Was German “Eliminationist Anti-Semitism” Responsible for the Holocaust?
| |
|Was German “Eliminationist Anti-Semitism” Responsible for the Holocaust? |
|Issue 10 “Taking Sides: Clashing Views in World History” |
| |
German anti-Semitism played the main role in Holocaust and extermination of Jewish population in Europe during World War 2. There are different views on this subject among historians. Some support the fact that German society was anti-Semitic and ordinary Germans’ hatred towards Jews was the main factor in horrors of Holocaust. One of supporters of this idea is political science professor Daniel Goldhagen. He argues that German citizens were willing to commit all kinds of crimes against European Jewry during years of World War 2. In his article “The Paradigm Challenged” he emphasizes that many books were written about the Holocaust and none of them includes studies of the perpetrators; people who designed and implemented the strategies of mass extermination of Jews. Goldhagen discussed that most scholars have a very strange view on the attitude of perpetrators. In their studies most perpetrators presented as victims of the Nazi regime and social pressure of that time. They made Germans look like they had no choice, but to follow violent and unlawful orders of their leaders. In fact there was always a choice not to kill innocent people. There is no record of anybody from German military being seriously punished for not following the order to kill Jews. Despite that, ordinary German soldiers were killing Jewish people all around the Europe and the Western part of Soviet Union. Also the writers who defense German perpetrators and look for more complicated explanation of their
|Was German “Eliminationist Anti-Semitism” Responsible for the Holocaust? |
|Issue 10 “Taking Sides: Clashing Views in World History” |
| |
German anti-Semitism played the main role in Holocaust and extermination of Jewish population in Europe during World War 2. There are different views on this subject among historians. Some support the fact that German society was anti-Semitic and ordinary Germans’ hatred towards Jews was the main factor in horrors of Holocaust. One of supporters of this idea is political science professor Daniel Goldhagen. He argues that German citizens were willing to commit all kinds of crimes against European Jewry during years of World War 2. In his article “The Paradigm Challenged” he emphasizes that many books were written about the Holocaust and none of them includes studies of the perpetrators; people who designed and implemented the strategies of mass extermination of Jews. Goldhagen discussed that most scholars have a very strange view on the attitude of perpetrators. In their studies most perpetrators presented as victims of the Nazi regime and social pressure of that time. They made Germans look like they had no choice, but to follow violent and unlawful orders of their leaders. In fact there was always a choice not to kill innocent people. There is no record of anybody from German military being seriously punished for not following the order to kill Jews. Despite that, ordinary German soldiers were killing Jewish people all around the Europe and the Western part of Soviet Union. Also the writers who defense German perpetrators and look for more complicated explanation of their
Bibliography: Joseph R. Mitchell and Helen Buss Mitchell. Taking Sides: Clashing Views in World History. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008.