Nazis

Nazis Define and discuss the terms "intentional" and "functional" as they used to explain Nazi policy toward the extermination of the Jews. Despite the claims of the Holocaust deniers, there is no real historical question that, at some point in time, Nazis began a willful extermination program targeting the Jews. The Holocaust simply could not have occurred if that had not happened and there is ample evidence to prove that the Holocaust did, in fact, occur.

However, in academic circles there is a significant amount of debate surrounding the origins of the extermination policy and how that furthered Nazi goals in World War II. The two different camps viewpoints are known as intentionalism and functionalism, and represent different perspectives on the origins of the Holocaust. Furthermore, there are degrees in each camp, indicating the degree of overlap, if any, the particular scholar believes exists between his or her chosen theory and the opposing point-of-view.

While scholars had been talking about the diverging viewpoints for since the end of World War II, it was not until 1981 that historian Timothy Mason coined the phrases "intentionalism" and "functionalism" to describe the different viewpoints. According to the intentionalists, Adolf Hitler had a master plan to launch the Holocaust. In fact, extreme intentionalists not only feel that Hitler had always had a desire to attain Jewish extermination, but that his quest for power was largely driven by his anti-Semitic feelings.

As a result, they feel that, by 1924, Hitler had a plan for the Holocaust. Moderate intentionalists agree that Hitler was the person behind the plan to exterminate the Jews. However, they disagree that Hitler had formulated this plan by the early 1920s. Instead, they suggest that Hitler decided upon Jewish extermination by the late 1930s. According to the functionalists, Adolf Hitler did not have a master plan to launch the Holocaust, on the contrary, the Holocaust initiated within the ranks of the Nazi bureaucracy.

Moderate functionalists believe that it was rivalry within the Nazi bureaucracy that led to the Holocaust, because they felt pressure to resort to genocide when they were unable to expel the Jews from Europe. Extreme functionalists place the blame for the Holocaust lower in the Nazi bureaucracy, and suggest that it was low-ranking officials who drove the bureaucracy, and disclaim the idea that Nazi leadership played any driving role in initiating the Holocaust.

This is not to suggest that functionalist believe that humans were not responsible for the Holocaust; despite the functionalist label, they still firmly assign blame to the people who perpetrated the Holocaust (Mason, 1995, p.213). B. Explain the position of Bauer, Browning and Rubenstein on the issue of intentionalism vs. functionalism. Yehuda Bauer refuses to be pigeonholed as either a functionalist or an intentionalist.

Like many who begin their work on the Holocaust, Bauer began as an intentionalist, perhaps because it is emotionally easier to imagine that the Holocaust was the result of one man's hatred, rather than the result of multiple people, many of whom did not have that same level of hatred, planning the extermination of a nation of people to reap the financial benefits. Bauer believes that the Holocaust was both a top-down and a bottom-up phenomenon. He rejects the idea that Hitler had planned the Holocaust before coming to power.

Furthermore, he cites discussion by Nazi leaders, most specifically Heinrich Himmler, about the feasibility of the proposed Final Solution, as evidence that the Nazi leaders were not committed to an extermination of the Jews until well-into World War II. However, he does not believe that Nazi leadership had no responsibility for the Holocaust. On the contrary, he cites Hitler's anti-Semitism as a driving force behind the Holocaust and believes that Hitler was responsible for giving the orders directly responsible for the Holocaust. (See generally, Bauer, 2000).

Christopher Browning is a functionalist, who believes that the Holocaust was not directly ordered by Hitler, but developed from lesser bureaucrats within the Nazi party. While acknowledging that Hitler's leadership played a contributory role to the Holocaust, Browning makes it clear that he believes that the Holocaust was not driven by Hitler's desire to exterminate the Jews, but because of a radicalization of the German state under the Nazi party.

It is important to understand that the Holocaust refers to the actual killing of the Jews, not the actions prior to the killings, such as confining Jews in ghettos. Once the virulent anti-Semitism had caused Jews to be treated in a very derogatory manner, then the Jews really did present a problem to the German state. Functionalists believe that Nazis in high leadership positions, including Hitler, originally intended to force Jews out of Europe.

For example, the Madagascar Plan would have arranged for France to cede Madagascar to Germany, and for all Jews to be forced to live in Madagascar. However, the Madagascar plan was contingent upon Germany defeating Britain, which did not occur. Initially, the "Final Solution" referred to a territorial solution, but by 1941, when a territorial solution seemed unlikely, that solution turned into genocide. (See generally Browning, 1992). Richard Rubenstein is a functionalist.

In fact, his theories are so functionalist that they actually beg the question of whether or not it would have mattered if Hitler had desired the extermination of the Jews. Rubenstein focuses on how the Nazis needed cheap labor to run the war effort. Though they eventually became death camps, the concentration camps began as places of slave labor, and that labor was driven by the industrialization of Europe. Moreover, Rubenstein discusses the societal need to feel as if one has superseded another.

He discusses how Christians seem to feel that they have superseded Judaism, which made Jews vulnerable to the type of mass genocide characterized in the Holocaust. At times it can be difficult to understand Rubenstein's arguments from a strictly historical perspective, because he did not make his arguments from a strictly historical perspective. Instead, he discusses the religious implications of the Holocaust.

However, Rubenstein does not excuse the behavior of lower-level officials who drove the Holocaust, and places much of the blame for the Holocaust at the feet of people who had anti-Semitic feelings prior to the start of the war. (See generally Rubenstein, 1975). C. Does the Wannsee Conference lend credence to intentionalism or functionalism? Explain. At first blush, the Wannsee Conference would seem to lend credence to intentionalism.

This is because the Wannsee Conference outlined a plan that would inevitably result in the death of millions of Jews, and which provided for the extermination of other Jews. Moreover, the Wannsee Conference determined who would be considered Jewish for the purposes of such extermination.

Given that Hitler made anti-Semitic statements and had, in his early writings, made some statements suggesting that all Jews should be killed, it would be easy to state that those feelings and the stated goals of the Wannsee Conference meant that Hitler was the driving force behind the Holocaust. However, functionalists do not try to argue that Hitler was not anti-Semitic or that he opposed the Holocaust, simply that he was not the main, driving force behind the Holocaust. The Wannsee Conference tends to support that opinion.

Leading Nazi officials were present at the Wannsee Conference and discussed the "Final Solution" to the Jewish problem, which was clearly death, at that time. However, the mere fact that the Wannsee Conference did not occur until January 1942 argues against the idea that genocide had always been one of Hitler's goals. Instead, it suggests that the Nazis had become somewhat overwhelmed by the Jewish problem, which they had created with increasingly anti-Semitic regimes in Nazi-occupied areas. In that way, the Wannsee Conference is functionalist.

However, the functionalist/intentionalist question is two pronged, and one of those prongs consists of the participation of high officials in the decision to exterminate the Jews. The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of many of the highest-ranking members of the Nazi party, many of whom had previously opposed genocide-type killings. Moreover, the Wannsee Conference, while not attended by Hitler, was undoubtedly ordered by Hitler. In that way, the Wannsee Conference and its proposed "Final Solution" had to be attributable to Hitler.

Therefore, the events of the Wannsee Conference do not support either an intentionalist or a functionalist point-of-view, but demonstrates that the Holocaust probably had multiple causes. (See generally Browning, 2004). Using Lodz as an example, explain ghettoization as a process and experience in the Holocaust. When people think of the Holocaust, they immediately think of concentration camps with their gas chambers and sadistic medical experiments, and they wonder how that could possibly happen.

What they neglect to consider is the fact that most Jews experienced the Holocaust as an ongoing process, whereby rights were slowly stripped from them. When Lodz was occupied by the Germans on September 8, 1939, the Nuremburg Laws were immediately applied, which began the ghettoization of Lodz. Soon after, the Jews of Lodz were subjected to legal restrictions which were more severe than those that had been applied earlier in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. The authorities in charge of Lodz sought to completely separate the Jewish population from the non-Jewish population.

Business were marked with the nationality and ethnic identity of the proprietors, which made it easier for Germans to target Jewish-owned stores and Jews were required to wear arm bands and forbidden to leave their houses between 5:00pm and 8:00am. In fact, Lodz was the first area to institute the armbands that would distinguish Jews from non-Jews. Jews could not use public transportation, public parks, or work at non-Jewish businesses. Furthermore, Jewish property was pillaged and taken, with official sanction.

If the Jews abandoned any real property, that property went into receivership. Jews were prohibited from withdrawing substantial sums of money from their bank accounts or from keeping substantial sums of money in their homes. The government confiscated raw materials from Jewish workshops and prohibited them from engaging in certain trades. People began to target educated Jews, often by boycotting them, forcing Jews who lived elsewhere to move into the Jewish district.

This combination of economic measures prevented Jews from being able to support themselves and from being able to fund a resistance. (See generally Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, 2007). While violence against the Jews had begun with the occupation, it escalated after the Jews had been deprived of their economic power base. Jews in the streets could fear being caught and assaulted. Fear of these assaults led Jews to cooperate with the Germans in providing slave labor for the Nazis, in exchange for freedom from assaults.

However, Jewish leadership was targeted, with these leaders rounded up, tortured, and either killed or shipped to concentration camps. (See generally Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, 2007). Eventually, the Germans created a ghetto to be sealed off from the rest of Lodz. This was considered the first stage of the final solution, because it separated Jews from the rest of the society. The ghetto was located in the worst part of town, and on April 30, 1940 the ghetto became totally isolated from the rest of the city.

There were strict rules in the ghetto. For example, telephones in the ghetto could only be used by administrative officer, and mail exchange was limited. Moreover, the Nazis transported Jews from elsewhere to Lodz, so that approximately 200,000 Jews went through the ghetto. The overcrowding led to horrible sanitation conditions, the Jews there could not get enough food,.