![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So yesterday, my college hold an event tha had Professor Timothy Snyder from Yale discuss his latest book: "Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning."
He had an interesting argument about how to look at the Holocaust in a different lense. He discussed how Hitler viewed the world in a rather ecological way, by stripping away the artificial ways (bioogical) and build the races though land and food. And that the Nazi Reich main goal was gaining the land of milk and honey (aka Ukraine).
Hitler also stated in his Mein Kampf about how if anyone else argues otherwise about not spreading greed and envy and that science is a trap, and therefore, the woldd is fooled by the Jews.
The Holocaust happened because while the Nazis thought that they can win Russia in less than 9 weeks (which didn't happen) although, they were in Kiev, that Hitler had to blame someone (anyone) why the Nazis weren't winning. Hence, the final solution was thought up, in order to destroy the people who were helping the Germans "lose."
The only way the Holocaust happened is when Nazi Germany induced failed-states. When Germany took over Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, other countries during WWII, the political parties, estalished parties were forced out or induced into failure and thus left the citizens in those state to feel like nothing, i.e. no more country, no longer a citizen, you're now a refugee or second-class citizen in Nazi Reich. Hence, how the humilation and politics helped to create the Holocaust.
When March 11, 1938 happened in Austria, the Jews were surrounded by Austrian citizens and looked upon with shame and humiliation, as to remind the citizens of Austria the last political state in Austria that got stripped away and no longer exists.
I am not sure if I agree with all what Professor Snyder stated. But it was interesting to hear how when social scientists start to generalize something (about the world, human nature, etc.) that the historians come in to state, there's an exception to this generalization.
