A Functionalist View Of the Holocaust
Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany (1933-45) has gone down in history as one of the most horrific mass-murderers in history. Not only did he cause the bloodiest war ever seen, but his warped racial ideology precipitated the Holocaust, the organized slaughter of over twelve million persons. At the top of his list of ‘inferior’ groups were the Jews of Europe. Hitler sought to make the Reich Judenrein (‘free of Jews’), and did so in the most horrific fashion imaginable. There are two schools of thought on the origins of the Holocaust. The first is the intentionalist, the belief that it was the Nazis’ determined and unwavering attempt to physically destroy European Jews. The other is the functionalist belief, that being that the decision to slaughter the Jews was reached via a twisted road, being a result of forces outside of Germany as well as within. This paper will argue the functionalist view of the Holocaust, discussing different avenues pursued by the Germans to make their land Judenrein, and how the failure of those attempts led the Nazis to their horrific Endlösung (‘Final Solution’). Many people would be shocked to learn that Adolf Hitler was not always an anti-Semite. In his famous book Mein Kampf
Hitler’s first major anti-Semitic legislation was the famous Nuremberg Laws, enacted in September 1935. The main aim of these was to define non-Aryans, and limit their freedoms. These laws stated that only a person of German ‘or related blood’ could be a German citizen. Therefore, Jews were not citizens, merely ‘subjects’. The Nazis denounced the killing as part of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. ‘Spontaneous’ demonstrations erupted throughout Germany, in which over 300 synagogues were razed, 7000 Jewish business destroyed, and 90 Jews murdered. Furthermore, after the riots, Goebbels stated that the Jews were to pay a ‘Jewish atonement fine’ of one billion marks for their “abominable crimes, etc.” This massive levy had the effect of stripping most Jews of any capital they might still have. If you were a member of Congress, would you vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on a bill to open the doors of the U.S. to a larger number of European refugees than now admitted under our immigration quotas?
Some topics in this essay:
Nuremberg Laws,
Mein Kampf,
Zionism Palestine,
Final Solution,
Gestapo Jewish,
Security Service,
Reich Judenrein,
Göring Hitler’s,
Goebbels December,
European Jews,
final solution,
nuremberg laws,
‘final solution’,
world war,
jewish question,
solution jewish,
jews europe,
jewish refugees,
december 1941,
mein kampf,
term ‘final solution’,
organizational functional material,
solution jewish question,
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Approximate Word count = 3282
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
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