Roll No: 1464

Name: Sarah Javed

Submitted to: Mam Hina Manzoor
Department: Applied Psychology (BS Evening)
Title: The Holocaust: Why it happened?
 Table of contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 3
Literature Review:.......................................................................................................................................... 5
Method of Data Collection: ........................................................................................................................... 6
Questionnaire ................................................................................................................................................ 7
Performa ........................................................................................................................................................ 8
Results: ........................................................................................................................................................... 9
Conditions of World War I: .................................................................................................................... 9
The role of Adolf Hitler: ......................................................................................................................... 9
Ethnocentrism: ...................................................................................................................................... 9
Military Funding: .................................................................................................................................. 10
Collaborators: ...................................................................................................................................... 10
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................... 11
Discussion: ................................................................................................................................................... 11
References ................................................................................................................................................... 12
 Introduction

The problem I investigated in this paper is related to the Holocaust particularly the reasons that
led to the mass atrocity that took place in the 1940’s across German Occupied Europe. The
reason I chose this topic is because of the lack of awareness in our country of the heinous acts
committed by the Nazis during the second world war. Even though it’s a well-known theme in
Europe and other countries, little is known about it in this part of the world. The second reason I
chose this topic pertains to the fact that the so-called conditions that led to this massacre are still
present today in this very age. The third being that there are a great many distortions about why
it happened and what reasons led to such a vicious answer to a problem. This is a great area of
concern because the Holocaust being a shocking part of history shouldn’t have happened but it
did and now the only way we can prevent history from repeating itself is by uncovering the facts
at the root of its cause. Before going into the reasons that resulted in the Holocaust, let’s first
look into what it was:
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War
II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some
six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish
population[1]. The murders were executed in several ways including mass shootings, freight
trains, death marches, extermination through labor and in gas chambers.
Following Germany’s humiliating defeat in World War 1, the country was crippled with
economic disparity and later the depression. Germany was forced to accept full responsibility for
starting the war and to pay heavy reparations. To many, including 30-year-old former army
corporal Adolf Hitler, it seemed the country had been “stabbed in the back” particularly the
Jewish people. He blamed German Jews for their failure in World War 1.
Jews in Europe have been discriminated against and persecuted for hundreds of years, often for
religious reasons. For a start, they were held responsible for the death of Christ. In the Middle
Ages, they were often made to live outside the community in separate neighborhoods or ghettos
and were excluded from some professions. In times of unrest, Jews were often singled out as
scapegoats. This was exactly what happened in Germany[2]. The German people used the Jews as
an outlet for their frustrations and started to blame them for everything.
These events created a sense of victimization in the German people. Adolf Hitler tried to take
advantage of this now vulnerable Germany by exploiting people’s fears, frustrations, and hopes.
He ran for elections but even then, 55% of the people did not vote for him.
 He came to power as a result of being appointed Chancellor in a coalition government. The
conservative politicians didn’t trust him and thought they could use him. The Nazis were
revolutionaries who wanted to radically transform Germany. Hitler was successful in wooing the
German people with his extreme enthusiasm and charisma. He sowed the seeds of antisemitism
that would soon lead to the mass murder of approximately 6 million Jews.
The economy had reached rock bottom when the Nazis came to power. They boosted its
recovery with huge public works projects for the unemployed. Their achievements encouraged
many people to overlook radical Nazi policies, or even to support them. Between 1933 and 1939,
the German government enacted hundreds of laws to define, segregate and impoverish German
Jews.
The goal of Nazi propaganda was to demonize Jews and encourage Germans to see Jews as
dangerous outsiders in their midst. German police filled the concentration camps with thousands
of Jewish inmates. The SS released them only if they agreed to emigrate. But Jews faced
increasingly restrictive immigration quotas in most countries and bureaucratic hurdles in
Germany. Many who had the means and somewhere to go tried to leave Germany. Some families
sent their children alone to other, safer countries. They could not know how soon the world
would be at war.
On September 1, 1939, a massive German force invaded and conquered Poland within a month.
It was the start of the Second World War. In April 1940, Germany occupied Denmark and
Norway. In June, Paris fell and France surrendered. The swift and unexpected victory over
France avenged Germany’s defeat and humiliation in the First World War. It propelled Hitler to
a new level of popularity and trust among the German people.
As German troops advanced into eastern Europe, Germany’s power extended over millions more
Jewish inhabitants in the occupied lands, where German authorities could exploit existing anti-
Jewish attitudes among local populations. Across eastern Europe, German authorities forced
those identified as Jews into tightly packed areas called ghettos. Separated from the non-Jewish
population, Jews in the larger ghettos were imprisoned behind brick walls and barbed wire.
Many ghettos served as staging grounds for the transportation of Jews to the east,
euphemistically called “resettlement” by the Germans, who promised their captives better
conditions and opportunities to work. People endured unimaginable suffering on journeys that
lasted days, without food, water, or toilet facilities. Many of the weak, the young, and the elderly
died before reaching the destination.
The Germans and their collaborators deported roughly 2.7 million Jews and others to killing
centers in German-occupied Poland. At the largest of the camps, Auschwitz, transports arrived
from all across Europe. In several killing facilities, exclusively designed to kill human beings on
an industrial scale, camp authorities used poison gas to murder children, women and men. At
these killing centers, nearly half of all Holocaust victims died.
 While the fall of the Nazi regime and its surrender on May 8, 1945 is usually the date given as
the end of the Holocaust – it did not mark the end of organized killings of Jews in Europe.
Hundreds of Jews were killed across Poland by Polish locals after the war had ended.

Literature Review:

Hitler’s Willing Executioners was an expansive work derived from Goldhagen’s reward winning
1994 doctoral dissertation The Nazi Executioners: A Study of Their Behavior and the Causation
of Genocide, (APSA 2018). This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths
about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers
were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler’s Willing
Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged
the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs
the climate of “eliminationist anti-Semitism” that made Hitler’s pursuit of his genocidal goals
possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth
of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes
us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them
wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units,
to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a
society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs
to their logical conclusion.[5] However, this book was also subjected to heated debate among
academic circles because of its emphasis on anti-semetism being the sole reason of the
Holocaust.
Sean Sheehan’s book ‘Why did the Holocaust Happen?’ also highlights the events that lead to
the Holocaust. It also discusses the causes of the Holocaust, the main it deems the growing
antisemitism during that era. This book examines the Holocaust using well-researched
information supplemented by primary sources from the time period, sidebars, and timelines.
Another book that underlines the causes that brought about the Holocaust is ‘The Holocaust:
Causes’ by Patricia Levy. This book looks at the history of European anti-semitism and how this
was exploited by the Nazis - leading to a systematic programme of persecution and ultimately
the Final Solution. It discusses the myriad and complex causes of the holocaust, posing question
such as: Was it driven by ancient racial prejudice or by the political and economic trauma
Germany suffered after the First World War? Were the German people peculiarly susceptible to
fascism? and, how important was the Allies' reluctance to intervene on behalf of the Jews?

But is anti-Semetism enough of a reason to explain what circumstances compels an ordinary

person to commit extraordinary acts of violence?
 Method of Data Collection:

I took the qualitative approach of data collection for this paper. My research approach included
research on books written by scholars depicting the events of the Holocaust or the reasons for the
growing anti-semetism in Germany during that era. In order to gain better insight into what
actually happened, I also studied interviews from Holocaust survivors who shared their accounts
of the second World War and the brutalities they faced at the hands of the Nazi Germans, among
which included interview with survivor Max Eisen, Mindu Hornik, Irving Roth and others. [4].
These interviews were spontaneous and unstructured. Unstructured interviews usually produce
results that cannot be generalized beyond the sample group, but they provide a more in-depth
understanding of participants’ perceptions, motivations and emotions. These raw interviews
helped me probe deeper into the thought process that led Nazis to behave as they did. I also
obtained much information from documentaries especially Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-
hour-long Documentary ‘Shoah’ which revealed much insight and facts as to what took place
during those 12 years.
 Questionnaire

1) Other than anti-semetism, what were the reasons that lead to the Holocaust?
2) What reasons induced normal people like the Germans to take part in such barbaric acts?
 Performa
Name:
Age:
Gender:

Do you know or have any

vague idea what the word Yes No
‘Holocaust’ means?

Do you believe that the

Holocaust is a conspiracy and Yes No
actually never took place?

Do you harbor negative views

about Jewish people or Yes No
people of races different from
your own?

Do you believe your race is No

superior to other races? OR Yes
do you consider other races
inferior from your own?

Do you believe anti-semetism

to be the sole reason for the Yes No
Holocaust?
 Results:
In light of the above-mentioned facts, I’ve concluded that the Holocaust was not only a product
of Anti-Semetism. Rather, it took place because of collective factors that occurred at the same
time and place.

Conditions of World War I:

Hitler blamed "Jews" for Germany's loss in WWI. He blamed Germany's weakness on them too
which was quite irrational as the German Jews played their part and loyalty for Germany in
World War I. The Stab-in-the-Back Myth was the belief that the German Army did not lose the
First World War on the battlefield, but was instead betrayed by communists, socialists and Jews
on the home front. This myth fostered the growth of extreme antisemitism, nationalism and anti-
communism. The unsettled conditions in Germany encouraged the popularity of nationalism and
nostalgia for the country’s pre-war strength. Nationalism was a key factor in the rise in
popularity of nationalist political parties such as the Nazis, and, in turn, ideas such as
antisemitism.

The role of Adolf Hitler:

Adolf Hitler’s anti-sematic views added fuel to the fire. Had it not been for Hitler’s and the Nazi
party’s rise to power, the Holocaust may never have happened. He gave hope to the German
people who were at a low point and redirected their anger and hostility to another source I.e. The
Jews. The origin of his own anti-sematic views is unknown. He had a twisted idea of the
superiority of the “pure” German race, which he called “Aryan,” and with the need for
“Lebensraum,” or living space, for that race to expand. To him, an Aryan was anyone who was
European and not Jewish, Romany or Slavic.

Ethnocentrism:
Ethnocentrism is a term used to describe cultural or ethnic favoritism that occurs when an
individual observes another culture from the standpoint of their religion[3]. Nazism taught that
racial struggle was the driving force in history - “superior” races must battle “inferior” races or
be corrupted by them. The Nazi concept of a national community was exclusive and based on
race, as defined in their new laws and decrees. Ethnocentrism and cultural dissonance were
major themes in bringing about the Holocaust.
Military Funding:
One of the conclusions that I derived from reading Rudolf Vrba's book (I Escaped from
Auschwitz) and listening to the interviews with Claude Lanzmann (He was a French filmmaker
known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah.) was that in addition to the ideological
component of scapegoating Jews for the loss of WWI the other dimension of anti-Semitism was
outright thievery. The Nazis funded a significant portion of the war effort by stripping Jews of
their personal assets. The Nazis also invited sections of the German (non-Jewish) population as
well as other native populations in the occupied territories to participate in the looting of Jewish
assets and engage in other morally compromising activity. This included auctions of property
stolen from Jews sent to the death camps. All revenues from such proceedings went to the Reich
(excepting those pocketed directly by corrupt SS officers and others). The effective scenario was
first you blame the victim for the distress following the loss of WWI and that then justifies their
subsequent robbery to fund renewed military solutions to the crisis confronting a resource poor
(oil, minerals, and farmland) German economy. The crime is then washed by the complete
elimination of the victim in the Holocaust. Yes, hate was a dimension of the crime but that was
mostly an emotion manipulated in achieving the fundamental goal of asset stripping. When a
crime occurs... follow the money.

Collaborators:
The Nazis couldn’t have carried out such a large-scale massacre on their own. They were
assisted by the German people on the home front and other countries that looked to gain from the
mass killings. Collaboration took many forms. There were those who actually assisted the Nazis
in the military takeover of their countries, those who fought in various military formations on the
side of Germany, those who revealed the names and locations of partisan fighters to the Nazis,
those who cooperated in the German governing of their countries, and those who helped directly
or indirectly in the murder of Jews. Though the exact number of people who collaborated with
the Germans in the murder of the jews will never be known, it is clear that without widespread
collaboration and silent approval, the Nazis could not have murdered six million jews from all
over Europe.
 Conclusion:
In this paper we made an effort to understand the reasons that led to the mass killing of Jewish
people during the Holocaust. We studied the literature of the Holocaust first and analyzed some
of the factors which led people to hold anti-sematic views. Our literature review of the causes of
the Holocaust led us to identify that most scholars link anti-semitism as the main reason for the
occurring of the Holocaust. When we looked at the history of Germany and the conditions of the
World War 1 in addition to the Nazi Party’s coming to power, we reach to a conclusion where
we can identify the several reasons that occurred at a specific time and place leading to the
Holocaust. This finally leads us to believe that, along with the hate that was fostered among
Germans appertain to the Jews, the role of Adolf Hitler, the collaborators, the resulting
ethnocentrism and the effects of the first World War brought about the attempted ethnic
cleansing of an entire race.

Discussion:
The results show many reasons for the Holocaust. These findings can be helpful in tracing the
motivations that led to the Holocaust. Furthermore, it’s important that we never forget the
atrocities of the second World War and the millions that died during that time. It is now our
responsibility to throw light on the brutality the Jewish people suffered by the hands of the
Nazis. To ensure something like this never happens again, we need to educate people on the
factors that gave rise to the Holocaust. The Holocaust darkened the world’s view of humanity
and our future. As the world struggled to understand what had happened, a new word, genocide,
was needed for these crimes—crimes committed by ordinary people from a society not unlike
our own. Although there are some shortcomings with this Research paper owing to the fact that
we can never really know, apart from the German military, what exactly went through the mind
of the seemingly normal people that took part in the atrocities. It can be boiled down to economic
gain but how exactly an educated sophisticated society could so easily become mass murderers
with the majority of the populous sit in silent approval of their country men who committed such
atrocities. The fact is that no amount of research can tell us the exact answer to that question.
 References
[1] .Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, February 8). The Holocaust. Wikipedia. Retrieved February
13, 2022.
[2]. What is the Holocaust? Anne Frank Website. (2022, January 27). Retrieved February 13,
2022.
[3]. Ferraro, Andreatta, and Holdsworth 2017. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective.
Toronto: Nelson.
[4]. A&E Television Networks. (n.d.). Auschwitz untold: Survivors speak channel. History.com.
Retrieved February 14, 2022.
[5]. Goldhagen, D. J. (n.d.). Hitler's willing executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen:
9780679772682: Penguinrandomhouse.com: Books. PenguinRandomhouse.com.
Retrieved February 14, 2022.