Is the Holocaust Unique?

The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately six million Jews sponsored by Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. With no political or economic incentives at all Adolf Hitler began to systematically kill Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and disabled people as well. It's been known that the Jews have been persecuted and not very liked for thousands of years, but at no point in their history has any thing like it happen. There have been similar attacks on whole races of people before the Holocaust as well as afterwards, with some even going on today. So was the Holocaust Unique? At the time yes, however, due to similar massacres afterwards, it isn't as unique as it is thought to be.

One of the most unique parts of the Holocaust was the fact that Hitler had no political or economic reason to justify the mass extermination of approximately six million Jews. Throughout history most wars and attacks are for a reason. Whether this reason is for land or for power, attacks have a basis. For example, the crusades were very much religious wars, however the different sides didn't battle each other because they strictly didn't like one another. Everyone wanted to control the city of Jerusalem (History-World). Hitler made part of World War II religious based because of his persecution of Jews, however he never had any tangible reason to exterminate them as a whole besides his own personal hatred toward them. The killing of Jews was not just apart of the war effort Hitler had going on with other countries, it was very much equal to it. Hitler used resources that he could have been using to fight the Allied forces in the extermination effort (Jewish Virtual Library). This showed how much hate he had towards the Jews because these resources could of helped him win the war, however he decided to use them against a population of people that really had no real threat against him. We will never know the outcome of the war if the resources used to kill Jews were used for something more practical in the war against the Allies, however it does show that Hitler really had no basis for this fight he waged against the Jews.

Another reason that the Holocaust was unique, which is also tied in with the fact he had no economic or political reasoning to exterminate the Jews, was that the only "crime" the Jewish people committed was their existence. From Hitler's point of view, being born a Jew was sufficient enough of a reason to be punished by death (Jewish Virtual Library). He believed that the Jews had a conspiracy to gain world leadership (Hitler and Manheim), which obviously wasn't the case. He made reasons up in his own mind to justify his actions and also used these made up reasons to brainwash his own soldiers to fight against the Jews. His speeches and propaganda were really able to get his point across.

While six million Jews is a ton of people to be murdered, this isn't the first time in history that a mass amount of people was exterminated because of their ethnic or cultural background. The victims of the Spanish annihilation of the native people in Mesoamerica in the 16th century were in the tens of millions. Even just ten years before the Holocaust, Stalin murdered at least seven million Ukrainians in the "Terror Famine" of 1932-1933. In both of these mass exterminations, both groups suffered a bigger numerical lost than the Jews did in the Holocaust (Codoh). The Nazis killed 60 to 65 percent of all the Jews in Europe. However, this isn't the biggest mass extermination of people proportionally. From the 16th-19th century, 95 percent of native people in North America by the Spanish, British and new "Americans." This means that while one out of every three Jew survived the Holocaust, only one out of every twenty people survived in North America. While more people died proportionally in North America, it is worth pointing out that it was over the course of 300 years, about twenty times the amount of time the Holocaust extended over. There are a few differences between these massacres and the Holocaust. First is the amount of time it took to murder the amount of people in each of these events. While more people were killed in the 16th century during the Spanish annihilation in Mesoamerica and more people were killed proportionally in North America, these massacres happened over the course of centuries. The Holocaust just lasted five years. The only event comparable that has been mentioned is Stalin's "Terror Famine," where he killed seven million Ukrainians in about two years. However, even comparing just these two instances, there still is a major difference between Stalin's method and Hitler's method of murder. Stalin created a man-made famine where people died of starvation and other diseases related to it. He didn't forcefully move people from their homes and into extermination camps like Hitler did. Another major difference is that Hitler had no political or economic reasoning behind his murders. Many people argue the reasoning behind Stalin's acts of terror, but most people mainly agree on two possible reasons; the first being economic problems stemming from economic changes during Soviet industrialization and the second being a direct attack on Ukrainian nationalism (Bilinsky). Both events were obviously evil, however, Stalin at least had a reason for his madness, when Hitler did not.

Another interesting part of the Holocaust and how it was carried