Nazi Ideology

In the case of the Holocaust, ideology created a psychotic dimension of experience, which whilst an invented dimension, was logical and consistent, thus making sense to those who believed it. (Glass 1997:76) By ideology being spread through education and the media, it became a group belief, which only heightened the feeling of rationality and truth. The ‘Auschwitz Self’ eroded all limits and created a delusional sense of reality by creating new and unyielding logic. (Glass 1997:74) The Wannsee Conference can be seen as a good example of the group-psychotic reasoning that existed. In Himmler’s speech to the SS-Korpsfhürer he stated; “Anti-Semitism is exactly like delousing. The removal of lice is not an ideological question, but a matter of hygiene.” (Glass 1997:83) Indeed, in Browning’s assessment of the Reserve Police Battalion 101, he notes that ideological indoctrination not only affected the elite groups of the SS but also infiltrated lower down the hierarchy, the policemen were expected to be ideologically motivated crusaders against enemies of the Third Reich. (Browning 2001:177)

However, an interesting dynamic is created, as whilst the Nazi ideology replaced real rational thought with logical delusion, the subject of their ideology was real. The Nazi ideology did not make up …show more content…
Within the context of my analysis, contextualising the Holocaust in Germany’s loss of the First World War and the consequential humiliation suffered teamed with professionals and the media antagonising an existing notion of the Jews as inferior and dangerous is particularly convincing in explaining perpetrator motives. However, it remains challenging to attribute the heartless and brutal nature of the killings of the Holocaust to socio-psychological factors when, by the process of their reasoning, erodes individual autonomy and, if pushed, can exonerate