litical groups. They portray Hitler to be an uninvolved, often unattainable leader that intervened sporadically and unpredictably. He was irrational, no doubt, but was he capable of making and executing plans to wipe out an entire race? Some think that the killings started because of the competition of rival [Nazi] groups to impress their Fuhrer, while Hitler remained in the background having little to no knowledge or involvement. But to form such an effective operation would require planning and cooperation. As Marrus puts it, “ Nazi genocide was truly a monumental task, requiring great exertion throughout the whole German empire, bureaucratic ingenuity, countless administrative decisions, the continuous cooperation of widely diverse agencies, and many thousands of officials.” (Marrus, 48-9)While intentionalists present the Nazis as a carefully formed killing machine, functionalists tend to see them as unorganized and chaotic. For instance, Jews were contained in ghettos around 1939. Conditions were completely unlivable. Disease and starvation were a part of everyday life. They were used as slave labor for the Nazi war cause, a preview of what was to come. After conquering Russia, there were new arrivals daily into an already overcrowded area. The number of Jews in Poland was becoming overwhelming, therefore the Nazis came up with a solution: mass extermination. Yet, it was years before they perfected efficient means to do so.And the most obvious reason indicating functionalism: there is no document in existence signed by Hitler ordering the murder of the Jews. Yet there are many documents that allude to the idea. In Himmler’s memorandum to Hitler on May 25,1940 he says things such as “…we want to dissolve them…” and “…carry out the racial sifting which must be the basis for our considerations…” and even more disturbing, “I hope the concept of Jews wi...
