Historical perspectives on The Holocaust

Question 1

What was the traditional portrayal of the Holocaust before the 1990s?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 1

The Holocaust was typically portrayed as a bureaucratic and industrial killing system, implemented by German Nazis against the Jews as racial enemies, according to Hitler’s plan outlined in Mein Kampf.

Question 2

How have scholars revised their understanding of the Holocaust over the years

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 2

Historians now understand that the Holocaust was made possible not just by dedicated Nazi officials, but also by the actions and inactions of millions of ordinary people of various nationalities, ideologies, genders, social identities, economic statuses, and religious beliefs.

New knowledge from previously inaccessible archives, testimonies, and ethnic violence studies has expanded our understanding of the Holocaust and placed it in a broader context of genocide.

Question 3

What are some of the new sources that have contributed to a deeper understanding of the Holocaust?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 3

New sources include previously inaccessible archives, testimonies, and oral history collections that shed light on the long-term trauma experienced by victims, witnesses, and perpetrators. Ethnic violence studies have also helped to contextualise the Holocaust within a broader history of genocide.

Question 4

How have institutions that emerged in the 1990s responded to the evolving understanding of the Holocaust?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 4

Many institutions, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, are revitalising their permanent exhibitions, and new publications are presenting more complex narratives that reflect the evolving understanding of the Holocaust.

Question 5

What is Dan Stone’s book “The Holocaust: An unfinished history” about?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 5

Stone’s book is a survey that updates the history of the European genocide, highlighting how the Holocaust had roots that were sown centuries before Hitler’s rise to power and how it was a continent-wide crime that involved exterminationist ideologies and genocidal actions across Europe.

Question 6

How was antisemitism embedded in the European worldview before the Nazis took it up as a defining element of their doctrine?

• Jews were often s……… for s……. p……. .
• C19th..?
• Religious teachings reinforced negative ..?
• Antisemitism was also fuelled ..?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 6

• Jews were often scapegoated for societal problems, and viewed as outsiders who posed a threat to Christian values and culture.
• C19th ‘scientific racism’ underpinned some antisemitic thinking
• Religious teachings reinforced negative stereotypes about Jews, such as their alleged responsibility for the death of Jesus.
• Antisemitism was also fuelled by economic competition and political tensions between Jews and non-Jewish Europeans.

Question 7

What are some borrowed roots of the defining elements of the Holocaust?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 7

• Nazi racial policies drew on eugenics thinking of the early twentieth century
• the concentration camp evolved from the mass incarceration of PoWs during WWI
• population transfers at the end of WWI provided precedents for the forced displacement of European Jews during the next conflict
• Violence and subjugation of colonialism and early-twentieth-century European wars prepared the way for even more extreme violence.

Question 8

Was the Holocaust a preordained plan directed from above?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 8

No, the Holocaust did not unfold as a preordained plan directed from above. German officials regularly responded to changing circumstances and took advantage of unforeseen opportunities. Ordinary folk were eager to profit from the confiscation of Jewish wealth and exclusion of Jews from civil society, which bound them together into an ever-widening circle of perpetrators. Nazi policy towards Jews entailed many redirections and “mental leaps.”

Question 9

How does Stone’s telling of the Holocaust differ from previous understandings?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 9

In Stone’s telling, the Holocaust does not unfold as a preordained plan directed from above, but rather German officials regularly responded to changing circumstances and took advantage of unforeseen opportunities.

Question 10

What was the T4 Euthanasia programme?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 10

The T4 Euthanasia programme was a Nazi program in which about 70,000 Germans considered to be racially deficient were murdered by medical professionals.

T4 Program, Nazi German effort—framed as a euthanasia program—to kill incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly people. Adolf Hitler initiated the program in 1939, and, while it was officially discontinued in 1941, killings continued covertly until the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

Question 11

What did the failed genocidal plan to deport Jews to the French colony of Madagascar lead to?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 11

The failed genocidal plan to deport Jews to the French colony of Madagascar laid the ground for the idea of exterminating European Jewry in situ (where Jewish people were already).

Question 12

What and when was Operation Barbarossa and what was the impact on Jews residing in Soviet territories?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 12

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941, brought a wave of destruction to 4 million Jews residing in the Soviet territories. Approximately, 1.5 million were able to evacuate or escape deeper into the Soviet Union, leaving around 2.5 million Jews under German-occupation.

Question 13

What proportion of Jews killed in The Holocaust were murdered by Einsatzgruppen?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 13

The Nazis and their collaborators murdered the majority of those left behind. Mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) followed the German Army, murdering Soviet civilians and Jews one bullet at a time. It is largely unknown that one out of three Jews killed in the Holocaust were murdered by bullets, not in gas chambers.

Question 14

What is the popular narrative of liberation, and how does Stone’s understanding of it differ?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 14

The popular narrative of liberation has become skewed, with iconic images of liberation showing survivors who had only just arrived at the camps. Stone shows that liberation did not end the nightmare for many survivors, as they faced difficult circumstances even after leaving the camps.

Question 15

What challenges were faced by survivors?

What specific places existed for many years after?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 15

In 1947 there were still 250,000 Jews living in displaced persons’ camps in Germany and Italy. The last DP camp was not dismantled until 1957.

Those who managed to return to their prewar homes often found their houses occupied by former neighbours and their communities and families destroyed.

Question 16

What does Hermann Beck’s book “Before the Holocaust” focus on?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 16

Hermann Beck’s book “Before the Holocaust” is a focused study on antisemitic violence and the reaction of German elites and institutions during the Nazi takeover.

Question 17

What did the violence against Jews in Germany involve in the spring of 1933?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 17

The violence against Jews in Germany in the spring of 1933 involved physical attacks, economic boycotts, and rituals of humiliation.

Question 18

Who were the first victims of the attacks against Jews in Germany?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 18

The first victims of the attacks against Jews in Germany were Jewish immigrants, particularly refugees from eastern Europe.

Question 19

What motivated the perpetrators of the attacks against Jews in Germany?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 19

The perpetrators of the attacks against Jews in Germany were motivated not only by malevolence and antisemitism but also by more mundane feelings of envy and professional jealousy.

Question 20

Did the leadership of the German Protestant Church protest against the violence against Jews?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 20

No, the leadership of the German Protestant Church refrained from protesting against boycotts, violence, and anti-Jewish restrictions and instead offered concerned Protestants abroad excuses and justifications for the crimes taking place in Germany.

Question 21

Where did Martin Davidson’s book “Mobilising Hate” place the most emphasis in terms of causes?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 21

Martin Davidson’s book “Mobilising Hate” viewed the Final Solution as very much driven by Hitler’s personal world view.

Question 22

Who aided Hitler in the implementation of the Final Solution according to Davidson’s book? Name three of them (2 and 1)

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 22

According to Davidson’s book, Hitler was aided by a small coterie of co-conspirators: Heydrich, Goebbels, Himmler, Eichmann, and other leading Nazis who “ensured that Hitler’s criminal orders would be translated into full-scale genocide,” as well as by a widening circle of bureaucrats, theologians, doctors, lawyers, “hardened and reliable killers” and foreign collaborators.

Question 23

What does Davidson’s book “Mobilising Hate” present the entire process of the Final Solution as akin to?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 23

Davidson’s book “Mobilising Hate” presents the entire process of the Final Solution as akin to the production line of one of Henry Ford’s factories, where everything proceeds mechanically along the assembly line.

Question 24

Where are xenophobic nationalism and authoritarian rule on the rise according to the text?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 24

Xenophobic nationalism and authoritarian rule are on the rise not only in the countries in which the Final Solution took place but also in nations as far removed as the US, India, China, Brazil, and most recently, Israel.

Question 25

What have public institutions in some countries done regarding their citizens’ collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust?

Public institutions in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary have o……….. the c……….. of their own citizens and governments and, at times, promoted the myth of J….-B…….. .

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 25

Public institutions in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary have obfuscated the collaboration of their own citizens and governments and, at times, promoted the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism.

Question 26

What is the current state of antisemitism according to the text?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 26

Conspiratorial thinking proliferates on social media and the public airwaves, singling out individual Jews as global villains and ascribing culpability to “The Jews” for a cornucopia of imagined crimes.

Question 27

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 27

Question 28

What question does Davidson suggest in ‘Mobilising Hate’ might puzzle us?

How many Jews were in Germany?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 28

What’s so strange about blaming the Jews specifically is how little sense it made, even then. 100,000 German Jews proudly wore German uniforms. Hitler being recommended for an Iron Cross was thanks to a Jewish senior officer. No one thought the war was fought for Jewish interests - except later Henry Ford with his anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about America’s involvement.

The 600,000 Jews were 1% of the population and very assimilated.

Question 29

According to Davidson, what was unusual about Hitler’s racism? (‘Mobilising Hate’)

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 29

If it was just blaming German Jews for disloyalty, it would have fizzled. But it became a whole theory of how the world works, always has, and always will. Hitler thought in cosmic terms. He tried to link Germany’s predicament to this pathological view of Jewish influence.

What he’s doing is coming up with a causal chain to explain the world and Germany’s role in stopping this Jewish scourge. It starts as just his and a small group’s extreme views, seemingly justified by extreme times. But it takes on the weight of a world theory, and grows as Hitler does. It remains central to his thinking, a way to explain the world.

Question 30

According to Davidson, what is the paradox of German anti-semitism? (‘Mobilising Hate’)

Both … yet possessing…

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 30

Ordinary racism sees groups as merely inferior. But anti-Semitism sees Jews as both inferior yet possessing outsized global power and influence through money, media, etc. That’s what makes it so terrifying.
There’s a twisted ideology with the Aryan myth and degenerate art that’s not just about Jewish money lenders. It’s that Germany needs to return to its mythical Nordic past. This perverts everything and buys into this Teutonic worldview. Gradually, by rewriting history and indoctrinating youth, it takes hold. Suddenly in a short period, this hate is not just mobilized but uncontrollable.

Question 31

Which other figure, according to Davidson, had the biggest impact on ‘mobilising hate’?

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust

Answer 31

Goebbels (Propaganda Minister )especially understood you dial up or down based on reactions. To whip up extreme states of mind, be very specific about the reviled group’s offenses. But also flatter the audience about their worthiness of being spared this group. He was a genius at this - the clawing, self-pitying phrases about decent, hard-working families and the silent majority who won’t stand for this minority trampling their values.

At the same time, probe the most effective ways to agitate and mobilize. I describe how it starts crudely, making Jews pariahs by isolating them from society. The main links are sex and money - marriage, children, livelihoods. Goebbels organizes an economic boycott to hit where it hurts - making a living. The sex element comes in too, with “race defilement.” Both have a pathological element - financial jealousy and sexual prurience are powerful motivators.

Question 32

Differing Historical Interpretations of The Holocaust