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T-Duong Nguyen
Professor Gomez
English 1A
2, December 2010
The Final Solution
The “us-them” dichotomy and xenophobic attitudes are the mind sets of people such as
Hitler and Pol Pot in numerous genocides throughout history, or more specifically, these men
carefully created a plan to determine how to deliberately kill the “hated” group. In 1930’s
Germany, preceding the Holocaust was the Nazi’s policy or plan for the mass murders of
European Jews, and where racist propaganda played a significant role in enforcing such
xenophobic attitudes. Xenophobia is also present during the Khmer Rouge or Communist Part of
Kampuchea rule in 1975, where Pol Pot, the leader of the CPK, used the U.S. bomb attacks on
Cambodia which devastated civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutality
and radical policies. The CPK and Nazis both had similar plans to make the hated group those to
blame for the economic troubles and military conflict of the time. Although they occurred at a
different time, the “Final Solution” determined by the Nazis and Khmer Rouge for the fate of
innocent Jews and Cambodians, are similar in their “us-them” dichotomy but slightly different in
their reasoning.
The U.S. bomb attacks on Cambodia’s largest city and capital, Phnom Penh, in the
1970’s, were a way for the CPK to scare civilians into their “open arms” and make it easier for
them to take advantage of the hopeless civilians. The reason for their continuous cooperation
with the CPK is stated in Ben Kiernan’s book, The Pol Pot Regime, where he says “It was their
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dissatisfaction with the bombings that they kept cooperating with the Khmer Rouge” (Kiernan
19). Such dissatisfaction with the U.S. bombings made it easier for them to win the people over.
The CPK’s plan, or “Final Solution”, involved radio broadcasts, catchy slogans,
dehumanizing comics/drawings, and finally, their evacuation of those living in the city to the
countryside. Pol Pot admired the ways the tribes on the outskirts of Cambodia’s jungles lived,
which were free of Buddhism, money, education, and wanted the entire nation to be this way.
“Pol Pot envisioned a Cambodia absent of any social institutions like banks or religions or any
modern technology.” This new way of living was “sought to triple agricultural production in a
year, absent the manpower or means necessary.” His means of implementation was to start by
exterminating anyone who didn't fit this new ideal. He stated that he was “turning Cambodia
back to "Year Zero," where intellectuals, businessmen, Buddhists and foreigners were all purged.
On the other hand, The Nazi’s were also successful in their reign by blaming the Jews and
exterminating them involving public oratory and racist propaganda in the 1930’s. With the
exception of how Nazi’s dehumanized and mass murdered an ethnicity other than their own,
differentially, CPK singled out people of their own ethnicity.
The Nazi’s Final Solution of 1933 of the Jewish question, or the “code name for the
deliberate, carefully planned destruction of European Jewry”, was to use forced relocation or
evacuation of all Jews from Germany. They did so by first making people scared of Jews, which
in turn made it easier for Nazis to pass anti-Jewish laws. Hitler started by passing laws to control
Jewish life, taking their rights away from using money, owning property, and their businesses.
Thus making it impossible for them to earn a living, feed their families, and survive nonetheless.
Those exempt from such laws were those formerly in the military, however, this did not last for
long. In September of 1935, the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws were developed to strip Jews of
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citizenship, their civil rights, and provided a way to determine who was a Jew and who was not.
Hitler also tried to preserve blood purity, so “Jews could not marry or have sexual relations with
Germans or employ female employees under the age of forty-five in their households”. The
Nazi’s main focus of their Final Solution was to exterminate all Jews from Germany; likewise,
CPK’s main focus was to exterminate everyone who didn’t fit the ideal citizen.
Both radical leaders, Pol Pot and Hitler, used their Final Solutions to get what they
wanted from the public, which made it easier for them to pass anti-Jewish laws or evacuating the
Cambodians from their own homes. Pol Pot wanted “to transform the capitalist society of
Cambodia into an agrarian society from their victims”, so he started by issuing a radio broadcast
informing the people “to rise up and liberate Phnom Penh” (Kiernan 31), which basically told
people to fight back and defend their city. Pol Pot used these radio broadcasts to make people
scared of anyone other than them, trusting the CPK with their lives, and in turn making it easier
to pass their rapid evacuations. Hitler too, almost completely controlled all media and
newspapers, he made frequent radio broadcasts, and controlled other radio programs so the
Germans could not gather all the facts. Such tactics were used by both radical leaders in similar
ways, which were to hide their real intentions and lie to the public.
Propaganda, propaganda was enforced through Pol Pot and Hitler’s xenophobic attitudes
against the hated group. In the World Book under Propaganda, the section titled “How it works”,
called Simplicity and Repetition, states that “Propaganda must be easy to understand and to
remember. As far as possible, propagandists make their appeals in simple, catchy slogans that
they repeat over and over”; which is exactly what the CPK and Nazis did, in fact, CPK’s most
popular slogan of the time was “What is rotten must be removed”. The slogan refers to the city
people as “rotten”, which must be “removed” through execution and many other excruciating
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ways of annihilation. Here propaganda is used to get the Cambodians to trust the communist
leaders, which will eventually get the ideal, or countryside Cambodians, to turn against those not
fitting the ideal civilian, or those living in Phnom Penh. On the other hand, one of Hitler’s most
popular slogans of the Holocaust states, “The intelligence of the masses is small. Their
forgetfulness is great. They must be told the same thing a thousand times.” Here Hitler criticizes
the intelligence of Jews by saying they cannot listen the first time and the only greatness about
them is their “forgetfulness”. Propaganda is used effectively in both genocides, and both
contribute tremendously to the roots of such tragedies.
As Cambodia descended into civil war, the Khmer Rouge presented themselves as a party
for peace and succeeded in mobilizing support in the countryside. After gaining the people’s
trust, there was a meeting held to discuss the plan. Pol Pot announced that he was “Cleansing the
Cities”, and in order to do so they had to attack Phnom Penh and evacuate those living in the
city, temporarily. Little did the city residents know, they were going to undergo constant
supervision and be evacuated to the countryside to undertake agricultural work, but they were
told such an evacuation was because of another possible U.S. bombing. Similarly, Jews during
the Holocaust were evacuated to Ghettos, and eventually to concentration camps. Along the way,
Jews were always under constant supervision and treated as less than human. Those who were
able to work were subject to undertake large work details; such camps only drove them to
starvation, mental illnesses, and finally, their deaths. The German’s separated Jews by sex, the
elderly were gassed within gas chambers or shot to death, and those sick only had less of a
chance to live. Hitler and Pol Pot believed anyone who wasn’t a Jew or countryside Cambodian
was not worth living, and therefore, were subject to perish through exhaustion, death marches,
disease, gun shots, or gas chambers. Such evacuations occurring during the reign of Pol Pot are
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significantly similar to the evacuations of Jews during the reign of Hitler, although they occurred
about forty years apart, however, their plans from their mindsets of the “us-them” dichotomy is
more similar than their times.
Another important factor of the Khmer Rouge’s Final Solution was to wipe out
Buddhism, markets, not allowing people to have or use money, and own property. Pol Pot
believed that “Where there was money there were markets, and if there were markets there
would be people with money and those people would have property” (Kiernan 57). This was
supposed to triple the amount of agricultural production within a year, but instead tripled the
numbers of deaths. With the Pol Pot group, “Working conditions under constant supervision
were severe, food was scarce, medical care practically did not exist.” Similarly, the Nazi’s took
the Jews’ rights away through the Nuremberg Laws, and working conditions were practically
identical to those of the Khmer Rouge. However, Hitler almost successfully wiped out all Jews
young and old, all homosexuals, those mentally ill or disabled, and many others. Sadly, this was
the success of the radical leaders’ Final Solution, which was an end to a race, or an end to
numerous innocent lives who were not seen as “ideal”.
Boreth Ly, was only twelve years old when he had returned home after four years of
forced labor and suffered near-death starvation by the Khmer Rouge. Ly talks about the
experiences he and his family had gone through during the Khmer Rouge rule in “Devastated
vision(s): The Khmer Rouge scopic regime in Cambodia”. Ly talks about how the Khmer Rouge
was a regime that enforced visual surveillance on its victims and deliberately traumatized and
destroyed their vision. It is said that the leaders intentionally concealed their identities and
political plans to change “the capitalist society of Cambodia into an agrarian society from their
victims. These hidden agendas were accomplished by keeping the regime's victims in a perpetual
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state of shock and disorientation.” This was probably how Pol Pot and his followers were so
successful in transforming the city at the time. Ly gives ten detailed “security regulations” that
was posted outside of Building A- 1 of the Tuol Sleng compound, where those who “thwarted
the Revolution” were asked questions and had to respond with an answer right away. About half
way through the list of “regulations” is where it gets physical, where one could not cry or scream
from the lashes or electrifications made by the guards. Sadly, this is only one person’s
experience of what actually occurred during the rule of Khmer Rouge and one can only imagine
what many other innocent civilians suffered from by the radical leader, Pol Pot.
Under the Khmer Rouge rule of 1975, one of the things that could have been done to
correct such genocide was to stop the communist party long before and possibly while they were
only an “orthodox”. It is said that “In the early days, it was an orthodox communist party and
looked to the Vietnamese Communists for guidance”, so maybe if the U.S. stepped in before the
CPK could corrupt Cambodia, things might’ve turned out differently. So if the Vietnamese
Communists weren’t around for the Khmer Rouge to look for guidance, they wouldn’t have
anyone to idolize. Considering the Khmer Rouge’s tactics was learned from the Viet Cong,
resulting in them eventually developing their own tactics. Perhaps if the U.S. or any other
country for that matter had put an end or let alone, their input, to these radical communists’
mindsets, the Khmer Rouge would never have been able to develop a tactic more evil than those
of the Viet Cong.
Under the Nazi rule of Germany in 1933, though it is difficult to actually say what could
have been done to correct the Jewish Holocaust; it might have not been as progressive if
someone had stepped in during the Night of the Broken Glass on November 9, 1938.
Considering over 1,000 synagogues across Austria and Germany were burned and many Jewish
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businesses looted and destroyed. Ninety-six Jews were murdered and 30,000 were arrested and
sent to concentration camps in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald”, because there were
numerous deaths and vandalisms that had occurred which should have attracted a lot of media
attention outside of Germany. This in turn, is where other countries could have stepped in to save
the 140 million people who perished during the Nazi rule.
As a whole, the events preceding the Cambodian and Jewish Holocaust are tragically
similar. Not only were their plans for the annihilation of innocent people identical, but “the
language employed by the Khmers Rouges to refer to politically undesired elements resembles
the degrading language used by the Nazis to depict the Jews.” Such language only promoted
dehumanization and xenophobic attitudes of the time. Not only were the plans of the Khmer
Rouge and Nazis successful in their intentions, but they managed to survive as a “political
force”. Racist propaganda played a huge part in making such radical policies possible with their
success in the removing of people, either by execution or working people to death with slogans
similar to, "What is rotten must be removed", which was a popular Khmer Rouge slogan of the
time. One of the most famous uses of propaganda was made by Hitler and the Nazis “effective
use of education, motion pictures, press, and radio to shape opinion and behavior”. From ashes to
rubble and deaths to dust lay the remains of innocent Jews and Cambodians due to the
xenophobic attitudes and their “us-them” dichotomy mindsets.