Holocaust History and Experiences

In the centuries prior to World War II, the Jewish people had a rich and varied culture across Europe.  At the same time, however, strong undercurrents of antisemitism provided Hitler and the Nazis with fertile ground to sow the seeds of hate.  And although the Holocaust expanded in scope to murder millions of Poles, Soviets, Romani, homosexuals, the disabled, and others, Hitler's later rise to power was built upon this antisemitism.

From the Treaty of Versailles to the Great Depression, German society of the Weimar Republic experienced tremendous economic and social upheavals.  Although none of these forces justified the Holocaust to come, we study them in order to understand how Hitler's messages of hate were able to corrupt not only a government, but a major portion of a national population.

Immediately after coming to power, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party made decisions to consolidate their influence and outlaw all opposing political parties.  Throughout this time period, they implemented racist policies of increasing brutality that primarily targeted Jews.  During this stage of the Holocaust, the Nazi aim was to remove all Jewish influence from German society, and the distinct lack of popular resistance offers important historical lessons for democratic societies today.

"Manifest Destiny" and "Lebensraum"

In this discussion, it's crucial that we acknowledge the inspiration that Hitler and other Nazis drew from other nations — the United States in particular.  From U.S. policies of Segregation and Indian reservations to the index card sorters sold by IBM, the Nazis applied American systems of discrimination to a previously unimagined industrial scale.  Worse, we must consider the number of countries who stood idly by and did nothing as thousands of Jews sought to escape the horror to come.

Additional Readings:

"How American Racism Influenced Hitler" by Alex Ross.

"Hitler's American Dream" by Timothy Snyder.

Hitler's plans for world domination pushed Germany into desperate gambles that led to crushing economic and military defeat.  Against this backdrop, the Nazis engineered their "Endlösung der Judenfrage" — the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."  With unimaginable brutality, German SS and military units conducted the extermination of millions.  The scale of murder was so vast that the concentration camps couldn't even dispose of the corpses — the gas chambers, crematoria, and mass graves emerged from efforts to match industrial capacity to unquenchable disgust for those peoples labelled as "undesirables."

Hitler's plans for world domination pushed Germany into desperate gambles that led to crushing economic and military defeat.  Against this backdrop, the Nazis engineered their "Endlösung der Judenfrage" — the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question."  With unimaginable brutality, German SS and military units conducted the extermination of millions.  The scale of murder was so vast that the concentration camps couldn't even dispose of the corpses — the gas chambers, crematoria, and mass graves emerged from efforts to match industrial capacity to unquenchable disgust for those peoples labelled as "undesirables."

The Nuremburg Trials

The search for justice couldn't possibly recover what was lost.  Entire families and communities from across Europe had been wholly erased, and the survivors were left in search of homes that no longer existed.  In this section, we consider how the Allies tried to punish Nazi crimes without repeating the mistakes of Versailles.

Here, we'll also look at the contested birth of Israel and it's relationship to the Holocaust.  As Jewish survivors sought a new home free of oppression, Zionist goals of a Jewish homeland came up against Palestinians who'd long settled the area known as the Holy Land.