War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Chapter 1 focuses on the social conditions that predated the Nazi Party’s rise to power. Bergen notes that Nazi ideology is not a purely German phenomenon, nor did Nazis introduce bigotry to Germany. Rather, they used engrained preexisting prejudices in their quest to secure Lebensraum (“living space”) for ethnic Germans. Bergen refers to Lebensraum as “the Nazi ideology of race and space—‘racial purification’ and territorial expansion” (2).

While the Nazis mainly targeted Jews throughout the 1930s and ’40s, they also persecuted Roma, Slavs, queer people, Black and mixed-race people, socialists, communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, and people with disabilities. Each of these groups faced systemic oppression in prewar Germany.

Bergen’s examples of medieval and early modern antisemitism are closely linked to Christian fervor. Jews were scapegoated for many social ills and suffered mass violence, segregation, and expulsions as a result. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, secularism improved European Jews’ social standing somewhat. In the decades before World War II, European Jews were largely assimilated; they participated in mainstream society and came from all walks of life. However, systemic antisemitism still existed.

Handicapped people were in a precarious position prior to World War II. Eugenics programs were popular in Europe and the United States. These programs attempted to improve society by selectively breeding out “inferior” traits. Attitudes around eugenics were already radical prior to Hitler’s reign.

Like the Jews, Roma people faced oppression in Europe dating back to the medieval period. Nineteenth- and 20th-century eugenicists theorized that the Roma were genetically predisposed to crime and should therefore be barred from reproducing. Anti-Roma policies in Germany and across Europe were strict and diligently enforced.

In the late 1800s, Germany held a protectorate over modern-day Namibia, home to the Herero and Nama tribes. The Herero and Nama rebelled against their colonizers in 1907. The Germans responded by killing 75% to 80% of all Hereros and nearly half of all Nama.

Germany was home to a small number of mixed-race individuals, particularly the children of white German women and African soldiers occupying the Rhineland during World War I. These children were derisively called “Rhineland bastards” and were held up as proof of a conspiracy to weaken Germany by sullying German bloodlines.

Bergen states that the origin of the Nazis’ anti-Slavic attitudes “are hard to identify” (19). She theorizes that these prejudices may have been an outcropping of post-World War I resentment, as many Slavic states were created in the wake of the war (i.e., Poland and Czechoslovakia). She suggests these prejudices may also have stemmed from fears of a Russian-born communist conspiracy.

Being gay outlawed in Germany until the 1960s. However, post-World War I Berlin was home to a flourishing gay community. Some Germans—such as sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld—argued that same-sex attraction was a legitimate and healthy part of the social order. Others feared queerness and regarded it as deviant.

Jehovah’s Witnesses and Freemasons were among the Nazis’ targeted groups. Prior to Hitler’s regime, many Germans regarded Jehovah’s Witnesses with suspicion and irritation.

The sociocultural fallout of World War I in Germany was complex. Bergen refutes the notion that “the desperate Germans turned to Hitler to rescue them and turned on the Jews as a scapegoat for their suffering” (26). She asserts that, contrary to popular belief, the terms of the postwar Treaty of Versailles were lenient. However, Germany’s loss of the war resulted in a “climate of scapegoating [… and] the stab-in-the-back myth” (27) that blamed Jews for Germany’s capitulation. The horrors of war also sparked a “cult of violence” (28) that cheapened life to many Europeans.