Overview about the responsibility for the Holocaust
Part of a series on
The Holocaust
Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944
Responsibility
Nazi Germany
People
Major perpetrators
Adolf Hitler
Heinrich Himmler
Joseph Goebbels
Heinrich Müller
Reinhard Heydrich
Adolf Eichmann
Odilo Globocnik
Theodor Eicke
Richard Glücks
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Rudolf Höss
Christian Wirth
Ion Antonescu
László Ferenczy
Organizations
Nazi Party
Gestapo
Schutzstaffel (SS)
Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)
Einsatzgruppen
Sturmabteilung (SA)
Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT)
Wehrmacht
Trawniki men
Collaborators during World War II
Nazi ideologues
Early policies
Racial policy
Nazi eugenics
Nuremberg Laws
Haavara Agreement
Madagascar Plan
Forced euthanasia
Victims
Jews
Romani people (Gypsies)
Poles
Soviet POWs
Slavs in Eastern Europe
Homosexuals
People with disabilities
Ghettos
Białystok
Budapest
Kaunas
Kraków
Łódź
Lublin
Lwów
Minsk
Riga
Warsaw
Vilnius
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
List of selected ghettos
Camps
Nazi extermination camps
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Bełżec
Chełmno
Jasenovac
Majdanek
Sajmište
Sobibor
Treblinka
Nazi concentration camps
Auschwitz I
Bergen-Belsen
Bogdanovka
Buchenwald
Dachau
Dora
Gonars (Italy)
Gross-Rosen
Herzogenbusch
Janowska
Kaiserwald
Mauthausen-Gusen
Neuengamme
Rab
Ravensbrück
Sachsenhausen
Salaspils
Stutthof
Transnistria (Romania)
Theresienstadt
Uckermark
Warsaw
Transit and collection camps
Belgium
Breendonk
Mechelen
France
Gurs
Drancy
Italy
Bolzano
Netherlands
Amersfoort
Westerbork
Slovakia
Sereď
Divisions
SS-Totenkopfverbände
Concentration Camps Inspectorate
Politische Abteilung
Sanitätswesen
Extermination methods
Gas van
Gas chamber
Extermination through labour
Einsatzgruppen
Human medical experimentation
Atrocities
Pogroms
Kristallnacht
Bucharest
Dorohoi
Iași
Izieu
Szczuczyn
Jedwabne
Plungė
Radziłów pogrom
Kaunas
Lviv (Lvov)
Marseille
Tykocin
Vel' d'Hiv
Wąsosz
Einsatzgruppen
Babi Yar
Bydgoszcz
Częstochowa
Kamianets-Podilskyi
Ninth Fort
Odessa
Piaśnica
Ponary
Rumbula
Erntefest
"Final Solution"
Wannsee Conference
Mogilev Conference
Operation "Reinhard"
Holocaust trains
Extermination camps
End of World War II
Wola massacre
Death marches
Resistance
Auschwitz Protocols
Vrba–Wetzler report
Czesław Mordowicz
Jerzy Tabeau
Rudolf Vrba
Alfréd Wetzler
Bricha
Jewish partisans
Sonderkommando photographs
Witold Pilecki
Resistance movement in Auschwitz
Związek Organizacji Wojskowej
Witold's Report
Ghetto uprisings
Warsaw
Białystok
Łachwa
Częstochowa
International response
Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations
Auschwitz bombing debate
MS St. Louis
Nuremberg trials
Denazification
Aftermath
Bricha
Displaced persons
Survivors
Central Committee of the Liberated Jews
Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany
Lists
Holocaust survivors
Deportations of French Jews to death camps
Survivors of Sobibor
Timeline of Treblinka extermination camp
Victims of Nazism
Rescuers of Jews
Memorials and museums
Resources
Bibliography
List of books about Nazi Germany
The Destruction of the European Jews
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos
Functionalism versus intentionalism
Remembrance
Days of remembrance
Memorials and museums
Righteous Among the Nations
v
t
e
Responsibility for the Holocaust is the subject of an ongoing historical debate that has spanned several decades. The debate about the origins of the Holocaust is known as functionalism versus intentionalism. Intentionalists such as Lucy Dawidowicz argue that Adolf Hitler planned the extermination of the Jewish people as early as 1918 and personally oversaw its execution. However, functionalists such as Raul Hilberg argue that the extermination plans evolved in stages, as a result of initiatives that were taken by bureaucrats in response to other policy failures. To a large degree, the debate has been settled by acknowledgement of both centralized planning and decentralized attitudes and choices.
The primary responsibility for the Holocaust rests on Hitler and the Nazi Party leadership, but operations to persecute Jews, Romani people, homosexuals and others were also perpetrated by the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Wehrmacht, and ordinary German citizens as well as by collaborationist members of various European governments, including their soldiers and civilians. A host of factors contributed to the environment in which atrocities were committed across the continent, ranging from general racism (including antisemitism), religious hatred, blind obedience, apathy, political opportunism, coercion, profiteering, and xenophobia.
and 29 Related for: Responsibility for the Holocaust information
TheHolocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered...
Jews had been rounded up for deportation to death camps in July 1942, Macron denounced his country's role in theHolocaust and the historical revisionism...
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as theHolocaust, is a fabrication or exaggeration...
(2004). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942. Comprehensive History of theHolocaust. Lincoln:...
that the Poles remain in denial about their responsibilityfortheHolocaust. How gratifying, then, to see so many letters in The Times in the subsequent...
failed to discover the crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibilityfor, theHolocaust. This image dominated...
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as theHolocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal)...
ethics, social responsibility, and genocide on a global scale. Exploring trauma, memories, and testimonies of the experiences of Holocaust survivors, human...
Conduct to include "Germany's historical responsibilityfortheHolocaust is also a reason for which we support the right of Israel to exist" among their...
German government. The trial centers on questions regarding Germans' individual and collective responsibilityfortheHolocaust, with the backdrop of a tense...
IBM and theHolocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation is a book by investigative journalist and historian...
TheHolocaust—the murder of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945—is the most-documented genocide in history. Although there is no...
Hungarian citizens murdered during theHolocaust were Jews" and that the memorial deflects responsibilityfortheHolocaust by suggesting that "all Hungarians...
In the decades since theHolocaust, some national governments, international bodies and world leaders have been criticized for their failure to take appropriate...
Slovaks encouraged the working class to adopt antisemitic beliefs in order to divide the proletariat. However, responsibilityfortheHolocaust was placed squarely...
organizations, museums and monuments are intended to serve as memorials to theHolocaust, the Nazi Final Solution, and its millions of victims. Memorials and museums...
that criminalized public speech attributing responsibilityfortheHolocaust to Poland or the Polish nation; the criminal provisions were removed again later...
– 7 August 2013) was a French-born researcher of theHolocaust who established the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 1987. She was married to...
The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of theHolocaust, is an international memorial day on 27...
with the Axis powers Glossary of Nazi Germany TheHolocaustHolocaust victims Mass suicides in 1945 Nazi Germany Nazi eugenics Responsibilityforthe Holocaust...
Résistancialisme ResponsibilityfortheHolocaustThe Good German – a 2006 Steven Soderbergh film Wehrkraftzersetzung Frank Richoct, "The ‘Good Germans’...
Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, disability or sexual orientation...
Holocaust survivors are people who survived theHolocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies...
of theHolocaust. Kershaw (2008) Hitler: A Biography, p. 955 Joachimsthaler (1999) [1995] The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth...
TheHolocaust in Ukraine was the systematic mass murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, the Crimean General Government...
Nazi Germany. It may later have helped the Viennese to suppress their sense of responsibilityfortheHolocaust. In reality, Schirach was a strong National...