Attack On Titan Sunday: On War and Genocide

Themes borrowed from World War II and The Holocaust.

The sky reddened and the ground rumbled.
You know its coming, you just can’t do anything about it.

You wonder what you and many others could have done differently to prevent the nightmare that was already happening. You get frustrated with the government and with yourself, for the hatred you've harbored against the Devils. "But they deserved every bit of it", you think to yourself, as you remember the horror stories told by your late grandparents. The many crimes against humanity committed by the Devils' ancestors on yours. You however find solace in the hope that the hate would finally be flattened off the face of the Earth.

You say your final prayers as you prepare your final supper. The walls around you tremble and the noise outside grows ever louder. The walls around you come crashing down as the heat comes first. Your meal would probably be jealous of how well cooked you are at this moment, as the superheated steam begins to rip the skin off your body and every other thing around you. However, you aren’t dead just yet. Supposing your eyes still work milliseconds after the ordeal, the darkness comes next, as you get stomped by a 60meter pile of burning meat, muscles, and bones.

The Rumbling isn’t coming anymore.

Its already here.

It’s safe to say that if you’re here reading this, you have probably watched the anime, Attack on Titan, or at the very least, heard about it from somewhere in media. It is a big part of Japanese and Western pop-culture due to its intriguing plot and thought provoking themes, some of them being, friendship and betrayal, emotional turmoil, hate crimes, child soldiers, wartime ethics, mass murder and genocide, and who could ever forget the 2000 year long ethno-racial cleansing?

← If you haven’t seen the show, spoilers ahead! Don’t care? Awesome! Let’s dive right in. →

Attack on Titan is many things: fun, nerve-wracking, brutal, scenes that make you want to bawl your eyes out, music so good it gives you the weird urge to give your life to serve the military of a fictional state (insert Sasageyo salute), titans that emote with the sole aim of becoming the best new meme on Twitter. It can also be scary; and I don’t mean the fear of getting eaten alive, but with the way the actions of peoples and governments reflect our very own reality in the 20th century.

The themes of fascism, war, and ultimately, genocide resonate greater in the later stages of the show and could be compared to the crimes committed by our very own non-fictional Eldian Kings (Adolf Hitler, Leopold II of Belgium, Genghis Khan, to mention a few). The themes borrow heavily from the events of both world wars, including the Holocaust, which would be the primary focus of this piece. Thought the internment zones on Marley looked familiar to you? The concentration camps in Nazi Germany should have rung those bells once or twice.

For 2000 years, the Eldian Empire terrorized the rest of the world with the Power of the Titans before the 145th king, Karl Fritz, abandoned the empire’s ideals and fled to the island of Paradis. With the end of the tyranny, the world was given a key figure to hate. After the events of World War I, the Allies needed a scapegoat which ended up being Germany, in the form of The Treaty of Versailles.

In its simplest terms, the Treaty blamed the events and occurrence of the first world war on Germany, forcing them to admit the claim by signing the treaty which included terms of significantly trimming the army down to just a hundred thousand men, and paying reparations to the allied nations, stated in Article 231 of the Treaty, often known as the "War Guilt Clause". Adolf Hitler was a proud German nationalist and this disgrace made him lose his nuts, giving him the motivation to rise through the ranks and bring Germany back to its former glory.

In the Attack on Titan verse, hate and fear-mongering were the tools used to unite the world against the Eldian race. Hate which many believed was well-deserved, considering the atrocities that took place for 2000 years.

Hitler could take grip of an audience, as he was one of the greatest orators in history, just like Commander Erwin. Difference being the latter wasn’t a genocidal maniac who believed his was the pure race and used the discrimination built up over the centuries to oppress the “lower races” in his country. He used the tool of anti-semitism to place the blame of Germany’s loss in the first world war on the Jews, basically reiterating that they were stabbed in the back on the battlefield, leading to their loss and humiliation.

This triggered a series of aggression and pogroms towards the Jews by the Nazi Party’s paramilitary forces and even civilians. As the 2nd World War raged on, a "solution" to the "Jewish problem" was proposed in the form of Concentration Camps where over 6 million Jewish people and political opponents were systematically wiped out via gassing and other means.

Attack on Titan uses some of these themes from the war without trying to diminish the implications but I believe it was in everyone’s best interest to make the Internment Zones a watered-down version of one of the worst occurrences in human history.

The idea of using child soldiers in war wasn’t just a figment of the writer’s imagination, it has been thought of and executed many times in history, notwithstanding the 2nd WW. Unlike the Marleyan Warrior candidates indoctrinated into believing their race was evil and were the tools used in wiping out that evil, just over 80 years ago, The Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) organization was established to physically train youths aged 15-17 on how to handle weapons and infantry. Younger boys aged 10-14 were also involved in the program under the Deutches Jungvolk (a program with the aim of indoctrinating the Nazi ideology in it’s young members). The young girls were not spared of this madness either as they were involved in some capacity through the Bund Deutscher Mädel (The League of German Girls), with their primary role to bear racially pure Aryan boys.

Other countries and even some of the Allied Nations were also guilty of using child soldiers during the war. For example, preparations for the Battle of Okinawa saw the Japanese Imperial Army mobilize students aged 14-17, and allowed 17 year old boys to volunteer as Kamikaze pilots.

Unlike Hitler, Eren doesn’t use race as an excuse to commit his atrocities. Some might even argue that Eren’s actions are justifiable. Attack on Titan deals with grey areas so well that the only solutions offered to either side are the genocide of either side, using the same weapon of the Founding Titan. Zeke Yeager believes the best way to end the cycle of hate is to commit a slow-burn genocide by euthanizing his own race. His younger brother takes his solution to the extreme by killing off the rest of the world (which includes a significant population of his own race as well) with the Rumbling.

Ideas towards peace were explored but the hate towards both sides caused these strategies to fail. I do believe that a peaceful solution would have presented itself if Erwin was chosen to live (yes, Floch was right and Armin was the wrong choice. Fight me).

Eren is an amazing character who is willing to fight for his freedom and the lives of his friends. He achieves his goal by destroying every last one of his enemies. The final scene at the end of the 3rd season is one of my favorites in the show.

Our heroes venture far beyond the walls to the sea, the feeling of finally being free from the terrors of the titans alluding to everyone. They reach the sea and play in it, carefree and happy. Their dreams finally fulfilled. Or were they? Eren, with a look of immense sadness, looks and points towards the horizon asking, “if we kill all our enemies over there, would we finally be free?”
This line made me feel a lot of things, specifically the gravity of that statement. That was the moment I knew the show had way more to offer and as I had correctly guessed, it was truly the beginning of the things that were set in motion in the final season.

Hitler’s actions towards the Jews were borne out of ideologies that people never really understood. Eren’s actions were borne of the hate shown towards him by the world and responded in the same manner. This is in no way trying to compare one of the worst persons in history to this character but an attempt at showing the not-so-blurry parallels that link the show with the disasters of the 20th century.

The beauty of character motivations and actions lie in the fact that they are understandable (not exactly justifiable), and you can sympathize with every side of the conflict. No one is truly in the wrong and you get stuck in the middle, not sure which side to take, and the story understands this and offers “solutions” that leave you satisfied with the outcome. The Eldians are hated by the rest of the world due to the actions of their ancestors for 2000 years, and Eren hates the rest of the world for their actions towards his people for the last 100 years.

You could make the argument that the Eldians haven’t even begun to atone for the sins of their forefathers but why should the current people be punished for those sins? Just like how the Jews are discriminated against because many think they were the cause behind the Crucifixion of Jesus millennia ago, why should they now be persecuted because of the claims made on their forefathers? The series asks this question many times and makes sound arguments surrounding it.

The resolution to the ages of conflict pretty much ends up with the genocide of millions, but as terrible as it sounds, it handles this impossible and difficult premise extremely well. It goes to show that human history contains the most fascinating and terrifying plotlines anyone can think of, and when some of these elements are used to tell a smaller and well thought out story, you have in your hands the masterpiece that is Attack on Titan.