Will this be the catalyst for the next Holocaust?
Participants: Jason Fields, Matthew Gault, Timothy Snyder
We live in the shadow of World War Two and the Holocaust.
To many, the Holocaust is an unthinkable atrocity and a historical aberration that is easily avoided in the future. But history is long and memories are short. Is it possible that something like the Holocaust could happen again?
This week on War College, we sit down with Yale historian Timothy Snyder to discuss his new book Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Snyder spent countless hours delving into the history of the Reich and the Holocaust and Black Earth breathes a fresh perspective into a tired topic.
The book opens with a solid explanation and examination of Adolf Hitler’s world view and his plans. To him, the Jews weren’t just a lesser race, but a supernatural force disrupting a global struggle for survival. America was not, at first, a great enemy, but rather an admired nation he sought to emulate.
Snyder explains the ideology that led to the Holocaust, but stresses that the such poisonous thinking can only take root if global conditions are right. For Snyder, the world of today looks a lot like the world before Hitler’s rise to power. That’s why Black Earth isn’t just a history, but a warning.
Subscribe to the War College podcast on iTunes
Further reading:
The most horrific war of all time–Russia vs. Germany
The man who could have killed Hitler
Dan Carlin’s take on what makes a historical arsonist
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so this article is just a book ad?
useless.
This is brilliant and very important.
It is already here, with white Christian supremacists and police killing black and others, left right and center.
We need to stop the senseless hatred toward innocent Muslims, especially since we need to be focused on hating cops. Cops are the enemy.
Follow the money. It’s absolutely pointless to go after the “radical” Muslims yet leave their financial backers untouched.
Yes, a new holocaust is already happening as radical Muslims rape, torture, crucify and behead innocent Christians, Muslims, and others in the middle East, Asia, Africa and elsewhere. They have vowed that we infidels need to either convert to their perverted views or die. I take them at their word.
I agree with Snyder.
As long as we are instinctively driven by our inherently self-serving, self-justifying nature we keep being thrown through all possible social, ideological, governing spectrum again and again.
Then we reach an intolerable state of crisis, some explosive situation like revolution or war erupts and then we start again.
The writing is already on the wall. As our “liberal, democratic, moderate” experiment failed, become corrupted we are already swinging to extremist (far right, far left, religious fundamentalism)directions politically, religiously and we are sinking into a deepening and unsolvable crisis.
It is time we start to become “humans”, creatures that can rise above inherent, instinctive behavior, consciously creating mutually complementing collaboration, the only way we can survive in a global, integral world.
The destruction of the Palestinian Nation and the colonization of its land is the holocaust of our time.
It is happening right now in plain view.