I know its an almost taboo question but what was the Natzis intellectual argument for its concentration camp policy that took so many lives?
Why did they target certain peoples particularly Jews?
I know its dfficult to be coldly objective and unemotional but I wonder what was the analytical sense of it all to those in power in Germany at the time?
Answers:
You used a very good words 'intellectual argument' and 'analytical sense'. I mean Nazi were ordinary people like you and I so what made them kill so many Jews.
According to Zygmunt Bauman it was rational bureaucracy and demand for modernity, which gave the conditions for Holocaust. Modernity with the help of science and democracy (haha) created racism. Jew did not fit the standards set up by Nazi, thats all.
Nazi did not think much about it. They were just obeying the commands. Authority, routinization of the killings and dehumanization of Jews caused moral judgements to disappear.
Oswiecim (Auschwitz) was a factory of death. Everything was planned. Everyone has its own duty to do and responsible for that one thing. Nazi did not think about the end results. They were just doing what they were told to do by authorities. Because it was during the war the circumstances were unusual and Nazi was told they Jews were enemies, they did not think about this as immoral killings. It was all much rationalised and without bureaucracy Holocaust would not be possible. I mean look at Rwanda or Sudan or Serbs. In ''normal'' genocide there is average 100 people kill a day, German kill 6mln, it would take them 200years to do so. They would not do this without modernization.
What is more this bureaucracy enforced cooperation of the Jews in their own killings. Each Jewish ghetto had a Jewish council which decided whose going to be killed next. If Jewish council did not provide 50 people ,German took 100.
Bauman called this 'save what you can game'.Everything was organised.
I hope this was objective.
There are many other interesting facts about Holocaust.
I recommend Polish Author-Zygmunt Bauman 'Modernity and Holocaust' 1989
You might find your answer in the following book:
Darwin, Charles (1859), On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. It provides the basis for why certain classes of people should be eliminated.
Nazi's also exterminated the physically handicapped, mentally ill, and the mentally retarded.
well they wanted to purify the race.they went after jews because they were the minority in Germany yet they owned many businesses and had political clout.They are not the first to target the jews so in general if so many different races disliked the jews there had to be something wrong with them.If Hitler succeeded the world would be a much better place now.km
Simply They believed the you were a better person if you had certain characteristics and that the word would be a better place without you if you didn't fit the mold..very strange thing was was that Hitler didn't fit the mold!
Many Jews were communist- they blamed them for the world's troubles
All Jews were discriminated aginst simply because they were Jews.
At the Wannasee meeting a lot of those who attended were middle class and from Universities.
This is true, why the thumbs down?
ask tony blair he is an expert in Crimes against humanity
The collective arguement was to endorse the concept of a "Greater Germany" and all those not falling under this ethnically Germanic society became a problem (so it was literally them vs everybody else). The jewish community was th primary target, and they also persecuted homosexuals, blacks, social outcasts, as well as resistant catholic clergy.
From an individual standpoint, especially when the surviving officers were brought to trial after the war, most of them claimed that they were just following orders.
The analysis was that the Aryan race was a superior race. Jews were targeted because they formed an intellectual and financial elite whose status caused jealousy, especially in the Depression years, when money was worth nothing and unemployment was high. The assumption and doctrine was that Jews were mentally and physically flawed and inferior and had to be weeded out to prevent the genetic downfall and pollution of the Aryan race. Jews were in their eyes also connected to US capitalism and therefore to the humiliation of Germany at the end of WW1.
Its not a taboo question at all, its something that should be taught in schools.
The Nazis were concerned with 'racial purity' and used the arguments put forwards by Eugenics about racial fitness. This is Darwins theory warped out of shape.
http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/othersrv/isa...
"ISAR - Psychology, Racism %26 Fascism: An On-line Edition
Foundations for fascism: The New Eugenics Movement in the United States. Patterns of Prejudice..."
http://www.hgalert.org/topics/geneticsel...
"In different countries eugenics took different forms, from the paternalistic social democratic eugenics of Sweden and Norway to the fascist eugenics of ..."
it makes me feel sick to my stomach, all the best
George W. Bush is an expert in crimes against humanity. He's the worst president in U.S. history. I'm an American by the way. I'm disgusted with most of my so-called "fellow Americans". Too many idiots and not enough brains. America used to be great, but not anymore.
Originally, the idea of concentration camps, (not a new idea, by any means, rather one that had been used in WWI and before) was to deal with the communist threat after the Reichstag had been set on fire by a dutch communist.
In the early years, KZ served as means to secure the revolution that had been taking place (by the Nazis coming to power, their main opponents were the communists).
The Reichstagbrandvrordnung (the law on which the extralegal measures were based) stated in its preamble that these actions were meant to defend against communist threats.
In 1934/35, (after their power had been secured), the Nazis released most of the communists and started to imprison jews instead.Thus, the KZs changed from serving a political purpose to serving an ideological purpose instead.
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