Example research essay topic: Women And Children Anti Semitism - 1,663 words

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... to the ways in which National Socialists approached this desideratum. The principal theme of Goldhagen's book is easily summarized. The cause of the Holocaust is to be found in the mind-set and beliefs of the Germans.

A vast national collective, the German people, motivated by a uniquely German anti-Semitic ideology, carried out a Germanic enterprise, the Holocaust. The systematic killing of Jews became a national pastime, in which all Germans who were given the opportunity gladly and enthusiastically participated. Germans killed Jews because they were consumed, as Germans, by an uncontrollable Germanic anti-Semitism. Hatred of Jews constituted the foundation of the universally accepted weltanschauung, worldview, of the German people.

The politics of the regime was of only secondary importance. Goldhagen insists that terms such as "Nazis" and "SS men" are "inappropriate labels" that should not be used when referring to the murderers. Goldhagen seems to suggest that the only essential causal relationship between the Third Reich and the extermination of the Jews was that it allowed the Germans to act, without restraint, as Germans, in accordance with German beliefs. As Goldhagen writes: "The most appropriate, indeed the only appropriate general proper name for the Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust is 'Germans. ' They were Germans acting in the name of Germany and its highly popular leader, Adolf Hitler" (page 6). Rather than ponder the implications of such awkward contradictions, let us move quickly to Goldhagen's conclusion: "that anti-Semitism moved many thousands of 'ordinary' Germans -- and would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positioned -- to slaughter Jews. Not economic hardship, not the coercive means of a totalitarian state, not social psychological pressure, not invariable psychological propensities, but ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany, and had been for decades, induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenseless Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and without pity" (page 9).

Employing a crude version of Kantian epistemology, Goldhagen argues repeatedly that anti-Semitism was an integral, virtually a priori, component of the cognitive apparatus of the Germans: "the anti-Semitic creed, " he writes, "was essentially unchallenged in Germany" (page 33). The methodological flaw of Professor Goldhagen's book is indicated in its title: Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Let us stop right there: What is meant by "ordinary Germans?" For those of you who would like a textbook example of an "abstract identity, " this is it. This is a category that is so broad; it is capable of including virtually everyone, except, presumably, Germans of Jewish parentage. What, after all, makes any particular German an "ordinary" one?

Is it a large girth and a fondness for knockwurst and sauerbraten? Is it blond hair, blue eyes and a penchant for sunbathing in the nude? Is it a talent for abstruse philosophizing and a passion for 300 -pound Wagnerian sopranos? A concept built upon such foolish and arbitrary stereotypes cannot be of any scientific value in the cognition of objective reality. But if we should attempt to include in our definition more serious sociological characteristics, the worthlessness of the concept of "ordinariness" becomes immediately apparent.

In 1933 German society possessed a complex class structure. Was the "ordinary German" at the time of Hitler's accession to power a factory worker, a ruined shopkeeper, a demoralized member of the lumpen proletariat, a heavily indebted peasant, an East Prussian land-owning Junker or an industrial magnate? If all these elements of diverse social strata are to be lumped together as "ordinary Germans, " it simply means that the concept of "ordinariness" does not reflect the internal antagonisms and conflicts of German society, as it existed in 1933. What Goldhagen, therefore, offers his readers is not a scientific examination of German society as it really was constituted in 1933, but rather -- and it is unpleasant to say this -- an idealized portrait of a homogenous society that uncritically substantiates the Nazi myth of a unified German Volk, defined by race and blood.

Having chosen this concept of the "ordinary German" as the basis of his entire analysis, Goldhagen is compelled to exclude from his book anything or anyone that might call into question the validity of this stereotype. His reply to the Nazi specter of der edge Jude, the eternal Jew, as the relentless enemy of the German people is the specter of der edge Deutsche, the eternal German, the relentless and unchanging enemy of the Jewish people. Having posited a nation without any sort of internal differentiation, other than the fixed division between German and Jew, Goldhagen is compelled to posit a nation without any real history. There is virtually no reference to the events and personalities that determined the course of German development in the 100 years that preceded Hitler's accession to power. In Goldhagen's book, the socialist movement is all but invisible. Not a single reference is to be found, in the course of this 622 -page book, to Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle, August Babel or Wilhelm Liebknecht.

Not a word is to be found about the anti-socialist laws of 1878 - 90 implemented by the regime of Bismarck. The Social Democratic Party, the first mass party in history, which by 1912 held the largest number of seats in the German Reichstag, is mentioned only in passing. There is no reference to the 1918 revolution or the uprising of the Spartacus League. These omissions cannot be explained as an oversight. Goldhagen simply cannot deal with the German socialist movement because its historical existence represents a refutation of his entire theory.

Yet without an examination of the emergence of the German socialist workers movement, it is impossible to understand the nature and significance of modern anti-Semitism. 3. The first task in the transformation of Poland into German "living space" was to remove Poles and Jews from the Polish countryside as well as Jews from the German homeland concentrate them in the cities of the General Government. Despite the effectiveness of the Einsatzgruppen on the Russian front, there were problems with carrying out mass extermination in that manner. First, it was too public. The shootings at places such as Babi Yar were often carried out in full view of civilians and regular Wehrmacht (regular German army) troops. Second, there are indications that such firing squad activities were having a demoralizing effect on those military personnel who participated -- particularly the close-range shooting of women and children.

Himmler suggested that a "more humane" and "rational" method of "disinfecting" the area was needed. Already, at this point, Himmler was planning the construction of special annihilation centers staffed with special technology and specially trained staff for mass extermination. The ghettoization process was merely a necessary first step in organizing the operation. Then the incorporated territories could be re-populated with ethnic Germans (Ger.

volksdeutsche from the Baltic States, Austria, etc. The one common thread throughout this "process of destruction, " as Hilberg calls it, was the Jews. The Communists were often explicitly targeted as well, but the Nazis believed that Communism was a creature of the Jews in any event. The expression often used was "Jews and other undesirables, " and the Jews were almost always the first group targeted in any initiative. There is no doubt that they were the focal point from beginning to end. The Germans set up an office on the "Jewish Question" under the direction of Adolf Eichmann the infamous Bureau IV B 4.

The name used for the ultimate killing action was "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, " Others were drawn in - with horrific results but the key object and common thread was always the Jews. Hitler said before the outbreak of the war that if there were another war, he would annihilate the Jews. He said during the war that he was in the process of annihilating the Jews. And he said in his Testament that he had done exactly what he had said he would do. The ultimate aim and the primary target never varied. Others were murdered in the course of the Final Solution, e.

g. Gypsies, Russian POWs, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on, but the first and constant target was always the Jews. The Final Solution was intended for the Jews, was about the Jews and chiefly affected the Jews. There is no denying that, without the Jews, there is no Final Solution. To minimize or trivialize the "Jewishness" of the Final Solution is to seriously understate, if not, unintentionally perhaps, deny its essence. This does not mean that the suffering of other groups is to be ignored; on the contrary, it was terrible.

But without the Holocaust, without the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question", the others live. The term "holocaust" was coined to describe the uniquely Jewish aspect of the Final Solution. It does not seek to negate the suffering of the other victims. Jewish Population (Historical Atlas of the Holocaust) COUNTRY 1933 1950 RUTHENIA (1939) 80, 000 na CZECHOSLOVAKIA 357, 000 17, 000 CITY OF KOSICE 13, 000 1, 000 POLAND 3, 000, 000 45, 000 HUNGARY 445, 000 155, 000 Worked Cite: Andrew Michael Roberts, The Novel: From Its Origins to the Present Day (London: Bloomsbury, 1993) Daniel Jonah Goldhagen Hitler's willing executioners: ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984, pages 3, 110, 129 Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p. 400. (London: Bloomsbury, 1993) Orlando Files, A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1996), pp. 196 - 97. (London: Bloomsbury, 1993) Pridham and Notes Nazism, 1919 - 1945: a documentary reader Robert S.

Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1982), p. 56. (London: Bloomsbury, 1993) With Bloody and Unclean Hands: The Holocaust in Sub Carpathian Ruthenia

Research essay sample on Women And Children Anti Semitism