War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Chapter 1 focuses on the social conditions that predated the Nazi Party’s rise to power. Bergen notes that Nazi ideology is not a purely German phenomenon, nor did Nazis introduce bigotry to Germany. Rather, they used engrained preexisting prejudices in their quest to secure Lebensraum (“living space”) for ethnic Germans. Bergen refers to Lebensraum as “the Nazi ideology of race and space—‘racial purification’ and territorial expansion” (2).

While the Nazis mainly targeted Jews throughout the 1930s and ’40s, they also persecuted Roma, Slavs, queer people, Black and mixed-race people, socialists, communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, and people with disabilities. Each of these groups faced systemic oppression in prewar Germany.

Bergen’s examples of medieval and early modern antisemitism are closely linked to Christian fervor. Jews were scapegoated for many social ills and suffered mass violence, segregation, and expulsions as a result. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, secularism improved European Jews’ social standing somewhat. In the decades before World War II, European Jews were largely assimilated; they participated in mainstream society and came from all walks of life. However, systemic antisemitism still existed.

Handicapped people were in a precarious position prior to World War II.