A-LEVEL HISTORY: P3 (9489)
EUROPEAN OPTION, TOPIC 2: THE HOLOCAUST
0. Introduction
● ‘Holocaust’
○ Composite of 2 Greek words
○ Suggests offering of a sacrifice by burning
○ Can mistakenly imply mass murder of Jews was a form of martyrdom rather than
genocide
es
○ Other word: Hebrew word ‘Shoah’ (meaning ‘catastrophe’)
1. Hitler’s Responsibility
→ Introduction to the Debate
● Main debate (Functionalism/Structuralism vs Intentionalism)
○ Was there a master plan on the part of Adolf Hitler to launch the Holocaust?
ot
○ Did the initiative for the Holocaust come from above, with orders from Hiter, or from
below, within the ranks of the German bureaucracy?
○ Functionalist/Intentionalist terms coined in 1981 essay by British Marzist historian
Timothy Mason
N
● Intentionalism: interpretations assuming that Hitler/the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews
from the start
● Structuralism: interpretations arguing that it was the nature of the Nazi state that produced
genocide
○ No coherent plan; chaotic competition for Hitler’s approval between different elements
ay
of the leadership produced a situation in which genocide could occur
● Functionalism: sees the Holocaust as an unplanned, ad hoc response to wartime developments
in E. EU when Germany conquered areas with large Jewish populations
○ Closely related to structuralism
● Synthesis interpretations: interpretations which show characteristics of more than one of the
nj
above
● Intentionalist & Functionalist Thoughts
Intentionalists Functionalists
Sa
● Hitler was an all-powerful dictator who made most ● Question whether Hitler was a strong dictator
decisions & controlled what went on in Nazi ○ Hitler exerted considerable influence
Germany over course of events, but not always
the prime mover
● Domestic/foreign policy determined by
● In theory: was an all powerful dictator
determination to purify/strengthen the Aryan race ○ Reality: did not initiate every major
○ Internal: eliminating Jews, Gypsies, & development in Third Reich
disabled
a
● Hitler was weak, lazy dictator, frequently
○ External: lebensraum indecisive
○ Operation Barbarossa (USSR invasion ○ An opportunist; responding to events
ni
June 1941) was deliberate attempt to win rather than taking initiative
○ Spontaneous, haphazard &
lebensraum, destroy communism &
unpredictable
eliminate Jews ■ Eg. 1935 Nuremberg Laws
was done to appease
So
hardcore anti-Semites in
NSDAP
● Areas of Debate
○ Hitler’s responsibility?
■ What personal role did Hitler play?
■ Was it a long term plan to exterminate EU's Jewish population?
■ Was it a centralised or decentralised event?
○ Himmler & SS role?
○ Combined sentimental & romantic patriotic interest in German folklore, local history & a
"back-to-the-land" desire
○ Movement was a revolt against modern German life
■ Combined old fashioned & unusual aspects of folklore occultism alongside
"racial adoration" (a type of anti-Semitism linked to ethnic nationalism)
○ Ideas also included anti-communist, anti-immigration, anti-capitalist &
anti-Parliamentarian
○ Ideas of "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft) increasingly exclude Jews in
es
Germany
○ Connection with Nazism
■ Goebbels at 1927 Nuremberg Rally: Völkisch movement had understood
power & how to bring thousands out in support in the streets, it would have
gained political power on 9 November 1918
ot
■ Mein Kampf: "the basic ideas of the National-Socialist movement are völkisch
and the völkisch ideas are National-Socialist."
● Volksgemeinschaft
○ Idea of community based on a racially pure Germany
○ Appealed to workers, capitalists, peasants, politicians, ex soldiers, landowners,
N
artisans, blue/white collar workers & intellectuals
■ Encourage voters to support them & the concept of all Germans working
together for the well being of the Fatherland
○ Central issue of the Nazi Party
y
■ Linked to ideologies of racial purity & anti-semitism
○ Used it to blame Jews for everything wrong in Germany
■ Jewish weapons manufacturers had profited from WWI
ja
■ November Criminals were Jewish (stabbed Germany in the back
■ Jews had actively encouraged the signing of TOV
■ Jews were benefiting from the huge reparations being paid to the allies
■ Jewish financiers who were causing inflation in Germany (1923)
n
■ Jewish people were automatically Communists & would organise a Bolshevik
Revolution in Germany if given the opportunity
● Lebensraum
Sa
○ 1921-25: Hitler developed the belief that Germany required Lebensraum to survive
■ Living space could only be gained in E. EU (taken by force from Russia)
■ Used Lebensraum to legitimately support his foreign/domestic policies towards
USSR & Jews
○ Term first coined by Friedrich Ratzel
■ Theory: development of all species is primarily determined by their adaptation
to geographic circumstances
a
■ To remain healthy, species must continually expand the amount of space they
occupy
ni
■ Migration is a natural feature of all species; expression of need for living space
■ Could only be successful if the conquering nation ‘colonised’ the new territory
● ‘Colonisation’ = establishment of peasant farms by new occupiers
So
→ Nazi-Antisemitism & Persecution, 1933-39
● Events of 1933-34
○ German Jews 1933: 503,000 (0.76% of population)
■ 16% of Germany’s lawyers, 10% of its doctors, 5% of its newspaper editors
○ Revolution from below
■ Nazi mobs killing Jews & sending them to concentration camps
● Nazi govt claimed they were the work of ‘popular anger’
● Attacks initiated by local level by rank & file Nazi activists
■ Synagogues burned down
● Actually prepared by Heydrich’s office (ie. Heydrich was giving orders
to himself)
● Heydrich didn’t need Goring’s authorisation to continue
expulsion/extermination
○ SS already had far-reaching authority
● Document suggests that Heydrich knew he faced a new task that
dwarfed even the Einsatzgruppen’s massacres
● Some historians: Goring document simply represented an extension of
es
Heyrich’s responsibility for the Jewish question beyond Germany’s
borders
○ Document discussed emigration/the final solution
○ But: no signs in Aug of frenzied activity to organise a genocide
programme
ot
■ Goring still spoke of Jews being confined to labour
camps
● Commented that Jews should be
ignominiously hanged rather than honourably
shot
N
○ Hitler decided on total genocide out of desperation rather than elation (Burin &
Kershaw)
■ Sep 1941: Operation Barbarbossa was not going to plan
● Longer USSR kept up the fight, greater the danger of guerrilla war
ay
● Hitler decided that Jews would have to pay for the spilling of so much
German blood
○ Himmler: “I do nothing that the Fuhrer does not know”
● The Final Solution in the USSR
○ Jews herded into ghettos in cities like Minsk & Rovno
■ Put to work & easily identified when killing priority
nj
○ Wehrmacht responsibility
■ Auxiliary forces (recruited from people of Baltic states/Ukraine) killed alongside
Einsatzgruppen
■ Post 1945: Wehrmacht tried to hide their involvement in the Holocaust
Sa
● Army leaders gave commands & ordinary soldiers willingly carried
them out
○ Sometimes undertook brutal ‘cleansing’ operations on their
own initiative
○ Economic concerns from Jews escaping immediate death
■ Dec 1941 orders from Berlin: “economic considerations are to be regarded as
fundamentally irrelevant in the settlement of the problem”
a
● In practise: compromise between SS/army & economic agencies
○ Few Jews were given a stay of execution for labour purposes
ni
○ Numbers killed
■ First sweep (June 1941-April 1942): 750,000 Jews
■ Second sweep (1942-3): a further 1.5 million
■ Most shot by machine gun, died in special gas vans (used from Dec 1941),
So
labour camps
■ 40 million Ukranians killed, 10s of thousands of Ukranians transported to
Germany as slave labourers
● Fate of German Jews
○ Aug 1941: illegal for Jews still living in Germany to emigrate voluntarily (around
300,000)
○ October 1941: Eichmann began transporting German Jews eastwards
■ Allowed to take some money, a case of luggage & food for the journey
○ Lodz
■ Clashed with Himmler arguing that concentration camp factories were
inefficient
● Preferred using paid labour in occupied countries
● Later claimed to have saved lives because of this policy
■ End WW2: Speer was arrested & charged with using slave labour in his
production programmes
● Pleaded guilty, sentenced to 25 years in prison
■ Died in 1981
es
○ Rudolf Hoess
■ Early 1940: Kommandant of Auschwitz
■ Responsible for exterminating 2.5 million people
● At peak efficiency Auschwitz killed ‘ten thousand people in 24 hour’
■ May 1941: Himmler told Hoess that Hitler had given orders for the FS of the
ot
Jewish question & chose Auschwitz camp for that purpose
■ Hoess converted Auschwitz into an extermination camp
■ 1943: Hoess appointed chief inspector of all concentration camps
● Worked hard to improve the ‘efficiency’ of other extermination centres
■ Hoess fled after the war & went into hiding in Germany under the name Franz
N
Lang
■ Arrested in 1946 & tried in 1947
● Sentenced to death & returned to Auschwitz to be hanged on the
gallows outside the gas chamber
ay
● Role of the SS
○ Dominant in the formulation of racial policy from 1938
■ 1941 onwards: became the driving force behind the racial extermination
programme
■ Boycott of Jewish shops (Apr 1933), Nuremberg Laws (1935) & Kristallnacht
(1938) primarily inspired by agitation from the SS storm troopers
nj
● Encouraged & orchestrated by Goebbels
○ Provided the perfect instrument for the resolution of the Jewish problem
■ Bureaucracy was efficient, ethos was ruthless, its ideology ardently racist
■ Jan 1939: Goring commissioned Heydrich (SS 2nd in command) to organise
Sa
emigration of all Jews from Germany
○ Heydrich established the ‘Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration’ in Berlin
■ Eichmann was Heydrich’s assistant
■ Eichmann spoke some Hebrew; had a reputation as an expert on the’Jewish
Question’ from his experience in Palestine & Vienna
■ Eichmann proposed several schemes to make Germany Jew-free
● 1. Establishment of a Jewish reserve in the extreme eastern area of
a
German occupied Poland
● 2. Creation of a Jewish state in Palestine & forceful resettlement of
ni
Jews on Madagascar
○ 1942: SS started a policy of systematic extermination
■ SS were the anti-semitic policy leaders at each stage of the execution
○ Post Sep 1939: SS Einsatzgruppen attached to army units eliminated Polish
So
communist/intellectuals
■ 1940: SS units organised gassing of Jews & political dissidents in the Baltic
States
■ Waffen SS provided almost 1500 men for the Einsatzgruppen murder squads
■ June 1941: 4 Einsatzgruppen followed the Wehrmacht rounding up &
massacring thousands of Jews & Bolshevik functionaries
○ July 1941: Goering commissioned Heydrich with the preparation of a FS
■ Heydrich’s solution: all EU Jews should be exterminated in gas chambers in
converted concentration camps
■ Pregnancies resulted for Polish Soviet or Yugoslav forced labourers with
German men
● “Race experts” determined that the child was not capable of
“Germanisation”
○ Women generally forced to have abortions
○ Sent to give birth in makeshift nurseries where conditions
would guarantee death of infants
○ Deported to the region they came from without food or medical
es
care
● Women in the Resistance
○ Women served as couriers who brought information to the ghettos
○ Escaped to the forests of E. Poland/USSR & served in armed partisan units
○ Sophie Scholl, student at Universitiy of Munich & member of White Rose resistance
ot
group, arrested & executed in Feb 1943 for handing out anti-Nazi leaflets
○ Active in aid & rescue operations of Jews in German occupied EU
→ Should definitions of the Holocaust include victims other than Jews?
● Victims
N
○ Jews (Star of david)
○ Gypsies (Romany)
○ Disabled/mentally ill
○ Political opponents (red triangle)
●
○ Homosexuals (pink triangle)
y
○ Jehovah’s Witnesses (purple triangle)
Friedlander: three groups should be considered victims of the Holocaust (Jews, Romani &
ja
mentally/physically disabled)
○ Romany & disabled were just as much victims as the Jews were
● Yehuda Bauer: only Jews should be considered victims of the Holocaust
● Sybil Milton: argues against the “exclusivity of emphasis of Jedeocide in most Holocaust
n
literature that has generally excluded Gypsies (as well as blacks & the handicapped) from
equal consideration”
● Bauer: not just another genocide
Sa
○ Holocaust was the worst single case of genocide in history in which every member of a
nation was selected for annihilation
5. Bystanders
→ Introduction
● Bystanders: a catch all term applied to people who were passive & indifferent to the escalating
persecution that culminated in the Holocaust
a
○ Largest yet least studied & least understood
○ Not directly involved in the destruction
ni
○ External/international bystanders
■ Allied govts, neutral countries, religious institutions & Jewish organisations
○ Internal bystanders
■ Societies close to & often physically present at the events
So
■ Group characterised as “passive” or “indifferent”
● Passive = inaction, derive from a range of quite different feelings: from
a sense of powerlessness, fear for one’s physical safety, social
pressures within one’s community
● Indifferent = lack of interest/apathetic
○ Plight of Jews is often attributed to people’s daily
preoccupations
■ Depression of hardships & survival of wartime
deprivation
■ Introduce sub-messages
○ State main message in first sentence
■ Is one side or both being blamed by the writer Why
■ One point the historian makes is (quote something from the source or write a
point they make)
○ Pick out justification given by the historian to contextualise
■ Only use contextual knowledge to explain points author is making
○ Develop submessages
es
■ State them at beginning of new paragraph
■ Explain author’s argument for each
■ Don’t make any judgements/give alternative hypotheses
● Write what the approach is, NOT criticise it
■ First argument that makes it clear why you think the historian belongs to that
ot
specific school of thought
○ Paragraph before conclusion
■ Eg. “We can tell this view is a post-revisionist approach because the historian
sees both sides as bearing some responsibility. This was the view put forward
by academics such as…”
N
■ Mention how the historian is making his arguments; whether he is critical,
overly critical etc.
■ Elimination paragraph: why the historian can’t belong to another school of
thought
○ Conclusion
y
■ Summary of what you have learned about the author’s Big Message
■ “To conclude, the historian demonstrates this and this by showing etc. therefore
ja
presenting this interpretation of the holocaust”
● Tips from examiner’s report
○ Make the Big Message Clear
● Points to talk about
n
○ Evidence used by the historian
● Useful phrases
○ …which ultimately culminated in the FS
Sa
○ … competing with each other to win Hitler’s favour which by that time had become the
only source of political legitimacy
○ Top down interpretation
○ Bottom up approach
Interpretations:
● Internationalism
a
○ Interpretations that assume that Hitler/Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews from the
start
ni
● Structuralism
○ Interpretations that argue the nature of the Nazi state produced genocide
■ No coherent plan
■ Chaotic competition for Hitler’s approval between different elements of
So
leadership produced a situation in which genocide could occur
● Functionalism
○ Closely related to structuralism
○ Holocaust was an unplanned, ad hoc response to wartime developments in E. EU
when Germany conquered areas with large Jewish populations
● Synthesis
○ Interpretations that show characteristics of more than one of the above
(internationalism, structuralism, functionalism)
○ How appropriate the use of this kind of terminology is in relation to the extract
