The Holocaust: Eastern Europe Vs. Western Europe
... alone had about three million Jewish inhabitants and about two million Jews occupied the USSR. Because Western European countries had far fewer Jews living there, they didn’t view them as being as much of an economical problem to their country. Nations such as Denmark, Holland, and France, of Western Europe had a harder time accepting the explanation of the Jews being the reason for all their problems because of this lower population. On the other hand, Nations like the Soviet Union and Poland may have been easier to convince because of their high Jewish population. The numbers also affected the methods by which the Germans tried to eliminate the Jews. In Western Europe they had to approach it more carefully, using more political and strategic methods (Yahil 1990, 185). Also the Jews were more scattered, so it was difficult to attempt the mass killings being used in the East. In Eastern Europe, convincing the nations of the Jews being a problem was slightly easier in these times of economic distress because of the very high populations. The second major factor according to Yahil was “the size and character of the German administration of the country” (Yahil 1990, 184). The measures taken by the European nations and to what extreme things were done to eliminate the Jews depended largely on how far under Nazi rule the nation was at that point (Yahil 1990, 185). In Eastern Europe where the government had become a poly-hierarchy, it was a lot easier for the Germans to kill the Jews, as they wanted because they pretty much controlled everything there. In Western Europe, where they had less control, attempts at eliminating the Jews were less successful. For example, from Yahil, “The abortive attempts at deporting Jews from the Greater Reich--made in 1939 and 1940 from Vienna, Czechoslovakia, Stettin (Szczecin), and Baden--proved that Hitler was still not capable of cleansing his own house of Jews. He had begun the war against the Jews of Europe, but it was still far from having reached its full dimensions”(Yahil 1990, 185). The third major factor Yahil mentions is “the quality of the traditional relations between the general and Jewish populations” (Yahil 19...