Why Did Genocide Happen

Often, humans are blind to the idea that we are all one species, whether it be one person, or a crowd of people. Throughout the existence of mankind, many nations and civilizations have made history by slaughtering their own people, whether it be for superstitions, personal gain, or both. The Holocaust, one of the most violent genocidal events in the past century, has sparked many awareness programs to prevent another event of similar nature from happening again. Genocide is the act of deliberately killing a large group of people, especially those of a similar ethnic group or nation. These awareness efforts in recent years have lead historians to ask: Why does genocide occur? Often, genocide is the product of political and ethnic tensions
and strong manipulation by a notable being or group. Firstly, genocide is often caused by existing ethnic tensions, especially within the same nation or land boundaries.
Before Nazi Germany’s peak of influence in Europe, Grupenfuhrer Heydrich, an SS soldier, addressed the police force of Germany to perform the first act against German Jews in the World War II era, Kristallnacht. In his order issued to all Police officers, Heydrich wrote, “a) Only such measures may be taken which do not jeopardize German life or property (for instance, burning of synagogues only if there is no danger of fires for the neighbourhoods). b) Business establishments and homes of Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police have been instructed to supervise the execution of these directives to arrest looters. c) In Business streets special care is to be taken that non-Jewish establishments will be safeguarded at all cost against damage. As soon as the events of this night permit the use of the designated officers, as many Hews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails will hold, are to be arrested in all districts, Initially only healthy male Jews, not too old, are to be arrested, After the arrests have been carried out the appropriate concentration camp is to be contacted immediately with a view to a quick transfer of the Jews to the camps,”
(Document C). In this memo, SS soldier Heydrich issues an arrest for all Jews in all districts of Germany. However, Heydrich specifically mentions to avoid destroying or harming any non-Jewish property or beings, going out of his way to invalidate some Jewish buildings if German lives were on the line. These filters create an undeniable idea that the order was to be issued with Jews in mind, as the memo also mentioned the transferring of Jewish people to concentration camps, which are infamously known to be facilities of inhumane conditions and ruthless murdering. On another note, ethnic tensions are not only sparked from hatred on a specific group of people. In other cases of genocide, land distribution also played a key role in creating tensions between two populations of people in a single nation. The United Human Rights Council wrote a report on the genocide in Darfur, which is in the western part of the nation Sudan. “In 1989, General Omar Bashir took control of Sudan by military coup, which then allowed The National Islamic Front government to inflame regional tensions. In a struggle for political control of the area, weapons poured into Darfur. Conflicts increased between African farmers and many nomadic Arab tribes. In 2003, two Darfur rebel movements- the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)- took up arms against the Sudanese government, complaining about the marginalization of the area and the failure to protect sedentary people from attacks by nomads. The government of Sudan responded by unleashing Arab militias known as Janjaweed, or “devils on horseback”. Sudanese forces and Janjaweed militia attacked hundreds of villages through Darfur. Over 400 villages were completely destroyed and millions of civilians were forced to flee their homes. Om this ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed… The Sudanese government … denies any connection with the Janjaweed,” (Document G). A recurring theme between these two documents is the genocides’ perpetrator was always the government, or a level of government. In this example, the government of Sudan aims to quell tensions by hiring a militia, while also hiding this by denying involvement and allowing the Janjaweed to carry out their own actions. The root of these tensions, however, was caused by border disputes and economic issues, which caused “the flow of weapons into the country,” and ultimately, the violent slaughter that still goes on today. Secondly, the influence of powerful figures can often lead to the act of genocide against a group of people.
Following the conclusion of World War II in Nazi Germany, the world witnessed the Nuremburg War Criminal Trials, a set of trials against the onlookers of the Holocaust, or Germany’s mass extermination of European Jews. In most of the cases in the trials, the accused often used obedience to plead their cases, claiming that their actions had all come from higher in the Nazi’s hierarchy of government. Researcher Stanley Milgram “devised [an] experiment to answer the question ‘Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them accomplices?’ … The study revealed that two-thirds of the time, the participant was willing to deliver potentially life-threatening shocks to the ‘learner’ simply because they were receiving orders from an authority figure” (Document A and Documentary). Historians baffled the thought that Americans were not capable of killing their own peers, simply because the population was thought of as “superior” and it was claimed to be “impossible for an American to kill a fellow American.” However, Milgram’s experiments confirmed the truth that humans are willing to commit unethical or inhumane acts against other humans if given orders from an authority figure, confirming his suspicions during the Nuremberg Trials, and more specifically, Adolf Eichmann’s claim that he was only following
orders from his superiors. These experiments created the idea that not all humans are safe from harming those who they care about. Following the studies, a genocide occurring in Rwanda was documented in 2010 by a writer who explained the events leading to the chaos. In his online report, he wrote, “Thus, by April 1994 Rwanda was in a state of crisis: the economy had collapsed, which only added to problems of landlessness, over-population and societal change. At the same time, the government was propagandizing that the Tutsis were the root of all these problems and inciting racial hatred against them. This created a “kill or be killed” mentality in which previously rational people were driven to killing their former friends and neighbors through extreme fear,” (Document B). The situation in Rwanda occurred in a fashion similar to that of the genocide in Darfur (Sudan), with one exception; the government created fear amongst its own population. The online report on this genocide mentioned that rational people went out of their way to kill off their friends and family in the sake of a chaotic society and a rapidly collapsing environment, leaving a precedent that claims that ‘given the right conditions, humans will turn against each other.’ The intentional propaganda distributed by the government is a strong example of corrupt manipulation that can cause genocides of similar qualities, and ultimately, leave an impact on those caught in the center of the blaze. As previously stated before, genocide can be caused by many different actions or factors, affecting developing or even modern countries alike. In the right circumstances, two large causes of genocide remain to be the most threatening in corrupt nations. Racial tensions that arise in wearying situations can bend civilized people to turn on their peers over materials, land, or power. Additionally, strong influence from the totalitarian leaders or governments can incite powerful crowds of people to perform inhumane acts on minorities. In what started as Germany’s attempt to become the most superior race of Europe spiraled out of control to begin the mass killing of millions of European Jews. This horrific example of treachery against a nation’s own population serves as a standard to all leaders around the world: to avoid events or actions that may cause the next mass-scale genocide.