Hitler And The Genesis Of The Final Solution Brzat Analysis

1977 work “Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution” Broszat argues that their no was no direct to start the extermination of Jews, by Hitler himself. Instead Broszat argues in this piece , that it was lower level Nazi officials in occupied territories, who made the decision to start mass executions of the Jewish People in their areas, a decision that was later retroactively given approval by the higher-ups of the Nazi Regime such as Hitler . Hans Mommsen is another functionalist historian that enterered the debate in the late 1960’s. Mommsen is best known for originating the concept of Hitler as a “weak dictator”. Mommsen believed that Hitler was not a rule that reacted decisively to important matters, and instead reacted to the pressures that were placed …show more content…
Gotz Aly made a similar argument to Broszat and Mommsen, in that he also believes that it was not Hitler, but rather lower ranking official that played a larger role in the start of the Final Solution. In his 1999 work Final Solution ': Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews , Aly argues that the Holocaust took a bottom-up approach, meaning that it was the lower ranks of the resettlement apparatus that came up with the idea for the mass extermination of the Jews . Aly uses a letter by Rolf-Heinz Höppner to Adolf Eichmann, as evidence elf lower ranking officials coming up with the final solution. Aly notes that Hopper was just an ordinary SS officer at the time of the letter, Aly quotes Hopper as writing that “ There is a danger that, in the coming winter, it will become impossible to feed all the Jews. It must seriously be considered whether the most humane solution is to finish off the Jews unfit for labour through some fast-acting means. This would definitely be more pleasant than letting them starve to death