The wars between the Axis Power and the Allied and the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan were usually what come into a discussion about World War II. Besides those events, the most horrific and considerably inhumane time was the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a period time during World War II, when Adolf Hitler launched a “movement” to kill all the Jews and anyone he deemed as lower than him in his territories. Most people now looked back at history around this time and believed that the SS and policemen killed the Jews because of brainwashing and forcing. But, in the book Ordinary Men, Christopher R. Browning argued that it was not the case. He argued that these police officers were ordinary men just like everybody else and they were not forced…
“Intentions and the “Final Solution”” by Berel Lang captures the Intentionalist and Functionalists views of the “master plan” that Hitler calls the “Final Solution”. The “Final Solution” was what Hitler constructed and planned to carry out the Holocaust. The author makes it clear that this act of violence was carried out by only one person, and that person being Adolf Hitler, and that it was certainly not an accident. Lang creates a biased comparison of what different views of the “Final Solution” were after everybody met for the Wannsee Conference. Intentionalist believe that this was something that Hitler was planning the whole time, while functionalist…
“News of the German defeats filled the Jewish prisoners with both hope and trepidation. Many feared that the SS would soon liquidate the camp and its remaining prisoners so that all evidence of their heinous crimes would be destroyed.”9 Those who were in the camp wanted a way to escape and tell someone of the war crimes that the German’s were committing. The revolt was staged by the “Organizing Committee,” which consisted of Dr. Julian Chorazycki, “camp elder” Marceli Galewski, former Czech army officer Zelo Bloch, Zev Kurland, and Jankiel Wiernik, a carpenter who worked in the extermination area.”10 Samuel was unaware that the staging of a revolt was about to occur. How Samuel found out was in a truly remarkable way. While he was stationed with an Austrian guard, and elderly man walks into the room he is in, already stripped down and about to be executed, pleaded out that there is a conspiracy being planned to escape, but the Austrian guard couldn’t understand him and proceeded to shoot the man in the head. Leading up the revolt, the committee was faced with a major setback. Chorazycki, who was charged with the task of acquiring arms from outside was caught by the deputy commandant and would eventually commit suicide to prevent any other information from escaping. After hearing news of a revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto from prisoners coming off the trains, their morale’s and…
Everywhere you go there will be police to help keep everything in line. In Germany it’s the same way. Their police are called the Orpo troops or Ordnungspolizei, also known as the green police. Their name comes from what they wear, green uniforms so green is in their name. They were mostly known during the Holocaust when Hitler was in power around January of 1933. He used them to take over the country and wipe out the Jews. Even though Hitler wanted to kill the Jews. But the Jews did have there own police called the Judenrat. The Judenrat and the green police were trained the same way. They both had to have physical fitness, military experience, and secondary or higher education. But even though they were police they still had to wear the star…
Einsatzgruppen - Killing Squads Do you ever stop and think about how many lives were taken in the Holocaust? More than six million Jews lost their lives throughout the course of this traumatic event. Some of us may find it hard to even wrap our brains around a number this large. Try and imagine that each and every digit in that number was a living human being. Now they’re dead.…
In the introduction to Alan E. Steinweis’ book Kristallnacht 1938, he argues that the German citizens attacking Jewish synagogues, businesses, homes, properties and the Jewish people themselves on November 9th, 1938 is important to understand the perspective of German Society and it’s role in the prosecution of Jews perpetrated by the Nazis. It further suggests that the involvement of Germans in the attacks was far more wide spread than just a small group of Nazi and Nazi sympathizers. It included not just German military officers and personnel, but also workers, teenagers and even children. Kristallnacht 1938 is different than other books and publications on the subject of the events that occurred in Germany in November 1938. Its primary focus is more on the individuals committing the attacks rather than the Jewish victims. It also argues against some of the prevailing theories noted in other works about the Kristallnacht.…
Donald L. Niewyk’s fifth and sixth chapters both deal more with outside perspectives and outside reactions than it does with those who were persecuted. The fifth chapter, “Bystander Reactions,” offers four different arguments as to why bystanders acted they way they did during the Holocaust. The sixth chapter, “Possibilities of Rescue,” discusses three different viewpoints on what foreign governments could have done to prevent the Holocaust. These two chapters conclude Niewyk’s book The Holocaust and wrap up the final sequence of events surrounding the Holocaust and the camps.…
Early in the Holocaust, German army units participated in the massacre of the Jews in Eastern Europe. Among these, the Reserve Police Battalion 101 was made up of civilian police men, German men, and volunteers subject to the military draft. They were middle-aged working family men with a lower middle class background. Their main purpose was to be an essential source of manpower in holding down German-occupied Europe. In 1941, they were told that they had to perform a gruesome and undesirable task executing the Jewish population in the area they patrolled. My paper will be focusing on factors that lead up to how these “ordinary men” allow themselves to be a part of a systematic genocide. In trying to understand the factors that made these men’s crimes possible the factors that are central to their actions are several: peer pressure and conformity, the roles, the developing of a rationale for killing, and the environment they were in. Without these elements, the men of Police Battalion 101would not have become executioners.…
In 1992, Christopher Browning published his book Ordinary Men, a work in which he narrates the experiences of the men in the Reserve Police Battalion 101. Browning begins by classifying the men as ordinary people, as his title suggests, but quickly reveals not only how easily these men succumbed to the vicious acts they were expected to carry out, but how swiftly they began to take extra measures that were unnecessary as a result of their loss of morality. Based on this, Browning’s account of this Battalion allows him to explain that the Holocaust was made possible…
Stanley Milgram, born a Jew, wonders how he was fortunate enough to be born and raised in the United States, however, he was still impacted by the Holocaust. He felt very passionate about the Holocaust and feels guilty that he hadn’t died in the concentration camps with his fellow Jews in Europe (Miller, 2015). Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, sought out the reasoning behind why Nazi soldiers blindly obeyed authority, especially after the Nuremberg War Criminal trials in World War II (McLeod, 2007). The Nuremberg War Criminal trials consisted of thirteen trials against the higher ranked “Nazi war criminals.” The Nazi criminals killed innocent Jews but proceeded to do so anyway during the Holocaust (Nuremberg Trials, 2015). Some of the Nazis knew killing Jews was immoral, but claim they were “just following orders.” The fact that Milgram was a Jew (Miller, 2015) accompanied by the testimonies in…
Many people have different ideas on who is to blame for the holocaust. Some say “well it has to be the SS officers, because they carried out the plans”, while others say “it’s clearly other countries faults for knowing about it, and not doing anything”. There are many people you can blame for allowing this terrible time in history, or even partaking in it, but there is one single person who really allowed this to happen. Hitler, all by himself is the one who caused it all, through his allowing of nazzis to grow bigger than ever, the foreseeing of this expulsion, and because of his hatred for jews.…
Growing up, there is a label on each and every person, and on that label, there are expectations. Every single plant, animal, thing, human has to meet the expectations placed upon their label. Whether they like it or not, this label, and these expectations stay with them their whole life. Good, bad, smart, athletic, and so on. What they have been pre-described, shapes their life, for the better or worse, and just like any other time, the time during the Holocaust much was the same. However, the expectations that were placed on every single human, country, and government did not seem to be met. Every one of them all had the same excuse. “We did not…
In his book, Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning describes the men of Reserve Police Battalion as “ordinary men” because he is attempting to portray them as any other man regardless of their nationality. Daniel Goldhagen, on the other hand, describes the men of the Police Battalion as “ordinary Germans” as to why they would voluntarily commit such horrendous acts of violence as a unique German mindset of the time.…
The Holocaust was a mass murder of about six million Jews by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany that took place over a span of 12 years. The purpose was to wipe out what were considered “inferior” races and social groups, meaning they were not as common or normal to the Nazis. Beginning in 1933, the feeling of anti-semitism, or hatred of Jews, was very immense for Hitler and his Nazis, so the practice of persecution was put into effect. The title Holocaust was given to this event because it means “destruction by fire,” and the inferior groups were being sacrificed and killed through concentration camps and death sentences (Greenfeld 3). Actions needed to be taken in order to guide the targets of Nazi Germany to safety, but it was not a priority for…
After Adolf Hitler had died (the guy responsible for starting the Holocaust) many of his followers and close friends tried to carry on his legacy (The Nuremburg Trials (the book) They called it "German Patriotism" Some of the most renounced Nazis are: Hermann Goering (former ww1 OCE), Heinrich Himmler (Leader of S.S), Joseph Goebbels (Minister of Proproganda) and Martin Bormann (Hitler 's Secretary.) and many others. These men were all being tried for one thing, discriminating Jews. All though, have you ever wondered what role they played in the holocaust? I have.…