Imponderables of the Holocaust

In: World politics: a quarterly journal of international relations, Volume 34, Issue 1, p. 90-113

Abstract

Recent literature, particularly in Germany and the Netherlands, has provided insights into some of the most perplexing imponderables of the Nazi annihilation of the Jews. These are, first, the development of consensus among the various German elites for the purposes of the Final Solution; second, an incremental kind of German decision making which led to the efficiently implemented mass annihilation of the Jews; and third, the passive mood toward the disasters befalling the Jews on the part of the entire universe of bystanders. (In the case of the Netherlands, this resulted, in spite of an unusually low degree of anti-Semitism, in an unusually high degree of Jewish victimization—in contrast to the so-called Danish reversal.) Fourth, because of the unimaginable predicament experienced by the victims and their "governments," the Jewish Councils (such as the AmsterdamJoodsche Raad), they never had a chance to develop workable responses to such a catastrophe.