Hitler and the Holocaust (42 page)

8. M
ODERNITY AND THE
N
AZI
G
ENOCIDE

1.
Omer Bartov,
Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation
(New York, 1996), 4.

2.
Zygmunt Bauman,
Modernity and the Holocaust
(Oxford, 1989), is perhaps the best articulated of these efforts. For an interesting critique, see Hans Mommsen, “Nationalsozialismus als vorgetäuschte Modernisierung,” in Walter H. Pehle, ed.,
Der historische Ort des Nationalsozialismus
(Frankfurt, 1990), 31–46.

3.
Hannah Arendt,
Totalitarianism
(New York, 1968).

4.
For the role of medicine and science, see Robert J. Lifton,
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
(New York, 1986); Benno Müller Hill,
Murderous Science
(Oxford, 1988).

5.
Bauman,
Modernity
, 33.

6.
See Wolfgang Schneider, ed.,
Vernichtungspolitik Eine Debatte über den Zusammenhang von Sozialpolitik und Genozid im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland
(Hamburg, 1991), for a discussion of Aly and Heim’s themes.

7.
Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, “Die Ökonomie der Endlösung?” in
Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits und Sozialpolitik
(Berlin, 1987) 5:14.

8.
Browning,
Path to Genocide
, 59ff., points out that initially the arguments of “productionists” in favor of economic self-sufficiency in the ghettos had the upper hand.

9.
Ulrich Herbert, “Racism and Rational Calculation: The Role of ‘Utilitarian’ Strategies of Legitimation in the National Socialist Weltanschauung,”
Yad Vashem Studies
24 (1994): 133.

10.
Michael Burleigh, “A Political Economy of the Final Solution? Reflections on Modernity, Historians, and the Holocaust,”
Patterns of Prejudice
30.2 (1996): 29–41.

11.
Dan Diner, “Rationalization and Method: Critique of a New Approach in Understanding the ‘Final Solution,’ ”
Yad Vashem Studies
24 (1994): 87.

12.
Peter Longerich,
Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung
(Munich, 1998).

13.
Lochner,
Goebbels Diaries
, 102.

14.
Ibid.

15.
Quoted in Matthew Cooper,
The Phantom War
(London, 1979),
57. See also Yehoshua Büchler, “The Extermination of the Jews Disguised as Anti-Partisan Warfare in the Occupied Areas of the Soviet Union 1941–1942,” M.A. thesis in Hebrew (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989).

16.
See Tim W. Mason, “The Primacy of Politics—Politics and Economics in National Socialist Germany,” in Henry A. Turner, ed.,
Nazism and the Third Reich
(New York, 1972), 175–200.

17.
Albert Speer,
The Slave State: Heinrich Himmler’s Masterplan for SS Supremacy
(London, 1981), 251.

18.
Höss,
Commandant of Auschwitz
, 206.

19.
Smith and Peterson,
Heinrich Himmler
, 201.

20.
Helmut Heiber, ed.,
Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler
(Stuttgart, 1970), 190.

21.
Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal
(Nuremberg, 1948), 29:123.

22.
Ulrich Herbert, “Arbeit und Vernichtung: Ökonomisches Interesse und Primat der Weltanschauung im Nationalsozialismus,” in Dan Diner, ed.,
Ist der nationalsozialismus Geschichte?(Frankfurt
, 1987), 198–236.

23.
Browning,
Paths to Genocide
, 59–85.

24.
Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews
, 3 vols. (New York, 1985), 3:994.

25.
See Bauman, Chap. 4, on “the uniqueness and normality of the Holocaust.”

26.
Mark Levene, “Is the Holocaust Simply Another Example of Genocide?”
Patterns of Prejudice
28.2 (1994): 3–26, at 23.

27.
Edwin Black,
IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and Americas Most Powerful Corporation
(London, 2001).

28.
Friedlander,
Origins of Nazi Genocide;
284.

29.
Christopher Browning, “The Revised Hilberg,”
Simon Wiesenthal Centre Annual
(1986), 291.

30.
Hilberg,
Destruction
, 669.

31.
Hans Mommsen, “The Realisation of the Unthinkable: The ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ in the Third Reich,” in his
From Weimar to Auschwitz: Essays in German History
(Cambridge, 1991), 224–53, at 250.

32.
David Bankier, “On Modernisation and the Rationality of Extermination,”
Yad Vashem Studies
24 (1994): 109–29.

33.
Michael Marrus,
The Holocaust in History
(London, 1988), 40.

34.
Ian Kershaw,
The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation
(London, 1993), 85–86, for a discussion of Hans Mommsen’s work, which first popularized this term.

35.
Schleunes,
Twisted Road
, viii.

36.
Martin Broszat, “Hitler und die ‘Endlösung’: Aus Anlass der Thesen von David Irving,”
VJfZ 25
.4 (1977): 739–75.

37.
Mommsen, “Realisation of the Unthinkable,” 232–33.

38.
Herbert,
National Socialist Extermination Policies
, 1–52, editor’s introduction.

39.
Ibid., 83–127, for the articles by Pohl and Sandkühler.

40.
Ibid., 37.

41.
See Porat, “Holocaust in Lithuania” and Steinberg, “Types of Genocide” in Cesarani,
Final Solution;
Mark Mazower,
Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–1944
(London, 1993), and Jonathan Steinberg, “The Holocaust, Society, and Ourselves,”
The Jewish Quarterly
153 (spring 1994): 46–50. See also the new book by Jan T. Gross,
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabue, Poland
(Princeton, 2001).

42.
Tzvetan Todorov,
Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps
(London, 1999), 289–90.

43.
Arad,
Belzec
, 84.

44.
Ibid.

45.
Ibid., 67.

46.
Wistrich,
Who’s Who
, 269.

47.
Ibid., 278–79, for a short biography of Wirth.

48.
Arad,
Belzec
, 183.

49.
Bauer,
History of the Holocaust
, 210–11.

50.
Wistrich,
Who’s Who
, 241–42. See also Gitta Sereny,
Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience
(London, 1977). This is the only case in which a death-camp commandant ever revealed his feelings in lengthy interviews.

51.
Quoted in Arad,
Belzec
, 186.

52.
Wistrich,
Who’s Who
, 123–24.

53.
Höss,
Commandant of Auschwitz.

54.
Todorov,
Facing the Extreme
, 170.

55.
Martin Gilbert,
The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy
(London, 1986), 582.

56.
Todorov,
Facing the Extreme
, 142; Primo Levi,
The Drowned and the Saved
(London, 1989), 56, already noted that in the camps compassion and brutality “can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment, despite all logic.”

57.
“Diary of Johann Paul Kremer,” in J. Bezwinska and D. Czech, eds.,
KL Auschwitz, Seen by the SS
(New York, 1984), 214–15.

58.
Jean Améry,
At the Mind’s Limits
(London, 1999), 31. These are reflections by a survivor on Auschwitz-Birkenau and its realities.

59.
Bruno Bettelheim,
The Informed Heart
(Glencoe, Ill., 1960), 109.

60.
Todorov,
Facing the Extreme
, 78.

61.
Levi,
Drowned
, 202.

62.
Todorov,
Facing the Extreme
, 152.

63.
Levi,
Drowned
, 30ff.

64.
Ibid., 34.

65.
Ibid., 35.

66.
Ibid., 37.

67.
Goldhagen,
Hitler’s Willing Executioners,8.

68.
Margerete Buber-Neumann,
Déportée à Ravensbrück
(Paris, 1988), 53.

69.
David Rousset et al., eds.,
Pour la vérité sur les camps concentrationnaires
(Paris, 1990), 183.

70.
For Nolte’s views, see his “A Past That Will Not Pass Away,”
Yad Vashem Studies
19 (1988): 71. This issue reproduces the main documents of the German “battle of the historians” (
Historikerstreit
) in the 1980s.

71.
Steven T. Katz,
The Holocaust and Comparative History.
Leo Baeck Memorial Lectures, vol. 37 (New York, 1993), 3–29.

72.
Ibid., 20–21.

73.
Ibid., 22.

74.
Olga Lengyel,
Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz
(New York, 1947), 110–11.

75.
Katz,
Holocaust
, 24.

76.
The figures for the total number of Armenian deaths vary enormously. Katz gives a minimum of 476,000 and a high of 776,000 fatalities (ibid., 17). Some Armenian historians speak of more than a million deaths. Robert F. Melson estimates that between
1915 and 1918, one million out of two million Armenians were killed. See his “The Armenian Genocide” in Rosenbaum,
Is the Holocaust Unique?
89. He adds that between 1918 and 1923 half a million more Armenians perished at Turkish hands.

77.
Pierre Papazian, “A ‘Unique Uniqueness’?”
Midstream
(April 1984), 14–18, and the responses by Yehuda Bauer, Helen Fein, George M. Kren, Leon H. Rappoport, and Nora Levin (19–25).

78.
Melson, “Armenian Genocide,” 92–93.

79.
Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide,” in Rosenbaum,
Is the Holocaust Unique?
104–5.

80.
Katz,
Holocaust
, 6–17.

81.
Richard L. Rubinstein, “Religion and the Uniqueness of the Holocaust,” in Rosenbaum,
Is the Holocaust Unique?
11–18.

82.
Maccoby,
Sacred Executioner
, 175.

83.
Uriel Tal, “On the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide,”
Yad Vashem Studies
13 (1979): 45.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Robert Wistrich is Neuberger Professor of modern European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He previously held the Chair for Jewish Studies at University College, London, as well as guest professorships at Harvard, Brandeis, and Oxford Universities, and at the Institute of Advanced Study in the Netherlands (NIAS). An editor of East European Jewish Affairs and a regular contributor to the
Times Literary Supplement
, Professor Wistrich is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history of modern Jewry and anti-Semitism. He is the author of many highly regarded books, including the award-winning
Socialism and the Jew, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky, Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary, Who’s Who in Germany, Hitler’s Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy, Between Redemption and Perdition: Antisemitism and Jewish Identity
, and
Weekend in Munich: Art, Propaganda and Terror in the Third Reich.
He also scripted, edited, and presented several acclaimed documentary films for British television, including
The Longest Hatred
and
Good Morning, Mr. Hitler.

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