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THE KI L L I NG TRAP
The Killing Trap offers a comparative analysis of the genocides, politi-
cides, and ethnic cleansings of the twentieth century, which are estimated
to have cost upwards of forty million lives. The book seeks to understand
both the occurrence and magnitude of genocide, based on the conviction
that such comparative analysis may contribute to prevention of genocide
in the future. Manus Midlarsky compares socioeconomic circumstances
and international contexts, and includes in his analysis the Jews of
Europe, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Tutsi in Rwanda, black
Africans in Darfur, Cambodians, Bosnians, and the victims of conict
in Ireland. The occurrence of genocide is explained by means of a frame-
work that gives equal emphasis to the non-occurrence of genocide, a
critical element not found in other comparisons, and victims are given a
prominence equal to that of perpetrators in understanding the magni-
tude of genocide.
MANUS I . MI DLARS KY is the Moses and Annuta Back Professor of
International Peace and Conict Resolution at Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, NJ. He has authored or edited eleven books and sixty-
ve articles and book chapters. Most recently he has published The
Evolution of Inequality: War, State Survival, and Democracy in
Comparative Perspective and the edited volumes Inequality, Democracy,
and Economic Development (Cambridge), and the Handbook of War
Studies II.
THE KI LLI NG TRAP
Genocide in the Twentieth Century
MANUS I . MI DL ARS KY
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Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cn: :iu, UK
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Manus I. Midlarsky 2005
2005
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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For Liz, with extreme gratitude, and for Tali: May she and her
generation never bear witness to genocide.
Right or wrong, we must win. It is the only way . . . And once we have
won, who is going to question our methods?
Adolf Hitler
Evil, violent, iniquitous, and inhuman means, even supposing that
they had an appearance of immediate utility at the moment of crisis,
leave behind . . . long and disastrous traces.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
CONTENTS
Preface page xiii
PART I Introduction 1
1 Preliminary considerations 3
Purposes of the book 4
The role of theory 11
Research strategy 16
Plan of the book 18
2 Case selection 22
Excluded cases 25
Three cases of genocide 34
PART II Explaining perpetrators: theoretical foundations 41
3 Continuity and validation 43
Continuity of the killing in the three cases 43
Validation 61
4 Prologue to theory 64
Rational choice 64
vii
Utopianism 74
Two historical cases 76
5 A theoretical framework 83
The domain of losses and state insecurity 86
Three types of realpolitik 92
Realpolitik, property, and loss compensation 97
The domain of losses, risk, and loss compensation 103
Altruistic punishment 107
PART III The theory applied 111
6 Threat of numbers, realpolitik, and ethnic cleansing 113
The Irish famine 115
Germans and Jews in Poland 123
Muslims in Bosnia 129
7 Realpolitik and loss 135
The Holocaust 135
The Armenians 153
The Tutsi 162
Conclusion 167
8 The need for unity and altruistic punishment 169
Germany 170
The Ottoman Empire 173
Rwanda 176
Himmler and the necessity for cooperation 180
viii C O N T E N T S
Conclusion 190
9 Perpetrating states 194
Italy: a genocidal trajectory 195
Vichy France 196
Romania 202
PART IV Victim vulnerability: explaining magnitude and
manner of dying 209
10 Raison detat, raison deglise 211
The Armenians 212
The Holocaust 220
The Tutsi 228
Conclusion 234
11 Cynical realpolitik and the unwanted 237
The United States 237
Great Britain and Commonwealth countries 245
Impact on the Holocaust 248
12 High victimization: the role of realpolitik 250
Hungary 250
The Netherlands 259
13 Inequality and absence of identication 264
Inequality and absence of identication between
perpetrators and victims 264
C O N T E N T S ix
Inequality and absence of identication among
the victims 266
On the possibilities of survival 279
Equality and identication between Jews and
non-Jews 283
14 On the possibility of revolt and altruistic
punishment 287
o dz 287
Warsaw 291
Vilna 298
Comparisons among the three ghettos 302
Conclusion: the role of altruistic punishment 305
PART V Exceptions 307
15 A dog of a different nature: the Cambodian
politicide 309
Variation in victimization 311
Genocide of the Vietnamese 312
The Communist models 315
Purges 321
Summary comparisons 323
16 Dogs that didnt bark I: realpolitik and the absence
of loss 325
Bulgaria 326
x C O N T E N T S
Finland 331
Comparisons 332
17 Dogs that didnt bark II: afnity and vulnerability
reduction 335
Afnity and genocide 336
Greeks in the Ottoman Empire 337
Jews in Eastern Europe 343
Poland at the time of the Partitions 347
Britain and Ireland 354
Israel and Intifada II 363
The impact of war 364
PART VI Conclusion 367
18 Findings, consequences, and prevention 369
Similarities and differences 369
Consequences of genocide 375
Genocide prevention and the role of democracy 381
Validation 394
Coda 395
References 396
Index 423
C O N T E N T S xi
PREFACE
I write this book after a 46-year gestation period. This does not mean
that my thinking about the book spanned nearly ve decades. Instead,
my experiences as a seventeen-year-old were formative and ultimately
decisive in the decision to do the research and writing.
For many years, I avoided the issue of the Holocaust, despite an
intense training in Orthodox Judaism and a household deeply affected
by the news of the Holocaust. Although both sides of my family were
originally from Eastern Europe, site of the most extensive massacres, we
were fortunate in that none of our immediate relatives was murdered by
the Nazis. To my knowledge, not even a rst or second cousin of mine
succumbed to this bestiality. Yet, as in most American-Jewish house-
holds of that period, feelings ran deep, especially as the full extent of the
horrors had been so recently revealed. At the age of seventeen, I was
afforded the opportunity to experience them vicariously.
On Yom Kippur in Israel, in 1954, I visited an uncle (through
marriage), who escaped from eastern Poland with his immediate family
to live with relatives in Voronezh, in the depths of Russia. Virtually all of
his relatives who remained in Poland perished in the Holocaust. Now in
Israel after leaving the displaced persons camp in Germany, he was living
in one of the last of the Israeli transit camps (Maabarot). Most of the
younger couples with children had already been placed in new housing,
leaving only the older people who remembered only too well the extent
of their losses. When it came time for the Memorial Service for the Dead
(Yizkor), the extent of their agony became abundantly clear. I have never
before, or since, heard such anguished weeping. It was as if the many
dead in the full extent of their suffering had entered the consciousness of
the living, and we were now hearing their cries of horror at experiencing
their wholly unjustied fate.
Such intensity of feeling was simply too much for a seventeen-year-old
relatively sheltered American. For the next thirty years, I blocked out this
memory. It was revived only after my wife, Professor Elizabeth Midlarsky of
xiii
Teachers College, Columbia University, who was then in the midst of a
research project on helping during the Holocaust (supported by the
National Institutes of Health) and editing a special issue of the Humboldt
Journal of Social Relations on that topic, asked that I contribute an article.
I was exceedingly reluctant for reasons already given; the subject also was
then outside my eld of expertise. Yet perhaps it was the memory of that
Yizkor service long ago, now revived, that was decisive in my ultimate
agreement to write the article. As it happens, the article received a favorable
citation in a review article on altruism in the 1990 Annual Review of
Sociology, thereby allaying fears over my handling of this important and
sensitive topic. Subsequent research on ethnic conict brought me closer
professionally to the topic of genocide, the subject of this book.
These heightened sensitivities to the Holocaust then led to an
increased awareness of other genocides, including, of course, the
Armenian and Tutsi, as well as the Cambodian politicide. All are
explored in this volume.
My rst and heartfelt thanks go to my wife, Liz, for dragging me
kicking and screaming to face the reality of my recent heritage. She also
was immensely helpful in suggesting better ways to frame the arguments,
and to make them more coherent and accessible. My children, Susan,
Miriam, and Michael, all contributed through their questions and con-
cern within this long gestation period, Miriam perhaps most of all. In
her rabbinical studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Miriam (now
Rabbi Miriam Midlarsky Lichtenfeld) has continually raised important
issues about the future of Judaism and the Jewish people in light of the
Holocaust. These conversations fueled much of the thinking that fed
into the writing of this book.
Acknowledgments and thanks are extended to Laura Ahrens, Ya r
Auron, Joseph Bendersky, Claudio Ciof-Revilla, Helen Fein, Brian
Ferguson, Joseph Grieco, Max Herman, Jan Kubik, Jack Levy, Roy
Licklider, Robert Melson, Alexander Motyl, Jack Porter, Scott Straus,
Anna Stubbleeld, and Benjamin Valentino for their comments on
portions of the book. For their efforts, the book is stronger. All errors,
of course, are my own.
Research support of the Back family to the Moses and Annuta Back
Chair of International Peace and Conict Resolution at Rutgers
University, New Brunswick, NJ, made this effort possible. For that too,
I am extremely grateful.
Last, but certainly not least, are the secretarial and administrative
efforts that were needed to complete the manuscript. Isabel La Venuta
xiv P R E F A C E
and Sonya Riley rendered extremely competent service that frequently
went beyond the call of typical ofce work. Sonya especially displayed a
loyalty to the project and reliability of effort that led to completion of the
manuscript in a timely fashion. She deserves the highest praise for her
work.
One point needs to be made with great clarity. Although the primary
purpose of this book is social science explanation, I hope that this
analytic emphasis does not prove to be offensive to the survivors of
genocide. The attempt to explain mass murder, which often involves
understanding the perspective of perpetrators of great evil, can some-
times appear to be callous by those who experienced the full impact of
that evil. Theory, with its necessary mode of abstraction, itself can be
viewed as offensive by people who lost whole families and even entire
societies. The question of abstraction pales before that of existence. Even
the children and grandchildren of survivors can harbor justiable sensi-
tivities on this issue. Yet to explain is not to condone. Explanation has
the virtue of perhaps establishing the foundation for the future preven-
tion of mass murder. Without such explanation, certainly the probabil-
ity of the future repetition of genocide is increased. It is my hope that
social science analysts and genocide survivors, ultimately, are not mem-
bers of disjoint sets on this issue. Hopefully, they can agree on the utility
of the analytic mode, even when it appears to be abstracted from the
immense brutalities of everyday existence in concentration camps or
other killing traps.
P R E F A C E xv
PART I
Introduction
1
Preliminary considerations
On the morning of April 11, 1922, Hans Morgenthau presented a speech
in honor of the duke of Coburg, leader of an autonomous duchy within
Weimar Germany. This was an honor traditionally conferred on the top-
ranked eligible student at the local gymnasium. No Jew had ever been
selected for this honor; indeed, Morgenthau was the only Jew enrolled at
this elite institution. Yet, there was no getting around the fact that
Morgenthau merited this distinction and so the duchy allowed him to
present the speech. That morning, citizens of Coburg distributed anti-
Semitic leaets including demeaning distortions of his Jewish-sounding
name and urging a boycott of the speech. Later, Morgenthau wrote:
Nobody would speak to me . . . And people would spit at me and shout
at me. People would shake their sts at me and shout imprecations or
anti-Semitic insults, and so forth. It was absolutely terrible, absolutely
terrible . . . probably the worst day of my life.
1
During the speech, the
duke and other notables held their noses in a show of disgust. After his
emigration, Morgenthaus classic Politics Among Nations would estab-
lish the study of international relations as a distinct eld of inquiry in the
United States.
Is this an illustration of virulent anti-Semitism that Daniel Goldhagen
would argue quickly morphed into eliminationist
2
anti-Semitism
prior to and during the Holocaust? Or are there other answers that
provide a more compelling explanation? Despite a long history of
German anti-Semitism,
3
the overtly anti-Semitic political parties
experienced a steep decline prior to World War I. By 1912, together
they captured less than 1 percent of the vote.
4
We also know that, for
most supporters of Nazism during the early 1930s, the principal attrac-
tion of the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or
Nazi Party) was not anti-Semitism, but the perceived need for radical
solutions to the countrys economic and political chaos. Perceived
1
Frei 2001, 22.
2
Goldhagen 1996.
3
Hilberg 1985.
4
Melson 1992, 119.
3
injustices of the Treaty of Versailles also fed into support for policies of
the NSDAP.
5
The April 1, 1933, economic boycott of Jewish-owned
businesses sponsored by Hitlers government was particularly unsuc-
cessful.
6
Why, then, the atrocious treatment of Morgenthau, among
other Jews, at this time? Answers are to be found in the wider setting
of European society at the end of World War I, as will be emphasized in
this book.
Purposes of the book
In the broadest sense, this book is about threat (the fear of potential
loss)
7
and vulnerability, two necessary conditions for the occurrence of
genocide. The targeted population needs to be perceived as threatening,
or at least have a tenuous connection to external threatening agents,
whatever the reality of that perception, and the targeted population
must be vulnerable to mass murder. At the same time, the potential
perpetrators of genocide also must experience some vulnerability to
generate their real or fantasized images of threatening civilian popula-
tions. Any process that simultaneously increases both threat to the state
and its vulnerability, as well as vulnerability of a targeted civilian popu-
lation, also increases the probability of genocide. It is for this reason,
among others, that all of the cases examined here, even those that are
ultimately excluded from lengthy consideration, occur during time of
war, interstate or civil. Threat management by the state can be under-
stood as a critical function of realpolitik (dened as policies designed to
preserve and strengthen the state),
8
while vulnerability of states or
potential civilian targets is most frequently signaled by loss.
Realpolitik and loss are the twin theoretical foci of this book.
Understanding the dynamics of genocide at the moment of decision is
at best incomplete, for models of genocide etiology have been put
forward infrequently.
9
Thus far, two basic approaches have been taken
to understanding the annihilation of European Jewry, the exemplar of
5
Abel [1938] 1986; Merkl 1975.
6
Friedlander 1997.
7
For the impact of external threat on domestic societies, see M. Midlarsky 2000b, 2002,
and 2003; see also chapter 5.
8
Waltz 1979, 117.
9
Raul Hilberg 1985 (originally published in 1961) put forward perhaps the earliest model
of the Holocaust in the form of the sequence: denitionexpropriationconcentration
extermination. More recent and comprehensive models of genocide are found in Fein
1979, 1984, 2000; Kuper 1981; and Harff 2003.
4 I N T R O D U C T I O N
twentieth-century genocides because of its magnitude and the absence
of identiable Jewish provocation. The rst is the intentionalist
10
that
posits an ultimate intention on the part of Hitler and his henchmen to
destroy all of Europes Jews. The second is the functionalist argu-
ment
11
that points to the coercive build-up (by the Germans) of Jewish
populations in unsanitary ghettos, which were not only disease-prone
but also required the material support of the occupying German forces,
as the root cause. With so many unwanted Jews excluded from the
economy and the bickering between bureaucratic agencies of the Third
Reich as to the ultimate responsibility for their welfare, the decision to
liquidate them was made.
Neither of these two explanations, nor others such as Saul
Friedlanders most recent emphasis on redemptive anti-Semitism,
12
explains the essentially dynamic circumstance of the increasing propen-
sity to murder Jews as World War II progressed. In other words, this
book seeks to explore the transition from genocidal behavior the
tendency to massacre some people having a particular ethnoreligious
identity to genocide itself wherein the mass murder is systematically
extended to include all people with that identity.
This distinction is not merely a matter of denitional semantics, for the
lives of millions of people were forfeited in the transition from the more
limited behavior to the far more extensive one. Massacres
13
can be used to
terrorize and cow a hated civilian population, as occurred in the large-scale
murder of both Polish and Jewish leaders (Communists, high church and
army ofcials, rabbis, professors) after the invasion of 1939. Indeed, the
murder of the Polish leaders occurred prior to that of the Jews because of
the greater threat of Polish anti-German agitation given their much larger
numbers, yet this murderous behavior is distinct from the later Holocaust
both in kind and scale. Or consider the massacre of approximately 200,000
Armenians by the Ottoman authorities in 189496. This large-scale mas-
sacre is qualitatively distinct from that of the genocide of 191516 when as
many as 1 million or more Armenians were systematically murdered. One
can make similar distinctions between the episodic massacre of Tutsi by
Hutu in Rwanda and the genocide of 1994 in which a likely maximum of
800,000 Tutsi were killed.
10
Dawidowicz 1986; Jackel 1981; Fleming 1984.
11
Fraenkel 1941; Neumann 1942; Broszat 1981.
12
Friedlander 1997.
13
For comprehensive treatments of massacres, see Levene and Roberts 1999.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 5
The emphasis on change over time, particularly during a war, might
appear to be self-evident, yet major public and scholarly gures have
largely ignored it. In addition to the distinction between intentional-
ists and functionalists, journalists such as Sebastian Haffner, himself
a non-Jewish anti-Nazi refugee from Hitler who has been called the
conscience of post-war Germany, argued that over and above every-
thing else, including victory, the principal goal of Nazi Germany was
destruction of the Jews.
14
More recently, Omer Bartov, who has emerged
in recent years as one of the leading Holocaust historians, also afrmed
that, when all other plans fell through, even when the fronts were
collapsing and Germany was about to be invaded, the Jews remained
what they had been from the very beginning: Germanys rst and
primary target.
15
As we shall see, the analyses here will belie this
presumed constancy of motivation.
Contingency also is one of the major emphases of this book.
Genocide, I argue, is a contingent event, one made more probable by
the earlier experience of loss and its consequences. In contrast to John
Lewis Gaddis, who argues for the absence of patterns in contingent
events (By contingencies, I mean phenomena that do not form pat-
terns. These may include the actions individuals take for reasons known
only to themselves: a Hitler on a grandiose scale, for example),
16
this
book demonstrates that patterns of contingency in genocide do occur.
This book, then, attempts to solve two puzzles in the study of
genocide. First, how does the pattern of massacre, sometimes random,
oft-times organized for specic purposes, become transformed into
genocidal policy organized at the state level? Terror is often used to
achieve specic purposes. Potentially hostile civilian populations need
to be cowed into submission; even on the battleeld, technical changes
are sometimes introduced solely in order to induce terror and a con-
sequent demoralization of opposing forces. The tting of shrieking
sirens to the wings of German Stuka dive bombers in World War II is
a case in point. And terror is often sufcient to achieve neutralization,
even complete submissiveness. Active Czech opposition to the German
occupation effectively ceased after the massacre of the male population
and internment in concentration camps of the women and children, as
well as physical destruction of the town of Lidice near the assassination
site of Reinhard Heydrich, protector of Bohemia-Moravia and an archi-
tect of the Final Solution. More generally, as Edward Luttwak notes,
14
Haffner 1979.
15
Emphasis added; Bartov 2003, 93.
16
Gaddis 2002, 3031.
6 I N T R O D U C T I O N
The reprisal policy of the German forces during World War II was very
effective in minimizing the results that guerrillas could achieve, in most
places, most of the time.
17
Genocide of the Czech population was
unnecessary and did not occur.
European Jewish populations had for centuries trained themselves to
be utterly submissive to Christian secular authorities in the expectation,
frequently realized, that even severe oppression ultimately would pass,
and the Jewish community would survive. Orthodox, especially Hasidic
Jewish communities in eastern Poland, Belorussia, and Ukraine were
singularly indifferent to the secular authority of the moment. Their lives
were intensely spiritual and predominantly concerned with doctrinal
Jewish matters. In the face of such manifest indifference or surrender,
why institute genocide?
Second, why does genocide persist? One of the oldest recorded geno-
cides, the Melian of the Peloponnesian War, occurred almost 25 millen-
nia ago, while the most recent, the Tutsi, took place within the past
decade. And these genocides appear not to have conferred any tactical or
strategic advantage on the perpetrator. All of the major instances of the
past century, as well as the prototypical Melian case, were committed by
the losing side in a major war. Indeed, instead of incremental gain,
genocide appears to have incurred substantial losses, as in the
Holocaust when German transport and personnel had to be diverted
from the principal task of waging war against an increasingly formidable
array of opponents. A rational choice decision calculus emphasizing
instrumentality appears not to have been decisive in choosing the
genocidal option, an argument that will be developed more fully in
chapter 4.
The past is unalterable. This painful axiom of invariance sets the stage
for attempts to confront and then roll back the dictates of history. Based
on some understanding of the past, frequently awed as in the canard of
Jewish responsibility for Germanys defeat in World War I, genocide
emerges as a radical solution to the perception of an unacceptable,
indeed intolerable, historical circumstance. Genocide is not an inevita-
ble consequence nor is it a frequent one. But when certain sociopolitical
conditions coincide, genocide has ensued. The task of this book is to
delineate these conditions in three almost universally acknowledged
genocides: the Holocaust of 194145, the Armenians of 191516, and
the Tutsi of 1994. By conning the analysis to cases of maximum
17
Luttwak 1987, 133.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 7
victimization (in the 6670 percent range),
18
I also allow for the possi-
bility of ferreting out variables that have the strongest impact on exten-
sive mass killing. The role of the state, realpolitik, and loss will turn out
to be crucial. These variables also allow for the possibility of specic
policy recommendations included in the concluding chapter an
outcome frequently denied to the more macro variables typically
found in large-N analyses.
19
Later, a politicide the mass murder of
designated enemies of the state based on socioeconomic or political
criteria the Cambodian politicide of 197579, will be shown to have
a different etiology, stemming from an equally awed understanding of
historical causation.
I choose these instances not only because there is little debate about
their status as genocides in contrast to many other potential candidates,
but also because much information is available for the analyst to draw
upon. This is especially true of the Holocaust. Its sheer magnitude of
6,000,000 dead, and the absence of any identiable Jewish provocation
render it unique and almost endlessly attractive to historians, social
scientists, and philosophers who seek to explain the apparently inexplic-
able. The literature on the Holocaust, therefore, is far more extensive
than that found in other cases. Yet explain it we must, because it is too
important an event to leave to the mystiers who contend that it simply
cannot be explained in the temporal realm. The Holocaust also has a
much wider geographical range of occurrence than do any other geno-
cides including the Armenian and Rwandan. It took place in twenty
European countries (including Britain, in the collaboration of local
government with the Nazis on the Channel Islands)
20
with varying
degrees of collaboration or deance among their leaders and popula-
tions, and over a longer time period. This plethora of data allows for the
examination of a wide variation of behaviors among countries and even
among the Jewish ghettos in Poland between 1940 and 1944. This
behavioral variation, too, is absent in other cases. For these reasons,
the Holocaust receives greater emphasis. By studying it in its entirety, we
18
Fein 2004 lists the Holocaust, the Armenian, and the Tutsi genocides in that category.
Only the Herero are also to be found in the category of maximum victimization but, as
we shall see in chapter 2, the ambiguous extent of state involvement and combatant
status lead to its exclusion.
19
See, for example, the important association between political upheaval and genocide
found in Harff 2003. Political upheaval, of course, allows for a large number of
manifestations that lacks the specicity required for policy recommendations.
20
For an artistic rendering of this collaboration, see Pascal 2000.
8 I N T R O D U C T I O N
simply learn more from the varieties of behavior found across most of
the European continent.
In order to maximize explanation, we must listen to the voices of
perpetrators and rescuers alike. Voices of the victims have mostly been
stilled by mass murder and the ravages of time, but their rage, sorrow,
powerlessness, and, for the survivors, a lifetime of pain, assuaged only
intermittently by new families and personal achievements, have been
recorded in memoirs and oral histories. Where appropriate, their evi-
dence can help us as well.
This book is about loss in two important senses. First, in the enor-
mous losses of human life, possibility, and culture visited on the world
by genocide. The three genocides examined here resulted in the direct
deaths of approximately 8,000,000 people; the aftershocks and contagion
processes led probably to a minimum of another 45 million dead. This
number is greater than the number of combat deaths in World War I,
with the obvious difference that nearly all of the World War I combat
dead were male. Genocides in the twentieth century made no provision
for the rescue of women and children.
Entire cultures were lost. The vibrant Yiddish-based culture of East
European towns and cities is no more. There are no longer any
Armenian communities in eastern Anatolia; their church bells no longer
ring for Sunday services. In Rwanda today, only with some effort can one
nd a Tutsi who was living in Rwanda in 1994. Most Tutsi in Rwanda
now are returnees or migrants who arrived after the genocide. The
enormity of the losses can perhaps best be appreciated by those who
directly experienced them or their relatives or ethnic kin. Yet all of us
can at least cognitively understand the monstrous dimensions of these
losses.
The second meaning of loss is more analytic, for it provides a basis for
understanding the behavior of many of the perpetrators. Indeed, loss is
the single common thread that undulates throughout the
several theoretical foci that are used here to understand the onset of
genocide. Loss is understood as either (1) the transfer of territory,
population, authority, or some combination of any of the three to
another political entity, or (2) signicant casualties in political violence
(e.g., war) that either are about to be or have already been incurred.
Why should a political scientist like myself, in addition to personal
reasons, seek to study the origins of genocide? After all, genocide is a
profoundly human condition involving the deaths, in the aggregate, of
millions of people, often by extraordinarily barbaric means. In that, it is
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 9
rst and foremost a human tragedy and justiably it has been treated as
such. Yet to understand the etiology of genocide, and that is my princi-
pal concern in this book, we must look to the foundations of policy
making, namely politics. And these political processes often involve
threats to the security of fairly newly established states, specically the
possibility of loss. Germany embarked on its genocidal path in 1941 after
only seventy years of independent united existence, a period during
which it experienced three incarnations imperial Germany, the
Weimar Republic and the Nazi state the last, of course, the newest
and in certain respects the least established in August 1941 when geno-
cide began in earnest. The state, then, and policies designed to ensure its
continuity a fundamental component of realpolitik dened as success
in preserving and strengthening the state
21
loom large in the following
analyses.
Genocide is understood to be the state-sponsored systematic mass
murder of innocent and helpless men, women, and children denoted
by a particular ethnoreligious identity, having the purpose of eradicating
this group from a particular territory. More detailed reasons for this
choice will be presented in chapter 2. Genocidal behavior is understood
to be mass murder short of eradicating the entire group, but including a
signicant subset of that group in the killing.
In understanding the behavior of perpetrators, explanation will not
be restricted to the political realm. Theories will be drawn from social
psychology, economics, cognitive science, and other sciences committed
to understanding the human condition. And the perpetrators, however
well deserved their odious reputations, were primarily human beings. It
does no good to label them as monsters and simply forget about them
after their consignment to the trash heap of history. Certainly the
perpetrators committed monstrous deeds. Yet, we do far better to
explain their descent into atrocity as human beings than as some
mutated creatures whose behaviors defy understanding. In the latter
instance, we will claim no purchase on explanation and possible pre-
vention, whereas in the former we may nd some hope for the future. To
humanize is to understand, but certainly not to absolve or condone.
As the Israeli poet and Holocaust survivor Dan Pagis wrote in his
poem Testimony:
21
Waltz 1979, 117.
10 I N T R O D U C T I O N
No no: they denitely were
human beings: uniforms, boots.
How to explain? They were created
in the image.
I was a shade.
A different creator made me.
And he in his mercy left nothing of me that would die.
And I ed to him, oated up weightless, blue,
forgiving I would say: apologizing
smoke to omnipotent smoke
that has no face or image.
22
The moral stigma will remain whatever our level of understanding, for
the barbarities and immensities of human loss lay beyond any absolution,
however limited. Notwithstanding their intent, unless perpetrators are
genuinely deranged, are psychologically disconnected fromtheir surround-
ings, or are coerced with deadly force, judgments are based on actions, not
motivations.
23
In the nal analysis, I pose the question: can we afford to
treat the perpetrators as human beings instead of monsters? The answer is
simply that we cant afford not to. Too muchis at stake in the explanation of
genocide and perhaps prevention of future mass killings.
The role of theory
If we view genocide as a human perversion, certainly in the moral realm,
it is useful to seek answers in the perverse. One hint of the source of such
perversion is found in the Message to the Assembly that Dr. Ismar
Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York,
delivered at the 2001 graduation ceremony of the Cantorial and
Rabbinical School. Chancellor Schorsch suggested that one of his favor-
ite Hebrew words was tzimtzum, meaning contraction. To be an
effective leader, a rabbi must frequently contract her sphere of inuence
in order to stimulate creativity in others. Her contraction provides the
intellectual/spiritual space for congregants or colleagues to explore their
own capabilities, thereby enhancing the creative process.
The identication of contraction with creativity in Schorschs inter-
pretation contrasts sharply with the effective identication of contrac-
tion with destruction in the minds of genocidal leaders. For example, in
22
Quoted in Bartov 2003, 113.
23
Neiman 2002.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 11
his speech of June 25, 1931, Hitler stated that: The parties of the middle
say: everything is collapsing; we declare: what you see as collapse is the
beginning of a new era. There is but one question about this new era: will
it come from the German people . . . or will this era sink toward another
people? Will the Jew really become master of the world, will he organize
its life, will he in the future dominate the nations? This is the great
question that will be decided, one way or the other.
24
The space
created by the collapse of the center parties is to be occupied not by a
political creation of the Nazi Party, but by the destruction, or at least
neutralization, of the Jewish menace.
In all of the genocides considered here, the perpetrators had already
experienced losses in the form of substantial spatial contractions, or were
reasonably certain that such contractions were impending. Instead of a
creative response, they entered upon a manifold intensication of the
destructive process indiscriminately applied to innocent men, women,
and children. Creativity of the intellectual and spiritual domains empha-
sized by Schorsch provides a stark contrast with the wholesale violence
associated with genocide.
Explanation of the onset and magnitude of genocide is the main
purpose of this book. And such an analysis at the outset cannot be rmly
in the nomothetic camp because of the relative absence of theorizing in
the eld of genocide. This unfortunate situation is due to at least two
reasons, not entirely independent of each other.
First, the preponderance of research in the eld of genocide studies
has been by professional historians, almost always on a single case of
genocide, most frequently the Holocaust. And, until now, this is as it
should have been. Even the Holocaust, as by far the most extensive
genocide of the twentieth century, even in all of recorded history, had
received very little attention from historians until the Eichmann trial in
Israel and the virtually simultaneous publication of Raul Hilbergs
magisterial study of the Holocaust in the early 1960s.
25
Only then, and
with the gradual disappearance of the generation of German perpetra-
tors, as well as the even more recent end of the Cold War, did historians,
especially German ones, take a serious interest in the Holocaust. The
passing of the survivors also has quickened the pace of Holocaust
research, before their oral testimony and the writing of their memoirs
will no longer be added to the store of evidence. Even a basic issue such
as the timing of Hitlers decision to murder all of Europes Jews, not just
24
Quoted in Friedlander 1997, 103.
25
Hilberg 1985, a new edition of his 1961 work.
12 I N T R O D U C T I O N
those in the Soviet Union presumably infected with the Bolshevik
bacillus, has only received a modicum of consensus among historians
in the past several years. Interestingly, this issue will arise later in
connection with the uses of theory.
The need for comparison in theory development
As a result of this emphasis on single cases, important as they are,
generalizability has suffered greatly. This limitation on generalizability
a hallmark of empirical validity has impeded the development of
theory. The fact that the third most extensive genocide of the twentieth
century, that of the Tutsi in Rwanda, occurred only during the past
decade has also retarded theory development because its recency pre-
vented its inclusion in comparative analyses. This brings me to my
second concern, the relative absence of comparative analyses (statistical
or small-N) without which theory building either cannot proceed or is
sterile.
Because of its extent and manner of occurrence, the Holocaust has
been claimed to be unique. And it is unique in the unthinkable number
of dead and the innocence of any malevolent intent toward Germany
among the vast majority of those killed. Indeed, because of the deriva-
tion of Yiddish from Middle High German (when taught in the absence
of Judaic studies, it is almost always included among the Germanic
languages), it was far and away the most popular choice among Jews
as a foreign language of study in the early part of the last century. At
the personal level, my mother and her American-born siblings all stu-
died German in high school, my aunt having won the German medal,
a matter of some family pride.
German was the ofcial language of the rst Zionist Congresses prior
to World War I, and it is clear that no more patriotic group could be
found in Germany than its Jews. Nearly 100,000 Jews had served in the
German army during World War I: 80,000 experienced combat, 35,000
were decorated for bravery, and 12,000 were killed, numbers out of all
proportion to the estimated 500,000 Jewish citizens living in Germany at
that time.
26
A horribly ironic sidelight on the Holocaust is the relative
warmth that many older Warsaw Jews felt for the Wehrmacht soldiers
immediately upon German arrival in 1939.
27
These Jews recalled the
substantially better treatment meted out to them by the German
26
Fischer 1998, 120.
27
Abramowicz 1999.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 13
occupying troops of World War I, in comparison with the overtly anti-
Semitic tsarist authorities they replaced.
This positive sentiment certainly did not exist among the other cases
of genocide considered here. The Armenians had created at least two
anti-Ottoman revolutionary groups the Dashnaks and Hunchakists
by the turn of the century, and many Tutsi (but certainly not all) were
sworn enemies of the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government.
This is not to say that there exists a justication for genocide. Any
single death as the result of murder, mass or single, is one death too
many. The vast majority of Armenians and Tutsi murdered in their
respective genocides were wholly apolitical, as were the Jews in the
Holocaust. These people wanted nothing more than to live in peace
with their neighbors. Yet one cannot ignore the existence of opposition
to the anciens re gimes in the Ottoman Empire and Rwanda that genu-
inely provoked these governments.
I chose a comparative analysis because, despite the Holocausts
uniqueness, this mode of inquiry is more likely than any other to yield
insights into the origins of not only genocide generally, but even the
Holocaust in particular. One case in point is the role of a particular
theoretical orientation in helping to pinpoint the moment of decision to
murder all of Europes Jews found within the boundaries of German
governance or occupation. This theory, to be developed more fully in
chapter 5, concerns the impact of increasing losses on state insecurity,
and the consequent increase in the probability and intensity of political
violence directed against civilian populations.
A related issue is that of the use of social science theory in an effort to
generalize across cases. Realpolitik, prospect theory, and other perspec-
tives on loss will be introduced as means of understanding the onset of
genocide within the context of earlier state losses and high risk. This
emphasis reverses the understandable tendency to view genocide as
principally a domestic enterprise.
28
After all, did not the ideological
bases of the Holocaust and other instances of mass murder arise within
the borders of states such as Germany? The answer to this question
obviously is yes, but with an important qualication. Although the rise
of such murderous sanctioning ideologies was necessary to the commis-
sion of routinized mass murder, it was not sufcient. We shall see how
the experience of loss by perpetrators bridges the chasm between ethno-
religious hostility that traditionally was expressed in the form of legal
28
Melson 1992.
14 I N T R O D U C T I O N
exclusions, personal beatings, even occasional murder, on the one hand,
and genocide, on the other. Clearly, other conditions had to be present.
This book will focus on the largely neglected international context.
Does this effort at abstraction detract from what is essentially a
humanistic enterprise? Abstract theory is very far removed from the
individual Jews and their entire communities burnt alive inside their
wooden synagogues. Or Armenian families hacked to death inside their
churches. Or Tutsi children slaughtered with machetes in front of
their parents before they themselves were killed. Or later, as we shall
see, Cambodians murdered simply because they wore glasses. The ana-
lytic enterprise does not concern itself with these micro-level aspects of
mass murder, yet in a larger sense the analysis is humanistic if it helps us
understand why human beings engage in such notoriously savage beha-
vior. To understand is not to condone or to forgive. We understand as
the result of social scientic explanation. Part of that explanation
includes the conditions under which people are willing to jettison
their moral universe and clearly transgress the bounds of ethical con-
duct. Yet, at the same time, we can and must insist on the rm main-
tenance of those boundaries, even under the trying conditions to be
detailed in the following chapters. Not to do so is to sacrice the
essential part of what makes us human.
Theory as explanation can also help us get around the mystication
obstacle to understanding. Even as accomplished a historian as Jan
Gross (author of Neighbors) can state that the Nazi-conceived project
of the eradication of world Jewry will remain, at its core, a mystery.
29
Although sensitive to Elie Wiesels deep concerns on this issue and of
course his horric experiences in Auschwitz, nevertheless Yehuda Bauer
takes issue with Wiesels well-known mystication of the Holocaust.
30
If
we seek to know what is in the heart of every single member of the
Einsatzgruppen operating in eastern Poland and the Soviet Union (or the
Ittihadists or members of the Interahamwe), or even the Polish peasant
guarding against Jewish escape from the mass murder at Jedwabne, the
subject of Grosss book, then the mystery probably will remain unsolved.
Motivations can range fromoutright sadism, to the desire for loot, to the
obedience to authority, to the settling of old business scores, to the utter
absence of empathy, or to ideological fanaticism, to name but a few.
The biographical case study approach to the study of perpetrators
motivations thus far has yielded little explanatory traction. Even after
29
Gross 2001, 132.
30
Bauer 2001, 15.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 15
some 100 biographies, we still are not absolutely certain why, at bottom,
Hitler chose this singularly destructive path. But if we stick with
the observable behaviors of state decision-makers and perpetrators,
particularly those at the highest levels and extending down through
the mid-range (e.g., army captains), noting the patterns amenable to
explanation, then at least progress can be made.
There may exist enduring principles underlying the human condition
that govern this murderous choice otherwise, why is genocide
repeated? Answers are to be found in the principles and practices of
realpolitik, especially the imprudent variety, and the empirical ndings
associated with prospect theory, one that emphasizes loss aversion and
risk acceptance as essential components of decision making under risk
and uncertainty. Additional consequences of loss lie in the realm of
emotional reactions to loss including anger, brutality, desire for revenge,
and class envy. Altruistic punishment will help explain large-scale coop-
eration with the genocidal enterprise, even if only among the ge noci-
daires themselves, and abetted by many bystanders sympathetic to the
mass murder.
A contribution of this book is the nding that a statement of desire or
intent to commit genocide is not the key variable leading to its onset.
Whatever the virulence of the ideological underpinnings, the actual
events occurring just prior to the genocide and the relevant geopolitical
setting are crucial. In some cases, they can contribute to the making of
the nal decision to commit genocide as in Germany in December 1941,
or to its prevention, or at least minimization of the genocidal urge, as in
Anatolia in 191522 and the survival of almost the entire Anatolian
Greek community. This is not to deny the relevance of ideology. It is
important and necessary to the genocidal enterprise. It simply is not
sufcient.
Genocide, the wholesale elimination of a perceived enemy, is an idea
that has been around since biblical times and the writings of Thucydides.
Yet only on rare occasions do we nd its actual occurrence. That relative
rarity is to be explained by the conuence of events suggested by the
theoretical approaches to be introduced shortly.
Research strategy
A top-down strategy is chosen here, namely to identify the most
general precursors of genocide and then to narrow the choices to specic
inuences. The funnel of causality is widest at the top and very narrow at
16 I N T R O D U C T I O N
the bottom. The most general inuences at the top are those that can
have many possible outcomes, including genocide, while at the bottom
are variables that are more specic in their genocidal effects.
Theoretical conditions can yield different outcomes depending on the
specic application. Realpolitik as policy prescription, emergent from
realism for example, was at one time ubiquitous. Emphasis on state
needs characteristic of realpolitik was a policy foundation for most
European as well as independent Asian powers prior to World War II.
Thereafter, many newly independent countries also adopted this policy
prescription. Yet, under certain constraining conditions, realpolitik can
have horric outcomes. It is the imprudentbrute force form of realpo-
litik as distinguished from the prudent type
31
as well as from a third
type, the cynical variant, that can increase the probability of genocide.
Victim vulnerability is greatly increased by cynical realpolitik. One of
the constraints imposed by the theoretical approach adopted here
loss is a critical component of prospect theory. Specically, it is the
magnication of perpetrator loss suggested by prospect theory, anger at
the presumptive other, or other consequence of loss leading to the use
of an imprudent realpolitik, and impact of the cynical variant, that can
yield the genocidal outcome.
Still further down the funnel is the concept of altruistic punishment as
the basis for cooperation between genocidal leaders and followers. In the
face of overwhelming odds and/or likely defeat in war, why were geno-
cidal perpetrators not deterred from continuing, in fact accelerating the
mass murder? This theoretical perspective can shed light on what at rst
appears to be highly anomalous behavior.
This book, then, employs theoretical perspectives to explain the
typically complex behavior associated with genocide. The conjunction
of several processes is required in order for the genocide to take place. In
this, the book is in the tradition rst adumbrated by Theda Skocpol in
her States and Social Revolutions,
32
and employed by me in The Onset of
World War and Preventing Systemic War.
33
This approach has been
further developed theoretically by Charles Ragin.
34
Why erect this formidable theoretical scaffolding upon which to
construct the explanation of genocide? After all, was not the virulence
of Nazi anti-Semitism, Ottoman Turkism, and Hutu extremist anti-
Hamitism sufcient to explain the genocides? They hated, so they
killed, runs the argument. But this argument belies the considerable
31
Garver 1987.
32
Skocpol 1979.
33
M. Midlarsky 1984, 1988a.
34
Ragin 1987.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 17
variation in the killing over time and over space in all of the genocides.
Whatever their murderous fantasies, they could be enacted by the
perpetrators only under a certain conuence of sociopolitical condi-
tions. It is the task of this book to detail the nature of these conditions,
insofar as possible.
In two senses, the book is isomorphic to the phenomenon it seeks to
explain. First, the outcome of genocide seldom is the result of a single
decision. It tends to be a cumulative process in which earlier violence
directed against civilians can make later mass murder more likely to
occur. Second, genocide is not a neat one-size-ts-all happening.
Genocides differ in their extent, rapidity of occurrence, and asymmetries
in patterns of killing both within and between genocides. In its attention
to these differences, this book seeks to be an accurate reection of
genocide. Only in the commonalities of human failing across all three
of the genocides is there symmetry, perhaps pleasing to the analyst, but
nevertheless suggesting deep pessimism about the unfettered human
condition. Only with the appropriate political institutions can human
beings master the homicidal impulses unleashed in genocide.
Finally, all of these processes and events occur within an international
context that can be critical in either promoting or abetting genocide, or
preventing it altogether. Indeed, aside from the absence of loss or its
compensation by nonviolent means, the only variable consistently identied
as a genocide preventive the existence of powerful afne ethnoreligious
groups or governments arises from the international setting. Thus, the
contextuality of genocide is emphasized here. Events occurring within a
single country certainly are not sufcient for genocide to occur. Even an
emphasis on a single dyad of countries would not be sufcient. It is the
regional and international context that is crucial for an outcome of this
magnitude, or its prevention.
Plan of the book
A denition of genocide,
35
its justication, and more detailed case
selection (including reasons for excluding certain candidates) are found
35
The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin 1944, 79. This denition provided
the basis for the somewhat later one devised by the United Nations. Rudolph Rummel
1998, 113, has coined the term democide to refer to the killing of large numbers of
people by the s tate. See also Rummel 199 7. I ssues of comparat ive genocide are tr eated in
many of these sour ces, but see especially Rosenbaum 199 8. For additional perspectiv es,
see Krain 1997 and Valentino 2000.
18 I N T R O D U C T I O N
in chapter 2. Part II presents theoretical foundations for understanding
perpetrator behavior. First, the experience of killing and its validation,
including the important role of identication with earlier victimizers prior
to the genocides, are detailed in chapter 3. The experience of massacre
itself, especially without signicant negative consequence for the perpe-
trator, makes the later genocide more likely to occur.
Chapters 4 and 5 present alternative theoretical perspectives such as
classical rational choice theory and utopianism, reasons for their rejec-
tion, and justication for the choice of realpolitik and loss as central
components of the theory. Empirical ndings in the eld of Bayesian
decision making are helpful in this regard. Chapter 4 also includes two
prototypical cases that aid us in theory development.
Most critical to the transition from massacre to genocide are realpo-
litik and loss. Because realpolitik (especially involving threats to state
security) is such an important variable, three types of realpolitik are
identied in chapter 5; ve consequences of loss are suggested, all
leading to the onset of genocide.
Part III consists of empirical applications of the theory. First, in
chapter 6, realpolitik in the form of threat to the state is associated
with ethnic cleansing in Ireland, Poland, and Bosnia, but not genocide
(excepting Srebrenica). With the addition of loss, the expanded theory is
examined in the contexts of the onset of the Holocaust, and the
Armenian and Tutsi genocides (chapter 7). The etiology of genocide is
distinguished from that of ethnic cleansing principally in the presence of
recent loss in the former instance.
In chapter 8, altruistic punishment is put forward as a means of
effecting unity in a fractious population, as a way of answering a ques-
tion initially posed by Michael Marrus,
36
namely why so many followed
the genocidal leader down his nihilistic path. Expanding empirically,
perpetrating states, that is states participating in the Holocaust Italy,
Vichy France, and Romania are all found to have experienced severe
territorial losses and refugee migration, as did Germany and Austria
prior to World War II (chapter 9).
Unique to this book is the systematic effort in part IV to identify
conditions that increase victim vulnerability. Although Christopher
Browning has recently presented detailed and invaluable histories of
mass murder during the Holocaust
37
a signicant departure from
36
Marrus 1987.
37
Browning 2004.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 19
earlier concentration by Holocaust historians on the perpetrators this
evidence in itself does not readily translate into identifying the
antecedents of vulnerability. New variables, or more specically varia-
tions on those used earlier in the book, are required to explain victim
vulnerability, especially increases in the magnitude of the killing and
manner of dying.
Chapter 10 details the cynical realpolitik of international agents that
increases the vulnerability of potential victims, thereby undoubtedly increas-
ing the magnitude of the killing. Cynical realpolitik is further examined in
the context of the refusal to admit refugees from almost certain death, an
important factor inuencing the magnitude of the killing (chapter 11).
The subsequent chapters (1214) focus on high victimization rates,
inequality, identication, and potential for revolt within ghettos, with
detailed considerations of perpetrators and victims. Here again, the
extent or magnitude of the killing is at issue. The full sweep of the
Holocaust with its twenty-country involvement is given its due.
Although the Holocaust was orchestrated from Berlin, nevertheless the
considerable variation in local implementation deserves separate treat-
ment. Again, altruistic punishment will be critical in understanding the
onset of widespread rebellion in one Jewish ghetto, but not in others also
located within the old pale of East European Jewish settlement.
Part V analyzes exceptions to the patterns of genocide identied
earlier. A single case of politicide, Cambodia, also having a relatively
small genocidal component the ethnic Vietnamese is explored in
chapter 15. Victimization of the ethnic Khmer was vastly increased by
Khmer Rouge ideological afnities with Maoism and Stalinism, and a
consequent Cambodian ability to seal itself off from international
scrutiny and inuence that could have diminished the extent of the
killing. Cases of the dogs that didnt bark, instances where genocide
might have been expected to occur, but did not, are explored in chapters
16 and 17. The roles of realpolitik and the absence of loss are examined
in the cases of Bulgaria and Finland, exceptions to the pattern of
collaborating European states. A form of prudent realpolitik, afnity,
is developed to explain the absence of genocide in certain instances
Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Jews in Eastern Europe before
December 1941, Poland at the time of the Partitions, Roman Catholic
Irish in Ireland after World War I, and Israel during Intifada II where
genocide seemed possible, even likely. Vulnerabilities of target popula-
tions are substantially reduced in the presence of powerful afne ethni-
cities in other countries, or powerful sympathetic governments.
20 I N T R O D U C T I O N
Potential losses in human life from genocide are simply too vast to
ignore the necessity to generalize and extrapolate from the ndings
here. In one sense, this book seeks to be an antidote to death and
nothingness. Genocide is intended to achieve precisely that outcome
for the victimized group. Yet, by understanding the genocidal process,
the hoped-for prevention of future genocides suggests that the mur-
dered did not die completely in vain. Which are the sociopolitical
conditions most likely to inuence both the onset and magnitude of
genocide and howmay we best avoid them? The concluding chapter (18)
suggests generalizations and extensions of the analysis. Connections
with cognate scholarly work and policy making are developed. Most
important, the frequently incalculable consequences of genocide are
examined in some detail, followed by implications of the analysis for
the prevention of genocide.
P R E L I M I N A R Y C O N S I D E R A T I O N S 21
2
Case selection
As stated in the introduction, genocide is understood to be the state-
sponsored systematic mass murder of innocent and helpless men,
women, and children denoted by a particular ethnoreligious identity,
with the purpose of eradicating that group from a given territory.
1
Vulnerability of the targeted group and a real or purported connection
with threats to state security (e.g., ethnic kin in an enemy state) are
necessary conditions for the genocide to occur.
Two elements are critical in dening genocide. First is the matter of
state policy. Was it the policy of the perpetrating state to commit mass
murder with exterminatory intent? If so, then the number of people
murdered would be vastly greater than if such a policy were absent.
Second, were non-combatants of a particular ethnoreligious identity
subject to the mass murder? If large numbers of men were killed on
the battleelds of Flanders or elsewhere during World War I, it is a
substantially different matter than if they, as civilians, were killed along
with their families in the Nazi gas chambers of World War II. In the
former instance, they are typically (but not always) men ghting on
behalf of their country. In the latter, they are victims of an exterminatory
state policy. Thus, the two elements critical for selecting cases for
analysis are the existence of a state policy demanding the systematic
mass murder of an ethnoreligious group and the implementation of that
policy.
1
I distinguish between genocide as the systematic mass murder of people based on
ethnoreligious identity, and politicide as the large-scale killing of designated enemies
of the state based on socioeconomic or political criteria. Although genocide can be
understood to be a species of politicide (but not the converse), in practice, genocidal
(i.e., ethnoreligious) killings tap into much deeper historical roots of the human condi-
tion. In this distinction, I follow Harff and Gurr 1988, 360. For other conceptualizations
and denitions of genocide, see Bauer 2001, 810; I. Horowitz 2002, chapter 2; Fein
1990, 231, and 1979, 34; Kuper 1981, chapters 23; Charny 1994; Chalk and Jonassohn
1990, 332; Melson 1992, 2230; R. Smith 1987; Katz 1994, 12539; Chorbajian 1999,
xvxxii; Huttenbach 2002; Straus 2001; and Staub 1989, 38.
22
Although other denitions certainly exist,
2
this one has the advantage
of including only those cases that are almost universally acknowledged
to be genocides the Holocaust, for example in contrast to partial
efforts at mass murder that have other intentions. Massacres intended to
induce ight and ethnic cleansing frequently are denied the status of
genocides.
3
However, genocidal behavior in intensity of the killing stands
somewhere between massacre and genocide. It is understood to be mass
murder short of the aim of eradicating the entire group, but including a
signicant subset of that group in the killing. The mass murder of
Muslim males in Srebrenica in 1995 is a prototypical example. So too
is the transition from the massacre of Jews in Ukraine during the Russian
Civil War to genocidal behavior by the Einsatzgruppen early in the
summer of 1941 (only Jewish males subject to mass murder), followed
by genocide throughout Europe after December 1941. This issue will be
examined at length in the following chapter.
Accordingly, it is possible to categorize cases of genocide on the two
dimensions: exterminatory state policy and the selection of non-com-
batants (including prisoners of war of a certain ethnicity) for annihila-
tion. However, one case is much less easily categorized than the other
two. It is the one anomaly that not only suggests some ambiguities in the
understanding of exactly what constitutes state policy and even what
constitutes a combatant, but also points in certain analytic directions for
understanding the etiology of genocide.
Table 2.1 presents such a categorization based on the two dimensions.
Where state policy of systematic ethnoreligious mass murder is clearly
present and is implemented in the killing of non-combatants, we have
three incontrovertible cases of twentieth-century genocide, the
Armenians in 191516, the Holocaust of 194145, and the Tutsi of
Rwanda in 1994. It is clear that in all three instances state policy was
exterminatory and was implemented with deadly effect. Cambodia will
be examined later as a case of exterminatory state policy and its imple-
mentation in the killing of non-combatants, but without a substantial
ethnoreligious dimension, which demonstrates a different etiology from
the other cases. It will be treated as a politicide.
Occasionally, politicides aim at a particular ethnoreligious group, but
with overtly political goals. The massacre of approximately
100,000200,000 Hutu in Burundi in 1972 had the goal of preventing
their political ascendance based on their majority status. Thus, Tutsi
2
Straus 2001.
3
Levene and Roberts 1999; Schabas 2000, 197201.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 23
leaders saw the annihilation of all educated Hutu elements as the most
sensible course to make Burundi safe for the Tutsi minority. By striking
at all Hutu elites, students, and schoolchildren indiscriminately, even at
the least suspicion of subversive intentions, they aimed . . . to decapitate
a potential counterelite.
4
Not only is the differing etiology important, but genocides and
politicides frequently yield different outcomes. Genocide is not only
exterminatory, but aims at annihilation. I prefer this term to extermina-
tion, although to signify intent I will use exterminatory to describe state
policy; extermination implies that the noxious insect could somehow
return in which case the exterminator would have to be brought in
again. Annihilation implies a total erasure of any human or physical
remnants (e.g., synagogues, Armenian churches) that could remind the
perpetrator of the victim. The eradication is complete.
In contrast to genocides, politicides the mass murder of designated
socioeconomic or political enemies of the state not only typically leave
the majority of the population intact after purging the economic or
political offenders, but do not necessarily destroy the cultural infra-
structure of the victim. Even if attacked and partially destroyed, enough
of the infrastructure survives to build anew as in the former communist
countries that experienced this form of state-sponsored mass murder.
The same cannot be said of the minuscule Jewish communities of
Eastern Europe, the Armenians of Anatolia, or the surviving Tutsi in
Rwanda (in contrast to returning Tutsi refugees). As one would expect,
Table 2.1 Dimensions of genocide and politicide
Victim status
Combatant Non-combatant
Present Herero? Armenians
Holocaust
Exterminatory Tutsi
state policy [Cambodia]*
Absent World War I Bosnia
Nanjing
Note: *Cambodia is an example of politicide.
4
Lemarchand 1996, 10102.
24 I N T R O D U C T I O N
proportions of the victimized populations differ greatly. Whereas the
percentages of murdered Armenians, Jews, and Tutsi within the targeted
country areas centered around 6670 percent, that of Cambodians was
approximately 20 percent.
5
Another clear-cut case of the absence of genocide is World War I
where the vast majority of deaths, especially on the Western front, were
incurred on the battleeld. Although the deaths in Bosnia and Nanjing
were mainly those of non-combatants and extermination was not state
policy, both cases require discussion because of their occasional treat-
ment as genocides.
Excluded cases
The denition of genocide and the use of the two dimensions to select
cases may be claried by considering the three cases that are excluded
Bosnia, Nanjing, and the Herero. Each provides a cogent example of
mass murder. However, none meets all of the criteria. Later, in the
concluding chapter, the recent ethnic cleansing of black Africans with
possible genocidal behavior in Darfur in western Sudan will demon-
strate some resemblance to the Bosnian case.
Bosnia
Although sometimes categorized as a genocide, the Serbian actions
against the Bosnian Muslims would not t the denition adopted
here. According to the 1948 United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, any acts com-
mitted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group
6
would be sufcient to label as genocide an
instance of mass violence but, in the absence of state policy mandating
wholesale extermination, would not be included here. My view of the
United Nations Convention is that it is too broadly inclusive, for it does
not distinguish between killing with the purpose to terrorize and per-
haps effect an ethnic cleansing through mass ight of the victims on the
one hand, and deliberate wholesale extermination on the other.
Genocide is a form of ethnic cleansing, but ethnic cleansing does not
have to entail the presence of genocide. Emigration and other forms of
5
Fein 1979, 2004; Melson 1992; Kiernan 1996.
6
Emphasis added; Chalk and Jonassohn 1990, 44.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 25
population removal, even if coerced and/or effected by terror, do not
constitute annihilation.
The number of dead in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been estimated by the
Bosnian Institute for Public Health to be 146,340, a number that is in
approximate agreement with that given by Mustafa Imamovic : 144,248,
mainly Muslims.
7
These estimates have been challenged by George
Kenney, who argues for a number between 25,000 and 50,000 total
deaths. And the highly respected Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI) essentially agrees with Kenneys view in
putting forward a gure of 25,000 to 55,000 total deaths, excluding
those incurred by ghting between the Bosnian Serb and Bosnian
Croat armies.
8
More recently, ofcials of the Demographic Unit,
Ofce of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal of the former
Yugoslavia, estimated the total number of dead at 102,622, broken down
into 55,261 civilian and 47,360 military.
9
Even assuming that all of the
civilian deaths were Muslim, a somewhat unsafe assumption, the total
number of deaths due to ethnic cleansing or to genocidal activity is
maximally in the 50,000 range, in agreement with SIPRI.
Clearly even the highest estimates here do not match the number of
Armenians killed in the massacres of 189496 (approximately 200,000)
that, despite their horror, were really only a precursor to the genocide of
191516. I am reluctant to appear to be playing a numbers game here.
Yet one must distinguish between exterminatory state policies that have
the capacity to murder many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, as
in the case of the Holocaust, and the absence of such policies. In the
latter instance, the death tolls are invariably much smaller. Additionally,
and most importantly, the etiologies of massacres and genocides likely
differ, if only because state sponsorship of the former, more limited type
of violence frequently is absent.
10
The absence of exterminatory intent on the part of the Serbs (or
Croats) does not mitigate the tragedy of the displacement of between
one-third to two-thirds of the Bosnian population, most of whom are
Muslim. The Bosnian Institute of Public Health found that nearly one of
every two persons living in the federation was displaced, and many of
7
Burg and Shoup 1999, 169.
8
Ibid., 170.
9
Tabeau and Bijak 2003.
10
See, for example, D. Horowitz 2001. More directly relevant to our concerns here is the
nding by Klier and Lambroza 1992 that many of the late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century pogroms that had been thought to be sponsored by the tsarist
state, in fact, were of spontaneous origin.
26 I N T R O D U C T I O N
them are now living abroad. A crime against humanity had been com-
mitted, but The practice of expelling Muslims from Serb-controlled
territories and the tendency to single out men and boys for execution
while in themselves despicable seem contrary to an intent to destroy
the Muslim people as such.
11
Absence of exterminatory intent is further indicated by the fact that,
in 1990 and 1991, Serbs actually spent much time and effort in attempt-
ing to woo the Bosnian Muslims.
12
The Serb leaders thought that,
despite the threatened secession of Croatia and Slovenia, Muslims
might choose to remain within the federation, thus creating a viable, if
smaller, political entity. Should the Muslims decide to stay, even the
departure of the dissident republics ultimately might be avoided. Only
later, after the hounds of war had been let loose, did the killing begin,
with the main purpose of inducing the ight of as many Muslims as
possible.
According to William Schabas in his comprehensive treatment of
genocide in international law,
13
the drafters of the UN Genocide
Convention resisted efforts to include ethnic cleansing under the rubric
of punishable acts. Further, after a detailed analysis of the Bosnian case,
Schabas concludes, it is incorrect to assert that ethnic cleansing is a
form of genocide, or even that in some cases, ethnic cleansing amounts
to genocide.
14
Thus far, as of early 2004, the United Nations war crimes tribunal for
Yugoslavia agrees. Three defendants accused of genocide have been
acquitted of the charge; the third is Milomir Stakic, a Bosnian Serb
and former mayor of Prijedor in northeast Bosnia. Although responsible
for the deaths of 1,500 persons and the forcible removal of 20,000 non-
Serb civilians from the town, the tribunal refused to convict him of
genocide. Instead, he was convicted of ve counts of crimes against
humanity and war crimes, receiving the maximum possible sentence
of life imprisonment.
15
At the same time, the Bosnian Serb general
Radislav Krstic was found guilty of genocide for his involvement in the
Srebrenica massacre, and the sentencing appeal was recently denied. As
we shall see in chapter 6, even within cases of predominantly ethnic
cleansing, genocidal behavior can be identied, especially where earlier
losses are experienced by the perpetrator.
11
Emphasis in original; Burg and Shoup 1999, 183.
12
Judah 2000, 196.
13
Schabas 2000, 196.
14
Ibid., 200.
15
New York Times, August 1, 2003, A8.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 27
Distinguishing between behaviors that are principally ethnic cleans-
ing from those that yield full-edged genocides can help us predict and
perhaps even prevent their occurrence in the future. As we shall see, an
accentuated sense of recent or impending loss beyond any found in the
instances of ethnic cleansing or episodic massacre characterizes all three
cases of genocide.
Nanjing
The second excluded case is the massacre that occurred in Nanjing in
December 1937. The claimed murder of several hundred thousand
(between 200,000 and 250,000) has led some analysts to view it as a
genocide,
16
a perception that is understandable especially in light of the
many atrocities committed by the Japanese troops. Nevertheless, the
Rape of Nanjing, although aptly named, does not meet the criteria
adopted here.
In the matter of scale, the Rape of Nanjing is maximally in the
category of several hundred thousand dead. Masahiro Yamamoto, on
the other hand, gives a much lower range of 15,000 to 30,000 fatalities.
17
Even if we accept Iris Changs maximum estimate, this still would put
Nanjing in the same category as the maximum estimated number killed
in the Bosnian ethnic cleansing and the Armenian massacres of 189496.
But this is not decisive. What is decisive, as table 2.1 implies, is the
absence of Japanese state policy mandating such action. Apparently the
horric events occurred at the instigation of local commanders who
violated the orders even of the military general responsible for the
overall entry of Japanese troops into the city. Accordingly, General
Matsui Iwane, himself a devout Buddhist, ordered only a few well-
disciplined battalions into the city with instructions to complete the
occupation so that the army would sparkle before the eyes of the
Chinese and make them place condence in Japan.
18
While ill, he called
a meeting of his staff ofcers to his sickbed and stated:
The entry of the Imperial Army into a foreign capital is a great event in
our history . . . attracting the attention of the world. Therefore let no unit
enter the city in a disorderly fashion . . . Let them know beforehand the
matters to be remembered and the position of foreign rights and interests
in the walled city. Let them be absolutely free from plunder. Dispose
16
Chang 1997, 4.
17
Yamamoto 2000, 282.
18
Chang 1997, 39.
28 I N T R O D U C T I O N
sentries as needed. Plundering and causing res, even carelessly, shall be
punished severely. Together with the troops let many military police and
auxiliary military police enter the walled city and thereby prevent unlaw-
ful conduct.
19
Matsui had just been promoted to general supervisor of the entire
central China theater, and his replacement in command of one of the
three major columns about to enter Nanjing was a relative of the Emperor
Hirohito, Prince Asaka Yasuhiko. Being a member of the royal house
would give him extraordinary freedom of action. His acquaintance
with the other two commanders from their joint stay in Paris as military
intelligence ofcers would further facilitate a common policy.
With nearly 300,000 Chinese troops about to surrender in Nanjing
and without the food to feed them, or even sufcient Japanese force to
contain them and prevent reprisals, an order was sent from Asakas
command to kill all captives.
20
The murder of these Chinese troops
was the basis of the atrocity that then quickly spread to the wholesale
rape and in many cases subsequent murder of women and even of female
children.
The killing and rape subsided only when Matsui Iwane, although still
not fully recovered, entered the city for a ceremonial parade. When he
discovered what had happened, he sharply rebuked his ofcers including
the royal Asaka Yasuhiko. Shocking those present, Matsui even went so
far as to tell an American foreign correspondent (the United States was
not yet in the war) that the Japanese army is probably the most
undisciplined army in the world today.
21
Clearly, those mass murders were not mandated by the Japanese state.
Yet, in one sense, they began to point in the direction of understanding
how genocide as state policy can begin in wartime. What the Rape of
Nanjing, Bosnia, and the mass murder of the Herero (to be discussed
shortly) and our three principal cases hold in common is the emergence
of unexpected threat experienced by ultimately victorious troops in local
engagements.
Earlier in the 1930s, the Japanese boasted that they could conquer
mainland China in as little as three months. The Chinese army was
nowhere near as modern or as well equipped as the Japanese. Nor were
its leaders as experienced or well schooled in the practice of warfare. Yet
in the summer of 1937, after the outbreak of war, instead of falling
19
Ibid., 3940.
20
Ibid., 40.
21
Ibid., 51.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 29
almost immediately to the Japanese, the city of Shanghai held out for
months. Setbacks to the Japanese included the deaths of several hundred
men as the result of a Chinese artillery ambush of the soldiers as they
were being landed on the Shanghai docks. A cousin of the Empress
Nagako died in that clash.
22
The Japanese approach to the capture of
Nanjing, the Chinese capital, would now be far more brutal than anyone
anticipated.
The Herero
The third case to be excluded is the Herero. Although genocidal
behavior did occur in 1904, it differs in important ways from the
cases that are included. At the same time, this case is even more
convincing in the impact of emerging threat, and is more complex,
especially in the understanding of what constitutes state policy and
even combatant status. Moreover, in contrast to the cases considered
in this book, the killing took place in an explicit colonial context,
German-governed South-West Africa (today Namibia), involving
racially distinct perpetrators and victims. Although important in pro-
viding a justication for the brutalization and ultimate genocidal
behavior, racism itself was not decisive. Other, more immediate and
more compelling factors were to build on this racist edice and yield
the mass destruction.
In response to the continued expropriation of land and cattle by
German settlers, and despite some last-minute attempts at reform by
the administration of the governor, Major Theodore von Leutwein, the
Herero, realizing that expropriation would continue, rose as one man
under the leadership of their Supreme Chief Samuel Maharero.
23
The
blatant racism of the Germans in virtually eliminating Herero civil and
human rights was an important factor stimulating the uprising.
Although von Leutwein sought to limit the German military response
to the initial Herero success, he gave way to the tactical choice of General
Lother von Trotha, newly arrived in South-West Africa. In a letter to von
Leutwein, he wrote: I did not receive any instructions or directives on
being appointed Commander-in-Chief in South-West Africa. His
Majesty the Emperor only said that he expected me to crush the rebel-
lion by fair means or foul and to inform him later of the causes that had
22
Ibid., 33.
23
Drechsler 1980, 132.
30 I N T R O D U C T I O N
provoked the uprising.
24
Earlier the kaiser had forbidden the opening
of negotiations with the Herero, demanding instead unconditional
surrender, which von Trotha was determined to achieve.
25
Accordingly, in order to unconditionally quell the rebellion, until
then quite successful, von Trotha adopted a new strategy. He ordered
the Herero in the Waterberg (including women and children) sur-
rounded on three sides, with the fourth side only weakly garrisoned,
facing the desert. This was the only direction open for escape from the
Germans. Facing German forces including thirty pieces of artillery and
twelve machine guns on three sides, the Herero had no choice but to
retreat to the Omahake desert, where many died of thirst and starvation.
A study by the German General Staff later concluded that this battle
inicted a far worse fate on the Herero than German arms ever could
have done, however bloody and costly the battle.
26
As a result of this
and other actions against the Herero and later the Nama, another
rebelling tribe, by 1911, fully 80 percent of the Herero and 50 percent
of the Nama had died.
27
Three factors are important to consider. First, the initial Herero
successes were startling to the Germans, as was the Chinese success
(albeit limited) in Shanghai to the Japanese invaders. The Herero had
learned to ght the Germans in repeated ambushes leading to successive
German losses. Von Leutwein, to all appearances, had failed to come up
with a military strategy to counter these successes. That a primitive
tribe of Africans, undoubtedly viewed as racial inferiors by the Germans,
should be so successful militarily was anathema to the Germans. As a
consequence, the far harsher genocidal policy of von Trotha was sub-
stituted for von Leutweins reliance on pure military tactics.
The deaths of women and children in the Omahake desert raise the
second of our issues, the nature of a combatant. Given the customs of
Herero society, it would have been virtually impossible to separate the
men from the women and children, for the families tended the cattle
together. When von Trotha surrounded the Herero in the Battle of
Waterberg, the women and children were present together with the
men and the cattle they were tending. Thus the avoidance of frontal
clashes and movement of the Herero closer to the desert inevitably
entailed the transfer of women and children as well.
Yet, after the battle when so many Herero had died and the power of
this people appeared to be broken, von Trotha still followed an
24
Chalk and Jonassohn 1990, 241.
25
Ibid., 239.
26
Ibid., 243.
27
Ibid., 246.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 31
exterminatory policy. In a report to the chief of the Army General Staff,
General Alfred von Schlieffen, von Trotha laid out his strategy:
Since I neither can nor will come to terms with these people without
express orders from His Majesty the Emperor and King, it is essential that
all sections of the nation be subjected to rather stern treatment. I have
begun to administer such treatment on my own initiative and, barring
orders to the contrary, will continue to do so as long as I am in command
here . . . Before my departure yesterday I ordered the warriors captured
recently to be court-martialled and hanged and all women and children
who sought shelter here to be driven back into the sandveld . . . To accept
women and children who are for the most part sick, poses a grave risk to
the force, and to feed them is out of the question. For this reason, I deem
it wiser for the entire nation to perish than to infect our soldiers into the
bargain and to make inroads into our water and food supplies.
28
Von Schlieffen himself approved of von Trothas intentions in terms of a
racial struggle that required an effort either to wipe out the entire
nation or to drive them out of the country, but he had doubts about the
effectiveness of von Trothas strategy. Von Schlieffen desired a surrender
of the Herero that von Trothas intention of shooting each and every
Herero male would complicate enormously.
29
The imperial chancellor desired further limitations on von Trotha
that stemmed from the inconsistency of a genocidal policy with
Christianity and Humanity, the impracticality of von Trothas strat-
egy, the indispensability of the natives for the colonys potential
development and the [fact that this] policy was demeaning to your
[German] standing among the civilized nations of the world.
30
Kaiser
Wilhelm II initially had ruled out negotiations, demanding uncondi-
tional surrender instead,
31
and apparently approved of the harshest
measures to be taken against the Herero. However, after ve days of
hesitation, he agreed to a version of Chancellor von Bulows suggested
policy that surrendering Herero be shown mercy. Eight days later, he
assented to von Bulows specic request that the lives of surrendering
Herero be spared.
32
Here we see a split between the civilian and military components of
the German government, with the kaiser initially leaning toward the
military side, but ultimately malleable on the issue. This disjunction
between the German military and civilian sectors will reappear in
28
Drechsler 1980, 161.
29
Ibid., 163.
30
Ibid., 164.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
32 I N T R O D U C T I O N
the later cynical realpolitik of Germany in the Armenian genocide of
191516 (see chapter 10). Essentially, the state in the form of the
kaiser and von Bulow had stepped back from the precipice of authorizing
genocide. This was, of course, little comfort to the Herero now conned to
reservations and subject to indiscriminate brutality and outright murder,
albeit unauthorized, by German soldiers. Without their traditional hier-
archy and cattle-based way of life, the Herero experienced a catastrophic
demoralization. One year after the Battle of Waterberg, only 25 percent of
the Herero existing in 1904 were still alive;
33
seven years later, that number
declined to 20 percent. Although many were later murdered, further
demographic attrition was based principally on declining fertility and
poor living conditions in the enforced dwellings.
Because of the absence of state policy authorizing genocide, and the
status of virtually all Herero including women and older children at least
as combat associates especially during the Battle of Waterberg, this case
of genocidal behavior will not be included in the following analyses. Yet
the violation of expectations and the possibility that the Germans
could have actually experienced defeat at the hands of the Herero is an
important clue to the conditions under which genocide may be initiated.
The invocation of the domain of losses and realpolitik as important
sources of genocidal behavior
34
are also represented here. Additionally,
von Trothas treatment of the Herero in the Battle of Waterberg could
have served as a model for German military advice to the Ottomans
during the Armenian genocide (see chapter 10).
Why concentrate on genocide as state policy? Why not focus instead
on the fortuitous opportunistic mass murders, or genocidal behavior,
found in Bosnia, Nanjing, and German South-West Africa? An initial
answer is to be found in my concern for understanding the behavior of
the perpetrators, in addition to factors that increase the rate of victimi-
zation. By emphasizing the saved, lms like Schindlers List, The Pianist,
or The Killing Fields become luminous works of art that help keep the
issue of genocide as well as the perversity and depredation of the
perpetrators alive in the public consciousness. Sadly, however, they tell
us little about the overwhelming majority of victims who went to their
deaths. By understanding the perpetrators, we can address the causes of
the mass killings that took so many lives and, thus armed, perhaps
33
Bridgman 1981, 131.
34
See the governor of South-West Africas advocacy of the use of realpolitik in dealing
with rebellious natives; Drechsler 1980, 241.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 33
prevent similar occurrences in the future. And the vast majority of those
murders took place after a policy decision had been made to commit
genocide. If in Serb-occupied Bosnia, Japanese-occupied China, and
German South-West Africa, the governing authorities had decided to
kill all indigenous peoples, then certainly many times more people
would have died than in the absence of such a policy. State-generated
genocidal policies put at the disposal of the perpetrators the tools of
modern mass killing machine guns, gas chambers, ovens, or only a
highly developed communications infrastructure that could be used to
coordinate the mass murders, as in Rwanda.
Three cases of genocide
The three cases of genocide included in this analysis are the Holocaust,
the Armenians, and the Tutsi. All were selected because they meet the
criteria of state-sponsored systematic mass murder of a targeted ethnor-
eligious group and of non-combatant status of the victims. More will be
said later about these cases, especially in the course of presenting the
empirical analyses. For now, certain bare outlines can be given.
The Holocaust
Despite the onset of the war in September 1939, Jews were not murdered
en masse until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
However, immediately after the invasion, specially trained murder
squads called Einsatzgruppen began murdering Jews throughout the
conquered areas of the Soviet Union. At rst only males were killed. In
mid-August, women and children were included in the systematic kill-
ing. In some instances, local populations enthusiastically took part in
the massacres of men, women, and children. For example, in a
December 1, 1941, report by Karl Jager, commander of Einsatzgruppe
3, he described in summary fashion the eradication of the majority of
Lithuania Jewry:
I can conrm today that Einsatz Kommando 3 has achieved the goal of
solving the Jewish problem in Lithuania. There are no more Jews in
Lithuania, apart from working Jews and their families. These number:
in Shavli about 4,500, in Kovno about 15,000, in Vilna about 15,000.
I wanted to eliminate the working Jews and their families as well, but the
Civil Administration [Reichskommissar] and the Wehrmacht attacked me
34 I N T R O D U C T I O N
most sharply and issued a prohibition against having these Jews and their
families shot. The goal of clearing Lithuania of Jews could be achieved only
through the establishment of a specially selected Mobile Commando under
the command of SS Obersturmfuhrer Hamann, who adopted my aims fully
and who was able to ensure the co-operation of the Lithuanian Partisans and
the Civil Authorities concerned. The carrying out of such Aktionen is rst of
all an organisational problem. The decision to clear each sub-district system-
atically of Jews called for a thorough preparation for each Aktion and the
study of local conditions. The Jews had to be concentrated in one or more
localities and, in accordance with their numbers, a site had to be selected and
pits dug . . . The Jews are brought to the place of execution in groups of 500,
with at least 2 kms distance between groups . . . All the ofcers and men of
my command in Kovno took active part in the Grossaktionen in Kovno. Only
one ofcial of the intelligence corps was released from participation on
account of illness.
I consider the Aktionen against the Jews to be virtually completed. The
remaining working Jews and Jewesses are urgently needed, and I can
imagine that this manpower will continue to be needed urgently after
the winter has ended. I am of the opinion that the male working Jews
should be sterilised immediately to prevent reproduction. Should any
Jewess nevertheless become pregnant, she is to be liquidated.
35
By March 1942 the rst facilities with permanent gas chambers
were built in Belzec in eastern Poland. Shortly thereafter, Auschwitz
(Oswiecim)Birkenau in Silesia also was operational and gassing Jews
transported to its extermination camp (Birkenau). Approximately
1.2 million Jews died there. Other extermination camps, also
in Poland, were Sobibo r established in May 1942, Treblinka (July
1942), and Majdanek (autumn 1942). The latter two were responsible
respectively for the mass murder of the large Jewish concentrations in
the Warsaw and Lublin areas.
36
Throughout Europe, Jews were transported either directly to these
camps or to the Polish ghettos that were already in existence, from there
to be taken to the death camps at a later time. This entire process was
pregured by the infamous speech of December 16, 1941, by Hans
Frank, the governor-general of the Polish Generalgouvernement (the
German administration in Poland), in which he stated, One way or
another I will tell you that quite openly we must nish off the Jews.
The Fuhrer put it into words once: should united Jewry again succeed in
35
Wistrich 2001, 9394.
36
Ibid., 100.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 35
setting off a world war, then a blood sacrice shall not be made only by
the peoples driven into war, but then the Jew of Europe will have met his
end. Frank then concluded his speech:
We must destroy the Jews wherever we meet them and whenever the
opportunity offers so that we can maintain the whole structure of the
Reich here . . . The Jews batten on to us to an exceptionally damaging
extent. At a rough estimate we have in the Generalgouvernement about
2.5 million people [Jews] now perhaps 3.5 million who have Jewish
connections and so on. We cannot shoot these 3.5 million Jews, we
cannot poison them, but we can take measures that will, one way or
another [so oder so], lead to extermination, in conjunction with the large-
scale measures under discussion in the Reich.
37
The timing of this speech will prove to be important in understanding
the etiology of the Holocaust in its gruesome entirety.
The Wannsee conference of January 20, 1942, was convened shortly
thereafter to implement the extermination process under the aegis of
Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the security police and the SD (intelligence
arm of the SS), and Plenipotentiary for the Preparation of the Final
Solution of the Jewish Question.
38
Altogether, the process of shootings,
gassings, starvation, and epidemic diseases among the malnourished
residents of the Jewish ghettos led to the deaths of approximately
6,000,000 Jews between 1941 and 1945, the principal genocidal compo-
nent of the Holocaust, which also included among its victims Roma,
homosexuals, and Soviet prisoners of war.
The Armenians
Here again, state authorization of the systematic mass murder of eth-
noreligiously targeted non-combatants is found. On April 24, 1915, the
leaders of the Armenian community in Constantinople and elsewhere
were rounded up and deported. This event signaled the beginnings of
the Armenian genocide that would lead to the deportation and deaths of
approximately 1,000,000 Armenians. The German pastor Johannes
Lepsius in 1919 recorded that the earliest deportations began in
March, but in May were begun in earnest. The following is a partial
list of the deportations beginning in eastern Anatolia closest to the
37
Ibid., 101.
38
Ibid., 102.
36 I N T R O D U C T I O N
Russian border, continuing into central Anatolia and northern
Mesopotamia, and ending in western Anatolia.
39
May 15, 1915 The rural parts of Erzeroum [Erzerum]
June 15July 15 and
July 26, 1915 The city of Erzeroum
June 26, 1915 Harpout [Kharput] and Trebizond
June 27, 1915 Samson
July 10, 1915 Malatia
Deportations from Cilicia
July 27, 1915 The seashore areas in Cilicia Antioch
July 28, 1915 Aintah
Deportations from western
Asia Minor
August 1019, 1915 Brusa
August 16, 1915 Konia
Able-bodied Armenian men were drafted into the Ottoman army
where they were eventually disarmed and given menial tasks to perform.
Deprived of younger male protection, remaining inhabitants of villages
were exposed to massacre and deportation. Only the city of Van in the
heartland of Armenian Anatolia successfully defended itself initially
against the deportations, although it succumbed later. Armenians who
survived the village massacres were deported to the Mesopotamian
desert and then left to die a horrible death of starvation and disease.
En route, the few possessions they had were stolen by successive mar-
auding tribesmen until virtually nothing was left. The younger and more
attractive women were either abducted and subjected to forced conver-
sion to Islam or repeatedly raped and left to die.
One of the witnesses, Edith Woods, a nurse in Kharput and Malatia
described the consequences of the deportations:
It was like an endless chain . . . The children would often be dead before
I had taken their names. Forty to fty of the older women died each day.
You see starvation, exposure, exhaustion . . . Their mouths were masses
of sores, and their teeth were dropping out. And their feet, those poor,
bleeding feet. The Turks were doing nothing at all for them. In Malatia
the dead lay around in the streets and elds. No attempt was made to bury
them . . . Deportation is sure death and a far more horrible death than
39
Boyajian 1972, 10405. The full list was initially recorded in 1915 by Johannes Lepsius,
a German pastor working in Anatolia.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 37
massacre. Unless one sees these things it is difcult to believe that such
monstrous cruelty and barbarity exist in the world. Making women and
children suffer that way until they die seems incredible. But that is
Malatia.
40
The majority of the deportations ended in 1916, but even as late as
1920, atrocities took place in portions of Russian Armenia occupied by
the Turks, leading to a minimum of another 100,000 dead.
41
Only the
intervention of a Soviet army stationed nearby prevented continued
slaughter of the Armenians. Today there are few, if any, Armenians
remaining in their former heartland of eastern Anatolia.
The Tutsi
Eradication of an ethnoreligious group also became state policy in the Hutu
extremist-led Rwandan state. Of the three genocides considered here, the
most rapidly executed was that which occurred in Rwanda between April
and July 1994. Estimates range between 500,000
42
and 800,000
43
dead,
mostly Tutsi, but including thousands of Hutu moderates who wanted
no part of the genocide. Most of the killing was done between April and
May, a killing rate that exceeded that of the Nazi death camps during World
War II. Rapidity of the killing distinguished the Rwandan genocide,
although extent could still be claimed by the Nazis.
The genocide began soon after the April 6 assassination of the Rwandan
president Juvenal Habyarimana. The military, National Police (gendarmes),
and communal police actively led the genocidal attacks, with civilians, espe-
cially those in the Interahamwe (militia), then becoming active participants.
44
At rst, only targeted individuals, either Tutsi leaders or prominent
Hutu moderates, were murdered. Soon they began the distinctive process
of driving Tutsi fromtheir homes to government ofces, churches, schools,
or other public sites, which appeared to confer safety, but actually became
sites of wholesale massacre.
45
The mass killings at the church in Kaduha is
typical of many. At rst, Hutu neighbors and friends were allowed to bring
food and livestock to the assembled Tutsi at the church. But after April 17,
and the instigation of a more aggressive national policy, food could no
40
Quoted in Marashlian 1999, 131.
41
Dadrian 1999, 159.
42
Des Forges 1999, 1.
43
Gourevitch 1998, 3.
44
Des Forges 1999, 8. For a recent description of the genocide including the training of the
Interahamwe and the French role in that process, see Melvern 2004.
45
Ibid., 910.
38 I N T R O D U C T I O N
longer be brought in, and people were no longer allowed to leave the
church. On April 20, a Hutu crowd tried to steal the livestock but were
prevented from doing so by the Tutsi defenders. On April 21, assailants
threw grenades at a house containing Tutsi refugees, which apparently
signaled the start of the massacre. A witness reported:
I could hear gunre and the explosion of grenades and the cries of people
being killed. The attackers red their guns and threw grenades into the
crowd and then groups of killers with traditional weapons came in and
killed those who were still alive. This began early in the morning on the
21st and it continued all day Thursday and all day Friday. On Friday, they
mostly searched for people who were hiding.
46
Another witness commented on the role of the National Police:
The National Police who were supposed to protect us were lodged in the
agricultural school. When we awoke and found we were surrounded, we
tried to defend ourselves. We were more than they and so we were able to
force them back by throwing rocks. But the National Police came to
reinforce them . . . They began to organize the crowd. They red their
guns and threw grenades.
47
Scenes of this type were repeated many times over in Rwanda until the
Tutsi population was decimated. Rape, torture, and physical mutilation
often preceded the killing, which not infrequently included beheading
by machete.
48
Only those who were able to ee successfully, nd effec-
tive hiding places, or were fortunate enough to be befriended by a Hutu
sympathizer survived. Today the vast majority of Tutsi living in Rwanda
are not survivors of the 1994 genocide, for they are few in number, but
returnees from the Tutsi refugee communities in surrounding countries.
Because of its status as primarily a politicide, although including a
genocidal element, the Cambodian case will be described in its entirety in
chapter 15. All of the cases of genocide and politicide share the properties
of state sponsorship of the systematic mass murder of a selected population.
At the same time, individual persons were required to perform the mass
murders. The following chapters explore the etiology of the killing from
the perspectives of decision makers, actual killers, and the victims them-
selves. But, before these issues are addressed, we need to establish the
theoretical foundations of this inquiry.
46
Quoted ibid., 341.
47
Quoted ibid.
48
Gourevitch 1998, 131.
C A S E S E L E C T I O N 39
PART II
Explaining perpetrators: theoretical
foundations
3
Continuity and validation
In order to understand the onset of genocide, we must look at moments
during which the vulnerability of victims was clearly established, and at the
conditions that established vulnerability in the minds of the perpetrators.
In this chapter, I rst discuss continuity as one such condition. Later,
validation the absence of serious consequences for perpetrators is
presented as a second condition. In succeeding chapters, explanations
will be offered for the transition from massacre to genocide.
Continuity, whether through experience or identication with the
mindset associated with mass murder, is supplemented by validation.
Validation occurs when a morally reprehensible act, even a heinous act,
goes unpunished. If the perpetrators of previous murders were not
punished, then to all intents and purposes, in a purely pragmatic
sense, the killings were justied by their tacit acceptance.
Continuity of the killing in the three cases
By continuity, I mean prior experience with massacre or identication with
the aims and mindset of those associated with mass murder. Genocide as a
thoroughgoing eradication requires preparation. And it is not only pre-
paration in the material sense of building gas chambers or buying large
numbers of guns and machetes. It is the experience of massacre that is
crucial. To be sure, this is not a historical awareness as in Hitlers reference
to the genocide of the Armenians in his speech to army commanders prior
to the invasion of Poland. Nor does this experience require the perpetrators
of genocide themselves to have murdered in the past. What is required is
that perpetrators be aware that there have occurred massacres of elements
of the victim population in the recent past, and that they identify with the
political goals and mindset of the earlier perpetrators. Identication can
provide a bridge between the recent past and present, and makes subse-
quent mass murder more likely to occur. Vulnerability of the victims, a
necessary condition for genocide, has been clearly established.
43
The East was a major preoccupation of Nazis such as Hitler and
Himmler. Therefore, these leaders would have been aware of the
Russian generals plan to deport substantial numbers of Jews from
Poland to the Don basin during World War I because of their status as
security risks.
1
The Nazi leadership would also have known that, after
World War I, the stridently anti-Semitic Polish National Democratic
Party sought to limit citizenship in the new Poland to those who could
prove that there had been no Jews in their families for at least three
generations. In this respect, anti-Semitic Poles anticipated the Nazis by
about fteen years. The National Democrats also sought to forcibly
eliminate or reduce the Polish-Jewish population.
2
And the economic
boycott of Polish Jews that had begun under the Russian administration
in 1912 was continued after Polish independence,
3
again anticipating
the Nazi boycott of 1933 by more than a decade.
And if Russian or Ukrainian nationalists as opponents of Bolshevism
saw t to murder Jews en masse, then certainly the current (i.e., Nazi)
cognoscenti of racial superiority and extreme anti-Bolshevism could,
under the appropriate political conditions, at least follow the earlier
example, or even better it. Because this linkage between massacre by the
Ukrainian or Russian anti-Bolshevists and the later activities of the
Einsatzgruppen (German killing squads) in the East typically is not
emphasized in earlier studies of the Holocaust, it receives a substantial
share of attention here. Similarly, in the Ottoman Empire and Rwanda,
many of the same people who had earlier participated in the massacres,
or the descendants of those people, participated in the genocide at the
local level.
Identication with past murderers and/or their political goals works
to disinhibit the genocidal perpetrators from the moral restraints that
typically prevent mass killing. Of course, ideologies justifying mass
murder can serve a similar function, but the view that the victims in
the recent past somehow deserved to die, and the murderers were
justied in the mass killing, can further remove inhibitions against
systematic murder. Intimations of genocidal possibility are presented.
The Holocaust
In his otherwise nely wrought treatment of the Einsatzgruppe massacres
of East European Jewry, Richard Rhodes gets one thing wrong. He
1
Black 1993, 268.
2
Ibid., 274.
3
Ibid., 275.
44 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
explicitly connects the activities of the Einsatzgruppen with the origins of
the Holocaust as in the title of his book Masters of Death: The
SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust.
4
In fact, one
cannot begin to understand the onset of the Holocaust without examin-
ing the Russian Civil War period. In those years, approximately
10 percent of Ukrainian Jewry died
5
under circumstances not terribly
different in kind, although massively different in scale, from those
existing in the summer and fall of 1941. The earlier massacres of
191920 heralded those of the early 1940s. Events within Ukraine in
the early 1930s further exacerbated matters immeasurably. It is to that
processual continuity that we now turn.
It has been estimated that between 1918 and 1920 as many as 150,000
Jews were murdered by Bolshevik armies (2.3 percent), Petluras
Ukrainian nationalists (53.7 percent), and Denikins Volunteer Army
(17 percent). The remainder was killed by local bands of renegade
soldiers and other anti-Semites.
6
These estimates include deaths due to
massacre-induced disease or starvation. More recent estimates based
on newly available Russian records judge the percentage killed by the
Volunteer Army to be much higher, perhaps as high as 50 percent.
7
At the end of World War I, the withdrawal of German troops left a
vacuum that no existing force could adequately ll. The Bolshevik Red
Army under Leon Trotsky had not yet been fully formed, and the
interventions of the tsarist White Russians under leaders such as
Anton Denikin and Aleksandr Kolchak were just beginning. Just as the
Poles and Finns were mobilizing for independence from the tsarist
empire, so too were the Ukrainians under nationalist leaders like
Simon Petlura. His forces were to commit atrocities against the Jews
that were comparable in kind to those later committed by the Nazi
Einsatzgruppen in alliance with Ukrainian nationalists.
Many were the number of reported atrocities. Only several are needed
to communicate their level of barbarity. At Chernobyl, famous for its
failed nuclear reactor, Jews were forced into streams; those who
attempted to avoid drowning were shot. Typical of several appeals
from towns such as Kostichev, Volochek, or Khemlnik (sic) was a
message from the Jews of Trokinitz to the rabbi of Kaminski:
4
Rhodes 2002.
5
Baron 1976, 18485.
6
Gergel 1951, cited in Vital 1999, 722.
7
Kenez 1992, 302.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 45
The misfortunes which fall upon the Jews of our town of Trokinitz are
indescribable. Savage bandits have murdered, massacred and torn to
pieces four-fths of the Jewish population. It is a real wonder that some
of them have been able to escape the massacre. The money, the beds, the
clothes, the furniture, the wares, everything has been robbed and plun-
dered. Houses have been demolished. Windows and stores broken and
hacked to pieces. Here are now several hundred Jewish widows and
thousands of Jewish orphans.
8
As in the later Holocaust, many towns had virtually their entire Jewish
populations murdered en masse. In the town of Tetiev on March 25,
1919, as was their custom in times of trouble, 2,000 Jews sought sanc-
tuary in their large wooden synagogue. This time, the building could not
protect them, for it was set are by Cossack troops under the command
of Colonels Kurovsky, Cherkovsky, and Shliatoshenko. Indeed, this was
the prototype for the later mass murder by re of Polish Jews in their
wooden synagogues during the Holocaust. According to one eyewitness,
Of the synagogue nothing remained except walls blackened by re and
a few charred bodies which it was no longer possible to identify. All
around the place, hands, feet and other human remnants were seen.
9
Elsewhere in the town, Infants were tossed up into the air and their
bodies dashing against the pavement squirted blood on the mur-
derers.
10
A group of peasants tried to intercede on behalf of one Jew,
at which point Kurovsky stated He may be the best of them, but since
he is a Jew he must be killed.
11
Approximately 4,000 of Tetievs 6,000 Jews were murdered in this
pogrom. Towns with smaller Jewish populations had even a larger
proportion of their Jews killed. In Dubovo on June 17, 1919, 800 of
the towns 900 Jews were murdered in assembly-line fashion. Under the
supervision of invading Cossack troops, two executioners stood at the
head of the stairs leading to the basement of one D. Feldman. With their
sabres, they proceeded to decapitate the Jews who were forced to
approach the staircase. Shortly, the basement lled with the fragments
of corpses.
12
When the malevolence approached Kiev, with its sizable Jewish
population, even an avowed anti-Semite, U. V. Shulgin, was appalled:
8
Quoted in S. Friedman 1976, 22.
9
Quoted ibid., 1112.
10
Ibid., 12.
11
Quoted ibid.
12
Ibid., 11.
46 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
A dreadful medieval spirit moves in the streets of Kiev at night. In the
general stillness and emptiness of the streets, a heartrending cry suddenly
breaks out. It is the cry of the Jews, a cry of fear. In the darkness of the
street appears a group of men with bayonets. At this sight, large ve and
six story houses begin to shriek from top to bottom. Whole streets, seized
with mortal anguish, scream with inhuman voices.
13
According to various reports, the murderers systemically cordoned off
streets and then moved from building to building as they bayoneted,
bludgeoned, or shot the Jews to death. Jewish intellectuals appear to
have been the early targets, as in the later Holocaust.
Before the end of the reign of terror, the Ukrainian nationalist forces
led by Petlura were responsible for 493 separate massacres.
14
Nationalists assumed that the Jews were Bolshevik supporters, com-
mitted to the Sovietization of the entire former tsarist empire including,
of course, Ukraine. The anti-Semitic nationalist spokesman Shulgin
declared that if you have some Jews who are very rich, who are very
great nanciers, the majority are very poor. They live in the small towns
and villages and they live miserably. They became communists.
15
True, many prominent Bolsheviks such as Leon Trotsky, leader of the
Red Army, were Jews. Other prominent Jewish Bolsheviks included
Jacob Sverdlov, president of the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party, and Grigori Zinoviev, president of the Third
International. Yet the equation of Jews and communism, later to be
even more emphatically propagandized by Hitler, was a canard. In 1922,
only 5.2 percent of Soviet Communists cited themselves as Jews and, of
these, many, such as Trotsky (ne Bronshtein), had taken Slavic names,
and no longer identied themselves in any fundamental way as Jewish.
16
Also in 1922, of a total Ukrainian-Jewish population of 1,773,000 only
8,250, less than half of one percent, identied themselves as
Communists.
17
Indeed, the vast majority of Ukrainian Jews were poor
artisans, traders, and shopkeepers. As such, they deeply opposed the
collectivization policies of the Bolsheviks to the extent that initially
many even welcomed the arrival of Denikins White forces,
18
as some
Jews welcomed German forces in 1941 because of their loss of businesses
under Bolshevik rule. Thus, for example, in Vinnitsin in 1941, an elderly
Jew who had his inn conscated under Soviet governance requested that
it be restored by the Germans because of his recollection of their
13
Quoted ibid., 1314.
14
Ibid., 365.
15
Quoted ibid., 193.
16
Ibid., 196.
17
Committee of the Jewish Delegations 1927, 43.
18
Kenez 1992.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 47
relatively benign rule during World War I. The Germans tied him to a
horse and dragged him through the city to his death.
19
In addition to common anti-Bolshevik sentiments, two factors were
to strengthen the Ukrainian nationalistNazi connection. First, Stalins
forced collectivization of agriculture was to have disastrous conse-
quences in Ukraine. At least several million, perhaps as many as
5,000,000, Ukrainians died as the result of famine directly induced by
the collectivization process.
20
Whether Stalin actually intended this
draconian outcome in order to counter Ukrainian nationalist activity,
or the famine came about as the result of Soviet incompetence, the
widespread devastation exacerbated Ukrainian anti-Semitism. In addi-
tion to the perception of Jews as Bolshevik supporters, the famine
differentially impacted Ukrainian non-Jews. By the mid-1930s, the
majority of Ukrainian Jews were urbanized, or at least lived in towns
and villages. In contrast, the majority of Christians were rural peasant
farmers the precise target of the agricultural collectivization. Thus,
they died in far higher numbers and proportions of their populations
than did the Jews. And if the target was Ukrainian nationalism with its
correlative separatist tendency, as writers such as Robert Conquest
argue, then, historically, the Jewish population would have been far
less susceptible to this particular ideological appeal with its strong over-
tones of Orthodox Christianity.
21
Thus, from this perspective, too, Jews
would have been targeted less than Christians.
It was during this period of 193033 that in a Ukrainian newspaper
Meta on April 17, 1932, the following exhortation was found:
Ukrainian Nationalism must be prepared to employ every means in
the struggle . . . not excluding mass physical extermination, even if
millions of human beings, physical entities, are its victims.
22
Also in the early 1930s, overt cooperation developed between the
Nazis and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the civi-
lian successor to the Ukrainian Military Organization that emerged after
World War I and was now headquartered in Berlin. This was the second
factor leading to the World War II alliance of Nazis and Ukrainian
nationalists, at least in relation to the mass murder of Jews. Many
members of the OUN were Nazi agents acting on behalf of Nazi
Germany from locations in eastern Poland (western Ukraine) with its
predominantly Ukrainian population, and even within the Soviet
19
Rhodes 2002, 14950.
20
Conquest 1986, 303.
21
Conquest 1986.
22
Gartner 1991, 231.
48 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
Union. Espionage information provided by the OUN network in the
Western Ukraine before World War II was utilized by the Third Reich to
its best advantage when it invaded the Soviet Union.
23
Thus, even
before the war, Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists were in close covert
cooperation, which facilitated their later overt cooperation during the
Holocaust. The following incident is an exemplar of their early
cooperation:
During the rst three days of July 1941, the Nightingale Battalion,
composed almost entirely of Ukrainians under the direction of the
Gestapo, slaughtered seven thousand Jews in the vicinity of Lwow
(Lemberg). Before their executions, Jewish professors, lawyers, and doc-
tors were made to lick all the steps of four-story buildings and to carry
garbage in their mouths from house to house. Then, forced to run a
gauntlet of men who wore blue and gold armbands (coincidentally the
colors of the Petlurist Republic), they were bayonetted to death in what
was ofcially termed Aktion Petlura.
24
Early massacres of this sort suggest that the NaziOUN collaboration
yielded information concerning the intense anti-Semitism they found
throughout Ukraine prior to any action against the Jews or any other
European nationality. The Nazis were very careful to gather as much
information as possible as the counterpart to Goebbelss dissemination
of propaganda to the targeted country. Both intense awareness of the
enemies circumstances as well as propagandistic inuence were hall-
marks of the Nazi regime. Thus, the task of annihilating Soviet Jewry was
greatly facilitated by the Ukrainian nationalist collaboration.
In addition to the Ukrainian nationalist pogroms of 191819, there
were those emanating from a very different quarter but with the same
outcome for the Jews. In the summer of 1919, taking advantage of
strategic errors by the Red Army, Denikins Volunteer Army occupied
virtually the whole of Ukraine. As a tsarist army, its goals of defeating the
Bolsheviks while maintaining the empire intact obviously conicted
with the separatist purposes of the Ukrainian nationalists. But the
Cossacks of both armies held in common their hatred of Jews and
propensities toward looting and rape. The tsarist ofcers in command
of Denikins army allowed the Cossack troops considerable leeway in
their initiation of pogroms throughout areas of Ukraine under their
command.
23
Sabrin 1991, 4.
24
S. Friedman 1976, 374.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 49
Atypical pogrom began with the ofcers and men divided into groups
of ve or ten each. They would beat and rob Jews on the street followed
by entry into their houses and the extortion of money and valuables.
Rape and murder would follow:
Methods of murder varied greatly. Generally the Cossacks shot or bayo-
neted their victims, but hanging, burning, drowning in wells, and live
burials also occurred. There were recorded instances of people buried up
to the necks in the sand and then killed by horses driven over them. Many
victims were not killed outright but wounded and left to die. Thousands
died of hunger, disease, and exposure after their houses were burned
down and they had no one to turn to for help.
25
An important distinction needs to be addressed: that between the locally
raised Ukrainian forces, which sometimes acted like little more than a
rabble, and the Volunteer Army, which was thoroughly professional,
consisting mainly of ofcers from the old Russian army in command of
Cossack forces. Describing this army, David Vital writes:
All ranks within it were politically united in their dedication to the
re-establishment of the Autocracy and genuinely imbued with the
connected, driving conviction that at the root of Russias tragedy and
their own political discomture as a military class lay the Jews. If their
Russia was ever to rise again from the ashes in which it now languished,
the Jews, so ran their common and exceedingly tenacious belief, needed
to be punished, indeed destroyed. Given the spirit moving them and the
armed power at their command, it was inevitable that the consequences
should go well beyond the Cossacks being allowed a few days amusement
as Denikins subordinates were apt to put it in the Jewish quarters of the
towns and villages through which they swept when advancing towards the
centre of the country and again, in darker mood, early in 1920, as they
retreated. In the view of the thinking members of the Volunteer Army,
there lay upon them a positive duty to rid Russia, and by extension
Christian Europe generally, of the Jew the Jew in general, that is
to say, conceived generically and without regard to his or her actual sex,
or age, or station in life, or political afliation (if any at all). No explicit
obligation to kill was laid upon Denikins ofcers in the eld. So far as is
known, no central, binding order to do away with the Jewish population
was ever issued. But the climate of opinion in which they were engulfed
encouraged it.
26
25
Kenez 1992, 299300.
26
Vital 1999, 72425.
50 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
Although organized Jewish self-defense was sometimes successful
against the Ukrainian nationalists, it was hopeless against the
Volunteer Army. Here for the rst time in modern memory, apparently
without orders to do so, disciplined uniformed military forces were
engaged in the massive destruction of a civilian population on the
continent of Europe. Clearly this is a prototype for the later uniformed
cadres of the SS and Wehrmacht, who in even more disciplined fashion
managed to kill many times the number of Jews murdered by Denikins
forces.
Were the Nazis of the post-World War I period aware of these
murderous anti-Semitic activities in the East and, if so, how salient
were they? That they were aware cannot be disputed if only because of
the large-scale immigration of Polish and Galician Jews into Germany
during this period. Germany appeared to be a safe haven after the
extreme depredations of Petlura and Denikin. Coming at the time of
the Great Disorder, over 70,000 recent Jewish immigrants from the East
were found in Berlin alone, most of them illegally. Many of these Jews,
without proper means of support, along with large segments of German
society, were engaged in black marketeering, which further alienated
many Germans already inclined to anti-Semitic thinking. By 1920, the
term Volksschadling had become a widely accepted code word for the
Jew, a term used to identify those who injured the people but which also
suggested a noxious insect whose elimination could only serve the
public good.
27
From another perspective, we also can appreciate the salience of the
East in the Nazi mind. The rst districts in Germany to go over to the
Nazis in free elections were those in East Prussia and Silesia.
28
East
Prussian origin was highly overrepresented among early members of
the Nazi Party.
29
East Prussia and Silesia were closest geographically to
the East and indeed would be absorbed into a newly reconstituted
Poland at the end of World War II.
Another indication of the importance of the East comes from a major
study of early members of the Nazi Party.
30
Of the 581 Nazi respondents to
a survey by Theodore Abel, those from East Prussia and other Eastern
regions are overrepresented.
31
Military-civil servants comprising 23 percent
of the sample
32
along with business and professional people
33
saw the
Weimar Republic as Jewish-run. Disproportionate numbers of those who
27
Feldman 1993, 203.
28
Merkl 1975, 110, 189.
29
Ibid., 17.
30
Abel [1938] 1986; Merkl 1975.
31
Merkl 1975, 17.
32
Ibid., 51.
33
Ibid., 690.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 51
viewed Weimar as the Judenrepublik participated in or sympathized with
the beer hall putsch or belonged to volkisch social groups or parties.
34
More
than 61 percent of the early Nazis either had some direct experience with
the war or were enthusiastic victory-watchers.
35
Most of the dynamic
marcher-proselytizers among themwere of the war generation.
36
Fully two-
thirds of the concentration camp commandants had served in the army
before joining the Nazi Party.
37
Military experience of this type could serve as a conduit of attitudes
and behavior experienced in the East. Peter Kenez tells us that:
The beginning of antisemitic agitation cannot be dated, for the Ukraine
had not been without it for centuries. During 1918, however, when the
country was occupied by the Germans and the Austrians, agitation
accelerated. The occupying authorities contributed to antisemitism by
their proclamations, which singled out the Jews. These proclamations
attacked the Jews for black marketeering and for the spread of anti-
German rumors. An Austrian commander, for example, forbade Jews
under pain of death to have any contact with his soldiers; he was afraid
that the Jews would somehow corrupt them.
38
Local attitudes and behaviors, whether or not stimulated by the German
occupying authorities, must have left a deep impression on the German
(and Austrian) soldiers returning from the front. The many quasi-legal
militias that sprang up in Germany after World War I (e.g., the
Freikorps) must have been fertile arenas for the exchange of experiences
at the front. Attitudes in Ukraine leading to the loss by murder or
pogrom-induced disease of approximately 10 percent of the Jewish
population, the rape of Jewish women, and the destruction by re of
28 percent of all Ukrainian Jewish houses
39
must have communicated
themselves forcefully to the German occupying soldiers. Anti-Semitic
ideas developed rst in Western Europe, especially Germany, found
fertile ground among many of the Russian intelligentsia in the nine-
teenth century,
40
and then, having been acted upon in Ukraine in
191820, returned to Germany as a model for genocide. A White secret
service agent reported from Ukraine:
No administrative step would help; it is necessary to neutralize the
microbe the Jews . . . As long as the Jews are allowed to do their harmful
work, the front will always be in danger . . . The Jew is not satised with
34
Ibid., 483.
35
Ibid., 157.
36
Ibid., 371.
37
Segev 1987, 60.
38
Kenez 1992, 29495.
39
Baron 1976, 18485.
40
Klier 1995, 40716.
52 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
corrupting the soldier. Lately he has been paying even greater attention to
ofcers. But he is most interested in young people. Clever [Jewish] agents,
under the cover of patriotism and monarchism, mix with young soldiers,
and with the help of cards, women and wine they lure the debauched
youth into their nets.
41
The microbe analogy is compatible with the worst of Nazi propaganda
a decade or two later. As Peter Kenez comments:
This new and passionate antisemitism was born out of a need to explain,
not so much to others, as to themselves, why the revolution had occurred.
In the view of the reactionary ofcers it was the alien Jews who were
primarily responsible. They were the microbes that destroyed the healthy
body politic of old Russia. Antisemitism was not simply an element in
their Weltanschauung; it was the focal point. It alone enabled them to
make sense of a world that to them seemed senseless. In this respect, at
least, the White ofcers were precursors of the Nazis.
42
Analogy to the distress of German soldiers puzzling over the defeat of
1918 and its aftermath is striking. How could a powerful European
empire descend to the level of chaos and near-dissolution with left-
wing leaders governing in place of the hereditary monarchy? The same
question was asked in both the German and Russian instances; the
answer was identical. It is no wonder that the great Soviet-Jewish writer,
Isaac Babel, upon observing the devastation of Jewish villages in western
Ukraine remarked, Is it not bound to be our century in which [the
Jews] will perish?
43
This foreboding also is reected in one of the Red
Cavalry stories, Zamos c , dated September 1920 in which a muzhik
(peasant) shares his views with the author:
The Jew is guilty before all men, he said, both ours and
yours. There will be very few of them left when the war is
over. How many Jews are there in the world?
Ten million, I replied and began to bridle my horse.
Therell be two hundred thousand of them left,
the muzhik exclaimed.
44
The Holocaust in fact began in the East as a continuation of the shoot-
ings and other individualized methods of murder used at the end of
World War I. In the opening stages, most of the killing was done by local
41
Quoted in Kenez 1992, 304.
42
Ibid., 31011.
43
Babel 2002, 408.
44
Babel 1998, 206.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 53
populations, as in Lithuania where only eight to ten German soldiers
were required to kill approximately 130,000 Jews between July and
December 1941; virtually all of the killing was done by Lithuanians in
mobile machine gun units.
45
Later, the killing police battalions
46
and the
use of gas in industrialized mass killing would add a Western (German)
organizational touch, gas rst having been used in the earlier eugenic
killings. Thus, the uniquely German methods and those more native
to the East would be combined in the mass slaughter of innocent men,
women, and children. Interestingly, only after the rst use of the more
primitive methods principally by the local population, almost as a test
case, do we nd application of the industrialized chemical-based
methods.
In Munich, the hotbed of Nazism, were found former participants in
the 190506 pogroms, members of the reactionary Black Hundreds, and
the later more deadly 191820 pogroms, all now refugees from the 1917
revolution. They brought with them the Protocols of the Learned Elders of
Zion, the infamous tsarist forgery used as an important basis of Nazi
propaganda. Also brought to Munich were many Baltic Germans from
the former Russian Empire, among them Alfred Rosenberg who would
soon become the chief ideologist of Nazism, a close collaborator of
Hitler, and an expert on the East, Russia, and the Jews.
47
Heinrich Himmler, the chief implementer of the Holocaust, was
known to have been obsessed with the East. In 1921, he attended a
lecture by Count Colmar von der Goltz, a general who had continued
to ght in the East after the end of World War I. Himmler conded in
his diary that Now I know more denitely: if there is a campaign in the
East again, I will go along. The East is the most important thing for us.
The West dies out easily. We must ght and settle in the East.
48
In his
biography of Himmler, Richard Breitman comments that Anti-
Semitism and German conquest of land in the East were to remain
two of his great lifelong causes.
49
Thus, in Himmlers mind as well as
Hitlers, the joining of these two obsessions was paramount in their
genocidal policies. As Oscar Hamman commented in the immediate
post-World War I period, Our resurrection will to a great extent
depend upon the shape things will assume in the East.
50
45
Neshamit 1977, 293.
46
Browning 1992.
47
Malia 1999, 351.
48
Quoted in Breitman 1991, 16.
49
Ibid.
50
Quoted in Weinreich 1999, 11.
54 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
The Armenians
In the case of the Armenian genocide, elements of continuity also are
prominent. Approximately 200,000 Armenians were massacred in the
Ottoman Empire during the period 189496. One authoritative estimate
puts the total as high as 250,000.
51
The rst of these massacres occurred
in the mountainous region in the vicinity of Sassoun; its cause was
similar to earlier local revolts in the Balkans surrounding the issue of
taxation.
Many Christian minorities throughout the Ottoman region were
subject to double taxation, especially in rural areas in eastern Anatolia.
Local Kurdish tribal chiefs exacted tribute fromthe Armenian peasantry,
as did the Ottoman authorities. The combination of the two often was
sufcient to deprive the peasants of even a subsistence livelihood.
Additionally, one of the Armenian revolutionary groups that emerged
during this period, the Hunchakists, agitated for an armed uprising.
Although a widespread uprising did not take place, there was isolated
resistance to the Kurds and Ottoman support troops, in addition to the
refusal of approximately seventy or eighty houses of a village to pay
taxes. Ottoman authorities attempted to implicate the Kurds as entirely
responsible for the massacre, but evidence exists for the presence of the
Fourth Army Corps acting under orders of Sultan Abdulhamit II. The
commander of the Fourth Army Corps later was decorated by the sultan
for his laudable services and excellent and able efforts.
52
There even
exists the suspicion that the Kurds were encouraged to raise their taxes
so that, when the Armenians objected, the Ottoman authorities would
have a pretext to stage the massacre.
53
According to Vahakn Dadrian,
The Sassoun massacre was the rst instance of organized mass murder
of Armenians in modern Ottoman history that was carried out in peace-
time and had no connection with any foreign war. It lasted 24 days
(August 18September 10, 1894).
54
It was to be but the opening stage of
a series of massacres.
The following year, in October 1895, a demonstration in
Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, was to have additional conse-
quences. Organized by the Hunchakists, a peaceful demonstration
took place against the Sassoun massacre, the precarious situation of
the rural Armenian peasantry, and the inaction of the Ottomans. The
4,000 demonstrators were set upon by the Turks, and many of themwere
51
Dadrian 1997, 155.
52
Ibid., 115.
53
Marriott 1947, 399.
54
Dadrian 1997, 117.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 55
killed. Shortly thereafter, in late October, an uprising occurred at
Zeitoun in the Armenian highlands. It was apparently occasioned by a
warning from some friendly Turks that a massacre was about to take
place. Military units had actually begun to destroy Armenian villages
when the defenders of Zeitoun mounted their insurrection. A furious
battled ensued, leading to a negotiated settlement. But elsewhere in the
fall of 1895 most Armenian communities were attacked and devastated
resulting in the nal conagration at Van, the center of Armenian life in
eastern Anatolia. A nine-day battle followed that saved the vast majority
of the Armenians in the city from Ottoman massacre, but further from
the city the losses increased exponentially. Approximately 20,000
Armenians were killed in these depredations.
55
The last of the major events of this period was the capture of the
Ottoman State Bank in August 1896. This time, the Dashnaks, another
Armenian revolutionary group, organized the action. Although auda-
cious in its planning and execution, the consequences were bloody in the
extreme for thousands of Armenians in the capital. The insurgents were
allowed to leave the country after returning the bank to its directors, but
many innocent Armenians were not so fortunate. Not only Armenians
in Constantinople were murdered but even those in distant cities such as
Egan in the interior of Turkey did not escape massacre.
56
Typical of
these massacres is one related by an Armenian pastor, Abraham
Hartunian:
On Sunday morning, November 3, 1895, the church bells were silent. The
churches and schools, desecrated and plundered, lay in ruins. Pastors,
priests, choristers, teachers, leaders, all were no more. The Armenian
houses, robbed and empty, were as caves. Fifteen hundred men had
been slaughtered, and those left alive were wounded and paralyzed.
Girls were in the shame of their rape . . . On Thursday, November 7,
the fth day of our imprisonment, we were taken out and driven to the
courtyard of a large inn. As we moved along in a le under guards, a
crowd of Turkish women on the edge of the road, mocking and cursing
us like frenzied maenads, screeched the unique convulsive shrill of
the zelgid, the ancient battle cry of the women of Islam the exultant
lu-lu-lulu lled with the concentrated hate of the centuries.
57
Although different from the massacres of Jews in Ukraine in precise
etiology, there exists a strong underlying similarity. While the threat of
55
Ibid., 137.
56
Ibid., 148.
57
Quoted in Staub 1989, 177.
56 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
Jewish equality motivated the pogroms of 191820 Jews had joined
socialist and communist political groups in sizable numbers and had
organized self-defense forces partially effective against the Ukrainian
nationalists the threat of Armenian equality was at least as important
in 189496. Aresponse to the British and French insistence on Christian,
especially Armenian, equality at the end of the Crimean War (1856) was
the prediction of a great slaughter by then Grand Vizier Res id.
58
In the
Turkish view, by appealing to the European powers for juridical equal-
ity, Armenians had overstepped their bounds as dhimmis, subject people
whose lives and property could be protected only under Muslim
hegemony.
In Adana, in 1909, another massacre took place in which approxi-
mately 30,000 Armenians died.
59
The occurrence of this massacre after
the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 suggests that the extreme anti-
Armenian policies of the Ottoman state would continue. Once they
had challenged that hegemony, their lives and property could be for-
feit.
60
Many of the massacres occurred on a Friday when Muslims were
gathered in their mosques for prayer:
[The massacres] objective, based on the convenient consideration that
Armenians were now tentatively starting to question their inferior status,
was the ruthless reduction, with a view to elimination of the Armenian
Christians, and the expropriation of their lands for the Moslem Turks.
Each operation, between the bugle calls, followed a similar pattern. First
the Turkish troops came into a town for the purpose of massacre; then
came the Kurdish irregulars and tribesmen for the purpose of plunder.
Finally came the holocaust, by re and destruction, which spread, with
the pursuit of the fugitives and mopping-up operations, throughout the
lands and villages of the surrounding province. This murderous winter of
1895 thus saw the decimation of much of the Armenian population and
the devastation of their property in some twenty districts of eastern
Turkey . . . Cruellest and most ruinous of all were the massacres of
Urfa, where the Armenian Christians numbered a third of the total
population . . . When the bugle blast ended the days operations, some
three thousand refugees poured into the cathedral, hoping for sanctuary.
But the next morning a Sunday a fanatic mob swarmed into the
church in an orgy of a slaughter, riing its shrines with cries of Call upon
Christ to prove Himself a greater prophet than Mohammed. Then they
amassed a large pile of straw matting, which they spread over the litter
58
Dadrian 1997, 147.
59
Miller and Miller 1993.
60
Yeor 1985, 101.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 57
of corpses and set alight with thirty cans of petroleum. The woodwork of
the gallery where a crowd of women and children crouched, wailing with
terror, caught re, and all perished in the ames. Punctiliously at three-
thirty in the afternoon the bugle blew once more, and the Moslem
ofcials proceeded around the Armenian quarter to proclaim that the
massacres were over . . . the total casualties in the town, including those
slaughtered in the cathedral, amounted to eight thousand dead.
61
Much of this hatred for Christians, as we shall see in chapters 5 and 7,
must have stemmed in part from the refugee status of many Ottoman
Muslims who had ed from newly independent Christian lands. But the
mobilization and direction of this hatred by the Ottoman authorities
had a geopolitical base. If the Armenians remained subservient as was
traditionally the case, then matters could continue as before. But with
the rise of Armenian revolutionary groups and agitation for equality,
autonomy, or even political independence, the Anatolian base of the
Ottoman Empire appeared to be threatened. Spread out among all six
Anatolian provinces and with a large presence in the east at the Russian
border, another Bulgaria, split from the empire, appeared to be in the
ofng. The vast majority of Armenians had no such expectations. They
simply wanted to continue to live in peace in their ancestral villages, as
did the Ukrainian Jews.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the traditional empire with one
ethnoreligious group in perpetual ascendancy simply became untenable.
The Soviet Union, as a reincarnation of the tsarist empire in centralized
and industrialized garb, prolonged the agony of dissolution for another
seventy years. It did so in part by promising and then partially fullling
the promise of equality, but outside the rubric of ethnoreligious nation-
alism so common in that era and indeed our own. But some people,
namely Russian Communist leaders, were more equal than others; the
promise of equality was not sustained beyond the 1920s, and only
through the vehicle of national self-determination could individual
Soviet republics feel they could fulll that promise.
The Ottoman Empire had no new incarnation. It was reduced to the
dimensions of modern Turkey by World War I. Genocide of the
Armenians and expulsion of the Greeks yielded a homogeneous
Muslim Turkish state, but one that adopted a secular government.
Ethnoreligious equality as a major issue Greek and Armenian
61
Kinross 1977, 55960.
58 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
dominance of the nonagricultural economy no longer existed beyond
the early 1920s, with one exception. Only the Kurds, confessionally the
same, but ethnically different, persisted as a threat to the integrity of the
Turkish state in eastern Anatolia. Paradoxically, the Kurds were highly
useful to the Ottomans in establishing a united Islamic front versus the
Armenians, especially in critically important eastern Anatolia. Now that
religious homogeneity was no longer an issue, the Kurds constituted a
separatist threat.
Ironically, only the Jews, despite episodic persecutions in virtually all
of Europe and especially in tsarist Russia, escaped harm. Their small
number and absence of any afnities of religion, ethnicity, or politics
with competing great powers rendered them harmless. Their proportion
of valuable economic holdings in the Ottoman Empire also was sub-
stantially less than that of Greek or Armenian Christians.
62
This too,
rendered them less visible and therefore less liable to persecution.
Interestingly, the Zionist Jews in Palestine with their potential for
separatist activity and Russian origins were viewed with far greater
suspicion by the Ottoman authorities. Zionist support for the Allies in
World War I in part stemmed from these sentiments.
Rwanda
Equality also is a component of continuity preceding the Rwandan
genocide. One cannot understand the genocide of 1994 without rst
examining the sources and consequences of the revolution of 1959,
and the rst massacres of Tutsi in 196364.
Gradually, over time, the Tutsi, who were pastoral herders, began to
assert political dominance over the Hutu, who were settled agricultur-
alists. By the eighteenth century, the polarization between rulers and
ruled was complete. Power was increasingly dened as solely a Tutsi
prerogative.
63
But it was under colonial rule that the distinctions
between the two groups were hardened into virtually hermetic racial
categories. First under the Germans and even more emphatically after
World War I under the Belgians, the Tutsi became the handmaidens of
colonial rule. The Belgians especially found it useful to appoint Tutsi to
be heads of various prefectures and other positions of leadership. The
Roman Catholic Church, by now the dominant religion, also was dis-
proportionately staffed by Tutsi in leadership positions. With
62
Issawi 1980.
63
Mamdani 2001, 63.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 59
independence nearing in 1959, and the Tutsi only a 15 percent minority
in Rwanda, violent opposition against the Tutsi chiefs developed.
Several were killed and others forced to resign. To forestall even more
violence by the Hutu, and major Tutsi reprisals, the Belgians moved to
install a Hutu-led government. Many Tutsi went into political exile, only
to return in the early 1960s as the inyenzi or cockroaches, Tutsi armed
guerillas who targeted Hutu leaders. An early Hutu reprisal had the
following consequence: Between 1000 and 2000 Tutsi men, women and
children were massacred and buried on the spot, their huts burned and
pillaged and their property divided among the Hutu population.
64
The year 1963 witnessed further inyenzi attacks, and the level of
violence escalated dramatically. Early estimates of the number of dead
were low but have now been substantially revised. Careful scholarly
estimates put the number killed at between 10,000 and 14,000, while
Human Rights Watch estimates that close to 20,000 Tutsi were mur-
dered.
65
The revolution, followed by attempts at restoration and bloody
reprisals, set the stage for the genocide of 1994. Even much of the killing
pattern was the same as in the disposal of Tutsi bodies in the
Nyabarongo river.
66
Not only was this a fairly efcient method of
disposing of the large number of Tutsi killed, it had symbolic value as
well. The river was seen to ow in the direction of the Horn of Africa
where the Tutsi were presumed to have their origins. Now these
foreigners were being sent back to the region from whence they
came. By 1966, the inyenzi, sickened by the number of their ethnic
brethren butchered by the Hutu, ceased their incursions.
67
Although Rwanda would not again experience massacres of this
intensity until the early 1990s, nevertheless responses to external events
took the form of massacre. In 1972, in response to an attempted Hutu
student-led uprising in Burundi, the Tutsi-led army murdered approxi-
mately 200,000 Hutu.
68
In Rwanda, Hutu students at the National
University in Butare began agitating against their Tutsi colleagues.
Tutsi students began to leave, along with Tutsi employees of targeted
rms. Several hundred Tutsi were murdered. Now the hostility of the
Hutu population, most of whom were poor, began to be directly leveled
not only at the Tutsi, but at all of those who were presumed to be rich
(mostly the Tutsi).
69
Ethnopolitical violence now merged with class
warfare. Although the number of murdered was small relative to the
64
Ibid., 129.
65
Ibid., 30.
66
Des Forges 1999, 85.
67
Gourevitch 1998, 66.
68
Mamdani 2001, 137.
69
Ibid.
60 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
previous decade, continuity of massacre was preserved until the
Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) invasion of 1990.
The political system facilitated the occurrence of massacre, and later
of genocide. In July 1973, following a period of attacks by Hutu against
Tutsi, partly to minimize growing differences between northern and
southern Hutu, General Juve nal Habyarimana seized power in a blood-
less coup. Two years later, he ofcially made Rwanda a single-party state
under the Mouvement Revolutionnaire National pour le De veloppement
(MRND). Increasingly, he and his cohort included the leadership of the
army, corporate heads, and the hierarchy of the Rwandan Roman
Catholic Church. Of the nine bishops in place at the time of the
genocide, seven were Hutu. The Anglican hierarchy and the Baptist
Church also supported him.
Within this larger circle of the elite was a smaller one called the akazu
or little house consisting of corporate heads and military ofcers.
Among them was Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, a principal organizer
of the 1994 genocide. Habyarimanas rule was increasingly harsh,
especially against political opponents. Although evidence of increasing
corruption and favoritism along with economic decline forced the
establishment of a nominal multiparty system in 1990, Habyarimana
still held the levers of power until the genocide four years later.
Validation
Continuity presupposes proximity in time of similar acts, committed by
like-minded perpetrators, acting in roughly comparable circumstances.
Thus, the Einsatzgruppen are exemplars of the German continuation of
earlier reactionary Russian barbarism in Ukraine and Belorussia in
191820, but of course on a much larger scale. The near-elimination
of the Herero and Nama tribes by German colonial authorities in South-
West Africa around the turn of the century also provides an earlier
element of continuity in German policy toward alien people whom
the Germans perceived to be troublesome.
70
Continuity establishes a
temporal causal nexus via the identication of genocidal leaders with the
policies of earlier prototypes of the same nationality or at least similar
ideological disposition. Thus Nazi leaders could identify with the elimi-
nationist policies of earlier German colonial authorities, as they could
with the virulent and murderous anti-Semitism of anti-Bolshevik
70
Arendt 1951.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 61
Ukrainians and White Russians. The Ottoman Turks at the start of the
Armenian genocide could identify with the behaviors of the minions of
Abdulhamit II in the massacres of Armenians in 189496, and the Hutu
extremists in 1994 were able to identify with the earlier murderous
behaviors of their political forebears in 195964 and in 1972.
Essentially, in each case, the goals were the same the mass murder of
ethnically different people who did not share the worldview of the
prevailing political authority.
Validation, on the other hand, refers to the consequence of an act for
the actor. Validation occurs when morally repugnant and heinous
behaviors result in few if any negative consequences for the perpetrators.
The mass killing of Armenians by Turks during World War I and of
kulaks by Stalin during the early 1930s yielded no appreciable negative
consequences for either the Ottoman or Soviet leaders. However dis-
gusted Western leaders were with the Ottoman and Stalinist policies
(and some actually praised the latter), none in the West was willing or
able to act against them. Indeed, from the standpoint of an amoral
autocratic observer, massacres simply resulted in a reinforcement of
the power of the political leadership. As Hitler stated in his speech to
German generals on the eve of the invasion of Poland in September 1939
justifying the killing of Polish civilians, Only thus shall we gain the
living space [Lebensraum] which we need. Who after all, speaks today of
the annihilation of the Armenians?
71
Hitler need not have identied
with the policies of the Ottoman leadership. Certainly he saw no con-
tinuity between the policies of his leadership and those of the Turks in
1915. Yet their actions, whatever the degree of verbal condemnation
they incurred, had no adverse external consequences for them. In other
words, the end genuinely justied the means, a more extreme but never-
theless commonly understood precept of realpolitik.
Similar but not identical arguments apply to the Armenians and the
Tutsi. The massacres of 189496 in the Ottoman Empire led to very few,
if any, consequences for the Ottoman leaders. If anything, they tended to
cement the relationship between the German and Ottoman leaders (see
chapter 10). The mass killings in Rwanda after 1959 also had no appre-
ciable consequences for the extremist Hutu leadership that could deter
future actions of this kind. Thus, in all three cases, the precedent of
impunity was established, which validated killings on a massive scale
71
Quoted in Fein 1979, 21.
62 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
and could then be applied to mass murder on the even larger scale of
genocide.
Risks associated with the earlier mass murders of Jews, Armenians,
and Tutsi were minimal or nonexistent; these massacres later were
amplied into genocide. Conversely, if risks were greater, as demon-
strated, say, by consequences for earlier massacres, then the likelihood of
genocide would be diminished signicantly. This theme will be devel-
oped later in the discussion of protective afne populations or sympa-
thetic governments (see chapter 17) that signicantly elevate the risk of
committing genocide for potential victimizers.
Now, having established certain pre-genocidal conditions that facili-
tate the later onset of genocide, we can turn to the development of
theory. In this, I rst consider existing theories, rejecting some, and
then turning to other avenues of understanding the onset and the
magnitude of genocide.
C O N T I N U I T Y A N D V A L I D A T I O N 63
4
Prologue to theory
Two existing theories, one based on goal attainment and the other based
on ideology, are rst examined as plausible approaches to the explana-
tion of genocide. Respectively, they are rational choice theory and
utopianism.
Rational choice theory is virtually ubiquitous in many elds of social
science, especially in economics and political science, and therefore is a
prime candidate for consideration. Utopianism has emerged in one
major work as an exemplar of ideologically driven behavior leading to
genocide. Since genocide has been claimed to be ideologically motivated
at bottom, utopianism appears to be an appropriate point of theoretical
departure. Later, two cases of genocidal behavior will be examined as
bases for theory development.
Rational choice
Why not use rational choice theory as the primary basis on which to
build theory about the onset and implementation of genocide? After
presenting basic elements of the theory, I will state the blatant, some-
what coarse version of the argument against its usage, followed by a
nuanced version that I believe to be more accurate. In the end, I con-
clude that rational choice theory has broad applicability in the everyday
discourse of normal politics, but outside the domain of losses where
genocides typically occur.
Two fundamental bases of rational choice theory are the existence of
preferences and utility maximization. These requirements are intimately
connected. Rational choice theory demands that utility be maximized
or, in other words, that a clear preference exists that is to be achieved in
the most efcacious manner.
1
1
See Elster 1986 and ONeill 1999, 25960.
64
As Jon Elster reminds us, if we are to agree that an act is based on
rational choice, then The agent must not act on a desire that, in his own
opinion, is less weighty than other desires which are reasons for not
performing the action.
2
Furthermore, according to Barry ONeill in his
award winning Honor, Symbols, and War, equating rationality with
possession of a utility function would go far from the normal meaning
of the word, since someone can be relatively wise but fail to follow the
pattern required by the utility axioms [e.g., consistency and transitiv-
ity],
3
or alternatively someone who we would call unbalanced might
followthe axioms exactly.
4
To be sure, the decisive test of a theory is not
its truth content but its predictive or explanatory power.
5
And there
have been many successes in the application of rational choice theories,
principally conceived as game-theoretic mathematical models.
6
However, here a costbenet calculus, including most importantly an
evaluation of outcomes, must be introduced to assess the rationality of
decision making, independent of any subjective perceptions of the
participants.
In addition, the outcome, as well as the process, must be subjected to
what Amartya Sen calls reasoned scrutiny and must be prudent, as we
shall see shortly. As he puts it:
Rationality is interpreted here, broadly, as the discipline of subjecting
ones choices of actions as well as of objectives, values and priorities to
reasoned scrutiny. Rather than dening rationality in terms of some
formulaic conditions that have been proposed in the literature (such as
satisfying some prespecied axioms of internal consistency of choice,
or being in conformity with intelligent pursuit of self-interest, or being
some variant of maximizing behavior), rationality is seen here in much
more general terms as the need to subject ones choices to the demands of
reason.
7
Despite the obvious appeal in its parsimonious, even elegant formula-
tions and successes, rational choice theory can be said to explain the
onset of genocide only in the most narrow sense. Expressing a preference
for genocide leads to genocide so goes the argument. This alternative
2
Elster 1986, 12.
3
Consistency means that there are no internal contradictions in the actors schedule of
preferences; transitivity implies that given three preferences, if preference A is preferred
to B and B to C, then A must be preferred to C.
4
ONeill 1999, 260.
5
M. Friedman 1953.
6
Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003.
7
Sen 2002, 4.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 65
of eliminating a hated ethnoreligious group is claimed to rank rst
among all desiderata, as in Hitlers choice of killing the Jews above all
else, including winning the war.
In addition to the arguments concerning Hitlers changes in policy
over time noted in the introduction, we need not belabor the obvious
point that Hitler and Himmler were perfectly willing to use valuable
transport facilities and soldiers to convey vast numbers of Jews to their
deaths when such equipment and personnel were desperately needed in
the ever-worsening German battleeld predicament. As will be shown
later, the intensity of the genocide actually was inversely related to
battleeld success. In other words, winning the war as the obvious
rational choice preference was subverted by the ever-intensifying desire
to complete the genocide.
One has only to contrast the relatively (for Hitler) well-reasoned and
benign analyses of Hitlers Second Book
8
with his later behaviors.
Although not published in his lifetime, this book is a useful baseline
for comparing his prewar, almost prudent realpolitik with the genocide
beginning full force in 1942. Much of the book, written in 1928, after
Mein Kampf, is an argument for dampening nationalist passions con-
cerning German speakers governed by the Italian government in South
Tyrol. Hitlers purpose was to maintain good relations with Italy even at
the expense of the South Tyrolean ethnic Germans. Hence, when a Nazi
government took ofce, fascist Italy could be its rst European ally.
For the most part, Hitlers arguments are embedded in rational
discourse a prudent realpolitik. He examines all possible great power
allies and, through historical example and geopolitical argument, espe-
cially concerning vulnerability of Germanys borders,
9
he arrives at the
choice of Italy. Contrast the several chapters on Italy with the relatively
small amount of space (f ive pages) at the end of the book devoted to the
Jewish Question. And, even here, he ties this issue with that of Italys
relative freedom from Jewish domination that makes other candidates
such as Britain less desirable as allies. Although a screed, and one based
on the utterly false premise of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, beyond
that fatal aw, the argument is reasonably well presented. In contrast, as
we shall see, when the human and material costs of the Soviet invasion
escalated dramatically as early as mid-August 1941, this kind of reasoned
scrutiny was abandoned. Because of these changes over time, a single
8
Weinberg 2003.
9
Ibid., 13738.
66 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
analytical approach, such as rational choice theory or any other per-
spective that assigns primary motivation, cannot be adopted.
Recognizing Hitlers (and other genocidal leaders) changes in
outlook over time suggests the more nuanced argument concerning
rational choice. Adopting a Bayesian approach to human reasoning
can help explain the transition from Hitlers relatively well-reasoned
arguments of 1928 to the apparent irrationality of late August 1941 and
the start of the Holocaust in the East. Recent ndings suggest that
human decision making depends on sensory feedback that which we
observe at the moment of decision combined with prior knowledge or
memory.
10
The greater the uncertainty at the time of observation, the greater the
reliance on prior knowledge of similar phenomena. Complete uncer-
tainty would yield complete dependence on memory, while certainty of
outcome would lead to the disuse of prior knowledge. As we shall see,
the uncertainty of the wars outcome, especially after the difculties
encountered by the Germans in Russia in mid-August 1941, led to
Hitlers reliance on prior knowledge of loss emanating from the defeat
of World War I. Indeed, the vast shrinkage of German and Austro-
Hungarian governed territories in Europe after June 1918 could be
repeated again in the early 1940s. In June 1918, all of Central and
Eastern Europe, as well as portions of Ukraine, France, and Belgium
were held by German forces, or their allies. Hence, the rational calcula-
tions of 1928, dependent on the then current and predictable geopoli-
tical environment, could give way later during the extreme uncertainty
of 194142 to dependence on prior knowledge of loss or, as we shall see,
the domain of losses with its own horric consequences.
Even for a leader such as Hitler, rationality can persist within rela-
tively certain environments, but when losses are invoked as a
consequence of uncertainty, the dynamics of decision making change
radically. Rational choice theory, therefore, has a broad mandate
outside the domain of losses but, as suggested by prospect theory (see
chapter 5), it is much less applicable within the domain of losses. And, as
we shall see, while prospect theory indicates asymmetry between
peoples reactions to gains and losses, the Bayesian ndings imply
that, under extreme uncertainty, current sensory inputs the database
of rational decision making would be virtually ignored in favor of the
memory of loss.
10
Kording and Wolpert 2004; Leonhardt 2004.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 67
All of the cases of genocide and politicide examined in this book were
associated with wars that were lost by the genocidal states both prior to
the war in which genocide occurred and within its duration. These
include Germany in World Wars I and II, the Ottoman Empire in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and World War I, the Hutu
extremist government in Rwanda during the early 1990s, and
Democratic Kampuchea (the Khmer Rouge) versus the Vietnamese,
the only ethnicity actually subject to genocide in the ongoing politicide
(see chapter 15). Earlier cases to be brought forward for illustrative
purposes toward the end of this chapter, such as Athens in the
Peloponnesian War, were also on the losing side both before
(Mantinea) and after the genocide.
Interesting from the costbenet perspective and potentially impor-
tant in understanding the etiology of genocide is the Ottoman genocidal
campaign against the Armenians, in part, at least, to generate
an ethnically and religiously homogeneous state in Anatolia. The large
concentration of Christian Armenians in eastern Anatolia separated the
Muslim Turks in western Anatolia from their coreligionists to the east.
As the Ottoman Empire had been shorn of its largely Christian holdings
in Europe by local (mainly Balkan) nationalisms, Arab nationalism
began to make itself felt in Mesopotamia and Arabia, and European
powers asserted their imperial designs in North Africa. Anatolia loomed
large as the only relatively secure bastion of Turkish Muslims.
Armenians, and to a somewhat lesser extent Greeks, were seen as the
only obstacles to an emergent Turkish statehood.
11
The former would
be, for the most part, annihilated during World War I, and the latter
ethnically cleansed in the Greco-Turkish War of 191922. In this fash-
ion, most of Anatolia became almost entirely Muslim and, with the
exception of Kurdish communities (also Muslim), ethnically Turkish.
Although the Ottomans lost World War I along with Germany and
Austria-Hungary, in one sense at least they can be said to have won
the peace, because they now had, in their view, the ethnic and religious
basis for a viable modern state.
The force of this argument, however, rests on historical contingencies
that might have developed very differently, if not for critical events,
foremost among them the Bolshevik Revolution. If this revolution had
not occurred, then the victorious Allies (and they would have been,
given the US entry into the war) could have made common cause with
11
Libaridian 1987; Melson 1992.
68 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
Russia, possibly in seeking more direct and effective retribution against
Turkey for the Armenian genocide. The victorious Orthodox Church in
Russia, not decimated and suppressed as under the Bolsheviks, might
have taken the lead in spurring Russia and the Allies to take a far more
determined stand against the Turkish leadership and possibly even the
Turkish nation than they did at Se`vres in 1920.
Earlier, in February 1914, at the instigation of the Russian govern-
ment, an Armenian reform agreement was signed by the Ottomans,
effectively relinquishing authority over the Armenian communities in
eastern Anatolia to appointed foreign observers.
12
Had the same or a
similarly inclined government remained in place at the end of the war,
instead of an abortive legal adjudication of Ottoman crimes against
humanity, with Russian cooperation there could even have occurred a
restoration of the boundaries of an autonomous Armenian region in
eastern Anatolia as planned by the Allies, with implications for a
decidedly weakened Turkish state. Of course, when the Ittihadists
embarked on the genocide of 1915 and 1916, they could have had no
way of knowing that the Bolshevik Revolution would later occur in 1917,
which not only would temporarily weaken Russia considerably as the
result of internecine warfare, but would blunt the potential Russian
quasi-religious involvement on behalf of the Armenians.
Another consideration stems from rst principles. From the outset,
how did the Ottoman authorities believe that they could commit car-
nage of this magnitude and get away with it? Virtually complete German
support for Ottoman policies, especially within the German military,
provides a partial answer. Had not the Germans themselves moved the
Herero to the Omahake desert in the Battle of Waterberg without major
repercussions? Germany as the great power protector of the Ottomans
effectively generated a permissive context for the Armenian genocide.
(This argument is more fully developed in chapter 10.) But the
Ittihadists did not count on the outright German defeat. Without
German protection they could easily have succumbed to Allied
retribution, especially from the Russians, but for the weakened state of
Bolshevik Russia.
Thus, the short-termgain for Turkey was a contingent event. But even
here one can question the nature of the short-term gain. Witnessing the
genocide in 1915 in Kharput in central Anatolia where he was posted as
US consul, Leslie Davis remarked:
12
Bodger 1984, 96.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 69
It was literally a case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, for there
would be no one left to till the soil and the authorities might have foreseen
the famine which actually did visit the land the following year . . . Nearly all
the merchants, bankers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, carpenters,
brick-layers, tile-makers, tinsmiths, bakers, tailors, shoe-makers, and other
artisans so essential to the life of the people were Armenians . . . By one
stroke . . . the country was to be set back a century.
13
In the long term, the loss of the Armenians (and Greeks) must certainly
be considered a major setback in light of Turkeys current ambitions to
both modernize and enter the European Union (EU). The Armenians
and Greeks (whose expulsion during the Greco-Turkish War was prob-
ably motivated, at least in part, by the successful elimination of the
Armenians during World War I) could have provided a dynamic societal
bridge between Turkey and Europe. Both Armenians and Greeks in the
Ottoman Empire were entrepreneurial and leading-edge economic
innovators in what was otherwise a traditional agrarian society.
Indeed, Res at Kasaba argues that the Greek community, and to a lesser
extent the Armenian, was laying the foundations of an Ottoman civil
society as early as the middle of the nineteenth century.
14
Over time,
these economic communities could have had a multiplier effect on the
entire Turkish economy, making it far more eligible to join the EU.
Socially, too, the presence of signicant non-Muslim groups numbering
in the millions could have muted the hostility of those in the EU who
would like to admit to membership only Christian societies. At the very
least, it would have been a partly Muslim country more palatable to
most Europeans than a homogeneous Islamic state subject perhaps to
fundamentalist tendencies. In the long run, then, modernization and
growth of the Turkish economy in concert with the EU was retarded by
the Armenian genocide and its aftereffects.
What appears rational may actually depend on the constellation of
power available to the protagonists. In comparison with the newly
formed, relatively weak Soviet Union and with Greece in the Greco-
Turkish War, Turkey after World War I was sufciently powerful to
avoid any serious consequences of the Armenian genocide and expul-
sion of the Anatolian Greek communities. These two neighboring coun-
tries were the only ones proximal geographically and with the
ethnoreligous incentives to have responded strongly to the genocide.
13
Quoted in Balakian 2003, 236.
14
Kasaba 1999.
70 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
But the Russian Orthodox Church was now muted, and the invasion of
Turkey by Greece ended disastrously for the invader. Thus a much more
ethnoreligiously homogeneous Turkish society, capable of utilizing that
homogeneity for state-building purposes, was not only contingent on
historical events like the Bolshevik Revolution, but on the overall
geopolitical power conguration that effectively allowed Turkey to
get away with it.
Germany, too, would have suffered the consequences of the
Holocaust far more if not for the onset of the Cold War that gave
Germans in the western zones of Allied occupation the leverage to
escape much of the planned de-Nazication and potential retribution.
Geographically, Germany was perceived to be essential for blocking
communist expansion into Western Europe. If not for the Cold War,
the consequences of the Holocaust for Germany could have been far
more extreme, in addition to the earlier drain on German resources
during World War II. Or, going back in time, the successful European
expansions and virtual elimination of Native Americans in both North
and South America depended on the gross power disparities between the
invaders and indigenous populations.
Our perception of rationality as equivalent to success in the
costbenet calculus depends very much on power relationships. The
phrase history is written by the winners is another way of saying that
the reconstruction of events by historians on the winning side follows a
rational design that he or she has imposed on the events in question.
Had Nazi Germany won the war, we would now be studying the success
of German arms through the rationality prism of an absolute necessity
to eliminate racial enemies (who could stab one in the back) prior to
such a victory. Obviously such a policy was not followed in World War I,
hence the German defeat. What is assumed the Jew as racial enemy is
justied by later events, whatever the truth or falsity of the initial
assumption. As we shall see in chapter 8, the altruistic punishment by
Nazi leaders self-sacrice for the sake of destroying the other can
account for the much greater unity and consequent success of Nazi
Germany in World War II when compared to its fractious behavior
and more rapid defeat in 1918. This particular element of theory was not
suggested by rational choice considerations.
Although such a redactive process challenges the rational choice
approach as a way of understanding the onset of genocide, it does
suggest the importance of power as a real-world mediating variable.
The question becomes not whether the Jews had to be destroyed in order
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 71
to win the war, but whether Nazi Germany had the actual power to both
win the war and at the same time destroy the Jews. Also note the
substantial power increase to Germany had Jewish scientists and math-
ematicians (including those with partial Jewish ancestry), such as Albert
Einstein, Niels Bohr, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Stanislaw Ulam, or
John von Neumann, remained in Europe and worked on atomic weap-
ons for the Reich instead of for the Allies. And, here, we see that in the
case of the Holocaust the decision is not explainable by a rational choice
approach. Rationality would dictate instead that these scientists be put
to military use in the construction of atomic or other weapons for the
Axis Powers. Given the contingent nature of the Turkish escape from
serious retribution after World War I because of temporary Russian
(Soviet) weakness, as we have just seen, that decision, too, is not readily
explainable by a rational choice methodology.
The long-term implications for Germany as a twice-defeated cos-
seted state within the EU, and ever-present reminders of its horric
past that the Germans even to this day never seem to escape, also suggest
the absence of any rational choice explanations. And, in Rwanda, the
replacement of the Arusha power-sharing accords by genocide of the
Tutsi led to the direct downfall of the Hutu-led regime, and the loss of all
political power that the Hutu extremists had fought so hard to maintain.
Most became refugees living a hardscrabble and conict-ridden exis-
tence in countries like Zaire (later renamed Democratic Republic of the
Congo). And even the secondary but important consequence for the
Hutu extremists of eliminating the Tutsi from Rwanda has been
reversed. Within a few short years after the genocide, the approximately
10 percent share of the Rwandan population has once again been
achieved by the return of pregenocide Tutsi exiles. Endemic conict
throughout Central Africa, with no end in sight, has been a longer-term
consequence of the genocide.
It is conceivable, of course, that one can nd historical illustrations of
the success of genocide as a policy option without obvious costs. But
in candidates such as the obliteration of Carthage in the last of the Punic
Wars, the status of Carthage as a feared and once nearly victorious
enemy (ghting which had cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of
Roman lives)
15
blunted any sense of moral outrage that could have
affected Roman politics for years to come. Although defeated elsewhere
15
For obvious reasons, it is difcult to obtain exact estimates of the Roman dead in the
Punic Wars. Rostovtzeff suggests that a multitude of Roman citizens and allies lay dead
72 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
in the Mediterranean region, the Carthaginians under Hannibal were
never defeated in Italy itself,
16
thus yielding a sense of loss that led
M. Porcius Cato, an extremely inuential veteran of the wars with
Hannibal, to declare in the Roman Senate, it is my opinion that
Carthage must be destroyed.
17
Whatever the ethical standards of
the day, without a seemingly prudential temporal or sacral justication,
mass killing may have a negative societal impact for generations
to come.
The moral dimension must be weighed in any long-term evaluation
of the consequences of genocide, for simple reciprocity of kindness
or hostility is a moral basis for many societies. Even game-generated
scenarios such as Robert Axelrods Tit for Tat
18
conform to this
principle. Later, we shall see the importance of the moral dimension
in understanding the role of altruistic punishment in establishing
cooperation between genocidal leaders and followers. To blithely
ignore such relationships, as in a total reliance on realpolitik, is to
enter a quagmire of future uncertainty, self-doubt, and even self-hatred.
Polls of West European peoples views of themselves typically have
Germans at the bottom. Ian Buruma chronicles the guilt that still pervades
German society.
19
Sen criticizes the single-minded pursuit of self-interest dened in
narrow terms. Accordingly, The need for reasoned scrutiny applies
not only to accommodating moral and political concerns in personal
choices and in social living, but also in incorporating the demands of
prudence. Many failures to be adequately prudential arise, in fact, pre-
cisely from the absence of an adequately reasoned scrutiny.
20
Clearly,
leaders such as Hitler, Talat, and Habyarimana were not prudential. In
the following chapter, prudence entailing the application of reasoned
scrutiny will be used to distinguish between prudent and imprudent
realpolitik.
Perceptions of current well-being also are deeply inuenced by past
behavior. In a large-N study of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews, and of
bystanders who did not help, highly signicant differences were found
between the two groups. Specically, those involved in historic rescue
gained a sense of deep inner contentment. Furthermore, in contrast to
the bystanders, rescuers felt far more satised with the way they had
on the battle-elds of Italy (1960, 62). Polybius, 1960, 3, 116, estimates 70,000 Roman
dead at Cannae alone.
16
Rostovtzeff 1960, 64.
17
Chalk and Jonassohn 1990, 85.
18
Axelrod 1984.
19
Buruma 1995.
20
Sen 2002, 47.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 73
conducted their lives, and had lower rates of post-traumatic stress
disorder; bystanders, on the other hand, suffered from higher rates of
psychopathology, even several decades after World War II.
21
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, rational choice perspectives
tend not to be integrative. Typically, they do not suggest separate
processes operating at different levels of society (required assumptions
of rationality at all levels), which together may present a coherent
explanatory whole. Realpolitik concerns, that is those focused on the
state and indeed having a rationality component, may not be persuasive
to elements of the general population, but reminders of the recent
experience of loss, such as the presence of refugees and the necessity
for personal sacrice, may have such resonance. In order to explain
political and social mobilization for genocide having a purpose that
deviates thoroughly from accepted moral precepts, such theoretical
integration is required. As will be seen in the case of Bulgaria, realpolitik
has a rational component in necessary risk minimization, but within the
context of the domain of losses (e.g., Nazi Germany) becomes unneces-
sary, is genocidal, and hence is distorted well beyond the demands of
reasoned scrutiny. Outside the context of loss, realpolitik, as in other
potentially rational programs, can conform to reasoned scrutiny
(Bulgaria) and the absence of genocide when it might have been
expected to occur. Perhaps it is this case more than any other that
suggests large areas of applicability for rational choice theory in the
everyday discourse of politics, but excluding the domain of losses.
Utopianism
In addition to rational choice, utopianism is a current theory that could
serve as a starting point for comprehending the onset of genocide. In
contrast to rational choice, which provides a social scientic basis,
a focus on utopianism would provide an ideological source of genocide
as a uniform substratum. This emphasis on ideology is the basis of a
recently published well-written comparison of four genocides by Eric
Weitz.
22
Focusing on the concept of utopia at the core of genocidal
ideologies, Weitz argues for its salience as an explanation of the Soviet,
Cambodian, Nazi, and Bosnian atrocities.
In considering Weitzs argument, though, it is apparent that the
Marxist-Leninist cases are conated with cases that have entirely
21
E. Midlarsky and M. Midlarsky 2004; E. Midlarsky et al. forthcoming.
22
Weitz 2003.
74 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
different etiologies. The Soviets had an elaborate ideational class-based
justication for mass murder, as did the Cambodians, while the Nazi
and Bosnian instances were based on ethnoreligious criteria without
elaborate justication. Thus, the concept of utopia does not go very far
in explaining these latter two cases. The Nazis had utopian visions of a
distant past including an ostensibly racially pure Ottonian Germany,
while the Communists (Soviets and Cambodians) possessed a rigorous,
if deeply awed, ideational structure that predicted a future free of class
oppression and conict.
The consequences of ethnoreligious hostilities are vastly different from
those of overtly political ideation. In the former, complete eradication is
most frequently the goal, while in the latter elimination of incorrigible
political enemies along with reeducation of the remainder constitutes the
core of the governmental program. Victimization rates, therefore, differ
substantially, ranging from the approximately 67 percent of Jews murdered
in Nazi-targeted areas of Europe to at most 10 percent of the Soviet and
Chinese populations, and 20 percent of the Cambodian. Moreover,
possibilities for reconstituting cultural and religious life were sharply
circumscribed for Jews (and Armenians) after their genocides. Such
limitations were much less pronounced in the Soviet and Cambodian
instances; contemporary Russia, indeed, has seen a massive Orthodox
revival after the earlier decimation of church ofcials by the Bolsheviks.
It is debatable whether the Serbs ever widely shared an ethnoreligious
utopian vision of the past. And in Rwanda neither of these forms of
utopianismwas entertained seriously. As far back as any one could remem-
ber, even into the late eighteenth century, the Tutsi that is, the victims
had ruled over the Hutu, not the converse. A utopia of Hutu governance
or Tutsi absence simply did not exist. There existed no ideology to justify
the genocide other than the claimof Hamitic, hence foreign, origin of the
Tutsi in some distant unrecorded past.
23
Further, issues of socioeconomic
class, inequality, and regionalism have been cited as major sources of the
genocide.
24
Thus, there was no golden age of either past or future to
invoke in any coherent way as a utopian enterprise.
Even more problematic in applying utopianism is the Armenian geno-
cide. Neither in their past nor in any realistically conceived future could the
Young Turks imagine a state puried of other nationalities, so that an
ideology justifying mass murder could not be used effectively as motiva-
tion. Certainly at the time of the Armenian genocide in 191516, the
23
Mamdani 2001.
24
Pottier 2002.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 75
Greeks, who were somewhat more numerous than the Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire and even more dominant in its economic life, were not
subject to genocide. This fact will be examined at length in chapter 17.
Beyond the problem of generalizability, difcult as it is, the concept of
utopianism itself certainly is not sufcient to explain genocide as a
behavioral category. There have been utopian socialists of every stripe,
for example, from cosmopolitans in the nineteenth-century United
States and Europe, to more nationalistic ones in the kibbutzim in
Israel. Hardly any had advocated, let alone participated in, genocide.
In other words, utopianism can just as readily invoke benign, even
reclusive visions (e.g., the Hutterites), where the last thing any of these
utopians wanted to do was to kill or even bother other people.
Where utopianism does get into trouble is in its juncture with the state
and especially with state power. The conjoining of the two can lead to
genocidal consequences, but it is the state that is the driving force behind
the utopian vision or whatever related genocidal motivation (e.g., state
security) may exist at the moment of decision. Utopian belief is neither
necessary nor sufcient for understanding the origins of genocide although,
if strongly held, it certainly can provide the ideational basis for genocidal
thinking. Yet, even when utopian ideation is an element in motivating
genocide, it is not the whole story. We must insert the several variables that
lie between the belief system and genocidal action in order to even
approach the goal of completeness of explanation. Many of these additional
variables are to be found at the level of the state and its relations with its
international environment, and in relationships among state leaders and
followers, as will be developed in later chapters.
Two historical cases
In the theory that will be presented more fully in the succeeding chapter,
loss assumes a prominent position, along with realpolitik and altruistic
punishment. Loss is fundamental, however, for it chronologically pre-
cedes the other two. At least two historical cases, Poland and ancient
Athens, suggest the importance of loss in the pathway to genocide.
Poland and loss compensation
I begin with illustrations from Poland because here, prior to World War
II, was the largest concentration of Jews to be found anywhere in
Europe. Poland also experienced one of the highest Jewish victimization
76 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
rates, estimated at approximately 90 percent.
25
Documented sponta-
neous massacres occurred in Poland that can help reect on the
underlying etiology of genocide precisely because of the removal of
such massacres from the directives of state leaders. To begin small is
to capture social dynamics that would otherwise escape us when we
examine the genocidal process in its entirety. At the same time, to
argue that the enormity of genocide is the net result of such small
incidents is not only to commit the fallacy of aggregation the assump-
tion that genocide is the sum total of individual discrete massacres but
is untrue to the historical record. Leaders such as Hitler did make the
decision to commit systematic mass murder that was then handed to
subordinates for implementation. Yet before such decisions were made
and even before they rose to power, European leaders as individual
Germans, Poles, Frenchmen, and others experienced processes that
were common to many. Understanding their common mindset can
help elucidate the genocidal process, specically in the response to loss
and its compensation.
Poland is illustrative in another way that captures the thoroughness of
mass murder committed in the East, whether by Germans or Poles. The
massacres at Jedwabne, Radzilo w, Wasosz, and other eastern Polish
towns followed the pattern of genocide adopted by the Germans during
the Holocaust (and the Hutu extremists in 1994) but differed in one
important respect from that of the Ottomans in 191516. Although in
practice it was frequently abandoned, theoretically there at least existed
the option of conversion to Islam for Armenians threatened with depor-
tation and likely death. No such option existed for Jews murdered by
Germans or by Poles nor, for that matter, Tutsi killed by Hutu extre-
mists. Indeed, when priests were approached, as at Jedwabne or at
Radzilo w, they offered no help to the Jews either by openly opposing
the murders or by allowing conversion.
26
Interestingly, only some seventeen pages removed from Jan Grosss
comment on mystery (see chapter 1, p. 15), we nd the beginnings of
an understanding, not heretofore noted. And it comes, as many of these
things do, in the form of a puzzle, actually two related puzzles. First, why
did there occur so many pogroms in post-World War II Poland after the
presumably common enemy of both Jews and Poles, Nazi Germany, had
been soundly defeated? Traditional Polish anti-Semitism is the most
often-cited explanation, but the exceptional violence of the Kielce
25
Fein 1979, 62.
26
Gross 2001.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 77
pogrom of July 4, 1946, in which forty-two Jews were brutally murdered,
contrasts sharply with traditional Polish patterns of personal beatings,
business discriminations, legal exclusions, and other less violently
expressed forms of anti-Semitism.
The second related puzzle is quoted by Gross.
27
In response to efforts to
denounce perpetrators of the pogrom leading to condemnatory statements
in the press, strikes were called at factories and workshops in o dz. Refusal
to sign such statements by workers and others was widespread, even result-
ing in violence used against those who wanted to resume work. Strikes
spread to other cities, and In Lublin during a mass meeting of 1,500
railwaymen in this matter people were screaming, Down with the Jews,
Shame, they came to defend the Jews, Bierut [the president of Poland at
the time] will not dare to sentence them to death, Wilno [Vilna; now
Vilnius in Lithuania] and Lwo w[nowLvov in Ukraine] have to be ours.
28
Puzzling, if not striking here, is the juxtaposition of the typical anti-
Semitic statement of Down with the Jews with the boundary-related
Wilno and Lwo w have to be ours. Why this combination of seemingly
unrelated elements? Yet they are related through the particular theoretical
prisms of realpolitik and loss, for these cities with majority Polish (and
Jewish) populations before the war were set to be incorporated within the
new borders of the Soviet Union. Effectively, the Polish state was to be
moved westward in its entirety, receiving former German lands in the west
but relinquishing a much larger portion of territory in the east. A net
territorial loss of 20 percent was experienced in this massive transition.
29
And, since much of the western territory had been occupied by Germans,
representing historically a much more powerful political entity than
Poland, the formerly German lands were only insecurely held until the
very recent past. Realpolitiks emphasis on state security is signicant here.
Yet, despite these territorial losses, the population density of Poland
actually decreased from 1939 through 1945. This decrease resulted from
the loss of nearly one-quarter of its prewar population due to death (3
million Jews, 3 million Poles) and the postwar exodus of large numbers
of Germans and other minorities. With a reduced population density,
why then the concern over the loss of territories in Vilna and Lwo w,
coupled with overt anti-Semitism? The locations of these strikes and
protests suggest an answer.
Both o dz and Lublin had very large Jewish populations before the
war. Lublin, where the quoted anti-Semitic statements were made, was
27
Ibid., 148.
28
Quoted ibid., 149.
29
Davies 1982, 489.
78 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
an especially important Jewish center prior to World War II. When, in
1928, a large Orthodox Jewish gathering was convened in Vienna to
select a location for the building of a new major yeshiva (center of Jewish
higher learning), Lublin was chosen. And when surviving Jews, having
escaped to Russia, returned to Poland after the war to reclaim their
stolen property or simply to assess the current situation, their destina-
tion was frequently Lublin. At one point in 1946, approximately 300,000
Jews were to be found in the Lublin vicinity. Thus, to the railwaymen of
Lublin and other Poles in the region, it must have appeared as if the Jews
were returning en masse; earlier efforts by individual Poles tacitly or
actively supporting the Nazi genocide had seemingly come to naught.
Here, the tradeoff between external territory and the immediate envir-
onment becomes apparent. The loss of Vilna and Lwo w to the Soviet
Union, unlikely to be recouped, was to be compensated by the sustained
exclusion of Jews from Polish society. In this, the Polish railwaymen and
sympathizers were successful. The vast majority of returning Jews left
Poland permanently, leaving only about 25,000 concentrated in the
capital city of Warsaw. Most of these remaining Jews would also leave
after the governmentally inspired anti-Semitic campaigns of the late
1960s. Loss compensation, at least in one salient form, had been effected,
in response to the territorially recongured Polish state.
Athenian loss and risk minimization
The Athenian experience during the Peloponnesian War can also serve
as an introductory test case, but without the contemporary research that
has distinguished our three twentieth-century cases, the Holocaust of
194145, the Armenian of 191516, and the Tutsi of 1994. If these ideas
demonstrate some explanatory power here, however, then they can be
applied systematically to our principal twentieth-century cases. The
Melian genocide occurred in the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian
War. Most importantly, it occurred after substantial strategic losses had
been experienced by Athens. Risk minimization, an important element
suggested by realpolitik, is emphasized here.
In 420 BC, at the behest of Alcibiades, an Athenian general, Athens
concluded an alliance with three Peloponnesian states, Argos, Mantinea,
and Elis.
30
This was intended to be an important diplomatic coup
against Sparta because such an alliance effectively removed the northern
30
Gomme et al. 1970, 54.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 79
section of the Peloponnesus from Spartan inuence.
31
This
Spartan failure led to further humiliations such as the attack on the
Spartan colony, Heraclea, and personal indignities suffered at
the Olympic games of that year. Warfare ensued between the Argives
and Spartans, ultimately leading in 418 to the battle of Mantinea, won by
Sparta and its allies, which Thucydides tells us was certainly the greatest
battle that had taken place for a very long time among Hellenic states,
and it was fought by the most renowned states in Hellas.
32
Although
technically at peace with Sparta because of the Peace of Nicias, Athens
nevertheless sent a force consisting of 1,000 hoplites and supporting
cavalry (only about one-eighth of the total) to the battle. Yet, far more
important for Athens and for Alcibiades, the architect of the alliance,
was the failure of this Peloponnesian policy.
Athens was now to be thrown back on its own defenses in Attica and
at sea. Here, the importance of Melos comes into focus, for it was the
only important island not paying tribute to Athens while attempting to
remain neutral. The losses incurred on land could now be compensated
by gains at sea. Athens, thrown back on its sea power, could remove all
potential threats to its anks from a recalcitrant island state. Earlier, in
426, Athens had attempted to subdue Melos by ravaging the land, but
withdrew after the Melians refused to offer battle.
33
Now, in 416,
after considerable Spartan success, Melos would not escape, and in
fact after the genocide (and it was that) Melos would be settled by
Athenians. As Russell Meiggs puts it,
His [Alcibiadess] rst grand design had been to revive the policy of
Themistocles and crush Sparta with an alliance of Spartas potential
enemies in the Peloponnese. This design had collapsed on the battleeld
of Mantinea. It was natural that the Athenian restlessness which
Alcibiades had exploited should nd an alternative outlet, by sea. The
incorporation of Melos in the empire was the most attractive opportunity
open to the Athenian eet.
34
Although they are not undisputed,
35
we have two sources, Plutarch and
Andocides, who indicate that the genocidal decree either was attributa-
ble to Alcibiades or that he supported it.
36
Certainly the Melian genocide is consistent with an earlier mass
murder at Scione, another island state, but Scione had rebelled against
31
Kagan 1981, 39.
32
Thucydides 1954, 353.
33
Meiggs 1972, 386.
34
Ibid., 387.
35
Gomme et al. 1970, 19091.
36
Kagan 1981, 153.
80 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
Athens; no such revolt ever occurred on Melos, for the Melians were
never allied with Athens. Traitors typically receive harsher punish-
ment than do recalcitrant neutrals. Yet Thucydides gives pride of place
to the invasion and debate at Melos, signaling their importance after the
defeat at Mantinea and especially just prior to the disastrous Sicilian
expedition. Here, we have the second possible function of genocide, risk
minimization.
We know that the Athenians had an ongoing concern with the west,
especially Sicily and its city-states. Strong evidence remains of an alli-
ance between Athens and Egesta in the west of the island dating from at
the earliest 45857, and at the latest 45453, well before the
Peloponnesian War even began.
37
During the period 42724, several
Athenian military expeditions were sent to Sicily with inconclusive
consequences, partly because the Sicilian cities made peace among
themselves.
38
Signicantly, at around the same time, the rst Athenian
expedition against Melos occurred, also with inconclusive results, as the
result of the Melian unwillingness to do battle and the Athenian wari-
ness of a long siege of the city. This pairing of Melos and Sicily in the
minds of Athenian decision-makers, especially Alcibiades, may have
been signicant in the decision to commit the later Melian genocide
with the still later, important Sicilian expedition in mind. The scale of
the land forces in the later expedition was to exceed the combined total
of the land forces sent in 427424.
39
It is entirely possible, as Lawrence
Tritle suggests, that even as Melos was being conquered and the popula-
tion destroyed (men) or enslaved (women and children), the later
disastrous Sicilian expedition was being prepared.
40
The documented role of Alcibiades in both expeditions and his
opposition to the more cautious Nicias, who earlier withdrew from
Melos, suggests that Melos and Sicily must have been paired in his
mind. If Alcibiades wanted to succeed in the more ambitious Sicilian
expedition then, given the difculties already known to the Athenians,
he would have wanted to minimize the obvious risks inherent in this
undertaking. Clearing the decks, as it were, of any opposition at Melos
closer to home would have minimized the risk not only by guarding
against potentially hostile Melian activity at sea, but also by example.
Such a demonstration of resolve would have suggested the determina-
tion of the Athenians to succeed, at whatever moral and material cost.
37
Meiggs 1972, 100.
38
Ibid., 321.
39
Gomme et al. 1970, 197.
40
Tritle 2000, 121.
P R O L O G U E T O T H E O R Y 81
Such inexibility of will, in the Athenian view, might have made the
Sicilian Dorian cities less likely to resist the Athenian onslaught.
Prior loss at Mantinea and risk minimization for the future, critically
important Sicilian expedition are paired, as are the past losses and very
risky behavior of the German, Ottoman, and Hutu leaders in our cases
of genocide. Thus, loss compensation derived from the Polish example
and risk minimization from the Athenian are plausible constituent bases
of a theory of genocide that will be developed more systematically in the
following chapter. At this juncture, having examined two salient
theoretical approaches rational choice and utopianism and two
important test cases for their analytic implications, we can now turn
directly to theory development.
82 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
5
A theoretical framework
Having eliminated two candidates for explanation, and seeing intima-
tions of possibility in others as the result of our test cases, we turn
directly to theory development. Realpolitik as management of threats
to the state and losses as signals of state vulnerability now occupy our
attention. Realpolitik is understood as policies that preserve and
strengthen the state,
1
while loss is the experience of either (1) transfer
of territory, population, authority, or some combination thereof to
another political entity, or (2) military defeat or signicant casualties
in political violence (e.g., war) that either are about to be or have already
been incurred. Concrete expectations of loss in the near term can yield
outcomes similar to those of loss itself. In later analyses, I will nd it
useful to distinguish between threat and loss, whereby threat can be
understood as the fear of potential loss. This understanding will be useful
later in distinguishing between conicts that result in ethnic cleansing,
and those that proceed further to genocide.
Brute force (imprudent) realpolitik entailing disproportionate
responses to perceived provocation, to be dened more completely
below, and prospect theory emphasizing the salience of loss are intro-
duced as means of understanding the transformation of massacre into
genocide
2
within the context of earlier state losses and high risk.
Prospect theory will also be described in more detail. Massacre, unfor-
tunately, is not an uncommon occurrence. While massacre may origin-
ate in many different ways,
3
its transformation into genocide is complex
1
Waltz 1979, 117.
2
Figure 5.1 is a causal diagram. In regard to massacre, it does not yield any of these
variables. Instead, massacre provides a historical context for the occurrence of genocide
in the form of continuity and validation, if the massacre has gone unpunished. Earlier
unpunished massacre increases the likelihood of later genocide, assuming the sequence
displayed in gure 5.1 is followed at the later time.
3
Levene and Roberts 1999.
83
and therefore infrequent. That complexity is reected in the following
theoretical development.
Figure 5.1 presents the basic relationships suggested here. Situation
within the domain of losses has two simultaneous consequences: a state
insecurity that leads to brute force realpolitik, and a risk acceptance
frequently resulting in risk minimization. Both of these processes
together yield a loss compensation and altruistic punishment that even-
tuate in genocide.
On the right-hand side of the gure, situation within the domain of
losses implies a state insecurity that is associated with the most extreme
sorts of realpolitik. Brute force realpolitik arising from imprudence
tends to be most readily invoked under conditions of state insecurity;
the greater the danger to the state, the greater the likelihood of political
violence and, when it occurs, the greater the intensity of violence
directed against civilian populations. Threat leads to anger that will
most likely target members of an ethnic group different from ones
own.
4
Under conditions of extreme threat, the traditional quid pro
Risk acceptance
Risk
minimization
State
insecurity
Brute force
(imprudent)
realpolitik
Domain of losses
Loss compensation
altruistic punishment
Genocide
Figure 5.1. A model of the transformation of massacre into genocide
4
Bodenhausen et al. 1994; DeSteno et al. 2004.
84 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
quo of realpolitik (as in negotiated settlements) can be transformed into
a loss compensation akin to revenge that is genocidal.
On the left-hand side of the gure, prospect theory suggests reasons
for the salience of loss aversion with its associated risk taking. By the
tenets of prospect theory, the domain of losses a condition of either
experiencing loss or the dominance of the memory of loss
5
gives rise to
a risk acceptance that, in turn, realpolitik tells us, should be minimized
to protect the increasingly insecure state. The combination of risk
minimization and loss compensation (indicated by a simple solid line,
not a causal arrow)
6
yields the genocidal outcome. Risk minimization
and loss compensation can occur simultaneously, or the former can
shade into the latter as the perpetrators own battleeld and/or civilian
losses mount. Altruistic punishment as self-sacrice while punishing the
perceived enemy suggests an answer to the question posed by Michael
Marrus concerning reasons for the large followings enjoyed by Hitler
and other genocidal leaders.
The emphasis on losses, principally to other states or societies, and
realpolitik reverses the understandable tendency to view genocide as
mainly a domestic enterprise.
7
After all, did not the ideological bases of
the Holocaust and other instances of mass murder arise within the
borders of states such as Germany? The answer to this question
obviously is yes, but with an important qualication. Although the rise
of such murderous sanctioning ideologies was necessary to the commis-
sion of routinized mass murder, it was not sufcient. Clearly, other
conditions had to be present.
This book focuses on the largely neglected international context,
which in combination with ideological justication, however primitive,
forms a more complete model of genocide. The elements of the model
5
A technical denition of the domain of losses will be given below, p. 104, n. 71.
6
Although I prefer the language of probabilities, wherein a particular variable increases or
decreases the probability of genocide, the testing of hypothesized relationships here can
be said to constitute an as-yet-unvalidated claim for their status as necessary conditions
for state-sponsored genocides, but not as sufcient ones. The later inclusion of related
analyses in candidate cases where genocide did not occur may suggest the possibility of
sufciency for the entire model. For distinctions between the requirements for establish-
ing necessity on the one hand, and sufciency on the other, see Most and Starr 1989, esp.
chap. 2, and the chapters in Goertz and Starr 2003. Ciof-Revilla 1998 explores related
issues.
7
Although Melson 1992 emphasizes the origins of revolution within the framework of the
state, he also suggests that the revolutionary state may generate international pressures
leading to war that, in turn, can have genocidal consequences.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 85
presented in gure 5.1 will be explicated beginning with the domain of
losses and state insecurity. Subsequent sections of this chapter treat
three types of realpolitik, followed by realpolitik, property, and loss
compensation, and then the domain of losses, risk, and loss compensa-
tion. Finally, altruistic punishment will be described in some detail.
The domain of losses and state insecurity
In each of the cases of genocide, the socioeconomic space was con-
tracted. By socioeconomic space, I mean the context within which
groups live their lives spatially (meaning physical territory), economic-
ally, and in their hierarchical relations with each other. I argue that this
shrinkage, especially if it occurs on all three dimensions, is the single
most important long-term progenitor of genocide.
Clearly, not all states experiencing loss are expected to be genocidal.
As noted in chapter 2, vulnerability of a targeted group with a real or
purported connection with state security (e.g., ethnic kin in an enemy
state) is a necessary condition for the genocide to occur. For example, as
a result of the 184648 MexicanAmerican War, Mexico was truncated
without genocide occurring. There was no vulnerable ethnic group
within the boundaries of the shrunken country that could be even
remotely blamed for the disaster.
The shrinkage of empire and the loss of state strength are both
situated within the domain of losses and comprise international sources
of state insecurity. In two of the three cases of genocide Germany and
the Ottoman Empire the empires were contracted as the result of
defeats in war. Economic catastrophe, as in the disasters of post-
World War I German ination or the extreme indebtedness of the
Ottoman state, was an important factor that further magnied that
insecurity. In the third, Rwanda, state insecurity was amplied by
ongoing conict that began with the virtual inception of the modern
state, followed by territorial losses to the invading Rwandese Patriotic
Front (RPF) after 1990, and entailed serious economic weakness as well.
Further, the recent Hutu political dominance over the Tutsi was threat-
ening to revert to the earlier, more enduring governance of Hutu
by Tutsi.
In all of the following analyses of genocide, initial loss will be under-
stood quite specically as territorial loss. It has a concrete specication
and strong consequences, not the least of which is the presence of
refugees from the lost territories. World War I was to have far more
86 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
intense consequences in Germany than in any other West European
country, despite roughly comparable numbers of battleeld dead in the
three principal contestants, Britain, France, and Germany. Territorial
loss was not conned to the loss of relatively small colonial areas
(relative to the British and French), principally in Africa, or to the loss
of former Polish lands in the East. At the time of the armistice, Germany
was still occupying large swaths of territory in Belgium and France, and
especially in Russia. At the wars end, it must have seemed to most
Germans that an enormous shrinking process had occurred.
8
During the
later wars, genocide occurring in all three cases, loss can refer to battle-
eld casualties and civilian deaths.
Territorial loss also can be understood within specic national con-
texts that, beyond a common susceptibility to increased ethnic conict,
can yield different consequences for different countries. Contrasting
Germanys sudden collapse in 1918 (see chapter 7) with Frances leve e
en masse in response to French defeat by the Prussians at Sedan in 1870,
Wolfgang Schivelbusch suggests that:
The most important difference between the two was that the collapse
of 1870 did not leave France in a free fall. Frances safety net was its sense
of national pride, which had developed over the course of two centuries of
European hegemony. The vanquished Germans of 1918 lacked any com-
parable heritage. The memories of centuries of national inferiority, sup-
posedly relegated to the past by the victory of 187071, by the founding of
the empire, and by forty years of power politics, now reappeared like an
unwelcome guest on Germanys doorstep.
The burden of the past helps explain the response to the news of
German defeat. People reacted not with manly composure, as the heroic
vision would have it, but with everything from bewilderment to literal
paralysis and nervous breakdown.
9
Facing the uncertainty of the postwar era, Germany would be haunted
far more by its disunied and nationally (qua nation-state) undistin-
guished past relative to its competitors, as the Bayesian ndings
reviewed in the preceding chapter inform us. The same holds true
for the Hutu-led government in 1994, which, facing a future replete with
uncertainty after territorial loss to the RPF and likely implementation of
the Arusha Accords to its detriment, could only hark back to its earlier
period of political servility both under the European colonial powers,
8
Evans 2004, 5253.
9
Schivelbusch 2003, 19697.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 87
Belgium and Germany, and still earlier under the Tutsi since the eight-
eenth century. Or as Christopher Taylor concludes, colonialism is in
the hearts and minds of every . . . Hutu and Twa, who imagines him or
herself superior or who feels the need through the force of arms to
overcome an imagined inferiority.
10
Interestingly, when we later examine the Cambodian genocide of its
ethnic Vietnamese population within the overall politicide, a similar
historical context is found. Perception of the Khmer Rouge that
Kampuchea Krom, essentially the Mekong river region of Vietnam,
had been lost to the Vietnamese was important. Earlier political subjec-
tion of the Khmer to the Vietnamese, and continued subordination even
of the Communist Party of Democratic Kampuchea to its Vietnamese
counterpart suggested a past that easily could be invoked in the future.
Even more decidedly, as we shall see in the empirical analysis in
chapter 7, the Ottoman Empire had an unbroken series of losses, even
to Balkan states that were formerly part of its empire prior to the start of
World War I. There was to be no victorious referent past the eighteenth
century.
At least ve analytically distinct perspectives inform the consequences
of loss. First, as physical space contracts, the presence of considerable
numbers of refugees may lead to an emotional reaction that in turn can
result in brutality or even murder. As Sandra Blakeslee put it, People
who are emotionally wrought by anger or disgust, say over . . . the
condition of the downtrodden, may decide that certain brutal actions
are morally acceptable.
11
This conclusion is based on recent ndings
that decisions having moral import are far more likely to be based on
emotional reactions than on reasoned deliberation.
12
Identication with
the downtrodden because of ethnoreligious commonality may lead to
brutal actions against those, often of a different ethnicity, who are
perceived to be at fault in generating the refugee inux.
Additional evidence is found in studies indicating that anger, in
contrast to sadness or a neutral emotion, increases the probability of
negative reactions to people of a different ethnicity.
13
External threat can
stimulate anger, which in turn is most frequently directed against mem-
bers of a group different from ones own.
Second, the placing of blame for perceived or actual injury to ethno-
religious kin suggests that revenge a kind of loss compensation can be
10
Taylor 1999, 95.
11
Blakeslee 2001.
12
Greene et al. 2001.
13
Bodenhausen et al. 1994; DeSteno et al. 2004.
88 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
exacted. And recent neural ndings indicate that the experience of actual
or anticipated revenge activates regions of the brain associated with
feeling good.
14
Thus, revenge can be pleasurable.
Third, if those perceived to be at fault also arrive as refugees or are
viewed as comfortable and wealthy, then they can be targeted for mas-
sacre or ultimately genocide. The intersection of migration, ethnoreli-
gious identity, and social class is combustible. Refugees sharpen an
existential contrast with the other, Jews as the anti-German, Armenians
as the anti-Turk, or Tutsi as the anti-Hutu, especially if the victims are, on
the whole, wealthier and/or more visible than the majority. Competing for
the same resources in a shrunken environment, refugees and native
populations can come to see each other as inevitable opponents in a
contracting socioeconomic space.
15
Introducing the element of social class in the context of refugees
competing with the other, Hitler himself remarked, our upper
classes, whove never bothered about the hundreds of thousands of
German emigrants or their poverty, give way to a feeling of compassion
regarding the fate of the Jews whom we claim the right to expel.
16
Fourth, as we shall see in more detail, prospect theory also tells us that
losses are valued more highly than gains.
17
Experimental evidence has
consistently demonstrated the asymmetry between losses and gains,
even to the extent that, in contrast to gains, losses can generate extreme
responses. Losses as the result of a shrinking spatial environment, there-
fore, may have a magnied role in the public consciousness out of all
proportion to the real-world consequences of loss. Again, brutality may
be justied in the mind of the observer.
Fifth, the importance of territoriality in its own right should not be
minimized, especially if the presence of refugees serves as a continual
reminder of the territorial loss. Territory is so fundamental to state
security that massive brutalities may be justied in the name of the
state. When compared with general foreign policy disputes and those
involving contrasting regime types, territorial disputes have a higher
probability of escalating to war than either.
18
This suggests the funda-
mental importance of territoriality, even in comparison with other
issues that are typically thought to be critical in fomenting conict.
14
See Knutson 2004 and de Quervain et al. 2004.
15
M. Midlarsky 1999.
16
Hitler [1942] 2000, 397.
17
Kahneman and Tversky 1979, 2000; Levy 2000, 203.
18
Senese and Vasquez 2004; Vasquez 2000; Huth 1996.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 89
A contributing element to the importance of territoriality stems from
the signaling of state weakness associated with territorial loss in time of
war. Territory can be used to protect the state, as in a buffer zone
between the state core and its enemies. When that territory is lost,
state weakness can be perceived by both defenders of the state and its
external opponents. Under certain conditions, that weakness can lead to
elimination of internal enemies in order to buttress the newly vulner-
able state.
19
There are three possible responses to the perception of a shrinking
spatial environment. All three contain within them possibilities for
genocide and depend in large measure on the force capability available
to the potential perpetrator. First, given sufcient force capability, the
perpetrator can embark on expansion to directly counter the recent
contraction. The concept of Lebensraum that became emblematic of
Hitlers drive to the East exemplies this alternative. Instead of
German-speaking refugees pouring westward into Germany after
World War I, Slavic and Jewish refugees would either move eastward
or, as it developed later in Nazi genocidal policy, be murdered en masse.
The newly acquired space would then be safe for the perpetrator. New
German settlements gradually began to occupy the eastern spaces
vacated by the eeing or murdered inhabitants.
Second, the contracting state can attempt to insure that remaining
territory will remain part of the original state. Without force sufcient to
expand territorial boundaries, defense of the remaining territory
becomes the major focus. Any real or perceived alien threat to dom-
inate that territory, as in a secession by a minority population, can
generate a genocidal response. Ottoman fears of the creation of a new
Bulgaria in eastern Anatolia by the Armenians is a case in point.
Muslim refugees would no longer be forced into remaining Ottoman
territory by newly independent Christian populations, but Christians
(Armenians in this case) would be deported and/or murdered.
Finally, even if the national state territory can no longer be defended,
at least a minority population can be prevented from governing it. In
this, the case of minimal force capability, the perpetrators are losing
control of national territory to enemy forces. If a kindred enemy popu-
lation is destroyed, then the capability of the enemy forces to govern
the conquered territory is minimal. Eventually, demographics would
dictate governance. In Rwanda, after the Tutsi-dominated RPF began
19
M. Midlarsky 2005.
90 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
conquering Rwandan territory at a more rapid rate, genocide of the
Tutsi became the most rapidly (although not the most extensively)
executed genocide of the twentieth century.
The domain of losses implies the existence of changes in state security
in a negative direction. As security of the state diminishes, the prob-
ability and, when it occurs, the intensity of violence, even against hapless
nonparticipant civilians, increase.
State security can be dened as the relative freedom of the state from
threats to its existence emanating either from its domestic or its inter-
national environment.
20
The qualication relative is important because
state security is often assessed by policy-makers in the context of some
recent period in national history, or in some instances relative to other
states. A state that has recently emerged from defeat in a major war may
also experience a sense of insecurity. Of course, the ultimate condition
of state insecurity is found during major war itself, when the state could
be torn asunder as the result of defeat, as in fact happened to Nazi
Germany at the end of World War II. And it was during wars that boded
extremely ill for the state that the Ottoman Empire during World War I,
Germany during World War II, and Rwanda in 1994 engaged in the
most destructive form of identity conict, genocide, respectively against
the Armenians, Jews, and Tutsi.
A renewed determination and an acceleration of the killing can stem
from a perceived threat to state security. Hitler apparently recognized
as early as November 1941 that the war could not be won, as the
Germans bogged down in their advance toward Moscow. Thus, when
the Russians launched their successful counteroffensive defending
Moscow on December 5, 1941, and the Pearl Harbor attack brought
the United States into the war on December 7, it must have become
clear to Hitler that Germany could not win the war against such
an array of opponents.
21
The predicted relationship between state
insecurity and political violence suggests that, shortly after these
virtually simultaneous events, the Nazis would escalate the violence.
And indeed, on December 12, Hitler spoke to high-level Nazi Party
ofcials, very likely informing them of his decision to murder all
European Jews.
22
20
The relationship between state insecurity and genocide is treated ibid.
21
M. Gilbert 1989.
22
Gerlach 2000b.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 91
Three types of realpolitik
To begin with, one must distinguish between realism
23
as a theory of
international politics emphasizing the national interest and state secur-
ity as key explanatory variables, and realpolitik as political practice. The
former is a positive theory that helps us understand the workings of
relations among nations, while the latter is a prescription for foreign
policy making, diplomacy, war, and, in extremis, genocide. One connec-
tion, however, is apparent. Realism in its emphasis on the national
interest and state security as explanatory elements of international
politics perforce single out the practice of states in maximizing their
own security. Realism sensitizes us to the presence of realpolitik where it
exists, but of course does not in any way mandate that it must exist.
Theory and political practice necessarily occupy different domains of
inquiry.
In the long and scabrous history of realpolitik, much has been made
of its power-centered and state-centric core. Indeed, one of the most
distinguished scholars of realism has based his exhaustive denition of
realpolitik on the states interest in which success is the ultimate test of
policy, and success is dened as preserving and strengthening the
state.
24
Threats to state security can easily invoke the practice of
realpolitik. Geopolitical considerations often lie at the core of such
threats. This formulation is but one of the latest among those of a long
line of like-minded theorists including Thucydides, Machiavelli,
E. H. Carr, and Hans Morgenthau. Yet, surprisingly, if one examines
the practice of realpolitik more closely one nds more extreme, even
sinister consequences than simply the satisfaction of state interests. And
we need look no further than Thucydides to nd one of the more
dramatic instances.
Here, in the famous Melian Dialogue, we nd one of the earliest
recorded instances of brute forceimprudent realpolitik, the rst of
our three types, which, following Amartya Sen in the preceding chapter,
is dened as realpolitik not based on reasoned scrutiny. Conversely, the
second type, prudent realpolitik, is one based on reasoned scrutiny
understood as the application of reason to the empirical world. Thus,
23
Among the many treatments of realism are, for example, Meinecke 1957; Waltz 1979,
2000; Jervis 1999; Snyder 1985, 1991; Posen 1984; Glaser 1996; Van Evera 1999; and
Mearsheimer 2001.
24
Waltz 1979, 117.
92 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
state policy based on a reasoned application of comparative method is
very likely to be prudential. Policy that is not based on science, or indeed
contradicts the ndings of science, as in racially based theories, is not
prudential. Consistent with this approach is that taken by Eugene
Garver, who in the context of analyzing Machiavellis thought, argued
that prudence is the ability to confront problems of the practical uses of
intelligence reexively, and in particular to make judgments about the
efcacy of knowledge.
25
The reexive element is important in connot-
ing the ability to reect on matters intelligently; the efcacy of know-
ledge here refers to policy implementations that are knowledge-based.
In his brute forceimprudent realpolitik, Hitler conated success
with protracted conict. Accordingly, in the life of the peoples
together, the ultimate success will always be to [sic] states that ght
deliberately, because conict is the only way to increase their power.
26
Hereafter, imprudent realpolitik and brute force realpolitik will be
used interchangeably.
In the Melian Dialogue, occurring after the major defeat of Athenian
allies at Mantinea and just prior to the ill-fated Sicilian expedition,
Athenian representatives justify their coming attack on the island of
Melos, populated by Spartan colonists, but previously neutral in the
Peloponnesian War. Justifying their behavior in the face of appeals
to justice and fairness by the Melians, the Athenians said to them,
by conquering you we shall increase not only the size but the security
of our empire. We rule the sea and you are islanders and weaker
islanders too than the others; it is therefore particularly important that
you should not escape.
27
Despite Melian arguments, including the threat of Spartan retalia-
tion, dangers of Athenian overreaching and the possible aggregation
of outraged neutrals against Athens, the Athenians are not deterred.
After siege operations, the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the
Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took,
and sold the women and children as slaves. Melos itself they took over
for themselves, sending out later a colony of 500 men.
28
Here we have
one of the earliest illustrations of imprudent realpolitik, in the funda-
mental sense of maximizing state security, with a genocidal conse-
quence. A reasoned scrutiny was not applied to this genocidal policy,
for with the Melian promise of neutrality, likely to be strictly followed,
25
Garver 1987, 157.
26
Weinberg 2003, 125.
27
Thucydides 1954, 361, Book 5, Chap. 7.
28
Ibid., 366, Book 5, Chap. 7.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 93
the genocide was unnecessary. Easily avoided were alienated allies and
third parties, lost hegemonia, and weakened . . . power base. The Melian
Dialogue and the Sicilian expedition are pathological departures from
rational self-interest.
29
Interestingly, reasoned scrutiny as part of a prudent realpolitik would
also have avoided the US intervention in Vietnam. As Hans Morgenthau
suggested in his public statements at the time, such an intervention
could only lead to a closer alliance between China and North Vietnam,
whereas a neutral stance by the United States would likely have allowed
conict between the two states historical enemies to develop, as
indeed it did in 1979 after the wars end. In contrast to many American
policy-makers at the time, Morgenthau employed a comparative histor-
ical method, contrasting the known hostile behavior of the two states
during long periods without a common external enemy, on the one
hand, with the likely behavior of the two in the presence of a powerful
common enemy, on the other.
In the concluding chapter, more will be said about the distinction
between prudent and imprudent realpolitik. For now, it is enough to
suggest that when any and all methods, including the most brutal, are
justied for state preservation or expansion, then an imprudent real-
politik is evident. Disproportionate responses to perceived provocation
constitute imprudence. Genocide, of course, is one such illustration, as
are unnecessary resorts to force when diplomacy or other peaceful
methods might achieve the same or an equivalent goal.
A third version, the cynical variant of realpolitik, is also understood as
preserving and strengthening the state, but, instead of the state as a
potential perpetrator of genocide, it is an onlooking bystander state that
acts cynically in its own interests, disregarding the plight of potential
victims.
The following instance of cynical realpolitik, although not state-
based, is interesting because it is not well known, yet is richly illustrative.
In 1942 and 1943, the vast majority of direct attacks against German
occupying forces in France was carried out by a group called the
Immigrant Workers, including many Jews, which was linked to the
Communist Partys Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. Having lost families
and positions and increasingly under the threat of death, they were
perceived by the Communist leadership as having nothing more to
lose; hence they were entrusted with the task of targeting Nazi ofcers,
29
Lebow 2001, 551.
94 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
hotels, military convoys, and even cafes and nightclubs frequented by
the German occupiers. As a result of these attacks, the Germans in Paris
and elsewhere in France increasingly hid behind gated enclosures,
barbed wire, and other barriers that made their lives far more difcult
than they had been.
In late 1943, after Gestapo agents had followed members of the group
for some time, they were arrested, and twenty-three were executed on
February 21, 1944.
30
Shortly thereafter, the Nazis put up throughout
Paris red posters with photographs of these resistance ghters and their
names (e.g., Grzywacz, Wajsbrot, Fingerweig, Witchitz) and the ques-
tion, Des libe rateurs? (Some liberators?).
31
Of course the poster was
intended to distance the French from these very foreign names and faces
of Nazi opponents. Presumably, as a consequence, Parisians would
identify more with the Aryan Germans. Yet, precisely the same logic
appears to have been used by the Communists in their cynical realpolitik
calculation. Although contested by some diehard Communists, the
evidence points to a deliberate refusal by the Communists to rescue
members of the group when they rst reported being followed. Standard
operating procedure in such cases was to nd shelter for threatened
operatives in safe houses outside Paris. Without such aid, the group was
doomed. As we know, the help was not forthcoming. Why?
As the war was drawing to a close, the Communist Party leaders knew
that they would be electoral opponents of Gaullists, among others, after
the liberation. Given the anti-foreign sentiment of many Frenchmen, it
was assumed that the emergence of such a group of foreigners after the
war as Communist heroes would be detrimental to the partys electoral
chances.
32
Indicative of the potential electoral climate was the following
aberration: during the last year of the Third Republic, Jean Giraudoux
delivered a vitriolic attack against Jewish immigrants just prior to his
30
For a relatively complete account, see Raymond 1985, especially 1386.
31
Although the poster is exhibited ibid., 3, a more exact color duplication is found in
Bourget and Lacretelle 1980, 162.
32
For a thorough description of these anti-foreign sentiments, see Marrus and Paxton
1995. The betrayal of these partisans is mentioned by their leader Missak Manouchian
in his last letter to his wife Me line e (celui qui nous a trahis . . . et ceux qui nous ont
vendus) and others such as Charles Tillon (on les a abandonne s). See Raymond
1985, 24143. From September 1942 until the end of the war, the major clandestine
Communist paper, LHumanite , made not a single mention of Jewish matters. See
Zuccotti 1993, 139. As late as the 1960s, the French Communist Party refused to
acknowledge the non-French origin of the partisans of the afche rouge. See Auron
1998, 151.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 95
appointment as minister of information.
33
Better to have the group
disappear at German hands than to suffer their electoral liability
after the war.
34
It is the permissive context of realpolitik that is emphasized here,
following the model of cynical calculation in the satisfaction of state or,
as we shall see later, church interests. This is the less obvious variant that
deserves study, for it has received hardly any systematic attention. Yet
the fates of entire peoples have rested on this cynical permissive variant,
no less than that of brute force.
In order to understand the sources of genocide, we must look to its
permissive context. Which ideational or other justication for action
supersedes the traditional moral and/or religion-based inhibitions
against mass murder? In the case of the brute force or imprudent
realpolitik exemplied by the Melian genocide, the permission can be
self-granted by the exigencies of war or the ideology of imperial expan-
sion. An ideology of racial superiority, of course, is found in the Nazi
genesis of the Holocaust.
But as in the sacrice of the Parisian immigrant partisans by the
Communist Party, larger, more powerful, and higher-status entities,
acting on their own perceptions of self-interest (raison detat or raison
deglise) can facilitate the killing of ethnoreligious groups. This is sel-
dom a matter of hatred of these groups by the higher-status entity.
Indeed, in some cases there may even be strong sympathies for the
victims. Yet the demands of realpolitik are such that the killing goes on.
There are two possible effects of the cynical variant of realpolitik. The
rst is the facilitation of the onset of genocide, while the second is
facilitation of the magnitude of the killing, once begun. Inuence of
the cynical variant on both variables can be found in all three cases, to be
treated more fully later. Although facilitation of the onset of genocide is
difcult to demonstrate, nevertheless there exists evidence to that effect
even in the Holocaust, the most problematic of the three in the matter of
onset, for we know that the mass killing began on the Eastern front, far
removed from the Vatican as the permitting agent. Yet early in the politics
of Nazi accession to power, we shall see the impact of the Vatican
in Hitlers own words. Nevertheless, I do not claim that the establish-
ment of a permissive context always rises to the level of a necessary
condition for the onset of genocide in all three cases, although it
can. However, the magnitude of the killing did require the permissive
33
Friedlander 1997, 213.
34
Riding, 2001.
96 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
environment as a necessary condition, for in our three cases, the number
of victims would have been reduced had the permitting agent acted
differently.
Realpolitik, property, and loss compensation
Historically, realpolitik has taken on an international cast, precisely
because of its emphasis on the satisfaction, even maximization, of state
interests, often in conict with competing states. Yet the word does not
mean real in the English sense, but in German connotes things in
opposition to principles or ideals that could govern political action.
According to Machiavelli, The desire to acquire possessions is a very
natural and ordinary thing, and when those men do it who can do so
successfully, they are always praised and not blamed.
35
This emphasis
on possessions by Machiavelli is stated in the context of international
competition for territories, principally in Italy. Accordingly, one of the
major practices of realpolitik has been the use of the quid pro quo or
something given in exchange for something else in negotiations. Having
received a material benet, the recipient then compensates the giver.
The use of the quid pro quo in realpolitik is essentially compensatory
behavior. A loss is compensated by a gain.
Realpolitiks reference to things has a distinguished lineage. Not
only do we nd it in the traditional German usage, but also Machiavelli,
one of the most canny and astute interpreters of realpolitik, stated that:
When he [the Prince] is obliged to take the life of any one, let him do so
when there is a proper justication and manifest reason for it; but above
all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more
easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.
36
And if
any doubt exists as to Machiavellis credentials as a theorist of real-
politik, one has only to consider Harvey Manselds observation that
Machiavelli was the master of politics, when politics is understood as
aiming to win with no reference to a standard above politics.
37
Property in a nationalistic age has a much wider meaning than simply
personal holdings. Especially for new states such as Poland during the
interwar period, all of the patrimonial territory is sacred and inviol-
able. This perspective helps explain the virtually suicidal decision of the
Polish army in 1939 to defend against the impending German invasion
35
Machiavelli 1950, 13 (Prince, 3).
36
Emphasis added; Machiavelli 1950, 62 (Prince, 17).
37
Manseld 1996, xiii.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 97
right at the border, despite the entreaties of expert French military
advisors to withdraw somewhat to maximize tactical advantage. The
loss of any Polish territory was intolerable to leaders of the new state. We
would not expect the popular view to be any different. Indeed, the rst
concerted Polish reaction against Jews as a corporate body occurred in
the eighteenth century after major territorial losses were experienced in
the First Polish Partition of 1772.
38
Thus, loss of the Jews internal to Poland compensates the Poles for
their loss of territory to the Soviets. The earlier slaughter of the Jews of
Jedwabne
39
on July 10, 1941, can be viewed as an internal compensation
for the loss of sovereignty to the Germans and the doubtless reduction of
the size of Poland under German tutelage. If Poland cannot have the
desired territorial extent and cannot even be sovereign in its own
territory, then the acquisition of an internal space must compensate
for these external losses. Jews, as the most vulnerable and at the same
time large enough minority, could be sacriced.
Henryk Grynberg, a survivor of the murders at Dobre writes:
The people of Dobre werent monsters, and some of them sincerely sym-
pathized with the Jews. But at bottom they were pleased. Even those who
sympathized. So many places had opened up in the town. So many goods, and
such different kinds. They couldnt help taking a quiet pleasure in this. Even
the best of them, who found it hard to admit this to themselves. The
Germans had known this and had certainly counted on it.
40
It would be difcult to imagine such quiet pleasure by otherwise
decent people, outside the context of devastating national loss and the
experience of political subjugation.
To many Poles, the desirability of ethnically cleansing Jews by what-
ever means (see chapter 6) was enhanced considerably by the already
ongoing resettlement of ethnic Germans from various locations (the old
Reich, the Baltic regions, Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Volhynia) into
Polish territories already ethnically cleansed of Poles.
41
After the inva-
sion of the Soviet Union, ethnically cleansing Jews by Nazi Germany was
tantamount to eradication, as we shall see in chapter 7.
38
Levine 1991.
39
Gross 2001.
40
Emphasis added; Grynberg 1993, quoted in Polonsky and Adamczyk-Garbowska
2001, xxvi.
41
Burleigh 2000, 44650.
98 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
As expected in the realm of realpolitik, Machiavelli places the state at
the center of The Prince, for it begins: All states and dominions which
hold or have held sway over mankind are either republics or monar-
chies.
42
Turning to our contemporary examples, realpolitik helps us
understand the genocidal impulse. But is there more in the ideational
sphere than simply Hitlers often unintelligible rantings in Mein Kampf ?
The writings of Carl Schmitt help us bridge the gap between the
ordinary politics of realpolitik, or prudent realpolitik, and the unimagin-
able happenings of the Holocaust. Schmitt, in his political theory, takes
realpolitik and Machiavellian thought to its outer limits, although those
annihilationist limits are to be found in Machiavellis writings.
Accordingly, he writes, Men must either be caressed or else annihilated;
they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great
ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need
not fear his vengeance.
43
And presaging Schmitts categorical distinc-
tion between friend and enemy, Machiavelli states that A prince is
further esteemed when he is a true friend or a true enemy, when, that
is, he declares himself without reserve in favour of some one or against
another. This policy is always more useful than remaining neutral.
44
Although in Schmitts best-known work, The Concept of the Political,
no anti-Semitic statements are to be found (at least not in the earlier
versions), nevertheless his theory, published immediately prior to
Hitlers accession to power, constitutes, at bottom, a justication for
genocide: Schmitt himself became a supporter of the 1935 Nuremberg
racial laws
45
that began the process of dehumanizing the Jewish popula-
tion as a formula for the declaration of an internal enemy.
46
Genocidal ideation
Not unlike Machiavelli, Schmitt begins his theory with an emphasis on
the state. Accordingly, The concept of the state presupposes the con-
cept of the political
47
and The specic political distinction to which
political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend
and enemy.
48
Further, and most important for our concerns here,
An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one ghting collectivity
of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public
enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity
42
Machiavelli 1950, 4 (Prince, 1).
43
Ibid., 9 (Prince, 3).
44
Ibid., 83 (Prince, 21).
45
Bendersky 1983, 228.
46
Schmitt [1932] 1996, 46.
47
Ibid., 19.
48
Ibid., 26.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 99
of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such
a relationship.
49
Hitler did not stray far from this conceptualization. Accordingly,
politics is history in the making. History itself represents the progres-
sion of a peoples struggle for survival.
50
Collectivities are the units to
be categorized as friends or enemies. And, to be sure, such an intense
focus has the virtue of recognizing in concrete clarity the enemys
identity.
51
According to Tracy Strong, for Schmitt, such clarity avoids
the difculties of bourgeois politics wherein solutions are the result of
compromise; they are in the end temporary, occasional, never deci-
sive.
52
If necessary, war can be waged against the enemy to render
decisive that which had been basically unresolved, or even at times
otiose.
The books dedication in itself is revealing. It is dedicated to
Schmitts friend, August Schaetz, who was killed in battle on the
Western front during World War I. When we consider that Schmitts
concept of the political entails fault lines between enemies and friends,
the dedication certainly cannot be ignored. Hitler himself intuitively
understood this identication of politics with the friendenemy dis-
tinction in the realpolitik mode. With the Jew, there can be no nego-
tiation, but only the decision: all or nothing! As for me, I have decided
to go into politics.
53
But beyond the presumed virtues of clarity, there is an even darker
side to Schmitts theorizing than merely the possible genocidal implica-
tions of the collective friendenemy distinction. In elucidating his
notion of clarity in recognizing the enemy, Schmitt refers to
the fanatical hatred of Napoleon felt by the German barons Stein and
Kleist (Exterminate [the French], the Last Judgement will not ask you
for your reasons) . . . surpassed by Cromwells enmity towards papist
Spain. He says in his speech of September 17, 1656: The rst thing,
therefore, that I shall speak to is That (sic) that is the rst lesson of
Nature: Being and Preservation . . . The conservation of that, namely
of our National Being, is rst to be viewed with respect to those who
seek to undo it, and so make it not to be . . . The Spaniard is your
enemy, his enmity is put into him by God. He is the natural enemy,
the providential enemy, and he who considers him to be an accidental
49
Ibid., 28.
50
Weinberg 2003, 7.
51
Schmitt [1932] 1996, 67.
52
T. Strong 1996, xv.
53
Quoted in Burrin 1994, 30.
100 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
enemy is not well acquainted with Scripture and the things of God,
who says: I will put enmity between your seed and her seed.
54
Schmitt actually quotes Cromwell at greater length than is excerpted
here. It is noteworthy that, of all English leaders of the recent past, the
genocidal impulse is perhaps strongest in Cromwell, expressed not only
in words against papist Spain, but in the vicious massacres at Drogheda
and Wexford in 1649, as well as in the institution of the plantation
policy in which Scottish Presbyterians were to replace Irish Catholics in
northern Ireland. By 1703, the proportion of land held by Catholics in all
of Ireland declined to 14 percent from a high of 59 percent in 1641.
55
The later response (or absence of it) by Westminster during the Irish
potato famine of the middle of the nineteenth century, leading to an
estimated 1 million Irish Catholic deaths, complemented the earlier
Cromwellian policies of massacre and land expropriation.
The existential nature of such conict is emphasized by Schmitt:
There exists no rational purpose, no norm no matter how true, no
program no matter how exemplary, no social ideal no matter how
beautiful, no legitimacy nor legality which could justify men in killing
each other for this reason. If such physical destruction of human life is not
motivated by an existential threat to ones own way of life, then it cannot be
justied.
56
When collectivities are in a state of existential conict in which ones
way of life is threatened by the enemy, and the enemy does not even have
to be the private adversary whom one hates,
57
then the justication for
genocide is at hand. Even good Jews, those who were liked personally
by Nazis, were doomed to extinction in the Holocaust. It is no accident
that, after 1933, Schmitt became the self-appointed ideologue of the
Nazis, only to run afoul of SS ideologists in 1936. He would nevertheless
keep his post at the University of Berlin until the wars end under
Hermann Gorings protection.
Schmitts theorizing clearly stemmed from the experience and legacy
of World War I. Yet, although derivative of World War I, the principles
enunciated by Schmitt can be understood as an application of realpolitik
to a conicted region. Machiavelli, writing in the uncertain period of
wars among Italian city-states and invasions from without, suggests that
war is of immense importance, A PRINCE should therefore have no
54
Gen. III: 15; emphasis in original, Schmitt [1932] 1996, 6768.
55
Hayton 1985, 216.
56
Emphasis added; Schmitt [1932] 1996, 49.
57
Ibid., 29.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 101
other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study, but war
and its organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is
necessary to one who commands.
58
Machiavelli understood that, in order to achieve the required extent
of commitment, courage, and ferocity, soldiers should be part of a
citizen army, preferably a militia. He was bitterly opposed to the use
of mercenaries, for according to Machiavelli the ruin of Italy is now
caused by nothing else but through her having relied for many years on
mercenary arms.
59
Certainly it is not fortuitous that the most rapidly executed genocide
of the twentieth century, that of the Tutsi in 1994, was facilitated
enormously by the machete-wielding Hutu of the Interahamwe, the
extremist militia. Christopher Brownings description of the Ordinary
Men of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 who committed mass murder
of Jews in eastern Poland
60
would very likely conform to Machiavellis
image of the typical militia member. Similar observations apply to
Kurdish irregulars drawn by the Ottomans from regions adjacent to
areas of Armenian habitation, and to Ottoman conscripts who engaged
in the large-scale murder of Armenian populations.
Most importantly, Machiavelli deemphasized the means a ruler uses
to attain his ends. In the actions of men, and especially of princes, from
which there is no appeal, the end justies the means. Let a prince
therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means
will always be judged honourable and praised by every one.
61
Compare
this statement with that of Hitler to Goebbels on June 16, 1941, shortly
before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Right or wrong, we
must win. It is the only way . . . And once we have won, who is going to
question our methods?
62
Yet Machiavelli did not advocate mass murder. His more extreme
statements generally refer to the foe as a more personal enmity, instead
of the collective enemy in Schmitts writings.
63
Referring to
Agathocles, king of Syracuse, Machiavelli states that his barbarous
cruelty and inhumanity, together with his countless atrocities, do not
permit of his being named among the most famous men.
64
More
generally, victories are never so prosperous that the victor does not
need to have some scruples, especially as to justice.
65
He would likely be
58
Machiavelli 1950, 53 (Prince, 14).
59
Ibid., 45 (Prince, 12).
60
Browning 1992.
61
Machiavelli 1950, 66 (Prince, 8).
62
Goebbels 1983, 415.
63
Schwab 1996, 10.
64
Machiavelli 1950, 32 (Prince, 8).
65
Ibid., 84 (Prince, 21).
102 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
shocked to discover that the realpolitik he advocated could under
certain conditions be transformed into the facilitation of mass murder.
What are those conditions? Clearly, a protracted period of conict or
war, contrary to Machiavellis preferences, could establish the condi-
tions for atrocity. As an article on Hitler in the Frankfurter Zeitung of
January 26, 1928, put it,
It is a matter of a manic idea of atavistic origin that pushes aside
complicated reality and replaces it with a primitive ghting
unit . . . Naturally, Hitler is a dangerous fool . . . But if one asks how
the son of a petty Upper Austrian customs ofcer arrives at his craze,
then one can only say one thing: he has taken war ideology perfectly
literally and interpreted it in almost as primitive a way that one might be
living in the era of the Volkerwanderung the period of Barbarian inva-
sions at the end of the Roman Empire.
66
The domain of losses, risk, and loss compensation
The general question arises: why the increased probability and intensity
(when it begins) of killing upon the diminution of state security and
invocation of brute force realpolitik? A priori, there would appear to be
no evident reason, other than Machiavellis trenchant observation on
the importance of property loss. His formidable reputation notwith-
standing, Machiavelli would have had no access to scientic examina-
tion of this claim. In recent years, however, there has emerged a theory of
decision making under risk and uncertainty that provides considerable
empirical validation of the importance of loss aversion. Prospect theory
was originated by the social psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos
Tversky
67
to rebut certain claims of expected utility theory, principally
in the eld of economics. In 2002, Kahneman received the Nobel prize in
economics for his contribution.
Two basic insights from the theory are relevant here and have been
supported by substantial experimental evidence.
68
The rst is the
66
Quoted in Kershaw 1998, 302.
67
Kahneman and Tversky 1979.
68
In addition to the experimental evidence reviewed in Kahneman and Tversky 2000,
applications to risk in international politics can be found in, among others, Farnham
1992, Levy 2000 and McDermott 1992, 1998. Critiques of prospect theory are found in
ONeill 2001 and Boettcher 1995, which has an experimental test of the theory applied
to foreign policy decision making. In the domain of losses, 92 percent of the subjects
were found to be risk-acceptant in military policy making (and 83 percent risk-averse in
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 103
asymmetry of losses and gains. People are loss-averse in the sense that losses
loomlarger than the corresponding gains.
69
Put another way, the response
to losses is more extreme than the response to gains.
70
As a consequence of
this loss aversion, people in the domain of losses
71
are risk-acceptant, in
comparison with risk-averse behavior relative to the likelihood of gains.
The second insight concerns the importance of framing around a
reference point. Losses and gains are dened for each person relative to
some reference point unique to that individual. Identication of this
reference point is called framing.
72
Accordingly, After suffering losses
political leaders have a tendency not to renormalize their reference point
but instead to gamble in the hope of eliminating those losses and return-
ing to the reference point, even at the risk of suffering a larger loss.
73
Consistency of prospect theory with the tenets of realpolitik is found not
only in the writings of Machiavelli, but in contemporary thinking as well.
Randall Schweller, for example, considers that states value what they
possess more than what they covet, and that rational states do not seek
relative gains so much as avoid relative losses.
74
Although Schweller
associates this loss aversion with neorealisms status quo bias, the reference
point for the status quo in Nazi perceptions was not the geopolitical
conguration of 1939, but that of 1914, as will soon become apparent in
the discussion of Hitlers war ideology. The unacceptability of the defeat
of 1918 and its territorial losses, of course, was a basis of Nazi ideology.
It is no accident that both Machiavelli and Schmitt wrote their basic
theories within the domain of losses, as in fact did Thucydides in his
the domain of gains), thus providing a signicant conrmation of the theory for
war-related decisions. This nding suggests a strong applicability of prospect theory
to the onset of genocide within the war-related context found in all three cases
considered here.
69
Jervis 1992, 187.
70
Tversky and Kahneman 1981, 454.
71
The domain of losses is dened as that region in which all possible outcomes are inferior
(or equal) to the reference point. Related to this concept is that of the endowment effect
wherein an object acquires greater value after its possession than before the moment of
acquisition (Kahneman et al. 1990). Further, the main effect of endowment is not to
enhance the appeal of the good one owns, only the pain of giving it up (Kahneman
et al. 1991, 197).
72
Given our societal concerns here, the following denition of framing is appropriate:
Collective action frames are constructed in part as movement adherents negotiate a
shared understanding of some problematic condition or situation they dene as in need
of change, make attributions regarding who or what is to blame, articulate an alter-
native set of arrangements, and urge others to act in concert to affect [sic] change
(Benford and Snow 2000, 615).
73
Levy 2000, 203.
74
Schweller 1996, 99.
104 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
lengthy meditations on the catastrophic Athenian defeat. Schmitt was
outraged at the losses imposed on Germany by the victors at
Versailles,
75
and later crises such as that of the Rhineland further deep-
ened these concerns.
76
In reaction to these losses, Schmitt resonated
strongly to the idea of Lebensraum articulated by the Nazis. The new
German Reich could now (in 1939) set the law for itself within its
greater space (Grossraum) and also is able . . . to reject the interfer-
ence of powers that are alien to the space and do not belong to the
folk.
77
Further, in 1941, he stated the development leads to a new
greater-space arrangement of the earth. New powers and new energies
carry the new space revolution, and this time it is the German people to
whom leadership is due.
78
Schmitt also was aware of the Florentine and more generally Italian
losses deeply felt by Machiavelli. In actuality, Machiavelli was on the
defensive as was also his country, Italy, which in the sixteenth century
had been invaded by Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Turks.
79
One has only to examine the last chapter of The Prince, titled
Exhortation to liberate Italy from the Barbarians, to appreciate this
sense of loss and despair. In the years before completion of The Prince in
151315,
80
Charles VIII of France conquered Florence (in 1494). Several
years later, Fra Savanarolla staged his successful revolt and ultimately
was deposed, and in 1512 the Florentine republic fell.
81
US Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it well when he
stated: It is in the nature of mans mind. A thing which you have
enjoyed and used as your own for a long time, whether property or an
opinion, takes root in your being and cannot be torn away without your
resenting the act and trying to defend yourself, however you came by it.
82
Yet the logic of the theory yields additional implications. A rst
implication concerning the possibility of compensatory behavior
lies in the area of risk. Although actual losses or their possibility in the
near future can yield risky behavior, neither the theory itself nor logic
precludes the possibility of minimizing those risks. One can hedge
against risky behavior by additional behavior that minimizes the risk,
or at least diminishes it. The contextual logic of both risk acceptance
and the imperative of realpolitik to protect the state suggests that,
given any additional opportunity to minimize the primary risk already
75
Schwab 1996, 5.
76
Balakrishnan 2000, 83.
77
Quoted in Weinreich 1999, 74.
78
Quoted ibid., 124.
79
Schmitt [1932] 1996, 66.
80
De Grazia 1989, 23.
81
Ibid., 15, 32.
82
Holmes 1897, 477.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 105
undertaken, decision-makers would at least consider it very seriously,
and even seize the opportunity.
Risk minimization is typically found in anti-guerrilla warfare where
civilians are often indistinguishable from combatants. Even if not actual
combatants, sympathetic civilians still may transmit critical information
to such people. A now well-known case is that of former US senator Bob
Kerrey, accused of killing Vietnamese women and children to silence
them after his Navy Seals group was discovered in the midst of its secret
mission. Kerrey stated: Standard operating procedure was to dispose of
the people we made contact with. Kill the people we made contact with,
or we have to abort the mission . . . It does not work to merely bind and
gag people, because theyre going to get away.
83
It is estimated that 24
people were killed. 13 were women and children and one old man.
84
Even more to the point here and in anticipation of the later massacre
of dangerous Jewish males presumably infected with Bolshevism in
the opening stages of the conict on the Eastern front,
85
an estimated
6,500 Belgian and French civilians were killed by invading German
forces from August to October 1914.
86
Earlier, in 1870, as the French
army was being defeated by the Prussian, the French leadership called
for a leve e en masse and guerrilla warfare conducted by francs-tireurs
(free-shooters). Although Belgian civilians did not resist the Germans in
1914, an uprising along the lines of 1870 nevertheless was expected, and
the German army behaved with unwarranted brutality toward Belgian
civilians in the hope of preventing its outbreak.
87
Yet, in all of these cases, the particular form of risk minimization was
unnecessary. Jews in the Soviet Union and Belgian civilians were not
uniformly hostile to the Germans. Certainly, as town dwellers and
civilians without substantial military training, they would not have
posed any military threat to the invading Germans, if treated with
minimal decency.
Second, if people are exceedingly sensitive to losses, if the losses
appear to be irreversible, then the best avenue of redress is to compensate
for those losses. Here the quid pro quo of realpolitik nicely supplements
83
Quoted in Vistica 2001, 55.
84
Quoted ibid., 66.
85
Shortly after the invasion of Russia, Hitler [1942] 2000, 29, remarked that: The old
Reich knew already how to act with rmness in the occupied areas. Thats how attempts
at sabotage to the railways in Belgium were punished by Count von der Goltz. He had all
the villages burnt within a radius of several kilometres, after having had all the mayors
shot, the men imprisoned and the women and children evacuated.
86
Horne and Kramer 2001, 419.
87
Strachan 2001b, 32.
106 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
the loss aversion emphasized by prospect theory. A seemingly irrever-
sible loss in one area can be compensated for by gains in another. Indeed,
the theory implies that loss aversion would be a powerful driving force
behind this compensatory behavior.
If the potential compensation for losses and the risk minimization
opportunity coincide, then there can be powerful incentives to engage in
the compensation for losses and a simultaneous risk diminution.
Genocide can provide just such a simultaneous opportunity. But before
we examine the cases of genocide, it will be useful to consider the impact
of realpolitik in the domain of threat alone without the actual experience
of loss, Threat to state security itself is sufciently important to warrant
a separate examination of its potential consequences. Without the
dimension of loss, however, the particular form of realpolitik is not
likely to yield genocide. Later, realpolitik and loss will be combined in
the analysis of our cases of genocide.
Altruistic punishment
Finally, we address the question raised by Michael Marrus noted in
chapter 1: For historians of the Holocaust, the greatest challenge has
not been making sense of Hitler, but rather understanding why so many
followed him down his murderous path.
88
Or, to put the question
within the context of the actual killing, why were the perpetrators not
deterred from the genocide even as defeat loomed unmistakably in the
very near future? Surely there would be retribution from the victorious
foe. Cooperation between leaders and actual perpetrators continued
well beyond the time that one would expect a breakdown in cooperation
between them, based on sheer self-interest of those doing the actual
killing.
Experience of loss has an additional implication. The taking on of risk
as a consequence of loss implies potential sacrice. One can lose ones
life in war that risk might entail, or commit atrocities that actually are
extremely distasteful and can cause physical distress. Of course, the risk
of retribution and the loss of ones own life can be the result of commit-
ting mass murder.
A eld of experimental politics and economics has emerged that
studies the development of cooperation under a variety of conditions.
88
Marrus 1987, 46.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 107
Most important for our purposes here is the body of literature stemming
from the seminal contribution of Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues.
89
Generally, this literature concludes that cooperation or internal govern-
ance (in contrast to rules imposed from without) is most readily gener-
ated when sanctions are available.
90
As Ostrom and her colleagues put it,
Best of all the conditions we examined are covenants with an internal
sword, freely chosen or made available as an institutional option.
91
Most recently, Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter
92
have introduced the
concept of altruistic punishment to explain cooperation.
93
Following
Fehr and Gachter, I dene altruistic punishment as punishment inicted
on a defector from cooperation, which is costly to the punisher and
without material gain. In a series of public goods experiments that pitted
private return against public welfare requiring cooperation in a group
project, cooperation was found to ourish when altruistic punishment
was possible and to break down when it was ruled out.
Subjects were given the opportunity to invest in a group project with
monies handed to them, or to keep the funds. Individually, if they chose
to invest, they would receive less than if they kept the money, but
collectively the group as a whole would receive more, if all invested.
(This is reminiscent of the famous stag hunt in which an individual may
gain by snagging a hare instead of participating in a group hunt; in such
a hunt, the gain would be even greater for each participant if it is
successful, but it will be more likely to fail if any participant drops
out.) Subjects could punish others after information was provided as
to how much each had invested. But each punishment of another subject
was costly. Specically, subjects who chose to punish were required to
forfeit an amount equal to one-third of the monetary punishment
imposed on a defector. Thus, the punishment is altruistic. Defectors
those who refused to cooperate were punished even when material
self-interest was sacriced by cooperators. Participants who chose to
punish defectors by withholding monies themselves had to sacrice
monetary rewards.
Punishment and non-punishment experimental conditions were
compared. Where punishment was allowed, there occurred a signicant
89
Ostrom et al. 1992.
90
Boyd and Richerson 1992; Sober and Wilson 1998; Boehm 1999; Fehr and Gachter
2000.
91
Emphasis in original; Ostrom et al. 1992, 414.
92
Fehr and Gachter 2002.
93
Axelrod and Hamilton 1981; Axelrod 1984; Sober and Wilson 1998.
108 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
increase in investment in the public good, namely cooperation. Where
punishment was forbidden, the average investment was much lower.
Negative emotions towards the defectors are the proximate mechanics
behind altruistic punishment.
94
Concerning altruistic punishment, Fehr
remarks, Its a very important force for establishing large-scale coopera-
tion, every citizen is a little policeman in a sense. There are so many social
norms that we follow almost unconsciously, and they are enforced by the
moral outrage we expect if we were to violate them.
95
The greater the
extent of deviation from cooperation by defectors, the more heavily they
were punished by cooperators.
96
It was punishment per se [that] provided
the motivation, not some consequence anticipated by the player.
97
Instrumentality was not especially relevant.
Entirely consistent with these ndings are those stemming from a
related set of experiments. Two players are given an opportunity to split
a sum of money: the rst proposes a division; if the second player
accepts, the game is over and the players receive their agreed-upon
shares. If the second player rejects the offer, both receive nothing. Alan
Sanfey and his colleagues describe the results of several studies: Modal
offers are typically around 50 percent of the total amount. Low offers
(around 20 percent of the total) have about a 50 percent chance of being
rejected. This latter, quite robust, experimental nding is particularly
intriguing, demonstrating that circumstances exist in which people are
motivated to actively turn down monetary reward.
98
In other words, a modal cooperation of equal division is typically
established. Defectors from that fair, cooperative division are often
punished even at some cost to the punisher. Altruistic punishment has
been robustly established. These ndings stem from public goods
experiments, but are readily generalizable to social groups seeking a
basis for cooperation in the absence of a functioning external authority.
Given an extreme, even life-threatening environment, such as massive
economic failure followed by war, the particular form of altruistic
punishment chosen can be severe.
Even as they were clearly losing their respective wars, Hitler pro-
ceeded mercilessly with his extermination campaign, Enver Pas a lent
his approval to the Armenian genocide, and the Hutu extremists were
rapidly eliminating the Rwandan Tutsi. Hitler would die by his own
94
Fehr and Gachter 2002, 137.
95
Quoted in Angier 2002, F6.
96
Fehr and Gachter 2000, 980.
97
Bowles and Gintis 2002, 126.
98
Sanfey et al. 2003, 1755.
A T H E O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K 109
hand, Enver in battle attempting to unite Turkic peoples against the
Soviets, and many of the Hutu ge nocidaires in the refugee camps of
northern Congo.
Hitlers political testament written shortly before his suicide is reveal-
ing. He spoke of the German war as the most glorious and valiant
manifestation of a nations will to existence,
99
and ended: Above all,
I adjure the leaders of the nation and those under them . . . to merciless
opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, International
Jewry.
100
Here, the connection between national unity in struggle and
punishment of the defector, even as one is about to die, is made
manifest in the form of altruistic punishment. Equally to the point, he
stated, when man not infrequently, it seems renounces his own self-
preservation instinct for the benet of the species, he is still doing it the
highest service. Because not infrequently it is this renunciation of the
individual that grants life to the collective whole, and thus yet again to
the individual.
101
Having laid the theoretical foundations, we can now turn to their
empirical examination in part III.
99
Quoted in Kershaw 2000a, 822.
100
Quoted in Burleigh 2000, 793.
101
Quoted in Weinberg 2003, 7.
110 E X P L A I N I N G P E R P E T R A T O R S : T H E O R E T I C A L F O U N D A T I O N S
PART III
The theory applied
6
Threat of numbers, realpolitik, and ethnic cleansing
In this part, cynical and imprudent realpolitik are explored in their
consequences for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Realpolitik alone as
management of threats to the state (or preserving and strengthening the
state) in whatever form will seldom, if ever, result in genocide. When
constrained by loss, however, as suggested in the preceding chapter, the
probability of genocide is vastly increased. Effectively, a single compo-
nent of gure 5.1, the one with the most widespread political applic-
ability, is now being examined, to be followed in the three succeeding
chapters by an exploration of the entire model.
In this chapter, then, the consequences of realpolitik will be examined
in three cases: the Irish famine of 184552, Polish ethnic cleansing policy
of the interwar period, and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia with a genocidal
incident embedded within it in 1995. I choose these cases because they
are among the closest to genocide itself without reaching that level,
thereby allowing for the possibility of one or two key variables distin-
guishing between ethnic cleansing and genocide. Certainly the accusa-
tion of genocide had been repeatedly leveled against the British as early
as 1868
1
(see also chapter 17). At the local level, the Poles did engage in
genocidal behavior during World War II, as at Jedwabne, discussed in
chapter 1. And, to this day, Serbs have been accused of committing
genocide in Bosnia. These cases are also among the most well-known
instances of ethnic cleansing; they are richly illustrative of realpolitik,
and in one instance, Srebrenica, realpolitik combined with loss.
As we saw at the outset of the preceding chapter, I will nd it useful to
distinguish between threat and loss. Threat is the fear of potential loss,
while loss itself is the actual experience of the transfer of territory,
population, or authority to another political entity, and/or military
defeat or signicant casualties in political violence. Concrete expecta-
tions of loss in the near term can yield outcomes similar to those of loss
1
Mitchel 1868.
113
itself. If a particular ethnoreligious group for one reason or another is
perceived to be threatening, then ethnic cleansing can be a consequence
of attempts to blunt or remove the threat. If loss itself has been or is
about to be experienced, attributable rightly or wrongly to that group,
then genocide becomes a distinct possibility.
The British response (or absence of it) to the Irish famine, leading to
approximately 1 million deaths, represents a reaction to the threat to
continued British security posed by a burgeoning Roman Catholic Irish
population. That threat was magnied enormously by the potential
conuence of Irish rebellion with French invasion that actually occurred
at the end of the eighteenth century, but was defeated by British arms.
Somewhat earlier, a conuence of indigenous rebels and French military
support actually resulted in the independence of the thirteen former
American colonies. Ethnic cleansing occurred by allowing the famine to
do its work or by encouraging emigration. Loss in Ireland was not
experienced by the British prior to the famine, and genocide was not
committed. However, a cynical realpolitik was functioning in the readi-
ness of British ofcials to take advantage of the famine for purposes of
strengthening the British state.
Another illustration is that of interwar Poland. Although only a
partial ethnic cleansing occurred, largely of the much smaller ethnic
German population, it was clear that the Poles planned an ethnic
cleansing of Polands Jewish population, if at all possible given world-
wide restrictions on Jewish immigration (see chapter 11). The combined
threat of a militarily resurgent Germany that clearly had irredentist
claims on Polish territory, along with the steadily increasing arms
production of the Soviet Union, and their own territorial claims, was
decidedly threatening to the still relatively new Polish state. However,
here again loss was not experienced nor was genocide. Although never
put into practice, the threatened ethnic cleansing of Polands Jewish
population verged on an imprudent realpolitik one that did not
employ a reasoned scrutiny in recognizing the potential loyalty to the
Polish state of the vast majority of its Jews. The experience of loss after
the Nazi invasion led to the actual practice of genocidal behavior at the
local level, as we saw in chapter 4.
Finally, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia included genocidal
elements. As the Yugoslav state disintegrated, its inclusive security
guarantees also disappeared, leaving individual successor states to fend
for themselves. Serbia and Croatia found themselves in a security
dilemma that led to competition for territory in Bosnia, an imprudent
114 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
realpolitik, and the ethnic cleansing of Muslims, principally by Bosnian
Serbs.
2
Demographic changes had been consequential in generating a
Muslim plurality, displacing the Serbs from their formerly dominant
position. The anticipation of and actual experience of losses by Bosnian
Serb commanders were associated with genocidal acts, as at Srebrenica.
The Irish famine
Before illustrating the impact of threat and its evocation of a cynical
realpolitik in the Irish famine of 184552, it is worthwhile to consider a
metaphor. Recall the comment by Holocaust survivor Henryk Grynberg
concerning the people of Dobre in Poland who beneted from elimina-
tion of the Jews. I will paraphrase, eliminating some material and
substituting key members of the British cabinet for the people of
Dobre, Irish for Jews, and country for town:
The British cabinet members werent monsters, and some of them sin-
cerely sympathized with the Irish. But at bottom they were pleased. Even
those who sympathized. So many places had opened up in the
country . . . They couldnt help taking a quiet pleasure in this. Even the
best of them, who found it hard to admit this to themselves.
3
The British government did not commit genocide, any more than did
the Polish gentiles of Dobre, yet both gained considerably, at least in the
short term, from the elimination of the respective victims. The famine
led directly to deaths of approximately 1 million people during the
famine itself, a generally acknowledged gure,
4
and an emigration pro-
cess that led to the depopulation of Ireland by at least 4 million addi-
tional people between the famine and World War I.
5
In 1881, nearly
40 percent of Irish-born persons were not living in Ireland.
6
Irish agriculture quickly rebounded from its previously moribund
state. Productivity of farm workers steadily increased after 1851 and,
most importantly, average farm size increased as well. Instead of the
steady subdivision of farms and tenancies as before the famine, a con-
solidation of farmland took place. Between 1853 and 1902 the smallest
farms of 15 acres actually decreased in number, while those over
2
See Posen 1993 for the security dilemma applied to ethnic conict.
3
Emphasis added; after Grynberg 1993, quoted in Polonsky and Adamczyk-Garbowska
2001, xxvi.
4
Kinealy 1994, 168.
5
Guinnane 1997, 101.
6
Ibid., 104.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 115
30 acres increased.
7
Economies of scale now had a profound effect on
Irish agricultural efciency. The time from 1850 to the mid-1870s was
a period of great prosperity in Irish agriculture.
8
But, afterward, the seeds
of bitterness and dissidence among the Irish planted during the famine
would return from the United States and elsewhere to haunt the British,
as will be detailed in chapter 17. For now, in order to understand the
dimensions of this temporary gain for Britain, we need to examine
Ireland at the time of the famine.
As of the last Irish census before the famine, that of 1841, the Irish
population was estimated at 8,175,124,
9
approximately the same as that
of England in 1800. In the four decades since the Act of Union in that
year, the Irish population had grown by 50 percent. And the population
growth was most rapid in the poorest, most heavily Roman Catholic
sections of the country in the south and west. Overall, the Irish popula-
tion was 40 percent of that of the United Kingdom as a whole.
10
Relative to Britain, Ireland was underdeveloped and, in further con-
trast to Britain, increasingly so. According to Christine Kinealy, The
percentage of the labour force engaged in the industry declin[ed] from
an estimated 43 percent in 1821 to 28 percent in 1841 . . . Between 1821
and 1841, for example, the rural workforce within Ireland increased by
an estimated 50 percent.
11
In Britain, on the other hand, the percentage
of the workforce in industry had already exceeded that in agriculture.
Great Britain was predominantly Protestant, with most adhering to the
Protestant Church of England. Ireland was heavily Roman Catholic,
with adherents of the Protestant Church of Ireland, the established
church (until 1869), numbering no more than 12 percent and declining
steadily in their relative share of the population.
12
And the Protestants as
a whole were divided mainly between the ofcial Church of Ireland and
the Presbyterians situated primarily in the north, descended principally
from Scottish settlers, encouraged to emigrate since the early seventeenth
century.
Irish numbers began to weigh very heavily in the middle of the nine-
teenth century, for the rapid growth of the Irish population began to
pose serious threats to the prevailing sociopolitical structure. Two
movements are relevant. First, in the early nineteenth century, Daniel
OConnell and his followers successfully campaigned for Catholic
emancipation, achieved in 1829.
13
But thereafter his campaign for repeal
7
Ibid., 43.
8
Ibid., 49.
9
Tanner 2001, 240.
10
Kinealy 1994, 9.
11
Ibid., 9.
12
Guinnane 1997, 67.
13
Boyce 1985, 262.
116 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland deeply threatened
the British. Created after the failure of the combined Irish uprisings and
invasion of Ireland by the French in 1798, the Union in British eyes had
taken on the sanction of fundamental law.
14
It was presumed to be a
bulwark of stability by British statesmen fearful of future French incur-
sions and of willing Irish collaborators. It was precisely this security
framework that was being challenged by Irish numbers.
OConnells demonstrations against the Act of Union were famous
for their legions of Roman Catholic Irish supporters. In Boyce, one can
see a portrait of one such massive demonstration held at Tara in 1843.
15
Another demonstration, that of June 8, 1843, in Kilkenny, was said to
have attracted 300,000 supporters in a town that today boasts no more
than 20,000 residents.
16
Shortly thereafter, OConnell was imprisoned,
but he was released after several months. Demonstrations of this mag-
nitude must have been deeply upsetting to the British government.
Equally unsettling were demonstrations of a different kind directed
against attempted reform of Irish agriculture. Irish landlords increas-
ingly were ejecting their tenant farmers in favor of pastures in which to
graze their sheep and cattle. The hovels in which the tenants lived were
often destroyed shortly after forced evictions. A movement to reverse
this process overtook Ireland in 182931, and in a sense was a socio-
economic precursor to the later attempts to repeal the Act of Union. The
Terry Alt movement, as it was called (for idiosyncratic reasons),
assembled hundreds of, and sometimes even more than 1,000, people
at a single site to dig up the pastures that formerly had been used by
tenant farmers. This process is described in the following manner:
The size of the crowds was certainly one of their most arresting features.
Though some involved only scores of people, most crowds numbered in
the hundreds and not a few included more than a thousand. They were
usually mixed in age and sex, comprising women and children as well as
adult males . . . In the typical case the diggers marched to their appointed
work in military order, with spades and pitchforks hoisted on their
shoulders, and with fers or other musicians playing before them.
Naturally, this ritual drew onlookers, who followed the marchers to the
designated place and lustily cheered them on as they stripped and set to
work. While some participants turned up the grass with their spades . . .
others broke the sods with their pitchforks . . . It was a ritual to toss the
14
Ibid. See also Foster 2001.
15
Boyce 1985, 262.
16
Rothe House exhibit, Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 117
sods of grass into the air and at the same time to raise a cry, such as Hey
for OConnell, and hey for Clare. Because the crowds were so large, it was
possible to turn up a eld of ve or ten acres in an hour or less, and it was
not unusual for one crowd to polish off several elds in a mornings work
of protest, sport and conviviality. Small parties of police . . . were no
use . . . Sizeable detachments of soldiers . . . soon brought the turning
up of pastures to an end.
17
The OConnell referred to here, of course, is the same OConnell who
later led the movement for repeal.
Twenty-one members of the Terry Alt movement were condemned to
death and fty-eight others were transported out of the British Isles, but
agrarian rebellion continued. In January 1831, William Blood, a land
agent for Lord Stradboke in County Clare, was ambushed and mur-
dered. By May of that year, nineteen members of the landowning class
were murdered, presumably by Terry Alts. Agrarian rebellion did not
cease, but effective armed resistance was defeated not by security forces
but the horrors of the potato famine.
18
These horrors the massive
depopulation as the result of death and the desperate need to emigrate
soon overshadowed and then displaced any serious efforts at rebellion.
Only a small and utterly ineffectual revolt occurred in 1848, easily put
down by the authorities.
19
In 1846, the rst serious famine year, the British government changed
from that of the Tory Sir Robert Peel to the Whig Lord John Russell.
Earlier, even in the midst of what appeared to be a typical small-scale
famine, Peel had made serious efforts to aid the affected population. He
established a temporary relief commission consisting of some of the
most competent members of the Irish administration. Peel also arranged
to buy large quantities of corn meal (maize) in the United States and
shipped it to Ireland for distribution to the most needy. Unfortunately,
the starving were never fully instructed in ways to cook the meal so that
ingested raw, as it often was, it led to bowel ailments and death.
20
However, as the famine worsened in 184647, the new government
proved to be increasingly inadequate to the task. Further, as time passed,
a resentment grew of the Irish peasant of whom it was said by Sir Charles
Trevelyan, permanent secretary at the Treasury, A fortnight planting, a
week or ten days digging and fourteen days turf cutting sufce for his
subsistence. During the rest of the year he is at leisure to follow his own
17
Emphasis in original; Geraghty 1998, 29091.
18
Ibid., 291.
19
Connolly 1995, 44.
20
Kinealy 1994, 46.
118 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
inclinations.
21
Throughout the famine period, when starvation was
rampant, large quantities of food were exported from Ireland to
England.
22
Encouragement of the Irish peasant to be more self-reliant as well as
concerns about the economy became dominant themes of the time,
especially after the scal crisis of 1847. And after 1847, ideological
and scal concerns, combined with a zealous determination to use the
calamity to bring about long-term improvements in the economy of
Ireland, took priority over the immediate needs of the distressed poor.
The consequence was a breakdown in the provision of relief.
23
And, by
1849, even the 100,000 ($480,000 at that time) deemed to be required
for famine relief was unavailable for this purpose.
24
But these traditional explanations of Britains inadequate response to
the famine fail to answer certain critical questions. Why the inordinate
concern for the work ethic of the Irish peasant and, more important,
why after 1847 was the so-called Gregory Clause of the Poor Relief Bill
instituted? This clause stipulated that tenants holding more than a
quarter-acre of land were not eligible for public assistance.
25
Becoming
law in June 1847, the worst of the famine years, it became the basis for
mass evictions of hundreds of thousands that yielded not only death by
starvation, but also by epidemic diseases of many sorts, made possible by
the weakened constitutions of the malnourished.
Why were the rapid population increase, underdevelopment, and
potential, though not actual dissidence of poor Irish Catholics so threat-
ening to Britain? An answer is to be found in the earlier invasion of
Ireland by the French and the attempted coalition of an external great
power enemy and native rebels that earlier had proven so devastating to
the British in the American Revolution. Even the external great power
was the same in both cases France. And while France was an ally of
Britain during the Entente Cordiale of the 1830s and early 1840s, that
condition would change radically precisely during the early stages of the
famine.
The effort to solve the Irish Question through draconian measures
can be fully understood only within the geopolitical security context of
the period. Russell himself actually opposed ejecting the Irish tenants
but came up against two of his cabinet members with Irish landholdings
who opposed leniency. One of these, Lord Palmerston, the foreign
21
Daly 1995, 132.
22
Woodham-Smith 1962, 75.
23
Kinealy 1994, 121.
24
O

Gra da 1999, 83.

25
Donnelly 1995, 159.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 119
secretary, was especially adamant. He also was the single most well-
known and widely inuential member of the cabinet. Some of his
statements are revealing. On March 31, 1848, Palmerston recorded to
the cabinet that it was useless to disguise the truth that any great
improvement in the social system of Ireland must be founded upon an
extensive change in the present state of agrarian occupation, and that
this change necessarily implies a long continued and systematic eject-
ment of small-holders and of squatting cottiers.
26
The cabinet exhib-
ited a general shudder when Lord Clanricarde (another landholder in
Ireland) made similar pronouncements with an equal degree of ruth-
lessness.
27
More directly on the matter of numbers, in Muriel
Chamberlains paraphrasing:
On [Lord Palmerstons] estate there were about 6,000 persons whom
some of our Friends would call my Poor, & say that I ought to employ &
support but they had grown to such numbers wholly without any
consent, concurrence or Encouragement of mine. Now that their accus-
tomed food had vanished by a Dispensation of Providence, they were
ten times more numerous than would be required for the protable
cultivation of the land and many times more numerous than the income
from the land would enable him to employ. The only solution he could
see was emigration.
28
Palmerston suggested that the government should subsidize emigration
by supplying money to landlords who would then send out emigrants.
And when Palmerston sent his own tenants off to Canada in the summer
and autumn of 1847, the Canadians were shocked at the conditions of
the immigrants, who arrived in a state of complete destitution.
29
Palmerstons behavior, as recounted in the Canadian press, was nothing
less than scandalous.
At the same time, Palmerston as foreign secretary was keenly aware of
security threats that an economically more developed, less heavily
Roman Catholic Ireland would have mitigated. His training included
terms as a junior lord at the Admiralty in 1807, after which, in 1809, he
became secretary at war for nearly twenty years. He was foreign minister
in 183041 and 184651, and later prime minister in 185558 and
185965. Clearly, Palmerston was not only a central gure in Britains
foreign policy establishment, but on the domestic scene as well.
26
Ibid., 163.
27
Ibid.
28
Chamberlain 1987, 65.
29
Ridley 1970, 322.
120 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
The collapse of the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France came
on Palmerstons watch as foreign minister. The issue centered on the
proposed Bourbon spouses of heirs to the Spanish throne, supported by
the French since the early 1840s. Palmerston strongly opposed these
marriages specically because of the virtual union between the Spanish
and French governments that these betrothals implied, but more gen-
erally because he regarded France, under whatever government, as the
main enemy of England.
30
Palmerston also particularly resented links
between the French and the Irish rebels.
31
Even before Palmerstons accession to the head of the foreign minis-
try, the Peel government was deeply anxious about this growth of French
inuence on the Iberian peninsula. Peel stated in 1844: Let us be
prepared for war . . . They (the French) are much more likely to pre-
sume upon our weakness than to take offence at our strength.
32
The
Duke of Wellington in 1845 studied the best ways to defend the British
Isles against attack by the French. As he later remarked in 1848, the year
of the Paris commune, there can be no doubt now of the object of the
disaffected in Ireland to deprive the Queen of her Crown! And to
establish a Republic. To obtain that object they are ready to arm and
attack the City of Dublin. God send us a good deliverance.
33
Palmerston, ever sensitive to these issues, stated in 1845 that: The
Channel is no longer a barrier. Steam navigation has rendered that
which was before impassable by a military force nothing more than a
river passable by a steam bridge.
34
A report by the Inspector General
Fortication remarked on the greater precautions necessary for the
south than for the north of Ireland in part because of the lesser reliability
of this largely Roman Catholic population,
35
soon to be engulfed by the
famine.
This period generally witnessed a greatly increased emphasis on
British vulnerability culminating in the Report of the Royal Commission
on the Defence of the United Kingdom, published in 1860. It said at one
point:
Having carefully weighed the foregoing considerations, we are led to the
opinion that neither our eet, our standing armies nor our volunteer
30
Bullen 1974, 5. More generally, Palmerston subscribed to principles of realpolitik: For
him, mutual suspicion between states that were natural rivals was predestined (Steele
1991, 309).
31
Chamberlain 1987, 74.
32
Quoted in Bullen 1974, 40.
33
Quoted in Sloan 1997, 116.
34
Quoted ibid., 115.
35
Ibid.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 121
forces, nor even the three combined, can be relied on as sufcient in
themselves for the security of the kingdom against foreign invasion. We
therefore proceed to consider that part of our instruction which directs
our attention especially to fortications.
36
Faced with these weaknesses, Palmerston argued for strengthening
national defenses, but even more generally Palmerston was convinced
that Englands power was the result of her progress.
37
If Britain were to successfully counter the French threat to its ascen-
dance, then the British Isles, most vulnerable perhaps on the west
coast of Ireland because of the possible coalition between the French
and Irish Catholic rebels, had to progress as quickly as possible.
Underdeveloped and partially seditious Ireland needed to be trans-
formed quickly and thoroughly. The famine as a Dispensation of
Providence could be used to further that end. According to
G. R. Sloan, The Act of Union which came into effect in 1800 did not
immediately achieve the objectives that British policy-makers intended,
but it began a process whereby at the end of the nineteenth century
Ireland had been integrated into a defense system of the United
Kingdom as a whole.
38
The importance of Ireland, with its many estuaries and more than a
few willing rebels, was not lost on the French. According to one French
writer, The independence of Ireland is necessary for the world. The
French Revolution spread the seeds of liberty throughout the Continent
of Europe. Perhaps the Irish Revolution will soon provide us with the
liberty of the seas.
39
A more direct attack on the principal basis of
British power cannot be envisioned; that attack would proceed through
the region of greatest British vulnerability Ireland. The British
response to the famine, particularly the absence of effective relief and
the wholesale eviction of peasants from their farms, stands squarely in
the tradition of cynical realpolitik that which ignores the consequences
of state inaction for victimized populations, but emphasizes only the
potential benets of that inaction for the state.
Perhaps it was this very real concern with state security in the con-
tinued presence of perceived dissidence that led Cecil Woodham-Smith
in a classic history of the famine to observe that:
36
Ibid., 117.
37
Bullen 1974, 54.
38
Sloan 1997, 109.
39
Quoted in Geraghty 1998, 26061.
122 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
It is not characteristic of the English to behave as they have behaved in
Ireland; as a nation, the English have proved themselves to be capable of
generosity, tolerance and magnanimity, but not where Ireland is con-
cerned. As Sydney Smith, the celebrated writer and wit wrote: The
moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid
adieu to common feeling, common prudence and common sense, and to
act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.
40
Germans and Jews in Poland
The transition to a policy of ethnic cleansing of Polands German and
Jewish populations before World War II illustrates the consequences
posed by a Germany rearming under Nazi rule and an equally hostile
Soviet Union. State insecurity evoking the response of a realpolitik
bordering on brute force-imprudence, but without the recent experi-
ence of loss (indeed, victory over the Soviets and an expanded territory
were achieved by the Poles in 1920), characterizes the Polish condition
during the interwar period. That the ethnic cleansing of Jews actually did
not yet come about is attributable only to the start of World War II.
Overt threat to the newstate of Poland began with the Locarno Pact of
October 1925. Although hailed in the West as a milestone in the con-
solidation of peace, for it gained German recognition of the inviolability
of Germanys western borders as prescribed in the Treaty of Versailles, in
the East it evoked quite the opposite reaction. Instead of a direct inter-
national guarantee of Polish borders, Locarno obtained a French guar-
antee of these borders, but only within the framework of the Covenant of
the League of Nations. In other words, in the event of hostile action
against Poland, France could act only after the cumbersome League
machinery had been put into motion, thereby delaying any international
assistance until it was probably too late to do any good. Thus, the
Franco-Polish alliance that had served as the principal bulwark of
Polish territorial integrity since 1921 had been diluted almost to the
point of uselessness. At least this was the conclusion reached by the
Polish General Staff and communicated to the Polish ambassador in
Paris in February 1926.
41
Gustav Stresemann, the German foreign minister, repeatedly
announced that Locarno did not limit Germanys right to obtain
40
Woodham-Smith 1962, 411.
41
Gieysztor et al. 1979, 56667.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 123
corrections to its eastern border.
42
Indeed, his personal antipathy to
Poland was well known. In 1928, for example, at a meeting of the League
Council, he shouted and pounded his st in response to statements of
the Polish foreign minister, August Zaleski, attacking the nationalist
activities of the Upper Silesian Volksbund, then under Polish govern-
ance. As Harald von Riekhoff remarks, in [Stresemanns] image the
idea of Germans living under Polish rule entailed elements of perver-
sion, while the reverse conformed to the natural order.
43
Two additional factors were to compound the threat. The SovietGerman
Neutrality Pact of April 1926 appeared to be explicitly directed against
Poland.
44
German troops had occupied Poland during World War I
and the PolishSoviet war had ended only ve years earlier. Hans von
Seeckt, commander of the German army, was known to hate Poland and
sought its destruction.
45
In order to avoid the limitations of the Treaty
of Versailles, German troops actually began secretly training on Soviet
soil; it would have been virtually impossible to conceal such military
maneuvers from the Poles. In 1924 and 1925, the Soviets had proposed
to the Germans an alliance that aimed at Polands partition and a
restoration of the 1914 borders.
46
Second, in 1925, Germany began a tariff war with Poland that com-
pounded its economic difculties. An internal economic insecurity was
thereby added to the military uncertainty, principally because half of
Polands trade was with Germany.
47
In May 1926, Marshal Jo zef Pisudski, hero of the PolishSoviet war,
overthrew the democratically elected government, signicantly retain-
ing only the minister of war and general inspector of the armed forces,
after appointing trusted colleagues to civilian posts.
48
Initially, Pisudski
announced that the coup would have no revolutionary consequences for
the polity or society,
49
which was largely true during the rst years of his
regime.
But despite Pisudskis desire to avoid antagonizing ethnic minorities
and thereby keep Polands borders intact, majorityminority relations
gradually deteriorated. In response to Ukrainian nationalist provoca-
tions, the infamous pacication of Eastern Little Poland occurred, in
which the rural population was terrorized by the army as it was billeted
42
Cienciala and Komarnicki 1984, 273.
43
Von Riekhoff 1971, 265.
44
Leslie et al. 1980, 158.
45
Lukowski and Zawadzki 2001, 210.
46
Von Riekhoff 1971, 26566.
47
Lukowski and Zawadzki 2001, 209.
48
Ibid., 213.
49
Gieysztor et al. 1979, 579.
124 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
locally and carried out its investigations of nationalist activity.
Abandoned Orthodox churches were blown up and there occurred
sporadic attempts to convert the Orthodox to Roman Catholicism.
In 1934, a Polish version of the Nazi concentration camp (called an
isolation camp) was constructed to house Communists as well as
members of the Ukrainian and Belorussian opposition to Polish rule.
50
Relations with both Germany and the Soviet Union were tense, at
times including crossborder violence. Typical of the period after 1930
was a speech delivered by the German minister of transport, Gottfried
Treviranus, on the steps of the Reichstag building. The speech itself
referred to the day, hopefully in the not too distant future, when all of
the lost territories in the East would be reincorporated into the German
Reich. The subsequent furor actually was intensied by Treviranuss
efforts at clarication, which hinted that Germanys peaceful attempts at
border revision stemmed solely from its then current absence of military
power, the Reichswehr having been limited to a maximum of 100,000 by
the Treaty of Versailles. Zaleski remarked that from this the whole
world had to conclude that Germany would make war on Poland if
she had an adequate army.
51
The subsequent period was replete with
border violations by Polish military aircraft and clashes between
German and Polish border police.
Violent incidents also were common in relations between Poland and
the Soviet Union. Most serious was the March 1928 assassination of
Peter Voikov, the Soviet minister in Warsaw. Stalin himself commented
on it in an article in Pravda. The Soviet government demanded an
immediate investigation with Soviet participation (reminiscent of the
assassination at Sarajevo and the aggressive Austro-Hungarian reaction
to it in 1914). Military preparations began on both sides, leaving the
French ambassador Jean Herbette to report to Aristide Briand that the
signs of preparation for a war are so numerous and open in the USSR
that one cannot doubt the intentions of the Soviet government.
52
But
cooler heads ultimately prevailed and hostilities were avoided.
Paradoxically, relations between Poland and Germany improved only
after Hitlers rise to power, culminating in the nonaggression pact of
January 1934. Hitlers plans did not include an initial foray against
Poland; he preferred instead to consolidate his power in Germany and
then Austria. Pisudski was happy to be free of the virtually unrelenting
pressure for border revision emanating from the previous German
50
Ibid., 58593.
51
Quoted in Von Riekhoff 1971, 331.
52
Quoted ibid., 291.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 125
regime.
53
But as it rearmed and successfully militarized the Rhineland in
deance of the Treaty of Versailles, as well as adding Austria to its
domains, Germany again began to loom as a serious threat. Soviet
armaments build-up also was proceeding apace in response both to
Germanys aggressive policies and to those of Japan in the Far East.
Poland, literally caught in the middle, turned on its German and Jewish
minorities that were assumed, rightly or wrongly, to be seditious.
Although cool at rst to the Nazi message, after 1935 the German
minority rapidly warmed to its appeal. At rst, the Polish government
did nothing to stem this tide. It was careful not to antagonize this
minority in order to placate the rapidly growing power to the West.
But despite these efforts by the Polish government, as early as 1936,
eighty-six Germans in Katowice were convicted of having formed a pro-
Nazi underground organization, which aimed at detaching Upper
Silesia from Poland by means of an armed uprising.
54
Relations were
further embittered by Polish efforts at land reform in the west that in the
Germans perception unfairly targeted them, as well as limitations on the
entry of Germans into the professions.
55
As in the Irish case, emigration
appeared to be the only solution. According to the German consul-general
at Thorn writing to the Foreign Ofce in October 1938:
In view of the severe pressure to which the German minority in Poland is
subjected, for [sic] it nally sees no alternative but to emigrate to the
Reich. These Germans maintain that, even if they themselves could
endure the situation, their children would certainly have no chance of
any start in life. The continual measures oppressive [sic] of the Polish
administration as recently evinced in the expulsions from the frontier
zone and in the closing of schools, etc., are sufcient evidence that it is
impossible for the Germans to continue living here, and that they must
leave the country if they are to survive. The prospects of waging a
successful battle against the Polish authorities, without considerable
active support from home, is so poor that the enormous emigration of
earlier days and again of the past two years has seriously weakened the
German community here.
56
The Jews also were not to be spared, and in many respects their situation
would worsen considerably because of the absence of emigration oppor-
tunities. Not only were the Jews to serve effectively as political sacricial
lambs to demonstrate Polish congruence with Nazi beliefs and thereby
53
Leslie et al. 1980, 183.
54
Polonsky 1972, 465.
55
German Foreign Ofce 1940, 10304.
56
Ibid., 141.
126 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
appease the Germans, but the Jews also were indelibly identied with
communism. According to an order of the day issued by the right-
wing National Party prior to a demonstration outside Warsaw in 1936:
The danger of the Judaeo-Communist conspiracy dispelled by the Polish
victory of 1920 has increased seriously in the last few years and has made
the menace of revolution hang over our country and over the other
countries of Europe, particularly over those which have not yet succeeded
in giving themselves a solid national regime. The victory of anarcho-
Communist forces is particularly in the interest of the Jews, who
are threatened by the tide of National movements, growing stronger
every day.
57
But it was not only political anti-Semitism that made this identication
between Judaism and communism. According to a pastoral letter of
February 1936 by Cardinal Hlond, the Roman Catholic primate of
Poland, read from all the Catholic pulpits in Poland, It is a fact that
Jews oppose the Catholic Church, are steeped in free-thinking, and
represent the avant-garde of the atheist movement, the Bolshevik move-
ment, and subversive action. The Jews have a disastrous effect on
morality and their publishing-houses dispense pornography. It is true
that Jews commit fraud, usury, and are involved in trade in human
beings.
58
To be sure, Jews were prominently active in the outlawed
Polish Communist Party, but the vast majority of Jews did not support
communism either in Poland or in the Soviet Union.
Polish governments tended to blur the distinction between hard-core
Communist supporters of the Soviet Union who happened to be of Jewish
origin, and others who, while socialist (e.g., Bundists; see chapter 14),
nevertheless were politically loyal to the Polish state. Government of-
cials suspected that these Jewish socialists, like all others, were secretly
subversive, if not openly so.
59
The imprudence of these ofcials in their
realpolitik was manifest. Throughout this period, the Polish foreign
minister, Jo zef Beck, regarded the USSR as Polands principal
enemy.
60
Economic measures taken against the Jews became increasingly harsh.
After the onset of the Great Depression, a moratorium on the debts of
peasants in 1933 was not extended to traders, principally Jews. They also
were now almost entirely excluded from the timber trade, a eld in
57
Quoted in Polonsky 1972, 41617.
58
Quoted in Vital 1999, 767.
59
Ibid., 785.
60
Leslie et al. 1980, 203.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 127
which Jews had once played the principal role. The tax burden on
predominantly Jewish occupations was disproportionately high.
Whereas Jews constituted 10 percent of the population, they were pay-
ing between 35 and 40 percent of all taxes. New restrictions were
imposed on the entry of Jews into trade schools and universities. In
1938, fully one-half of Polands Jews could not afford to pay a 5 zoty
(then roughly 50 cents) communal tax. By the end of the decade,
approximately one out of every three Jews was dependent on relief,
largely nanced by the American Jewish community. According to one
astute Jewish leader in Lwo w: A year or two ago, 40 percent of our
people applied for aid to the community, this year it is 50 percent., the
next year or the year after that it will be 60 percent. We are waiting for
death.
61
By the late 1930s the Polish government had settled on a policy of
ethnic cleansing its Jewish as well as its German population. The pro-
portion of Jews in major Polish cities such as Warsaw, o dz, Lwo w, and
Lublin was in excess of 30 percent and increasing.
62
Most of these Jews
were impoverished. In June 1936, Prime Minister (also General) Sawoj-
Skadkowski told the Polish Sejm (national legislature) that economic
conict between Jews and Poles entailed a struggle for Polands sur-
vival.
63
A leader of the principal political party, OZON (Camp of National
Unity), General Stanisaw Skwarczyn ski and 116 of his parliamentary
colleagues declared in 1938 that a radical reduction of the number of
Jews in Poland by means of a massive emigration was required.
64
A set
of thirteen resolutions was adopted, indicating how reduction in the
number of Jews was to be effected.
65
As early as September 1934, Beck declared to the League of Nations
that Poland was not required to safeguard the rights of its minorities. In
1936, the Polish delegate to the Leagues Economic Commission, upon
Becks instructions, claimed that the Jewish problem in Poland, espe-
cially its cities, required rapid measures of relief, hopefully through
large-scale emigration. Almost immediately thereafter, the Polish dele-
gate to the Leagues Political Commission raised the same issue of Jewish
emigration. The Polish government also strongly supported Zionist
attempts to increase emigration to Palestine, but British measures
restricting Jewish immigration thwarted these efforts.
61
Quoted in Polonsky 1972, 470.
62
Vital 1999, 765.
63
Ibid., 771.
64
Polonsky 1972, 466.
65
Vital 1999, 771.
128 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
The following year, a group of Poles visited Paris with the suggestion
that Madagascar, then a French colony, be designated a site for Jewish
emigration. Other locations also were explored, but the ood of Jewish
emigrants from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia led to an
increasingly hostile worldwide response to Jewish immigration, a
theme that will be explored in chapter 11. By November 1938, the
principal newspaper of the National Democratic Party stated the partys
wish To show the Jews the door; in order to effect this outcome, one
should push them through by means of a surgical operation [sic] which
would deprive them legally of the means to live in Poland.
66
Within one month of Pisudskis death, in June 1935 a massacre of
Jews took place in Grodno. The following year witnessed intermittent
pogroms throughout Poland that continued until the war broke out.
67
Jewish university students were forced either to attend lectures seated in
separate benches set aside for them or to stand, which the vast majority
chose to do. Only the onset of World War II prevented legislation
depriving Jews legally of the means to live in Poland from being passed
in the Sejm.
68
Poland was on the verge of either ethnic cleansing its Jews
and/or exclusion of its Jewish minority from public life.
Muslims in Bosnia
Threat of numbers also weighed heavily in the ethnic cleansing of
Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Ethnic cleansing was com-
mitted by all major actors in Bosnia Serbs, Croats, and Muslims but
the greater part of the ethnically cleansed population was victimized by
the Serbs. As a consequence, the Bosnian Serbs will be emphasized in the
following account. In contrast to the preceding cases, the Srebrenica
massacre incorporates a clear genocidal element within the overall
ethnic cleansing.
The demography of Bosnia-Herzegovina underwent a dramatic
change in the decades preceding the Yugoslav wars. In 1961, Muslims
constituted only 26 percent of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
with the Serbs comprising 43 percent. By 1991, virtually a complete
reversal had occurred with the Muslims rising to 44 percent and the
Serbs dropping to 31 percent.
69
Many Serbs had migrated from Bosnia
to Belgrade or other locations inside Serbia proper. A differential birth
66
Quoted in Polonsky 1972, 468.
67
Dubnov 1973, 88081.
68
Vital 1999, 772.
69
Woodward 1995, 33.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 129
rate between Muslims and Serbs also favored the former. Thus, from
a near majority in 1961 or at least a large plurality, the Serbs now were
a distinct minority. One groups former dominance was exchanged for a
secondary status. And all of this was in addition to the genocidal
elimination of a large portion of the Bosnian Serb population by the
fascist Croatian Ustase (with some Bosnian Muslim collaboration) in
alliance with Nazi Germany.
In Titos Yugoslavia under single-party Communist rule, such a
reversal of fortune, however dramatic, would not necessarily yield a
commensurate diminution of inuence. However, by the early 1990s,
more than a decade after Titos death, democratic reforms ensured that
ballots would count very heavily in the power distribution. The desire
for electoral victories and the resulting power gain stoked the nation-
alistic res. Local politicians within the republics sought to maximize
their own political positions in republican elections as well as the posi-
tions of the individual republics vis-a` -vis the federal government and
competing republics.
70
Indeed, ethnic cleansing, and its genocidal cor-
ollary, had its roots in a democratization process associated with the
emergence of sovereignty in the new post-Cold War period. According
to the Badinter Arbitration Commission and the European Community
(EC) support of its ruling, international recognition of national sover-
eignty required a referendum of the residents of a given territory on their
choice of a state.
71
Military control was not sufcient; a vote was required. Thus, the only
guarantee of eventual incorporation of a strategically or economically
desired territory within the borders of a state was the conformity of the
(ethnoreligious) identity of most of the residents of that territory with
that of the incorporating state. Ethnic cleansing, therefore, became a
preferred modus operandi to maximize the security of the emerging
state. As Susan Woodward comments:
States are more than communities of political identity. In addition to
legitimacy and citizens, they require strategically defensible borders,
economic assets sufcient to survive against external threats, and a
monopoly on the use of force over territory claimed. The borders of the
republics had never had to satisfy the needs of independent states. Once
nationalists turned to state-building, there was an additional reason on
many sides for contesting existing republican borders. While political
70
Janjic 1995.
71
Woodward 1995, 292.
130 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
rhetoric and propaganda continued to emphasize ethnic criteria, the
actual goals of military activity would be driven by strategic objectives.
72
Serbia, despite its domination of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA),
had legitimate security concerns as the dissolution of the former
Yugoslavia loomed on the horizon. The July 1991 accord at Brioni
stipulated the withdrawal of all JNA units from Slovenia, thereby imply-
ing international recognition of that new state. As a consequence, Prime
Minister Jo zsef Antall of Hungary warned Serbia that it could not
assume that its province of Vojvodina with its large Hungarian minority
would continue to be part of Serbia. We gave Vojvodina to Yugoslavia.
If there is no more Yugoslavia, then we should get it back, declared
Antall, referring to the 1920 Treaty of Trianon.
73
This verbal threat was
supported by the earlier sale of at least 36,000 Kalashnikov ries to the
Republic of Croatia in 1990. Serbia, therefore, could legitimately feel
threatened not only by the newly emerging states of the former
Yugoslavia, but by neighboring existing states as well.
German domination of EC political decision making at this time
raised perhaps even deeper security concerns for Serbia. The taking on
of Croatian fascist Ustase symbols by Franjo Tu dman, the Croatian
leader,
74
as the Croatian state emerged, of course, was hardly reassuring
to the Serbs. Memories of the mass murder of at least 500,000 Serbs by
the fascist Croatian state in alliance with Nazi Germany during World
War II were rekindled by Tu dmans behavior.
The recent German unication and German emergence as the clear
economic, even political leader of the EC made matters far worse. After
considerable lobbying by the Croatian and Slovenian leadership as well
as by the Vatican, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minis-
ter, emerged as an unequivocal supporter of Croatian and Slovenian
independence.
75
When the actual recognition, by Germany, of both new
countries came on December 23, 1991
76
with agreement of the remain-
ing EC members, apparently bullied by the newly augmented Germany
the Western threat became palpable. With growing economic ties to
Germany, the Slovenian and Croatian economies, already burgeoning
relative to the remainder of Yugoslavia, and the presence of NATO
nearby, the JNA and mainly its Serbian leadership would feel an immi-
nent threat to the Yugoslav state.
72
Ibid., 267.
73
Quoted ibid., 219.
74
Glenny 1996, 1113.
75
Ibid.
76
Woodward 1995, 184.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 131
Although politically Yugoslavia had traversed a middle way
between East and West during the Cold War, nevertheless, by the mid-
1980s the JNAs contingency plans (Rampart-91) were based on the
assumption that invasion would most likely come from the West.
NATO maneuvers in Southern Europe in 1985 and 1986 emphasized
this threat, as did Slovenian and Croatian appeals to NATO for protec-
tion from the JNA during the early phases of Yugoslav dissolution.
77
Bosnia was pivotal in that dissolution, for Serbia and Croatia, already
at war at the time of the EC recognition of Bosnian independence on
April 6, 1992, would vie for maximizing the security of their own states
on Bosnian territory. Recall from chapter 2 the efforts of the Serbs to
persuade the Bosnian Muslims to remain within the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia. Within a newly independent Bosnia, a Serbian minority
would be subservient to a MuslimCroat majority, which the Serbs
(in both Bosnia and Serbia) feared might seek alliance with Croatia
and perhaps even Germany.
Bosnia also was pivotal to the JNA. During the 1980s, 4055 percent
of the Bosnian economy was tied to military industries. Sixty to
80 percent of the armys physical assets (armaments factories, supply
routes, airelds, mines and basic raw materials, stockpiles, training
schools, oil depots) were located in Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the eve of
the war, 68 percent of the federal armys 140,000 troops were stationed
in the republic. To the extent that the Yugoslav army was ghting a war
for its own integrity and state, it could not easily be a neutral party in
Bosnia-Herzegovina or abandon its own economic foundations.
78
A two-tiered threat to the Serbs emerged from Serbian numerical
weakness within Bosnia coupled with the looming presence of the newly
united Germany at the head of the EC. The end result of the military
clashes and ethnic cleansing was a near-equal division of Bosnia between
the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (the Bosnian MuslimCroat
Federation) holding 51 percent of the territory and the Republika
Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Republic) occupying 49 percent with corres-
ponding ethnic majorities within each. The two halves together formed
the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but with rights of each half to
afliate with other political entities, if they so wished.
79
Yet, as we know, there were genocidal elements to the ethnic clean-
sing, particularly on the part of the Serbs. And here, in contrast to the
previous cases, loss was far more tangible for the Serbs than it was either
77
Ibid., 72, 136.
78
Ibid., 259.
79
Burg and Shoup 1999, 367.
132 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
for the Poles or the British at the times of their respective efforts at or
acquiescence in ethnic cleansing. This loss was not only that of the mass
murder of Serbs during World War II, important as it was. Its signi-
cance was echoed in the building of Serbian concentration camps for
Muslims such as Omarska in the Prijedor region at major sites of Serbian
deportations and mass murder by the Ustase during the early 1940s.
80
In
addition, the head of Omarska, Dr. Milan Kovacevic, was born in
Jasenovac, the site of the most deadly and infamous of the Ustase
concentration camps. As noted earlier, Jasenovac for the Serbs has the
same signicance as does Auschwitz for the Jews.
81
But, in addition,
there were anticipated signicant territorial losses that likely inuenced
the mass murder at Srebrenica, one of the genuinely genocidal efforts on
the part of the Serbs.
Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb, was in charge of the genocidal behavior
in Srebrenica. He had been commander of the Serb garrison at Knin, the
most important city in the Serb-held Croatian krajina, and later became
head of the Bosnian Serb army.
82
Thousands of Muslim men were killed
after the Bosnian Serb army completed its conquest of Srebrenica on
July 12, 1995.
83
Mladic was operating in the domain of losses in two
senses. Like other Serb ofcers in the old JNA, he had lost his Partisan
father in battle with the Croatian Ustase. His worldview was not unlike
that of many Nazis, such as Himmler (see chapter 8). According to
Mladic, Regardless of what we decide, the west will continue to imple-
ment its infernal plan. What is at stake is an attempt to disunite the
Orthodox world, and even annihilate it.
84
More important, perhaps, was the conclusion he must have reached
that the Serb-held krajina in Croatia would soon be lost to a Croatian
offensive. Mladics task as commander of the Bosnian Serb army was to
keep a corridor open to the krajina through Bosnia.
85
As the former
commander of Knin, he would have been highly sensitive to this military
requirement. Yet during the late spring and early summer it must have
been obvious that the krajina would not be held. By early July, just prior
to the Srebrenica massacres, the Croatian army had made signicant
gains, putting their artillery and troops within striking distance of Knin.
As early as July 15, the NewYork Times was reporting the Croatian build-
up.
86
It must have been obvious much earlier to a highly interested
80
Judah 2000, 23536.
81
Ibid., 129, 236.
82
Ibid., 230.
83
Burg and Shoup 1999, 32425.
84
Quoted in Judah 2000, 231.
85
Woodward 1995, 262.
86
Burg and Shoup 1999, 342, 461.
T H R E A T O F N U M B E R S , R E A L P O L I T I K , A N D E T H N I C C L E A N S I N G 133
Bosnian Serb military leader like Mladic . When the Croats launched
their offensive on the krajina on August 4, the krajina Serb military put
up little or no resistance. Hundreds of thousands of Serb refugees ed to
Serb-held regions in Bosnia and Serbia.
87
Reasons for the lack of krajina Serb resistance rested not only on the
obvious massive Croatian buildup. US Army chief of staff, General Carl
Vuono, is reported to have met ten times with senior Croatian ofcers
prior to the attack.
88
But Slobodan Milosevic himself had apparently
signed on to an exchange of populations wherein Srebrenica would
become Serb-held, while the krajina would fall to the Croats. The krajina
Serbs had an arsenal of rockets that could have been used to shell
Croatian cities in the event of a successful offensive. Indeed, they did
just that, ring a rocket at the heart of Zagreb in the midst of May during
the Croatian offensive on western Slavonia. A furious Milosevic then
seized many of the rockets from the krajina Serbs. Clearly, Serbia would
be of no help to them.
89
According to Tim Judah:
Thinking like this [population exchanges] was the green light for the
conquest not only of Srebrenica but of Krajina too. Even if there were no
formal meetings in which such forms of brutal population exchanges
were mooted, the messages were clearly understood by all concerned. The
disaster was that, while it was possible, if not highly likely, that the
Croatian offensive on Krajina would drive out its population, no one
had foreseen that Mladic would oversee the wholesale slaughter of thou-
sands of Srebrenicas men after it duly fell in July.
90
Being situated within the domain of losses, however, could lead Mladic
to just such an outcome.
The discussion of realpolitik and ethnic cleansing, including a geno-
cidal element is now complete. The following chapter empirically exam-
ines the expanded theory in which realpolitik is combined with loss in
our three cases of genocide.
87
Ibid., 331.
88
Ibid., 339.
89
Judah 2000, 301.
90
Ibid.
134 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
7
Realpolitik and loss
The path is nowopen for an empirical examination of the full theoretical
complement of realpolitik, loss, and their consequences for genocide, as
suggested in chapter 5. Loss is the initial variable that sets the entire
sequence in motion, ending in genocide. In each of the three cases of
genocide studied here, rst the domain of losses and state insecurity
(suggesting the beginnings of brute force realpolitik) are explored,
followed by risk acceptance, minimization, and loss compensation as
indicated in gure 5.1. Examination of altruistic punishment will be left
to the succeeding chapter.
The Holocaust
The domain of losses and state insecurity
Turning rst to the most extensive genocide and one that is most
surprising because of the utter absence of opposition, among most
Jews, to either Germany or German culture prior to the Nazi period,
World War I provides the key. Indeed, World War I is the reference
point around which many, even most of the Nazi perceptions were
framed. As we saw in chapter 6, territorial losses were not conned to
former colonies and ethnically Polish territories in the East, but also
encompassed the enormous losses of European territory occupied by
Germany in 1918 prior to the Armistice.
The dimension of loss was magnied immeasurably by the appear-
ance of refugees from the lost territories. A contraction of socio-
economic space had been effected with visible consequences.
1
If, as did
many Germans, one measures the territorial losses from June 1918 when
1
As early as the middle of the nineteenth century, loss and migration were to be found in
Central Europe. Defeat of Austria by Prussia in 1866 was to lead to political reforms that
eventually resulted in an extraordinarily large Czech population in Vienna, Hitlers early
political training ground. It is estimated that nearly half of Viennas population in 1910
135
much of Eastern Europe and Ukraine and portions of France and
Belgium were under German and Austro-Hungarian authority, then
the contraction would appear to be immense.
2
While in the election of
1912 it had become apparent that anti-Semitic political parties had lost
virtually all of their inuence,
3
the same certainly could not be said of
the post-World War I period.
Eastern territories lost to Poland gave rise to German-identied
refugees, as did the Baltic states now governed by indigenous popula-
tions unwilling to continue experiencing German land ownership. Many
of these Baltic Germans, including the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg,
were to be rabid supporters of the Nazi cause. These migrations and
expulsions continued until the start of World War II (see the preceding
chapter).
At the same time, many Jews crossed into Germany eeing the
pogroms of Petlura and other Ukrainians, as well as White Russian
nationalists. The image of both the German and the Jew on an equal
footing as uprooted minorities must have been anathema to the tradi-
tional German,
4
indeed ubiquitous European Christian, view that the
Jew was to be held in a subordinate position.
Certainly the defeat of Germany in World War I is important in
understanding Nazi genocidal behavior during World War II; the sin-
gular perception of that defeat is crucial for with his abdication, the
kaiser blamed the Jews bitterly for Germanys defeat. This is the infa-
mous stab in the back accusation, or as the kaiser put it in a letter to
General August von Mackensen in December 2, 1919:
The deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a people in
history, the Germans have done onto [sic] themselves. Egged on and
misled by the tribe of Juda [sic] whom they hated, who were guests
was either from Bohemia or of Bohemian descent (Hamann 1999, 307). In 1943, Hitler
remarked that Ive managed to get the Jews out of Vienna, now I also want to get the
Czechs out of there (ibid., 324). Signicantly, the origins of the Nazi Party are to be
found in anti-Czech agitation that led to the formation of the German Workers Party
(DAP) in 1903 that later become the National Socialist German Workers Party
(NSDAP) under Hitlers leadership (ibid., 25960).
2
Evans 2004, 5253.
3
Melson 1992, 119.
4
According to Hitler on April 4, 1942: Our upper classes, whove never bothered about
the hundreds of thousands of German emigrants or their poverty, give way to a feeling of
compassion regarding the fate of the Jews whom we claim the right to expel. Our
compatriots forget too easily that the Jews have accomplices all over the world, and
that no beings have greater powers of resistance as regards adaptation to climate. Jews
can prosper anywhere, even in Lapland and Siberia (Hitler [1942] 2000, 397).
136 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
among them! That was their thanks! Let no German ever forget this, nor
rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated [vertilgt
und ausgerottet] from German soil! This poisonous mushroom on the
German oak-tree!
5
Only in this way could many Germans understand their countrys
traumatic transition from near-European hegemon in the spring of
1918 to the truncated and militarily constrained pariah of the early
1920s.
In the hierarchical society of early twentieth-century Germany, such
sentiments would have had considerable weight. Certainly, Hitler agreed
completely. Speaking to the Czechoslovakian foreign minister Franzisek
Chvalkovsky on January 21, 1939, Hitler stated The Jews have not
brought about the 9 November 1918 for nothing. This day will be
avenged.
6
And in anticipation of the massive deportations to the East
and a loss compensation that would not yet constitute genocide, Hitler
summarized on October 25, 1941:
From the rostrum of the Reichstag I prophesied to Jewry that, in the event
of wars proving inevitable, the Jew would disappear from Europe. That
race of criminals has on its conscience the two million dead of the rst
[sic] World War, and now already hundreds of thousands more. Let
nobody tell me that all the same we cant park them in the marshy parts
of Russia! Whos worrying about our troops? Its not a bad idea, by the
way, that public rumour attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews.
Terror is a salutary thing.
7
Sentiments concerning Jewish responsibility for the outcome of World
War I were rife throughout the Nazi hierarchy. Heinrich Himmler, the
chief architect and implementer of the Nazi genocide, perhaps expressed
them most clearly, also linking them to risk minimization. In a now-
infamous speech to senior SS ofcers in Posen in October 1943,
Himmler referred openly to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermina-
tion of the Jewish people. Further: If the Jews were still lodged in the
body of the German nation, we would probably have reached by now the
stage of 191617.
8
According to Himmler, had the Jews not been
removed from Germany, by whatever means, then defeat would have
been imminent in 1943, as it was in 191617 when the Jews were present.
5
Quoted in Rohl 1994, 210.
6
Quoted in Kershaw 2000a, 127.
7
Hitler [1942] 2000, 87.
8
Emphasis added; quoted in Burleigh 2000, 660.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 137
All of this despite the reality of 100,000 Jewish men under arms
(80,000 having served in combat), 12,000 Jewish dead, at the front and
35,000 decorated for battleeld bravery. These statistics are out of
all proportion to the roughly 500,000 Jewish citizens living in Germany
in 1914.
9
Equally consequential for later developments was the period imme-
diately thereafter, called the Great Disorder by Gerald Feldman.
10
This
was the period of massive ination during which the dollar exchange
rate of the paper mark in Berlin went from a yearly average of 4.28 in
1914 to 534,914 in 1923. The greatest rate of increase was in 192223.
11
Clearly, pensioners and those living on xed incomes, either salaried or
based on investments, had their nancial lives ruined. The business
climate also was devastated. One economist called it
one of the outstanding episodes in the history of the twentieth century.
Not only by reason of its magnitude but also by reason of its effects, it
looms large on our horizon. It was the most colossal thing of its kind in
history: and, next probably to the Great War itself, it must bear respon-
sibility for many of the political and economic difculties of our genera-
tion. It destroyed the wealth of the more solid elements in German
society: and it left behind a moral and economic disequilibrium, apt
breeding ground for the disasters which have followed. Hitler is the
foster-child of the ination.
12
Additionally, the deep malaise was attributed to the economic and
political mismanagement of the German Republic. The rst major act
of violence against a prominent Jew, the assassination of Foreign
Minister Walter Rathenau in 1922, was not only an expression of the
extraordinary difculties of the time, but a harbinger of much worse
things to come. The Great Depression, begun by the stock market crash
of 1929, would bring back memories of the Great Disorder. Now
unemployment was rampant and the economy once again in shambles.
Enormous and unimagined societal insecurity had appeared twice
within less than a decade with, of course, enormous consequences as
well. The November 1918 revolution in Bavaria, soon to be the hotbed of
Nazism, occurred even before that which swept the Reich. It was a more
radical revolution and one that happened to have several Jews among its
leaders, including those with East European origins and Bolshevik con-
nections. At the head stood Kurt Eisner, a Jewish journalist and left-wing
9
Fischer 1998, 120.
10
Feldman 1993.
11
Ibid., 5.
12
Robbins 1937, 5.
138 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
socialist who earlier had organized the January strike of 1916 in an
attempt to initiate industrial unrest. As Kershaw put it, this revolution,
albeit unsuccessful (Eisner was assassinated soon after its start) devel-
oped in ways that were to leave a profound mark on Hitler.
13
The
connection with Bolshevism was particularly important for, as Hitler
himself said of Bolshevism and incidentally capitalism as well,
14
the
bearers of this [Bolshevik] system are also in both cases the same: Jews
and only Jews!
15
By 1925, the German-Jewish population had grown to 565,000. But
more important, at least for the Nazis, was its prominence. As of 1930,
Jews owned approximately two-thirds of Germanys larger department
and chain stores and almost half of Germanys textile rms. At least half
of the German industry in Upper Silesia, including its largest steel
manufacturer, was owned or managed by Jews. The two largest publish-
ing houses (Ullstein and Mosse) were owned by Jews. In addition to
prominence in journalism as well as the arts and sciences, more than half
of the lawyers in Berlin were Jewish.
16
As bad as the situation was in Germany before World War II, it was
worse in Austria, especially Vienna, site of Hitlers early political educa-
tion and a preferred location for Jewish immigrants from Galicia and
elsewhere within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Post-World War I
Austria, of course, was a rump state vastly shrunken in size from its
prewar imperial expanse. During World War II, a disproportionately
large number of concentration camp guards and SS men were Austrian.
A common political framework greatly facilitated the migration from
one part of the empire to another. Between 1860 and 1910, the Jewish
population of Vienna rose from 6,200 to 175,300, roughly a quadrupling
from 2.2 to 8.7 percent.
17
By the end of World War I, their number had
increased beyond 10 percent both because of a somewhat larger number
of Jews (200,000), and a smaller total Viennese population (1,865,000)
as the result of the privation and immigration stemming from the war.
18
13
Kershaw 1998, 112.
14
On June 25, 1941, Joseph Goebbels illustrated this presumed connection between
Bolshevism and capitalism. Sumner Welles [US undersecretary of state] has spoken
on behalf of the USA. Totally subservient to Red Bolshevism. The old, so-familiar
alliance between capitalism and Bolshevism has been resurrected in the foreign-policy
eld (Goebbels 1983, 429).
15
Quoted in Kershaw 2000a, 431.
16
Sachar 2002, 242.
17
Hamann 1999, 326.
18
Sachar 2002, 179.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 139
In 1912, almost half of the secondary school population was Jewish
(47.4 percent). Nearly one-third of all university students in Vienna
were Jewish; in 1913 Jews constituted more than 40 percent of all
medical students in Vienna. In excess of 25 percent of the law students
were Jewish. To gauge the rapidity of this demographic change, one has
only to note that of 681 lawyers in Vienna in 1889 over half, 394, were
Jewish. Two decades earlier, the number was 33. Wealthy Jews occupied
newly constructed mansions in Vienna that were the envy of the aris-
tocracy. Because of the tolerant reign of Franz Josef II, Austro-
Hungarian Jews were protected, even rewarded with medals and titles
by the grateful monarch.
19
By the mid-1930s, Jews constituted 62 per-
cent of Viennas lawyers and 47 percent of physicians. A minimum of
70 percent of the citys wholesale and retail businesses were in Jewish
hands.
20
In Germany, a sign of the times was a 1919 memorandum from the
Reichsbank to the interior minister saying:
Because of their shrewdness, their connections with one another and with
third parties, and their skill in using loopholes in the regulations . . . to
get around the legal requirements, a complete success against their mis-
chief is unlikely to be achieved . . . unless it proves possible to keep these
unwanted foreign guests, whose presence from a political as well as from
a food and housing perspective is not exactly advantageous, out of
Germany.
21
In Germany, the rise of Jews to prominence threatened the traditional
hierarchical dominance of Jews by Christians. It was not only prominent
Jews that could be threatening to that hierarchy, but the rapid rise of the
German-Jewish middle class could also have that consequence.
According to Albert Lindemann, Jews themselves in nineteenth-
century Germany were predominantly of lower-middle-class origin,
but their rapid upward mobility had only weak parallels in the Gentile
lower-middle class, a development that threatened the self-image of
many of its members.
22
This threat is to be found in the appellation
Judenrepublik for the Weimar Republic, perhaps as an expression of
traditional German anti-Semitism or perhaps also as a shocked recogni-
tion that a people that only a generation or two ago had been living on
the sidelines of German political life and even had legal barriers to their
19
Hamann 1999, 32728.
20
Sachar 2002, 179.
21
Quoted in Feldman 1993, 20102.
22
Lindemann 1997, 116.
140 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
full participation were now full and perhaps even leading participants in
the founding of the new German state. The rise to cultural and scientic
prominence of world-renowned Jewish gures such as Albert Einstein
and Sigmund Freud also could have appeared to be consistent with
communist political revolution in the name of the revolutionary gure
with Jewish origins Karl Marx.
In Vienna in 1920, there occurred a concerted campaign against
Viennas Eastern Jews, many of themrecently arrived, including physical
violence. And in 1923, all Jews who had settled in Bavaria since 1914
were expelled, principally, of course, the Eastern Jewish refugees.
Between November 5 and November 8, the twentieth-centurys rst
German pogrom occurred. In Berlins ghetto, Jews were robbed and
beaten by a rampaging mob estimated to be approximately 10,000 in
size.
23
Soon, German battleeld losses during World War II, beginning
in August 1941, would signal that the horric losses of World War I would
be augmented by the unfolding of vicious combat on the Eastern front.
24
Risk acceptance, minimization, and loss compensation
The onset of the Holocaust is generally dated from the appearance of the
Einsatzgruppen in the East shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union
on June 22, 1941.
25
These mobile killing squads would later
be supplemented and ultimately replaced by the extermination camps
dotting the East European countryside. At the same time, despite expres-
sions of Nazi hubris, the invasion of the Soviet Union was seen to be the
riskiest military venture undertaken at that point by the Third Reich.
There are many indicators of Hitlers awareness of this gigantic risk.
Even as operational plans for Barbarossa, as the invasion was code-
named, were put into place in early 1941, Hitler was unsure how things
would go. He was distrustful of his own military leaders, uncertain about
the strength of the Russians, and disappointed in the intransigence of
the British.
26
Hitler also was likely aware of the need for a quick
strategic victory. Not only was Britain undefeated, but Hitler was con-
vinced, correctly as it turns out, that if the United States would not
shortly be an active participant in the war then at least it would supply
massive amounts of materiel should the war drag on into another year.
27
23
Aschheim 1982, 24243. See also Wertheimer 1987.
24
Mayer 1988; Burrin 1994.
25
Hilberg 1985; Bartov 1992; Burleigh 2000; Kershaw 2000a.
26
Kershaw 2000a, 344.
27
Ibid., 388.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 141
The Soviet Union as a potential adversary needed to be eliminated
quickly, in order to avoid the linkage of its resources with those of the
West.
28
According to prospect theory, Crucial is the argument that
people will run much higher risks to avoid losses than to make gains.
29
Of course, the example of Napoleon and his catastrophic invasion of
Russia weighed heavily on Hitlers mind, as it did on those of many of
his military leaders. General Franz Halder, army chief of staff, noted in
his diary as early as January 28, 1941, as Barbarossa was being planned
that Purpose is not clear . . . Risk in the west must not be underesti-
mated. It is possible that Italy might collapse after the loss of her
colonies, and we get a southern front in Spain, Italy, and Greece. If we
are then tied up in Russia, a bad situation will be made worse.
30
Hitler
himself signaled his uncertainty and hesitancy by not moving his head-
quarters to East Prussia until thirty-six hours into the conict, in con-
trast to his procedure in the earlier Western engagements.
31
According
to Hitler, the invasion of Russia constituted a risk, even a big risk.
32
Two additional interrelated factors were to increase the risk and
thence the brutality. First, as a consequence of the failure to defeat
Britain in 1940, a naval blockade prevented the arrival of grain and
oilseeds. Fowl were being slaughtered because they consumed too much
feed. The invasion of the Soviet Union would signicantly disrupt
essential food supplies from the East; as a consequence all available
food would be transported to Germany, leaving Soviet citizens in
major cities to starve. The Reichs food ministry even drafted plans to
allow x [sic] millions of people to starve.
33
Second, because of the enormity of the Barbarossa task and its extra-
ordinarily long supply lines, the army to a large extent would have to live
off the land. Much of the food necessary for the army would be requisi-
tioned by the German military, again entailing starvation for the local
inhabitants. This condition was exacerbated by the necessity for a quick
28
For Hitlers keen awareness of this possibility, see Goebbels 1983, 414. Saul Friedlander
1967, 313, concludes that If Hitler had actually succeeded in smashing Russia swiftly,
an Anglo-American victory using conventional weapons alone would have been hard to
achieve. As we know from the history of the Normandy landing in 1944, Operation
Overlord would have been impossible if 174 German divisions had not been tied up in
the East.
29
Jervis 1992, 202.
30
Halder 1988, 314.
31
Warlimont 1964, 172.
32
Quoted in Burrin 1994, 134. Reecting the insecurity of the moment, Hitler said, On
22 June, a door opened before us, and we didnt know what was behind it . . . the heavy
uncertainty took me by the throat (quoted in Cooper 1990, 285).
33
Gerlach 2000a, 214.
142 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
victory prior to a likely American intervention, as we saw, and requiring
incursions deep into the Soviet Union to quickly eliminate all resistance,
further extending the already vulnerable supply lines.
34
Precisely because of the extreme risk, extreme brutality was seen to be
necessary for a quick victory. Or as Michael Geyer put it: On the front
this war was fought with utter brutality from the very beginning, because
victory had to be achieved quickly. Thus destruction became an end in
itself in the hope that unleashing violence would eventually destroy the
enemy. The military had little choice in this matter. If it wanted to win, it
had to act quickly. If it wanted to do so against a deant enemy, it had to
escalate the use of force.
35
Thus, at the outset, all male Jews, assumed to be Communists and
political commissars were to be shot by the Einsatzgruppen.
36
Jews in any
sort of leadership capacity were especially targeted. Yet even in
Lithuania, for example, site of the most brutal and extensive killing,
women and children were not yet subject to mass murder. According to
Christoph Dieckmann, When on 30 June 1941, the Lithuanian police
chief of Alytus, a town in the south of Lithuania, offered to kill all of the
Jews in the whole region with a squad of 1,050 Lithuanian police and
partisans in a few days, it was rejected by the German side.
37
However,
as the extent of Soviet opposition became apparent in July, the killing
began to be extended to all Jews, including women and children.
A summary of the German view at that time is given by Jurgen
Matthaus: Beginning in late July, as a result of the failure to win a
quick victory over the Red Army, German obsession with security
increased. The Reich was, as Hitler put it, forced to rule areas extending
over 300 to 500 kilometers with a handful of people. The army leader-
ship compensated for that lack of manpower by an even more massive
use of force.
38
Earlier, in 1940, before US aid to the Allies began and when the Nazi
state still appeared to be secure, Hitler spoke of the Jews as stupid and
not nearly as powerful as he had rst thought. Further, On 25 April
1940, Goebbels noted, Hitler had said that, all things considered, the
Jews are still very stupid.
39
On August 17, 1940, Goebbels, ever
34
Ibid.
35
Geyer 1986, 592.
36
Burleigh 2000, 602. For evidence on the positive reception Jews accorded the Soviet
occupation of eastern Poland in 1939, especially in contrast to the overtly anti-Semitic
policies of the displaced Polish government, see Korzec and Szurek 1993.
37
Dieckmann 2000, 245.
38
Matthaus 2004, 278.
39
Burrin 1994, 80.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 143
slavishly following his Fuhrer, noted exterminatory solutions (liquidate
them) suggested for asocial elements, but not for the Jews, who were to
have their own state in Madagascar.
40
The nonexterminatory approach to the Jewish population at this time
helps explain an apparent anomaly. During this period, in January 1940,
the Germans allowed a Jewish welfare organization to be established
named Jewish Social Self-Help (Z

SS, the acronym in Polish) headed

by a Michael Weichert. It was the only Jewish institution that was
allowed to function in the Generalgouvernement. As Weichert com-
mented, It simply wasnt logical. On the one hand they persecute Jews
to the utmost, and on the other they discuss a central organization for
social aid with them.
41
In part, the answer resides in Nazi policy goals. American welfare
organizations such as the Commission for Polish Relief and the
American Red Cross were active in Poland at this time. They demanded
that distribution of food, medicine, and clothing be handled by repre-
sentatives of the local population, not the Germans. Because the Nazis
desperately wanted to preserve US neutrality and also keep the door
open to negotiations with the Western powers, they acceded to these
American requests. As chapter 17 will make clear, while the United
States remained neutral, genocide of the Jewish population could not
proceed. Nor had the Jews at this time given any evidence of the
international power that had, in the distorted Nazi view, led to the
German defeat in World War I. From this perspective, too, the genocide
was unwarranted.
Even as late as May 1941, following earlier policies instituted in o dz,
the Warsaw ghetto was encouraged to be economically productive. The
so-called productionists among German planners had won out over
annihilationists, who wanted the ghetto residents to die by slow
attrition. If necessary, the ghetto would be subsidized initially by the
Germans in order to eventually achieve the goal of economic self-
sufciency.
42
Consistent with this emphasis on instrumentality, in contrast to
annihilation, in April 1941, the German authorities granted permission
to Adam Czerniakow, chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat (Jewish
Council), to open three synagogues. Funds were then solicited for the
40
Goebbels 1983, 12425.
41
Quoted in Gutman 1982, 41.
42
Browning 2004, 13031.
144 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
renovation of the Great Synagogue. And on the next major Jewish
holiday, Shavuot, on June 1, 1941, Czerniakow prayed there.
43
But on June 30, 1941, Hitler conded to Mussolini his surprise at
discovering the immense quantities of armaments held by the Soviets.
By July 15 he indicated to the Japanese ambassador his concern about
the gigantic supplies available to the Soviets and the fact that the
Russians fought like wild animals.
44
Goebbels in his diaries also
reected these deepening concerns about the future. On July 17, he
noted the enemys extraordinarily strong resistance on all fronts.
Within two days, he was describing the war as a war of survival between
Bolshevism and Nazism. On July 26, Germany was described as ghting
for its life.
45
On August 11, Halder noted that the whole situation
makes it increasingly plain that we have underestimated the Russian
colossus.
46
Halder further indicated that instead of the expected 200
Soviet divisions, there were 360 and that, for every dozen divisions
destroyed, another dozen replaced them. Hitler, pondering the experi-
ence of the rst six weeks of the war, concluded that one cannot beat the
Russian with operational successes . . . because he simply does not
acknowledge defeat.
47
Clearly, Soviet resolve was preventing the
quick victory that Nazi Germany needed, and male Jews were paying
with their lives.
Events were making Nazi state security even more uncertain, and
The killing, though horrifying, was on nothing like the scale that it
reached from August onwards.
48
On August 11, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill of Great Britain and President Franklin Roosevelt
of the United States issued the Atlantic Charter, as a consequence of
their meeting at sea off the coast of Newfoundland. Although several
provisions pertained only to the two signatories, at least three must have
been of deep concern to the Nazi leadership: (1) no territorial changes
would be made without the freely expressed wishes of the people con-
cerned; (2) sovereignty rights and self-government would be restored to
peoples forcibly deprived of them; (3) all countries that threatened or
committed aggression would be disarmed.
49
This agreement was a
further solidication of the developing Anglo-American alliance that
had already witnessed the LendLease Act of March 1941 and the sale of
fty American destroyers to Britain in return for 99-year leases on bases
43
Kermisz 1979, 10.
44
Burrin 1994, 136.
45
Ibid., 13738.
46
Halder 1988, 506.
47
Geyer 1986, 591.
48
Kershaw 2000a, 467.
49
Albrecht-Carrie 1958, 565.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 145
in British possessions in the Atlantic. The greatly feared two-front war
was becoming a reality for Hitler.
All of this was so upsetting to Hitler that, on August 18, much to
Goebbelss surprise, Hitler raised the possibility of peace with Stalin.
50
Although the terms potentially to be offered to Stalin would likely have
been unacceptable to him, nevertheless thoughts of peace on the Eastern
front must have been generated by the growing fears of defeat at the
hands of the combined Soviet and Anglo-American forces. Failing such a
peace with Stalin, the war would grind on and A rough estimate would
show about 50,000 Jews killed up until mid-August, in nearly two
months of activity. An impressive gure, ten times higher than the one
for Jewish victims of the Polish campaign; but a modest gure compared
to the total, ten times higher still, that would be achieved by the end of
the year, in four more months.
51
Signicantly, August 15 is the date after which women and children
were being killed en masse.
52
Risk minimization the killing of male
Jews and new stricter controls on Jews ordered on July 22, in response to
Stalins July 3 call for partisan activity against the German occupiers
had now been transformed into loss compensation. The Jews would now
have to pay not only for the stab in the back of World War I and the
consequent German loss, but also for German blood shed on the Eastern
front and the likely imminent opening of other fronts. On August 26,
Goebbels noted that as long as Germany was ghting for her life, he
would make sure the Jews neither proted from the war nor were spared
by it.
53
And on January 30, 1942, Hitler stated that: For the rst time,
other people will not be the only ones to spill their blood; this time, for
the rst time, the old Jewish law will be in effect: an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth.
54
An order to his troops from General Walter von Reichenau, com-
mander of the Sixth Army, on October 10, 1941, concisely illustrates the
combination of risk minimization and loss compensation effected after
August 15:
The essential goal of the campaign against the JewishBolshevik system
is the complete destruction of its power instruments and the eradication
of the Asiatic inuence on the European cultural sphere.
50
Kershaw 2000a, 412.
51
Burrin 1994, 113.
52
Ibid., 110.
53
Quoted ibid., 152.
54
Quoted ibid.
146 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Thereby the troops too have tasks, which go beyond the conventional
unilateral soldierly tradition. In the East the soldier is not only a ghter
according to the rules of warfare, but also a carrier of an inexorable racial
conception and the avenger of all the bestialities which have been com-
mitted against the Germans and related races.
Therefore the soldier must have complete [sic] understanding for [sic]
the necessity of the harsh, but just atonement of Jewish subhumanity. This
has the further goal of nipping in the bud rebellions in the rear of the
Wehrmacht which, as experience shows, are always plotted by the Jews.
55
General Erich von Manstein, one of the most successful eld comman-
ders of the German army, on November 20, 1941, declared that:
Since 22 June the German Volk is in the midst of a battle for life and death
against the Bolshevik system. This battle is conducted against the Soviet
army not only in a conventional manner according to the rules of
European warfare . . . Jewry constitutes the mediator between the
enemy in the rear and the still ghting remnants of the Red Army and
the Red leadership. It has a stronger hold than in Europe on all key
positions of the political leadership and administration, it occupies
commerce and trade and further forms cells for all the disturbance and
possible rebellions.
The JewishBolshevik system must be eradicated once and for all.
Never again may it interfere in our European living space. The German
soldier is therefore not only charged with the task of destroying the power
instrument of this system. He marches forth also as a carrier of a racial
conception and as an avenger of all the atrocities which have been
committed against him and the German people.
The soldier must show understanding for the harsh atonement of
Judaism, the spiritual carrier of the Bolshevik terror.
56
A companion statement from Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel stated that
the ght against bolshevism [sic] demands in the rst place also reck-
less and energetic action against the Jews, the main carrier of bolshevism
[sic].
57
Arno Mayer was among the rst to identify the pattern of war-related
massacres.
58
The rst such large-scale massacre occurred at Zhitomir,
where the Wehrmacht for the rst time encountered serious opposition.
Many more Jews were killed there than in the surrounding towns. Soon
55
Emphasis added; quoted in Bartov 1992, 12930.
56
Quoted in Wistrich 2001, 95.
57
Quoted in M. Gilbert 1999, vi.
58
Mayer 1988.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 147
the massacres ended and the Jews were enclosed in ghettos. But, when
effective opposition was again encountered in Kiev, the city surrender-
ing only on September 19 after more than a full month of erce resis-
tance, the mass killing resumed. The nal precipitants for these
massacres were large explosions, apparently set by the retreating
Soviets, which leveled portions of the city, killing many Germans.
Leaders of Einsatzkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C notied their superi-
ors in Berlin that in retaliation for the arson in Kiev all Jews were
arrested and that on September 29 and 30 a total of 33,771 Jews were
executed.
59
Most of those murdered were women, children, and older
people, most of the younger and middle-aged men away serving in the
Red Army. This is the infamous Babi Yar atrocity that has been immor-
talized in the poetry of Yevgeni Yevtushenko and the music of Dimitri
Shostokovich.
In 1941, as they entered Soviet territory, the Einsatzgruppen did not
kill many Jews in the eastern Polish cities (under Soviet occupation since
1939) that happened not to offer major resistance. But as these killing
squads approached the Ukrainian heartland and its stiffened resistance,
the butchery began in earnest.
60
By now, the killings of Communists
and Jews were being called measures of atonement.
61
But in reality,
according to Omer Bartov, the army reverted to the crudest moral code
of war, according to which everything which ensured ones survival was
permitted (and thus considered moral), and everything even remotely
suspect of threatening it must be destroyed (and was by denition
immoral).
62
The whirlwind destruction of the majority of Hungarian Jewry in
several months of mid-1944 with Wehrmacht support is explainable by
the perceived necessity for risk minimization by the German forces. The
sequence of deportations is important because it reects the variability
in military risk. Soviet forces were rapidly approaching northeastern
Hungary as well as Carpatho-Ruthenia.
63
Von Reichenaus thinking
indicated in the quote above is applicable here in reecting on the
perceived, though not actual, dangers to German forces posed by large
concentrations of Jews in these regions. Thus, these two areas were the
rst to be rapidly cleansed of Jews, with Budapest and other regions to
the west, with large Jewish concentrations but not directly in the inva-
sion path, to be left for later disposition.
59
Quoted ibid., 268.
60
Ibid., 277.
61
Manoschek 2000, 170.
62
Bartov 1992, 70.
63
Murray and Millett 2000, 449.
148 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Even from within Jewish ghettos in Poland, one nds observations
along these lines. One of the most astute commentators of the Warsaw
ghetto, Emmanuel Ringelblum understood this element of risk mini-
mization. Commenting on the episodic massacres of Jews (some of
notables, others not) beginning on April 18, 1942, and lasting until the
summer deportations, he states: During his last visit, Himmler must
have issued an order for massacres to be perpetrated to terrorize the
Jewish populace. Probably this is in connection with the spring cam-
paigns. They want their rear to be secure. They threw a little fright into
the Jews, so the Jews would keep their heads down.
64
Similarly, Chaim Kaplan notes that in order to prepare for the
coming events [an offensive] the Pawia [Gestapo political prison] is
being lled with hundreds of prisoners, all Aryans . . . The Aryans are
put to death after a short period of arrest; the Jews are killed without
even a pretense of arrest.
65
After the deportations began, Ringelblum sees the mass murders as
loss compensation. He tells a folktale followed by his judgments. Once
there was a landed gentleman who was living high. He kept borrowing
money on interest from his banker Shlomo, until nally the Jew col-
lected his debts by auctioning off the gentrys property. Foaming at the
lips, the impoverished nobleman cursed the Jew who had made him
poor. In revenge, he called his dog Shlomo and beat it. The same thing,
people say, is happening to the Germans. They are being defeated, their
cities are being destroyed, so they take their revenge on the Jews by
beating them three times a day.
66
It matters not that the decision to murder Europes Jews in December
1941 (with the Wannsee conference, planning the actual extermination
process, taking place the following month) would in no way affect the air
raids destroying Germanys cities. In the Nazi mind, the losses of World
War I, those of the Russian front, and any underlying future losses as a
result of the increasingly difcult war were to be laid at the Jews
doorstep.
64
Ringelblum 1974, 262. Another interpretation is that these massacres were intended to
destroy elements of the Jewish leadership in anticipation of the forthcoming mass
deportations (Gutman 1982, 17680). Yet the two interpretations are consistent. The
Jews were by 1942 increasingly identied as the quintessential enemy, so that terrorizing
them initially in the expectation of quelling enemy opposition soon shaded into loss
compensation when the deportations began.
65
Kaplan 1973, 318.
66
Ringelblum 1974, 29091.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 149
But how did the order to destroy all of European Jewry come about?
Thus far, into the autumn of 1941, only Soviet Jews presumably infected
by the Bolshevik bacillus were being murdered en masse. Now the
certain, not merely probable, opening up of new fronts and extreme
dangers to the Nazi state eventuated. On November 29, 1941, Dr. Fritz
Todt, minister for armaments and war production of the Nazi govern-
ment, after returning to Berlin from the Russian front, reported to
Hitler: Given the arms and industrial supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon
powers, we can no longer militarily win this war.
67
On November 30,
General Franz Halder recorded in his diary, The eastern army has a
shortage of 340,000 men, i.e., 50 percent of the combat strength of its
infantry. Company combat strength is 5060 men . . . In Germany we
have only 33,000 men available. The bulk of the replacements are not yet
broken in to the front-line routine and so have limited combat value.
Trucks: Serviceability, at most 60 percent.
68
On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the United States
naval base at Pearl Harbor. True to the Axis alliance, Hitler declared
war on the United States on December 11. On December 12, 1941, Hitler
addressed a meeting of the most important sectional and regional
leaders of the NSDAP. Goebbelss notes on the meeting are as follows:
Regarding the Jewish question, the Fuhrer is determined to clear the table.
He warned the Jews that if they were to cause another world war, it would
lead to their own destruction. Those were not empty words. Now the
world war has come. The destruction of the Jews must be its necessary
consequence. We cannot be sentimental about it. It is not for us to feel
sympathy for the Jews. We should have sympathy rather with our own
German people. If the German people have to sacrice 160,000 victims in
yet another campaign in the east, then those responsible for this bloody
conict will have to pay for it with their lives.
69
Goebbels of course was referring to Hitlers Reichstag speech of
January 30, 1939, in which he warned: If the world of international
nancial Jewry, both in and outside of Europe, should succeed in
plunging the nations into another world war, the result will not be the
Bolshevization of the world and thus a victory for Judaism. The result
will be the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe.
70
67
Quoted in M. Gilbert 1989, 265.
68
Halder 1988, 571.
69
Emphasis added; quoted in Gerlach 2000b, 122.
70
Emphasis in original; quoted ibid.
150 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Now a world war had come about, and the Jews would have to pay for
German blood spilled in the war. Soon, speeches such as that of Hans
Frank, the leader of the Generalgouvernement of Poland, on December 16,
spoke of Hitlers prophecy and the efforts to realize its goals of the
liquidation of European Jewry now that a world war had actually come
to pass. Accordingly, as far as the Jews are concerned, I would therefore
be guided by the basic expectation that they are going to disappear. They
have to be gotten rid of.
71
Additional evidence is found in Gerlachs
comprehensive treatment that has been cited approvingly by historians
such as Ian Kershaw and Michael Burleigh.
Despite the Germans imperative need for rolling stock immediately
after the successful Soviet counteroffensive defending Moscow began on
December 5, 1941, transport thereafter was principally allocated to the
mass murders.
72
A grisly indicator of the importance of the December dates is the
following change in the construction of large gas vans intended for the
Einsatzgruppen. Whereas in early October, vans with the capacity of
approximately thirty people were ordered, in December the killing
capacity was raised twelve-fold, a clear qualitative leap, according to
Gotz Aly.
73
Peter Longrich corroborates these facts. Accordingly, In the
fall of 1941 the decision for the immediate murder of all European Jews
had not yet been taken. In the fall of 1941 the murder of hundreds of
thousands, but not millions of human beings was being prepared.
74
As
late as November 30, evidence exists for the absence of a generalized
policy for the liquidation of Jews, whether conned in ghettos or not.
75
Thus the Holocaust was a contingent event, one not predestined by
the intensity of Nazi anti-Semitism, virulent as it was, but facilitated by
the exigencies of a world war that threatened to destroy the Nazi state,
with the Jews perceived by Hitler as leading the vanguard of that
destruction. Each step in the decision-making process concerning the
Jewish Question was dependent on critical war-related events. After the
defeat of France in 1940, Madagascar, a French colony, was chosen as
71
Quoted in Gerlach 2000b, 125. Also see Kershaw 2000b, 12526.
72
Braham 1981; 2000, 136.
73
Aly 1999, 232.
74
Quoted in Browning 2004, 373. Yet, despite a fundamental agreement with Longrich,
for different reasons Browning argues for the last week in October 1941 as the
watershed date for decisions initiating the Final Solution.
75
Matthaus 2004, 305. Evidence exists in the form of Himmlers direct order on
November 30 not to kill Berlin Jews transported to Riga.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 151
the future homeland of the Jews.
76
When the undefeated British navy
made such mass shipping impossible, an area at the fringe of the German
empire near Lublin was chosen, to be later changed to an unnamed
destination in the soon-to-be-conquered Soviet Union. This harsher
decision was made in March 1941
77
at the same time as the
LendLease Agreement between the United States and Great Britain.
Difculties in the invasion of the USSR led to the killing of Jewish
women and children after August 15. As these difculties became
increasingly apparent to the Germans, harsher measures including
deportations of Jews from Western to Eastern Europe were carried
out,
78
to be followed by the ultimate decision to commit genocide
after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the rst Russian land victory
defending Moscow.
Even after the onset of the genocide, the rate of killing depended on
state insecurity in the form of the potential for defeat of Nazi Germany
and supporters such as Vichy France. As Isaac Levendel, a child survivor
in Vichy France and winner of the Prix Franco-Europeen for his mem-
oir, observed: in early 1944 as the situation became tougher for the
Germans at the front, there were rumors of Jewish arrests closer to
home. Soon they were happening all around us.
79
An interesting sidelight on Hitlers changing policies is seen through
the lens of his treatment of Mischlinge (part Jews) in the armed forces.
Although at rst willing to declare certain part Jews deutschblutig, or of
equal status with those of German blood when they were deemed to be
necessary, this policy began changing as the war worsened. Exemptions
allowing Mischlinge to remain in the armed forces were given less
frequently and even accomplished ofcers of part-Jewish ancestry were
dismissed. As Bryan Rigg indicates: The more Hitler realized that he
could not change the wars outcome, the more irrational he became,
76
Aly 1999, 109.
77
Ibid., 255. Although Aly argues that population policies made this decision virtually
inevitable, his position ignores the likely elation after victory had the Germans won the
war in the East. Such euphoria undoubtedly would have led to less harsh measures
since, in the Nazi view, the Jews would have been defeated as they were after the fall of
France in 1940, therefore thus far less dangerous.
78
Browning 2004, 375388. An additional motivation was the seizure of Jewish property
to house incoming Volksdeutsch transported from the East.
79
Levendel 1999, 89. Other students of the period such as Paul Webster 1991, 71, agree,
stating that: The closer Germany came to defeat, the more Vichy was prepared to
support the Nazi cause, claiming that France was in the front line of the ght against
Communism.
152 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
which had a catastrophic effect on the conduct of government.
80
Two
dozen generals were released precisely when their expertise at the front
was most desperately needed.
The dynamic approach adoptedhere helps explain an apparent anomaly.
While there is clear evidence of virulent German anti-Semitism during the
war even among ordinary Germans who behaved abominably toward
Jews in the death marches from the concentration camps into Germany
proper in 194445,
81
the evidence of earlier German anti-Semitism is
variable. German anti-Semitic political parties had declined precipitously
in their share of the Reichstag vote prior to World War I, achieving only
0.86 percent in 1912 compared with 3.70 percent in 1898.
82
Even after
World War I and the rapid rise of anti-Semitism, reasons for joining the
Nazi Party given by early members generally did not include anti-Semitism
among the primary factors.
83
The economic boycott of Jewish businesses
called by the Nazi leadership for April 1, 1933, shortly after its accession to
power, was generally regarded as a public relations failure, even by the Nazis
themselves.
84
Only after the events of World War II and the growing threat
to the Nazi by now identied as German state did the German
population behave in a deeply anti-Semitic manner. Thus one resolution
of the apparent inconsistencies between Goldhagens account and the
many critics of his emphasis on eliminationist anti-Semitism can be
found in the dynamics of the confrontation between Nazi Germany and
its systemic environment.
The Armenians
The domain of losses and state insecurity
Turning to the case of the Ottoman Empire, we see that, despite the
conclusion that The decline of the Ottoman Empire was neither rapid
nor continuous,
85
by the end of the nineteenth century that decline was
evident. As early as 1774 and the Peace of Kuchuk Kainardji, the Ottomans
had lost not only territories in the Caucasus to the Russians in which the
80
Rigg 2002, 233.
81
Goldhagen 1996.
82
Melson 1992, 119.
83
According to Theodore Abel [1938] 1986, 161, in his survey of early Nazi Party
members, Sixty percent of the contributors make no reference whatsoever to indicate
that they harbored anti-Semitic feelings. In his reanalysis of the Abel set of respon-
dents, Peter Merkl 1975, 522, found that only 14.6 percent identied Jews as their chief
objects of hostility.
84
Gellately 2001, 27.
85
Palmer 1992, 32.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 153
Turks had long been dominant, but even control of Christian (principally
Orthodox) communal life within the empire. The nineteenth century
witnessed a virtually unmitigated series of disasters. Lost wars with Russia
in 1829 and again in 1878 led to further shrinkage of the empire; this
pattern of losses would continue into the early twentieth century.
Between 1750 and 1914, the area of the empire had been almost halved,
from 3,470 to 1,790 square miles.
86
All of North Africa and virtually all of
the Balkans were lost. Soon after, during World War I, Syria, Iraq and
Palestine would also be lost.
87
The disastrous performance of the Ottoman
army during the First Balkan War had nothing less than a traumatic effect
on the Ottoman state leaders.
88
This is a virtually uninterrupted decline of
the state, which if unimpeded would lead to state dissolution. In response, a
coup was carried out by militant young ofcers on January 23, 1913, and
was followed by efforts at state building initiated by the Committee of
Union and Progress (CUP), loosely but somewhat erroneously identied as
the Young Turk Movement. Their efforts at reform not only forced the
abdication of Sultan Abdulhamit in 1909, but also set the stage for the
Armenian genocide of 191516.
The Ottoman state at the start of the twentieth century was extra-
ordinarily weak and insecure in several respects. Financially it was
seriously indebted to the European powers; its non-Muslim religious
institutions (with the exception of Jewish ones) were under the control
of foreign powers. The empire had granted special legal rights as well as
tariff concessions to foreign merchants residing within it, and the
military was no match for modern European armies. Worst of all,
perhaps, was its image of the sick man of Europe gained as the result
of these debilities and its steady loss of dominion to the Russian Empire
and independent successor states. World War I and its military con-
frontations with the old foe Russia as well as Russias allies would
magnify this insecurity greatly. The confrontation itself emerged from
Ottoman weakness, for it was dependence on the German ally that
brought Turkey into the war to begin with. Germanys inuence within
the Ottoman Empire was considerable, not the least aspect being the
armys virtually complete dependence on its German advisors and
armaments suppliers. This close political and military relationship that
would bring war and further dismemberment to the empire also would
have unforeseen implications for the Armenian genocide of 191516.
86
McCarthy 1997, 199.
87
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977.
88
Sicker 2001, 20304.
154 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Prior to that genocide, the Ottoman authorities were deeply con-
cerned that the traditional dominance of Islam be retained.
89
Not only
were the Christian communities under the protection of various
European authorities, but the traditional political dominance of
Muslims in the Balkans and areas of the Caucasus was undergoing
challenge. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, and Armenia were cases in
point but, in contrast to other cases where the Christian populations
were localized and their challenges therefore could be seen to be con-
tained, the Armenians were spread throughout the empire. Thus, if
a challenge to the dominance of the Muslim Ottomans and their
Kurdish agents occurred in eastern Anatolia, it could be quickly
interpreted to be a more widespread challenge to the imperial authority,
say in Constantinople, where Armenians were found in signicant
numbers. Armenian communities were found in all six of the Turkish
provinces.
90
At the end of the nineteenth century, there was a determined effort by
the Ottoman authorities to revitalize Islam as the dominant religion.
The most widespread ideological force in the Ottoman Empire during
Abdulhamits years was Islamism, calling for a return to the fundamental
values and traditions of the civilization of which the empire was the
most modern manifestation.
91
After the Young Turk revolution of
1908, Islamization was now tied to state modernization and revitaliza-
tion. The intimate connection between Islam and the Ottoman state was
reborn in the new context of Turkish nationalism and state making. The
truncated empire, shorn of most of its Christian subjects, could be seen
as an Islamic redoubt consisting almost entirely of Muslim Turks and
Arabs. Military opposition from Orthodox Christian Russia during
World War I must have seemed doubly threatening in this context, for
the Orthodox Armenians could have been the handmaidens of Russia in
eliminating or even reversing the traditional political dominance of the
Muslim Ottoman authorities.
Refugees in sufciently large numbers are a potent indicator of the
contraction of physical space. According to Kemal Karpat, The quan-
titative indicators cited in various sources show that during this period
[18561916] a total of about 7 million migrants from Crimea, the
Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands settled in
Anatolia. These immigrants were overwhelmingly Muslim. By the end
of the century the immigrants and their descendants constituted some
89
Karpat 2001.
90
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 201.
91
Ibid., 259.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 155
30 to 40 percent of the total population of Anatolia.
92
After the Balkan
Wars, many Muslim refugees were settled in Armenian areas of eastern
Anatolia. According to Fridjot Nansen, The settlement of Muslim
refugees in the Christian sections of Armenia was carefully prepared
and promoted. After the Balkan defeat thousands of Turkish refugees
from Thrace and Macedonia arrived in Anatolia full of anti-Christian
hatred which was inamed by the government.
93
This anti-Christian hatred had its roots in the 187778 forced ejection
of Muslims from their homes in the Balkans. Although this anti-Muslim
violence stemmed from an earlier massacre of Bulgarians by the
Ottomans (estimates vary from 4,000
94
to 15,000
95
killed), nevertheless,
according to British ambassador Henry Layard:
When the Russians crossed the Balkans last summer and, disarming the
Mussulmans whom they had induced to submit by promises of justice
and protection, had handed over their weapons to the Bulgarians, a scene
of indiscriminate slaughter and devastation ensued, such as had not been
known since the most barbarous times . . . The Russian authorities have
sanctioned and encouraged the destruction of Turkish property in all the
towns and villages they have occupied, to the very gates of the capital.
They have deled the mosques, and turned them to vile uses; they have
desecrated the Mussulman graves, broken up the tombstones, and turned
the cemeteries into public gardens and places of amusement, compelling
the unfortunate Mussulmans themselves to do the work.
96
Refugees affect the economic and hierarchical relations among indigen-
ous residents. Competition for living space, agricultural land, and jobs
intensies. Instead of resenting the Muslim refugees, the long-standing
Muslim residents tended to sympathize with them, and to resent still
more the living space and economic holdings of the Armenians, already
perceived as an entrepreneurial, mercantile-oriented ethnie, despite the
status of most Armenians as poor or mid-level peasants. Nevertheless,
based on data drawn from various 1912 yearbooks,
97
Fatma Goc ek
concludes: While Ottoman Muslim [Turkish] participation became
limited to 15 percent in internal trade, 12 percent in industry and crafts,
and 14 percent in the professions, the share of Ottoman minorities
[Greeks and Armenians] expanded to comprise 66 percent of those
92
Karpat 2001, 343.
93
Quoted in Dadrian 1999, 145.
94
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 162.
95
M. Anderson 1966, 184.
96
Quoted in Karpat 1985, 7273.
97
Issawi 1980, 14.
156 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
engaged in internal trade, 79 percent in industry and crafts, and
66 percent in the professions.
98
In the 187778 war alone, approximately 250,000300,000 Muslims
were killed, mostly ethnic Turks, and roughly 1.5 million others had to
seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire.
99
Constantinople alone received
200,000 Muslim refugees in 1878.
100
When the tsarist government
stationed Cossack soldiers in Circassia in the north Caucasus beginning
in 1863, Circassians began to migrate in large numbers to Ottoman
domains.
101
Later, as a part of their Islamization campaign, the
Ottomans actively encouraged Muslim migration. In 190506, the
ow of Circassians increased substantially. Villages were built for
their settlement, and the location was chosen in order to assure
there the numerical preponderance of the Muslims against any future
territorial claims by non-Muslims.
102
The fact that the wealthier
refugees went to large cities like Constantinople,
103
but poorer ones
to rural areas such as eastern Anatolia (where the Armenians were
concentrated), introduced an element of envy of the Armenians in
the rural regions that also contributed to the later massacres and
genocide.
The widely held public view of the Armenians as favored economic-
ally, of course, fed into the ideational justication for mass murder and,
later, genocide. Refugees also have an impact on the prevailing hier-
archical relations. To see the misery and forlorn status of Muslim
refugees from newly independent Christian lands must have further
reinforced the prevailing view that the elevated economic status of
Christian Armenians was unjust. In a largely Muslim land, it was
thought that the Muslim must be more favored; the Muslim refugee
should be at least equal to the Christian Armenian, if not substantially
superior. In the end, many of the holdings of slaughtered Armenians
would be given to these refugees.
State insecurity was substantially increased by a renewed Russian
interest in the Armenians of eastern Anatolia, largely as a result of the
Muslim inux. After considerable Russian pressure in early 1914,
a Russo-Turkish Convention was signed giving the Russians authority
to supervise reforms in the governance of Armenian communities
in that geopolitically sensitive region. Specically, foreign inspector-
generals were to be appointed, and community representatives of the
98
Goc ek 1996, 114.
99
Karpat 1985, 75.
100
Karpat 2002, 702.
101
Ibid., 791.
102
Ibid., 670.
103
Ibid., 704.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 157
Armenians and Muslims were to be elected, all under Russian inuence.
104
Once again, foreign intervention in the domestic affairs of the Ottoman
Empire had occurred, but this time at the hands of its chief enemy.
Risk acceptance, minimization, and loss compensation
With such a history of loss, the tendency toward risk taking is increased.
The entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers was just
such a risk. The magnitude of the risk can be gauged by the extent of real
and potential opposition to the decision by the Ottoman leaders, Enver
Pas a, Djemal Pas a, and Talat Bey. Turkey offered the alliance to
Germany on July 22, 1914, but the offer was kept secret from the cabinet
as a whole.
105
The three Turkish leaders were convinced that neutrality
was not an option because of the prevailing sentiments for the partition
of Turkey among the European powers, Russia foremost among them.
All had staked out claims to spheres of inuence within the Ottoman
Empire: France to Syria, Britain to Mesopotamia and the Gulf, Russia to
the Caucasus, and Germany to central Anatolia. In the event of partition
resulting from war or some other triggering mechanism, these spheres of
inuence could be transformed into colonies.
106
Indeed, in the British
and French instances, this is precisely what happened at the end of the
war. Seeking protection, offers of alliance were rst extended to the
Entente Powers respectively Britain, Russia, and then France but, for
a variety of idiosyncratic reasons, each of these offers was rejected.
Just as alliance with Germany was seen to be risky by a majority of the
government cabinet and the Committee of Union and Progress, even
more so was the decision to actually join the war effort. By the autumn of
1914, much had happened to thrust Turkey into the war itself, beyond
its earlier declaration of neutrality in August. The Goeben and Breslau,
two German cruisers, had escaped British pursuit and were now, with
German agreement, incorporated into the Turkish navy, virtually at its
head.
107
Relations with the Entente Powers had deteriorated even to the
point of the Turkish navy bombarding Russian bases on the Black Sea
that the Russians did not respond to in the hope of preserving Turkish
neutrality. Yet the cabinet was still divided as to the wisdom of formally
entering the war, especially in light of the perceived weakness of the
104
Bodger 1984, 96.
105
Strachan 2001a, 669.
106
Ibid., 655.
107
Sicker 2001, 208.
158 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Turkish army. In order to contrive entry into the war, Enver Pas a had
the government meet not with the cabinet, but with the more bellicose
central committee of the Committee of Union and Progress. On
October 30, war was declared, but only after a defensive agreement
with Bulgaria had been signed that assured the security of the landward
approach to the Dardanelles straits on the European side.
108
Thus, the war was seen to be risky in the extreme, The fact that
Britain and France, as well as Russia, were at war with Turkey trans-
formed the Ottoman Empires strategic position. Its extended coastline,
with its accessibility to naval power, its joint frontier with British-
controlled Egypt, and the Government of Indias interest in
Mesopotamia meant that the entire perimeter lay under potential
threat.
109
Two events were to accentuate that risk immeasurably, and they were
to occur in the period just prior to the onset of the deportations. First,
upon the Ottoman declaration of war, the Russian army pushed across
the border and, after erce battles, including some Russian losses but a
major Turkish defeat at Sars kamis in December 1914 and a Russian
successful counteroffensive in January 1915, the Ottoman army scat-
tered with over three-quarters of the men lost as they retreated. The way
was now open for a Russian push into eastern Anatolia.
110
It was precisely at this time (December 1914 or January 1915) that a
document was prepared by the Committee of Union and Progress called
The Ten Commandments, presented below in a verbatim translation
as given in the source:
1. Proting by the Arts: 3 and 4 of Comite Union and Progress [In
accordance with Articles 3 and 4 of the Committee of Union and
Progress], close all Armenian Societies, and arrest all who worked
against Government at any time among them and send them into
the provinces such as Bagdad or Mosul, and wipe them out either on
the road or there.
2. Collect arms.
3. Excite [Iname] Moslem opinion by suitable and special means, in
places as Van, Erzeroum, Adana, where as a point of fact the
Armenians have already won the hatred of the Moslems, provoke
organized massacres as the Russians did at Baku.
108
Strachan 2001a, 677.
109
Ibid., 689.
110
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 315.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 159
4. Leave all executive [executions] to the people in the provinces such
as Erzeroum, Van, Mamuret ul Aziz, and Bitlis, and use Military
disciplinary forces (i.e. Gendarmerie) ostensibly to stop massacres,
while on the contrary in places as Adana, Sivas, Broussa, Ismidt and
Smyrna actively help the Moslems with military force.
5. Apply measures to exterminate all males under 50, priests and
teachers, leave girls and children to be Islamized.
6. Carry away the families of all who succeed in escaping and apply
measures to cut them off from all connection with their native place.
7. On the ground[s] that Armenian ofcials may be spies, expel and
drive them out absolutely from every Government department
or post.
8. Kill off in an appropriate manner all Armenians in the Army this
to be left to the military to do.
9. All action to begin everywhere simultaneously, and thus leave no
time for preparation of defensive measures.
10. Pay attention to the strictly condential nature of these instructions,
which may not go beyond two or three persons.
111
The second extreme risk was posed by the Dardanelles campaign
begun in February 1915. Because of difculties in passing through the
straits easily, the British-led Australian and New Zealand contingents
began to land on April 25.
112
Extensive preparations for these landings
were known to the Ottomans prior to that date, if only because of Liman
von Sanderss (commander of the Turkish forces) correspondingly
extensive military preparations on the Turkish side begun on
March 25.
113
On April 24, the Interior Ministry authorized the arrest
of the Armenian political and community leaders suspected of anti-
government tendencies. In Constantinople alone, nearly 2,000 such
leaders were arrested; eventually most were executed.
114
The following
month, in late May, widespread deportations of Armenians were
ordered. The genocide had begun.
Note the proximity of time and place of risk and genocidal response,
much as in the case of the Holocaust. Constantinople, with its large
(nearly 10 percent of the total)
115
Armenian population, lay close by the
Dardanelles now under attack. The largest concentration of Armenians
in the empire was found in eastern Anatolia, near the expected Russian
111
Balakian 2003, 18990.
112
Hickey 1995, 109.
113
Erickson 2001, 81.
114
Dadrian 1997, 221.
115
Karpat 1985, 18889.
160 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
advances after the Ottoman defeat of January. Further, many of those
defeats were attributed by the Turks to the Armenian volunteer move-
ment ghting with the Russians, comprising Armenians from Russia,
Persia, Europe, and the United States. Armenians from Turkey also were
involved. Antranik, an Armenian hero of the Balkan Wars, was a leader
of this movement; he was instrumental in inicting a major defeat on
much larger Turkish forces (a ratio of nearly 10 to 1) on April 18,
1915.
116
A successful uprising, later to be reversed, in the heavily
Armenian city of Van in eastern Anatolia also began on April 15.
117
Note the beginning of the deportations from Constantinople on April 24.
As Kamuran Gurun put it, In short, Armenians residing in the
provinces bordering the area of military operations and in proximity
to the Mediterranean Sea would be relocated.
118
The risk of state
dissolution at the hands of powerful British and Russian forces was
palpable. The genocide was perceived as a form of risk minimization
and ultimately of loss compensation, should Britain and Russia win
the war.
Contrary to many claims, however,
119
the vast majority of Armenians
posed no threat to the Ottoman state. But the perception of them as
Christians potentially allied to the Russians, especially in eastern
Anatolia, must have added fuel to the genocidal fury, ultimately ending
in full-edged genocide.
An important issue here, as in the Holocaust and the Rwandan
genocide, is the disjunction between intention and action. For example,
there is evidence that the Turks sought to eliminate the Armenians as
early as the end of the nineteenth century. After the Young Turk
Revolution of 1908, this intention was made plain. In a speech prior to
the Third Ittihad Convention in Salonika in 1910 by Talat, later one
of the instigators of the genocide, he indicated the necessity for homo-
genization of the Ottoman Empire:
You are aware that by the terms of the Constitution equality of
Mussulman and Ghiaur [indel, a derogatory label applied to non-
Muslims] was afrmed by you and all know and feel that this is an
unrealizable ideal. The Sheriat [sharia, the religious laws of Islam], our
whole past history and the sentiment of hundreds of thousands of
Mussulmans and even the sentiments of the Ghiaurs themselves . . .
present an impenetrable barrier to the establishment of real
116
Dadrian 1999, 115.
117
Ibid., 116.
118
Gurun 1985, 207.
119
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977; McCarthy 1997.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 161
equality . . . there can therefore be no question of equality until we have
succeeded in our task of Ottomanizing the Empire.
120
Here we have a virtual smoking gun of genocidal intent (although
unclear as to the choice of ethnic cleansing or genocide) as in the
instance of Hitlers speeches and those of other Nazis even prior to
the start of World War II. Yet, after quoting the speech, Dadrian, the
historical doyen of the Armenian genocide, only some twenty pages
later, writes a chapter title referring to The dysfunctional dynamics of
Armenian military successes and their lethal consequences for Ottoman
Armenians
121
as the basis for the genocide. Intention has been galva-
nized into action by a series of events that make it seem imperative that
genocide be the Ottomans instrument of choice. This was true of Nazi
decision making during World War II and, as we shall see, also of the
Rwandan genocide of 1994.
The Tutsi
The domain of losses and state insecurity
Here the domain of losses originated in a somewhat different manner
from the preceding cases, but in the end had similar consequences.
Instead of territorial losses at the outset, the initial losses were primarily
found in the status relations between Hutu and Tutsi. In place of the
combination of Hutu supernatural powers with Tutsi military
powers
122
in the early Rwandese state, and agriculturalists as well as
pastoralists of both origins living side by side, a gradual polarization set
in. Beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century, political power
was increasingly dened as a Tutsi prerogative, with the Hutu corres-
pondingly degraded in status.
This process would be rapidly accelerated under Belgian colonial rule.
While there existed impoverished Tutsi or petits Tutsi,
123
and some
Hutu who could accumulate cattle and thereby rise in socioeconomic
status in the precolonial period, thus minimizing social differences, the
arrival of the Europeans rigidied the HutuTutsi distinction. In parti-
cular, the Tutsi pastoralists were treated as Hamites having arrived
120
Quoted in Dadrian 1999, 96.
121
Ibid., 117.
122
Mamdani 2001, 62. Mamdani recounts a historical narrative indicating the impor-
tance of a Hutu diviner in the formation of the Rwandan state.
123
Ibid., 57.
162 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
from the Hamitic northeast carrying with them civilizational attributes
that justied their rule over the indigenous Hutu. Seen as more
European in appearance and presumed origins, the Tutsi were racial-
ized into an elite class to be the handmaidens of Belgian colonial rule.
With the revolution of 1959 entailing the emergence of the Hutu major-
ity as the dominant political force, status relations between Hutu and
Tutsi were reversed, at least in the political arena.
124
Yet the invasion of
Rwanda by the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF; initially based
in Uganda) in October 1990 threatened to reverse these Hutu gains.
Early RPF military successes led to the convening of the Arusha peace
talks beginning in July 1992.
Four factors then led to an extraordinary evocation of the domain of
losses. First, very early in the talks, it became clear that the presidential
system that had favored Hutu power would be replaced by a parliamen-
tary system combined with a council of ministers. Later in the talks, the
strongest advocate of Hutu power, the Coalition pour la Defense de la
Re publique (CDR) was to be excluded from any transitional political
institutions. At about the same time, it was decided that the number of
seats in the new assembly and government ministries would favor
the opposition to the Hutu-led government party, the Mouvement
Re volutionnaire National pour la De mocratie et le De veloppement
(MRNDD, formerly MRND).
Second, after the massacre of several hundred Tutsi, the RPF renewed
its offensive in February 1993, and within two weeks had doubled the
amount of territory under its control.
125
Only French intervention
prevented the RPF from taking Kigali, the Rwandan capital. A conse-
quence of this success was the agreement to allow 50 percent of
the armed command of the RPF to be composed of Tutsi, despite the
10 percent representation of Tutsi in the population at large. Refugees
abroad, including of course many Tutsi in Uganda and elsewhere in
Africa, were to be allowed back in the country as envisioned by the
earlier Dar-es-Salaam declaration on the Rwandan refugee problem.
Third, the assassination on October 30, 1993, of Melchior Ndadaye,
the rst Hutu president of Burundi by the Tutsi-dominated army began
a series of killings of thousands of Hutu in that country. According to
Bruce Jones, The assassination and killings were rich material for the
extremists in Rwanda, who used the events to lend credence to their
124
Prunier 1995.
125
Jones 1999, 141.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 163
claims that the Tutsi of the RPF were returning to Rwanda to reestablish
their historic dominance over the Hutu.
126
Finally, as in our other two cases, the presence of refugees grievously
accentuated the dimensions of loss. The refugees were of two types, both
Hutu, but from different locations. First were Hutu from Burundi who
ed the Tutsi-led massacres of 1972 and again in 1993.
127
In 1988, poor
harvests led to near starvation in Burundi, leading to an additional
refugee inux.
128
The latest of these, however, was to be the most
consequential. After the assassination of President Ndadaye of
Burundi in 1993, waves of violence spread that led to some 400,000
refugees from Burundi, mostly Hutu, crowding into Rwanda. Many of
the ge nocidaires would be drawn from this group.
129
According to
Ge rard Prunier, The psychological impact of the Hutu Presidents
murder and of the arrival in Rwanda of hundreds of thousands of
Hutu refugees spreading tales of terror and massacre at the hands of
the Tutsi army of Burundi had enormous negative consequences on the
already overcast Rwandese political weather.
130
The assassination and refugee arrivals solidied the position of the
extremist Hutu-power advocates. Supporters of a hardline approach
suggesting virtually a nal solution of the Tutsi now secured addi-
tional public support. Many of these Burundi Hutu participated in the
genocide, even to the point of committing extraordinary torture and
atrocity.
131
After the RPF invasion of 1990, the number of refugees climbed from
80,000 in that year to 350,000 in 1992, and 950,000 after the February
1993 offensive.
132
Territories in Rwanda lost many Hutu as they ed
before the advancing RPF forces, under the assumption that Hutu
peasants themselves would be massacred. After earlier Hutu massacres
of Tutsi, the RPF forces did take revenge on some Hutu communities.
An important complicating factor was a land shortage that predated
the RPF offensive and consequent refugee inundation. At around mid-
century, the typical [Rwandan] peasant family lived on a hill which
supported between 110 and 120 inhabitants per km
2
; in 1970, that same
family [had] to make a living on a hill which support[ed] between 280
and 290 people per km
2
.
133
Thus, an average family saw its holdings
more than halved in approximately twenty years. In the nineteenth
126
Ibid., 144.
127
Mamdani 2001, 204.
128
Pottier 2002, 21.
129
Newbury 1995, 16.
130
Prunier 1995, 200.
131
Mamdani 2001, 205.
132
Ibid., 204.
133
Pottier 2002, 20.
164 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
century, security for ones family had been achieved through spreading
the community to distant places.
134
That kind of security was no
longer available; palpable economic insecurity was compounded by
the refugee inux. Some areas of the country experienced a population
density in excess of 1,000 people per square mile.
135
Catharine and
David Newbury single out the land shortage, and Hutu fears of return-
ing Tutsi refugee demands for land to be returned to them, as a critical
basis of the genocide.
136
The right of return of all Rwandan refugees
(albeit limited; see below) of course signicantly magnied the salience
of this issue.
Timothy Longman shows that, within a single prefecture, in one
village where socioeconomic disparities between local elites and the
peasantry were emphasized by elite behavior, the killings were often
committed by locals who were well acquainted with their victims.
137
In a
neighboring village where such disparities were minimized, the bourg-
mestre (head of the commune) had to import outsiders to do the killing.
Regionalism and perceived defection were additional complicating fac-
tors. In the south, many Hutu and Tutsi worked together, lived harmo-
niously with each other, and even intermarried. To the chagrin of
Juvenal Habyarimanas northern elite, Hutu in the south were inclined
toward power sharing with the RPF. As a consequence, many of these
moderate Hutu were considered to be traitors to the race and along
with the Tutsi were subjected to the murderous wrath of the army and
the militias of the old regime.
138
The Arusha Accords of July 1993 threatened the sociological majority
principle of the 1959 revolution,
139
namely that political power was
to be held by the Hutu as the majority ethnicity in Rwanda. These
agreements stipulated that the ruling MRNDD would be guaranteed
only one-third of the parliamentary seats, thereby rendering it a minor-
ity party. Further, the RPF would receive a 40 percent share of the troops
in a combined armed forces, in addition to the 5050 split of the ofcers
with the existing Hutu-led army.
140
The loss of political and military
power would be accompanied by the right of return of all refugees to
Rwanda. As these were mostly Tutsi, the political power base of the Tutsi
in a multiparty system would be considerably enhanced at the polls.
Despite the fact that only refugees who left the country ten years earlier
134
Ibid., 29.
135
Newbury 1995, 14.
136
Newbury and Newbury 1999, 309.
137
Longman 1995.
138
Pottier 2002, 37.
139
Prunier 1995, 161.
140
Jones 2001, 93.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 165
or less had the right to recoup lost properties,
141
the threat of numbers
in an increasingly democratic system was substantial. By destroying the
Tutsi demographic base, the MRNDD and its extremist allies might
retain political power. The Arusha Accords and even a likely RPF victory
in a renewed war might be nullied by the act of genocide.
Risk acceptance, minimization, and loss compensation
In the Rwandan case, risk took the form of essentially abrogating the
Arusha Accords.
142
Although the CDR, the most extreme of the Hutu
power advocates, did not participate in the talks, nevertheless its leader-
ship was consulted on important matters before the agreement was
signed in August 1993.
143
Once the CDR and other Hutu extremists
became nally unalterably opposed to the accords, the risk consisted of
defying them in the face of United Nations, Tanzanian, Ugandan, and of
course RPF opposition, all of which had supported the Arusha peace
process.
To minimize the consequences of this risky deance, the genocide was
executed. Should the RPF win the war, as there was no party committed
to stopping it outside Rwanda, then at least the victory would be short-
term. The risk of permanent domination by the Tutsi as had persisted
for at least two centuries would be minimized by their demographic
truncation. As democracy was making inroads even into central Africa
(witness the then recent election of Ndadaye, the rst Hutu president of
Burundi), the massive decimation of the Tutsi would ensure a political
future replete with Hutu-dominated governments. Additionally, aug-
mented losses as the result of risky behavior an increased number of
refugees, military defeat at the hands of the RPF and short-term Tutsi
domination would be compensated for by the mass murder of enor-
mous numbers of Tutsi. Risk minimization and loss compensation
nicely complemented each other or, as Mahmood Mamdani recounts:
One recalls the more sober advice offered by a wise old Tutsi man to a
young RPF ghter who had come to liberate him in Ruhengeri in
January 1991: You want power? You will get it. But here we will all
die. Is it worth it to you?
144
Even more directly, the Hutu army chief of
staff stated that the RPF will rule over a desert, and a Hutu extremist
141
Pottier 2002, 187.
142
For more complete accounts of this process, see Jones 2001 and des Forges 1999.
143
Jones 1999, 148.
144
Mamdani 2001, 212.
166 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
party leader was quoted as saying: Even if the RPF has won a military
victory, it will not have the power. It has only bullets; we have the
population.
145
As Rome o Dallaire, military head of the United Nations Assistance
Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), and a witness throughout the geno-
cide, concludes: As we crept further into May, more extremists in the
government, including ministers, were encouraging the arming of the
Hutu population and demanding more action at the roadblocks to weed
out Tutsis and rebel inltrators . . . Reports were coming in of new
massacres in towns around the country.
146
This intensication of the
Rwandan genocide, even as the RPF was making rapid military
advances, parallels Isaac Levendels observation on the intensifying
roundups of Jews in Vichy France in 1944 as the Germans were clearly
going down to defeat, as we saw earlier in this chapter.
Here again, the genocidal intent was signaled well in advance of the
events, as early as 1992, but again military matters were to have an
inordinate effect on the outcome. Elsewhere, I suggested that the
appearance (but not actuality) of unopposed genocide in Bosnia in
1992 may have inuenced the intention of Habyarimana to plan the
genocide.
147
Yet, after his death, the genocide was perpetrated, as we
have seen, conditioned by the simultaneity of military failure and unac-
ceptable international agreements. Only a salient series of intervening
events can successfully transform intention into action, especially when
such action requires that traditional moral restraints be shattered.
Conclusion
By combining elements of realpolitik and prospect theory, we more
completely understand the transition from hatred and sporadic killing
to the systematized mass murder associated with genocide. This transi-
tion depends heavily on the international setting and especially on its
increasing threat to the potential perpetrator. Although ideological
justication for the genocide clearly is necessary, it is not sufcient for
the onset of genocide, since events in the immediate international
environment are critical harbingers of the mass killing. A history of losses
sets the entire process in motion in which the practice of realpolitik
politics without reference to any standard above politics is invoked to
protect the threatened state and minimize the risk, made far more
145
I. Martin 1998, 159.
146
Dallaire 2003, 363.
147
M. Midlarsky 2000b, 3942.
R E A L P O L I T I K A N D L O S S 167
acceptable by the experience of loss. In this process, millions of people
were doomed to extinction.
We cannot avoid concluding that, if Germany had been victorious in
World War I, or indeed had defeated the Soviet Union on the Eastern
front in 1941, the Holocaust in its nal dimensions would not have
occurred. Similarly, had the Ottoman Empire and Hutu-led Rwandan
army been more successful in their military confrontations respectively
with tsarist Russia and the RPF, the Armenian and Tutsi genocides also
likely would not have occurred. This analysis has detailed the processes
through which these losses were transformed into the commission of
genocide. Because realpolitik and the principles underlying prospect
theory are continuing elements of the human condition, we have no
guarantees that genocide will not again occur in the future.
The following chapter examines the role of altruistic punishment in
the implementation of genocide.
168 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
8
The need for unity and altruistic punishment
Let us now explore an additional consequence of loss. The taking on of
risk as a result of loss implies potential sacrice among signicant
elements of the population. Such processes typically occur at the societal
level.
Turning to the societal context, as already noted in chapter 5, if there
is a single question that penetrates to the heart of analyses undertaken
here, it is this: For historians of the Holocaust, the greatest challenge
has not been making sense of Hitler, but rather understanding why so
many followed him down his murderous path
1
and sacriced their own
lives in the process. Hitler himself, as other genocidal leaders, could have
been seen as a political crank and marginalized, even ignored altogether.
Explaining why he enjoyed such a large following is one of the principal
tasks of this book.
Without that following, two things could have happened. First, the
German war effort might have faltered much earlier, as soon as the
German army encountered serious resistance in the East, saving many
hundreds of thousands if not millions of Jewish lives. Such a precipitous
collapse, indeed, occurred during World War I even with the German
army intact and occupying large swaths of European territory.
Signicant military and civilian sectors simply refused to continue the
ghting.
2
Second, the SS and units of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern
front might have been less willing to participate in the mass murder,
especially as the war increasingly appeared to be a lost cause. The basis
for an answer to this question of the extraordinary following enjoyed by
Hitler will be provided by the perception of deep disunity in organic
society.
In each of our three cases of genocide, a climate of disunity had
prevailed for most of the period prior to the genocide itself. All had
experienced serious divisions that in the view of many threatened the
1
Marrus 1987, 46.
2
De Gaulle 2002.
169
viability of the state. Later in this chapter, the theory of altruistic
punishment will be applied as a means of understanding how that
unity was to be effected through individual sacrice. However, the role
of altruistic punishment as a basis for cooperation in divided societies
cannot be fully understood without rst examining the historical desire
for unity in our three genocidal states.
Germany
The German desire for unity had deep historical roots. It eventuated in
Carl Schmitts The Concept of the Political
3
that based virtually all of
politics on the collective friendenemy distinction. Essentially, a poli-
tical justication for genocide was established.
The beginning of the Wilhelmine period witnessed the writings of
Paul de Lagarde, a widely read social critic who was deeply pessimistic
about Germanys future, despite the public euphoria in the immediate
aftermath of the formation of imperial Germany. In 1880, he wrote, I
have no use for abstract truth. I want to bind and liberate my people.
4
Moreover, the unity of his people was paramount.
With the competing loyalties of north and south Germans,
Protestants and Catholics, liberals and conservatives, as well as tensions
between classes signied by the rapid rise of the Social Democrats,
Lagarde emphasized the most critical problem facing the newly
established Germany. Continuing divisiveness was, in many respects,
the hallmark of the new Germany.
How then could the disunity and the increasing role of Jews as promo-
ters of toxic ideologies such as capitalism be combated? In his Deutsche
Schriften (German Writings), Lagarde argued that a Fuhrer was required,
a leader who could command the loyalty of all true Germans and who
could also exterminate the Jews as the apostles of capitalism and disunity.
He used the analogy of bacilli and trichinae to justify the mass killing of all
enemies of German unity. Himmlers use of the word bacterium in his
infamous Posen speech justifying the genocide (see pp. 18081) obviously
has a historical root in Lagardes lexicon, and also serves as clear evidence of
dehumanization of the presumed enemy. It is not surprising that, in
1944, in the midst of the extermination campaign, the German army
distributed an anthology of Lagardes work that enunciated his sanctioning
3
Schmitt [1932] 1996.
4
Quoted in Stern 1974, 36.
170 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
of mass murder. As Fritz Stern comments, Few men prophesied Hitlers
work with such accuracy and approval.
5
Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, an advocate of the need for a Germanic
art, and later Moeller van den Bruck effectively advocated the idea of
national socialism in which German solidarity would be rmly estab-
lished and would not necessarily be based on economic principles. But
this desired unity was to be coupled with sacrice. Two cases are
especially relevant. In 1923, Leo Schlageter, a former member of
the Freikorps who earlier had fought against the Russian Communists
in the Baltic and the German Communists in the Ruhr, was executed by
the French for attempted sabotage during their occupation of the Ruhr.
He was immediately canonized as a hero of the German battle for unity
in the face of enemies to both the East and West. He was especially
prominent in Nazi martyrology.
The second instance is that of Moeller van den Brucks suicide.
Although not anti-Semitic as were Lagarde and Langbehn, he never-
theless wrote Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich) as an expression of his
extreme nationalism, emphasis on unity, and hatred of liberalism.
6
His
suicide in 1925 was seen by both friend and foe as a Germanic suicide.
His despair over Germanys future was said to have been the source of
his suicide.
7
The Nazis later appropriated the name of his book for their
new Germany. Although seemingly far less dramatic in the overt level of
self-sacrice, Himmler in his efforts to enhance German unity and
cooperation follows this Germanic tradition. In the end, though, the
nihilism that pervaded the Nazi Party was to nd its ultimate expression
in the suicides of Hitler, Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels, the most
prominent architects of the Final Solution.
Interestingly, one of the rst to think extensively about modern
German nihilism was the political philosopher Leo Strauss, who was
forced to ee Germany in the 1930s. In a lecture delivered in February
1941, Strauss, like Stern, saw the deep roots of German nihilism, with
Nazism as only the most recent (in 1941) manifestation.
8
A moral life is
inherently opposed to the idea of an open society, for in it all sorts of
moral conceptions are allowed free rein. Pleasure seekers, those con-
cerned only with the good life or economic satisfaction, are divorced
from a singular moral conception that has the nation at its core. War on
behalf of the nation, with its inevitable sacrices, is a hallmark of this
morality. According to Strauss, What [the moral believers] hated, was
5
Ibid., 63.
6
Ibid., 2612.
7
Ibid., 266.
8
Strauss 1999.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 171
the very prospect of a world in which everyone would be happy and
satised, in which everyone would have his little pleasure by day and his
little pleasure by night, a world in which no great heart could beat and
no great soul could breathe, a world without real, unmetaphoric, sacri-
ce, i.e. a world without blood, sweat, and tears.
9
As early as 1880, the older Moltke, chief of the German General Staff,
stated: Permanent peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and
war is a law of Gods order in the world, by which the noblest virtues of
man, courage and self-denial, loyalty and self-sacrice, even to the point
of death, are developed. Without war the world would deteriorate into
materialism.
10
Later, in 1932, just prior to the Nazi period, this idea
would receive its apotheosis by Ernst Junger: What kind of minds are
those who do not even know this much that no mind can be more
profound and more knowing than that of any soldier who fell anywhere
at the Somme or in Flanders? This is the standard of which we are in
need.
11
And Junger was no hypocrite. In 1944, when his son was killed
in the Italian campaign, Junger related to his friend General Speidel that
his son had succeeded where he, Junger, had failed. This was his rst
day under re one he had keenly looked forward to. He always wished
to follow in my path, and now, taking his very rst step, he has gone
further than ever I managed to do.
12
Nihilism is evident when death in
the service of a goal, often political, is not to be avoided, but is to be
valued, even cherished.
13
In addition to ideological and societal calls for German unity, the
demands of economic growth after World War I also required it. Not
only was economic growth needed to compete with other European
powers and the United States, but the Nazis understood that their
continued tenure in power rested, in part, on German consumer satis-
faction.
14
And the path to rapid economic growth was seen as a ratio-
nalization of industry along American lines, specically with Henry
Fords assembly-line innovations as a model. An analysis of German
economic efforts by Robert Brady just prior to the Nazi accession to
power suggested that:
9
Ibid., 360.
10
Quoted ibid., 377.
11
Emphases in original; quoted ibid., 369. See Junger 1975.
12
Keates 2004.
13
Or as Saul Bellow 1982, 291, put it, the rst axiom of nihilism the highest values
losing their value.
14
Schivelbusch 2003, 285.
172 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Rationalization will be retarded in Germany as long as national, political,
social, and other barriers stand in the way of technological and economic
forces . . . There are denite limits set to rationalization and economic
planning so long as Germany remains a house divided against itself so
long as Catholic Bavaria is pitted against Protestant Prussia, the right
against the left, the industrialists against the agriculturists, the urban
against the rural districts, the cartels against consumers, the states against
the Reich.
15
Thus, from a practical standpoint, German unity was absolutely
required if the Nazis were to continue to govern and then successfully
defeat their enemies on the battleeld. For these reasons, the spirit of
1914 was continually invoked as the one moment in recent German
history when all of the divisions mentioned by Lagarde and Brady
disappeared, and were replaced by a German people united against a
common enemy. The nation rose as one to the challenge of the new war.
And according to Wolfgang Schivelbusch: To call upon the unity of the
nation in the form of folk community was henceforth identical with
reviving the spirit of 1914.
16
The Ottoman Empire
Unity was also a principal concern of the Ottoman Empire, especially
after the disastrous defeat by Russia in the Russo-Turkish War of
187778. According to Kemal Karpat, over 300 thousand Muslims
were massacred and one million uprooted in the Balkans and
Caucasus, and the Balkan provinces of Serbia, Romania, Montenegro
(which became independent), and Bulgaria (which became autono-
mous) were lost. The Berlin Treaty of 1878 sealed the Ottoman defeat
and, contrary to its claim that it would settle the national question in the
Balkans, generated a series of new ethnicnationalreligious conicts,
which had been markedly absent during four centuries of Ottoman rule,
and which culminated in the creation of a group of ethnic national
states, including Turkey.
17
The fundamental issue facing the Ottomans, particularly Abdulhamit II,
was how to integrate these Muslim refugees along with Turks and Arabs
(Sunnis and Shiites) into a cohesive political entity. Islam was the
vehicle chosen to accomplish this task. Whereas prior to the nineteenth
15
Quoted ibid., 28384.
16
Ibid., 22223.
17
Karpat 2001, 41314.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 173
century the Ottoman Empire had an approximate demographic equality
between Muslims and non-Muslims (mainly Christian), that had been
altered radically. NowMuslims were the clear majority and their religion
was to be the principal unier.
Mosques were repaired and restored. In addition to being encouraged
to celebrate Islamic holidays, Muslims were offered lessons on Islam and
the Arabic language through secular schools. Arabic was almost raised to
equality with Ottoman Turkish as an ofcial language, but, at the last
moment, the sultan was dissuaded from this policy.
18
Many of the Muslim migrants were encouraged to settle in areas with
sizeable Christian populations such as eastern Anatolia with its large
numbers of Armenians.
19
In this fashion, the incipient nationalisms of
Christian groups would be blunted by the growing Muslimpopulations in
these regions. Between 1862 and 1882, Muslim migrants from Russia and
the Balkans increased the Ottoman Muslim population by 40 percent.
20
The emphasis on Islam had an additional advantage. Because most of
the nonagricultural economy was in the hands of Christians Greeks or
Armenians
21
this strategy also managed to reinforce not only a reli-
gious, but also an economic cleavage between these Christian commu-
nities and Turkish as well as Kurdish Muslims. When calls for action
came against the Christian communities in the form of genocide for the
Armenians and exile for the Greeks, the Ottoman leaders could rely on
the Turkish and Kurdish peasantry who were united against and hostile
to the Christians. There were at least two sources of unity Islam and
intense class-based hostility for the Ottoman leaders to draw upon.
Additionally, as early as 1873, the concept of vatan (fatherland,
homeland) was gaining ascendancy within the Ottoman Empire. In
Namik Kemals thinking, the vatan was necessarily Muslim or, even
more precisely, Turkish, clearly excluding all non-Muslim Ottomans.
In Kemals play of that year, the hero Islam bey (sic) tells his love:
The state has declared war. The enemy is trying to trample under its feet
the bones of our martyrs on the frontier (serhat, which has a powerful
mystical connotation of martyrdom . . . ). How can I stay in comfort at
home when the fatherland is in danger . . . Fatherland! Fatherland! I
shout that the fatherland is in danger, dont you hear me? God created
me, the fatherland reared me. God nurtured me for the fatherland . . . I
feel the bounty of the fatherland in my bones. My body (is part) of the
18
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 25960.
19
Karpat 2002, 64.
20
Karpat 2001, 97.
21
Issawi 1980.
174 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
fatherlands earth, my breath (is part) of the fatherlands air. Why was I
born if I was not to die for the fatherland?
22
Sacrice for the Ottoman Empire clearly was the theme of Islam beys
declaration. Elsewhere, he decries the widespread absence of such sup-
port for the empire:
When in need of defense, it has to be defended by forcing (whipping) the
children of the fatherland . . . to go to the frontier to ght. The fatherland
is everybodys real mother, and yet many people try to exploit it in its
good and bad days and arent willing to shed even two drops of tear [sic]
for it. The fatherland is nurturing forty million people and, yet now it has
not found even forty souls to volunteer to die for it. In the past, this
fatherland kept alive with its sword several states while now it is preserved
with the help of a fewother states (the English and French, who supported
the Ottomans against Russia).
23
Although a poet and playwright, Kemal became one of the architects
of the constitution of 1876. His play concludes with a chorus:
Wounds are medals on the braves body;
The grave (martyrdom) is the soldiers highest rank;
The earth is the same, above and underneath;
March, you brave ones, to defend the fatherland.
24
Karpat concludes his analysis of Kemal with the comment: In the
ultimate analysis, the fatherland for Namik Kemal was the territory of
the state (devlet) and the nation (millet) was the community of Ottoman
Muslims, led by Turks or by those closely identied with Ottoman
history.
25
As the Turks were the ascendant group by virtue of their
numbers and their loyalty, it was not surprising that they became the
most powerful force within the Ottoman Empire.
It was Kemal who would presage the transition from Ottomanism to
Turkism as the basis of governance. Later, around 1890, Sultan
Abdulhamit commented, In fact the Turks constitute the real strength
of the state. As long as the Turks survive, the rest will (follow) and
sacrice themselves for the dynasty as part of their absolute (religious)
obligation. This is the reason for which the Sublime Sultanate should
place on a higher level the national fate (kadr-i millet) but also respect
the Arabs, with whom we share the language of our faith.
26
22
Quoted in Karpat 2001, 331.
23
Quoted ibid., 332.
24
Quoted ibid., 334.
25
Ibid.
26
Emphasis added; quoted ibid., 336.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 175
When Arab nationalism proved to be more resilient than expected, and
the Albanians, despite the presence of a Muslim majority, declared inde-
pendence in 1912, Turkism became ascendant. The Committee for Union
and Progress (also somewhat erroneously identied as the Young Turks)
would transform the empire into a Turkish state imperial in form and
national in content.
27
There would be little room for non-Muslim or non-
Turkish nationalism in the new empire.
Rwanda
As in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, Rwanda also had deep con-
cerns about the absence of unity, even within the majority Hutu popula-
tion. First, in contrast to Germany, where Jews were less than 1 percent
of the population, and the Ottoman Empire, where Armenians were no
more than 3 percent, the Tutsi in Rwanda were a substantially larger
minority. At the time of the genocide, they numbered at least 10 percent
(taking into account Tutsi registration as Hutu to avoid discrimination)
of the total including both Hutu and Twa (no more than 1 percent).
28
Such a sizable proportion of the population had strong implications for
governance in an emerging multiparty system. But in addition to this
increasingly fundamental divide, the Hutu themselves were divided
between northerners and those from central and southern Rwanda.
The northern Hutu, known as Kiga, formed a distinctive subculture
that was brought under the aegis of the Tutsi monarchy only in the
twentieth century with German and, later, Belgian help.
29
In contrast
to the south, especially in the region of Butare, there was little inter-
marriage between Hutu and Tutsi in the north. Indeed, the northerners
viewed the southerners as other because of the close ties between the
Hutu and the Tutsi.
30
It was the perception of the southerners as other
that most probably inspired the northern-dominated government to
unleash especially severe genocidal action in the south of Rwanda. Many
of the murdered Hutu moderates would be from this region.
Hutu from central and southern Rwanda actually dominated the
government until the 1973 coup by Juve nal Habyarimana. It was not
until attacks on the Tutsi, which some attributed to southerners, that
northerners effectively took over governmental control. Others laid
responsibility for the attacks on northerners hoping to generate instabil-
ity and thereby justify the coup de tat. In either event, the tactic was
27
Ibid., 370.
28
Des Forges 1999, 15.
29
Lemarchand 1995, 8.
30
Pottier 2002, 35.
176 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
clear: seek to resolve differences among Hutu at the expense of the
Tutsi.
31
From the outset, the search for unity among Hutu would involve the
murder of Tutsi. At the same time, Hutu moderates who opposed this
tactic were hated passionately. In one 1993 song, the popular singer
Simon Bikindi targeted the Hutu of Butare:
Let us start in the region of Butare where they like feudalism (the reign of
the Tutsi), who would blame me for that? I hate them and I dont
apologize for that. I hate them and I dont apologize for that. Lucky for
us that they are few in number . . . Those who have ears, let them hear!
32
The Hutu extremist newspaper Kangura stated: Your unity, your
mutual understanding, your solidarity are the certain weapons of your
victory . . . You understand that when the majority people is divided,
(then) the minority becomes the majority.
33
An ideology of hatred began to build on the presumed Hamitic and
therefore alien origin of the Tutsi, but with strong emphasis on Tutsi
unity that needed a strong Hutu counterpart. Using the term inyenzi
(cockroach) to describe the Tutsi, in March 1993 Kangura published an
article titled A Cockroach Cannot Give Birth to a Buttery. This
article, characterizing the Tutsi as evil and dehumanizing them, inclu-
ded the following:
We began by saying that a cockroach cannot give birth to a buttery. It is
true. A cockroach gives birth to another cockroach . . . The history of
Rwanda shows us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same, that he
has never changed. The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the
history of our country. We are not wrong in saying that a cockroach gives
birth to another cockroach. Who could tell the difference between the
Inyenzi who attacked in October 1990 and those of the 1960s. They are all
linked . . . their evilness is the same. The unspeakable crimes of the
Inyenzi of today . . . recall those of their elders: killing, pillaging, raping
girls and women, etc.
34
With such an unchanging and united enemy, the Hutu were called on
to be tightly organized in response. This press for a vigorous Hutu
response went beyond the pattern already established of Tutsi exclusion.
Although Habyarimana in 1973 actually included a Tutsi in his cabinet,
the barriers to Tutsi participation in the real organs of power, the army
31
Des Forges 1999, 41.
32
Quoted ibid., 83.
33
Quoted ibid., 82.
34
Quoted ibid., 7374.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 177
and local government, were virtually impenetrable. There was actually
one Tutsi ofcer in the army, but army members were forbidden by
regulation to marry Tutsi women. Although dened as an ethnic min-
ority, Tutsi were effectively denied group recognition and were com-
pletely excluded from power at the local level. Tutsi in neighboring
countries, many of them refugees or descendants of refugees, were
denied Rwandan rights of any kind.
35
The events of 1990 and thereafter
would demand an exclusion well beyond this customary discrimination.
Yet another potential dimension of conict was social class. Increased
population density made existing landholdings smaller and even gave
rise to landlessness, a deadly condition in a largely agrarian economy.
36
In 1984, 57 percent of rural households had less than one hectare to
farm, and, of these, 25 percent had less than half a hectare.
37
Between
1984 and 1989, average farm holdings shrank by 12 percent. And the
shrinkage occurred during only a ve-year period, suggesting the expo-
nential decline of holdings size under a condition of unremitting popu-
lation growth.
38
Peasants are the rst to shrewdly observe such processes
and to predict their likely unhappy outcomes in the foreseeable future.
39
A USAID-commissioned study concluded that: Disputes over land are
reported to have been a major motivation for Rwandans to denounce
neighbors during the ethnic conicts of 1994.
40
When such increasing scarcities intersect with regional political divi-
sions, the result can be local massacre. In comparing two Rwandan
communities, Kirinda and Biguhu, Timothy Longman found just such
a relationship.
41
In the former community, located in central Rwanda, a
cohesive elite was loyal to President Habyarimanas party consisting of
northerners, while the peasantry on the whole supported the opposition.
Despite the absence of Tutsi in either the economic or political elite,
Habyarimanas supporters sought to deect hostile sentiments of the
peasantry onto the regions Tutsi minority, descendants of the pre-1959
elite. A mob was organized that murdered a signicant portion of the
local Tutsi community. In Biguhu, on the other hand, a local elite
developed without signicant ties to the northerners. The local peasan-
try was the focus of efforts to improve the status of the community. As a
35
Mamdani 2001, 141.
36
Pottier 2002, 184.
37
Mamdani 2001, 197.
38
M. Midlarsky 1999.
39
M. Midlarsky 1988b.
40
Quoted in Mamdani 2001, 197.
41
Longman 1995.
178 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
consequence, few, if any, of the local elite participated in the genocide.
External perpetrators had to be imported, in the absence of local
participation.
Here, as in our other cases, sacrice was required in the name of Hutu
unity and power. Or as Mamdani puts it: Faced with a military defeat
that seemed to sound the very death knell of Hutu Power, the ge noci-
daires chose to embrace death itself as an alternative to life without
power.
42
The search for unity establishes a powerful substratum upon which
genocidal thinking can be built. If unity is to be imperiled by the
presence of alien societal elements, and there exists evidence, either
real or phantasmal, for the inuence of these people on the genesis of
loss, then genocide can emerge as a serious policy option. Succeeding
chapters explore this and other consequences of the perception of
disunity.
Partly because of the reluctance of the Turkish government and even
many Turkish scholars to acknowledge that a genocide of the Armenians
occurred, information on the lives and motivations of the perpetrators is
limited. The same limitation is true of Rwanda, but for a different
reason. Here, the genocide is ten years old as of this writing, and detailed
information on the lives and motivations of the organizers of the
genocide has yet to appear.
43
The rst biography of Himmler in
English appeared twenty-six years after his suicide,
44
and a more
detailed and extensive one
45
not until twenty years after that. It may
take many more years before reliable personal data on Rwandan central
perpetrators becomes available. Consequently, I could only explore the
moral dimension and inclinations toward cooperation satisfactorily in
the case of Heinrich Himmler, the chief architect of the Final Solution.
The others must await further research.
42
Mamdani 2001, 215.
43
Recently, Jean Hatzfeld has written a book based on the narratives of perpetrators in one
commune of Rwanda, that of Nyamata. With only one exception, the ten perpetrators
interviewed were ordinary farmers or laborers and not involved as prime movers. The
exception, Joseph-De sire Bitero, was the only one who was involved in preparations for
the genocide several months before its onset (A

ce titre, il est le seul de la bande a` avoir

e te implique dans la pre paration du ge nocide plusieurs mois avant que celui-ci com-
mence): Hatzfeld 2003, 30405.
44
B. Smith 1971.
45
Padeld 1991.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 179
Himmler and the necessity for cooperation
We now explore the nexus between Nazi leadership in the form of
Heinrich Himmler and putative followers. It focuses on factors that
could have motivated a thoroughly violence-averse individual to
authorize the commission of mass murder on a truly horrendous scale.
How do we reconcile such an apparent disjunction between personal
preferences and collective behavior? An answer is to be found in the role
of altruistic punishment as a strategy to maximize societal cooperation.
Materials from Himmlers life history are used to support the basic
propositions. The relevance of altruistic punishment is compared with
related but still very different concepts such as Saul Friedlanders
redemptive anti-Semitism
46
and Robert Jay Liftons killing to heal.
47
The basic explanatory strength of altruistic punishment is found in its
unique capacity to link the individual behaviors of leaders and collective
behaviors of followers. This dynamic linkage is to be preferred over the
essentially static banality of evil characterization by Hannah Arendt
48
of bureaucratic murderers like Adolf Eichmann, and even higher-level
functionaries such as Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler as moralist
One of the most arresting speeches in German history and perhaps in all
of human affairs is that given by Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer-SS, to
a meeting of senior SS ofcers, among others, in Posen on October 4,
1943. In it he spoke of the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of
the Jewish people. That reference in itself, appalling as it is, does not
necessarily give rise to utter amazement and consternation. After all, the
Holocaust, though exceptional in its magnitude and absence of identi-
able Jewish provocation, was not the rst genocide of the twentieth
century, nor would it be the last. It is the inverted moral calculus that
is stunning in its impact. Himmler states:
Most of you men know what it is like to see 100 corpses side by side, or
500 or 1,000. To have stood fast through this and except for cases of
human weakness to have stayed decent that has made us hard . . . We
had the moral right, we had the duty towards our people, to destroy this
46
Friedlander 1997.
47
Lifton 1986.
48
Arendt 1964. For a refutation of the banality of evil hypothesis, see Lozowick 2002,
esp. 26880.
180 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
people that wanted to destroy us. But we do not have the right to enrich
ourselves by so much as a fur, as a watch, by one Mark or a cigarette or
anything else. We have exterminated a bacterium because we do not want
in the end to be infected by the bacterium and die of it. I will not see so
much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may
form, we will cauterise it. All in all, however, we can say that we have
carried out this most difcult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people.
And we have suffered no harm in our inner being, our soul, our
character.
49
In Himmlers view, this was a glorious page in our history that has
never been written and is never to be written.
50
Two days later, he amplied the moral theme before a high-level
gathering of Reichsleiters and Gauleiters. The entire property that we
conscated from the Jews it runs to innite value has been passed
over to the Reich Economics Minister down to the last Pfennig. I have
taken the view: we have the duty to our Volk, to our race, if we want to
win the war we have the duty to our Fuhrer, who now for once in two
thousand years has been granted our Volk, not to be petty here but to be
thoroughgoing. But we have not the right to take even one Pfennig from
the conscated Jewish property. I established from the beginning that SS
men, even if they only take one Mark, are dead. In the last few days
on that account I have signed several I can say it calmly, it was about
a dozen death sentences. Here one has to be hard lest the whole suffer
by it.
51
SS sadists occasionally were punished. When questioned as to the
appropriate response to the unauthorized killing of Jews, Himmler
responded: If the motive is purely political there should be no punish-
ment unless such is necessary for the maintenance of discipline. If the
motive is selsh, sadistic or sexual, judicial punishment should be
imposed for murder or manslaughter as the case may be.
52
When
corruption was combined with sadism, Himmler let the hounds of
justice loose.
53
As the Himmler biographer Richard Breitman comments: The archi-
tect of mass murder remained in his own eyes a moralist to the end.
54
Further, according to Yehuda Bauer, within the framework of the SS
ethos, Himmler changed the biblical thou shalt not murder into a
49
Quoted in Burleigh 2000, 66061.
50
Quoted in Kershaw 2000a, 487.
51
Quoted in Padeld 1991, 469.
52
Quoted in Hohne 1970, 383.
53
Ibid.
54
Breitman 1991, 243.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 181
Nazi thou shalt murder . . . a positive commandment. In other words,
he did not deviate from accepted moral precepts but stood them on their
head without changing the traditional framework in which people
accepted them.
55
Clearly, Himmlers morality was not that typically
associated with altruism,
56
nor did it conform to the canons of moral
philosophy.
57
The existence of this moral inversion, however, does not help explain
its genesis. How could the not-unintelligent Himmler, and educated,
even sophisticated SS ofcers, two-thirds with university degrees and
nearly a third with doctorates, most frequently in law,
58
descend to this
moral purgatory?
Preceding answers have centered on the peculiarities of Himmlers
psyche. The existence of his youthful diaries and the many speeches he
delivered provide a useful database for such inductive theorizing.
Following Peter Loewenberg, Peter Padeld in his extensive biography
of Himmler interprets many of his actions to be a consequence of a
personality riven by emotional withdrawal and narcissism.
59
Both
Bradley Smith and Richard Breitman follow more orthodox historio-
graphic paths and attribute Himmlers behavior to the unique intersec-
tion of family circumstances and historical trajectories.
60
Neither of
these idiographic approaches is sufcient, for they do not help explain
the general acceptance of Himmlers actions by a large proportion of
Nazi Germanys leaders. We now know that the Wehrmacht was deeply
complicit in the Holocaust, especially in the East.
61
In early May 1944, at
a gathering of generals and members of Hitlers headquarters staff,
Himmler openly spoke of the mass murder of Jewish women and
children as well as the men. A recording of the speech reveals that
these remarks were greeted with applause.
62
Morality, especially at the front, was relative. Viewing Judeo-communism
as the be te noire of the Nazis, the German troops could believe that No
matter the scale of the Wehrmachts atrocities, the enemys, by denition,
were greater. Thus as long as the morality of ones actions was gauged in
relation to the enemys, there could not be any absolute moral limit.
Personal moral outrage, instead of tempering ones conduct, rather
55
Bauer 1994, 116.
56
E. Midlarsky 1968, E. Midlarsky and Kahana 1994.
57
Neiman 2002.
58
Herbert 2000a, 26.
59
Loewenberg 1971; Padeld 1991.
60
B. Smith 1971; Breitman 1991.
61
Bartov 1992; Hamburg Institute for Social Research 1999.
62
Padeld 1991, 484.
182 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
enhanced it, by being directed at those perceived as the cause of all
enormities.
63
Defection and cooperation
Although Communists, Social Democrats, Roma, homosexuals, and
other asocials were despised and in many cases subject to mass mur-
der, the Jews occupied a singular position at the head of the group. Their
defection was seen to be particularly egregious because of the infamous
stab in the back popularized by Kaiser Wilhelm II upon his abdication
at the end of World War I (see chapter 7).
Here we have the image of the classic defector. Residing in the midst
of a mutually cooperating society, the Jews are assumed to take advan-
tage of their hosts in ways that ultimately lead to the German defeat in
World War I. To their great misfortune, further events would reinforce
this illusion of the Jews as defectors. The November 1918 revolution in
Bavaria, soon to be the hotbed of Nazism, occurred even before that
which swept the Reich. It was a more radical revolution and one that
happened to have several Jews among its leaders including those with
East European origins and Bolshevik connections. At the head stood
Kurt Eisner, a Jewish journalist and left-wing socialist who earlier had
organized the January strike of 1916 in an attempt to initiate indus-
trial unrest. The vast majority of revolutionaries, however, were not
Jewish.
Later, in 1919, the revolution was to be further radicalized by three
Jewish emissaries from the Soviet Union Lewien, Levine-Niessen, and
Axelrod. Before their soviet republic was quashed, one of the nal acts of
the revolutionaries was to execute a number of hostages. Among them
were seven members of the Thule society, a conservative aristocratic
society that gave rise to a German Workers Party, later to become the
NSDAP (Nazi Party) under Hitlers leadership.
64
Four of the murdered
Thule society members were nobles. The nobility was very dear to the
hearts of the Himmler family. Heinrich himself was the namesake of
Prince Heinrich of the Bavarian house of Wittelsbad and a student of
Professor Himmler, Heinrichs father. The princes death from wounds
suffered at the front was deeply felt by the Himmlers. According to
Padeld, Its against this background that Heinrich Himmlers views
were formed.
65
63
Bartov 1994, 47.
64
Kershaw 1998, 13536.
65
Padeld 1991, 36.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 183
Himmlers notes on a book read in the spring of 1924 state: A new
frightful insight into the workshop of the enemy. Bitterness seizes one
when one reads all this. What have we done to these people that we should
not live. And nowwith a vengeance. We want to be German and will always
ght for this against every enemy. What kind of enemies of belief and of
the Christian religion of love are these people indeed.
66
In a classic description of the hidden defector, Himmler, in the wake
of the Rohm purge or night of the long knives in the summer of 1934,
states: That the Jews and our other enemies would not proceed against
us with direct attacks must have been clear to each of you even those
who have no knowledge of them. The attack of the Jews and all secret
enemies occurs, as it has for centuries, via seeds of discord, via lies,
calumny, via shameless intrigue.
67
Even in their language, the Jews were
seen as defectors. After reading a nineteenth-century book about
Yiddish, Himmler comments, One sees that Yiddish is a form of middle
high German . . . Shame to our beautiful language.
68
While Jews were being identied as defectors, the necessity for coop-
eration was emphasized in German society. As early as the formation of
the Reichswehr after World War I by General Hans von Seeckt, the
necessity for societal cooperation was recognized. In his reform of the
military, von Seeckt set out to eliminate from the army many of the class
barriers that had served as social fault lines and were thought to have
contributed to the revolutionary ethos of 191819. In the manual
authorized initially by von Seeckt, leaders were enjoined to live with
their troops and share with them their dangers and deprivations, their
joys and sorrows.
69
This new spirit of cooperation was to be effected
later during World War II, as exemplied by one incident recounted by
Major General F. W. von Mellethin. While in Venice dining at a hotel,
Italians were surprised to nd von Mellethins driver seated at the same
table. Von Mellethin explained: While normally ofcers and other
ranks took their meals separately, it was a matter of course for us to
eat together like this when an ofcer and a private were all on their own.
In contrast to 1918 the inner knowledge that ofcers and enlisted men
belonged together was never shaken, and even in 1945 there were no
signs of rot in the German Army.
70
66
Emphasis added; quoted ibid., 70.
67
Quoted ibid., 163.
68
Quoted in B. Smith 1971, 143.
69
Quoted in Condell and Zabecki 2001, 5.
70
Quoted ibid., 6.
184 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Cooperation within German society was a principal Nazi goal.
Sebastian Haffner lists it as one of the genuine achievements of the
Nazi period, what Hitler called the socialization of people.
71
Younger-age school children belonged to the Jungvolk, while adoles-
cents found a home in the Hitler Youth. Military sports were common in
the SA (paramilitary assault divisions) or SS. Women were active in the
German Womens League. These activities gave rise to an undeniable
sense of security, comradeship and happiness which ourish in such
communities.
72
And these efforts at cooperation were successful, even in the genocidal
impulse among the German civilian population, not to mention the
military, and even after the full extent of the genocide had been revealed.
In October 1945, a survey of the German population in the American
zone of occupation revealed that fully 20 percent of the respondents
supported Hitlers treatment of the Jews, and another 19 percent were
generally in favor but felt that he had gone too far.
73
As late as 1947,
55 percent of the population believed that National Socialism was a
good idea badly carried out.
74
And we know that these attitudes were
not characteristic of Germans in 1933 at the start of the Nazi regime
(e.g., the failed Nazi-sponsored April 1 boycott of Jewish businesses).
Victor Klemperer, an acute observer of the wartime German scene,
indicated that, in the last year of the war, Germans were increasingly
likely to vent their hostilities directly at Jews and were openly supportive
of the Nazi policies toward them.
75
Himmler himself was extremely sensitive to the imperative need for
cooperation in the face of governmental collapse. An early expression of
this societal orientation was found in his fraternity (Bund) activities.
The traditional Kameradschaft of the Bund had a deep appeal for him,
and he took his responsibilities to his fraternity brothers very seriously.
He visited sick Apolloneans [fraternity brothers] and sought out
71
Haffner 1979, 37.
72
Ibid., 39. Indeed, Haffner himself experienced these feelings despite his strong anti-Nazi
sentiments, which led to his emigration before the war. Writing in his posthumously
published memoir, Haffner recorded his reaction to the required attendance at an
ideological indoctrinataion camp for soon-to-be-certied lawyers. Although put off
by the SA leaders, Haffner soon succumbed to what he called the trap of comradeship.
At the end of the camp session, he comments, We had become a collective entity, and
with all the intellectual cowardice and dishonesty of a collective being we instinctively
ignored or belittled anything that could disturb our collective self-satisfaction.
A German Reich in microcosm (Haffner 2002, 283, 288).
73
Kulka 2000, 279.
74
Ibid.
75
Heim 2000, 324.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 185
members and alumni wherever he went. The parallel between the
Kameradschaft of the Bund and the esprit de corps of a military unit
pleased him. In the Bund he found an expression of the genuine German
spirit.
76
At around the same time, Himmler notes in his diary a visit to a
destitute old woman. 24 November: . . . Visit to Frau Kernburger. The
poor old woman. This is true misery. She is almost too weak from
hunger and exhaustion to walk . . . People are as hard and pitiless as
they can be . . . I fetched rolls for her and added a small cake which I put
down without her noticing.
77
His social instincts, at least among
cooperators, were very strong. They would be manifested still further
in his cooperative behavior with Nazi leaders (der treue [loyal]
Heinrich) and his successful leadership of the SS and Gestapo.
Clearly, Himmler understood the Jews to be defectors par excellence.
But how strongly did Himmler react to the appearance of defection from
the rules of cooperating society? Recall that one of the experimental
ndings emphasized that the greater the amount of defection from
average levels of cooperation, the greater the extent of punishment
visited upon the defector.
78
Not only would the Jews have to be extra-
ordinary defectors in Himmlers view, but he himself would have to be
sensitive to defection. In Himmlers case, strong sensitivity of this type is
indeed in evidence.
An incident reveals the extent of Himmlers reaction to any form of
defection from accepted norms of cooperative behavior. It occurred in
September 1916, as food shortages were making themselves felt in
wartime Germany. A clipping from a local newspaper kept by
Himmler denounced the hoarding behavior of a woman known to
him. She had complained to the Himmler family about the food restric-
tions in Germany that she was circumventing by her hoarding behavior
in Passau. Food she collected there was being sent home. Bradley Smith
concluded from this incident that the Himmlers perhaps Heinrich
himself were directly involved in the denunciation of the hoarders. The
boys wealth of information on the incident certainly suggests that he
played some part in its exposure.
79
But the commission of systematic mass murder was actually against
Himmlers personal temperament. Unless judged to be absolutely neces-
sary, Himmler found murder to be distasteful. For example, his written
76
B. Smith 1971, 112.
77
Quoted in Padeld 1991, 1011.
78
Fehr and Gachter 2000, 980.
79
B. Smith 1971, 43.
186 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
commentary on a volume on human torture suggested that it was a
horrifying work and a frightening book about the beast in men which
manifests itself in every century and in every state.
80
The subject of
killing seems to have caused him physical distress.
81
Attending one
execution of 200 Jews in Minsk, Himmler was barely prevented from
physically collapsing.
82
While his fondness for children was widely
noted, he readily gave time to widows and war orphans saying that,
Compared with their sacrice, the half-hour which I sacrice to them is
such a small matter. I would be ashamed if I failed to listen to them or
give them the feeling there was somebody to whom they could turn.
83
Yet he ordered and supervised the murder of millions, most frequently
under barbaric conditions. A series of Himmlers statements strongly
suggests the notion of altruistic punishment.
As early as 1924 when he worked hard to disseminate volkisch propa-
ganda, delivering speeches in small towns and writing short articles for
rural newspapers, he noted in his diary on February 24, This service to
the people is bitterly hard and full of heartaches.
84
Later, in September
1937, in a speech to the German army General Staff, he spoke of the
difculties in stafng the camps in the hands of the Deaths Head
Battalions. It is . . . necessary to have a relatively high number of
these supervisory troops, there are at present 3,500 in Germany,
because there is no service as debilitating and as exhausting as the
supervision of these bums and criminals.
85
The editors of this docu-
ment sought to disparage Himmlers comment by heading the section in
which it appears, Himmler Pities Prison Guards,
86
but this statement
is consistent with many others suggesting the concept of self-sacrice for
the good of the Volk. When Himmler spoke to the generals on June 21,
1944, he stated that It was the most dreadful assignment and most
awful commission that an organization could ever receive: the commis-
sion to solve the Jewish question.
87
Or, on May 5, 1944, Please under-
stand how difcult it was for me to perform this soldierly command,
which I followed and performed out of obedience and the fullest con-
viction.
88
And nally, in his infamous speech in Posen, he spoke of
the difculties of committing mass murder and remaining decent, as
we saw.
80
Quoted ibid., 165.
81
Padeld 1991, 373.
82
Hohne 1970, 366.
83
Quoted in Padeld 1991, 39495.
84
Quoted in B. Smith 1971, 137.
85
Himmler 1938, 13.
86
Ibid., 12.
87
Quoted in Fleming 1984, 54.
88
Quoted ibid., 5354.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 187
That Himmler personally extended himself there can be little doubt.
But on behalf of whom and in the name of which process was he acting?
Clearly, the German Volk was to be the recipient of his altruistic endea-
vors. By eliminating the Jews as the prime source of the 1918 defeat,
Himmler was opening the possibilities for victory in the second round.
Or, as he put it in his Posen speech of October 4, 1943, and is worth
repeating, If the Jews were still lodged in the body of the German
nation, we would probably have reached by now the stage of
191617.
89
In early May 1944, he told a gathering of generals and
members of Hitlers headquarters staff, Of this you can be sure, had
we not eliminated the Jews from Germany we would not have been able
to endure the bombing despite the decency of the German Volk. That is
my conviction.
90
Later, on July 26, 1944, he stated, The war is precisely
as surely to be won as the world war was in November 1918, January
1919, if only we had had a rm leadership then, a loyalty pervading the
whole Volk up to the top, and good nerves . . . We are in the fortunate
position that we have no more Jews within, so the scum of all revolts has
been eradicated in the mass of the people.
91
This latter quote reveals both the purpose and the principal base of
the altruistic punishment. Himmler had devoted himself with super-
human energy to the achievement of cooperation within Germany by
eliminating the main group of earlier assumed defectors, the Jews.
And without the perennially defecting Jews, the bedrock of German
cooperation, loyalty, could now be established. Treue or loyalty was
Himmlers main concern. Earlier in his life, he commented, upon read-
ing Werner Jansens Das Buch Treue (The Book of Loyalty), One of the
most wonderful German books that I have read. The German loyalty
[Treue] problem . . . wonderfully presented.
92
According to Smith:
A . . . direct connection between his early ideas and his later activities is
to be found in his concept of Treue or loyalty. Praise of company or party
loyalty is common in organizations, but volkisch writers and speakers in
the early 1920s elevated it to the paramount position in their value
system. Loyalty became the bedrock of the volkisch faith . . . The slogan
of the SS, Meine Ehre heisst Treue [my honor demands loyalty], marked
the institutionalization of this concept inside the Nazi system.
93
89
Quoted in Burleigh 2000, 660.
90
Quoted in Padeld 1991, 424.
91
Quoted ibid., 519.
92
Quoted in B. Smith 1971, 142.
93
Ibid., 171.
188 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
To Felix Kersten, Himmlers personal physician who complained of
the extent and personal cost of the killing even to perpetrators, Himmler
remarked, You oughtnt to look at things from such a limited and
egotistical point of view; you have to consider the Germanic world as a
whole . . . a man has to sacrice himself.
94
Throughout the invasion of
Russia, Himmler exhorted his Einsatzgruppe minions to fulll their
heavy task.
95
Perhaps most indicative of prevailing sentiment about killing among
the military is a pep talk given to Wehrmacht troops in Russia by a
Captain Wesreidau in autumn 1943, after the major German defeats at
Stalingrad and Kursk, and German troops in full retreat. I quote it at
length because it so clearly reveals the relationships existing among the
search for unity, risk, inverted morality, and altruistic punishment,
especially the need for sacrice:
We are now embarked on a risky enterprise, with no assurance of safety.
We are advancing an idea of unity which is neither rich nor easily
digestible, but the vast majority of the German people accept [sic] it
and adhere to it, forging and forming it in an admirable collective effort.
This is where we are now risking everything. We are trying, taking due
account of the attitudes of society, to change the face of the world, hoping
to revive the ancient virtues buried under the layers of lth bequeathed to
us by our forebears. We can expect no reward for this effort. We are
loathed everywhere: if we should lose tomorrow those of us still alive after
so much suffering will be judged without justice. We shall be accused of
an innity of murder, as if everywhere, and at all times, men at war did
not behave in the same way. Those who have an interest in putting an end
to our ideals will ridicule everything we believe in. We shall be spared
nothing. Even the tombs of our heroes will be destroyed, only
preserving as a gesture of respect toward the dead a few which contain
gures of doubtful heroism, who were never fully committed to our
cause. With our deaths, all the prodigies of heroism which our daily
circumstances require of us, and the memory of our comrades, dead
and alive, and our communion of spirits, our fears and our hopes, will
vanish, and our history will never be told. Future generations will speak
only of an idiotic, unqualied sacrice . . .
We shall be suffering not only in the interests of ultimate victory, but
in the interests of daily victory against those who hurl themselves at us
without respite, and whose only thought is to exterminate us, without any
94
Quoted in Hohne 1970, 365.
95
Quoted ibid.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 189
understanding of what is at stake. You can feel certain of me, in return,
and certain that I will not expose you to any unnecessary dangers.
I would burn and destroy entire villages if by so doing I could prevent even
one of us from dying of hunger. Here, deep in the wilds of the steppe, we
shall be all the more aware of our unity. We are surrounded by hatred and
death, and in these circumstances we shall daily oppose our perfect
cohesion to the indiscipline and disorder of our enemies. Our group
must be as one, and our thoughts must be identical. Your duty lies in your
efforts to achieve that goal, and if we do achieve it, and maintain it, we shall
be victors even in death.
96
Guy Sajer comments: Our conversations with Captain Wesreidau
made a deep impression on us.
97
But according to Omer Bartov, The
more it became clear that the war would not lead to the promised
victory, the more powerful became the faith in the mythical Endsieg
[nal victory], whose essence was a belief in the need to keep on
destroying the present until eventually the ideal future emerged from
the debris.
98
Needless to say, Captain Wesreidau died in battle. To
quote Christopher Taylors paraphrase of Benedict Anderson: Fatality
becomes transformed into continuity.
99
Conclusion
In his article advocating a particularistic interpretation of Heinrich
Himmler, Peter Loewenberg quotes the German historian Helmut
Heiber: Who was the true Heinrich Himmler? The petty schoolmaster
who distributes report cards to his students? Or the writing-desk mur-
derer whose total balance is just short of ten million people? Or the man
of honor who controls millions of marks, yet deducts 150 marks for a
wristwatch from his salary?
100
Clearly, the listing of polar opposites suggested by Heiber leads
directly to the hypothesis of a split personality. Yet when one is faced
with a more coherent, essentially simpler explanation of Heinrich
Himmler, the interpretation of a split personality is unnecessary.
Occams razor demands the more parsimonious and general explana-
tion that not only explains Himmlers behavior but also that of other
96
Emphasis added; quoted in Sajer 1971, 21718.
97
Ibid., 218, son of a German father and French mother.
98
Bartov 1994, 49.
99
Taylor 1999, 152; and B. Anderson 1991, 11.
100
Heiber 1968, 8; Loewenberg 1971, 612.
190 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
perpetrators not easily pigeonholed into this psychological category.
Instead of unique personality traits peculiar to Himmler, we can under-
stand his behavior as a consequence of his altruistic punishment chosen
to maximize cooperation in the near-anarchic setting of Germany dur-
ing the interwar period and then during the war itself. The increasing
anarchy and threat of defeat in the war made the punishment incom-
parably harsher when compared with the concentration camps of the
1930s that had no extermination function. Before the war, altruistic
punishment may be invoked as an explanation of brutal behavior
toward defectors, mainly political, but the mass murders of the war
years evolved under much harsher conditions that justied, to the Nazis,
much harsher punishment of this large concentration of Jewish defec-
tors. This is not to say that sheer sadism, looting, the settling of old
scores, and other reasons were not factors in the frequently brutal mass
murders of World War II. But to ignore the role of altruistic punish-
ment, especially among leaders such as Himmler, is to omit a crucial
variable in helping to understand the onset of mass murder and its
abetting by large numbers of perpetrators and bystanders.
Among historians of the Holocaust, perhaps Friedlanders concept of
redemptive anti-Semitism
101
is closest to that of altruistic punish-
ment. In order to save the world, one must go to great lengths to destroy
its ultimate parasites, the Jews. Hitler, in his anti-Semitic apotheosis,
stated: If, with the help of the Marxian creed, the Jew conquers the
nations of this world, his crown will become the funeral wreath of
humanity, and once again this planet, empty of mankind, will move
through the ether as it did thousands of years ago . . . Therefore,
I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator:
By warding off the Jews I am ghting for the Lords work.
102
Even closer in conception is Liftons idea of killing to heal. Here, the
world requires the cleansing, even the mass murder of people, to be truly
healed. Lifton initially used this concept to explain the behavior of Nazi
doctors in extermination camps,
103
but then extended it to the nuclear
genocidal mentality,
104
and to an obscure but deadly Japanese sect.
105
In
discussing the genocidal ideology of the SS, Lifton and Markusen aver:
One must, that is, make sacrices or, as some SS ofcers put it,
overcome oneself for the sake of the higher therapeutic purpose.
101
Friedlander 1997.
102
Emphasis in original; Hitler 1939, 84.
103
Lifton 1986.
104
Lifton and Markusen 1990.
105
Lifton 2000.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 191
One has taken ones place in an ideological narrative within which the
murderers are virtuous, the victims evil, and the killing necessary.
106
Here, the conceptualization comes very close to that of altru-
istic punishment, but with one crucial exception. Redemptive anti-
Semitism and killing to heal are put forward in an effort to understand
the lethal individual behavior of virulent anti-Semites. Although not
explicitly suggesting self-sacrice, it can be implied, as we just saw. But
altruistic punishment not only straightforwardly suggests the denial of
self for purposes of punishing the other, it also is critically linked with
cooperation. Not only is the experimental evidence clear on this point,
but in the Holocaust the apparently seless behavior on behalf of the
Volk by the SS provided a model for others to emulate in enhanced
cooperation.
Himmler and the SS comprised the quintessential cooperating
community only SS men were shot instantly when captured by the
Soviets because the SS prisoners would never reveal any information
that had as its major purpose the extinction of the defecting group that
in their view could undermine the new era of German comradeship.
As the war progressed, the Germans evinced not only an increased
anti-Semitism but also a steely resolve to oppose the Allies no matter the
cost. The costly punishment of the defector became emblematic of the
entire German war effort as World War II came to a close in 194445.
The whirlwind destruction of the greater part of Hungarian Jewry
107
in
but a fewmonths in 1944 even at the cost of using much needed men and
transport is explicable in this light. So is the unrelenting destruction of
conspirators and their associates after the failed assassination attempt of
July 20.
At this time, it is difcult to estimate the extent to which these
conclusions apply to leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP) in the Ottoman Empire or ge nocidaires in Rwanda. Yet the
embrace of death by both groups suggest the applicability of the concept
of altruistic punishment. Certainly, as in Germany, the search for unity,
the development of extremist ideologies (Turkism and Hamitic ori-
gin) established the moral framework within which the killings were
justied. Clearly too, the Armenians and Tutsi, viewed respectively by
the CUP Turks and Hutu extremists as joined in battle against them,
were defectors amply deserving of the most severe punishment. Indeed,
after the successful nineteenth-century efforts of Armenians to inuence
106
Lifton and Markusen 1990, 58.
107
Braham 2000, 25253.
192 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
West European powers to intervene in Ottoman affairs on their behalf,
and the rise of nationalist groups such as the Dashnaks and Hunchakists,
the Armenians became prototypical defectors in the Turkish view.
The trials of Ittihad leaders after World War I leading to death
sentences in absentia,
108
aborted only by the Kemalist resurgence and
the death by assassination of Talat, suggest the risk of death undertaken
by the CUP leaders in their costly punishment of Armenian defectors.
Similarly, the rapid mass murder of the alien Hamitic Tutsi and forced
exile of Hutu ge nocidaires in neighboring countries, battles with and
death at the hands of the Rwandese Patriotic Front in Congo and
ongoing trials of the leading Rwanda murderers also suggest the applic-
ability of altruistic punishment as an explanation. And, in all three cases,
widespread societal cooperation in the mass murders was a distinguish-
ing feature.
Finally, does the altruistic motive in costly punishment somehow
absolve Himmler, his minions, and others of the evil that typically has
been associated with their monstrous crimes? Of course not, simply
because the intention, however laudable, should have no bearing on
judgment of the outcome. Unless perpetrators are genuinely deranged,
are psychologically disconnected from their surroundings, or are
coerced with deadly force, judgments are to be based on actions, not
motivations.
109
However noble the intent, whether it is to rid the world
of pestilential Jews, satanic indels, or some other offenders as
seen in the eyes of the beholder, the judgment of evil is always warranted
by the premeditated murder of innocent and helpless men, women, and
children. Without such a rm disjunction between motivation and
action, we enter a labyrinth of moral relativism that is truly frightening
in its import.
Our focus now shifts from the three cases of genocide to perpetrating
states that collaborated with the Germans in murdering their own Jewish
citizenry. These countries are Italy, Vichy France, and Romania.
108
Dadrian 1997, 331.
109
Neiman 2002. For evil as an intrinsic motivation of the Holocaust, see Lang 1999.
T H E N E E D F O R U N I T Y A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 193
9
Perpetrating states
Contraction of socioeconomic space as part of the domain of losses can
help us understand not only the onset of genocide in certain instances,
but even the extent of collaboration with the initiators as a form of
cynical or brute force realpolitik. In the following analysis, states to be
examined are those with indigenous governments unfettered by military
occupation and having some freedom of policy choice. Perpetrators are
states that openly collaborated with the Nazis in victimizing their own
Jewish citizenry. Exceptions are states that did not do so and will be
examined in chapter 16. I choose these cases because only here can we
observe either (1) the indigenous genocidal impulse, (2) willingness to
comply with German genocidal policies, or (3) the ability to resist
German pressures for Jewish deportation. These instances stand in
contrast to cases of direct occupation or absolute dependence on the
genocidal state that preordain the policy outcome.
All European states in the Nazi orbit
1
were examined for the extent of
their decision-making autonomy in regard to their own citizenry. All
countries directly occupied by German forces ultimately dedicated to
the slaughter were excluded. These include Czechoslovakia (occupied
from March 1939), Poland (September 1939), Norway (April 1940),
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (May 1940), Greece and
Yugoslavia (April 1941), the Soviet Union (June 1941; partial occupa-
tion), Denmark (August 1943), Albania (September 1943), and Hungary
(March 1944).
Although Hungary was an ally of Germany with considerable domes-
tic autonomy that even protected Hungarian Jews stranded in Germany
during the war in addition to Jewish citizens within Hungary itself, that
policy was reversed after the German occupation.
2
Hungary will be
examined separately in a later chapter (12). The Danes, with Swedish
help, did rescue almost the entire Jewish community of Denmark, but
1
Hilberg 1985, 544; Fein 1979, 4041; Murray and Millett 2000.
2
Braham 1981, 255.
194
not as a consequence of policy choices made by Danish governmental
leaders, who had already been removed from ofce by the German
occupying forces.
3
Successor states such as Slovakia and Croatia explicitly created
by the Nazis in their subjugation respectively of Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia were also excluded. Not only were these states thoroughly
dependent on their creator, Nazi Germany, but their ctive indepen-
dence was emphasized by United States non-recognition, before US
entry into the war.
4
In contrast, the United States did recognize Vichy
France as a sovereign entity.
5
All genuinely neutral states also were
excluded.
These exclusions leave the small set of European German allies, Italy
and Romania, plus the formally neutral but militarily constrained Vichy
France,
6
which were all allowed substantial leeway in their domestic
policies by the Germans in order to maintain their support for the war.
Italy: a genocidal trajectory
Although the entirety of Jewish genocidal victimization in Italy occurred
after German occupation, Italy nevertheless deserves comment because
its later behavior, just prior to German occupation, is suggestive of the
central importance of loss. Because of Italys status as Germanys prin-
cipal European great power ally, it was, like Finland, allowed substantial
freedom in its domestic policies. Yet there were pressures that were
repeatedly placed on the Italian government to release Jews for deporta-
tion by the Germans. One of these sources of pressure emanated from
the presence of Jews in Italian-administered areas of the former
Yugoslavia. Appalled by the deadly brutality of the Croatian fascist
Ustase toward Serbs and Jews, Italian military forces interceded to
protect as many as they could from the Ustase, and then later from the
Germans intent on Jewish deportation. A second focus of German
pressure was the relatively large concentration of free Jews in Italian-
occupied France in the area of Nice.
It has been suggested that this early experience in protecting
endangered populations under Italian rule beginning in 1941 led to
3
Goldberger 1987.
4
Keesings Contemporary Archives; Foreign Relations of the United States 19401942.
5
Burrin 1996, 77.
6
As exceptions, Bulgaria and Finland will be examined separately in chapter 16.
P E R P E T R A T I N G S T A T E S 195
their continued refusal to allow German deportation of Jews throughout
Mussolinis tenure in ofce prior to German occupation.
7
Perhaps this
fact more than any other led to a positive view among scholars of Italys
record during the Holocaust.
8
This relatively benign situation, however, changed after the experience
of territorial loss, rst in North Africa and then in Sicily. On May 13,
1943, the Axis forces surrendered in Tunis, leading to a reported loss of
morale among Italian troops in Yugoslavia.
9
On July 10, the Allies
invaded Sicily, making rapid advances on all fronts. By July 15, Guido
Lospinoso, an Italian police ofcer charged with Jewish affairs in Italian-
occupied France, was ordered by his superiors in Rome to deport
1,0001,200 Jews. According to Susan Zuccotti, Such a direct and
unequivocal order could not have been issued without Mussolinis
approval, and Lospinoso would not have been able to evade it. The
Jews concerned were saved only by Mussolinis fall a few days later.
10
Prior to this time, Mussolini had wavered on all German requests for
deportation, ultimately declining to deport the Jews. Now, in the midst
of experiencing the loss of nearly 10 percent of core Italian territory in
Sicily, his position was unequivocal in favor of deportation, an action
directly contrary to his earlier behavior. State weakness, signaled by the
loss of Sicily and an expected immediate Allied invasion of the Italian
peninsula, apparently proved decisive. German military support would
be required to salvage his regime and so the Germans had to be propi-
tiated by deporting the foreign Jews.
Given the extent of Italian state weakness, had Mussolini stayed in
ofce it is quite likely that he would have extended the deportation to
Italian Jews as well, especially in light of his agreement with Jewish
deportation in his later tenure as leader of the rump northern Italian
state under German occupation.
11
Among these Italian Jews was the
young Primo Levi, a future Nobel laureate, and a suspected suicide many
years after his Auschwitz experience.
Vichy France
Shortly after formation of the Vichy regime in August 1940, it repealed
the loi Marchandeau (Marchandeau law), which had outlawed any
attack in the press on a specic group of people on account of race or
7
Carpi 1977, 505; Steinberg 1990, 133.
8
Steinberg 1990, 132.
9
Ibid., 138.
10
Zuccotti 2000, 132.
11
Ibid., 29192.
196 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
religion and designed to arouse hatred against them.
12
Repeal of this law
opened the oodgates to much anti-Semitic writing in the press.
In October, a series of laws directed specically at Jews was enacted.
On October 3, the Statut des juifs dened who was Jewish according
to the state, and then proceeded to exclude Jews from top positions in
the public service, from the ofcer corps and from the ranks of noncom-
missioned ofcers, and from professions that inuence public opinion:
teaching, the press, radio, lm, and theater.
13
As Michael Marrus and
Robert Paxton comment, Without any possible doubt, Vichy had
begun its own antisemitic career before the rst German text appeared,
and without direct German order.
14
But this tawdry beginning was not to be the end of it. When the
deportations to the East began in the summer of 1942, the Vichy police
cooperated fully, indeed as the Germans requested. The Germans simply
did not have the manpower to carry out the required administrative
functions, including those involving Jews, throughout all of France.
Vichy was created, in part, to serve these functions, while maintaining
political neutrality in the war. According to Heinz Rothke, the SS
lieutenant in charge of Jewish affairs within the German police hierarchy
in France, The entire operation in the southern French territory was
much more dependent on the French police than in the formerly
occupied territory. The German strike force there could only exercise a
weak supervision over the operation.
15
As early as February 1942, before the start of the deportations, the
German consul in Vichy understood that the French government
would be happy to get rid of the Jews somehow, without attracting too
much attention.
16
Vichy French neutrality was not a mere ctive crea-
tion of the Nazi regime. On all matters of internal administration,
negotiations were required between the Germans in the occupied zone
and the Vichy authorities. Yet, in the matter of the deportations,
the Germans could rely on a rival homegrown anti-Semitism to effect
the required cooperation. Little if any arm-twisting was required.
The extent to which Vichy cooperation was required may be gleaned
from the following statistics. Under conditions of full cooperation from
Vichy, in the summer and autumn of 1942 when the deportations began,
approximately 42,000 Jews were sent to their deaths. Roughly one-third
of this number was sent at Vichys initiative from the unoccupied zone.
12
Marrus and Paxton 1995, 3.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., 7; see also Curtis 2002.
15
Quoted in Levendel 1999, 236; Marrus and Paxton 1995, 202.
16
Burrin 1996, 156.
P E R P E T R A T I N G S T A T E S 197
In 1943, after forced labor of European youth required, in the end,
750,000 French males in Germany and a consequent diminution of
French enthusiasm for cooperation with the Germans, only 22,000
Jews were deported. And in 1944, after the Germans were left more to
their own devices, 12,500 were deported.
Alois Brunner, an SS captain with a formidable reputation for ef-
ciency in his earlier successful actions in deporting Jews from Vienna
and Salonika, Greece, failed entirely in late 1943 without the support of
the French police. After the Italian war effort collapsed in the summer of
1943, Brunner was sent to the Italian zone of occupation in the Co te
dAzur to arrest and deport the Jews that previously had enjoyed the
protection of the Italian authorities. Left with only the support of his
German staff, only 1,900 Jews of the estimated 25,000 in the region were
found and deported.
17
Inescapably, one arrives at the conclusion that
(1) there was considerable initial enthusiasm for the deportations on the
part of the Vichy government, and (2) the Germans absolutely required
the cooperation of that government.
Why should this have been the case? One answer is to be found in
an acute contraction of socioeconomic space, much as we saw in the
histories of the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Rwanda prior to their
genocidal activities. Three-fths of France was occupied by the
Germans, and the remaining two-fths was limited as to political man-
euverability (required neutrality), size of the armed forces, and
availability of resources for the German war effort. This was a major
contraction from Frances former status as a European great power, one
that only twenty-two years before had, with the other victors, dictated
the Peace of Versailles to the defeated Germans. Indeed, the preceding
outbreak of anti-Semitism in France occurred after the rst French
contraction upon the defeat of 1871 and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to
the new united imperial Germany. French Jews ed these territories and
according to Paul Webster, There was a ood [in the print media] of
what were to become familiar caricatures of hook-nosed, repulsively
ugly, rapacious Jews barely able to make themselves understood through
thick German accents images that were copied by Petains propaganda
services.
18
As noted earlier regarding the three outright genocidal states, refugees
are a signicant indicator of socioeconomic contraction and a strong
provocation in their own right. Here, in the case of Vichy, they perform
17
Webster 1991, 17071.
18
Ibid., 10.
198 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
a similar function. Almost immediately after constitution of the Vichy
regime, Germany was dumping its unwanted Jews across the demarca-
tion line into the unoccupied zone, even over erce French objections.
Prior to at least mid-1941, it was German policy to encourage emigra-
tion of Jews to whatever state would have them. Here was a golden
opportunity for this policy to be effected. Only the most intense French
protests prevented over 270,000 Jews from being transported into Vichy
France. Some trains containing Jews were simply sent back to the
occupied zone by the French authorities. On their own, many French
Jews ed the occupied zone for what was perceived to be the relative
safety of Vichy.
In the interwar period, Jews were prominent in politics, with Le on
Blum as premier leading the Popular Front coalition of 1936, and in
industry with Henri Citroen establishing a leading car company, and
Bloch heading an aviation manufacturer that later, after the war, was to
become Dassault, Europes largest contemporary exporter of combat
aircraft. All of the ills plaguing French society during the 1930s and
there were many: the parliamentary disorder, a declining birthrate,
and economic decline would be attributed to the Jewish presence.
Even before the establishment of the Vichy regime, France had experi-
enced large-scale immigration and refugee arrival. Now, with the
contraction of socioeconomic space territorially, economically, and in a
radically diminished international stature foreigners, especially Jews,
could be convenient targets. For this reason, the Vichy French insisted on
lling the early German deportation requirements with foreign or recently
naturalized Jews. Initially, the Germans went along with this French pre-
ference but, later, many French-born Jews also went to their deaths with
their foreign-born coreligionists. By mid-1942, the Germans had no inter-
est in distinguishing between native or foreign Jew; all were targeted for
extinction. Nevertheless, to placate the French, whose cooperation they
required, the earliest transports contained few French Jews. Only later,
when the internment camps containing the foreign Jews (built by Vichy)
had been emptied and deportation quotas still had to be lled, were French
Jews routinely included in the transports to the East.
Marrus and Paxton compare Vichy policy toward its Jews with those
of other defeated countries Hungary in 1919 (see chapter 12) and
Romania in the loss of one-third of its territory to Hungary and Russia
in 1940.
19
During the same year, France lost three-fths of its territory to
19
Marrus and Paxton 1995, 36064.
P E R P E T R A T I N G S T A T E S 199
German occupation. In our lexicon here, they could be said to experi-
ence socioeconomic contractions. All three had indigenous anti-Jewish
legislation and to varying extents cooperated with the Germans in the
deportations of Jews. Prior to the implementation of Nazi genocidal
policy, nationals of these countries murdered Jews locally in hastily
arranged pogroms (especially Romania) or, in the case of France,
interned them in camps in which some 2,000 died the rst victims of
the Holocaust killed actually on French soil. In Romania, General
Antonescu enacted a myriad of anti-Semitic ordinances shortly after
inheriting the shrunken state from his predecessor, King Carol. Later,
the viciously anti-Semitic Romanian Iron Guard staged atrocities of
such a barbaric nature that members of the SS actually had to intervene
to rescue Jews already targeted for extermination by them, but in a
humane manner.
Even in comparison with the anti-Semitic legislation of Hungary
during the interwar period, Vichy France comes off second-best. The
denition of Jewishness adopted by the Hungarian government was
actually more liberal than that of Vichy, thereby allowing more people
to escape the consequences of the anti-Jewish legislation. Nevertheless,
all three countries behaved in a very similar manner after experiencing
territorial contraction, attempting to save at least some of their native
Jews, but instigating anti-Jewish legislation, as well as cooperating in
the Final Solution. Vichy France may actually have been the worst of the
three, for as Marrus and Paxton tell us:
When the Germans began their systematic deportation and extermina-
tion of Jews in 1942, Vichys rival antisemitism offered them more
substantial help than they received anywhere else in western Europe,
and more even than they received from such allies as Hungary and
Romania.
20
Contraction of socioeconomic space helps explain not only the extreme
Vichy anti-Semitic response, but also those of Hungary and Romania.
Increasing state insecurity can help us understand the intensication of
anti-Semitic sentiment as the war proceeded. By early 1944, it was clear
that an Allied invasion was imminent. And, instead of diminishing their
anti-Semitic activity, it actually increased, as suggested by the theory
of state insecurity. According to Marrus and Paxton, The anxieties of
the summer of 1944 did not diminish anti-Jewish feeling among Vichy
20
Ibid., 369.
200 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
leaders but, if anything, sharpened it.
21
Levendel records that As the
situation became tougher for the Germans at the front, there were
rumors of Jewish arrests closer to home. Soon they were happening all
around us.
22
And Webster suggests that The closer Germany came to
defeat, the more Vichy was prepared to support the Nazi cause, claiming
that France was in the front line of the ght against Communism.
23
The precedent of sending foreign-born Jews to their deaths (including
those whose status as naturalized citizens had been nullied by Vichy
law) undoubtedly made it easier for some of the French-born to be
deported as well. From the start, the Vichy leaders attempted to avoid
deporting French Jews for reasons of public opinion, prestige and
sovereignty.
24
At the same time, foreign-born Jews were deliberately offered up to
the Germans, including many to be rounded up in the unoccupied zone
by the French police and herded into the occupied zone as substitutes.
This was the basis of the rst massive roundup of Jews in La Grande
Rae of July 16 and 17, 1942, in which approximately 9,000 Jews were
kept in the Ve lodrome dHiver, an indoor bicycle stadium, in vile
conditions for ve days prior to deportation. Over 4,000 children were
included, the vast majority of whom never returned from Auschwitz.
25
Initially the Germans did not request that children under the age of
sixteen be included, but the Vichy ofcials, especially Pierre Laval, did
not want the responsibility of those soon-to-be orphans, and so offered
actually more than were requested by the Germans. It was Laval, the
French prime minister, who directly proposed that children younger
than sixteen years old be included in the deportation.
26
Most of
the children were born in France and therefore were French citizens.
In the end, many French Jews, including some of the most prominent,
and even supposed friends of Pe tain, were sent to their deaths in
Auschwitz.
Although Laval was prominent in the anti-Jewish activities of the Vichy
regime and was executed after the war for his efforts, it was Marechal
Philippe Petain, hero of Verdun in World War I and invested with the
legal authority of the Vichy government, who made state policy. And here
we confront the same phenomenon that saw a deep complicity of the
German military in the Armenian genocide, as well as the central role of
the French military in the Dreyfus affair around the turn of the twentieth
21
Ibid., 339.
22
Levendel 1999, 89.
23
Webster 1991, 71.
24
Burrin 1996, 157.
25
Webster 1991, 115.
26
Ibid., 113.
P E R P E T R A T I N G S T A T E S 201
century (a Jewish ofcer, Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused of treason, and
imprisoned until ultimately exonerated): a far greater susceptibility of the
military to the dictates of realpolitik. After all, military ofcers are respon-
sible for the physical protection of the state and, to this extent, Petain could
assert in his farewell address at the end of the war in France, While it is true
that de Gaulle has bravely raised Frances sword, history will not forget that
I patiently held the French peoples shield. This shield of a brute force
realpolitik could be raised to protect the insecure and dependent Vichy
French state but, as in the case of the German military in Turkey and
perversely misguided French ofcers at the turn of the twentieth century,
helpless minorities were chosen to be sacriced for this purpose. Jews,
instead of French Christians, were to be sacriced on the altar of Nazi
preferences, and mostly foreign-born Jews in place of French Jews. The
shield of at least a partial genocide was intended to protect Vichy from
potentially harsh German demands to be made on the larger French
Christian population.
That many of Petains closest prewar associates were Jewish made no
difference to their fate. Jacques Heilbronner, head of the Jewish
Consistory, had been a close friend of Petain. As an ofcer on the
French General Staff, he had strongly supported Petains elevation to
lead the French army. In a letter of appeal, Heilbronner afrmed that the
Mare chal always shown me so much kindness and condent affec-
tion.
27
In 1943, Heilbronner and his family were gassed in Auschwitz.
Romania
Romania presents a mirror image of Hungary and in doing so further
conrms the importance of truncation as a key stimulant to domestic
anti-Semitism leading ultimately to the perpetration of mass murder.
While Hungary was truncated after World War I and for the rst time
since 1867 promulgated anti-Semitic legislation, Romania was
expanded at that time and for the rst time ceased its earlier anti-
Jewish campaigns. Later, just prior to its entry into the war, however,
when it too experienced territorial and population losses, Romania
passed its rst anti-Semitic legislation of the interwar period.
After World War I and the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary (com-
plete) and imperial Russia (partial), Romania was one of the states that
gained most fromthis process of changing borders. As of 1920, the territory
27
Quoted ibid., 101.
202 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
of Romania doubled, as it absorbed Transylvania, Bessarabia, Bukovina,
and Cis ana; in the process, Romania was transformed from a relatively
homogenous state to one with 28 percent of its population composed of
non-Romanian minorities. They included Magyar, German, Jewish,
Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Turko-Tatar minorities.
28
The addition of
these territories to Romania served to accentuate the prominence and
visibility of Jews. As in Hungary, neither the feudal aristocracy nor the
peasantry was prepared to engage in economic development. This was left
to the Jews as an entrepreneurial middle class. Thus,
By the middle of the interwar era, Jews controlled the bulk of the private
capital in the export, transportation, insurance, textile, leather, electrotech-
nical, chemical, housing, printing, and publishing industries. Though their
access to the universities was restricted by statutory limitations and extralegal
violence, they were also strongly represented in the legal, medical, dental,
journalistic, and banking professions. Though only 4.2 percent of the total
population, they constituted 30.1, 27, and 23.6 percent, respectively, of the
town populations of Bukovina, Bessarabia and Moldavia, and 14.3 percent of
the entire countrys urban population. In such cities as Chis inau (Kishinev)
and Cernausti . . . where the Jews accounted for 52.6 and 44.9 percent of the
population, most store signs were in Hebrew letters.
29
Even in Regat (historic) Romania, the Jewish population of Ias i, the largest
city in Moldavia, was 42 percent.
30
As in Hungary, the Jews were dispro-
portionately visible economically and socially. In the textile industry
80 percent of the engineers were Jews, in the Army Medical Corps 1,960
doctors were Jewish, 460 belonged to other minority groups, and only 1,400
were Romanian; 70 percent of journalists were Jews; and in the universities,
where, in 1925, 27 percent of the student body had been of foreign origin,
the proportion in 1934 had risen to 43 percent.
31
The sense of foreign, especially Jewish, domination was palpable.
According to a poet of the Iron Guard, the premier Romanian fascist
organization,
Youve come with foreign laws
To steal my stock, my song, my poverty;
Out of my sweat youve built your property,
And taken from our children for your whores.
32
28
Jelavich 1983, 12224.
29
Ibid., 160.
30
Boia 2001, 173.
31
Weber 1965, 529.
32
Quoted ibid.
P E R P E T R A T I N G S T A T E S 203
The foreign laws mentioned by the poet most likely were elements of
the 1923 constitution promulgated at the behest of Allied Powers,
granting Jews citizenship rights equal to those of other Romanians.
33
The boundaries of this expanded state were guaranteed by the Little
Entente: Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia in association with
France as the great power protector of them all. Hungary (as part of
Austria-Hungary) and Bulgaria as Central Power allies during World
War I were the targets of this alliance, lest they adopt revanchist policies
to regain their lost territories.
According to Radu Ioanid, The period between 1923 and 1938
represented a golden age of human rights in Romania.
34
But the rise
of anti-Semitic movements such as the Christian National Defense
League and the Iron Guard clouded the horizons. Nevertheless, no
anti-Semitic legislation was proposed until the actual takeover of
Romanian territory, rst by the Soviet Union (Bessarabia and northern
Bukovina, June 1940), then by Hungary (northern Transylvania, August
1940), and nally by Bulgaria (southern Dobruja, September 1940).
35
Just as Hungary earlier was forced by the victorious Allies to cede
territory at the Trianon Palace in 1920, in 1940 Romania was forced to
cede territory by the allied Soviet and Nazi governments, united now in
their eastern policies by the SovietNazi pact of June 1939. When the
Romanians consulted the Germans upon the receipt of Soviet territorial
demands, they were advised to acquiesce.
36
Germany also was instru-
mental in effecting the losses to Hungary and Bulgaria.
These cessions caused enormous public indignation, especially the
surrender of the Transylvanian lands.
37
As a contemporary Romanian
historian, Iosif Dragan, put it without embellishment, With the sup-
port of the Soviet army, Party activists were brought in, under new,
Romanianized names, people like Ana Rabinovici-Pauker, Leonte Rautu
(Rotmann), Mihail Roller, Silviu Brucan, Teoharia Georgescu, La szlo
Luka cs (Vasile Luca) and the Bulgarian Borila, etc. [ . . . ] The leadership
of the Party was monopolized by these allogenic elements.
38
Now the Romanian truncation to the boundaries of the old kingdom
(Regat) existing prior to World War I would yield anti-Semitic legisla-
tion. The law of August 8, 1940, dened Jews racially in even more
draconian fashion then did the Nazis. Another law forbade marriage
33
Nagy-Talavera 2001, 357.
34
Ioanid 2000, 12.
35
Jelavich 1983, 226.
36
Ibid., 225.
37
Ibid., 226.
38
Quoted in Boia 2001, 172.
204 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
between Jews and gentiles while directly citing the 1935 Nuremberg laws
as precedent.
39
Further legislation restricted Jewish access to education
and entry into both the medical and military professions. Economic
legislation severely limited Jewish business activity and further restricted
Jewish life circumstances. Jewish rural property was nationalized and
Jewish civil servants were purged.
Prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, the worst period for
Romanian Jewry was that just before and during the Iron Guard govern-
ment of September 6, 1940January 21, 1941. It came to power as the
result of the foreign policy reverses suffered by King Carol II, especially
the loss of signicant territories, and his subsequent forced resignation.
Even before the accession of the Iron Guard, as the Romanians were
withdrawing from territories ceded to its neighboring acquisitors, mas-
sacres of Jews occurred. Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, ceded to the
Soviet Union, were scenes of some of the worst atrocities.
The massacres were fueled by the rumor and, in some cases, the
actuality of Jewish positive responses to the Soviet entry. After twenty-
two years of anti-Semitic and corrupt rule by the Romanian authorities,
many of the Jews in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina welcomed
the Soviets as liberators.
40
Although most Jews would come to see the
advent of Stalinism as more of a curse than a blessing,
41
nevertheless
the atrocities against Jews by Romanian soldiers and peasants would
continue during the summer of 1940. Between June 1940 and May 1941,
more than 600 Jews were killed in Romania.
42
The massacres would later
be vastly expanded during the return of the Romanians a year later at the
start of the German march to the East in June.
The uniquely Romanian nativist fascist Iron Guard ideology operat-
ing since the end of the 1920s had much to do with setting the stage for
these massacres. Once the Guard achieved control, sporadic murderous
rampages against Jews continued until the Guard was ousted from
power in January 1941. But the die had been cast. When the
Romanians joined the Germans in Operation Barbarossa after June 22,
1941, depredations against the Jews began on a massive scale.
Ias i was the location of the rst large-scale massacre of the Romanian
Holocaust. In addition to its anti-Semitic traditions of over a century,
because of its proximity to the Soviet frontier, it became the focus of
many of the anti-Semitic measures that accompanied plans to join
39
Ioanid 2000, 2022.
40
Nagy-Talavera 2001, 46162.
41
Ioanid 2000, 39.
42
Ibid., 61.
P E R P E T R A T I N G S T A T E S 205
Germanys invasion of the USSR.
43
The terms Jew and Communist
were virtually interchangeable, as in the order by Ion Antonescu, the
Romanian head of state, to compile lists of all Jews, Communist agents,
or sympathizers in each region.
44
Worse was Order No. 4147, issued at
about the same time, which demanded the expulsion of all Jews between
the ages of eighteen and sixty from northeastern Moldavia (the Ias i
region) in expectation of ghting there. The presence of large numbers
of Jews in the region was anathema to both the German and Romanian
ofcials. Fully half of Ias is population of 100,000 was Jewish. In coop-
eration with the German Gestapo and the SD (the intelligence arm of the
SS), the Romanian Secretariat of the Secret Intelligence Service (SSI)
prepared the expulsions. At the same time, former Iron Guardists (also
called legionaries because of the virtually equivalent organizational
name of Legion of the Archangel St. Michael) were informed of the
impending expulsions and likelihood of a pogrom.
A raid against Ias i by the Soviet air force provided the spark for the
pogrom. Damage was minor but rumors spread that the entire Jewish
population of Ias i was in league with the Red Army. Further rumors of
Ias i natives ying Soviet aircraft fanned the ames still further. On
June 20th, four days after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the
pogrom began in earnest. It lasted over a week, until June 29. Although it
is difcult to gain accurate estimates of the number of Jews killed, the
minimum is probably about 900, with a more forthright testimony from
a witness estimating the number of dead at 3,0004,000.
45
But worse was yet to come. Several thousand Jews had been interned
in police stations and special camps as dangers to Romanian security.
At the end of June, these Jews were loaded onto death trains to be
transported out of the region. The cars were decorated with signs stating
that inside were Communist Jews or killers of German and
Romanian soldiers. Several destinations were chosen and ultimately
few survived the densely packed, poorly ventilated cars. No food or
water was allowed. Jews, who frantically jumped from train cars to
drink at a river crossing were shot or forcibly drowned. Those who
survived were forced to hand over their valuables in a pattern of vor-
acious looting that would be characteristic of the entire Holocaust, and
of other genocides as well. Of 2,530 Jews who were transported in the
rst train, some 1,400 died. Of 1,902 Jews who boarded the second train,
1,194 died.
43
Ibid., 63.
44
Ibid., 64.
45
Ibid., 77.
206 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
Ias i was only the rst of many massacres of Jews that were to take
place in nearby Bessarabia and Bukovina, territories that had been
transferred to Soviet control in 1940, but were now under German and
Romanian authority. Mihai Antonescu, a relative of Ion Antonescu and
deputy premier, supported the forced migration of Jews from
Bessarabia and Bukovina. This attitude of blame for the loss of these
territories in 1940 was to characterize much of Romanian Jewish policy.
Frequent massacres occurred immediately after the German invasion.
During July alone, Raul Hilberg estimates that more than 10,000 Jews
were murdered by the Romanian and German military, as well as the
native Ukrainian peasantry.
46
These massacres were to be followed by
mass deportations to work camps in Ukraine and ultimately death
camps in Poland. At rst, the Germans resisted the massive relocation
of Jews from northern Bessarabia into German military-controlled dis-
tricts. The number of Jews in each of these attempted transports was in
the tens of thousands. The Germans conjured up the specter of more
than a half million Jews to be added to the many indigenous Ukrainian
Jews now being murdered by Einsatzgruppe D with only 600 men.
Consequently, the German legation informed Mihai Antonescu that
the Jews were to be eliminated in a slow and systematic manner.
47
Jews were now interned in transit camps throughout Bessarabia. In
October, deportations to Ukraine began. During the rst months of the
war, it is estimated that at least 65,000 Jews from Bessarabia and
Bukovina were killed in mass murders, in the transit camps and during
deportation.
48
If we add the number of Jews deported who died in
southwestern Ukraine (called Transnistria by the Romanians), the num-
ber reaches approximately 130,000. If we add to this the number of
native Ukrainian Jews in Odessa and elsewhere killed by the Romanian
and German authorities, the number reaches approximately 250,000
murdered under Romanian jurisdiction. According to Raul Hilberg,
no country, besides Germany, was involved in massacres of Jews on
such a scale.
49
This chapter completes the direct empirical examination of the theory
detailed in chapter 5. The inquiry included Germany, Austria, the
Ottoman Empire, and Rwanda among the genocidal states. Italy,
Vichy France, and Romania, allies of Germany during World War II,
were included among the perpetrating states collaborating in the
46
Hilberg 1985, 771.
47
Quoted in Ioanid 2000, 121.
48
Ibid., 17273.
49
Hilberg 1985, 759.
P E R P E T R A T I N G S T A T E S 207
Holocaust. Later, in chapter 16, the noncollaborating behavior of
Bulgaria and Finland, also allies of Germany, will provide a stark con-
trast. Interestingly, when the single politicide, Cambodia, is examined in
chapter 15, genocide of the Vietnamese within the overall politicide will
follow the contours suggested in the theoretical framework put forward
here, and conrmed in the genocidal and perpetrating state behavior.
We turn now to an assessment of victim vulnerability, identifying
factors that increase the magnitude of the killing, once begun.
208 T H E T H E O R Y A P P L I E D
PART IV
Victim vulnerability: explaining magnitude
and manner of dying
10
Raison de

tat, raison de

glise
The etiologies of the onset and magnitude of genocide are not necessa-
rily distinct processes. Variables like realpolitik and the contraction of
socioeconomic space associated with loss can inuence both facets of
genocide. But in this part of the book, emphasizing the magnitude of the
killing, we are not dealing with temporally based processes, as in the
transformation of massacre to genocide detailed in gure 5.1. The onset
of genocide is not a dichotomous variable; it has strong elements of
continuous build-up over time until the decision to commit genocide is
reached. The magnitude of the killing, on the other hand, can be
inuenced simultaneously by several factors, each of them acting for
the most part independently of others.
To understand the magnitude of the killing, once again we begin with
variables derived from the international context, namely realpolitik in two
forms, cynical and brute force. Here, decisions by political elites in coun-
tries external to the killing sites can be critical in explaining magnitude. At
the same time, as in altruistic punishment within the German military and
society, we will turn to the societal context to understand behavior within
besieged Jewish communities. Later chapters in this part will focus not only
on altruistic punishment within East European ghettos, but also on
inequality yielded by the contraction process and consequent failures of
mutual identication that inated the magnitude of the killing. Altruistic
punishment and failures of mutual identication can also have an impact
on the manner of dying, a factor of immense importance to those who
looked forward to the future status of Jewish communities after the war.
Accordingly, the rst two chapters in this part extend the net of
participants beyond the genocidal and perpetrating states. Policies of
Germany during World War I along with other European great powers
are explored in regard to the Armenian genocide, to be followed by
policies of the Vatican in relation to the Nazis prior to and during World
War I, and of France in its association with the Rwandan state in 1994.
Failures of the United Nations to thwart or at least limit the magnitude
211
of the killing in Rwanda also are highlighted. The succeeding chapter
examines immigration policies of the United States, Great Britain, and
other Western democracies as the increasingly virulent anti-Semitic
policies of the Nazis unfolded.
In examining the consequences of cynical realpolitik, I begin with the
Armenians during World War I, because here, in some contrast to the
Holocaust, both the onset and magnitude of the killing were inuenced
by Germany as the external permitting agent. This case also is exemplary
in demonstrating the murderous impact of strong external support, or
at least a permissive context for genocidal behavior.
The Armenians
Consider the genocide of Armenians by the Ottomans during World
War I and immediately thereafter. There are essentially two phases of
cynical realpolitik affecting the Armenian genocide. The rst consists of
the policies surrounding great powers prior to and during the massacre
of Armenians in 189496. This precursor of the later genocide led to the
deaths of approximately 200,000 Armenians.
Russia was easily the most important early great power referent for
the Ottoman rulers, as they had experienced a long series of defeats at
Russian hands. Beginning with the Peace of Kuchuk Kainardji in 1774,
the Ottomans lost to the Russians not only territories in the Caucasus in
which the Turks had long been dominant, but even control of Christian
(principally Orthodox) communal life within the empire. The nine-
teenth century witnessed a virtually unmitigated series of disasters for
the Ottomans.
1
Lost wars with Russia in 1829 and again in 1878 led to
further shrinkage of the empire; this pattern of losses would continue
into the early twentieth century.
The images of Constantinople and the Dardanelles straits under eventual
Russian rule still shimmered in their eyes. As the Russians were Orthodox
Christians, one would expect a continuation of the traditional Russian
policy of protecting Armenian (Orthodox) communities in the Ottoman
Empire. Instead, a role reversal occurred in which The Armenian policy of
Tsarist Russia gradually stiffened, assuming a harsh and uncompromising
stance in the last two decades of the 19th century. Indeed, Vahakn Dadrian
calls this reversal the crux of the Armenian disaster.
2
What were the bases
of Russian realpolitik at this time?
1
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977.
2
Dadrian 1997, 70.
212 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
Russian policies were deeply inuenced by what they viewed as the
disappointments of the Balkans. After decades of diplomatic interven-
tion on behalf of Christian nationalities in the Balkans, the Russians felt
that they came up empty-handed. Not only were these newly indepen-
dent countries not rmly allied with tsarist Russia, but in some instances
they actually thwarted its interests. Russia had come up against the hard
rock of late nineteenth-century European nationalism, particularly
strong in Bulgaria, which would not in any way be subservient to
Russian interests.
Armenian groups at the time were active in seeking autonomy along
lines similar to those originally granted to Bulgaria. But according to
Nikolaus Giers, Russian foreign minister in the 188295 period, Russia
has no reason at all to desire the formation of a second Bulgaria. The
emergence of an autonomous Armenian principality would then entail
the danger for Russia that the Russian Armenians will aspire to become
part of it.
3
Russian policy was increasingly centered on the preservation
of Ottoman boundaries, especially in Anatolia, where the vast majority
of Armenians resided. The tsarist empire was subject to the same sorts of
nationalist pressures as the Ottoman. Any disintegration of the latter
into independent states clearly would affect the former. Tsarist Russia,
the seat of European autocratic reaction, would in no way countenance
devolution of its authority, and so, without enthusiasm, but with a rm
hand, the Ottomans were supported in their increasingly anti-Armenian
policies. Even during the massacres, the Russian foreign minister, Prince
Alexis Lobanof-Rostowski declared his rm opposition to the formation
of another Bulgaria in eastern Anatolia, site of the greatest Armenian
population density. A contemporary Turkish historian suggested that
Abdul Hamit was able to push forth his Armenian policy thanks to the
underhanded [el altindan] support of the Tsar.
4
Later, in the years
immediately preceding World War I, partly as a consequence of the
massacres and the continued inux of Muslims into the Ottoman
Empire, the Russians reversed themselves, and once again sought to
assume a protective role vis-a` -vis the Armenians.
5
3
Quoted ibid., 72.
4
Quoted ibid., 74. Later Russian policy supporting the status quo in the Ottoman Empire
is outlined in Bodger 1984.
5
Ibid., 96.
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G L I S E 213
Germany clearly is the most important great power inuencing
Ottoman policy during the later genocide, for Germany at the turn of
the century was emerging as the Ottomans most important ally. Already
during the period of the massacres, the outlines of German policy
concerning the Armenians were decisively formed. In November 1898,
a policy brief was put forward by the German foreign ministry that
became the basis not only for German ofcial reaction to the massacres,
but also for the later genocide. Essentially, it stated that the Armenians
were crafty and seditious and had grievously provoked the Ottoman
authorities. Further, Germany had little if any reason to intervene on
behalf of the Armenians, especially given the business interests of many
German rms in the Ottoman Empire, which might be endangered by
German intervention. Very early in the day, cynical realpolitik had
become the basis of German policy on the Armenian Question. Only
two years after the end of the 1896 massacres, with great pomp and
circumstance, Wilhelm II visited Turkey, was greeted lavishly by Sultan
Abdulhamit II, and the upward trajectory of Turko-German collabora-
tion was rmly established.
6
Yet this open expression of support by the kaiser came after the
massacres had occurred. How could the Ottomans believe that they
could massacre 200,000 people, often in the most brutal fashion, with-
out repercussions frominterested great powers such as Great Britain and
France? The two powers had pressed for Ottoman action on reforms of
the Armenian condition, incorporated in the Treaty of Paris of 1856,
and reiterated frequently thereafter.
7
Indeed, the British and French did
protest, and the British contemplated sending their eet into the Aegean
sea and possibly even through the Dardanelles straits. But, in the end, no
military intervention occurred.
The answer to the question of Ottoman impunity is to be found in the
emerging German presence in Turkey prior to the massacres. Militarily,
between 1885 and 1888, huge Krupp cannon were put into place guard-
ing the Dardanelles straits and the C atalca defense line north of
Constantinople. Upon request, Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the
German General Staff, sent some of his best ofcers to reform the army,
including General von der Goltz of later fame as commander of the
Ottoman forces in Arabia during World War I.
8
In 1888, the traditional
predominance of Britain and France in the Ottoman economy was
6
See Dadrian 1997, 9397, and Trumpener 1984.
7
See M. Anderson 1966, 204 and 25359.
8
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 245.
214 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
challenged by the Deutsche Banks participation in the construction and
ultimate operation of what was to become the BerlinBaghdad railway.
9
Clearly, Germany, whose power was so vividly demonstrated militarily
in the humiliating defeat of France in 1871, diplomatically in the tri-
umph of Otto von Bismarck as the honest broker at the Congress of
Berlin in 1878, and economically in the extraordinarily rapid expansion
of the German economy toward the centurys end, was to be relied upon
in place of the Western powers. That the Germans asked few if any
questions about the ghastly treatment of Christian minorities such as the
Armenians was a clear bonus.
The Ottoman Empire was now heavily dependent on its only close ally,
Germany; the Ottoman leadership could not ignore the potential reaction
of their sole military ally commanding their troops and supplying their
arms. As early as September 1913 when negotiations were again ongoing
for Armenian reforms, the German ambassador to the Porte, Hans
Wangenheim, indicated that Germany would agree to the terms of the
proposed reform agreement only if the Ottoman Empire itself agreed.
10
During the 190913 period, Enver Pas a, later war minister during
World War I, twice served as a military attache in Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm II
made particular efforts to cultivate a special relationship with him. During
his tenure as war minister, Enver Pas a essentially became a co-conspirator
with Talat Bey, a leader of the Young Turks, and other governmental
gures. Indeed, the genocide could not have been carried out without
the participation, even leadership, of the War Ministry. Deeply entangled
with the Young Turk leadership, especially with the War Ministry, was the
German Military Mission, which at the height of wartime operations had
700800 ofcers and 12,000 troops. Among its ofcers were to be found a
Prussian eld marshal, Count von der Goltz, two generals who later
became marshals, Liman von Sanders and Erich von Falkenhayn, and
three admirals, Usedom, Souchon, and Martens.
11
From the start, the Germans seemed to have encouraged the forma-
tion of an ethnically pure Turkish Anatolia. Von der Goltz, in particular,
argued in the immediate aftermath of the 189496 massacres that
Turkeys future lay not in the European portion of the empire, but in
the Asiatic TurkishArabian portion. Islam would be the cement that
unied this AnatolianArabian empire; of course, remaining Christians
like the Armenians would have little place in such a recongured state.
12
9
Ibid., 227.
10
Dadrian 1997, 249.
11
Ibid., 251. See Strachan 2001a, 64493.
12
See Karpat 2001, esp. 32152.
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G L I S E 215
Dadrian concludes that The ideological rudiments of the Turkish
scheme to divest Turkey of its indigenous Armenian population in
this respect bear a German imprint.
13
At the very least, according to
Paul Rohrbach, an advocate of German imperial expansion in the
Middle East, Armenians could be relocated from their ancient
homeland in eastern Anatolia to areas along the new Baghdad railway
system. Here is the core of the later forced evacuation of Armenians
from Anatolia to Mesopotamia, where so many were either shot to
death en route, or died of thirst and starvation in the Mesopotamian
desert.
14
Such ideas did not emerge sui generis in the German mind. A prior
German colonial experience may have been a successful prototype for
Rohrbachs suggestion; he had been head of the South-West African
Settlement Commission. In his German World Politics, published in
1912, Rohrbach advocated the extermination or expulsion of native
inhabitants to make way for the white race.
15
It was an easy matter to
alter the model slightly to t Turkish requirements.
In German South-West Africa, genocidal behavior had already
occurred, as we saw in chapter 2. Thus, we see an unbroken chain of
colonial military policy in South-West Africa affecting the Armenian
genocide not only in annihilationist intent, but also in actual method
of implementation death from thirst and starvation in the desert.
This method was even extended later into the Holocaust in areas where
practical (not many), as we shall see in the following section.
Were German ofcers actually involved in the planning and imple-
mentation of the deportations? Documentary evidence exists in two
forms, both indicating extreme complicity. The rst was unearthed by
the British high commissioners ofce; in it, Bronsart von Schellendorf,
chief of staff at the Ottoman High Command, ordered deportation of
the Armenians with special attention to the Armenian labor battalions,
to prevent them from interfering with the remaining deportations.
Further, General Bronsart instructed Count von Schulenburg, newly
installed consul at Erzerum, not to intercede on behalf of the
Armenians, as was done by his predecessor in that position. Bronsarts
order referred to the Armenian people (Ermeni ahalinin), whose
deportation has been determined upon (mukkarrerdir), [and had] the
additional specic purpose, namely targeting the Armenians in the
13
Dadrian 1997, 254.
14
Ibid.
15
Jonassohn and Bjornson 1998, 69.
216 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
labor battalions who, for security reasons, were to be subjected to
severe treatment.
16
The second document, signed by Lieutenant Colonel Bottrich, chief
of the Ottoman General Staffs railway department, and dated October 17,
1915, stated that the deportation of the railway employees was an
integral part of the general deportation policy of the Ottoman govern-
ment. No further reason for the order was given. All the Armenian
employees, with no exemption for those living in Constantinople,
were to be deported.
17
Henry Morgenthau, American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire,
had many conversations with German ofcers who either concurred
with the deportation and extermination of the Armenians, or expressed
a studied lack of concern. The German naval attache , Hans Humann, a
very close friend of Enver Pas a, conded, I have lived in Turkey the
larger part of my life, and I know the Armenians. I also know that both
Armenians and Turks cannot live together in this country. One of these
races has got to go. And I dont blame the Turks for what they are doing
to the Armenians. I think that they are entirely justied. The weaker
nation must succumb.
18
Also typical of attitudes of German ofcers
is that of Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. He stated in August 1915:
It will be salvation for Turkey when it has done away with the last
Armenian; it will be rid then of subversive bloodsuckers.
19
Bronsart, signatory of one of the two documents implicating German
ofcers in the genocide, quite explicitly compares Armenians with Jews,
and, specically, Polish Jews, foreshadowing widespread attitudes in
Germany prior to and during the Holocaust. Namely, the Armenian
is just like the Jew, a parasite outside the connes of his homeland,
sucking off the marrow of the people of the host country. Year after year
they abandon their native land just like the Polish Jews who migrate to
Germany to engage in usurious activities. Hence the hatred which, in a
medieval form, has unleashed itself against them as an unpleasant
people, entailing their murder.
20
Yet, one must be careful to pinpoint the particular Germans who were
most complicit in the genocide, and these turn out to be military
ofcers. German civilians, especially those involved in building the
BerlinBaghdad railway were, for understandable reasons, opposed to
16
Quoted in Dadrian 1997, 257.
17
Quoted in Kaiser 1999, 82.
18
Quoted in Morgenthau 1918, 375.
19
Quoted in Dinkel 1991, 116.
20
Quoted in Dadrian 1997, 259.
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T A T , R A I S O N D E

G L I S E 217
the deportations.
21
Approximately 880 skilled Armenians were
employed by the railway company and an additional large number of
Armenian workers were to be found on construction sites in the Taurus
and Amanus mountains. A delegate of the Deutsche Bank, Franz
J. Gunther, headed the railway ofce, and his considerable efforts were
critical in at least delaying deportation of the railway workers, though
not preventing their ultimate annihilation. Gunther saw quite clearly
that these workers were essential to the railways completion, hence to
the recouping of and prot on the Deutsche Banks investment. He also
was motivated by humanitarian concerns. Railway stations had become
detention camps all along the railway lines. Some of the camps were
enormous by standards of the day. At the end of October 1915, some
40,000 Armenians were found in Katna; soon they would be transported
to Ras-ul-Ain where many thousands would die from exhaustion, epi-
demic diseases, and the brutality of the Ottoman forces.
Because of the centrality of the Baghdad railway in this deportation
process, civilians like Gunther could not help being intimately aware
of the brutalities and ultimate genocide then taking place. That the
railway staff, many of them Armenian, were collecting evidence on
the deportations also likely increased their vulnerability.
22
In addition
to Gunther, Engineer Winkler, responsible for railway construction in
the province of Adana, site of extensive deportations, also tried to
protect his workers, in vain. He was told that they would be
replaced by Muslims, whatever their qualications. Some German con-
suls reported the ongoing deportations, asking their government to
intercede. The German government refused, avoided any interference
in Ottoman affairs, and asked that reports be prepared to show how
the Armenians were seditious, hence justifying the Ottoman severity.
The German press was instructed to publish denials of the rumored
atrocities.
23
How do we interpret this disjunction between civilian and military
responses, including the military-dominated government in Berlin?
21
Trumpener 1968 records the activities on behalf of the Armenians of many German
political gures as well as private citizens. For a history of German involvement in the
building of the BerlinBaghdad railway, see McMurray 2001.
22
Kaiser 1999, 77.
23
Ibid., 68. For some of the Turkish military orders expelling the Armenians from
Anatolia, see Gurun 1985, 20410. For an entirely different interpretation of these
military orders and one consistent with Turkish genocidal intent, see Dadrian 1999,
12331.
218 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
Confronted with an unexpectedly long war on three fronts (Western,
Eastern, and Southern), the demands of cynical realpolitik in extremis
impressed themselves far more on the military planners than on their
civilian counterparts. Men like Gunther and Winkler were still con-
cerned with the quintessentially peacetime motives of construction
and prot maximization. In such an instrumental atmosphere, human-
itarian considerations could be allowed to emerge. Military planners,
however, were exposed to an entirely different decision calculus. The
goal of the ofcer in wartime is not the construction of public works or
other such utilitarian enterprises. Instead, the purpose is the destruction
of enemy forces by whatever means necessary, either in their surrender
or annihilation on the battleeld.
24
In extreme cases, a mostly civilian
population can be destroyed, as in Melos in the Peloponnesian War, the
Herero in South-West Africa, or the Armenians during World War I.
Certainly the hierarchical feudal traditions of the Prussian ofcer
corps dominating the German army had much to do with its will-
ingness to support mass deportations of civilian populations. Racism
was endemic within that corps; Jews were forbidden to be ofcers in the
Prussian army. Slavs and native Balts were looked down upon as
decidedly inferior beings. Indeed, the earlier eastward expansion of
the Germans resulted in the conquest and ultimate disappearance of
the native Baltic Prussians and Livonians. A combination of genocide
and forced assimilation served as a harbinger of the modern Prussian
state. To be sure, later there was strong opposition among the Prussian
ofcers to Hitlers early leadership, but this was more a hierarchical
nativist reaction to the Austrian corporal than a disavowal of his
rabid anti-Semitism.
In the Armenian case, both the onset and magnitude of genocide were
facilitated by the Germans. It is likely that the precursors of the World
War I genocides, the 189496 massacres followed by the smaller but not
insignicant 1909 Adana massacre (approximately 25,000 dead),
25
enabled the later onset of the 191516 genocide. Neither of the two
earlier discrete episodes was halted by any of the European powers,
although they had earlier committed themselves to Armenian protec-
tion. Thus, in the context of war and the strong support of Germany, the
24
The relationship between total war and the Armenian genocide is treated in Reid 1992.
The more general relationship between genocide and total war is examined in Markusen
1987 and in M. Shaw 2003.
25
Dadrian 1997, 18283.
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G L I S E 219
onset of genocide in 191516 could proceed initially at a high level of
magnitude against Armenian males, to be followed quickly by the
deportation of entire villages and communities.
The Holocaust
We nd the German permission of genocide in 191516 rooted in a
cynical realpolitik stemming from the increasing domination of the
military within German policy-making circles. But which agency, if
any, played a similar role in establishing a permissive context for the
Holocaust in 194145? Might not the virulence of Nazi ideology have
been sufcient to establish such an eliminationist climate as claimed
by Goldhagen? Certainly Nazi ideology was important, if not crucial, in
understanding the mass murder of Jews during that period. Yet I claim
that its existence was not sufcient for understanding the onset of that
genocide. An external permissive element was necessary, also rooted in a
cynical realpolitik. I refer here to Vatican policies beginning in the early
1930s and ending shortly after the Allied victory in World War II. These
policies center on the person of Eugenio Pacelli.
There were four elements to the realpolitik of Eugenio Pacelli, papal
nuncio in Munich between 1917 and 1930, cardinal secretary of state
between 1930 and 1939, and Pope Pius XII thereafter until his death in
1958. These elements are: (1) a virulent anti-communism that demanded
the subordination even of national Catholic interests for purposes of
defeating the larger threat to the Church of Soviet-inspired communism,
(2) expansion of Catholic belief especially among Eastern Orthodox
schismatics, (3) expansion of the Holy Sees international political
inuence, and (4) physical preservation of the Vatican as the institu-
tional seat of Roman Catholicism. Each of these elements would be
heavily inuenced by three stages in Pacellis international career. In
the rst of them, he cultivated an extreme hatred and fear of commu-
nism that would deeply inuence his political worldview. In Munich, in
1919, he witnessed rsthand the abortive Communist coup that, had it
succeeded, would have ushered in a period of extreme difculty for the
Roman Catholic Church. That many of the revolutionaries were Jews
would establish a strong connection in Pacellis mind between Jews and
communism that would bode ill for his later policies during
the Holocaust. Indeed, in a typewritten letter signed by Pacelli describ-
ing the meeting between representatives of the nunciature and
the revolutionaries, he used anti-Semitic stereotypes to describe the
220 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
Russian-Jewish leader as Pale, dirty, . . . vulgar, repulsive, with a face
that is both intelligent and sly.
26
As cardinal secretary of state, Pacelli had the opportunity to formulate
Vatican foreign policy. In that position he was decisive in silencing the
German Catholic Center Party that could have provided the only coher-
ent opposition to the Nazi Party. Hitler and the Nazis were seen by
Pacelli to be the only effective bulwark against the western expansion of
communism from its Soviet base. As the price for Hitlers concordat
with the Catholic Church, he demanded the cessation of all political
activity by the Church. Hitler understood that only the Catholic Center
Party in the Reichstag had the potential support of roughly 27 million
German Catholics. Between 1919 and 1933, ve Catholic Center Party
members served as chancellors in ten ruling cabinets of the Weimar
Republic. The Center Party typically was second only to the Social
Democrats in electoral popularity. Shortly after the July 1932 elections,
before Hitler assumed power and well before the concordat, the German
Catholic hierarchy denounced the Nazis once again. In a bishops con-
ference in August, the minutes stated that All diocesan authorities have
banned membership in this party. The ofcial program of the Nazis was
said to contain false doctrine and was hostile to the faith.
27
Only by
undermining the capacity of the Center Party to politically mobilize this
anti-Nazi sentiment could Hitler ensure success of his totalitarian
program.
Left to its own devices, the Center Party would have remained com-
mitted to a pluralist democracy, as it had pledged at the beginning of the
Weimar Republic. The last functioning chancellor of the republic,
Heinrich Bruning, a leader of the party and a devout Catholic, was
loyal to parliamentary democracy and utterly opposed to concordats
with totalitarian regimes. As chancellor, he also had been opposed to
Pacellis notion of a concordat that had centralized papal ecclesiastical
authority, instead of local needs and desires at the core of German
Catholic decision making. After Hitlers accession to power, Bruning
desperately argued against the concordat that would have depoliticized
German Catholicism. His opponent now was the leader of the Center
Party, Ludwig Kaas, a Jesuit priest and an intimate of Pacelli, increas-
ingly under his inuence. Kaas argued that a concordat with Hitler
would better serve the German Catholic Church than would its con-
tinuance as the basis of a political minority opposed to Nazism.
26
Quoted in Cornwell 1999, 75.
27
Quoted in Scholder 1987, 159.
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Indeed, well before the concordat was signed, Kaas was inuential in
generating support in the Center Party for the Enabling Act of March 23,
1933, which delegated to Hitler virtually dictatorial powers. Goebbelss
newspaper, Der Angriff, mentioned openly that Kaas held the Center
Partys approval of the Enabling Act contingent upon the willingness of
the Reich government to negotiate with the Holy See for a Reich con-
cordat, and to respect the rights of the church.
28
All members of the
party eventually voted for the Enabling Act. Even earlier in January, Kaas
sent a letter to Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, with a copy to President
Paul von Hindenburg, suggesting that, since von Schleicher did not have
parliamentary backing, he should be dismissed and his place assumed by
Hitler, who controlled the largest party in the Reichstag.
29
These posi-
tions, of course, accorded with Pacellis views.
The working relationship between Kaas and Pacelli had begun as early
as 1920, in the negotiations over the concordat with Bavaria.
30
It would
end only after Kaass death in Rome in 1952, after he left Germany in
April 1933 to become one of the popes most trusted advisors in the
curia.
31
Given this long history of close cooperation over the interests of
the Catholic Church, it is virtually inconceivable that a Reich concordat
would not have been a topic of discussion at the negotiations leading
to passage of the Enabling Act.
32
Concerning Pacelli, Bruning wrote,
All successes [Pacelli believed] could only be attained by papal diplomacy.
28
Quoted ibid., 246. Scholder also records the recollection of Fritz Gunther von
Tschirsky, an associate of Franz von Papen in the Vice Chancellery, to the effect that
negotiations of this type occurred between Hitler and Kaas prior to the decisive
Reichstag session of March 23. Center Party members were also suspicious that such
conversations were ongoing. Even from the Protestant side, there is strong evidence for
such an arrangement being discussed as early as March. See ibid., 24647. Ernst von
Weizsacker, the German ambassador to the Vatican and Ribbentrops former under-
secretary at the Foreign Ofce, described Pope Pius XII as a realist (emphasis in
original). See Chadwick 1989, 1266. For a different view of Weizsackers motives, see
Friedlander 1966, XXXXII. Other views of the pope are to be found in Cargas 1998,
Morley 1980, Conway 1968, and Chadwick 1986.
29
Schwab 1996, 16.
30
Helmreich 1979, 105.
31
Ibid., 240.
32
Heinz Hurten 1992, 23334, argues that there was no connection between the con-
cordat and the Enabling Act. But his evidence and interpretations appear to be inaccu-
rate. He cites, for example, a letter written by Kaas to the German ambassador to the
Vatican, Diego von Bergen, suggesting that Kaas had no knowledge of the negotiation
until he met Vice Chancellor von Papen on the train. Yet in that same letter according to
Scholder (1987, 247), Kaas states: Immediately after the passing of the Enabling Act, in
the acceptance of which I had played a positive role on the basis of certain guarantees
given to me by the Reich Chancellor (guarantees of a general political as well as a
cultural political nature), on 24 March I traveled to Rome. Apart from having a holiday,
222 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
The system of concordats led him and the Vatican to despise democracy
and the parliamentary system . . . Rigid governments, rigid centraliza-
tion, and rigid treaties were supposed to introduce an era of stable order,
an era of peace and quiet.
33
Thus, at a simple stroke on July 20, 1933, the Reich concordat was
signed, the Center Party was disbanded for good, and Hitler expressed
the chilling opinion that the concordat would be especially signicant
in the urgent struggle against international Jewry.
34
For the sake of
erecting a central European bulwark against communism, Pacelli effec-
tively silenced the only potential large-scale opposition to Hitlers vio-
lently anti-Semitic program.
Expansion of ecclesiastic Roman Catholicism always had been a goal
of the Vatican, never more than under Pius XII. And in the German
invasion and conquest of Yugoslavia in 1941, just such an opportunity
was presented. The Nazi puppet-state of Croatia was carved out of
Yugoslavia, with Ante Pavelic , the leader of the Croat fascist movement,
the Ustase, at its head. The Vatican was eager for the Catholic state of
Croatia to succeed. Instead of the nominally secular state of Yugoslavia,
increasingly under Orthodox Serbian control, a state ruled by Catholics
had come into existence and with the head of the Croatian church,
Bishop Alojzije Stepinac, in an inuential role.
When the massacres of both Serbs and Jews began, would the Vatican
respond? Almost as soon as Croatia, including also Slovenia, Bosnia-
Herzegovina, and portions of Dalmatia, was removed from Yugoslavia,
the persecution began. In April 1941, all publications employing the
Cyrillic alphabet, used principally by Serbs, were banned. At the same
in order to develop the views I put forward in the Reichstag on 23 March I wanted to
explain the situation created by the Reich Chancellors declaration and to investigate
the possibilities for a comprehensive understanding between church and state. As
Scholder (ibid., 24748) remarks, those who dispute a link between acceptance of the
Enabling Act and the conclusion of the Reich concordat denitely seem unconvincing.
It simply stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that Kaas was unaware of any such
connection between these two signal events. Having written to von Schleicher and von
Papen in January effectively nominating Hitler for the chancellorship (see p. 222),
having at his disposal the second largest bloc of available non-Nazi votes needed for
passage of the Enabling Act, having worked on concordats such as those with Bavaria
and Prussia since 1920, and being an intimate of Pacelli with his desire for ordered
churchstate relations, Kaas was simply too thoroughly enmeshed in these proceedings
not to have investigated at the earliest possible moment the potential for a compre-
hensive understanding between church and state. For the text of the letter from Kaas to
Bergen, see Kupper 1969, 49598.
33
Quoted in Cornwell 1999, 124.
34
Scholder 1987, 404.
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time, the Aryanization of professions, bureaucracies, and Jewish cap-
ital was begun. Although the fate of the Jews was not yet fully decided,
intimations of genocide against the Serbs already existed. Serb villages
were raided and hundreds massacred, in one case (Glina) inside a
Serbian Orthodox church. This practice foreshadowed the later
German massing of Jews inside their wooden synagogues in Poland
and then setting re to the buildings, as the congregants inside burned
alive.
Four days after the Glina massacre, Pavelic had a devotional meet-
ing with Pope Pius XII in the Vatican; at the same time, the Holy See
granted de facto recognition to the newly created Nazi puppet
Independent State of Croatia. As John Cornwell indicates, there is no
evidence that the pope was aware of these massacres at that time.
35
Yet,
he must have known that Pavelic was a totalitarian dictator, appointed
by Hitler to oversee the Catholicization and Aryanization of Croatia.
Racist and anti-Semitic laws had already been passed, and enforced
conversion from Orthodox Christianity to Roman Catholicism was
already underway. He could also have been aware of the exclusion of
the Orthodox Serb intelligentsia priests, teachers, and even rich art-
isans and tradesmen from the possibility of conversion, suggesting
their future annihilation in the new Croatia.
By early June, massacres of Serbs on a larger scale had begun. Even the
German general plenipotentiary assigned to Croatia stated that, accord-
ing to reliable reports received by him, the Ustasha [Croatian fascists;
sic] have gone raging mad.
36
The Germans were embarrassed as they
watched helplessly the blind, bloody fury of the Ustasha [sic]. Priests,
principally Franciscans, played a major role in the massacres. One,
Father Bozidar Bralow, known for routinely carrying a machine gun,
was seen dancing around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs.
That the Vatican was aware of these depredations against Serbs and
Jews cannot be doubted. Undersecretary of State Monsignor Giovanni
Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI) was heavily involved with day-to-day
matters concerning Croatia and Poland. Late in 1941, he heard of the
Ustasa atrocities; Pope Pius was also by then aware of these events, because
he received daily reports from Montini. His colleague, Monsignor
Domenico Tardini, interviewed Pavelics representative to the pope.
Tardini reportedly told him that Croatia is a young state . . . Youngsters
often err because of their age. It is therefore not surprising that Croatia has
35
Cornwell 1999, 252.
36
Quoted ibid., 254.
224 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
also erred.
37
This indulgence toward Ustasa excesses would characterize
Vatican policy concerning Croatia even to the end of the war, after 487,000
Orthodox Serbs, 30,000 Jews, and 27,000 Roma were murdered, mostly in
Ustasa death camps or in German gas chambers.
38
Shortly after the
Wannsee conference formalized the beginning of the industrialized
mass murder of Jews, the World Jewish Congress and the Swiss Israelite
community sent a cry for help to the Vatican via Monsignor Filippe
Bernadini, the apostolic nuncio in Berne. Dated March 17, 1942, represen-
tatives of the two agencies documented persecution of Jews in Germany,
France, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Croatia. The document
requested that the pope use his inuence in the latter three countries,
which had strong ties between their governments and the Roman
Catholic Church.
Regarding Croatia, the document reads, Several thousand families
were either deported to desert islands on the Dalmatian coast or incar-
cerated in concentration camps . . . all the male Jews were sent to labor
camps where they were assigned to drainage or sanitation work and
where they perished in great number . . . At the same time, their wives
and children were sent to another camp where they, too, are enduring
dire privations.
39
Gerhart Riegner, a signatory of the document,
revealed in his 1998 memoirs that this document was excluded by the
Vatican from the eleven volumes of released wartime documents, sug-
gesting an extreme sensitivity concerning the Vaticans behavior during
World War II. Later, in August 1942, Riegner was the rst to directly
inform the Allied Powers of the full extent of Nazi genocidal
intentions.
40
The Vaticans penchant for ecclesiastical expansion during World
War II went so far as to forbid the postwar reunication of many
Jewish families with children sheltered from the Holocaust in Catholic
institutions. A Vatican directive containing Pius XIIs approval forbade
the return of hidden children to their Jewish parents if the children had
been baptized, typically without their parents consent, or with a formal
permission, but one not genuinely granted under the extraordinary
duress of the moment.
41
To this day, there are Holocaust survivors
37
Quoted in Phayer 2000, 37.
38
Cornwell 1999, 253.
39
Emphasis in original; quoted ibid., 258.
40
See Riegner 1998, and his obituary by D. Martin 2001.
41
Sciolino and Horowitz 2005.
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who resent the length of time (nearly twelve years in one instance)
required to rejoin their Jewish families.
42
Contrast this behavior by the pope, his silence on the Holocaust, and
marginal private help to individual Croatian Jews with the behavior of
Italian forces stationed on Yugoslav territory. Beginning with the earliest
massacres in the spring of 1941, individual young ofcers intervened on
behalf of threatened individuals. By July 1, 1943, before the entry of
German troops, Italians had rescued 33,464 civilians in their Yugoslav
sphere of inuence, of whom 2,118 were Jews.
43
All this was done in the
highly constrained circumstance of Italy as Germanys ally in the war. As
Jonathan Steinberg comments, A long process which began with the
spontaneous reaction of individual young ofcers in the spring of 1941
who could not stand by and watch Croatian butchers hack down Serbian
and Jewish men, women and children ended in July 1943 with a kind of
national conspiracy to frustrate the much greater and more systematic
brutality of the Nazi state . . . It rested on certain assumptions about
what being Italian meant.
44
But there was an even more general purpose to the popes silence
before and during the Holocaust. As early as the seizure of Prague and
before the invasion of Poland by Germany, Pacelli had hoped to be the
honest broker and settle the rapidly emerging crisis between Hitlers
Germany and the Allied Powers.
45
If, under his auspices, the crisis could
be ended without war, the Vaticans inuence would be greatly
enhanced. This vain hope would continue throughout the war.
Virtually all of Pacellis actions would be taken with the following
consideration in mind: would anything he did compromise the
Vaticans neutrality so that it would be unable to convene a peace
conference and thereby immeasurably extend the Vaticans inuence?
Given his Germanophile tendencies and knowledge of German history,
he must have been aware of Germanys vastly increased prestige after the
Congress of Berlin in 1878 that brokered the peace between Russia and
the Ottoman Empire, with Otto von Bismarck as the honest broker.
Indeed, given its wideranging consequences for Eastern Europe, hence
for the onset of World War I, the Congress of Berlin ranks as the single
most important such event in the half-century prior to that war.
International prestige, such as that conferred by convening such a
conference, could reverse the declining worldwide inuence of the
42
Greenberg 2005, 3.
43
Steinberg 1990, 132.
44
Ibid., 133.
45
Cornwell 1999, 222.
226 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
Roman Catholic Church in the face of communisms advance and the
rise of other secular isms. As Michael Phayer put it,
Years after the end of the war, Robert Leiber, the German Jesuit who was
one of Piuss closest condants, made clear the connection between the
Popes silence about the Holocaust and his diplomacy. The reason that
Pius XII did not speak out about the murder of the Jews, Leiber conded
to the Dutch historian Ger van Roon, was that he wanted to play the
peacemaker during the war. To safeguard his credentials for such a role,
the Holy See had to preserve Vatican Citys status as an independent state
and neutral government. Piuss role model in this respect was Pope
Benedict XV, whose efforts to negotiate a European peace during
World War I had impressed a younger Eugenio Pacelli.
46
Thus, in addition to Bismarcks role in furthering German inuence
through peacemaking, Pius XII actually had a papal model for such
efforts. That they were unsuccessful in the case of Benedict XV would
not deter Pius, because of the perceived greater need for the reversal of
Catholicisms decline after the carnage of World War I and the rise of
communism.
Finally, in order to play this international role, Vatican City and
Rome itself needed to be intact, and the Vatican thoroughly neutral.
By refusing to speak out publicly against the Holocaust, this neutrality
would be enhanced, so that none of the Axis Powers or their collabora-
tors would feel discomted. However, as Guenter Lewy commented:
A public denunciation of the mass murders by Pius XII, broadcast
widely over the Vatican radio and read from the pulpits by his bishops,
would have revealed to Jews and Christians alike what deportation to the
East entailed. The pope would have been believed, whereas the broad-
casts of the Allies were often shrugged off as war propaganda. Many of
the deportees, who accepted the assurances of the Germans that they
were merely being resettled, might thus have been warned and given an
impetus to escape. Many more Christians might have helped and shel-
tered Jews, and many more lives might have been saved.
47
Here, in contrast to the Armenian case, we have a disjunction between
onset and magnitude. Clearly, the magnitude of the killing would have
been affected by an open declaration by the pope. Jews might have believed
the pope and ed for their lives, or resisted strongly. Roman Catholics
46
Phayer 2000, 57.
47
Lewy 1964, 303.
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would have been far more likely to help Jews targeted for annihilation, even
if only to care for newly orphaned children. But the onset of the Holocaust
occurred in the context of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet
Union, which seemingly would be unaffected by any activities, declarations
or otherwise, by the papacy far to the west.
Yet, in one sense, the onset of the Holocaust was affected by Eugenio
Pacelli, then papal secretary of state, especially in his political activities,
rst through Ludwig Kaas in supporting Hitlers accession to the chan-
cellorship and then support for the Enabling Act giving Hitler virtually
dictatorial powers. The consequences were political silencing of the
Catholic Center Party, and nally the concordat itself, which provided
the rst external legitimation of Nazi rule. Hitlers comment upon
signing the concordat that it was especially signicant in the urgent
struggle against international Jewry, quoted earlier, suggests the con-
cordats importance in facilitating onset of the Holocaust. The counter-
factual positioning of the Center Party and the Roman Catholic Church
as domestic opponents of Nazism might have given Hitler pause prior to
his later homicidal onslaught against the Jews. As the preceding quote
reveals, in Hitlers view, one major obstacle to this onslaught had been
removed.
The Tutsi
Turning now to the case of Rwanda, in which approximately 800,000
Tutsi and Hutu moderates were murdered over six weeks in 1994, we
have an instance more like that of the Ottoman Empire during World
War I. Instead of Germany as the principal agent of the permissive
context, France, another European power, played that role.
In order to fully understand French policy during that period, one
must see two sides of the same coin representing that policy. First, there
were strongly positive elements to the relationship between France and
governing elites not only in Rwanda but also throughout Francophone
Africa. According to Ge rard Prunier, There is a high degree of symbio-
sis between French and francophone African political e lites. It is a
mixture of many things: old memories, shared material interests, delu-
sions of grandeur, gossip, sexual peccadilloes in short a common
culture for which there is no equivalent among ex-colonial powers
with the possible and partial exception of Portugal.
48
48
Prunier 1995, 10304.
228 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
More to the point, and in accordance with the realpolitik model,
Rwanda, precisely because of its Francophone status and widespread
Roman Catholicism, was in the process of inclusion in the French-
dominated African community. It would be the rst such country
not to have experienced French colonial role. On the negative side, there
was potential opposition stemming from Anglophone African states,
especially Uganda, home base of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF),
the Tutsi rebel organization that invaded Rwanda in 1990. According to
Prunier, the French were reacting to the Anglo-Saxon threat:
The notion of Anglo-Saxon is hazy yet it also has a deadly clarity.
Anybody who speaks English can be Anglo-Saxon, and indeed northern
Europeans such as the Scandinavians and the Dutch are honorary
Anglo-Saxons because they tend to speak English so well. Of course
Anglo-Saxons are usually white, but not always. President Yoweri
Museveni [of Uganda] . . . was denitely an incarnation of the Anglo-
Saxon menace in its truest form: because an Anglo-Saxon is an
English-speaker who threatens the French.
49
The confrontation between the heirs of les Anglais and the French in
Africa has been dubbed the Fashoda syndrome by Prunier, after the
1898 confrontation between English and French troops in southern
Sudan. He asserts that this syndrome is the main reason why France
intervened so quickly and so deeply in the Rwanda crisis.
In agreeing with this view, former French minister of defense,
Franc ois Leotard, told members of the French Assembly that The
President of the Republic [Mitterrand] was the person who in his
comments seemed to dene best the balance of power between the
Anglo-Saxons and the French in this part of the world, and to do so
with greatest precision and sense of strategy and history.
50
Not only was this thinking symptomatic of the Fashoda syndrome,
but the very idea of a balance of power between the Anglo-Saxons and
France is redolent of realpolitik. After all, was it not, according to
Thucydides, the growth in Athenian power thereby destroying the
49
Ibid., 104.
50
Quoted in Des Forges 1999, 117. That the French were not unrealistic in their assess-
ments is suggested by the fact that Paul Kagame, leader of the RPF, received training in
military tactics and intelligence methods at the Kansas-based Tactical Command and
General Staff College of the US Army. As a consequence, he was called Americas Man
in the Great Lakes. See Madsen 1999, 10405.
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G L I S E 229
balance with the Spartans that led to the Peloponnesian War and its
genocidal consequence? Additionally, Rwanda was seen by French
policy-makers to be geopolitically pivotal in affecting events in Zaire,
another French-speaking former Belgian colony in the FrenchAfrican
political orbit. Given its size, mineral wealth, and serious internal weak-
ness, Zaire would have made a valuable and fairly easily acquired
addition.
51
Beginning in 1990, the French military mission maintained between
600 and 1,100 troops in Rwanda. At the time of the French arrival, the
Rwandan army consisted of as few as 3,000 men, of whom only about
2,000 actually knew how to ght, so that the French addition was not
inconsiderable. According to both French and Tanzanian military intel-
ligence sources, the RPF offensive stopped short of the Rwandan capital,
Kigali, in February 1993 only because of the presence of French troops in
the vicinity.
52
A Nigerian colonel serving in the international military
observer group apparently accused French troops of bombarding RPF
positions in Ruhengiri.
53
Equally as, if not more important for understanding the genocide, is
the French military aid and troop training supplied to the Rwandan
army. Arms and ammunitions had been continually supplied but, after
February 1993, up to twenty tons of materiel per day were sent.
54
As early as February 1992, the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs
formally asked approval for naming a Lieutenant Colonel Chollet,
head of the French military assistance mission, to be military advisor
to President Habyarimana. Although this appointment was aborted
largely because of negative publicity as the result of a news leak, in
April, Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Jacques Mourin was named adjunct to
the French military attache in Kigali and fullled essentially the same
role that had been proposed for Chollet. In addition, French soldiers
on the ground were assisting in combat, in interrogating military
prisoners, and in enforcing control measures on the civilian
population.
55
Further, there is evidence that the French actually helped train the
Interahamwe, the Hutu extremist militia. One former militia member
claimed that French militaries [sic] taught us how to capture our
victims and tie them up . . . the French taught the interahamwe to
throw knives and assemble ries. The French trained us . . . for a total
51
For regional perspectives on the Rwandan genocide, see Jones 1999 and Gnamo 1999.
52
See Callamard 1999, 160.
53
Ibid., 166.
54
Des Forges 1999, 20.
55
Ibid., 68.
230 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
of 4 months between February 1991 and January 1992.
56
He further
alleged that French soldiers were present when the Presidential Guard
committed a large number of massacres. A member of the International
Enquiry Commission claimed that French trainers were present in a
military camp where hundreds of civilians were brought and killed.
From the start of the French military presence in Rwanda, there was
an awareness of genocidal intent. A Colonel Rwagalita, a close associate
of President Juvenal Habyarimana, told a French general directing
French military cooperation in Rwanda that the Tutsi are very few in
number, we will liquidate them.
57
Propagandists had given ample warnings of the possibility of geno-
cide that the French could hardly ignore. As early as November 1992,
Leon Mugesera gave a speech before a meeting of the leading political
party, the Mouvement Revolutionaire National pour la De mocratie et le
De veloppement (MRNDD), outlining the justication for genocide. In
the face of Tutsi hostility and the purported objective of Hutu extermi-
nation, the Hutu were to rise up in self-defense. He said that the Tutsi
must be made to recognize that your home is in Ethiopia, that we are
going to send you back there quickly, by the Nyabarongo.
58
The
Nyabarongo river is mentioned as a clear reference to earlier massacres
of the Tutsi and deposition of their bodies in that river to oat in the
direction of Ethiopia.
In April 1993, a new radio station, the Radio Tele vision Libre des
Mille Collines (RTLM) was incorporated with the express purpose of
establishing a hardline Hutu stance against the Tutsi. One of the chief
nancial supporters of the project was related through marriage to
President Habyarimana. The RTLM was basically hate radio carrying a
message of virtual Tutsi extermination, especially as the genocide itself
was approaching.
59
Essentially, the theme of self-defense against the
pernicious Tutsi was the justication for the coming violent actions.
There were warnings, as well, from United Nations-afliated person-
nel that implicate not only the French, who must have been aware of
these signals of genocide, but the larger international community as
well.
60
For example, in November 1993, Lieutenant Marc Nees, an
intelligence ofcer with the Belgian paratroopers attached to the
United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), reported
that persons attending a meeting chaired by Habyarimana had decided
56
Quoted in Callamard 1999, 181.
57
Quoted in Des Forges 1999, 121.
58
Quoted ibid., 71.
59
Chalk 1999.
60
See Melvern 2000 and Power 2001.
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T A T , R A I S O N D E

G L I S E 231
to distribute grenades, machetes and other weapons to the
Interahamwe and to CDR [Coalition for the Defense of the Republic]
young people. The objective is to kill Tutsi and other Rwandans who are
in the cities and who do not support them (i.e. the Interahamwe and
CDR). The distribution of the weapons has already begun.
61
At the
time, the number of machetes imported into the country was sufcient
to equip every third Hutu male.
62
In December 1993, Canadian general Rome o Dallaire, military head
of UNAMIR, received messages from senior ofcers of the Rwandan
armed forces that, after killings at Kirambo, Mutura, and Ngenda,
more massacres of the same kind are being prepared and are supposed
to spread throughout the country, beginning with the regions that have
a great concentration of Tutsi.
63
General Dallaire sought additional
discretion in action from his UN superiors, but did not receive it.
Shortly after the massacres in Kigali began on April 6, the rapid with-
drawal of foreign nationals and stated opposition to the UNAMIR
presence by France, the United States, and other powers on the
Security Council led Dallaire to conclude that April 12 was the day
the world moved from disinterest in Rwanda to the abandonment of
Rwandans to their fate.
64
That information was immediately made
available to the Rwandan government because its representative on the
Security Council (a rotating seat), inappropriately, was not asked to
leave the room.
65
Shortly thereafter, the leader of the Rwandan army, a
moderate, and his aides, as well as other administrative personnel
opposed to the genocide, primarily regional, were removed from ofce
by the Hutu extremist leadership,
66
and the killing spread rapidly from
Kigali to other cities and regions.
67
A report of Belgian intelligence, also in December, stated that: The
Interahamwe are armed to the teeth and on alert. Many of them have
been trained at the military camp in Bugesera. Each of them has ammu-
nition, grenades, mines and knives. They have been trained to use guns
that are stockpiled with their respective chiefs. They are all just waiting
for the right moment to act.
68
Ofcials in France, Belgium, the United
States, and the United Nations were well aware of the possibility of mass
killing, yet did little if anything to stop it. Actually, France was in the best
61
Quoted in Des Forges 1999, 143.
62
Ibid., 127.
63
Quoted ibid., 145.
64
Dallaire 2003, 291.
65
Power 2002a, 36769.
66
Dallaire 2003, 292; Des Forges, personal communication, May 8, 2004.
67
Des Forges 1999, 263.
68
Quoted ibid., 146.
232 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
position to do so, but did not. Indeed, when President Mitterrand, the
intimate of President Habyarimana and architect of Frances realpolitik
policy in central Africa, was asked by a journalist about the genocide, he
answered: The genocide or the genocides? I dont know what one
should say!,
69
as if there existed a symmetry between Hutu and Tutsi
behaviors during that period. One might just as well have argued that
the German mass murder of Jews was in response to identical behaviors
toward Germans by Jews. In the midst of obvious preparations for the
genocide, the French ambassador to Kigali, Georges Martre, observed,
I had dinner yesterday night with President Habyarimana; he is a nice
man. I even drank champagne with him. I know him, he is a charming
person.
70
Perhaps the permissive role of France was best summarized
by the following statement by General Paul Kagame, commander of the
RPF:
You armed and trained the Presidential Guards; you have accepted that
the Presidential Guards armed and trained, in front of you, the Hutu
extremists. You have not required the President of Rwanda to abandon
ethnic identity cards; vous portez donc une lourde part de responsabilite
dans le ge nocide en cours.
71
Or as Rene Lemarchand observed, France helped to give the
Habyarimana regime a degree of credibility that proved totally illusory,
and thus created false expectations about its commitment to
democracy . . . No amount of retrospective guilt can diminish its place
in history as the principal villain in the Rwandan apocalypse.
72
As in the Armenian case and in contrast to the Holocaust, onset and
magnitude are equally affected. The earlier massacres of the Tutsi in
196364 and 1973
73
laid the groundwork for the later magnitude of the
genocide that would, given the permissive environment established by
the French, begin at an extraordinarily high rate of killing.
Counterfactually, had the French not helped stop the RPF offensive
before Kigali in February 1993, the RPF advance might have been very
swift and many more Tutsi would have been saved under RPF protec-
tion; even the genocide itself might have been averted. Diplomatic and
military support of the Rwandan army and especially materiel
69
Quoted in Prunier 1995, 339. Research ndings refuting the claim of a double genocide
are found in Verwimp 2003.
70
Quoted in Callamard 1999, 169.
71
Le Figaro, 25 June 1994; quoted ibid., 165.
72
Lemarchand 1994, 603.
73
Mamdani 2001, 193.
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T A T , R A I S O N D E

G L I S E 233
transferred to it by the French were inuential not only in increasing the
magnitude of the genocide, but also in establishing a climate of permis-
sion that allowed the killing to begin.
Even after much of the genocide had run its course, the French
intervened forcefully in Operation Turquoise with ostensibly human-
itarian goals but with very mixed consequences. Although the French
were responsible for rescuing approximately 10,00013,000 people in
southwest Rwanda, they actually served to provide political cover for the
many Hutu perpetrators of the genocide then eeing to Goma in Zaire
as the RPF advanced.
74
In Goma, French humanitarian activities
actually helped the former genocidaires far more then the Tutsi victims
who were the advertised beneciaries.
75
Appropriately, Gerard Prunier
described the Machiavellian statesmanship that President Mitterrand
exhibited in an interview on French television in 1994 when he claimed
that Operation Turquoise had saved tens of thousands lives, that
President Habyarimana had been steadily democratizing Rwanda before
his death, that France had nothing to do with the genocide, and that
France could not intervene during the genocide because that was the
responsibility of the United Nations.
76
In point of fact, In 1994, during
the height of the extermination campaign in Rwanda, as Paris airlifted
arms to Mobutus intermediaries in eastern Zaire for direct transfer
across the border to the ge nocidaires, Frances President Franc ois
Mitterrand said as the newspaper Le Figaro later reported it In
such countries, genocide is not too important. By their actions and
inactions, at the time and in the years that followed, the rest of the major
powers indicated that they agreed.
77
Conclusion
Table 10.1 summarizes the preceding arguments. Two genocidal
variants cynical and brute force are listed along with the military
and genocidal targets in each case. In the rst column, the cynical
supporter is listed, not necessarily as a proponent of genocide, but as a
formal or unspoken ally of the military goals of the perpetrator. When
these military goals were transformed into genocidal ones via brute force
realpolitik, then the supporters were at best transformed into bystanders, or
74
Prunier 1995, 303.
75
Gourevitch 1998, 32425.
76
Prunier 1995, 297.
77
Quoted in Gourevitch 1998, 32425.
234 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
were, as in the case of the German military during World War I, actually
complicit in the genocide.
This table helps suggest a method of genocide prevention.
78
Instead of
targeting for diplomatic persuasion the potential perpetrator of geno-
cide, if he or she may be xed in the genocidal purpose and therefore
intractable, the supporter or principal ally could be approached. If the
Vatican or France could have been made aware of the possible conse-
quences of their actions in supporting military goals, respectively of
Nazi Germany and the Hutu elite, then it is possible that their degree of
support might have diminished, with perhaps a consequent smaller
probability of a later genocide. Such diplomatic entreaties would prob-
ably have been less successful in the case of imperial Germany because
the ongoing world war isolated enemy coalitions from each other and
made alliances such as that between Germany and the Ottoman Empire
virtually unconditional.
Here we see the importance of timing and context. If widespread
warfare already is underway, then there may be only very limited pos-
sibilities for prevention. On the other hand, if diplomatic approaches
can be made earlier before the onset of major war, in recognition of the
potential impact of inuential supporters on the probability of geno-
cide, then diplomatic venues may be more successful.
Table 10.1 Realpolitik and genocide
Realpolitik variant
Cynical Brute force
Supporter Perpetrator Military target
a
Genocidal
target
Imperial
Germany
Ottoman Empire Russia Armenians
The Vatican Nazi Germany Soviet Union Jews
France Hutu elite Rwandese Patriotic
Front
Tutsi
Notes:
a
Only the military target relevant for the genocide is listed.
78
See Fein 2000 and Ould-Abdallah 2000. Another approach via the mechanism of
international aid is given by Uvin 1998.
R A I S O N D E

T A T , R A I S O N D E

G L I S E 235
In the concluding chapter, additional evidence will be presented that,
in the case of Rwanda, it was not only France, the great power supporter
of the Rwandan government, that played a permitting role. The behavior
of the United Nations in the nal moments was probably decisive in
allowing the massacres in Kigali, the capital city, to spread throughout
the country, yielding the genocide of 1994.
236 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
11
Cynical realpolitik and the unwanted
Thus far in this part, their use of cynical realpolitik has identied
permitting agents of the Holocaust and of the genocide of the
Armenians and Tutsi that undoubtedly increased the magnitude of the
killing. Yet policies dictated by cynical realpolitik go beyond this rela-
tively small company of leaders and include even the enemies of Nazism
who were ultimately, at great cost, to defeat Nazi Germany in World
War II. The story of this chapter is the callous disregard of the Jewish
plight in virtually all potential national sites of refuge and its likely
impact on the genesis and, most importantly, the magnitude of the
Holocaust. Here, the cynical version of realpolitik is played out on the
world stage.
The United States and Great Britain were the principal actors in this
drama, for they were the main destinations sought by the Jews as the
Nazi persecution worsened. Other places of potential refuge such as
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were also implicated. As might be
expected, the United States was the leading actor and, During the
Holocaust, Britains policy much of it made in conjunction with the
United States government continued to put self-interest rst, leaving
minimal scope for humanitarian action.
1
Self-interest dictated by con-
siderations of realpolitik, punctuated by occasional short-lived bursts of
humanitarianism, was to characterize the policies of both countries.
The United States
According to David Wyman, Three major factors in American life in
the late 1930s tended to generate public resistance to immigration of
refugees: unemployment, nativistic nationalism, and anti-Semitism.
2
1
London 2000, 1; see also Wasserstein 1999. For an overview of Western immigration
policy toward Jewish refugees, see Engel 1993.
2
Wyman 1985, 3. See also Feingold 1970 and S. Friedman 1973.
237
Nativism frequently shaded into outright anti-Semitism, but in itself
was a force militating against admission of aliens of any origin. And the
nativistic reaction to the Great Depression actually antedated the acces-
sion of the Nazis to power and the need for Jewish escape.
As early as 1930, President Hoover, when faced with the problem of
increasing unemployment, sought methods to limit immigration.
Seeking administrative relief from the State Department, the Hoover
administration turned to a previously little-used provision of the
Immigration Act of 1917 that excluded individuals who were likely to
become public charges. This LPC requirement, as it came to be known,
became a constant method of limiting immigration throughout the
following decade and a half. Immigrants had either to possess enough
money to support themselves or to have afdavits from friends or
relatives in the United States that they would be supported in the
event that employment could not be found. And the wording of the
instructions to consular ofcials was elastic enough to deny entry to a
large number of refugees. A White House press release of September 8,
1930, stated that, if the consular ofcer believes that the applicant may
probably be a public charge at any time, even during a considerable
period subsequent to his arrival, he must refuse the visa.
3
When Franklin Roosevelt assumed ofce, this policy was kept in
place. At times this policy was eased, as in the directive of December
1936 that instructed consular ofcers to assess the likelihood of the
applicant becoming a public charge, and not . . . the possibility of it.
4
Immigration totals rose accordingly yet, on the whole, the consular
ofcials in Germany and later Austria remained roadblocks to successful
emigration. Assistant secretary of state in charge of immigration
Breckenridge Long, fearful of aliens and verging on anti-Semitism,
suggested to his consuls in Germany,
We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indenite
length the number of immigrants in to [sic] the United States. We could
do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way
and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative
devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting
of the visas.
5
3
Quoted in Wyman 1985, 4.
4
Emphasis added; quoted ibid., 5.
5
Quoted in Zucker 2001, 41.
238 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
An unexpired passport or a police certicate attesting to good conduct
was required, along with a complete nancial statement, certicate from
a public health ofcial, duplicate records of all required personal infor-
mation, and an afdavit by a guarantor in the United States listing the
guarantors complete assets as well as the percentage of those assets
required for the new immigrant. If a single error was found in the
approximately fty pages of documentation, at best a delay was to be
expected; frequently outright rejection of the application was the out-
come.
6
The typical waiting time for an application to complete the
screening process was nine months, even longer for those in the enemy
alien category after the United States entered the war.
As early as 1933, a well-known German-Jewish historian, Dr. Mark
Weschnitzer, remarked that dozens and dozens of individuals whose
credentials . . . were in perfect form . . . were denied visas, emphatically
stating that the Consuls, particularly in the provinces are pretty ada-
mant . . . [and] in Berlin, too, they are so busy that they adopt the course
of least resistance.
7
In July 1943, a visa application more than four feet
long was introduced along with the need for two American sponsors who
would attest to the absence of any danger to the United States from the
applicant
8
this at a time when Washington was already fully aware of
the ongoing destruction of European Jewry.
One incident is revealing. A German-Jewish refugee in France had her
visa approved in Washington in November 1941. But after American
entry into the war one month later, now categorized as an enemy alien,
she had to begin the process all over again. According to a report of the
Unitarian Service Committee in October 1942, In spite of what seemed
to be a favorable reception of her case when it was presented by her niece
in Washington, the visa was refused and this meant her case could not be
reopened for six months. There was nothing we could do. A few days ago
came word of her deportation.
9
Of course, state security, an essential element of realpolitik, was
operative here after December 7, 1941. There was an ongoing fear of
spies introduced into the United States under the guise of refugee status.
Given the relatively large US German-speaking population and the
ability of such a spy to submerge in its midst, this was a real concern.
Yet, as we saw in the preceding incident of the deported refugee, all too
many genuine victims of Nazism were lost in the process, soon to be
murdered.
6
Ibid.
7
Quoted ibid., 175.
8
Wyman 1984, 127.
9
Quoted ibid., 126.
C Y N I C A L R E A L P O L I T I K A N D T H E U N W A N T E D 239
Even those who were offended by the Nazis treatment of the Jews
nevertheless opposed any liberalization of the immigration laws. Here,
nativism and anti-Semitism merge with a realpolitik that together put
the interests of the state over those of increasingly desperate human
beings. George Messersmith, as consul-general in Berlin, minister in
Vienna, and later assistant secretary of state of immigration matters
among other positions, embodied this syndrome. Despite hundreds of
reports detailing the Nazis barbaric behavior, according to his biogra-
pher, his visceral Americanism included a selsh side that recom-
mended selective immigration policies
10
especially concerning Jewish
applications, and he sought to preserve American democracy by exclud-
ing those who might become an added burden on democracy.
11
Messersmith admitted opposing any tampering with that existing
order which . . . vests nal authority in the Consular Service.
12
And
when, in 1933 American universities developed a plan to admit German-
Jewish professors, Messersmith averred that such individuals were dan-
gerous because they, while designated as liberal, are in reality in direct
opposition to our own social order.
13
Realpolitik in the formof friendly
relations between Germany and the United States also was important to
him. When, in 1933, a German-Jewish physician came to the consulate
to complain of Nazi atrocities against Jews in Berlins hospitals,
Messersmith burst out, You Jews are always afraid of [sic] your own
skins. The important thing for us is to preserve friendly relations
between the two countries.
14
As an indicator of the overall effectiveness of the many obstacles to
immigration, the following statistics are revealing. Although the immi-
gration quotas allowed for Germany and Austria in the 1930s would
have been insufcient to meet the demand, they were never lled.
According to Bat-Ami Zucker, During this period, quota fulllment
ranged from a low of 5.3 percent in 1933 to a high of 40.6 in 1939, with
an average for the entire period of 17.5 percent.
15
When the number of refugees itself is examined, both Jewish and non-
Jewish, the total admitted between 1933 and 1943 rises to no more than
280,000,
16
a small fraction of the total possible under law (2,154,306).
17
Realpolitik has another dimension, in addition to that of state secur-
ity. When the focus is on the state, of course state security is paramount.
But when the focus shifts to leadership, tenure in ofce is the sine
10
Zucker 2001, 176.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., 175.
13
Quoted ibid., 176.
14
Quoted ibid.
15
Ibid., 60.
16
Davie 1947, 27.
17
Zucker 2001, 60.
240 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
qua non, especially in democratic polities. In their sensitivity to wide-
spread anti-Semitism, the actions of the Roosevelt administration and
its counterpart in Britain reected this aspect of a cynical realpolitik.
As early as 1920, Henry Ford set the stage for the emergence of
political anti-Semitism with his personal newspaper, the Dearborn
Independent, with a circulation of 700,000. He chronicled the supposed
misdeeds of Jews and their threat to the republic. The infamous tsarist
forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a staple of anti-
Semitism up to the present time, was published serially by the
Independent in 1920.
18
Articles in the Independents series The
International Jews: The Worlds Problem were bound in volumes and
mailed to members of Congress and other prominent ofcials. One
observer, Carey McWilliams, concluded that it would be difcult to
overestimate the damage which Fords vicious, persistent, and heavily
nanced anti-Semitic campaign caused the Jews of the world.
19
Ford was the rst American to be awarded the Grand Cross of
the German Right. As early as 1922, his portrait hung in Hitlers pri-
vate ofce.
20
Articles in the Independent were translated and distri-
buted widely in Germany. Hitler openly noted the importance of
Fords contribution. With the onset of the Depression, 121 American
anti-Semitic organizations emerged during the 193040 period.
21
Important among them were the Silver Shirts, headed by William
Dudley Pelley. Predominantly a Protestant movement, at its maximum
in 1934 it had about 15,000 members. Although nominally national in
scope, many of its ofcers came from the Ku Klux Klan, thus giving it a
regional southern avor. Most of its propaganda activities were found
west of the Appalachians.
22
More inuential in the 1930s was the movement established by Father
Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest based in Royal Oak, Michigan.
Initially attractive to working people of all faiths, including many
Jews, because of its emphasis on social justice (the name of Coughlins
periodical), by the mid-1930s it had turned openly anti-Semitic. He gave
Sunday afternoon radio talks that by one estimate in 1939 reached
3,500,000 people. He formed the National Union for Social Justice as a
vehicle for espousing his political views, and later the Christian Front in
New York, which consisted of anti-Semitic thugs ready to take to the
streets at a moments notice. Coughlin published the Protocols in 1938.
18
Baldwin 2003, 141.
19
Quoted in Zucker 2001, 21.
20
Baldwin 2003, 173.
21
D. Strong 1941.
22
Zucker 2001, 22.
C Y N I C A L R E A L P O L I T I K A N D T H E U N W A N T E D 241
Much of the Coughlinite anti-Semitic propaganda centered on the
notion of the international Jew who could not be successfully inte-
grated into American life; the Protocols, of course, were a pillar of this
worldview. But even more insidious was the implication and direct
accusation that Jews were somehow alien to American life and a danger
to the republic. The connection between Jews and communism was
consistently emphasized both on the radio and in print. Only after US
entry into the war were Coughlins activities curtailed, and Social Justice
was banned from the mails in 1942.
The inuence of Ford, Pelley, Coughlin, and other anti-Semites was
to be found in the prevalence of anti-Jewish activities in the 1930s and
1940s. A series of surveys between 1938 and 1941 showed that between
one-third and one-half of the American populace believed that Jews had
too much power in the United States.
23
During the war years, the
survey found that the proportion rose to 56 percent. Jewish power was
earlier thought to be located principally in business and commerce
and in nance. Later it was extended to politics and government.
24
From August 1940 and later through the war, 15 to 24 percent of
respondents viewed Jews as a menace to America; Jews were seen as
more threatening than Negroes, Catholics, Germans, or Japanese
(with the exception of 1942 for the latter two groups). Between 1938
and 1945, 15 percent of respondents would have supported an anti-
Jewish campaign, with 20 to 25 percent sympathizing with it. Another
30 percent would have opposed it, with the rest remaining neutral. Thus,
nearly 40 percent of the population would have approved of an anti-
Jewish campaign.
25
The results of these polls must have been known to President
Roosevelt and inuenced him accordingly. Although he was at rst
outwardly sympathetic to the plight of Germanys Jews, as time passed,
concerns about the United States in the war a fundamental state
security tenet of realpolitik replaced any residual sympathies he had
for them.
As early as 1938, Roosevelt was trying to publicly resolve the Jewish
refugee crisis without opening any additional American doors. The
Anschluss of 1938 between Austria and Germany yielded an additional
ood of refugees. In addition to combining the Austrian and German
US immigration quotas, and allowing this consolidated quota to be
23
Quoted in Wyman 1984, 14.
24
Ibid., 15.
25
Ibid.
242 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
completely lled, a major result was the Evian conference, held in
July 1938.
The conference, called by Roosevelt, was billed as a major
intergovernmental effort to resolve the refugee crisis that threatened to
reach ood-like proportions, as the Nazis hastened Jewish emigration
from newly acquired Austria. The conference had a humanitarian face
but somewhat darker origins. In a State Department memorandum of
1938 summarizing the years refugee program, pressure from liberal
writers such as Dorothy Thompson and certain Congressmen with
metropolitan constituencies were claimed to have led to the confer-
ence. Demands emanating from those quarters were deemed to be both
exceedingly strong and prolonged. As a consequence, Secretary of State
Cordell Hull, Undersecretary Sumner Welles, and Assistant Secretary
Messersmith concluded that, instead of resisting this pressure, it would
be preferable to get out in front and attempt to guide it, primarily to
forestall any efforts to liberalize immigration policy.
26
By making every-
one in the world responsible for the fate of the refugees, essentially no
one would be, including the United States.
And that was the basic outcome of the conference. With the exception
of Italy, all thirty-two invited countries attended the conference at
Evian-les-Bains, but only one, the Dominican Republic, agreed to
increase its quota for Jewish immigration. Another outcome was the
formation of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, which was
to prove to be largely ineffectual as a vehicle for Jewish immigration. As
former undersecretary of state Sumner Welles averred after the war,
The committee could have been responsible for an outstanding human-
itarian achievement prior to and during the war years, but . . . the nal
results amounted to little more than zero. The Government of the United
States itself permitted the committee to become a nullity.
27
Two aspects of the conference were noteworthy. One was the open
rejection by most countries of even the possibility of Jewish immigra-
tion. Countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and France indicated
that they were already saturated with Jewish refugees. Australia would
not encourage any large-scale immigration because, they said,as we
have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.
28
New Zealand pointed to its economic problems, as did Canada, in
limiting immigration. Unemployment was cited as a major factor by
Latin American countries, with the aforementioned exception of the
26
Quoted in Wyman 1985, 44.
27
Quoted ibid., 51.
28
Quoted ibid., 50.
C Y N I C A L R E A L P O L I T I K A N D T H E U N W A N T E D 243
Dominican Republic. Cynical realpolitik, in the sense of a perceived
national self-interest placed over and above the human rights of perse-
cuted peoples, was the dominant response.
The American public responded in a similar vein. In July 1938, at the
time of the conference, a Fortune poll revealed that two-thirds of
respondents (67.4 percent) agreed with the statement regarding refugees
that with conditions as they are we should keep them out. Organs of
public opinion such as the Jesuit weekly America and the Catholic Tablet
published in Brooklyn essentially agreed with this view, although the
liberal Catholic Commonweal supported the possibility of Jewish refuge
in the United States.
29
In Congress, Edward T. Taylor, Democrat of
Colorado, wanted to be assured that the proposed Evian conference did
not amount to an invitation to use the United States as a dumping
ground for all of these people.
30
This sentiment was typical of many in
Congress who opposed opening doors to the burgeoning number of
refugees.
Even non-German sources threatened to worsen the refugee problem.
Both Poland and Romania sought to attend the Evian conference in an
effort to lessen their own Jewish problems. In common with Nazi
Germany, which allowed observers to attend from both the German and
Austrian Jewish communities, the conference was seen by Poles and
Romanians as a vehicle for the reduction of their own Jewish popula-
tions. Both countries were refused attendance.
The German government, of course, was well aware of these events. At
the time of the conference, Hitler declared in Konigsberg, I can only
hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for
these criminals, will at least be generous enough to convert this sym-
pathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these
criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury
ships.
31
Awareness of the unwillingness of the West to respond openly
to the Jewish refugees was indicated by Viennas Volkischer Beobachter,
which stated: We cannot take seriously President Roosevelts appeal to
the nations of the world as long as the United States maintains racial
quotas for immigrants.
32
And at the close of the conference, a spokes-
man for the Wilhelmstrasse (where the German foreign policy making
agency was based) exultingly announced that Western countries
wanted the Jews no more than did the Germans themselves.
33
29
Wyman 1984, 64.
30
Quoted in Wyman 1985, 46.
31
Quoted in Morse 1968, 204.
32
Quoted ibid., 20506.
33
Quoted in Marrus 1985, 172.
244 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
This rejection of the Jewish refugees would be even more dramatically
revealed by events surrounding two vessels, the St. Louis and the Struma.
In May 1939, the former ship set sail for Havana from Hamburg with
Jewish refugees aboard. Although the Cuban government had abruptly
canceled all landing permits already issued, the ship landed at Havana
and 907 of the refugees were refused entry. Nor would the US govern-
ment intervene on behalf of the more than 700 of the passengers who
had registered for American visas and had their support documents in
order. The New Republic, for one, was outraged that these passengers
were not permitted to land, taken in on temporary visas, and later
counted toward the new quota. After sailing back to Europe and despe-
rate entreaties from refugee organizations, Britain, France, Belgium, and
the Netherlands agreed to take them in.
The Struma, with 769 passengers, would meet a far worse fate.
Embarking for Palestine, initially from a Romanian port, the Struma
reached Istanbul in February 1942, but was forbidden to land without
prior British approval for entry to Palestine. This the British refused to
grant (see pp. 24647 for more details on British Palestine policy).
Forced to sail from Istanbul in an unseaworthy ship, the Struma was
towed from port and exploded shortly thereafter. There was a total of
two survivors.
34
Great Britain and Commonwealth countries
British immigration policy toward Jewish refugees differed little from
that of the United States. Louise London
35
estimates that a nal total of
approximately 80,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia
were permitted to escape through the United Kingdom. Given that the
population of the UK was roughly one-third that of the United States at
that time, this number on a per capita basis is comparable to the
maximum cited earlier of 280,000, including both Jews and non-Jews,
allowed to enter the United States.
36
There were, however, two major
exceptions. The rst is the admission of 20,000 Jewish children from
Austria and Germany after the Anschluss, something the United States
refused to agree to, and the problem of Palestine, then governed by
Britain under a League mandate.
Historically, the ungenerous British immigration policy had roots
similar to the American. Both emerged from the nativist and strong
34
Wyman 1985, 3839.
35
London 2000, 12.
36
Zucker 2001, 60.
C Y N I C A L R E A L P O L I T I K A N D T H E U N W A N T E D 245
anti-communist feelings permeating Anglo-American society after
World War I. As in the Red Scare immediately after the war in the
United States, immigrants from Russia in London, most of them Jews,
were viewed with deep suspicion. In 1920, elements of the government
even agreed that Russian immigrants were to be interned en masse in
time of war.
37
During the 1930s, immigrants from Germany, also prin-
cipally Jewish, were to be interned in the event of war.
Anti-Semitism in ofcial circles also paralleled the American variant.
While expressing sympathy for the persecuted Jews (e.g., George
Messersmith in the United States), ofcials often held anti-Semitic
views that inevitably found their way into immigration policy. The
British ambassador to Germany in 1933, Sir Horace Rumbold, is a
case in point. He was strongly anti-Nazi, wrote a critique of Mein
Kampf that was required reading within the Foreign Ofce, and even
lectured Hitler on the wrong-headedness of his anti-Jewish policies. Yet
he also sought explanations for German anti-Semitism in the behaviors
of the Jews themselves. In particular, he contrasted the undesirable
behavior of bad Jews, especially immigrants to Germany, with the
upright actions of the native good Jews; Rumbold aided refugee Jews
in Britain after his retirement in August 1933, even while continuing to
express anti-Semitic views.
38
Cynical realpolitik was at the heart of British policy, as in the United
States. According to London, this policy was driven by self-interest,
opportunism and an overriding concern with control
39
and was ruled
by priorities formulated in terms of the national interest.
40
As a result,
these policies were hostile both to immigration substantial enough to
alleviate the ever-growing problem and to international agencies such as
the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGC) of the League of
Nations engaged in humanitarian work.
Palestine presented a major problem for British policy making.
Ultimately, cynical realpolitik considerations won the day. Although
eventually 140,000 Jewish refugees reached Palestine, both legally and
illegally,
41
Arab opposition to Jewish immigration, culminating in the
1936 riots, led to the closing of that venue. The UK governmental White
Paper of May 1939 limited Jewish immigration into Palestine to a total
of 75,000 during the next ve years, after which no further immigration
would be allowed without Arab consent. Clearly, a general war appeared
37
London 2000, 21.
38
Ibid., 32.
39
Ibid., 14.
40
Ibid., 94.
41
Ibid., 12.
246 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
to be on the horizon, and Arabs throughout the Middle East were to be
propitiated if not appeased by this policy. Hence, the national interest
trumped the humanitarian needs of Jewish refugees.
Nor would the Dominions of the British Empire be of any help to the
Jews. When approached about the possibility of admitting German-
Jewish scientists, Lord Bledisloe, governor-general of New Zealand,
stated that, even if there were immigration possibilities, he would be
unlikely to take any step . . . from humanitarian motives which might
leave the impression that German Jews of any description were being
welcomed to this Dominion during a period of acute economic depres-
sion to the possible detriment of New Zealanders.
42
Further, he feared
that immigrants from Germany might be at heart, if not openly,
Communists, and spread revolutionary propaganda to the social unset-
tlement of the local community.
43
Canada was especially hostile to Jewish immigration. It is worthwhile
quoting at some length the response of Frederick Charles Blair, director
of the Immigration Board at this time. Writing to a strong opponent of
Jewish immigration, he stated:
I suggested recently to three Jewish gentlemen with whom I am well
acquainted, that it might be a very good thing if they would call a conference
and have a day of humiliationand prayer whichmight protably be extended
for a week or more where they would honestly try to answer the question of
why they are so unpopular almost everywhere . . . I often think that instead
of persecution it would be far better if we more often told them frankly why
many of them are unpopular. If they would divest themselves of certain of
their habits I am sure they could be just as popular in Canada as our
Scandinavians . . . Just because Jewish people would not understand the
frank kind of statements I have made in this letter to you, I have marked it
condential.
44
The prime minister of Canada, Mackenzie King, believed that if Jewish
refugees of even the best type were allowed to land on Canadian soil,
they would destroy the country. In his diary he wrote, We must seek to
keep Canada free from unrest and too great an intermixture of foreign
strains of blood.
45
He feared the pollution of the Canadian blood-
stream and that Canadian unity would be undermined by any increase
in the Jewish population.
46
Canada did take a substantial number of
42
Quoted ibid., 43.
43
Quoted ibid.
44
Quoted in Abella and Bialystok 1996, 755.
45
Quoted ibid., 756.
46
Ibid.
C Y N I C A L R E A L P O L I T I K A N D T H E U N W A N T E D 247
non-Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia in 193839, but fewer than
5,000 Jews between 1933 and 1945.
47
With doors increasingly closed to Jewish refugees, and the ongoing
Holocaust now well known to the Allies, an Anglo-American conference
on refugees was called for April 1943 in Bermuda. According to David
Wyman, The conferences minutes reveal once more the deep fear the
two powers shared that a large exodus of Jews might take place.
48
And
Richard Law, the head of the British delegation, conded that It was
thought in London that the most favourable thing that could be done in
opening negotiations with Hitler was the receipt of a blank negative to
any proposals made by the United Nations that this clearly was the
hope in England.
49
Even in the face of mass murder on a literally
unimaginable scale, cynical perception of the national interest, here
understood in terms of limited or nonexistent immigration, dominated
the political landscape.
Impact on the Holocaust
We know that from the outset the Nazi government was keenly aware of
emigration possibilities. Indeed, they did all they could to encourage if
not mandate that emigration. Hitler himself had taken such an interest.
As early as 1933, British ambassador Horace Rumbold reported that,
according to an informant, at a meeting of the German cabinet, Hitler
requested information about the number of Jews who had left Germany
recently and remarked that he hoped, in time, to get rid of every Jew in
the country.
50
This report, of course, is consistent with Hitlers and other German
reactions to the Evian conference indicated above. The Germans, in
their efforts to encourage emigration, even went so far as to omit the
J for Jewish from passports of Jews they knew were attempting to enter
Palestine illegally.
51
There are two possible conclusions. First, the limiting of emigration
possibilities implied that Germany and Austria would not easily dispose
of their Jews in this fashion. When during the war literally millions of
additional Jews were added to territory under German control, then
clearly thoughts of mass annihilation came to mind. Second, the near-
universal rejection of mass immigration by Jews implied their
47
London 2000, 45.
48
Wyman 1984, 114.
49
Quoted in London 2000, 213.
50
Ibid., 28.
51
Ibid., 175.
248 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
dehumanization, which reaction to the St. Louis and Struma incidents by
the international community must have powerfully reinforced.
Added to this was the refusal of the Allies to interfere in any way with the
mass extermination process. As late as 1944, when events surrounding the
Holocaust were well known in Allied capitals, the refusal of President
Roosevelt to bomb Auschwitz was symptomatic of the inuence of cynical
realpolitik on Allied decision making. Although John McCloy, the assistant
secretary of war, had been excoriated for his refusal to authorize the
bombing, most recently an interview with him revealed that he had been
acting at the presidents behest. When McCloy brought the suggestion to
Roosevelt, he was irate. Roosevelt exclaimed Why, the idea! Theyll say
we bombed these people, and theyll only move it down the road a little way
and [well] bomb them all the more. If its successful, itll be more provo-
cative, and I wont have anything to do [with it] . . . Well be accused of
participating in this horrible business.
52
It is the last sentence that is most
revealing. Instead of the symbolic and real support of Jews faced with
annihilation, the reputation of the United States and of Roosevelt, in
particular, assumed priority. The Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, a survivor of
Auschwitz, indicated that he would have welcomed the bombing. We were
no longer afraid of death at any rate, not of that death.
53
Thus did the
personal and perceived national interests of leaders trump all humanitarian
concerns.
But this form of dehumanization would have additional implications.
Beyond suggesting the primacy of a cynical realpolitik on a worldwide
basis, at least regarding the fate of the Jews, this universal rejection sug-
gested that others besides the Nazis perceived the risks (often unrealistic)
associated with the Jewish presence. (Note especially the reactions of the
Canadian and New Zealand prime ministers.) Thus, when faced with large
concentrations of Jews after the invasion of the Soviet Union and increasing
difculty in prosecuting the war, the Nazis would call upon their own now-
buttressed dehumanization of the Jews to eliminate this risk. The mass
killings by the Einsatzgruppen would receive additional justication
54
well
beyond the early anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party and continuity with mass
murder in the East, as well as its validation, during the Russian Civil War.
52
Emphasis added; quoted in Beschloss 2002, 66.
53
Quoted ibid., 65.
54
As Saul Bellow 2000, 178, commented, The war made it clear that almost everybody
agreed that the Jews had no right to live.
C Y N I C A L R E A L P O L I T I K A N D T H E U N W A N T E D 249
12
High victimization: the role of realpolitik
Consistent with the purpose of explaining the magnitude of the killing,
the remaining chapters in this part focus initially on reasons for the high
victimization rate in certain occupied countries during the Holocaust.
Realpolitik is emphasized, followed by inequality and failures of mutual
identication among the victims. This part of the book concludes with a
comparison among Jewish ghettos in Eastern Europe and the reasons for
revolt in one such ghetto, but a higher survival rate in another that did
not revolt. Paradoxically, revolt and ultimate survival will prove to be
independent of each other in these ghettos. Also, somewhat counter-
intuitively, individual and community survival will appear to be incon-
sistent with each other.
Two cases of high victimization now occupy our attention. Why
should Hungary and the Netherlands stand out for the mass murder
of high percentages of their Jewish populations, especially when
Hungary was occupied by the Germans only very late in the war
(March 1944), and the Netherlands had a uniquely tolerant social land-
scape that virtually eliminated the possibility of widespread anti-
Semitism? What are the salient causes?
Hungary
The Holocaust in Hungary also conforms to the model of the contrac-
tion of socioeconomic space as a progenitor of anti-Semitic practice, but
it was German brute force realpolitik that sealed the fate of 70 percent of
Hungarian Jewry.
Prior to World War I, the Hungarians joined with the Austrians in
administering the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a dual monarchy in which
they jointly ruled the largest empire in East-Central Europe comprising
todays Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and large swaths of southeastern Poland and western
Ukraine, most notably Galicia. Hungarian Jews were increasingly
250
Magyarized in their support of the Hungarian aristocracy. After the
emancipation of the Jewish community in 1867, the same year as the dual
monarchy was formed to permit Hungarian accession to power, Magyars
and Jews entered a golden age of cooperation. Jews advanced economic-
ally and socially while providing almost all of the middle-class economic
development that Hungary badly needed.
A mutually advantageous relationship developed between the still
largely feudal Hungarian aristocracy and the rising Jewish bourgeoisie.
Jews also provided a buffer against the increasingly vocal Slavic
minorities who were agitating for a share of political power, something
the Jews were perfectly willing to leave to the Hungarian aristocracy, as
the Jews themselves became increasingly acculturated and assimilated.
The Magyar aristocracy established an umbrella of political protection
under which the Jews prospered economically and socially as they
developed a modern economic infrastructure within Hungary.
1
By
1910, the Jews constituted 23 percent of Budapests population.
Overall, they comprised over 40 percent of all journalists, 52 percent
of all industrial employers, 59 percent of medical personnel, 61 percent
of all lawyers, and 64 percent of those engaged in trade and nance.
2
In
Budapest, Jewish prominence was even greater, where the better-known
newspapers were owned by Jews and approximately 70 percent of jour-
nalists were Jewish. Prominent scientists, writers, poets, and artists were
predominantly Jewish.
3
Although this newly achieved Jewish visibility led to tensions with
elements of the Hungarian population, it was World War I and its
aftermath that began the process of institutionalized Hungarian anti-
Semitism. Two factors were to be salient in this transformation. After
World War I, instead of sharing almost equally in the governance of a
geographically large and populous European great power, Hungary had
lost two-thirds of its historic territory, one-third of its Magyar people,
and three-fths of its total population.
4
The Trianon Treaty of June 4, 1920, was signed between the victorious
Allied Powers and a newly independent Hungary created from the
dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Large amounts of
territory were ceded to Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (soon to be called Yugoslavia).
Approximately 3 million Magyars now found themselves under
1
Braham 2000, 1920.
2
Cesarani 1997a, 10.
3
Dea k 1965, 368.
4
Braham 2000, 22.
H I G H V I C T I M I Z A T I O N : T H E R O L E O F R E A L P O L I T I K 251
Romanian or Czech administration. Retaining less than a third of the
territories [Hungary] had once ruled: of 282,870 square kilometers she
kept 91,174, and of a population of 18 million only 8 million were left.
5
A truncated Hungary had become one additional small landlocked
European country to be the object of great power manipulations. With
the exception of the Jews, Hungary was now essentially a homogeneous
state. No longer were the Jews required as a loyal, increasingly
Magyarized minority to offset the Slavic inuence. Jews came to be
viewed as foreigners, an unhealthy interposition within the body of the
Hungarian people. The large number of poor, rural, Yiddish-speaking
Jews who were widely seen to be unacculturated and unassimilable
added to this perception. A not-insignicant number of these Jews had
recently ed the violence attendant upon the Bolshevik Revolution in
nearby Ukraine, an uprising that had inspired many pogroms by right-
wing counterrevolutionaries.
This contraction of physical and demographic space with its asso-
ciated consequences was to be caused, in part, by an event similar to that
which transpired in Bavaria, a left-wing revolution in which Jews were to
play a prominent role. Perceptions of Jews as alien were to be enor-
mously facilitated by this revolution.
Following the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and dismemberment
of the Hungarian Kingdom in 1919, a Communist dictatorship led by
Bela Kun, along with other Jews such as Georg Luka cs, seized power.
Although soon overthrown by an intervening Romanian army,
6
the
harsh period of Kuns governance left a bitter legacy. While Jews also
found that government distasteful, perhaps doubly so because of their
own middle-class status and classication as followers of an organized
religion, nevertheless, anti-Semitism substantially increased after the
overthrow of Kuns government. A counterrevolutionary terror fol-
lowed that in fact dwarfed the preceding Red terror in magnitude and
ferocity.
7
Istva n Dea k considers the brief Bolshevik reign and the pre-
sumption of Jewish responsibility for its excesses to be one of the
determining factors in [later] Hungarian policy.
8
Counterrevolutionary leaders gathered in Szeged consisted of many
of those who had been dispossessed one way or another by the massive
contraction: military ofcers who had lost their positions because of the
lost war or Kuns purges, civilians affected by the inationary spiral, and
5
Weber 1964, 88.
6
Cesarani 1997a, 12.
7
Braham 2000, 2122.
8
Dea k 1965, 370.
252 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
especially the homeless, propertyless, and embittered [who] rst placed
their hope in the Ka rolyi and Kun regimes. Disappointed over the
violation of their traditional class interests, subsequently they whole-
heartedly embraced the counterrevolution. They were easily swayed by
the ideologues of the Szeged movement who placed the blame for their
suffering on the alien Jews and Bolsheviks.
9
Former public servants
constituted the majority of the 300,000 Magyar refugees who ed into
Hungary after 1918.
10
Signicantly, this counterrevolutionary group gave rise to a philosophy
or ideology known as the Szeged Idea. Its central themes included
fomenting anti-Semitism, struggle against Bolshevism, extreme national-
ism, and revanchism. In many respects, the founders of this group were, as
they claimed, the forerunners of fascism and Nazism. Indeed, the rst
military units to aunt death as their symbol were not those of the
German SS, but the Hungarian counterrevolutionary Black Legion of
Death that initiated numerous pogroms leading to the deaths of thou-
sands of Jews. Only the fear of stern Allied reaction to these atrocities led to
their forced cessation by the new conservative Hungarian leadership.
11
Gyula Gombos, a Szeged leader and later to be Hungarian prime minister,
actually was the rst to openly suggest a GermanItalian alliance, as early as
the 1920s.
12
He spoke of himself as a Hungarian National Socialist as early
as 1919.
13
Yet the Kun revolution and its counterterroristic aftermath culminat-
ing in the truncated territory of Trianon Hungary had societal conse-
quences that went beyond a radicalization of the Hungarian right.
Everyday decisions were being made on the basis of this truncation.
For example, in 1922, a chief judge in a town near Budapest refused to
grant permission to a Jewish entrepreneur to start a new industry. His
reasoning was: The request will be refused because on the territory of
truncated Hungary the primary task of ofcials is to guarantee the living
conditions of Hungarians. If he granted the request of a member of a
different race, a chief judge would act against his obligations.
14
Indeed,
this statement may be seen as paradigmatic for all defeated and/or
truncated entities of the interwar period and World War II. First the
majority must be tended to, and then, and only then, might some
consideration be given to alien minorities.
9
Braham 1981, 18.
10
Nagy-Talavera 2001, 78.
11
Braham 1981, 1819.
12
Nagy-Talavera 2001, 79.
13
Weber 1964, 90; Payne 1995, 132.
14
Quoted in Po k 1997, 151.
H I G H V I C T I M I Z A T I O N : T H E R O L E O F R E A L P O L I T I K 253
Conservative governments, for the most part, were the order of the
day during the interwar period. Surely, as in Bavaria, the threat to a
traditional, often Roman Catholic way of life was palpable to many
Hungarians. A status reversal, with the Jews as politically dominant,
was probably the most threatening aspect of Kuns revolution.
Given these spatial and demographic contractions, as well as the
threatened status reversal, it is not surprising that Hungary was the
rst European state to institute anti-Jewish measures. In 1920, a
Numerus Clausus act was adopted, which restricted Jewish admissions
to higher education institutions to at most 6 percent of the student
body,
15
in a rst effort to uproot social disproportionality.
16
By 1938,
the then prime minister Ka lma n Dara nyi announced the essential aboli-
tion of the 1867 act that had granted the Jews the same civil and political
rights enjoyed by the Christian majority.
17
Following that speech, four
pieces of legislation were introduced limiting Jewish participation in
economic life.
The rst of these bills, passed in 1938, was to reduce Jewish participa-
tion in the economy by limiting the proportion of Jewish labor in
businesses with more than ten employees to no more than 20 percent
of the total. The remaining laws were to strengthen the barriers to Jewish
participation in the economic life of the country even to the point of
requiring male Jewish participation in public labor projects, a kind of
corve e that laid the foundation for the later notorious labor brigades
within the Hungarian army. A large proportion of productive Jewish
males lost their lives in these brigades on the Soviet front after the
German invasion of June 1941.
18
These rsts for anti-Jewish legislation in the interwar period were
complemented by another of far more sinister dimension. Although the
anti-Jewish legislation was only laxly enforced, and the number of Jews
affected was far fewer than these laws required, far worse was to come.
The purpose of the legislation promulgated by traditional Hungarian
conservatives was in part to appease the radical anti-Semitic right. Now
these anti-Semites were to be appeased in bloody fashion.
As foreign Jews migrated into Hungary to escape the hardships of
German rule after 1939, especially in Poland, all were required to register
with the National Central Alien Control Ofce (KEOKH). Ultimately,
the category of alien Jews consisted of refugees who found a haven in
Hungary from the Nazi persecutions in Poland and Slovakia, Jews who
15
Braham 2000, 22.
16
Don 1997, 48.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid., 66.
254 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
had ed to Hungary during World War I to escape the privations of that
period, and, nally, Jews who came under Hungarian rule in newly
acquired territories during 193841.
19
Upon Hungarys entry into the war against the Soviet Union on June
27, 1941, ofcers of the KEOKH hatched a scheme to deport alien Jews
to areas of Poland and Ukraine now under German rule. Beginning in
July, all foreign Jews registered with the KEOKH were rounded up by the
Hungarian authorities and, indeed, were not limited only to aliens. In
the haste and extent of the roundup, Hungarian-Jewish citizens, even
entire communities in Carpatho-Ruthenia, were crammed into freight
cars. By August 19, 15,567 Jews had been handed over to the SS. First
taken in trucks, they were then marched in columns of 300400 to
temporary homes in Kamenets-Podolsk.
Unprepared for the mass arrival of the Jews, the Germans actually
tried to halt the deportations, but to no avail because of Hungarian
opposition. Complaints by Wehrmacht ofcers that their lines of com-
munication were being affected by this large number of Jews led to the
SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Franz Jackeln to order their execution. On
August 2728, the mass murder was carried out. In the Operational
Report on the killing, Jackeln put the total number at 23,600 (16,000
from Hungary), the rst massacre of this size in the history of the Final
Solution.
20
Although the deportations ceased when news of the mass
murder was received in Budapest, Hungarian authorities nevertheless
had undertaken delivery of these victims to the SS. This fact alone
substantially distinguishes the Hungarian from other European govern-
ments who were not accomplices to mass murder, Belgium and the
Netherlands among them. The latter two will be treated shortly.
Yet the vast majority of Hungarys Jews were still alive in mid-1942.
Even Hungarians inclined to genocidal thinking did not yet think in
terms of complete annihilation. Gyorgy Ottlik, a member of the Foreign
Affairs Committee of the Upper House of the Hungarian parliament,
after his meeting with Dome Szto jay, the Hungarian minister in Berlin,
recounted Szto jays views that
It would be appropriate if Hungary did not wait until [the Germans]
raised the issue sharply, but would expedite the tempo of the changing of
the guards [sic] and resettle a sizable portion of our Jewish population in
occupied Russia. Our minister rst spoke of about 300,000 but then
19
Braham 1981, 274.
20
Braham 2000, 3334.
H I G H V I C T I M I Z A T I O N : T H E R O L E O F R E A L P O L I T I K 255
bargained himself down to 100,000. On my interjected remark he did not
keep it a secret that resettlement meant execution.
21
Thus a realistic maximum for the massacre of Hungarian Jewry, even
after the Final Solution was already being enacted throughout occupied
Europe, was set at approximately 14 percent. By early 1944, when the
vast majority of Jews in these occupied lands had been murdered, the
condition of Hungarian Jews had not changed appreciably. This condi-
tion of relative stasis was about to change radically. And the cause of this
abrupt departure was not principally Hitlers wish to extend the Final
Solution throughout Hungary, desirable as that outcome might be to
him. The German decision to occupy Hungary resulted from a series of
political-military factors; the unsolved Jewish question, though impor-
tant, was not the determining consideration.
22
The key consideration was Hungarys decision to withdraw from the
war in the face of unrelenting Soviet pressure in the East. Italy had
already withdrawn from the war and Hungary had recognized the
Badoglio government that replaced Mussolinis. As early as January
1943, the dismal performance of the Hungarian military in support of
the Germans at Voronezh during the previous year had soured the Nazi
leadership on Hungarian commitment to their cause.
23
Now, at the start
of 1944, the Hungarian government was preparing to repatriate
Hungarian troops from the Eastern front for the defense of the
Carpathian mountains. Most important was the strategic position of
Hungary directly in the path of several approaching Soviet armies.
24
With a Hungarian withdrawal from the war and large numbers of Jews
in the Carpatho-Ruthenian regions presumably highly receptive to a
Bolshevik entry, the Soviet advance could be rapid indeed. To forestall
this possibility, the Nazis decided to occupy Hungary. The catastrophic
consequences for Hungarian Jews, especially for the less urbanized
section in the east, followed directly from that decision. After a con-
ference in March 1944 between the top Hungarian and German leader-
ship in Schloss Klessheim, including Hitler and the Hungarian regent,
Admiral Horthy, the Hungarians agreed to the occupation. When the
issue of deportation was raised, especially of shtetl Jews of Galician
descent, Horthy acquiesced. According to La szlo Endre, a key gure in
the ghettoization process, Horthy stated:
21
Quoted ibid., 58.
22
Ibid., 53.
23
Murray and Millett 2000, 292.
24
Ibid., 410.
256 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
The Germans . . . want to deport the Jews. I dont mind. I hate the
Galician Jews and the Communists. Out with them, out of the country!
But you must see . . . that there are some Jews who are as good
Hungarians as you and I. For example, here are little Chorin and Vida
arent they good Hungarians? I cant allow these to be taken away. But
they can take the rest.
25
To be sure, Horthy wanted to save as many of the Magyarized Jews as
possible. According to another account, the regent raised no objection
to the deportations, saying that the sooner the operation was concluded,
the sooner the Germans would leave the country.
26
Horthys preferences
essentially would dictate the contours of the bloodletting that would
follow in the next several months and would account for most of the
569,507 Hungarian Jews murdered, out of the 725,000 in Hungary just
prior to the German occupation.
Given the hypothesized dependence of the killing on war-related
matters, one would expect the most rapid and extensive deportations
to occur rst in the areas most vulnerable to the Soviet westward
advances. And this is precisely what happened. The whirlwind ghettoi-
zation and deportation of Jews in Carpatho-Ruthenia and northeastern
Hungary took place immediately after the German occupation, to be
followed by those in northern Transylvania, northern Hungary, south-
ern Hungary, southwestern parts of the country, and nally Budapest
and its immediate vicinity.
27
Proximity to the advancing Soviet armies
and implications for security of the Third Reich were the principal
criteria.
Note the similarity between this pattern of deportation of Hungarian
Jews and that demonstrated in the deportation of Armenians (see
chapter 2). In each case, the sequence began with removal of the victims
from the zone of greatest threat posed by an onrushing enemy (Soviets
in the former instance and tsarist Russians in the latter) and ended at the
locus of least threat, more distant from the enemy.
On April 28, 1944, the decree authorizing the establishment of the
ghettos was scheduled to go into effect. However, the roundup and
concentration of Jews actually began in Carpatho-Ruthenia and north-
ern Hungary twelve days earlier, suggesting not only the extreme impor-
tance of this region in relation to the Soviet advance, but also the
necessity for haste in light of proximity to that advance. Although in
25
Quoted in Braham 2000, 61.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid., 11314.
H I G H V I C T I M I Z A T I O N : T H E R O L E O F R E A L P O L I T I K 257
response to various international and domestic pressures Horthy ceased
the deportations on July 7, in the period between April and early June,
several hundred thousand Jews already had been deported during the
most rapid rate of annihilation of the entire Holocaust. A later govern-
ment led by the Nyilas the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party resulted in
the deaths of many more Jews. In all, of the 825,000 individuals targeted
as Jews (including converts and Christians of part-Jewish origin),
569,507 were murdered, or nearly 70 percent of the total.
28
Comparison with Romania
A contrast between the outcomes in Hungary and Romania is puzzling.
Despite the barbarity of the Romanian authorities, approximately half of
Romanias Jews survived, a larger percentage than in Hungary. Out of
756,000 Jews in Romania in 1930, 375,000 survived the war, the vast
majority in Regat Romania. Why? There are essentially two reasons for
this outcome, both consistent with the theoretical framework put for-
ward here emphasizing losses at the outset. First, as Radu Ioanid put it,
In regard to the experience of the Jewish community of Regat, one thing
was clear during the Holocaust: not having come into contact with the
Soviets in 1940, the Jews were not held accountable for the loss of
Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and therefore not singled out for
prompt punishment at the beginning of the war.
29
Thus, Jews in the Regat were not murdered to the same extent as those
in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, because they were not held
responsible for the Romanian territorial losses and consequent refugee
migrations.
Second, despite Romanian refusals to initiate these deportations, the
Germans might still have intervened directly in Romania to effect
deportations under different geopolitical circumstances. And here we
nd one of the crucial distinctions between Romanian and Hungarian
behavior. Whereas the Romanians could refuse the German requests for
deportation for their own reasons, having to do principally with the fear
of Allied reprisals after the increasingly likely German defeat, the
Hungarians could not. In contrast to Romania, Hungary lay directly in
the path of the Soviet westbound march. In the Nazi view, as we saw
earlier, the large concentration of Jews in Hungary constituted a
28
Ibid., 252.
29
Ioanid 2000, 238.
258 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
potentially collaborating fth column that could ease the Soviet advance
to the Reich heartland. Hence, direct German intervention was required.
Although geopolitically important principally due to the Ploesti oil
elds, Romania did not lie directly in the path of the main Soviet
advance and was not required for a strategic defense of the eastern
reaches of the Reich. At this stage of the war, after Allied bombing of
the oil elds and the absence of a perceived direct strategic threat to
Germany of Romanias remaining Jews, an intervention was not
required for strategic defense. It is ironic that a country with a far
more virulent and barbaric anti-Semitic tradition could save a larger
percentage of its Jews than one with an earlier history of strong
HungarianJewish collaboration. Yet here we see the importance of
geopolitical imperatives, an important component of realpolitik (as
identied in the three models of realpolitik in chapter 5), in effecting
these unexpected outcomes. Additional reasons stemming from the
socioeconomic structures of both the Hungarian- and Romanian-
Jewish communities will emerge in chapter 13.
Finally, the pattern of Hungarian-Jewish deportations suggests a
transition even within imprudentbrute force realpolitik. Whereas the
choice of genocidal behavior clearly was imprudent at the start of
Operation Barbarossa in mid-1941, three years later, even to German
opponents of Nazism, it could now appear to be prudent. By this time,
the Germans could reason, many Hungarian Jews would have heard of
the genocide elsewhere in Europe and would have become determined
opponents of the Nazi regime. Aid to the oncoming Soviets would have
been forthcoming. Having created this body of potential fth
columnists by their own unbridled brutality, the Germans were forced
to live with the consequences. Deportation and death of this Jewish
population then could easily have been seen by the Germans to be
absolutely required in order to protect the German state and its popula-
tion from Soviet revenge.
The Netherlands
And what of comparisons with a country that witnessed an even larger
proportion of its Jews murdered during the Holocaust, yet whose
government did not play a signicant role in that process? How can
we reconcile the nding that two perpetrating states, Romania and
Hungary, had larger percentages of their Jews saved than did an essen-
tially nonperpetrating state, the Netherlands, with an approximate
H I G H V I C T I M I Z A T I O N : T H E R O L E O F R E A L P O L I T I K 259
85 percent victimization
30
rate to be compared with 50 percent and
70 percent for Romania and Hungary, respectively? Perhaps even more
revealing of the importance of the geopolitical component of realpolitik
is the comparison between the Netherlands and a neighboring nonper-
petrating state, Belgium, in which the victimization rate was 40 percent,
less than half that of the Netherlands. And even France, another perpe-
trating state (in the Vichy-controlled region), had only a 25 percent
victimization rate. We have seen how the geopolitics of the wartime
period affected France, Hungary, and Romania. The relevance of geo-
political considerations is no less true of the Netherlands in comparison
with Belgium.
As in our other cases, the initial conditions dened the ultimate con-
tours of the Holocaust and its outcomes. A major difference between the
Holocaust in the Netherlands and Belgium was the prime military impor-
tance of the latter. Belgian territory is far closer to Britain than is Dutch
soil. An invasion of Europe from Britain would be far more likely to
traverse the English Channel to land in Belgium than to land in the
Netherlands. For these and other reasons having to do with traditional
Dutch neutrality prior to the war (or leaning toward the German side as in
the extensive German use of Dutch Fokker aircraft in World War I),
in contrast to Franco-Belgian cooperation, the German administration
in the Netherlands was civilian.
In Belgium, as in unoccupied France, the German administration was
military. Tensions therefore were introduced between the Wehrmacht
(the German army) and other German authorities such as the SS.
31
Often, points of friction surrounded the economic impact of Jewish
deportations. The diversion of badly needed transport from military
uses to Jewish deportations or, in some cases, the potential alienation of
sympathetic local non-Jewish populations, especially later in the war
when it appeared as if Germany would lose, upset Wehrmacht leaders.
The ideologically motivated SS would often ignore these increasingly
salient factors. SSWehrmacht frictions occurred with far greater fre-
quency in the West, in contrast to the East, with its large concentrated
Jewish populations presumably infected with the Bolshevik virus gen-
erating substantial agreement between the two agencies.
A consequence of this civilian administration in the Netherlands was
the exaggerated prominence of the SS. The Reichskommissar, Arthur
Seyss-Inquart, was a loyal Nazi who was directly responsible to Hitler
30
Moore 1997, 25960.
31
Blom 1989, 338.
260 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
and took his honorary SS rank seriously.
32
He was aided by four
Generalkommissare: Hans Rauter of the SS; Fritz Schmidt representing
the Nazi Party; and two acquaintances, Frederick Wimmer and Hans
Fischbock. All except Schmidt were from Austria, thus facilitating com-
munication and fulllment of common purpose with higher-level SS
functionaries, such as Adolf Eichmann and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, also
from Austria. The depth of Austrian anti-Semitism and active participa-
tion in the Holocaust has been well documented. A measure of the SS
presence in the Netherlands is the number of men found there 5,000
in comparison with only 3,000 in France with a much larger territory
and Jewish population.
33
These factors begin to explain how the Netherlands, with the virtual
absence of any tradition of political anti-Semitism, experienced such a
high victimization rate for its Jewish population. Yet there is more to be
said, for even with the disproportionately large SS presence, according
to Willi Lages, head of the German Security Police and SD (intelligence
arm of the SS), The main support of the German forces in the police
sector and beyond was the Dutch police. Without it, not 10 percent of
the German occupation tasks would have been fullled . . . Also it
would have been practically impossible to seize even 10 percent of
Dutch Jewry without them!
34
This testimony was corroborated by an
Amsterdam police detective who testied after the war that The cells
were full of Jews day after day, so there was no room for ordinary
criminals. I was sometimes unable to nd a single police van for serious
criminals, but when a hunt for Jews was called there were no problems,
then the vans were ready to take off.
35
In explaining the apparent anomaly, there are at least two levels of
explanation. The rst pertains to the general political culture of Dutch
society of which the police, of course, were an integral part; the second
refers directly to police structure and behavior.
As in Germany, cooperation with the prevailing political authority
was a leading Dutch societal value. The utterly one-sided German
victories on land over all opponents early in the war, of course, rein-
forced this tendency. Thus, after Jewish ritual slaughter was banned,
forms A (for Aryans) and B (for non-Aryans) were distributed to the
Dutch civil service and routinely signed, and then Jews were dismissed
from the civil service; there was little formal opposition by the
32
Marrus and Paxton 1982, 704.
33
Blom 1989, 339.
34
Quoted in Hirschfeld 1988, 173.
35
Quoted ibid., 177.
H I G H V I C T I M I Z A T I O N : T H E R O L E O F R E A L P O L I T I K 261
secretaries-general who constituted the Dutch leadership under
the Germans after escape to London of the government itself.
36
To be
sure, there were courageous gures such as the theologian
Dr. J. Koopmans, who from the beginning openly protested the
German requirements and who tirelessly worked to help persecuted
Jews.
37
And a strike on February 25, 1941, initiated by the Dutch
Communist Party in support of Jewish workers deported to the
Mauthausen concentration camp, was one of the few public actions in
Nazi-occupied Europe taken by non-Jews in support of their Jewish
countrymen.
38
Yet, deference to authority prevailed not only among the
Dutch bureaucrats, especially the police, but also among Jews them-
selves. J. Presser, a Dutch-Jewish survivor and author of The Destruction
of the Dutch Jews,
39
could not nd a single case of Jews who deliberately
avoided registering as required by the Germans.
40
Compliance was rife
throughout Dutch society. Perhaps the comfort they felt as Dutch
citizens with little experience of anti-Semitism lulled the native Jews
into thinking that they were safe.
For this reason alone, one would not have expected the police to
behave differently when confronted with orders emanating initially
from the German occupiers and transmitted through the Dutch police
leadership. Additionally there were severe sanctions for noncompliance.
Not only could the individual ofcer lose his livelihood but, beginning
in July 1942 at the start of the massive roundup of Jews, ofcers who
refused to undertake a task assigned to them had to face trial before a
special German SS and police court.
41
At the same time, bonuses were
given to police who exceeded expectations in rounding up Jews or other
distasteful tasks such as the capture of downed British airmen.
Yet there were instances of police help to Jews in warning of forth-
coming roundups, and earlier in the lax enforcement of regulations
forbidding Jewish entry to parks and swimming pools. In October
1942, for example, between 13,000 and 15,000 Jews were apprehended.
Yet despite the presence in this action of more men than all other
agencies combined (German police and Nazi Party functionaries,
Dutch National Socialists and SS), the Dutch police arrested only 700
of the total number of Jews.
42
Perhaps one indication of the lack of enthusiasm of police for the
roundups is given by the reeducation efforts of the Germans in
36
Presser 1969, 631.
37
Ibid., 24.
38
Moore 1997, 72.
39
Presser 1969.
40
Moore 1997, 64.
41
Hirschfeld 1988, 173.
42
Moore 1997, 98.
262 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
attempting to bring the police around to the German viewpoint. When this
failed, they set up a special police training program at Schalkhaar. Most of
the Schalkhaarders, as they were called, now ideologically programmed by
the Germans, were deployed in Amsterdam and may account for the police
cooperation in Jewish detentions noted earlier. In May 1942, Rauter also set
up a Voluntary Auxiliary Police composed of Dutch SS and Dutch National
Socialist Party members. They were committed Jew-hunters and served the
Germans admirably in their deportation efforts.
43
Thus, special efforts to
effectively craft Dutch police units in the German (actually SS) image may
have gone far to account for the extent of police cooperation with the
Germans. Beginning in 1943, when forced labor requirements and food
restrictions began to be imposed on the Dutch themselves, and the war
appeared to be turning against the Germans, many police began to openly
defy the Germans. However, by this time, the majority of Dutch Jews had
gone to their deaths.
Finally, the structure of the Jewish community itself and failure of Jews
to identify with each other, in class, religious outlook, or other life
circumstances, undoubtedly contributed to the ease with which
German exterminatory goals were satised. This topic will be dealt
with extensively in the following chapter.
43
Ibid., 199200.
H I G H V I C T I M I Z A T I O N : T H E R O L E O F R E A L P O L I T I K 263
13
Inequality and absence of identication
Genocide, as we have seen, is a massive event that lends itself to analysis
at various levels. As before, most of this chapter and its successor
concentrate on the victims, a necessary addition to the analysis.
1
Here
we continue our exploration at the societal level as a means of under-
standing two things: (1) how so many perpetrators could be induced
(of their own will or otherwise) to commit mass murder and (2) how so
many victims, especially in the Holocaust, could be persuaded to colla-
borate in their own annihilation.
One perspective enables us to shed light on both questions; it emerges
from our initial identication of the centrality of loss in the form of the
diminution of socioeconomic space experienced by both perpetrator
and victim, although at different times. Earlier, we saw the emotional
and cognitive reaction of perpetrators to the consequence of contrac-
tion. The pitiful or at least unsettling condition of refugees and eco-
nomic chaos were principal consequences of territorial loss. Now we
focus on an additional consequence of loss the nexus between inequal-
ity and identication, and how the interplay between the two variables
affects victimization. Specically, economic scarcity leads to economic
inequality between individuals and groups, which in turn limits the
ability to establish mutual identications among the goals and life
circumstances of the affected parties.
Inequality and absence of identication between perpetrators
and victims
By way of introduction, as we saw in chapter 3, the rst mass murder of
Jews in the twentieth century occurred in Ukraine after the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917 and the truncation of tsarist Russia. This process had
1
D. Michman 2003.
264
an inequality component, one that emerged even in the midst of some
economic expansion. According to Elias Heifetz:
The well-being of the population both Christian and Jewish had increased
considerably. It was the time of unlimited speculation in goods and
money, of smuggling in and out of Soviet Russia and the neutral zone.
The peasants, however, could not increase their earnings in the same
measure as the others. The products of the land were taken from them by
force, at low prices, and carried to Germany. On the basis of exaggerated
reports of the wealth of the Jews, there developed among the peasants a
feeling of envy and a desire for city products (manufactured goods,
shoes), of which there was nothing in the Ukrainian village, rumor having
it that the Jews in the larger centers enjoyed a superuity of such things.
2
Because Jews were concentrated in the towns and peasants in the
countryside, with only limited contact between them, reports of Jewish
wealth could be magnied beyond all proportion. The prominence of
some Jews within the Soviet government further magnied the envy of
the peasantry so that they asked What, you want to rule over us?,
3
in
stark contrast to the earlier tsarist prohibition against Jews holding any
state or public ofce. Heifetz further comments that The Ukrainian
peasant had a tendency to impute to the Jewish commissars and gen-
erally to the whole Jewish population in the neighboring towns and
districts all the sins committed against him by the new regime (requisi-
tioning, mobilization, barrage troops, executions by order of the extra-
ordinary commissions).
4
Hence, perceptions of inequality outpaced the
inequality that actually existed. Peasant hostility toward the Jews would
be channeled into the pogroms of the Civil War, and the deaths of up to
150,000 people, as we saw in chapter 3.
It has been known for some time now that scarcity and inequality are
strongly linked. The greater the scarcity of desiderata (generally com-
modities, but also societal status), the greater the inequality among
potential recipients.
5
Thus the greater the contraction of socioeconomic
space, the greater the inequality between haves and have-nots, and the
diminished extent of identication between societal sectors. Urban Jews
in Kiev or Odessa with access to an expanding economy could be
contrasted with poorer and discomted Ukrainian peasants without
such access and vulnerability to German and later Soviet expropriation
of farm products. German nationalists could contrast comfortable
2
Heifetz 1921, 78.
3
Ibid., 8.
4
Ibid., 9.
5
M. Midlarsky 1982, 1988b, 1999.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 265
German Jews, living in Berlin after World War I, with recently arrived
dispossessed Baltic or East Prussian Christian ethnic Germans.
Identifying with the dispossessed German, the nationalist (e.g., Hitler;
see p. 89) would deeply resent the better-off status of the Jew. A sense of
commonality and community would be fostered between the two
German-speaking coreligionists, to the exclusion of the Jews whose
economic comfort would be increasingly resented.
One can, of course, make the same argument for Hungarian nation-
alists witnessing the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Christian
Hungarian public servants rendered jobless by the massive truncation
of Hungary after dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Here resentment of the Jew would even be greater because of the virtual
control of the nonagricultural sector of the Hungarian economy by the
Jewish bourgeoisie, as we saw in the preceding chapter, in comparison
with the much smaller extent of relative Jewish economic empowerment
in Germany. And, indeed, Hungarian political anti-Semitism was wide-
spread after World War I, leading to the rst overtly anti-Semitic
legislation in all of Europe during the interwar period. In contrast,
German anti-Semitism was not as widespread, and, even after the Nazi
electoral victories of 1932 and 1933, the Nazi-sponsored economic
boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933 was a grand failure.
6
The
Nazis garnered votes mostly for other reasons,
7
a fact that led them to
rely on the fomenting of anti-Semitism during the later 1930s and the
war years.
8
Thus, the extent of socioeconomic contraction and contrast
with the better-off Jew is predictive of the degree of popular political
anti-Semitism in these two cases.
Inequality and absence of identication among the victims
Similar arguments apply to Jews herded into ghettos far too small to
adequately accommodate the large number of newcomers. The Jews
were divorced from the national economy by the German occupiers,
so the unavailability of productive work immediately distinguished the
afuent from the poor. Those who were able to bring with them large
amounts of cash or diamonds, a frequently used form of currency, were
able to purchase temporary exemptions from deportation or simply to
use their inuence with ghetto leaders to prolong their lives in the
expectation that in the end they would survive, an unattainable goal
6
Kershaw 1998.
7
Abel [1938] 1986; Merkl 1975.
8
Obenaus 2000.
266 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
for the vast majority. After early 1942, Nazi policy was to ultimately
murder every last Jew in occupied Europe. But the vast majority of Jews
had no way of knowing this hideous fact, and, even when apprised of
Nazi intentions, many simply chose to disbelieve this apparent outing
of all moral restraints.
East European ghettos
In the East European ghettos, it was not only socioeconomic class that
distinguished among inmates, but point of geographic origin that
tended to be crucial in establishing failures of mutual identication.
Refugees and expellees from other regions tended to be treated differ-
ently from the native Jews, even in the ghettos. In the Warsaw ghetto, for
example, in refugee homes between 20 and 25 people would be forced
to live in a room measuring 4 by 6 meters. In the homes of natives, up to
seven persons lived in one room.
9
The average density across natives
and foreigners was less than 4 m
2
per person in the odz ghetto, and in
Kaunas (Lithuania), 2.25 m
2
per person.
10
Because of the massive resettlement efforts by the Germans, the space
problem was enormous:
The dimensions of the mass migration are best illustrated by the fact that,
according to the ofcial German population census of April 18, 1941,
1,365, or 26 percent, of the 5,239 Jews in Kutno were refugees from 75
different localities. In the small town of Zagoro w (Konin district), with a
Jewish population of 2,170 in 1940, 1,582, or 73 percent were
refugees . . . According to the report of the Warsaw Ghetto refugee com-
mittee of December 31, 1940, there were in the Warsaw Ghetto 78,625
refugees from 73 towns (14,823 from o dz, 6,230 from Kalisz, 2,097 from
Wocawek, among others). Refugees numbered 20 percent of all the Jews
registered in the ghetto at that time. During the period from January to
April 1941, over 70,000 Jews from the western part of the district were
driven into the Warsaw Ghetto, and by mid-1941 the refugee population
rose to almost 150,000 souls, one-third of all the ghetto inmates.
11
Living in squalid, overcrowded conditions that beggar the imagination,
the death rate of refugees even before they were deported exceeded that
of the natives. Because they were forced to leave their homes almost
immediately, they had few garments, no furniture, very little money, and
9
Trunk 1972, 109.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid., 12930.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 267
virtually no space in which to live. Often what little they could take with
them was stolen by either the German or Polish authorities. Indigence
was a problem in Polish cities such as Lublin and Kielce even before the
war. Now it became a problem literally without solution, except for the
rapid deaths of the many indigent refugees.
12
In addition to the different life circumstances of refugees and natives
as well as class distinctions, there were frequent additional intrusions to
minimize identication among the ghetto inhabitants. For example, in
the fall and winter of 194142, approximately 20,000 Jews from Austria,
Germany, and Prague were resettled in the o dz ghetto. Because of
their much better life circumstances before the war and less rapid
dislocation by the German authorities, many were able to bring with
them quantities of cash, diamonds, or other personal belongings that
simply were unknown in the poverty-stricken Jewish communities of
Eastern Europe. As a result of this sudden infusion of cash and valuables,
ination rapidly increased and the ghetto currency plummeted in value.
In short, the newcomers could buy food and additional necessities of
life, while others in the ghetto could not.
13
As Zygmunt Bauman put it,
In the ghetto, distance between classes was the distance between life and
death.
14
Disparities of this kind were signicant in turning Jew against
Jew and diminishing substantially the prospects for cooperation against
the Nazis. Equality, as we know from the work of Morton Deutsch and
others, is a strong vehicle for cooperation.
15
The Netherlands
Yet one did not require a ghetto with its horribly constricted spaces to
yield critical differences among Jews. Although an Amsterdam ghetto
was contemplated, it never came into existence, despite the presence of a
fairly well-dened Jewish quarter. Perhaps the fact that this neighbor-
hood did not contain a majority of Amsterdams Jews inuenced the
outcome.
16
Differences among Dutch Jews predated the Holocaust by
several centuries. As early as the middle of the seventeenth century, two
major groups of Jews resided in the Netherlands: Ashkenazic Jews (those
12
Ibid., 131.
13
Ibid., 97. Recently released photographs of the o dz ghetto vividly illustrate the gap
between a small privileged elite celebrating birthdays and other occassions and the
destitute majority barely managing a day-to-day subsistence (Alvarez 2005).
14
Bauman 1989, 146.
15
Deutsch 1985; M. Midlarsky 1999.
16
Moore 1997, 6768.
268 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
of Central and East European origin) and Sephardic Jews (mainly
Portuguese in origin). According to Bob Moore, The Sephardim
chose to avoid any contact with their Eastern European co-religionists,
which necessitated the continuance of separate religious and secular
organizations by each community.
17
Indeed, this was a characteristic
of Dutch society in general in which four vertical zuilen (pillars)
Protestant, Roman Catholic, social democratic, and so called liberal or
neutral divided the society, with the Jews tending to associate with the
two nonreligious pillars.
18
Although class inequality was not a factor in
this societal segmentation, nevertheless, cooperation among the four
categories was not substantial.
According to Moore, among the many divisive elements in the Jewish
population, degree of religious observance within both Ashkenazic and
Sephardic groups was not the least important. Nevertheless, the crucial
factor seems to have been the chasm between the Jewish elite and
proletariat.
19
Class differences were signicant. Jews were markedly
overrepresented in lower middle-class or proletarian occupations such
as diamond cutting, which did not enjoy high earnings.
20
Added to this mix of divisive elements is national origin. By 1940, as
the result of immigration, nearly 16 percent of the Jews in the
Netherlands originated from Central and Eastern Europe.
21
The Dutch
Jews had little in common with these German- or Yiddish-speaking
Jews, culturally, socially, or linguistically. Even economically, there
were disparities. Some of the refugees, especially those from Germany,
were better off than the native Dutch Jews. Many of the German Jews
settled in the more afuent sections of Amsterdam and its suburbs.
Indeed, the refugee enclaves became so well-known that in some
quarters the number 24 tram was re-christened the Berlin express,
and the number 8 reputedly had a sign that the conductor also spoke
Dutch.
22
There were further resentments of the apparent arrogant
attitude of the German-Jewish refugees toward their Dutch-Jewish
hosts. Despite eeing Germany, the refugees tended to tout German
culture as decidedly superior to the native Dutch variety.
At the other end of the economic spectrum, the East European
Yiddish speakers tended to inate the ranks of the proletariat. Poorly
educated or trained for the workplace (although well-versed in their
religion), these Jews could nd no better places on the economic ladder
17
Ibid., 21.
18
Ibid., 10.
19
Ibid., 24.
20
Ibid., 26.
21
Ibid., 259.
22
Ibid., 31.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 269
than its lowest rungs. Thus, economic inequality that was relatively
severe prior to the immigration of the 1930s was worsened considerably
at the end of this period. Although the immigrants numbered no more
than 16 percent of the Jewish population, they tended to concentrate in
Amsterdam, thereby increasing the large-scale urban visibility of this
inequality.
Much has been written about the Amsterdam Jewish Council, espe-
cially the extent of its cooperation with the German authorities. My
purpose here is not to pass judgment on any of the actions of this council
or on its East European Judenrat counterparts. As Moore in his com-
ments on the Amsterdam Jewish Council
23
and Isaiah Trunk in his
judgments of the Judenrate make clear,
24
the extraordinary moral com-
plexity of their highly constrained situations make any condemnations
morally uncertain, if not outright derelict. Yet one can examine the
quality and extent of collaboration as a measure of the unwillingness
of many Jews to cooperate with their besieged coreligionists in thwarting
the Nazi goals. Effectively, the Dutch Jewish council was exceptional in
the efforts of its leadership to protect the middle- and upper-class
Dutch-Jewish population, especially the families and friends of those
within the leadership circle. To this end, the leadership of the council
demanded absolute cooperation by Jews with the German authorities.
All German demands of the Jewish community were funneled through
the council; they were instantly obeyed. As Moore put it, Each time it
was asked for a concession in the form of co-operation or the compila-
tion of lists or choices of who should be eligible for labour service or
deportation, the Council complied.
25
The council probably gave the Jewish population the illusion of some
security when in fact there was none. Many Jews hoped that the coop-
eration demanded by the councils, acting as intermediaries with the
Germans, was a means to an end survival. This, as we know, was a false
hope, which leaders of the council may in fact have realized as early as
1942 when reports of massacres in the East began to be received in the
Netherlands. Professor David Cohen, one of the two Amsterdam council
leaders, explicitly dismissed these reports as irrelevant in the current
circumstances, for how could the Westernized Jews of the Netherlands
be treated by the Germans the same as the poor shtetl Jews of Poland?
After the war, Cohen, who survived, argued that to save the commu-
nity a certain portion had to be retained (the elite, to use his own
23
Ibid.
24
Trunk 1972.
25
Moore 1997, 109.
270 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
word) while the remainder (presumably the nonelite) had to be
sacriced.
26
In response to this assertion,
Cohens argument that he had to protect and preserve a nucleus of the
elite for the eventual rehabilitation of the community, and if necessary
leave the others to their fate, is unacceptable an excuse for saving
members of a protected class to which the heads of the Council them-
selves belonged. Indeed, the results show that to the extent to which
matters depended on the Council, it was the rich and the intellectuals
who were saved.
27
That a form of class warfare was being practiced is borne out by available
statistics. For example, in Amsterdam, 62.9 percent of deportation
exemptions were distributed by the council to middle- and upper-class
neighborhoods, but only 38.8 percent of the Jewish population was
found in these neighborhoods. In the Hague, also with a collaborating
council, 75 percent of the lower classes had been deported by April 1943
and 59 percent of the middle classes, but only 43 percent of the upper
class.
28
This was despite the tendency of the Nazis to destroy the Jewish
leadership early in the extermination process to avoid the possibility of
rebellion. Apparently the Dutch Jewish councils were judged to be
sufciently cooperative to avoid any early Nazi attacks on their leaders.
To the great misfortune of the Dutch Jews, the German judgment
proved to be correct. After the war, the following dialogue with Willi
Lages, head of the German central ofce for Jewish affairs in the
Netherlands (the Zentralstelle), was recorded:
How was the Jewish Council used?
In every possible way.
Did you nd them easy to work with?
Very easy, indeed.
29
Elsewhere, Lages commented that without the Jewish Council we
would not have achieved anything.
30
Dutch Jews, in their inequality of class as well as diversity of national
origin and extent of religious observance, failed to identify with each
other in opposition to the German oppressor. Indeed, if anything, the
leadership of the council, especially Abraham Asscher and David Cohen,
may have to a certain extent identied with the aggressor, while
26
Presser 1969, 205.
27
J. Michman 1989, 834.
28
Moore 1997, 11213.
29
Quoted in Presser 1969, 271.
30
Quoted in Moore 1997, 246.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 271
demanding absolute obedience from the Jewish masses. Privileges were
conferred on both men that simply were not available to other Jews.
Asscher, for example, was able to use his bicycle and telephone, could
ride in automobiles and trams, and even asked Lages for permission to
travel rst-class to visit the transit camps of Westerbork and Vught
where Jews were held prior to deportation to Auschwitz.
31
Cohen did
not avail himself of all of these privileges but nevertheless had greater
freedoms than other Jews. Both Asscher and Cohen along with their
families eventually were deported, the former to Bergen-Belsen and the
latter to Theresienstadt, where they were afforded substantially better
treatment than the vast majority of Dutch Jews, thereby enabling them
to survive the war. Other Jews were deported ultimately to Auschwitz
where they were generally murdered immediately upon arrival, espe-
cially the children and elderly.
A wry joke circulating among the remaining Jews in 194344 con-
cerned an interchange between Asscher and Cohen. They are the only
Jews left, and the Germans demand the deportation of one of them.
Says Cohen to Asscher: It had better be you, Abraham lest worse befall
the rest of us.
32
Despite strong differences in geopolitics, history, and
war-related events, the experience of Hungarian Jews was strikingly
similar. Again, the failure among disparate Jewish communities to
mutually identify likely contributed to the high victimization rate.
Inequality was a major component of this failure.
Hungary
Prior to the German occupation in 1944, two so-called Jewish laws were
passed in Hungary. The rst, passed in May 1938, as we saw in the
preceding chapter, if implemented seriously, would have had signicant
effects on Jewish economic life. More than half of the Jewish lawyers,
almost half of the Jewish physicians, and a substantial number of
journalists, engineers, and other professionals would have been dis-
missed from their positions. In all, approximately 15,000 Jewish profes-
sionals would have been rendered jobless, along with an additional
35,000 tradesmen.
33
But in order to minimize damage to the Hungarian economy, the law
was only laxly enforced. Its purpose was to appease Germany and its
ideological allies on the extreme Hungarian right. The second Jewish
31
Presser 1969, 275.
32
Quoted ibid., 276.
33
Don 1997, 5152.
272 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
law, enacted in early 1939, however, extended discrimination deep into
all aspects of political and civil life.
34
Jewish tradesmen were to be
excluded from many, even most, of their traditional occupations.
Quota restrictions of 12 percent in white-collar jobs and 6 percent in
the liberal professions (lawyers, physicians, pharmacists) were imposed,
thus limiting Jewish employment to numbers far below their earlier
levels. In contrast to pre-quota employment of close to 100 percent,
imposition of quotas resulted in employment rates varying between 20
percent and 60 percent, depending on occupation. By 1942, anywhere
between 140,000 and 222,000 people had lost their sources of liveli-
hood.
35
However, because of the strong connections that remained
between the Jewish entrepreneurial upper class and the Hungarian
aristocracy, few of the Jewish entrepreneurs were affected. The Jewish
laws seemed to make little visible impact on the fortunes of the very large
Jewish industrial enterprises.
36
Nevertheless,
The overall economic effects of the Jewish Laws on the Jewish public were
highly regressive. They dramatically widened the income and wealth gap
within the community, between the well-to-do classes and the lower
middle classes. While the income of the upper echelon was hardly
impaired and probably improved as a result of wartime prosperity and
ination, the peddler, the artisan, the white-collar employee and the
average liberal professional became impoverished, rst, by losing their
jobs and, second, by losing through ination the value of their savings.
The wealth factor further widened economic inequality. Until the
German occupation Jewish wealth, except farmland, was not directly
affected. Neither was income from property affected. This applied, natu-
rally, only to those who owned property and did not have to sell it to
survive. The wealth factor thus reinforced the regressive tendencies
caused by the selective implementation of the Jewish laws.
37
The second major source of disparity and divisiveness stemmed from
the social, cultural, and religious orientation of Hungarian Jews. In
contrast to the upper class of Jewish (or formerly Jewish) magnates
who had deep ties to the Hungarian aristocracy, most Jews led social
and religious lives that principally involved other Jews. This was espe-
cially true of the provinces, which yielded by far the highest number of
victims.
34
Ibid., 56.
35
Ibid., 59.
36
Ibid., 68.
37
Ibid., 71.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 273
There were three sources of Hungarian-Jewish immigration. Two of
them, the Austro-German and Bohemian-Moravian, were to eventually
coalesce into a fairly homogenous group who called themselves
Magyars of the Israelite faith. Religiously, they were Neolog (roughly
equivalent to contemporary Reform Judaism) in religious afliation and
were highly assimilated culturally. By the early 1940s very few, if any,
spoke Yiddish. Many could not even remember a family ancestor who
did. These were the Jews who were most prominently found in Trianon
Hungary (territory that remained to Hungary after the Trianon Peace
Treaty of 1920), especially in Budapest.
By way of contrast, the Jews of Carpatho-Ruthenia to the northeast
were Yiddish-speaking, religiously Orthodox, frequently Hasidic, and
had little in common with the remainder of Hungarian Jewry. Whereas,
the former were mostly middle-class, the Jews of Carpatho-Ruthenia
were engaged either in rural business or most frequently in manual
labor.
38
Additionally, in contrast to the assimilated Jews of Trianon
Hungary, those of Carpatho-Ruthenia were extraordinarily resistant to
assimilation:
The resistance to assimilation in Carpatho-Ruthenia may be gauged from
the statistics on mixed marriages in the various regions of pre-World War
II Czechoslovakia. While the proportion of Jewish men taking non-
Jewish wives was 30 percent in Bohemia, 19 percent in Moravia, and 5
percent in Slovakia, it was only 0.4 percent in Carpatho-Ruthenia. Jewish
women who married non-Jewish husbands constituted 26 percent in
Bohemia, 16.6 percent in Moravia, 4.8 percent in Slovakia, and 0.9
percent in Carpatho-Ruthenia.
39
Moreover, while only 5.9 percent of Carpatho-Ruthenia Jews declared
themselves to be Hungarian in nationality in the 1930 census, 92.6
percent considered themselves to be Jewish.
40
Transylvania to the east,
the third major region to be found in wartime Hungary, reected a mix
of Orthodoxy, Hasidism and a Hungarian cultural orientation even
among the religiously observant.
In addition to the typical granting of special status to Jewish leaders
in order to gain their cooperation,
41
thereby limiting identication
between elite and mass, the diverse nature of Hungarian Jews made for
extreme difculties in identication among them. Even within the
Orthodox community, say in Transylvania, there were many who did
38
Braham 1981, 8182.
39
Ibid., 83.
40
Ibid., 1, 83.
41
Braham 2000, 77.
274 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
not speak Yiddish, suggesting a strong contrast with Orthodox, even
non-Hasidic, Jews who spoke only Yiddish in Carpatho-Ruthenia. (I am
personally acquainted with one Hungarian Orthodox Jewish woman
who learned to speak Yiddish only in the displaced persons camps of
postwar Germany, as her only means of communicating with many non-
Hungarian Jews.) Also contributing to this dizzying mix of identities
was the fact that most Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia were relatively
recent immigrants from Polish Galicia, and that Carpatho-Ruthenia
along with portions of Transylvania was alternately ruled by
Czechoslovak or Romanian political authorities prior to 1940. In con-
trast, no such political transfers occurred in Trianon Hungary.
For Hungarian Jews, especially in the provinces, the result of inequal-
ities and failures to identify was catastrophic. While David Cohen in the
Netherlands could assume with perhaps some justication in prior
history that murderous events in the East simply could not be repeated
in the more civilized West, no such assumption could be made in
Hungary, especially regarding Galician-descended Jews in Carpatho-
Ruthenia. Their brethren in Poland already had gone to their deaths,
and this fact was now well known in Hungarian-Jewish circles. As early
as the late summer of 1941, the news of the mass murder of
16,00018,000 alien Jews deported to Kamenets-Podolsk had reached
Hungary. The more general exterminatory activities of the
Einsatzgruppen were also by now well known.
42
Other sources of news existed as well. Thousands of Jewish refugees
had escaped into Hungary from Poland and Slovakia, bringing with
them word of the extermination camps. More specic information was
provided from the relative safety of Slovakia. The working group of the
Bratislava Jewish Council was active in forwarding information to
Hungarian-Jewish counterparts. On March 24, 1943, a full year before
the beginning of the Hungarian deportation, Gisi Fleischmann of the
Slovakian group identied annihilation centers in Poland where the
only Jews left alive were those deemed t to work. Most remaining
Polish Jews had been murdered. Additionally, though bitterly com-
plaining about the callousness and insensitivity of the Hungarian Jewish
leaders, Fleischmann continued to forward further details about the
annihilation of the European Jews in Poland. Her report of September
5, 1943, was quite specic: We know today that Sobibor, Malkyne-
Treblinki, Belzec, and Auschwitz are annihilation camps. In the camps
42
Ibid., 88.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 275
themselves small work parties are being maintained to create the
impression that they are ordinary camps.
43
Finally, two escapees from Auschwitz, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred
Wetzler, collected detailed information about the annihilations while
inmates in that camp. Reaching Slovakia, that information, including
the number and origin of Jews gassed at Birkenau (the location next to
Auschwitz where the mass murders actually took place), apparently was
then relayed to Hungarian-Jewish leaders. Vrba states that he was
assured by Slovak-Jewish leaders that the report was sent to Hungary
before April 26, 1944. Further, the report was corroborated by two
additional escapees from Auschwitz, Arnost Rosin and Czezlaw
Mordowicz.
Hungarian-Jewish leaders such as Samu Stern, head of the Budapest
Jewish Council, were aware of these events:
I nor others I suppose was not taken in by the faked good will,
hypocrisy, and treachery of the Gestapos debut. I knew what they had
done in all German-occupied states of Europe. I knew their activities to be a
long, long sequence of murders and robberies . . . I knew the Nazis
habits, deeds, and terrifying reputation, and yet I accepted the chairman-
ship of the Council. And the others knew as much as I did when they joined
the Council as members.
44
And Rudolph Kasztner, president of the Zionist organization of
Hungary, stated We had, as early as 1942, a complete picture of what
had happened in the East to the Jews deported to Auschwitz and the
other extermination camps.
45
In early May 1944, Hauptsturmfuhrer Dieter Wisliceny was visited by
Kasztner at his home in Budapest: He told me [Kasztner] that it had
nally been decided total deportation.
46
Kasztner already was in
possession of the VrbaWetzler report. Despite those admissions of
virtually complete knowledge of the impending deportations and the
near-certain fate of the Jews when deported, neither the provincial
Jewish leaders, nor the Jewish masses, nor even the Hungarian autho-
rities (themselves probably already well aware of the consequences of
deportation) were informed by the Hungarian-Jewish leadership. The
Jewish leaders held the VrbaWetzler report to be condential and
kept their knowledge secret so as not to create panic.
47
Thus were the
43
Quoted ibid., 90.
44
Emphasis in original; quoted ibid., 92.
45
Quoted ibid., 93.
46
Quoted ibid., 94.
47
Ibid., 95.
276 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
vast majority of Hungarian Jews in the provinces kept in the dark as to
the ultimate goal of the ghettoization, deportation, and ultimately
Jewish annihilation in a totally Judenrein Hungary.
Romania
By way of contrast, we do not nd an abandonment of vast numbers of
Jews by the Jewish leadership in Romania, despite the widespread anti-
Semitism and malevolent intent of the government. Indeed, quite the
opposite appears to have been the case. From the start, Wilhelm
Filderman, president of the Union of Jewish Communities of
Romania, was adamant in his support of all Jews under Romanian
authority, even including recent refugees from Poland. Shortly after
the invasion of the Soviet Union during the summer and fall of 1941,
various local and national edicts were passed requiring Jews to wear the
infamous yellow star. Filderman was active in opposing them all. He met
with the deputy minister of the interior, Popescu, twice, sent memor-
anda to Mihai Antonescu, vice president of the Council of Ministers,
and to Ion Antonescu, the head of state, requesting, even demanding,
that these orders be rescinded. Although he was not entirely successful,
the star was not imposed in most of the Regat.
48
Filderman also effec-
tively used his contacts with non-Jews such as Dr. Nicolae Lupa, a
National Peasant Party leader who was sympathetic to the Jews.
Indeed, Filderman was so active on behalf of his Jewish brethren that
this, among other factors, inuenced the Romanian government to
dissolve the Union of Jewish Communities of Romania and replace it
with a Central Jewish Ofce controlled by the government, effectively a
Romanian Judenrat.
49
During the summer of 1942, negotiations were proceeding between
Romanian and German ofcials for deportation of Romanias remain-
ing Jews, mainly from Moldavia, Wallachia, and southern Transylvania.
According to a census in the spring of 1942, approximately 300,000 Jews
remained in Romania. Raul Hilberg summarizes the result:
On July 26, 1942, the Eichmann Referat of the [Reich Security Main
Ofce] reported that its representative in Bucharest, Hauptsturmfuhrer
Richter, had scored a complete breakthrough. Political and technical
preparations for a solution of the Jewish question in Romania, reported
48
Ioanid 2000, 33.
49
Ibid., 34.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 277
Eichmann, have been completed by the representative of the Reich
Security Main Ofce to such an extent that the evacuation transports
will be able to roll in a short time. It is planned to remove the Jews of
Romania in a series of transports beginning approximately September 10,
1942, to the district of Lublin, where the employable segment will be
allocated for labor utilization, while the remainder will be subjected to
special treatment.
50
Yet the deportations did not take place. Why? Apparently the inter-
cession of Jewish leaders such as Filderman made the difference. Chief
Rabbi Alexandru S afran intervened with Metropolitan Balan (himself an
anti-Semite) pleading with him to approach Ion Antonescu on behalf of
the Jews. Apparently he did. Andrea Cassulo, the apostolic nuncio, also
interceded with Antonescu. Wealthy Jews like Max Auschnitt, or con-
verts to christianity such as Baron Neumann, donated large amounts (or
arranged for their donation) to Ion Antonescus favorite charities. One
of these was Maria Antonescus Patronage Society; another was the
Palace of the Handicapped directed by Antonescus personal physician,
Dr. Stroescu, who then intervened directly with Antonescu. This parti-
cular charity was the recipient of funds directly from the Jews of
Transylvania and Banat.
51
At the same time, the indefatigable Filderman along with another
Jewish leader, Dr. Stefan Antal, repeatedly intervened with General
Vasiliu, inspector general of the gendarmerie, which would have carried
out the deportations. Vasiliu recommended canceling the deportations
because of the weather, recommending their initiation the following
spring. Antonescu followed this recommendation and, probably on
October 11, cancelled the deportation order. The deportations were
never to be carried out.
52
Later, in November, when the danger certainly
was not over, Filderman even intervened on behalf of Polish-Jewish
refugees on Romanian soil
53
and repeatedly sought clemency for the
Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina.
54
Why, then, do we nd the ability of
Filderman, Antal, S afran, Auschnitt, and even Baron Neumann to iden-
tify with the Jewish masses of Romania, to the extent of an ultimately
successful rescue of approximately 300,000 persons?
The Jews of Romania, although of course differentiated in many ways,
nevertheless constituted a more homogenous body than those of
Hungary and, even with respect to class, those of the Netherlands.
50
Hilberg 1985, 784.
51
Ioanid 2000, 24243.
52
Ibid., 246.
53
Ibid., 261.
54
Ibid., 275.
278 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
Most Romanian Jews were at least nominally Orthodox and spoke or at
least understood Yiddish. Whereas the Magyarized Jews of Hungary
could identify with Hungarian and to some extent French or German
culture, Romanian Jews, many of them very recent arrivals from Poland
or Russia, had assimilated to a far lesser extent. For the most part, they
maintained their own communities and were not encouraged to assim-
ilate as were Hungarys Jews. In contrast to Hungary, the Romanian
political elite did not see any particular advantage to an economic
alliance with the recent arrivals, not only Yiddish-speaking, but many
Hasidic as well.
55
Only in Wallachia was Yiddish relatively unknown,
but those of Wallachia constituted only a small percentage of Romanias
Jews as of the census of 1930.
56
Bucharest, in Wallachia, had a small
Sephardic community, but as in Holland, the division between
Ashkenazim and Sephardim was not a critical determinant of extermi-
natory outcomes. Although the Jews of Transylvania and Bessarabia
were oriented to Hungarian and Russian culture respectively, the pre-
valence of a Yiddish-based culture was a common cement.
Despite the existence of a traditional Jewish entrepreneurial elite that
was distinguished from the mass of Romanian Jews, much of it had been
bankrupted during the depression of the 1930s. As Ioanid put it,
Although the standard of living among Romanian Jews was higher
than that of Polish Jews, many were virtual paupers.
57
Class differences
were present, but not to the same extent as in the Netherlands and
Hungary. The ability of a Jewish leadership to identify with the interests
of a majority of the Jewish population was far more pronounced in
Romania than in the Netherlands or in Hungary.
On the possibilities of survival
Identication presupposes certain basic socioeconomic equalities. The
Nazis understood this full well when they decided to stigmatize Jews
with the required yellow Jewish star. Once equal to their Christian
neighbors, Jews were now identied by something new that suggested
their manifest inequality with others. The Nazi leadership also likely
understood the consequences of appointing Jewish council leaders such
as Asscher and Cohen, even giving them virtually unlimited power over
their coreligionists. With the prewar socioeconomic and cultural
inequalities between council leaders and Jewish masses augmented
55
Lindemann 1997, 31112.
56
Ioanid 2000, xx.
57
Ibid.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 279
immeasurably by the new power over life and death, especially concern-
ing deportations and exemptions which were now in the hands of
council leaders, the gap between elite and mass was transformed into a
chasm. The principal advisor to Professor Cohen summarized these
powers in a memorandum to members of the nance committee of
the Amsterdam Jewish Council:
The reality is . . . that the joint presidents, and only they, are the men with
whom, in the nal analysis, the governing authorities negotiate, to whom
they relay their instructions, and whom they hold fully responsible for
everything that happens or does not happen. Since it is they who are held
responsible to the outside authorities, they must also be given full
responsibility in the inner circles, both formally and substantively. All
members are subordinate to the presidents, and they alone make the nal
decisions. This means that all the other members, all the way down the
line, are in effect advisors only.
58
SS ofcers charged with administering the Jewish councils frequently
were careful to treat the Jewish leaders with respect, as if to consecrate
their elite status and presumed immunity from deportation. Promises of
such immunity were frequently conferred, only to be broken when the
last Jews, including the leadership, were themselves deported.
Effectively, the inequality was two-tiered. At the societal level, prior to
the war, there were differences of class, culture, language, and religious
observance. During the occupation, the apparently unlimited power
(at least over life and death) vested in the Jewish leadership and the utter
powerlessness experienced by the Jewish masses were superimposed
upon these earlier ssures.
These vastly differing circumstances can have profound conse-
quences. In a now-classic experiment by Philip Zimbardo and his
colleagues,
59
dividing college-age students into prison guards and
inmates, with appropriate uniforms, the guards treated the prisoners
in an utterly inhuman manner. They forced the prisoners to defecate in
buckets, to clean toilets with their bare hands, and to be utterly sub-
missive to their every whim. Stripped of human dignity, the prisoners
became objects of derision and near-sadism by the guards. The social
arrangement, not any inherent personality aws, led to the cruelty. Or as
Zygmunt Bauman avers, What mattered was the existence of a polarity,
58
Emphasis in original; quoted in J. Michman 1989, 826.
59
Haney et al., 1973.
280 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
and not who was allocated to its respective sides. What did matter was
that some people were given a total, exclusive and untempered power over
some other people.
60
The absolute power of the SS was transmitted, albeit temporarily, to
the Jewish council heads who then acted accordingly. But if that same
leadership could have found some points of commonality with its
charges, then perhaps some of the extreme consequences could have
been mitigated.
We now arrive at a critical counterfactual issue. Could a greater
number of Jews have survived had the Jewish leadership in the
Netherlands, Hungary, and other locations acted differently?
Certainly, Jacob Robinsons conclusion is in agreement with the facts
set out by historians such as Isaiah Trunk. It would appear, then, that
when all factors are considered, Jewish participation or nonparticipa-
tion in the deportations had no substantial inuence one way or the
other on the nal outcome of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
61
One may even take Robinsons conclusion beyond Eastern Europe
and apply it to the Netherlands as well. For example, Joseph Michman
concludes that, relative to other leaderships of Jewish councils in Nazi-
occupied Europe, such a comparative investigation would reveal that
the leaders of the Jewish Council of Holland fell below par in compar-
ison with many of their colleagues in other lands in questions of political
sagacity, preservation of Jewish honor, and even in placing the good of
the community above personal interests.
62
Michman also counsels us
to remember those who forced them into their actions or inactions.
63
Even the most sagacious and honorable of Jewish council leaders did not
have the luxury of freedom of choice relative to ultimate Nazi extermi-
natory goals.
But what of Central Europe, principally Hungary, in which approxi-
mately 750,000 Jews remained alive in early 1944? The Jewish councils in
the Netherlands (principally Amsterdam and The Hague) and Judenrate
in East European ghettos shared a salient common feature. In these
cases, the deportations began almost immediately after the provisions
of the Wannsee conference had been implemented, that is, in mid-1942.
German prospects for victory, at least to the casual observer, still
appeared to be bright. Resistance to the Nazis appeared to be futile,
60
Emphasis in original; Bauman 1989, 16768.
61
J. Robinson 1972, xxxv.
62
J. Michman 1989, 843.
63
Ibid.
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 281
and, in places of high population density such as the Netherlands, there
were few places to which one could ee.
The Holocaust in Hungary, however, began two years later, when
Soviet troops were fast approaching Hungarys borders; a German defeat
seemed inevitable. In this instance, warnings to provincial Jewish lea-
ders and even directly to the Jewish masses could have saved tens of
thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of lives. Flight to the forests
in a much less densely populated country was a possibility denied to
others far to the west. Survival until the soon-to-be-consummated
Soviet victory was possible, at least for the younger and hardier elements
of the population. Simply the imposition of difculties in the roundup
and deportation of Jews could have saved lives. Eichmann had only
150200 SS men
64
with whom to do the job of deporting approximately
half a million Jews. He relied on the local Hungarian gendarmerie and
the cooperating Jewish authorities. If open opposition to the roundups
began, with the inevitable cruel German responses, even some of the
Hungarian gendarmerie might have balked. Open declaration by the
Jews that their opposition was predicated on awareness of the Final
Solution might have given pause to the Hungarian leadership, especially
in light of the proximity of the Soviet army and possible Allied retribu-
tion after the war. Indeed, Horthys ultimate halting of the deportations
was based precisely on this logic.
Additional German troops might have been required to put down the
disturbances, exacerbating the already-tense relations between the SS
and Wehrmacht in certain quarters. All available German troops were
desperately needed to counter the Soviet advance. And the Germans had
already indicated their unwillingness to have the deportations and
resettlement openly advertised as mass murder. Earlier in the winter
of 1943, 1,700 Jewish men married to non-Jewish women were rounded
up in Berlin and were being held by the Gestapo pending their deporta-
tion to the East. The wives of these Jewish men began demonstrating
publicly, demanding the return of their husbands. Unwilling to arrest
the women and thereby risk advertising the genocide, especially after
defeats in the East had unsettled the Nazi regime, Goebbels ordered the
release of these Jews. They were also reclassied as protected Jews and
allowed to remove the identifying yellow star. Hitler agreed with
Goebbelss decision.
65
64
Braham 2000, 24.
65
Heidenrich 2001, 10607.
282 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
Now, the Hungarian countryside was not the same as Berlin, the
political heart of Germany. Yet the international press could still have
gotten wind of the mass attempts to ee by the threatened Jews, and of
the massive protests against deportation taking place throughout
Hungary. Why would such a widespread, desperate reaction occur
unless it was based on the fear of annihilation? Even nearby
Wehrmacht troops needed for the battle against the Soviets but diverted
to quell the disturbances might have been an unwelcome conduit for the
news to reach Germany. The claim that these were communist sym-
pathizers, thereby justifying the earlier Einsatzgruppe mass murders
upon the invasion of the Soviet Union, would have been more difcult
to justify in a Central European region, formerly part of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire.
Had the Hungarian-Jewish leaders, already branded as callous and
insensitive by Gisi Fleischmann in late 1943, felt an identication with
the threatened Jewish provincial population, they might have acted
differently. Certainly many lives would have been saved.
Equality and identication between Jews and non-Jews
One may gain further insight into the importance of equality and
identication by examining the rescue of Jews by non-Jews during the
Holocaust. Identication, as we have seen, may or may not occur within
the variegated social structure of a particular group. Of course, the same
holds true for identication, or its absence, between groups.
Consider rst the political identication between Christian and
Jewish Danes that facilitated the rescue of Danish Jewry. Although at
rst considered a model protectorate by the Nazis largely because of a
perceived Aryan similarity and absence of overt opposition to their
rule, things begin to change in 1943. After a dock strike in August 1943
along with other strikes, riots and sabotage, the Danish government was
forced to resign. Danish parliamentary government was replaced with
direct military rule.
Shortly after the assumption of direct command by the Nazis, a raid
was planned against the Jews. As the result of warnings received from a
German shipping ofcial in Copenhagen and relayed to the Jews by the
leadership of the Danish Social Democratic Party, the chief rabbi pub-
licly warned the community just before the start of the Jewish New Year.
Warnings were spread by Social Democrats, priests, politicians, and
others. As a result, when the rst raid was carried out on October 12,
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 283
1943, very few Jews were found at home. The vast majority were in
hiding, ready to be ferried to Sweden in shing boats. Even many of the
475 who were seized were saved from death in Theresienstadt by the
constant intercession of Danish ofcials, shipments of food parcels from
Denmark, and other expressions of concern.
As Leni Yahil describes it,
For two or three weeks, the Danes, identifying the Jews fate with their
own, became totally involved in the rescue operations. They viewed the
rescue of the Jews as a manifestation of their national revolt against
the Germans, and thus the rare situation was created in which it was
not the Jews who were asked or sought to prove their identication with
the host country, but rather it was the Danes who proved by their
response and actions how great the identication was between
their national interests and the fate of the Jews.
66
Similar arguments apply to the later help given to Jews by the
Christian Dutch, but only after most Jews already had been deported.
Earlier, as we saw, the Dutch authorities were complicit with Nazi rule.
As B. A. Sijes remarks, The Dutch authorities, and in particular the
Secretaries-General, who had been invested with governmental author-
ity by the departing Dutch Government, were the rst who must bear
part of the responsibility for separating Jews and non-Jews by imple-
menting laws which were completely contrary to existing Dutch law.
This was the starting point for the development of a barrier between the
two groups.
67
Only later, in 1944, when the Dutch themselves were
experiencing difculties with the German occupation, especially labor
conscription, did resistance movements develop that were of some help
to the Jews. As Helen Fein suggests, Why did a movement to aid people
in hiding emerge almost a year after it would have been of most benet
to the Jews hunted for extermination? One answer, advanced by de Jong,
cites the belated development of identication with Jews and the
ambivalence or antipathy among the founders of this movement, who
came from different social classes and regions than did most Jews.
68
Consider, nally, relations between Jews and non-Jews in Nazi
Germany. Given the middle-class nature of German Jewry in the period
from the formation of the German Empire in 1871 to the rise of the
Nazis, one would expect a predominance of helping Jews, or at least
active opposition to the Nazis, among the German middle class. Equality
66
Yahil 1977, 62021.
67
Sijes 1977, 552.
68
Fein 1979, 287.
284 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
of circumstance here is predicted to promote cooperation or helping.
69
And this is what Sarah Gordons data generally demonstrate.
In an exhaustive analysis of archives from the Nazi period, Gordon
extracted data on opponents to Nazism found in the Gestapo les of the
Governmental District of Dusseldorf (GDD). There were 203 Gestapo
les on individuals who aided Jews, 42 les on critics of racial persecu-
tion, and 30 les on individuals suspected of aiding Jews. The archive
also holds 137 les on Germans who had sexual relations with Jews, 40
les on persons who were suspected of having sexual relations with
Jews.
70
The Nazis labeled those who gave direct help as Judenfreunde (friends
of Jews), while those who had sexual relations with Jews were termed
Rassenschander (disgracers of the race). Sexual relations with Jews were
forbidden to Germans by the Nuremberg Laws and therefore involved at
least an element of risk, if not outright opposition to the regime. In
Gordons statistics, she does not differentiate between the two categories
in overt class-based opposition. However, in a comparison between
Judenfreunde and Rassenschander during the different phases of perse-
cution (193334, 193537, 193839, 194044), there were no substantial
differences in percentages between the two categories.
71
Table 13.1 presents the statistics of greatest interest in Gordons
study. Percentages of Jews in Germany in 1933 in the various occupa-
tional categories are compared with percentages of Jews in the Rhine
province to establish that there are no visible differences of serious
magnitude between the two data sets. This lack of difference suggests
that the percentages of opponents in the Governmental District of
Dusseldorf are likely (but not certain) to be representative of the pattern
of opposition throughout Germany. It is clear that middle-class (inde-
pendents and white-collar workers) opponents of the Nazis are vastly
overrepresented relative to the working class. This is all the more
surprising because for a substantial portion of this period, 193944,
the Jews remaining in Germany were mainly blue-collar (58.3 percent).
Thus, the opportunity for a blue-collar Christian to help the blue-collar
Jewish colleague would have been greater than for a middle-class
Christian, especially given the 51.1 percent of the GDD labor force
that was blue-collar.
72
69
Deutsch 1985; Leventhal et al. 1980.
70
Gordon 1984, 211.
71
Ibid., 216.
72
Ibid., 323
I N E Q U A L I T Y A N D A B S E N C E O F I D E N T I F I C A T I O N 285
This nding concerning the predominance of middle-class oppo-
nents of the Nazi racial policies is even more surprising given the
conventional wisdom of middle-class electoral support for the Nazis.
One would expect, therefore, a diminution of middle-class helping of
Jews and perhaps a predominance of blue-collar support of Jews, espe-
cially in light of communist opposition to the Nazi regime. Yet such is
not the case. The theory of equality and identication, on the other
hand, predicts this nding of greater helping by middle-class Germans,
based on perceptions of similarity between middle-class Germans and
their Jewish counterparts and, perhaps at some level, common fate. This
outcome is supported in the data of table 13.1.
Table 13.1 Occupational distribution of Jews and opponents of anti-
Semitism in Germany, the Rhine Province, and the Governmental District
of Dusseldorf (in percentages)
Jews in
Germany,
1933
Jews in
Rhine
Province,
1933
Jews in
Germany,
1939
Opponents of
anti-Semitism in
the Governmental
District of
Dusseldorf
(GDD), 193344
Independents
(professional and
self-employed)
51.7 53.4 16.2 33.6
Civil servants 1.1 1.0 0.0 6.6
White-collar 37.5 35.6 25.5 44.4
Blue-collar 9.8 9.9 58.3 15.3
Source: After Gordon 1984, 227, who cites the following: for the occupational
distribution of Jews in 1933, see Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, 470 (1937), 1: 8; for
1939, see 552 (1944), 4: 74; for the occupational distribution of Jews in the Rhine
Province in 1933, see Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, 455 (1936), 16: 60. For the
occupational distribution of opponents of anti-Semitism, see Gordon 1984,
appendix B, 32425.
286 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
14
On the possibility of revolt and altruistic punishment
The preceding chapter detailed the impact on victim survival of inequality
and identication among the victims. That chapter also examined identi-
cation between the victims and potential non-Jewish helpers how that
identication affected the differential likelihood of early death at the hands
of the Nazis, or salvation from it. Now I examine the impact of identica-
tion not on the likelihood of death and its timing, but on the manner of
dying. Why did the Warsaw ghetto end in a massive rebellion in which the
remnants of the Jewish population chose to go to their deaths ghting,
while a neighboring large Jewish ghetto, that of o dz, exhibited virtually no
sign of revolt, not even at the very end? And an intermediate case, that of
Vilna, demonstrated an intent to revolt by a group of organized youth, but
was persuaded to abandon that alternative when faced with the unique
political circumstances of the moment. As we shall see, altruistic punish-
ment was a major unifying factor in the successful organization of the
Warsaw ghetto revolt.
o dz

Ordered to be established on February 8, 1940, by the o dz chief of

police, SS Brigadenfuhrer Johannes Schafer, the o dz ghetto was the oldest
of the large Jewish ghettos in Poland.
1
It was located in the Warthegau,
a portion of prewar Poland annexed to the Reich after the Polish defeat
of 1939. This most westerly of the large Jewish ghettos, therefore, was
to be a major recipient of Western Jews deported from the old Reich,
Czechoslovakia (principally Prague), and Austria (mostly Vienna).
And, as we saw in the preceding chapter, this entry of approximately
20,000 Western Jews at least temporarily resulted in an enormous
increase in the level of inequality. The recorders of the chronicles
of the ghetto are explicit on this point. Most of the newcomers in
1
Dobroszycki 1984, xxxvii.
287
the spring of 1942 brought extra food with them. The chroniclers record
that on May 7, Prices shot up from one hour to the next, and in a short
time the price of a loaf of bread had risen to 25 marks, whereas in
previous conditions a price of 10 marks would have seemed sky
high.
2
And by May 30 it was no longer 25 marks but the price of
a loaf of bread rose to 600 marks, one kilogram of margarine to 1,000
marks, one kilogram of potatoes to 90 marks, one cigarette, without
mouthpiece, to 4 marks, and so on.
3
Clearly only those who could
afford these prices could buy bread or a little horsemeat, a minimal
protein staple of the ghetto. The vast majority, mostly native Polish
Jews, could not. Mutual identication across the geographic divide
of national origin was unlikely under these circumstances.
Another distinguishing feature of the o dz ghetto was its condition of
isolation. Whereas the Warsaw ghetto abutted Aryan Warsaw and was
occasionally open to contact with the outside world, the o dz ghetto was
virtually hermetically sealed. Very little interchange between the Jewish
and Aryan side took place, in contrast also to Vilna where at least the
possibility existed of escape to the forests to join the Partisans, as did
many young ghters in the end. All of the workshops, factories, and
other places of employment were found within the barbed wire of the
o dz ghetto. Residents were simply not exposed to news emanating
from other parts of the world, other ghettos. Even the fate of Jews subject
to resettlement was known with less certainty in o dz than in either
Vilna or Warsaw.
Without these sources of news, the ghetto population could
be manipulated more readily by its Eldest of the Jews Mordechai
Chaim Rumkowski. Appointed by the Germans in October 1939, he
very quickly took the reins of power (all that was allowed by the
Germans), eventually becoming a virtual dictator. Indeed, he used
that word in response to questions concerning strikes at a meeting
of administrative ofcials and workshop managers on December 2,
1940. He stormed: Strikers are criminals! Ill act like a dictator! Ill
stamp them out, them and their families! Ill arrest them and send them
to labor camps!
4
In a more specic response to a nurses strike, he
threatened, And now, only force will be used. No one is going to deal
with the nurses but me. I will break them. If they had come to me instead
of leaving their jobs, Id have extended my hand.
5
2
Ibid., 16566.
3
Ibid., 191.
4
Quoted in Tushnet 1972, 26.
5
Quoted in Adelson and Lapides 1989, 98.
288 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
These are the hallmarks of a totalitarian mentality, one that would
brook no opposition or dissidence. He eliminated all sources of such
opposition, including separate organizational soup kitchens, private
meetings of Zionist or Bundist parties, smuggling groups that could
indicate to the Germans that he, Rumkowski, was not in full control, and
any other indication of independent activity in the ghetto.
6
His was a
collectivist sensibility; the individual frequently had to be sacriced for
the common good. Perhaps this was expressed most tragically in his
speech of September 4, 1942, when the Germans demanded deportation
of children under the age of ten, the sick, and the elderly, he proclaimed In
my old age I must stretch out my hands and beg: brothers and sisters, hand
themover to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children! . . . Give me
the sick. In their place, we can save the healthy.
7
Even more directly, on October 17, 1943, he stated: Please under-
stand this. I appeal to you as human beings and Jews! Please accept that
you must show consideration for the ghetto as a whole and subordinate
your personal interests to the collective interest. Do not force me to use
methods I would rather not.
8
Others such as Adam Czerniakow, chair-
man of the Warsaw Judenrat, upon meeting Rumkowski in Warsaw on
May 17, 1941, declared In the Community Rumkowski was recounting
his activities in o dz. The individual does not exist for him. He uses a
Sonderkommando for the purpose of requisitioning. He has been collect-
ing diamonds and furs.
9
The designation Sonderkommando was copied from SS usage, tho-
roughly consistent with Rumkowskis frequent appearance in public
wearing Gestapo boots.
10
His sense of the collective goal, however, was
thoroughly distorted. In contrast to Maimonidess (perhaps the greatest
Jewish philosopher of the past two millennia) injunction if idolaters
were to demand the life of a single Jew under the threat of collective
annihilation if refused, then all should allow themselves to be killed
Rumkowski supervised the deportation of tens of thousands including,
as we saw, the children. Perhaps this distortion resulted from his
rumored pedophilia, for which we also have rst-hand testimony,
11
or
his desperate desire to be recognized in some fashion by the Jewish
community, a goal that eluded him before the war. Whatever the source,
6
Tushnet 1972, 3133.
7
Quoted in Adelson and Lapides 1989, 32829.
8
Quoted ibid., 390.
9
Quoted in Czerniakow 1979, 237.
10
See photographs, Adelson and Lapides 1989, 52, 54.
11
Eichengreen 2000.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 289
he is quoted as saying, If I can save a hundred Jews in the ghetto,
everything will have been worthwhile.
12
A survivor of the o dz ghetto, Lucille Eichengreen, comments, The
enormity and monstrosity of Rumkowskis words appalled me. One
hundred Jews, and no more! This is what he considered an achievement!
Not a thought had been spared for those already deported, and not a
thought or concern had been expressed for the tens of thousands of
small children he had demanded we hand over to the Germans. They
were gone, and would never be seen again.
13
This obsession with seeing at least a remnant survive led Rumkowski
to take actions that precluded any possibility of revolt. By February
1944, the o dz ghetto was the only place in Poland where Jews existed
in fairly large numbers. Approximately 80,000
14
were found in the
ghetto, mostly working in the factories and workshops that produced
much-needed materiel for the German armed forces. In Rumkowskis
mind, this was to be the solution for his Jews, as he liked to think of
them. If they could prove themselves indispensable to the Wehrmacht
and hold out long enough for the Soviet armies to reach o dz in their
drive westward, then perhaps these Jews might be saved. Accordingly, no
break in production was to be allowed. The Nazi war machine was to be
served with almost-fanatical devotion to forestall the increasingly likely
mass deportation, as the German losses mounted.
Accordingly, on February 15, Rumkowski issued orders severely
restricting freedom of movement. In his speech, he ordered, among
other things:
(1) To begin with, distribution points will remain closed during work-
ing hours, that is from 7 AM to 5 PM. The same will hold for the
outpatient clinics and other institutions and ofces dealing with the
public.
(2) The factories will remain hermetically sealed from 7 AM to 5 PM. No
one will be permitted to leave his plant. All persons on a plants
ofcial roster must in fact be there . . .
(3) I order those working at home to remain there and work continu-
ously under all circumstances. Loitering in the street, on whatever
pretext, must stop.
(4) I order a regular inspection of apartments . . .
12
Quoted ibid., 83.
13
Ibid.
14
Dobroszycki 1984, 301.
290 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
(5) From now on, no one will be able to leave his job site, factory, or
ofce during working hours without a pass. Every manager will
appoint someone to take responsibility for this, along with the
gatekeeper, who is to let no one out. Passes will be administered
in such a way that it will be easy to know to whom and how often a
pass has been issued. Anyone found in the street will have to show
his papers. Furthermore, the work card will indicate the workers
shift. If he works at night, there is no reason why he cannot be
outdoors during the day.
15
This was the end product of Rumkowskis draconian centralization of
authority in his own person and a consequent atomization of ghetto
society. There was little opportunity for residents of prime working age,
hence most t for battle, to organize effectively and confront the
Germans in one last battle, that would salvage at least a modicum of
honor and revenge. The Warsaw ghetto, with half the number found in
o dz, roughly 40,000, would provide a stark contrast.
Warsaw
Once again, it is useful to approach the problem of ghetto revolt through
the medium of the leader, in this case the chairman of the Judenrat,
Adam Czerniakow. Leadership plays a crucial role here because to the
extent they thought possible, and to maximize efciency, the Nazis
vested virtually all of their authority in a single individual. And in the
Warsaw ghetto, events were to take a very different course from that in
o dz, in large measure because of Czerniakows far more humane and
tolerant attitude toward organized Jewish life and the individuals that
comprised it. In contrast to Rumkowski, Czerniakow was a caretaker,
not so much of a community, as of its countless afictions, and his entire
ofcial life was much less a singular daily effort to save a people than a
whole series of efforts to save people every day.
16
Czerniakow was appointed chairman of a spontaneously formed
Jewish council in September 1939,
17
a position that he sought. With
the assumption of the civil administration of Warsaw by the Gestapo, in
the following month, Czerniakow found himself chairman of the
Warsaw Judenrat.
15
Quoted in Adelson and Lapides 1989, 409.
16
Hilberg and Staron 1979, 65.
17
Ibid., 68.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 291
In further contrast to Rumkowski, Czerniakow encouraged the devel-
opment of civil life in the ghetto without his immediate supervision.
Vocational schools were opened and specic training courses begun.
Teacher-training courses were encouraged; elementary schools were
opened. Even a professional conference on the consequences of hunger
(appropriate for the ghetto) took place.
18
Under Czerniakows aegis, a rather astonishing event took place.
Consistent with their overall policy of discouraging if not destroying
the infrastructure of Jewish communal life, on January 20, 1940, the
Germans ordered that all synagogues, yeshivas (Jewish parochial
schools), and mikvahs (ritual baths) be closed. Even small minyanim
(prayer services with ten or more men) were forbidden. Yet at the end of
April 1941, Czerniakow persuaded the Germans to allow the opening
of three synagogues. He even suggested to a delegation of rabbis
that they choose a chief rabbi and begin to rebuild the synagogues. On
June 1, 1941, Czerniakow prayed in the Great Synagogue.
19
Only after the
December 1941 decision to murder all available European Jews and the
subsequent Wannsee conference in January were the synagogues ordered
closed. On March 3, 1942, Czerniakow received a letter from the German
Kommissar, Heinz Auerswald, ordering that the Great Synagogue and
neighboring buildings be emptied by March 20.
20
Czerniakows desire to be an effective caretaker led him to avoid
cracking down on smuggling operations or other efforts to supplement
the wholly inadequate food rations legally allowed by the Germans. He
records that, in November 1941, legal imports to the ghetto were 2
million zotys in value, unlike illegal imports amounting to 80 million
zotys.
21
In a similar vein, he worked to ameliorate the inequalities of ghetto
life. According to Josef Kermisz, The Judenrat represented mainly the
well-to-do, was closer to the upper classes, and more frequently backed
these classes during the selection for the camps where the Jews were sent
for forced labor and extermination.
22
The wealthy, for example, were
almost entirely exempt from direct taxation. Indirect taxation also fell
disproportionally on the poor, especially taxes on food coupons and
medicaments.
In this, the Warsaw ghetto and its Judenrat did not differ substantially
from others. Yet Czerniakow did try to ameliorate the consequences of
18
Kermisz 1979, 89.
19
Ibid., 10.
20
Czerniakow 1979, 331.
21
Kermisz 1979, 12.
22
Ibid., 5.
292 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
this inegalitarian tendency, sometimes to no avail, but at other times
successfully. On January 6, 1942, he managed to increase by 10,000 the
number of vouchers that would be free of the bread tax. The total
number of exemptions now reached 150,000, a substantial portion of
the ghetto population.
23
On April 20, 1942, and again on May 21,
Czerniakow instructed the ghetto police to raid the stores that displayed
luxury food items. Those included sardines, chocolate, fats, and cakes.
Cakes were distributed to the orphanages.
24
From the earliest stages of the ghetto, the political parties (the
Yiddishist and Socialist Bund, Communist, Zionist) ignored the ban
on their activities. Czerniakow tried to incorporate their activities into
those of the Judenrat but, when they balked, he did not in any way
suppress them. In this, as in virtually all other matters of consequence,
Czerniakow acted as a transmission belt for German orders and not as
a satrap having discretionary powers.
25
Even raids by left-wing groups
on clubs and restaurants of the wealthy brought only warnings from
Czerniakow and no action against the perpetrators. Political parties
conducted meetings in secret and published underground newsletters.
Thus, when the massive deportations began in July 1942 resulting in the
deaths of approximately three-quarters of the residents by September,
the parties and their youth auxiliaries were in place to plan resistance
activities.
Shortly after the start of the German Aktion against the Jews (some say
on the day after it began, i.e., July 23, 1942), a meeting took place
between the representatives of the organized parties, with the exception
of Mizrachi (a middle-class-oriented Zionist party) and the Revisionists
(a semi-militarized right-wing Zionist party). The absence of the
Revisionists at the rst meeting in Warsaw will have echoes later in the
failure of the Vilna underground to stage a revolt against the Germans.
In Warsaw, it was even to affect the timing and composition of the
Jewish ghters, for a degree of mutual identication was necessary for a
revolutionary organization to form.
At this meeting in Warsaw, the issue of resistance was raised imme-
diately, but several participants argued strongly against it. Zisha
Frydman representing the Agudah, an ultra-Orthodox organization,
deemed it necessary to place the future of Warsaw Jewry in the hands
of God, as virtually all intensely observant Jews had done for millennia.
Salvation could be found only in Gods hands. Representing a more
23
Czerniakow 1979, 312.
24
Ibid., 345, 356.
25
Tushnet 1972, 120.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 293
commonly held view at the time was a veteran Zionist, Dr. Ignacy
Schipper, who held that Jews episodically had to accept a period of
bloodletting in order to insure the survival of at least a portion of the
community and, therefore, Jewish continuity. Resistance would only
provoke the Germans to intensify their blood lust. Only certain repre-
sentatives of young Zionist groups (Dror Hehalutz and Hashomer
Hatzair), generally leftist in orientation, argued for armed resistance.
With views this divergent in scope, the parties were unable to reach
agreement. Each of them attempted to respond to the emergency indivi-
dually through various self-help measures that of course would prove to
be futile in light of the recently adopted Nazi exterminatory policy.
At the end of the rst week of the Aktion, representatives of three
Zionist youth movements met to formthe organization that would carry
out the revolt the following April. These were Hashomer Hatzair, Dror
Hehalutz, and Akiva (Orthodox labor Zionist). The Jewish ghting
organization was given a Polish name, Z

ydowska Organizacja Bojowa,

commonly called by its acronym Z

OB. The purpose of the organization

initially was to make contact with Polish sources of arms, obtain as many
as possible in the shortest amount of time, and send emissaries to other
Polish ghettos announcing the organizations existence. According to
Yisrael Gutman, the urry of organizational activity and uprising in a
number of places Cracow, Bedzin, Sosnowiec, Czestochowa, and to
some degree Bialystok should be viewed as expressions of a dynamic
that was set in motion in Warsaw in July 1942.
26
However, none of
these events was to have the scope, intensity, and ultimately the sig-
nicance of the Warsaw uprising.
Although the deportations were continuing on a daily basis, after
much debate, the founders of Z

OB decided not to immediately attack

the Germans. Younger members were eager to do so, but cooler heads
prevailed after pointing out the necessity to obtain arms, detail a plan of
action, and choose an appropriate time. Until then, any spontaneous
outburst would be easily put down, and therefore short and without any
lasting signicance. Whether such a decision would have been made had
the Z

OB known that the Aktionen would end in September only after

nearly three-quarters of the population had been murdered
27
is an open
question. Tactics of the organization during this period included the
posting of handbills in public places and other clandestine activity
urging Jews to avoid reporting to the Umschlagplatz (from which they
26
Gutman 1982, 237.
27
Ibid., 211.
294 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
were deported) when ordered to, and in any way possible avoid both the
Jewish police and the German authorities. In addition, an assassination
attempt was made on the life of the commander of the Jewish police,
Jo sef Szeryn ski, himself a convert to Christianity and an open anti-
Semite before the war. Apartments of deported Jews also were burned
to prevent their possessions from falling into the hands of the
Germans.
28
By January 1943, there were some 40,000 Jews living in the ghetto.
29
Despite progress in obtaining some quantities of small arms and devel-
oping an infrastructure in preparation for the planned uprising, the
rebels were not yet ready. Yet an Aktion by the Germans was upon
them, and the surprised but partially ready ghters responded with
force. For the rst time, the Germans had to be wary of a Jew carrying
a revolver and willing to shoot. An observer, Shmuel Winter, recorded in
his diary, thanks to the resistance, during todays Aktion there wasnt a
single instance of the murderers seeking people out in cellars; they were
simply afraid to go down [into them].
30
Only some of the groups forming the Z

OB fought in this encounter,

and they were primarily those which had met in July 1942 to form the
initial framework. They also were among the Jews that had weapons,
always in very short supply. At the forefront stood the commander of the
organization, Mordechai Anielewicz, who would lead the major uprising
in April, and a band from his Zionist movement, the left-wing
Hashomer Hatzair. The ghting was sporadic, but had several important
consequences. First, the idea of resistance gained credibility in the
ghetto. The Jews concluded that the relatively small number of Jews
removed from the ghetto, approximately 5,000,
31
was a consequence of
the resistance. In point of fact, this is only partially true. The Germans
had planned a limited Aktion to begin with, expecting to cull about 8,000
from the ranks of the ghetto.
32
The Jews, exposed to the massive
deportations of the preceding summer, assumed that this relatively
small number was entirely a consequence of the resistance.
Nevertheless, Winter commented in his diary: Combat groups went
out to war again, at Mila 34. Today they took a thousand plus a few
hundred more Jews. Blessed be those youngsters.
33
Second, the combat groups gained valuable experience in street ght-
ing and even combat within buildings or on rooftops. This experience
28
Ibid., 23840.
29
Ibid., 307.
30
Quoted ibid., 310.
31
Ibid., 311.
32
Ibid., 307.
33
Quoted ibid., 317.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 295
would prove to be invaluable in prolonging the much larger uprising in
April.
Third, among many Poles, the Z

OB won respect. Although the esti-

mated number of German dead tended to be inated by the Poles,
probably inevitable in such observation from a distance, nevertheless
the conclusions of one important underground publication resonated
widely. Writing in the Biuletyn Informacyjny, the ofcial organ of the AK
(the Home Army, largest of the militarized Polish underground groups),
the commentator observed, after a detailed recounting of the armed
clashes, that the valor of those who have not lost their sense of honor
during the saddest moments of Jewish history inspires admiration, and
it is a glorious chapter in the history of Polish Jewry.
34
More important
to the Z

OB was the delivery at the end of January of the largest shipment

of arms from the AK command. Fifty large revolvers and fty grenades
were smuggled into the ghetto. Without the events of January, it is most
unlikely that the Poles would have been willing to part with these
weapons.
Finally, the self-sacrice of the Jewish ghters, ultimately outnum-
bered, outgunned and killed by reinforced German units amounted to
an altruistic punishment by the Jewish youth. According to Marek
Edelman, a Bundist and one of the few leaders of the April revolt to
survive: The Z

OB had its baptism by re in the rst substantial street

battle on the corner of Mila and Zamenhofa. We lost the cream of our
organization there. The commander of the Z

OB, Mordechai Anielewicz,

was saved by a miracle and only thanks to the fortitude of [their]
courage.
35
Their valor, as we saw, impressed not only the Poles, but
more immediately the Jews of the ghetto. In addition to the possibility of
staving off future deportations, Jewish groups that had remained aloof
from the Z

OB decided to cooperate, as did the Poles in their arms

shipment. The Poles also established ties with Z

OB representatives on
the Aryan side of Warsaw.
Although we have little information on when an alternate group the
Z

ZW (Jewish Military Union) was founded, its formation and eventual

relationship with the Z

OB undoubtedly were inuenced by the January

events. The Revisionists, as we saw, did not attend the July 1942 meeting
that laid the foundation for the Z

OB. They eventually founded the Z

ZW
which was able to obtain arms through contacts with Polish former
military ofcers. Although they probably had to pay dearly for it,
34
Quoted ibid., 320.
35
Quoted ibid., 31314.
296 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
nevertheless, this group was able to obtain a machine gun somehow
smuggled into the ghetto, demonstrating relatively close relations with
elements of the Polish military underground. There is no record of any
military activities of the Z

ZW in the January clashes. During the April

uprising it became essentially subordinated to the Z

OB.
36
Ideological
differences and disagreements over organizational structure (the
Revisionists demanded, among other things, that the Z

OB have a com-
mander drawn from their group) prevented an early union between the
two ghting groups.
37
By April, both groups, now under the command
of the Z

OB, were able to eld about 500 ghters from the Z

OB and 250
from the Z

ZW.
38
But it was not only some key Poles and a major dissident Jewish
organization that were drawn into cooperative relations with the pri-
mary Jewish ghting organization. After January, many Jews sought to
join the Z

OB and some the Z

ZW, but the shortage of weapons, fear of

informers among individuals who were not well known, and the intent
to maintain an elite ghting unit kept the numbers down. When the
widespread ghting erupted, the Z

OB leadership under Anielewicz

wanted to be certain that the ghters would be fully prepared to con-
front the German army in highly unequal combat. The Jews who were
turned away or who did not know whom to approach spent much time
digging bunkers that might not only help save some Jews from the
Germans, but also could serve as places from which resistance could
be maintained even after the street battles had been lost.
Known informers, at least those not already assassinated by the Z

OB,
were shunned and isolated by the vast majority. Whereas before January
informers had played a signicant role in suppressing dissent and
atomizing the ghetto, this had now ceased. Thus, the events of January
were to have a considerable impact on the April uprising. It lasted from
April 19 until at least May 16 when General Jurgen Stroop, commander
of the German forces quelling the uprising, declared that the Grand
Aktion was over.
39
Yet even afterward, until May 26, Jews survived in
bunkers, sewers, and cellars, some to reemerge occasionally to shoot at
the Germans, or to make their way to the Aryan side. Many of those
who survived in this fashion were to ght and die in the general Warsaw
uprising the following April. Some groups actually survived in the
ghetto into October.
40
36
Ibid., 349.
37
Ibid., 295.
38
Ibid., 365.
39
Ibid., 399.
40
Ibid.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 297
Perhaps most telling was the strategy that Stroop was forced to adopt.
Confronted with the tenacity of the Jewish ghters, mounting German
losses, and the warren of bunkers that the residents had constructed, on
April 26, seven days after the revolts outbreak, he resorted to setting
successive housing blocks are until the entire ghetto was razed to the
ground.
41
Only in this fashion could he put down the revolt in anything
resembling a reasonable amount of time and with a minimal casualty
rate. Elsewhere, and for a different purpose, I commented,
The modern Warsaw Ghetto revolt of 1943 had clear antecedents in the
earlier, almost equally destructive rebellion of the Jews against Rome in
6670. The ability to act collectively even in defeat against overwhelming
odds and to make the rebellion endure four years in the instance of
Rome and one month in the instance of hopelessly outgunned men,
women, and children in Warsaw created a historical linkage of Jewish
national life that would feed powerfully into the formation of modern
Israel in 1948.
42
Vilna
Vilna is the third great East European Jewish community that can be
examined through the prism of leadership policies that inuenced the
likelihood of revolt. On September 6, 1941, the Vilna ghetto was estab-
lished by the Germans, after approximately half of the Vilna Jewish
population was massacred at Ponar, a location outside the city.
Shortly afterward, a smaller second ghetto was liquidated when its
residents were killed at Ponar.
43
Although initially only the chief of the
ghetto police, Jacob Gens was quickly established as the effective leader
of the ghetto. Genss military background and connections with
Lithuanian Christians facilitated his effectiveness. A Judenrat was estab-
lished, but because of his good relations with Franz Murer, the Nazi
deputy for Jewish affairs, Gens frequently bypassed it until July 11, 1942,
when Murer dissolved it. At that time, Gens was ofcially appointed by
Murer head of the ghetto, with two assistants, one for administrative
matters and the other for police matters.
44
In matters pertaining to civic life in the ghetto (with the exception of
cultural events and historical chronicles that all three encouraged),
41
Ibid., 386.
42
M. Midlarsky 1999, 136.
43
Harshav 2002, xliii.
44
Kruk 2002, 326.
298 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
Genss policies were situated somewhere between those of Rumkowski
and Czerniakow. Whereas Rumkowski quashed almost all of the organ-
izational activity of the o dz ghetto and Czerniakow encouraged such
activity in Warsaw, Gens was guarded in his support. Food smuggling
was a common activity, in stark contrast to its complete absence in o dz
and difculty in Warsaw despite Czerniakows encouragement. In part
this was a result of Genss status as a former ofcer in the Lithuanian
army, who commanded the respect of Lithuanian guards at the ghetto
entrance. They actually saluted him as he entered and exited the ghetto.
They were bribable. Even the Germans called him the Proud Jew.
45
Because of the smuggled food, in contrast to Warsaw, there were no
outright deaths from starvation in the Vilna ghetto, and no deaths from
tuberculosis as in o dz.
46
Most important, for our purposes here, of course, was Genss relation-
ship with the nascent underground movement. Whereas Rumkowski
worked hard to suppress underground activity, and Czerniakow tried
to coopt it into the Judenrat, eventually winking at its existence, Gens
studiously ignored it until the question of weapons became important to
him, by which time the underground was already established. Unlike
Rumkowski, who used any excuse to get rid of troublemakers, when the
Germans asked [Gens] for a list of Bundists and Communists in the
ghetto, he told them he knew of none. He also told them that only foolish
children talked about resistance, that no partisans had connections with
the ghetto, that all the ghetto Jews were solid workers.
47
Gens was even
aware that his deputy, Joseph Glazman, was a commander of the United
Partisan Organization, the FPO.
48
As in o dz and Warsaw, the question of mutual identication among
Jews was crucial. Such identication tends to be linked to cooperation
that, all other things being equal, may enhance the probability of survi-
val. Because of the relatively widespread availability of food and absence
of Jews from outside the region, in contrast to o dz, the issue of socio-
economic inequality was not critical. However, in the diary of Herman
Kruk, deep political ssures were revealed between the non-Zionist
Bund and other groups of Jews, all of whom, with the exception of the
Communists, had Zionist leanings. Kruk, the Bundist (Yiddishist and
socialist), commented on a New Years Eve party on January 1, 1942,
hosted by Gens, a supporter of the right-wing Zionist Revisionist Party
45
Tushnet 1972, 161.
46
Ibid., 165.
47
Ibid., 169.
48
Farynikte Partizaner-organizatsye; ibid., 171.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 299
that actually had prewar contacts with the Italian fascists: Il Duce of the
ghetto, the Revisionist police chief Gens, held a New Years Eve party,
attended by 25 persons, in his apartment. At 12 oclock at night Il Duce
took the oor and said that despite the hard year this was and despite his
hard work, he recalls how he stood at the gate and saw Jews taken away;
some we may never see again, others we may perhaps meet sometime
nevertheless, he thinks he has done important work.
49
Elsewhere in the diary Kruk also comments on the virtual monopoly
of power that the Revisionists had accumulated (e.g., police
Revisionists),
50
despite Genss efforts to instill unity among all groups
not directly afliated with the partisans.
After the formation of the FPO, the primary resistance organization,
in late January 1942 (21st, 23rd, or 24th),
51
the question of participation
arose for inhabitants of the ghetto. Kruk tells us that, if not for the
specic tragic situation in which the ghetto nds itself, none of our
group would have agreed to cooperate with the Revisionists, Shomrim
[Hashomer Hatzair, left-wing Zionists], and Comm(unists). Not wanting
to remain isolated, we, too, were forced to join the FPO. Naturally, the
Reds took over the institution. They harnessed the partners in the
supposed organized self-defense while turning it into a fortress of their
own. Having no alternative, our group swallowed all that.
52
Ultimately,
the Bund members agreed among themselves not to participate in any
armed rebellion: We must try to inuence the ghetto police. But by no
means to allow a social and historical crime of exploding the ghetto.
53
The commanders of the FPO were Itzik Wittenberg, a Communist, Abba
Kovner, a member of Hashomer Hatzair, and Glazman, the Revisionist.
The question remains whether politicization of the ghetto adminis-
tration in the form of known Revisionists occupying key roles (head of
the ghetto and the Jewish police) led to important strategic decisions
based on political criteria. Without such apparently overt politicization
(like that in Vilna) in the Warsaw ghetto administration, the Warsaw
ghters of the Z

OB included Bundists such as Marek Edelman, a leader

of the Warsaw ghetto April uprising, and one of its few survivors after
the war.
Genss policies allowed the formation of a reasonably broadly based
partisan organization, albeit mostly Zionist (the Yiddishist Bund mem-
bers were opposed to a Jewish national home). The organization quickly
49
Kruk 2002, 148.
50
Ibid., 135.
51
Ibid., 453.
52
Ibid., 561.
53
Quoted ibid., 562.
300 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
began to assemble a cache of smuggled weapons that not only swelled
but exceeded that held by the Z

OB and Z

ZW in Warsaw. They had

thirty revolvers, ve machine guns, fty grenades, several ries and
thousand [sic] of rounds of ammunition. To these were added the
weapons secretly made in the ghetto machine shops, enough to arm
every ghter and to have a reserve.
54
Why then did not the ghetto
residents rebel, as did those of Warsaw when intimations of impending
ghetto liquidations were all around them? On July 1, 1943, the long-time
ghetto Kommissar Franz Murer was replaced by a so-called Jewish
expert, a Gestapo man by the name of Kittel with a reputation as a
liquidator of Jewish ghettos.
55
This, among other events, heightened the
sense of foreboding.
Earlier, on June 26, in a confrontation between members of the Jewish
police and the FPO, the former were shown to be representative of an
essentially politically bankrupt organization. The ghetto police were
ordered to arrest the vice commander of the FPO, Joseph Glazman,
and escort him to neighboring Resza. For a while, the ghetto authorities
may have been concerned about the organized resistance, the presence
of arms in the ghetto, and increasing numbers of ghetto residents going
to the forest. The exile of Glazman may have been an effort to disrupt
these processes, especially after the Warsaw ghetto uprising in
AprilMay. Glazman refused to go peacefully and was forced by the
Jewish police to exit the ghetto. Suddenly, a group of about fourteen to
seventeen FPO commanders attacked the small group of police and
rescued Glazman, to the cheers of the onlooking ghetto residents. For
a short time, it was the partisan organization, not the Jewish police in the
service of the German authorities, that had control of the streets. After
an intercession by Gens to avoid a threatened assumption of direct
control by the Germans, Glazman agreed to go to Resza under the
protection of Gens and the Jewish police chief Salek Dessler.
56
As Kruk
remarked: Today has an absolutely historical meaning for the ghetto. It
was the rst contest between the not-yet-dead ghetto society and the
empty hollowness of the ghetto rulers. The street said that the police are
undermined. The danger that the disagreements inside the ghetto will
explode the ghetto hovers over everyone.
57
Yet, in contrast to Warsaw, the ghetto did not explode. Why should
this have been the case? Subsequent events were to provide the answer.
On July 9, in preparation for the liquidation of the ghetto and the
54
Tushnet 1972, 179.
55
Kruk 2002, 580.
56
Ibid., 57374.
57
Ibid., 575.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 301
transport of residents to work camps in Estonia, shooting at Ponar, or
mass murder at Majdanek, the FPO commander, Wittenberg, was
arrested as ordered by the Germans. Upon being apprehended while
attending a meeting with Gens at his invitation, Wittenberg was freed
from Jewish police custody by members of the FPO. Kittel issued an
ultimatum that, if Wittenberg was not given up to the ghetto authorities,
the ghetto itself would be liquidated. Instead of rising in revolt, the
panicked residents descended on the FPO demanding that Wittenberg
be surrendered.
58
Gens himself incited the residents with his slogan 1 or
20,000, meaning that, if Wittenberg were to escape, then all 20,000
residents would be murdered in reprisal. As Benjamin Harshav describes
the scene: Underworld characters and Jewish police, masses of ghetto
Jews besieged partisan headquarters with screams: We want to live! The
Germans were staying out of it. For the partisans, it made no sense to
start the uprising then and there because that would mean ghting the
Jews rather than the Germans. In a terrible bind, the partisan leadership
decided to let Wittenberg go alone to the Gestapo. He apparently got
hold of a cyanide capsule and committed suicide the same day.
59
Afterwards, the FPO decided to send its membership in small groups
to the forests where together they fought the Germans until the end of
the war. The ghetto itself was liquidated in four waves, between August
and September.
60
The remaining FPO members engaged the Germans in
combat on September 1 and then ed the ghetto. By September 24, the
ghetto was no more.
61
Gens himself was shot on September 14 by the
Gestapo chief, Neugebauer.
62
Comparisons among the three ghettos
Clearly the Vilna ghetto response to the Wittenberg affair was crucial, for
the FPO leadership decided against the revolt upon perceiving the mood of
the majority. But why was this mood different from that in Warsaw the
previous April? The Glazman episode as a precursor may be telling, just as
the January combat between the Z

OB and the Germans was decisive for

the April uprising in Warsaw. Whereas the Germans were directly
engaged in combat with the Z

OB, only the Jewish police were attacked

by the FPO. Germans died in the Warsaw encounter, and it appeared as
if Jews were saved from deportation by the Jewish ghters. No one was
58
Ibid., 585, 592.
59
Harshav 2002, xlvi.
60
Ibid.
61
Kruk 2002, 592.
62
Tushnet 1972, 196.
302 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
killed in the Vilna incident, and it even appeared as if the confrontation was
futile because of Genss intercession and the exile of Glazman. Moreover,
by this time, after the Warsaw uprising, the Germans were sensitized to the
possibility of revolt by a well-armed group, hence the desperate search for
weapons during this later period by the Jewish police at German instiga-
tion, and the attacks on the FPO leadership, especially on Glazman and
Wittenberg.
Perhaps most important, if we seek to understand the absence of
cooperation against a hated enemy, the absence of altruistic punishment
may be decisive. In the January Warsaw combat, not only were Germans
killed, but so were Jews willing to save their people from deportation.
Entire groups of Jewish ghters were annihilated, as we saw. This
example of valor in death, wherein ones own life is sacriced for the
sake of punishing the enemy and promoting the ultimate survival of
ones own group, was abundantly evident in Warsaw.
Although the Warsaw ghetto was liquidated and the preponderance
of Jewish lives was lost, the altruism of the ghters in the Warsaw ghetto
uprising served as an example of heroism and solidarity to the struggling
Jewish community in Palestine. Most of the leadership of the uprising
was Zionist, as were many of the participants. As the East European
Jewish communities were rapidly disappearing in the Nazi death camps,
the future of the Palestinian-Jewish community must have been salient
in the thinking of these Zionists. Such heroic altruistic actions were
absent in Vilna.
Leonard Tushnet comments that all three ghetto leaders were not
only personally ambitious in their efforts to save their ghetto popula-
tions, but were in a way bound up with an altruism amazing under the
circumstances.
63
Certainly Rumkowski and Gens could have saved
themselves, if they so wished. Gens was married to a non-Jew, had
excellent relations with the earlier Gestapo administration, and was
even warned a day earlier about his impending execution by a Nazi
ofcer, Martin Weiss, who took a liking to him.
64
Gens could easily have
escaped to his wifes dwelling or to the forests, where his military
training and native strategic talents would have been invaluable.
Rumkowski was offered the option of remaining in the ghetto with his
wife and adopted son after the vast majority of Jews were deported to
Auschwitz.
65
Both chose death, as did Czerniakow (a suicide) earlier in
the process when he perceived the Germans exterminatory intentions.
63
Ibid., 204.
64
Ibid., 195.
65
Ibid., 61.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 303
Yet none of the three engaged in the altruistic punishment that can yield
societal cooperation in the most grievous circumstances. Perhaps, by his
suicide, Czerniakow attempted to signal his desire to resist the
Germans,
66
but no Germans died in the process, and so active coopera-
tion against them had to wait until the following April.
Yitzhak Zuckerman, one of the few surviving leaders of the April
revolt, concludes that the January revolt made the April revolt possi-
ble.
67
And Yisrael Gutman, perhaps the foremost chronicler of the Jews
of Warsaw during the war period, argues that an analysis of the course
of events leads to the conclusion that the January uprising was an
indispensable step that allowed the ghetto to unite and prepare for the
April revolt.
68
In this fashion, the inequalities and failures of mutual
identication were overcome, cooperation was fostered by the altruistic
punishment of January, and the April revolt was far more stunning in its
eventual impact then even its planners foresaw.
Certainly this revolt, along with other historical instances of Jews
defying the odds and battling far stronger adversaries, enhanced the
resolve of the Palestinian-Jewish community in the immediate after-
math of the war. Not even the combined military might of the surround-
ing Arab states could deter them from establishing the State of Israel.
And many Jewish communities from Europe, the Caucasus, North
Africa, and the Middle East were saved from eventual extinction (by
assimilation or pogrom) through the existence of Israel as a destination
of choice.
Yet the Jews of the odz ghetto survived in far greater numbers than
those of any other ghetto. In addition to the 877 people who were left to
clean up the ghetto and avoided death because of the hasty departure of
the Germans as the Russians approached,
69
it is estimated that approxi-
mately 10,000 survived the ghettos liquidation.
70
The enormous num-
ber of Jews at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 (mainly from Hungary)
led to the deportation of some odz Jews to non-exterminatory labor
camps, thereby increasing the probability of their survival. In reality,
only the herculean efforts of Rumkowski, the parvenu, alleged pedo-
phile, and dictator, kept the ghetto so productive for the Germans that it
became the last place in Poland with a signicant number of Jews, even
more than a year after the liquidation of the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos.
66
Ibid., 130.
67
Quoted in Gutman 1982, 320.
68
Ibid.
69
Dobroszycki 1984, lxvi.
70
Adelson and Lapides 1989, 493.
304 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
It is a great irony that Rumkowskis efforts to save a community led to
the salvation of a not insignicant number of individual Jews, whereas
the deaths of the Warsaw ghetto ghters increased the likelihood of
Jewish communal continuity in Israel. Perhaps their recognition of the
possibility that Jews in Palestine or elsewhere might not be willing to
ght for Jewish continuity without the precedent of intense resistance
during the Holocaust led the Zionists to be among the earliest and most
prominent leaders of the ghetto ghting organizations. If Jews them-
selves would not ght for Jewish honor, then who would was a question
that those young men and women likely posed to themselves. Their
answer was found in battles on the streets of Warsaw and in the forests
near Vilna. Rumkowski, despite his Zionist sympathies, never really
asked that question. Because of his efforts, though, there are Jews from
the o dz ghetto who, to this day, credit their survival to his dictatorial
policies.
71
Conclusion: the role of altruistic punishment
In the nal analysis, did inequality within the ghettos have a major
impact on the differential outcomes in the three cases? Certainly the
odz ghetto with its large inux of German and Central European Jews
experienced the largest gaps between socioeconomic categories, and the
Vilna ghetto experienced the smallest such disparities. Yet the non-
economic failures of mutual identication probably were more salient.
Wealth differentials can affect the tendencies of people to identify with
each other but, as in the Vilna ghetto, political identication was at least
as important, if not more so. The failure of the Yiddishist Bund to
identify with the Zionist and Communist factions comprising the FPO
was crucial in the consequent failure of the FPO to encompass the
entirety of the potential opposition to the Germans. Vilna was home
to YIVO (Yiddisher Visenshaftlekher Institut), one important indicator
of the importance of Yiddish language and culture in Vilna. Another was
the acronym, FPO, that stood for the Yiddish name for the partisan
organization, in contrast to the Polish Z

OB and Z

ZW in Warsaw. Had
the Bund joined the FPO as the organizational representative of
Yiddishism, it is possible that a signicantly larger number of people
would have been sympathetic to the FPO and supported a revolt within
the ghetto at the critical moment.
71
Ibid.
O N P O S S I B I L I T Y O F R E V O L T A N D A L T R U I S T I C P U N I S H M E N T 305
What is clear, though, is that the massive inequalities in odz com-
bined with (or enabling via atomization) Rumkowskis dictatorial poli-
cies virtually precluded any possibility of revolt. It is also clear that the
altruistic punishment of the January battles in Warsaw facilitated the
unity that made possible the later general uprising in April. No such
facilitating event occurred in Vilna. Whether the emergence of wide-
spread political identication thereby incorporating the Vilna Bund in
the FPO could have made a signicant difference is, of course, an open
question.
Our focus on the victims is now complete. To end the overall analysis,
it is necessary to consider exceptions to the patterns identied thus far.
If, for example, it is found that German allies with expanded socio-
economic space did not collaborate with the Germans in the killing of
their Jewish citizenry, as did allies with contracted socioeconomic space
(see chapter 9), then the salience of loss as a progenitor of genocide will
have been reinforced.
306 V I C T I M V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
PART V
Exceptions
15
A dog of a different nature: the Cambodian politicide
Exceptions to the patterns identied thus far are now considered. First, the
Cambodian politicide is contrasted with the genocides of Jews, Armenians,
and Tutsi. This is a matter of some importance because of the frequent
claimthat the Cambodian mass murders between 1975 and 1979 amounted
to genocide. The overall pattern in this instance, however, does not con-
form to that identied in the genocides analyzed in previous chapters.
The succeeding two chapters present cases where genocide was not
committed even where it might have been expected to occur. In the rst
of the two chapters, I examine Bulgaria and Finland as exceptions to the
pattern established in collaborating and perpetrating states in the Nazi
orbit (Italy, Vichy France, and Romania). Territorial expansion prior to
the Holocaust characterized the former two countries, whereas the three
perpetrating states experienced territorial contraction. And in the last
chapter of this part, a major deterrent to genocide, the ethnoreligious or
ideological afnity to the victims on the part of powerful populations or
governments, is suggested. Again, genocide did not take place where it
might have been expected to occur.
Turning to Cambodia, the mass killings in that country during Pol
Pots murderous regime are often categorized with other seemingly
identical instances. Cambodia and Rwanda, for example, are typically
treated as genocides that differ little from each other in essential char-
acteristics. However, the victimization rates for the two countries are
similar only when treated as proportions of the total country population
systematically murdered. Although the mass murders in Cambodia are
frequently categorized as genocide, I argue that in fact genocidal activity
was only a small proportion of the killing and that the vast majority of
Cambodians died in a politicide, substantially different in origin from
the genocides we have been examining. The matter of etiology lies at the
root of my distinction here, not denitional semantics. If we lump the
Cambodian case with other instances of systematized mass murder, then
the sources of all of them become hopelessly muddled.
309
Between April 1975, the date of the victory of the Khmer Rouge over
the Lon Nol government, and January 1979, when the Cambodian
Communist government was toppled by the invading Vietnamese, enor-
mous numbers of people were slaughtered. Ben Kiernan estimates that
1,671,000 residents of Cambodia were killed, or approximately one in
ve Cambodians.
1
Yet, as we shall see, a fundamental difference exists
between Rwanda and Cambodia in regard to the selective exclusivity of
the murders. In Rwanda, the vast preponderance of the murdered was
Tutsi, with a much smaller number of Hutu moderates opposed to the
genocide also having been slaughtered. In Cambodia, the killing ranged
over virtually all sectors of the population. The 70 percent victimization
rate of the Tutsi contrasts sharply with the 20 percent killing rate in
Cambodia. We will see the detailed ideological basis of the Cambodian
killings in contrast to the virtual absence of any articulated ideology
(other than Hamitic origin) in the Rwandan case, or in our other
instances of genocide: the Holocaust and the Armenian case.
Essentially, I argue that genocides stem from a primitive identica-
tion of the collective enemy in Carl Schmitts sense, whereas politi-
cides, at least of the Cambodian variety, are attributable to more detailed
ideological considerations. Further, the Cambodian case falls under the
rubric of state killings, having a particular afnity with earlier practices
in the Soviet Union and China. Indeed, an arc of Communist politicide
can be traced from the western portions of the Soviet Union to China
and on to Cambodia. Not all Communist states participated in extensive
politicide, but the particular circumstances of Cambodia in 1975 lent
themselves to the commission of systematic mass murder. Because an
element of Cambodian state insecurity existed in this period, especially
vis-a` -vis Vietnam, a genocidal element is found in the killing of identi-
ably non-Khmer peoples such as the Vietnamese, who comprised a
small proportion of the total.
To begin with, it is useful to set out the agenda of Pol Pot, the leader of
Democratic Kampuchea (DK) as it was then called, immediately after
taking power. Because of the civil war that raged between 1970 and 1975,
Pol Pot had a great deal of time to consider his options and to formulate
a detailed agenda. According to eyewitness testimony, Pol Pot made
eight points in a special meeting of military and civilian ofcers of the
new regime called for May 20, 1975. They are:
1
Kiernan 1996, 458.
310 E X C E P T I O N S
(1) Evacuate people from all towns.
(2) Abolish all markets.
(3) Abolish Lon Nol regime currency and withhold the revolutionary
currency that had been printed.
(4) Defrock all Buddhist monks and put them to work growing rice.
(5) Execute all leaders of the Lon Nol regime beginning with the top
leaders.
(6) Establish high-level cooperatives throughout the country with com-
munal meals.
(7) Expel the entire Vietnamese minority population.
(8) Dispatch troops to the borders, particularly the Vietnamese border.
2
Most of the subsequent major political events, although occurring at
different times during the next three and a half years, were dictated by
this agenda. When the killing began, one observer identied three
principal categories and their approximate numbers of deaths:
(1) Between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths were attributed to the execution
of Lon Nol regime personnel including family members.
(2) Another murdered cohort, estimated to be as many as 200,000,
consisted of party members caught in the never-ending purges of
the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). A measure of the
extent of these purges is given by the fact that nearly one-third of
Pol Pots cabinet of 1976 did not survive until early 1979, the end of
Democratic Kampuchea.
3
(3) Finally, the greatest proportion of deaths is attributed to the
so-called assertive killings resulting from the formal evacuations
from towns and other resettlements, as well as ethnoreligious mur-
ders. Included in this category are those who died of overwork or
outright starvation.
4
The so-called new people, or those resettled from elsewhere, had the
highest total victimization among the general Khmer population.
Variation in victimization
A breakdown of the number dead in several categories will prove to be
helpful in assessing the etiology of the killings. First, although small in
total numbers, the proportion of ethnic Vietnamese affected stands out
2
Quoted ibid., 55.
3
Chandler 1999, 108.
4
Thion 1993, 16667.
D O G O F A D I F F E R E N T N A T U R E : T H E C A M B O D I A N P O L I T I C I D E 311
at 100 percent. Of the 20,000 ethnic Vietnamese remaining in Cambodia
in 1975, all had been expelled, ed the country, or were murdered by
early 1979. Indeed, as early as the end of September 1975, 150,000 ethnic
Vietnamese residents of Cambodia had been expelled to Vietnam.
5
Crucially, and in contrast to other societal categories, no difference in
victimization rate is found between urban and rural Vietnamese.
Despite the fact that ethnic Chinese were virtually all urban in origin,
anathema for the Khmer Rouge, 50 percent died during this period.
Next in order are the Lao (40 percent), Thai (40 percent), and Cham
(36 percent), all rural,
6
with the distinguishing feature of the Cham
being their Muslim faith. The vast majority of Cham spoke Khmer, and
the two peoples were linked by language, lifestyle, a long shared exis-
tence and a good mutual understanding.
7
The Cham also shared with
the Khmer a history of conict with the Vietnamese, which nevertheless
did not compensate for their alien belief system. Among the New or
resettled people, often urban in origin, the victimization rate for Khmer
was 25 percent, whereas among the Base or in situ population it was
15 percent.
Victimization rates for Vietnamese, Thai, and Lao on the one hand,
and Chinese on the other, are revealing, for they point to two principal
characteristics of the mass murder. A clear genocidal component existed
in the killing of ethnic minorities and indeed conforms generally to the
three principal cases considered earlier. The Vietnamese clearly consti-
tuted a threat to Cambodian state security both historically and in the
perception of the CPK. Historic Vietnamese domination was to be
avoided at all costs. Potential allies of the Vietnamese such as the Lao
and Thai also suffered. Most ethnic Vietnamese were expelled by 1975;
those that remained, often intermarried with Khmer, were murdered.
The ethnic Chinese, almost all urban, were killed not so much for their
ethnicity but for their presumed beliefs and socioeconomic character-
istics, assumed to be incompatible with the new Kampuchea.
Genocide of the Vietnamese
Difculties with Vietnam began almost immediately after the Khmer
Rouge victory in April 1975, when several Vietnamese-held islands in
the Gulf of Siam were attacked by the Cambodian forces.
8
Tensions with
5
Kiernan 1996, 107.
6
Ibid., 458.
7
Ner, quoted ibid., 256.
8
Chandler 1999, 21920.
312 E X C E P T I O N S
the Vietnamese were highlighted in September 1976 in a dispute within
the CPK over whether the partys origins were to be traced back to 1951
when the Indochinese Communist Party was founded essentially
under Vietnamese tutelage, or 1960 when a special congress was called
in Phnom Penh, which named Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, among others, to
the partys Central Committee.
9
Those who favored the latter date were
supporting the independence of Cambodia from the perceived threaten-
ing hegemony of Vietnam in the former French Indochina. That threat
was accentuated by the treaty of cooperation between Vietnam and Laos
signed in July 1977.
10
Cambodia appeared to be surrounded by poten-
tially hostile forces. Soon after, in September 1977, the Vietnamese
congratulated Pol Pot on his speech announcing the existence of the
CPK and its relation to Cambodian history. Vietnamese radio reported
that the Vietnamese always considered their special relationship
with . . . Kampuchea as their sacred cause.
11
As David Chandler
notes, with friends like that, Pol Pot may have mused, what would
Cambodia do for enemies?
12
The situation deteriorated very quickly thereafter. In response to
repeated incursions of DK forces into Vietnamese territory and the
refusal of DK to negotiate with Vietnam, a major invasion by
Vietnamese troops was mounted in late 1977. Most returned to
Vietnam within several months, taking with them Cambodians who
could be groomed for future governance in a Vietnamese-dominated
Cambodia. Conict continued throughout 1978. Chinese diplomatic
support of Cambodia was coupled with a Soviet like-minded effort on
behalf of Vietnam. At around this time, Deng Xiaoping referred to the
Vietnamese as the Hooligans of the East.
13
In December 1978, the
Vietnamese mounted a major offensive that led to the end of
Democratic Kampuchea in January 1979.
Why the unabated, ultimately suicidal, hostility of the Khmer Rouge
toward Vietnam? Had not the Vietnamese fully supported the
Cambodian Communists successful campaign to overthrow Lon Nol?
Here, of course, lay the not-so-hidden threat of Vietnamese dominance
in league with the Soviets. And the Chinese were prepared to give full
diplomatic support (but not the requested troops) to the Cambodians.
14
Yet such incessant hostility, including the thorough extinction of all
9
Carney 1989b, 18.
10
Chandler 1999, 220.
11
Emphasis added by Chandler; quoted ibid., 136.
12
Ibid.
13
Quoted in Chandler 2000, 223.
14
Morris 1999.
D O G O F A D I F F E R E N T N A T U R E : T H E C A M B O D I A N P O L I T I C I D E 313
remaining Vietnamese in the country after the earlier expulsion,
requires further explanation. We nd it in the person of Ieng Sary, the
deputy prime minister for foreign affairs.
15
He was born in Kampuchea
Krom, essentially the Mekong River region of Vietnam, was a Khmer
Krom ethnic Khmer originating in Vietnam and actually had to learn
the Khmer language. According to Marie Martin:
The fact that Ieng Sary was a native of Kampuchea Krom certainly
inuenced his conduct of foreign policy, above all toward Vietnam. If
the Khmers organized their rst guerrilla units in accordance with the
advice and aid of the Vietnamese, Ieng Sary remained distrustful and
waited for the hour of vengeance to come: the Vietnamese of the north
and south had to pay for the suffering they had imposed on the Khmer
krom [sic] over the last twenty years. The ease with which the Americans
abandoned the game politically, the failure of the Khmer republicans, and
the submission of the inhabitants at the entrance of the yothea [Khmer
Rouge soldiers] into Phnom Penh caused the leaders to lose what little
sense of proportion they had. Ieng Sary was able to give free rein to his
desire for vengeance and to convince the victorious Pol Pot without
difculty that the reconquest of Kampuchea Krom was within striking
distance.
16
Not only was Ieng Sary able to implement his vision of an annexed
Kampuchea Krom through his own ministerial position, but he had also
named his nephew, Hong, as the secretary general of foreign affairs.
17
By
1978 Ieng Sary himself was now fully in charge of international relations
as he was the only deputy prime minister for foreign affairs, having
relegated his colleague, Son Sen, formerly also a deputy prime minister,
to a ministerial position.
18
Here, we nd, as in chapter 7, the domain of losses Vietnamese
domination of Kampuchea Krom operating to increase risk accept-
ance, even in what would appear to be a fruitless venture. Vietnam was
attacked; ethnic Vietnamese along the border were murdered as part of a
process of risk minimization. After the late 1977 decisive Vietnamese
defeat of the Khmer Rouge forces,
19
even non-Vietnamese residents of
the east closest to Vietnam would be subject to Khmer Rouge butchery.
But, after the defeat, even more important from our perspective is the
extension of the killing of remaining Vietnamese, part-Vietnamese, and
Khmer Krom throughout Cambodia.
20
In other words, a close parallel
15
Carney 1989a, 101.
16
Emphasis in original; M. Martin 1994, 212.
17
Ibid., 162.
18
Carney 1989a, 102.
19
Morris 1999, 102.
20
Kiernan 1996, 12324.
314 E X C E P T I O N S
to our cases of genocide is found here in the imprudent eliminationist
DK behavior vis-a` -vis the Vietnamese. Risk acceptance in the aggressive
military behavior at the border was to be coupled with the risk mini-
mization of the killings of ethnic Vietnamese at the border, and even-
tually loss compensation associated with the mass killings of a
thoroughgoing genocide of the ethnic Vietnamese.
And if this was the sum total of the mass killing in Cambodia, then we
could easily place Cambodia (especially the annihilation of the
Vietnamese) alongside the Holocaust, the Armenians, and the Tutsi as
an exemplar of genocide. But, as we know, this is not the case. The
murdered 10,000 Vietnamese, even including the additional residents of
the east murdered with them, amount to only a small fraction of the
total. Other sources to be found in Communist ideology and behavior
are far more relevant. One immediate source is to be found in the
Chinese Great Leap Forward of 195861 and the later Cultural
Revolution of the mid-1960s.
The Communist models
China in the late 1950s and Cambodia in 1975 faced similar problems.
Both were largely peasant societies with enormous aspirations to indus-
trialize along the lines of Communist ideology and rhetoric. To accom-
plish this goal quickly and at the same time maintain control over a
highly reluctant and potentially seditious peasantry, collectivization was
introduced. One observer commented on a speech by Pol Pot to stu-
dents in an educational seminar. He was the only one to speak during
two days. He wanted the country to be rst in all domains and to become
the model for all nonaligned countries; he wanted agricultural yields
to be higher than Japans. He told us that Cambodia was an under-
developed country, that it had to wake up quickly, make progress, a great
leap.
21
As in Cambodia later in the 1970s, new Chinese communes were
established by pouring millions of city people into them. The traditional
village as the hallmark of rural China was to be abandoned in favor of the
communes. Work was to be organized collectively; no longer would the
peasant have his or her own plot of land. Living was on a communal
basis with common dining rooms. Also to be found later in Cambodia
was a reliance on barefoot doctors, often children with no knowledge
21
Quoted in M. Martin 1994, 202.
D O G O F A D I F F E R E N T N A T U R E : T H E C A M B O D I A N P O L I T I C I D E 315
of medicine but who nevertheless possessed the folk wisdom of the
people. Estimated deaths from starvation in these ill-advised trans-
formations during 195962 in China run as high as 20 million people.
22
An even earlier Communist antecedent is to be found in the mini-
mum of 6 million dead in Stalins collectivization efforts of 192933.
23
Here, too, famine was an essential reason for the deaths. When famine
did not eliminate the recalcitrant Ukrainian farmer and kulak land-
owner, opponents of the collectivization effort were shot immediately
or deported to regions from which few returned. Exposure to the
Stalinist French Communist Party during the early 1950s likely inu-
enced Pol Pots later policy choices.
24
The Cultural Revolution provided the next model for Pol Pots
revolution. Indeed, he visited China in 1966 just as the Cultural
Revolution was in full swing.
25
Kenneth Quinn identies several char-
acteristics of the Cultural Revolution that were found in Cambodia a
decade later.
26
A rst similarity can be found in the emphasis on youth
purity, and its critical role in the revolution. The Chinese Red Guards,
the guarantors of Maos virtually perpetual revolution, were almost all
very young and poorly educated. They were to be preferred to the
tainted and especially Westernized older people, frequently urban,
who simply could not be trusted.
In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge were young, poorly educated, and
frequently illiterate, yet precisely because of these characteristics were far
less infected by the microbes that haunted the Democratic
Kampuchean imagination. According to a CPK report issued in 1976:
The heat of the peoples revolution and the democratic revolution were
not enough . . . The level of peoples struggle and class struggle meant
that [when] we searched for evil microbes inside the party, we couldnt
nd them. They were able to hide. Now that we are advancing on an all-
embracing socialist revolution . . . in the party, in the army, among the
people, we can nd the evil microbes. They emerge, pushed out by the
true nature of the socialist revolution.
27
The purity that was so valued by the Khmer Rouge was to be found only
in the young, or alternatively in the hill peoples found in the northeast of
the country. These poor minority peoples, many of whom could not
22
Quinn 1989a, 225.
23
Conquest 1986, 303.
24
Jackson 1989b, 249.
25
Chandler 1999, 7173.
26
Quinn 1989a, 22631.
27
Quoted in Chandler 1990, 169.
316 E X C E P T I O N S
write Cambodian, were highly valued by the Khmer Rouge, especially
during their sojourn in that region while ghting the Lon Nol forces.
The Khmer Rouge considered the hill tribes to be pure elements and,
fascinated by their social organization, decided to apply the tribal social
model to all Cambodia.
28
As one might expect, their victimization
rate was the lowest of all groups, sharing this fortunate circumstance
(15 percent) only with the rural Khmer Base People, those not relo-
cated from other cities or regions.
29
A second shared characteristic is found in the attack on vested inter-
ests. Four groups in China were targeted by the Cultural Revolution:
(1) The majority of rural cadre[s] who had reached accommodations
with the peasants or were afraid of losing their positions;
(2) Low-ranking ofcials whose loyalty was to their bosses;
(3) Ordinary peasants with kinship ties or other ties to village leaders,
which gave them a favored position;
(4) Peasants with an economic stake in the status quo, such as the rich
peasants who by 1962 were reemerging in the villages as the
governments emphasis turned to increased production.
30
Bureaucratization, kinship, and other forms of nonrevolutionary
association were, in Maos view, strangling the Communist revolution.
To overcome them, young cadres from far regions were relocated into
communes, factories, or universities. These strangers would not in any
way be subservient to the current structure of deference. Accordingly,
they could freely attack the institutional infrastructure.
In Cambodia, too, similar processes were initiated by the CPK. As
early as 1971, well before the nal victory over the Lon Nol forces,
unknown young cadres (political leaders) were appearing in conquered
southwest Cambodia to purge local cadres and then implement the new
Khmer Rouge policies. In June 1973, these cadres destroyed existing
hamlets and villages and upon their ashes built the new communes.
Already in this early process we see the systematic relocation of
Cambodians. These communes appeared to be fairly close imitations
of those established in the Chinese Great Leap Forward.
Third, politics were primary in both revolutions. And here, as we
shall see, lies the core of the politicide. Apparently the slogan of
the Chinese revolution was better red than well read.
31
Expertise,
28
M. Martin 1994, 209.
29
Kiernan 1996, 458.
30
T. Robinson 1971, 1617, quoted in Quinn 1989a, 227.
31
Quinn 1989a, 227.
D O G O F A D I F F E R E N T N A T U R E : T H E C A M B O D I A N P O L I T I C I D E 317
the sine qua non of modern Westernized society, was to be eschewed in
favor of political views thoroughly consonant with those of the revolu-
tion. In 1957, Mao delivered a speech titled On Contradictions, in
which he cited the supposed contradiction between the intellectuals
and the peasants as the chief obstacle standing in the way of the
revolution. Those with the expertise, or the intellectuals, were too
prone to command attention, thereby emerging as a leadership class
with its own interests, frequently at odds with those of the revolution.
In China, this elite emerged prior to the revolutionary transformations
desired by Mao. As a consequence, during both the Great Leap Forward
and the later Cultural Revolution, administrators, managers, and tech-
nicians were sent to the countryside to be replaced by untrained youths
who would presumably succeed at their jobs through political zeal and
revolutionary steadfastness.
To avoid this problem, Pol Pot decided to short-circuit this process
and, immediately after seizing power, preemptively send urban popula-
tions directly to the rural areas where they could do no damage to the
revolution. Eventually, many died from malnutrition, disease, starva-
tion, or outright execution. Haste was required in order to prevent any
entrenchment of urban and Westernized elites in the new bureaucracy.
Haste also was required to place the revolution on a rm footing prior to
the eventual confrontation with Vietnam. Despite Vietnamese reluc-
tance to go to war, especially after their quarter-century of war against
Japan and the Western powers, the Khmer Rouge fully expected such a
war of domination to take place shortly after their victory over the Lon
Nol forces. Thus, avoidance of limitations of the Chinese experience and
the Khmer Rouge perceptions of a threatening environment conspired
to yield the hasty emptying of the cities and rapid communalization of
the countryside. Both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution failed in their objectives. With a much smaller and therefore
manipulable political stage and avoidance of the problems encountered
by Mao, the Khmer Rouge thought they could achieve success in both
revolutionary transformation and maintenance of their sovereignty.
A simultaneous anti-urban and anti-Western orientation permeated
the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. This is the fourth
element of commonality between the Chinese and Cambodian revolu-
tions. The Chinese revolution exhibited a strong preference for com-
munalization of the countryside and a consequent deemphasis on the
importance of cities. At the same time, Chinese independence from the
West and ultimately even from the revisionist Soviet Union was to be
318 E X C E P T I O N S
vigorously maintained. The Chinese revolution was to be untainted by
foreign inuences.
In Cambodia too, the anti-urban and anti-Western sentiments were
to be strongly manifested. And where these policies were to be present in
Chinese formulation, they were to be exaggerated, perhaps even carica-
tured in the Cambodian revolution. Cities were to be emptied almost
immediately after victory, and the degree of isolation of DK was extra-
ordinary. Diplomatic relations were maintained only with China and
North Korea, themselves international isolates (though, in the Chinese
case, not to the same degree as the others).
32
The world of Cambodian
communism was small and was restricted only to the Asian models that
were worthy of emulation. No other societies were worthy of even
minimal contact.
Finally, individual incentives were eschewed in favor of collectivism
in both the Chinese and Cambodian revolutions. Rewards were to be
collective in both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution,
as well as in Cambodia.
A particular form of collectivism was favored during the Cultural
Revolution. This was the so-called Tai Chai system, which favored
rewards for communal effort instead of any to be bestowed on indivi-
duals.
33
Mao himself wrote of this successful experience in inaugurating
a Learn from Dazhai (Tai Chai) campaign.
34
This was to be the model
for the Cambodian communes in their collective efforts to improve their
agricultural output. A red ag honor program was instituted to
reward communes which had performed in the honored Tai Chai fash-
ion. Indeed, in late 1977, a Chinese Politburo member, Chen Yonggui,
visited Cambodia with the purpose of educating the Cambodians about
the accomplishments of Tai Chai.
35
Tachai was symbolic of the possi-
bilities which the 700 million people of China could realize if they would
but bend their backs and their collective will to the task.
36
He toured
agricultural sites, always accompanied by Pol Pot, lecturing the Khmer
about the achievements of the agricultural work brigades in northern
China under his supervision in the 1960s.
37
Yet despite these profound similarities and the evidence of close
contact between Chinese and Cambodian leaders, there were differ-
ences. In the nal analysis, the Chinese revolution simply was less
draconian than the Cambodian. The expulsion of urbanites from cities
32
Ibid., 229.
33
Ibid.
34
Kiernan 1996, 354.
35
Milton and Milton 1976, 74.
36
Chandler 1999, 14041.
37
Ibid., 233, n. 7.
D O G O F A D I F F E R E N T N A T U R E : T H E C A M B O D I A N P O L I T I C I D E 319
was far less complete in China than in Cambodia. And most important,
at least for our purposes here, the victimization rate was far lower. Pol
Pot undoubtedly observed this relatively benign behavior and nally
came to the conclusion that this Chinese restraint, along with other
factors, had led to the failure of the Cultural Revolution. The sheer size
of the country made a sweeping revolution envisioned by Mao more
difcult to accomplish successfully. Additionally, Chinese leaders such
as Zhou Enlai or Deng Xiaoping exercised moderating inuences
on Mao.
Cambodia, on the other hand, was a much smaller country.
Resistance to authority that could be made effective by distance from
the capital or living in remote mountainous regions simply was far
less likely to ourish within the connes of the small Cambodian
state. Chinese social and economic institutions also had a greater
durability historically than did those of the Khmer; in contrast, few
such moderating inuences existed to affect the DK central leadership.
To minimize the possibility of failure, the total emptying of cities and
the unprecedented use of violence were tactics chosen by a united
Khmer leadership. And here the Stalinist model was available; the
similarities between Pol Pots policies and those of Stalin are many
and important.
In contrast to the Chinese experience, both the Cambodian and Soviet
authorities were more narrow in their classication of people amenable
to reeducation and consequent inclusion in the new society. According
to Alexander Dallin and George Brandover, whereas the Maoist stra-
tegy denes the out-group those who, in Bolshevik jargon, are
destined for the garbage heap of history so narrowly as to leave open
the possibility of reeducating most class-alien elements, the Stalinist
variant is marked . . . by a far narrower denition of the in-group
those who can be trusted as and those who can be made over into good
Communists.
38
As a consequence, in the Soviet Union entire categories of people were
marked for elimination. The kulaks or those deemed to be landowners by
virtue of owning small plots of land and perhaps employing a worker or two,
were deported or eliminated in situ, as the collectivization process advanced
in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A reasonable estimate of the number of
dead in the dekulakization process is the 6.5 million given by Robert
Conquest.
39
Added to this should be the 7 million dead in the famine
38
Dallin and Breslauer 1970, 7.
39
Conquest 1986, 306.
320 E X C E P T I O N S
associated with the collectivization process.
40
This process is comparable to
that imposed on the vast number of New people and others victimized in
the Cambodian revolution.
Yet another similarity is to be found in the antecedents of both Stalin
and Pol Pots campaigns of terror. The period of the Russian Revolution
and Civil War (191723) was extraordinarily murderous. One estimate,
including decit in births as the result of the mass murders and starva-
tion, rises to 23 million. Another estimate actually yields 26 million
losses. The brutality of the revolutionary and Civil War period was
exceptional. Here, too, we see famine (approximately 5 million dead)
that would be repeated in somewhat different form less than a decade
later.
41
Although the killings were not as coordinated as they would be
later under Stalins reign, nonetheless the precedent of vast numbers
killed, whether by design or happenstance, would certainly predispose
the later regime to indulge in a similar level of brutality and neglect.
The Cambodian experience prior to Pol Pots victory in April 1975 was
also exceptionally morbid. Between 1970 and 1975, large numbers of
Cambodians died either as the direct result of combat in the civil war,
famine, or disease, or as a consequence of the beginning of hamlet
destruction and replacement by communes even prior to the Khmer
Rouge victory. Even at the height of the US bombing campaign of 1973,
itself a contributor to the mass destruction and CPK recruitment,
42
the
communization process was proceeding rapidly in those areas already
conquered by the Cambodian Communists.
43
In a sense, both Stalin and
Pol Pot directly coordinated processes of mass destruction that in signi-
cant ways aped their own chaotic but no less destructive precedents. In
Stalins case, in comparison with Pol Pots, the preceding period was the
more deadly of the two. Nevertheless, Pol Pot had not only his own
previctory period to draw upon, but also Stalins own policies in the
1930s as a Communist model. Both Stalin and Pol Pot moved to collectivize
with great speed and determination once they had the reins of power. In
this too, they showed a basic similarity.
Purges
Because the Chinese were more optimistic in their expectations as to the
consequences of reeducation, they paid a price. According to Dallin and
Breslauer:
40
Ibid.
41
Pipes 1993, 50809.
42
Kiernan 1996, 22.
43
Chandler 1999, 100.
D O G O F A D I F F E R E N T N A T U R E : T H E C A M B O D I A N P O L I T I C I D E 321
The Chinese leadership failed to eliminate potentially rival elites before
embarking on its major mobilization tasks . . . Many who were written
off as members of out-groups in Russia and Eastern Europe were in
China allowed to survive . . . And, once the Maoist wholesale effort at
restructuring human attitudes had visibly failed, in key spots within the
society there remained not only the unreformed (more precisely, the
un-thought-reformed) members of in-groups but also the alienated
survivors whose counterparts elsewhere in the Communist world would
have been purged.
44
Accordingly, to avoid this problem, Pol Pot, as we saw, decided to purge
the party to get at the microbes still persisting within its ranks. The
model was already Stalinist. According to one estimate, by 1938,
80 percent of the Central Committee members of 1934 in the Soviet
Union had been arrested. Almost all of those arrested were murdered in
captivity.
45
This wholesale elimination of potential opposition, both real
and imaginary, led to the following: By 1939, some 80 percent of its
[the partys] members had joined after the midpoint of the decade, and
hence were products of the new socialism, wedded both psychologically
and ideologically to its achievements and personally beholden to its
master builder.
46
Apparently, in the new Cambodia of the late 1970s, as in the case of
the Soviet Union of the late 1930s, there was signicant opposition to
regime policies emerging even from the depths of the ruling party. And
in Cambodia the opposition was virulent enough to lead to an
attempted coup in September 1976. Alarmed by the extent of violence
in revolutionary DK, military leaders and senior party ofcials, among
them Hou Yuon, a former minister of the interior and cooperation,
planned to overthrow the existing regime. Pol Pot was to be assassinated
by poison and a new leadership installed. The plot was foiled; its after-
math included the rst of the great purges that followed in 1977. All
party leaders, governmental ofcials, and military leaders associated
with the plot were hunted down. Hou Yuon was executed, as were
other senior ofcials, including their wives, children, and other close
family members. More than 16,000 dossiers on victims were found,
including 1,200 pictures of children.
47
The purge was then extended
beyond the connes of ofcialdom. In one district, of the 70,000
44
Dallin and Breslauer 1970, 7980.
45
Mann 1997, 153.
46
Malia 1999, 307.
47
Quinn 1989b, 198.
322 E X C E P T I O N S
residents, 40,000 were claimed to be traitors and were dealt with
accordingly.
48
A second coup attempt was initiated by Cambodian elements sympa-
thetic to the Vietnamese leadership in Hanoi, apparently at its instiga-
tion. Beginning in late 1977 or early 1978, a second purge was initiated
in which all ofcials and others suspected of Vietnamese sympathies
were eliminated, among them Von Vet, the vice premier responsible for
economic policy. As before, the party organization, military structure,
and governmental ranks were heavily depleted by the violent purges. In
one district in Battambang Province, a district chief was removed,
followed by his replacement within the period of one year. Reportedly
they were both killed as enemies of the state. Political commissars also
were among those murdered. The extent of the purges even led true Pol
Pot supporters to side with the Vietnamese in the forthcoming invasion
because of fears for their safety.
49
Summary comparisons
Summarizing the etiology of events in Cambodia between 1975 and
1978, Kenneth Quinn probably put it best when he stated that: In
short, Pol Pot was implementing Maos plan with Stalins methods.
50
Serge Thion categorized the motives of the killings in more detail:
Generally speaking, people were persecuted under DK because of what
they believed, or were supposed by security organs to believe, and because
of family links with those suspected of harboring wrong beliefs or
thoughts detrimental to the state. Killings based on racist hatred involved
only the small number of Vietnamese residents left after the May 1975
evacuation and the wanton murdering of Vietnamese farmers in the raids
across the border in 19771978 . . . Chinese and Sino-Khmers were not
murdered as such, but as traders and capitalists in the greatest need of
reformation, killed mostly by hard labor.
51
The core of the motivation, then, was belief or presumed belief, and the
low probability of successfully reeducating certain categories of people.
This stands in stark contrast to the unyielding decision to massacre all
Jews, Armenians, and Tutsi based on racial or ethnoreligious char-
acteristics. Religious conversion could not help the hunted Jews, or the
Armenians except in the infrequent instances of young and mostly
48
Ibid., 200.
49
Ibid., 20607.
50
Quinn 1989a, 236.
51
Thion 1993, 172.
D O G O F A D I F F E R E N T N A T U R E : T H E C A M B O D I A N P O L I T I C I D E 323
attractive girls who could be taken into Muslim households as servants,
concubines, or in other capacities that required, of course, conversion to
Islam. The only Tutsi who managed to survive the killing in Rwanda
were those who hid themselves effectively (or were hidden), or who
masked their ethnicity and even in some cases participated in the
murder of their own relatives. Victimization rates in all three instances
of genocide ranged between 66 and 70 percent. The 20 percent victimi-
zation rate in Cambodia is much more in keeping with the scripted mass
murders initiated by Stalin and Mao.
324 E X C E P T I O N S
16
Dogs that didnt bark I: realpolitik
and the absence of loss
In order to establish valid causal inference, instances must be found
where genocide might be expected to occur, but did not. Theoretically,
the national experience of loss and the demands of imprudent realpo-
litik, especially unnecessary risk minimization, are suggested to lead to
genocide. If even one of these explanatory components is absent, then
genocide also should be absent. The following two chapters explore
these themes.
In this chapter, I argue that the absence of loss may be sufcient to
avert genocide. Thus, the Bulgarian and Finnish experiences of territor-
ial expansion at the start of World War II are contrasted with the
territorial loss and contraction experienced by the genocidal and
perpetrating states examined in the preceding chapters. Specically,
the pre-genocide histories of Germany, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, the
Hutu-led Rwandan state, Italy, Vichy France, and Romania entail
the experience of loss, while those of Bulgaria and Finland are associated
with gain. At the same time, the genocidal and perpetrating states were
complicit in the mass murder of their own citizenry, while Bulgaria and
Finland refused to enter that abyss. Germany, Austria, Italy, Vichy
France, and Romania also demonstrated very different behaviors before
and after their loss experiences.
In chapter 17, the second chapter treating instances in which poten-
tial genocide did not occur, I examine the importance of the afnity
condition in preventing genocide. That is, even when other facilitating
conditions exist, the presence of afne populations or governments
(ethnoreligiously similar or ideologically sympathetic) serves to dimin-
ish the probability of genocide. Chapter 17 examines the consequences
of a necessary minimization of risk in order to maximize security of
the state. If, for example, identication of defectors (such as the
Jews) requires their removal in order to maximize state security, at
the same time, the risk of removal itself to the perpetrating state
should not be too great. The afne population or government serves a
325
protective function via the implicit or explicit threat of retaliation
against the genocidal state. It is this afnity condition that will be
explored in the succeeding chapter. In this later chapter, Nazi
Germany is examined before and after the invasion of the Soviet
Union, and the Ottoman Empire in its differing behaviors toward
Armenians and Greeks. These analyses are followed by explorations of
the behaviors of nonperpetrating states that might otherwise have been
inclined to genocidal behavior: late eighteenth-century Poland, the
British in Ireland in 191621, and, briey, the Israelis in Intifada II
(2000present).
Bulgaria
Bulgaria illustrates the inuence of prudent realpolitik at the highest
levels of decision making and the absence of the impact of loss.
Additionally, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church protested even the earliest
introduction of anti-Jewish legislation. The demands of any sort of
realpolitik at this time could be outed by the Bulgarian church hier-
archy because, in contrast to the Vatican (see chapter 10), an indepen-
dent state-like existence simply did not exist for the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church. Neither, of course, did it exist in France at the time of the
French Roman Catholic protests against the deportations.
Prudent realpolitik nevertheless was evident in the Bulgarian govern-
mental decision to propitiate Nazi Germany in the hopes of immediate
gain. And these hopes were realized. On February 15, 1940, the German-
educated and strongly Germanophile Bogdan Filov was appointed pre-
mier by King Boris III,
1
replacing the earlier moderately pro-Western
Georgi Kyoseivanov. Also appointed was the new interior minister,
Petar Gabrovski, a former member of a leading Bulgarian fascist
organization, the Ratniks (Guardians). Between August and December,
the Law for the Defense of the Nation was prepared in the National
Assembly and ofcially promulgated on January 23, 1941.
2
The lawdened
precisely who was a Jew and proceeded to limit Jewish participation in the
professions, property ownership, and even places of residence.
3
During this
period, the Germans interceded on behalf of the Bulgarians in Vienna on
September 7, 1940, at which time the Bulgarians received southern
Dobrudja from Romania.
4
In March 1941, Bulgaria formerly adhered
to the Axis Powers and, with German permission, assumed control of
1
Oren 1968, 92.
2
Ibid., 93.
3
Todorov 2001, 4.
4
Chary 1972, 19.
326 E X C E P T I O N S
Thrace and Macedonia.
5
As Nissan Oren comments: In the main, the Law
for the Protection of the Nation was to pave the way for the fast developing
rapprochement with Germany and solidify Bulgarias position within
the Axis.
6
King Boris III, virtually the absolute authority since 1934, actually
suggested the Law of the Defense of the Nation, remarking that such
legislation had been imposed in Romania, Hungary, and even France.
7
As Frederick Chary indicates: If alliance with the Reich meant an anti-
Semitic law, Boris knew that Bulgaria must have such a law, although he
tried to make it as mild as possible.
8
Thus, with Nazi Germany in the
political and military ascendancy throughout Europe, Bulgaria, a small,
militarily insignicant country, demanded a prudent realpolitik in its
foreign policy, lest it be overwhelmed by the much stronger European
great power. In that event, the plight of the Jews would be far worse than
the mild application of the Law of the Defense of the Nation. The
territorial rewards were ample and the safeguards were signicant,
especially as Hitler trusted and admired the king, at least in the early
stages of the war.
9
Later in the war, in March 1943 after the massive
German defeat at Stalingrad, Boris responded positively to the plight of
the Jews, effectively preventing their deportation.
How did this state of affairs come about? More precisely, in addition
to the diminishing threat of Nazi Germany and a required corresponding
change in prudent realpolitik, what were the domestic circumstances
that allowed Boris to essentially thwart Hitlers intention to eradicate
Bulgarian Jewry?
The Bulgarian National Assembly is said to have been inuential in
mustering a protest against the deportations that led to their postpone-
ment and ultimate cancellation. Here, a minority of parliamentarians,
although a sizeable group from the governments own party, protested
this operation, never achieving abrogation of the decree, but postponing
it just enough for other political forces to emerge that would render the
temporary permanent.
10
Boris was obviously inuenced by this protest
from a substantial portion of his own partys deputies. But even more
important, and consistent with demands of a prudent realpolitik, the
king needed as much support as possible. He had to convince the
Germans that his decision to stop or delay deportation was the result
5
Todorov 2001, 5.
6
Oren 1968, 93.
7
Quoted in Todorov 2001, 4.
8
Chary 1972, 186.
9
Oren 1968, 91.
10
Chary 1972, 190.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I 327
of a series of strong protests that coming, as they did, from very
inuential circles, could not be ignored.
11
At the same time, recent scholarship has shifted to an emphasis on
one member of the National Assembly in particular, its vice chairman,
Dimitar Peshev. It was he who organized the petition signed by one-
third of the governments own party members. When he heard of a
roundup of Jews in his own electoral district, the town of Kyustendil, he
acted. Attempting to speak to Bogdan Filov, the prime minister, he was
allowed to see the minister of internal affairs, Petar Gabrovski, in charge
of the deportations. Peshev pointed out to Gabrovski that these
unpublicized deportations violated Bulgarian constitutional law;
Gabrovski initially denied any knowledge of this operation. Peshev, his
colleagues Mikhalev and Ikonomov, and other deputies refused to leave
Gabrovskis ofce until all telephone or telegraph contacts had been
made that were necessary to free the Jews who had been arrested.
12
In order to ensure that the arrests would not shortly resume, Peshev
organized the parliamentary petition that ultimately led to his removal
as vice chairman of the National Assembly, but postponed further any
deportation plans to the more distant future.
13
By then, the war would
be nearly over, as Peshev and his colleagues suspected, and even the
thought of such mass killing would be abhorrent.
Nevertheless, not denying the goodness that Tzvetan Todorov attri-
butes to Peshev, this is not the whole story. It is instructive to examine
the manner in which Peshev was informed. When Bulgarians in
Kyustendil heard of the arrests, they quickly made plans to send forty
of their number to the National Assembly in Soa. After deliberation,
they chose only four, all non-Jews, to plead the case of their Jewish
townspeople.
14
Although Peshev had already heard of the arrests
through other avenues, he was heartened by the concern of his non-
Jewish constituents. Thus, in addition to the basic decency of the man
and his supporters in the National Assembly, we must consider the
milieu that made it possible. Why, in contrast to France and Romania,
not to mention Germany, was Bulgaria so free of anti-Semitism that it
could yield Peshevs success?
One answer, of course, is the absence of territorial loss and its
accompanying refugee inux. Without the large number of refugees of
like ethnoreligious identity, sympathy can actually be extended to others
11
Boyadjieff 1989, 140.
12
Todorov 2001, 37.
13
Ibid., 39.
14
Ibid., 910.
328 E X C E P T I O N S
of a different identity, who, through no fault of their own, are subject to
deportation and a probable death. Thus according to Peshev:
As I was trying to understand what was happening and why, I received a
visit from Dimitar Ikonomov, the deputy of the National Assembly from
the town of Dupnitsa . . . He told me that he had just returned from a
visit there and was extremely depressed by what he had witnessed taking
place in the street. He described a distressing scene Thracian Jews, old
people, men, women, and children, carrying their belongings, defeated,
desperate, powerless people, begging for help as they crossed the town on
foot, dragging themselves towards some unknown destination. He was
saddened and utterly outraged to see helpless people being sent to some
destination that could only be surmised, to a fate that conjured up
everyones darkest fears. He spoke of the effect of this horrible scene on
the residents of Dupnitsa, their anger and outrage, their inability to
remain indifferent to the tragedy that was unfolding before their eyes:
This multitude of women and children and old people who were being
taken who knows where. To hear Ikonomov tell it, the townspeoples
despair was so great that many had been moved to tears.
15
Here, Peshev refers to a failure of Bulgaria to protect the Jews of Macedonia,
Thrace, and a small portion of Serbia, now under Bulgarian authority. The
Germans demanded these deportations and, in order to placate them, the
Bulgarian government complied, at the same time asserting that these were
residents of newly occupied territory, not Bulgarian citizens subject to
Bulgarian constitutional law. In all, 11,393 Jews from these regions were
deported to Poland, almost all perishing in the extermination camps.
16
Later in the concluding section of this chapter, Bulgarias behavior will be
compared to that of Vichy France.
Coincidentally, February 2, 1943, the day that SS-Obersturmfuhrer
Theodor Dannecker and Gabrovski agreed that the Bulgarian govern-
ment would deliver to the Germans all Jews in Thrace and Macedonia,
17
was the same day that the last message was transmitted from the German
pocket still holding out at Stalingrad.
18
Thus, the period subsequent to
this agreement was one in which news of the massive German defeat was
being widely disseminated. Boris clearly was aware of these military
developments.
19
By the following month, a reevaluation of Bulgarian
policy toward the Jews was undertaken.
15
Quoted ibid., 158.
16
Chary 1972, 127.
17
Oren 1968, 95.
18
Murray and Millett 2000, 291.
19
Boyadjieff 1989, 14748.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I 329
Despite evacuation from the capital Soa to about twenty other cities
(probably to mollify the Germans), as were non-Jews eight months later
for their own safety during the Allied bombing, the 45,000 Jews of
Bulgaria
20
were not deported from the country and survived the war.
Finally, in all of our cases of genocidal or perpetrating states, victim
prominence has been cited. But in Bulgaria this element is decidedly
absent. Jews were conspicuously absent from the political and economic
leadership of the country. In an open letter to the National Assembly
deputies, journalist and politician Christo Punev remarks:
The vast majority of Jews in Bulgaria are working-class people: small
grain merchants, pushcart vendors, retail tradesmen, labourers and
maids, all of them working for a living and all of them going hungry.
Have you not walked by the children of Yuchbunar on the streets of the
capital? Little children and students, have you not seen them, famished,
jaundiced, wasted and ragged, marching alongside Bulgarian children on
Cyril and Methodius Day? . . . We are seven million people, yet we so
fear the treachery of 45,000 Jews who hold no positions of responsibility
at the national level that we need to pass exceptional laws to protect
ourselves from them . . . And then what?
21
The combustible mix of territorial loss, threatening ethnoreligious
identity, and class conict is absent, as is outright collaboration in the
genocide of a states own citizenry. Thus, the absence of territorial loss
and consequent refugee migration allowed sympathy for the Jews to
develop, especially after the deportations from Thrace and Macedonia
were witnessed by elements of the Bulgarian population. Perhaps it was
this sympathy which led Assa Ben Solomonov to proclaim: If one looks
for a single denominator to ascribe the success to a single name, I would
say that this is the Bulgarian people themselves, who saw the light and
produced also sons who were up to the task of successfully carrying
through this great humanitarian deed.
22
At the same time, a prudent realpolitik that earlier suggested a limited
cooperation with the Germans, after the decisive German defeat at
Stalingrad indicated less cooperation, and ultimately frustration of the
Nazi goal of deporting Bulgarias Jewish citizens. In this fashion,
Bulgaria would be better prepared politically to greet the Allied victors.
20
48,000 according to Boyadjieff 1989, 1.
21
Quoted in Todorov 2001, 51.
22
Quoted in Boyadjieff 1989, 143.
330 E X C E P T I O N S
Finland
The Jewish community of Finland numbered approximately 2,000 in the
early 1930s, before the addition of several hundred foreign Jews who had
been granted asylum. Nearly all escaped deportation.
After an extended analysis, Hannu Rautkallio concludes that the visits
of Hitler and Himmler to Finland, respectively in June and July of 1942,
proved how much the Fuhrer valued the contribution of Finland as a
co-belligerent ghting a common enemy in the East . . . The Jewish
Question was therefore left in the background of FinnishGerman rela-
tions; in fact, this issue was never brought forcefully to the attention of
the Finns.
23
Here, the Germans were exercising a prudent realpolitik.
Finnish participation on the Eastern front was required, and so other
matters such as the Jewish Question were not unduly emphasized.
German pressure was minimal; hence the Finns could act with consider-
able latitude in regard to their Jewish residents, including support for
their civil liberties. Why the absence of anti-Jewish animus? One answer
is found in territorial expansion.
As in the case of Bulgaria, Finland gained territory prior to its brush
with genocide. By the start of the later Continuation War with the Soviet
Union, in December 1941, the Finns had regained all of the territory lost
to the Soviets in the Peace of Moscow of March 1940 ending the earlier
Winter War.
24
Now, instead of losing one-ninth of their territory as in
1940, the Finns regained it all plus a substantial amount. They were to
retain this territory until June 1944, well after the period during which
even minor German pressure for deportation had ended.
25
Equally important, if not more so, was the status of refugees. In 1940,
11 percent of the total population was relocated westward on newly
created holdings, a process that proved to be a colossal undertaking.
26
After the territorial advances of 1941, these refugees returned to their old
homes. Instead of refugees streaming into the country invoking feelings
of anger and identication with their unfortunate ethnic kin, the nation
could feel satised that this earlier wrong had been corrected. We would
expect, as in the case of Bulgaria, a sympathetic response to other
refugees in Finland, many of them Jewish.
And this is indeed what we nd. Despite the absence of forceful
German pressure, in October 1942 the Finnish government did plan to
23
Rautkallio 1987, 170.
24
Polvinen 1986, 282.
25
Kirby 1979, 141.
26
Jutikkala and Pirinen 1974, 279.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I 331
deport foreign Jews. When the plan became known, 200 citizens of the
town of Pietarsaari signed a petition asking that the government not
deport these Jews.
27
This effort parallels that which occurred in the
Bulgarian town of Kyustendil, as we saw in the preceding section.
After a public dispute leading to a reduction in the number of deportees,
on November 6, eight Jews including two children were deported to
Tallinn in Estonia and then to Auschwitz after which only one adult
survived the war.
28
Although seemingly incomparable in one respect the sacrice of
foreign Jews in Bulgaria and their attempted rescue in Finland this
difference is more apparent than real. Foreign Jews in Finland resided on
Finnish territory and had been granted asylum. Thracian and
Macedonian Jews deported by Bulgaria did not reside on Bulgarian
territory, and had not been acknowledged in any way by the Bulgarian
government. Similar dynamics were at work in a population outraged by
the prospect of violating Finnish hospitality, and in one horried by the
treatment of the Thracian and Macedonian Jews. Without the popular
anger that might have erupted over treatment of their own indigenous
refugees, had they existed at the time, the routine sympathies of ordinary
people could be activated.
The cases of Bulgaria and Finland both share the impact of realpolitik
in their relations with Nazi Germany. In the former, the worsening
German fortunes on the battleeld suggested a distancing of Bulgaria
from Germany. In the latter, German dependence on Finnish participa-
tion to maintain the integrity of the Eastern front tended to minimize
the intensity and extent of pressure for Jewish deportation from Finland.
At the same time, the absence of territorial loss and refugee inux in
both cases freed both populations from feelings of anger that could
easily have been directed against the Jews. Realpolitik at the state level
and absence of loss at the popular level tended to reinforce each other in
yielding these relatively benign outcomes.
Comparisons
We have now laid the foundation for comparisons across genocidal
states, perpetrators, and exceptions. In the context of the Holocaust as
well as genocides of the Armenians and Tutsi, territorial contraction and
its corollary of refugee inux are important progenitors of mass killing.
27
Cohen and Svensson 2001, 205.
28
Ibid.
332 E X C E P T I O N S
In our genocidal states, Germany and Austria, and two of the perpetrat-
ing states, Vichy France and Romania, the mix of territorial loss, refu-
gees, and issues of social class was prominent; in Italy, the state itself was
threatened by the ongoing territorial loss (see chapter 9). Only in
Bulgaria and Finland, where the vast majority of Jews was saved, were
these elements absent.
One may argue that a large proportion of Frances Jewish citizens,
although not as large as Bulgarias, also survived the war, and France did
indeed suffer severe truncation and territorial loss. Yet until World
War II, France was the home of continental European liberalism,
never having promulgated an anti-Semitic law after the time of
Napoleon I. Pogroms in France were unknown. Bulgaria, on the other
hand, had experienced episodic pogroms including the most famous
one in Pazardzhik (1895), as well as Soa (1884), Vratsa (1890), Lom
(1903), and Kyustendil (1904). Most were sparked by rumors of ritual
Passover murders by Jews, the infamous Blood Libel.
29
Thus, for France,
the leap to state-supported anti-Semitism and complicity in Jewish
deportation, including many French citizens, was far greater than that
for Bulgaria and certainly for Romania. Although Romania did take that
plunge into the abyss, as did Vichy France, Bulgaria ultimately declined.
As it does not differentiate effectively between Vichy France and
Bulgaria, emphasis on a history of anti-Semitism as a potential explana-
tion for genocidal behavior also does not distinguish between Italy and
Finland. In both instances, before the 1930s, widespread anti-Semitism
was virtually unknown in the modern period, yet the outcomes differed
in the two cases.
Romania, in its twentieth-century history, like Vichy France, demon-
strated radically different behaviors upon expansion and later after
contraction. Only after substantial shrinkage of the Romanian state in
1940 did it embark on its genocidal path. These considerations suggest
that one must examine a perpetrating states behavior not only in
comparison with others, as in the comparisons among Italy, Vichy
France, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland, but also in light of its own
history. The behaviors of these states, as well as those of Germany and
Austria, suggest enormous changes in state policy regarding Jews only
after the experience of territorial loss and, in four of these states,
Germany, Austria, Vichy France, and Romania, refugee migration.
Political elites concerned with state security may be more directly
29
Chary 1972, 32.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I 333
sensitive to territorial loss in itself, as was Mussolini, while refugee
migration, often associated with territorial loss, can lead to mass dis-
affection and popular violence directed against targeted minorities.
Finally, there is the issue of symbolic representation. For many French
people and, as a percentage, many more Romanians, as for many
Germans, there was the indelible but vastly exaggerated connection
between Jews and communism. Any gains for the Soviet Union (as in
the instance of the territories forcibly ceded to the Soviet Union by
Romania in 1940) were frequently laid at the Jewish doorstep. Thus, in
addition to the psychosocial implications of loss suggested by prospect
theory, identication with the downtrodden of ones own ethnicity,
anger at the presumptive other, and economic competition within a
shrunken spatial environment, there are issues of political responsibility
that emanate from territorial transfers. Jews, Armenians, and Tutsi were
to pay a heavy price for an unwarranted culpability emerging from the
national experience of loss, made palpable in the everyday lives of people
by the often-ubiquitous presence of refugees.
334 E X C E P T I O N S
17
Dogs that didnt bark II: afnity
and vulnerability reduction
Now we examine potential victimizers, apart from the Axis collaborat-
ing countries of World War II. There are seemingly innumerable avail-
able instances, but several strong possibilities present themselves based
on variables already introduced in chapter 5. These are countries:
(1) situated within the domain of losses, (2) experiencing threats to state
security, (3) undergoing substantial risks, and (4) potentially targeting
victims that have large afne populations or governments (ethnoreli-
giously similar or ideologically sympathetic, frequently in neighboring
countries) with substantial political and/or military inuence the
afnity condition.
This last variable is suggested to distinguish between potential geno-
cides that eventuated in that outcome and those that did not, largely
because of the prudent recognition by the potential victimizer of the
importance of afnity. The targeted victim should not be in a position to
react effectively or be able to call upon effective help from like-minded
or ethnoreligiously similar populations. The existence of such potential
allies, if deemed to be sufciently powerful or at least inuential in the
international arena, could deter genocidal activity by a potential victim-
izer. Essentially, victim vulnerability, a necessary condition for geno-
cide, can been reduced by the afnity condition.
However strong the genocidal impulse in a potential victimizer, a
prudent realpolitik demands avoidance of the extreme risk of offending
a large afne population or powerful government that can come to the
aid of the victim. Of course, the fog of war increases the likelihood of an
imprudent realpolitik that can be genocidal. War can strongly increase
the perceived threat of potential victims and their kin in neighboring
countries and, as we shall see in the concluding section of this chapter,
can nullify the afnity condition.
As before, the Holocaust is complex enough that we will nd the
disappearance of the afnity condition associated with the rapidly
worsening treatment of the European Jewish population. Interestingly,
335
the Ottoman Empire demonstrates the presence and absence of afnity,
with respect to two separate populations, the Ottoman Greeks (ulti-
mately expelled in 192223 in an exchange of populations after the failed
invasion of Turkey by Greece) and the Armenians. As a nal require-
ment for the cases to be examined here, potential perpetrators must have
been keenly aware of the genocidal choice as a policy option, preferably
in their own past experience.
These considerations led to the examination of the Ottoman Empire
in its very different treatment of Armenians and Greeks, and Nazi
Germany before and after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Here the
behavior of perpetrators differs over space (Ottoman Empire) and over
time (Nazi Germany). To complete the comparison, three nongenocidal
potential victimizers are chosen: late eighteenth-century Poland, the
British in Ireland in 191621, and, briey, the Israelis in the second
Intifada. Poland experienced extreme losses in the late eighteenth cen-
tury, and clearly fullls the remaining conditions for inclusion, as do the
other two cases. As we shall see, the Poles recognized the availability of
genocide or at least widespread massacre as an option. The British and
Israelis understood full well the possibility of genocide as a policy
option. The Israelis, of course, have the recent memory of the
Holocaust in which many family members of the Jewish population
were slaughtered during World War II. The British had the long, tor-
tured history of Anglo-Irish relations, the charge of genocidal behavior
in Ireland having been leveled against them during at least three
historical moments.
Afnity and genocide
The absence of afnity is understood as the absence of any afne
population or government (ethnoreligiously similar or ideologically
sympathetic) with the power and inuence to actively intervene or
provoke intervention on behalf of the victims. Larger neighboring
populations, especially if they appear to have political inuence, can
serve as protective umbrellas for threatened populations. The afnity
does not have to be ethnoreligious, although in practice that is most
frequently the case.
The actual presence of afnity can be signied in two ways. First, the
direct protection of the potentially victimized population is available
through the political inuence of a neighboring afne population. For
example, the inuence of highly placed Soviet Jews may have given
336 E X C E P T I O N S
pause to whatever German genocidal intent toward Jews may have
existed prior to June 1941, as an expanded and more powerful Greece
protected ethnic Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. Second, an indirect
two-tiered process may protect the potential victims. Here a smaller
protecting state itself is protected by one or more great powers that
then, by extension, protect the potential victims as well. Ethnic Greeks
living in the Ottoman Empire were subject to both the direct and
indirect varieties the existence of an independent Greece and
European great powers intent on its welfare thereby distinguishing
them from the far more threatened Armenians without either
protection.
Greeks in the Ottoman Empire
We begin with differential outcomes for Armenians and Greeks in the
Ottoman Empire. Ethnic Greek communities had existed in Anatolia
since ancient times. After the independence of Greece from the
Ottomans in 1832,
1
these communities remained under Ottoman rule,
numbering 1,792,206 Greeks out of a total of 18,520,016 Ottoman
citizens in 1914, or nearly 10 percent of the total population.
2
Economically, of all ethnic groups including Turks, Arabs, Armenians,
and Jews, the Greeks were predominant in 1912, controlling 43 percent
of internal trade, 49 percent of industry and crafts, and 44 percent of the
professions.
3
Given this degree of prominence outweighing even the
Armenians (roughly 1.3 million in number and averaging 25 percent
economic dominance), and the obvious Ottoman preference for a reli-
giously if not ethnically homogeneous society, why were the Greeks not
targeted for extinction along with the Armenians, or even before them?
Beyond their size and economic importance, both communities were
threatening to the Ottomans. While the Armenians established natio-
nalistic groups and made separatist claims, the Greeks vastly expanded
the activities of their syllogues, the political organizations they dubbed
literary and scientic associations. With nancial support from the
Greek government and rich Greeks . . . the syllogues sprang up in all the
major Ottoman localities inhabited by Greeks and added political
momentum to the cultural awareness disseminated by the existing
Greek educational institutions. In the Istanbul area alone the Greeks
1
Kourvetaris and Dobratz 1987.
2
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 241.
3
Issawi 1980, 14.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 337
had over one hundred schools as early as 1878, and the number had
nearly doubled by the end of the century.
4
While the Armenians were perceived as threatening in eastern
Anatolia and to some extent in Constantinople, the Greeks were even
more numerous in that city.
5
Perhaps most important, the Greek popu-
lation was situated principally along the shores of the Black, Aegean, and
Mediterranean Seas, making them a prime target for subversion of the
Ottomans by British and Russian naval emissaries. And the loyalties
of Ottoman Greeks were highly suspect, even those of Greek deputies of the
Ottoman Assembly who espoused widely held pan-Hellenic sympathies.
In the widely quoted words of one of them, Bos o (Boussios) Efendi,
I amas Ottoman as the [foreign-dominated] Ottoman Bank.
6
Armenians,
Jews, and Maronites were far more welcome in the Ottoman administra-
tion than were Greeks.
7
One may counter that the Germans, for example, seeking to rid the
East of Poles and Jews, after murdering the Polish leadership and
intelligentsia chose to commit genocide only against the Jews. But the
Poles were far more numerous than the Jews (10 percent of Polands
prewar population was Jewish) and the Germans simply did not have the
facilities to murder so many people simultaneously. In contrast, Greeks
in the Ottoman Empire were little more populous than Armenians,
numbering approximately 500,000 more.
Perhaps the greatest threat came from Greek adherence to the Great
Idea. This was the overriding goal of Greek foreign policy from the
inception of the state until the early 1920s. With Greek boundaries
guaranteed by Great Britain, France, and Russia in the three-power
treaty of 1827, foreign policy concerns extended principally to the
unincorporated Greek communities. Or as Theodore Couloumbis
et al. put it, That goal, most commonly designated the Great Idea, was
the liberation of Greeks still subject to the Ottoman Empire or, in the
case of the Ionian Islands until 1864 and Cyprus after 1878, those living
under British colonial rule. It involved their incorporation into a greater
Greece and therefore presupposed territorial aggrandizement.
8
Precisely because the Greek state initially incorporated only about
one-third of ethnic Greeks in the Mediterranean region, the Great Idea
became the most pressing concern of Greek foreign policy. With a small
4
Karpat 2001, 32425.
5
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 242.
6
Quoted, for example, in Ahmad 1982, 409.
7
Ortayli 1999, 165.
8
Couloumbis et al. 1976, 22.
338 E X C E P T I O N S
nearby state agitating for incorporation of large numbers of Ottoman
citizens, the Ottoman state must have perceived threats to its security
that genocide could have averted.
There were two forms of threat to the integrity of the Ottoman state.
The rst threatened direct incorporation of territories inhabited princi-
pally by Greek communities. The classic expression of this formof threat
(essentially the Great Idea) was put forward in a speech by Ioannis
Kolettis before the Constituent Assembly in Athens in 1844:
The Kingdom of Greece is not Greece. [Greece] constitutes only one part,
the smallest and poorest part. A Greek is not only a man who lives within
this kingdom but also one who lives in Jannina, in Salonika, in Serres, in
Adrianople, in Constantinople, in Smyrna, in Trebizond, in Crete, in
Samos and in any land associated with Greek history or the Greek
race . . . There are two main centres of Hellenism: Athens, the capital of
the Greek kingdom, [and] The City [Constantinople], the dream and
hope of all Greeks.
9
The second possible strategy was less bellicose in its implications, but
no less threatening to the social and religious coherence of the Ottoman
state. Through the good ofces of the Ottoman state, educational and
cultural life of the Greek communities could expand at will, as we just
saw in the near doubling of Greek schools between 1878 and the end of
the nineteenth century in the Constantinople area alone. Paraphrasing
the written views of Pavlos Karolidis, a Greek deputy in the Ottoman
parliament of 1908 and a leading intellectual, Richard Clogg tells us that:
Froman economic point of viewthe Ottoman Empire already constituted
a Greek state, since all economic life and many public works were carried
out either by Greeks or by Greek capital. Greek and unbiased foreign
observers seeing these things, the newspaper continued, deplored the
hostile policy of Greece towards the Ottoman Empire, believing the
Hellenization of the Ottoman state to be a simple matter of time.
Although expressed with characteristic hyperbole such attitudes were by
no means uncommon among both Greeks of the empire and Greeks of
the kingdom.
10
In this view, the Ottoman state itself would eventually fall into Greek
hands if they simply waited for these socioeconomic processes to con-
tinue on this course.
9
Quoted in Clogg 1982, 193.
10
Ibid., 197.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 339
Yet the Greek state prior to World War I possessed another property
that brings us to the rst direct afnity condition protecting the
Ottoman ethnic Greeks. The Greek state of 1914 was no longer the
tiny truncated state of 1832, the year of its formation. As a result of
the Balkan Wars, by 1913 Greece had acquired most of Macedonia,
southern Epirus, many Aegean islands, and Crete, a major foreign policy
goal for decades. Greece had increased its territory by 68 percent and its
population from approximately 2.7 to 4.4 million. And, for the rst
time since independence, Greece had expanded territorially as a result of
its own efforts rather than through the good graces of the powers.
11
Thus, Greece had emerged as a signicant Mediterranean power in its
own right. If that power were to be activated, then the Ottomans would
face another opponent in the context of World War I and its grave
uncertainties.
Events within Greece would further counsel extreme Ottoman cau-
tion. With the outbreak of World War I, two opposing foreign policy
camps arose within Greece, one led by the prime minister, Eleftherios
Venizelos, arguing for entry into World War I on the side of the Entente
and the other, headed by King Constantine I, seeking to support the
Central Powers, or at least to reinforce neutrality. Aggravating the
dispute was Venizeloss strong emotional attachment to Britain and
France, while Constantine was married to the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II
of Germany and was himself an honorary eld marshal in the German
army.
12
War-related events were to force each side to take opposing
views of the Greek future. Venizeloss adherence to the Entente had the
purpose of implementing the Great Idea of incorporating Ottoman
territories containing ethnic Greeks, while Constantine and his sup-
porters advocated a small but honorable Greece. Venizelos invited
British and French forces to occupy Salonika in support of the Serbs;
they landed in October 1915. Constantine for the second time in six
months called for Venizelos to resign. Further conict ensued, rst,
when the government in Athens, now headed essentially by
Constantine, refused to allow Serbs to cross Greek territory to reform
their front and, second, when British and French forces landed in
Piraeus and Athens to enforce Greek neutrality but were forced back
in an ignominious retreat.
Two governments now existed, one in Athens headed by Constantine
controlling all of southern Greece (principally the area of Greece prior to
11
Couloumbis et al. 1976, 35.
12
Clogg 1992, 8687.
340 E X C E P T I O N S
1913) while Venizelos governed the 1913 conquests (including Crete),
plus Thessaly conquered by Venizelists and the Allies between
September 1916 and June 1917.
13
Clearly, any Ottoman attack on ethnic
Greeks during the period of genocidal activity against the Armenians
(191516) would unify the Greek state around Venizeloss support of
the Great Idea. A new opponent added to the array of allies opposed to
the Central Powers and especially the Ottomans would be particularly
undesirable. On the other hand, as long as the newly empowered (as of
1913) Greek state was divided, Greece would likely continue to remain
neutral. Without Ottoman provocation, neutrality was indeed observed
until June 1917, when the Allies forced Constantines abdication. By the
time Greece was actively engaged in the September 1918 offensive on the
Macedonian front, the wars trajectory was clearly in favor of the Allies.
Genocide of the ethnic Greeks by the Ottomans would have been an
extraordinarily foolhardy action.
The second, the indirect form of the afnity condition, is that pro-
vided by great power(s) protection of the afne country. Even before the
beginning of Greek statehood, the great powers had been active in
support of Greek independence. By the Treaty of London in 1827,
Great Britain, France, and Russia agreed to mediate the conict between
insurgent Greece and the Ottoman Empire. This policy led to the Battle
of Navarino in October 1827 the last major naval battle with opposing
ships of sail in which an allied eet led by the British admiral, Sir
Edward Codrington, utterly destroyed a combined Turco-Egyptian
eet.
14
The later treaty of May 1832 among the three powers placed
the new Greek state under their protection, with Otto of Bavaria
accepting the Greek throne.
15
The interests of Greece were protected and even advanced during the
nineteenth century. In 1864, the British ceded the Ionian islands to
Greece, increasing the population by roughly a quarter of a million.
16
In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 187778 and the ensuing
Congress of Berlin, Greece was allowed to annex Thessaly and the Arta
district of Epirus in 1881, adding a territory roughly 25 percent of pre-
war Greece and a sizable population.
17
Although Britain was in the forefront of these activities, by 1913
France and Germany also sought to woo the expanding Greek state.
For example, although the Greek government under pressure was pre-
pared to yield one of the furthest of its conquests in the Second Balkan
13
Ibid., 92.
14
Ibid., 42.
15
Ibid., 47.
16
Ibid., 61.
17
Ibid., 73.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 341
War, Kavala, both France and Germany supported its retention by
Greece.
18
Even Austria-Hungary, represented by Count Johann von
Pallavicini in Constantinople, lectured the Turks on their foolish
persecution of the Greeks in Thrace.
19
Culturally, all of the European powers felt indebted to the Greek
heritage. Great Britain and France emphasized ancient Greek democ-
racy, Germany the archeological and literary treasures of Greece, and
Russia its religious heritage of Orthodoxy. Given these political and
cultural ties, wholesale attacks on the Ottoman Greeks would have
profoundly angered not only the Entente Powers, but Germany and
Austria-Hungary as well, the allies upon whom the Ottomans were
deeply dependent. Under these conditions, genocide of the Ottoman
Greeks simply was not a viable option.
Many, however, were massacred by the Turks, especially at Smyrna
(todays Izmir) as the Greek army withdrew at the end of their headlong
retreat from central Anatolia at the end of the Greco-Turkish War.
Especially poorly treated were the Pontic Greeks in eastern Anatolia
on the Black Sea. In 1920 and particularly in 1921, as the Greek army
advanced, many were deported to the Mesopotamian desert as had been
the Armenians before them.
20
Nevertheless, approximately 1,200,000
Ottoman Greek refugees arrived in Greece at the end of the war. When
one adds to the total the Greeks of Constantinople who, by agreement,
were not forced to ee, then the total number comes close to the
1,500,000 Greeks in Anatolia and Thrace enumerated in 1914.
21
Here, a strong disjunction between intention and action is found.
According to the Austrian consul at Amisos, Kwiatkowski, in his
November 30, 1916, report to the foreign minister Baron Burian: on 26
November Rafet Bey told me: we must nish off the Greeks as we did with
the Armenians . . . on 28 November Rafet Bey told me: today I sent squads
to the interior to kill every Greek on sight. I fear for the elimination of the
entire Greek population and a repeat of what occurred last year.
22
Or
according to a January 31, 1917, report by Chancellor Hollweg of Austria:
The indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as
enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy
implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the interior without
18
Couloumbis et al. 1976, 38.
19
Bridge 1984, 45.
20
M. Smith 1998, 211.
21
For the estimated number of Greek refugees, see Hirschon 2003, 14, while the 1914
estimate of Greeks in Anatolia and Thrace is found in Karpat 1985, 188.
22
Quoted in Halo 2000, 123.
342 E X C E P T I O N S
taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger, and
illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burnt or destroyed.
Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks.
23
Massacres most likely did take place at Amisos and other villages in
the Pontus. Yet given the large numbers of surviving Greeks, especially
relative to the small number of Armenian survivors, the massacres
apparently were restricted to the Pontus, Smyrna, and selected other
sensitive regions.
Jews in Eastern Europe
Having juxtaposed the radically different outcomes for two ethnic
communities in the Ottoman Empire, we can now turn to a diachronic
analysis of Jews in Eastern Europe before the worsening of relations
between Germany and the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1940, and after
the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. According to
Christopher Browning, the invasion of the Soviet Union would ulti-
mately have an immensely radicalizing effect on Nazi Jewish policy,
from which no Jews in the German empire and those in Poland in
particular would be spared.
24
As we saw in chapter 7, prior to mid-August 1941, the Nazis had not yet
experienced the losses that would invoke their memory of World War I and
its domain of losses, which inspired their movement from the outset. Thus,
one would not expect a wholesale extermination policy to be implemented
before that August. Nevertheless, despite the great importance of these
losses in initiating the Holocaust, one can still see the impact of afnity
in the relatively restrained (for the Nazis) early treatment of Jews in
comparison with the brutality meted out to Poles immediately after the
invasion of September 1939.
We now consider both the reality and the reputation of Jews in the
Communist Party. The equation of Jews with Soviet communism was, of
course, a longstanding axiom of Nazi ideology. But how did this come
about? In answering this question we will also be able to understand the
initial avoidance of systematized mass murder of Jews in Poland and the
later onset of genocide across all of occupied Europe.
From the beginning, the European socialist parties had a dispropor-
tionate number of Jews. As Albert Lindemann put it, Considering that
23
Quoted ibid., 124.
24
Browning 2004, 137.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 343
the Jewish population of Europe was approximately 2 percent of the
total, the Jewish participation in socialism, revolutionary and demo-
cratic, was remarkably large.
25
Even more important, the proportion of
visible socialist leaders of Jewish origin was extraordinarily high. One
has only to mention the names of Moses Hess, Karl Marx, Ferdinand
Lassalle, Eduard Bernstein, Otto Bauer, Rosa Luxemburg, Julius Martov,
Leon Trotsky, and Le on Blum to see this striking contribution. Of
course, many other leaders such as Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin, August Bebel, and Georgy Plekhanov were not Jewish, but even
many of the non-Jews were so-called Jewiers (in the parlance of anti-
Semites) who valued the Jews even more than they valued their own
nationalities. Lenin, for example, commented to Maxim Gorky that
an intelligent Russian is almost always a Jew or someone with Jewish
blood in his veins.
26
But even Lenin, the non-Jew, had a Jewish grandfather who had
converted to Christianity in marrying his grandmother, who was herself
of Christian German origin. Although culturally Great Russian, he was
widely believed by anti-Semites to be Jewish. Mikhail Kalinin, the pre-
sident of the Soviet Union, was considered by Jewish Bolsheviks to be
more Jewish than the Jews possibly because of his open expression of
emotion. For example, in a speech describing the pogroms of the Civil
War (see chapter 3), he broke down and cried, and was unable to
complete the speech.
27
Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka, the
Soviet secret police, was originally a member of the Polish gentry and
learned to speak Yiddish in his youth in Vilna. He was friendly with
many Jews and was married to one.
Even Winston Churchill, along with other English intellectuals such
as Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, bought into the idea of Jewish
dominance of the Bolsheviks. According to Churchill, this amazing
race has created another system of morality and philosophy, this one
saturated with as much hatred as Christianity was with love.
28
Much of this British reaction, like that of other nations, was based on
the reality and exaggeration of Bolshevik atrocities during the Civil War,
which were equaled if not surpassed by the opposing White and
Ukrainian nationalist armies (see chapter 3). According to David Vital,
25
Lindemann 1997, 425.
26
Quoted ibid., 426.
27
Ibid., 433.
28
Quoted ibid., 434.
344 E X C E P T I O N S
The counter-revolutionaries believed that at the root of the Russian
Revolution lay a JewishBolshevik conspiracy, that the Jews were ulti-
mately responsible for Russias disasters for how else were those dis-
asters to be explained? and that, more generally, the Jews had
engineered themselves into a position of great political power. It was a
view that they held with great tenacity, and which they proceeded, with
some success, to spread round the world.
29
Among those deeply inuenced by these events, as we saw, were Hitler
and Himmler. With their rm belief in the veracity of the tsarist forgery
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and the news from the East
brought back by returning German soldiers after World War I, the
JewishBolshevik connection became rmly rooted in the Nazi mind.
Indeed, the infamous and inuential stab in the back accusation that
Kaiser Wilhelm II made on his way out of Germany had its origin partly
in the East. Walther von Kaiserlingk, the German Admiraltys chief of
operations visited Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in the winter of 191718.
He saw the government as run by Jews in the interests of Jews; it was
insanity in power, and it presented a mortal threat not only to
Germany but to the civilized world. Wilhelm agreed that the Russian
people had been turned over to the vengeance of the Jews, who are
connected with all the Jews of the world.
30
Who were these Jews? First among them and initially second only to
Lenin in power and authority was the leader of the Red Army, Leon
Trotsky (ne Bronstein). Grigori Zinoviev (Radomyslsky), a celebrated
orator, was president of the Communist International and chairman of
the Petrograd Soviet. Lev Kamenev (Rosenfeld) was a member of the
party Central Committee, edited Pravda, the party newspaper, and
chaired the Second Congress of Soviets. He also briey was nominal
head of state and chaired the Moscow Soviet. Adolf Yoffe was chair of
the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, headed
the Soviet delegation negotiating the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with
Germany, and then became Soviet ambassador to Germany. Yakov
Sverdlov was secretary and principal organizer of the Bolshevik Party
in 1917, and in 1918 was head of state after Kamenev. Moisei Uritsky was
head of the Cheka (Soviet secret police) in Petrograd where the
Communist terror was especially brutal. Other Jewish leaders were
Grigori Sokolnikov, once editor of Pravda and head of the delegation
29
Vital 1999, 726.
30
Quoted in Lindemann 1997, 424.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 345
that signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk after Yoffes voluntary departure
from that position, and Karl Radek, a leading political gure.
31
Most important, the Cheka employed a signicant number of Jews
right up to the start of World War II. For example, in 1937 at least
10 percent of the 407 Cheka ofcials who had been decorated had obviously
Jewish names.
32
High-level Jews at that time were a close associate of
Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich, the head of the secret police, Genrich Yagoda,
and the diplomat Maxim Litvinov who, although dismissed as foreign
minister prior to the NaziSoviet Pact of 1939, nevertheless continued in
power until 1943, occupying the extremely important position of
ambassador to the United States with its large Jewish community.
Deeply offending powerful Jews in the Soviet Union by killing Polish
or other Jews based on racial classication would not have been in the
Nazi self-interest for at least three reasons. First, the Soviets were allied
with the Nazis after June 1939, an alliance that brought considerable
benet in the successful invasion of Poland, an outcome that would not
have been possible without Soviet neutrality, if not support. Second, a
frequently overlooked element of the alliance was the population reset-
tlement policy of the Nazi regime that required Soviet cooperation. For
example, immediately after the transformation of the Baltic states into
Soviet republics, on July 21, 1940, Himmler ordered preparations for the
resettlement to Prussia of ethnic Germans from Lithuania and later
Estonia and Latvia.
33
On September 5, a GermanSoviet pact was signed
authorizing the transfer of German minorities from Bessarabia and
northern Bukovina.
34
If a genocidal policy had been adopted by the
Nazis at that time, then resettlement agreements of this kind, essential to
Hitlers goal of establishing a homogenous Reich, would have been
difcult if not impossible to consummate.
Finally, the timing of the war with the Soviet Union might have been
affected. Perhaps more than any other contemporaneous leader, Hitler
understood the value of surprise in both war and politics. He also
understood the value of careful preparations in anticipation of a major
military action, especially one that entailed the extraordinary risks
associated with an invasion of the Soviet Union. If leading Jews in the
Soviet Union had been alarmed unduly by the onset of genocide, then
early Soviet preparations for war might have forced Hitlers hand and
the onset of a war for which Germany would not have been adequately
prepared. By not engaging in excessively brutal behaviors toward Jews,
31
Ibid., 43132.
32
Ibid., 454.
33
Aly 1999, 93.
34
Ibid., 98.
346 E X C E P T I O N S
at least not highly visible ones, Hitler could retain the initiative to be
utilized at a time and place of his own choosing. Stalins utter surprise
and consequent misconduct of the war immediately after the Nazi
invasion is a vindication of this early restraint by Hitler.
Another of the Nazis fears, of course, was Jewish inuence in the
United States that could lead it into war against Germany.
35
Genocide in
Europe might have galvanized action in the United States, leading to the
two-front war so dreaded by the Nazis. Ever mindful of the international
situation, especially in wartime, Hitler would exercise caution in
attempting to avoid the major pitfall of simultaneous war with the
Soviet Union and the United States.
Poland at the time of the Partitions
Now, instead of a diachronic comparison, let us consider cases where
genocide might have been expected to occur, but did not. The afnity
condition will prove to be important, even decisive.
As before, the Polish experience, because of its large concentration of
Jews, becomes emblematic. The Jews of Poland found themselves at a
critical juncture in late eighteenth-century Poland. The Partition of
Poland of 1772 had shorn the country of nearly 30 percent of its territory
and 35 percent of its population. Austria received not only 83,000 km
2
and 2,650,000 inhabitants but some of the most fertile and densely
populated lands with valuable salt mines. Russia received the lions
share of territory 92,000 km
2
but fewer inhabitants, 1,300,000 in
all, and fewer fertile lands with no appreciable mineral assets. The
Prussian share was the smallest at 36,000 km
2
of territory and 580,000
inhabitants.
36
This apparent inequity was strongly compensated for by
its presence at the mouth of the Vistula River. As a consequence of this
geopolitical coup as well as Prussias control of areas in Silesia and later
Pomerania, the overwhelming proportion of Polish trade had to pass
through Prussian territory. Trade treaties, ratied in 1775, imposed
heavy customs duties on goods leaving Poland, low duties on those
entering Poland, and exorbitant charges on Polish transit trade. There
35
As Richard Breitman summarizes George Messersmiths view of Nazi policies during
the 1930s: It was only the realization that antisemitic actions could injure Germanys
interests that exerted a check on the regimes actions against Jews (Breitman
2000, 505).
36
Gieysztor et al. 1979, 28182.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 347
was a real danger that the new truncated Polish state could become a
Prussian economic vassal.
These new economic debilities in many ways precipitated an eco-
nomic crisis. Frederick [II of Prussia]s economic war crippled
Poland, although it did not destroy it.
37
Poland had been in economic
decline for more than a century; indicative of this decline was the
increased dependence of royal revenues on the sale of alcohol. In 1564,
in the heyday of Polish grain production, the manufacture of alcohol
accounted for 0.3 percent of revenues from royal properties. By 1764 it
accounted for an astonishing 37.6 percent and by 1789 over 40 percent.
A reasonable interpretation of these statistics is that more than one-
third of the royal income depended on an inebriated, mostly peasant
population. And Jewish proprietors were at the heart of the so-called
propinacja, a specialized form of the arenda (system of leases) in which
Jews were leaseholders of crown estates; in the instance of the propinacja,
the lease entailed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.
Jewish-operated taverns dotted the Polish countryside. In the midst of
economic crisis, the nonproductive nature of this form of economic
enterprise came to the attention of many reform-minded Poles.
In other areas of the Polish economy, Jewish traders and business
people of various types found themselves in competition with the Polish
burghers who were approximately equal in number.
38
Here one sees the
insecurities of an incipient Polish middle class in a growing state of
conict with its only domestic competition. The size of this burgher
class, disproportionately small relative to the overall Polish population
size, must have exacerbated its insecurities in comparison with an
equally large counterpart among the Jews, despite the fact that Jews
consisted of only 10 percent of the population of Poland.
The four-year Sejm (Polish national legislature), lasting between 1788
and 1792, became a focus for burgher efforts to permanently exclude the
Jews from the towns. In this last-ditch effort at Polish national renewal,
all sectors of Polish society attempted to exert their respective inuences
on the Sejm. Hostility toward Jews by the burghers reached its height in
1790, as they were agitating for Jewish exclusion. On May 15, a riot
erupted in which Jews were attacked and their wares stolen; the violence
did not end until the army intervened. The immediate cause of the
disturbances was a contract awarded to Jewish suppliers.
39
The outcome
of this violence, along with other burgher efforts, was to lead to the
37
Lukowski 1999, 110.
38
Stone 1976, 82.
39
Levine 1991, 213.
348 E X C E P T I O N S
virtual exclusion of the Jews from the towns, except when expressly
permitted by the town authorities. Even more important was the exclu-
sion of Jews as a group from the public law. Although freedom of
religious practice was guaranteed by the new constitution, the Jewish
community, in contrast to others, was excluded from public law. Not
only was this outcome ominous for the future continued existence of
this least-assimilable Polish community, but it also stood in stark con-
trast to its traditional legal standing.
For two centuries, between the union of 1569 and the middle to late
eighteenth century, Jewish autonomy had been granted by royal charter.
The kehilla (pl. kehillot), or community in Hebrew, was constituted as
the legal representation of the local Jewish community. It was respon-
sible for administering the religious and social affairs of this community
and, perhaps most important, for collecting taxes, a substantial portion
of which would be rendered to the Polish authorities.
40
Jewish commu-
nities, therefore, came under royal protection or, where less applicable
because of distance from the capital, under the protection of local
magnates. The legal standing of the kehillot was undisputed; beginning
in the 1580s, they began to function under a larger organization called
the Council of Four Lands. Such a council probably compensated for the
increasing fragmentation of Polish political life and a consequent
diminution of Jewish security. During the sixteenth and early seven-
teenth centuries, Polish Jews had created the greatest networks of
communal and educational institutions of any Jewry since the decline
of the Jewish community of Babylon. This council, through its federated
structures, sought to direct, regulate, and protect far-ung Jewish com-
munities, otherwise subjected to different domains of authority and the
conicting interests of diverse segments of Polish society.
41
By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the political and
nancial difculties of the Polish commonwealth were evident. The
Szlachta (Council of the Nobility) of 1764 resolved to abolish the
Council of Four Lands that had been functioning successfully for nearly
two centuries.
42
Taxes would now be collected directly by the Polish
representatives, a move to economize by eliminating the prior tax-
collecting agent, namely the Council of Four Lands. To be sure, a certain
proportion of the funds was used for administrative purposes by the
council. But at the same time, Jewish communal administration, cha-
rities, religious organizations, burial societies, learned institutions and
40
Davies 1982, 325.
41
Levine 1991, 35.
42
Dubnov 1973, 359.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 349
the like could no longer be administered by a central Jewish organiza-
tion. The individual kehillot were on their own.
The gradual fragmentation of the Polish state had another conse-
quence, namely the rst major communal violence targeting Jewish
communities since 1648 and the Chmielnicki pogrom, which was car-
ried out by Ukrainians, not Poles. Empress Catherine II of Russia, by this
time serving as protector of the Polish state, now also sought to
protect the rights of Eastern Orthodox Polish citizens. This action raised
the question of the rights of others such as Protestants and even Jews,
thereby precipitating a vigorous Roman Catholic reaction among the
nobility. The Confederation of the Bar was formed under conservative
Catholic leadership, which had the additional consequence of precipi-
tating a peasant reaction to the Confederates mainly in the predomin-
antly Orthodox areas of Ukraine. Cossack forces rampaged throughout
Ukraine with the purpose of hanging from the same tree Pole, Jew and
dog all of the same faith.
43
Estimates of the number of Jewish dead
vary from conservative estimates of thousands,
44
to the 10,00020,000
range,
45
up to tens of thousands.
46
Clearly the visibility of the Jewish
arendar (whether or not involved in the propinacja) as an agent of the
Polish nobleman made him a handy target for the venting of violent rage,
despite the immediate origins of the violence in issues of Catholic
supremacy.
Thus, the period of the First Partition in 1772, especially the four-year
Sejm, was immediately preceded by two extraordinary blows experi-
enced by the Jewish community. Its overarching communal organiza-
tion had been legislated out of existence, and once again, as in the
preceding century, the threat of massive violence hung over its head.
In this climate of threat and vulnerability, the Jews could expect little
from the four-year Sejm despite their best efforts at inuence and the
high praise of observers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau among others.
47
Although the constitution resulting from this Sejm conformed to many
liberal principles of the Enlightenment, it did little to respond to the
Jewish predicament. If anything it worsened that plight considerably by
not referring to the Jewish community. Exclusion from the public law of
the time was the consequence. Ten percent of the population therefore
was effectively excluded from this constitutive process. Interestingly, the
book index for the most comprehensive recent treatment of this
43
Quoted ibid., 364.
44
Gieysztor et al. 1979, 278.
45
Dubnov 1973, 366.
46
Levine 1991, 162.
47
Fiszman 1997.
350 E X C E P T I O N S
constitution,
48
a book 562 pages in length, has not a single entry for the
words Jew, Jewish, Judaism, or any other variant. This exclusion
stands in contrast to other European countries where Jewish corporate
existence continued to be recognized both in privilege and disability.
49
In further contrast, the Law of the Towns explicitly recognized the
rights of Christian burghers, including foreigners, as well as the freedom
of townspeople from feudal obligation. Burghers could now purchase
estates and were granted rights to lower-level judicial and administrative
appointments; several hundreds were even elevated to the level of
gentry.
50
Last-minute efforts to introduce a draft resolution concerning
Jewish corporate rights failed, consistent with the continued Jewish
exclusion from the towns. According to Hillel Levine,
This left Polands Jews, even more than before the May Constitution,
subject to the whims of petty local tyrants. Vis-a` -vis the larger collectivity,
the Polish nation, Jews were now dened administratively as nonpersons.
For Jews on the brink of the modern period, a period that would witness
the mightiest effort to dene the Jew as a nonperson and thereby to
eliminate Jews from European society, the legacy of Polands bloodless
revolution was insidious.
51
Jewish reactions to this new (non)status varied, but most perceived
the dangers. Perhaps most perceptive are the comments of the Briton
Lord George Gordon, who was later to convert to Judaism. He wrote,
There has been something not sincere in the Polish Revolution, a sort of
false pretence in favour of Liberty, which is now too apparent, and [the
Poles] themselves are suffering the fatal consequences of the
deception . . . The Assembly of France, you know, has prudently
admitted the Nation to the equal rights of Citizens. The Jews in France
were soon penetrated with admiration and respect, on beholding the
multiplied acts of Justice, which proceeded from that Assembly; and
they deposited in the midst of them the solemn testimony of their
patriotism and devotedness: their solemn oath to sacrice, in every
instance, their lives and fortunes (sic) for the public good; for the glory
of the nation and the king. One sole object rules and animates all their
thoughts, the good of their country, and a desire of dedicating to it all
their strength. In that respect they will not yield to any inhabitants of
France; they will dispute the palm with all the citizens for zeal, courage
and patriotism . . . But what encouragement does the present Diet [another
48
Ibid.
49
Levine 1991, 229.
50
Ibid., 218.
51
Ibid., 221.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 351
term for the Sejm] hold out to the Polish Jews which they did not enjoy
under the old Republican Government? None at all.
52
In a much darker and perhaps prophetic tone, a poem was written in
1789 and published in 1790 was homicidal in content:
How to correct this, here is a cure. Trees are in abundance, but gallows
are sparse. So each year we must hang one hundred Jews. Crime will
diminish . . . in this way turn bad into good.
53
Yet even here we do not see a recommendation for wholesale massacre
or genocide. However, I do identify this as a pregenocidal condition
because of commonalities with antecedents of genocide in the several
cases examined here. Moreover, Poles must have been keenly aware of
the massacre of Jews in 1768 and even more so as the result of the much
more widespread massacres (approximately 100,000 dead) of the earlier
Chmielnicki pogroms during the preceding century.
First, we have the corporate exclusion from public law. Although not
nearly so severe as the racial laws of Nazi Germany, this exclusion
nevertheless represents an abrupt departure from the explicit recogni-
tion of Jewish corporate rights in the preceding centuries. The earlier
abolition in 1764 of the Council of Four Lands likely paved the way for
this later exclusion.
Second, extensive violence against Jews leading to the probable deaths
of at least 10,00020,000 in eastern Poland in 1768, largely unpunished,
suggests a commonality with the later massacres of 191820. As we have
seen, earlier massacres also occurred in our cases of genocide, fullling
the continuity and validation conditions.
Third, Jewish and Christian refugees must have been a major concern
during this period. The massacres of 1768 must have had the effect of
dislocating many Jews, as did the later Partition of 1772. Indeed, after
the Partition, the Prussian government simply forced the more poverty-
stricken Jews from their homes and dumped them back onto Polish
territory.
54
Within Poland itself, Jews were expelled from villages and
towns where burghers were no longer forced by the gentry or the crown
to coexist with them. A new class of 72,000 unemployed Jews and 9,000
paupers was thus generated, nearly 10 percent of the Jewish population
and a much larger proportion of its adult males.
55
In addition,
52
Quoted in Solomons 1913, 257.
53
Quoted in Levine 1991, 212.
54
Ibid., 167.
55
Mahler 1971, 30001.
352 E X C E P T I O N S
approximately 200,000 Germans and 300,000 Russians migrated to
Poland at this time, creating additional population pressures, although
it is unclear how many of these people were Jews.
Fourth, the First Partition in 1772 must have generated an extreme
state insecurity. After nearly a century as virtually a Russian satellite, a
status not terribly dissimilar to that of Poland during the post-World
War II era, nearly 30 percent of its territory and 35 percent of its
population were lost to three much stronger powers. Obviously, fears
of another partition were rife and led to various efforts at national
rejuvenation, including, of course, the May 3, 1791 constitution.
Clearly these efforts were not sufcient, because in 1793 and 1795 the
Second and Third Partitions ended the sovereign existence of the Polish
state. Under these conditions of extreme state insecurity, one would
expect a sharpening of antagonism toward those perceived as less cen-
trally important members of the polity.
Fifth, ideational justications for these antagonisms were increasing.
The dissemination of the Blood Libel, a medieval calumny that claimed
Jewish use of Christian blood in the celebration of Passover (directly
contradicting a fundamental Jewish law forbidding the ingestion of even
animal blood), was on the rise. Although various high church ofcials, even
several popes, condemned the Blood Libel as an absurdity, nevertheless it
persisted at the local parish or regional level as a rallying cry and justica-
tion for attacks on Jews, whether verbal or physical. And as Levine indi-
cates, from the middle of the eighteenth century, especially after one
especially heinous case in Zhitomir in 1753, the appearance of the Blood
Libel was increasing in frequency and intensity.
56
The Roman Catholic
Church rapidly emerged as a defender of Poland against all schismatics
(Eastern Orthodox believers) and others, such as the Jews.
57
Given these conditions constituting a pregenocidal syndrome, why in
point of fact did a genocide of the Jews not occur? Here, again, several
reasons emerging from this analysis can be presented. First, the period
immediately after the First Partition saw the Central-East European region
at peace. The Russo-Turkish War ending in the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji
in 1774 was winding down and in any event did not at this time directly
involve the Poles. Indeed, a major purpose of this and the later partitions
was the avoidance of great power war.
58
An ongoing war that directly
threatens state security may in fact be a necessary condition for genocide
that no pregenocidal antecedents can overcome.
56
Levine 1991, 18390.
57
Dubnov 1973, 363.
58
Lewitter 1965.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 353
Second, while ideational inuences of the Roman Catholic Church
fostered anti-Jewish feeling, there were clear limits to this antagonism.
The Jews had experienced a protection of the church if only to continue
as witnesses to the travails of a people that had refused to accept Christ
as the Messiah. Roman Catholic theology explicitly rejected the outright
murder of people, whatever their past misdeeds.
Third, another ideational inuence, this time from a very different
direction, also militated against genocide. Thus, the Enlightenment in
various countries including Germany immediately to the west and
especially France further west was incorporating Jews into the polity
and society. Clearly, the Enlightenment was inuential in Poland, as the
constitutional efforts of the late eighteenth century attest. Even if
incomplete, especially in the exclusion of Jews as a corporate entity,
the inuence of the Enlightenment simply would not permit wholesale
efforts at mass murder.
The fact of Jewish acceptance in revolutionary France established an
afnity for Jews that likely would not permit great power and especially
French approval of such a genocide. Ideas of the French philosophes and
those emanating from the French Revolution were sufciently wide-
spread and inuential in Poland to militate against any direct attack on a
people that was currently being favored by revolutionary France, the
soon-to-be continental hegemon.
Here is the crux of the matter. Revolutionary France, exponent of the
Enlightenment and liberator of the Jews from their ghettos and restric-
tive legislation, was in many respects the catalyst of the new Polish
constitution. To offend this once-again-rising great power by a gross
victimization of the Jews was simply out of the question. Effectively
France, as the guardian of both the Jewish community and Polish
liberalism, played the role of afne protector.
Britain and Ireland
Before tackling the question of Great Britain and Roman Catholic
Ireland after World War I our second case of a genocide that might
have been expected to occur but did not a prior question must be
addressed. Is it legitimate to suggest democracies as candidates for the
commission of genocide? Clearly the histories of democracies have been
vastly superior in this regard to those of autocracies.
59
Yet democracies
59
Rummel 1997.
354 E X C E P T I O N S
have been known to commit genocide. The Melian genocide of the
Peloponnesian War is one case in point, as is the debated but never-
theless possible genocidal policy of successive US governments toward
Native Americans in the nineteenth century. It remains an open ques-
tion whether the use of smallpox-infected blankets given to vulnerable
Indian tribes, or individual massacres such as Sand Creek in Colorado,
were evidence of state-sponsored systematic mass murder as in our three
instances here. Nevertheless, the Melian genocide and the suspect US
policy concerning Native Americans certainly suggest the potential for
democracies to commit genocide, especially against groups with ethno-
religious characteristics distinctly at variance with those of the majority.
One more issue needs to be addressed, namely the extent to which
Britain was actually within the domain of losses at the time of the
uprising. Although not even close to defeat (as Germany was not in
194243), the British by April 1916 had not won any major land
victories, but did experience one humiliating loss. This was the
Gallipoli invasion of March 1915 through January 1916. With the
naval bombardment of March 1915 and the April landings of British
and mainly Commonwealth troops, Churchills proposed shortcut to
ending the war appeared soon to be realized. The tottering Ottoman
Empire, defeated by Balkan states only three years earlier, appeared to be
by far the weakest major Central Power. Yet the determined stand of
German-led Turkish forces forced the British to complete their with-
drawal by January 1916.
60
To many observers, this would appear to
signify a further weakening of the British Empire, evidenced in British
difculties in the Boer War against Afrikaner colonists some seventeen
years earlier.
Much as the defeat at Mantinea saw the collapse of Athenss
Peloponnesian policy followed by the Melian genocide, so did
Gallipoli signify the end to any illusions of a rapid Allied march to
victory. Indeed, without signicant land victories (only the French
had clearly won a victory on the Marne), and with only a remote like-
lihood at that time of American entry into the war (Wilson was already
campaigning for reelection on a platform of strict neutrality), defeat was
a distinct possibility. Note the timing of the unwise and excessively
harsh British response to the April 1916 uprising in Dublin, to be
examined more fully below.
60
M. Gilbert 2000.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 355
A genocidal solution of the Irish Question is found deep in Anglo-
Irish history; it is most often associated with a period of English losses.
As early as the late sixteenth century, there were calls for genocide
against the native Irish by English colonists who were driven out in the
late 1590s. They wrote to Elizabeth I, Lett the feete of yore forces treade
and trample downe these bryars that will not suffer yore plantes to
prosper . . . Lett them weare with theire heeles the very rootes out of
the earth that they springe no more: soe shall you make Ireland a
ourishing nursery for England.
61
Edmund Spenser, one of the irate English colonists, suggested just
such a genocidal program of deliberate starvation. Sensing this impru-
dent realpolitik, W. B. Yeats, the great Irish Protestant poet, who in his
poetry distanced himself from the famine, nevertheless wrote:
Like an hysterical patient he [Spenser] drew a complicated web of inhu-
man logic out of the bowels of an insufcient premise there was no
right, no law, but that of Elizabeth, and all that opposed her opposed
themselves to God, to civilisation, and to all inherited wisdom and
courtesy, and should be put to death.
62
After the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland by Henry II in 1122,
large numbers of English settlers arrived in its wake. They took root in
the Dublin area, in the southeast and southwest, and more sparsely
throughout virtually the entire island. But by the sixteenth century
English culture was in a state of decay. Counties Kerry and Tipperary
were once studded with English settlements,
63
but wars with the native
Irish and the absorption of many Old English into the majority Gaelic
culture had sapped these communities of their number. The English
imagined a golden age of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries in
which English culture reigned supreme at least in the areas of settlement,
but by the end of the sixteenth were writing of the Irish problem.
64
The English inhabitants of Ireland during the reigns of Henry VIII,
Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth I were convinced, correctly, that their
world was shrinking day by day.
65
Even in areas close to Dublin, the
heart of the English settlement, English as a language had ceased to be
used on a regular basis. It was in this context of shrinkage and loss that
these genocidal sentiments were uttered by uprooted English settlers.
61
Quoted in Tanner 2001, 30.
62
Yeats 1961, 361.
63
Tanner 2001, 28.
64
Ibid., 29.
65
Ibid., 33.
356 E X C E P T I O N S
The Irish rebellion of the late 1590s and the general decline of English
culture was, in the subsequent century, to be followed by a genuine effort
at the root and branch annihilation of Irish customs desired in the
1590s.
66
Oliver Cromwells invasion of Ireland in 1649 was to lead to this
catastrophe. A three-prong strategy was adopted by Cromwell. First was
the elimination of all military resistance to the Cromwellian Protestant
reforms, effectively ending the chaos that had reigned in Ireland since
1641, and the rebellion that had its origin in Ulster. This was accom-
plished fairly quickly and with considerable loss of life, including the
infamous massacres at Drogheda and Wexford. Second, all priests and
landowners implicated in the insurrection were to be removed. This
process eventually entailed the wholesale dispossession of all Catholic
landowners out of the three provinces of Leinster, Munster, and Ulster,
effectively all of eastern Ireland, the most fertile region. Only small
estates were to be allowed Catholic landowners to the west of the
Shannon river. The infrastructure of the Catholic church was destroyed
both organizationally and physically, entailing the murder of large
numbers of clergy. Finally, Catholicism was to be supplanted with
Protestantism throughout the island. To this end, large number of
Protestants were to replace Catholics, either murdered or forced to
move to the west of the Shannon.
67
This process yielded a loss of approximately 750,000 persons between
1600 and 1650, reckoned as follows. At the close of the sixteenth century,
Ireland had roughly 750,000 people,
68
while in 1650 it had about
800,000. Given a peacetime fertility rate (suggested by the doubling of
the Irish population between 1650 and 1700 to 1.5 million people), the
number of persons should have been 1.5 million in 1650, not half that
number.
69
In addition to these human losses, the losses in land were equally
catastrophic. Of the 7.5 million most arable acres, 5.2 million were
transferred to Irish Protestants. Although some of that land did nd
its way back into Catholic hands, the net effect was a massive transfer-
ence of landed wealth to the Protestants.
70
From that time, the vast
majority of Irish would be poor peasants, many without land, struggling
to eke out a meager existence. The Protestant Ascendancy dates from
this time.
66
Ibid., 31.
67
Canny 1991, 14548.
68
Ibid., 110.
69
Tanner 2001, 145.
70
Ibid.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 357
The third period that some have associated with genocide is that of
the famine beginning in the late 1840s. As we saw in chapter 6, if the
famine was not a genocidal act overtly planned by the British, it never-
theless took over 1 million Irish lives, mainly Catholics, and utterly
transformed the sociopolitical face of Ireland. Just before the famine,
in 1841, the population of Ireland numbered some 8,175,124. Of these,
approximately 2.5 million were landless laborers, and only 10 percent of
farms had more than 30 acres.
71
In this setting of rural overpopulation,
the failure of the principal crop was devastating in its consequences. In
the west of Ireland, the almost uniformly Catholic areas beyond the
Shannon river, vast expanses of depopulation became apparent. In the
words of one observer these empty villages were the tombs of a
departed race.
72
Most importantly, the British government, which after Peel sought to
allow laissez-faire (i.e., Darwinian) economics to resolve the famine
crises, actually opened itself to accusations of genocide. The so-called
Gregory clause of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1847 forbade the
distribution of any relief to poor who held more than one-quarter of an
acre of land
73
even in the midst of widespread starvation. It is no wonder
that writers such as John Mitchel directly accused the British of for-
mulating a consciously genocidal policy
74
in which the famine was
articially sustained. And Mitchel was one of the rst of the prominent
Young Irelanders, forerunners of the Fenians who were to play a major
role in the development of Irish nationalism.
Originally known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (itself an amal-
gam of Young Irelanders and Chartists, called Irish Confederates), the
Fenians were actually founded in New York in 1858.
75
Many of the
Fenians were to come from the pool of 150,000 or so Irish-American
veterans of the American Civil War, a large reservoir of young men
whose Irish consciousness was raised rst by the famine they had ed,
and then by rampant anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudices in the
United States. The Fenian movement was to spread to Great Britain
and, most crucially, Ireland.
And here we nd one of the key elements in the development of an
afne condition protecting the Irish Catholic community from system-
atic mass murder. The second major consequence of the Irish famine was
the emigration of large numbers of mainly young people. The scale of
71
Ibid., 241.
72
Foster 1991a, 203.
73
MacRaild 1999, 31.
74
Mitchel 1868; Foster 1991, 209.
75
MacRaild 1999, 139.
358 E X C E P T I O N S
the emigration can be gauged by the drop in Irish population from
8.5 million in 1845 to approximately 6.5 million six years later.
76
These
numbers suggest that, in addition to the number of deaths in excess of a
million, another million or so had emigrated. Additionally, this was no
singular historical occurrence. A pattern had been set whereby families,
especially in the Catholic west, designated certain family members to
emigrate and, where possible, send money back to their impoverished
relations in Ireland. This pattern had become so socially ingrained that
By 1870 more than half as many natives of Ireland were living overseas
as at home. Three-fths of the three million emigrants were in the USA,
a quarter in Britain, and about one-thirteenth in Australia as in Canada.
The unique decline of Irelands population for nearly a century after the
famine was mainly caused by structural emigration, which removed up
to half of each generation from the country.
77
The nearly 2 million emigrants in the USA were to be crucial, as we
saw, in the establishment of the Fenians, the prototypical militant Irish
nationalist movement, but also in subsequent key events. Between 1870
and 1914, at least 1 million were to be sent home annually to Ireland,
typically in the Christmas American letter, which became essential to
the stability of the western rural economy.
78
And the maintenance of
this relatively primitive economy was to ensure the perpetuation of this
vast emigration throughout the period ending early in World War I.
Irish-Americans were crucial not only to the Irish economy but also
to the furtherance of Irish nationalism. As early as the 1860s, repub-
licanism was seeping into the country from Famine emigrants new
home in America, gnawing away at the bres of loyalism.
79
The Land League, established principally by Fenians, was a response
to the bad harvest, hunger, and violence of 1879. The leagues purpose
was to achieve peasant proprietorship and rent reduction.
80
Although
peaceful in its tactics, the league would serve as a vehicle for the expres-
sion of Irish nationalism more generally. By 1881, the Land League of
America had more than half a million members organized into 1,500
branches. According to Donald MacRaild, this movement represented a
coming of age in Irish American politics.
81
But as a consequence of
the renewed and sometimes extreme Irish nationalist sentiment, vio-
lence erupted. In 1883, for example, the American Clan na Gael
attempted to destroy the Liverpool Town Hall with bombs and was
76
Ibid., 32.
77
Fitzpatrick 1991, 213.
78
Ibid., 216.
79
Tanner 2001, 250.
80
Ibid., 254.
81
MacRaild 1999, 145.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 359
also responsible for three explosions in Glasgow.
82
The United States
was increasingly becoming an incubator for the coming Irish nationalist
explosion.
In April 1916, the Fenians, now known as the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, staged its revolt. Although fought by Irishmen principally
in Dublin, the funding was provided by the American Clan na Gael.
83
Given Fenianisms American roots, this source of nancial support was
to be expected. A participant in the uprising, Eamon de Valera, later to
be prime minister of Ireland, was spared execution probably because of
his American birth. He later urged an American strategy in which
Irish-Americans would be mobilized to seek American support for Irish
representation at the eventual peace conference.
84
During the postwar
uprising, Irish public opinion in the United States was courted and
heavily mobilized in favor of Irish independence, or at least a high
level of autonomy. Given this profound connection between Ireland
and the United States not to mention the large Irish communities in
Britains greatest cities including London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, a
genocidal solution to the Irish Question should have been excluded as
an option.
85
Yet there were strong inuences in favor of a genocidal solution. Most
important, perhaps, was the domain of losses noted earlier, which set the
precedent for British brutality in Ireland during this period, but also to
be considered is the failure of extensive British efforts to stem the tide of
Irish nationalism.
Two of the most contentious issues that gave rise to groups such as the
Fenians were land and religion. Inequality in Irish landholdings was
enormous. To understand the scale of the inequality, a comparison with
Prussia and its history of a malevolent inuence of land inequality on
politics is revealing. With a rough equivalency in area, in 1870 Ireland
had 400 estates of 10,000 acres or more, and 2,000 estates of 2,000 acres
or more. In that year only 100 Prussian estates were 2,000 acres or more,
and those of 10,000 acres were rare.
86
Equally important politically and having even greater impact on the
daily lives of Irish peasants were tenant rights. As of 1903, the vast
majority of Irish farmers were tenants.
87
Tenancies were often held at
the discretion of the landlord, most often a Protestant, and rents were at
times increased, even though such tenures and rents were customarily
82
Ibid., 144.
83
Fitzpatrick 1991, 237.
84
Ibid., 241.
85
MacRaild 1999.
86
Guinnane 1997, 48.
87
Ibid., 50.
360 E X C E P T I O N S
xed; these combined to make the future appear to be very insecure to
the typical Irish Catholic tenant. Poor harvests for example, those that
led to political conict and violence associated with the Land Wars of
187982 and the threat of famine easily could magnify such fears.
The Land Acts of 1870 and 1881 were designed to redress some of
these grievances. The 1870 act essentially gave the force of law to that
which had been customary in land tenancy, while the 1881 legislation
aimed at extending the scope of tenant rights throughout Ireland and
xing rents by special land courts.
88
Elements of both acts endeavored to
encourage land purchases by farmers. The Local Government Act of
1898 allowed the election of local councils in Ireland, as did the legisla-
tion of 1889 and 1894 in Britain. Additional legislation between 1885
and 1903 further encouraged land purchase.
89
A major grievance of Irish Catholics was the existence of the Church
of Ireland a Protestant institution in a predominantly Roman Catholic
land as the established church, similar to the Protestant Church of
Englands established status but in a mostly Protestant country. But
despite widespread evangelical Protestant efforts and relatively low
levels of Protestant emigration, the number of Church of Ireland adher-
ents actually declined from 852,000 (census of 1834) to 693,000.
90
This
fact along with Fenian activity imported from the United States led to the
disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, in an effort like that
of the Land Acts to stabilize the Irish situation. According to Boyce,
91
In 1783 the whole of Ireland was in the grip of a privileged Protestant
minority; by 1901, except in Ulster, that minority had experienced the
gradual transfer of power to the Roman Catholic majority. The Church
of Ireland had been disestablished; local government placed in the hands
of elective (and therefore mainly Roman Catholic) councils; and peasant
proprietorship all but achieved.
Despite these sweeping changes, in the midst of a most difcult war,
open rebellion occurred in 1916, suggesting that nothing short of a near-
genocidal solution, as in Cromwells day, could alter Irish Catholic
nationalist sentiments. And the overreaction of the British authorities
in 1916 is likely attributable to these considerations. Sixteen of the rebels
were executed and 3,500 people were arrested, court-martialed, or
interned in Britain. Given the initial, extraordinarily negative reaction
of most Dubliners, who had little sympathy for the rebellion that led to
the destruction of much of Dublins center (rebels were pelted with
88
Ibid.
89
Boyce 1985, 264.
90
Tanner 2001, 22223.
91
Boyce 1985, 264.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 361
tomatoes by the public after surrendering), the British overreaction was
a gift. Instead of dealing with the rebels as dissident citizens, they were
viewed by the British as traitors who had stabbed the Empire in the
back
92
and were treated accordingly. All Irish Catholics were now
viewed with great suspicion. The brutality of the British forces was
indiscriminate in its application. As a consequence,
Communities previously indifferent to republican slogans were outraged
at victimization of hitherto innocuous idealists, who nevertheless bene-
ted from detention by meeting enthusiasts from other localities, learn-
ing Irish, mastering Gaelic games, and so receiving elementary training in
revolution. While the new revolutionary elite crystallized in detention, a
sentimental cult of veneration for the martyrs developed outside as after
previous failed risings. The conspirators thus achieved their aim of
reversing the movement towards Anglo-Irish reconciliation.
93
Yet, as we know, despite movement in this direction in 1916, and
another indiscriminate brutal response by British paramilitary forces
(the infamous Black and Tans) supporting the police in suppressing
the postwar rebellion of 192021, genocide did not occur. The afne
American connection simply was too strong for the British to seriously
consider this option.
Even the possibility of massacre raised red ags to incisive British
observers. For example, Sir Henry Wilson, Unionist (favoring continued
union between Great Britain and Ireland), member of Parliament, and
former chief of the Imperial General Staff, noted in his diary in the
summer of 1920: Winston Churchill suggested arming 20,000
Orangemen [hardline Unionists] to relieve the troops from the north.
I told him this would mean taking sides . . . civil war and savage repri-
sals, and, at the very least, great tension with America and open rupture
with the Pope. Winston does not realise these things and is a perfect
idiot as a statesman.
94
Noteworthy in this regard is a resolution of
sympathy for the aspirations to self-determination of the Irish people
95
found among the reservations to the Treaty of Versailles put forward in
the US Senate in 1919.
It may be objected that Jews in Europe had an American afne
population as well, yet this did not serve to deter Hitler. But there are
several crucial differences. First the American-Jewish community was of
more recent vintage than the Irish Catholic, smaller in size, and less
92
Fitzpatrick 1991, 240.
93
Ibid.
94
Quoted in Bew 2004, 11.
95
Brody 1999, 23.
362 E X C E P T I O N S
embedded within the overall polity and society. Irish Catholics began
arriving in large numbers in the late 1840s; large-scale Jewish immigra-
tion dated from the 1890s. Whereas the Jewish community numbered
approximately 4,000,000 in 1940, Americans of Irish Catholic descent
numbered at least 20,000,000. More important, the hierarchy of the
American Catholic Church was almost uniformly Irish Catholic in
descent. As Marcus Tanner commented, the Catholic Church in
America had become a vast extension of the Irish Catholic Church.
96
To have outraged the second-largest Christian denomination in the
United States would have been extreme folly on the part of the British.
Still, as implied above, the earlier relatively decent treatment meted
out to Jews by the Nazis may have been pretty much due to the perceived
exaggerated inuence of the American-Jewish community, in tandem
with similar perceptions of inuential Soviet-Jewish ofcials. But, in the
nal analysis, the Soviet Union could be conquered by the Nazis, or so
ran their expectation, and the United States would eventually enter the
war, thus dispelling any fears of this double inuence. The Holocaust
would then proceed in all its ferocity. The notion of the British conquest
of the United States, thereby nullifying Irish Catholic inuence, was
absurd. That absurdity lies at the heart of the afne protection afforded
the Catholic community in Ireland.
Israel and Intifada II
As a nal example, although as of this writing it has not yet come to a
formal conclusion, the Israeli response to the second intifada also
indicates the importance of the afne protection of potentially threa-
tened populations. Despite the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis (and still
counting) in the most recent intifada, they have been exceedingly careful
to avoid any implications of genocidal activity against the Palestinians.
And the haste of the Palestinians in accusing Israel of such activity even
when an ofcial UN investigation absolved the Israelis of the so-called
Jenin massacre in 2002, supports the importance of the afnity
condition.
In addition to the Israeli need to avoid offending the United States in
its efforts to maintain cordial relations with elements of the Arab world,
the overriding consideration for the Israelis is the direct threat posed by
the vastly more numerous Arab populations residing on three sides of
96
Tanner 2001, 298.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 363
Israel. With roughly 5 million Jewish Israelis potentially confronting
over 150 million Arabs, an afne protection is amply afforded to Arabs
under Israeli governance. The common Arab identity is reinforced by a
burgeoning Muslim identication in the Middle East. Faced with the
possibility of a two-front or even a three-front war, if surrounding Arab
states were to come to the aid of a beleaguered Palestinian population
threatened with genocide, the Israelis on the whole have been cautious in
responding to the suicide bombings and other Palestinian attacks. The
magnitude of this caution is emphasized by the enormous disparity
between the military capabilities of the Israelis and the Palestinians,
that is, the gap between the damage the Israelis could inict and that
which they already have.
Strategically, faced with this disparity, the Palestinians have sought to
goad the Israelis into genocidal activities that would force surrounding
Arab states to commit themselves militarily to the intifada. Effectively,
the afne population would be activated on behalf of the Palestinians.
That this strategy has thus far been ineffective suggests the Israeli
recognition of the importance of the afnity condition.
The impact of war
Warfare, though, may invert the afnity condition. While, earlier, East
European Jews were protected by the existence of politically powerful
Jews in the Soviet Union, when war broke out the Jewish threat had to
be neutralized. Armenians protected by the February 1914 agreement
between the Ottoman Empire and Russia were suddenly transformed by
the war into highly threatening Russian handmaidens that needed to be
dealt with harshly. And when the United Nations as a local protector
decided to withdraw its troops from Rwanda, this was the signal for the
genocide to be enacted throughout the country. Ottoman Greeks were
saved from extinction not only by the afnity condition of extreme
Allied, especially British protectiveness toward them and the existence
of the Greek state itself, but by the emergence of Turkey as victorious in
the later Greco-Turkish War that removed it from the domain of losses.
Genocide of the Vietnamese in Cambodia accelerated rapidly as the
Khmer Rouge were being decisively defeated in the quickening border
war with Vietnam.
Precisely because the afnity condition restricts the decision latitude
of the potential victimizer and in that sense magnies the threat of both
the potential victims and their afne protector, when war breaks out,
364 E X C E P T I O N S
these strictures no longer hold. Genocide then becomes a distinct pos-
sibility. This, perhaps, is the paradox of afnity protection in peace-
time, but much greater vulnerability in time of war. Yet the power of the
afnity condition in preventing or at least postponing genocide is still
evident, if only in the differential treatment accorded Armenians and
Ottoman Greeks, even in the midst of a full-scale war in 191516.
D O G S T H A T D I D N T B A R K I I 365
PART VI
Conclusion
18
Findings, consequences, and prevention
The twentieth century witnessed the horrors of genocide and its
sequelae, horrors that unfortunately have not yet ceased. A major pur-
pose of this volume has been to identify antecedent factors that make
genocide more or less likely to occur, as well as factors that increase
victim vulnerability, thereby augmenting the magnitude of the killing.
In this chapter, therefore, I begin by summarizing similarities and
differences in the ndings. Following this presentation, I include sum-
maries of the analyses that help clarify the consequences of genocide and
modes of genocide prevention including the role of democracy. If
nothing else, an investigation of genocide should lead not only to an
understanding of its origins and consequences, but also to ways of
preventing genocide in the future. Which variables are most likely to
signal the onset of genocide and how should interested parties (in the
best-case scenario, the entire international community) react?
Similarities and differences
Genocide and other crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing
share certain features in common. Most important, they are more likely
to occur during wartime than during peacetime. War is associated with
uncertainty, as its outcome tends to be uncertain. Given the tendency of
uncertainty to increase reliance on prior knowledge or memory, as the
Bayesian ndings inform us, a recent history of loss looms large in its
decision-making inuence. Loss builds on and coalesces the tendencies
toward extremism already inherent in the search for unity and conti-
nuity of mass murder. The emphasis on loss also species a behavioral
consequence of political upheaval, a variable that has been identied as
critical in yielding genocide by analysts such as Robert Melson and
Barbara Harff.
1
Political upheaval, whether domestic or international,
1
See Melson 1992 and Harff 2003.
369
yields winners and losers. As we have seen, losers in earlier or ongoing
conicts are the most likely perpetrators of genocide. Loss is a blatant
and eminently measurable property of the human condition.
The etiology of ethnic cleansing, as in the Irish famine, is distin-
guished from that of genocide mainly by the presence of recent loss in
the case of genocide. Realpolitik alone was prominent in explaining that
famine, as well as other cases of ethnic cleansing such as that which
occurred in Bosnia. In the one clearly genocidal element of the Bosnian
ethnic cleansing, Srebrenica, recent or impending loss is implicated.
In the case of genocide, loss is allowed to generate its pernicious
consequences. The three genocidal states Germany, the Ottoman
Empire, and Rwanda had histories of loss that increased the prob-
ability of an imprudentbrute force realpolitik with its associated risk
minimization (mostly unnecessary) and genocidal outcome, especially
after loss compensation had been effected.
An implication, of course, is that, if earlier German losses in World
War I had been reversed in the later conict, then the genocide likely
would not have occurred, certainly not in its eliminationist form. As we
saw in chapter 7, after the defeat of France and prior to the Battle of
Britain in 1940, Hitler considered the Jews to be stupid and not nearly
as powerful as he had rst thought. Following this logic, continued
victory for Hitler would have led to additional contempt for world
Jewry, but much less brutality. With the defeat of Britain, the British
navy would no longer have been an obstacle to the mass transfer of Jews
to Madagascar, the initial preferred option by the Nazis during the war.
The same argument holds for the Ottoman and Hutu extremists. Defeat
of the Russian army by the Turkish, instead of the latters rout in 1915, and
reversal of the Rwandese Patriotic Front territorial gains, especially those
of February 1993, would likely have thwarted the genocidal process.
At the same time, vulnerability of the targeted group with real or pur-
ported connection with an enemy state (e.g., ethnic kin within that state) is
a necessary condition for the genocide to occur. Thus, not all experiences
of loss by states will lead to genocide.
2
Continuity of the killing with earl-
ier massacres, which demonstrates vulnerability, and validation killing
without punishment facilitate occurrence of the later genocide. Whether
2
For example, although Mexico was a substantially truncated state after the
MexicanAmerican war of 184648, genocide did not occur. There was no vulnerable
ethnic group within truncated Mexico that could be accused of facilitating the Mexican
defeat and territorial loss.
370 C O N C L U S I O N
continuity and validation rise to the level of necessary conditions is still an
open question, although in fact they may be just that.
Essentially, the explanations offered here apply to three genocides of the
most destructive variety and involving the deaths of far more people than
many mass murders combined. To err on the conservative side, I should
make no claim that this explanatory framework extends to other instances,
although, in fact, it might. Most recently, I discovered that the Vendee, a
series of late eighteenth-century mass murders (estimated 117,000 dead
within a relatively small area in northwestern France) by French revolu-
tionary troops following a major counterrevolutionary revolt, occurred
immediately after a military defeat of the French revolutionary army at
Neerwinden in Belgium.
3
This loss emphasized the precarious condition of
the French revolutionary state in the face of both internal and external
enemies. Applicability of the present framework to the current ethnic
cleansing with possible genocidal behavior in the Darfur region of western
Sudan will be examined later in the section on genocide prevention.
Defeat of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese army signaled the
military weakness of Democratic Kampuchea followed by the thorough-
going genocide of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia. This nding was an
unexpected byproduct of analyzing the Cambodian politicide.
There are differences among our cases. Most notably, the Cambodian
politicide emerged within the historical and geographic arc of commu-
nist governance stretching from Central Europe through Siberia and
China, and extending down to the French Indochinese successor states.
In contrast to the genocidal states that had little ideological uniformity,
a single ideology of Marxism-Leninism (albeit with regional variations)
established the parameters of governance, despite genocide of the ethnic
Vietnamese largely within the domain of losses and risk minimization. It
is not surprising, therefore, that the Cambodian politicide exhibited the
goals of Maos Cultural Revolution implemented by Stalins methods.
Pol Pots frequent contact with the Chinese Communists, along with his
3
For descriptions and analyses of the Vende e, see Tilly 1964 and Secher 2003. Although
comprising a series of mass murders like those of the Armenians in 189496, certainly
not a genocide, these cases suggest the possibility that large-scale mass murders also may
be associated with prior or ongoing loss. In the Armenian case, it was the attempt by
Armenians to enforce the liberal reform provisions of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878
imposed on the Turks after their disastrous losses in the Russo-Turkish War of
187778, followed by the unication (and expansion) of Bulgaria in 1885 at Ottoman
expense, that led to the mass murders (Dadrian 1997, 11384).
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 371
earlier sojourn in Paris and the inuence of the Stalinist French
Communist Party, established the contours of his later decision making.
Another major difference is found in matters of scale. Although the
Holocaust victimized approximately six times as many people as the
next most extensive genocide, that fact, horrifying as it is, turned out not
to be critical to the analysis. What was crucial analytically was the
presence of the Holocaust in twenty European countries, which allowed
comparisons among perpetrating states.
Among the ndings of analyses of these countries, several are prominent.
The experience of territorial loss distinguished between perpetrating states
such as, on the one hand, Italy, Vichy France, and Romania, which victi-
mized their own citizenry, and on the other Bulgaria and Finland, which
saved most of their Jews after having their borders expanded at the start of
World War II. At this time, both Vichy France and Romania were severely
truncated, and Italy was in the process of experiencing territorial loss.
Implications of that loss, as in the genocidal states (Germany, Austria, the
Ottoman Empire, and Rwanda), were extensively developed theoretically.
Inequality and especially mutual identication among victims turned
out to be important in understanding two things: rst, how so many
people could be murdered by the Germans using collaborators among
the Jewish leaders, and, second, why at least one East European ghetto
rebelled on a large scale, but others did not.
Victim vulnerability, a seldom-examined subject, is salient here.
Whether the number of Jewish victims in the Netherlands could have
been reduced if there had existed greater equality and mutual identication
among them is unknown. Yet, if the extensive collaboration between the
Amsterdam Jewish Council leaders and the SS had been reduced, then
perhaps delaying tactics might have led to the survival of a larger number of
Jews at the wars end. This speculation is somewhat problematic because of
the early (1942) destruction of so much of the Dutch-Jewish community.
Much less problematic is the contrast between behaviors of the
Hungarian-Jewish leaders and those of Romania. Despite intense
Romanian anti-Semitism and the participation of Romania in the killing
of more Jews than any other state besides Germany,
4
300,000 were saved by
the intense efforts of Jewish leaders identifying with their coreligionists.
Before the war, among ve European countries examined, Romania had by
far the highest number of anti-Semitic acts per million population between
1899 and 1939, more than three times the rate of Germany.
5
In Hungary,
4
Hilberg 1985, 759.
5
Brustein and King 2004, 43.
372 C O N C L U S I O N
on the other hand, with much less identication among different sectors of
the Jewish community, more than 500,000 went to their deaths in the
absence of warnings from the Jewish leadership that annihilation was
imminent. In mid-1944 when these killings took place, the probabilities
of escape and survival until the Soviets arrived were much higher than
earlier in the war.
Absence of mutual identication also helps explain the failure of
revolts to develop among Jews in ghettos such as o dz and Vilna.
In the former, the presence of wealthier foreign Jews militated against
such identication, while in the latter the resistance organization was not
all-inclusive, omitting important groups such as the Yiddishist Bund
because of deep political antipathies. In Warsaw, on the other hand, the
April ghetto revolt exploded with all resistance groups cooperating.
Even more important, as we saw, is the likely impact of altruistic punish-
ment occurring in the earlier January revolt on the unity characteristic of
the later, much more widespread, April revolt. Not only was that unity
achieved among the victims, at least in this one instance, but the concept of
altruistic punishment also helps answer Michael Marruss question of why
so many victimizers were willing to followHitler down his murderous path.
Altruistic punishment as a generator of unity within a fractious population
was found to be important in answering this question. It also was critical in
helping understand how a violence-averse person such as Himmler could
still engage in mass murder on a horrendous scale.
At the same time, altruistic punishment may have been less important
in the genocides of Armenians and Tutsi. We have some evidence of
inclinations in the direction of altruistic punishment by Ottoman lea-
ders such as Enver Pas a and Talat, both of whom died shortly after
World War I in circumstances that can be interpreted as sacricial for
unity of the state.
6
Sacrice of the genocidaires was found in the refugee
camps of Zaire and the deaths of many at the hands of the RPF.
If altruistic punishment was less important and perhaps even irrele-
vant to the Rwandan genocide, which process could augment or replace
it in encouraging unity of leaders and followers? The evidence thus
far suggests the role of fear of both the oncoming RPF and the genocidal
Hutu leaders who might kill Hutu peasants if they did not obey orders
to murder Tutsi. Interviews with ge nocidaires have revealed both
6
As minister of the interior, Talat was responsible for deportation of the Armenians; he
was assassinated by an Armenian in Germany in 1921. Enver Pas a continued to battle the
Soviets after World War I and was killed by them in 1922.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 373
motivations as sources of the widespread killing.
7
Fear of the oncoming
Russian army as well as of disobeying Ottoman ofcers charged with the
genocide was probably a major factor in the Armenian instance, as were
elements of altruistic punishment.
Yet altruistic punishment as a voluntary form of sacrice is more
effective. Without the sacrice of Captain Wesreidau and others of like
mind on the battleeld (see chapter 8), the German front might have
collapsed much earlier in the war, as it did in World War I, thereby saving
many Jewish lives and rendering the genocide less complete. The more than
half a million Hungarian Jews along with Romanian, Slovak, French,
Polish, and other Jews killed later in the war could have been saved.
We are now at the point of identifying the relative impact of several key
variables. Analyses here have indicated that both loss and imprudent
brute force realpolitik are clearly implicated in all three cases of genocide,
both in generating the onset of genocide and in magnifying the extent of
victimization. Using the language of necessary conditions,
8
one can
argue that these variables rise to the level of necessity because of their
appearance in all cases of genocide and absence in the instances where
genocide might have been expected to occur, but did not. I prefer to use
the language of probabilities, wherein these variables can be said to
greatly increase the probability of genocides occurrence and extent of
victimization. Alone, the search for unity probably was not inuential in
regard to either the onset or magnitude of genocide, but was consequen-
tial in affecting magnitude in concert with altruistic punishment (in the
case of the Holocaust), or with fear (in the case of the Tutsi).
On the other hand, there are variables that principally affect the
magnitude of the genocide. Altruistic punishment is one such variable,
as we just saw, and cynical realpolitik is certainly another both in the
denial of refuge that undoubtedly increased the number of victims, and
in the effective permission granted to genocidal governments by cynical
bystanders. Inequality and especially absence of mutual identication
were signicant in allowing Hungarian Jews to go to their deaths with-
out warning that might have saved many, given the proximity of Soviet
forces.
The consequences of loss, imprudent and cynical realpolitik, altruistic
punishment, and failures of mutual identication individually or in
some combination exist beyond the connes of genocide. Mass murder
may be occasioned by loss and an imprudent realpolitik, as in the
7
Berkeley 2002.
8
Goertz and Starr 2003.
374 C O N C L U S I O N
Vendee, and realpolitik alone is inuential in the genesis of ethnic
cleansing. The rise of suicide bombing, in particular, may stem from a
sense of loss and altruistic punishment intended to maximize coopera-
tion among the aggrieved population.
9
Bayesian ndings that emphasize
the role of uncertainty in diminishing the bases of rational calculation
and lead to reliance on memory are especially applicable to almost any
situation clouded by the fog of uncertainty.
The fog of war is what it implies a blanket of uncertainty that obscures
features of the physical and social landscape; most important, it renders
uncertain the wars outcome. All three of the genocidal states and the
genocidal component of the single politicide occurred within the context
of war.
10
Without war, it is exceedingly unlikely that genocide would have
occurred. Precisely because of the importance of war, the international
dimension of genocide has received the lions share of attention.
Consequences of genocide
If the study of genocide can lead to the understanding of crimes against
humanity beyond the strict connes of the phenomenon in question, the
consequences of genocide too can be multifaceted and far-reaching both
geographically and in longevity of outcomes. All three genocides had
such wide-ranging consequences.
The Holocaust
In addition to the removal of the majority of Jews from Europe by death or
migration, a principal outcome of the Holocaust was the formation of the
State of Israel. If, at the outbreak of World War II, the majority of world
Jewry was not Zionist, within a few years after its end it would be. As we
saw, signicant proportions of the Jewish populationwere Yiddishist (often
Bundist, supporting Yiddish as the main language of the Jews and opposing
Zionism), and so were opposed to the idea of a Jewish state and the use of
Hebrew as a daily language as it was evolving in the Jewish community of
9
M. Midlarsky 2004.
10
For general associations between genocide and war, see Markusen 1987 and M. Shaw
2003. The context of war profoundly inuenced the Cambodian genocide of the ethnic
Vietnamese, for it occurred very shortly after the defeat of Lon Nols forces, conquest of
South Vietnam by the North, ongoing military engagement of the Khmer Rouge with
the Vietnamese, and the earlier highly destructive US bombing of Cambodia.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 375
Palestine. Another segment was Orthodox, frequently Hasidic, organized
typically into separate communities. Support for a Jewish state was abso-
lutely forbidden among many of these communities because of their belief
that only arrival of the long-awaited Messiah could justify the ingathering
of Jews into the Promised Land.
Sometimes, entire nationalities such as the Hungarian Jews, whatever
their level of observance, were only weakly Zionist, if at all, because of
assimilation (see chapter 12), the presence of Hasidism, or simply the
absence of a history of persecution comparable to that of the Jewish
communities of Poland and Russia under the anti-Semitic tsars. Franz
Josef II of the Austro-Hungarian Empire presided over a tolerant gov-
ernment that in the view of most Hungarian Jews obviated the necessity
of seeking a Jewish national home. Finally, the level of assimilation, not
only in Hungary, but in Austria, Germany, and even PolandRussia,
excluded the possibility of Zionism as an option for many Jews.
The Holocaust changed all that. The vast majority of Hasidim were
murdered. Assimilated as well as observant Jews were killed along with
their families with apparent equanimity; no distinctions were made in
this thoroughly egalitarian enterprise of mass murder. In this milieu,
practicing Christians with Jewish parental or even grandparental ances-
try were pushed into the gas chambers along with bearded and earlocked
Hasidim. Theodor Herzl, author of The Jewish State and the father of
modern Zionism, appeared to be correct. There was no hope for the Jew
in Europe, even if thoroughly Christianized.
Support for an independent Israel, then, grew to transcend the
bounds of the Jewish community, not only in Europe, but importantly
also in the United States. Staunch Arab opposition to this development,
both within Palestine and outside it, led to the invasion of Palestine by
surrounding Arab governments and the defeat of these forces by the
now-organized Jewish defenders. And, as argued in chapter 14, the
Warsaw ghetto revolt of 1943 against vastly superior German forces, as
in the much earlier revolt against Rome in 6670, suggested the pre-
cedent for limited and perhaps even, under different conditions, sub-
stantial Jewish success against seemingly overwhelming odds.
11
11
Israel Gutman notes that The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . . . has become a symbol of
Jewish resistance and determination, a moment in history that has transformed the self-
perception of the Jewish people from passivity to active armed struggle. The Uprising
has shaped Israels national self-understanding (1994, xi).
376 C O N C L U S I O N
A consequence, of course, was the displacement of most Palestinian
Arabs from the boundaries of Israel, the beginnings of the Palestinian
refugee problem, and desire for revenge by the defeated Arabs whether
Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, or Iraqi. The various ArabIsraeli wars,
Intifadas I and II, and the current (as of this writing) impasse in
IsraeliPalestinian negotiations then followed. If the populations of
the European Union believe that Israel is a greater threat to world
peace than North Korea or Iran,
12
it is precisely because of the legitima-
tion of Zionismby the Holocaust, occurring of course, on European soil.
The Armenian genocide
Strangely, as we shall now see, an important consequence of the Armenian
genocide and its corollary, the ethnic cleansing of the Anatolian Greeks, will
intersect with that of the Holocaust. This is the secularization of modern
Turkey under Kemal Ataturk after dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at
the end of World War I. Stanford Shaw and Ezel Shaw describe the
condition of modern Turkey at its inception in 1923:
The disruption was massive. Most non-Muslims were gone, with the
Greek community reduced from 1.8 million to 120,000[,] the
Armenians from 1.3 million to 100,000. No less than 2.5 million Turks
had died during the war, leaving a population of 13,269,606 in Anatolia
and eastern Thrace. Foreign trade had fallen drastically, exports from 2.5
to 0.8 billion kurus , imports from 4.5 to 1.4 billion kurus between 1911
and 1923. State revenues declined from 2.87 to 1.8 billion kurus .
13
And, as we saw in chapter 7, prior to World War I, ethnic Turkish
participation had been limited to 15 percent in internal trade, 12 percent
in industry and crafts, and 14 percent in the professions. Armenians and
Greeks controlled the lions share (between 66 and 79 percent) of the
non-agricultural Ottoman economy. Turks themselves therefore, had to
ll these enormous gaps after the genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Ataturk himself was keenly aware of these deciencies. In a speech to a
conference held in Izmir (formerly Smyrna) in February 1923, Ataturk
began, I shall not describe the state the country is in. You know it.
14
Knowledge of the countrys backwardness should be an impetus to unity
12
As of the fall of 2003, according to the Monitoring Institute on Racism and Xenophobia
of the European Commission.
13
S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 373.
14
Quoted in Mango 2000, 375.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 377
in its redevelopment, was Ataturks principal message: Those who
conquer by the sword are destined to be defeated by those who conquer
by the plough; the economy is everything: it is the totality of what we
need to live, to be happy.
15
Ataturk was acutely aware of the absolute dependence of Turks on
Armenian and Greek craftsmen. According to Andrew Mango, Muslim
Turks lacked the most basic technical skills. Famous as cavalrymen, they
had to rely on Armenian farriers to shoe their horses.
16
And his only
address to a popular audience during the War of Independence was one
given to graduates of a newly created school for military farriers. The
Turkish nation, according to Ataturk, was dependent on non-Turks for
everything from needles to thread, from nails to pegs. Continuing, he
stated that the simplest trade is the most honourable. Shoemakers,
tailors, carpenters, tanners, blacksmiths, farriers these are trades
most worthy of respect in our social and military life.
17
All of these
trades traditionally had been occupied by non-Muslims.
An interesting sidelight on this conference is its location. Smyrna was
formerly occupied almost entirely by Greeks, Armenians, Turks, and
Jews, but after its destruction by Ataturk only the Turkish and Jewish
sectors were left standing. Because of the widespread destruction, many
of the conferees were hosted in Jewish homes, signifying the longstand-
ing security felt by Jews even in the emergent modern nationalist
Turkey. Noteworthy here is the position of Jews as a distant third,
after Greeks and Armenians, among non-Muslims in control of the
economy, in contrast to Hungary, Romania, Poland, Austria, and
Germany. The threat of Jewish economic dominance as a component
of potential loss in Turkey, therefore, was minuscule, in comparison
with these European states prior to World War II.
Traditional Islamic teaching simply would not do. The medreses, or
religious schools, frequently were headed by muftus, who were woefully
ignorant even of their own traditions. Encountering one such muftu
attempting to teach Arabic, Ataturk proclaimed I do not know Arabic,
but as I had served in Arab lands, I knew more of the language than the
muftu . . . Let us send people to Syria or Arabia to learn Arabic, but let us
not waste time in all our medreses, where people who neither know nor
can teach are uselessly occupied.
18
Only the study of modern business
and technology could restore Turkey to a semblance of its economic
15
Quoted ibid.
16
Ibid., 368.
17
Quoted ibid.
18
Quoted ibid., 374.
378 C O N C L U S I O N
performance prior to the war. And this was one of the rst orders of
business facing the republic.
A modern system of education was instituted that was divorced from
religion. The study of religion was delegated to the family or to small
private schools in smaller villages. Although Islam was never abolished
and mosques were allowed to remain open for prayers, clergy who had
once been extraordinarily inuential were relegated to the sidelines.
State reforms would proceed without interference from the Muslim
clergy so that enormous losses engendered by the disappearance of the
Armenians and Greeks (at least a century of growth according to the US
consul Leslie Davies; see chapter 4) could be recouped.
When in late 1923 the caliph, as the supreme Muslim leader, became a
political focus for opponents of the new regime and asked for increasing
privileges, Ataturk reacted. Writing to the last caliph, Abdulmecit: Let
the caliph and the whole world know that the caliph and the caliphate
which have been preserved have no real meaning and no real existence.
We cannot expose the Turkish Republic to any sort of danger to its
independence by its continued existence. The position of Caliphate [sic]
in the end has for us no more importance than a historic memory.
19
On
March 3, 1924, the caliphate was abolished, ending the Muslim seat of
ecclesiastical governance for the entire Middle East and beyond.
And here we nd one of the genuinely incalculable consequences of
the Armenian genocide and Greek expulsion. In his haste to secularize
and thereby make up much lost economic ground, all threats to that
process had to be blunted. Vestiges of the religious hegemony of Islam
embodied in the caliphate were eliminated. And this is precisely the
historical event that exercised the staunch Islamism of the Egyptian
Sayyid Qutb, arguably the single most inuential philosopher of
Muslim extremism, and his most accomplished follower, Osama bin
Laden.
With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1921, elimination of
the caliphate in 1924, and the emergence of secular Turkey under Kemal
Ataturk as a successor state, the empire unifying the Muslim peoples of
the Middle East had been replaced by a horrendous model to be avoided
at all costs. Qutbs solution, enthusiastically adopted later by Egyptian
Islamist groups and still later by Al Qaeda, was resurrection of the
Muslim caliphate whose institutional vestiges had been destroyed by
Ataturks regime.
19
Quoted in S. Shaw and Shaw 1977, 36869.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 379
Osama bin Laden explicitly harks back to this time of Muslim humi-
liation after World War I. Remarking that the United States was lled
with horror after the attacks of September 11, bin Laden goes on to say,
Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more [than] 80 years,
of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its
sanctities desecrated.
20
Had the Armenians and Greeks remained in Turkey as economic
prime movers, it is likely that the secularization drive would have been
much slower and perhaps would never have come into existence. The
old millet with its autonomous religious communities would still have
been needed, and sensitivity to Muslim sentiments could have contin-
ued. As in Abdulhamits reign as the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire,
Islam could have been seen as societal cement, but one limited by
strictures of the millet system.
And here lies the convergence of consequences of the Holocaust and
the Armenian genocide. Both Israel as an immediate outgrowth of
the Holocaust and secularism in the modern Islamic world inspired by
the Turkish model have invoked the wrath of Islamists ranging from the
Palestinian Hamas to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, including, of course,
Al Qaeda. Perhaps it is a measure of the enormity of genocide that events
occurring in different parts of the world, with seemingly little overt
connection, can generate trajectories that join many years later in wide-
spread but connected oppositional movements with similar themes.
The Tutsi genocide
Finally, we have the immediate consequences of the Tutsi genocide. As
of 2004, it had resulted in the deaths of at least 3.8 million people in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire),
21
and the active
involvement of neighboring African countries such as Rwanda, Uganda,
Tanzania, Angola, and Zambia. Hutu ge nocidaires escaping the victor-
ious RPF spilled over the borders into Zaire, followed by troops of the
RPF and other Tutsi seeking vengeance. Attempts to depose the Laurent
Kabila government led to civil war involving local political and tribal
groups, with substantial external involvement, principally Rwandan.
French-led troops came as peacekeepers, to be replaced more recen-
tly by a force of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nepalese, and Uruguayan
20
Quoted in Berman 2003, 117.
21
According to the International Rescue Committee (Lacey 2004).
380 C O N C L U S I O N
composition.
22
Given the magnitude of the killing and the involvement
of so many African countries signifying Congos size and geographic
centrality, it is doubtful that we have seen the last of the consequences of
the Rwandan genocide.
As in our other two cases, unforeseen events and currently incon-
ceivable political trajectories may have been set in motion by the mass
killings rst in Rwanda and then in Zaire. The future political unity of
the Democratic Republic of the Congo may have been seriously jeopar-
dized, with implications for the unity of the other African states with
borders stemming from the colonial period. This is but one of the
potential consequences of the Rwandan genocide, in addition to the
millions already murdered in Congo.
Genocide prevention and the role of democracy
Has the analysis here suggested ways of preventing genocide? Well, both
yes and no. To the extent that genocide originates in war, a military force
exclusively devoted to intervention in potential genocides
23
would be
helpful. But if the potential victimizer is a great power, as occurred in
two of the three cases of genocide analyzed here, then such an interna-
tional force would be of little utility. Judicial arenas such as the
International Court of Justice, created in 1946 but without enforcement
powers, had little effect even on the course of the Rwandan genocide, or
genocidal elements of the Bosnian ethnic cleansing. The newly created
International Criminal Court, in its ability to try and sentence indivi-
duals for criminal behavior dened by the Rome Statute,
24
may be more
successful, but still may not deter the tendencies toward impunity of the
most powerful states.
Among those who have examined the issue of prevention, John
Heidenrich
25
explores the potential for prevention of various forms of
rescue, and the role of organized religion, among other agencies, in limiting
either the onset or extent of genocidal killing once begun.
26
Helen Fein
reviews the ndings of studies that have revealed the sources of genocide.
27
Among them are regime type (democracy, nondemocracy), presence or
22
BBC News, UK Edition, June 11, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa.
23
Bauer 2002.
24
For the contents of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, see http://
www.un.org/law/icc/statute/contents.htm.
25
Heidenrich 2001.
26
See Kolodziej 2000.
27
Fein 2000, 4849.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 381
absence of civil liberties, political exclusion as the result of ethnic hierarchy,
conict over land use, growth of hate movements, and immunity from
external restraint.
Here, I propose to examine variables identied in previous chapters
that have the potential to limit or prevent genocidal activity. On the
whole, following emphases of this book, these variables are interna-
tional. If, as we saw, variables that increase threat to state security also
increase the probability of genocide, then decreasing that threat would
be of paramount importance. Most important analytically is the situation
of the state within the domain of losses. Identifying countries or popu-
lations that have experienced recent losses internationally (or intereth-
nically), especially if the losses are territorial, might be an important rst
step in pinpointing a potential genocide. Recency is important because
of the still palpable emotional reaction and (as yet) little recompense for
the loss. If memories of loss are kept alive within schools, say in refugee
populations, then this activity can be functionally equivalent to recency.
Loss compensation and afnity
The experience of loss and the importance of loss compensation in
effecting genocide suggest a potential preventive measure. Instead of
loss compensation taking the form of genocide, as it has in our three
cases (and in the instances of Srebrenica and the ethnic Vietnamese in
Cambodia), it can be introduced much earlier in relations between states
or communities. For example, Allied recognition of the potential impact
of German territorial concessions at Versailles, especially in light of the
massive relinquishing of non-German territories occupied by German
troops (including territories governed by Prussia since the late eight-
eenth century), might have led at that time to Allied compensations.
Reparations might have been imposed, as they were, but then immedi-
ately forgiven, as they were not. Only after the French occupation of the
Ruhr in 1923 to guarantee payment had embittered many Germans and
massively energized the Nazi Party were the reparations ultimately
forgiven. Clear readmission into the network of European great power
politics also could have yielded compensation in the form of increased
international status.
Compensation also can take the form of credible territorial guaran-
tees to compensate countries for major territorial losses. If the Ottoman
Turks had been convinced that, despite the war, the whole of Anatolia
would remain Ottoman and not be divided into Turkish, Greek, and
382 C O N C L U S I O N
Armenian enclaves, then the Armenian genocide and ethnic cleansing of
the Greeks would have been less likely to occur. Great power guarantees
of continued Hutu political inuence in Rwanda in proportion to their
number, not envisioned in the Arusha Accords, could have compensated
for Hutu concessions in those accords. For countries experiencing
serious losses, even the substantial effort by signicant international
actors to achieve loss compensation could go far in allaying fears
about an extremely uncertain future. This is a form of prudent real-
politik for great powers that replaces the far more prevalent (historically)
cynical variety, and can avoid the imprudentbrute force realpolitik of
mass political violence.
And here we nd the rst suggestion (another will be examined later)
that democracy may not be a universal palliative in protecting human
rights.
28
After the four years of intense propaganda efforts by the Allies
in painting the Huns as evil autocrats, thereby stimulating the war
effort at home, could the leaders of Britain and France have agreed to a
compensatory peace at Versailles and still retained ofce? Woodrow
Wilson, on the other hand, leading a country at war for less than half
that time, with many fewer casualties per capita, and proportionately
less inhibited by these government-generated domestic hostilities
toward the Central Powers, was able to craft the fair-minded set of
Fourteen Points, effectively constituting a compensatory peace that,
alas, could not carry the day against British and especially French
obstructionism. Without the need to satisfy energized and in the
French case security-minded electorates, it is possible that a more
compensatory peace could have evolved, thereby avoiding the intense
feelings of loss and their ultimate consequences for war and genocide.
Even the limited compromises Georges Clemenceau agreed to at
Versailles for example, accepting the promise of security guarantees
by the United States and Britain in place of French occupation of the left
bank of the Rhine were distasteful to the French public. When, after
Versailles, these guarantees failed to materialize within the United
States, mainly for political reasons, the Clemenceau government fell in
January 1920.
29
28
For evidence of the pacic effects of democratic governments on genocide within their
own countries, see Rummel 1997 and Harff 2003, despite differences in the domains of
inquiry between these studies and my own. For the pacic impact of democracy on civil
wars, see Hegre et al. 2001.
29
Brody 1999, 25.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 383
Russia and the Ottoman Empire
Based on this analysis, is it possible to predict the current likely perpe-
trators of genocide? Certainly the country with the largest domain of
losses is Russia, having lost not only its satellites in Central and Eastern
Europe with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even long-time
ethnically cognate major components of the old tsarist empire such as
Ukraine and Belarus. Correspondingly, we have seen the brutal Russian
attempts to stamp out efforts at Chechen autonomy. To the extent that
these activities have killed a signicant number of Chechens, Russia
could already be accused of genocide based on the United Nations
denition. However, insofar as Russia has not sought to eradicate all
Chechens, including women and children, it cannot be classied as a
genocidal state according to the denition adopted here.
Why has the Russian government not sought to entirely eradicate the
Chechen people? Answers are to be found in the gradual incorporation
of Russia into Europe and the dangers of rupturing these relations.
European powers and even the United States might not only eschew a
policy of cynical realpolitik that could allow a genocidal venture against
the Chechens, but might even become afne governmental protectors of
the Chechens, especially if nearby large Muslim-majority states such as
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and notably Turkey become alarmed. There
existed a near-universal recognition that Russia after 1991 bore strong
similarities to Weimar Germany after 1919, including the rise of nation-
alist extremists such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky who could prot politi-
cally from the Russian experience of loss.
30
Western policy toward
Russia during this period, on the whole, sought to avoid the isolation
and near-pariah status accorded Weimar Germany after World War I,
which reinforced the sense of loss. Instead of committing genocide in
order to ensure that Chechen territory remains within the Russian
Federation, compensatory policies in the economic and political realm
have been reincorporating Russia into the global system with its own
substantial rewards.
Here we see a fundamental difference in analytical consequence
between use of the denition adopted in this book attempted total
30
As early as October 1990, even before the actual disintegration of the USSR, at a
conference held at the Institute of USA and Canada Studies of the Soviet (now
Russian) Academy of Sciences, statements to this effect by Soviet speakers were
heard. Some written hints of it are to be found in chapters stemming from the
conference published in M. Midlarsky et al. 1994.
384 C O N C L U S I O N
eradication and partial loss of group members noted by the United
Nations denition as sufcient for the accusation of genocide. Although
compensation for losses and afnity could not save all of the Chechens,
nevertheless these processes very likely were instrumental in mitigating
the ferocity of the Russian governmental response, thereby allowing
most Chechens to survive. These mitigating variables emerged from
the present analysis that focuses only on the few contemporary attempts
at ethnoreligious eradication. It is less likely that these variables would
have emerged from a large-N analysis that necessarily is not limited to
the most egregious cases. Less policy-specic variables such as political
upheaval have emerged from such analyses.
31
Interestingly, a comparison between Russia in 1991 and the Ottoman
Empire in 1914 is equally appropriate for purposes of distinguishing
between the emergence of brutality, even mass killing on the one hand,
and outright genocide on the other. Both Russia and the Ottoman
Empire had suffered grievous territorial losses and were deeply con-
cerned about the territorial integrity of their truncated states. Genocide
of the Armenians was partly a product of that Ottoman concern in 1915.
Extreme brutality toward the Chechens is the contemporary analogue,
with the previously mentioned constraints afnity and compensation
preventing genocide. Effectively, both prudential (recognition of afn-
ity) and imprudentbrute force realpolitik are found in the effort to
maximize state security in both the Ottoman and Russian cases but, in
the absence of uncompensated loss, the violence has stopped short of
genocide in the Russian instance. Additionally, the absence of wide-
spread warfare dampened the genocidal impulse.
Widespread warfare, of course, is decisive in vastly increasing the
probability of genocide. Losses during war, such as those experienced by
the Ottoman Empire, Nazi Germany, and Rwanda, are extremely dif-
cult to compensate. First, while the war is ongoing, battleeld position is
almost always non-negotiable. Second, especially during the opening
stages of battle, losses generate uncertainty the fog of war that, as we
have seen, leads to magnication of the losses in decision-makers
perceptions and that may yield genocidal outcomes. Precisely because
of these considerations, Clausewitz is almost certainly wrong in his well-
known assertion that war is politics carried out by other means.
32
Absence of loss compensation at the outset and loss magnication
during the war yield very different conceptions and behaviors from
31
See, for example, Harff 2003.
32
Clausewitz 1968.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 385
those stemming from the give-and-take of ordinary political discourse.
Losses in war build on earlier losses experienced in older wars (Nazi
Germany) or nationalist uprisings (Ottoman Empire). Loss of freedom
as the result of political subjugation becomes a possibility once again as a
consequence of more recent losses in war (Rwanda).
Darfur
Although territorial loss in war with its seemingly irreversible quality
tends to be decisive, the expectation of such loss, if uncompensated, can
also have horric consequences. In the Darfur region of western Sudan
we may have an illustration of just such a consequence as a form of loss
compensation by means of self-help, in contrast to compensation that
could be offered by the international community.
As a result of protocols signed on May 26, 2004,
33
between southern
Sudanese leaders of the black, predominantly Christian Sudanese
Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Arabized Muslim leaders of
the north, a six-year interim period would be specied, after which a
referendum would take place allowing for the possibility of indepen-
dence for the oil-rich south. This outcome would lead to the loss of
approximately one-third of Sudanese territory including its oil. The
possible presence of oil in the Darfur region as well makes this territory
potentially as valuable economically as the oil-rich south. If Darfur were
to be Arabized through the massacre and ethnic cleansing of its black
population, then it could serve as compensation for losses in the south,
especially in the face of an incipient rebellion by the black Africans in
Darfur.
Encouraged by the success of the black southern rebels both on the
battleeld and at the conference table, two groups of black Muslims
from Darfur rebelled, apparently representing black populations perse-
cuted through raids and other violence by nomadic Arabized tribes.
Confronted by another separatist rebellion like that of the SPLA, ethnic
cleansing of another black population was unleashed, with a possible
genocidal component of tens of thousands dead.
34
One purpose of this
effort has been to compensate for the potential losses in the south by
ensuring that another potentially valuable territory, Darfur, remains
within an Arab-dominated Sudan.
33
BBC News, World Edition, May 27, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa.
34
Marquis and Lacey 2004.
386 C O N C L U S I O N
As in the Rwandan case, the international community was intensely
concerned that a settlement between the Khartoum government and the
SPLA be reached. Colin Powell, then the US secretary of state, visited the
negotiations between the SPLA and Khartoum leaders in October 2003
and Darfur itself in June 2004.
35
The United Nations has also taken an
active role. And like Arusha in the Rwandan case, an international
agreement implying heavy losses in the future, whether in political
power (Rwanda, territory already having been lost to the RPF) or
valuable territory (Sudan), may have spurred this effort at loss compen-
sation. Also like the Interahamwe in Rwanda, much of the killing and
ethnic cleansing has been carried out by a government-supported mili-
tia, the Janjaweed, an Arabized military group.
These considerations suggest that even more active intervention is
required to stem these massacres and ethnic cleansing. A pairing of the
two regions of Sudan, Darfur and the south, should be a focus of
international diplomacy, without forsaking one region for the other.
Unfortunately, just the opposite appears to have occurred. According to
John Prendergast, a former African affairs director at the National
Security Council under President Clinton, When the secretary [Colin
Powell] was in Naivasha [location of the negotiations between the
Khartoum government and the SPLA], and a major problem was getting
worse in Darfur, everyone agreed to deal with the southern problem rst
and with Darfur later. That was a monumental diplomatic error.
36
Integration of Sudan into elements of the international economy,
including appropriate nancial incentives (e.g., rmly guaranteed access
to oil in the south in the event of southern independence), might serve at
least as a partial loss compensation to offset the loss of one or both regions.
All of this indicates that, as in any medical or social pathology, early
intervention is required to avoid a fatal outcome. Hitler in Germany and
Zhirinovsky in Russia experienced very different historical trajectories
in part because of the contrasting reactions of international diplomacy
in the two cases.
At the same time, potentially victimized populations without afne
protection are the most vulnerable to future genocide. In contrast to
35
Ibid.
36
Quoted in Weisman 2004. Actually, I encountered this negative assessment of current
US policy after having written this section suggesting a simultaneous diplomatic
approach to both the south and Darfur based on the present theory.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 387
other cases such as the Greeks in Anatolia or the Roman Catholic Irish in
the twentieth-century United Kingdom, at the time of their respective
genocides, the Armenians, Jews, and Tutsi did not enjoy the protection
of afne populations and/or governments powerful enough to shield the
threatened populations in time of war.
Realpolitik
Far more difcult to pinpoint with some precision are the various forms
of realpolitik, especially the matter of prudence and its antecedent,
reasoned scrutiny. Amartya Sen himself admits that the concept is not
easily translatable into practical application
37
or, what is the same thing,
ease of operationalization. Yet, perhaps as in the case of pornography,
following Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewarts dictum, imprudent
realpolitik can be recognized when it is seen. Difculties in dening
pornography and distinguishing it from art are similar to those encoun-
tered in recognizing an imprudent realpolitik distinct from the pruden-
tial variety. Yet there may be one criterion that clearly sets the imprudent
apart from the prudential version: the end justifying the means. When
any and all methods, including the most brutal, are justied for state
preservation or expansion, then imprudent realpolitik is evident.
Genocide, of course, is one such illustration, as are unnecessary resorts
to force when diplomacy or other peaceful methods might achieve the
same or an equivalent goal.
Admittedly, short of unwarranted, frequently brutal means in rela-
tion to a particular end, the divide between prudent and imprudent
realpolitik is not a clear line, but a zone in which one shades into the
other. Proportionality in response to provocation is critical in evaluat-
ing the matter of prudence. Within that grey zone between prudence and
imprudence, proportionality may be the criterion of choice for evaluat-
ing state responses. Disproportional responses, of course, fall into the
imprudent category.
Imprudence can have a dynamic all its own; as we saw in the deporta-
tion of Hungarian Jewry (chapter 12), imprudence can actually be self-
generating. What appeared to be imprudent to many Germans on the
battleeld the start of the mass murder of Jews in mid-1941 might
actually have had the appearance of prudence in mid-1944 and the
threatened entry into Germany of Soviet forces with Hungarian-Jewish
37
Sen 2002, 4852.
388 C O N C L U S I O N
help. Having created a Hungarian-Jewish population of determined
opponents as the result of the earlier genocide, protection of the
German heartland and its population appeared to require the elimina-
tion of this fth column. Greater support for imprudentbrute force
realpolitik had been generated, even among Germans who had initially
opposed the genocidal policy.
Yet, in the nal analysis, we cannot allow the subjective perceptions of
perpetrators to condition our analytic judgment. As suggested in chap-
ter 4, in evaluating the presence or absence of rationality and prudential
or imprudent realpolitik, it is the outcome that is decisive. Genocide is
genocide, whatever processes may have led to its commission; it is a
particularly noxious form of brute forceimprudent realpolitik.
Interestingly, cynical realpolitik is somewhat less difcult to identify.
When the lives of human beings are jeopardized for state purposes
without direct activity of that state, then cynical realpolitik is evident.
Bystanders who could alleviate the condition of victims but do not for
reasons of state, or permitting agents who could be inuential in pre-
venting genocide but do not for the same reason, can be said to engage in
a cynical realpolitik one that ignores the essential humanity of the
victim.
At the same time, among the different types of realpolitik, cynical
realpolitik may be most easily altered, at least in the long run. A case in
point is the Vatican, which has gone far in acknowledging its past
indiscretions that possibly made the Holocaust more likely to occur
and almost certainly increased its magnitude. Anti-Semitic references in
the Roman Catholic liturgy have been reduced if not eliminated entirely.
Earlier, admittedly limited efforts by several popes to reach out to Jewish
communities have culminated in John Paul IIs unprecedented activities
in this domain. The image of this pope praying at the Western Wall in
Jerusalem, Judaisms holiest site, is indelible. A cynical realpolitik as
practiced by Pius XII is most unlikely to occur again, at least in the
foreseeable, even distant future.
This change of behavior suggests a possible preventive strategy,
namely targeting the most relevant and powerful bystanders who
could intervene on behalf of potential victims. Governments with afne
populations are likely to be most inuential because of the increased
probability of their intervention in a potential genocide, and at the same
time they are susceptible to diplomatic appeals. Afnities do not have to
be ethnic, but also can be religious, suggesting the potential inuence of
religious institutions. They can even be political, as in the strong
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 389
inuence of revolutionary France on Poland and the likely consequence
of that inuence on the prevention of any government-inspired mass
violence against Jews at the time of the Polish Partitions. Other geogra-
phically or ethnoreligiously proximal bystanders also could be per-
suaded to exert some diplomatic inuence on behalf of intended
victims. However, war, during which genocides typically occur, makes
such efforts difcult. Hence, any effort to dehumanize and isolate a
distinct ethnoreligious population, or the prevalence of cynical realpo-
litik in its treatment, is a signal to the international community that, if
war were to break out, this population is in danger.
Preventing politicides, as in the communist template, is more difcult
because of the reclusive nature of such regimes. The only signicant
inuences on their domestic behavior emanate from other strong states
of the same kind. If these states (e.g., communist) are rare, then the
possibilities of external restraint are circumscribed, and are not likely to
be easily found.
The sources of cynical realpolitik are important and instructive for
future preventive efforts. Consider, for example, the refusal of the
United States to intervene actively on behalf of the Tutsi in Rwanda,
or even to countenance a UN presence in Rwanda that somehow could
involve US military forces. As early as April 7, 1994, after the rst
massacres in Kigali, the United States opposed expanding the United
Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda.
38
To this end, the term genocide, with its implications for requiring UN
intervention, was desperately avoided both by US policy-makers directly
and in their behind-the-scenes inuence on UN Security Council reso-
lutions. At the start of the genocide, Christine Shelly, speaking to
reporters on behalf of the US State Department concerning use of that
term, noted that:
The intentions, the precise intentions, and whether or not these are just
directed episodically or with the intention of actually eliminating groups
in whole or in part, this is a more complicated issue to address . . . Im
not able to look at all of those criteria at this moment and say yes, no. Its
something that requires very careful study before we can make a nal
determination.
39
38
Des Forges 1999, 603.
39
Quoted in Power 2002a, 360.
390 C O N C L U S I O N
She further maintained that the UN genocide convention did not
contain an absolute requirement . . . to intervene directly,
40
so that
even if the g word were used, this fact would not commit the United
States to action. The term genocide did not appear in any ofcial US or
UN statement. And when the Security Council did seek to make a
statement, US and British diplomats insisted on the words exclusion.
At the same time, Secretary of State Warren Christopher instructed the
American UN delegation to push for UN withdrawal, lest American
troops be involved.
41
By April 25, 1994, most of Romeo Dallaires UN
troops were evacuated. Even as late as mid-May when nearly 500,000
Rwandans were already dead, the United States was still putting dis-
abling conditions on the Security Councils authorization of humani-
tarian rescue.
42
Why this extreme aversion to US military involvement? The one prior
event that would be most salient to US policy-makers was the Somalia
asco in which American troops were attacked and killed by Somali
forces (possibly supported by Al Qaeda), and the American public was
horried to witness on television the body of a dead American Marine
dragged through the streets of the capital, Mogadishu. Thus,
The fear, articulated mainly at the Pentagon, was that what would start as
a small engagement by foreign troops would end as a large and costly one
by Americans. This was the lesson of Somalia, where US troops had
gotten into trouble after returning to bail out the beleaguered
Pakistanis. The logical outgrowth of this fear was an effort to steer clear
of Rwanda entirely and be sure others did the same. Only by yanking
Dallaires entire peacekeeping force could the United States protect itself
from involvement down the road.
43
Even the pending 1993 US intervention in Haiti was inuenced by the
Somalia debacle. A small gang of Haitian toughs threatened to create
another Somalia for the United States if American troops landed in
Port-au-Prince. The transport ship Harlan County carrying American
troops then left Haitian waters. The subtitle of the New York Times
article reads As Peacekeeping Falters in Somalia, Foes of the US Effort
in Haiti Are Emboldened.
44
And the New York Times went on to
comment on the rst page, Aclearer demonstration of the global village
40
Quoted ibid.
41
Ibid., 367.
42
Dallaire 2003, 372.
43
Power 2002a, 366; See also Barnett 2002.
44
Apple 1993, A1.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 391
that modern communications have created . . . would be difcult to
imagine.
45
In Rwanda, a cynical realpolitik was invoked based on the fear that
future US military embarrassment, as in Somalia, could jeopardize the
Clinton administration at the polls. This was especially important as the
election of 1996 was already on the political horizon. Certainly Bill
Clinton, the consummate politician, was preparing for it, if only in the
avoidance of any future pitfalls that could thwart his reelection.
The lesson for future genocide prevention is clear. When salient
embarrassing events such as the Somalian intervention occur, the prob-
ability of immobilizing even potential great power interveners increases,
thereby also increasing the probability of imprudentbrute force actions
such as genocide. Efforts to thwart this immobility must be redoubled.
As Michael Walzer suggests, establishing norms or rules of external
intercession on behalf of threatened populations may be the best way
to encourage humanitarian intervention.
46
Included among these norms should be a more vigorous response by
peacekeepers when opposed by indigenous forces intent on mass mur-
der. In this way, the Somalia effect in which not only was the United
States immobilized, but Hutu ge nocidaires along with the Haitian thugs
became aware of this potential immobilizing response could be
avoided. Indeed, some of the aggressive actions of the ge nocidaires
toward Belgian and other UN peacekeepers were based precisely on
this logic of immobility.
47
When faced with casualities to their forces,
the international peacekeepers would withdraw, allowing the extremists
free rein to scuttle the Arusha Accords, or to do far worse, as we have
seen, in the face of the resumed RPF military advances.
Democracy
And nowwe arrive at a paradox of genocide prevention. Although one of
the best preventives of the genocide of a states minority population is
the existence of a liberal democratic regime within that state, quite the
opposite is true of democracy in bystander states. Here, the desire to be
reelected, as in the case of the Allied governments at Versailles, or simply
to avoid negative public reaction, may preclude any governmental
45
Ibid.
46
Walzer 2002. For additional perspectives, see Ignatieff 2002 and Power 2002b.
47
Dallaire 2003, 240.
392 C O N C L U S I O N
action on behalf of endangered citizens of another state. Recall in
chapter 11 President Roosevelts refusal to authorize the bombing of
Auschwitz because of the fear of embarrassment, not to mention his
earlier narrowing of immigration possibilities for Jews seeking refuge in
the United States. Opinion polls had revealed the high level of anti-
Semitism in the United States that might make his governing more
difcult and, of course, his reelection as well. The British followed a
similar path, as did President Clinton more recently in the Rwandan
genocide.
At the Evian immigration conference in 1938 (chapter 11), the only
state to open its borders to Jewish immigration was the Dominican
Republic under Rafael Trujillo, a dictator who was among the least
responsive to public opinion. The Western democracies were extremely
uncooperative in opening their borders. To be sure, public outcry on
behalf of a threatened population potentially may reach a larger audi-
ence in a democracy than in an autocracy, if allowed, but on the whole
the presumption in democracies, almost universally accepted, is that the
electorate will be far more responsive to issues directly concerning its
own perceived well-being than to the concerns of alien people.
Even more recently, the reaction by the Spanish people after the
bombings of March 11, 2004, may serve to illustrate the limitations
associated with democracy. Despite efforts of the coalition forces to
secure a democratic regime in Iraq that would no longer countenance
the mass killings of the Saddam era, after the bombings, the Spanish
electorate ousted the Conservative government (the election favorite
before the bombings), which had authorized Spanish participation in
the occupying coalition in Iraq. Note that the election did not raise the
issue of the invasion of Iraq. That event had already occurred. The only
issue remaining was continued participation of Spanish forces that had
incurred Al Qaedas fury and Spanish civilian casualties. The Spanish
electorate effectively ignored any domestic needs of the Iraqi people for
the stability that an effective and temporary occupation could offer.
Democracy, therefore, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, its
spread will make the lives of minorities more secure within states that
democratize successfully. This conclusion is suggested by the ndings of
Rudolph Rummel
48
and Barbara Harff.
49
On the other hand, popula-
tions threatened with genocide may nd fewer islands of refuge within
democratic states. Recent restrictions on the granting of political asylum
48
Rummel 1997.
49
Harff 2003.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 393
in European countries, not to mention greater difculties generally in
immigrating to Europe, and all of this even after the European
Holocaust experience, suggest the importance of this distinction.
Validation
Finally, the role of validation must be considered. We saw that failures
to adequately punish the perpetrators of earlier massacres either
of Armenians in 189496, Jews in Ukraine in 191820, or Tutsi in
Rwanda beginning in 1959 likely contributed to the perceived vulner-
ability of these groups.
With the rise of contemporary mass communications, perhaps even
resulting in a global village in the half-century since the Holocaust,
validation does not have to be conned to the earlier unpunished
murder of the potential victims themselves. If the ongoing process of
massacre is not addressed, then victimizers anywhere in the world may
conclude that mass killing will not be interrupted or punished, even if in
a different location and with different victims. A process of this type
likely occurred prior to the Rwandan genocide, and specically in the
early stages of the Bosnian conict two years earlier. At this time, it had
all the appearances of genocide, at least to many observers. The fact that
the apparent mass murder of tens if not hundreds of thousands in
Bosnia
50
went unopposed, at least militarily in the opening, most inu-
ential stages of the conict, made it appear that genocidal activities
could be accomplished without serious external constraint in the post-
Cold War climate of the 1990s. In other words, if they can get away with
it, so can we.
Regarding another African conict, I call it the copycat syndrome,
said Dame Margaret Anstee, who was the UN secretary generals special
envoy in Angola in the early 1990s. She said that, in 1992, when the rebel
leader Jonas Savimbi chose bullets over ballots, he had been watching
the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic getting away with mur-
der.
51
This interpretation accords with the nding of Stuart Hill and
Donald Rothchild that receptivity to outside political violence is condi-
tional upon a recent history of domestic strife, amply found in both
Angola and Rwanda.
52
The ghting between Hutu and Tutsi in 195964,
the sporadic persecutions after independence (especially in 1973), and
50
Daalder 1996.
51
Quoted in Crossette 1999, 16.
52
Hill and Rothchild 1986.
394 C O N C L U S I O N
the ongoing strife after the RPF invasion of 1990 amply satisfy this
condition.
Widespread massacres anywhere in the world, particularly in regions
with powerful states such as Europe, have the potential to be extremely
inuential, especially if these states do nothing to stop the massacres. If
power disparities between potential interveners and victimizers are
substantial, again as in Europe in the early 1990s, and no intervention
occurs, then validation of massacre, if not genocide itself, can be even
more pronounced. Thus, prevention of genocide in one location is
dependent on prior occurrences not only in that location, but in almost
any place in the world in which successful intervention to prevent mass
murder could have occurred, but did not. As in understanding the
etiology of genocide, prevention is a complex matter requiring vigilance
and awareness of the appropriate antecedent variables.
Coda
A Jewish mother walking in the Ukrainian woods with her children in
September 1941,
53
an Armenian working on the BerlinBaghdad railway
in late 1915, a Tutsi sitting in a crowded Rwandan church in the spring
of 1994, or a Cambodian teaching her class of twelve-year-olds in 1976
most likely never would be seen again. It is my hope that this book has
accurately charted pathways from the mundane to the bizarre and
unthinkable. That chart, of course, does not consist of a simple linear
trajectory, but requires several analytic nodes to encompass it. Given the
enormity of genocide and politicide, one should expect nothing less.
53
After writing this passage, I read Jonathan Safran Foers Everything Is Illuminated
(2002). Although ctional, it is the single most compelling evocation of the end of a
Ukrainian shtetl that I have read.
F I N D I N G S , C O N S E Q U E N C E S , A N D P R E V E N T I O N 395
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INDEX
Abdulhamit II, 55
and massacres of Armenians, 62,
154, 155, 173, 175, 213,
214, 380
Abel, Theodore, 4, 51, 139, 153, 266
Act of Union between Great Britain
and Ireland, 117, 122
Adana and Armenian deportations,
159, 160, 218
afche rouge, 95
afne protection: of Armenians, 388
of Irish Catholics, 358, 363
of Jews, 388
of Tutsi, 388
afnity condition, 20, 309, 325,
33564, 382, 385, 389
denition of, 336
disappearance of, 335
as great power protection of afne
country, 34142
paradox of, 364
presence of, 33637
protection of potential victims, 325,
336
religious, 389
restriction of decision latitudes, 364
threat of retaliation, 325
two-tiered, 337
US protection of Irish Catholics,
362
and war, 36465
Africa, 87
Anglophone, 229
black, 25
central, 72, 233
Francophone, 22829
French political orbit in, 230
akazu (extremist Hutu leaders), 61
Aktionen, 29397
limited, 295
Lithuanian, 35
Al Qaeda, 380, 391
fury of, 393
and resurrection of caliphate, 379
Allies (World War I), 68, 69,
204, 251, 253, 341, 355, 364,
382, 383
forced Constantines abdication,
341
reparations to, 382
at Versailles, 392
Zionist support for, 59
Allies (World War II), 71, 192,
248, 249
bombing of Romanian oil elds,
259
reprisals of, 258
victory in World War II, 220
altruistic punishment, 16, 17, 19, 20,
44, 8486, 10710, 135, 149,
168, 16993, 211, 287, 30506,
37374
absence of in Vilna, 303
and Armenian genocide, 373
brief denitions of, 71, 85
full denition of, 108
as generator of unity, 373
in German army, 211
and Himmler, 17993
in January Warsaw ghetto revolt,
296, 304
as voluntary sacrice, 374 see also
sacrice
Aly, Gotz, 135, 136, 151, 152, 346
423
Amsterdam, 261, 263, 268, 270, 271
Anatolia, 16, 3638, 68, 15556,
213, 337, 342, 382
another Bulgaria in, 58, 213
as base of Ottoman Empire, 58
central, 69, 158
eastern, 9, 44, 56, 59, 68, 90, 155
ethnically pure, 215
evacuation of Armenians from, 216
population of, 377
Russian push into, 159
Anderson, Benedict, 190
anger, 16, 84, 88, 331, 334
Anielewicz, Mordechai, 295, 296, 297
annihilation, 24, 275
annihilationists, 144
anti-Hamitism, 17
anti-Semitic claims:
Bolshevism, 127
fraud, 127
free-thinking, 127
having disastrous effect on morality,
127
Judaism as atheistic movement, 127
opposition to Catholic Church, 127
trade in human beings, 127
usury, 127
anti-Semitism, 34
absence of Finnish, 331, 333
Austrian, 261
and boycott of Jewish businesses,
185
British, 393
Dutch, 262
of early Nazis, 139, 153
French, 198
German, 3, 17, 185, 266
German during World War II, 153
German increase of, 192
of German political parties, 153
German (traditional), 140
history of, 333
Hungarian, 251, 266
Italian, 333
legislation, 20405, 266
Polish, 7778, 127, 143, 165
redemptive, 5
Romanian, 277
in USA, 237
Vichy, 197202
Antonescu, Ion, 200, 206, 207,
277, 278
Antonescu, Mihai, 207, 277
Arabs, 173, 304
British propitiation of, 247
nationalism of, 68
opposition to Jewish immigration to
Palestine, 246
riots of (1936), 246
opposition to Israels formation,
376
invasion of Palestine, 376
desire for revenge, 377
Shiites, 173
Sunnis, 173
arendar, visibility of Jews in, 350
Arendt, Hannah, 61, 180
and banality of evil, 180
Armenia, 155
autonomous region, 69
Russian, 38
Armenian genocide, 3638, 62,
6870, 212, 227, 233, 374,
37780, 383, 385
consequences of, 379
magnitude of, 212, 21920
onset of, 212, 219
see also genocide
Armenians, 5, 7, 89, 1415, 19, 23,
24, 25, 34, 43, 5559, 6263,
76, 77, 102, 155, 174, 19293,
212, 315, 334, 336, 338, 342, 364
arrest of political and community
leaders, 138
bridge between Turkey and Europe,
70
churches of, 24
compared with Greeks, 337
controlling economy, 377
deportation of, 218
difcult relations with Turks, 217
as economic prime movers, 380
elimination of, 323
and Kurds, 55
labor battalions of, 21617
liberal reforms of, 371
424 I N D E X
massacre of, 371
military success of, 162
nationalism of, 337
population density of, 213
as proportion of Ottoman
population, 176
protected by February 1914 reform
agreement, 69, 364
reduction in number, 377
reforms of, 214
revolutionary groups of, 55, 58
as Russian handmaidens, 364
societies of (closed), 159
threat of, 338
vulnerability of, 394
as workers, 218, 395
army: Austrian, 52
Bolshevik, 45, 49
Bosnian Croat, 26
Bosnian Serb, 26, 13334
British, 114, 340
Chinese, 29
citizen, 102
Denikins Volunteer, 45, 4951
French, 114, 201, 340
German, 31, 45, 47, 106, 169, 170,
202, 211, 219
German in France, 9496
German in Poland during World
War I, 124
German in Soviet Union before
World War II, 124
Greek, 342
Hungarian, 254, 256
Italian, 195
Japanese (imperial), 28, 29
Ottoman, 37, 159, 374
Ottoman in Arabia, 214
Polish, 97
Red, 47, 49, 143, 148
Reichswehr, 125, 184
Romanian, 252
Russian, 159, 374
Rwandan, 38, 168, 230, 232
Serbian, 340
Soviet, 38, 124, 148, 204,
206, 256, 282, 283, 290,
374, 388
tsarist, 49
Tutsi of Burundi, 164
Ukrainian, 344
US, 391
Vietnamese, 371
White (Russian), 47, 344
Yugoslav (JNA), 13132, 133
Arrow Cross (Hungarian), 258
Arusha Accords, 72, 87, 143, 145,
163, 165, 166, 167, 383, 387
Aschheim, Steven E., 141, 155
Asscher, Abraham, 279
privileges of, 27172
Ataturk, Kemal, 37779
abolishes caliphate, 379
awareness of Turkish deciencies,
377
Athens (ancient), 68, 76, 7982, 229,
339, 340
allies of, 93
defeat of, 105
Peloponnesian policy of, 355
see also Sicilian expedition
Auschwitz (Oswiecim), 15, 35,
133, 196, 201, 202, 272,
27576, 332
bombing of, 393
crowding at, 304
Austria, 19, 12526, 139, 207, 248,
250, 261, 287, 333, 372
Jewish assimilation in, 376
Jewish emigrants from, 129, 244
threat of Jewish economic
dominance, 378
Austria-Hungary, 68, 136, 13940,
250, 251, 252, 266, 283, 342
dismemberment of, 202
Axelrod, Robert, 73, 108
Axis: alliance, 150
collaborators, 335
forces, 196
powers, 72, 227, 326
Babel, Isaac, 53
Bagosora, Colonel The oneste, 61
Balkans, 88, 213
Christian nationalities in, 213
Muslims in, 155, 173
I N D E X 425
Baltic: Balts (native), 219
Prussians, 219
region, 98, 171
states, 136
Soviet republics, 346
Barbarossa, Operation, 14148, 205,
206, 228, 259
Bartov, Omer, 6, 11, 141, 147, 148,
156, 166, 167, 168, 182, 190
Base people (Cambodian), 312
Bauer, Yehuda, 15, 22, 181, 182, 381
Bavaria, 173, 183, 252
expulsion of Jews from, 141
revolution in, 252
Roman Catholic, 254
soviet republic in, 183
threat to, 254
Bayesian: approach to human
reasoning, 64
decision making, 19
ndings, 87, 369, 375
Belgium, 87, 106, 176, 194, 243,
245, 255
awareness of possibility of Rwandan
mass killing, 232
intelligence agencies of, 232
Jewish victimization rate in, 260
military importance of, 260
occupied by Germany, 67
and Rwanda, 5960, 162
Bellow, Saul, 249
on nihilism, 172
Belorussia, 7, 61
opposition to Polish rule, 125
Bendersky, Joseph W., 99
Benedict XV, Pope, 227
proposed peacemaker in World War
I, 227
Berlin, 48, 138, 150, 215, 239, 282
ghetto, 141
Jews in Riga, 139, 151
military-dominated government in,
218
pogrom, 141
Treaty of (1878), 173, 371
University of, 101
BerlinBaghdad railway, 215, 217
German involvement in, 218
Berman, Paul, 380
Bermuda, conference on refugees, 248
Beschloss, Michael, 249
Bessarabia, 98, 204, 205, 207,
258, 278
Germans from, 346
Bin Laden, Osama, 379
and Muslim humiliation, 380
and September 11, 380
Bismarck, Otto von, 215, 226
as honest broker, 227
Black and Tans, 362
Black Hundreds, 54
Blair, Frederick Charles, 247
Blood Libel, 333, 353
Bolshevism and Bolsheviks, 44,
4748, 106
atrocities of, 344
Bolshevik Revolution, 252, 264, 321
and capitalism, 139, 153
Boris III, 326, 327
delays deportation of Jews, 327
and Hitler, 327
inuenced by protest, 327
and Stalingrad, 327
Bosnia(-Herzegovina), 19, 24, 2527,
29, 3334, 7475, 113, 114,
12934, 155, 370
appearance of genocide in, 145,
166, 167
in Austria-Hungary, 250
in Croatia, 223
Croats in, 129
demographic changes in, 115
demography of, 129
ethnic cleansing in, 113
genocidal behavior in, 113
importance to JNA, 132
Institute of Public Health in, 26
Muslims in, 115, 12934
Serbs in, 115, 12934
Boyce, D. G., 116, 117, 361
Braham, Randolph, 151, 192, 194,
251, 253, 274, 282
Breitman, Richard, 54, 181, 182
Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 345, 346
Britain, 8, 87, 114, 11623, 133, 141,
14546, 152, 158, 159, 161,
426 I N D E X
175, 212, 214, 237, 241, 245, 260,
338, 34142, 35463, 383, 388
as ally of Germany, 66
Anglo-Irish relations, 121, 122,
326, 336, 356, 362
anti-communism in, 245
anti-Semitism in, 246, 393
and Armenian equality, 57
brutality of, 362
cabinet members, 115
charges of genocide against, 113,
35658
and a compensatory peace, 383
in domain of losses, 355
downed airmen of, 262
failure of Germany to defeat, 142
food imports from Ireland, 119
Foreign Ofce, 246
and Gallipoli, 355
and Holocaust, 24548
losses of, 356
nativism in, 245
obstructionism of, 383
and Palestine, 245, 24647
population of, 116
predominantly Protestant, 116
protection of Greeks, 364
response to Irish famine, 114
security of, 114, 122
use of word genocide, 391
weakening of, 355
White Paper (May 1939), 246
Browning, Christopher, 19, 54, 102,
144, 151, 16667, 343
Bruning, Heinrich, 221
on Pacelli, 222
brutality, 16, 89, 94
extreme, 143
justication for, 88
brute force realpolitik, see
imprudentbrute force realpolitik
Buch Treue, Das (The Book of Loyalty),
188
Budapest, 148, 251, 255, 256, 257, 274
Jewish Council of, 276
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, 65
Bukovina, 98, 207, 278
Germans from, 346
northern, 204, 205, 258
Bulgaria: as Central Power ally, 204
Bulgarians, massacred by Ottomans,
156
compared with Finland, 331, 332
as exception, 20, 74, 155, 159, 195,
204, 208, 213, 309, 32630,
331, 333, 371, 372
failure to protect Macedonian and
Thracian Jews, 329
free of anti-Semitism, 328
Muslims in, 173
National Assembly of, 326, 327,
328, 330
pogroms in, 333
prudent realpolitik of, 327
realpolitik of, 332
reevaluation of Jewish policy in, 329
Bund (German fraternity), 18586
kameradschaft of, 18586
Bund (Polish-Jewish Yiddishist and
socialist party), 127, 373
opposed to idea of Jewish state, 375
in Vilna, 299, 300
in Warsaw, 289
Burleigh, Michael, 98, 110, 135, 137,
141, 143, 151, 152, 156, 160,
181, 188
Burrin, Philippe, 100, 141, 142, 143,
146, 156, 159, 166, 16768,
195, 201
Buruma, Ian, 73
Burundi, 23, 163
bystanders, 16, 7374, 234
cynical, 374
relevant and powerful, 389
caliphate, abolition of, 379
Cambodia, 15, 20, 23, 24, 39,
7475, 88
communist government of, 310
comparison with China, 31520
comparison with Japan, 315
contrasted with Rwanda, 309, 310
deaths in, 321
in domain of losses, 371
genocide of ethnic Vietnamese, 371,
375, 382
I N D E X 427
Cambodia (cont.)
incursions into Vietnam, 313
inuence of Chinese Cultural
Revolution on, 31620
Lon Nol government of, 31011,
323
politicide in, 37172
relocations in, 317
size of, 320
state security of, 310, 312
teachers in, 395
US bombing of, 375
use of risk minimization, 371 see
also Democratic Kampuchea,
Khmer Rouge
Cambodian politicide, 30924
compared with genocide, 309, 323
three categories of, 311
Cambodian Revolution, 321
differences with Chinese, 319
camps: concentration camp guards,
Austrian, 139
concentration (German), 153
concentration (Polish; isolation
camps), 125
concentration (Serbian), 133
death (Nazi), 38
displaced persons, 275
extermination, 275
gas chambers, 22, 225
labor (non-exterminatory), 304
Canada, 237, 243, 247
site of Irish immigration, 120
unity of, 247
Carol II, 200, 205
Carpatho-Ruthenia, 148, 255, 257
Catholic Center Party (German),
22123, 228
committed to pluralist democracy,
221
early opposition to Nazi Party, 221
Caucasus, 158, 212
dominance of Muslims within, 155
loss to Russians, 153
Muslims in, 173
Central Powers, 158, 204, 340, 341,
383
Chalk, Frank, 22, 25, 31, 73, 231
Chandler, David P., 311, 313, 316, 321
Charney, Israel, 22
Chechens, 38485
afne protectors of, 38485
autonomy of, 384
eradication of, 384
extreme brutality toward, 385
survival of, 385
Chen Yonggui, 319
visit to Cambodia, 319
with Pol Pot, 319
China, 29, 310, 371
alliance with North Vietnam, 94
bureaucratization in, 317
communes of, 31516
Cultural Revolution in, 315, 316
deaths from starvation in, 316
diplomatic support of DK, 313
Great Leap Forward, 315
individual incentives eschewed, 319
Japanese occupied, 34
primacy of politics in, 31718
Red Guards in, 316 see also Cultural
Revolution
Chinese, 75
in Cambodia, 312
and Japanese occupation 28
limited success in Shanghai, 31
leadership, 322
Chinese Revolution: differences with
Cambodian, 319
less draconian, 319
lower victimization rate, 320
and Pol Pot, 320 see also Cultural
Revolution
Chmielnicki pogroms, 350, 352
Ukrainian participation in, 350
Christians, 279, 376
Armenian, 59
Baptist Church, 61
Church of England, 61, 116, 361
hatred of in Ottoman Empire, 58
Orthodox in Ottoman Empire, 154
potential help to Jews, 227, 233
see also Church of Ireland,
Orthodox Church, Roman
Catholic Church
Church of Ireland, 116, 361
428 I N D E X
decline of adherents, 361
disestablishment of, 361
Churchill, Winston, 145, 344, 355, 362
Clan na Gael, 35960
class, 89
conict, 330
envy, 16
warfare among Dutch Jews, 271
Clausewitz, Carl von, 385
Clinton, William J.: election of 1996,
392
and Rwanda, 393
Coalition pour la De fense de la
Re publique (CDR), 145, 163,
166, 167, 232
Cohen, David, 27072, 275, 27980
Committee for Union and Progress
(CUP), 154, 15859, 17679,
19293, 215
communism, 138, 152, 220
arc of governance, 371
expansion of, 71, 221
and state-sponsored mass murder, 24
terror, 345
Communist Party, French, 95, 316
Communist Party of Kampuchea
(CPK), 88, 311, 312
dispute within, 313
recruitment within, 321
report of, 316
Communists, 283
Cambodian, 75
as defectors, 183
German, 171
Polish, 125
Russian, 58, 171
Soviet, 75
Vilna, 299, 300
comparative historical method,
1316, 93, 94
compensatory policies, 384, 385
Concept of the Political, The, 99, 170
concordat (Vatican), 22123, 228
with Bavaria, 223
with Nazi Germany (1933), 221
with Prussia, 223
relation with Enabling Act,
22223n
Confederation of the Bar (Polish), 350
Orthodox peasant reaction to, 350
Congo, Democratic Republic of the,
72, 38081
size of, 381 see also Zaire
Congress of Berlin, 215, 226, 341
consequences for Eastern Europe,
226
Conquest, Robert, 48, 316, 320
Constantine I, 34041
Constantinople, 36, 55, 155, 160,
212, 214, 338, 339, 342
Armenian deportations from, 161,
217
Istanbul, 245, 337, 339
massacre of Armenians in, 56
receiving Muslim refugees, 157
contingency of genocide, 6
continuity of massacre and genocide,
4362, 370
denition of, 43
Jewish, 305
contraction, 13541, 194, 198200,
211, 250, 26468, 306,
325, 356
of Austria, 325
contrasted with destruction, 1112
contrasted with expansion, 306
extent of, 266
France (1871), 198
France (1940), 325
Germany, 325
Italy, 325
Ottoman Empire, 325
predictive of degree of popular
political anti-Semitism, 266
and refugees, 19899
Romania, 325
Rwanda, 325 see also country
headings, loss, territorial loss,
truncation
cooperation, 16, 17, 17093
between leaders and actual
perpetrators, 10709
linked with mutual identication,
299
societal, 18093
within Germany, 185 see also unity
I N D E X 429
Cossacks, 46, 4950, 157
and looting, 49
and rape, 4950
and tsarist ofcers, 4951
cost-benet calculus, 65, 68
Croatia and Croats, 26, 27, 114, 131,
195, 225, 250
Catholicization and Aryanization of,
224
fascist, 131
forced conversion in, 224
independence of, 131
massacres of Orthodox Serb
intelligentsia in, 224
as Nazi puppet state, 22326
offensive on krajina, 134
racism and anti-Semitism of, 224
Cromwell, Oliver, 10001, 361
invasion of Ireland (1649), 357
massacre at Drogheda, 357
massacre at Wexford, 357
Protestant reforms of, 357
Cultural Revolution (Chinese),
31819, 371
anti-urban, 318
anti-Western, 318
collectivism in, 319
failures of, 318, 320
four targeted groups in, 317
Tai Chai system of, 319
see also China
cynical realpolitik, 17, 20, 11323,
194, 196, 21136, 23749, 374,
383, 38992
altered, 389
and Anglo-American immigration
policy, 246
and British Palestine policy, 246
of bystanders, 389
and Clinton, 392
criteria for, 389
denition of, 9497
of permitting agents, 389
reasons of state, 389
and Rwanda, 392
sources of, 390
and USA in Rwanda, 39092
and US military embarrassment, 392
and Vatican, 389
see also realpolitik
Czechoslovakia, 194, 195, 251, 275
Jewish emigrants from, 129
Czerniakow, Adam, 14445, 289,
29193, 299
allows political party meetings, 293
allows smuggling operations, 292
allows underground newsletters,
293
ameliorates inequality, 292
as caretaker, 292
compared with Rumkowski, 291
encourages professional
conferences, 292
encourages teacher training courses,
292
meeting with Rumkowski, 289
suicide of, 30304
tolerates organized Jewish life, 291
transmission belt for German
orders, 293
Dadrian, Vahakn N., 38, 55, 57, 141,
156, 160, 161, 162, 193, 212,
214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219,
371
Dallaire, Rome o, 144, 16667, 232,
391, 392
Dardanelles straits, 159, 212, 214
campaign, 160
Australian contingent in, 160
New Zealand contingent in, 160
Darfur, 25, 371, 38688
Arabized, 386
ethnic cleansing of blacks in, 386
rebellion of blacks in, 386 see also
Sudan
Dashnaks, 14, 193
and capture of Ottoman State Bank,
56
decision making: steps in, 151
under risk and uncertainty, 16
defection and defectors, 108, 18393
denition of, 10809
Jews as, 110
punishment of, 10809
democracy, 39294
430 I N D E X
in central Africa, 146, 166, 16768
and civil wars, 383
as double-edged sword, 39394
and genocide, 354, 383
as palliative, 383
Democratic Kampuchea, 68, 31023
absence of moderating inuences in,
320
attack on vested interests, 317
confrontations with Vietnam, 318
diplomatic relations with China,
319
diplomatic relations with North
Korea, 319
emptying of cities, 319
imprudent elimination of Khmer
Krom, 315
incursions into Vietnam, 313
individual incentives eschewed, 319
military weakness of, 371
primacy of politics in, 31718 see
also Cambodia, Khmer Rouge
Denikin, Anton, 45, 47, 51
Denmark and Danes, 194, 284
chief rabbi of, 283
Danish Jewry, rescue of, 28384
dock strike in, 283
government of, 283
as model protectorate, 283
national revolt of, 284
riots in, 283
sabotage in, 283
Social Democratic Party of, 283
strikes in, 283
Des Forges, Alison, 38, 60, 166, 177,
229, 232, 390
Djemal Pas a, 158
Dobre, 98, 115
people of, 115
Dobrudja, southern, 204, 326
domain of losses, see loss
Dominican Republic, 243
and Jewish immigration, 393
Dublin, 121, 356, 360, 361
Edelman, Marek, 296, 300
Egypt, 159
Egyptian desire for revenge, 377
Egyptian Islamists, and resurrection
of caliphate, 379
Eichengreen, Lucille, 289, 290
Eichmann, Adolf, 12, 180, 261, 282
trial of, 12
Einsatzgruppen, 15, 23, 34, 44, 141,
143, 148, 151, 189, 207, 249,
275, 281
alliance with Ukrainian nationalists,
45
and validation, 61
Eisner, Kurt, 138, 183
electorate, 393
security minded, 383
Spanish, 393
Elster, Jon, 64
Enabling Act (German), 222, 228
giving Hitler dictatorial powers,
22223
passage of, 223
relation with concordat, 22223n
English culture and language, 356
decline of, 357
English settlers in Ireland, 356
shrinking world of, 356
Enlightenment, 354
French, 354
German, 354
inuential in Poland, 354
enmity: collective, 102
personal, 102
Entente, 340, 34142
entente cordiale, 121, 123
Enver Pas a, 109, 158, 159, 215,
217, 373
battling Soviets, 373
equality: Armenian, 57
demographic between Muslims and
Christians, 174
between German Christians and
German Jews, 136, 284
between Jews and non-Jews,
28386
of Muslims and indels, 161
in Rwanda, 5961 see also inequality
Erzerum, 37, 159, 160
Estonia, 302, 332
Germans from, 346
I N D E X 431
ethnic cleansing, 19, 27, 11334
of Anatolian Greeks, 377, 383
in Bosnia, 28, 113, 381
in Darfur, 386
distinguished from genocide, 23,
28, 370
of Germans in Poland, 12326
in Ireland, 11523
in Poland, 113
of Polish Jews, 128
and realpolitik, 375
in Yugoslavia, 114, 119
Europe, 4, 23, 3536, 76, 161
central, 371
inuence of, 395
no hope for Jews in, 376
at peace, 353
restrictions on immigration to, 394
restrictions on political asylum,
393
western, 71, 73
European Community (EC), 130, 132
German domination of, 131
and German unication, 131
European Union (EU), 70, 72, 377
and Iran, 377
and Israel, 377
and North Korea, 377
European powers and Europeans, 215
as afne protectors, 38485
and cynical realpolitik, 384
democracies, 393
guilt of, 73
Evian immigration conference,
24344, 393
rejection of Jewish immigration, 243
evil, and altruistic punishment, 193
Fashoda syndrome, 229
Fehr, Ernst, 108, 10809n, 109, 186
Fein, Helen, 8, 22, 25, 62, 77, 194,
235, 284, 381
Fenians, 358, 35960,
from USA, 361
as veterans of American Civil War, 358
Filderman, Wilhelm, 27778
Filov, Bogdan, 326, 328
Finland and Finns, 45
common enemy with Germany,
331
compared with Bulgaria, 331, 332
deportation of foreign Jews from,
33132
as exception, 20, 195, 208, 309,
33132, 333, 372
hospitality of, 332
participation on Eastern Front, 331
realpolitik of, 332
refugee inux, 331
refugee return, 331
territorial gain of, 331
territorial loss, 331
Fleischmann, Gisi, 275, 283
fog of war, 335
and uncertainty, 385
Ford, Henry, 241, 242
and Grand Cross of the German
Right, 241
FPO (Farynikte Partizaner-
organizatsye; United Partisan
Organization of Vilna ghetto),
299303, 30506
confrontation with Jewish police,
301
freeing Wittenberg, 302
Yiddish name, 305
framing, denition of, 104
France, 87, 9496, 138, 152, 158,
159, 175, 196201, 211, 214,
225, 235, 239, 243, 245, 328,
333, 338, 34142, 351, 371
absence of anti-Semitic laws, 333
advising Poland, 98
alliance with Irish rebels, 121, 122
anti-Semitic legislation in, 200, 327
and Armenians, 57
awareness of possibility of mass
killing, 232
and a compensatory peace, 383
connection between Jews and
communism in, 334
declining birthrate in, 199
defeat of, 136, 151, 152, 215, 370
denial of involvement in genocide,
234
economic decline, 199
432 I N D E X
German military administration in,
260
home of continental European
liberalism, 333
insecurity of revolutionary state, 371
interwar ills, 199
Jews in, 351
loss of 3/5 of territory to Germans,
199
main enemy of England, 121
materiel supplied to the Hutu, 234
obstructionism of, 383
occupation of left bank of Rhine, 383
occupied by Germany, 67
occupied zone, 197, 199
opposition to UNAMIR presence in
Rwanda, 232
parliamentary disorder, 199
permissive role of, 233
as permitting agent, 22836
in position to stop the killing in
Rwanda, 232
realpolitik policy in central Africa,
233
relations with Britain, 119
unoccupied, 260 see also French
France (revolutionary), 390
as afne protector of Jews, 354
defeat of revolutionary army, 371
Jewish acceptance in, 354
philosophes in, 354 see also French
France (Vichy), 19, 137, 152,
193, 195, 19798, 207, 309,
333, 372
anti-Semitism of, 333
compared to Bulgaria, 333
compared to Romania, 333
complicity in Jewish deportation, 333
Jewish deportation from, 19798
Jewish victimization rate in, 260
Frank, Hans, 35, 151
Franz Josef II, 376
tolerance of, 376
French, 77, 105, 106, 171, 229
Assembly, 229, 351
Communist Party, 372
General Staff, 202
invasion of Ireland, 114, 117
military mission to Rwanda, 230
military aid to Rwanda, 230
military intelligence, 230
Revolution, 95, 122, 354
Third Republic, 95
troops, 230, 231
victory on the Marne, 355 see also
France
Friedlander, Saul, 4, 5, 6, 12, 96, 142,
157, 179, 180, 191, 222
and redemptive anti-Semitism, 180
functionalism, 5
Gabrovski, Peter, 326, 328, 329
Gachter, Simon, 10809n, 186
Gaddis, John L., 6
Gaelic culture, absorption of Old
English in, 356
Gallipoli invasion, 355
Garver, Eugene, 17, 93
genocidaires (Hutu), 16, 179, 192,
193, 380
and Belgian peacekeepers, 392
in Goma, 234
interviews of, 373
as ordinary farmers or laborers, 179,
180
and UN peacekeepers, 392
genocidal behavior, 10, 23, 27, 30,
33, 64
choice of, 336
in ethnic cleansing, 13234
ideation, 99103
impulse, 194, 335
Polish, 114
of states, 211 see also genocide
genocidal intent, disjunction with
action, 34243
toward Ottoman Greeks, 34243
see also genocide
genocide, 419n
absence of, 20, 74
accusations of, 358
of Armenians, 7576, 79, 91, 149,
15362, 168, 201, 211, 237,
309, 332, 341
brief denition of, 10
brutality in, 385
I N D E X 433
genocide (cont.)
consequences of, 21, 37581
contrast with politicide, 22, 2425,
39, 309
denition of, 18, 22
and dehumanization, 385
desire or intent to commit, 16
differences among denitions, 384
dimensions of, 24
distinguished from ethnic cleansing,
28, 370
dynamics of, 419n
enormity of, 380
as eradication, 384
ideological sources of, 7476
intensity of, 66
intent to commit, 162
intervention against, 387
inversely related to battleeld
success, 66
of Jews, 91, 309
justication for, 73
magnitude of, 12, 20, 96, 21112,
25063, 374
mass killing in, 385
Melian, 7, 7982, 96, 355
moral dimension in, 73
necessary conditions for, 4, 85
not a dichotomous variable, 12, 64,
96, 211
onset of, 374
partial loss in, 385
precondition of, 352
prevention of, 21, 235, 381, 395
probability of, 235, 374, 38586
Rwandan, 161, 16267
and state insecurity, 91
sufcient conditions for, 85
theory of, 63
transformation from massacre, 211
transition to, 147, 166, 167
of Tutsi, 79, 91, 237, 309, 332
United Nations denition of, 384
of Vietnamese in Cambodia, 88, 364
and war, 375, 38586 see also
Armenians, Holocaust, Jews,
Srebrenica, Tutsi, Vietnamese
Gens, Jacob, 298303
comparison with Czerniakow, 299
comparison with Rumkowski, 299
and ghetto underground, 299
married to a non-Jew, 303
ofcer in Lithuanian army, 299
as Proud Jew, 299
geopolitics, 66, 67, 92, 259
as component of realpolitik, 259
Gerlach, Christian, 91, 135, 142, 150,
151, 160
Germans, 5, 77, 78, 105, 13653,
268, 338
after World War I, 5154
attitudes toward Jews, 217
Baltic, 54
blue collar, 285
Catholic, 170
and collaborating Jewish leaders,
372
conservative, 170
continuation of massacres of
Ukrainian Jews, 61
departure from o dz ghetto, 304
East Prussian, 266
ethnic in Poland, 114, 12326
liberal, 170
limited cooperation with, 330
migrating to Poland, 353
North, 170
Protestant, 170
in Russia, 67
Social Democratic, 170
South, 170 see also German,
Germany, Nazi Germany
German Workers Party (DAP), 136,
151, 183
later to become NSDAP (Nazi
Party), 183 see also Nazi Party
Germany, 3, 7, 10, 13, 14, 16, 19, 51,
68, 70, 7173, 85, 87, 125,
13553, 158, 173, 176, 192,
198, 20708, 225, 246, 248,
25859, 265, 266, 283, 333,
34142, 372
agriculturalists in, 173
alliance with Ottoman Empire, 154,
235
allies of, 194
434 I N D E X
and anti-Semitism, 3, 5154, 136
cabinet of, 248
cartels, 173
Catholic Bavaria in, 173
civilians, 217
class barriers in, 184
compliance with genocide, 194
connection between Jews and
communism in, 334
consuls, 126, 218
consumer satisfaction, 172, 173
contraction of, 86, 198
cooperation and loyalty, 188
cooperation within, 185
cynical realpolitik of, 21419
defeat of in World War I, 13638
defeats in East, 282
dependence, 194
disjunction between civilian and
military, 218
disunied, 87
in domain of losses, 355
during World War I, 144, 211, 374
and East, 51
economy of, 172, 215
as external permitting agent, 212, 228
and fascist Croatia, 131
Foreign Ofce, 126
General Staff, 31, 187
generals, 62, 182
as great power protector of
Ottomans, 69
at head of EC, 132
heartland of, 283, 389
and Henry Fords assembly-line
innovations, 172
imperial, 10, 198, 235, 284
industrialists, 173
ination, 86, 138
interceding on behalf of Bulgaria,
326
January strike (1916), 183
Jewish assimilation in, 376
Jewish emigrants from, 129
as Judenrepublik, 52
land ownership, 136
languages, 13
leaders, 62
the left, 173
losses of (World War I), 370
middle class, 284, 285
military (World War I), 217, 235
military transport, 151
nationalists, 266
near anarchy within, 191
occupation, 14, 194
ofcers, 21619
old Reich, 84, 98, 106
as Ottoman great power referent,
21419
Ottonian, 75
perceptions of national inferiority,
87
and Poland, 78, 87, 97, 114, 126
police in Jewish deportations, 262
political parties, 3, 136
press, 218
Protestant Prussia in, 173
relations with Soviet Union, 125
resettlement efforts, 267
the right, 173
rural dwellers, 173
and Rwanda, 59
security of, 257
settlers, 30
shipping ofcial of, 283
spirit of 1914, 173
state insecurity of, 14546
states of, 173
territorial concessions, 382
threat of, 114
threat of defeat of, 191
threat of Jewish economic
dominance in, 378
and Treaty of Versailles, 105
troops, 182
unication, 131
unity in army, 184
unity of, 170
urban dwellers, 173
victories of, 261
if victorious in World War I, 147,
166, 168
victory of 187071, 87
Volk, 181, 192
vulnerability of borders, 66, 67
I N D E X 435
Germany (cont.)
Weimar Republic, 3, 10, 51, 138,
140, 221, 384
and Western Europe, 52
Womens League, 185 see also
Germans, Germany (Nazi)
Germany (Nazi), 5, 6, 10, 49, 7172,
7475, 77, 91, 12326, 133,
152, 204, 235, 244, 248, 287,
326, 336, 370
boycott of Jewish businesses in
(1933), 44, 266
brutality toward Poles, 343
communist opposition to, 286
concentration camps in, 191
defeat at Stalingrad, 327
demanding deportation, 329
dependence on Finland, 332
diminishing threat of, 327
early restrained treatment of Jews,
343
eliminationism, 220
extermination policy, 343
failure in attack on Moscow, 91
food ministry, 142
food shortages, 186
genocidal intent, 337
genocidal policy of, 90
goal of deporting Bulgarias Jews,
330
government, 66
ideology of, 343
inevitable defeat of (World War II),
282
invasion of Poland, 114, 346
invasion of Soviet Union, 336, 343
leaders, 44, 61, 71
losses of, 343
military ascendancy of, 327
occupation of Hungary, 250
occupiers, 26683
ofcers of, 94
omission of J for Jewish, 248
orbit of, 19495, 309
pact with Soviets, 204, 346
pressures for Jewish deportation,
194207
prudent realpolitik of, 331
racial laws of, 352
radicalization of Jewish policy, 343
Reich economics minister, 181
relations between Jews and non-Jews
in, 284
relations with Soviet Union, 343
resettlement policy of, 90, 346
sexual relations between Christian
and Jews in, 285
territorial losses of, 385
in World War II, 237 see also
Germans, Germany
Gestapo, 95, 149, 186, 206, 276,
28283
les, Governmental District of
Dusseldorf, 285
ghettos, 266
East European Jewish, 8, 149, 250
intrusions in, 268 see also o dz,
Vilna, Warsaw
Glazman, Joseph, 299, 300, 301,
30203
Goebbels, Joseph, 49, 102, 139, 142,
143, 144, 145, 146, 156,
16667, 222, 282
Der Angriff, 222
Jewish responsibility for another
world war, 150
Goldhagen, Daniel J., 3, 139, 153,
220
and eliminationist anti-Semitism,
153
Goltz, General Colmar von der, and
East, 54, 214, 215
Gombos, Gyula, 253
as Hungarian National Socialist,
253
suggestion of GermanItalian
alliance, 253
Gordon, Sarah, 285
Gourevitch, Philip, 38, 60, 234
Grande Rae, La, 201
Great Disorder, 46, 138
Jewish immigration to Germany
during, 51
Great Idea (Greek), 33839, 340
dened, 338
threat of, 33839
436 I N D E X
Great Leap Forward (Chinese), 317,
31819
anti-urban, 318
anti-Western, 318
failures of, 318
Greece (modern), 142, 194, 337, 339,
342, 364
boundaries of, 338
divided, 341
engaged on Macedonian front, 341
expansion of, 340
greater, 338
independence of, 337
invades Turkey, 336
neutral, 341
three-power treaty (1827), 338
three-power treaty (1832), 341
Greeks (Anatolian), 16, 20, 5859,
70, 75, 388
consequences of expulsion, 379
ethnic cleansing of, 377, 383 see also
Greeks (Ottoman)
Greeks (Ottoman), 20, 174, 33743
afne protection of, 364
and afnity, 336
compared with Armenians, 337
controlling economy, 377
deputies of Ottoman Assembly,
338
economic predominance of, 337
as economic prime movers, 380
educational and cultural life of,
339
loyalties of, 338
numerosity of, 338
Pontic, 342
reduction in number, 377
schools, 339
size of, 337
survivors, 343
syllogues of, 33738
Thracian, 342 see also Greeks
(Anatolian)
Gregory Clause, of Poor Law
Amendment Act (1847), 119,
358
Gross, Jan, 15, 7778, 7778n, 98
Grynberg, Henryk, 98, 115
Gutman, Yisrael, 144, 149, 16667,
168, 294, 304
Habyarimana, Juve nal, 38, 61, 73,
145, 166, 167, 177, 230, 231,
233, 234
Haffner, Sebastian, 6, 171, 185
Halder, Franz, 135, 142, 145, 150,
166, 167
difculties on Russian front, 142,
150
Harff, Barbara, 4, 8, 22, 369, 383,
385, 39192, 393
Harshav, Benjamin, 298, 302
Hatzfeld, Jean, 179
Heidenrich, John, 282, 381
Heilbronner, Jacques, 202
Herero, 8, 24, 25, 2934, 61, 69, 219
Herzl, Theodor, 376
Heydrich, Reinhard, 6, 36
Hilberg, Raul, 34n, 12, 141, 156,
194, 207, 278, 372
Himmler, Heinrich, 133, 149, 17993
and altruistic punishment, 180
der treue Heinrich, 186
and East, 54
and Finland, 331
and German unity, 171, 188
inuenced by JewishBolshevik
conspiracy, 345
inverted moral calculus of, 18083
and loyalty, 188
in Minsk, 187
as moralist, 18083
murder as distasteful, 186
orders not to kill Berlin Jews, 136, 151
Posen speech, 180
preoccupation with East, 44
and resettlement of ethnic Germans,
346
on risk minimization, 137
use of valuable transport facilities, 66
use of word bacterium, 170
violence-averse, 373
Hitler, Adolf, 5, 6, 12, 73, 77, 85, 89,
103, 107, 137, 152, 183, 191,
241, 260, 282, 362, 387
accession to power, 99
I N D E X 437
Hitler, Adolf (cont.)
address to NSDAP leaders, 150
anti-Semitic apotheosis of, 191
appreciating risks, 346
and Armenian genocide, 62
attitude of Prussian ofcers toward,
219
awareness of risk, 14143
on Belgium in World War I, 106
call for extermination of Europes
Jews, 150, 151
changes in policy over time, 66,
15253
choice of killing Jews, 6667
decision to murder all European
Jews, 12, 91, 14953, 292
declaration of exterminatory intent, 35
declaration of war on USA, 150
drive to East, 90
effect on of Bavarian revolution,
139
and Enabling Act, 22223n
ends justifying means, 102
extending Final Solution into
Hungary, 256
failed assassination of, 192
fear of defeat, 144, 146
fear of two-front war, 146
fear of US entry into war, 141
feared Bolshevization of world, 150
ghting for Lords work, 191
and Finland, 331
and followers, 169
goal of homogenous Reich, 346
headquarters in East Prussia, 142
historical awareness of massacre, 43
Hitlers Second Book, 66
and Hungarian leadership, 256
ideology of war, 104
and imprudentbrute force
realpolitik, 93
inuenced by JewishBolshevik
conspiracy, 345
informed of Anglo-Saxon military
supremacy, 15051
intention to eradicate Bulgarian
Jews, 327
and Jewish emigration, 248
and King Boris III, 327
likely elation after victory, 136, 152
and loss, 10910
and Mein Kampf, 99
negotiations with Kaas, 222
political testament of, 110
possibility of peace with Stalin, 146
preoccupation with East, 44
prophecy, 15051
rabid anti-Semitism of, 219
reaction to Vatican, 96
recognition of possible defeat in war,
91
Reichstag speech, 150
retaining initiative, 347
revenge against Jews, 146, 149
rise to power, 125
on risk of invading Soviet Union,
142, 156
and Rosenberg, 54
and Rumbold, 246
and Schmitts theories, 100
size of following, 373
on social class, 89, 136, 152
and socialization of people, 185
speeches of, 162
on stab in the back, 137
supports Jewish emigration, 244
surprise at quantity of Soviet
armaments, 14546
thinking of Jews as less powerful,
370
thinking Jews are stupid and
weak, 14344, 370
timing of war with Russia, 346
treatment of Mischlinge, 15253
on uncertainty in invasion of USSR,
142, 159
understanding value of surprise,
346
use of terror, 137
use of valuable transport facilities,
66
valued Finnish contribution, 331
vengeance against Jews, 137
in Vienna, 13536n, 139, 151
youth of, 185
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 105
438 I N D E X
Holocaust, 316, 1920, 23, 24, 26,
3436, 4554, 70, 7172, 77, 79,
85, 96, 99, 101, 115, 13553,
160, 161, 168, 18092, 196208,
216, 217, 220, 22728, 233,
23749, 25063, 28182, 283,
305, 315, 332, 335, 343, 363,
374, 377, 380, 394
consequences of, 37577
contingency of, 151
in East, 66, 67
East European, 281
extent of victimization, 372
Hungarian, 28283
loss compensation in, 14153
magnitude of, 212, 23749, 389
magnitude of killing, 227, 233
onset of, 212, 228
permissive context for, 22028
presence in 20 European countries,
372
risk acceptance in, 14153
risk minimization in, 14153
and Roman Catholic liturgy, 389
uniqueness of, 13
and Vatican, 389 see also Jews,
Roma
homosexuals, 36
Horthy, Admiral Nicholas, 25658, 282
Hunchakists, 14, 55, 193
Hungary, 148, 194, 199, 200, 204,
225, 25059, 281, 28283
anti-Semitic legislation in, 327
aristocracy in, 250, 251
Black Legion of Death in, 253
Bolshevik reign in, 252
as Central Power ally, 204
compared with Romania, 203
compared with Vichy France, 200
contrast with Romania, 25859
cooperation between Jews and
Magyars, 251
counterrevolution in, 252
decision to withdraw from war, 254
economy of, 272
1867 equality act of, 254
as rst to institute anti-Jewish
measures, 254
gendarmerie of, 282
German occupation of, 194, 257
ghettos in, 257
homogenous, 252
Jewish assimilation in, 376
Jewish leaders compared with
Romanian, 37273
limiting Jewish participation in
economic life, 25455
Magyars of Israelite faith in, 274
nationalists in, 266
Nazi occupation of, 256
non-agricultural sector of economy,
266
Numerus Clausus in, 254
pogroms in, 253
public servants in, 266
Slavs in, 251
territorial losses of, 25152
threat of Jewish economic
dominance, 378
Trianon, 253, 273, 275
truncated, 252
Hutu (Burundian), 23
refugees, 72
Hutu (Rwandan), 5, 14, 3839,
5961, 75, 87, 88, 102, 145,
16267, 17679, 394
army chief of staff, 148, 166, 168
of Butare, 177
in domain of losses, 16266
intermarriage with Tutsi, 176
moderate, 38, 143, 165, 17677,
228, 310
northern (Kiga), 61, 176
political dominance over Tutsi, 86
southern, 61
unity of, 177 see also Rwanda
Hutu extremists (Rwandan), 62, 68,
72, 77, 109, 192, 227, 233,
235, 370
concessions of, 383
in domain of losses, 16266
fear of, 373
hardline stance of, 231
leadership of, 62, 232
loss compensation by, 144,
16667
I N D E X 439
Hutu extremists (Rwandan) (cont.)
potential defeat by RPF, 147,
166, 167
risk acceptance of, 144, 16667
risk minimization by, 144, 147,
16667, 168
and state insecurity, 16266 see also
genocidaires (Hutu), Rwanda
Ias i, 203, 20506
pogrom, 206
ideation and ideology, 64
communist, 315
justications, 353
Nazi, 220
identication, 19, 20, 43, 287, 331
absence of, 26486
among victims, 287
between Christian and Jewish Danes,
283, 284
between Jews and non-Jews, 28386
between victims and helpers, 287
with downtrodden ethnic kin, 88, 334
effect on manner of dying, 287
failures of, 211
and inequality, 279
of Jews with communism, 127
mutual, 26468, 37273
with past murderers, 44
see also political identication
identity, ethnoreligious, 5, 89
Ieng Sary, 314
named to Communist Partys
Central Committee, 313
Ikonomov, Dimitar, 328, 329
immigration, 25
Immigration Act of 1917 (US), 238
Jewish, 114, 23749
laws (US), see under United States
policy, Western, 237
imprudentbrute force realpolitik, 16,
17, 8386, 92, 93, 11315,
12329, 135, 194, 202, 211,
234, 259, 325, 335, 370, 374,
383, 385, 38889
criteria for, 388
disproportionate responses to
perceived provocations, 94
distinct from prudent, 94, 388
dynamics of, 38889
end justifying means, 388
German, 13541, 250
Hutu extremist, 16266
Khmer Rouge, 312
Ottoman, 15358
and risk minimization, 370 see also
realpolitik
inequality, 20, 26486, 372, 374
among Jews 273
class, 280
and contraction process, 211
between council leaders and Jewish
masses, 28081
economic, 270
in ghettos, 30506
and identication, 279
Irish compared with Prussian, 360
in Irish landholdings, 360
in o dz ghetto, 268
perceptions of, 265
two-tiered, 280
in victim survival, 287
in Warsaw ghetto, 304 see also
equality, scarcity
instrumentality, 109, 219
intentionalism, 5
interahamwe (Rwandan extremist
Hutu militia), 38, 39, 102,
232, 387
trained by France, 230
International Court of Justice, 381
and Bosnian ethnic cleansing, 381
and Rwandan genocide, 381
International Criminal Court, 381
and Rome Statute, 381
International Criminal Tribunal of
Former Yugoslavia, 26
Intifadas I, 377
II, 20, 36364, 377
inyenzi (refugee Tutsi warriors), 60,
177
attacks of, 60
Ioanid, Radu, 204, 205, 207, 258,
277, 278, 279
Ireland, 19, 126, 336, 35463
Act of Union with Great Britain, 117
440 I N D E X
Anglo-Norman invasion of, 356
Catholic emancipation in, 116
development of, 11623
economy, role of Irish-Americans in,
359, 360
food exports to England, 119
independence of, 122, 360
labor force in industry, 116
Northern, 101
plantation policy, Cromwells, 101
population of, 116, 358
Republic of, 117
rural workforce in, 116
Scottish settlers in, 116 see also Irish
Irish, 115
agriculture, 11516, 117
Christmas American letter, 359
Confederates, 358
landlords, 117
lesser reliability of, 121, 122
nationalism and America, 359
peasant, 11819
Presbyterians, 116
productivity of farm workers, 115
question and genocide, 356
rebellion (late 1590s), 357
rebellion (1848), 118
rebellion (1916), 355, 36162
rebels, 114, 121
Republican Brotherhood, 358, 360
revolution, 122
Roman Catholics, 20, 101, 114,
116, 35463, 388
tenant farmers, 11718
viewed as traitors, 362 see also
Fenians
Irish famine, 101, 113, 114, 358, 370
and Britain, 358
and British state insecurity, 11523
and Catholic emigration, 358
tenant rights, 36061
Iron Guard (Romanian), 200, 203,
204, 205, 206
Islam, 37, 77, 17374
conversion of Armenians to, 324
elimination of hegemony, 379
hegemony of, 57
and massacre of Armenians, 56
as societal cement, 380
as unier of Anatolia and Arabia, 215
Islamists, wrath of, 380
Israel, 304, 305, 36364, 375, 380
avoids appearance of genocidal
activity, 363
boundaries of, 377
caution in response to suicide
bombings, 364
deaths in, 363
disparity in capability relative to
Palestinians, 364
impact of Warsaw ghetto rebellion
on, 375, 377
in Intifada II, 326, 336
negotiations with Palestinians, 377
as outgrowth of Holocaust, 380
possibility of two- or three-front
war; threat of surrounding
Arab populations, 363
Italians, 184
rescue of Serbs and Jews, 226
Italy, 19, 66, 102, 142, 185, 207, 309,
333, 372
allied invasion of, 196
fascists in, 300
genocidal trajectory of, 19596
as German ally, 195, 226
protection of Jews in, 198
in Punic Wars, 73
Sicily, 8182, 196
and state insecurity, 19596
weakness of, 196
withdrawal from World War II, 256
Ittihadists, 15, 69
Janjaweed, 387
Japan, 28, 29, 126, 150
ambassador to Germany, 145
attack on Pearl Harbor, 150
Jasenovac, 133
Jedwabne, 15, 77, 98, 113
Jewish communities: Caucasian, 304
East European, 24
European, 304
Middle Eastern, 304
North African, 304
Palestinian, 304
I N D E X 441
Jewish councils, 144, 279, 281
Amsterdam, 279, 281
Bratislava, working group of, 275
Dutch, 27072, 281
East European, 270
leaders of, 372
The Hague, 281
Vilna, 298
Warsaw, 289, 29193
Jews and Jewish, 315, 25, 3436,
7679, 102, 115, 13553, 169,
334, 338, 34347
afne protection of East European,
362, 364
alleged stab in the back, 13637,
146, 183
American, 128
annihilation of, 18093
as apostles of capitalism and
disunity, 170
Ashkenazic, 268
assimilation of, 274, 376
assumed to be alien, 252, 254
assumed to be alien to American
life, 242
assumed to be political commissars,
143
Austrian, 268
as bacteria, 170
banning of ritual slaughter, 261
Berlin, 266
Bessarabian, 279
Bolshevik connections of, 13839,
183
bourgeois, 266
boycott of (1933), 153
British restrictions on immigration
to Palestine, 128
Bulgarian, 32630
Carpatho-Ruthenian, 27475
class differences among, 269, 279
as collaborating fth column, 259
commissars, 265
communal tax, 128
communists, identied as, 4748,
57, 127, 143, 182, 206, 242,
257, 283, 343, 345
communists among Ukrainians, 47
community, 281
Consistory (French), 202
cooperation with Germans, 270
corporate rights of, 352
Danish, 194
death rate of, 14653
as defectors, 18384, 325
dehumanization of, 99, 24849
dependent on relief, 128
deportations of, 25556
deportations to Croatian
concentration camps, 225
deportations to Dalmatian coast,
225
deportations to East, 137, 152
deportations from France, 197,
19798
deportations from Hungary, 25658
deportations from Italy, 196201,
197
deportations of Polish in World War
I, 4454
deportations of Romanian, 27779
deprivations of rights, 129
differences among Dutch, 26872
distant third in Ottoman economy,
378
divisiveness among, 273
dominance of Bolsheviks, 344
dominance in Romanian economy,
203
Dutch, 263, 269, 270, 278
East European, 20, 44, 138, 183,
303, 34347
economic impact of deportation,
260
effect of Bolshevik Revolution on,
252
elimination of, 323
elite, 269
entrepreneurial upper class, 273
equality in Hungary, 254
estimates of dead, 350
ethnic cleansing from Poland, 128
European, 4
excluded from Polish public law,
349, 35051, 352
excluded from Polish towns, 351
442 I N D E X
expulsion from villages, 352
failures to identify with each other,
263
Finnish, 33132
foreign in France, 199
French, 374
French-born, 199
Galician, 51, 256, 257
German, 13, 244, 265, 268, 269
ghettos of, 281
Hasidic, 7, 274, 279, 376
homogeneity of, 27879
honor of, 281
Hungarian, 148, 192, 194, 25059,
27277, 304, 374, 376,
38889
Hungarian bourgeoisie, 251
and Hungarian economic
development, 251
and Hungarian public labor
projects, 254
immigration from Central and
Eastern Europe, 269
inuence in USA, 242, 347, 363
inuence of Soviet, 363
international, 223, 242
Italian, 19596
in Italian-administered Yugoslavia,
195
in Italian-occupied France, 195
JewishBolshevik system, 14647
journalists, 272
kehillot, 349
laws (Hungarian), 27273
lawyers, 272
limited participation in Hungarian
economic life, 25455
Lithuanian, 3435
o dz, 128
Lublin, 128
Lwo w, 128
Macedonian, 332
magnates, 273
Magyarized, 250, 25152, 257, 279
Marxian creed of, 191
mass murder of males, 23, 106, 143
massacres of, 129, 20507, 264
massacre of (1768), 352
massacre of (191820), 352
massacre of (Ukrainian), 23, 394
massacres of in East, 270
massive emigration, 128
menace, 12
menace to USA, 242
as microbes, 53
middle-class, 270
mild early treatment by Nazis, 363
Moldavian, 277
more threatening than other groups,
242
as mortal threat to Germany, 345
murdered in burning synagogues,
224
mutual identication among, 299
Nazi persecution of, 237
New Year, 283
as non-persons, 351
non-support of Jewish state, 376
number in German armed forces,
138
Orthodox, 7, 27475, 279, 376
in Ottoman Empire, 59, 338
as parasites, 217
percentage of Budapest population,
251
perishing in extermination camps,
329
as physicians, 272
plight of, 23749
pogroms against, 129
Polish, 51, 114, 123, 12629, 275,
343, 346, 374
Polish reactions against, 98, 128
politically dominant, 254
positive response to Soviet entry,
205
Prague, 268
proletariat, 269
property, 181
property in Germany, 139
proportion of German population,
176
protected, 282
provocation, 8
question, 66, 331
question (Romanian), 277
I N D E X 443
Jews and Jewish (cont.)
refugees, 252, 254, 26768
refugees from Germany, 269
resettlement of, 288
responsibility for Hungarian
Bolshevism, 252
revolt against Rome (6670),
298, 376
revolutionaries, 220
in Romania (Regat), 258
Romanian, 374
as Romanian doctors, 203
as Romanian engineers, 203
Romanian journalists, 203
in Romanian universities, 203
Sephardic, 269, 279
shtetls of Poland, 270
Slovakian, 374
socialism, 57
Soviet, 106, 150, 336
in Soviet occupation of eastern
Poland, 143, 165
taverns, 348
tax burden on, 128
taxes of, 349
Thracian, 329, 332
threat of, 364
timber trade, 127
to be hanged, 352
traders, 127, 348
Transylvanian, 27475, 277, 279
as trichinae, 170
in tsarist Russia, 59
Ukrainian, 4553, 56, 58, 207, 252
unemployed, 352
university students in Poland, 129
unwarranted culpability of, 334
upper-class, 270
urban guerillas, 9496, 26586
usurers, 217
vengeance of, 345
in Vichy France, 145, 166, 167
victimization of, 76
victimization rate in Hungary,
25758
Vienna, 136, 151
Vilna, 73
violence against, 350
visibility in Hungary, 251
vulnerability, 394
Wallachian, 277, 279
warnings to, 28283
Warsaw, 128
wealth of, 265
as witnesses, 354
in World War I, 188
worsening treatment of, 327, 335
Yiddish-speaking, 252, 269,
27475, 279
Zionist, 128
Zionist in Palestine, 59
John Paul II, Pope, 389
Jones, Bruce, 163, 166, 230
Judenrate, see Jewish councils
Kaas, Ludwig, 22122, 228
letter to Diego von Bergen, 222
negotiations with Hitler, 222
Kagame, General Paul, 229, 233
Americas Man in Great Lakes,
229
Kahneman, Daniel, 89, 103,
10304n
Kamenets-Podolsk, 255, 275
Kampuchea Krom, 88, 314
Karadzic, Radovan, 394
Karpat, Kemal H., 173, 174, 175
Keitel, Field Marshal Wilhelm, 147
Kemal, Namik, 17475
Kershaw, Ian, 103, 110, 13536n,
136, 137, 139, 141, 145, 151,
152, 153, 156, 166, 167, 181,
183, 266
Kharput, 37, 69
Khartoum government, 386, 387
Khmer Krom, 314
genocide of, 31415 see also
Vietnamese
Khmer Rouge, 20, 68, 88, 310, 312,
371, 375
butchery, 314
defeat of, 314, 364
perceptions of threat, 318
valued purity, 31618
war with Vietnam, 364
youth of, 316
444 I N D E X
Kiernan, Ben, 25, 310, 314, 319, 321
Kiev, 4647, 148, 265
Kigali, 158, 230, 233, 236, 390
massacres in, 232
withdrawal from, 232
killing to heal, 180, 19192
Kinealy, Christine, 115, 116, 118
King, MacKenzie, 247
fear of polluting Canadian
bloodstream, 247
Klemperer, Victor, 185
Kolettis, Ioannis, 339
Kovner, Abba, 300
Krajina, 13334
Krstic, Radislav, 27
Kruk, Herman, 298, 299300,
301, 302
on historical signicance, 301
Kuchuk-Kainardji, Treaty of, 153,
212, 353
kulaks, 265, 320
and collectivization process, 320
expropriation from, 265
mass killing of, 62
number dead, 320
Kun, Be la, 25253
purges of, 252
revolution of, 253, 254
Kurds, 59, 68, 102, 155, 174
and Armenians, 55
and massacre of Armenians, 57
tribal chiefs, 55
Kyustendil, 328, 332, 333
Lagarde, Paul de, 17071, 173
Lages, Willi, 261, 271
Land: League (Irish), 359
use, conict over, 382
Wars (Irish 187982), 361
Land Act: Irish of 1870, 361
Irish of 1881, 361
landlessness, Rwandan, 178
Langbehn, Julius, 171
Lao, 312
Latvia, Germans from, 346
Laval, Pierre, 201
Law for the Protection of the Nation
(Bulgarian), 32627
applied mildly, 327
and rapprochement with Germany,
327
Law of the Towns (Polish), 351
League of Nations, 128
Council of, 124
Covenant of, 123
economic commission, 128
Intergovernmental Committee on
Refugees, 243
political commission, 128
Lebensraum, 62, 90, 105
Leiber, Robert, 227
and popes silence about Holocaust,
227
Leinster, dispossession of Catholic
landowners from, 357
Lemarchand, Rene , 19, 24, 176,
227, 233
Lemkin, Raphael, 18, 22
LendLease Agreement, 145, 152
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 344, 345
Lepsius, Johannes, 36
Leutwein, Major Theodore von, 3031
levee en masse, 87, 106
Levendel, Issac, 137, 145, 152, 166,
167, 197, 201
Levi, Primo, 196
liberal democracy, 39294
in bystander state, 392
within a state, 392
Lifton, Robert J., 179, 180, 191,
191 92n
and killing to heal, 180
Lithuania, 3435, 54, 143
Germans from, 346
and mobile machine gun units, 54
police and partisans, 143
Little Entente, 204
Czechoslovakia in, 204
France in, 204
Romania in, 204
Yugoslavia in, 204
Local Government Act (UK 1898),
361
Locarno Pact, 123
o dz, 78, 267, 268, 28791,
30405
I N D E X 445
o dz ghetto, 299, 305
absence mutual identication in,
288
absence of revolt in, 373
Central European Jews in, 305
German Jews in, 305
inequality in, 28788, 30506
ination in, 288
isolation of, 288
productivity of, 144
Western Jews in, 287306
Lon Nol, 313, 317, 318, 375
London, 262, 360
Treaty of (1827), 341
London, Louise, 237, 245, 246
Longman, Timothy, 165, 178
Longrich, Peter, 136, 151
loss, 4, 8, 9, 14, 17, 19, 27, 33, 64,
6768, 74, 76, 8491, 10307,
113, 123, 13334, 13541, 147,
149, 166, 167, 194, 211,
26468, 325, 335, 36970,
374, 382
absence of, 20, 32534
absence of in Ireland, 114
aversion, 16, 85, 10407
battleeld casualties, 87
built on earlier loss, 386
civilian deaths, 87
consequences of, 169, 374
denition of, 83, 113
distinct from threat, 83
Florentine, 105
German battleeld, 141
German in World War I, 149
German on Eastern Front, 149
Hutu, 16266
of Iraq (Ottoman), 154
of Irish Catholic persons, 357, 358
of Irish population, 359
of Italians, 105
magnication of, 385
nationalist uprisings and, 386
of Ottoman lands, 15358
Polish, 114
and political subjugation, 386
recent or impending, 28
recompense for, 382
and refugee populations, 382
territorial, 8688, 264, 370, 372
and Vietnamese domination of
Kampuchea Krom, 314 see also
contraction, territorial loss
loss compensation, 7682, 85, 88,
97107, 135, 168, 315, 370,
38287
absence of, 385
against Jews, 137
by means of self help, 386 see also
revenge
Lublin, 35, 7879, 267, 278
as homeland for Jews, 152
Jewish indigence in, 268
Luttwak, Edward N., 6, 7
Lwo w, 49, 78, 79
Macedonia, 327, 330, 340
Machiavelli, Niccolo` , 92, 93, 97105,
99, 102
The Prince, 99, 105
Madagascar, 129, 144, 370
as homeland for Jews, 151
Maharero, Samuel, 30
Majdanek, 35, 302
Manouchian, Missak, 95
Manseld, Harvey, 97
Manstein, General Erich von, 147
Mantinae, 68
defeat of Athenian allies at, 81,
93, 355
Mao Tse-tung, 316, 324, 371
Maoism, 20
strategy of, 320
and Tai Chai, 319
Marrus, Michael R., 19, 85, 107, 169,
197, 199, 244, 261, 373
Martre, Georges, 233
dinner with Habyarimana, 233
Marxism-Leninism, 74, 371
mass murder, 5, 33, 43, 374
of Chinese, 29
egalitarian, 376
of Jews in East, 249
and Machiavelli, 102
massacres, 5, 6, 19, 23, 343
of Adana, 219
446 I N D E X
of Armenians, 28, 6263, 213,
214, 371
of Armenians (189496), 26,
5559, 212, 215, 219, 394
in burning synagogues, 224
experience of, 43
at Glina, 224
of Jews, 55, 22325
and later likelihood of genocide, 63
of Muslims, 13234, 173
of Orthodox Serb intelligentsia, 224
Sand Creek (Colorado), 355
Sassoun, 55
of Serbs, 22325
transformationinto genocide, 83, 211
of Tutsi, 5961
Vatican response to, 223
Masters of Death: The SS-
Einsatzgruppen and the Invention
of the Holocaust, 45
Matthaus, Jurgen, 143, 151, 165
Mayer, Arno, 141, 147, 155,
166, 168
Mein Kampf, 66, 99
Mekong River region (Vietnam), 88
Melos, 8081, 93, 219
Melian Dialogue, 9294
Melson, Robert, 3, 14, 22, 25, 68, 85,
136, 139, 152, 369
Merkl, Peter H., 4, 5152n, 139,
153, 266
Mesopotamia, 37, 68, 158, 159, 342
destination for Armenians, 216
Messersmith, George, 243, 246
assistant secretary of state, 240
consul-general in Berlin, 240
minister in Vienna, 240
on relations between Germany and
USA, 240
visceral Americanism, 240
Middle East, 364, 379
Muslim peoples of, 379
Midlarsky, Elizabeth, 74, 182
Midlarsky, Manus I., 4, 17, 74,
89, 139, 167, 178, 265, 298,
375, 384
millet (Ottoman ethnoreligious
community), 256, 380
Mitchel, John, 113, 358
Mitterrand, Franc ois, 229, 234
intimate of Habyarimana, 233
on symmetry between Hutu and
Tutsi behaviors, 233
Mladic, Ratko, 13334
Moldavia, 203
northeastern, 206
morality: complexity of, 270
inverted, 18083
of living, 171
of pleasure seekers, 171
and validation, 62
Morgenthau, Hans, 34, 92
and Vietnam, 94
Morgenthau, Henry, 217
Moscow, 91, 152
Peace of, 331
Mouvement Re publicain National
pour la De mocratie et le
De veloppement (MRNDD), 143,
163, 165, 231
Mouvement Re volutionnaire
National pour le De veloppement
(MRND), 61
Munich, 54, 220
Communist coup within, 220
and Nazism, 54
Munster, dispossession of Catholic
landowners from, 357
Muslims, 68
alliance with Croats, 132
anti-Christian hatred, 156
Arabs, 155
Bosnian, 2527
ejected from Balkans, 156
identication among, 364
inux into Ottoman Empire, 213
males, 23
migrants, from Balkans, 174
opinion of, 159
replacing Armenians, 218
from Russia, 174
in Serbian concentration camps,
133
Turks, 155
violence against, 15657
Mussolini, Benito, 145, 196, 334
I N D E X 447
mutual identication, 37273
absence of, 374
failures of, 305
in Warsaw ghetto, 304
linked with cooperation, 299
Nama, 31, 61
Nanjing, 24, 25, 2830, 33
Rape of, 2830
Napoleon I, 100, 142, 333
National Democratic Party (Polish),
44, 127, 129
nationalism: Arab, 68, 176
Balkan, 68
Irish Catholic, 361
nativistic (US), 237
Turkish, 155
nationalists: German, 266
Hungarian, 266
Petluras Ukrainian, 45, 51, 57
navy: British, 152, 338, 370
Russian, 338
Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,
NSDAP), 34, 8, 12, 96, 101,
13553, 162, 194207, 211,
279, 287, 382
anti-Semitism of, 249
Bavarian, 183
beliefs of, 126
connection with Ukrainian
nationalists, 4849
direct command of Denmark, 283
and East, 5152
electoral victories of, 266
enemies of, 237
exterminatory goals of, 281
false doctrine of, 221
functionaries in Jewish
deportations, 262
and geopolitics, 104
and German solidarity, 171
ideology of, 220
martyrology of, 171
nihilism of, 171
origins in German Workers Party
(DAP), 151, 183
post World War I, 51
preoccupation with East, 44
reasons for joining, 153
Ndadaye, Melchior 146, 166,
16768
assassination of, 16364
Netherlands, 194, 243, 245, 25063,
268, 281, 372
absence of political anti-Semitism
in, 261
Aryans in, 261
authorities complicit with Nazi rule,
284
barriers between Christian and
Jewish citizens of, 284
bureaucrats within, 262
civil service of, 261
Communist Party of, 262
comparison with France, 261
contrast with Romania and
Hungary, 25960
cooperation within, 261
deference to authority in, 262
Fokker aircraft of, 260
help of Jews by Christians in, 284
identication between Christian and
Jewish citizens of, 284
Jewish victimization rate in,
25960
labor conscription in, 284
National Socialists, in Jewish
deportations, 262
neutrality of, 260
non-Aryans in, 261
police, 26163
political culture of, 261
Secretaries General, 261, 284
SS, in Jewish deportations, 262
tolerant social landscape of, 250
Neumann, John von, 72
New people (Cambodia), 311,
312, 321
New Zealand, 237, 243, 247
Newberry, Catharine, 165
Newberry, David, 165
Nightingale Battalion (Ukrainian), 49
and Aktion Petlura, 49
and Gestapo, 49
and Petluras Republic, 49
448 I N D E X
nihilism, 19
Nazi, 17172
Nuremberg racial laws, 99, 205, 285
Nyabarongo River, 60, 231
Nyilas (Hungarian), 258
OConnell, Daniel, 11618
Odessa, 207, 265
Omahake Desert, 31, 69
ONeill, Barry, 6465n, 65, 103
Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN), 48
Orthodox Church, 125, 133
Bulgarian, protest of anti-Jewish
legislation, 326
Eastern Orthodox, 353
Eastern Poles in, 350
in Ottoman Empire, 212
Russian, 69, 70, 71, 75
as schismatic, 220
Serbian, 224
Ostrom, Elinor, 87, 108
Ottoman Empire, 5, 14, 44, 6870,
77, 90, 102, 148, 15358, 168,
17376, 193, 198, 207, 212,
215, 226, 228, 326, 33742,
343, 370, 372, 380,
384, 385
alliance with Germany, 154, 158
and afnity, 33536
area of, 154
behavior toward Armenians, 326
behavior toward Greeks, 326
capitulations within, 154
caution of, 340
Christians in communities within,
55, 15556
civil society of, 70
class-based hostility in, 174
conict with insurgent Greece, 341
contraction of, 86
declaration of war on Russia, 159
decline of, 15354
defeat at Sars kamis , 159
defeat by Russia, 173, 370
defeated by Balkan states, 355
dissolution of, 377, 379
economy of, 59, 214
extremists in, 370
nances of, 154
German-led forces, 355
German Military Mission to, 215
Hellenization of, 339
interior ministry, 160
loss compensation of, 15862
lost wars with Russia, 175, 212
navy of, 158
non-agricultural economy of, 174
non-Muslim religious institutions
of, 154
Ottomanism, 175
risk acceptance of, 15862
risk minimization of, 15862
as sick man of Europe, 154
State Bank of, 56
state leaders of, 154
status quo in, 213
territorial losses of, 212, 385
threat to, 337, 339
traditional dominance of Islam, 155
troops of, 5559
unity of, 17376
war ministry of, 215
as weakest major Central Power, 355
and World War I, 91, 154 see also
Turkey
OZON (Polish Camp of National
Unity), 128
Pacelli, Eugenio, 222, 223
as cardinal secretary of state
(193039), 220
connects Jews and communism, 220
consequences of an open declaration
on Holocaust, 227, 233
formulates Vatican foreign policy,
221
Germanophile, 226
grants de facto recognition to
puppet Croatia, 224
Hitler seen as bulwark to communist
expansion, 221
as honest broker between Allies
and Axis, 226
as papal nuncio in Munich, 220
as peacemaker during the war, 227
I N D E X 449
Pacelli, Eugenio (cont.)
perceives threat of Soviet-inspired
communism, 220
as Pope Pius XII (193958), 220,
223
as realist, 222
refusal to return baptized Jews,
22526
seeks expansion of Catholic belief,
220, 223
seeks expansion of Holy Sees
international inuence, 220
seeks physical preservation of
Vatican, 220
silence on Holocaust, 227
uses anti-Semitic stereotypes, 220
virulent anti-Communism of, 220
see also Vatican
Padeld, Peter, 179, 182, 183,
187, 188
Palestine, 59, 128, 245, 24647,
248, 376
Jewish community of, 303,
305, 375
Jewish defenders in, 376
as League mandate, 245
resolve of Jewish community, 304
Palestinian Arabs: desire for revenge,
36364, 377
displacement of, 377
as refugees, 377
strategy of, 364
Palmerston, Lord, 11922
Papen, Franz von, 222, 223
Paris, 29, 95, 129, 234
commune, 121
Treaty of (1856), 214
Pavelic, Ante, 223, 224
meeting with Pope Pius XII, 224
Paxton, Robert, 95, 197, 199, 261
peacekeepers: French, 380
Bangladeshi, 380
Pakistani, 380
Nepalese, 380
Uruguayan, 380
Pearl Harbor, attack on, 91, 152
Peel, Sir Robert, 118, 121, 358
perpetrating states, 211
denition of, 194
perpetrators: absence of identication
with victims, 235, 26466
behavior of, 1011, 19
motivations of, 15
subjective perceptions of, 389
vulnerability of, 4
Peshev, Dimitar, 32829
petition of, 328
removal as vice chairman of
National Assembly, 328
Pe tain, Mare chal Henri, 198, 20102
Petlura, Simon, 45, 47, 51, 136
Phayer, Michael, 225, 227
Phnom Penh, 313, 314
Pietarsaari, 332
Pisudski, Marshal Jo zef, 124, 125,
126, 129
Plutarch, 80
pogroms, 4650, 136
German, 141
Kielce, 77 see also massacres, of Jews
Poland, 15, 19, 20, 4344, 51, 7679,
12329, 194, 244, 250, 275,
279, 290, 304, 305, 343,
34754, 376
ambassador in Paris, 12324
borders of, 123
Communist Party, 127
constitution of (1791), 350, 353
contraction of (postwar), 353
death camps in, 207
during interwar period, 9798
eastern, 7, 3536, 102
economic decline of, 348
effect of revolutionary France on,
390
efforts at land reform, 126
ethnic cleansing in, 113
Franco-Polish alliance, 123
French guarantee of borders, 123
General Staff, 123
Generalgouvernement, 3536,
144, 254
German invasion of, 62, 226
interwar, 114
Jewish assimilation in, 376
Jewish ghettos in, 287
450 I N D E X
Jews in, 34754
late eighteenth-century, 326, 336
limitations on Germans, 126
loss of population, 353
military underground, 296
military violations of, 125
Nazi persecution of Jews in, 25455
non-aggression pact with Germany,
125
peasants, 348
population density of, 78
as Prussian economic vassal, 348
relations with Germany, 125
relations with Soviet Union, 125
Roman Catholics in, 350
as Russian satellite, 353
state security of, 353
threat of Jewish economic
dominance in, 378
threats to, 12324
vulnerability of, 350
Poles, 45, 7779, 133, 268, 338
as burghers, 34849, 351
economic conict with Jews, 128
fragmentation of political life,
34950
genocidal behavior of, 113
middle class, 348
murder of leadership, 338
numerosity of, 338
respect for Z

OB, 296
victory over Soviets, 123, 127
Polish Partitions, 390
First (1772), 98, 34753
First and Austria, 347
First and avoidance of great power
war, 353
First generating Polish state
insecurity, 353
First and Prussia, 34748
First and Russia, 347
Second and Third, 353
political identication: and Bund,
30506
and communists, 305
failures of, 30506
and Zionists, 305 see also
identication
political upheaval, 8, 369, 385
politicide, 23, 68, 88
Cambodian, 8
Communist, 310, 390
contrasted with genocide, 22,
2425, 39, 309
denition of, 8
dimensions of, 24
prevention of, 386
reclusive nature of regimes, 390
Pol Pot (leader of Democratic
Kampuchea), 30923, 371
agenda of, 31011
cabinet of, 311
campaigns of terror, 321
compared with Stalin, 321
congratulated by Vietnamese, 313
contact with Chinese communists,
371
coup against, 323
rst purge, 322
inuenced by French Communist
Party, 316
named to partys Central
Committee, 313
plot against, 322
purges, 32123
relocating urban populations, 318
second purge, 323
sojourn in Paris, 372
speech by, 315
visit to China, 316
Pope Pius XII, see Pacelli
population density: high, 282
low, 28283
Rwandan, 178
population growth: Austrian Jewish,
13940
German Jewish, 139
Posen, 137, 170
Himmler speech at, 180, 187, 188
Powell, Colin, 387
power, 392
disparities, between potential
interveners and victimizers, 395
of Jewish leadership, 28081
of Jewish masses, 280
relationships, 7172
I N D E X 451
Power, Samantha, 231, 390
Presidential Guard (Rwandan), 227,
233
massacres by, 231
Presser, J., 262, 262
prisoners of war, annihilation of, 23
productionists, 144
propinacja, 348
prospect theory, 14, 16, 17, 67, 83,
85, 89, 10307, 142, 146, 166,
16768, 334
and realpolitik, 104
Protestants, 350
Ascendancy of in Ireland, 357
German, 222
Scottish Presbyterians, 101
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,
54, 241, 345
as Nazi propaganda, 54
tsarist forgery, 54
prudence, 73
denition of, 93 see also prudent
realpolitik
prudent realpolitik, 17, 20, 66,
9293, 99, 325, 32627, 335,
383, 385, 388
criteria for, 388
distinct from imprudent, 94, 388
proportionality in, 388 see also
prudence, realpolitik
Prunier, Ge rard, 163, 164, 165,
22829, 233, 234
Prussia, 219, 352
East, 51
ofcer corps, feudal traditions of, 219
ofcer corps, hierarchical nativism
of, 219
ofcer corps, Jews forbidden from
joining, 219
ofcer corps, racism within, 219
territories governed by, 382
victory at Sedan, 87
Quinn, Kenneth M., 316, 317, 322,
323
Qutb, Sayyid, 379
and Muslim extremism, 379
and resurrection of caliphate, 379
Radio Te le vision Libre des Mille
Collines (RTLM), 231
rational choice theory, 19, 6474
goal attainment, 6474 see also
rationality
rationality, 65, 71, 375, 389 see also
rational choice theory
realism, 17
denition of, 92
relationship with realpolitik, 92
realpolitik, 4, 8, 10, 14, 17, 1920, 33,
74, 76, 78, 83, 92103, 105,
11334, 146, 166, 16768,
21120, 332, 370, 38892
change in, 327
combined with loss, 113
denition of, 92103
geopolitical component of, 259, 260
and ethnic cleansing, 375
of Eugenio Pacelli, 22028
as management of threats to the
state, 113
and prospect theory, 104
and quid pro quo, 84, 97, 106
relation to property, 9799
relation to realism, 92
self-interest in, 237
and threat, 107
without loss, 107 see also cynical
realpolitik, imprudentbrute
force realpolitik, prudent
realpolitik
reasoned scrutiny, 65, 73, 9293,
114, 388
redemptive anti-Semitism, 180, 191,
192 see also anti-Semitism
refugees, 20, 74, 86, 8990, 147, 166,
167, 264, 334
affecting economic hierarchical
relations, 156
Balkan, 155
from Burundi, 164
Caucasian, 155
and contraction of socioeconomic
space, 19899
Crimean, 155
denial of refuge, 374
Eastern Jewish, 141
452 I N D E X
emotional reaction to, 88
German-Jewish, 239
German speaking, 90
Hutu, 110, 164
in relation to territorial loss, 86
inux, 328, 332
Jewish, 90, 275
Jewish, death rate of, 26768
Jewish and Christian, 352
Macedonian, 156
Mediterranean islands from, 155
migration, 330, 333
Muslim, 90, 15557, 17374
non-Jewish, 248
Ottoman Greek, 342
Polish-Jewish, 277, 278
Rwandan, 16364
Serb, 134
Slavic, 90
Thracian, 156
Tutsi, 24, 39, 143, 165
Reich Main Security Ofce (RSHA),
277
Reichenau, General Walter von, 146,
148
Reichstag, 125, 137, 153, 222, 223
Report of the Royal Commission on
the Defence of the United
Kingdom, 121
Reserve Police Battalion 101
(German), 102
revenge, 85, 88
see also loss compensation
Revisionists, 29697
monopoly of power in Vilna ghetto,
300
in Vilna ghetto, 299300
revolution: 1917, 54
Bavarian, 13839, 183
Bolshevik, 6869
communist, 141
of 1959 in Rwanda, 59, 60
Polish, 351
Young Turk, 155, 161
Rhodes, Richard, 44, 45, 48
Riegner, Gerhart, 22526
Ringelblum, Emmanuel, 135,
149, 168
and risk minimization, 149
risk acceptance, 16, 8491, 104, 135,
314, 315
risk minimization, 74, 7982, 8485,
10507, 135, 314, 315, 325
of anti-guerrilla warfare, 106
unnecessary, 325
risks, 63, 85, 10307, 169, 285, 335
elimination of, 249
of Jewish presence, 249
of murdering Jews, 63
Roma, as defectors, 36, 183
Roman Catholic Church, 229, 254:
as defender of Poland, 353
difculties of, 220
French protests against
deportations, 326
hierarchy denounces Nazis, 221
in Rwanda, 59, 61
infrastructure of, 357
to be replaced by Protestant in
Ireland, 357
theology of, 354
Romania, 19, 193, 195, 199200,
20207, 225, 244, 245, 251,
275, 27779, 309, 326, 328,
333, 372
anti-Semitic legislation in, 327, 372
barbarity of authorities in, 25859
and Bessarabia, 203
and Bukovina, 203
and Cisana, 203
compared with Germany, 372
connection between Jews and
communism in, 334
contrast with Hungary, 25859
human rights in, 204
as mirror image of Hungary, 202
Muslims massacred in, 173
participation in Holocaust, 37273
Ploesti oil elds in, 259
Regat (historic), 203, 258
Secretariat of the Secret Intelligence
Service (SSI), 206
shrinkage of, 333
territorial losses in, 258, 334
threat of Jewish economic
dominance, 378
I N D E X 453
Romania (cont.)
Transylvania, 203
Romanian minorities: Bulgarians, 203
Germans, 203
Jews, 203
Magyars, 203
Turko-Tatars, 203
Ukrainians, 203
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 145, 238, 241,
24243, 244, 249, 393
and bombing of Auschwitz, 249
and cynical realpolitik, 249
fear of embarrassment, 393
narrowing of Jewish immigration,
393
RPF, see Rwandese Patriotic Front
Rumbold, Horace, 246, 248
as anti-Nazi, 246
critic of Jewish behavior, 246
critic of Mein Kampf, 246
Rumkowski, Mordechai Chaim,
28891, 299, 303, 304
alleged pedophile, 289, 304
and atomization of ghetto society, 291
bars smuggling, 289
bars Zionist and Bundist meetings,
289
collectivist sensibility of, 288, 289
deported to Auschwitz, 303
desire for Jewish recognition, 289
desire for survival of remnant, 290
as dictator, 304, 306
efforts to save Jewish community,
304, 305
and Germans, 288, 289
use of Gestapo boots, 289
meeting with Czerniakow, 289
and nurses strike, 288
as parvenu, 304
restricting Jewish freedom of
movement, 29091
and strikers, 288
totalitarian mentality of, 289
use of Sonderkommando, 289
as virtual dictator, 288
Zionist sympathies of, 305
Rummel, Rudolph, 18, 22, 354, 383,
393
Russia, 54, 6869, 79, 106, 158, 159,
161, 199, 226, 279, 338, 341,
342, 376, 38485
Armenian policy of, 21213
Belorussia in, 384
brutality of, 384
Civil War, 23, 45, 249, 265,
321, 344
compared to Weimar Germany, 384
comparison with Ottoman Empire,
385
deling mosques, 156
in domain of losses, 384
ferocity of response, 385
as great power referent, 21213
heritage of Orthodoxy, 342
immigrants from in Britain, 246
invading Balkans, 156
Jewish assimilation in, 376
massacres of Muslims by, 15960
Orthodox Christian, 155
partial dismemberment of, 202
policy of realpolitik, 21213
territorial losses of, 385
tsarist, 14, 26, 45, 47, 58, 149, 157,
168, 212, 264, 376
Ukraine in, 384
Russians: advances of, 160
generals of, 44
migrating to Poland, 353
nationalists, 44, 136
tsarist Whites, 45, 5253, 62
Russo-Turkish Convention (1914),
15758
Rwanda and Rwandans, 5, 89, 34,
3839, 44, 5961, 62, 68, 72,
75, 86, 90, 91, 17679, 192,
193, 198, 207, 211, 22836,
233, 324, 370, 372, 38081,
394
1973 coup, 176
abandonment of, 232
Anglo-Saxon threat, 229
Butare, 176
contrast between northerners and
southerners, 17677
contrasted with Cambodia, 309,
310
454 I N D E X
in domain of losses, 16266
exponential decline of holdings in, 178
French intervention in, 163
government, 14
Hutu political inuence in, 383
invasion by Rwandese Patriotic
Front (RPF), 16367
land shortage in, 16465
landlessness in, 178
mass killings in, 381
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 230
number killed, 391
parliamentary system in, 163
polarization in, 162
population density in, 178
presidential system in, 163
regionalism in, 143, 165
revolution of 1959, 163
social class in, 17879
socioeconomic disparities in, 165
sociological majority, 143, 165
state insecurity, 16266
territorial loss of, 385, 387
unity of, 17679 see also Hutu,
Rwandese Patriotic Front,
Tutsi, Tutsi genocide
Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), 61,
86, 87, 90, 143, 16368, 193,
229, 373, 380, 387, 395
fear of, 373
invasion of Rwanda, 61
offensive, 230, 233
positions in Ruhengiri, 230
territorial gains of, 370
see also Rwanda
SA (Nazi paramilitary assault
divisions), 185
sacrice, connection with unity, 170
of genocidaires, 37374
German, 187
for good of Volk, 18788
in January Warsaw ghetto revolt, 296
of Jews, 202
potential, 169
see also altruistic punishment
Salonika, 161, 198, 339
British and French forces in, 340
Sanders, Liman von, 160, 215
scarcity, relation with inequality,
26468 see also inequality
Schabas, William A., 23, 27
Schalkhhaarders, 263
programmed by Germans, 263
Schellendorf, Bronsart von, 216, 217
compares Armenians with Polish
Jews, 217
Schleicher, Kurt von, 222, 223
Schmitt, Carl, 99101, 99101n,
10405, 170, 310
identication of collective enemy,
310
SD (intelligence arm of SS), 36, 206
secularism: inspired by Turkish model,
380
in modern Islamic world, 380
security guarantees, 383
by USA, 383
Sejm, 128, 129, 34849, 350
Sen, Amartya, 65, 73, 92, 388
Serbia and Serbs, 26, 114, 129, 131,
134, 329
charge of genocide against, 113
mass murder of, 131, 133
murdered in burning Orthodox
churches, 224
Muslims in, 173
Shanghai, 30, 31
Sicilian expedition (Athenian), 8182,
93, 94
Silesia, 35, 51, 347
Upper, 126, 139
Volksbund, Upper Silesian, 124
Skocpol, Theda, 17
Slovakia, 195, 225, 250, 275, 276
Nazi persecution of Jews in, 254
Slovenia, 27, 131, 250
independence of, 131
as part of Croatia, 223
Smith, Bradley, 179, 182, 184, 186,
187, 188
Smyrna (Izmir), 160, 339, 343,
37778
Armenians in, 378
destruction by Ataturk, 378
Greeks in, 342, 378
I N D E X 455
Smyrna (Izmir) (cont.)
Jews in, 378
Turks in, 378
security of Jewish community, 378
Social Democrats (German), 221
as defectors, 183
socioeconomic space: contraction of,
8691
denition of, 8691
dimensions of, 86
Soa, 328, 330, 333
Somalia: lesson of, 391
and Pakistanis, 391
and Rwanda, 391
and USA, 391
and US intervention in Haiti, 39192
South-West Africa (Namibia), 3034,
61, 216
SovietGerman Neutrality Pact
(1926), 124
Soviet Union, 15, 34, 49, 70, 71, 72,
7475, 78, 79, 123, 125, 127,
148, 152, 166, 168, 183, 194,
204, 207, 221, 249, 254,
25859, 265, 310, 363, 373
advance of, 282
allied with Nazi Germany, 346
approach to o dz ghetto, 304
armaments, 114, 125, 126
Central Committee members in
1934, 322
collapse of, 384
compared with Cambodia, 322
counteroffensive defending
Moscow, 91, 151, 152
disintegration of, 384
as empire, 58
frontier, 205
German invasion of, 66, 102, 141,
152, 205, 254, 277, 283, 326
German need to eliminate quickly,
142
Hungary warring against, 255
Jewish leaders among, 220, 346
military strength of, 141
neutrality of, 346
number of divisions of, 145
occupationof easternPoland, 143, 165
opposition to German invasion, 143
pressure on Germany, 256
prisoners of war, 36
relations with Germany, 125
resolve of, 145
as revisionist, 318
satellites of, 384
Second Congress of Soviets, 345
size of armaments, 145
support of Vietnam, 313
territorial claims against Poland, 114
territorial gain, 334
threat to Germany, 388
victory of, 28283
westward advance, 257 see also
Bolshevism and Bolsheviks
Spain and Spaniards, 100, 105,
142, 393
army of, 393
Conservative government of, 393
Spanish throne, 121
Sparta and Spartans, 79, 80, 230
colonists, 93
SPLA, see Sudanese Peoples Liberation
Army
Srebrenica, 19, 23, 27, 113, 115, 129,
13334, 382
SS (Nazi defense echelons), 36, 169,
18182, 185, 186, 188, 200,
255, 26061, 262, 280, 281,
282, 289, 372
Austrian 139
and cooperation, 192
ideologists, 101
sacrice of, 191
slogan of, 188
tensions with Wehrmacht, 260
St. Louis, 245, 249
Stalin, Joseph, 53, 62, 125, 323, 324,
346, 347, 371
called for partisan activity, 146
compared with Pol Pot, 321
deaths due to collectivization, 316
and famine, 316
and kulaks, 316
Stalinism, 20, 205
and Ukrainian farmers, 316
Stalingrad, battle of, 189, 329, 330
456 I N D E X
Stalinist model, 32021, 322
and Pol Pot, 32021
strategy of, 320
terror within, 321
starvation: as deliberate program, 356
as imprudent realpolitik, 356
state policy: and denition of genocide,
2225, 33
ambiguities in understanding, 23
Japanese, 28
state (in)security, 14, 76, 78, 84, 92,
12324, 13541, 20001, 239,
333, 382
denition of, 91
dissolution, risk of, 161
effect on killing rate, 138
increases probability of genocide, 382
maximization of, 325
Nazi, 145
Ottoman, 15358, 339, 385
and realpolitik, 10
Romanian, 206
of Russians, 385
theory of, 99
threat to, 19, 22, 107, 335
of USA, 24048
Steinberg, Jonathan, 196, 226
Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI), 26
Strachan, Hew, 106, 142, 215
Strauss, Leo, 171
Stroop, SS General Jurgen, 29798
Struma, 245, 249
explosion of, 245
Sudan, 229
Arab-dominated, 386
nancial incentives for, 387
integration into international
economy, 387
pairing of two regions in, 387
territorial loss of, 386, 387
western, 38687 see also Darfur
Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army
(SPLA), 386, 387
suicide: bombing, 375
Goebbels, 171
Goering, 171
Himmler, 171
Hitler, 171
maximizing cooperation, 375
survival: communities, 250, 305
individuals, 250, 305
rate of, 250
Syria, 158, 378
Syrian desire for revenge, 377
Szeged idea: against Bolshevism, 253
anti-Semitism in, 253
connection with German SS, 253
deaths head as symbol, 253
extreme nationalism, 253
forerunners of fascism, 253
forerunners of Nazism, 253
and Hungarian counterrevolution,
252
revanchism, 253
Talat Pas a, 73, 158, 161, 193, 215, 373
and Armenian deportations, 373
assassinated, 373
Tanner, Marcus, 356, 357, 359, 361, 363
Tanzania, 145, 166, 167, 230, 380
territorial loss, 309, 325, 328, 330,
332, 333, 334, 372, 382
absence of, 330
of Austria, 67, 325
expectation of, 386
of Hungary, 25152
irreversible quality of, 386
of Italy, 325
of Nazi Germany, 385
of Ottoman Empire, 325, 385
of Poland, 78, 98
of Romania, 325
of Russia, 385
of Rwanda, 325, 385
of Vichy France, 325 see also loss
territorial loss (Germany), 67, 325
in Belgium, 135
in Eastern Europe, 135
in European territories, 13536
in France, 135
Polish territories in East, 13536
in Ukraine, 135 see also loss
territory: aggrandizement of, 338
Bulgarian expansion, 325
expansion, 309
I N D E X 457
territory: aggrandizement of (cont.)
Finnish expansion, 325
guarantees, 382
integrity, 385
as reward, 327
territoriality, 8990
terror, 6
against Jews, 149, 168
Hungarian counterrevolutionary,
252
Thai, victimization of, 312
theory: decisive test of, 65
role in explaining genocide, 1116
Theresienstadt, 272, 284
Thion, Serge, 311, 323
Third Reich, see Germany (Nazi)
Thrace, 326, 330
eastern, population of, 377
threat, 4, 84, 88, 350
denition of, 83, 113
distinct from loss, 83
management of, 4
of numbers, 113, 12934, 143, 166
Thucydides, 16, 80, 92, 93, 104, 229
Todorov, Tsvetan, 326, 327, 328,
329, 330
Todt, Dr. Fritz, 150
meets with Hitler, 150
at Russian front, 150
Transylvania, 204, 257, 27475, 278
northern, 204
Treblinka, 35
Trianon, Treaty of, 131, 251
Trotha, General Lothar von, 3033
Trotsky, Leon, 45, 47, 344, 345
truncation, 202,
and anti-Semitism, 202
Romanian, 204 see also contraction
Trunk, Isaiah, 267, 270, 281
Turkey, 56, 6971, 155, 202, 217, 384
disappearance of Armenians in, 379
disappearance of Greeks in, 379
foreign trade of, 377
invasion by Greece, 336
mosques in, 379
Muslim sentiments in, 380
purposed partition of, 158
removal from domain of losses, 364
role of Islam in, 379
scholars, 179
secularization drive in, 37780
study of religion in, 379
system of education, 379
Turko-Egyptian eet, 341
victory over Greece, 364 see also
Ottoman Empire
Turkism, 17, 17576, 192
Turks, 3738, 62, 68, 105, 153, 173,
174, 179, 382
and Armenian massacres, 5558
and CUP, 192
dependence on foreign craftsmen,
378
difcult relations with Armenians,
217
lacking technical skills, 378
participation in economy, 377
reduction in number, 377
Turquoise, Operation, 234
Tutsi, 5, 7, 8, 9, 19, 24, 34, 3839,
5961, 63, 75, 77, 86, 88, 102,
16267, 168, 22834, 310, 315,
334, 380, 390, 394
alleged Hamitic origin of, 75, 162,
192, 193, 310
of Burundi, 2324
chiefs, 60
claimed to be few in number, 231
elimination of, 323
exclusion of, 17778
genocide of, 72
intermarriage with Hutu, 176
inyenzi, 60
massacre of, 6061, 163, 164, 231,
233, 394
monarchy, 176
petits, 162
as proportion of Rwandan
population, 17678
refugees, 24
Rwandan, 1315, 23, 109
survivors, 324
unity of, 177
vulnerability of, 394
Tutsi genocide, 5961, 38081, 395,
intensication of, 145, 166, 167,
458 I N D E X
magnitude of, 233
onset of, 233
and USA, 39092 see also genocide
Tversky, Amos, 89, 10304n
Uganda, 145, 163, 166, 167, 229, 380
Ukraine, 7, 23, 44, 4553, 56, 61,
250, 252, 350
anti-Bolshevism in, 61
anti-Semitism in, 61
occupied by Germany, 67
opposition to Polish rule, 125
pogroms against Jews in, 252
provocations in, 124
site of rst twentieth-century mass
murder of Jews, 264
western, 48
work camps in, 207
Ukrainian nationalists, 45, 47, 61, 136
deaths from famine, 48
Nazi connection with, 4849
provocations, 124
Ulster, 357, 361
dispossession of Catholic
landowners from, 357
UNAMIR, see United Nations
Assistance Mission for Rwanda
uncertainty, 87, 103, 375
and fog of war, 385
and memory, 369
and rationality, 375
and reliance on memory, 375
at time of observation, 67
unemployment (US), 237, 243
German, 138
Union of Jewish Communities of
Romania, 277
United Kingdom, see Britain
United Nations, 18, 145, 166, 167,
232, 234, 363, 364, 387
awareness of possibility of mass
killing, 232
failures of, 211
genocide convention, 391
investigation of Jenin massacre,
363
in Rwanda, 390
Security Council, 232, 390, 391
withdrawal of troops from Rwanda,
364
United Nations Assistance Mission for
Rwanda (UNAMIR), 145, 166,
167, 23132
United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, 25, 27
United States, 29, 76, 118, 139, 141,
145, 151, 152, 161, 195, 212,
231, 23746, 240, 362, 363,
383, 387
as afne protector, 38485
aid to Allies, 143
anti-Semitism in, 240, 24145, 393
aversion to military involvement,
391
awareness of possibility of mass
killing, 232
bombing campaign against
Cambodia, 321
Catholic Church hierarchy, 36364
colonies, 114
Congress, 244
consular service, 23839, 240
and cynical realpolitik, 384
disabling UN rescue in Rwanda, 391
entry into World War II, 91
experiencing another Somalia, 391
failure to intervene in St. Louis
incident, 245
German speakers in, 239
and Holocaust, 23746
horried after 9/11, 380
immigration laws, 240
immigration quotas for Austria and
Germany, 240
immobilization of, 392
incubator of Irish nationalism, 360
intervention in Haiti, 39192
intervention in World War II, 143
Jews compared with Irish Catholics,
36263
military forces of, 390, 391
nativism in, 240
neutrality, 144
opposition to UNAMIR presence in
Rwanda, 232, 390, 390
I N D E X 459
United States (cont.)
Pentagon, 391
policy toward Native Americans, 355
potential conquest of by Britain,
363
pushes for UN withdrawal from
Rwanda, 391
racial quotas for immigrants, 244
Red Cross, 144, 146
reputation of 249
resolution of sympathy for Irish
people, 362
Revolution, 119
and Rwandan genocide, 39092
Senate, 362
and Somalia, 39192
State Department, 390
support for Israel, 376
USAID, 178
against use of word genocide,
39091
unity, 19, 169
and altruistic punishment, 374
coupled with sacrice, 171
German, 17073
of Hutu, 177
Ottoman, 17376
of Rwanda, 17679
sacrice for, 17093
search for, 374
of Tutsi, 177 see also cooperation,
sacrice
Ustase, 130, 195, 223
alliance with Germany, 130
Bosnian Muslim collaboration with,
130
death camps, 225
mass murder of Jews, 195
mass murder of Serbs, 133, 195
symbols of, 131
utopianism, 19, 64, 7476
juncture with state power, 76
validation, 43, 6163, 370, 394, 395
and Bosnian conict, 394
and earlier unpunished murder, 394
and ongoing process of massacre,
394
and Rwandan genocide, 394
denition of, 62
of genocide, 249
of killing, 19
Van, 37, 56, 159, 161
van den Bruck, Moeller, 171
Vatan (Turkish fatherland), 17475
Vatican, 211, 235
despises democracy, 223
foreign policy of, 221
indulgence of Ustasa excesses, 225
neutrality of, 226, 227
penchant for ecclesiastical
expansion, 22526
as permitting agent, 96
policies, 22028
support for Croatian and Slovenian
independence, 131 see also
Pacelli
Ve lodrome dHiver, 201
Vende e, 371, 374
Venizelos, Eleftherios, 34041
attachment to Britain and France, 340
Versailles, 383
Treaty of, 105, 123, 125, 126, 362
Vichy France, see France (Vichy)
victim vulnerability, 4, 17, 1920, 43,
208, 335, 370, 37273
and inequality, 26683, 287
as necessary condition for genocide,
4, 22, 43
survival, 287
victimization rates: Cambodian hill
tribes, 317
of Cambodian politicide, 324
for genocides and politicides,
30910, 324
high, 20, 25063
variation in, 31112
victims, 9, 26466
absence of identication among, 266
Vienna, 135, 13940, 141, 151, 198,
287, 310, 326
Eastern Jews in, 141
Vietnam, 31215
hegemony of in former French
Indochina, 313
invasion of Cambodia, 310
460 I N D E X
and islands in Gulf of Siam, 312
treaty of cooperation with Laos, 313
US intervention in, 94
Vietnamese, 106
called hooligans of the East, 313
conict with Khmer and Cham, 312
ending of Democratic Kampuchea,
313
ethnic, 20, 31112, 382
genocide of, 68, 208, 31215
reluctance to go to war, 318
war with Japan, 318
war with Western powers, 318
Vilna, 34, 78, 79, 298306
forests near, 305
Vilna ghetto, 288, 295, 298306
absence of revolt in, 373
Bundists in, 299300
communists in, 299
comparison with o dz ghetto, 299
comparison with Warsaw ghetto,
299, 301, 30206
food availability in, 299
Gestapo in, 302
inequality within, 299
Jewish police, 30002
liquidation of, 304
partisans, 302
underground in, 293
Voluntary Auxiliary Police, 263
Dutch National Socialists in, 263
Dutch SS in, 263
Vrba, Rudolf, 276
VrbaWetzler report, 276
Walzer, Michael, 392
Wannsee conference, 36, 149, 225,
281, 292
wars, 369
among Italian city-states, 101
ArabIsraeli, 377
Austro-Prussian, 135, 150
Balkan, 154, 156, 161, 340
between Bolshevism and Nazism, 145
Boer, 355
Cold War, 71, 132
Continuation (Finnish), 331
Crimean, 57
crimes of, 27
fog of, 375
Franco-Prussian, 106
and genocide, 219, 381, 38586,
390
Greco-Turkish, 68, 70, 7172, 342,
364
impact on afnity, 36465
as law of Gods order, 172
MexicanAmerican, 86, 370
onset of, 388
on three fronts, 219
Peloponnesian, 7, 68, 7982, 93,
219, 230, 355
PolishSoviet, 124
Punic, 7273
Russo-Turkish, 173, 341, 353, 371
Second Balkan, 341
Turkish War of Independence, 378
two-front, 146, 347
and uncertainty, 369
widespread, 385
Winter (Finnish), 331 see also
World War I, World War II
Warsaw, 13, 35, 79, 125, 127
Aryan side, 296, 297
Warsaw ghetto, 144, 149, 299, 305
abutting Aryan Warsaw, 288
Bund, 29394
choosing of chief rabbi in, 292
closing of mikvahs in, 292
closing of synagogues in, 292
closing of yeshivas in, 292
communists, 293
deportation of children from, 289
deportation of elderly from, 289
deportation of sick from, 289
forbidding of minyanim in, 292
Great Synagogue of, 292
inequalities in, 29293
Jewish ghters in, 29398
Judenrat and well-to-do, 292
July meeting in, 29394
liquidation of, 304
numbers in, 29198
opening of three synagogues in, 292
order closing of Great Synagogue,
292
I N D E X 461
Warsaw ghetto (cont.)
politicization of administration, 300
taxation in, 29293
Umschlagplatz, 294
well-to-do in, 292
Zionists, 293, 294
Warsaw ghetto revolt, 287, 294,
29798, 301, 30203, 372,
373, 376
altruistic punishment in, 304
confronting German army, 29798
duration of, 297
German army in, 376
January revolt, 29596, 30203,
373
mutual identication in, 304
stunning in impact, 304
subordinated to Z

OB, 297
Waterberg, Battle of, 3133, 69
Webster, Paul, 137, 152, 198, 201
Wehrmacht, 13, 34, 147, 148, 169,
189, 255, 283, 290
complicity in Holocaust, 182
tensions with SS, 260 see also army
Weitz, Eric D., 74
Welles, Sumner, 139, 153, 243
Wesreidau, Captain, 18990, 374
altruistic punishment of, 18990
inverted morality of, 18990
need for sacrice, 18990
risk of, 18990
search for unity of, 18990
Western Wall (Jerusalem), 389
and Pope John Paul II, 389
as Judaisms holiest site, 389
Wetzler, Alfred, 276
Wiesel, Elie, 15, 249
Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 3033, 13637,
183, 214, 215, 340, 345
Wilhelmine period, 170
Wilno, see Vilna
Wilson, Woodrow, 355, 383
and Fourteen Points, 383
Winkler (German engineer), 218, 219
Winter, Shmuel, 295
Wittenberg, Itzik, 300
Woodham-Smith, Cecil, 11334,
119, 122
World War I, 7, 1314, 20, 22, 24, 25,
44, 45, 48, 51, 53, 54, 58, 59, 68,
70, 71, 72, 86, 88, 91, 100, 101,
115, 13538, 139, 141, 146,
147, 153, 154, 155, 15862,
166, 168, 169, 183, 184, 193,
201, 204, 211, 212, 213, 214,
219, 228, 250, 255, 260, 336,
340, 340, 359, 373, 374, 377,
380, 384
consequences of Congress of Berlin
for, 226
defeat of Germany in, 67
disunity in, 18393
and domain of losses, 343
German defeat in, 18384
impact on Hungarian Jews, 251
US entry into, 355
Western front, 25
World War II, 5, 67, 17, 19, 22, 38,
48, 68, 71, 76, 79, 91, 113, 129,
131, 133, 136, 139, 141, 153,
162, 207, 253, 325, 333, 335,
346, 370, 372, 375
brutality within, 191
Eastern front, 96, 106, 141, 146,
148, 166, 168, 332
end of, 192
German spirit of cooperation in,
184
US entry into, 239
Yeats, W. B., 356
Yiddish, 13, 184
culture of, 9
East European speakers, 269
as form of Middle High German, 184
Yiddishism, of Bund, 375
YIVO (Yiddisher Visenshaftlekher
Institut), 305
Young Turks, see Committee for
Union and Progress
Yugoslav National Army (JNA),
see army, Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia, 26, 194, 195, 196, 251
Communist rule in, 130
democratic reforms in, 130
German invasion of, 223
462 I N D E X
middle way, 132
Titos, 13032
under Orthodox Serbian control,
223
wars in, 129
Zaire, 72, 230, 234, 380
mass killings in, 381
refugee camps in, 373 see also Congo,
Democratic Republic of the
Zeitoun, uprising in, 56
Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 384, 387
Zionism, 375
legitimation of, 377
Zionist Congresses, 13
Zionists among leaders of ghetto
ghting, 305
Zionists in Vilna, 299
Z

OB (Z

ydowska Organizacja Bojowa;

Jewish ghting organization),
29497, 300, 301
as Polish name, 305
wins respect of Poles, 29697
Zuccotti, Susan, 95, 196
Zuckerman, Yitzhak, 304
on relations between January and
April revolts, 304
Zuilen (Dutch pillars), 269
liberal, 269
Protestant, 269
Roman Catholic, 269
social democratic, 269
Z

ZW(Z

ydowski Zwia zek Wojskowy;

Jewish Military Union), 29697,
301
as Polish name, 305
I N D E X 463