Parallel analysis essay

I wrote this for my english 10 class, the task was to write a 6 paragraph essay explaining how the Nazi's were able to gain control of Germany, and how it could happen again using alexander grashoff's the wave and elie wiesel's night. please be critical and tell me what I can improve, thank you

11 million. Over 11 million people died in concentration, labor and death camps during the Holocaust in the years 1933-1945. This consisted of 6 million Jews 3 million Soviet POW’s, 2 million Polish political POW’s, and about half a million others that consisted of communists, disabled, gyspsies, and homosexuals. The Holocaust indeed was an act of genocide and is one of the worst crimes in the history of humanity; if not the worst ever, going by how it is described by the book Night Elie Wiesel. The German people did not try to stop the Nazi regime, because they were afraid of their power and got caught in the group-think mentality. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s had manipulated the Germanic peoples when they came into power in the 1930’s and 40’s, this same idea is seen in Alexander Grasshoff’s movie The Wave, where Mr. Ross manipulates his social studies class.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night is a clear example of how the Nazi’s used fear to force people to obey him, not from the Nazi perspective in itself, but from the eyes of Elie, a Jew who was enslaved in concentration camps. For example, Elie and his father were tortured at these concentration camps. All they got to eat was a slice of bread and soup for their meals, they witnessed harsh treatment of prisoners, open execution of prisoners etc. In the end of it all, Elie basically witnessed his own father die and suffer right in front of him, and had to battle near impossible hardship and adversity to ensure his own survival. I believe a quote from Elie toward the end of the book which sums up his experience at these camps perfectly reads, “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That’s all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread, and even when we were no longer hungry, not one of us thought of revenge.” (pg115) Subsequently, this shows that he did not care to get back to the Nazi’,s. Elie did not even care for his friends and family for the whole time being. Elie was hungry, very, very hungry. He did not think of revenge, because you can convey that he did not want him and the Jewish people to sink to the Nazi level of sadism. They just wanted everything, this whole experience to be over and to never happen again. The 2^nd quote which is on the same page as the last one is also excellent at portraying that Elie was indeed frightened by his experience, it reads, “I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” (pg 115) To illustrate, what the author is trying to convey here, is that when Elie looked in the mirror, he no longer saw his own face, but a corpse. It is trying to tell you the reader of the book the end result of what the Holocaust had on him. Even though he survived the war, he is dead inside, from everything that he saw during this experience to himself and others in the concentration camps. This all in all showing that this was a very traumatic experience for Elie indeed, something he probably never wants to re-live again. You can imply that Elie was in fact afraid. Hence, through both of these quotes you can sense fear in the author’s tone. This fear came from the Nazi’s, the Nazi’s in the end made many Jewish and other Holocaust survivors afraid and maybe even paranoid. They did the same to their followers, to make sure no one tried to go against the Nazi power in Germany.
Another reason why people didn’t stop Hitler and the Nazi’s is because they got caught inside of the group think mentality. Hitler manipulated the people of Germany and made them trust him, and his beliefs. The Nazi’s manipulated the Jews in a way as well, as shown by the memoir Night. Before people like Elie were placed in concentration camps. There was much anti-Semitism in Europe during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Adolf Hitler is a big reason why prejudice against Jews got so big. Him and the Nazi party used propaganda and lies to slander the Jews in this time period. An important example of that would be that German Jews signed the Treaty of Versialles at the end of WWI, which was totally unfair to Germany. Of course it was a lie, but this was one of the many ways the Nazi tried to scapegoat the Jewish people during this time period. Jews in other countries at this time, for example Elie and his family, were manipulated over and over again into trusting the Nazi’s, that they were doing no harm. One good example is when Moshie the Beadle had returned to the town of Sighet. He told a very frightening story about how the SS took him and other foreign Jews out near the border, lined them up, and shot them in a line. Moshie escaped to warn people but no one believed him. One quote from Moshie reads, "I wanted to come back to Sighet to tell you the story of my death. So that you could prepare yourselves while there was still time. To live? I don't attach any importance to my life any more. I'm alone. No, I wanted to come back, and to warn you. Only, no one will listen to me." (page 7) Not even Elie believed him. Many would write this off as “oh no one could be that cruel, sure this is war, but that is cold blooded murder, they couldn’t be that evil could they.” This is why Hitler worked his plans in motion secretly, because the Nazi’s were indeed that evil and they did commit these vicious crimes. Word had never gotten out to everyone that these camps had already started enslaving, torturing and killing people, and the ones deemed un-fit were shot on site. Nobody thought anything like this was possible. Everyone had their opinions on the war and that was that, no one really had a vendetta against Nazi Germany at this time. In this manner, the Germans would eventually reach Sighet. But they were not really an enemy, because they were in fact fighting a war at the time. Many stayed in the houses of Jews in Sighet for hospitality. Another quote that directly ties into this quote on page 9 reads, “Their attitudes toward their hosts was distant but polite. They never demanded the impossible, made no offensive remarks, and sometimes even smiled at the lady of the house. A German officer lodged in the Kahns’ house across the street from us. We were told he was a charming man, calm, likeable and polite. Three days after he moved in, he bought Mrs Kahn a box of choclates. The optimists were jubilant: ‘Well? What did we tell you? You wouldn’t believe us. There they are, your Germans. What do you say now? Where is your famous cruelty.” (pg 10) This is indeed manipulation; the Germans were kind and polite, they gain the trust of the Jews and now have them right where they want them. Not many would now intend to flee, and if they do it will probably be at a time that is too late. After this they would do more and more, make them where the Star of David, take their valuable possessions, move them into the ghettos, and finally deport them to the camps. This was all the master plan. The 1^st step for gaining their trust is probably the most important. If they went in there and just tried deporting them right away, in a ruthless manner, there may have been a rebellion, or word would of gotten out about the camps, since if they were ruthless here, they probably would have been the same in many other places. These quotes both prove that Hitler was a master at planning and manipulation to gain the trust of the Nazi’s, citizens of Germany, and others, and through reading the story, the reader learns of the power and the danger that this man was, and how others with the same mentality, same patience, and same management of organization can be as well.
In Alexander Grashoff’s movie The Wave is another excellent example to show why no one in Germany stopped Hitler. This movie is about a social studies teacher, who conducts an “experiment”, after one of his students asks him why no one stopped the Nazi’s. He did not have an answer for it. During this experiment, Mr. Ross was the dictator of the group, he was their Adolf Hitler, and the students were the Nazi’s or the Nazi followers. One thing that Mr. Ross did importantly in this experiment, is that he used fear as a tool, to have his students obey. In the movie, David and Lorie get into a fight about The Wave. Lorie does not agree with it, and David does not know why. The altercation eventually turns physical, and this is when David realizes that there is indeed a problem with The Wave. David goes to see Mr. Ross at his house to paraphrase “The Wave is out of control, students are going crazy, and tonight I did something terrible. I hurt Lorie. The Wave is out of control.” The next day in class, Mr. Ross says that there will be a national meeting of The Wave in the auditorium the next day, and that it will continue (it was a part of the experiment but the students did not know that). Lorie and David are outraged. While Mr. Ross is manipulating the students, they scream not to listen to him, that he is using them the same way Hitler used the German people and the Nazi’s. Mr. Ross orders Robert in an angry stern tone to escort them out of the room and for David and Lorie to go home. Robert obeys. Robert felt a sense of pride but at the same time a sense of fear. Say Hitler demands his most worthy follower, in this sense, I’ll use Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS; to order his men to create these camps for at 1^st, POW’s, and Communists/socialists. Then after send Jews to these camps (He did in fact carry out these orders) What if Himmler defies Hitler? Hitler would probably kill/imprison him and mark him as a traitor. If any of the Nazi’s or Germans for that matter got the thought to defy Hitler and go out against the fascist Nazi party, they would be stopped and killed or enslaved. This is where the sense of fear goes in. Even if Himmler or a Nazi did not want to carry out their crimes, they would anyway because of the fear that Hitler struck onto them.
The Wave also showed examples of Mr. Ross manipulating the students as a dictator would to his followers, such as Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s manipulating Germany. Mr. Ross would give tell them all this stuff as it says in the move “STRENGTH THROUGH COMMUNITY, STRENGTH THROUGH DISCPLINE, STRENGTH THROUGH ACTION” And would have them repeat this in unison. Mr. Ross also drilled into them to stand when they speak, and even gave them a pledge that they have to use, just as Hitler did with the Sieg Heil. Even their name “The Wave” which was named because as Mr. Ross says “a wave is a pattern, it has movement direction and impact.” Everyone was obsessed with The Wave, it was spreading like wildfire. Even Lorie at 1^st liked it when she told her parents, “Mom, there is nothing wrong with The Wave. I mean even Robert the class creep is into it. That’s gotta count for something right?” They were drawn to this sort of thing, because people like to be apart of things in their life. For some it gives their life meaning; others may actually be happy that they are just apart of something that in peoples eyes is important. They thought that being apart of The Wave is the right thing to do, and if you’re not apart of The Wave, then you were lesser of a human being. Mr. Ross explained it perfectly at the end when they said they let The Wave take control of their lives, they let a dictator manipulate them just as Hitler did with Germany. That is exactly how Nazi ideology works. It has almost every idea of fascism, but Nazi ideology also supports that there is one race. In this case The Wave members, or pure blooded Aryan Germans are the master race, and that every other race is lesser to them, and they must be enslaved to benefit the master race. Basically meaning that yes a fascist is not always a Nazi, but a perfect Nazi is always a fascist, just as Mr. Ross proved in his experiment.
Therefore, through Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night and Alexander Grashoff’s move The Wave, it is clear to see why Nazi Germany was such a superpower and why no one in Germany bothered to stop them. Because of Adolf Hitler’s strike of fear into others, and his manipulation, Germany rose to great power and became responsible for in my opinion the biggest war crime and worst act of genocide in the known history of mankind. How Hitler used these abilities per se, are shown in Night, and how he brought fear into the Jewish people; particulay Elie in this case, and how he manipulated them, to get them into the camps in the 1^st place. Also compared to in The Wave as The Wave is basically the group of Nazi’s and Nazi followers, and Mr. Ross is their dictator, he is their Hitler. This is important because many people believe that something like the holocaust could never happen again, that people have smartened up since then. But as shown by the evidence that I have just given, that is entirely not true, a dictatorship with an evil agenda could indeed pop up again and become a superpower, just as Nazi Germany did.