Who Was To Blame For The Holocaust Analysis

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After World War Two (WW2) had ended and the dust began to settle over the Nazi regime, historians began to try and analyse the monstrosities that had occurred in Nazi Germany. The two first interpretations of the Holocaust that came about were intentionalism. This was the belief that without Hitler as Führer the Holocaust would never have happened. Therefore it’s no coincidence that Michael Marrus was an intentionalist historian. The other interpretation was structuralism. Structuralists believe that Hitler was just as much to blame for the Holocaust as a whole string of other factors which will come out in this essay. Then again, historiography isn’t the only factor that must be taken into account when pinning blame for the Holocaust. It must be remembered that there are different types of responsibility too, and how these are analysed may…show more content…
The Führer’s power therefore made it possible for Hitler to still do anything he felt inclined to do, even if was controversial, like the passing of the Sterilisation Law, and this point shows that Hitler would always remain in ultimate control and that nothing would or could have happened in Nazi Germany that either he didn’t want to happen or that he had not authorised. Moreover we must comprehend Hitler’s own role in the growth of anti-Semitism (AS) in Germany from 1933-1941. During the first couple of years that Hitler was in control of Nazi Germany the levels of AS were very low. The only two real AS incidents were the SA violence after the 1933 elections and the failed Jewish shop boycott. The way in which Structuralists would view these incidents would be to highlight how little control Hitler had and how even in the early stages of Nazi Germany pressure to push forward AS was coming from below, in this case from the
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