Intentionalist/Functionalist Debate
As I moved to put up the first batch of notes on the
overhead, I told the students that the discussion on which we were about to
embark might at times seem a little ridiculous. Does it matter why the Holocaust happened? After all, it happened… I was pressed to explain my remarks, and I
was reminded and spoke to the students one of the most lasting statements about
the Holocaust I have heard (forgive me if I can’t remember exactly where I
first heard it, or if I paraphrase…):
“Any attempt to explain the Holocaust must be credible in the presence
of burning children.” -- OK, so the
point is that there is no explanation? --
Not one that Jews, or anyone involved as a victim or liberator would want to
hear. Imagine a couple who has just
given birth to a stillborn child. What
could anyone possibly say to them? That
it was God’s will? That they can have
other children? That this pregnancy was
not meant to be? Those aren’t exactly
comforting words, and for the couple they don’t make them feel better about
themselves. No, the Holocaust occurs at
many levels: the human, theological,
the intellectual, emotional… On some of
those levels we cannot create a reason why this happened. It is still too painful. – And wouldn’t an explanation in some way
give the Nazis credit for doing it? It
would give the Holocaust validity in a way.
I asked for a definition of “intentional”. – When you mean to do something. Something that is premeditated or
pre-thought out. What about the
word “functional”? -- It would be
something that just happens as a side effect of some other action. Right.
What we’re going to talk about next is a debate among historians as to
Hitler’s involvement in the carrying out of the Holocaust. Please keep in mind that in no way is anyone
attempting to absolve Hitler of responsibility for the horrors perpetrated by
the Nazis. It is accepted that as the
leader of Nazi Germany he bears full responsibility not only for his own
actions, but for those of his underlings as well.
The Road To the Final Solution
Intentionalist/Functionalist Debate:
Intentionalist arguments –
Hitler
was ideologically obsessed with the extinction of the Jews
Hitler
became fuehrer – the Aryan messiah
Charismatic
rule; personalized rule
Racial
prophet
Racial
precedent: 1915 Armenian genocide by
Turks
Soviet
Union: 1929-33 genocide against Russian
peasantry to force them onto collective farms
Millions
(estimates range from 3-7 million) killed
Man-made
famine orchestrated by Stalin
Victims
were vulnerable and powerless
SS =
defense corps (Schutz Staffer)
Began
as the “Praetorian Guard”
Originally
began as 250-280 elite guards
Grew
to millions of members, like a hydra-headed monster
What do the first three arguments show? -- That Hitler had a motive, which was hatred. – That it had been done before – that a dominant group had killed a people. – And in the 20th Century, too. – The Jews were available; they were non-resistant because of certain factors. – What factors do you think might have made them that way? -- I’ve read that in many cases the Jews couldn’t comprehend what was happening, that they couldn’t believe it even after they received information. – And that has been said to be true of the potential rescuers who instead became bystanders. A major criticism of Jewish groups in the United States was that they didn’t take necessary action, or didn’t move quickly enough. One might imagine that if European Jews couldn’t comprehend these events with much closer proximity to the tragedy, how were Jews on the other side of the planet to see what was occurring?
Stages
of persecution:
Humiliation/persecution
through law (1933-39)
Jews
kicked out of civil service first
“Cold
pogrom” = more than 400 laws designed to get Jews out of society
Do you
recall at the beginning of the semester when we looked at a list of civil
rights that Jews lost in the period 1933-39?
What rights did Jews lose? – They lost the right of assembly, to
vote, to practice kosher butchering, to own pets, to own radios, to
travel… all of these things.
Identification
(September 1935)
A
Jew is anyone with 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents -OR- 2 Jewish grandparents and is
married to a Jew -OR- is a practicing Jew at time of Nuremberg Laws
Mixed-race
qualifications
Check out
that last requirement. Notice anything
unusual? -- Oh! If this persecution was supposedly
racially-based, then someone who was a recent convert from another religion
should be exempt, but it says that any practicing Jew counted…
Expropriation: robbing Jews of their property (1933-45)
Kristallnacht
(1938): Jews forced out of economy
Is this the period when many Jews lost their homes and Aryans moved in to occupy them without compensation? -- Yes. Not only did they lose their homes, in many cases they lost valuable art and even family heirlooms. There is a lengthy story from the Chicago Tribune (August 19, 2001) on the back wall that details how the Nazis profited from the theft and sale of violins and other musical instruments, some hundreds of years old. There is a photo of the famous violinist Rachel Barton of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing one of the disputed instruments, a 1617 Amati violin.
Concentration: ghettoization (1939-42)
Step
before deportation; Jews are moved to smaller pockets
Deportation:
to the killing centers (1941-45)
Here is the
major argument that the Holocaust does not fit in the Intentionalist camp –
what am I referring to? -- The Jews
were in the ghettos for about two years before the deportations began. Why would the Nazis hold them for that long
if they were going to kill them anyway?
-- But maybe that was because they knew the Jews would die off
“naturally” anyway in the ghettos, so they didn’t need a concrete plan at the
time. – But if eradication was your
goal, wouldn’t you want to accomplish that more quickly as opposed to more
slowly?
Annihilation
(1941-45)
Whole
process directed from above, ideologically-driven
Speech
by Hitler on July 10, 1939 is used as a proof of the intentionalists
Fall,
1940: war against USSR would be a war
of annihilation
Einsatzgruppen
were to kill all Soviet political officials and/or commissars and all Jews
July
31, 1941: Goering ordered Reinhard
Heydrich to undertake plans for Final Solution in Germany’s sphere
October
31, 1941: all further emigration was
banned
This is an Intentionalist proof, even though it comes as late as 1941 – the Jews were forbidden to leave because they would be killed. That is the only reason they were forbidden to go. – But couldn’t another reason be that those who would leave knew too much and could tell the world of the mistreatment the Jews and other groups had been receiving? – That could be true… But remember what we’ve discussed previously: Even American Jews, let alone foreign diplomats who might have had the means to exact some type of aid or rescue, couldn’t believe what they were hearing. The Nazis were smug in the knowledge that they were getting away with mass murder scot-free.
October
1941: first German Jewish deportation
to East
December
8, 1941: opening of Chelmno (some
350,000 would die there)
January
20, 1942: Wannsee Conference
Final
Solution efforts were put in place
We paused here and began viewing the History Channel’s series on the Holocaust with the first installment, “Invasion”. Students were enthralled by the methodology of the Nazi machine as it plowed into the Soviet Union in 1941. Reactions were very grim as we viewed archival footage of actions against Jews. A film clip of a mother being separated physically from a small child particularly disturbed students. The video had been from a hidden camera manned by a local non-Jew. In the scene a soldier is pushing a woman away from what looks to be a two- or three-year old girl. The mother tries to get back but the soldier pushes her away and stands in between the two as the child runs back toward the mother.
The video does a fantastic job of mixing period film with testimony from survivors as well as perpetrators. Students were angered as many of the German soldiers testified that they knew nothing of the larger plan, that they didn’t see anything wrong with killing Jewish men. One former soldier even went so far as to weep when he spoke of having killed Jewish women and children. Here he had drawn a line as to what was acceptable. I also struggled with footage of a jail in the Ukraine where Soviet political prisoners had been jailed. Allegedly, the Nazis were horrified that Soviet authorities had set the jail ablaze as the Germans advanced. In retaliation for this “brutality”, one soldier stated that he knew killing the Communists was the thing to do… Students’ ire was raised again when the narrator told how Jews were made to bury the burned corpses. We renewed our discussion on Jewish views of clean/unclean, and I related some information about Jewish funerals (Donin 297-99).
Students were to take notes on the film. As homework, they were assigned to read an excerpt from Christopher Browning’s book, Ordinary Men, entitled “One Day at Jozefow”. I requested that they journal their thoughts and feelings as they read. I anticipate that not everyone will have read this, so I offered an incentive to give them a homework grade for their time. We’ll see how discussion goes on Tuesday.
The next day I led off with the opportunity for students to interact for a few minutes on what they’d read from Browning. After, I went to the board and we compiled some of their comments and reactions to the account of Jew-killing by Reserve Police Battalion 101.
Their reactions included: