What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Who were the perpetrators and who was responsible?
also begs the question of what students actually know
and understand about Hitler’s actions in terms of policy
formulation and implementation.
What do students know and understand
about the role and responsibility of
Hitler in the Holocaust?
Hitler’s role
While the question of Hitler’s role in the Holocaust
would appear facile and superfluous, it is one that
remains a source of dispute and a spur to continuing
research. It is also a query that touches on a raft
of matters, some specific to the Third Reich –
its system of rule, its power structures, the
decision-making process behind genocidal policies
– and others more general, such as the notion of
‘great men’ in history, the functions of the modern
State and the very nature of historical explanation.
At root, ‘the central issue’ – in the words of Hitler’s
biographer Ian Kershaw (2008: 238) – is ‘how
Nazi hatred of the Jews became translated into
the practice of government, and what precise role
Hitler played in this process’. Interpretations of
these questions spawned two contrasting schools
of thought in the 1980s – ‘intentionalism’ and
‘functionalism’ – which, in their essence, can be
traced to contrasting arguments forwarded during
the post-war trials. According to the former, the
Holocaust was attributable to a direct instruction
from Hitler who, by virtue of his extreme antisemitism,
was committed to embarking upon a policy of mass
murder. This, broadly conceived, was the central
framework onto which intentionalist scholars like
Lucy Dawidowicz (1975) or Gerald Fleming (1984)
grafted their own particular tracts – explanatory
accounts that, at their core, prioritised agency as the
most influential causal factor in history.
The challenge to this orthodoxy began to emerge
in earnest in the late 1970s, with social historians
such as Martin Broszat (1981) contesting the idea
of a single ‘Hitler-order’. For Broszat and others,
Hitler was not the omnipresent dictator many
presumed, but rather the structure of Nazi Germany
was fundamentally polycratic. In this sense, different
Nazi leaders often wrestled for power and favour in
capricious circumstances and shifting contexts, while
policies were often formulated in a haphazard, handto-mouth
fashion. To structuralists, explanation for
the Holocaust lay not in individuals but in the forces
embedded within and between social structures.
So polarised were these positions that, perhaps
inevitably, they eventually led to concessions and
the emergence of ‘a middle ground of moderate
functionalism or moderate intentionalism’ (Confino
2012b: 43). At the same time, new avenues of
research during the 1990s posed questions to both
frameworks, leading more recently to a ‘return of
ideology’ where questions around how and where
agency and circumstance come together are now
conducted in ‘a much broader, empirically rich, and
analytically sophisticated historical context’ (Stone
2010: 72). Debates over the precise role of Hitler, for
instance, or the exact course of the decision-making
process, have not therefore gone away but have
become more nuanced.
These have been the debates within scholarship
over the past two decades, but it is arguable as to
how far these advances have found their way into
popular culture and educational practice. Certainly,
just from the findings of this research study it would
seem that a considerable distance exists between the
academy and the classroom. For example, Chapter
5 revealed the tendency of students to approach the
question of ‘Why the Jews?’ by constructing Hitlercentric
accounts which – in some instances – framed
the Nazi leader as the causal factor. Similarly, when
Hitler’s role was broached directly in focus-group
interviews, students – particularly those in younger
cohorts – typically saw him as the principal agent in
the development of the Holocaust.
Perhaps the clearest example of this was how
younger students would personalise their narration
of the Holocaust or specific events related to it
through reference to Hitler. At its most extreme, this
led to such assertions as, ‘He got all the Jews and
put them in concentration camps and gassed them’
(Michael, Year 8, NE1), or ‘He forced them to live out
in ghettos’ (Zoe, Year 8, LON5), or ‘He killed people
in mass groups’ (Charlotte, Year 8, LON6) and ‘He
was the person who put people in the concentration
camps’ (Candice, Year 8, LON6). These and other
similar statements often came from students at
the youngest end of the age range, but they were
also a periodic feature of interviews in many other
year groups.
More commonly, students would place Hitler at
the centre of the action by framing him as someone
who directed events. For example, Liam (Year 9,
NE1) reasoned the power structure in Germany was
‘like a triangle with Hitler at the top and then he is like
telling the people below him to go and do stuff for
him’. Fahima (Year 10, LON5) similarly reasoned that
Hitler ‘would just give commands’ and Alex (Year 12,
EE1) noted that he was ‘the driving force behind it
[the Holocaust]’.
On the surface, these sorts of comments suggest
that many students held outmoded understandings
of Hitler, as – in Norman Rich’s well-worn phrase –
the ultimate ‘master in the Third Reich’ (Rich 1973: