I. Thesis
The mere mention of the Holocaust creates a very visual image of what the epitome of evil looks like. What has long been assumed to be a result of Hitler’s long-term plan to rid the world of the Jews has in fact turned into a debate as to who was truly behind the Holocaust. Intentionalists believe the Holocaust was the result of a master plan. Functionalists believe even though Hitler was anti-Semitic it was not his original intention. The key question, and the one that has produced extensive debate among Holocaust historians, is whether the Final Solution was a master plan or an eventual and unintended consequence of some other Nazi plan gone away. With the evidence going both ways it is reasonable to question the fact, but the facts favor Hitler knowing exactly what he was going to do. Hitler implemented the Nazi’s anti-Semitic policy with the intention of radical progression that would end with the Holocaust and the total extinction of the Jews.
II. The Holocaust was an act of such breathtakingly wanton evil of the 20th Century
a. Two important points should be kept in mind:
“(1) the Final Solution, far from being envisioned in detail before 1941, evolved over time, and
(2) Hitler’s authority, as well as Nazi ideology, was a necessary condition for the mass murder that eventually took place.”
b. Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels sought to “situate the architectural and political precedent for Nazi concentration camps within British imperial rule.”
(1) This leaves us with two models – one in which the Nazi hierarchy had conceived an idea based on British management of the South African war.
(2) Another which indicates that the Nazis evolved a concept to serve a truly monstrous purpose.
c. Browning notes that during the 1990s most observers came to believe that 1941 was the pivotal year, and that the Nazi regime’s unsuccessful attempts at race-engineering in Poland led to the Final Solution.
(1) Demographic engineering
(2) population resettlement in Poland
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"The Holocaust: Intentionalism vs. Functionalism".
III. Hitler’s personal influence and authority was involved with the development, guiding, and enforcing of termination of the Jews.
a. Personal power and racial agenda ““(were) a necessary condition for the mass murder that eventually took place.”
b. There exists the distinct possibility that Hitler himself was responsible for establishing and enforcing the enactment of some nascent program that readily evolved into the Final Solution.
c. Functionalists argue that Hitler was anti-Semitic, but that he did not have a masterplan for genocide.
(1) Hitler certainly considered himself to be a multi-talented ubermensch, a social engineer, artist, architect, military strategist and visionary.
(2) His megalomania, combined with absolute power, could easily have provided the impetus for a systemic solution to the Jewish “problem,” even if that solution took some time to evolve.
IV. The horrors perpetrated by the Nazis were neither the result of random chance nor the preparation of some detailed master plan.
a. Steven Welch contends that “they were the result of converging factors, of the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and chance.”
b. The Nazis clearly found themselves needing to devise some invention to expedite the clearing away of an entire population
c. It is argued that the Holocaust resulted from below in the ranks of the German bureaucracy with little or no involvement on the part of Hitler.
(1) The extermination camps ran like clock-work
(2) Premeditated policy in place
V. Conclusion
Hitler implemented the Nazi’s anti-Semitic policy with the intention of radical progression that would end with the Holocaust and the total extinction of the Jews. There are very valid arguments from both the functionalist and the intentionalist; however with the events that transcribed and the detail involved the intentionalists have a much stronger argument. In war, necessity is often the mother of invention, and the Nazis clearly found themselves needing to devise some invention to expedite the clearing away of an entire population. Hitler’s megalomania, combined with absolute power, could easily have provided the impetus for a systemic solution to the Jewish “problem,” even if that solution took some time to evolve. Nevertheless, it requires a substantial suspension of disbelief to argue that the extermination camps, which operated like clock-work, were simply thrown up ad hoc, without some premeditated policy in place. Substantiating the argument that Hitler’s master plan was intended to end with the Holocaust.
