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"The book focuses on the integral role that the state and its institutions played in determining the effectiveness of Hitler’s genocide. Where states were destr
by rsync 11y ago
"The book focuses on the integral role that the state and its institutions played in determining the effectiveness of Hitler’s genocide. Where states were destroyed, Jews were murdered; where the state remained intact, Jews could find some protection in bureaucracies and passports. It was in the stateless regions of Eastern Europe where the Nazis were able to experiment with and calibrate the Final Solution"
Well, that's one way of looking at it.
I guess if you are a proponent, or defendant of statist, authoritarian power, at some point you have to come up with some answer to the violence and repression of statist, authoritarian actors like Hitler.
Later:
"And again, that’s only possible—killing Jews is only possible—because states are destroyed."
I don't think this argument holds up when you extend your historical worldview to Soviet Russia under Stalin:
"Judging from the Soviet records we now have, the number of people who died in the Gulag between 1933 and 1945, while both Stalin and Hitler were in power, was on the order of a million, perhaps a bit more. The total figure for the entire Stalinist period is likely between two million and three million. The Great Terror and other shooting actions killed no more than a million people, probably a bit fewer."[1]
"The largest human catastrophe of Stalinism was the famine of 1930–1933, in which more than five million people died. ... Of those who starved, the 3.3 million or so inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine who died in 1932 and 1933 were victims of a deliberate killing policy related to nationality."[1]
That's the state and there's no argument. Perhaps they were not jews specifically, but that probably hurts the pro-statist argument even more: human beings (nazis) made human decisions to kill discriminately, whereas a machine (the soviet state) just steamrolls indiscriminately.
Even if one stipulates that the occupying and invading German forces were not "the state" (which I don't) it's still clear: the state is perfectly capable of killing jews by the millions.
[1] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/hitler-...
- venomsnake 11y agoGenocide is pretty high energy expenditure affair. You need records, you need logistics, you need system to minimize the false positives, you need a lot of stuff that must be state provided. Indiscriminate killing is easier. You just carpet bomb and wipe the ashes.
- Crito 11y agoI don't think that is true at all. There have been many genocides throughout history, but how many have been characterized as industrial, documented, in need of logistics, or particularly concerned with false identification? Well the last one is questionable at all, but generally speaking the Holocaust is spoken of as fairly unique in those other regards. The general rule of thumb is that the only thing you need for a genocide is a bunch of men willing to do it. You don't need trains or camps. You don't need gas chambers or tabulating machines. You just need willing men.
- venomsnake 11y agoDepends when indiscriminate killing turns into genocide. If I say - kill everyone in this city, and don't care about false positives, it is mass killing. The genocide requires precision. And lets take srebrenica - finding all the muslim men and executing them is obviously harder than just killing everyone in that area.
- tormeh 11y agoShiboleth. Genocide is older than dirt.
- Crito 11y agoEthnic cleansing is much more straightforward than you are making it out to be. How is it that these people can be targeted with discrimination or verbal abuse hurled from across the street, but those same racists armed with murderous intentions would be unable to find them? That's just silly. Humans have been doing this longer than we've been writing down our own history. "Industrial" genocides like the Holocaust are the exception, not the rule.
- nl 11y agoIt was in the stateless regions of Eastern Europe where the Nazis were able to experiment with and calibrate the Final Solution It's not at all clear if this is what Snyder says or if it is Delman's interpretation. It seems an odd claim to me - many of the killings in Eastern Europe (Babi Yar[1] for example) used some elements[2] of the former state to help with the killings. It's true that these were mostly individuals who switched to the new powerbase, but still.. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Auxiliary_Police#Participation_in_Holocaust_and_Nazi_atrocities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Auxiliary_Police#Par...