Of all peoples, why the Germans? An answer to the question the Israeli President then, Shimon Peres, asked in his speech to the Bundestag on International Holocaust Day, 27 January 2010

On International Holocaust Day, 27 January 2010, President Shimon Peres, in a historical speech at Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, raised a question that has troubled the minds of many: "We cannot dismiss the Nazi hostility as just 'anti-Semitism.' That is a banal definition that does not explain the Nazi regime's murderous, bestial enthusiasm, its obsessive determination to exterminate Jews." Furthermore, President Peres asked, "What caused the Nazis to continue and persevere in this to the end, even when their end was already visible on the horizon"?, and also, "What motivated the Nazis to allocate so many resources to their industry of death?." Peres noted that "The Holocaust raises questions that reach into the depths of the human soul. How far can the evil in man reach? How far can a people's paralysis reach? A people that knew culture and respected philosophy?."

President Peres in his speech makes it clear that intensive Holocaust studies in the sixty-six years since the end of World War II have not succeeded in finding a satisfactory answer to the "troubling question" of Why the Germans of all peoples?

The book The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust, published a bit over a year ago (at about the same time that President Peres gave his speech) by Sussex Academic Publishing House, offers a number of innovative answers to these questions:

• The Holocaust's roots are to be found in issues found in the sphere of German nationalism.
• When the need for national cohesion reached its climax, the Nazi theory of race gave solace to the Germans.
• The theory of race could not be accepted as valid by the Germans, in light of the obvious success of German Jews. This refuted the theory and the Jews therefore had to be removed.
• At first the Germans spoke of expelling the Jews from the territories under their control to Madagascar or "the east." The Germans believed that the war that was being waged in Europe and North Africa would be over in a few months, Britain would be paralyzed, and they would be able to implement their "Final Solution," the total expulsion of the Jews.
• This was the original agenda of the Wannsee Conference, planned for December 1941.
• However, in light of the complications in the war at the beginning of December 1941 the Wannsee Conference was postponed to the end of January 1942; by then the agenda had been changed,    from total expulsion to total annihilation.
• The German leadership wanted to establish a "thousand-year Reich" based on the following two objectives:

• (a) The "ideological objective" of cleansing the Aryan German race of the "Jewish microbes." The racial purity of Germans was perceived as a precondition for achievement, and therefore a "final solution" was needed;

•  (b) The "physical objective" of expanding the German "Lebensraum" by clearing and annexing territory to Germany and "gathering in" the Germans who had left their homeland in the course of history; therefore a war was necessary.

• For Hitler, the success of the "Final Solution" and achieving the "ideological objective" were at least as important, if not more so, than success in expanding the Reich's physical area, since the latter could also be achieved later in the coming millennium, if the Germans in Hitler's time were to lose the war.
• This would appear to have been the reason why Hitler extended the war's duration. He wanted to achieve his "ideological objective" even after he realized, in December 1941, that the Germans would actually be defeated in the war. He wanted to at least realize his goal of cleansing the race of "microbes," for the German posterity of the coming millennium.
• That is why, to use President Peres' words, the Germans invested so many resources in their "industry of death" "even when their end was already visible on the horizon."

The book The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust is based on post-doctoral research at the Hebrew University during 2007-2008 under the guidance of Prof. Gabriel Shefer and Prof. Mario Schneider. It constitutes a "Copernican" revolution in the study of the Holocaust, which, for the first time, is not treated here as an extreme event in Jewish history ("studying the victim"), but as an integral part of German history, regarding absence of nationality ("studying the criminal"). It shows that President Peres' intuitions did not deceive him: The Germans perceived the annihilation of the Jews as an "unavoidable necessity" of "self-defense," and implemented in a calculated and "rational" manner, not as part of an outbreak of extreme anti-Semitic hatred. On the other hand, President Peres was completely justified in his resounding accusation: "Did any Jewish force threaten to stop the 'thousand-year Reich'? Could a persecuted nation, under the tread of its oppressor's boots, stop the murderous Nazi war machine? How many divisions did the Jewish communities in Europe possess? How many tanks, how many warplanes, how many rifles?." 

Questions and comments can be added below.

What did Eichmann mean when he said in 1952, "I was an idealist"?

Exactly four weeks ago the magazine Der Spiegel wrote that Adolph Eichmann was recorded at his hide-out in Argentina in 1952 as saying: "I would not have accepted orders just so. If I had, I would have been a fool. Rather, I was part of the thinking process. I was an idealist". This very frank statement, which contradicts the line which the defense took in the Eichmann trial in 1961, is not only something new, but can also create confusion, nor is it consistent with accepted theories in Holocaust research, which are based on the assumption that the annihilation of the Jews was the distorted climax of extreme anti-Semitism. Under this assumption it is impossible to understand how burning hatred can be associated with "ideals" (especially as expressed in the only expression of remorse uttered by Eichmann in the 1952 recording, namely that he had "made the mistake of not having murdered all the Jews").

The book The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust, which was published by the Sussex Academic Publishing House more than a year before the publication in Der Spiegel, provides an accurate description of the ideological motivation behind the German killing machine, explains its compelling motives whose roots go back over centuries of German history, and in fact predicts the possibility of Nazi leaders expressing themselves in the way in which Eichmann did in the tape recording that remained hidden in the archive in Koblenz, Germany for almost sixty years.

The book is part of a study of six national collectives in Europe and constitutes a "Copernican" revolution in the study of the Holocaust, which is here for the first time treated not as an extreme event in Jewish history ("studying the victim"), but as an integral part of the Germans' history of absent nationality ("studying the criminal"), in light of which it also analyzes the Germans' behavior after the Holocaust and makes predictions concerning Germany's role in the European Union.

The book proposes answers to questions that Holocaust research has so far failed to answer:

* What did Eichmann mean when he said "I was an idealist"
   in 1952?

* Why was it the Germans of all people, the possessors of the highest
   culture in Europe at the time, who carried out the Holocaust?

* Did the Germans in the past commit deeds that are reminiscent of the way
   they acted in the Holocaust?

* Did the Germans as a collective do any soul-searching after the Holocaust
   and learn any lessons?

* Is there "another Germany" today?

* Can another Holocaust occur?

* How can another Holocaust in human history be prevented?

* Are there collectives that may commit another Holocaust? And who are
   those endangered by it, whether Jews or others?

… A year ago The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust was published. This book provides complete answers to these questions, based on the facts of German history in the centuries preceding the Holocaust. It attempts to explain the behavior of the Germans today, and also discusses the likely way in which Germany will become integrated into the European Union in future. The answers which this book provides have been reinforced from an unexpected direction – new evidence that has come to light lately, and that cannot be explained in terms of previous theories about the Holocaust.

The book is part of a study of six national collectives in Europe (the Germans, French, Italians, Spaniards, Dutch and British), and constitutes a "Copernican" revolution in the study of the Holocaust, which is here for the first time treated not as an extreme event in Jewish history ("studying the victim"), but as an integral part of the history of the Germans ("studying the criminal"), in light of which it also analyzes the Germans' behavior after the Holocaust and makes predictions concerning Germany's role in the European Union.

Israel's President, Mr. Shimon Peres, in his speech to the German Bundestag raises some difficult questions, including

How a nation can conceive of itself a "super race" while treating others worthless?

Why did the Nazis perceive the Jews as posing such a great and immediate threat?

What motivated the Nazis to allocate so many resources to their industry of murder?

Why did the Nazis continue with the Holocaust to the bitter end, even when they already realized that they would be defeated?

Was there any Jewish force in existence that could stand in the way of the "Thousand-year Reich"? How many divisions did the Jewish communities in Europe possess? How many tanks, how many warplanes, how many rifles?

The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust tries to answer these and other questions..[1] [2]

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[1] The book can be ordered directly from the current publisher: Priests Publishing.

[2] President Peres has of course no connection whatsoever to the book or this blog, and is not responsible for anything in them.