Hello Bob,

 

Was the holocaust not rational? Certainly it is  politically incorrect to suggest such a thing. But it happened 75 years ago. Perhaps the time has come for us to try to understand what happened. After all, there have been so many more 'holocausts' of various kinds since then. 

 

On the one hand, to understand what happened implies a certain amount of rationality. But on the other hand, as an historical occurrence any possible understanding would require a great deal of historical knowledge.

 

I would begin by suggesting a number of historical factors that were necessary presuppositions  of the holocaust.

 

First, the question is: how was there such a large middle and upper class Jewish population in Germany in the 1930s? This required a 100 years and more of quite liberal policies. We certainly see the beginning of this in Hegel's day with Moses Mendelssohn and his grandson. His daughter, too, for that matter, married F. Schlegel.  

 

Second, it is almost unbelievable how many Jews were college professors (especially in physics) in Germany at that time. This, too, required a 100 years or more of very liberal policies.

 

Then two things happened almost simultaneously. First, the German economy (and the world economy) was wrecked by WWI. And, second, German physics was hot on the trail of developing a super-bomb that would give them total world domination.

 

So the first step leading away from a 100 years of very liberal policies to the holocaust was the necessary removal for security reasons of all Jews (and socialists) from academia and from state jobs in 1933 in preparation for the top secret building of this super-bomb.

 

But this happened at a time of about 30% unemployment. This sudden opening up of so many good, middle class jobs at a time when so many young middle class men were resigned to a life of partial employment at best was a true god-send to the German middle class. Although this wasn't the reason for removing the Jews (and socialists) from all these middle class jobs, it was, none the less, the main result.

 

So then the next step toward the holocaust was the so-called kristallnacht of 1938. The Jews were like a herd of fattened sheep in the middle of a famine, as had been made clear in 1933. By removing from them all their property in 1938, still in the midst of this great depression, the German economy was able to recover.

 

Wouldn't it have been nice if FDR had been able to end the great depression through less drastic and more "rational" means?

 

Certainly a real historian would be able to do a much better job explaining all the factors leading to the holocaust than I can. But this is only possible because human actions are just by definition more or less rational--and therefore understandable.

 

John

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: robert fanelli robertfanelli2001@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: Hegel Hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
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Sent: Sun, Jul 21, 2019 7:45 pm
Subject: [hegel] 'What is real is rational and what is rational is real.'