Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Peter Longerich [essential books to read TXT] 📗

mass murders and economic planning, 13

vast projects for the deportation of whole ethnic groups, 14 the National Socialists’

forced labour programme (Arbeitseinsatz), 15 or the expropriation of Jewish property, 16 amongst other areas.

Just as was the case in the debate between structuralists and intentionalists, here

too similar attempts can be discerned to try to shape the discussion along the lines

of major dichotomies: regional research has initiated a discussion of the role of

‘centre and periphery’, 17 and the appearance of works emphasizing the ‘utilitarian’—which is to say material—interests that were at stake in the murder of the

Jews have led to the opposition of ‘ideology’ and ‘rationality’. Within the context

Introduction

3

of the disagreement between Christopher Browning and Daniel Goldhagen on the

motivation of the executions (Todesschützen) in the police battalions a debate

emerged about whether the perpetrators were mainly driven to carry out these

killings by ‘situational’ factors or whether they were predisposed towards these

crimes by the anti-Semitic milieu in which they grew up. 18 The tendency of recent research to emphasize an individual's mindset or Weltanschauung, his capacity for

independent initiative and the room for manoeuvre available to him is clearly a

counter-trend to the older image of a perpetrator at a desk, merely carrying out

orders within anonymous structures, behaving like a cog in a great machine. 19

Whilst such dichotomies and polarized debates can be of use to research, they

create the danger that—as was the case with the debate between the intentionalists

and structuralists—new polemics are kindled without ever leading to significantly

new insights into their subject matter. It seems to me that Holocaust research has

now reached a point where the debate has to reach out beyond such oppositions

and dichotomies and become accustomed to a mode of discussion that is more

complex in structure. It is clear that the battles between one-dimensional explan-

ations can no longer do justice to the complexity of the object of our study—the

systematic murder of the European Jews.

The more research develops and is intensified, the more obvious it becomes that

oppositional pairings such as intention and function, centre and periphery, ration-

ality and ideology, situation or disposition are not mutually exclusive but illumin-

ate varying aspects of historical reality in complementary, even interdependent

ways. 20 However, when one attempts to read the relationship of the antagonisms defined as so irreconcilable by historical research in dialectical terms, it seems

virtually pointless to keep on trying to play off one element of the opposition

against the other. The contradictions can only be resolved if they are regarded as

the starting point for developing historical connections on a higher level.

For example, if one looks back on the debate between structuralists and

intentionalists with a degree of hindsight, it becomes clear that both schools

have emphasized differing aspects of the same phenomenon that on closer

inspection prove to be by no means mutually exclusive. People who pursue

their intention to carry out mass murder do so within certain structures; these

structures do not act of their own volition, they do so via human beings who

combine their actions with intentions. It is the same with centre and periphery: as

will be shown as this study progresses, the initiatives of Nazi potentates in the

various regions of Germany were an essential component of centrally managed

policies, but the leadership role of the centre was itself safeguarded by competi-

tiveness between the various functionaries. Similarly the ‘pragmatic’ basis for Nazi

Judenpolitik—Aryanization, the confiscation of living space, the exploitation of

the labour force, and so on—was matched up with ideological strategies designed

to justify it; and at the same time Nazi ideology was itself validated by the

‘successes’ of its pragmatic implementation.

4

Introduction

In order to set these historical connections into a context, for the 1998 German

version of this book I turned to the concept of Judenpolitik. This was a contem-

porary coinage, used by the perpetrators themselves and applied many times

before in historical research, particularly in scholarship in German. This presents

a difficulty here in that the phrases ‘Jewish policy’, or better still, ‘anti-Jewish

policy’ are inadequate as translations of Judenpolitik since the German word

Politik combines the senses of ‘politics’ and ‘policy’. This makes it very well suited

as a term to describe and analyse the complex process of the persecution of the

Jews. In my view, the concept of Judenpolitik—which will be used in German

throughout this study—comprises the following factors.

First, Judenpolitik has the sense of ‘policy’, the Nazis’ long-term intentions and

goals in respect of the Jews, their strategy for making real the utopian dream of a

racially homogeneous national community via the systematic exclusion, segrega-

tion, and elimination of the Jews.

Historical experience shows that even the most radical of political aims, pur-

sued by a determined leadership and implemented by an extensive apparatus of

power can seldom be put into practice in a simple and straightforward manner.

Political decision-making processes develop their own structures and modalities.

What this means for an analysis of the persecution of the Jews and for a study of

the Holocaust is that Nazi Judenpolitik carved out its own political territory

comparable with that of foreign policy, economic policy, and social policy, for

example. In this field of politics, whilst the top-level strategies and far-reaching

intentions of the major players were undeniably effective, they were subject to the

same sorts of friction and distraction as in other political fields or in any large

organization. These include rivalry between the protagonists (for which the

structures of the Nazi regime were particularly favourable), communication

problems between the various levels of the hierarchy, the ponderousness of the

mechanisms of power, and so forth.

Above all, however, the field of Judenpolitik did not develop autonomously or

independently, but functioned within a context determined by the other areas of

political activity. It penetrated them and radically transformed them. The National

Socialists tended to understand traditional political fields (such as foreign, social, and labour policy) in a racist manner and to redefine them along racist lines. Their starting point was the assumption that there was something akin to an ‘international Jewish

problem’ that foreign policy had to focus on; they assumed that social policy in the

Nazi state took the form of welfare provision for ‘Aryans’ alone and not for the

‘racially inferior’; they took it as read that Jewish labour was essentially unproductive and parasitic and therefore, as a matter of principle, only used