Social Darwinism And The Holocaust

World War II was a horrific event that lasted from 1939 to 1945 with over 60 million people killed throughout the world. In particular, the Holocaust accounted for millions of deaths in the persecution of Jews, with very few survivors in comparison. Anti- Semitism was an already occurring belief during this era, but because due to the eruption of World War II, the hate for Jews grew rapidly. In order to justify the Nazis desire toward the persecution of Jews, the Nazis enacted a series of anti- Semitic laws and justified their ideologies. I believe that the introduction of German concentration camps came from the anti- Semitic laws and ideologies from the Nazis because of the Nuremberg Laws, Emigration law, Social Darwinism, and anti- Semitic
Regarding the theory of Social Darwinism, human evolution occurs through natural selection. In Mark P. Mostert’s article, “Cultures of Death, Old and New,” he explains, “In some ways, Nazi ideology legitimized itself through the pseudoscience of Social Darwinism, driving perceptions of difference from benign recognition to active genocide. Not only was the pseudoscientific claimed as science, but the pseudoscientific was used as an instrument of deceit to perpetuate murder” (1). By using the theory of Social Darwinism, Nazis are able to justify the use of concentration camps through the persecution of Jews. Despite Social Darwinism not being a legitimate scientific theory, Nazis use this theory to validate their anti-Semitic ideologies. By using this theory, they are able to claim that the Germans are considered as the superior race, and that any other race was undesirable, which would lead to the German concentration camps. A similar enactment can be found with the Final Solution. In the textbook, Traditions and Encounters. A Brief Global History, by Jerry H Bentley, it claims that because of the failed original attempt to emigrate Jews to neighboring countries, the policy to commit genocide to every living Jew in Germany was established by the fifteen leading Nazi bureaucrats at the Wannsee Conference in January 20, 1942 (1050).
The Nazi military leader, Hermann Goering, had been interviewed by a newspaper company to state his views on Hitler’s regime. In the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s newspaper article, “Hitler Sworn in as Chancellor; Names Nazi Aides to Two Key Cabinet Positions,” they write, “‘The aim of the Hitlerist Movement’, he [Goering] asserted, ‘is to revive German national life. The Nazi regime will allow no alliance between Germans and people belonging to the black and yellow races, nor between Germans and Jews. German citizens, men or women, who marry Jews and Jewesses, will automatically forfeit their citizenship rights against the German state’” (3). By appointing Hitler as chancellor, the Nazis were able to fully act upon anti- Semitic laws. This led to the introduction of concentration camps because the Nazis were able to justify their racism and racial superiority in the persecution of Jews. In addition, the Nazi ideology that Jews “stabbed” Germany in the back supports the establishment of German concentration camps. In the Nazi propaganda poster, Deutsche, denkt daran!, (Please see Illustration 1), it depicts a Jewish man wielding a knife, with other stereotypical looking Jewish men behind him; the man with the knife is pointing it toward the crowd of German soldiers entering a war. This illustration directly correlates with the