Conference at Boston College, April 25-26, 2019: "Hitler's Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust." (Please forward to a Colleague or Student). Prominent scholars from Germany & around the world gather on April 25 deliberating the question of how Hitler's ideas set the stage for the Holocaust. A few places are left to participate in this groundbreaking event. Through the generosity of Boston College, fees have been waived. To hold a place, simply send an email to Prof. John J. Michalczyk at michalcj@bc.edu with the message, "I would like to register to for the Conference." Space is limited. Please respond immediately
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Abstract: Sometimes, complex events may be understood in terms of fundamental ideas that generate these events. Hitler was the "prime mover" of the Final Solution. I hypothesis that his thoughts on warfare--that I have reproduced below--reveal the "logic" that generated the Holocaust. Hitler reflected: "If I have the right as national leader to send my own soldiers, the best people, to their deaths, do I not also have the right to require that enemies of Germany, the worst people, be sent to their deaths?" Hitler's justification for genocide derived from his thinking about warfare. 

The Holocaust: The Final Solution

The Final Solution—systematic extermination of the Jewish people—began before the construction of death camps and gas chambers. As the German army moved eastward into the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942, they were followed by the Einsatzgruppen or mobile killing units. Approximately 1.5 million Jews were shot and killed, many of them buried in gorges that bear a striking resemblance to the trenches of the First World War. Hitler professed to be undisturbed by the extermination of men, women, and children, providing the following rationale:

Nature if cruel. Therefore, we too, may be cruel. If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret for the shedding of valuable German blood, then I have naturally the right to destroy millions of men of inferior races who increase like vermin (Meltzer, 1976).

Here is another translation of this crucial passage:

Nature is cruel; therefore we also are entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin? (Fest, 1974).

The Holocaust represented an extension of the logic that allows leaders of nation-states to sacrifice the lives of their own soldiers. Hitler declared that if German soldiers were required to die, Jews also had to die. If German soldiers were suffering and dying in massive numbers on the field of battle, so Jews would be required to suffer and die in massive numbers in the camps. If the German nation could compel its best people to die, surely it had the right to send the worst people to die.

The logic of genocide followed the logic of warfare.