Genocide and the Holocaust: was it an historically unique event of unparalleled evil, or do we find similar instances all too frequently across cultures and throughout history? What makes large-scale genocide possible, at both the macro and micro levels of explanation?
I. Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that there were so many like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal."
Q: Does legal guilt depend on intent to do wrong, or what we sometimes call "guilty mind?"
A. His plea: Not Guilty. Not that he didn't act on purpose, but he didn't act for base motives. In fact, his conscience only bothered him when he didn't do what he was ordered to do.
1. Not personally anti-Semitic
2. Considered himself an idealist
3. His job: a bureaucrat working in the coordination of transportation.
II. Stages of his involvement
A. The First Solution: Expulsion... here Eichmann was genuinely enthusiastic
B. The Second Solution: Concentration... internship camps
C. The Final Solution: Extermination
"I had never thought of such a thing, such a solution through violence. I now lost everything, all joy in my work, all initiative, all interest."
III. Legal framework
A. Eichmann tried to explain several times that during the Third Reich, the Fuhrer's words had the force of law.
B. His motives
1. Admiration for Hitler
2. Determination to remain a law-abiding citizen
"Both motives came into play once more during the last days of the war, when he was in Berlin and saw with violent indignation how everyone around him was sensibly enought trying to fix himself up with forged papers before the arrival of the Russians or the Americans."
IV. Language rules
A. "Final solution;" "radical solution;" "special treatment"
B. "The net effect of this language system was not to keep people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it to their old 'normal' knowledge of murder and lies."
V. Characteristics of totalitarian systems
A. Control of mass communication--"the big lie"
B. A single party system in which the party represents a "moral" elite
C. Layers of commitment
D. Secret police and informers
VI. What is deviant/criminal in such a system? Can we construct a higher system, within which to judge such governments and their activities?
A. The Nuremberg Trials
B. The current International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague
C. Proposal for international criminal court: 127 nations convened in Rome in 1998 to consider proposal for a court that would deal with war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression
1. 120 nations voted in favor
2. 7 nations voted against, including China, Iraq, Israel, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and the United States... one reason for U.S. opposition lies in the lack of clear definition for "aggression"
3. 60 nations must sign and ratify the treaty for it to take effect... so far, signed by 80 countries, ratified by only 4.
V. Video: "One Survivor Remembers"
VI. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust--Daniel Goldhagen (1996)
A. Major thesis: That a particularly vicious, "eliminationist antisemitism" was a longstanding peculiarity of German culture...
According to most reviewers, Goldhagen largely fails to prove his thesis, and herein lies the interest for sociology...
John Reilly review in Culture Wars:
"Public antisemitism was hardly rare under either the Hohezollern dynasty or the Weimar Republic, but it did not, for instance, help much in electoral politics. Even the Nazis toned down the antisemitic elements of their programs when they saw a practical possibility of electoral victory. Eliminationist antisemitism was important, not as a popular enthsiasm, but as an organizing principle for would-be elites. To paraphrase George Orwell, it was the kind of thing you had to flunk out of college to believe.
And when those would-be elites became actual elites, how did they get the rest of the Germans to kill most of the Jews of Europe for them.? Well, they continually shouted the unhumanity of the Jews through every medium of communications between 1933 and the beginnings of the final solution in 1941. They created an apocalyptic society in which the normal rules of morality did not apply. Then they sent ordinary Germans to destroy a whole people. And the ordinary Germans did it. Perhaps that is the most unnerving lesson of the Holocaust for later generations. It is appalling to think of what perfectly sane and pleasant people will do, what you yourself would probably do, if put into a situation where an atrocity is a duty."
Particularly good review by Roland Wagner
Major focus of Goldhagen on the death marches like the one in "One Survivor Remembers" and the cruelty of the Ordnungspolizei... but he also gives considerable evidence of the emotional stress they were experiencing and of the instances in which German civilians along the marches tried to provide food...
Goldhagen himself inadvertently raises a problem with his theory when he notes on p. 122 that Germans typically did not condemn particular Jewish families with whom they were personally acquainted, although they routinely condemned the World Zionist conspiracy which they had been taught actually existed. "When the people read of the measures taken against the Jews in the big cities, then they approve of them. But when a Jew of their circle of close acquaintances is affected, then the very same people moan about the terror of the regime. Then compassion stirs in them again...Against them [the anonymous Jews in the big cities] the Germans applaud the eliminationist measures." If anti- Semitism was indeed a deep-seated, centuries old belief that had reached near hallucinatory "exterminationist" proportions, why did the German people routinely make such personal exceptions? A rather obvious conclusion
would be that despite 12 years of skillful manipulation of the mass media by the Nazi propaganda ministry, many Germans were not prejudiced against Jews as people, but rather against Jews as representatives of an abstract conspiracy theory.
B. The Social Construction of Enemies
1. The Tutsi in Rwanda
2. Moslems in Bosnia
3. Pierre Van den Berghe, State Violence and Ethnicity, 1990
3. Democide: R.J. Rumel, U of Hawaii
C. Stanley Milgram's experiments at Yale: 65% of respondents administered "shocks" all the way up to 450 volts---xxx--extreme danger... many showed signs of extreme emotional discomfort
VII. France vs. Denmark in relation to German Occupation and treatment of Jews
A. France: Minneapolis Star Tribune, 4/8/2000
3000 page government report on French role in the Holocaust
German occupation and Vichy government (1940)
"The most stunning aspect of our findings is the extent of the looting. Every Jew in France was affected, from the poorest tailor to the richest art collector." $1.3 billion in assets stolen
50,000 aryanization cases , in which companies, businesses, and homes were turned over to non-Jews
"The report said that the systematic plundering of Jewish assets was largely a result of a political decision designed to weaken Jews and force them to band together 'better ot exclude and asphyxiate them.'"
76,000 Jews in France deported to Nazi concentration camps, of whom about 2500 survived
The Sorrow and the Pity. (1971) Genre-defining, epic-length documentary about the French collaboration with the Nazis in WWII. Considered a masterpiece of its genre by critics. Wrenching film is compulsory viewing for history buffs, documentary fans. Acclaimed look at German occupation of France. Director: Marcel Ophuls. Runtime: 265 minutes
B. Denmark...occupied by Germany in 1940... government cooperated to some degree until wave of sabotage and strikes in summer of 1943.
Why? German defeat at Stalingrad, allied landing in Italy, major bombardment of German cities
October 1, 1943: German police began to round up Jews, beginning with the synagogue in Copenhagen... a few hundred arrested the first day...
Protests by the king and the Social Democratic Party. Luthern pastors read aloud from the pulpit a letter which viewed the persecution of the Jews as conflicting with Christian culture. The University in Copenhagen closed its doors in protest.
Approximately 7,000 Jews illegally sailed to safety in Sweden..."Doctors, priests, and university students were particularly active in the rescue work. The Danish police and coast guard also took sides with the oppressed by refusing to assist in the manhunt." Less than 1000 Jews captured by Nazis and sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto north of Prague...
"Until then, occupied Denmark had been a somewhat opportunist, half-hearted nation. Anti-Semistism and xenophobia were not unknown, and oftentimes foreign refugees fleeing from dictatorships throughout Europe found the border closed. Many people were no taking a stand and helping the refugees."