This is a graded discussion: 20 points possible

due Mar 18

Week 3: World War II and the Holocaust (CO 11)

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11	Given repeated cases of genocide in the 20th century, such as the Nazi holocaust; Cambodia under Pol Pot; and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Rwanda, and others, analyze the roots of such behavior and explain how people can become involved in institutionalized, mass genocidal murder.

The following statement was taken from a contemporary account of Germany in 1939:

“Though the Fuhrer’s anti-Semitic program furnished the National Socialist party in the first instances with a nucleus and a rallying-cry, it was swept into office by two things with which the “Jewish Problem” did not have the slightest connection. On the one side was economic distress and the revulsion against Versailles: on the other, chicanery and intrigue…Hitler and his party promised the unhappy Germans a new heaven and a new earth, coupled with the persecution of the Jews. Unfortunately a new heaven and earth cannot be manufactured to order. But a persecution of the Jews can…”

How do you interpret this contemporary account of the persecution of people who are Jewish?

(You may post in this discussion for credit Sunday, March 11-Sunday, March 18.)