Transcript The Holocaust, the Bomb, and the Legacy of Mass Killing

The Holocaust, the Bomb, and
the Legacy of Mass Killing
The West
CHAPTER 27
Anti-Semitism: The Necessary
Precondition
• Rise of quasi-scientific racial theories perpetuated
the suspicion of Jews, even in secular, Western
Europe
• In radical right politics, Jews and communists
were often lumped together as partners in a plot to
destroy Europe
• In the political and economic chaos, after WWI,
anti-Semitism flourished, especially in central and
eastern Europe
Intensified Persecution of
Jews, in Germany
• Hitler clearly identified Jews as a threat to German
revival and planned to drive them from Germany
• Western appeasement convinced the Nazis that
they could pursue more aggressive anti-Semitic
policies
• Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938
• As German-controlled territory expanded,
expulsion of Jews no longer appeared a workable
policy, and the fact of war made murderous
violence more acceptable
The Radicalization of the
“Final Solution”
• The Nazis hoped to construct a new racial order,
in Eastern Europe
• Nazi policy enslaved Poles, murdered Polish
intellectuals, and drove Jews into ghettos
• In spring or summer 1941, Nazi policy toward the
Jews shifted from expulsion to extermination
• Jewish emigration was ended, and the SS
Einsatzgruppen began to kill thousands of Jews,
by firing squads
The Evolution of the Death
Camps
• In 1939, the Nazis embraced a systematic policy
to kill mentally and physically impaired Germans
• The Nazis used Europe’s railroad system for
systematic and efficient transport, in resettlement
and exportation programs
• As early as 1933, the Nazis had used
concentration camps to imprison enemies of the
Reich and to provide a pool of forced labor for
German industry
Auschwitz and the Death
Camp System
• Auschwitz began, in 1940, as a concentration
camp for Polish and Soviet prisoners of war
• The camp became a huge industrial complex, with
prisoners serving as slave labor
• In 1942, a death camp, Birkenau, was built within
Auschwitz, to kill Jews
• At least 80% of all Jews sent to Auschwitz were
killed upon arrival
Jewish Resistance
• Members of Nazi-appointed Jewish Councils
attempted to delay Nazi directives and save some
European Jewry
• Violent uprisings occurred in many ghettos, and
thousands of Jews fought in resistance movements
• In the face of Nazi policies to dehumanize the
Jews, any act that affirmed their human identity
was a form of resistance
The Widening Circle of
Responsibility
• Regular German army units and civilian
administrators all participated in the vast machine
that perpetrated the Holocaust
• In occupied Western Europe, local police and
bureaucracies aided the identification and
deportation of Jews
• Both Protestant and Catholic churches failed, as
institutions, to protect Jews
• Nazi policy did encounter resistance, even in
allied or satellite countries, such as Italy and
Bulgaria
The Allies’ Response
• Allied governments, media and populations
received information about Nazi atrocities and the
death camps
• British and American Jews lobbied their
governments to take action
• December 1942 - the Allies announced and
condemned the Nazi “Final Solution”
• No concrete action was taken to halt the killing
Remembering the Holocaust
• 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials highlighted Nazi
crimes against European Jewry
• Foundation of Israel was one of the most dramatic
consequences of WWII
• West German artists and writers struggled with
notions of collective guilt
• The centrality of industrial technology and
techniques, in the perpetuation of the Holocaust,
challenged the assumed linkage between progress
and rationality
Splitting the Atom
• Einstein’s theory of matter as “frozen energy”
• 1932 - James Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron
made splitting the atom possible
• 1938 - Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman split the
atom in Berlin
• To prevent Nazi Germany from gaining the atomic
bomb, Leo Szilard began to campaign for an
Allied nuclear weapon program
The Manhattan Project
• October 1941 - Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on
a top secret project to build an atomic bomb
• The Project was run by the US military
• December 2, 1942 - University of Chicago
scientists produced a nuclear chain reaction
• July 16, 1945 - First atomic bomb test, in New
Mexico
The Decision to Drop the
Bomb
• Desire to prevent horrifying casualties from
an invasion of Japan
• Pressure from British and American public
for Japan’s unconditional surrender
• Concern to impress American military and
scientific power upon the Soviet Union
• Widespread use of mass air bombing and
high civilian casualties, throughout WWII
The Dawn of the Nuclear Age
• The damage caused by the Hiroshima atom
bomb exceeded its creators predictions
• The deaths caused by radiation sickness
were unexpected and signaled the
revolutionary horror of nuclear warfare
• The “scientists’ movement” attempted to
ensure international control of nuclear
weapons, after WWII
The Nuclear Arms Race
• August 1949 - First Soviet atomic test
• The possession of nuclear weapons raised
the stakes in the cold war, but also acted to
restrain military action
• Militarization of daily life to prepare for
nuclear attack
• Proliferation
of
nuclear
weapons
technology, across the world
Learning to Live with the
Bomb
• Formation of campaigns against nuclear
weapons, across Western Europe and the US
• The Nuclear Age reinforced the hold of
abstract art in visual culture
• Films and novels attempted to grapple with
the technological threat to civilization posed
by nuclear weapons
The West, Progress and Power
• Cultural linkage between the Nazi obsession
with power and the Cold War quest for
nuclear dominance
• The carnage of the Holocaust and
Hiroshima demonstrated the destructive
capacities of science and industrialization
• Need to re-evaluate Western selfidentification and culture