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... tests to the extreme nature of the Nazi partys hostility towards Jews. With such a high level of efficiency, there was not a chance to revolt against the genocide of the Jews. German citizens were forced to accept Nazi brutality towards Jews because there was nothing they could do to prevent this treatment.
The strict organization provided by the presence of a dictator prevented the normal social controls of society from functioning. Social control is very important in the development of genocide because it is the only factor which can prevent its actual practice. There are two accepted levels of social control, external and internal. External controls are those actions that could have stopped the genocide. Examples of external control are the authorities and civilian population failing to stop the violence and nations of the world not acting to stop genocide. An interesting failure of external control in pre-World War II Germany is that the authorities themselves approved and took part in the violence.
They took Jewish property, deported them to ghettos, participated in beatings, and ultimately sent Jews to death camps. Internal control can be thought of as the factors that weaken the ability of the victim group to defend itself. Examples are lack of a state, lack of opportunity to develop a cultural group, not realizing the intent of genocide, and the actual destruction of group members (Mazian 215). Within the external controls, the authorities and citizens did nothing to prevent the Holocaust.
During the Holocaust, authorities obviously were not going to stop or question the violence directed towards the Jews because they were the ones responsible for and supportive of the hostility (Mazian 215). Authorities never even stopped the violence towards Jews at the hands of German citizens before the Holocaust began. When goods from Jewish shops were thrown into the streets and Jewish shops ransacked, the authorities never interfered to stop the violence (Schteunes 218). Also, German citizens could have protested Jewish persecution, but they did not. Except for a few small groups, the German population generally did nothing. The utter lack of action leads to the question: Why did they do nothing?
The tremendous amount of anti-Semitic ideas and the propaganda about Jews led the German citizens to think of Jews as different and non-human beings (Mazian 217). German citizens did not care about what happened to the Jews as is evident by their lack of protest. Other nations around the world showed no signs of concern regarding the Jews situation as can be seen by their similar lack of protest. They could have stopped the mass extermination of Jews, but they did not. Instead, the signs were ignored (Mazian 218). America, a nation known for its offering sanctuary to the oppressed, closed its doors to Jews through measurer's of isolationism, evasion, indifference, and bigotry (Mazian 219).
America even maintained its trade relations with Germany (Fein 168). The world knew what was happening to the Jews in Germany as can be seen through the resignation letter of James McDonald in 1936. In it he spoke of the persecution of Jews, the distribution of hate literature, and the inability of Jews to be employed (Ross 84 - 6). As a result of the worlds apathetic response to the plight of European Jews, the Nazis felt secure in their plans of genocide (Mazian 223). The general thought among the Nazis was since the world was not offering any help to the Jews now, why would they try to help them later? The lack of religious institutions interference on the part of the Jews demonstrated yet another failure of social control.
The religious institutions present in the world prior to World War II had perhaps the greatest opportunities to intercede on the side of the Jews. Religion was the one social institution that best represented authority and morality. Religion is historically known for having a great impact upon the actions of individuals. The Crusades were fought as religious wars in order to preserve Christianity.
The influence that the religious institutions potentially would have had on German citizens in order to stop the horrible treatment of Jews could have been enormous. The majority of the Jews killed in the Holocaust may have been saved if the churches had only interfered and protested against genocide. However, in most states, the religious institutions did nothing to help the Jews (Mazian 223). The Catholic Church did not even raise their voices in protest against Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass (Gordon 252).
Protestants were even quieter than the Catholics on matters of Hitlers war against the Jews (Weinberg 113). That is not to say that there was no Jewish support coming from the religious institutions. Many instances can be cited where individuals spoke out on the atrocities being committed against the Jews and acted to aid Jewish individuals. However the vast majority did not. The failure of German churches to protest against the racial persecution against Jews was a disgrace because of their unique position from which to speak. The Nazis feared the political power of the churches and would have perhaps altered their actions had the church leaders spoken out (Gordon 261).
The refusal of the churches to interfere with the killing of Jews with their moral authority simply allowed genocide to proceed unchecked. When looking at the Holocaust, one may ask how it is that the Jews did nothing to save themselves. The failure of the internal controls of the Jewish people also provided a situation that allowed the Holocaust to occur. The controls that could have saved the Jewish people were interference by their state, formation of self-defense groups, realizing the intent of the Holocaust, and retaliating physically.
Every one of these controls failed during the Holocaust (Mazian 225 - 6). The Jews had no state to protect them and no political voice in any country. If a Jewish state had been available, it could have threatened or actually attacked Germany. Since they had no one to protect them, the Holocaust proceeded unchecked (Mazian 226).
Another method of control that the Jews could have enacted would have been to form a large cultural group and rebel against the Nazi persecution. Ironically, they did not group together due to cultural reasons. Most of the European Jews did not have a common language, common faith in God, or common culture. If the Jews had organized a group and rebelled, the Germans would not have been able to maintain their high level of o...
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