What’s next? Is this not the question on everyone’s mind?

What’s next, now that the United Nations has been fatally bitten by its own resident scorpion, the Security Council?

What’s next, now that the US has revealed its true colours, handing a carte blanche to Israel to do as it pleases?

They have mowed the lawn, razed the fields, flattened the land and butchered its inhabitants, what’s next? How will the war games end? Is there a final solution?

An almost identical situation confronted humanity less than a century ago, during World War II. There is something very characteristic in this inflamed hostility. We are dragged back to the grim past for a historic view. Does history have a precise or clear-cut answer?

In the aftermath of horrific events, all ends are brutal, undesirable, and perhaps unavoidable.

Is today’s “Operation Swords of Fire”, equivalent to yesterday’s “Final Solution”?

The “Final Solution” was a Nazi euphemism, referring to the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.

“Operation Swords of Fire” is the codename for Israel’s military operation to destroy Hamas, (meaning Gaza), no matter the cost.

Both expressions were meant to gild the poisoned pill of the systemic genocidal campaign, resulting in total ethnic cleansing. How did the past fare? Is it a precursor of the present?

It is unclear when exactly Hitler decided to murder Europe’s Jews. He is credited or blamed for starting World War II, but his initial reason was quite different. His political message, that brought him to power, was his promise to make Germany economically strong again and militarily secure. Having suffered defeat in World War I, his primary concern was reuniting the German people and to pursue Lebenstaum (living space) that would solve Germany’s economic crisis. In other words, he sought territorial expansion.

With little resistance, he managed to annex Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, but his main target was Poland. Both France and Britain had guaranteed Poland’s security following WWI. When Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. The bloodiest war in all of human history was launched.

Hitler did not invent the hatred for the Jews; he only capitalised on it.

Jews in Europe had been victims of discrimination since the Middle Ages, mostly for religious reasons. It can even be traced to pre-Christian times in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Hitler was born in Austria in 1889, worked in Vienna for years as a painter. Hatred for the Jews in Vienna was very common, with its large Jewish community, and an extremely anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger. The general consensus was that WWI was lost, not on the battlefield, but through the betrayal of the Jews. With paintings depicting a Jew, knife in hand, stabbing a German soldier in the back, the defeat was referred to as the “stab in the back”.

This must have rubbed off on the young, impressionable artist, despite the fact that his most loyal admirer and buyer, Samuel Morgenstern, was a Jew.

After coming to power in Germany, laws and measures against Jews increased, but not the idea of genocide. The decision was probably made with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

It was conceived by the Chief of Germany’s Security Police, Rheinhard Heydrich, who envisioned a killing facility, efficient for mass murders. Similar to concentration camps, they were designed exclusively as death factories.

In the autumn of 1941, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler started the implementation of Endlosung, the infamous Final Solution.

This is doubtless non-human behaviour born in the mind of monsters, not men.

The horror, the outrage, the cold- blooded massacres of women and children is heartbreakingly familiar.  

This dominating passion to rid Europe of its Jewish population consumed Hitler, as it does Netanyahu to rid Gaza of Palestinians, under the guise of Hamas. Following in Hitler’s footsteps he displays the same short-sightedness as did Hitler.

While tears roll overwhelmingly for the lost innocent souls, callously referred to as “collateral damage”, heavenly justice is omnipotent.

The Satanic plan of the Final Solution had a far different end than was originally conceived.

It was not the mass murder of Europe’s Jews but the suicidal mania of Hitler and his associates.

Rotten deeds have a bad odour that permeates the air, floating slowly into Hitler’s bunker as the bombastic sound of the Russian war drums grew louder throughout Berlin.

Hitler heard of the ignoble end of his mentor Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, and how his dead corpse was dragged through the streets and hung upside down. Would this be his end?

He was found dead in the bunker, side by side with his lifelong companion and one-day wife Eva Braun.

Churchill wrote: “The bodies were burned in the courtyard and Hitler’s funeral pyre… made a lurid end of the Third Reich”.

If this was a man, he was a mad man. Madness tore him apart and threw him down as he died in wretchedness and gloom.

Still the end was yet to come with the formation of the International Military Tribunals (1945-46) held in the city of Nuremberg.

In the fog of war, the war criminals are blind.

 Nazi leaders stood trial for war crimes against humanity. In all, 199 defendants were tried; 161 were convicted and 37 were sentenced to death.

That was the Final Solution.

Arrogant and short-sighted little men, cannot see too far ahead.

“The strongest poison ever known/ Came from Caesar’s laurel crown.”

William Blake (1757-1829)

* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 December, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly