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Sociology and the Holocaust Essay

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Fascism is one type of political system based on the notion that some races are superior to others. Something that seems ridiculous in to enlightened modern day thinkers, which unfortunately makes it all the more difficult to try and understand for someone who has not experienced it. However by looking through history and taking into account some of the results of practised fascism, we can maybe begin to understand why so many people took up, and are still taking up fascism. Hopefully then we can understand exactly what we should learn from it, and possibly understand how we can prevent it appearing on the scale it did in the Second World War. Firstly I will look at some of the effects of fascism, starting with one of the most …show more content…

But why racism? It is generally believed by sociologists that one cannot be a racist unless he is distinguishing between different biological traits between people, which somehow make one biological 'race' superior to another. And Hitler knew how bitter the Germans were about the loss of the First World War, so he needed a reason to give them as to why they lost. So he turned to racism and began distinguishing the Aryans from other races in Germany such as the Jews and homosexuals. By blaming the mixing of these inferior races into Aryan blood he gave the people a reason to believe they were better than someone else, and gave them a purpose, people to blame for Germanys devastated economy. What exactly have these acts of fascism taught us? Have they shown us how easily a country with a population the size Germanys can turn into murderer racists and fascists if left in the correct conditions? It would certainly be incorrect to assume that this is not why the Germans embraced fascism, but are there any implications of other influences that may have caused these events. Socially, we can try to argue that even deprivation on the scale felt by the German people is not enough to force a society to become something they are not, unless really they already are. Throughout history there have been so many wars between different races. Although issues of religion are often the main driving forces between warring

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