Holocausts, Wars, and Genocides

Name:
Institution:
History
Date:
Holocaust
Introduction
The Holocaust is arguably one of the most brutal reminders of just how cruel and bloody mankind can be when made to turn against each other by selfish tribal or racial ideologies. It is testament enough of just how bad things can go if there are no checks and balances , or simply rules and regulations to direct general conduct even in the face of bitter conflict. Conversely, it is also testament enough of what human beings can do to each other within a global setup, if the rest of the world decides to turn a blind eye on internal affairs of a given nation or region. Omer Bartov, in his work Defining Enemies, Making Victims: Germans, Jews, and the Holocaust offers a discourse in the global picture of the postwar environment. In this environment, the focus is so often on the victims and the enemies. He has basically offered a critical glimpse into the aspects of war and genocide, essentially how people across the world have their views and perceptions redefined when it comes to such issues. In so doing, Bartov pits two issues of discussion against each other. The first is how the Germans perceive the Jews, and the second one is how the Jews perceive not only the Germans but also anyone else they take as their enemies. All these add up to what really affects the globe in terms of geopolitics and the balance of power. Much of what Bartov discusses are indeed accurate and quite practical, with there being a lot of relevance to it in the past as well as the present. This paper offers a deeper discussion into the issues of war and genocide, in agreement with Bartov’s argument about the same, while only offering a slight counterargument with him on the post war perceptions.
War and Genocide
The past century has been quite bloody. It seemed like there were serious conflicts each aimed at either exterminating or annihilating some specific portions of the population. As nations strived to become states and their sovereignty to be kept intact, it became rather clear that such things were bound to be cyclic. Much of these portions were defined along either racial or tribal lines. Since the turn of the 1900s, violence seemed to rule. There were cases of war in the first and Second World War, the Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf war as well as in the Yugoslavian territories. Some of these wars led to genocides, with many innocents being massacred for no good reason. The Jews, Armenians, Bosnians and Tutsis offer a clear illustration of genocides during that century.
According to Bartov, the war and the resultant genocide resulted to a feeling of victimhood (Bartov, p.771). It is quite interesting to note that even the German soldiers, who were the aggressors, were again the victims. This is after they later came to realize that the whole thing was a deception of the highest level, to try and spur them into committing such atrocities. The Red Army victimized the German soldiers on one side, while on the other hand, the Jews were the victims in the hands of the Nazis. This was genocide on a large scale executed by a complicated and elaborate system of dictatorial powers that be.
While this was partially true, it is quite evident that some of this argument was simply aimed ...