Red Cushion

Jewish Holocaust (Assignment 2:Comparative Essay)


This comparison contrast will illustrate the opinions and observations of historian, Christopher Browning, and his article, “The Process of Destruction,” as well as the viewpoints and facts presented in the Discovery Channel documentary film, Hitler: The Whole Story. Browning is a noted and well-versed historian, with several contributions towards the study of the Jewish Holocaust. His article is found in the book, Genocide; critical issues of the Holocaust printed in 1983 as companion to the like titled film. Hitler: The Whole Story is a critically acclaimed documentary film produced by Discovery Communications. Its presentation is well structured and adequately researched, also being based upon the book, Hitler by Jochim C. Fest. Both present eye opening and revealing presentations that go beyond the simple facts of the Nazi’s and the Jewish Holocaust. These two sources bring to our view, the underlying mechanical events that made Hitler’s rise to power possible and cause the deaths of over six million Jews. This is of great significance as we try to gain a personal understanding and appreciation of the events leading up to, and during the Jewish Holocaust. Only by learning the complete history of the Holocaust can we, in the twenty-first century stand a chance at preventing a relapse of the evils that took place during the 1930’s and 40’s.

The film, Hitler: The Whole Story illustrates many key and important facts pertaining to the beginning of the Nazi party and its rise to power. The film shows how the Nazi’s began as a very small minority among “the Old Guard” who vainly attempted to bring Germany back from the humiliation of the First World War. The film shows how Hitler seizes power, order, and solemnity through promises of returning Germany to a normal life, and return to world greatness. A key observation from the very beginning of the second volume in the film is that Hitler never learned to honor life, “but got plenty of mileage out of death.” The film observes how the Nazi’s effectively “used a two-faced, calculated psychological balance of fear and the fairground” in obtaining power, and blinding the world as to what their true agenda was. Their agenda was one, as noted by the film, fueled by Hitler’s personal fantasy of saving the world by creating a perfect Aryan race, which included the complete extinction of the Jews, whom he had grown to hate through the span of his life.

Hitler’s use of fanfare, bureaucratic process, and imagery made it possible to hide his intents in the backyards of both Germany and the Allied nations, while also serving as a fuel to feed is hungry delusions of grandeur. In the third part of the film, it is observed that the often lackadaisical, rarely stringent reactions of the Allies resulted in a “care-free Europe” being caught off guard with the threat of war following Hitler’s invasion of Poland. The film shows how Hitler would use photo sessions and public opportunities to further deceive the world and the public as to what his true agenda was. The film notes that the use of fire during their night rallies was used to symbolize the “cleansing of the world by fire.” Two failed attempts on Hitler’s life by senior Nazi’s would only further bolster Hitler’s delusions of grandeur. The film also notes that the primary purpose of the collection of Aryan elite, known as the SS was for the extermination efforts of “the Final Solution.”

Browning’s article places an emphasis upon the contributors to the Nazi’s rise to power and the holocaust outside of the concentration camps. Browning starts with noting Hitler’s “rational” approach, promising a “systematic legal opposition” to achieve “removal of the Jews all together.” He notes that the German bureaucracy was an “essential component of the machinery of destruction” which “infused” all other participants with “it’s sure-footed planning and bureaucratic thoroughness.” Browning then presents evidence that Anti-Semantic legislation produced by the various ministries within the German government began coming to law even before Hitler’s acquisition of power. Browning notes that the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service”, enacted in April of 1933, was the first Anti-Jewish law passed under Nazi rule. This law, as observed by Browning, represented a convergence of Nazi and German Ministry interest. This law also enabled the “dismissal” of those not found loyal to the Third Reich.

Browning illustrates the process of anti-sementic legislation with three phase’s, or “death’s.” Browning feels that the 1933 legislation represented the “civil death” of the Jews in Germany, by depriving them of equality in the nation. Browning states that the “Social Death” of the Jews came in 1935 with the passing of the Nuremberg Laws (The Reich Citizenship Law, and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, and The Decree Defining the Mischlinge, or Persons of Mixed Blood.) These laws prohibited any Jew from coming in contact with any non-Jew. Browning then notes that the Jews then suffered “economic death” with the passing of the Compulsory Aryanism laws of 1938. Browning states that these laws forced the Jews into liquidating all of their business, and personal assets at a fraction of their real value. In 1939, as Browning shares, all Jewish organizations were abolished and Hitler formed the Reich Union of Jews, and placed it under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich. It is then noted that with Heydrich, who also served as Deputy to SS leader, H. Himmler, leading the new Jewish organization, the final step to placing the Jews into the hands of Hitler’s “assassins” achieved, bringing forth the beginning of the extermination of all European Jews.

There are many areas in which both sources agree. The film spends considerable time talking about the economic depression that was afflicting the German people, only fueling their contempt for the Jews, who despite the woes of many Non-Jews were enjoying economic security and growth. Browning adds that feelings of “defeat, humiliation, revolution, and the collapse of traditional values” fueled a longing for a “return to a bygone era.” Both also are quick to note the underlying of mechanics of bureaucracy that would lead to the legislation passed against the Jews, as well as that the SS was a product of the bureaucratic process, and it’s many components.

A critical agreement to observe in the study of these sources is concerning the role of the German nation in the Holocaust. While film shares how the citizens of Germany were forced to tour the concentration camps that lay in their backyard, Brownings article points out the more important fact is that without the assistance of the citizens of Germany, the SS would have never been able to “carry out mass murder.” Throughout both Browning’s article and the documentary film, Hitler’s “Final Solution” is described as a machine. Browning concludes his article with a quote from Raul Hilberg; “The machinery of destruction, then, was structurally no different from organized German society as a whole; The difference was only one of function. The machinery of destruction was the organized community in one of its special roles.”

I feel that society as a whole knows the general facts of the Jewish Holocaust. In the Discovery Channel film, it is stated that “the scourge of Hitler was a German phenomenon – its victims, millions of innocent human beings.” Hitler’s success and rise to power was made possible by those around him, those who put him in power, and those who allowed him to continue, the people of Germany. Though dead, Hitler’s ideals continue to scourge the earth. Fueled by hate, envy, contempt and pride, the ideals of Nazism continue to live strong not only in Europe, but here in the United States as well. It is growing and building upon a foundation of bureaucracy and a failure to up hold accountability. The success of this growth is predicated upon the support or opposition of the people. Do we care enough to act? Or will we find ourselves in the end, even as the Germans of the 1940’s. The extermination of minority groups, who are despised, has roots in American History reaching before Hitler into the 1800’s. But what does the Holocaust mean to us now? Think about the events taking place presently in the world as well as in our nation. Have we seen a rise or fall of Neo-Nazism? What about the Ku-Klux-Klan once thought to be near extinction. Take into careful consideration this thought presented at the end of the film, “This time history must not be allowed to repeat its self – the world must keep its vigil so that the holocaust of the Forties can never happen again.” Is that vigil being kept?