We do all know that gas chamber and extermination camps existed in nazi Germany and its occupied territories. Not only are the victims still testimoning about them, but there are numerous material traces of these places : there is no way one could deny them in good faith. They are the most atrotious and the most unforgivable thing a People have done to human beings.

As we have comemorated the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, this last 27 January, I couldn't help but to wonder if people actually understand what the extermination of the Jews, the Roamni, the Homosexuals, and so many others, actually meant, and still means, for the nazis.I think that most people, when they discover these atrocities, are so chocked by their exceptionality, that they tend to think about them in a a-historical* way.

Let's be very clear : Germany was an actual and real place in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and so was Europe. And so was it in the tens of years, and in the centuries, before. This environment also had an intellectual dimension : people were reading, debating, talking to each other, exchanging ideas. Like in our days, most of these ideas did not even have to be ecplicited : an example of this is the representation of Homosexual men as feminine, not "real men". As far as in the XXIst century, there is still a sterotype of the "Gay", that is largely depicted in the society, wether it is in the media or everyday conversation - it is not even legal to be LGBT in some countries.

One of the most dominent component of the intellectual landscape of the early XXth century was Darwinism. Charles Darwin stated, in 1859, that all species arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete (for ressources), survive, and reproduce.

People often describe the nazi classification of people as "different races" : it is not. Nazis do not see the Jews as human beings at all, but as another specie, at the same title as "dogs", "cats" or "pigs". Neither did they see the east-Asians, Africans, native Americans, and others as humans, but it is simply that their victims were more geographically close. When they conquered new lands, they'd often "domesticated" (aka : enslave) its people, like they did in Eastern Europe. To them, only the so-called "aryans", "germanics", have rights that are worth to be respected, and LGBT people were eliminated as genetic anomalies and obstacles to the spreading of this "specie".

The ressource nazis were competing for was land. In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated very clearly that he believes the biotope ("Lebensraum") of the German specy was too exiguous, and that it needed to be expanded at any cost. The nazis envisioned a new territory for the Germans going as far as the Ural first, before expanding to the whole Eurasian Continent, even though if this revolution was so immense that it would take one thousand years to be accomplished. Since the beginning, the nazis putted an emphasis on transportation infrastructures, in order to offert their population the opportunity to settle to the newly created "Reichkomissariat", which were territories directly administered by a "Commissary", before eventually becoming new Reichsgaus.

But this expansion of Germany was not sought for the glory of maps colors. Indeed : a common idea from Darwinism is that different species would compete for the same ressources of a biotope : in the XXist century for example, bees are predated by asian hornets for ressources. The nazis were more specifically looking for agricultural lands, which they thought should not fall in the hands of other "species". And not only were they trying to eliminate the equivalent of birds in a field, but they also thought the Jewish people was actively against them, going as far as making Germany lose the First World War.

Now let's be clear : the XXIst Century alone is a proof of how much all of this is wrong : Humans are now able to be four time as much as in the 1950s on Earth. We are all from the same species don't have to compete for anything with other people. While not calling for nazism or fascism at everything and anything, I think it is very much important that we take care, and at least to remember.

* : I didn't find any article or link about a-historicism, so I linked a Wikipedia article about Historicism, so that readers can understand which notion "a-historicism", in my word, oppose to.