A spiral of fascism

Despite new ideas for social progress, genocide was a common feature of the early twentieth century. Genocide is the planned killing of a large group of people, usually because of their race or ethnicity. By the 1930s, many countries got caught up in trends like nationalism, authoritarian ideas like fascism, and imperialism. At first, these ideas were supported by a few fascist politicians. However, “ordinary” people eventually started believing in these trends. People were filled with hatred, leaving little space for ideas like human rights. In Europe during World War II, the spiral ended in the extreme violence and genocide that we call the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the intentional killing of millions of people. It was carried out by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, the German military, and their allies. The victims included 6 million Jews, up to 1 million Roma people, 3 million Soviet prisoners-of-war (POWs), and several million non-Jewish Eastern European civilians. Hundreds of thousands of others were targeted because of their race, political beliefs, disability, religion, or sexual orientation. The killings happened in many forms, including mass shootings, labor camps, and “extermination camps” such as Auschwitz.

The Holocaust was unthinkable violence. That’s why thinking about it is vital. The difficult task of remembering what went wrong is how we keep it from happening again. In this article, we will see how the persecution of minority groups intensified slowly, until so many people were involved that it became a horrific society-wide genocide.

Origins and first steps before the Second World War

You have already learned how scientific racism and ideas about national “purity” inspired early twentieth-century fascist visions of the world. You also learned a lot about European imperialism. All of these elements came together in a powerful and terrible way in Hitler’s wartime Germany.

The Nazis targeted many groups, but they focused most on eliminating Jews to achieve their goal of a racially “pure” nation. “Pure” Germans were thought to be of a superior, Aryan race. Even German children were taught about these racist ideas at school.

By 1933, these ideas became law. Jewish German citizens were forced to identify themselves with armbands or yellow stars, and in 1935 the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws. The laws stripped Jews and Roma of German citizenship and limited their interactions with “pure” Germans, such as dating.

Many non-Jewish Germans rioted on November 9, 1938, a date that has come to be known as Kristallnacht, or “night of broken glass.” Fueled by anti-Jewish hatred, they destroyed Jewish synagogues, businesses, and other institutions across Germany. Around 30,000 Jewish males were detained and sent to concentration camps.

After Kristallnacht, Jews lost more civil rights. They were barred from public transport, parks, schools, and certain jobs. It became clear that the Nazi state intended to get rid of the Jews by imprisoning them, sending them away, or worse.

Intensification after 1939

In 1939, the Holocaust grew more violent. The Soviets had invaded Poland at the same time Adolf Hitler invaded Poland to create new territory for “Aryan” Germans.

Polish Jews were forced into crowded ghettos, which were parts of cities designed to house Jews. The ghettos were located along major railroad lines to make it easier to remove them. Countless Jews and others were killed in mass shootings or sent to ghettos and labor camps. Those who escaped hid in the forest or joined resistance forces.

At the same time, the Nazis also began the “T4” program. This program intentionally killed disabled teens, adults, and elderly people, who were considered “unfit” members of society.

The “Final Solution”

Sometime in the fall or winter of 1941, Hitler authorized a “final solution” to the “Jewish question.” The solution was the intentional mass murder of Jews in extermination camps. The camps were designed to gas to death and cremate mass numbers of inmates. By the end of WWII, over 3 million people from all over Nazi territory were killed at these extermination camps.

At the camps, the Nazis used cruel and racist logic to decide who would do hard labor and who would be gassed to death immediately. For example, they often gassed pregnant women because they believed they were continuing the Jewish race. Even those who survived hard labor were killed because the Nazis were threatened by their strength. The genocide lasted over two years.

Who were the killers?

The horrors of the Holocaust went beyond extermination camps. Thousands of Jews died performing slave labor in concentration camps for German businesses. Others were murdered near their homes. The historian Omer Bartov has written that these murders were different than the murders in the extermination camps. They were personal, because the killers and the victims knew each other before the Holocaust. Bartov reminds us that the Holocaust could not have happened without the participation of German citizens.

Historians believe “ordinary” Germans were pulled into the violence of the Holocaust because they were attracted to the sense of belonging offered by fascism. They also were surrounded by racist propaganda. In a way, the Holocaust was also just a more extreme version of existing beliefs. For example, Roma were discriminated against in Germany before the Holocaust.

It’s also interesting to think about how gender influenced the Holocaust. Hitler and other fascist leaders believed men belonged in the war, while women should stay home producing children for the nation. These beliefs took away women’s rights. Still, many women supported these beliefs because they felt like they were supporting their country.

Gisela Bock is a historian of women in Nazi Germany. She says we should remember that “race” was what decided who lived and died in the Holocaust. Male and female victims of the Holocaust may have had different experiences, but these were just “different horrors inside the same Hell.” Furthermore, anyone who was what we now call LGBTQ, was also targeted.

We may always struggle with the horrors of the Holocaust. It can be hard to accept that so many people participated in or supported the killing, while so many others failed to speak out against it.

Fascism and the Holocaust destroyed a basic sense of human connection. In many ways, we are all still recovering. We need to be on the lookout for when we, too, become “used to” the casual oppression of others, when our everyday compassion for people different from us disappears. Without compassion, there is always a danger of something like the Holocaust happening again.