Third Reich & the Holocaust, Week One

As Americans and several generations removed from this era of history, it is difficult to fathom the Third Reich and the Holocaust. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I became fascinated with World War II-- I've read Reminisce magazine for decades and my grandad was in the Navy, serving in the Pacific-- and my German lineage turned my interests to the European fronts. At the time, I was weekly unleashed upon the Kemp Public Library in Wichita Falls, Texas. I was, and still unashamedly am, a voracious reader. In my search for this history, I stumbled across the many volumes of World War II Time Life Books, where for the first time I was confronted with war-- what one man can do to another. I was immediately struck by two historical occurrences: Japanese-American internment camps in the US during the war and Hitler and the Holocaust. It was beyond comprehension that one group of people could subjugate and detain another group of people in pens like animals-- and then exterminate them after putting these humans through forced labor, scientific experiments, and death marches.

I found these volumes in an antique store in Fort Smith, AR last summer and it was like touching my younger years... so I bought all the European front tomes.

The years have gone by and my interest has never waned. I've read many hundreds of books on the subject of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. My personal collection of books is nearing a hundred volumes. I am slightly ashamed to say that I do not own The Diary of Anne Frank, but I'm fairly certain I wore out the library copy. I took two years of German in college, took a history course on the Holocaust, did my college internship at a Holocaust museum sorting transcripts from the Nuremberg Trials, and completed my BA in history with a senior paper dealing with Holocaust themes. I've made a few trips to Germany. I've spent hundreds, if nots thousands, of hours watching documentaries on the subject. But for all this, the Third Reich and the Holocaust is not something I could ever pretend or hope to understand in all its complexities and inhumanities. For this class, the undertaking has verged on the overwhelmed so many times.

So I began this class in the most unusual of starts: liberation. What I wanted for the class was to put behind everything we've heard about the holocaust and experience as if for the first time, as the first Americans became aware of the what the Third Reich had done.

On April 27, 1945, the Kaufering IV sub camp of Dachau was stumbled upon by a division of the US 7th Army, soldiers of the 101st Airborne, and a group of men that would one day become known as the Band of Brothers. Their objective was to capture Munich, but what they found was the Dachau system of labor camps. Kaufering IV was one of eleven camps in the area, and was where prisoners no longer able to work were kept. The others camps were evacuated, yet this one was left with the dead and those close to death.

Band of Brothers: Liberation of a Concentration Camp

Some terms:
Arbeitslager: work camp
Juden: Jews
zigeuner: gypsies

The question is now-- what do we do with this?

We could start with the First World War and its aftermath.

We could start with Hitler's rise to power.

We actually start thousands of years before this date of liberation in 1945. We start with the concept of antisemitism.

Antisemitism is a recent word in its etymology. It was a word created in 1878 or 1879 by a German racist ideologist named Wilhelm Marr. It was a modern, scientific term that sounded hygienic, neutral, cleverly devoid of the word "Jew." (A History of the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer, page 51). This new term replaced the older word Judenhass, translated as Jew Hatred.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem are two giants in preserving this history and educating.

We watched about ten minutes of the Yad Vashem video on Antisemitism. This link succinctly covers antisemitism through the ages.

The book we will be using this semester is Night by Elie Wiesel. This is a clip of the news from the day he died a few years ago that covers his life and endeavors.

Modern Euro 2, Week One: Prelude to War

The Great War was from 1914 to 1918, and barely twenty years later, it seemed another war was on the horizon. At least that's how we read history these days, events and dates carefully delineated for our memorization. The treaties following World War I were great in theory but was the war really over? This peace (namely The Treaty of Versailles)-- "eternal peace" as it was named by British diplomat Harold Nicolson-- " perished in frustration and violence almost before the negotiators got home. Starting with Russia, one nation after another exchanged the evils of war for those of revolution and counter revolution... In these and other countries where peace alone had proved no cure for misery, people erupted in frantic epidemics of strikes and street fighting." (Prelude to War by Time Life Books, page 58.)

Conflicts and Wars in the Aftermath of WWI

For centuries most of continental Europe was governed by old empires, imperialistic and monarchic (mostly by primogeniture-- the father to first born son model). World War I brought about the death of empires, four specifically: the Hapsburg, Ottoman, Russian, and German Empires. In the wake of these shattered empires, the vacuum of new ideas-- "isms" of the 20th century-- created and propagated chaos. New ideologies (the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc. that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group) sprang up, each vying for the popular opinion/vote. The video above lists the "isms": fascism, futurism, communism, internationalism, republicanism, feminism, liberalism, nationalism, socialism, pacifism, imperialism, and others. What do these have in common? The ideals are highly specific, with little to no wiggle room, and most of them are "all in" ideologies. For every one "ism" above, there were dozens of splinters. No one could decide what they wanted, and no one was willing to negotiate. For countries, such as Germany, there were dozens of differing political parties... from the socialists to the communists to the national socialists-- and everything in between: right, far right, center, left, far left. Most of continental Europe was experiencing a malevolent identity crisis.

Of the "isms", three of them would fight for the majority: fascism, nazism, and communism.

Fascism:
1) nationalist; devoted to the State before individual wants/needs
2) centralized rule under a dictator who has complete political authority (totalitarian)
3) militaristic; using violence to persuade
4) glorified youth culture

Looming Face of Fascism: Benito Mussolini

Nazism:
1) fascist but radicalized by racial supremacy/purity; based on Darwinism
2) first goal was to undo the Treaty of Versailles: one German nation, all German speaking people within the same geographical perimeters
3) put itself off as "scientific"
4) simplified government

The Story of Fascism: Hitler

Communism:
1) economic system of government-- Karl Marx and Frederich Engels
2) against the exploitation of the worker to the benefit of the employer model
3) believed that to "reset" society to a theorized "utopian society", they needed to remove imperialism; the absence of money and ownership would establish one social order/class
4) Leninism: the ideology that a constant state of revolution/chaos moved society in the direction it needed to go
5) the dominant party (Communist, of course) would act in the best interest of the people

As Hitler quickly overturned the points set forth in the Treaty of Versailles, the European response was lackluster. This disinterest in forcing Germany to maintain the the Treaty became known as the Policy of Appeasement.

Appeasement 1935-1939

Hitler pressed rearmament, then retook control of the Rhineland (a chunk of land rich in resources that Germany lost in the Treaty) in 1936. This was a direct violation of the Treaty but only garnered some protest. In March 1938, Hitler marched troops into Austria to "help" with the election to force unification between Germany and Austria-- this was known as the Anschluss. Again, Britain and France protested, but did nothing. In September 1938, Hitler moved on Czechoslovakia to gain the strip of bordering land known as the Sudetenland, as this was the home to many German speaking people. Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Britain, flew to Munich to meet with Hitler and Mussolini, with the hope to preserve peace. The Munich Agreement ceded the Sudetenland to Germany on the promise that Hitler would not seek further territorial expansion.

Chamberlain returned home to London where he proclaimed the agreement as "peace in our time".

Neville Chamberlain Returns from Germany with the Munich Agreement

As an aside, the German-Soviet pact of non-aggression was called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (or Pakten).

Next week: the second world war begins

The book for this class is World War II: A Very Peculiar History by Jim Pipe.