A Look Ahead: The Genocide Forum at Two (1995-6)

Two years are enough to take stock.  If at the tender age of one The Genocide Forum made a "splash" and caught readers' attention, in this second year, The Genocide Forum had to justify its continuation.  Did it do so?  And how to measure it? 

For one thing, the mailing list has doubled; requests to be placed on it are received each week; inquiries for sets of back issues increased; significantly, permissions to reprint by local and regional publications also increased; and, most satisfyingly, instructors in high schools and colleges duplicate The Genocide Forum items for classroom use (one of them in New Jersey regularly made 130! copies this academic year).  Lastly, letters asking for advice or seeking intellectual bonding come from all corners of the globe, from individuals and groups concerned with related issues.  Even someone from the Tribunal in The Hague got in touch with us.

And where does The Genocide Forum still lag behind its goals?  While it is actively read (no lack of responses!) The Genocide Forum does not yet attract enough authors.  Compared to last year's four guest contributors, this year's seven are only a modest gain.  Many call in and ask about contributing, but most do not follow through.  Why?  One interesting explanation came from three different independent "sources," namely, " The Genocide Forum is too controversial."  While this is part compliment — The Genocide Forum was not launched to act as a valium — it is also a sad commentary on the prevailing climate.

If the statement is basically true, then who is afraid of what?  Are there really so many persons in our field intimidated by open expression of reasoned views?  Are there that many topics and issues considered taboo in the study of genocide?  Perhaps.  The disgraceful, almost anti-intellectual public assault, laced with ad hominems, on Daniel Goldhagen, staged by the Holocaust Museum and broadcast over C-Span cable TV gives an inkling of the storms that threaten the more timid and civilized.  These are not healthy signs; there are all too many.  Hence the need for The Genocide Forum, if only to provide a vehicle not bound by taboos that would compromise what it strives to do, to be a Forum for all.

So, what is envisioned for Year 3?  More of the same?  Yes and no.  The Genocide Forum will continue to focus on controversial issues large and small.  The Genocide Forum will also pursue its basic goal of contextualizing organically the Holocaust into Genocide Studies.  New will be an increasing focus on issues raised by recent publications (given the all too erratic range of critical opinion to which readers of scholarly research on genocide are subjected). 

By way of information: henceforth, The Genocide Forum's back issues will only be available in complete sets on diskette.  There will be a charge of $15.

Enjoy a Forumless summer.

Henry R. Huttenbach

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Privileging Jewish lives, Privileging Antisemitism

Hitler's Willing Executioners has an appealingly simple thesis: ordinary Germans were antisemites, eliminationist antisemites, and because they were eliminationist antisemites they willingly killed Jews.  "German antisemitic beliefs . . . were the central causal agent of the Holocaust." (p. 9)  The book claims that Holocaust scholars have not grasped this elementary fact because of their restricted view of the perpetrators, because scholars have insufficiently taken into account the broad range of Germans who willingly participated in the mass killing of Jews.  Although this representation of Holocaust scholarship is problematic, if scholars respond by paying more attention to the perpetrators' motives and to who the perpetrators were, one result of the book may be salutary. 

The large problem with the book is its restricted view of the victims.  Daniel Goldhagen, the book's author, barely mentions that German executioners killed more or less willingly millions of Gentiles.  Only the mass killing of Jews is deemed worthy of serious discussion.  By glossing over the mass murder of Gentiles, the mass murder of Jews is decontextualized from general mass murder and Jewish lives are privileged over Gentile lives.  Additionally, the inattention to German mass murder of Gentiles helps conceal a major weakness in Goldhagen's argument that eliminationist antisemitism was "the central causal agent" of the willingness of ordinary Germans to kill Jews .  Once the mass killing of Gentiles is brought into focus — killing by ordinary Germans unmotivated by any deep enmity — it becomes evident that ordinary Germans almost certainly would have been willing to kill Jews without being deeply antisemitic. 

The largest set of Gentile non-combatants killed by the Germans were the Soviet POWs.  In late l941 and early l942 Germans were killing Soviet POWs at higher rates, both in terms of absolute numbers and proportions of their population, than the contemporaneous mass killing of Jews.   And just as individual Germans could refuse to murder Jews without serious penalties, a fact Goldhagen returns to repeatedly, individual Germans could and did obstruct the killing of Soviet POWs without serious penalties.   Surely in a book that criticizes Holocaust scholars for their neglect of the extraordinariness of the act of mass killing (p. 13), in a book concerned with the ideological basis for the mass killing of Jews, both the contemporaneous killing of Soviet POWs by sometimes the same Germans who killed Jews and the ideological basis for this killing warrant serious attention.  Instead, Goldhagen devotes six lines, in a text of about 600 pages, to the German killing of Soviet POWs.  As part of a discussion of German use and non-use of Jewish labor Goldhagen writes: "Despite the ardent and until then decisive ideological opposition to the employment of Russian 'subhumans' within Germany — a purely ideological stance that had lead the Germans to kill, mainly by starvation, 2.8 million young, healthy Soviet POWs in less than eight months — the policy was reversed during this period.  In l942, owing to ever more pressing economic need, the Germans stopped the decimation of Soviet POWs . .  ." (p. 290)  I read this statement, together with the absence of any other statements on the subject, as indicating complete disinterest in ideology that lead Germans to kill millions of Soviet POWs in eight months and complete disinterest in the fact that ordinary Germans did kill millions of Soviet POWs in eight months.  Just as Jewish life is privileged by Goldhagen, so antisemitism is privileged as the pernicious German/Nazi ideology.

Probably the third largest set of victims of German mass killing, after the Jews and the Soviet POWs, were the Poles.  Well over a million Polish non-combatants were killed by the Germans — to me an extraordinary mass killing, but a fact not even alluded to in Hitler's Willing Executioners.  Goldhagen does briefly discuss in his text one execution of Poles: 78 Polish civilians executed in retaliation for the killing of a German sergeant by the Polish resistance (p. 240).  Goldhagen makes much of the tears of the German commander of the police battalion, who was unaccustomed to killing Poles.  In fact, the execution of the 78 Poles is discussed primarily in order to contrast the commander's tears with the same commander's willingness to kill Jews.   Goldhagen would have us believe that the men of the battalion were also affected by the killing of Poles, stating, "some of the men expressed afterwards their desire not to undertake any more missions of this sort." (p. 240).  Perhaps the men of the last quote were two men who simply wanted to show solidarity with their commander, well loved in the battalion.  Goldhagen does not  say that any member of the battalion asked for a transfer after the shooting of the 78 Poles. 

Subsequent to the execution of the 78 Poles, the battalion "participated in a large-scale retributive slaughter of Poles."  (p. 241).  According to Goldhagen, the battalion "did no more than comb the woods, leaving the killing and burning of the villages to the Kiwis." (p. 241).  The implication that "comb[ing] the woods" was innocuous, was not for the purpose of finding and killing Poles who had fled the villages, reads to me as disingenuous, an attempt to conceal the continuing killing of Poles by the ordinary Germans of the battalion. 

Goldhagen has few other references to Germans killing Poles.  He writes of a "harsh military measure . . . the killing of one hundred 'hostages' from a town in retribution against the local population for having allegedly aided partisans."  (p. 273).  And after reporting in a footnote the frequent killing of Poles "who hid or were suspected of hiding Jews," he states, "this is not surprising, given that this was a policy of the ruthless German occupation." (p. 546, note 8). 

As I read Goldhagen, he comes close to being an apologist for German killing of Poles, perhaps because of an overzealousness to make an argument that ordinary Germans differentiated between killing Poles and killing Jews.  The extent of German mass killing of Poles is not mentioned.  German genocidal killing in Poland is denied (p. 471), and when Germans kill Poles it is "not surprising." 

Goldhagen does provide an important service in Holocaust studies with his focus on the less-known perpetrators, "thickening" (his word) our sense of them as human beings, and thickening our sense of the gruesomeness of their acts, their acts when they kill Jews.  The obvious difficulty of placing antisemitism at the center of a willingness to murder when about half of the murdered were Gentiles, Goldhagen's blindness to the extraordinariness of killing millions of Soviet POWs, and his minimizing and excusing German killing of Poles will probably not be noticed by other American reviewers.  Privileging Jewish life over Slavic life, privileging eliminationist antisemitisim over other pernicious ideologies such as rabid anticommunisim is part of the air that American scholars breathe, part of the spirit of this age and country.  Do note that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, praised by Holocaust scholars for its fair treatment of the Germans' non-Jewish victims, hides its only statement that over 3 million Soviet POWs were killed by Germans in a ten second segment of a video.  The video runs under a display panel that understates Soviet losses to the invading Germans by a factor of ten.  

Jonathan Petrie

Re-Explaining the Explainable: The Case of the Deutsche Bank

Between the 1933 Machtergreifung and the 1995 Fiftieth anniversary V-E Day celebrations, the scholarly consensus on the role German bankers played in Hitler's rise to power and in sustaining the Third Reich turned a full 180 degrees.  Scholars first argued that German bankers fearing a communist revolution encouraged the National Socialist takeover and saw advantages in helping the regime survive its early financial turmoil.  After Jahr Null (1945), Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that the only identity left for West Germans was economic; they made an ideology out of Wirtschaftswunder, defining nationhood for a people who no longer knew what Germany signified for them.  In a post-war context of profound confusion, rage, fear, and despair, bankers, like the rest of the population, chose to forget the past.  Or, if not to forget it, explained it with descriptions of life in a totalitarian state.

In 1985 Henry Ashby Turner Jr. presented (in German Business and the Rise of Hitler) a most detailed defense, unequaled so far, of Big Business' relationship with National Socialists during the Weimar years.  He argues that bankers, like industrialists, never provided the bulk of the NSDAP's operating funds.  However, in a 125th-year Festschrift (The Deutsche Bank 1870-1995, Weidenfelf & Nicolson, London, 1995) published in German and in English, with essays by American, British and German scholars, the Deutsche Bank does not deny involvement in Nazi economic crimes.  Nevertheless, scholars say, "No!" the Deutsche Bank never sought to install Hitler in the Reich chancellery and was no ardent partner in extortion, in commerce of stolen property, in financing the death camps, and in Aryanization.  Again and again we read that life in a totalitarian state makes few choices possible, except those allowed by the regime.

Is the 1995 Deutsche Bank's Apologia any more successful than the 1945 version? 

The two essays describing the bank's involvement with National Socialists are Gerald Feldman's "The Deutsche Bank from World War to World Economic Crisis 1914-1933" and Harold James's "The Deutsche Bank and the Dictatorship 1933-1945."  Feldman emphasizes philosophical differences between conservatives and nationalist fanatics, stating: "In short, the bankers wanted a regime supportive of their economic position and that kept the left and extreme radicals on the right under control." 

James' arguments hinge on similar theories: "Throughout the duration of the National Socialist dictatorship, the party launched periodic attacks on [banks] and bankers.  It associated them with the allegedly defunct economy of 'liberal individualism' and found them to be at odds with its notions of state-led economic activity."  And, "The history of the Deutsche Bank in the Third Reich is the story of the clash of . . . two strategies of adaptation: on the one hand, self-defense against the intrusions of the party and state; but accommodation and compromise on the other."

For good reason, both of James's theories, particularly the second one, will trouble even the moderately-informed reader on Third Reich economic issues.  It implies that Deutsche Bank officers were, at worst, unwilling accomplices in Nazi crimes.

A brief summary of Nazi economic policies on Jews may help to clarify why his theory can be seriously questioned.  Confiscations did not follow a straight line course that began on April 1, 1933, with National Socialist Saturday (the boycott of Jewish retail businesses) and ended in death camps with the victims' last possessions taken from them.  Berlin's most vexing Jewish economic question from early 1933 until the outbreak of the war was not whether but how fast or slow to oust Jews from business and rob them of their assets.  If too fast, consequences might jeopardize stability.  If too slow, the National Socialist faithful might question — as did Ernst Röhm between January 30, 1933, and June 30, 1934 (Night of the Long Knives) — Hitler's sincerity in the crusade against the so-called Jewish Capitalist Communist International Conspiracy.

While Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht and Nazi radicals fought each other over how long Jews could remain active and in which business enterprises, Hitler watched and waited.  But he could not do so indefinitely.  In late 1936, Schacht brought word that rearmament must be slowed or cash flow would be compromised.  The Führer opted for the confiscation of Jewish assets to help make up for financial shortfalls.

James says little about this critical struggle, albeit devoting six-and-a-half pages to the Deutsche Bank's role in Aryanization, particularly of middle-sized and major Jewish-owned businesses, beginning in the fall of 1937.  This Aryanization process culminated , by 1941, with the absorption by German corporations of all Rothschild and Petschek holdings.  Nor did the bank participate as a mere junior partner; it helped lead the National Socialist seizure of Jewish wealth.  James tells us that the Reichssicherheitshauptamt reported: "Aryanizations in banking have been accomplished successfully, with the help of private banks, especially . . . the Deutsche Bank."  On the other hand, James assures that "the old owners [of Jewish firms] wanted the help of a reputable financial institution in preserving their life's work, and also in securing their position should there by some miracle be a change in the regime."

Former owners might have been less confident of Deutsche Bank's intention had they seen a letter from its Executive Offices to its branch offices, dated January 14, 1938, saying "Die ganze Angelegenheit muss vorsichtig und mit Ueberlegung behandelt werden und erfordert viel Geschick, damit nicht durch taktisch unrichtige Behandlung Verärgerungen und Verstimmungen ausgelöst werden, die, wie wir schon erfahren mussten, zu Folgerungen bezüglich des Geschäftsverkehrs geführt haben; das muss natürlich vermieden werden." 

Clearly, the Deutsche Bank operated on a realpolitik theory that there are no friends in business — even though Josef Hermann Abs, among the bank's most prestigious officers, told the Petscheks (who had earlier employed him) that he was, of course, working in their interests.  That position served the bank well.  Among later and equally profitable services to its customers were the management of wholesale robberies of assets of occupied countries and financing for I.G. Farben's forced labor camp adjacent to Auschwitz, I.G. Monowitz, to which some pre-war Jewish clients may well have been deported. 

Of the six major banks that functioned in Wilhemine Germany, only he Deutsche, Dresdner, and Commerz survived by May 1945.  What remained of their massive structures and of their vaults on Berlin's Behrenstrasse was in the Soviet Zone and summarily expropriated.  In May 1947, Western zones jointly issued Law 57, which compelled each major bank to dismantle, as an "excessive concentration of economic power." 

The swift advent of the Cold War brought dramatic changes in Western policy toward banks, however.  In March 1952, the Allies authorized Deutsche Bank to operate under three separate administrations.  Four years later, the Bundestag permitted each major bank to reconcentrate.  It was, therefore, virtually inevitable that in May 1957, Deutsche Bank could advise customers that it was once again a single institution, capitalized by DM 7.8 billion.  Without those assets and the DM 9.9 billion that the banks had at their disposal, the Wirtschaftswunder would not have been possible.  But Abs argued against Konrad Adenauer's demand that Jews be paid restitution and reparations unless the Americans and British forgave a large part of Germany's pre-World War II debts.  Washington and London yielded, thereby enabling Deutsche Bank to return to world prominence. 

Milton Goldin