Reactions to the Holocaust

The Holocaust was a period of time that is open to many interpretations due to the nature of the events that took place. Hilberg, having researched for many years with thousands of documents has come to his own conclusions of the reasoning behind events, which are mostly supported by the documents. Hilberg was right on many points but his view of the Jews is critical and his definition of resistance seems to be incorrect, based upon the readings. While Jews did comply on some occasions and certain policies, resistance did occur, as shown by the Reader documents and personal accounts.

Hilberg states that, while there was a strong history of anti-Semitism, mass murder was not a step deemed necessary in most German's eyes (Hilberg 5). The Anti-Semites' Petition of 1880 is a perfect example of a strong anti-Jewish past, shown by the four points asked for within the document, including that "Jews be excluded from all governmental (authoritative) positions and that their employment in the administration of justice...undergo an appropriate limitation" (Read 29). An item to point out from this document is the limited number of signatures that the item was able to receive. The petition was only able to obtain 250.000 signatures, which out of tens of millions within the nation, is a very low percentage of the population. The Reich Chancellor, upon receiving the petition, merely acknowledged that he had received it and to give a government response aside denying the signers their immediate goals. (Read 25). The political pressure to have a racist attitude against Jews was not present within the population. Most people wanted no part in the deprivation of rights based solely upon religion. Another example of a population that did not hate Judaism is the writing style of Hitler in Mein Kampf. Hitler, within his own writings, was forced to use a gradual process of anti-semitism to not appear as a quack. In the beginning of his book, he states (when speaking about a regular attitude toward Jews), "I believe that the old gentleman would have regarded any special emphasis on this term as cultural backwardness" (Mein 51) but later on within the chapter writes, "I had at last come to the conclusion that the Jew was no German" (Mein 60). He uses words such as "gradually" or "come to the conclusion" several times to give the appearance of a learned hatred based upon fact instead of an ignorant bias. Hitler is forced to write this way because he has to assume that the reader will not be anti-Semitic upon opening the book, further showing the fact that most of the population did not share a racial hatred of Jews. While these documents do not show a popular movement against Judaism, they do show the potential of violence within the population. Hilberg is proven to be correct with the belief of the Holocaust as a "final product of an earlier age" (Hilberg 5).

If the above statements are shown to be true, then how was the Nazi movement so effective during the Holocaust with so few anti-Semitic people? A clue into Hilberg's opinion is his statement, "the great majority of the officers of the Einsatzgruppen were professional men" (Hilberg 105). Hilberg also writes that the men had to try and make adjustments to the work involved in genocide and, "every once in a while a man did have a nervous breakdown, and in several units the use of alcohol became routine" (Hilberg 136). Hilberg implies through his writing that most of the people involved within the Nazi Regime did not have a hatred for Jews, but were coerced or avoiding punishment. The documents again prove Hilberg to be correct. The Implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service is a document that tries to define a Jew and their eligibility for employment within the government. While the document says someone had a single Jewish grandparent, a person is then a Jew; it later reads "If a civil servant did not already have a civil-service status on August 1, 1914, he must prove is of Aryan descent, or that he fought at the front, or that he is the son or father of a man killed in action during the World War" (Read 41) The Nazi party was forced to put this loop-hole in because it was hard to prove an anti-German ideology if one had fought for the country during the war. Nationalism was a rallying point and the population became upset if veterans, Jewish or not, was deprived of rights. A strictly anti-Jewish population would not care what someone had done; being a Jew would have been enough for them. Another document that shows a lack of anti-Judaic sentiment is the Byelaya documents about the Jewish children. When given orders to shoot the children, Lt-Col Groscurth tried to delay the death of the children by going to the head of the Army group, who delegated him downwards. In the meantime, he prolonged the children's lives through actions shown when writing, "He asked for an order in writing, I refused this, remarking that a definitive decision could be expected very shortlyÐ'...I stated that I had to stick to my instructions and would back them with force if necessaryÐ'...We would have to wait for the army's decision" (Byelaya 147). In other words, Groscurth would not act until he was positive that the direct order would be to kill the children, and anyone using anticipatory actions towards these orders would be stopped with force. The eventual killer's identity was a heated debate between the commanding officers. Neither the army nor SS wanted to have their men act as executions because "they have small children as well" (Byelaya 153 #7). Killing adults was a common occurrence to them but killing children, of Jewish descent or not, was viewed upon as immoral and sick. The Ukrainians were eventually forced to commit these violent acts. In Groscurth's report, when referring to the children's deaths, compared the occurrence to the stories of Soviet brutality being spread by Nazi propaganda (Byelaya 150). Directing the deaths to stories of merciless crazed killers illustrates the disapproving connotations attached.

Hilberg goes on to state that Germans within the killing units had problems coping with the stresses of murder. Complications such as a "lack of Ð''understanding' of the killings," (Hilberg 129) became clear after a short time in the field. This lack of understanding can be translated as a dislike and questioning of Nazi measures taken against Jews, especially within the killing units. Field Marshall Reichenau's order supports Hilberg's assessment directly. Reichenau writes that a, "soldier must have a full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just atonement on Jewish sub-humanity" (Read 71). The only reason a Field Marshall would have to say this within