Op-Ed: How to Explain the Nazis' Obsession with Jews?
For years after returning from the hell created by the Germans of the Third Reich, I tried to understand the reason for the unfathomable and irrational hatred if one can call it that towards us.
How is it that tens of millions of allegedly normative people became worse than predators? After all, most predators only kill when they are hungry or feel threatened. The Germans were definitely not hungry and couldn't have felt threatened by the Jews. Did we declare war on them? Did we claim territories from them?
It's true that in order to justify their impossible acts, the mass murder in cold blood and in the most sadistic methods of millions of men, women and children, according to a well-calculated plan they claimed that the Jews were planning to take over the world. And they, the courageous Germans, decided to rescue humanity from this danger. There is no need to state just how false and ridiculous this claim was.
The years went by and, needless to say, I failed to find any explanation to the Germans' wild and unrestrained behavior, to that unprecedented hatred in human history. I have reached the conclusion that there is simply no answer and no explanation. Other than, of course, the anti-Semitism which has turned into a real disease and tradition passed on from generation to generation, up to this very day.
The Germans, as an advanced and organized nation, did not settle for allegedly spontaneous pogroms, like the Crusades or the 17th-century pogroms in Ukraine and Russia. The Inquisition era in Spain didn't serve as a model to them either. No, the Germans murdered and destroyed according to a method and a plan, loyal to their dominant "motto": "Ordnung muss sein" there must be order.
more: http://www.shalomlife.com/news/23115/op-ed-how-to-explain-the-nazis-obsession-with-jews/
Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)-
You had it right in the title. Nazis. Some Germans opposed the Nazis.
Let me help you understand WWII. While Hitler did obsess over the Jews, exterminating them was not Reason One for going to war. The reason for war was a common one. Hitler wanted room for his Aryan race to expand. He had no more love for Christian Poles or Russians than German Jews. They were occupying land that Germany wanted, therefore, they had to die.
Go back a few hundred years. White Europeans needed room to expand. They found two new continents. They proceeded to kill and displace the native population, which were not Christian and would not convert freely. Those they did not kill, they herded into concentration camps. They were called Reservations. When the white man decided he needed more land, they were kicked off the Reservation. The slaughter continued until both continents were completely overtaken by whites. Some Jews also took part in the Genocide of the Americas.
Back to the 20th century, Hitler did indeed have a model to follow. It was the Armenian genocide. Turkey, to this day, has never been held accountable for this crime. Adolph thought he could get away with it, too.
So basically, Nazism was not an aberration. Just another manifestation of human greed that inhabits many of us.
Behind the Aegis
(53,956 posts)First, I did not write the piece.
Second, the person who did write the piece is likely much more aware of WWII that you, given he is a Holocaust survivor.
Third, no where in the piece was the author musing about why Germany went to war, but rather what was the Nazi obsession with Jews.
Forth, it is very clear, in the first line of the first paragraph as to which Germans the author was referring. Since you missed it, I shall reproduce it again: "For years after returning from the hell created by the Germans of the Third Reich..."
And, finally, I too am offended; by your very post, because it shows, once again, when discussing Jews and the Holocaust, it simply isn't allowed unless one can find a way to deflect from the topic, attack the author, or place blame on Jews for some other issue.
Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)OK, I see now that you didn't write the piece. I'm weak in that I need more than just a link at the bottom to show me that the opinions expressed in the OP are not necessarily those of the poster.
-
And, finally, I too am offended; by your very post, because it shows, once again, when discussing Jews and the Holocaust, it simply isn't allowed unless one can find a way to deflect from the topic, attack the author, or place blame on Jews for some other issue.
-
Deflect from the topic? I was merely trying to help the author reach understanding. He is obsessing over why the Nazis were obsessing. I was just pointing out that what happened has happened before and that the Holocaust was nothing new or unique.
Attack the author? Me? Where?
Place blame on the Jews? Huh????
Behind the Aegis
(53,956 posts)You were "helping" the author?
A Holocaust survivor trying to figure out why his tormenters did what they did?! There's a real head-scratcher. Just like nothing in the piece said anything about the Holocaust being new, as a matter of fact, he gave several examples of prior events.
You really should read the piece, then re-read your own post, you'll find the answers to your questions.
Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)I don't mean to diminish in any way the horror of the Holocaust, but the mistake that many make is that there is something unique about it, hence the author's questioning of WHY.
While he gave several examples of prior events, he couldn't connect the dots, and he omitted the most obvious precedent.
So help me out here, just what is the author seeking? An explanation of why man kills man? Or a more specific answer as to Why me? If the latter, get in line.
ScreamingMeemie
(68,918 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)I saw something on one of the cable science channels once called "the renaissance of science under the Nazis," and it showed interviews with all these guys who had just finished their grad work in the Nazi era, and one said, "Suddenly all these old ideas and old people were swept away to make way for youth and new ideas."
Who was swept away? The old Jewish professors.
I'm sure there were similar benefits with property stolen from Jews.
Anti-semitism existed, but the Nazis tweaked it to serve their purposes.
modrepub
(3,495 posts)I'm pretty convinced that most revolutions and/or changes of power occur under extreme economic duress. The Great Depression caused global upheaval. The Nazi's capitalized on the economic situation and directed the people's anger at an easy target. Their "final solution" was eugenics on steroids. Eugenics was a practice many "modern" societies had been discussing and experimenting with for decades before WWII. The Depression just provided more fuel to those preaching about removing the "undesirables". Unfortunately I don't see this type of behavior changing much.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)And it only worked for a couple of years before most people became disgusted, embarrassed, or at least tired of it, apart from a hardcore of right wingers who want any excuse to form a lynch mob.
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)and was told immediately he already was very familiar with it.
I can't imagine what kept everyone who knew of this at the time from going totally mad. Far too much evil for comprehension.
People need to know what made this happen, somehow.
Algernon Moncrieff
(5,790 posts)In this case, I think these factors explain it:
1) Anti-Semitism is a long-simmering sentiment in Christian Europe
The article makes reference to the two most readily handy pre-Nazi examples - the Pogroms and the Inquisition. Yet as terrible as both of these were, neither aimed at complete genocide. Spanish and Portuguese Jews, for example, find their way to the New World.
2) Hitler's personal anti-Semitism
The Daily Mail ran this interesting article about the research of Ralf-George Reuth:
At the time almost half of all German private banks were Jewish owned, the stock exchange dominated by Jewish stockbrokers, almost half of the nations newspapers were Jewish run as were 80 per cent of chain stores.
It became fashionable to decry the loss of the war on Jewish financiers.
But Hitler, according to Reuth, also blamed Jews for the Russian revolution, citing Leon Trotskys faith, as well as that of Marx whose theories he followed and even Lenin, who was one-quarter Jewish.
However, many world leaders harbor all sorts of personal bigotry. That alone does not explain much.
3) The rise of Nazism depended on getting a sizable portion of the German people to concentrate their rage and fear.
An easy way to unite a people is to give them a common enemy. An easy way for that happen is for a gifted speaker to deliver a message he deeply personally believes blaming a group of whom his audience is already suspicious.
But why not just take the Jews property and deport them?
4) War industry creates both a need for cheap labor and a means for mass slaughter.
This is where one sees a striking commonality between Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany. In Stalin's Russia, political enemies (and later, German prisoners) are sent to Siberia in rail cars to mine, clear forests, and perform otherwise physically brutal labor until death. In Hitler's Germany, useless eaters were ruthlessly murdered with industrial methods unavailable to the Inquisition and the Pogroms. Those deemed better-than-useless were worked to death in war industries. Even high level Nazi's like Albert Speer realized the waste and stupidity inherent in this, but failed to speak out because.....
5) Hitler grants unchecked authority to the SS/SD
The SS/SD are Hitler's private army and personal police force. They perform conventional military work (the Waffen SS), perform political-level policing and intelligence (The Gestapo and the SD), and enact the Final Solution (the Totenkopfverbände -- the "Death's Head" squadrons). I'm keeping it a summary level, but you get the idea. There is no check and balance. No one tells anyone in these organizations what they can't do. They are very well organized armed thugs with absolute power. It comes as no surprise that such an organization becomes corrupt. In this sense, I mean "corrupt" in the sense of "self-serving". By 1943, when it becomes clear to those in the upper echelons that Germany will not win the war, some Jews are ransomed from the concentration camps to raise funds for post-war escapes of high level officials. At the same time, a combination of Hitlerian rage and self-interest drives the concentration camps to -- as quickly as possible -- destroy the evidence and kill the witnesses. So for those who could not effectively work in a war industry, or those who didn't have relatives who could pay a steep ransom, death came -- either by Zyklon-B or bullets or starvation or exposure or disease.
6) Rationalization by the ordinary German citizen.
In the 30s "Hitler saved Germany from chaos and communism. His arguments against the Jews made sense"
In the early 40s "We Germans were at war, and we couldn't trust the Jews to stand with Hitler"
By the mid-40s "We had no idea what was going on in those camps except they were run by the SS, and we were to terrified of the SS to find out"
Obviously, not every German felt this way. Many Germans did - in small ways and large - work to hide Jews and get them to safety Many worked actively to oppose Hitler and resist the Nazis, and many very good men died horrible deaths resulting from their attempt to remove the Bavarian Corporal from the planet in 1944.
So it's clearly a multiple-causation event that fed on itself.
One of the ironies of history is that the flight German refugees combined with the stupid, wasteful, and criminal slaughter of human resources combined with the industrial resources to kill those humans (not just Jews, but Roma, Homosexuals, political enemies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Russians, the disabled, Catholics who wouldn't go along with the program, and many others) literally cost Germany any chance they had of winning the war.