History UsefulNotes / TheHolocaust

For a list of works that depict and address the Holocaust, see [[WorksSetInWorldWarII/WorksAboutTheHolocaust here]].

The institutional origins of the Holocaust boil down to UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's vision for rebuilding Germany into a world superpower and his subordinates' attempts to increase their own power by drafting policies which would make it a reality. Hitler's perennial laziness and heartfelt desire for others to do the hard work of actually running Germany for him is why there is no "signed order" from Hitler defining and initiating the Holocaust as a policy, yet there is no doubt that Hitler had verbally asked for and approved the genocides as they were implemented. [[note]]Contrast Stalin's ''Order 00447'', a document which sets out quite precisely how many people were to be executed and imprisoned from all the different "republics" of the Soviet Union during the "Yezhovschina" or "The Purges" of 1935. Stalin felt no shame about the purge and ordered the document preserved, not least because it implicated all his subordinates. Nikita Khruschev, for instance, like all the other leaders of the Soviet Republics, was implicated in the process of submitting numbers of people to be purged to Stalin for approval. ''Order 00447'' made quite a stir when it was unveiled, not least because some people weren't sure the whole thing wasn't just Yezhov's fault and many thought the numbers of dead numbered in the millions. It was as much Stalin's fault as Yezhov's, and the number of dead was actually just 750k.[[/note]]

More important for future developments was the appointment of Nazi party faithfuls to head Germany's various police forces, and the subordination of said forces to organisations associated with the Nazi party. During the Weimar period the political character of the police as a whole had been profoundly anti-Communist and more generally anti-leftist, not least because they had fought on the front lines against the Communists during the 1918-19 revolutions, so they found it relatively easy to adjust to the new regime and appreciated the chance to pursue their enemies more vigorously. The relatively small ''Kriminalpolizei'' (Criminal Police, responsible for national-level detective work) were immediately merged with the Nazi party's bodyguard service, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (lit. 'protection squadron). While the Prussian ''Geheimestaatspolizei'' (Secret State Police, or "[[UsefulNotes/TheGestapo Gestapo]]" for short) were initially brought under the control of UsefulNotes/HermannGoring, his lacklustre performance (relative to the ''Kriminalpolizei-Schutzstaffel'') in combating the regime's political enemies enabled Himmler to wrest control of it from him in 1935. Continued good performance allowed Himmler to secure nominal authority over the ''Ordnungspolizei'' (the Order Police, or Orpo, were Germany's national police force) in 1936, although the Orpo's huge resource base and good performance relative to the ''Schutzstaffel'' meant that in practice it continued to exercise a considerable degree of political independence. While there were a number of smaller police forces, such as those operating in the depths of the German countryside, these were tiny and simply didn't have the resources to play a substantive role in politics.

This era of pre-genocide was characterized by some amount of flexibility within the Nazi hierarchy. For instance, about 300,000 (of 500,000 German and Austrian citizens who met the legal definition of 'Jews' under the 1935 Nürnberg Laws) emigrated from Germany-Austria by 1939 with "encouragement" from the SA and SS; a third left in the year of 1935 and another third left in the years 1938-9. The rest remained because 1) they were confident of the generally civilised and moral nature of Germanic-European society and were sure that things wouldn't (and couldn't) get any worse, 2) they couldn't afford the 'minimum wealth requirements' of entry into countries such as the USA, 3) they refused to leave their homes and (until 1938-9) believed the NSDAP would lose the next election. UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler's SS effectively acquired a majority share over "Jewish Policy" when they managed to remove the bulk of the Jewish population of Austria within a year at minimal cost. This was done by carefully analysing the remaining Jews' motivations for staying on, realising the second factor (insufficient wealth to meet entry requirements) was actually the most important, and implementing a scheme whereby rich Jews were forced to pay the emigration and immigration costs of poor Jews. Envious of this "success", Josef Göbbels attempted in 1938 to usurp the SS's control over Jewish policy, as part of the Nazi tendency towards extreme measures to attract Hitler's patronage.

The PointOfNoReturn for Jewish policy is generally regarded as the ''Kristallnacht'' of 1938. This was Joseph Göbbels' last and most desperate attempt to encourage the remaining Jews to leave the country by inciting the SA and party faithful to attack Jews ''en masse''. Hershel Grynszpan was a Polish Orthodox Jew who was born in Germany, but had resided in France for several years. As a result of Germany's anti-semitic laws and Poland's bureaucratic chicanery, he was rendered stateless. The racist laws also made it difficult for him to contact his family or access his money in German banks. He eventually marched up to the Germany Embassy in Paris and assassinated ambassador Ernst vom Rath, then turned himself in for arrest. Vom Rath was given a state funeral; at this funeral, Hitler and Ribbentrop referred to the assassination as a declaration of hatred from Jews to Germans. Göbbels saw this as an opportunity for him to wrest control of Racial Policy from Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler by devising a series of Party-directed series of pogroms where Jewish shops were smashed[[note]]hence the term Kristallnacht, which means "The Night of the Broken Glass"[[/note]] and 1,200 synagogues across Germany[[note]]two thirds of the total number of synagogues in the country[[/note]] were smashed or destroyed. The official reported death count was 91, but it is believed to have been much higher. Contrary to general belief, these pogroms were deeply unpopular among the German public. The general reaction was one of outrage and shock: many German businesses had accidentally been targeted in the riots, and the wholesale looting and destruction had resulted in a drastic rise in insurance premiums. The campaign was an abject failure, resulting in very little emigration of Jews and a great deal of public discontent. ''Kristallnacht'', while shocking to international observers, internally discredited Göbbels and handed control of anti-Jewish policy to Göring and Himmler.

Most rescuers could be characterised as having 'mixed' motives. The sympathy and willingness to help of these people was greater, but still limited. They might hide and feed their son's wife, for instance, but not her family - or her immediate/nuclear family, but not their extended family. Religious organizations might give shelter to the victim on the condition said victim forsake their prior religion and convert to the rescuer's. And so on.

Most rescuers could be characterised as having 'mixed' motives. The sympathy and willingness to help of these people was greater, but still limited. They might hide and feed their son's wife, for instance, but not her family - or her immediate/nuclear family, but not their extended family. And so on.

The Holocaust was implemented by 300,000 opportunists, racists, anti-communists, anti-semites, fascists, collaborationists, sadists, [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers and normal people who'd rather not have been involved in it]]. These included 9000 German and 'Foreign-born German' (Volksdeutsch) Security Police personnel, 11,000 Order Police personnel, and more than 200,000 'Hiwis' ('Volunteers' recruited from Soviet POW). Amongst the Order Police contingent were 2,000 'Reserve' Order Police troops whom experts agree were a basically ordinary, representative cross-section of German society. Their conduct offers great insights into the behaviour of normal people in extreme circumstances.

Eugenics was, of course, fundamentally flawed in that [[NatureVersusNurture it assumed that most or even all traits were inheritable when, in fact, they were not]]. The new science of epigenetics proved that though the genetic code can't be changed, its expression ''can'' be switched on or off by the environment. Moreover, it also continued the medieval Christian tradition of [[BeautyEqualsGoodness equating physical appearance with morality.]] The children of prostitutes generally did not go on to become prostitutes unless they had no other choice, the children of murderers were not particularly renowned for murdering people themselves, and so on. Likewise, people who had grown up on the verge of starvation were not, for instance, short and brittle-boned because they were somehow eviler and less moral than their well-fed counterparts, but because of general malnutrition and Rickets (a condition caused by insufficient calcium intake). Finally, eugenicists deeply misunderstand a number of evolutionary concepts - “fitness” simply means fit for that creature’s current environment, not “best/most [x]”, eugenics policies are a form of artificial selection rather than natural, and so on.

More important for future developments was the appointment of Nazi party faithfuls to head Germany's various police forces, and the subordination of said forces to organisations associated with the Nazi party. During the Weimar period the political character of the police as a whole had been profoundly anti-Communist and more generally anti-leftist, not least because they had fought on the front lines against the Communists during the 1918-19 revolutions, so they found it relatively easy to adjust to the new regime and appreciated the chance to pursue their enemies more vigorously. The relatively small ''Kriminalpolizei'' (Criminal Police, responsible for national-level detective work) were immediately merged with the Nazi party's bodyguard service, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (lit. 'protection squadron). While the Prussian ''Geheimestaatspolizei'' (Secret State Police, or "Gestapo" for short) were initially brought under the control of Hermann Göring, his lacklustre performance (relative to the ''Kriminalpolizei-Schutzstaffel'') in combating the regime's political enemies enabled Himmler to wrest control of it from him in 1935. Continued good performance allowed Himmler to secure nominal authority over the ''Ordnungspolizei'' (the Order Police, or Orpo, were Germany's national police force) in 1936, although the Orpo's huge resource base and good performance relative to the ''Schutzstaffel'' meant that in practice it continued to exercise a considerable degree of political independence. While there were a number of smaller police forces, such as those operating in the depths of the German countryside, these were tiny and simply didn't have the resources to play a substantive role in politics.

This era of pre-genocide was characterized by some amount of flexibility within the Nazi hierarchy. For instance, about 300,000 (of 500,000 German and Austrian citizens who met the legal definition of 'Jews' under the 1935 Nürnberg Laws) emigrated from Germany-Austria by 1939 with "encouragement" from the SA and SS; a third left in the year of 1935 and another third left in the years 1938-9. The rest remained because 1) they were confident of the generally civilised and moral nature of Germanic-European society and were sure that things wouldn't (and couldn't) get any worse, 2) they couldn't afford the 'minimum wealth requirements' of entry into countries such as the USA, 3) they refused to leave their homes and (until 1938-9) believed the NSDAP would lose the next election. Himmler's SS effectively acquired a majority share over "Jewish Policy" when they managed to remove the bulk of the Jewish population of Austria within a year at minimal cost. This was done by carefully analysing the remaining Jews' motivations for staying on, realising the second factor (insufficient wealth to meet entry requirements) was actually the most important, and implementing a scheme whereby rich Jews were forced to pay the emigration and immigration costs of poor Jews. Envious of this "success", Josef Göbbels attempted in 1938 to usurp the SS's control over Jewish policy, as part of the Nazi tendency towards extreme measures to attract Hitler's patronage.

So far, Nazi policy did not differ greatly from "racial integrationist" policies encouraging Poles to assimilate into Prussian culture in Prussia and Imperial Germany, or Europe's medieval pogroms against Jews. Across Europe, Jews were often segregated into ghettos[[note]]the word itself originates from a pejorative insult directed to the Jewish quarter in Renaissance Venice[[/note]] and expelled at various times from England, France, and eventually even Castile-Leon (despite its strong Moorish cultural ties) in the 16th and 17th centuries. Pogroms were common in Russia and Poland well into the 19th century. The Holocaust was called "The FinalSolution" for a reason: when Hermann Göring, who was in charge of Jewish Policy, authorised the SS to organise a "total solution" to Jewish issues they were unable to resist the opportunity to advance themselves as an institution. SS agencies' previous drives towards ethnic cleansing and deportation had been frustrated by the Gauleiters (German regional governors) and Generalgouvernment, but this time the Sicherheitspolizei had the upper hand. And they intended to keep it.

One of the two radically different and incompatible theories about race and race-mixing was 'Corruption' or 'Pollution' Theory, also known as 'One Drop' Theory. This theory proposed that all it took to produce a degenerate human was a single element of inferior racial stock mixed in with otherwise perfectly superior European blood. This theory was only popular in the USA and to a small extent in South Africa, where the Pencil Test was ''much'' more popular in the "breed the races apart over generations" 'plan' — it focused on phenotype over genotype. [[note]]If your hair was strong and curly enough to (without gel) hold a pen or pencil for minutes at a time, then by law you were were determined to belong somewhere in the Jewish, Coloured, or Black racial super-categories regardless of how others in your family-by-blood were classified. The reason for this was regular throwbacks cropping up due to a lot of historic mixing on all sides, not just in the "official" Coloured community.[[/note]] In both countries, the 'Corruption/Pollution' theory was codified in a series of laws about who was legally 'non-white' and therefore could be enslaved.

Even after they abolished formal slavery, both democracies continued to use laws to ''de facto'' enslave 'non-white' citizens through the prison system[[note]]The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bans slavery, specifically grants an exemption saying slavery ''can'' be imposed as punishment for a crime[[/note]] (USA) and creation of nominally independent 'ethnic homelands' ('Bantustans', South Africa) economically dependent upon the motherland and restrict them to lesser (and vote-less) categories of citizenship. The USA 'officially' provided equal protection under the law with the 14th Amendment (1868), but attempts to enforce that mandate only lasted through the "Reconstruction" period following the UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. After that, white Americans continued to practically and legally discriminate against non-whites throughout the country, not just in the South. Real codification of the 14th Amendment only started up again in the decades following WWII. South Africa repealed Apartheid following a Referendum in 1990.

The "Undesirables" targeted in the narrowest definition can be more or less divided into three categories: state welfare dependents within the German Empire, foreigners who (supposedly) threatened to undermine Axis military operations in the occupied territories, and no-longer usable slaves harvested from across Europe to increase German industrial production and free up Germans for The Front. Germany utilised more than 13 million slaves during the war, and in 1944 Germany's 6 million slaves accounted for a third of the entire German workforce — having freed more than a million low-skilled Germans for military service. Moreover, the elimination of Undesirables not or no longer (after overuse) useful as slaves kept them from being a drain upon the German Empire's increasingly strained food supplies, forestalling greater resistance to German rule in the annexed/conquered territories. The Holocaust was also key to Germany's attempts to establish and maintain control over its occupied territories, as the gross insufficiency of German counterinsurgency assets made pre-emptive actions to neutralise potentially troublesome demographics a "military necessity" (''Kriegsraison'') in strategic terms.

After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the running of the concentration camps fell into the hands of Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Adolf Eichmann. Outside the ongoing ''Judenjagd'' ('Jew-hunts' for escaped Jews) and partisan war, killings were few and far between in 1943. ''Weeks'' could go by without the only remaining extermination facility, the recently-established Auschwitz-II/Birkenau, killing anyone at all. In 1944, however, the [=SiPo=] managed a series of diplomatic victories and the throughput of Undesirables for [[DeadlyEuphemism processing]] was so high at several points that a railway line was constructed into the interior of the Auschwitz-II/Birkenau Extermination facility of the complex to facilitate faster [[DeadlyEuphemism processing]] in these busy periods. The [=SiPo=] continued to press for and in some cases succeeded in implementing the extermination of Fit-for-work Undesirables, despite vociferous protests from economic agencies (the Four-Year Plan Organisation, Organisation Todt, Armaments Ministry, and Economics Ministry). The most prominent of these was the clearance of the Warsaw Ghetto, which was was preempted by the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April-May 1943. Despite these limited victories, such as in Lublin, the overall trend was against the [=SiPo=] and in favour of War Work. With no 'Unfit' elements remaining, Himmler had no leg to stand on with regards to eliminating the remaining Jews despite his personal desires and Hitler's general prejudices.

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