Genocide: the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. Genocide is the most horrific crime that one culture can commit against another. Genocide can be politically, ethnically, religiously, and/or racially motivated. The genocides known as the Holocaust and the Crusades were two of the largest racial and religious genocides ever. The Crusades were the seven or eight1 “Holy Wars”, depending on how you viewed them, lasting from 1096 AD to 1270 AD4 encouraged by Pope Urban the Second who offered immunity from the sixth commandment, thou shall not kill, as long as those you were killing were infidels as well as a direct pass to heaven if you took part in the crusades. But they were
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Racially the Crusaders tried to get rid of the olive skinned Middle Eastern people that occupied the Holy Land and the Nazis wanted to eradicate all those who did not have the Aryan look, blonde hair and blue eyes. They are also similar in the way that they were both religiously motivated. In Nazi Germany the prime target were the Jewish people. They were considered to be the most impure religion and therefore were gunned down and subsequently shipped off to concentration camps later in the war. The entire of the Crusades were built on ridding the Holy Land of the infidel Muslims. These two acts of genocide were racially and religiously …show more content…
In the Crusades the Pope instilled fear in the European peoples that fought during the Crusades, using his “direct line” with God to offer them a direct pass to heaven if they agreed to fight in the Crusades in a time where some thought that even the air you breathed was sinful1. So they obviously decided to take a free pass to heaven. In the 1930s Germany was pulled out of a staggering economic recession by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party therefore the German people joined this savior and believed that things could never go wrong if they followed this political party. The German people also felt that they had been too harshly punished for World War One and wanted some degree of revenge for their punishment. The ethnic and religious groups that were persecuted were dehumanized to the point where they were treated like animals, slaughtered on sight or killed in droves. In genocide treating your enemy like a lesser species and dehumanizing them makes them a lot easier to kill. For example would you rather kill a cow or a human being? The answer for almost all people would be cow because it is part of a different
Racially the Crusaders tried to get rid of the olive skinned Middle Eastern people that occupied the Holy Land and the Nazis wanted to eradicate all those who did not have the Aryan look, blonde hair and blue eyes. They are also similar in the way that they were both religiously motivated. In Nazi Germany the prime target were the Jewish people. They were considered to be the most impure religion and therefore were gunned down and subsequently shipped off to concentration camps later in the war. The entire of the Crusades were built on ridding the Holy Land of the infidel Muslims. These two acts of genocide were racially and religiously …show more content…
In the Crusades the Pope instilled fear in the European peoples that fought during the Crusades, using his “direct line” with God to offer them a direct pass to heaven if they agreed to fight in the Crusades in a time where some thought that even the air you breathed was sinful1. So they obviously decided to take a free pass to heaven. In the 1930s Germany was pulled out of a staggering economic recession by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party therefore the German people joined this savior and believed that things could never go wrong if they followed this political party. The German people also felt that they had been too harshly punished for World War One and wanted some degree of revenge for their punishment. The ethnic and religious groups that were persecuted were dehumanized to the point where they were treated like animals, slaughtered on sight or killed in droves. In genocide treating your enemy like a lesser species and dehumanizing them makes them a lot easier to kill. For example would you rather kill a cow or a human being? The answer for almost all people would be cow because it is part of a different