the holocaust and national soc essays

the holocaust and national soc essays Upon examining the excerpts from the works of Christopher Brownings Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland; and Omer Bartovs Murder in our Midst: the Holocaust, Industrial killing, and Modernity; one develops an understanding of the responsibilities the average German soldier had on the Holocaust. Christopher Browning argues that that the average German soldier did not willingly participate in killing of Jews. Browning believes that Nazi propaganda was the machine that drove Nazism and coerced German civilians into killing the Jews. Bartovs arguments on the Holocaust are more of a theoretical depiction of both the culmination of science and law. He believes the Holocaust and National Socialism were ever-present in the organized states of the industrialized western society. We have developed ambivalence towards war and violence. All that is needed in the modernity of war is two crucial elements: a scientific stamp and legalistic sanction. Christopher Browning states in his book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, that the majority of the German military did not willingly participate in the mass genocide of the Jews. As pointed out by Browning, Even twenty or twenty-five years later those who did quit shooting along the way overwhelmingly cited sheer physical revulsion against what they were doing as the prime motive but did not express any ethical or political principles behind this revulsion. Browning continues to follow course in that the Germans were blindly following orders. Most of the blame should come at those who gave the orders, and not the German military and civilians who executed these heinous crimes. Bartov elects to explain the governing body behind Nazism and its social uprising into the Hitler State. The emergence and implementation of industrial killing was a crucial component in the...