Summary Of The Holocaust By Martin Gilbert

To recite a quote by Martin Gilbert within the preface to his book The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe. During the Second World War, the Holocaust “was a process which depended upon the rousing of historic hatreds and ancient prejudice, and upon the cooperation or acquiescence of many different forces: of industry, science, and medicine, of the Civil Service and bureaucracy, and the most modern mechanisms and channels of communication. It also depended upon collaborators from countries far beyond the German border, and it depended most of all, one survivor has remarked, ‘upon the indifference of bystanders in every land.” Every one of these factors played a major role in the creation of the Holocaust. However, I feel there is one in particular
Hitler, within only two years of the First World War, began to plot against the Jews and establish antisemitic words in his campaign. In the words of Gilbert, “which permeated all Hitler’s speeches to his members, was echoed in the actions of his followers. Individual Jews were attacked in the street, and at public meetings and street-corner rallies Jews were blamed, often in the crudest language, for every facet of Germany’s problems including the military defeat of 1918, the subsequent economic hardship, and sudden, spiraling inflation.” (Gilbert 24/25). Hitler, like most in the past, used the Jews as a scapegoat for the German problems, convincing most of his followers that those of Jewish fate were to blame and were enemies of the German people. However, Hitler and the Nazi party were not the only ones attacking the Jews. Many other groups in Germany attempted to gain followers through verbal harassment of Jews, especially Jews high in the German government, one group in particular targeted the former foreign minister Walther Rathenau who in his time created a treaty with the Soviet