Intentionalism Vs.

Functionalism
Dutchess Community College

History 210

Daniel Hildebrandt
 When people are asked to define the Holocaust, it is hard to define in terms of a

“dictionary” definition. The first thought that comes to mind when people hear the term,

the Holocaust, they usually refer to the mass killings of Europeans (especially Jews),

committed by the Nazi’s, during World War II. According to the Merriam-Webster, the

literal definition of the word holocaust is: a sacrifice consumed by fire. One but can’t

help to wonder if the Holocaust was systematically planned or was this horrible tragedy

and evolution of hate that gradually led to the death of approximately six million people

in Europe during World War II? Historians have been arguing this point for many years.

The answer they want to obtain is obviously not a very clear answer and is very complex.

One thing that has been agreed on is that the Holocaust was not a single event at a single

place but yet it was a series of events, which spanned Europe, and took place over years.

Some historian’s say that Adolf Hitler had a master plan to exterminate all the Jews in

Europe and they he solely gave the order to do so. People who believe this ideology are

known as Intentionalists. Historians, who oppose this, state that the orders to execute the

Holocaust came from lower ranks within the bureaucracy. So is there more evidence to

prove that the Holocaust was a direct intention and order of Adolf Hitler or did it

gradually progress into a network of extermination camps based on the orders of lower

ranking Nazi officials?

The origins of this debate began almost as soon as the Second World War was

over. At the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, the prosecutors concluded that the plan was a

major basis of the formation of the Nazi party back in 1919. Following the war, many

people simply had a strict Intentionalists point of view about the Holocaust. It was not
until the late 60’s and the early 70’s that people would begin to think otherwise. In 1969 a

historian by the name of Martin Broszat had written a book called The Hitler State. Then

in 1970, a man by the name of Karl A. Schleunee also wrote a book called The Twisted

Road to Auschwitz. Both these books challenged the idea that the Holocaust was

intended from the beginning. They both conveyed the idea that there was no master plan

for the Holocaust to occur. The terms “functionalists” and “Intentionalists” were coined

in an essay titled “Intention and Explanation” written by Timothy Mason in 1981. In this

essay, Mason challenged top historians on their constant blaming of Adolf Hitler as one

of the main reasons of the Holocaust.

Lets take a look at the factual evidence from the beginning of the war up until the

end. I am not going to provide my personal opinion just yet but yet rather present the

facts to see if there a clear answer to the question was the Holocaust an intentional event

executed by Adolf Hitler? Or was it slowly progressed into mass extermination by the

orders of other ranking Nazi officials? The term “Final Solution” did not come into

existence until January of 1942 (based on the evidence) at the Wannsee Conference. Was

the “Final Solution” inevitable, or was it only brought up due the fact that the deportation

of the Jews was not going as planned? I am now going to prevent evidence from the

beginning of the war up until the Wannsee Conference, and until the surrender of

Germany in 1945.

The first major step that would lead up to the “Final Solution” would be the

deportation of Jews out of Germany. However previous to this were a number of

auxiliary laws known as the Nuremberg Laws. There is an uncanny relationship to these

laws and the Jim Crow laws passed in the United States following the Compromise of
1877. Some historians say Hitler modeled the Nuremberg Laws after the Jim Crow laws.

These laws were used to clarify the position of Jews in the Reich. The Nazi regime

started by stripping the Jews of economic, political, and citizenship rights. So even

before deportation Hitler wanted to “dehumanize” the German Jew.

In March of 1938 Germany annexed Austria without any resistance from Austria

and the rest of the world. Since Hitler had spent much time in politically conservative

Vienna, he learned a lot about anti-Semitism and concluded that Austria and Germany

were destined to be united. It was in Austria Hitler learned a great deal about anti-

Semitism. Hitler was persuaded by the mayor of Vienna in the late 1890’s to view the

Jews as not equal. It was also here that Hitler would become interested in a publication

known as Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Darwin’s ideas of “survival of the fittest and

racial theories of human behavior” would have a lasting impact on Hitler.

Almost immediately after Austria was annexed in 1938, the Nazi’s set up an

Emigration office in Vienna. The control of the office was given to a man by the name of

Adolph Eichmann. It had been reported that there were more then 180,000 Jews in

Austria in 1938. In September of 1939, there had only been about 60,000 remaining.

The office had faced much difficulty in finding countries that would accept the Jews.

This deportation effort concerned President Roosevelt enough to call a meeting of 32

nations to discuss the issue. On July 6, 1938 the nations met in Evian, France. Despite

the fact that the conference had known about the Nuremberg Laws and the intention of

Hitler to take away the rights of Jews, the conference closed with little accomplished.

They did not come up with any kind of solution to help the Jewish deportees. The rest of

the world did little to help either.

 Did Adolf Hitler know that for the most part the world would close their doors to

the Jews? Could this of been when he came up with the idea to exterminate all the Jews?

This was the first major step leading up to the “Final Solution.” At the end of 1938 and

straight through 1939 many laws were passed in Germany to further make the Jews .non

human.” Jewish doctors and lawyers had their licenses declared invalid. They were

required to hand over all their gold and silver to the Nazi government. This left the Jews

without nearly enough money required for emigrating. This was the first major step

toward the “Final Solution.” Was it after the failed attempt to force emigration that the

Reich would think of genocide as an answer? At a meeting of top Nazi officials on

November 12, 1938 Goring spoke about Hitler’s wishes on how to proceed with the

Jewish Question: “The Jewish question is to be summed up and coordinated once and for

all and solved one way or another...If the German Reich should in the future become

involved in conflict abroad then it is obvious that we in Germany will first of all make

sure of settling accounts with the Jews. Apart from that, the Fuehrer is now at last to

make a major move abroad, starting with the powers that have brought up the Jewish

question.”

The second major phase toward the “Final Solution” would begin with the

outbreak of war in 1939. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II

begun. Within three weeks, Poland was under Nazi control. In 1939, Poland had

approximately 3 million Jews living there. Germany quickly divided up Poland into 10
smaller districts. Like in Germany, the Jews living there were quickly stripped of their

rights. There personal property had been taken away and they relocated to ghettoes and

concentration camps. This is when we first see the Einsatzgruppen target and murder

Jews. The Einsatzgruppen were elite mobile killing units who were granted exclusive

permission to fight alongside the German army of the front lines. They were under

control of SS leader Heinrich Himmler. There main purpose was to hunt out and kill

Jews in Poland. 18 months after the invasion of Poland, the Einsatzgruppen had sought

out and killed over 1,300,000 Jews. These innocent people were killed by shooting them

or by stuffing them into a van, and filling it with poison gas. The Einsatzgruppen’s

leader, Heinrich Himmler, would soon come to realize the harmful psychological effects

of killing mass number of women and children would greatly hurt his elite soldiers

psyche. Himmler was looking for a more “humane” way of effectively killing the Jews

in Poland.

Hitler soon realized that Poland did not have adequate space for German

resettlement and the Jews. It was clear that in 1940 that the Jewish problem had to be

taken care of once and for all. One idea that was considered was to deport all the Jews to

some other place in the world. Madagascar was considered as an ideal place, however

that plan was quickly abandoned. It was clear to Hitler that the Nazi’s need a “final” way

to deal with the Jewish Question.

Prior to the Nazi’s setting up extermination camps, they had set up a program in

Berlin known as T-4 Euthanasia. The major purpose of this program was to rid the Reich

of “unfit” Aryans. Hitler wanted to kill mentally ill, handicapped, and incurable

Germans. This program was kept very secret because of the harsh opposition that would
come from the German public. Between 1939 and 1941, approximately 55,000 German

adults and children were killed. They German scientists experimented with the technique

used to kill them. The first used a form of lethal injection. Then they experimented with

a shower stall that actually spewed poison gas. I feel that this foreshadows the events

that would come to take place at the extermination camps such as Auschwitz. There is

without a doubt, a link between the Euthanasia program and the “Final Solution.”

Functionalists might argue that Adolf Hitler wanted to even kill his own kind who were

seen as inferior. They might say that he did not intend to only pursue genocide against

just Jews. It raises an interesting question, because the Fuhrer was perfectly willing to

kill people of German blood.

In 1940, we see the rise of ghettos in Poland. The Jews were sent to live there

sort of a temporary solution until a final one could be proposed. Between 1940 and 1942,

many ghettoes would be established throughout Poland. The conditions in these ghettoes

were terrible. Many Jews would die in the ghettoes as a direct result of starvation. They

were used exclusively for slave labor. Before the proposal of the “Final Solution” was

official, it was very clear that something had to be done to get rid of the Jews. The

figured starving them in the ghettoes was a better approach then just shooting them and

“wasting” ammo. What the Jews did not know is that the ghettoes they were living in

were amazing places to live compared to what awaits them.

On January 20, 1942 a meeting took place in Berlin to discuss what needed to be

done about the “Jewish Question.” While previous to the meeting, Hitler and Himmler
already knew what had be done, this meeting was simply to inform other top Nazi

officials of to what was going to happen. The meeting lasted about 90 minutes. The top

Nazi official presiding over the conference was Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich had wrote:

"the main purposes of the conference were, firstly, to establish the overall control of the

deportation programme by the RSHA over a number of important Reich authorities and

thereby, secondly, to make the top representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy into

accomplices and accessories to, and co-responsible for, the exile of all Jews in the present

and future areas under German rule to Eastern Europe, where they were to be exposed to

extraordinarily harsh living conditions and fatally exhausted or murdered.”

Following this conference, the “Final Solution” was made an official Nazi policy.

At that point mass extermination camps were set up very quickly. Concentration camps

had already been set up when Hitler came to power. However these camps were to be

used for political prisoners and people who opposed the Reich. People did die in these

camps, but it was due to disease and starvation. These camps had been set up all over

Germany and the occupied territories. There is no evidence to show that these camps

were intended to exterminate people. A large camp in Germany by the name of Dachau

did have crematoria in it, but it was strictly used to dispose of the people who had already

died.

Two major influences affected the emergence of the extermination camps. One of

them was the T-4 Euthanasia program which I already mentioned. Another would be a

small event that occurred at the Aschaffenburg concentration camp in Bavaria. As early
as 1933 a group of SS men killed a number of Jews who had been detained in the camp.

The local authorities arrested the SS men. Himmler ordered the men to be freed and that

they were not subject to civil laws. This event would help set forth the coming mass

murder at extermination camps.

Just to make clear that there is a big difference between the concentration camps

and the extermination camps. People did die at concentration camps but these camps had

been in place for quite some time. The major difference in the classification of the camps

is in there intended purpose. Between 1933 and 1941 many concentration camps had

been constructed and housed all kind of prisoners such as democrats, communists,

homosexuals, and of course Jews. The extermination camps were specifically intended

for mass murder. There were plenty more concentration camps then actual extermination

camps.

Some notable extermination camps included, Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau,

Belzek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Stutthof. Below shows a timeline of the Nazi

extermination camps:

Chelmno Auschwitz- Belzek Sobibor Treblinka Majdanek Stutthof

Birkenau
December September March 17, March July 23, October June 1944
7, 1941 1941 1942 1942 1942 1942
Gas Vans Zyklon-B Carbon Carbon Carbon Carbon Zyklon-B
Monoxide Monoxide Monoxide Monoxide
and
Zyklon-B
320,000 1,200,000 600,000 250,000 700,000 1,380,000 65,000
Killed Killed Killed Killed Killed Killed Killed
 Most people killed in the extermination camps were killed because they were

Jewish. Estimates conclude that approximately 3.5 million died in the extermination

camps alone. They were not prisoners of war. The Einsatzgruppen killed many more and

others died from starvation in the Ghetto. This whole process was rationalized by Nazi

ideology. The Nazi’s combined their ideas of racial superiority with Hitler’s personal

conquest of world domination, masked by World War II to commit the greatest crimes in

the history of our species.

So know the question still remains to this day is their enough evidence to prove a

more functionalist or Intentionalists theory about the Holocaust? There are extreme

points of view on both sides. Both sides have an extreme interpretation and a moderate

interpretation.

Extreme Intentionalists state that Hitler had plans for the Holocaust since 1924 or

maybe even earlier. Historians have concluded that Hitler had made extremely anti-

Semitic remarks since 1919. However none of these marks refer to killing Jews. In his

book Mein Kampf, Hitler only mentions killing Jews once. He says that if only 12,000 to

15,000 Jews had been gassed instead of German soldiers in World War I. Hitler states:

"the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain." However this is only

one line of his 684 page long book. Other extreme Intentionalists argue that the German

people were already anti-Semitic and welcomed the persecution of Jews.

On the other side of the fence extreme functionalists argue that the Nazi leader

had nothing to do with initiating the Holocaust. They argue that the initiative came from

within lower ranks in the German bureaucracy. They have found documents showing a

top German general in Poland saying that the countries population had to decrease by
25% in order for the economy to grow. This does not explain why the Nazi’s deported

Jews from France and the Netherlands to Poland. Why did they not just target 25% of the

Polish population? The Nazi’s went out of their way to deport Jews to Poland. So both

sides face criticisms.

While researching the evidence and looking at how both sides prevented there

facts I cannot pick a clear side. I feel that both groups make very excellent points. I

personally feel that no it was not the original intention of Hitler and the Nazi’s to

exterminate the Jews. I feel that around 1941 it did become very intentional and all

Nazi’s including Hitler wanted this to be carried out. It almost became an obsession to

them. They felt like all of a sudden they had to eliminate all the Jews and they had to do

it as quickly as possible. So if I had to choose a side it would be moderate functionalism.

The main point of all this, regardless if it was intentional or slowly approved, is

that nearly 5 to 6 million people lost their lives. The debate that rages on between

functionalists and Intentionalists is completely irrelevant to the final outcome. All the

events that lead up to the Holocaust slowly evolved over time. The increase in political

power, confidence, and being able to get away with almost anything was a recipe for

disaster. Hitler and Himmler’s extreme anti-Semitism grew with Germany. The world

was blinded by a world war. Either way, intentional or not, these crimes were committed

without any empathy towards human life. The Holocaust showed the world how easily

people can be controlled and how evil masks the goodness in people.
 Works Cited

Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship; Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. New
York: Oxford University Press Inc, Fourth Edition 2000.

Shermer, Michael. "Proving the Holocaust: The Refutation of Revisionism & the
Restoration of History," Skeptic, Vol. 2, No. 4, Altadena, California, June, 1994.

“Evidence for the Implementation of the Final Solution.” Christopher R Browing 2000
Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington
< http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/GENOCIDE/browning1.htm>

" Functionalism, Intentionalism, And The Concept Of

Scapegoating.” June 1998. Excerpt from interview with Professor Dominick LaCapra.
Cornell University
< http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203647.pdf>