The Holocaust: A War Between Germany and Its Ego

Omar Bartovs essay, Defining Enemies, Making Victims, explains that the genocide in the Holocaust was not about eliminating a group of people based on their religion, but really about Germanys lack of unity as a nation in the post-WWI depression. Their urge to turn back to a more secure past, resentment of the French enlightenment, fear of destroying the German Volk, empowerment of eugenics, and insatiable desire for a scapegoat after the loss of WWI led to a war not between Germany and the Jews, but between Germany and its own shattered ego. Since the eighteenth century, conservative fists dominated German societal ideologies, tightening with every revolutionary movement towards modernization in surrounding borders. They valued culture over civilization, claiming culture is something innate, intrinsic, inherited, a tradition handed down from the past. Civilization is therefore just a synthetic outcome of modernity, disregarding the values that culture passes down through generations. While Germany turned its back on progressive movements, Europe broke off from its former church-dominated medieval society and thirsted for knowledge, liberal beliefs, and most importantly, individuality. In response, Germany isolated itself in the comfort of backtracking to a time when progress was too distant in the future to foresee, and the present was secure and stable. The French did not let Germany have its way for too long. The Napoleonic Wars between 1803 and 1815 sent invaders with enlightenment in their hearts and in their muskets out towards those resisting progressive movements. Germany was an important stop, for it had declared itself a nation who hated everything the future and the French invited in. After the Frenchs disastrous victory, Germany suffered terribly and thus

believed even more fervently in the lifestyles before enlightenment. Furthermore, the French invasions embedded a bitter distaste of anything French-related on the tongue of every German citizen. They marched in unannounced and burnt Germany down to ashes. This turned everything French into un-German, something that will beat through German frustration up until WWII. So, where do the Jews come in? This is a group of people who the all-powerful Catholic Church discriminated against since 1000 AD. So, the Jews cheered on the metaphorical sidelines of the French invasions and danced in the freedom that modernity and enlightenment poured over their society. Jews endured crusades and unethical treatments in the medieval society that Germany advocated so strongly. Also, the same transcends vise versa when Germany fell to ashes as modernity in the form of Napoleon Bonapartes army came marching through its borders. In many French-occupied cities, the obligatory extension of equality to Jews enraged the Germans even more than French domination. Progress and enlightenment placed Germans and Jews on opposing ends, just by pure placements in society, not by any real relevance to Judaic religious practices. Wherever the Jews were free, Germans were trapped in a movement that went against their traditional values. Post-Napoleonic Wars left the victimized Germany completely shattered, without nationhood, political power, economical potential, or effective militarization. The outside world turned against Germany and, in turn, created the German nationalism Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn dubbed as the Volk. The Volk refers to more than just a group of people, but a cultural heritage that shares the same linguistics, land, beliefs, and morals. This psychologically crushed Germany needed to restore unity

after the rest of Europes obliteration of their conventional beliefs, and turning inward to the concept of Volk was the answer. It was hope for strength that Germany can stand on its own, and the Jews had no fit in the equation. As long as the Jewish population lived as German citizens in the age of Enlightenment, they benefitted just as much as Germans foreign and invading enemies. They became a state within a state and embraced the unfair advantage other Germans had fallen beneath. From then on, Jews were labeled as foreigners within their own country. A century passed of growing anti-Semitism within Germany, and the First World War had European nations battling once again. After another catastrophic defeat, Germany was left crippled while the rest of the world blamed them for causing the war and pointed with accusing fingers. A loss of husbands and fathers and a reparation bill that exceeded Germanys entire wealth threw the nation into a state of poverty and starvation. The foreign government, the Weimar Republic, took reign over the crumbling nation but received little respect in return. The German people did not want any more forced outside interference, especially while they were frequently visited by bitter North Africans in the French Foreign Legion reminding them to pay their WWI bill at the point of their rifles. They needed strength and patriotism to get back on their feet, and for that, they needed unity under German Volk. Insert into this weak and easily manipulated society Adolf Hitler with the National Socialist Party marching behind him, and you have the unity that will bring Germany the confidence it had lost a century earlier and that will ultimately create the Holocaust. Why couldnt Germany just take the blame for their losses, invite in the individuality that modernity encouraged, and grow as a stronger nation? If this had been

done, lives would have been saved, and a liberal and advanced society would have been embraced. However, this is a bit unrealistic, for morale was more fragile amongst the German people than the withering roofs they slept under during the depression. In terms of WWI, if German leaders put the blame on their soldiers for causing and losing the First World War, then the military would be pummeled after already being knocked down. German forces lost over seven million men, or 65% of their forces, in WWI. Widowed mothers mourning the death of their fallen soldier could not even afford to feed their children. Without stepping out of the spotlight as perpetrators during WWI, German society would never feel a part of a strong nation again. They needed a scapegoat, and the Nazi Regime knew this better than anyone else. Although progressive movements were always undermining Germans traditional intentions, major scientific studies during the time of the post-WWI depression were rooting for them. It did not matter how ridiculous their findings may be; anything that will strengthen the German Volk is an idea to pick up and run with. Revolutionary situations are a highly fertile breeding ground for fantasies and distorted perceptions, Omar Bartov writes in his essay. In the revolutionary time period of the early-to-mid 1900s, these fantasies and distorted perceptions can be found in the study of dividing humanity into higher and lower species. Although individuality was finally embraced, Europe was so involved in the strange concepts of superior races that it had become a major scientific study, testing different races to see which genes were smarter, more loyal, more honest, more sociable, and closer to the fantasy of a genetically perfect human race. The tested factors and values were mostly pertaining to emotions and logic, disregarding the physical qualities that are only actually affected by varying races. The

resulting proposals that call for inferior and superior races were all just talk until Germany stumbles into their confidence shortage. The study of eugenics labeled the Aryans the blond, tall, long-headed, and light-skinned as the true heir of the Greeks genius, born with economically honest, socially appropriate, sexually modest, and politically loyal qualities. A door of opportunity opened up for Germany because naturalborn German citizens resemble pure Aryans therefore, all other races must be inferior. Thus, science sent German leaders, more specifically the Nazi Regime, on a quest for perfection and purity. Social Darwinism took over ideologies within German society, causing the belief that if you were not Aryan, you were not born to be a strong member of society and could not climb up the social food chain. It now had nothing to do with how you were raised, where you were born, and especially how you practiced your religion, but what kind of people are embedded in your DNA. The Jews, who were mostly immigrants, typically had dark hair, dark skin, and a round head, so the illusion was that they lack all the good qualities that Aryans are born with. The Nazi Regime found the strength they sought in the degrading of other social groups, so this Jewish appearance was a main target for spreading the fear of biological degeneration and any threat to Aryan purity. Moreover, Jewish prejudice already existed in this fallen nation, thus science empowered the German Volk and its accompanying exclusion of the Judaic population. In reality, in 1933, Germanys population was less than 1% Jewish, but the desperate paranoia of damaging Aryan purity spread so immensely throughout the nation that genetic impurity became some elusive enemy one that can be hiding anywhere. There was also an assumption that there will always be more non-Aryans to eliminate if they were to remain a part of society. German people become hostile against

everyone that looked different and threatened their newfound ego, opening the doors for an imaginative Hitler and his Holocaust fantasy. The Nazi Regime had eugenics to justify their target against non-Aryan races. However, anti-Judaism soon became the most propelling force in the Holocaust movement, and the Jew came to represent the entirety of Germans foreign enemies. Although Germans really were not against their religious beliefs, the Jews were specifically brought down to a subhuman value because they served as Germanys ideal scapegoat. And it worked, for the Jewish prejudice has grown and molded into something Germans were able to take personally if they listened to a strong-enough dictator. German Jews being seen as foreign was nothing new, so when the Nazis began to speak about Jews as the enemy of the state, the idea was not so hard to swallow for the German civilians. Bartov further explains the so-called practicality of targeting the Jewish population in a post-WWI environment: Those on the lookout for domestic enemies needed a target group that would be both sufficiently visible and more or less universally disliked, perceived as both all-powerful and numerically marginal so that its elimination from society would not have a major detrimental effect on the nation, both an easy target for victimization and generally accepted as the chief instigator of its persecutors own victimhood. The Jews made up such a small percentage of the German population, so their elimination from society would be less detrimental than it would be metaphorical. They were generally accepted as perpetrators against the Germans just on the basis of historical bias. Moreover, the Jewish traditions generally advocated conformity and adaptation in

the face of opposition, so this was not a religious culture that was going to fight back. Lastly, Aryans, the descendents of ancient Greeks, and Jews were perceived as the last pure races in the world. Germans at this time valued racial purity, therefore sending these last two purebreds into a vicious war. All of these spiraling falls Germany plunged through constructed the perfect tools for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Regime to use to dictate the country. Post-WWI had Germany in a fatal depression, and because elections were happening a dozen times a year, politics were unstable. Therefore, Hitler made his way legally through the corrupted political system and worked with historical anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism to shed a shameful spotlight on a culture other than the Germans. He gave new life to the German Volk and put hope in the minds of his listening people so that they can be a strong nation once again. He spoke of eugenics, and told the weeping society that they are, in fact, the best possible human race. And, who is the worst? Your dark-haired neighborhood Jew. He shed anxiety throughout the nation about not contaminating the Aryan purity. Centuries after the end of medieval times switched the dominance of church and state, the Jews still went through one of the most horrific genocides of human history for all reasons that had nothing to do with their religious beliefs. Within a decade of Adolf Hitler stepping behind a podium, German forces murdered six million Jews, and civilians within close proximity to major death camps regarded the acts as no more than political offenders being taken as prisoners. The most disturbing element of the steps that led to the Final Solution is that it seems hardly preventable. The Jewish people just were roped into Germanys own coping with their failures. In the modern age of the Holocaust, Germany had long moved past anti-religious beliefs having been surrounded

by modernity for generations. The isolation, victimization, then extermination of Jews was just a tool to protect against foreign cultures shattering the German ego once again.