POLL: The Holocaust - Responsibility

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This topic is as much for my own interest than anything else, although hopefully some interesting and educational debate will form from it.

My question is simple, who, in your opinion is responsible for the holocaust? Feel free to expand on your poll choice below. I will weigh in with my own opinions later.

[ May 01, 2005, 20:56: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

Poll Information
This poll contains 1 question(s). 33 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

Poll Results: The Holocaust - Responisbility (33 votes.)

The Holocaust - Responisbility (Choose 3)
* Hitler, the killing of Jews was his aim all along - 39% (13)
* Hitler, although it was more pragmatic, "the Nazi's stumbled into the Holocaust" - 24% (8)
* Himmler - Heydrich and the SS - 27% (9)
* Gobbels, Goering and other leading Nazi figures - 30% (10)
* The Allied nations must bear some responsibilty, this includes ocupied nations - 15% (5)
* The Jews themselves must bear some responsibility - 6% (2)
* The Catholic Church must bear some responsibility - 6% (2)
* The German people as a whole must bear some responsibility - 58% (19)

 

The german people must bear the entire responsibility, but not the blame. There is a major difference with blame and responsibility. The leaders are guilty but the people who chose and trusted these leaders must bear the responsibility when the leaders are gone. Germany has done this admirably which is a sign of deep regret and understanding, something which is very rare in the history of mankind. If other nations faced their past in an equal manner this world would be a better place to live in.

 

Hmm, it's interesting that you site resposibility entirely in the hands of the German people. While there is a significant amount of evidence to suggest that the vast majority knew or were indifferent about the killings, it has to be aknowledged that many Germans would not have had the oppertunity to assist the Jew's, had they even wanted to.

Futhermore, I respect your discipline in stating that while they must bare responsibility they cannot take the blame. Afterall, There was real fear of reprisals and by the time news was widespread most Jews were already dead or beyond help.

 

Human prejudice is the biggest culprit here, in my opinion it was mostly a matter of chance that it was the Germans who put that prejudice to its ultimate conclusion. Jews were, disliked, envied, feared and hated everywhere and no one really cared much what happened to them until the full scope of what the Nazis did became known to them.

The core of the problem concerning the jews is/was christianity, it was the view of jews as christ killers who started the persecution of the jews in the first place. Giving the Nazis a very grateful group to focus on and to blame all of Germany's problems on.

Lets not forget that the Nazis tried to exterminate everyone who was different, gypsies, homosexuals, handicapped everyone. Everyone who didnt fit in, who wasnt up to certain standards. It is oh so simply to focus on people who are different and single them out and persecute them. It seems to lie in our human nature which is why I see the ghosts of the concentration camps in my mind everytime I hear someone talk about the horrid gay lobby and the gay agenda and the like. It was talk like that which started the holocause and needs to be fought at every oppurtunity.

 

I am aware that it is a very difficult matter when judging how much the average Germans knew. But there were many towns near concentration camps in Germany they lived around the camps and had direct view into them, yet they hesitated to act. Not that I blame them for it. Also rumours spread throughout Germany about how jews were treated and it was well known that they were treated like dirt. However it is wrong to claim that Germans were completely aware of the massdesturction of the jewish population.

I still do believe that the people of Germany are responsible. Hitler did not become the leader of Germany through succession, he became the leader through elections, and I believe that the people must take the responsibility for their elected leaders and not just say "I was not aware he was going to do this and that".

I would also like to point out that a lot of industry owners, politicians, soldiers who committed these horrible crimes against humanity were quite normal. All of them were in no way psychotic killers. Many have been described as loving fathers and honorable men in their civilian life but then as complete monsters when treating other ethnic groups.

 

The half of Europe and European culture. This all came not over night and this was not at all a only Italian-German-Spanish thing. Wherever the Germans went, they found plenty of people happy to turn against their neighbour. And I think the most interesting is, that it all started with killing disabled people.

 

No vote from me on that poll. I have a hard time dealing with Holocaust, which is too horrid a legacy to really comprehend. However, its difficult not to be constantly confronted with the issue as the entire Western World is obsessed with it in one way or other. I wonder why that is. Spooked because one of its more civilized people fell prey to a totalitarian regime and barbarism? Keeping down their own guilt over what was done to the Germans?

My grandmother swore she did not know of what happened with the jewish Germans. She said Jews - and many other people - kept disappearing all of the time. One day a jewish family lived next door and then, the other day, they were gone. The German fellow too vocal in his critique of the NS party? Gone.
Personally I dont know what to make of her claim and whether to believe her. I am pretty sure she didnt know of the deathcamps though. Those werent shown on the news, unlike the hate speeches against all who were 'different'. At best there were rumours. However all Germans - and all of Europe, all of the World - knew the rhetorics Hitler spouted. He was loud enough, no? Why she didnt come - did not want to come? - to the obvious conclusions I cannot tell. But then I did not live at that time - a time when most Germans lived in a state of insanity, seduced by Nazism, when one word of a neighbour was enough to be arrested and made disappear by the Gestapo. I dont know what life is like in a corrupted society of that sort. How it will shape a single persons mind. Nor does anyone else here. If one of us would have been raised at that time, under such conditions... would we have acted differently? I somewhat doubt it.

Still, although my grandparents were young at the time (in their early twenties) they are responsible from my point in history. They and their parents opened the door for the Nazis - not to slay the Jews, rather to deal with unemployment, and because they appealed to their patriotic/nationalistic feelings. And how tempting must that have been after the humilation of Versailles, hmm? The Nazis promised easy solutions in a difficult time. But then the Germans, being told left and right to be superior, did not resist when some of their fellow citizens, who happened to have a different faith (or opinion, sexual orientation), came under fire. And with their ignorance or acceptance of the smaller crime they invited the unthinkable. Something we should be oh so weary of when talking about torture, treatment of minorities etc. in the present.
Even if they did have a bad feeling about it they were too timid to give voice to their concerns. They remained silent and private, not actively searching out other people who were disturbed as well. The seducers were allowed to do their thing with not enough opposition. By then it was too late to do anything but trying to offer a jewish friend, a homosexual student of ones semester or an independent spirit covered assistance to help him escape in time. And many Germans did help – albeit secretly.

While I am not responsible for what happened before my parents were even born, I do feel guilty. That in turn makes me determined to take up the responsibilty of remembrance, unpleasant as it is with some self-righteous individuals around.

 

The Nazis did not seduce the Germans. It was the other way around. Hitler worked from the fears and hatreds of the German people. The National Socialists would not have been able to do what they did if they didn't have the support of the people. And no how many times they lie, most Germans did know what was going on with the camps. It's kind of hard not to see thousands of camp slaves marching through the streets twice a day and not figure out something evil was going on.

 

The Vote for the allied (including ocupied nations) was mine.

I have not the time to type up why at the moment, it should be here within 24 hours though, but examples of note are Romania and the Vichy government in france, compared to the kings of Denmark and Hungaria.

Oh and in response to tal, yes a poll is a pretty crude way of examining this but quite alot of people will vote in a poll but wont or cant go to the length of typing a long reply as to why they think what they do, especially if it goes against common or popular opinion (Allied\Jew\chruch responses) and a poll provides a quick and easy way to assess the majority of these peoples views.

A side effect of the poll is the discussion this is generating, something else I am also interested in as a self-apointed quasi-expert on the holocaust.

 

The vast majority of the people here were not even born when the Holocaust took place. In fact as far as I know I'm the only one who was alive then and I was a small child. So do not think that any statements I make are directed at anyone here. Those who were adult when WWII took place are getting fewer.

My reaction to the question of responsibility was everyone was responsible. There were German sympathizers in the US. The USA didn't go to war because of the Holocaust but because Germany attacked our ships. I believe that Germany declared war on us when we declared war on Japan.

A lot of people suffered under the Holocaust. People who disagreed with Hitler suffered. A lucky few got out of Germany. I was friends with the son of one such couple. His family were not Jewish.

Now I have a question:

Why the fascination with the Holocaust? Is it because we would like to think that it will never happen again but deep down inside we know it could?

Let Hitler and the German people take the responsibility and the rest of us can all go sleep comfortably.

However if the answer to my question is that we would like to prevent such a thing happening again that would make me very happy.

[ May 01, 2005, 05:06: Message edited by: Nakia Nightshadow ]

 

I can see how the Allies and Catholic Church must bear some responsibility for letting Hitler's extermination blosson into the Holocaust, but I would love the hear (with an open mind, too) an explanation of the thinking behind assigning any degree of responsibility to the Jews.

 

Sheesh...so many options are left out, this poll isn't fair from my point of view, so i can't vote, sorry 'bout that.

 

If I could vote for multiple answers, it would be 1, 3 & 4. Hittler didn't act alone, His advisors wanted this too. The SS were his attack dogs...

 

*blink* *blink* *blink*

...what?

Actually not that difficult to justify, either. Not responding forcibly when Germany was pushing the envelope throughout the thirties, turning away boatloads of Jews, and so on.

 

Right. There wasn't much protest when Germany annexed Austria. It took the invasion of Poland for most everyone to really move.

I would be hypocrtitical to say that the U.S. wasn't instrumental in winning WWII but it was an attack on Pearl Harbor that basically caused its entry in the war. There was sentiment within the country that it shouldn't get involved.

 

Yes, isolationism...but, even with the note of good or bad timings for a country's involvement in WWII, it's hard to comprehend how the actual blame of the holocaust would fall into Allied hands. I'll be adamant about reading Mr Writer's response.

I don't know others' reasons for fascination with the holocaust. Personally, however, I'm interested in genocidal events because they speak a great deal about human nature in itself, and I'm not referring to the holocaust alone. As much as some would like to brush aside events like these and "move on", I don't believe points in history with such weight should be forgotten; they should be learned from. I've heard an applicable explanation for why we study history since grade school -- "so we don't repeat the same mistakes."

 

There are actually entire lists of quotes by allied politicans and several historicans that aim to push away the guilt from Hitler and the germans. These quotes are ripped out of context and put together by neo-nazis.


I have to add just one detail: After the last free elections, the NSDAP did not have the majority in the german Reichstag (the national parliament). The nazis got a lot of votes, but it wasn't enough to rule without a coalition with the two nationalist parties, DVP and DNVP.

The final stepstone to Hitler's dictatorship was the adoption of the so called "Ermaechtigungsgesetz" (enabling act) in 1934 which allowed the goverment to rule through regulations alone. They did not need laws anymore.

The Reichstag disempowered itself. Only the social democrats voted against this act. All the other democratic parties voted to adopt it, even the Zentrum, a formerly state supporting catholic party.

You could say that germany's political elite was ultimatly responsible for the whole mess, because they laid the state into an artificial coma.

[ May 01, 2005, 12:44: Message edited by: Fabius Maximus ]