Sugar Hill Kevis
24th February 2008, 17:49
This is something we've been discussing in history class, I was interested in seeing what people feel here.
Here's part of an essay (minus some waffle at the start) I did on it for class. I was assigned the line of argument (that the German working class bear responsibility), and it doesn't necessarily reflect my opinions... Personally, I think you need to look at it more in the context of the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners who were arrested in the first few years of Nazi rule, a lot of these people who would probably have been at the vanguard of any resistance.
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A notion that “eliminationist anti-Semitism” being a prevalent part of German political culture was put forward by Goldhagen. It was contested that this form of anti-semitism had been developing in Germany over a multitude of centuries prior to the 20th Century. German support for anti-Semitism prior to the Third Reich can illustrated by massacres of the Jews from the 11th Century up until the 14th and more relevant to the political culture of the 19th and 20th centuries, the 1819 Hep-Hep riots against German Jews and the “League of Anti-Semites” which was founded in 1879 as the first German group committed to combating the supposed threat that the Jews posed to the state of Germany.
If we view Germany under this historical context, a degree of weight would seemingly be added to Goldhagen’s argument and in this context, 43.9% of Germans threw their support behind an openly anti-Semitic party. However, this still does not constitute a clear majority and it’s within comprehension that many people may not have voted for the NSDAP for anti-Semitic reasons. In spite of this possibility, the people who did not vote Nazi for explicitly anti-Semitic reasons could not claim ignorance; this was a party that was openly and belligerently anti-Semitic and so the voters would be entirely aware of this tenant of the party.
Following the Nazis ascension to dictatorship, Jews were soon subject to persecution. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, suspending all many civil liberties for Jewish people. On November 9th 1938 the German people lost their innocence to the violent discrimination against the Jews. During Kristallnacht (“the night of broken glass”), 8,000 Jewish businesses were ransacked, 30,000 Jews taken to concentration camps, 267 synagogues were burnt and over a thousand more ransacked with approximately 2,000-2,500 deaths being either directly or indirectly caused by the events of that night. It is also important to note that it was not only the SS and SA carrying out this persecution but it was met with the involvement of countless German citizens.
As such for the events of Kristallnacht, no German could claim ignorance to what the Jews were to be subject to. A Hanover newspaper further reinforces this notion of awareness in a 1942 edition carrying the headline “the Jews to be exterminated”. Even if the knowledge of Nazi death camps far away in the east were not widespread, knowledge of mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen was extensive according to historian Ian Kershaw.
The idea of the silent majority is often used in politics to counteract large numbers of demonstrators and vocal detractors of government policy, these people often overshadow the supposed silent majority who are in support of the government. This can be applied to Nazi Germany so far as to take passivity on the part of German citizens as being indicative of them being proponents of Nazi policy against the Jews. Contrary to this, Marxist historian Timothy Mason has asserted that the German working class were in constant opposition to the Nazi regime and as such opposed the holocaust has put it forward. However, Mason’s ideas of resistance seem to be purely rooted in economics as workers would often switch companies in an effort to drive bosses to increase wages and bears little relation to Nazi racial policy. It was not as if the German people were incapable of resistance, although rare there were some fleeting examples of public opposition to Nazi policy primarily the street protests occurring of the T4 euthanasia program. If as such, knowledge of the extent of Jewish persecution was well known as Goldhagen and Kershaw have put forward yet there was no embodiment of public protest and it could be seen that the German people were more incensed by the mentally and physically disabled being euthanised than they were to the genocide of the Jews. Kershaw has attributed passivity on the part of most Germans to corresponding with latent anti-Semitism.
If inaction was not the by-product of underlying anti-Semitism on the part of a nation, what was it the product of? To examine the structure of the Third Reich, following Gleichschaltung nearly every aspect of German society was an organ of the Nazi terror state. It is possible that in such a state of oppression many Germans who were personally opposed to the holocaust were afraid to speak out. However, there were 100,000 Germans involved in orchestrating genocide against the Jews and there was never one recorded instance of someone being executed for refusing to commit killings against the Jews. If not one person amongst the 100,000 involved had the moral standing to refuse atrocities against human beings then a great deal of weight is given to Goldhagens argument that Germans were not only willing but actively revelled in the holocaust.
To conclude, it is clear that the German people must concede responsibility for the atrocities carried out against Jews in the Third Reich. A lack of persecution against even a small minority of people who opposed Nazi racial policy refutes any conception that the manacles of this terror state suppressed any opposition from the German people.
Here's part of an essay (minus some waffle at the start) I did on it for class. I was assigned the line of argument (that the German working class bear responsibility), and it doesn't necessarily reflect my opinions... Personally, I think you need to look at it more in the context of the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners who were arrested in the first few years of Nazi rule, a lot of these people who would probably have been at the vanguard of any resistance.
---------------------------
A notion that “eliminationist anti-Semitism” being a prevalent part of German political culture was put forward by Goldhagen. It was contested that this form of anti-semitism had been developing in Germany over a multitude of centuries prior to the 20th Century. German support for anti-Semitism prior to the Third Reich can illustrated by massacres of the Jews from the 11th Century up until the 14th and more relevant to the political culture of the 19th and 20th centuries, the 1819 Hep-Hep riots against German Jews and the “League of Anti-Semites” which was founded in 1879 as the first German group committed to combating the supposed threat that the Jews posed to the state of Germany.
If we view Germany under this historical context, a degree of weight would seemingly be added to Goldhagen’s argument and in this context, 43.9% of Germans threw their support behind an openly anti-Semitic party. However, this still does not constitute a clear majority and it’s within comprehension that many people may not have voted for the NSDAP for anti-Semitic reasons. In spite of this possibility, the people who did not vote Nazi for explicitly anti-Semitic reasons could not claim ignorance; this was a party that was openly and belligerently anti-Semitic and so the voters would be entirely aware of this tenant of the party.
Following the Nazis ascension to dictatorship, Jews were soon subject to persecution. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, suspending all many civil liberties for Jewish people. On November 9th 1938 the German people lost their innocence to the violent discrimination against the Jews. During Kristallnacht (“the night of broken glass”), 8,000 Jewish businesses were ransacked, 30,000 Jews taken to concentration camps, 267 synagogues were burnt and over a thousand more ransacked with approximately 2,000-2,500 deaths being either directly or indirectly caused by the events of that night. It is also important to note that it was not only the SS and SA carrying out this persecution but it was met with the involvement of countless German citizens.
As such for the events of Kristallnacht, no German could claim ignorance to what the Jews were to be subject to. A Hanover newspaper further reinforces this notion of awareness in a 1942 edition carrying the headline “the Jews to be exterminated”. Even if the knowledge of Nazi death camps far away in the east were not widespread, knowledge of mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen was extensive according to historian Ian Kershaw.
The idea of the silent majority is often used in politics to counteract large numbers of demonstrators and vocal detractors of government policy, these people often overshadow the supposed silent majority who are in support of the government. This can be applied to Nazi Germany so far as to take passivity on the part of German citizens as being indicative of them being proponents of Nazi policy against the Jews. Contrary to this, Marxist historian Timothy Mason has asserted that the German working class were in constant opposition to the Nazi regime and as such opposed the holocaust has put it forward. However, Mason’s ideas of resistance seem to be purely rooted in economics as workers would often switch companies in an effort to drive bosses to increase wages and bears little relation to Nazi racial policy. It was not as if the German people were incapable of resistance, although rare there were some fleeting examples of public opposition to Nazi policy primarily the street protests occurring of the T4 euthanasia program. If as such, knowledge of the extent of Jewish persecution was well known as Goldhagen and Kershaw have put forward yet there was no embodiment of public protest and it could be seen that the German people were more incensed by the mentally and physically disabled being euthanised than they were to the genocide of the Jews. Kershaw has attributed passivity on the part of most Germans to corresponding with latent anti-Semitism.
If inaction was not the by-product of underlying anti-Semitism on the part of a nation, what was it the product of? To examine the structure of the Third Reich, following Gleichschaltung nearly every aspect of German society was an organ of the Nazi terror state. It is possible that in such a state of oppression many Germans who were personally opposed to the holocaust were afraid to speak out. However, there were 100,000 Germans involved in orchestrating genocide against the Jews and there was never one recorded instance of someone being executed for refusing to commit killings against the Jews. If not one person amongst the 100,000 involved had the moral standing to refuse atrocities against human beings then a great deal of weight is given to Goldhagens argument that Germans were not only willing but actively revelled in the holocaust.
To conclude, it is clear that the German people must concede responsibility for the atrocities carried out against Jews in the Third Reich. A lack of persecution against even a small minority of people who opposed Nazi racial policy refutes any conception that the manacles of this terror state suppressed any opposition from the German people.