Hitler annexed Austria as part of his quest for German “living space." He received a standing ovation at the Reichstag after announcing his “peaceful” acquisition of the country.
Hitler annexed Austria as part of his quest for German “living space." He received a standing ovation at the Reichstag after announcing his “peaceful” acquisition of the country.
On April 11, 1945, American troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. These soldiers had faced death many times. They had known the misery of twentieth-century warfare. None of that had prepared them for the horrors of Buchenwald: “No sooner had we passed the barbed wire gate than a nauseating stench reached our nostrils. But what we saw was even worse,” recalled a soldier of General George Patton’s Third Army.
There were dead bodies all around the camp, some lying side by side, others piled upon each other like cordwood. . . . [Further on] beyond the buildings, was a deep pit. It was filled with naked bodies—men, women and children—in all the grotesque positions of death. Someone said that these dead were Jews.1
American generals Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and George Patton viewed the carnage. General Patton—the fierce fighter everyone called “Old Blood and Guts”—stumbled away from the death pit and vomited.
General Eisenhower ordered the troops to document everything they saw. He wanted to be sure that nobody could ever dismiss it as “merely . . . propaganda.”2 The troops took pictures and talked to prisoners. In this way, they uncovered one horrifying truth after another.
New words came into the language and old words took on new meanings. In 1944, attorney Ralph Lemkin coined the word genocide. It meant the systematic killing of an entire racial, ethnic, political, or religious group. Holocaust originally meant mass destruction, especially by fire. After the war, it was used to describe the senseless slaughter that claimed millions of lives.
The saga of the Holocaust begins with Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. “Nazi” comes from the first four letters of the German NAZIonal. By calling their regime the Third Reich, the Nazis were claiming kinship with great leaders of the German past.
The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire. The pope laid its foundation in 800. That year, he bestowed the title of Holy Roman Emperor on Charlemagne of the Franks. The Second Reich began in 1871, when Otto von Bismarck unified the German states. It ended in 1918, with Germany’s defeat in World War I.
Between the two world wars, Germany experimented with democracy. The Weimar Republic (named after the town where the constitution was written) did not last long. It faltered during the Great Depression that began in 1929. It collapsed altogether when Adolf Hitler came to power.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor (chief minister of state) of Germany. This made him second in command under President Paul von Hindenburg. He immediately began the takeover that would lead Germany to war and genocide.
Eleven million people, 6 million of them Jews, perished during the twelve years of the Nazi Reich. Many have doubted that this grim fact could ever be explained or understood. Judaic Studies professors Calvin Goldscheider and Alan S. Zuckerman called the devastation of the Holocaust “unimaginable.” The scholars said that its meaning was “beyond the [understanding] of humans.”3 Others, like historian John Weiss, do not agree: “The Holocaust,” Weiss wrote, “is unique, but it is not [beyond understanding].”4 Its causes and effects can be studied and analyzed.
Sooner or later, anyone who studies the Holocaust must confront two questions: How could this have happened in a civilized country, and who is to blame? The search for answers has led to controversy.
Some have placed most of the blame on Adolf Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The opinions of historian Sebastian Haffner are a good example: “After 1933, something like a Führer state [a dictatorship] would probably have come into being even without Hitler. And there probably would have been another war even without Hitler. But not the murder of millions of Jews.”5
The idea of “no Hitler, no Holocaust”6 has gone out of favor with most historians. There is a new focus on the role of the unknown, ordinary people. The Nazi leadership planned the Holocaust, but hundreds of ordinary people carried it out. The killing could not have happened without them. Taken to its limits, the focus on the role of ordinary people in carrying out the Holocaust can lead to what John Weiss calls “bankrupt theories of collective responsibility”7 (blaming the entire German people).
Most of those who study Nazi Germany believe the truth lies somewhere between the extremes. It is wrong to blame all Germans for the Holocaust. But it is also wrong to blame only Adolf Hitler and the Nazi leadership. Many factors came together at a particular time and place in history. The result was a world war, accompanied by genocide. Learning how and why these horrors came about can perhaps help us ensure that they never happen again.