Transcript Folie 1 - University of Warwick

Making of the Modern World
War, Violence and Modernity (2):
Civil Violence
Terror, Genocide and Massacre in
the Twentieth Century
Schedule
1. Introduction: State Terror
2. Nazi and Stalinist Terror
3. Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
4. The Holocaust
5. Conclusion
Nazi Germany
Himmler
Reichsführer SS
Chief of Police
SS
Ordnungspolizei
(order police)
Municipal police
Sipo
Security Police
Heydrich
Kripo
Gestapo
Criminal Police Secret state police
SD
Security Service
Heydrich
Foreign
intelligence
Domestic
intelligence
Heinrich Himmler, 1900-1945
Reinhard Heydrich, 1904-1942
Stalinist terror
Secret Police (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD,
MVD) was a terror instrument to control society
and to intimidate all potential enemies
Collectivisation and de-kulakisation forced upon
peasantry by means of terror
Political purges from 1934 to 1938 were called
the Great Terror
Show trials, with coerced confessions and
summary executions, from 1936 to 1938.
During Stalin’s rule, one million direct killings &
at least 12 million deaths in Soviet prisons &
slave labour camps.
Nikolai Jezhov (1895-1940), Head of the
NKVD (Soviet Ministry for Domestic
Affairs and Police, 1936-1938).
Lavrenty Beria (1899-1953),
Head of the NKVD/MVD (19381946)
Some dates and figures on the Great Terror
• 1108 of the 1966 deputies to the 17th Party
Congress held in 1934 were later executed as
‘enemies of the people’
• In 1939 about 3.5 million people lived in Soviet
concentration camps and forced labour camps
• 1936-1937 there were 680,000 death sentences
• 1936-1938 45% of the upper ranks and political
commissars of the Red Army and the Red Fleet
were executed or released, among them
• 720 of the 827 commanding officers (from
colonels to field marshalls)
Forced Labour Camps in Stalinist Soviet Union
Nazi and Stalinist Terror
Focused more on clearly
identifiable groups
(Communists, active enemies
of the regime, homosexuals,
persons considered to be
‘work shy’, gypsies, Jews)
Social groups not specifically
targeted
Only a small part of the
population affected by the
terror
Conformity could protect you
from repression
For Jews no escape possible
Terror was omnipresent (active
enemies of the regime, former
members of different parties,
old Bolsheviks, national
groups, managers, former
kulaks etc.)
Targeted capitalists, wealthy
peasants, all who might
constitute a basis for the
restitution of capitalism
A large part of the population
was affected
Conformity could not protect
you from terror
Everyone could become a
victim
Schedule
1. Introduction: State Terror
2. Nazi and Stalinist Terror
3. Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
4. The Holocaust
5. Conclusion
Ethnic Cleansing
From the Serbo-Croatian: etničko čišćenje
Ethnic cleansing is “the expulsion of an
‘undesirable’ population from a given territory
due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political,
strategic or ideological considerations, or a
combination of these”
Andrew Bell-Fialkoff
Bosnia- Herzegovina
Examples in the 20th c.
“National operations“ in the Soviet Union 1936-1939: resettlement
of so called “Diaspora nations” in Soviet Union 1936-1940
German policy in parts of Eastern Europe 1939-1945 (expulsion of
Poles from Western Poland, resettlement of “Volksdeutsche”
(ethnic Germans living outside the borders of the German Empire)
in those territories
Wolhynian massacres (mass killing of Poles by Ukrainian
nationalist partisans) in Western Ukraine – expulsion of Poles
1943/44
Population exchange between Poland and the Soviet Union 19451947
Expulsion of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia 1944-1946
Resettlement of Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingushetians after
1945 in Soviet Union
1992- 1995: Bosnia-Herzegovina: “Ethnic cleansing” by Serbian
nationalists of territory inhabited by Bosnian Muslims - 200,000
deaths
Genocide
Geno-cide
Genos – Greek,
birth, race, family,
tribe
Occidere – Latin,
to fall, die
UN definition of genocide
Article II
In the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
United Nations Convention on Genocide, approved by the General
Assembly on December 3, 1948
Examples for 20th Century genocide or
massacres
1915-1916 Armenians in the Ottoman Empire –
1,500,000 deaths
1938- 1945: Holocaust – 6,000,000 deaths
1941-1945: Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia –
500,000 - 1,000,000 deaths
1937-1945 Chinese after Japan invaded
mainland China – 20,000,000 - 30,000,000
deaths; 200,000 - 250,000 in Nanking massacre
alone
1994: Rwanda – 800,000 deaths
The Armenian Genocide
Schedule
1. State Terror
2. Nazi and Stalinist Terror
3. Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
4. The Holocaust
5. Conclusion
Prelude to the Final Solution
April 1933 Boycott of Jewish shops
April 1933 Removal of Jews from civil service
September 1935 Nuremberg laws: racial
discrimination, loss of German citizenship
1933-1938 Aryanisation of Jewish property,
exclusion from most professions
Since 1939 plans for large-scale emigration
and resettlement of Jews (for example in
Madagascar)
The War and the ‘Final Solution’
Autumn/Winter 1939 Mass executions of
Polish Jews
1939/40 Deportation of Jews in ghettos in
Poland
1941/42 Mass execution of Jews in Occupied
Territory of the Soviet Union by
Einsatzgruppen, inspiring local pogroms,
21/1/1942 Conference in Wannsee (Berlin)
on the “Final Solution of the Jewish question
in Europe”
1942-1944 Deportation of Jews from all
occupied European countries to *Camps in
Eastern Europe
Wannsee Conference
Women, children, the
old & the sick should
be killed first
(unproductive)
Exploitation of young and fit
through forced labour,
undernourished - ‘destruction
through work’
Jews in ghettos and in
camps had to undergo
‘selection.’
Final Solution
Extermination
camps
Seeking the participation of Jews
in their own destruction – Jewish
Councils, Jewish Auxiliary Police
in ghettos
Shooting not effective
enough, psychological
consequences for
perpetrators
All Jews were
brought to ghettos in
Eastern Europe, and
isolated
Jews in ghettos –
cheap labour force.
A Jewish man wearing the yellow
star walks along a street in Germany
Mass murder by
Einsatzgruppen 1941/42
Extermination Camps
The work of the
Einsatzgruppen
Jewish families from the Warsaw Ghetto before they
were sent to be gassed at Treblinka extermination
camp.
Entrance to the
Concentration Camp in
Auschwitz
Entrance to Auschwitz
- Birkenau
The Gas Chambers
Survivors in Mauthausen open one of the
crematoria ovens for American troops who are
inspecting the camp.
SS Guards at Belzec death
camp
Interpretations
Implementation of Hitler’s plans and intentions –
Holocaust as his central goal (traditional view, for
example Joachim C. Fest)
No systematic plan, result of a spiral of inevitable
radicalisation (cumulative radicalisation) (Hans
Mommsen)
Not a barbaric regression but connected with modernity
(Zygmunt Baumann)
Ordinary Germans participated: reflection of
eliminationist German anti-Semitism (Daniel Goldhagen)
or due to specific extraordinary situation (war, group
pressure, indoctrination) in which those people found
themselves (Christopher Browning)
Schedule
1. State Terror
2. Nazi and Stalinist Terror
3. Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
4. The Holocaust
5. Conclusion
Conclusion
Terror is used as a tool by many dictatorial and
revolutionary regimes
Ethnic cleansing is a widespread phenomenon in 20th c.
history and can be implemented by a state or by a
nationalist movement
The differences between ethnic cleansing and genocide
are fluid
While genocides are not uncommon in history, Nazi
crimes are unique because of the goal of universal
annihilation and the modern methods used: the factorylike destruction of lives and the bureaucratisation of
destruction