Determining Origins of the Final Solution The Debate of Intentionalism Versus Functionalism

Patricia Ochonski Hist/Jst 497B

Table of Contents
I. Introduction ...........................................................................................................2 II. Mein Kampf .........................................................................................................6 III. Years of Persecution (1933-1938).....................................................................11 IV. Conclusion ........................................................................................................15 V. References ..........................................................................................................16

I. Introduction

The mass murder of six million Jewish people by the Nazi party during World War II, referred to as the Holocaust or the Shoah, has been a subject of study for many historians over the last several decades. Intensive historical research began to advance in West Germany following the international impact of the Eichmann trial in Israel, which revealed to the world the horrors of Nazi death camps. 1 The Holocaust was the product of the Final Solution a plan to exterminate European Jewry that was created in response to The Jewish Problem, a combination of long-standing European anti-Semitism, German nationalism, and biological racism. As stated in Ronald J. Bergers The Banality of Evil Reframes: Social Construction of the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, the Third Reich emphasized three themes in their claims against European Jewry: 1) Jews were blamed for an international financial conspiracy and were supposedly plotting to destroy Germany and rule the world, 2) Jews were a allegedly criminal class of people who destroyed societies through thievery and murder, and 3) Jews were regarded as biologically inferior people who threatened to infect the German population.2

The Final Solution was the result of highly developed, mechanistic planning. The Wannsee Conference in January 1942, which was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Main Security Office, was called together to properly coordinate the Final Solution between various departments within the Third Reich, such as the Reich Ministry for the Occupied
1

Ian Kernshaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Great Britain (1993): 81. 2 Ronald J. Berger, The Banality of Evil Reframes: Social Construction of the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, in The Sociological Quarterly (1993): 602. 3

Territories, the Security Police and SD. Coordination between all aspects of the Third Reich was essential for the Final Solution to be as systematic and efficient as possible.

Since the end of the war, the discovery of many official Nazi party documents has revealed to historians the logistics of the Holocaust initial attempts at extermination, the process of deportation, and the functions of concentration and death camps. There is a plethora of knowledge about how the Holocaust took place, but there was one question that remained unanswered where did the idea for the Holocaust originate?

Originally, it was accepted among historians that the Nazi party, specifically Hitler, planned the Holocaust from the beginning it was the product of Hitlers hatred of Jews and his goals of exterminating them from the European continent. However, in 1981, British Historian Timothy Mason published an essay, Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy About the Interpretation of National Socialism. In his essay, Mason argued an alternative reason behind the implementation of the Final Solution, which became known as the controversy of Intentionalism versus Functionalism.3 Intentionalism is the position that argues the original theory behind the origin of the Holocaust that it was the result of long-term deliberate planning by Hitler and the Nazi party. Many intentionalists theorize that the decision for the Holocaust was made long before the Nazi party even came into power, and many also agree that the Holocaust is unique in comparison to other forms of genocide due to its extreme nature.3 Functionalists, on the other hand, argue that the Holocaust was not the result of long-term planning, and that the decision was reached during the war due to the failure to eliminate Jews through methods such as forced

Timothy Mason, Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class, Cambridge (1995): 212-230. 4

immigration and harsh racial policies, as well as anti-sematic advancements made by party officials (known as the Bottom-Up Theory). Today, Intentionalism is often called the straight road to Auschwitz, while functionalism has been called the twisted road to Auschwitz because of the many factors that led up to the implementation of the Final Solution.4

Previous to the publication of Masons essay, the intentionalist theory had an immediate and obvious appeal, and Mason developed the alternative theory of Functionalism to counteract the flaws found in Intentionalism. He argued that because the theory only concentrated on Hitlers intentions, that social, economic, and political factors that may have played a major role in the development of the Holocaust were ignored. Additionally, Mason pointed out the problem of acquiring valid sources; each individual reader of a primary source can interpret it differently, and can even find evidence for each theory in the same document.5 Finally, the tip of the iceberg of this argument is the lack of evidence of an oral or written order for the Final Solution given by Hitler.6

In order to come to a decision about which theory most accurately fits the origins of the Holocaust, the actions of the Nazi party against Jews must be thoroughly analyzed for traces of evidence of each theory, and a conclusion made about which is the most plausible. The first, and possibly the most important, piece of evidence is Mein Kampf (English: My Struggle), Hitlers self-written autobiography. Additionally, various decrees and actions taken against Jews by the

Steven Welch, A Survey of the Interpretive Paradigms in Holocaust Studies and a Comment on the Dimensions of the Holocaust, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (2001): 1-11. 5 Kernshaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, 83-87. 6 Mary Fulbrook, A History of Germany 1918-2008: The Divided Nation, New Jersey (2011): 155-162 5

Nazi party and the persecution of non-Jews in 1933-1939, called The Years of Persecution can be used to interpret the intentions of the Nazi party.7

II. Mein Kampf

The failed attempt by Hitler and the Nazi Party to overthrow the Weimar Government in 1923, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, resulted in Hitlers short imprisonment during which he wrote his autobiography, Mein Kampf, German for My Struggle. The book was published in 1925 and 1926 in two separate volumes in which Hitler explains his goals for Germany, the threat of communism, and, most importantly, expresses his thoughts about European Jewry. 8 This document is a crucial form of evidence in the functionalist versus intentionalist debate because it is a source directly from Hitler himself that was written both before the rise of the Nazi Party and the start of World War II.

In the chapter titled Of Nation and Race, Hitler begins by explaining the historical division of mankind into three groups: founders of culture, bearers of culture, and the destroyers of culture. The Aryan race, an elite European race that encompasses the German people, he states, is the only group of people that are considered the founders of culture, and the breeding of Aryans with other lower class people is contrary to the will of nature. He gives examples of how in nature, species only breed with others of their own species and never venture out of their own kind: the field mouse with the field mouse ... the wolf with the she-wolf.... Hitler also mentions
7

Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume I The Years of Persecution, 19331939, New York (1997). 8 Roderick Stackelberg and Sally A. Winkle The Nazi German Sourcebook, New York (2002): 85, 92. 6

Charles Darwin, the man who proposed the theory of evolution and the well-known phrase, survival of the fittest and uses this scientific knowledge to support his argument that one race must be superior over the other, and that in order for one to thrive the other must be destroyed.

This introduction to the importance of the separation between the Aryan race and lesser races serves as a pretext to Hitlers explanation of the role of the Jewish people, claiming that they are not a religion, but a sub-human race. Hitler states that the Jewish people are the mightiest counterpart of the Aryan race, and his Anti-Semitic tone throughout the rest of the chapter is blatantly obvious. The Jew is described as destroyers of culture for hundreds of years, they had travelled from country to country, stealing intelligence and culture from the countries that they occupy; at one point they are even accused of being parasites in the body of other nations.9

From there, Hitler delves into examples of how the Jewish people have directly affected the German nation. He claims they are a Marxist communist weapon, and plan to take over the world, as supposedly outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Additionally, he charges the Jewish people with the fault of causing Germany to be defeated in 1918 (World War I) and how this is only miniscule compared to what would happen if the Jews were allowed to thrive in Germany and the rest of Europe. The only solution that would allow for the survival of the Aryan race would be the removal of Jews.9

This chapter in particular has been a piece of interest for both intentionalists and functionalists because of its strong anti-Sematic tone and suggestions at what Hitler has in plan for the
9

Adolf Hitler and Ralph Manheim, Mein Kampf: Chapter 6 -- Of Nation and Race, Boston (1943). 7

European Jewish population. Intentionalists point to Hitlers description of how Darwins theory of evolution applies to the Aryan and Jewish people as evidence for his belief that the Jewish race needed to be destroyed in order for the Aryan race to survive. Additionally intentionalists believe that, Hitlers mention of a Lebensraum, or living space for the Aryan race can only be achieved by the elimination of Jews from the European continent.10 Intentionalists interpret the words destruction and elimination when pertaining to the Jewish people to mean death and mass murder The Final Solution.

Lucy Dawidowicz was a well-known intentionalist that advocated the straight path to Auschwitz idea and is a supporter of the supposed evidence for the Final Solution presented in Mein Kampf. She makes her intentionalist viewpoints very clear by immediately mentioning the origins of the Final Solution in the very beginning of her publications. In her book, The War Against the Jews, she claims Hitlers ideas about the Jews were at the center of his mental world ... and they furnished the authority for the murder of the Jews in Europe during World War II. Evidence to support this statement can be clearly seen in the heavy anti-Sematic tone and clear hatred of European Jewry expressed in Of Nation and Race. In the first chapter of this book, there is a quotation taken from a passage in Mein Kampf that mentions German soldiers dying from exposure to poisonous gas and how if Hebrew corruptors of the people had met a similar fate before the war, the sacrifice of millions [of soldiers] at the front would not h ave been in vain. 11 This passage can be interpreted to foreshadow the fate that European Jews met in the gas chambers during the Holocaust, and is undoubtedly a piece of evidence that is pointed to by many intentionalists to prove that Hitler had the idea of mass murder of European Jewry on his
10 11

Hitler and Manheim, Mein Kampf, Chapter 6. Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945, Canada (1993): 10-18 8

mind even before rising to power; it is the only mention in Of Nation and Race of killing Jewish people.

In another one of her books, A Holocaust Reader, the introduction about the Final Solution and its origins states all his life [Hitler] was obsessed by the thought of a holy war against the Jews, whom he saw as the Host of the Devil and as the Children of Darkness and that Hitler never swerved from his single-minded dedication to the goal of their destruction. Hitlers views toward Jews, she concluded, originated from his experience in the Pasewalk hospital in 1918, and by the time he wrote the second volume of Mein Kampf, his intentions of extermination were a clear blueprint for the Final Solution. To support this claim, Dawidowicz provides passages from Mein Kampf, as well as several documents and speeches produced by Hitler prior to 1933 that state his intentions to remove Jews from the European continent.12

When reading both The War Against the Jews and A Holocaust Reader, a reader can easily understand how the evidence presented to him or her proves that Hitler indented to carry out the Final Solution from the beginning. This interpretation of the texts provided by Dawidowicz is not wrong, but it must be kept in mind that these are only interpretations Dawidowiczs own opinion of what the provided texts really mean. Looking at the aforementioned passages from a functionalist perspective can result in a very different interpretation. For example, the removal of Jews from the European continent is mentioned several times in Of Nation and Race. Dawidowicz interprets this to mean mass murder as a means of removal, while on the other hand a functionalist may interpret this to mean forced emigration, a policy used by the Nazi party in

12

Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, New Jersey (1976): 25-27. 9

the early 1930s. Additionally, many of Dawidowiczs interpretations result in statements about what is going on in Hitlers mind. Assumptions about what a person is thinking, such as those aforementioned, do not seem to be appropriate because what is expressed in a piece of writing or in a speech does not necessarily reflect what a person is thinking.

Dawidowicz does make a point of explaining that anti-Semitism was not something proposed by Hitler in Mein Kampf, but an accepted racist belief that was widespread across the whole European continent, not only Germany. Without this long-standing anti-Semitism, the Holocaust would not have been possible, something that well-known functionalist Ian Kershaw also agrees on. It is agreed among intentionalists and functionalists that the Holocaust would not have occurred if it were not for Hitler, but the debate still remains of how the decision to implement the Final Solution still remains.13,14

Kershaw provides a critique of Dawidowiczs work, in addition to the works of other intentionalists, in his book, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. He argues that Dawidowiczs analysis of Mein Kampf and other documents is centered too much on the driving force of Hitler as a leader and not so much on other factors that played a role in the Holocaust. He states that the intentionalist point of view takes Auschwitz as a starting-point and looks backwards to the violent expression of Hitlers early speeches and writing, pointing out that a false conclusion is made by some intentionalists because every remark made by Hitler

13 14

Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 Kernshaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, 70-87.

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about the elimination of Jewish people is immediately considered to foreshadow their mass murder during the Final Solution.14

Overall, Mein Kampf shows no mercy in expressing Hitlers hatred of the Jewish people. There are many statements made about the removal of Jewish people from the European content in order to promote the establishment of the Aryan race. There is only one explicit statement, the passage in which Hitler suggests that Jews should have met the same death by poisonous gas as German soldiers did in World War I, which suggests the extermination of Jews and the Final Solution. Based on Mein Kampf alone, the functionalist theory seems more suitable. Nowhere in the text does Hitler state a plan to exterminate European Jewry, and forced emigration is suggested as a more plausible means of removal rather than mass murder. The claims made by historian and intentionalist Lucy Dawidowicz are reasonable, however they are based upon interpretations of Hitlers character, which are obviously different based on the individual interpreter. Additionally, the criticism made by functionalist Ian Kershaw that intentionalists find proof for early planning of the Final Solution because they are intentionally searching for it. If one was to read Mein Kampf without any knowledge of the Holocaust, it would not be assumed that a master plan for extermination European Jewry was being proposed readers would only understand Hitlers hatred of the Jewish people and their possible removal from the continent.

III. Years of Persecution (1933-1939)

The pre-war time period of 1933 to 1939 is known as the Years of Persecution because of the numerous laws and actions taken again Jews and other non-Aryans to separate these people from

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German society. As aforementioned, this goal of separation was preached by Hitler in Mein Kampf -- in order for the German people, or Volksgemeinschaft, to prosper, Jews must be eliminated. The year 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, and soon after the immediate enforcement of many anti-Jewish policies that progressively pushed Jews out of German society and stripped them of their legal and social rights. Initially, it was the goal of the Nazi Party to force Jews to emigrate from Germany by intimidating them with these policies, which follows the functionalist viewpoint. Instead of being killed immediately after the Nazi party came to power, Jews were offered an opportunity to emigrate from Germany. This goes against the intentionalist viewpoint because, if Hitler was planning to exterminate all Jews, why did he allow them to safely move out of Germany, out of the grasps of the Nazi regime? From a functionalist standpoint, these laws and policies can only be seen as a means of trying to eliminate Jews from Germany and the rest of the European continent through methods of forced emigration. In order to more fully understand these racial policies and there role in the implementation in the Final Solution, two events will be evaluated: the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht. 15

The Nuremberg laws were introduced in 1935 and can be viewed as the first major step toward the separation of Jews and other non-Aryans from the Aryan race. The laws consisted of two pieces of legislation: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. The Reich Citizenship Law stated that only Aryans could be citizens of the Reich, thereby stripping Jewish people and other non-Aryans of their political rights, while the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prevented Jewish families from
15

Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume I The Years of Persecution, 19331939, New York (1997) 120-145. 12

having German maids in their household under the age of 45, prohibited marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans as well as prohibited sexual relations between Jews and Germans., Notably, these laws defined who was a Jew and who was not based not on whether a person practiced the religion, but based on a persons grandparents. 16 Perhaps the most well known representation of the Nuremberg Laws was the publication of a poster than explained who was and was not a Jew. Both the words Jude, meaning Jew, and Michling, which was a term used to define people of mixed Jewish/Aryan descent, appeared on the poster.17

Based on the evidence provided by the Nuremberg Laws, the functionalist argument seems to be more plausible. The only intentionalist argument that could be proposed based on the Nuremberg Laws is that by separating Jews from German society, the Nazi government was preparing them for being forced into ghettos, followed by deportation and killing. However, interpreting the Nuremberg Laws from a functionalist perspective leads to more realistic conclusions they were created with the goal of promoting the emigration of Jews from Germany; as stated by Hitler when the Nuremberg Laws were first presented to the German people, they were meant to create a basis on which a tolerable relationship becomes possible between the German and Jewish people.18

Kristallnacht was another major even in the persecution of Jews between 1933 and 1938, occurring on November 9 and 10, 1938. It was a violent pogrom throughout Germany that was controlled by the SD in response to the murder of a prominent German diplomat by a Jewish

16 17

Holocaust Memorial Museum, Nuremberg Race Laws. Yad Vashem, Nuremberg Laws. 18 Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume I The Years of Persecution. 13

man in Paris just a few days prior. Directions were given by Reinhard Heydrich to both the Gestapo and SD to destroy Jewish businesses and apartments, seize and transfer synagogue archives to the SD, all while not taking any measures that would endanger German life or property. According to a report published by Heydrich on November 11, a total of thirty-six Jews had been killed during the pogrom.19

As mentioned in Saul Friendlanders book, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, there is a question as to whether Kristallnacht was a step that aimed to hasten the emigration of Jews from the Reich or possibly and initiative furthering some other, more encompassing policy?. Friedlander takes a functionalist approach to his writing, and it is of no surprise that he supports the functionalist answer to this question that when plans for Kristallnacht were being made, there were not any mentions of anything systematic such as the mass killing of Jewish people. Going against any possible intentionalist interpretations, he argues that the killing that occurred during Kristallnacht stemmed from pre-existing hatred by the perpetrators that was let loose during the excitement of the pogrom.20

When analyzing both the Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht, it is clear that the functionalist viewpoint is much more reasonably applied than the intentionalist one. Both events were used as tactics to frighten Jewish people and to strip them of their German citizenship by either forcing them to emigrate, or taking away all political rights to the point where they were not considered German citizens at all. Neither example shows evidence of plans or suggestions of the Final Solution.
19 20

Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, New Jersey (1976): 25-27 Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume I The Years of Persecution. 14

IV. Conclusion

Originally, it was believed that there was only one straight path from Hitler to the Final Solution, however the publishing of Timothy Masons essay, Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy About the Interpretation of National Socialism, presented another route. The debate became known as intentionalism versus functionalism, and examples of each viewpoint can be found in many of the same sources. After analyzing Mein Kampf, as well as The Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht, there is more evidence supporting the functionalist argument. However, there is a flaw when it comes to both theories interpretation of sources. Interpretation is done on an individual basis, and the same document can mean two different this to two separate readers. It is up to the reader to make a further effort to investigate the source for his or herself and decide what the document really means.

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V. References
1. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, New Jersey (1976). 2. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews: 1933-194, Canada (1993). 3. Friedlander, Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume I The Years of Persecution, 19331939, New York (1997). 4. Fulbrook, Mary, A History of Germany 1918-2008: The Divided Nation, New Jersey (2011): 5. Hitler and Manheim, Mein Kampf: Chapter 6 -- Of Nation and Race, Boston (1943). 6. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website (www.ushmm.orh) 7. Kernshaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, Great Britain (1993) 8. Mason, Timothy, Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class, Cambridge (1995). 9. Stackelberg, Roderick and Winkle, Sally A., The Nazi German Sourcebook, New York (2002). 10. Steven Welch, A Survey of the Interpretive Paradigms in Holocaust Studies and a Comment on the Dimensions of the Holocaust, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (2001): 1-11. 11. Yad Vashem Website (www.yadvashem.org).

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