The total number of Holocaust victims is higher than the total number of concentration camp (and extermination camp) victims. Many were killed in mass open air shootings or died in ghettos. In other words, killed in Nazi concentration camps does not equal a count of Holocaust victims.
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According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
In 1933, there were approximately 9 million Jews in Europe. By 1945, the Nazis had reduced that number to about 3 million. Roma (Gypsies) were also sent to the concentration camps, resulting in about 200,000 Gypsy deaths. Physically and / or mentally handicapped, homosexuals, and Polish intellectuals accounted for at least another 200,000. This totals about 6,400,000 victims of the concentration camps.
The Nazis also killed between 2 and 3 million Soviet prisoners in labor camps or executions. Add to this the non Jewish Poles and Soviets sent to forced labor who died due to malnutrition, unsafe work conditions, disease and "experimentation."
The exact numbers may never be known, but hopefully this gives you some idea of the magnitude of the Nazi inhumanity.
NoteMany victims of the Holocaust were not killed in camps.______________________________________
Answer
For many years, since the Holocaust, their has been numbers flying everywhere that states how many people died in the Concentration Camps during the Holocaust. In most concentration camps their isn't an exact death number.
In many concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka, there's an range of number of people who died in the concentration camps. In Auschwitz there's an incredible range of 1.25 Million - 5.5 Million people who died at Auschwitz, according to most documents and facts, at least 2.25 Million died in Auschwitz. In Treblinka extermination camp, THERE'S an range of 875.000 - 1.6 Million.
The reason why the exact number of people who died in the Concentration Camps is because, after World War 2, Poland was took over by the USSR due to Germany occupied Poland in 1939 and many concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Krakow and Warsaw were investigated by the USSR. during the time, the USSR didn't aloud other Allied countries in due to the Soviets thought that the US would of mess up the results and findings. During the Soviet investigations and adding up what the other allies had found, At least 14 Million people, including 5.96 million Jews died in the Concentration Camps. However, since then, their has been some investigations and it's sort of agreed that at least 16.5 Million, likely over 17 Million people died in the concentration camps. 7 million were the Jews and following that 3.3 million Soviet POWs died.
AnswerThe word "survived" needs defining carefully, otherwise one ends up talking about quite different groups of people. The usual meaning of the expression "a holocaust survivor" is someone who was sent to a death camp (or equivalent), but was still alive at the end of WWII in Europe or when the camp was liberated. (In other words, Jews and others who had managed to flee to countries like the U.S., Britain and Sweden are NOT included). The most common figure is around 200,000.
AnswerThis question cannot be answered usefully, as no precise definitions are possible. There were "concentration camps" whose function was to kill people as quickly as possible (such as Treblinka), and others which were primarily prisons for political prisoners (such as Dachau), or slave labor depots. Some camps served multiple functions (such as Auschwitz). In all these camps, many people were killed, but some were much more lethal than others. Not all people held in concentration camps were treated the same. Jews were, in general, exterminated, but other groups such as Roma (gypsies) and Poles, while also killed in large numbers, were not systematically killed. Some of the political prisoners seized by the Nazis in the early years of their rule were later released, having been tortured and starved into submission.
It should also be noted that the Nazis (and some of their allies) performed much of the mass murder included in the Holocaust "in the field": the victims were slaughtered in or near their villages or neighborhoods. "Holocaust survivors" should include people who were at risk of these massacres but managed to get away, even though they were never in a "Holocaust concentration camp".
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AnswerWe know most of those that died were Jews, but we don't know EXACTLY how many people died. The bodies were buried in unmarked graves, or burned. At least 7 Million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. CommentSix million is the generally accepted approximate total for the number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust - including deaths from starvation, disease and of course, mass open-air shootings. Fewer than four million Jews died in extermination camps.Obviously, one has to add the figures for non-Jews in order to give a full answer to the question.
Additional InfoPeople tend to forget that while we remember the Holocaust, Jews were only the bare majority of people who died due to mass extermination by the German authorities.In addition, there were two "sets" of camps - the concentration camps, which were essentially large open-air prisons, and the death camps, which were part of the organized Final Solution. The death camps were exactly that - specifically designed and run to take in a steady stream of victims, kill them, and dispose of the bodies. The only people spared at these camps were victims willing to labor in the camp itself; most of them only postponed death for a short time, as the Nazi owners frequently would take new members for the labor force, and kill the old ones.
Current estimates are that somewhere around 11 million people died in various concentration camps, POW camps, and death camps. About 3 million died in the Death Camps (the majority at Auschwitz) - 90% of them Jews, most of the remainder being Roma (Gypsies). Approximately 3 million more Jews were killed in various mass murder campaigns prior to the Death Camps being set up. Likewise, about 1 million total Roma died. A similar number of people (1 million) - mostly ethnic Germans, though many from conquered countries - were killed as a part of the Euthanasia program. These were primarily the mentally ill, though homosexuals were also targeted.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 political prisoners and Western Allied POWs (British, American, etc.) died in the various concentration camps, mostly from abuse (not systematic extermination). In a similar manner, about 3.2 million Russian POWs were killed in German POW camps, mostly due to abject abuse and neglect (i.e. failure to feed, clothe, or house them for months on end in harsh weather).
Finally, perhaps 2-2.5 million Poles, Slavs, and other "lesser" races were starved or beaten to death in the various concentration camps, or during marches to them, or in forced labor.
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The claim above that "In Auschwitz there's an incredible range of 1.25 Million - 5.5 Million people who died at Auschwitz" is false and is only now used by Holocaust deniers in order to mock the Holocaust. In the 1980s the Auschwitz Museum undertook careful new research, based on documentary evidence. Well aware of the fact that the Soviet Union had exaggerated the figures in 1945-46, the Museum was cautious. It came up with a figure of about 1.15 milllion killed (in the Auschwitz group of camps) of whom about 90% were Jews. This research is widely accepted by Holocaust scholars and earlier figures are out of date and superseded. The range given above for Treblinka is far too high - the sort of figures one finds on sites trying to make fun of the Holocaust. The usual figure for Treblinka is 800,000 or slightly higher.
it shouldn't be illegal for people to kill themselves as this doesn't go against anyone else but the person who is trying to kill himself. It is not good to give up and kill yourself because tomorrow is another day and things do get better sometimes depending on your situation and your approach to things. Sometimes we convince ourselves that there is no other way because we had enough and we are tired. At the end of the day it is your life and your decision. There shouldn't be any laws in our constitution that forbid killing yourself as it is a very personal decision. If people follow the law, there would be no suicides in this world.
Roots of Hitler's and the Nazis' Hatred of Jews.
For a short answer see the Related Questions listed at the bottom.
Against this background there are also many contributing factors and possible theories. Here is some further input:
Since 1945-46, the most commonly quoted figure for the total number of Jews killed has been an estimate of approximately six million. This figure, first given at the Nuremberg Tribunal, has been broadly confirmed by later research.
The Holocaust commemoration center, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, comments:
There is no precise figure for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. The figure commonly used is the six million established by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 and repeated later by Adolf Eichmann, a senior SS official. Most research confirms that the number of victims was between five and six million. Early calculations range from 5.1 million (Professor Raul Hilberg) to 5.95 million (Jacob Leschinsky). More recent research, by Professor Yisrael Gutman and Dr. Robert Rozett in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, estimates the Jewish losses at 5.59-5.86 million, and a study headed by Dr. Wolfgang Benz presents a range from 5.29-6.2 million. The main sources for these statistics are comparisons of prewar censuses with postwar censuses and population estimates. Nazi documentation containing partial data on various deportations and murders is also used. We estimate that Yad Vashem currently has somewhat more than four million names of victims that are accessible.
Raul Hilberg, in the third edition of his ground-breaking three-volume work, The Destruction of the European Jews, estimates that 5.1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. This figure includes "over 800,000" who died from "Ghettoization and general privation"; 1,400,000 who were killed in "Open-air shootings"; and "up to 2,900,000" who perished in camps. Hilberg estimates the death toll in Poland at "up to 3,000,000". Hilberg's numbers are generally considered to be a conservative estimate, as they typically include only those deaths for which some records are available, avoiding statistical adjustment. British historian Martin Gilbert used a similar approach in his "Atlas of the Holocaust", but arrived at a number of 5.75 million Jewish victims, since he estimated higher numbers of Jews killed in Russia and other locations.
One of the most authoritative German scholars of the Holocaust, Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin, cites between 5.3 and 6.2 million Jews killed in Dimension des Völkermords (1991), while Yisrael Gutman and Robert Rozett estimate between 5.59 and 5.86 million Jewish victims in the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust (1990).
There were about 9.4 million Jews in the territories controlled directly or indirectly by the Nazis. (Some uncertainty arises from the lack of knowledge about how many Jews there were in the Soviet Union). The 6 million killed in the Holocaust thus represent about 64% of these Jews. Of Poland's 3.3 million Jews, over 90 percent were killed. The same proportion were killed in Latvia and Lithuania, but most of Estonia's Jews were evacuated in time. In Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia, over 70 percent were killed. More than 50 percent were killed in Belgium, Hungary and Romania. It is likely that a similar proportion were killed in Belarus and Ukraine, but these figures are less certain. Countries with notably lower proportions of deaths include Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Italy and Norway. Finally, of the 750,000 Jews in Germany and Austria in 1933, only about a quarter survived. Although many German Jews emigrated before 1939, the majority of these fled to Czechoslovakia, France or the Netherlands, from where they were later deported to their deaths.
The number of people killed at the major extermination camps is estimated as follows:
Auschwitz-Birkenau: 1.4 million; Belzec: 500,000; Chelmno: 152,000; Majdanek: 78,000; Maly Trostinets: 65,000; Sobibór: 250,000; and Treblinka: 870,000.
This gives a total of over 3.3 million; of these, 90% are estimated to have been Jews. These seven camps alone thus accounted for half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.
In addition to those who died in the above extermination camps, at least half a million Jews died in other camps, including the major concentration camps in Germany. These were not extermination camps, but had large numbers of Jewish prisoners at various times, particularly in the last year of the war as the Nazis withdrew from Poland. About a million people died in these camps, and although the proportion of Jews is not known with certainty, it was estimated to be at least 50 percent. Another 800,000 to 1 million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territories (an approximate figure, since the Einsatzgruppen killings were frequently undocumented). Many more died through execution or of disease and malnutrition in the ghettos of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Hungary before they could be deported.
The simplest answer is "scape-goating".
But that's not really a sufficient answer. Anti-semitism has been around for a very long time. Hitler and the Nazis didn't invent it. Not by a longshot. It's been around through medieval times, and even during Ancient Rome. There's alot of 'justifications', but they are all some variation of 'Jews are different, so it's easy to project my fears and insecurities on them.'
Hitler himself had many reasons why he hated Jews and it's something historians have studied for years. His father (whom he hated) was part Jewish. He was turned down for art school and blamed Jews.
But the most potent was that Hitler, like alot of Germans, blamed Jews (unjustly) for their loss in World War 1. The government of the Kaiser kept telling the German people they were winning the war. So when Germany surrendered, it was a major shock to them. And Hitler was a soldier in WW1. It was, by his own description, the best time of his life because he thrived on the comraderie with fellow soldiers.
To Hitler and those like him, the only explanation for how they went from being in a winning position to suddenly surrendering was sabotage. And Hitler blamed Communism and Jews. Which in his mind, were basically the same because he viewed Communism as a Jewish plot.
Hitler and other German anti-semites (and it's important to acknowledge not all were) blamed Jews for the struggles imposed by Versailles and everything else that went wrong.
Holocaust deaths
The word holocaust generally refers to the deaths of Jews, but other victims of Nazi Germany are often also included. (The word holocaust is also often used to describe the genocide of the Armenians in 1915-1917 by the Ottoman Turkish regime).
Although the exact figure will never be known, here are estimates:
In addition, Hitler targeted homosexuals, Communists and other political dissidents, most Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, dissidents, some Protestant pastors and Catholic priests, black people, the mentally and physically disabled, and others. The figures include the camps as well as the mass graves in the countryside, killings in the street, organized mass shootings (such as Babi Yar, etc.) and basically, any person singled out for their race, religion, political beliefs, or their sexual orientation.
There are approximately 250 Holocaust museums and centers around the world where you can learn more, as well as extensive information elsewhere on the Internet.
7,000,000
Further input:
Many Germans blamed the Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, some even claiming that German Jews had betrayed the nation during the war. In addition, at the end of the war a Communist group attempted to carry out a Bolshevik-type revolution in the German state of Bavaria. Most of the leaders of that failed attempt were Jews. As a result, some Germans associated Jews with Bolsheviks and regarded both groups as dangerous enemies of Germany. After the war, a republic, later known as the Weimar Republic, was set up in Germany. Jewish politicians and intellectuals played an important role in German life during the Weimar Republic, and many non-Jews resented their influence.
On the basis of his antisemitic views, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler attacked the impressive role Jews played in German society during the Weimar Republic, especially in the intellectual world and in left-wing politics. He referred to them as a plague and a cancer. In his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle, translated 1939), which was published in 1926, Hitler blamed the plight of Germany at the end of World War I on an international Jewish conspiracy and used terms such as extirpation and extermination in relation to the Jews. He claimed that the Jews had achieved economic dominance and the ability to control and manipulate the mass media to their own advantage. He wrote of the need to eradicate their powerful economic position, if necessary by means of their physical removal.
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Some historians, such as Christopher Browning, see the Holocaust as part of a wider campaign to destroy what the Nazis saw as 'Judeo-Bolshevism'.
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Note also Yehuda Bauer's stark formulation:
The basic motivation [of the Holocaust] was purely ideological, rooted in an illusionary world of Nazi imagination, where an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world was opposed to a parallel Aryan quest. No genocide to date had been based so completely on myths, on hallucinations, on abstract, nonpragmatic ideology - which was then executed by very rational, pragmatic means.
How seriously individual Nazis took these illusions and conspiracy theories is another matter. This notion of the Jews as dangerous, cunning conspirators doesn't fit the Nazi view of them as inferior.
The main cause of the Jewish Holocaust was AdolfHitler's hatred of all Jews also
Please see the related questions.
The most simple answer: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler was the driving force behind the obsessive and fanatical Nazi persecution and ultimately also the mass slaughter of the Jews and various other groups, though the details of implementation were left to the terror apparatus, headed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Here are more opinions and input:
The Holocaust was part of a wider Nazi campaign to rid the world of what they often referred to as 'Jewish Bolshevism'. It did not start with 'a big bang' in response to any particular incident but developed rapidly in the second half of 1941 during the early stages of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Please see the related question.
Answer 1
The reason why Hitler hated, targeted and killed the Jews was because that:
Answer 2
Hitler killed the Jews for more than one reason. The political reason given was that the Jews were aligned with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and were hence Communists. Communists were feared in Germany for not only their brutality but for what, they feared, was a totalitarian state in which there would be little freedom and the German culture and society would be radically changed, and everyone would suffer a lower standard of living. Great exhibitions were given to get that point across.
Publicly, Hitler did not talk about 'killing' the Jews, but about deporting them. He felt they were 'a people without a fatherland', and that all people, particularly 'Aryan' people and particularly German 'Aryans' were tied to their land in an almost spiritual way. To prosper, Hitler and the neo-pagans of the Third Reich felt that Germany had to be 'cleansed' of the people who were a 'nation within a nation' , and his first efforts were toward deportation. Germany looked into Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa, but it was impractical.
Nazi propagandists began to portray the Jew as the epitome of all evil and the reason for all the defeat and societal ills in Germany. He reasoned that their influence was evil and degenerate, and that they had caused Germany to lose WWI, had ruined the arts, were defiling bloodlines, bringing in disease, introducing communism, etc and that if conditions were left to themselves, would threaten the overthrow of Germany. The Jews were actually a small proportion (525,000) of citizens when the Nazis came to power in 1933, compared to approximately 62 million others in Germany. The real reason almost has to lie in the firm belief that the Aryan herrenvolk [Master Race] could not emerge fully until the Jews and their influence were removed.
While it was debated for decades whether the mass Killings were planned, scholars today have amassed such a large amount of data and information, as to make that position beyond doubt. Hitler espoused the desire early on to destroy the Jews of Europe and create a New European Order, and the Wannsee Conference and Operation Reinhard , along with the lagers and Einsatzgruppen made it clear that the systematic destruction of the Jews of Europe was the clear intent.
Additional Causes of Anti-Semitism
In addition, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, all kinds of fanciful conspiracy theories claiming that "the Jews" were using Communism to achieve world domination became quite popular in some places. In Britain and the US they were not taken particularly seriously by mainstream politicians, but in Germany this kind of stuff was seized on eagerly by the Nazis.
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The first people to be sent to concentration were known political opponents of the Nazis. 'Outsider' groups such as homosexuals were also persecuted. The Jews were subject to a massive program of extermination and a total of about six million were murdered in the Holocaust. Hatred of the Jews was long standing in many parts of Europe. (America wasn't free of Anti-Semitism, either). The Jews were the traditional scapegoats. Originally, Anti-Semitism had been directed mainly against Judaism and its adherents, but from the 1870s onwards it became racial and ideological. The period from about 1870 onwards was one of rapid change (urbanization and a further wave of industrialism). Many people who disliked these changes or could not adapt to them identified the Jews with Modernism. In addition, in Europe there was a severe economic depression from 1873-1879 (and arguably much longer).
Answer 3
It was, above all, conspiracy theories about "the Jews".These had been circulated in Russia from about 1900-1917 by the Tsarist secret police. After about 1918 they also circulated increasingly in Western and Central Europe. After World War 1 there were all kinds of conspiracy theories circulating about the Jews. They were widely regarded as Communists and subversives. In Germany and Austria there was a widespread view (for which there was no evidence) that they had engineered the defeat of Germany.
There were also conspiracy theories claiming that the Jews were seeking to dominate the world.
Answer 4
This question implicitly has two parts. The first is a question as to the rationales that Hitler believed in to justify Anti-Semitic beliefs and the second is a question as to why Hitler felt the need to kill the Jews as a way to solve these Anti-Semitic concerns.
The Reasons for Anti-Semitism in Germany during that period are numerous, but some of the more important reasons were the following:
1) Decay of the German State: During the 1800s, Jews began to become more integrated in German National Life. They served in its government, its military divisions, and its industry. As was typical of Western Europe, the Jews had more of a hand in the higher echelons of government than their population percentage would account for. The Nazis saw this increasing Jewish percentage in the government as a slow takeover of German policy and a corruption of the German people. They contrasted the great victories under Bismarck with the depressing failure of World War I and noted how a much larger percentage of soldiers in the latter war were Jewish. There was also the sentiment than in the early 20th century, values were beginning to ebb (this is similar to current politics in the United States) and the Jewish integration in the German apparatus (becoming teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) was to blame for this recession of values as opposed to modernity as a process.
2) Nationalism: Germany was brought together under the Nationalist conception that all peoples with German culture, history, and language should be united regardless of which principality currently held control. The German self-conception also had an ethnic component, holding that the perfect German was blond and blue eyed. Regardless of the fact that the majority of Germans were dark haired, Jews stuck out like a sore thumb because they overwhelmingly had darker hair. In addition, the idea of a German Jew was still rather new and both Jews and non-Jews tended to see the Jews in Germany as being part of a vast Jewish network and that these Jews just happened to be in Germany. The Nazis capitalized on this cosmopolitan sensibility by claiming that Jews' allegiances were not to the German State, but to secret Jewish Councils organizing world events.
3) Economy: Whether it was true or not, there was perception among Germans and the Nazis in particular that Jews were wealthy individuals and had a higher per-capita income than the Germans. In many ways (because of the above two reasons) Germans felt that the Jews were "stealing" their money while they were poor and suffering.
4) Pseudo-Science: The late 19th and early 20th century was filled with radical new ideas concerning Social Darwinism. It was believed by the Pseudo-Scientific community (which was rather in vogue) that different groups of people or races exhibited different emotional traits that were linked to physical differences. This led to the belief that Jews were corrupt and thieving by their irreversible nature and that they could not be "cured" and brought up as proper Europeans. This formalized Racial Anti-Semitism in Germany and made the situation much more dire for German Jews.
5) Heresy: Although not as much an issue in World War II as it may have been 500 years prior, Jews were still considered the heretics who murdered the LORD and Savior. This helped to justify Anti-Semitism as the Jewish comeuppance for their accepting of the Christ Bloodguilt.
6) Hatred: (written by someone else) Because ppl hated them . . . . .not such a good reason, right? Its so sad . . . . . .
Why was killing the Jews necessary?
The answer to the second part, while cold, is brutally honest. The Nazis encouraged the German population to believe that this myriad of Anti-Semitic issues was ingrained in German Society by making it part of the national curriculum and teaching it to millions of German children. The Nazis proposed that the only way to improve Germany was to remove the Jews entirely. There were two options for such a removal: exile or genocide. Since no country was willing to take the Jewish population en masse (and this includes the United States and United Kingdom due to prevailing stereotypes there) the Nazis made the executive decision to commit genocide to "save Germany".
Answer 5
The NSDAP executed many members of various groups, such as Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and others exact reason for each group is up for debate, but I'd guess a mixture of political antisemitism and wanting to create a sense of unity among the German people by pitting them all against the Jews.
Answer 6
for fun... seriously no reason he needed someone to blame for the downfall of Germany and no body could stop him in his gov. because he was supreme chancler and would kill you if you spoke out against him
First, Hitler did not only kill Jews. The Nazi's also killed basically any race they saw as "unfit" or a political view they opposed. The whole idea was to have a pure German race. Poles, Jews, Russians, Gypsy, Ukrainian, Blacks where all subject to murder and mistreatment in the hands of the Nazi's.
Hitler blamed the Jews for financial problems in Germany, control of media, basically a scapegoat for any and all problems the German people endured, especially after the end of the First World War which left Germany bankrupt. What was ironic was the German Jews who where persecuted had lived in Germany for 100's of years and saw themselves just as much German as Jewish. They loved their country and where dumbfounded at first by Hitler's views and extreme persecution.
Answer 7
Hilter and the Nazi killed Jews because:
Hitler hated the Jews and everyone who wasn't like him!
He killed most of the Jews to 'create a better world' for everyone or more likely for himself!!!!
Answer 8
Sir Arthur Keith was a British anthropologist, an atheistic evolutionist and an anti-Nazi, but he drew this chilling conclusion:"The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."
It seems to be clear from the above link that Hitler had connections with the Roman Catholic church. At the same time it is clear that Hitler persecuted Christians (among others) who did not agree with him. Not all Christians were actually anti-semitic, as true Christians realize that Jesus Christ was himself a Jew.
Jesus himself indicated that Christians were to suffer persecution as indeed they did from the martyrdoms of Stephen and James onwards through the Roman Emperors, the Inquisition, Hitler and Stalin and down to this present day in China and Burma, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Pakistan etc. Christians were never, even though their teaching would frequently meet opposition and would sadly split families, to be the perpetrators of violence. They were taught to 'turn the other cheek.' Hitler and his Nazis specifically mocked this aspect of the Christian faith as they saw it as a sign of weakness, definitely not part of the 'master race' they were seeking to produce.
There are therefore conclusions which may be drawn regarding the position of the Roman Catholic church at this time. Whatever the reasons for their position, it clearly was not Christian.
Undoubtedly Hitler was violently anti-semitic. It seems that he drew his motivation from a number of sources.
The religious connection is interesting because the Nazis always sought to control the churches (like most other things) particularly because they recognized that there was potential at least for strong opposition to arise from this source. Many church leaders either gave in to their demands or left the country when they saw what was coming. Others like Bonhoeffer joined the resistance and paid the ultimate price. The infiltration of Nazi ideology into the churches involved a radical re-interpretation of Christian theology, Hitler himself almost becoming a messiah-like figure to 'save' Germany.
Hitlers evolutionary motivations are also well-documented and there is a clear connection. What is not clear is whether he actually believed personally in the theory of evolution or whether it was merely a vehicle to justify his hatred of the Jews and that he therefore 'used' evolutionary theory as he 'used' the churches.
Probably the major difference which must be noted is that Christian theology does not justify either anti-semitism or murder, whereas the evolutionary 'nature red in tooth and claw' and the horrific eugenics theories which also arose from it are certainly consistent with Darwinism as abhorrent as this may seem. The quote from Sir Arthur Keith, himself an evolutionist, is quite honest in this regard.
Answer 9
because he blamed them for Germany's difficulties during post WW1 depression,so he eventually went completely insane & attempted to annihilate that ethnic group.
Answer 10
Hitler and his army actually did outright kill Jews. Places Jews were killed include:
History tells us that Hitler began slowly, which is what many dictators do. By slowly indoctrinating the Germans, he persuaded many more people to agree with his views. HOWEVER, some Germans never agreed with Hitler's politics or policies.
Please see the Related Questions which give a more complete idea as to why Hitler did kill Jews.
Answer 12
He didn't kill them for power. He already had control of them and still killed them.He thought they were an inferior race and should be destroyed.
Answer 13
Adolf Hitler hated and wanted to kill the Jews because he blamed them for the loss of the first World War. Because of Hitler, many Jews were part of a genocide.
Answer 14
Hitler ordered the destruction of millions of Jews because he was limited in his scope of human compassion. He used racist and hurtful propaganda to brainwash millions into following his plan for Aryan domination.
Hitler killed the Jews because he claimed that they had turned against Germany during the First War. Also, he feared German expansion. hitler killed the jews because he believed they were communist, and behind the downfall of germany in WWI.
the jews saved their money, and in europe's depression, they were the only population who flourished. this angered hitler, and he got others to rally behind him against jews.
also, it's been said that hitler's perfect race of people, the arian race, did not include jews, gypsies, or communists, so he had them exterminated; hitler believed he was cleansing the world of "scum".
Answer 15
Hitler wanted to kill the Jewish race because he believed they were the cause of Germany's problems. He also thought the Aryan race was the best so there did not need to be another race competing against them.
Battle of Britain
Battle of The Atlantic
D-Day (Operation Overlord)
Battle of the Bulge
Operation Cobra
Battles of Gustav Line/Monte Cassino
Second Battle of El Alamein
Hitler's Meddling and Japanese Military Arrogance
Germany Attacking Russia (Operation Barbarossa)
Moscow and Leningrad
Stalingrad
Battle of Kursk
Pearl Harbor
Battle of Midway
Guadalcanal
The Marianas
Papau New Guinea
Soviet invasion of Manchuria
Atomic Bomb
Battle of the Bulge was one of the more telling moments of the war that swung the tide for the Allies.
AnswerThe atom bomb was not a major turning point in world war two. This happened too far the end of the war and would only circumventJapan who were already extremely weak.The battle of Britain on the over hand was a major turning point, on D-Day, once being forced to retreat home, we stood back and preapared ourselves for an arial battle. Answerwhen Hitler decided not to invade England (operation sea lion), he attacked russia. that's when he lost the war. also the misinformatoin that the allies fed to Germany during the d-day invasion (operation overlord)was a major factor in their success. in the pacific theatre it was the battle of midway that took japan off the offensive AnswerD-Day in Europe, (June 6, 1944), and the taking of Iwo Jima in Feb-Mar of 45 that provided an air base that was within easy striking distance of Japan. AnswerA Few Major Turning Points:There are others, but the big ones have two stars, that is how I see it, be sure I forgot something.
Answerthe major turning points of ww2 are as followed, Hitler killing himself was definitely one of the most biggest turning points of ww2 because nazi Germany and all other nazi soldiers lost their faith and agressivness. Hitler could of led gremnat to a strong victory if he hadnt of told and say to japan to go along and fight us that idiot who i consider a very smart man made the biggest mistake in the war. jospeh stalon being the dictator of russia (the ussr.was what put Germany at scare stalon had a winter to back up his army and some nice artilary too much to name had hiler scared.that's what i think were the major turning points of ww2.The major turning point of WWII was the Battle of Britain. Hitlers first major defeat and the end to his dream of global domination. No other battle in WWII was so pivotal.
Pearl harbour, the victory in north Africa were vital.
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was an irrelevance as even if Hilter had won the allies would have got to Berlin and cut off the nazi soldiers in Russia anyway. The Russian soldiers fought bravely though.
Midway was not piotal as Japan had no ability to achieve gobal domination as they were unable to beat the British in India and Australia, or to invade the USA.
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Midway Island was the turning point in the Pacific.
The Siege of Stalingrad was the turning point in Europe/Asia.
Anne-Frank-Huis is Dutch for Anne Frank House, which is the house where the Franks and the other hid. It is now a museum.
When it became obvious to the members of the German High Command that the war was lost, they began to order all prisoners marched out of the camps, and mass-marched in the direction awayfrom the advancing armies. The camp, if ti was a work camp, was then abandoned, or if it was a death camp, it was destroyed, as best as they could. At least, that was the plan. But the Allies from every direction were advancing too fast, and many of the camps - including death camps - were captured intact, with prisoners still there.
Mass killings of Jews began in June 1941 as the death squads (SD-Einsatzgruppen) that followed the German armies into the Soviet Union began to operate behind the German lines.
The deportation of Jews from Berlin to Theresienstadt, to Riga (Latvia) and Maly Trostenets (Minsk, Belarus) started on 15 October 1941. Riga in Latvia and Maly Trostenets soon became a vast killing field for deported Berlin Jews.
The first large scale gassings took place at Chelmno on 8 December 1941. Further administrative details of Holocaust were worked out at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. (The actual 'conference' lasted only 90 minutes and was mainly concerned with co-ordinating the activities of the various agencies involved. Apart from a brief discussion of what to do about half-Jews and quarter-Jews, the meeting was not concerned with matters of policy).
AnswerThere's timeline at this link: ushmm.org Location of the HolocaustThe Holocaust did not happen in any one place. Everywhere the Germans conquered they exterminated the Jewish population and any other 'undersireables'. In the Soviet Union and parts of eastern Poland there were large scale mass executions throughout Nazi held territory. The extermination camps were nearly all in Poland.The killings took place in:
1. Mass open air shootings (especially in the Soviet Union)
2. Exceptionally harsh concentration camps, where the prisoners were literally worked to death: they had to do heavy manual labour (such as quarrying and mining) on insufficient food.
3. Extermination camps, mainly located in Poland:
The above camps were all in Poland. In addition, Maly Trostenets in Belarus is generally regarded as an extermination camp.
In Poland, Jews were herded into ghettos (such as the Warsaw Ghetto and the Lodz Ghetto) and given grossly insufficient food and not allowed medication. Many died of stavation and disease.
Two of Germany's allies, Romania and Croatia, carried out their own national holocausts.
Here is more input:
About 1,500. This staggering figure includes all satellite camps, including temporary camps. There were about 20 main camps (Stammlager).
Most concentration camps had many sub-camps, many of them labour camps that only functioned for a short time. The list below from the German-language Wikipedia is very good. There is a link below to the list issued by the Federal German Ministry of Justice. This can be assumed to be more or less definitive.
(The figure of 1,500 only includes camps run by the SS and related organization. It does not include camps for Soviet prisoners of war or camps for forced labourers imported to Germany from Eastern Europe).
Please see the link for the full list and also the related question.
Wikipedia and other sources name six extermination camps, all located in occupied Poland:
These six were killing centres and enjoy a kind of canonical status. Many would add Maly Trostenets in Belarus and some include Janowska in Ukraine.
The figure of 1,500 camps does not include camps for forced foreign labourers sent to Germany from the various countries under German rule. Many of these camps, especially those for Poles and Ukrainians, were little better than concentration camps. Nor does the figure include regular POW (prisoner of war) camps.
Note that there were three grades of ordinary Nazi concentration camps. These were, in ascending order of harshness: Grade I (such as Dachau) , Grade II (such as Buchenwald) and Grade III (such as Auschwitz III - aka Buna or Monowitz). Conditions at the Grade III camps were appallingly bad.
In 1944 there were 5.7 million forced foreign workers in Germany, many of whom had been abducted (kidnapped), taken to Germany and forced to work there.
Please see the link beginning with the word Bundesministerium for the full list.
Because the camps were located in all of the occupied countries in some form or another, and because many camps had sub-camps and even the sub-camps were further divided at different labor sites, I doubt that even the Nazi's could answer. Camps existed in Africa and even in the British Channel Islands. Not all camps were giant extermination factories, some were collection and transit points while the vast majority were labor centers with as few as a couple dozen inmates.
AnswerThere were ten times more camps than that! Only now as that particular generation die out is the true number starting to be revealed." Jewish Virtual Library estimates that the number of Nazi camps was closer to 15,000 in all of occupied Europe"
[From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps ]
But even that is an estimate: it's worse than that:-
"THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.
The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum.....
When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing - first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.
The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, "Germanizing" prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.
In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.
Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
"You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps," he said. "They were everywhere."
[From article "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking' at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ]
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35 main and 100's of smaller
There were about 35 main and 1000 smaller concentration camps during World War 2 and there were 6 extermination (death) camps.
The words 'reach violence' in the question are puzzling as the Nazis were violent almost from the outset and certainly by 1923 at the very latest. They even extolled violence as a virtue. Perhaps the question doesn't say what it really means ...
Obviously, his parents didn't give him enough attention. I mean, come on, his "perfect race" didn't even include himself!
Hitler wanted a pure Aryan race, people with blue eyes, blonde hair, muscular (in the case of men) and beautiful (the case of women). He wanted all Germans to be racially pure because he wanted to start his own "super" perfect race, even though he did not have blonde hair or blue eyes! Also there was a lot of speculation about him being homosexual, even though he sent homosexuals to concentration camps etc.
The view that the Nazis wanted a pure "blonde-haired, blue-eyed" race is largely a popular myth. The Nazis aimed to ensure that all members of the state were of "Germanic" stock. In practice that usually meant proving that one's ancestry for three generations past was free of any mixing with "non-Aryans", i.e. Jews, Asians, Africans.
However, the emphasis was always on ancestry, which was tested through records. There was no test based on the individual's hair or eye colour.
Obviously German propaganda depicted individuals with a handsome appearance and with North European features. But blondness was not an exclusive characteristic. Propaganda films, such as films showing members of the Hitler youth, or girls doing gymnastics, display the normal range of physical features found among German, e.g. many blondes, but also many persons of darker colouring.
CommentsGenerally, the only hope of survival was to escape from the ghetto.
1. For a time there was at a tunnel from a house in the ghetto to the outside world. The big problem was surviving once outside ...
2. Some escaped through the sewers, but again there were big problems once outside they surfaced on the other side.
3. For a time there was one point (a cemetary) which was separated only be barbed wire, not a wall and it is said that it was easier to cross there, but the section was well usually well guarded.
4. 34 Jews survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by fleeing through the sewers.
In Israel, they were 'quarantined' or kept outside of the main community. Leviticus 13 & 14 address skin communicable diseases and the priests instructions on how to cleanse the infected ones. See link below for further discussion.
From the Middle Ages onwards in Europe and later in America, people with Hansen's Disease (leprosy) were often sent to quarantine camps, sometimes called leper colonies.
ya its ghetto but if u know how 2 act you don't have anything 2 worry about just don't be a cop caller and know how 2 have a good time and everything is cool.oh and stay away from the tweakers they'll do anything 4 there next high
The most common meaning nowadays of the Holocaust (with an article and a capital h) is the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Sometimes other victims who were murdered by the Nazis on the basis of their group identity are included, in particular, the gypsies (Roma). Around 1980 it replaced the term 'Final Solution [of the Jewish Question]', which was the Nazis' own term. Before the late 1970s the word was most commonly used (without a capital H) in the expression nuclear holocaust, which referred to the feared nuclear war between East and West.
AnswerThe word Holocaust means great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life by fire.
AnswerIt comes from the Greek word "holokaustos", which means "burned whole". It has been used in English for a long time in the sense of disaster involving many deaths (especially by fire). In its Middle English form, derived from Greek, it was used to mean a burnt offering. This later broadened to any major destruction due to fire, and broadened further to mean any mass destruction. When used in capitalized form, it is specifically referring to the mass destruction of Jewish and other people by the Nazis in World War Two.
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It comes from a Greek word which means a sacrifice totally burned by fire. It has been widely used in English in the sense of 'great destruction (usually by fire)'. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s there was widespread fear of a nuclear holocaust.
Since the late 1970s the word holocaust has been widely used in historical writing in the sense of genocide. The Holocaust (without any further detail or qualification) refers to the genocide of about 6 million Jews by the Nazis. The Ottoman Turkish murder of about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-1917 is often also referred to the Armenian Holocaust).
The term is often extended to the systematic, mass killing of all groups that the Nazis tried to exterminate on the basis of group membership - including Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, incuarbles, Soviet political commissars and some other groups. Recently, the word has been widely used in English for the Nazi genocide of the Jews and has largely replaced the expression Final Solution [of the Jewish question], which is a direct translation of Nazis' own term.
Some people are uneasy about the use of the word holocaust because it can have religious implications. In Hebrew the word Shoah, meaning great calamity, is widely used instead.
For practical and linguistic purposes the meaning of a word is its current use, not its etymology or history.
Parts of the answers to the Related Questions below and the links give definitions and some discussion.
There were different kinds of camps, and the function of the older camps changed over time.
Some short, simplified answers:
The progression of Nazi camps:
Cinematic references include Schindler's List (1993), The Pianist (2002), and Red Dawn (1984).
Recommended reading:
Please also see the related questions.
SS stands for Schutzstaffel (which literally means 'protective squadron').
It was first formed in 1923 as a unit of the the Nazi paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung - Stormtroopers) and did not become fully independent till 1934. The original task of the SS was to act as bodyguards for senior Nazis, but in 1925 it became Hitler's personal bodyguard. From 1929 onwards it was headed by Himmler and expanded considerably.
In 1934 the SS assumed sole responsibility for running the concentration camps and it became a central element in the Nazi terror apparatus. It was the SS that organized the Holocaust.
After what was known as the Night of Long Knives that took place on June 30- July 1, 1934, in which major components of the SA had been disovled, the SS basically became a state within a state. There was almost no aspect of German life that the SS did not have its hand in. One of the key figures in the SS rise to power was Reinhard Heydrich who was head of the SD (SS security services) and later became head of the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office). Heydrich was one of the architects of the Holocaust and it was through him that major members of the Nazi party and of the SS met at Wannsee in 1942. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the practical organization of the extermination of the European Jews.
Forerunners of the Waffen SS emerged in the late 1930s. In 1940 this became a kind of a 'second' German army alongside the main army the Wehrmacht (Heer).
The SS considered itself the elite of the Nazi soldiers. Germans who wanted to join the SS had to prove that none of their great-grandparents had ever been Jewish. Officers had to prove their heritage was free of Jewish ancestors even further back then men Enlisted in the SS. In Nazi racial ideology the SS towered high above ordinary ('Aryan') Germans. However, in World War 2 the SS also became a kind of Nazi 'foreign legion', with Ukrainian, Latvian, Bosniak and many more units, as the regular armed forces (Wehrmacht) did not accept foreigners.
Their leader, Heinrich Himmler, was, together with many of his fellow SS, responsible for designing and executing the Holocaust.
The Waffen-SS were the Nazi elite troops, but also included some very poor troops, too. SS men were used to guard concentration camps and some members were turned into Einsatzgruppen, which were used in Eastern Europe to track down and murder Jews.
Schutzstaffel- Protective staff, organization, unit. There were both General ( called Allgemeine- this not a military rank,) SS ( including police crime-lab technicians, photographers, etc, and Waffen-SS men who as the adjective applies were fully armed!
Yes, the USSR had many "concentration camps" but they were mainly forced labour camps, their was 53 separate camps and 423 labour colonies. Most of these were located in Western side of the USSR and along South and South east of the Soviet Union. These were called "Gulags". The USSR hold people in these Gulags for the simplest of crimes eg. Littering and all the way to Political Prisoners.
See related Link for more info.
The holocaust is significant because it killed millions of people because of racism.
Its history is important and it shows how hatred can become an obsession.
Among other things, the Holocaust is a devastating illustration of just how thin the veneer of civilization is. In the period from about 1820-1933 the German states (from 1871 on, Germany) were widely admired as a highly civilized country. Its music, architecture, painting, literature and craftsmanship were widely respected and admired. Germany had a reputation for having an outstanding education system at all levels. Especially from about 1880-1933 it was the world leader in scientific and academic research.
Yet, men acting on the orders of this country that carried out the genocide.
As far as one can tell, most of those who did the detailed planning and carried out the actual killings, most of those who saw the victims face to face, weren't psychopaths, but very ordinary people, in fact boringly ordinary in most cases. Most of them were family men, with wives and kids who, as far as one can tell, took their family duties seriously. Many of them were kind to animals. Hoess, the Commandant of Auschwitz from its foundation in 1940 till 1943, illustrates the type, so does Eichmann.
Then there were very ordinary policemen, from cities like Hamburg, who had previously been ordinary cops - also law abiding, married men with children for the most part; but when drafted into SD dead squads and sent to Russia they machine-gunned defenseless victims. What's more their commanders made it clear from the outset that this particular 'work' was voluntary, that they could refuse to do it without fear of any victimization, that they could go back home and return to their civilian work. A small number did in fact refuse and went home - and that was the end of the matter for them. Why so few? Many who have thought carefully about this have commented on the reluctance of many people to be different, to stand out, to stand up. Others have stressed the lack of moral courage ('moral fibre'), the tendency to do as we're told, the fear of trusting out own feelings, and so on.
The perpetrators illustrate what Hannah Arendt called 'the banality of evil' - that is, 'the ordinariness of evil'. They were 'extraordinary in their ordinariness', to quote the German writer Hermann Glaser.
To prove to the world what human beings are capable of.
Without trivializing the deaths in the Holocaust, or the groups that were targeted, men have been systematically slaughtering each other based on ethnicity, religion, nationality, race, and a host of other factors for several millenia. That Jews were the main target is sadly unremarkable.
Besides the scale of the slaughter (and, the relative short timeframe this slaughter was carried out), there are two really unique and interrelated characteristics which make the Holocaust stand out from all other genocides and mass-murders in history:
(1) The level of industrialized, mechanized, and automated death. Never before (and, really, never since) has a mass murder campaign been carried out with such precision and utilizing the full resources of the country. Complete systems of automated death were designed and used to maximum efficiency, with constant "improvements" and other hallmarks of the industrial revolution's manufacturing processes. Unlike all other genocides, the level of planning and execution mirrored that of an industrial assembly line process - effectively, the Holocaust manufactured mass death as a product, and sold it to its victims.
(2) The level of which the Holocaust was not just a formal policy of a nation-state, but the way that it was institutionalized and bureaucratized into the nation carrying out the campaign. The reason we know so much about the Holocaust's victims was, that unlike all other mass-murder campaigns, the Nazi's kept meticulous records of everything, just like any other government bureaucracy. A whole government ministry was set up to handle the killing, and did so like any other ministry - it competed with other ministries for funding, talent, and resources, had goals and projections and produced statistical reports, and had all the hallmarks of "ordinary" government ministries. No other genocide has ever had this level of organization and official recognition within an established government the way that the perpetrators of the Holocaust had.
These things are what truly differentiate the Holocaust from all other genocides: this industrialization of death. Other genocides had specifically targeted killed Jews, blacks, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, or any of a myriad of minority groups. Others had killed in massive numbers, and with terrible means. Others had even wiped out whole societies and civilizations. However, no one else has ever directed the entire means of modern industrial society and technology to the purpose of genocide. The efficiency and scale such industrialized means give is an ominous warning to be vigilant for anyone else looking to apply such "lessons" to evil purposes.