Nazist Tyranny: The Holocaust
Nazist Tyranny: The Holocaust
Question:-The Aryan Master Race conceived by the Nazis graded humans on a scale of pure Aryan.It only became worse with the years, culminating in the Holocaust. Explain the Holocaust and its consequnces.
- The most horrific event in history was unmistakably the holocaust. It was the systematic, bureaucratic persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazists. Holocaust is a Greek word that means sacrifice by fire.
- According to the Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, Germans were racially superior and that the Jews, deemed inferior, were a threat to the German racial community.
- The genocide was carried out in stages where initially laws were passed to eliminate Jews from the society, of which most prominent were the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. This was followed by a network of concentration camps that were established in 1933. They also established ghettos tailing the outbreak of World War II.
- On acquiring new territory in eastern Europe in 1941, special paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen were made use of to murder million Jews and partisans, in what often happened as mass shootings. This continued and by the end of 1942 victims were transported on a regular basis by freight train to specially constructed concentration camps where they were ruthlessly killed in gas chambers.
- The Jews too resisted the Nazis which is seen in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 when tens of thousands Jewish fighters held the SS at bay for almost a month. French Jews too actively participated who conducted guerilla campaign. It is estimated that there almost over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings.
- In some other genocides, people had the option of converting to another religion or in some way assimilating, however this option was not open to the Jews of German occupied Europe, unless their grandparents had converted prior to January 18, 1871. Individuals of recent Jewish ancestry were to be wiped out in German controlled areas.
- The Final Solution was the policy under which the Nazis killed the Jews in Europe and by 1945, almost two out of three Jews were murdered. The primary target of the Nazis were of course the Jews but also included other victims like the gypsies and least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans. These were killed under the Euthanasia Program.
- The tyranny of Nazism was not confined to just these, but they also persecuted and killed thousands and millions of other people like the Soviet prisoners of war, some of whom also died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment.
- The despotism did not end here; there also were homosexuals and others whose behavior did not adhere to the prescribed social norms, who were persecuted. This campaign of murder continued till the end of World War II in 1945.
- The mass killings that were conducted throughout German occupied territories, were the most severe in central and eastern Europe. The Wannsee Protocol shows that the Nazis had plans of carrying the Final Solution to Britain and other European states that remained neutral.
- One of the unique features of the Holocaust was the use of extermination camps equipped with gas chambers for the mass killings. Never before in history there existed places specifically built to carry out mass murders. These camps were established at Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Jasenovac, Majdanek, Maly Trostenets, Sobibór, and Treblinka.
Consequences:
- One of the most significant outcomes of the Holocaust was the founding of Israel. The end of World War II made the Allies realize the amount of torture inflicted upon the Jewish community.
- This resulted in England, who at the time ruled Palestine, return it to the Jewish people. This way, the Jews would have a land to call their own. This was in light of avoiding another holocaust in the future.
- However, the founding of the state of Israel gave rise to plenty problems in itself. The displaced Palestinians and the Jewish found it difficult to get along well and live together.
- The other outcome was that the countries of UN committed to avoid a genocide in the future and the countries pledged to do all it would take to prevent another Holocaust from happening.
