The Explanations of the Nazi holocaust by Arendt

Introduction

For the Jews with a history that is marked by prosecution and tragedy, the Holocaust stands for their greatest tragedy, in which a third of Jews were exterminated together with one of the richest and most unique cultures in the world. For many historians, the holocaust remains one of the biggest historical puzzles. Germany, a state that was advanced and which is a cradle of many scientific intellectuals and a beacon of literary and musical brilliance, had become the source of unthinkable atrocities (Epstein, 2019). In this paper, the explanations which are given by Arendt (1951) and Bauman (1989) about the Holocaust will be critically evaluated.

Hanna Arendt (1951) Explanation of the Holocaust

To better understand the atrocities which occurred in the holocaust, I believe it is prudent first to understand the underlying motivations of the individuals who perpetrated or supported, facilitated, and committed the crimes. To do so, I will analyse the concept of the Origin of Totalitarianism as provided by Arendt (1951) in a bid to understand the Holocaust.

In her concept of The Origin of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that the main objective of totalitarianism was to obtain total domination, including the eradication of human individuality, spontaneity, morality, legality, and plurality. According to Arendt (1951), totalitarians experimented and thrived on total domination. This totalitarianism was realised in extreme levels in concentration camps that served as huge “laboratories” for the Nazi regime. This allowed them to inflict terror on prisoners held in the concentration camps. As a result, the Nazis laid open the essence of its existence or purpose, which was changing the nature of humans by altering a person into an entirely conditioned being (Arendt, 1951).

Arendt (1951) has demonstrated her understanding of the unprecedented effort the Nazi totalitarian rule put into dehumanizing Jews. She strove to illustrate the logic behind this concept, the totalitarian machine, and in the process, demonstrated to us the nature of human beings. In the process of evaluating the actions involved in totalitarianism and what is killed by dehumanisation, she defined what human is. While defining what human is, she provided us with three levels of answers which include individuality, morality, and legal rights as elements that make a human. The total domination theory of Arendt (1951) is one which is deeply rooted, among many things, in her empirical study and human experiences as portrayed by survivors’ testimonies. In her empirical research, she describes the mentioned levels as key in establishing totalitarianism or total domination. According to her, the first step, followed by the Nazi regime during the holocaust to establish complete domination was to destroy or eliminate the juridical individual. The second step was killing the moral individual in a human being and the last step was annihilating a person’s individuality. My critical analysis is that though the first process is evident and possible, even her research shows that some of the survivors were able to retain their individuality and morality; hence, the second and third processes needed further illumination.

Arendt's (1951) explanation on the Origins of Totalitarianism illustrates that, even within masses of good people, there is a precondition for attaining radical evil such as the totalitarianism seen through the holocaust. She says that dynamic movement and terror, for its sake, intends to eliminate people’s free movement and substitute it with the impersonal movement of different forces of nature. This is well illustrated through the three steps discussed by Arendt (1951) in achieving totalitarian destruction or extermination of Jews.

The first step of destroying or damaging the juridical individual or person was performed by establishing arbitrariness of some sort of punishment instead of letting them feel a sense of justice in their being. Secondly, the moral person was destroyed by, for instance, making the people complicit in the betrayal or punishment of other people (Arendt, 1951). The last step was crushing or damaging individuality in a people. Arendt (1951) says that destroying the individuality of a human being was the most challenging or difficult part. She says that totalitarianism even destroys “the DESERT of tyranny.” She says that even a desert leaves some space for men who are deracinated to move, however, in totalitarianism, people were pressed together leaving no space for a person to move, except for their capacity for impersonal movement, only allowing the natural scientific or biological processes to take place.

Bauman (1989) Explanation of the Holocaust

This sociologist explored or researched about what or who was responsible for the atrocities against the Jews murdered brutally during the holocaust. He mainly explored this subject through this perspective and came to the conclusion that this occurrence was not a fluke within history but was the result of modern types of social organisations or arrangements which must be learned, understood, and resisted both collectively and individually. According to Bauman (1989), the main modern or contemporary structure which supported the construction of the Nazi’s evil style can be manifested again in different contexts and forms, a modern structure which is non-emotional technocratic, industrial, professional and a routinized bureaucracy where responsibility is not only dispersed but also subjected to continuous buck-passing.

Bauman (1989) highlighted the statement of a German Commander after World War II on trial. This commander said that he did not think he was in a position to Judge Hitler’s actions or measures as either immoral or moral as he surrendered his moral conscience to the fact that he was only a soldier, a cog within a low level/position of a big machine. According to Bauman (1989), this type of machine system makes some sense or is rational in that it is only set in motion by a value which assumes the character, within a hierarchy of several values, being the main value that subsumes other values including personal or individual rights. The chief value becomes a utopian that aspires to a moral, efficient, and beautiful world. However, Bauman (1989) says that a rational machine or utopian design which is tasked with enacting it is not enough for bringing about or causing great evil.

According to Bauman (1989), the third factor that led to the holocaust is political paralysis by the public, which established non-interference with the killing machine. Bauman (1989) identifies two factors in assuring people’s paralysis and docility. The first key is moral separation, which was achieved through the physical and spiritual distance between the targets to be eliminated by the bureaucratic machine and the individual. The second factor was establishing the politics of fluidity or insecurity. On moral separation, Bauman (1989) talks of responsibility as an essential building block of human moral behaviour. This individual says that the defusing of human responsibility, as well as the neutralization of moral urge that comes after, should necessarily involve substituting proximity with a spiritual or physical separation. Bauman (1989) says that social distance is the main alternative to proximity and that the moral character of proximity is human responsibility. Further, he says that the moral characteristics of social distance are the absence of a moral relationship.

According to Bauman (1989), responsibility can be silenced when there is no more proximity, or the proximity is eliminated, and resentment is put in its place, which makes fellow human beings to change. On insecurity politics, Bauman (1989) says that modern life began when a big part of individual freedom was exchanged or sold for endorsed collective security. Then, the social guarantees offered to people in place of their individual security was withdrawn or could no longer be trusted. This researcher says that this was a recipe for anguish and insecurity and a desperate search for the putative, genuine, and trustworthy promise of a world that is too complex to safely walk through.

According to Bauman (1989), living during the fluid times or modern times meant insecurity for many people and the state answerd to people’s insecurity by manipulating their anxiety. According to Bauman (1989), it is the modern bureaucratic machine that led to the great evils seen in the holocaust. Bauman (1989) says that a moral individual can make an effort to stop this evil through courageous activism and the willingness to expose oneself to grave risks. Bauman (1989) says that the main lesson that people learn from the atrocities is the effort and facility which many people put in situations which do not always produce positive outcomes or which renders good choices very expensive, or remove them from their moral duty. He says that most of the time, people adopt precepts of self-preservation and rational interests. Therefore, Bauman (1989) perceives the modern bureaucratic system or machine as one which has the ability to produce grossest evils, especially when combined with citizen docility and utopian designs, fostered through politics of fluidity or insecurity and moral separation from the victims. According to Bauman (1989), it is imperative that there should be courageous collective and individual resistance to such factors to stop another Holocaust from happening.

Conclusion

Arendt (1951) has shown how the holocaust happened through her concept of the Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt (1951) demonstrates that the Nazi regime’s primary objective of totalitarianism was to obtain total domination, including the eradication of human individuality, spontaneity, morality, legality, and plurality. On the other hand, Bauman (1989) talks of a modern bureaucratic human extermination machine that was facilitated by citizen’s docility, the politics of fluidity and insecurity, and utopian designs.

References

Arendt, H., 1951. The Origin of Totalitarianism, Part Two: Imperialism. San Di-ego: Harcourt Brace JovanovichArendtThe Origin of Totalitarianism, Part Two: Imperialism1958.

Bauman, Z., 1989. Holocaust and modernity. Cambridge: Polity.

Epstein, H., 2019. Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with sons and daughters of survivors. Plunkett Lake Press.

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