Running Head: THE HOLOCAUST

A Brief History of the Holocaust and Holocaust Studies

Amy L. DeMarco
Appalachian State University

THE HOLOCAUST

2
A Brief History of the Holocaust and Holocaust Studies

The Holocaust remains one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. Historians,
journalists, social scientists, survivors, perpetrators, and their descendants have all written many
books and produced many documentaries and films about the Holocaust. The following is by no
means an exhaustive history.

Evolution
Anti-Semitism is not a Nazi invention; it has existed in Europe since at least medieval
times. While Jews were almost always viewed with suspicion; these feelings were most often
expressed during times of great distress and upheaval (i.e. war, economic strain, political unrest)
(Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem, 2014; Chanes, 2004). For
example, during the Black Death (1346-1353) Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and
causing the plague (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem, 2014).
Conversely, anti-Semitism was dormant to non-existent during periods of relative peace and
stability. The Nazis also neither invented ghettos nor concentration camps. Since Roman times,
various governments had forced Jews to live in ghettos. During the Spanish-American War
(1898), the Spanish created concentration camps and the Americans also did so during the
subsequent Philippine-American War (1899-1902). The British modeled their camps built during
the Second Boer War (1899-1902) after those of the Spanish and Americans (Read, 2003;
Wilson, 2003; Gellately, 2007). Additionally, the Soviets built concentration camps and forced
labor camps as early as 1918 (Gellately, 2007). Hitler and the Nazis expanded upon the
concentration camp model and added extermination camps and death camps.

THE HOLOCAUST

Fast-forward 565 years to the end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles and related
agreements eviscerated Germany. Consequently, Germany was unable to preserve most of its
contested territories. It had to give Alsace-Lorraine back to France and it had to cede control
over the coalfields of the Saarland to the French. In the East, Germany ceded Upper Silesia, and
most of Prussia, Posen, and Danzig to Poland. Germany was also barred from absorbing Austria.
In deciding who was to gain what territory, the Entente powers ignored the ethnic make-up of the
territory, a fact not lost on Adolf Hitler. All of the Eastern territories given to Poland were
ethnically German. The inhabitants of those lands spoke German and considered themselves
Germans. They had more in common with Germans than they did Poles. While Alsace-Lorraine
had a mixed population of Germans and French, the Saar was almost entirely German.
Germanys military was slashed to 100,000 men and it had to destroy most of its heavy
guns. It was essentially only to have an air force and its navy was gutted. It had to surrender any
ships over 100,000 tons displacement and all submarines; it could not build any more of those
vessels either. To add insult to injury, Germany was also forced to pay war reparations for

not only such marginal expenses as interest charges on war loans and general
costs of reconstruction, but pensions to disabled soldiers and to the orphans and
widows of the dead in perpetuity a sum so huge that it could not even be
computed (Howard, 2002, Loc. 1849).

While the exact sum was referred to a special reparations committee, the Germans had to accept
the terms prior to learning the final total. Furthermore, they had to pay 20 million marks up front
(Howard, 2002, Loc. 1853). All of these terms and conditions were decided without Germanys

THE HOLOCAUST

input. Overall, Germany still wanted to be a major player on the world stage. Now it would
quietly defy the terms of the awful stab in the back and it would come back with a vengeance.
Additionally, the democratic Weimar Republic that was hastily formed in accordance
with Versailles proved ineffective at alleviating the rampant inflation and other post-war
hardships. During the interwar period, Germanys economy was in shambles and the reparations
proscribed in the Treaty of Versailles only exacerbated the problem. There were millions of
unemployed, especially soldiers because the German military was essentially disbanded as a
condition of the Armistice. German society at this time was still very militaristic and there was
little distinction between political parties and paramilitary organizations (Read, 2003). Thus
became the impetus for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
In 1924, while in prison for the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler made his ambitions known
to the world in his manifesto, Mein Kampf. In fact, the volumes war aims and its ambition for
European domination were so blatant that the book was practically a blueprint for the rise of the
Third Reich (Lyons, 2010; Shirer, 1990). According to American journalist William Shirer in his
book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1990), had Mein Kampf been read and understood by
both foreign powers and enough of a non-Nazi German audience before 1933, Hitler may have
never been able to assume power (Shirer, 1990). However, history shows that neither happened.
Hitler acted upon his treatise and neither foreign powers nor the German people themselves were
able to stop him before he unleashed war and misery upon Europe, especially its Jews.
The aftermath of World War I was not the only factor that led to Hitlers rise to power.
Hitler promised to restore Germany to its previous stature both economically and militarily
(Shirer, 1990). He also seized upon latent prejudices especially anti-Semitism. During the
interwar years, anti-Semitism increased in Europe (Chanes, 2004). Remarkably, Hitler rose to

THE HOLOCAUST

power through legitimate means and shunned using force, albeit after force had initially failed
(Read, 2003; Shirer, 1990).
Very soon after Hitler assumed the Chancellorship in January 1933, he established the
first concentration camp at Dachau (Snyder, 2010, 2015; Wachsmann, 2015). It is important to
note that at this time the camps were meant to house any political prisoner or opponent of the
regime, regardless of religion or ethnicity (Wachsmann, 2015). The persecution of Jews began
about a month later, after the Reichstag fire. Then a few months after that, the Nazis boycotted
Jewish-owned shops and Jews who worked for the government were forced to retire (Adler,
1995). Thus began a steady erosion of the rights and livelihoods of the Reichs Jews. In 1935, the
Nuremburg Laws went into effect. These decrees denied Jews citizenship rights as well as
codified and institutionalized anti-Semitism and racism. The relative peace of Jewish life in
Germany came to a violent end on November 9-10, 1938 during the Kristallnacht Pogrom, when
the Nazis burned synagogues, ransacked Jewish businesses, and murdered Jews in the streets.
Prior to Kristallnacht, harassment was common, but violence against Jews was rare. After
Kristallnacht, the Nazis increased their violent persecution of the Jews. By the time Hitler
invaded Poland and began World War II in September 1939, ghettos were established and the
Allies were beginning to hear about the cruelty of the concentration camps.
From the beginning of the Third Reich, the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels and
the other Nazi propaganda organs put out anti-Semitic propaganda. Goebbels set out to organize
and consolidate the German media under his ministry and control. He put into motion the ideal
propaganda apparatus that Hitler described in Chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (Hitler, 2011). Contrary
to popular misconception, inciting Jewish hatred was not the only purpose for Nazi propaganda,
but it is the purpose for which it is best known. Goebbels understood, with the help of public

THE HOLOCAUST

opinion surveys taken by Reinhard Heydrichs Sicherheitsdienst (SD), that a strict diet of
political propaganda was counterproductive. People would grow tired of it and quit paying
attention to it. In order to keep the peoples attention, propaganda must not seem like propaganda
(Welch, 2002). Goebbelss ministry inserted propaganda into entertainment such as films and
radio broadcasts, as well as posters and newspapers.
Once World War II began, the gloves came off the Nazi regime and violence against
Jews increased. As the Nazis invaded Europe and occupied more territory, they spread their
persecution of the Jews. In January 1942, high-level Nazis, led by Heydrich, met at the Wannsee
Conference and devised the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. This was the birth of the
death camps and gas chambers on an industrial scale (Wachsmann, 2015). Labor and
concentration camps had already proliferated throughout the Reich, but extermination camps
began with the Final Solution. However, according to historian Timothy Snyder in Bloodlands:
Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), The vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust
never saw a concentration camp (Snyder, 2010, p. 382). It is important to understand that the
Final Solution was not a step-by-step plan or a single detailed directive (Snyder, 2015).
Instead, the Final Solution gave the Nazis carte blanche to murder Europes Jews with impunity.
The Nazis were meticulous record keepers, but were always careful to not explicitly delineate
their murderous plans and couched what they did write down in euphemisms (i.e. relocation,
protective custody, special treatment). However, the Nazis did not have to write anything
down. Decisions like the Final Solution carried the weight of law or decree. If Hitler approved
something, or would approve of something, then it was law. This is what historian Ian Kershaw
calls moving towards the Fhrer (Kershaw, 2000, p. 10).

THE HOLOCAUST

Auschwitz is one of the most infamous of the concentration, labor, and death camps. It
was by far the largest and it was actually three separate camps with many satellites. It began in
1940 as a prison camp for Polish political prisoners, and in 1942 it also became an extermination
camp. However, Auschwitz always remained a multi-purpose camp (Wachsmann, 2015). It is
important to note that the Nazis had an extensive camp system that also included temporary or
transit camps (Wachsmann, 2015).
Before 1933, about 9 million Jews lived in Europe (Lipka, 2015). By the time the Allies
liberated the first concentration camps in 1945, the Nazis had murdered six million Jews and five
million others (Snyder, 2010). Millions more survivors and refugees were displaced from their
homes and forced into displaced-persons (DP) camps (former concentration camps) or
immigrated to other countries willing to take them. The state of Israel was formed in 1948 in
response to this refugee crisis (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016).

Impacts
The Nazis killed a staggering number of people during World War II and the Holocaust.
Prior to 1939, there were about 9.5 million Jews in Europe; in 1945, that number was only 3.5
million (Lipka, 2015). It is easy to focus on raw statistics and forget that each number represents
the life of a human being who had a family, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Never forget does
not simply mean never forget that the Holocaust happened or how the Nazis came to power and
perpetrated one of the greatest horrors of the twentieth century. Never forget also means that
we must never forget the humanity of the victims and that each victim had a name and a life
before the Holocaust.

THE HOLOCAUST

The Holocaust impacted lives even after liberation in 1945. Many Jews lost most of their
family members. Some survivors were the only members of their families left still alive. After
the war, most Jewish refugees were destitute and received help from refugee relief agencies, as
well as from friends and family who already had escaped or immigrated elsewhere. They had no
choice but to start over. Jewish businesses had been forcibly taken by the Nazis soon after Hitler
came to power. When Jews were forced to relocate to the ghettos, their homes were taken away
and given to non-Jews. When the Jews left, they took with them whatever they could. When the
ghettos were liquidated, the Jews could only take with them what they could carry. Much of this
property was confiscated upon arrival in the camps. The Nazis redistributed the confiscated
Jewish property to Germans and Poles. After the war, many Germans and Poles who received
appropriated Jewish property refused to return it to its former Jewish owners (Snyder, 2015;
Wachsmann, 2015).
When the war ended in 1945, the political landscape in Europe changed. The hot war
of World War II turned into the Cold War. In 1945, the Allies split Germany from East to West
and gave the eastern half of it to the Soviet Union. The year 1945 also marked the beginning of
the denazification of Germany, both East and West. The Allies in West Germany, led by the
United States and Great Britain, began the Nuremburg Trials of high-ranking Nazi war criminals,
including Hermann Gring, Rudolf Hess, and Albert Speer. The Soviet Union also conducted its
own trials of Nazi war criminals in East Germany. After 1948, Israel also pursued and
prosecuted Nazi war criminals.

THE HOLOCAUST

Current Trends
Holocaust historiography has gone through several trends over the last fifty years. Prewar and post-war politics shaped both commemoration and historical analysis. World War II,
and the resultant Cold War, colored perspectives; ones perspective depended on which side of
the War, and the subsequent Iron Curtain, the author resided (Wachsmann, 2015). Right after the
war, historians from Allied countries wrote with a sense of good triumphing over evil, which
lasted for about two decades. Survivors also started releasing memoirs, some in graphic detail
(Wachsmann, 2015). In the 1960s, fueled by the trial of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann
(1960) and the findings of psychologist Stanley Milgrams obedience experiment (1963),
historians and social scientists looked at the Holocaust through the lens of perpetrator vs. victim.
As a result, the Nazis were portrayed as inhuman monsters and the Jews as helpless victims; this
viewpoint prevented unbiased analysis. In the 1970s, after psychologist Phillip Zimbardos
Prison Experiment (1973), historians and social scientists began to view the Holocaust and the
Third Reich from a psychological or sociological perspective; they started looking into how
ordinary people could commit monstrous acts. In the 1980s, as more survivors began telling their
stories, historians began to humanize Holocaust victims. Once Communism fell in Eastern
Europe in the 1990s, and former Eastern Bloc countries began opening their archives, Holocaust
scholars had access to more documents and shifted their perspectives once more. By the early
2000s, historians started writing about the human side of the Nazis as well. At this time, German
historians started confronting Germanys part in the Holocaust. Descendants of high-ranking
Nazis, such as Katrin Himmler, also started writing about their ancestors crimes.
Today, historians are revising earlier narratives. However, this revisionism is not meant
to hide or obfuscate facts, but to clarify earlier hypotheses. For example, according to Snyder

THE HOLOCAUST

10

(2010), recently released German documents show that Hitler and the Nazis killed more people
than once thought. Stalin is usually credited with killing more people than Hitler. Now, some
historians, including Snyder, believe the reverse is true (Snyder, 2010). Aside from numerical
revisions, historians are also beginning to revise how they interpret the actions and inactions of
ordinary Germans.
At this point, there is a plethora of primary source documents available to historians such
as diaries, photographs, posters, films, government documents, court documents from war crimes
tribunals, and artifacts. The Internet has made much primary source material available to
scholars and lay people alike. Some excellent websites include the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum (http://www.ushmm.org), Yad Vashem (http://www.yadvashem.org), the
University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation (https://iwitness.usc.edu), the United
States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) (http://www.archives.gov), and
the German Bundesarchiv (http://www.bundesarchiv.de). Since 1994, the USC Shoah
Foundation has collected the video history testimony of Holocaust survivors, rescuers, and
bystanders. The Shoah Foundation also collects the testimonies of survivors of other genocides
such as those in Rwanda and Bosnia. Additionally, many high-quality secondary sources about
the Holocaust exist such as Timothy Snyders Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
(2010) and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (2015), Wendy Lowers Hitlers
Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (2013), and Nikolaus Waschmanns KL: A
History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (2015).

THE HOLOCAUST

11

Possible Future Trends

The Holocaust remains one of the most interesting and oft-studied subjects, and this
interest does not seem likely to wane in the near future. Historians should further accelerate their
efforts to document, especially on video, as much testimony as they can. Soon all we will have
left are documents and videos because we lose many Holocaust survivors each year. For as much
information that we have about how the Holocaust happened, there are still unanswered
questions: How can we prevent genocide? Is a repeat of a regime like Nazi Germany possible?
What is the legacy of the Holocaust? After the Holocaust, the world declared, Never again!
Unfortunately, that cry rang hollow because human beings still slaughter each other sometimes
on a massive scale.

THE HOLOCAUST

12
References

Adler, D. A. (1995). We remember the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt & Company.
Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem. (2014). Echoes and Reflections
Teacher Resource Guide. New York: Same as Authors.
Association for Middle Level Education [AMLE]. (2010). This we believe: Keys to educating
young adolescents. Westerville, Ohio: Association for Middle Level Education.
Brustein, W. I., & King, R. D. (2004). Anti-Semitism in Europe before the Holocaust.
International Political Science Review, 25(1), 35-53. doi:10.1177/0192512104038166
Chanes, J. A. (2004). Anti-Semitism: A reference handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Eksteins, M. (1989). Rites of spring: The Great War and the birth of the modern age (Kindle eBook ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Experiment-Resources.com. (2008). Stanley Milgram Experiment (1961). Retrieved May 11,
2011, from Experiment Resources: http://www.experiment-resources.com/stanleymilgram-experiment.html
Gellately, R. (2007). Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The age of social catastrophe. New York:
Vintage Books.
Good, R. (2015, May). A high school teacher's views on trauma and trigger warnings. (T. A.
Historian, Interviewer) Retrieved from http://tah.oah.org/may-2015/trauma-and-triggerwarnings-high-school-teachers-view/
Himmler, K. (2007). The Himmler brothers (Kindle e-Book ed.). (M. Mitchell, Trans.) London:
Pan Macmillan Books.
Hitler, A. (2011). Mein Kampf (e-Book ed.). (J. Murphy, Trans.) Jagur, Brazil: Montecristo
Publishing.
Howard, M. (2002). The First World War: A very short introduction (Kindle e-Book ed.).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kershaw, I. (2000). Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Kindle e-Book ed.). New York: W. W. Norton
& Company.
Lindquist, D. (2007b). Avoiding inappropriate pedagogy in middle school teaching of the
Holocaust. Middle School Journal, 39(1), 24-31. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00940771.2007.11461610
Lindquist, D. H. (2007a, Spring). A necessary Holocaust pedagogy: Teaching the teachers.
Issues in Teacher Education, 16(1), 21-36. Retrieved from
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ796255.pdf
Lipka, M. (2015, February 9). The continuing decline of Europes Jewish population. Retrieved
from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/09/europes-jewish-population/
Lower, W. (2013). Hitler's furies: German women in the Nazi killing fields. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

THE HOLOCAUST

13

Lyons, M. J. (2010). World War II: A short history. Boston: Prentice Hall.
Overy, R. (2004). The dictators. New York: W. W. Norton.
Read, A. (2003). The Devil's disciples. New York: W. W. Norton.
Shirer, W. L. (1990). The rise and fall of the Third Reich: A history of Nazi Germany. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Snyder, T. (2010). Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books.
Snyder, T. (2015). Black Earth: The Holocaust as history and warning (Kindle e-Book ed.).
New York: Tim Duggan Books.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2016, January 26). Postwar refugee crisis and the
establishment of the state of Israel. Retrieved from Holocaust Encyclopedia:
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005459
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust.
Retrieved from https://www.ushmm.org/educators/teaching-about-the-holocaust/generalteaching-guidelines#methodology
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2013, June 10). The Holocaust Encyclopedia:
Boycott of Jewish Businesses. Retrieved October 10, 2013, from USHMM.org:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005678
USC Shoah Foundation. (2015, November 9). Kurt Messerschmidt on Kristallnacht. Retrieved
from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b7QgCMrsLI&ab_channel=USCShoahFoundation
Wachsmann, N. (2015). KL: A history of the Nazi concentration camps (Kindle e-Book ed.).
New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Welch, D. (2002). The Third Reich: Politics and propaganda (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Alexandria: Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Wilson, A. N. (2003). The Victorians. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With
special reference to the Stanford prison experiment. Cognition, 2(2), 243-256. Retrieved
from DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(72)90014-5