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• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
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• History of Islamic conquest in Europe
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• Detailed map of French colonization
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• Napoleon's conquests & legacy

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• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
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• Islamic Mujahidin vs. Spain & El Cid
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• Qadafi: Europe will soon be Islamic
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• The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
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& Caucasus vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Russia
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Inside Bulgaria, 1st Slavic nation,
land of Thracian masters of gold
• Visual history of Yugoslavia
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The causes of the Holocaust
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article    •    About the Author    •    Bibliography/Sources

This essay approaches the question: what were the causes of the Holocaust, one of the most drastic and horrific events in history? It does NOT excuse the genocide, nor justify it, nor place blame on the Jews. It is simply a fearless investigation into the causal aspects that led to the massacre, as no action can be free of a cause and motivation from both sides.

The Holocaust is easily one of the foremost malevolent and tragic events in world history. Everyone has been witness to the horrific imagery of incinerated and decrepit corpses being heaved into mass pits. But what were the actual catalysts of the mass genocide of over 6,000,000 individuals, most of whom Jews? Anti-Semitism and even outright attempts at extermination had been nothing new to the Germanic world, or the remainder of Europe. As early as 1096, German crusaders had begun pogrom-like attacks all throughout the Holy Roman (German) Empire against Jews, rather than Muslim Tatars or Saracens. Recently-united Spain in the 15th and 16th centuries ordered the expulsion of all Jews and non-Catholics from Iberia, even sanctioning their murder. In the 16th century, German Protestant founder Martin Luther called for their complete expulsion from Germany in his novel On the Jews and their Lies:

“If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy...we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country...Then they need no longer wail and lie before God against us that we are holding them captive...This is the most natural and the best course of action, which will safe guard the interest of both parties.”

But what were the underlying causes of such a sudden, unparalleled, and draconian explosion in national extermination programs of the Jewish populations in Axis-dominated Europe as initiated by Germany, Hungary, Romania, and their allies? The individual is well-versed in the standard curricular and ideological explanations for such an abhorrent tragedy: that the German people were brainwashed by a fanatical, evil despot, and that radical figures in the new National Socialist movement needed a scapegoat to explain the rampant post-war hyperinflation, shameful loss of a worldwide war, the seizure of Germany's eastern and western marches by the victors, and the Versailles punishments the German empire faced. Without restraint or bias, and especially being careful not in any way to imply that the mass slaughter of the Jews was justified or acceptable, historians must engage in active analysis of the contributions of both parties to the Holocaust, and why the historical anti-Semitism reached such a sudden peak after World War I. So central to modern German culture, war-guilt, and commemoration as the Holocaust is, a fair and total understanding of this era in German history is crucial if the German culture seeks to understand its heritage and actions, again being cautious not to fuel one-sided neo-Nazi or skinhead aims. Are Germans to blame their entire society, their grandparents only, or the period of history alone? To understand the role of Germans (and their allies) in history, every German must approach this question. Historians must first work to question the concept that the Holocaust can solely be attributed to the fanaticism of Chancellor Adolf Hitler, as is often implied. Coming to power in 1933 after an election victory and the selection by President Hindenburg, Hitler made clear public notice of his outlined suppression of the Jewish population. On multiple occasions, he openly exclaimed that the Jewish ethnoreligious community would be removed from Germany by force, especially in a famous 1942 national speech before the Sportspalast in Berlin:

“...the war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely with the uprooting of the Aryans, but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews.”

Such harsh and violent rhetoric occurred at the same time as historians imply that the German population was completely unaware of the coming horrors the Jews and other minorities would and were already facing in Axis lands. Therefore, the “canonical” standard that Hitler committed such ruthless crimes as the Holocaust behind the eyes of the German people or had hidden his true intentions is inaccurate. The extent to which the “Jewish question” was “answered” could obviously not have been imagined by German citizens, but the intentions of the elected regime were clear and bizarrely rife with popular support. As the German nation was clearly informed of such ruthless extents of anti-Semitism as annihilation, we can deduce that there was a blatant opposition to “Jewry” pervasively common throughout society. The policy was widely accepted among the ruling regime, the public, and Germany's allies in Romania and Hungary. The slaughter also occurred in the Soviet Union that Germany ignorantly considered a “Jewish empire”. This should encourage historians to question the idea that the genocide was merely the work of the madman Adolf Hitler sentencing millions to their deaths in cold blood as nothing more than convenient scapegoats. Even before the Wannsee Conference the Wehrmacht (army) as a whole in the Third Reich was enthused with the apparently inevitable removal of Jews from the Axis territories, as seen by this speech to the Wehrmacht in Poland by Governor General Hans Frank on 16 December, 1941:

“One way or another, I will tell you quite openly, we must finish off the Jews. The Führer put it into words: should united Jewry again succeed in setting off a world war, then the blood sacrifice shall not be made only by the peoples driven into war, but the Jew of Europe will have met his end...We must destroy the Jews wherever we find them, and wherever it is at all possible, in order to maintain the whole structure of the Reich...”

In delineation of the “canonical” idea of a universal Jewish scapegoat, that is that the Jews were slain en masse solely as a justification for Hitler's election and consolidation at the same time as supposedly no one knew it would occur, historians must analyze the accepted Jewish characteristics in the Third Reich. Was there more criticism of Jews in Europe than simpleton stereotypes like frugality, big noses, curly hair, and theft? Or did they play some role in the reactive mass Antisemitism experienced all over Europe and the Middle East? National Socialists, right-wing radicals, Freikorps, monarchies, and nationalists throughout Europe characterized the Jews as an ultra-liberal, often anarchistic, subversive, “parasitic” people and, most important perhaps, the founders of the growing threats of socialism and Communism, the archnemeses of international Fascism and Europe. They were often blamed for ending World War I early in the tumult of 1917-18, and also for forcing the liberalism, democracy, freedoms, and all-accepting tolerant governments that the Allies and United States demanded of the losers of the war. Without any attempt to justify the extermination of the Jews following World War I, historians must analyze the validity and source of such claims so prevalent in Europe, even among non-Axis nations.

A great deal of critical leaders in the international, liberal democratic and Communist movement were of Jewish heritage or were recent converts or apostates therefrom, including Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky. So too, Joseph Stalin, the key bulwark of Communist power, was of Judeo-Georgian origin, having attended a yeshiva (Jewish studies) school in his youth. The Great War had ended early for Germany due to widespread reformist and liberal revolts, eventually overthrowing the anti-Semitic dictator Kaiser Wilhelm II, resulting in an armistice with France at Compiegne, and the installation of a revolutionary government under the unstable banner of Weimar liberalism inspired by France and especially the United States. Long rooted in German heritage and conservative culture, Bavaria and now-French Alsace (Elsaß) had been ripped from the German empire in criminal coups by Communists seeking change from the anti-Semitic monarchical system of the Wittelsbachs to a liberal republic, creating the Alsatian and Bavarian Soviet Republics. The key leaders in the destruction of the 700-year-old Wittelsbach leadership in Bavaria were also Jewish, including Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, Rudolf Hilferding, and the leader Kurt Eisner. Later sweeping liberal revolts calling for democratic equality by the Spartakist League were also almost exclusively Jewish-run, including Rosa Luksemburg, Paul Levi, and Karl Liebknecht. This growing Spartakist movement actively handed out pamphlets calling for a complete overthrow of the German government, as seen in this November 1918 article from their official newspaper, Die rote Fahne:

“The revolution in Germany has come! The masses of the soldiers who for years were driven to slaughter for the sake of capitalistic profits; the masses of workers, who for four years were exploited, crushed, and starved, have revolted...From the first day of this war we endeavored to do our international duty by fighting that criminal government with all our power and branding it as the one really guilty of the war...The masses agree with us enthusiastically, constantly widening circles of the proletariat share the conviction that the hour has struck for a settlement with capitalistic class rule...But this great task cannot be accomplished by the German proletariat alone; it can only fight and triumph by appealing to the solidarity of the proletarians of the whole world. Proletarians of all countries! This must be the last war! We owe that to the twelve million murdered victims, we owe that to our children, we owe that to humanity.”

Rare photographs of Bavarian Soviet Socialist Jewish leaders Kautsky, Bernstein, Eisner, and Hilferding

The nation-wide sectarian “Jewish” revolt threats were real and problematic enough to catch even the attention of Lenin himself, calling for an intensification of the overthrow efforts against the conservative German establishment to be converted into a liberal government by the Marxist and American models:

“What measures have you taken to fight the bourgeois executioners?...have councils of workers and servants been formed in the different sections of the city; have the workers been armed; have the bourgeoisie been disarmed...have the capitalist factories and wealth in Munich and the capitalist farms in its environs been confiscated; have mortgage and rent payments by small peasants been cancelled...have all paper stocks and all printing-presses been confiscated so as to enable popular leaflets and newspapers to be printed for the masses...have you taken over all the banks; have you taken hostages from the ranks of the bourgeoisie...”

Such widespread blows against the already-collapsed German empire (now the Weimar Republic) obviously played a great role in the popular image of Jews as having a role in Communism, the greatest rival of the Axis state doctrine. Communism was deemed polar to German values in its efforts to promote “the weak” (i.e. the poor and especially minorities) as opposed to the “strong” (Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, or to some thinkers “Aryans”). It is logical to believe that indoctrination and national popular philosophy exacerbated the hatred between Europeans and Jews, but at best it only compounded already-dormant conflict. The post-war liberal government installed by revolutionaries and the United States via the League of Nations and Versailles were deemed illegitimate of foreign, partisan, and especially Jewish invention. Hitler reflected upon such events in the statement in his Mein Kampf, “I must remove the Jews. They are an element of revolt.” Later, other Jews likely contributed to this blanket labeling of the entire Jewish population as an enemy of the Germans. Herschel Grynszpan assassinated German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. David Frankfurter killed the famous Swiss National Socialist Wilhelm Gustloff, attempting to, as the Reich believed, prevent the Germans from reaching German-majority Switzerland. Dutch-national Communist Marinus Lubbe had burned the Reichstag building, contributing to the socially-accepted Enabling Act (Gleichschaltung) of Adolf Hitler. His Jewish ancestry is sometimes disputed as an act of scapegoating. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, American communists executed for espionage, were also Jewish, as were, some say, the famous communists Sacco and Vanzetti.

Marinus van der Lubbe, convicted arsonist of the Reichstag building

From such presented evidence, we can see that a much greater inspection of historical cause and effect relations is required to study the Holocaust and the causes of one of history's most horrific events. Of course, six million Jews were not all trying to overthrow the government or rob German civilians, but the popular Antisemitism in Europe that occurred long before Hitler had even been elected has a blatant causality that goes beyond ignorance and scapegoating. Some historians have openly questioned the standard outline of the Holocaust tragedy, but are often reviled as anti-Semites themselves (usually rightfully so). The ignorant say the Holocaust never occurred, despite being arguably history's most documented event. A great deal of the Arab, Iranian, and Indian world deny the Holocaust either as not having occurred at all or having been exaggerated or falsified, including Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Others say the Holocaust was used for political purposes that led to the creation of Israel at the behest of American influence from the former British colony of Palestine. Those who question the Holocaust are often thrown in jail in Europe for the crime of Antisemitism or promoting hate speech. Controversial and now-jailed British historian David Irving made great studies into the causes of the genocide of these Jews. Many critics claim that his motive was to debunk the Holocaust in entirety, but his evidence of the causes and blame of the Holocaust must be analyzed if we wish to gain a true picture of history. He recognized that the event occurred, but that it was (he believed) minimal in comparison to its modern perception, or over-exaggerated. Much of his theories are rejected due to his former membership in radical right-wing or neo-Nazi groups, which obviously reveals an ulterior motive behind his scholastic studies. In his controversial novel Hitler's War, Irving questioned the role of Hitler as the catalyst of such mass murder:

“Hitler grasped quite early on that antisemitism would be a powerful vote catching force in Germany; [he] had no compunction against riding that evil steed right up to the portals of the chancellery in 1933; but that once inside and in power, he dismounted and paid only lip service to that part of his Party creed...Himmler is known to have visited Auschwitz in 1941 and 1942. Hitler never did...Many people, particularly in Germany and Austria, had an interest in propagating the version that the order of one madman originated the entire tragedy. Precisely when this order was given was, admittedly, left vague...In the newly discovered Goebbels diaries we learned that Hitler lectured the Gauleiter [governors] in September 1935 that ‘above all’ there were to be no excesses against the Jews and no persecution of non-Aryans...Every other historian has shut his eyes and hoped that this horrid, inconvenient document would somehow go away.”Such controversial evidence is challenged with great heat. Irving's activity with neo-Nazi organizations like the Aryan Nations obviously reveals an ulterior motive. Historian Gordon McFee agreed that no link has been found between Hitler and the Holocaust order, but assumes by probability that such an extensive order could not have been engaged without his active hand:
“Most experts have agreed that an action on the magnitude of a mass genocide, with the resultant possible ramifications, could not have proceeded without Hitler's personal approval. Until now, no written decision from Hitler has been found...The recent discoveries cannot be called a written decision (which, if it ever existed, was almost certainly destroyed by the end of the war), but they are certainly unequivocal confirmation that a clear decision was taken by Hitler.”From such evidence one can observe that a completely unavailable link in the Holocaust timeline has been ignored and the source has been determined solely by probability. For this reason, greater investigations must be engaged to determine the true causes and source of such broad crimes. McFee continues to criticize Irving and Holocaust “revisionists” by the degree of motive:

“In my opinion there is force in the opinion expressed by Evans that all Irving's historiographical "errors" converge, in the sense that they all tend to exonerate Hitler and to reflect Irving's partisanship for the Nazi leader. If indeed they were genuine errors or mistakes, one would not expect to find this consistency. I accept the defendants' contention that this convergence is a cogent reason for supposing that the evidence has been deliberately slanted by Irving.”

Liberal and far-right motives play a great role in our portrayal of history, rendering a great deal of our knowledge of the causes inconclusive and potentially inaccurate, reinforcing historians' need to study into these causes greatly without bias. Without an unbiased investigation of the contributions of both parties (Jews and Germans) to the Holocaust without “presentism” (current ideas that influence our scope of the past), our knowledge and depictions of the Holocaust will instead continue to be largely inaccurate and short-sighted, polluted with bias and ulterior just as equally so as the blind and ignorant at the far-right. Germans will not be able to understand their place in history, their past, or their role or responsibility as a society today if we do not fully understand the event that has shaped new post-war democratic Germany for over 50 years and counting.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is the owner and Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I am working for a doctorate in history, with a specific emphasis on Islamic and European histories. I am well versed in all world cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, politics, and historical evolution in relation to and against each other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

Luther, Martin. On the Jews and their Lies. Liberty Bell Publications. 2003.

Hitler, Adolf. "Sportspalast Speech". Sportspalast, Berlin. 30 January, 1942.

Frank, Hans. “Speech before the Wehrmacht” 16 December, 1941.

Lenin, V.I. Lenin’s Collected Works. 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume XXIX.

Luksemburg, Rosa. “Untitled” Die Rote Fahne. 25 November, 1918.

Roizen, Ron. “Herschel Grynszpan: the Fate of A Forgotten Assassin.” 1986. http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/2/217

McFee, Gordon. “When did Hitler decide on the Final Solution?”
2 January, 1999. http://www.holocaust-history.org/hitler-final-solution/

McFee, Gordon. “Where did David Irving go wrong?”
22 November, 2003. http://www.holocaust-history.org/irving-wrong/