The Holocaust and the Centrality of Racism in Nazi Germany

Description

Under Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany sought to create a national community of Aryans that would last a thousand years. This “perfect community" was to exemplify hard work, social harmony, law and order, and self-sufficiency. Not only was war necessary to conquer the required living space, it also facilitated the isolation and elimination of those people who were not the chosen race. While “ordinary” Germans did not become completely oblivious to racial policies, they were conditioned to accept increasingly harsh measures. For example, Hitler began slowly by outlawing political parties and purging the civil service in 1933. Prior to World War II, over 300,000 social outcasts were deported to concentration camps for manual labor. These actions short of mass murder prepared German society for the “Final Solution,” which commenced in 1942 under the shadow of the war-torn eastern territories. However, the Nazi obsession with racial purity proved to be a catch-22, as the war that clouded the extermination program was itself hindered by the allotment of resources and manpower diverted towards implementation of the Holocaust.