Contagiousness of Violence Essay -- Holocaust, Hitler, Jews

The Holocaust is one of the most researched atrocities of recent History; there are many atrocities that one can research, why the Holocaust? Because along with being a horrific event in human history, it’s also a testament to the strength of the survivors, and a testament to the Horrors that Hitler began. This period in history can be separated into two major parts; the persecution of the Jewish people, and the extermination of all undesirables, which constituted mostly of Jews. Often times when researching the Holocaust you hear about Hitler and his villainy, but he was only part of the problem. This Paper intends to compare the arguments presented by Saul Friedlander in Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945 The Years of Extermination and Peter Longerich in the Holocaust the Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews; the paper will examine the contagiousness of violence, hatred, and prejudice that the Germans and the occupied territories participated in between 1933 and 1945 of Hitler’s Nazi Regime. Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945 the Years of Extermination begins the examination into the Holocaust by looking at the person who nurtured and strengthened the anti-Semitic feelings in Germany, and subsequently Europe, Adolf Hitler. Under Hitler’s Germany there was the essence of a political religion that is the devotion Germany felt for his cultural, and political goals is comparable to one’s faith in God. He had absolute loyalty, he ruled with fear, propaganda, and his personality; the key detail in his political rise to power is the externalizing of blame. â€Å"in Hitler’s views the Jews were first and foremost an active (Eventually deadly) threat† (Friedlander 16) he saw the Jews as the root of all evil, behind all the detrimental... ...edlander examines is prevalent in Longerich’s assessment of German control of Soviet occupied territories, the only difference that exist between the two is the detail, Friedlander briefly covers the situation while Longerich dedicates and entire section just to the murder of the Jewish men and then the next to the escalation from just the men to all Jews. The paper thus far has covered Hitler as the catalyst for the infection that took a hold of Europe, then the spread of his atrocious views to the German populace, its disastrous involvement in Poland and soviet territories. Now the paper will cover the extermination of the European Jew. Up until this point the events weren’t part of the Final Solution to the Jewish question only the propaganda, fear, and hatred that the Nazi regime spread along with their infectious views of the Jewish population in Europe.