If all Hitler had done was kill people in vast numbers more efficiently than anyone else ever did,

the debate over his lasting importance might end there.

But Hitler's impact went beyond his willingness to kill without mercy.

He did something civilization had not seen before.

Genghis Khan operated in the context of the nomadic step, where pillaging villages was the norm.

Hitler came out of the most civilized society on earth, the land of Beethoven and Goethe and Schiller.

He set out to kill people not for what they did, but for who they were.

Even Mao and Stalin were killing their class enemies. Hitler killed a million Jewish babies

just for existing.

Historian and essayist Nancy Gibbs.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music The

The Episode 373, the machinery of mass murder.

Today I want to talk about the Holocaust.

Last time I talked about concentration camps, and again I want to emphasize the difference

between a concentration camp, which is meant to imprison people, and extermination camps, which the Nazis built for

the sole purpose of killing as many human beings as possible, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

These camps are generally called extermination camps, or death camps.

Personally, I don't think either term captures the

full horror. The English language has a word that specifically means the intentional killing of another

human being. That word is murder. The most honest and accurate designation for these places would therefore be murder camps.

While I'm on the subject of words, let's talk about the word Holocaust.

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