Analysis Of Defining Enemies, Making Victims By Omer Bartov

Minorities are often blamed for the vast array of problems any society faces. In today’s America we can see it in the cries of “they are taking our jobs” or “they are overwhelming our social services.” When citizens of a country feel insecure, they search for a reason, and finding no easy answer, they look to a scapegoat. Such was the case for the Germans following World War I. In “Defining Enemies, Making Victims,” Omer Bartov argues that in Nazi Germany and the subsequent Holocaust, the world has found the ultimate enemy in Nazis and the ultimate victim in Jews. Germany was broken after World War I on almost every level—financially, physically and psychologically. And, while German Jews had built a strong sense of solidarity while fighting …show more content…
Also, modernity’s emphasis on science resulted in “the skewed logic of racial hygiene, [which said] the Jews were both the lowest and most insidious race” (Bartov 780). People began to not only hate the Jews, but also, they began to fear them for their racial impurity. Ultimately, picturing the Jew as the enemy of the German nation “enabled the regime to maneuver between contradictory ideological assertions and policies” (Bartov …show more content…
German civilians feel as though they are unfairly attached to the events of the Holocaust, especially those “who were either not in positions of power in the Third Reich or who belong to succeeding generations” (Bartov 793). Because of this, the Nazi has become “the new enemy of postwar Germany,” meaning much like the Jew during World War II, the Nazi “lurks in everyone and, in this sense, can never be ferreted out” (Bartov 793). At the same time, the Germans believe the Nazi and all Nazism stood for is vastly different from the beliefs of contemporary Germany and individual Germans that some choose to entirely ignore the historical significance of that portion of their nation’s history, regarding it as myth more than