The Holocaust

The Holocaust refers to the systematic killing of people of Jewish ancestry in Germany during the reign of Hitler. The Jews were killed by being locked up in concentration camps where they died of starvation and disease (Davies, 1982). Some were also subjected to physical torture by the special forces of Adolf Hitler, the then leader of Germany. The slave trade, on the other hand, is a business that involved the capture and transportation of Africans from West Africa. These captives were then tied and taken to places like the United States of America where they worked in plantations without pay. They were not allowed any freedom and they were mistreated. The industrial revolution that also began in Europe was about the leap in production that came with the mechanization of industry. Poor people who worked in the factories were not given fair treatment and most of them died as a result of diseases and lack of food.

The Holocaust: It’s Connection to the slave trade and the Industrial Revolution

The Holocaust had its roots in both the slave trade and the industrial revolution. This argument can be supported by the similarity in mentality between Adolf Hitler and the slave traders as well as their masters who made them work on the plantations. They shared a common perception of the people they subjected to suffering and this is why they did all that they did to them without giving a second thought. The most noticeable connections can be analyzed as follows:

To start with, Adolf Hitler had the perception that Jews were not as good as the Europeans in Germany. He at one point declared that the Germany people of European descent were a superior race and all he wanted to do was to clear all the other races from the world so that the best race (Germany Europeans) would remain. The slave masters had this kind of reasoning too (Berghahn, 1999). They had the understanding that the people who were working for them were less than them and subjecting them to sub-human conditions was okay since they were inferior. It is possible that Hitler got this concept of racial superiority from the slave business and decided to use it against the Jews when he rose to power in Germany.

The industrial revolution also had the element of the poor people working in industries perceived as being inferior. The landowners who employed some of the poor people mistreated them and this may as well acted as the launching pad for Hitler’s idea that some people were superior to other and he decided to use it against the Jews.

From the connections, we can see that it is possible that the Holocaust had its roots in the slave trade and the industrial revolution mistreatment of workers.