Chapter 25. The Crisis Deepens: World War II. Note how this Second World War beg

Question

Chapter 25. The Crisis Deepens: World War II.

Note how this Second World War begins as another European conflict but quickly became an even more international conflict than WWI.

Overview of the Most Deadly and Nihilistic of Wars
The war unleashed by Adolph Hitler in September 1939 eventually displaced Europe from the center of world power and called into question the very notion of the idea of progress the continent had developed during the 19th century. How could the most advanced scientific and technological nation in Europe, that is Germany, commit perhaps the most horrific crimes in the history of the human race? The reason I make this assertion stems from the fact that Hitler's genocidal regime ceased its killing not due to policy change but because it was wiped off the face of the earth. Many members of his regime regretted after their defeat not that the Holocaust against the Jews had happened but that they had not had enough time to complete it.
Why did dictatorships emerge across so much of the world in the 1930s? Does this cast an ominous shadow over this current decade?
What form did these dictatorships take? Did they vary much by region or continent? How much difference was there between Soviet Communism and German National Socialism?
What were the causes of World War II? Were they the same as World War I?
Why was World War II so much more of a world war than WWI?
Why were the Allied nations Great Britain, the USSR and the USA so much more effective in mobilizing their population for the war effort than the dictatorships?
Why did both Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia take modern nationalism to its limit in their expansionist aims and results?
What was the origin and nature of the Holocaust? What do the authors mean by “the Other Holocaust”?

Explanation / Answer

To fully understand the nature and purpose of the Holocaust, we must first understand what the word itself means. Holocaust means complete destruction, usually by fire, but has come to be used almost exclusively in reference to the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. The term Holocaust came into use because of the obvious destruction involved and when disposing of the bodies from concentration camps they were burned which relates back to the original meaning of the word holocaust. The Holocaust climaxed between 1941 and the end of World War Two when the Final Solution to the Jewish problem was put into practice and ended with over six million men, women and children dead. The murders had been widespread and Jews had died in most European countries from Denmark to Yugoslavia, but the country which accumulated the greatest death toll by far was Poland with over four and a half million dying there. This was largely due to the main concentration camps being situated in this country.

One might ask why? What was the reason for such a brutal extermination on such an overwhelming scale? The reason for this is certainly the Nazi’s anti-semitism. The Jews were considered to be sub-human or ‘untermenschen’ and so the logical way to cleanse Europe of such a blight was extermination of the entire race. Hitler himself had an intense hatred for the Jews which we can see quite clearly in a number of his speeches and in his book Mein Kampf. In said book, he claimed that by ‘defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord’. In a letter in 1919, he called for a systematic legal campaign against the Jews to remove them totally from German life. He also referred to them as ‘maggots’ and ‘racial tuberculosis’, expressing his belief that they were parasites and would ultimately bring down the superior races. Hitler also believed in Social Darwinism. He believed that if an inferior race such as the Jews were allowed to breed with the pure Aryan race that their offspring would be impure and so the race would become diluted and eventually weaken the martial spirit. With this belief then came the desire to purge Germany (and, indeed, the rest of Europe) of all undesirables: gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled.

Anti-semitism had existed long before Hitler ever came to power, so we mustn’t be under the illusion that he invented it from thin air and proceeded to annihilate an entire people. It had existed from the 4th Century when the Jews were blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and this shows that it had been a longstanding problem. The pogroms in Russia were an example of anti-semitism in the East, where Jews would be lined up and beheaded, showing that it was a widespread prejudice. However, even though anti-semitism wasn’t a new concept, it cannot be denied that Hitler and the Nazis took it to a whole new level. A possible reason for this deeper hatred could be that the Jews were seen as a good scapegoat. Hitler blamed the defeat in WW1 on the Jews diluting the Aryan race and weakening the fighting spirit. He claimed that they were a parasite, behind Germany’s economic problems and a communist plot.

When Hitler came to power he proceeded to institutionalize anti-semitism from 1933. In March there was much apparently sporadic and unplanned violence against Jews erupting around Germany, generally organized by SA members. Jews were forced to wear a star of David at all times, so as other German people could recognize them immediately. On 1 April, Jewish shops and businesses were boycotted by all citizens as ordered by Hitler. In the following weeks and months the Jews were driven out of every other profession including civil service, journalism, law and teaching. On the 10th May books by Jewish authors were burned in Berlin during sessions organized by Nazis. In September 1935 the Nuremburg laws were passed which meant that Jews were no longer considered German citizens and made marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans illegal. This was to reinforce the message that Jews were inferior and to preserve the purity of the Aryan race. The Nuremburg laws were very significant as they institutionalized anti-semitism and drove nearly half a million Jews from Germany. This was solid proof that official government policy was to take away their basic rights. The anti-semitism was spread and enhanced through propaganda. Goebbels’ propaganda forced anti-Jewish messages upon German families. They were often refused jobs and humiliated publicly as a result of this. In schools even the children were segregated and eventually expelled. Nazi cartoons and posters portrayed the Jew as a corrupt, greedy monster, and teachers were forced to teach children that the Jew was a danger to the nation.

Another important event when considering this is Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass). This was a nationwide, organized attack on the Jews following the murder of a Nazi official (Ernst von Rath) in Paris in November 1938. This was an act of revenge as the murderer was Jewish. During this night ninety one Jews were killed, one hundred and ninety one synagogues destroyed and seven thousand businesses trashed and demolished. Two thousand more Jews were killed at concentration camps. To add insult to injury, as well as having to pay for the repair of their damaged property and cope with their losses, the Jews were fined one billion marks for von Rath’s murder.

In 1939, war broke out. Even more extreme treatment of the Jews was applied because the world had more important things on its mind. The war also increased the number of Jews under German control and also meant that Jews couldn’t emigrate (which ruled out moving them all to Madagascar as originally intended). They were then dealt with brutally, being shot or herded into appalling ghettos where they lived in awful conditions of overcrowding and shortage of food - many died as a result of ‘natural reduction’.

It became obvious that the current solution to the Jewish Question wasn’t effective enough. During the war Germany had gained control over many more Jews, and after Operation Barbarossa there was more pressure to get rid of the Jews quickly, which brought to mind the idea of mass murder. However, many of the killers were becoming psychologically ravaged by having to shoot so many people and ammunition was expensive. So, the Wannsee conference was called. Hitler, Heydrich and Himmler sat down to discuss how to kill more Jews for less money and then dispose of the remains. There it was decided that gas chambers and crematoriums would be the most efficient method. Many still died from natural causes. The journey to the concentration camp and the living conditions inside the ghetto still remained sub human. Many would die en route to one of the camps (Auswitchz, Treblinka) because of the overcrowded conditions and weather extremes along with food and water shortages.

In conclusion, the Holocaust was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany. Whether or not this was pre-meditated or simply a reaction to a chain of events following the outbreak of WWII is debatable, but regardless of this, the Nazis still committed genocide on a massive scale. Anti-Semitism had existed long before the Holocaust in many different parts of the world, but the Nazis took it to a new level. Hitler institutionalized racism in order to get rid of the Jews, and that is what led to such an immense massacre and set the Nazis apart.

The Other Holocaust of World War II

The most shocking revelation [came in] late 1999, when Japan’s war files were finally opened under the Freedom of Information Act, and the Author found her cover art, designed to span the years of growing up in China, had become prophetic. She learned, to her profound horror, that the primary reason the United States had hurriedly dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was that American intelligence had intercepted a directive from the Japanese high command to all prison camp commandants, ordering them to execute every military and civilian prisoner of war . . . and to leave no trace!

Excerpted from the Preface to The Mushroom Years

Research by historians of China and the Far East, including the Allied Powers, came up with these carefully calculated civilian death figures during the Japanese occupation of that region (1931-1945). Although these victims weren’t exterminated in gas ovens as were the six million Jews and five million non-Jews in Europe during the same period, they were brutally executed en masse, starved in contrived famines and forced labor, and used for medical experimentation.

In 1931 the Japanese invaded Manchuria and spent the rest of the decade trying to subjugate it. From 1937 to 1945 the Japanese occupied China, including Southeast Asia, Burma, Thailand, and the Philippines. Although Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, that country staunchly resisted Japanese domination through the decades and its civilian deaths are listed here.

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