Hitler’s model for genocide, ‘taming of the Wild West’

German author Karl May dressed as his famous character Old Shatterhand, in 1896. (Wikimedia Commons) Hitler grew up reading Karl May’s American western novels for young people, which featured tales of taming the “Wild West” through “Indian wars.”

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), observed every year on January 27, is an opportunity for different people and communities to come together, learn about the past, and work together to protect people at risk of persecution today. The date was chosen because it marks the day in 1945 that Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s largest concentration and death camp, was liberated by Soviet troops, revealing the horrors within.

The dictionary defines the word “holocaust” as (1) a great or complete devastation or destruction; (2) the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II; and (3) any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.

Organizers of HMD intend the event primarily as a day of remembrance for the six million Jews and others murdered under Nazi persecution, as well as the millions who died during more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. According to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (www.hmd.org), more recent genocides represent a failure of humanity to learn from the Holocaust and are a reminder that we must be prepared to guard against genocide ever happening again.

In November 2022, Renee Iron Hawk (Tituwan Oohenumpa) and her husband Manny Iron Hawk (Titunwan Okowozu), of Red Scaffold, SD, were among 35-40 participants to spend four days in remembrance at the World War II death camp at Auschwitz, located in what was then German-occupied Poland. Despite being the only Native Americans in attendance, they felt a strong connection with other attendees.

Both Manny and Renee Iron Hawk are active members of the HAWK 1890 Wounded Knee descendants’ group on the Cheyenne River Lakota Reservation. Manny sees many parallels between the history of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Wounded Knee. “Trauma is trauma,” he said.

In the small council groups held each day for participants to share their inner experiences, he talked about the genocide of the Native American people in the United States. Over the course of the four days, Manny noticed busloads of school children and teachers touring the death camps to learn about the history there. He says, “This (teaching of history) should happen in the U.S. (in places like Wounded Knee).”

Manny and Renee both say that the overall experience was “hard mentally and physically.” Manny described the experience as “a spiritual journey.” Renee says that at times she had to dissociate herself temporarily to protect herself from being overwhelmed by emotion. Both say that several months after returning from the retreat, they were still processing the experience; reflecting on all that they saw, heard, and felt.

As challenging as this journey was for them, both responded quickly when asked, “Knowing what you now know, would you do it again?” The answer was an emphatic, “Yes, to find peace with relatives all over the world.” Of their travels, the Iron Hawks say, “We can help make the world a better place.”

Holocaust Memorial Day can serve to acknowledge the millions of Native Americans who lost their lives and freedoms at the hands of European colonizers during the genocide of First Peoples in the Western hemisphere. It is an opportunity to reflect on the far-reaching legacies of this brutality beyond the United States itself.

HMD is an appropriate time to acknowledge that Hitler was heavily influenced by the violent inhumane European colonization of the Americas as documented by recent historians, including Yale law professor James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, published by Princeton University Press in 2017. (See also The American West and the Nazi East, by Carroll Kakel.)

Hitler grew up reading Karl May’s American western novels for young people, which featured tales of taming the “Wild West” through “Indian wars.” He also regularly re-read them into adulthood and recommended them to his generals as sources of creative ideas.

According to Whitman, in 1928 – five years before he came to power, and over a decade before the outbreak of World War II – Hitler praised the United States for establishing its dominance through the genocide of Native Americans. White Americans, in Hitler’s words, “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now kept the modest remnant under observation in a cage,” by which he meant reservations.

Hitler saw a model in the United States for “Aryans” internationally – conquer a vast empire of land and wipe out the “racially inferior” people who lived there. Then create policies to ensure “racial purity” within that land.

By following this model, Hitler believed that Germany could rise to immense power through a campaign of conquest and extermination in the lands to its east. Once the Nazis began those eastern campaigns, they sometimes referred to the Eastern European Jewish populations they exterminated as “Indians.”

For Hitler, the American conquest of a vast and resource-rich land had been a turning point in world history, ushering in the first phase of White global domination, which Hitler now sought to complete. In 1936, the popular Nazi text, The Supremacy of the White Race, called the founding of the United States “the first fateful turning point” in the rise of worldwide White supremacy. The genocide of Native Americans played a crucial role in that “turning point.”

On December 9, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which entered into force on January 12, 1951. The Convention clearly defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the groups to another group. The United States ratified the Convention in 1988.

Since the 1970’s, American academics have begun to use the term “genocide” to describe U.S. policies toward American Indians. According to historical records and media reports, since its founding, the United States has systematically deprived Native Americans of their rights to life and basic political, economic, and cultural rights through killings, displacements, and forced assimilation in an attempt to eradicate this group physically and culturally. Even today, Native Americans face a serious existential crisis.

To whitewash this part of history, U.S. historians often glorify the Westward Expansion as the American people’s pursuit of economic development in the western frontier, claiming that it accelerated the improvement of American democracy, boosted economic prosperity, and contributed to the formation and development of the American national spirit. They make no mention of the merciless massacre of Native Americans.

Since the 20th century, with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the protection of Native Americans’ traditional culture and history has improved to some extent. However, due to the serious damage that had already been inflicted by that time, what is left now are often mostly cultural relics preserved by later generations.

Fragility of Freedom is the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2024. Freedoms typically lost during genocides include freedom of religion, freedom to self-identify, freedom of movement, freedom of reproduction, freedom of expression, and ultimately the freedom to live. Today many citizens in western democracies take these freedoms for granted.

HMD can be a day of reflection on how these freedoms need to be valued, preserved, and protected. It can be a day to reflect on the many people around the world who face restrictions on their freedoms to live, worship, work and love freely.

HMD 2024 is a day to reflect on how freedom is fragile and vulnerable to abuse. Those who reflect on the fragility of freedom can pledge not to take freedom for granted and can consider what to do to strengthen freedoms around the world.

Resources and further information are available at www.hmd.org.

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SOURCES:

www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/

www.hmd.org.uk/what-is-holocaust-memorial-day/this-years-theme/

www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/202203/t20220302_10647120.html

wagingnonviolence.org/2020/10/hitler-found-blueprint-german-empire-in-the-american-west/

www.amazon.com/Hitlers-American-Model-United-States/dp/0691183066

www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1093304