Obedience in the Holocaust

The Holocaust took place during the late 1930s to the early 1940s, a time when many external and internal factors were affecting Germany and its people (Hill 1). Nevertheless Nazi leaders and common Germans killed almost two thirds of an estimated nine million Jewish people (Hill 2). One of the most puzzling questions about the Holocaust is why did common Germans take part? It is difficult to formulate an exact answer to the question because it deals with a whole nation, but many historians have hypothesized explanations related to the German’s unwilling and willing participation (Goldhagen 375).

The Holocaust is considered one of the worst war crimes, if not the worst, in history. Six million Jews died in Nazi camps during this time. Even in this terrible time, there was plenty of resistance. Thousands of lives were changed or saved due to choices by many people. Many actions taken during the Holocaust led to consequences, including choices made by Jews to avoid going to camps, choices by people who hid Jews and tried to get them out of the country, choices by Jews who resisted Germans, and Hitler’s choice to try to hide Jewish persecution from German citizens and other countries.

The Holocaust was the systematic and bureaucratic extermination of millions of Jews, both mentally and physically disabled patients, Communists, homosexuals, and other groups that were seen as inferior to the Nazi regime and its collaborators that occurred between 1933 and 1945. To many people, it is considered to be the most tragic event in history. To others, it is a conspiracy theory that never actually occurred. This horrific time period didn’t begin with the Nazi regime and its leader, Adolf Hitler. To understand how this party came into power, the mentality of its people and the events prior must be taken into consideration. The eugenic mindset, the development of deadly weapons with the potential of mass killings, and the fascination

The Holocaust is one of the most puzzling and unintelligible events that has occurred within human history. Consequently, investigations and research done on the Holocaust tend to give inconclusive and ambiguous results that do not provide clear reasons why both perpetrators and victims acted the way they did. Almost all historians believe that the leaders of Nazi Germany ordered the massive uprooting and murder of 11 million people, however many question why most European citizens tolerated such a cruel and brutal governmental action. All the confusion that follows the Holocaust yields a challenging task of understanding and interpreting the events that make up the Holocaust. Much like any successful investigation, studies done upon the

The Holocaust is a period in history where the Nazis tried to wipe out the Jewish race from existence. Conflict and times of war darkens beliefs about what's right and what's wrong. There are innocent people that suffer, there are moments of hope and actions are questioned. Above all, in Morris Gleitzman’s book the reader sees how war changes what is morally right.

In the Holocaust millions of Jews lost their lives because of simply who they were. Many however hid and survived this dark event in history. It was the year 1933 and WW11 roared on, some saw it as a war against countries but eventually everything dark and ugly came to the light. Adolf Hitler was the chancellor of Germany and had obtained great popularity with the German people. While beginning to attack nations he was also trying to destroy all Jews in a horrific mass genocide. Creating concentration camps and taking all that the Jews owned he began to round up these human beings as if they were cattle. The stories account for them as being kidnapped at midnight to being tricked into going to their death thinking they were going for a

During World War II, the Nazis persecuted and executed over six million Jews and placed them in concentration and death camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka. This event, named the Holocaust, is the worst known case of genocide in human history. Even though the Holocaust ended quite some time ago, the question “how could the Holocaust have happened?” still lingers in the minds of many. To answer this question, you must determine possible motives behind why this would happen. Another way to answer this question is to utilize different sources to help form some explanation as to how it was allowed to continue for so long. The purpose of this essay is to provide and explain some possible motives as to why the Holocaust happened while

During the 1930 and 40’s the Holocaust the largest genocide in history, killing more than 6 million people. Despite that Adolf Hitler, the German leader in from 193 was a major role in the killing, many other groups must hold responsibility. Along with Hitler, who was the ruler of germany for 15 years, the National Socialist German Workers Party are also responsible. They were the majority of the ones pulling the triggers, and furthered the Nazi’s Regime. Furthermore, our global community lacked actions against the holocaust, and even limited emigration of jews in the 1030’s. Also average germans must also hold blame, as many of the acted as bystander in the face of atrocity. Although Hitler is the face of the nazi regime, the National Socialist

Philosophers have theorized that the “atrocities of the Holocaust were not caused by psychopaths but ordinary people placed under extraordinary pressure to conform” (Shpancer par. 1). The Holocaust was one of the most terrible events in human history and the people under the Nazi leadership (1933-1945) were pressured into supporting the persecution of Jews and other enemies of the German Reich and the Fuhrer. Not all people who participated in the persecution of the Jews and other minority groups agreed with the ideology of the Nazi Party, but if the citizens of Germany or other Nazi-controlled territories did not accept the rules and regulations emplaced by the central government and military, they would face similar persecution. Since the conclusion of World War II, “we have learned that the pressure needed [may] not [have been] extraordinary at all […and] it may not [have been] experienced as pressure, but as relief” (Shpancer par. 1). With the conclusion of World War I, Germany saw a rapid decline in manufacturing that led to the German economy crashing and the rise of inflation after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. For many Germans, they saw hope for Germany in the rising Nazi Party. With the support of the people of Germany, the Nazis were able to rebuild infrastructure, the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), end inflation, and create millions of jobs in the

In a world plagued with evil, we as man witness incidences of degeneracy on a daily basis. Whether it be road rage in response to scanty driving, acts of aggression spurred by those who have felt wronged, or the theft of lavish items; inimical acts have become all-too-ordinary in society. In American culture, the broadcasting of such acts has become commonplace through televised news and newsprint. Their mark on our hearts is minute- only to be replaced by another crime committed the following week. Luckily for man, acts of evil so heinous and vile, that they are remembered by the world for centuries, are virtually notional. The Holocaust is a rare exception of this statement- this atrocious act of evil paves the way for us to understand the innate evil of man presented in our past, present, and future; the constant will of man to hold and maintain power over others.

Defined by the dehumanizing treatment and horrific murder of the Jewish people, the Holocaust was a significant conflict that contributed to the militant period of the twentieth century. As the spearhead of the Nazi Party of Germany from 1934 to 1945, Adolf Hitler led the brutal, state-sponsored persecution and genocide of six million Jewish people, along with many other casualties. Fueled by a sense of extreme nationalism, the German people fiercely believed that they were superior to the Jewish people that they found as an inferior race that threatened their community. Many individuals who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust and survived, passed on their harrowing experiences through writing that still endures to this day. Through the

I was sixteen years old when I was first confronted with tangible evidence of evil as I looked through a glass wall at the severed braids of Jewish prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. I had heard stories about the Holocaust in school and saw pictures of camp survivors prior to arriving, but as tears covered my cheeks I realized that dry recitals of facts and frozen images were completely inadequate to convey the depth of suffering experienced in that place. Nothing could have prepared me to see hundreds of neatly labelled suitcases which were never intended to reach their destinations or to walk into shower rooms and imagine the screams of children my age as they choked on poison gas. I looked at the German students visiting the memorial with me and realized that the “monsters” who had been at work during the Third Reich, the grandparents of many of my friends, were people just like me. I was unable to comprehend the type of hatred that could drive thousands of otherwise “normal” individuals to systematically isolate, torture, and seek to eradicate an entire ethnic group. The vague interest I previously had in human behavior transformed into a driving passion to discover why people do the things they do – a passion that lingers with me today as I observe

The Holocaust was a disturbing unique element of European history; it refers to the period from 30th January 1933 when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany to 5th May 1945 when the Second World War officially ended. “The Nazis, who came into power believed that Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.” The Holocaust was responsible for murdering six million of the Jewish residence in Europe, the deaths represented two-thirds of the European Jewish population; the Jewish public was the Nazi regime’s primary target and the regime sought to wipe out the entire Jewish populace. The Nazi’s claimed that the Jews corrupted Germany and illustrated Jews as evil, Nazi’s believe that they could justify their treatment of Jews based on their racial theories. The Jewish inhabitants of Germany were murdered with the cruelest methods; they suffered from forced labor, starvation, disease, mass shootings, and the most notorious was gassing. Men and women experienced related traumas, while being held imprisoned in the concentration camps and or death camps; however, women endured incomparable circumstances that we cannot expect men to apprehend.

It would be hard to believe that some of the greatest teachers of human behaviour could be the past mistakes, and perhaphs even the nefariousiousness of some. A good example of this would be the Holocaust which could arguably be one of the most inhumane activities ever conducted against humanity; however, the event did teach us a lesson or two about how different individuals face such catastrophe. During such times, most do not consider it easy or “smart” to speak out against the violence, hatred, and atrocities that hurt, and sometimes even decimate people just like them; but there are just a few who dare to use their privilege to help those who are deprived of their’s. The New York Times

The brutality of the Holocaust is incomparable to any past or future events in history. The unprecedented and extreme cruelty makes this event unique, bringing to light a new social behavior and human experience. The Nazis sought mass destruction and humiliation for the enemy