1. Alexander Watson Religion, Peace and Conflict 25 March 2014
Lecture 5 The Holocaust

2. INTRODUCTION
The Holocaust: murder of 6 million European Jews between
Nazi Anti-Semitism
The Holocaust and Modernity
Conclusion
Corpses of prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, photographed by the Allies on 24 April 1945
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

3. Anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany (1)
30 Jan – Hitler appointed Chancellor
1 April 1933 – Anti-Jewish Boycott
7 April 1933 – Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
15 Sept – The Nuremburg Laws
14 Nov – Reich Citizenship Law Supplementary Decree
Anti-Jewish commercial boycott, The sign reads: ‘Germans! Defend Yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!’
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

4. Anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany (2)
9-10 Nov., 1938 – ‘The Night of Broken Glass’ (Reichskristallnacht)
- nearly every synagogue in Germany burned down
- 7,000 businesses destroyed
- 26,000 Jews sent to concentration camps
- 91 murdered
‘Reichskristallnacht (‘The Night of Broken Glass), 9-10 Nov. 1938
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

5. Adolf Hitler’s January 1939 Prophecy
‘In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. ... Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevising of the earth, and thus a victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!’ Speech in the German Reichstag, 30 January 1939
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

6. Nazi Germany’s Conquests
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

7. The Holocaust & Modernity
“Without modern civilization and its most central essential achievements, there would be no Holocaust.”
Zygmunt Bauman
Product of post-Enlightenment rational thought?
Product of modern state bureaucratic organisation and control over populations?
Role of modern technology?

8. The Holocaust – A Chronology
Sept – World War II begins
30 Oct – Jews in annexed Polish territories to be deported to Generalgouvernment. Also, ghettoisation.
Summer 1940 – Madagascar Plan
22 June 1941 – Attack on Soviet Union
Likely that between Oct. and Dec. 1941, Hitler orders (verbally) extermination of Europe’s Jews
15 July 1941 – Generalplan Ost presented to Himmler
Summer 1941 – First Soviet Jews, then women & children killed
Sept – German & French Jews to be deported to east
20 Jan – Wannsee Conference
Holocaust killings peak in 2nd ½ of Complete apart from Hungarian Jewry by end of 1943
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

9. The Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen tasked in the autumn of 1939 with murdering the Polish intelligentsia
6 June 1941 – Commissar Order – instant execution of all Soviet political representatives
Initially, c. 3,000 men. By end of 1941 had 33,000
2.2 million Jews murdered. Shot, gassed or beaten to death
Einsatzgruppe at work
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

10. Extermination Camps March 1933 – Concentration camp opens at Dachau
6 major extermination centres
Chełmno (Dec. 1941) - van
Bełżec (Dec. 1941)
Sobibór (April 1942)
Treblinka (July 1942)
Majdanek
Auschwitz (1942- for extermination; it was also a labour camp)
Prisoners, guards and new arrivals at Auschwitz. The famous entrance tower is in the background.
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

11. Extermination & Concentration Camps
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15

12. Himmler examines a model eastern farming settlement
GENERALPLAN OST, 1941
Himmler examines a model eastern farming settlement
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 16

13. CONCLUSION The extreme anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime
The ‘Modern’ Aspects of the Holocaust
- ‘Rational’ Planning
- State Bureaucracy
- Modern Technology
The irrational nature of modern racial Anti-Semitism
Alexander Watson, Minorities in East-Central Europe, c – Lecture 15