We think of the nazis as a machine, and that just wasn’t always the case.
Very true. The Third Reich looked all neat and tidy on the outside because that was the image the Nazis wanted to present. Inside...it was not. It was a polycratic mess full of competing satraps with their private fiefdoms, held together by Hitler. We're very fortunate that it was not a well-oiled machine.
Regarding the Holocaust, while with the benefit of hindsight it seems like there was a clear, linear road from Hitler's delusional rantings in Mein Kampf and Munich beer halls to the gas chambers of the death camps and the mass shootings of the Einsatzgruppen, when the Nazis came to power they did not have a step by step plan in the drawing board, just waiting to be implemented. It was always going to terrible for Jews to live under their regime, but their anti-Jewish policy evolved over time.
There was a lot of back and forth, from the rowdy antisemitism of the early 30s, to the SD's policy of 'encouraging' emigration (by working with Zionist groups and making conditions for Jews in Germany as bad possible through administrative measures, while also taking away all their assets), to the plans for a Jewish 'reservation' in eastern Poland or Madagascar and the first deportations, to the escalation of mass killings and the start of the Holocaust as we know it.
Last edited: