Killing as a Culture in Germany

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Is holocaust Germans’ way of life?
The German political culture
Eliminationist anti-Semitism
The will to participate
German material conditions
Opportunity to participate
Nazis
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The holocaust is one unfortunate occurrence in the history of the world. It is a permanent scar left on the face of the earth. Though it took place decades ago the question of who should be held responsible for the worst atrocities ever, has never been answered. Philosophers and scholars have analyzed and come up with their reasoning but they still leave much to be debated upon.

Is holocaust Germans’ way of life?

That holocaust is Germans’ way of life is a little on the biased side though Goldhagen’s argument brings it a little closer. Goldhagen (1996) states that holocaust was never a monocausal incident but a product of a multiple other factors which in themselves had deep-rooted causes (Mahoney & Ellsberg, 1999).

Goldhagen presents his case in a model-like structure whereby he puts it forward that the holocaust was as a result of many causes and effects. Goldhagen’s model points on six major causes of the holocaust. These include the German political culture, eliminationist anti-Semitism, the will to participate, German material conditions, Nazis and the opportunity to participate.

The German political culture

The first reason is the German political culture. He states clearly that even deep-rooted hatred will never materialize into killings unless fuelled by political leadership. Political leaders have a way of capturing peoples’ psyche and manipulating them to their own advantage.

Eliminationist anti-Semitism

Eliminationist anti-Semitism is another factor, which though does not give a clear excuse as to why the holocaust had to happen. Goldhagen states that during the time of the holocaust, eliminationist anti-Semitism was all over Europe and mainly Eastern Europe. Therefore, this could have only served as a mere icing on the cake. The other countries never witnessed such merciless acts of killing, torture, persecution and murder.

I concur with Brubaker who sees ethnicity, race and nation as not things in the world but perspectives of envisioning the world. Ethnicity amongst other grouping segregations exists only in and through our perceptions, interpretations representations, categorizations and identifications (Brubaker, 2002, p. 174).

The Germans created the illusion-ethnicity in their minds, a situation that made them point out on the Jews as intruders into their territory.

To say that the holocaust is the Germans’ way of life may seem far-fetched and abrasive but this may remain true for as long the eliminationist-anti-Semitism factor exists. Eliminationist anti-Semitism may seem obsolete but that may only be for the present.

Anti-Semitism is not extinct but merely in a latent state and may easily flourish once the pre-existing favorable conditions are revived. Bauer states that although no event will ever be repeated exactly, it will, if it is followed by similar events (Bauer, 2001, p. 2).

In relation to the Holocaust, Dominick LaCapra and Saul Friedlander argue that, prior to and during any act of genocide, there occurs a heightening of community feeling. This goes to the point at which this ecstatic sense of belonging permits, indeed demands, a normally forbidden act of transgression in order to safeguard the community by killing the designated threatening group (Stone, 2004).

Ethnicity arises when ethnies have a great interest in securing and exercising full control over a demarcated territory. This brings about ethnic nepotism. Genetic losses occur when an immigrant from different ethnies replace another ethny and self altruism becomes adaptive when it insists on preserving the genetic interests of a population consisting of genetically identical persons (Berghe, 1981).

Berghe’s arguments conceivably excuse the holocaust by arguing that it was a result of an ethnic cleansing. This argument is easily shot down by the fact that immigrants were not only present in Germany but all the nations of the world at the time had immigrants of some kind.

The western countries at the time were experiencing even more immigrants at the time and if arguments are based on Berghe’s evolutionary biology and nepotism then all nations should have been warring. Ethnic tolerance occurs when a people of a nation or an ethny’s accepts that they need another for productivity. Berghe further argues that immigration of any scale should be accepted if it raises the aggregate income of a society.

However, both genocide and holocaust are under the broad description of brutality they have a major difference in the nature of their occurrence. Genocide pits a government against its citizens (Wolffsohn, 1998). Holocaust is more expressed in ethnic terms, an ethny against an ethny. Holocaust is ethnic animosity fuelled by deep-rooted hatred.

The will to participate

Over and above the best killer is the willing one, hence the clause Hitler’s willing executioners. Germans due to their deep-seated ill reasons-a product of their poisoned minds, were willing to do away with the Jews. Michael Wolffsohn in his book ‘A people of hilling Jew murderous’, asserts that the Jew-killing will and mania of the Germans has deep roots reaching far back into the past, deeper than for other peoples (Wolffsohn, 1998, p. 75).

This is true. The political leadership fueled the poisoning of the Germans’ minds, which – in this case – was the Nazis’ rule. The leaders, ground perpetrators and the ordinary citizens carried out successful persecutions. The ground perpetrators imply the police battalions, death camps accompanied by the death marches.

German material conditions

Goldhagen also points at the Germans’ material condition. He states that at the time, Germany as a country was experiencing an economic depression. Goldhagen affirms were it not for the economic depression in Germany then the Nazis would never have come to power (Mahoney & Ellsberg, 1999). The stock market collapsed sending the world market into a tailspin followed by disastrous economic effects.

Economists state that the German economy was very vulnerable since it was built upon foreign capital and mostly on loans. Banks in Germany failed and workers were widely laid off. The Germans were cast into poverty and they miserably began looking for solutions, any solution. Adolf Hitler, whose party-Nazi party during the good times experienced very slow growth, knew that his time had come.

Opportunity to participate

Another cause of holocaust according to Goldhagen is the opportunity to participate. The German citizens were accorded that opportunity to participate in the persecution of the Jewish nationals. Participation was encouraged through recognition and awarding of the active participants.

This in union with the willingness and the political support formed a solid base for torture and murder. Many Germans arguably might have seen the opportunity to take control of the resources that had lain in the hands of the Jews.

Nazis

It is here that the Nazi rule comes into focus. This is simply because this political power drove the Germans to perform the atrocities. The Nazis provided the German nationals the opportunity and structure to translate the will to kill the Jews. The participants were motivated to kill because of the beliefs they had about them.

Nevertheless, Goldhagen stresses on Eliminationist anti-Semitism as the root cause of the lethal killings. The Germans might have been driven by the other factors. That could be true but it is the apparent zeal and voluntarism of the Germans that raises eyebrows.

Other nations were experiencing same if not identical issues but the worse did not turn into the evil massacre of a population. The way the killings were done would give one the idea of a ready to go car that is just waiting for the driver. The driver here is well covered by all the other factors conjugated to one.

Normalization of the unthinkable is the performing of terrible things in an organized and very systematic manner according to. This is a culture whereby evil and very degrading acts become routine and along the way become accepted as the normal. The Germans after some time of subjecting the Jews to the ‘gallows’ took it as the way things ought to be done. They embraced their evil deeds and even perfected the art of killing.

In the normalization of the unthinkable, there is usually division of labor with the brutal killings done by a segment of the group. In the Nazi death camps, killing was normalized for the prisoners i.e. the long-term prisoners as well as the regular personnel.

There was division of labor whereby the political leadership including the law enforcers set policies and actually felt that killing was never their job. In this sense, the lesser persons at the lowest end of the hierarchy did killings and the actual inhumane acts. Simply put, the Germans developed a vocabulary that rendered the unthinkable to be palatable.

Conclusion

Arguably, holocaust can never be conceived as the Germans’ way of life but rather as Germans’ way of thinking. Ethnicity, Eliminationist, anti-Semitism and normalization of the unthinkable are actually all in the mind. Holocaust to the Germans is a past tense but I would arguably add ‘at least for now’. Chances of another holocaust happening may seem impossible but it is actually latent.

It lies there, somewhere waiting to be awakened and it would erupt like an active volcano that has lay dormant for centuries. I would greatly concur with Goldhagen’s take on the issue.

He states that the happenings in Germany during the holocaust were not an occurrence out of the blue but rather an expression of the people’s deep-rooted intent. Or else how would one explain the willingness and the voluntarism with which the Jews were executed?

The best way to avoid the occurrence of another Holocaust is through doing a critical analysis of these six factors Goldhagen puts across. The six are interwoven and interrelated facts which we can all learn to handle nobly. German material conditions, German political culture, Nazis and the opportunity to participate are extrinsic factors.

Material condition in itself would never spell doom but it does when it leads to the appointment of a ruthless political class. Bad politics means bad living. The eliminationist anti-Semitism and the willingness are two intrinsic contributors. These two according to me are the most important. They are individual-based. Solving this means finding it within oneself and appreciating that the Holocaust is a terrible historical scar.

References

Bauer, Y. (2001). Rethinking the holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Berghe, V. (1981). Ethnicity and the biology of nepotism. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Goldhagen, D. (1996). Hitler’s Willing Executioner. New York, NY: New York press.

Mahoney, J., & Ellsberg, M. (1999). Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: A Clarification and methodological Critique. Journal of Historical Sociology, 12 (4), 424-429.

Stone, D. (2004). Genocide as Transgression. European Journal of Social Theory, 7 (1), 45-65.

Wolffsohn, M. (1998). A people of willing Jew murderers. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Press.

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