Popular antisemitism contributed to the Holocaust chiefly through induced apathy.

Evidence

Never during the process of destruction did popular antisemitism become an active force. At most it is suggested that it obliquely contributed to the perpetration of mass murder by inducing the apathy with which most Germans viewed the fate of the Jews when they knew of it, or resigned themselves to ignorance. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 115

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘co-operation by non-resistance’ and apathy mechanism prefigures Arendt’s banality-of-evil and later analyses of bystander complicity. — connects to: Antisemitism acted as a catalyst for Nazi rule, world war, and genocide; Random mass terror produces passive apathy rather than resistance in its victims.; Social factors, not just politics, turned antisemitism into extermination — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 273 (+8 more)

Related

• German popular antisemitism was weaker than in several other European countries. (similarity 0.85)
• Antisemitism acted as a catalyst for Nazi rule, world war, and genocide (similarity 0.85)
• Popular hatred was insufficient to drive the Holocaust (similarity 0.85)
• The Holocaust fused antisemitism with social and political mechanisms of an entirely different character. (similarity 0.83)
• Social factors, not just politics, turned antisemitism into extermination (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them (similarity 0.81)
• The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. (similarity 0.81)
• Antisemitism was added to Pan-German program rather than foundational to it (similarity 0.80)
• Traditional antisemitism negatively correlates with willingness to perpetrate genocide (similarity 0.80)
• Majority ambivalence toward Jews, not indifference, enabled genocide (similarity 0.80)
• Intense Nazi indoctrination failed to override conventional, nonracial loyalties (similarity 0.80)
• Holocaust death rates tracked Nazi control, not local antisemitism levels. (similarity 0.79)
• Antisemitism explains victim selection, not the crime’s nature (similarity 0.79)
• Nazi ideology encompassed antisemitic views that blamed Germans rather than Jews (similarity 0.78)
• The absence of active anti-anti-Semitism enabled complicity with genocide. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them #corroborates (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 522
• Popular hatred was insufficient to drive the Holocaust #corroborates (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 212
• The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114
• Traditional antisemitism negatively correlates with willingness to perpetrate genocide #corroborates (0.76) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 521