The Politics of Intimacy: Close Relations and Genocidal Violence
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”
by
David Deutsch
Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
22-4-2015
Beer-Sheva
The Politics of Intimacy: Close Relations and Genocidal Violence
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”
by
David Deutsch
Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Approved by the advisor Approved by the Dean of the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies
22-4-2016
Beer-Sheva
This work was carried out under the supervision of Professor Niza Yanay In the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Humanities and Social Sciences
Research-Student's Affidavit when Submitting the Doctoral Thesis for Judgment
I David Deutsch, whose signature appears below, hereby declare that (Please mark the appropriate statements):
_V__ I have written this Thesis by myself, except for the help and guidance offered by my Thesis Advisors.
_V__ The scientific materials included in this Thesis are products of my own research, culled from the period during which I was a research student.
__V_ This Thesis incorporates research materials produced in cooperation with others, excluding the technical help commonly received during experimental work. Therefore, I am attaching another affidavit stating the contributions made by myself and the other participants in this research, which has been approved by them and submitted with their approval.
Date: 22-4-15 Student's name: David Deutsch Signature:
Table of Content
Abstract 1-5
Introduction 6-27
Chapter One: Goebbels' Intimate Anti-Semitism 28-61
Chapter Two: Nazi Euthanasia and Empathic Rationalization of Violence 62-128
Chapter Three: The Transformation of Nazi Anti- Gay Discourse toward Close Hate 129-180
Short Summary 181-184
Bibliography 185-199
Hebrew Abstract 200-202
פ : '
מחקר לשם מילוי חלקי של הדרישות לקבלת תואר "דוקטור לפילוסופיה"
מאת
דוד דויטש
הוגש לסינאט אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בנגב
ג אייר התשע"ו 22-4-2015
באר שבע
פ : '
מחקר לשם מילוי חלקי של הדרישות לקבלת תואר "דוקטור לפילוסופיה"
מאת
דוד דויטש
הוגש לסינאט אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בנגב
אישור המנחה
אישור דיקן בית הספר ללימודי מחקר מתקדמים ע"ש קרייטמן ______
ג באייר התשע"ו 22-4-2016
באר שבע
העבודה נעשתה בהדרכת
פרופסור ניצה ינאי
במחלקה לסוציולוגיה ואנתרופולוגיה
בפקולטה למדעי החברה
הצהרת תלמיד המחקר עם הגשת עבודת הדוקטור לשיפוט
אני החתום מטה מצהיר/ה בזאת: )אנא סמן(:
__V_ חיברתי את חיבורי בעצמי, להוציא עזרת ההדרכה שקיבלתי מאת מנחה/ים.
_ V__ החומר המדעי הנכלל בעבודה זו הינו פרי מחקרי מתקופת היותי תלמיד/ת מחקר . .
_V__ בעבודה נכלל חומר מחקרי שהוא פרי שיתוף עם אחרים, למעט עזרה טכנית הנהוגה בעבודה ניסיונית. לפי כך מצורפת בזאת הצהרה על תרומתי ותרומת שותפי למחקר, שאושרה על ידם ומוגשת בהסכמתם.
תאריך: 22-4-15 שם התלמיד/ה: דוד דויטש חתימה:
1-5
6-27
פ : 28-61
פ : פ 62-126
פ : 128-180
181-184
פ 185-199
200-202
Abstract
During the period that I worked at Yadvashem as a guide, I noticed one particular question that was frequently asked, “how was it possible that German Jewish relations attained a genocidal level despite previous tendencies of proximity?” The traditional answer, commonly offered, focused on the development of “Otherization” and an exclusion process that is evident from the ongoing anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda at that time. The tendency to focus on exclusion as an explanation and conceptualization of the mass murders is not only common among Yadvashem guides, but is rather a widely accepted concept embedded within the academic outlook and historiography of genocide research. The starting point for the current research aspires to challenge the paradigm that argues that exclusion tendencies played an exclusive role in genocidal discourse. Instead, the research examines the explicit role perpetrator-victim proximity played in establishing a Nazi genocidal rationale. Most of the current literature, however, shows how marking, separating and excluding the targeted group countered the earlier position of proximity and basically toppled the affiliation completely. Further, it was demonstrated how German Jewish inter group influence was altered towards an anti-Semitic eliminating discourse.1 I argue that the traditional German Jewish proximity is part of the discourse of exclusion and contributed a large part to the genocidal development.
In this research, the relative role that discourse of proximity played in various aspects of Nazi violence against minorities (not only anti-Semitism) is traced. For example, during the murders of the mentally ill in Germany, patients were killed by their professional care givers and, in many cases, they were the very doctors and nurses that were familiar with these patient-victims. Here too, the common outlook explains the violent transformation that medical staffs underwent as part of their dehumanization of mentally ill patients; thus, closeness was downplayed by Otherization. However, I intend to examine the phenomenon wherein prior proximity served to justify and even fuel medical violence. I will also present the ideological mechanism that expropriates the concept of empathy in order to reinterpret violence as an act of medical mercy.
1 Daniel J.Goldhagen, titlom’ willingoxocutionom :,tolocau tomninam nomran anntro New York: A. Knopf, 1996.
1
In the past two decades, academic literature has turned its focus towards an examination of genocide from novel points of view and perspectives. As a result, there is a significant amount of researches that delve into the inclusion exclusion dynamics of genocidal outbursts. However, some researchers, for example La Capara, tend to avoid an in depth case study analysis of how the mechanism of hate and proximity coincide.2 Other researchers, who deal with actual case studies, offer a suggestive but general theory rather than a specific conceptualization of the different intimate-violent processes that took place.3 My research spotlights two main, divergent yet connected, categories of proximity: intimacy and empathy. By implementing these categories into the genocidal rhetoric, I intend to re-read the way in which Nazi discourse was cultivated. The research is based upon three case studies that demonstrate three distinct forms of close hate: anti-Semitism, euthanasia killing and the persecution of homosexual individuals. In all the cases presented, a situation of proximity was used and aimed at a discourse of genocidal violence. As I will demonstrate later on, categories of proximity, such as intimacy and empathy, can preserve the potential to justify and conceptualize explicit and implicit violence. Researches dealing with domestic violence pinpoint such a link between closeness and the element of fear, which eventually generates into a relationship of hate.4 Other researches, addressing the relations between the torturer and the victim, show how empathy can be manipulated in order to promote violent conduct.5 Similarly, I have examined how and to what extent categories of proximity not only did not function as an obstacle, but rather served as a linguistic tool that contributed to the Nazi propaganda for justifying their genocidal policies.
In the first case, I analyzed a form of anti-Semitism meticulously described in the speeches and diaries of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda. Although his genocidal discourse is ambivalent, it nevertheless presents linguistic formulations that clearly display German- Jewish
2 Dominick La Capara, Writing History Writing Trauma, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
3 Jacques Semelin, Purify and Destroy: the Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, New York: Colombia University Press, 2007 4 Ofra Maysless, "Adult Attachment Patterns and Courtship Violence", Family Relations, 1991, V. 40, pp. (21-28)
5 Lou Agosta, Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, UK: Palgave Macmillan, 2010
2
closeness, i.e. perpetrator-victim proximity. Goebbels claims to know the Jews from within and compares the similarity between Jewish and German characteristics and destinies. In his writings, he exhibits a vast knowledge of the Yiddish language, Jewish culture and Jewish rituals and emphasizes that the entire Jewish community is a fundamental threat to the German population due to the fact that they are close enemies from within. After rereading his diaries and juxtaposing them to his speeches, I deem the term intimate violence as more fitting to an understanding of Goebbels genocidal discourse against the Jews. Many scholars that have studied intimate relations connect intimacy with privileged knowledge; an inner understanding and codependency - features that are clearly visible in Goebbels hate speeches. Intimate violence is characterized by the inclusion exclusion dynamics which, in turn, may contribute to imaging the victim as a dangerous threat.6 In this chapter, I offer three different models to explain Goebbels’ discourse of intimate violence.
The second case study is based on the concept of empathic violence during the period of the euthanasia killings. In this area, the majority of research centers on the distorted image of the mentally ill who are seen by Nazi propaganda as hideous, demonic and parasitic creatures that are a burden to society.7 However, the testimonies of medical staffs offer a different outlook. In their defense, both doctors and nurses argued that they acted purely out of a sense of medical empathy. Scholars tenaciously questioned this argument, claiming that medical staffs retroactively invented a post war empathic discourse in order to downplay their responsibility. I assert that empathy, which under normal circumstances would stand in the way of the killings, contributed, in this case, to rationalizing the killings. A unique feature of empathic violence is its implicit and hidden nature; it is a form of violence that is hard to trace or detect. Medical personnel claimed that they acted in support of their patients and for their benefit. Integral to the strategy of empathic outlook used to justify their actions was role taking; they argued that if they were placed in the position of the mentally ill, they would have wished for a merciful death over continuing an ‘unworthy life’. In this chapter, I propose six different models of empathic violent
6 Lynn Jamieson, Intimacy: Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998
7 Klee Ernst, Dokumente zur 'Euthanasie' , Frankfurt, Fischer Tachencuch Verlag, 1985.
3
discourse as voiced by the actual perpetrators, doctors and nurses, that participated in the killings. These examples demonstrate how euthanasia was conducted under the conceptual roof of a medical- empathic discourse. Mercy and compassion were utilized by medical staffs to revise the concept of mass killings and to render their actions as patient care giving.
The third case study addresses the influence that ideas of proximity had upon the radicalization of the anti gay discourse under Nazi rule. Anti gay discourse provides an example whereby genocidal discourse slowly underwent fundamental conceptual shifts against the targeted minority. The rhetoric progressed from an early policy of implicit acceptance to a point where formal Nazi policies stipulated capital punishment for homosexual crimes. Nazi officials presented homosexuality as an inner and existential threat to German identity and to German society. Himmler argued that the danger of homosexuality was due to its threat to the German ideal of male bonding which was caused by the proximity of homosexuality to this Nazi ideal. Moreover, such similarities would pervert the purity of the male bonding ideals so that new laws were enacted, and more effective supervision and persecution were endorsed. Homosexuality was no longer a vice against German honor but rather an inner and hidden threat aiming to devour Germany from within. In this case, I supply a variety of sources that display the link between proximity and genocidal rhetoric
Despite the ideological and practical differences between the various forms of mass killings, there is an underlying guiding concept that pervades the entire research – and is seen in all three cases cited; proximity played a very crucial role in the process of genocidal exclusion. Further, the research provides analytic categories of proximity (intimacy and empathy) that help explain the ambivalent or dual nature of the Nazi genocidal discourse. The first chapter is based upon 12 years of Nazi propaganda, primarily voiced by Goebbels, wherein a comprehensive doctrine of Nazi anti-Semitism is devised. Sources used in the second chapter are more diverse - a wide variety of judicial material and confessions of perpetrators, who were constituents of the medical staffs during the early years of Nazi euthanasia, were collected (1939-1941). In the third and final part, diverse types of Nazi sources (Nazi directives, testimonies, camp protocols, propaganda etc.) were enlisted. A primary aspect of this research was to establish the theoretical arguments linking proximity and violence - first, by looking into specific case studies and,
4
second, by introducing the idea of violent intimacy and empathy to reread original Nazi texts so as to revise the traditional manner for understanding the formulation of genocidal rhetoric under Nazi rule.
5
Introduction
The paradox of intimate violence
The idea of ‘intimate violence’ features a paradox wherein love and hate as well as familiarity and strangeness coexist and promote one another. This paradox is appropriately worded by Maysless:
One major dilemma … centers around the coexistence of intimacy and violence under the same roof. Intimacy is usually associated with warmth, closeness, protectiveness, and acceptance, while violence evokes opposite images such as distance, rejection, rage, animosity, and unpredictability. Still they intertwine along the following dimensions of the violent couple's existential experience.8
Scholars that have explored the ambivalent nature of domestic violence, point out the role of intimate closeness in violent outbursts and also show how radical violence is fueled and rationalized by intimate proximity. Marcus and Swett reveal a linear linkage between the deepening of intimate relations and the chances of violent eruptions. 9 Some studies even find that violent couples still share a great deal of affection. 10 Gelles argues that the framework of close relations, where a couple live together, enhances a codependence that can be irritating and undermine self-freedom.11 Agosta presents the role of intimate perpetrator knowledge of his /her victim in the context of torture - the perpetrator takes advantage of privileged and consequential knowledge to violently and cruelly break his subject.12
8 O. Maysless, p. 21 9 Marcus Robert. F. and Swett Bruce, "Violence and Intimacy in Close Relationships" Journal of interpersonal Violence 2002, V. 17 No. (5) p. 572, pp. (570-586)
10 J. Langhinricksen-Rohling, K. A. Shlee, C. M. Monson, M. Ehernsaft, and R. Heyman, "What's love got to do with it? Perceptions of marital positivity in H-to-W aggressive, distressed and happy marriages", Journal of Family Violence, 1998, V. 13 pp. 197-212. 11 Richard. J. Gelles, M. A. Straus, "Determinants of violence in the family: Toward a theoretical integration" In Contemporary Theory about the Family, 1979, V. 1, pp. 549-581, New York: The Free Press. 12 L. Agosta., p. 71. 6
The concept of close hate and intimate violence can be applied not only in an interpersonal context, but on an inter-group level as well. Some studies have implemented highly specific versions of proximity, but they generally tend to avoid the kind of in-depth case study needed for proper research and analysis of intimate or empathic forms of violence (La Capara13). Furthermore, despite the growing interest in academic research that explores group violence from the perspective of close hate dynamics (Ignatieff,14 Kolstø,15 Semelin16), the specific idea of intimate violence, as an analytic category, has rarely been utilized in the examination of actual case studies of genocide and mass violence (Halfon,17 Nandy18(. The ‘intimate violence’ outlook (generally oriented toward inclusion- exclusion dynamics19) highlights inherent inconsistencies and also addresses the ambiguity of the mass violence discourse that may have been previously overlooked. The current trend of exploring 'inclusion-exclusion dynamics' would benefit from 'testing' it at the field level. such an approach offers a complex and comprehensive analytic categorization of violent rhetorical strategies.
This study attempts to make use of the dynamics of intimate violence, and thereby to revise the traditional understanding of Nazi rhetoric. As mentioned, it encompasses three different case studies that primarily address Nazi propaganda before and during the war years (Nazi anti- Semitism, euthanasia, and gay persecution) and offers an in-depth analysis of genocidal propaganda. It also spotlights diverse models of conceptual closeness, using the notions of 'intimacy' and 'empathy' as its primary analytic motivation, so that the findings and theoretical analysis are based on empirical models. The case studies embody a correlated chronological and
13 La Capara D., ibid. , 14 Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic war and the modern conscience, NY: Henry and Holt Company, 1997. 15 Pal Kolstø,“The Narcissism of Minor Differences-Theory: Can It Explain Ethnic Conflict?,” Filosofija i Drustvo, vol. 33, no. 2 (2007): 153–172. 16 J. Semelin, ibid. 17 Igal Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition 1918-1928, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. 18 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. 19 To be more explicitly demonstrated below. 7
sociopolitical framing which serve to demonstrate the manner in which genocidal rhetoric is both stimulated by closeness and articulated by intimacy. This outlook on the Nazi era provides a new perspective toward Nazi propaganda, wherein a combination of love and hate, familiarity and distance, admiration and violence, were articulated concurrently and inspired a setting for the perpetration of a genocidal discourse.
This paradox, which I label ‘intimate violence’, can be used as an analytic category for understanding the dialectic dynamics whereby genocidal propaganda is constructed and its discursive developed.20 The expansion of my theoretical argument, linking group proximity and genocidal violence to an empirical sphere, will contribute to a better and more comprehensive understanding of the nature of genocide. Accordingly, Nazi genocidal propaganda not only confirms that proximity existed, but also highlights the specific conceptual models of closeness that were used to establish an effective rhetoric of hate and exclusion. Rereading Nazi propaganda via a dynamic and complex prism (far-near, inclusion- exclusion, familiar-distant) helps to discern and better understand the micro-processes involved in genocidal hate conceptualizations. In the three case studies various strategies of violent intimacy and empathy, which conceptualize and legitimize mass murder, are explored.21
The concept of intimate violence is addressed on different levels. For example the first chapter deals with articulation of hate discourse whereas the second chapter highlights the "field leve" and the rationalization processes. Different forms of proximity (as intimacy and empathy) played different roles in conceptualizing genocidal discourse and conduct.
Case One: Goebbels’ Intimate Enemies
The first case is an in-depth microanalysis of the anti-Semitism found in the writings of Joseph Goebbels, who stood at the head of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. Much has been written
20 For the etymological roots of intimacy as a modern concept of self-perception, see: Theodor Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity, London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1995; for contemporary meanings of intimacy, see: Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, Great Britain: Polity Press 1992. 21 Harrison indeed addresses these tendencies of patient care yet avoids incorporating empathic reasoning in her analytic account: Sharon M. Harrison, Female Killers, Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008, p. 68. 8
about the Nazi discourse and Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda. and by being one of the main proponents makes his writings all the more significant. (Welch 1993, Herf 2006, Luckert 2009).22 As mentioned earlier, scholars have focused their research on the various ways in which the process of “Otherization” came about. The term 'intimacy' can help shed light upon this process by building a connection between closeness and violence in a novel and unique way.
The main aim of the first part of this study is to show that from the tension and conflict within Goebbels’ Diaries, a structure of intimate relations emerges between perpetrator and victim. His cruel and excluding Nazi discourse can be better understood within the dynamic implications that the concept of intimacy offers. Intimacy and violence are inherently linked in numerous ways. Further, every intimate relationship contains a powerful tension within which can generate various modes of action and reaction. Violence can be one of the operating modes in an intimate reality, especially when that reality jeopardizes self-definition. Sadly, the statistics regarding diverse kinds of domestic violence attest to the coexistence of intimacy and violence. Therefore, when Goebbels professes to 'really understand' Jews and thereby be aware of the 'great danger' they pose, he portrays the Jew as a close enemy, an enemy within. This category of 'inner understanding,' as analyzed by Jamisson, is extremely helpful in understanding Goebbels’ intimate perception of the Jews.23 Herein, a linkage is shown between rhetorical closeness and the radicalization of the anti-Jewish genocidal language.
In order to establish the argument and show how the rhetoric of close hate and genocide develop, a case study is presented in the second part, The years covered encompass the entire period of Nazi rule, 1933-1945, since the writings of Goebbels, albeit with small changes in style and form, continued to be propagated throughout this period. The resources analyzed are the many speeches made as well as his diaries. The diaries are significant since they embrace, in many
22 J. Herf ibid, Steven Luckert & Susan Bachrach, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009; David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda. 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 2002 (1993).
23 L. Jamieson ibid.,
9
instances, a more intimate and less constructed understanding of Goebbels’ type of anti- Semitism. The methodology of textual analysis is used to show how the ambivalence of his writing can be explained under the conceptual umbrella of intimate violence. Unlike empathic violence, the proximity Goebbels exhibits is non-personal, a structural form of closeness, linguistic and conceptual. The change in Goebbels’ rhetoric over the years is irrelevant to the main aim of showing the role that closeness played in establishing a hate rhetoric during the years of Nazi rule. Here are a few thematic frames depicting proximity which were used to reread the writings of Goebbels:
1. In intimate relations there are routine in-out dynamics of inclusion-exclusion. Some scholars show how volatile these dynamics can be since they target identity politics and can be imagined as a fundamental threat (Lacan, Simmel).24
2. Intimate proximity is where self-other categories can be blurred. Anthropological studies have dealt with intergroup borderline politics; the targeted group is attacked due to the fact that its closeness jeopardizes group coherence (Douglas).25
3. Intimacy is not only affective warmth but also a cognitive form of seeing the other. Scholars sometimes define it as a form of inner understanding (Jamisson).26 The diaries are saturated with Goebbels taking pride in his ability to understand the Jews from within.
Case Two: Empathic Medical Violence
The first Nazi genocidal projects were operations known as T4, 13f14, as well as several other mass killings without official code names ) that were based on the physical disabilities of the
24 Jacques Lacan, ,. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960, ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.; Simmel, Georg, 1950. "The Stranger," in The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1992 25 Mary Douglas, Purity and danger:ananal i opconcoct opcollutionannta oo ,London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. 26 Lynn Jamieson, Intimacy: Personal Relationships in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998. 10
victims. These executions were carried out jointly by Nazi officials and professional doctors and nurses under the guise of euthanasia. In many cases, the killers knew their victims quite well. Although the anti-Jewish propaganda concerning Jews was far more intense, the handicapped, who were German citizens with German families, were nevertheless singled out as useless people living an unworthy life and who were ultimately a burden to the German nation. Friedlander and many other researchers have focused on the connection between euthanasia and the subsequent mass murder of Jews.27 Thom and Spaar described the tendency, shared by some scholars, to blame the explicit euthanasia propaganda.
Nevertheless, their rationalizations fall short in explaining the connection between euthanasia and mass murder of Jews.28 Even Benedict and Chelouche, who presented new research studies that offer an integrative theory of the discourse of the perpetrators that participated in “euthanasia,” do not deal with the inherent ambivalence of this empathic genocidal rhetoric.29 For example, many nurses revealed empathy towards their victims and sometimes even legitimized their action with the liberal concept of their concern for the well-being of their patients. Moreover, doctors and nurses that chose their victims described themselves as their saviors and healers. Genocidal discourse during mass murder itself is fundamentally different from propaganda prevalent in Germany, that dealt with the uselessness of the handicapped and the mentally ill. This malevolent discourse is far more complex than the simplistic national propaganda highlighting the large budget allocations for mental institutes in Germany.
27 Henry Friedlander ,The origins of Nazi genocide: from euthanasia to the final solution, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 28 Thom Achim and Spaar Horst (eds), Medizin im Faschismus. Symposium iiber das Schicksal der Medizin in der Zeit des Faschismus in Deutschland 1933-1945, Berlin 1985; other examples of this line of research can be seen in:; Paul Weindling , Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945, Cambridge 1989. 29 Susan Benedict and Jochen Kuhla, "Nurses’ Participation in the Euthanasia Program in Nazi Germany", in Western Journal of Nursing Research, 1999, Vo. 21 No. 2 pp. 246-263; Susan Benedict and Tessa Chelouche, Meseritz-Obrawalde: A Wild Euthanasia Hospital of Nazi Germany in History of Psychiatry, 2008, Vo. 19 No. 1, pp. 68-76.
11
Kirmayer (2008) offers a polar understanding of the term empathy as consisting of positive and warm feelings but with a rooted aggressiveness and sadism. In some constellations, empathy can catalyze and justify mass murder, no less, and at times even more than utilitarian economic ideas. Doctors like Wernicke and nurses such as the infamous Wiezorck described their loving attitude towards the victims as the main rationale in the legitimization of this form of murder. Furthermore, the compatibility of the Christian education that most nurses had received with Nazi ideology is both complex and fascinating - the empathic approach served, in many cases, as a bridge to mediate the gap between the two opposing ideologies and empowered the perpetrators with a semicoherent self-legitimization.
The perspective from which I chose to analyze empathic violence during the Nazi euthanasia era is quite different from the method used in the first case study presented. I have selected six leading and well-documented cases of perpetrator discourse as conveyed by the perpetrators themselves. Undoubtedly, the models I offer are far from being exclusive to each perpetrator. Nevertheless, Nazi medical staffs seem to have frequently established a unique and common discourse, wherein they combined their empathic outlook with euthanasia ideology. I therefore found it imperative to provide several other examples of how medical staffs used the ideal of proximity in order to justify genocidal activity, rather than base my argument on a single case. Although I do address the history of and changes in the anti-disabled propaganda from the early 1930s up until 1939, the main emphasis of my work is centered on the latter years, 1939-1941, when the actual ideological killings took place.
Due to a lack of resources, most of the evidence used in my research consists of postwar trial affidavits and interrogations. This is a major methodological challenge, since trial testimonies are usually acquittal-oriented and typically reveal little concerning the actual atrocities and genocidal motivations. Therefore, the discourse analysis was more complex and a comprehensive Rosenthal's narrative analysis was used to arrive at responsible conclusions.30 Most of the
30 Gabriele Rosenthal, 'Reconstruction of Life Stories - Principles of Selection in Generating Stories for Narrative Biographical Interviews' in R. Josselson and A. Lieblich (eds.) The Narrative Study of Lives, Vol. 1 (London: Sage Publications, 1993), 59-92: Rosenthal analyzes Nazi perpetrator discourse and develops three primary categories for 12
individual perpetrators were not high-ranking professional Nazis, but rather mid-level medical staff. Case studies can provide an insight into the implicit mechanism of ideological evolution, since the discourse usually derives from medical staff rather than from Nazi officials. One particular case can contribute to presenting a comprehensive outlook of the processes wherein proximity and violence coincide. Furthermore, in this specific case, proximity is not only figurative and linguistic, but is manifested in an actual doctor-patient relationship. It was the ideal format used for killing patients, which was developed over time and under the specific conditions of Nazification of the medical profession.
Case Three: Nazi Gay Persecution
The field of Nazi homosexual persecution is overshadowed by research dealing with anti- Semitism and, as Giles points out, there is yet much analytic work to be carried out in this field.31 The research of Rector and Venema, which appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s, only provides a partial and severely under-analyzed presentation of antigay Nazi discourse and conduct.32 Although not written to analyze and scrutinize the relevant material, the comprehensive work of Grau covered numerous Nazi documents and greatly contributed to the field of antigay discourse.33 On the other hand, Porter was the first scholar to both provide a comprehensive and integrative study of the Nazi discourse and conduct of gay persecution and to also offer ample explanations relevant to historical developments by contextualizing the radicalization.34 Nevertheless, his outlook does not highlight many of the inherent paradoxes that critical reading and analysis, which can be helpful here as well: Narration, Orientation, and Microanalyses or Generic Analysis. 31 Geoffery J., Giles, “Why Bother about Homosexuals? Homophobia and Sexual Politics in Nazi Germany”, A Lecture given in J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Annual Lecture 30 May 2001, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 32 Adriaan Venema, The Persecution of the Homosexuals by the Nazis, LA: Urania Manuscripts, 1979; Frank Rector, The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals, NY: Stein and Day Publishers, 1981. 33 Günter Grau (Trans. Camiller Patric), Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933-1945, NY: Cassel, 1995. 34 Jack Nusan Porter (Trans. Gruab Page), Sexual Politics in the Third Reich: The Persecution of Homosexuals during the Holocaust, Massachusetts, 1990.
13
appeared in the texts. Further, his emphasis on Nazi language and conceptual processes demands further examination.
It is a surprising fact that homosexuals, mostly Germans, were treated in the camps as harshly as the Jews. Homosexuals in the camps died at rates of up to 60% of their total population. In many instances, they were treated worse than other prisoners and were subjected to fatal medical experimentation. The comparatively low numbers of total actual victims appear to have influenced the tendency of the academic world to overlook this form of genocide.
The campaign for homosexual persecution and the evolution of the antigay discourse were very different than in Case One and Case Two described previously. Although in Nazi imagery of a utopian society homosexuals had no place , the early Nazi policies were, in reality, quite lenient. In fact, many Nazi leaders themselves were homosexuals - a great many of the SA elite “shared” more than common political views. This is an example of a process wherein genocidal discourse develops from a simple framing of homosexuality as a mere vice to the point where homosexuals are regarded as the ultimate threat to the German homeland – on an equivalent level, in the Nazi view, to the danger posed by the Jews.
In this argument, the methodology I have used is more historically inclined and is not limited to a specific source, nor is it focused on low-, mid- or high-level Nazi figures. Naturally, I have devoted attention to some of the leading Nazi antigay advocates (Himmler, R. Klare, Meinsinger, etc.) since they were prominent contributors to establishing the discourse of hate. My analysis focuses on the role that close relations, proximity and sexual politics played in the construction of an antigay discourse. I therefore begin as early as 1933 and follow the developments up until the end of the war. Unlike the previously noted sections, wherein perpetrator reflections stand at the heart of the analysis, at this stage a variety of resources were scrutinized in order to provide an unambiguous picture of the development of genocidal rhetoric.
Among the resources examined are the following: legal deliberations, institutional directives, official propaganda as well as ground-level discourses of hate found in newspapers and pamphlets. In some cases, close hate was a very personal matter, such as after the “Night of the Long Knives,” when individual hate and political rivalry played a significant intertwining role.
14
Antigay propaganda was also 'faceless' and addressed the gay community as a group threat rather than on an individual basis. The homosexual was viewed as a dangerous conceptual figure rather than an actual human being. The research tracks specific stages in the radicalization of antigay propaganda, e.g., the modification of homosexuality’s legal status from an individual crime against basic morality into a group crime against the entire German people.
The third chapter is divided in chronological order into three stages, as follows: Stage 1, 1933- 1934, when the Nazi antigay outlook was in tune with traditional hetero normative values; Stage 2, covering the post-Röhm affair period until 1937, when homosexuality was criminalized, poeticized and objectified, and Stage 3, which extended til the end of the war. The latter stage is the most relevant to this research, since it the period when the construction of a genocidal rhetoric, which was in part based on sexual politics and proximity, was introduced. This approach is most noticeable in the antigay discourse.
Oosterhuis points out the connection between the German ideal of male bonding, which was endorsed by Nazi ideology, and the Nazi absolute exclusion of gay activity.35 The linkage of these two distinct phenomena was seen as an acute danger to German masculinity. The resemblance of gay activities to the favored Nazi conduct of male bonding played a significant role in radicalizing exclusion. This is but just one example - the chapter that discusses this topic depicts similar tendencies regarding the role of resemblance in exclusion, such as accusing homosexuals of gender blurring, portraying homosexuals as a danger from within, etc. Some of the analytical work showing anti-Semitism to be a form of intimate violence can also be applied to the case of antigay genocidal rhetoric. As the antigay discourse became more radical, Nazi propaganda began to feature detailed comparisons between the 'homosexual threat' and the 'Jewish enemy'.
35 Harry Oosterhuis, Medicine, Male Bonding and Homosexuality in Nazi Germany in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 187-205.
15
Paradigms in the Discourse of Violence and Genocide
There are two key paradigmatic theoretical approaches that are addressed in the study: one referred to 'exclusion' and a second, divergent paradigm, known as 'inclusion- exclusion dynamics’. In order to pinpoint my theoretical standpoint vis-à-vis current academic research, I begin by mapping these two key paradigmatic theoretical tendencies.. The concept of exclusion focuses on the way in which the in-group establishes an in-out group dichotomy (conceptual, legal and social), thereby distancing itself from the targeted out-group. This paradigm spotlights social exclusion and directs academic analysis toward the methods used for excluding and for shifting a persecuted minority into social outcasts. Many of the categorical tools established in the analytic accounts are in tune with and also exemplify concepts of 'exclusion': differentiation processes, marking or branding of minorities, in-out group separation, dehumanizing discourse and conduct.
On the other hand, 'inclusion-exclusion dynamics' underscores an ambivalent process, wherein close groups turn against each other. Under this approach, an emphasis is placed on the extent of prior proximity, since it plays a direct role in the formation of violent in-out group conflicts,. Research based on this paradigm tends to utilize social psychology to explain the polar dynamics of love-hate relationships. Scholars in favor of this theoretical outlook argue that the idea of proximity does not stand in contradiction to the genocidal mindset, but rather operates as part of its inherent logic. The following study aspires to contribute a new perspective within current concepts dealing with 'exclusion-inclusion dynamics' by providing a detailed case-study account entailing specific notions of violent proximity, mainly, intimacy and empathy. A more elaborate synopsis delineating the study's conclusions will follow the literature review in each chapter.
In the opinion of some genocide scholars, genocidal propaganda is primarily fueled by an 'exclusion'36 discourse of hate. Erwin Staub's work highlights the psychological preconditions of
36 Various studies use different terminologies for this analytic standpoint: it is labeled as dehumanization, Otherization, negation, etc., the common denominator being the tendency to highlight the identity-oriented perpetrator-victim differences rather than similarities as a precondition for mass violence. I have intentionally avoided providing an exclusive definition of 'exclusion' at this point, since later categories of distance and closeness such as intimacy and empathy will be extensively discussed below. However, exclusion in the following context is 16
genocide, where the concept of 'exclusion' plays a decisive role in justification of the hate campaign.37 Similarly, Rummel utilizes a version of 'exclusion,' that not only explains genocidal outbursts, but also demonstrates the potency of Otherization in contemporary forms of modern mass violence.38 According to Woolf and Hulsizer, "…the path of mass violence" passes through "…stigmatization, dehumanization, moral disengagement, moral exclusion, impunity…"39 Models of out-group exclusion dynamics may be traced, with a great deal of analytic effort, to the aforementioned features of genocidal discourse and conduct.
Jeffery Herf, who provides an in-depth analysis of Nazi propaganda, describes the evolution of the anti-Semitic discourse over the course of the war. The artificial image of the local Jewish enemy turned into the image of an “external” archenemy fighting against Germany: "…the Nazi propaganda machine interpreted the Allied attack as Jewry's unprovoked assault…"40 He shows how an image of an external, competent and distant enemy contributed to the radicalization of ideas and to violent actions. Also, in recent research on genocidal violence, microanalysis has been used to depict the unfolding stages of murderous justification. For example, Tomas Foth ascribes specific techniques and strategies to the imaging of the disabled in Nazi Germany as inhuman, thus justifying genocidal violence against this group.41
The widely accepted theoretical paradigm, highlighting 'exclusion' as the setting of genocidal discourse and violence, can be prominently seen when one changes perspective and examines efforts made to prevent genocidal outbursts and to promote peace initiatives and common sense. As noted by Genocide Watch, there are eight stages that lead to genocide: classification,
generally related with imaging the Other as more of an Other, enhancing strangeness, highlighting differences and de-familiarizing the targeted subject. 37 Erwin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 38 Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government, NJ: Transaction, 1996. 39 Linda M. Woolf and Michael Hulsizer, "Psychological roots of genocide: risk, prevention, and intervention", in Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2005, p. 101 (101-128). 40 J. Herf, p. 265. 41 Thomas Foth, Caring and Killing: Nursing and Psychiatric Practice in Germany, 1931-1943, Osnabrück University, 2013, 255-262. 17
symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination and denial.42 Most of these parameters are linearly aligned with the targeted group's degree of 'exclusion'. Stage two, symbolization, stipulates the following: "We name people 'Jews' or 'Gypsies', or … distinguish them…"43 From this point of view, group distinction allows the next stage of genocide, dehumanization, to take place – thus, violence and exclusion are interdependent.
Academic analysis of dehumanization strategies associates the degree of exclusion of the targeted minority with the ability to dehumanize them. Furthermore, the exclusion mechanism works at both ends of the spectrum. Research has shown how in-group glorification of the perpetrators establishes a substantial perpetrator-victim differentiation,44 while other studies have pointed out that branding of the minority's inferior otherness degrades their status and rationalizes the ongoing violence.45
The influence and effectiveness of the exclusion paradigm is evident in academic analysis of genocidal rhetoric in general, as well as in specific historical Holocaust-related research. Neil Kressel reasons that public acceptance of anti-Semitic Nazi values was achieved by Nazi propaganda that effectively utilized the 'good vs. evil' dichotomy.46 Daniel Goldhagen argues that absolute exclusion of Jews was based on the traditional German, pre-Nazi anti-Semitic culture.47 The 'exclusion' paradigm appears in other forms of Nazi violence besides anti- Semitism, e.g homosexuals, gypsies, Eastern Europeans etc..
42 Gregory Stanton, "The eight stages of genocide" in The Genocide Studies Reader, S. Totten and P. R. Bartrop (eds.) NY: Routledge, 2009, pp. 127-128. 43 Stanton, ibid. 44 Leidner et al., "Ingroup Glorification, Moral Disengagement and Justice in the Context of Collective Violence," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36 (2010): 1115-1129. 45 Norbert Vanbeselaere, "Ingroup Bias in the Minimal Group Situation: An Experimental Test of the Inequity Prevention Hypothesis," Basic and Applies Social Psychology 14 (1993): 385-400. 46 Neil J. Kressel, Mass Hate: The global rise of genocide and terror, NY: Plenum Press, 1996, pp. 156-158. 47., J. Goldhagen ibid. 18
Hilde Steppe48 and Ernst Klee49 share the view that euthanasia became possible by massive Nazi anti-disabled rhetoric, aimed at the German Volk, that focused on transforming the disabled into inhuman creatures. Grau shows that homosexuals were not only targeted for contempt and disgust, but were also saddled with a disease-related image. He also illustrates the role this form of dehumanization played in radicalizing the antigay discourse.50 Dehumanization is just one of the many extreme forms of group humiliation which can serve as the forerunner for group and/or individual modes of violence. Accordingly, Evelin Lindner has provided an elaborate analysis of the link between depriving the out-group of dignity and honor and the probability of ensuing violent conduct against them.51
Indeed, most genocidal propaganda includes an exclusion discourse that serves to establish a conceptual setting for the perpetration of violent and unethical crimes. It is tough to refute these overt and noticeable expressions of hate in the context of mass violence. However, some of the available research has been attempting to revise this paradigm, thus providing a venue for a more comprehensive, yet ambivalent, analytical scope. Although exclusion is an essential factor in establishing hate propaganda, it is not an exclusive factor in the genocidal rhetoric. Furthermore, the idea of exclusion itself, can be seen within a wider context of inclusion-exclusion dynamics.
As early as 1917, Freud presented an analytic category he called the narcissism of minor differences. He argued that “… it is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them.”52 Afterwards, in 1930, he further developed this concept in order to better understand racism, intergroup conflict and national violence: “It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their
48 Hilde Steppe, Ich war von jeher mit Leib und Seele gerne Pflegerin, Frankfurt: Mabuse, 1999. 49 E. Klee, Dokumente zur 'Euthanasie'. 50 G. Grau ibid.. 51 Evelin Lindner, "Gendercide and Humiliation in Honor and Human-rights Societies", in Gendercide and Genocide (A. Jones ed.), Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. 52 Sigmund Freud, The Taboo of Virginity, Standard Edition, Hogarth Press, London 1953: 11: 191:208, (1917). p. 199. 19
aggressiveness.”53 Freud demonstrated how inclusion can be linked directly to exclusion and why affectionate intergroup bonds can lead to out-group hate and aggression. He did not, however, develop this theory into a comprehensive account of the social mechanisms that may be exhibited in out-group dynamics of aggression. Later research readdressed this idea and provided more elaborate findings that attest to the volatile potential in the polarization of minor in-out group differences.
Anton Blok has offered an analytic perspective that converges with Freud’s concept of ‘the narcissism of minor differences.’ He explores its implications by utilizing a comparative empirical approach, while providing examples of violent conflicts. Blok thereby shows the role that minor differences play in establishing in-out group fear and paranoia.54 Zografou and Pipyrou explain this fear and have shown how minor differences can be perceived and presented as a fundamental threat: “These differences, precisely because they are minor, may provoke confusion instead of clarifying the reasons why conflicts between collectivities develop.”55 The confusion that these minor differences create is linked to identity politics and is an outcome of the in-group’s aspiration for coherence and conceptual sustainability.
Michael Ignatieff uses this Freudian concept in order to expound a two-stage structural buildup of dehumanization. The second killing stage is arguably a definitive exclusion manifested by genocidal activity. However, in the initial pre- killing stage ,a key question arises: "How is dehumanization achieved before the shooting starts?"56 In order to explain genocidal intent, Ignatieff turns to the Freudian concept of 'tronamci i roprinomnippomonco ’, arguing that "it is precisely because the differences between groups are minor that they must be expressed
53 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, Standard Edition, Hogarth Press, London 1953: 21: 191-208, p. 114. 54 Anton Blok, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences,” European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 1, no. 1 )1998(: 33– 56. 55 Magda Zografou and Stavroula Pipyrou, “Dance and Difference: Toward an Individualization of the Pontian Self” in Dance Chronicle, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 422-446; p. 424
56 M. Ignatieff , p. 56. 20
aggressively."57 Close enemies are set up as targets of exclusion, since the closer the enemy the greater the threat posed to group identity and self-coherence. The minority is close enough to be dangerous yet different enough to trigger fear and aggression.
Here, too, the idea of mass violence and group hatred is perceived from a point of view that is sensitive to inclusion- exclusion dynamics. This exemplifies how intergroup conceptual closeness enhances the gravity of anti-minority exclusion strategies. Freud's minor differences theory is also utilized in some current Holocaust studies that try to explain pre-genocidal group dynamics. Raz Segal highlights the role these minor differences played in the process of violent discrimination. Exclusion categories of violence that are based on prior proximity are far more potent than absolute (and relatively safe) forms of strangeness.58
Pål Kolstø provides an in-depth account of academic work that has used the Freudian notion of 'the narcissism of minor differences' as an analytic tool. He reviews various ethnic conflicts that, in time, developed into full-scale genocides and characteristically highlight the similarities between in and out groups.59 However, Kolstø questions the analytic benefit of the Freudian concept, arguing that we ought "… to lower the expectations for the utility of this idea…"60 Kolstø’s main criticism is that minor in-out group differences, per se, do not automatically generate aggression – i.e., not all minor differences have the same potency. Furthermore, it is not the differences that contribute to conflict but rather the way they are perceived and presented: "In order to understand why some conflicts turn violent while others do not, one must not objectively look for given differences, but for differences in perceptions and how these perceptions are publicly represented and understood. This means that we must turn our attention to public rhetoric and discourse."61
57 M. Ignatieff, pp. 50-51. 58 Raz Segal, "Becoming bystanders: Carpatho-Ruthenians, Jews, and the politics of narcissism in Subcarpathian Rus'" in Holocaust Studies: a Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 16, No. 1-2, 2010, pp. 129-156. 59 Pal Kolstø,”The Narcissism of Minor Differences-Theory: Can It Explain Ethnic Conflict?,” Filosofija i Drustvo, vol. 33, no. 2 (2007): 153–172. 60 P. Kolstø, p. 166. 61 P. Kolstø, p. 169. 21
The Freudian notion of highlighting minor differences can be a productive starting point toward a better understanding of intergroup inclusion-exclusion dynamics. However, it fails to categorize, classify and rank these differences so that the theory falls short of explaining which differences are more likely to fuel a violent outburst and why some differences are more fundamental and more significant than others. The concept of intergroup proximity can be more helpful in establishing a categorization of in-out group differences. The form of closeness that the concept of proximity captures is linked with identity politics so not all in-out group differences are the same.
Girard provides a curious analysis that formulates how glorification of victims can contribute to rationalization of violence.62 He highlights the ambivalent aspect of sacrifice that inherently holds tendencies of inclusion and exclusion: "As we have seen, the proper functioning of the sacrificial process requires not only the complete separation of the sacrificed victim but also some similarity between both groups."63 The model offered by Girard links acute and violent exclusion with tendencies of proximity, such as cultural similarities and veneration of the similar images. He even claims that in order to sustain sacrificial violence, the gap between victim and community must not be too wide. When the gap does grow far apart, he argues, "The victim will no longer be capable of attracting the violent impulses to itself."64 Girard, shows how inclusive tendencies of proximity are embedded in the social mechanism of exclusion.
Some recent research on genocide implements both the concept of 'inclusion-exclusion dynamics' as well as the notion of intimate violence. An example can be seen in the tendency of genocidal discourse to establish an 'either/or' equation which asserts that the targeted out-group poses an existential threat to the in-group. Correspondingly, Donald Horowitz shows how forms of collective fear can fuel mass violence: "A good many groups are convinced that they are or will be swamped, dominated, and dispossessed by their neighbors, perhaps even rendered
62 Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, translated by Patrick Gregory, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1977. 63 R. Girard, p. 39. 64 Ibid. 22
extinct."65 Although his outlook is focused on the mechanisms of collective fear, he explicitly addresses the proximity aspect of conflicts that occur between close neighbors.
Chirot and McCauley have energetically implemented the ambivalent inclusion-exclusion outlook of proximity and hate in the field of genocide research and also introduced the idea of 'essentializing Others'. They argue that part of the pre-genocide dynamics includes a process of reimaging the targeted group as an essential entity – initially, as an essential Other and afterward as an essential threat. They illustrate the manifold strategy of hate speech; on the one hand, utilizing an inclusive tendency to better 'see' the other, but on the other hand, reversing inclusiveness into a genocidal rhetoric of violent exclusion.66 The ability of the in-group to perceive the essence of the out-group, e.g., Jews, Gypsies or homosexuals, and currently, even AfricanTutsis, is the foundation for declaring a categorical definition of the specific targeted group – a definition which not only brands the victims but leads to a consistent justification of violence against them. In their research, Chirot and McCauley explain that the dynamics of essentialization are mutual to both groups: "It is not only the out-group that is essentialized; so is the in-group."67 They also clarify the idea of a 'dangerous similar other,' where close hate can be far more volatile and dangerous than hate towards distant strangers.
In his extensive work on the Holocaust, La Capara explicitly mentions intimacy as part of his own theoretical understanding of the genocidal character of Nazi anti-Semitism. He revises the image of a cancerous tumor to an image of Otherization and describes German hatred of the Jews as "…that kind of crazy desire to get of something that is very much part of yourself".68 He explains the rationale behind the common Nazi image of the Jews as a cancer and stipulates that the imagined danger of the Jewish threat is linked to the fact that they are 'insiders'. La Capara draws a linear connection between traditional German- Jewish proximity and anti- Semitic Nazi genocidal discourse. Current studies, focusing on regional aspects of genocidal conduct, attempt
65 Donald Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, p. 548. 66 Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley, Why not kill them all? The logic and prevention of mass political murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, p.85. 67 Chirot and McCauley, ibid. 68 D. LaCapra, p. 170.. 23
to explain different forms of close hate, such as the murder of family and close neighbors in the Rwandan genocide. Mahmud Mamadani's research on the genocide of the Tutsi minority discusses the prior intergroup closeness in his analytic framework.69 He reveals how common grounds as well as geographic and conceptual proximities can contribute to the genocidal discourse and conduct. Similarly, the comparative analysis provided by Semelin confirms how group fear is generated and how often it stems from intergroup proximity, rather than distance.70 Semelin also offers a more comprehensive and inclusive outlook of the phenomenon, comparing the role this form of fear played in the genocidal mindset of the perpetrators in Rwanda, Nazi Germany and Bosnia, respectively.
Russell Jacoby argues that the accepted perspective with regard to intergroup violence is typically misunderstood. Jacoby introduces the concept of brotherly violence, wherein love and hate are in tune and serve to fuel one another. The traditional legend of Cain and Abel, as well as the long-lasting Judeo-Christian conflict, can be better understood in terms of close hate rather than a fear of the 'stranger'. Jacoby uses the Freudian notion of minor differences and demonstrates the manner in which some of these differences turn into genocidal rhetoric of violent exclusion. He shows how the genocidal propaganda in Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia, as well as the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and other cases of interreligious clashes, is based on prior group proximity. Furthermore, the sustainability of these conflicts is related to in-out group temporal closeness.71
The theoretical framing of the following study is within the context of the methodological approaches observed in current trends of genocide research. By utilizing intimacy and empathy as categories for case study analysis of group proximity, I aspire to revise the linear link drawn between Otherization and genocidal violence. The process of exclusion and de-familiarization of the enemy can be part of a more complex dynamic mechanism, in which closeness and
69 Mahmud Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda , Kampala: Fountain Publishers 2001. 70 J. Semelin ibid. . 71 Jacoby, Russell, 2011. Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence from Cain and Abel to the Present. New York: Free Press. 24
familiarity play a decisive role in establishing a genocidal discourse of violence. A great deal of the genocidal propaganda demonstrates explicit forms of exclusion that targets a minority and delegitimizes its right to exist. The inclusion exclusion dynamics paradigm argues that these explicit excluding features of genocidal propaganda are, in most cases, in tune with implicit including tendencies toward the same targeted minority. Furthermore, the violent discourse of exclusion is rooted in an ambivalent imaging of the targeted group, where the inclusion- exclusion dynamics of hate propaganda contribute to establishing additional 'convincing' and rhetorically persuasive conceptual frame for group violence.
Most occurrences of twentieth century genocidal violence have been traditionally considered internal, rather than external, affairs.72 Ethnic genocides such as those that occurred during the Holocaust in Europe and in the early 90s in Rwanda, were conducted under state authority and targeted a near minority.73 Furthermore, in both cases, these minorities had undergone a process of integration – many shared family connections and were clearly an essential part of the cultural, political and financial life of the state.74 Simon features this weird logic and draws a direct link between German emancipation and the outburst of violent anti-Semitic exclusion: “The fundamental thesis is that the greater the integration of the Jews into the culture of another nation, the greater the hostility they arouse. When the integration reaches its peak it might lead to complete removal of the Jews from that society or to their annihilation, as was clearly seen in Spain during the Inquisition and Germany during the Nazi era.”75
Therefore, by highlighting tendencies of closeness which were later embedded in the discourse of genocidal hate, one can better understand the fundamental transformation of proximity and closeness into violence. The development of group integration, such as occurred during the
72 Leo Kuper provided a typological analysis and defined internal genocide as one of two main forms of genocidal conduct. See: Leo Kuper, The Prevention of Genocide, New Haven: Yale Universty Press, 1985. 73 For the link between state authority and genocide, see: Irving L. Horowitz, "Genocide and the reconstruction of social theory" in American Review, Vol. 37, No. 1, 1984. 74 Mamdani devotes a great deal of his work to presenting the pre-genocidal intergroup relations and conditions. See Mamdani ibid. 75 Ernst A. Simon, ”How Was German Jewry”, in Perspectives on German-Jewish History in the 19th and 20th Century, Leo Baeck Institution: Jerusalem 1971, p. 22. 25
emancipation in Germany, was reframed by Nazi propaganda in order to amplify the image of an existential threat. Nazi discourse articulated a new conceptual anti-Semitic equation – the more entrenched German-Jewish relations became the more they endangered the German state and the German Volk. Simon focuses primarily on Nazi perceptions and the evolution of the Jewish question. However, his analytic orientation can be implemented in other cases of Nazi genocidal discourse, wherein proximity played a role in establishing an excluding rhetoric of genocidal rationale.
Context and contribution
In general, the idea of proximity can be seen as a growing modern trend to help elucidate genocidal as well as intergroup violence (Nandy). Some studies implement highly specific versions of proximity, but tend to avoid the kind of in-depth case study needed for proper research and analysis of intimate or empathic forms of violence (La Capara). Comprehensive studies, featuring discourse analysis of genocidal propaganda in Nazi Germany, yielded a conclusion in favor of the exclusion paradigm (Herf). My position is that the current state of research can benefit from a case-study analysis of close hatred that focuses on specific forms of proximity (intimacy and empathy) based on three different documented cases and from three points of view, which will be described in the next three paragraphs.
First of all, to counter current research, which tends to implement the idea of violent proximity in a rather general way, it is important to understand that not all violent proximities are alike. Two of the most prominent concepts of proximity illustrated in this research are intimacy and empathy. In both cases, the violence erupting thereof can be seen as part of a specific perception of proximity. Both explicit intimate aggression and implicit empathic violence operate differently, and each one displays a designated configuration of how the discourse of violent proximity will typically evolve.
Secondly, the current trend of exploring 'inclusion-exclusion dynamics' would benefit from being 'tested' at the field level. A number of studies have already demonstrated the link between proximity and violence in specific case studies. However, the research, though scant, can be further utilized in order to revise the traditional historiography dedicated to the exclusion
26
paradigm. Accordingly, this study will present three separate cases of violent proximity in Nazi Germany. Intimacy and empathy are introduced in order to revise the genocidal discourses demonstrated in the cases of Nazi anti-Semitism, euthanasia, and the persecution of German homosexuals. Most current research is inclined to circumvent the notions of proximity embedded in the excluding discourse, whereas the present study attempts to show the rationale behind the conceptual hybrid of intimate violence.
Thirdly, the field of genocidal propaganda and discourse is usually understood as predominately focused on exclusion, so that even research dealing with 'inclusion-exclusion dynamics' tends to assign genocidal propaganda to the excluding portion of the equation. However, tendencies of proximity can also be observed entrenched within harsh genocidal propaganda and personal self- justification. Two brief examples demonstrate how intimacy and empathy can help to analyze the Nazi propaganda of minority exclusion. First, despite their total (legal, geographical and social) separation from the Aryan German community during the mass murder, Jews were publicly depicted by Nazi propaganda as an enemy within, an intimate threat. Second, nurses assigned the duty of killing their own patients asserted the normative legitimacy of their actions by arguing that their actions were driven by a sensitive-empathic outlook. Tendencies of proximity, embedded in the heart of Nazi genocidal discourse, must be taken into account in order to establish a viable theory of genocidal exclusion mechanisms.
27
Chapter One
Goebbels' Intimate Anti-Semitism
Introduction
The writings of Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s official propaganda minister, display a link between Nazi anti- Semitism and the concept of intimacy. I will demonstrate this by reviewing the prevalent theories on how the rhetoric and motivation of this Nazi group of murderers influenced the manner in which the mass killings perpetrated were justified and explicated. These theories underscore the way in which propaganda is employed to distance the persecutors from their victims.
In the second section, I develop the concept of intimacy in the fields of psychology and sociology and use this information to assess the connection between intimacy and violence. The third section deals with how the concept of intimacy may explain discrepancies and paradoxes in the writing of Goebbels and is largely empirical in nature. I will also show that the concept of intimacy furthers our understanding of how Goebbels could simultaneously exhibit familiarity and remoteness, and/or affinity and alienation toward the Jews. By contrast to traditional theories that have consistently emphasized the theme of dehumanization as a guiding principle, I propose a conceptual dualism that comprises humanization alongside dehumanization, within a model of the intimate relationships between Nazis and Jews. Such dualism is compatible and conforms to the polarity found in Goebbels’ writing and speeches.
Background
Current Scholarship on Persecutors and the Rhetoric of Genocide The conventional academic interpretation of Nazi anti- Semitism stresses its ideology. Nazi doctrine posits a dichotomous typology of races. Manifest in both Nazi texts and actions is the claim that Aryans and Jews are entirely different, with the label “human” reserved for the former
28
while the later are judged as sub-human.76 Existing theories address language and the psychological backdrop to mass murder, and is exemplified by the Nazis maintaining that expropriation of a given social group’s humanity constitutes one of the preconditions for the commission of genocide.
The theory lays out a schematic and linear process. At first, rhetorical, legal labeling and distinction are set up. In the second stage, the persecuted group’s foreignness is established and magnified. The third step is the linguistic and political expropriation of the victim group’s humanity. The final step, of course, is methodical and systematic murder of the targeted group, justified by an absolute dichotomy between the human persecutor and the subhuman victim.
Explanations that underscore the cognitive justification of genocide invariably invoke “dehumanization,” a concept that serves to explain the transformation, albeit in different directions, that both groups, persecutors and victims alike, undergo. Dehumanization enabled the Nazi perpetrators to remain unmoved by the fate of the victims, since they were not human, their suffering was of no account. Dehumanization was no mere metaphor under the Nazi regime; it was a living reality—as historically noted, the Nazis turned the Jews in the ghettos and the camps into muselmanns, by depriving them of food, proper clothing and essential healthcare. The concept of “dehumanization” explains the dual processes of change—on the one hand, the cognitive transformation undergone by perpetrators, and on the other, the transformation in the lives of victims, and belies the propaganda as to the group truly “dehumanized”
The concept of dehumanization offered students of the Holocaust and of genocide a theoretical foundation for the radical circumstances of ideological mass exterminations that occurred during the twentieth century. It fit in well with the normative postwar values of western and liberal historiography, which underlined the dangers inherent in ideology in general, and the destructive force of anti-liberal perceptions in particular. It was also compatible with postwar liberal Western political concepts, because dehumanization focused on the wellbeing of the individual
76 This is not the only pair of contrasting traits attributed to the two races. Other such clusters in Nazi ideology include dirty-clean, dangerous-innocent, and universal-national. See J. Herf ibid 29
as an autonomous entity independent of the state.77 Western liberalism sought to rebuild Europe by transforming priorities so as to put the individual before the state. In the eyes of liberals, dehumanization marked the price and grotesqueness inherent in ignoring the autonomous and unique value of individuals and groups within the national collective.
Scholars of genocide have worked from a number of perspectives, which have together yielded a fuller understanding of this pattern of social behavior. The social-psychological explanation mentioned above does not contradict parallel explanations provided in other disciplines. The most prominent purveyor of an explanation derived from the field of political science is Zigmunt Bauman, who emphasizes the functional and bureaucratic aspects of the phenomenon.78 He demonstrates the independent existence of the bureaucratic machine, which constitutes a decisive factor in the occurrence of genocide.
Adorno and Horkheimer, on the other hand, focused on philosophical and historical analyses, arguing that modern Western culture, when combined with the Enlightenment, contributed to the emergence of some of the conditions that have facilitated genocide.79 From a sociological point of view, Mark Levene has examined the role of existing social structures in the emergence of genocide.80 The explanations derived from different disciplines form an array of applicable analytical tools that is useful when examining the political, cognitive and historical rationale that motivated and led to mass murder. I set forth my present arguments to explain genocide within the contours of this pluralistic perspective.
There is extensive research regarding Nazi propaganda addressing various aspects of formal Nazi discourse. Over the years several paradigmatic approaches were introduces highlighting
77 For a summary of the internationalist approaches to mass murder, see David Bankir, Hitler, HaShoah VehaHevra tanomranit:SrutputUruna‘ut , Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1995, p. 75. The scholar who makes the clearest connection between dehumanization and genocide is Daniel Goldhagen, titlom’ WillingExocutionom :Omninam Germans and the Holocaust, pp. 131-164. 78 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. The first and revolutionary book regarding Nazi bureaucracy was published in 1961 unraveled the systematic aspect of Nazi genocidal policies. See: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale: Yale University Press, 1961. 79 M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, Frankfurt: GmhB, 1969 [1947]. 80 Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: The Meaning of Genocide, New York: Tauris, 2005. 30
different aspects of propaganda. The methodological outlook of scholars yielded diverse accounts exhibiting descriptive, contextual, psychological, analytic and linguistic researches.81
Earlier researches focused on the systematic aspects of Nazi regime. Hilberg’s ground breaking work demonstrated the organized, structured and consistent aspect of Nazi policies of genocide. Jäkel illustrates the development of Hitler's Nazi ideology and anti-Semitic rhetoric. He shows the systematic and premeditated aspects of Nazi thinking. In his research he mentions paradigmatic tendencies that seen in early Nazi writing )Mein Kampf(: "…A new universalist- missionary element; its link up with the outline foreign policy; and finally and above all else, an enormous radicalization of the intended measures."82 Jäkel focuses on the consistency and logic of Nazi discourse. A more recent research by Jeffery Herf offers comprehensive analysis of Goebbels ministry of propaganda presenting the methods and extent of formal propaganda mechanisms.83 Bytwerk delivers a study demonstrating the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda strategies in establishing conceptual legitimization toward mass murder;84 Welch assesses the extent in which Nazi propaganda goals met its initial goals.85 Saul Friedländer explains the conceptual platform and logic of Nazi anti-Semitic mythical rhetoric.86 Neumann presents themes and inherent logic of Nazi language.87 Alon Confino presents a novel analysis of psychological tendencies embedded within Nazi hate discourse, linking genocidal rhetoric with
81 For a detailed and chronological account reviewing the historiography of Nazi propaganda from the early 50s up until 2006 see Herf’s bibliographical essay : J. Herf, , pp. 365-374. 82 Eberhard Jäkel, Hitler's Weltanschauung, (H. Arnold trans.), Wesleyan University Press: Connecticut, 1972, p. 53
83 Jeffery Herf also argues that he is the first to provide an in depth analysis of role anti-Semitic propaganda played under Nazi rule , Herf, p. 366. 84 Randall L. Bytwerk, “The Argument for Genocide in Nazi Propaganda”, in: Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 91 (1), pp. 37-62, 2005. 85 David Welch, “Nazi Propaganda and the Volksgemeinschaft: Constructing a People's Community” in: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 2, Understanding Nazi Germany (Apr., 2004), pp. 213-238
86 Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, New York: Harper Collins, 1997, pp. 73-113 87 Boaz Neumann, Nazi Weltanschauung - Raum, Körper, Sprache, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2010.
31
the history of emotions.88 A great deal of the analytic work tends to focus on the role dehumanization, Otherization and demonization played in targeting the minorities under Nazi rule.89 The same theme appears in academic research regarding other oppressed minorities in Germany such as the mentally ill90 and homosexuals.91 Indeed Nazi propaganda illustrates tendencies of exclusion used to justify mass violence however the same propaganda displays tendencies of closeness and perpetrator victim proximity; this aspect of Nazi rhetoric was generally overlooked or undermined by many holocaust scholars. The following work aspires to revise Nazi rhetoric through the conceptual prism of intimate violence wherein fundamental proximity and aggressive hate coincide.92
Goebbels in the Interpretative Structure of Processes of Dehumanization
Upon perusing Goebbels’ voluminous diaries, Holocaust scholars have found considerable support for the psychological-cognitive argument presented above. His varied entries
88 Alon Confino,“A World Without Jews: Interpreting the Holocaust”, in: German History Vol. 27(4), pp.531-559, (Oct.2009).
89 Ernst K., Dokumente zur 'Euthanasie'; Hilde Steppe, Ich war von jeher mit Leib und Seele gerne Pflegerin, Frankfurt: Mabuse, 1999. 90 Grau G ibid. , 91 The link between dehumanization and genocidal discourse can be seen in various articles: Evelin Lindner, "Gendercide and Humiliation in Honor and Human-rights Societies", in Gendercide and Genocide (A. Jones ed.), Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. Kressel provides some examples based on the discourse of Nazi propaganda: Neil J. Kressel, Mass Hate: The global rise of genocide and terror, NY: Plenum Press, 1996, pp. 156- 158. 92 Despite the different orientations of Nazi propaganda voiced by various party members the influence of Goebbels ministry of propaganda is most evident. Over time the formal voice of anti-Jewish discourse was coordinated by this official office. A great deal of academic case study materials derive from the comprehensive Nazi directives, newsreels, speeches, movies, pamphlets, posters, and articles provided by Goebbels’ professional staff. Therefore most of the examples hereby demonstrated derive from the formal rhetoric provided by Nazi elite and Goebbels’ ministry of propaganda. For example see: Ernest Bramsted, Goebbels and the National Socialist Propaganda 1925- 1945, London: Cresset Press, 1965; Christian T. Barth, Goebbels und die Juden, Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003. 32
demonstrate how Nazi rhetoric played on the foreignness of the Jews to place the Jewish collective beyond the bounds of humanity. Goebbels was among those who developed a discourse in which the Jews were not even an actual race but rather microbes. He regarded the term “Jew” to be a clinical rather than a human concept, and likewise, the essence of the Jewish entity could not be properly comprehended . Goebbels attacked the Jews in a blatantly toxic manner and justified their extermination, which he insisted was just retribution for their crimes.93 “The Jews are to blame for the war. One cannot argue that we treat them unjustly, they deserve the punishment,”94 he wrote. The diary offers extensive evidence for the claim of a causal relationship between the utter alienation of the Jews in Nazi propaganda and the conceptual, linguistic and moral legitimization of their extermination.
I do not intend to deny that Goebbels was a party to the process of dehumanization of the Jews, since his writings make eminently clear that he was. Rather, I maintain, that this does not exclude other interpretations; the approach that proclaims the creation of alienation as the sole theme would leave much material in the texts as vague and unexplained.
One example is a paradox found in Goebbels’ writings with regard to the manner in which he presents and constructs the image of the Jew. The sections that underscore foreignness constitute but one aspect of his writing. Unexpectedly, perhaps, Goebbels also points out similarities between himself, as a German, and the Jews. Admittedly, the likeness is implied rather than openly stated, and Goebbels himself would undoubtedly have rejected it if it was made explicitly. Yet, there are passages, both in his diaries and his public speeches, that allude to affinity and mutual understanding between Jews and Nazis. A conscientious reading of Goebbels’ works uncovers contradictory themes, namely, acts of alienation and expressions of kinship.95 The prevailing approach is not able to explain this strange phenomenon. Not only
93 Goebbels, “Die nationale Intelligenz und die geistige Führungauszurotten,” Das eherne Herz: Reden und aufsätze aus den Jahren 1942-43, 2nd ed., München: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944, p. 24. 94 Goebbels, “Die Juden sind schuld!” Das eherne Herz, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1943, p. 91 (85-91). 95 It is of interest to note here the semantic similarity in Hebrew between proximity or familiarity [qirva] and sacrifice [haqrava] (derived from victim [qorban]). Rene Girard addresses the links between sacrifice and the sacred and violence. See Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, translated by Patrick Gregory, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1977. 33
Goebbels, but the Nazi regime itself was also characterized by contradictions in its attitude toward the Jews. The Nazi relationship with the Jews ranged between familiarity and alienation and between proximity and remoteness, both in its linguistic and ideological manifestations and in real-time Nazi politics and actions.
The Innovative Nature of Nazi Conceptualization of the Jews When used to explain the attempt to annihilate the Jews, the concept of dehumanization contrasts with the outlook during the pre-Nazi period in Germany. In this initial period, a form of German- Jewish “symbiosis” prevailed, in contrast to the violent Nazi period in which the Jews were robbed of their humanity and their lives. Yet the same polarity regarding Jews, evident in the Nazi period, was no less present in the pronouncements of German antisemites prior to the Nazi period.96 Note that the use of the concept of dehumanization as an explanatory principle for the revolutionary transformation in German society is radical, inasmuch as it presumes that the rhetoric shaping the figure of the Jew in Germany’s public sphere underwent a drastic change.
But the polarized conceptual scheme that helped fashion the German image of the Jews prior to the Nazi period is not all that different from that which served the Goebbels propaganda machine. There is no direct correlation between the drastic change in the conduct implemented by the Nazis against the Jews and the more moderate changes that occurred in the processes of conceptualization. These conceptual changes in the imagery of the Jew were not invented out of thin air. They were drawn from a tradition of edgy relations between Jews and Germans that served as the foundation on which the terminology of Nazi anti- Semitism was built.
The reshaping of the image of the Jew that transpired at this point in German history preserved some of the conceptual structures of the relations that preceded the unique rhetoric of the Nazis and especially of Goebbels, the propaganda minister. The theory being proposed addresses a dimension of continuity of the comprehensive antisemitic images of Jews from the pre-Nazi to the Nazi period. The historical accumulation of contradictory Jewish images within German
96 Shulamit Volkov, BoinYirunVoTri’ar , Tel Aviv: The Open University, 2003. Volkov describes an antisemitic discourse that regards Jews as a group “that sits on the fence” and refuses to merge with society. This antisemitic assertion claims that the Jews are in principle able to merge, but refuse to do so. See below, note 14. 34
society constituted the foundation for the development of outlandish Nazi theories and rhetoric. The structure of the relationship did not change one iota. On the contrary, it was the foundation used to bolster Nazi anti-Semitism. The concept of intimacy, as suggested previously, will therefore serve as my key for deciphering Goebbels’ relationship towards the Jews, which will also serve to elucidate a great deal ofhis writings.
Intimacy: Conceptual Logical Tension and Historical Continuity The contention that Goebbels proclaimed an intimacy and familiarity with the Jews may seem immediately objectionable for two reasons. First, it ostensibly contradicts his general writings, which indicate that he absolutely excluded Jews from the human sphere. Second, it creates a tangible affinity between perpetrator and victim, which is likely to blur the distinction between victims and the murderers. In due course, I shall addressthese objections. Meanwhile, I maintain that the essence of the Jews’ rejection, alienation and exclusion should be comprehended using a fresh approach. At this juncture, however, I merely present the main threads of the argument and clarify why it constitutes a key to understanding the Nazis’ apparent ambiguity with regard to the Jews.
Close relations between Germans and Jews began to develop in the eighteenth century, in the wake of the Jews’ emancipation. Volkov asserts that during this period the Jews were integral partners in shaping the emerging world of the German bourgeoisie.97 At the same time, the Jews in the German states began to internalize German national and cultural values. Zimmermann has noted the singular manner in which the Jews adopted German culture.98 German-Jewish thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig and Hermann Cohen were aware of the unique nature of the relations between Jews and Germans, and employed a variety of formulas to describe the Jewish— German “symbiosis” and “synthesis.”99 Compared with other countries, such as France and Britain, the affinity that developed between the Jews and the majority culture was of an unusual level.
97 Volkov, BoinYirunVoTri’ar, esp. p. 17-18. 98 Moshe Zimmermann, Die Deutschen Juden 1914-1945, München: Oldenbourg, 1997. 99 Samuel Moyn, “German Jewry and the Question of Identity, Historiography and Theory,” in Leo Baeck Institute: Year Book , 1996, p. 302 (291-308). 35
There also existed certain strands of pre-Nazi German anti- Semitism that linked the destiny of Germany to that of the Jews. Shulamit Volkov points out that one of the most famous slogans in Germany at the time stated that: “The social question is the Jewish question.”100 Antisemitic rhetoric underscored the failure of the Jews to integrate fully into society, despite the surface conformity. Volkov quotes Bruno Bauer’s observation concerning the integrity of Jewish emancipation: “Jewish emancipation in its radical and successful form is possible only once they gain emancipation not as Jews … but only once they turn themselves into human beings who will no longer be separated … from their fellow human beings.”101
Numerous scholars have underscored the uniqueness and radicalism of the Nazi period. Some have pointed to new concepts that served the Nazis in their brutal conduct and preparation for the final solution.102 Several scholars of genocide have also traced the links between war, revolution and genocide. Their work emphasizes the singularity of the period during which genocide is conducted, and in their analysis it contrasts sharply with what has preceded that period.103 But Goebbels’ diaries and speeches offer evidence that the Nazi era did not witness such a transformation of the existing order. Rather, the new regime exploited a conceptual foundation of intimacy so as to enhance the Jews’ guilt and with it the deserving of severe punishment. It was precisely this Jewish-German intimacy that led to the radicalization of German propaganda. Familiarity was conceived and it posed an existential threat to German identity. Many of the concepts that appear in Goebbels’ writing attest to this perception of Jewish–German relations. Goebbels maintains that the Jew is the enemy at home, which is why only he is capable of causing the German nation serious harm. Only the Nazis are truly capable of understanding the
100 Volkov, BoinYirunVoTri’ar, p. 77. Volkov’s analysis offers a new understanding of the social meaning of anti- Semitism, viewing it as part of a social code rather than as a purely ideological phenomenon, Shulamit Volkov, “Anti- Semitism as a Cultural Code,” in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 23 (1978), p. 41. 101 Ibid, p. 37; Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question, Trans. Helen Lederer, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, 1958. 102 See Friedländer’s use of the concept “redemptive anti- Semitism” in Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, pp. 73-113. 103 Robert F. Melson, Revolution and Genocide, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 256.
36
Jews, Goebbels declares. One may likewise mark a parallel between Goebbels’ processes of self- perception and his construction of the image of the Jew.
This concept of intimacy helps explain the polar tension present in Nazi rhetoric, in particular in the writing of Goebbels. Intimacy encompasses the tension between the similar and the disparate, and between familiarity and remoteness. It is not a monolithic or unambiguous term, since the circumstances that predispose toward intimacy come in a variety of forms. There is essentially no contradiction whatsoever between extreme violence and an intimate relationship. On the contrary, the concept of intimacy may explain why the condemnation of the Jews was so radical, obsessive, and irrational. On both the individual and group level, pathological patterns of destructive behavior may be found within an intimate relationship. The concept of intimacy sustains greater dynamism and complexity than the traditional terms that point to linear processes and one-dimensional rhetoric.
On Intimacy
Introduction The field of emotions, a relatively new areaof study, has served as a functional research methodology on its own right and has attracted growing interest in recent years from various disciplines. It integrates psychological and psychoanalytical approaches to historical events, thus contributing to a distinctive and more extensive comprehension of historical events. The emotional approach challenges existing analytical categories and induces a reassessment of social forces.104
Mosse offered an extensive study demonstrating the relationship between sexuality and nationalism. He highlights the role sexual politics played in Germany and in Nazi Germany.105 Alon Confino has shown how proximity and politics of emotions play out in Holocaust study. He
104 For a contemporary survey of the contribution of the history of emotions, see Ute , Roper Saxer, and Alon Confino, “Forum on History of Emotions,” German History, vol. 28/1, 2010: 67-80. 105 George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, New York: Howard Fertig, 1985
37
notes that Holocaust historiography tends to reaffirm its fundamental assumptions by means of new historical material, which leads to incongruence between the proliferation of historical material and the manner of its conceptualization. For a long period of time, the ideological-racist dimension has dominated the study of Nazism. Confino suggests that its ideology operated within a broader conceptual sphere that can best be understood by employing additional concepts, some of which he borrows from the conceptual toolbox of emotions. Other concepts, he argues, sporadically served as a foundation for Nazi ideology.106 Consistent with Confino, the present study does not claim that ideology played a minor role. Yet, centrality is not the same as exclusivity. Inter-group intimacy between Jews and Germans predated the Nazis’ rise to power, and in a certain sense persisted even as the genocide proceeded. The Nazis’ radical racist ideology did not exist in isolation. It was significantly motivated and rationalized by close relations between Jews and Germans and the perception of these relations.
Anti- Semitism, in the context of intimacy, was not a phenomenon new to the Third Reich. For centuries Jews and Germans have lived together in the German-speaking lands and the relations between these two groups could, in many aspects, be characterized as intimate. These intimate relations served as a springboard for Nazi propaganda, which radically reconceived Jewish– German familiarity.
I will begin by reviewing the principal theories that are of relevance to our topic which address the concepts of intimacy and intimate violence . I will then proceed from the psychological to the sociological arena - demonstrating the significance and implications of the concept of intimacy; both within groups and in inter-group relations. In the final section, which addresses Goebbels’ writings themselves, I will examine the extent to which the various connotations of the concept of intimacy in different spheres contribute to the understanding of the paradoxes and motivations of Nazi rhetoric, as manifested in Goebbels’ extensive written output.
106 Alon Confino, “A World Without Jews: Interpreting the Holocaust,” German History 27/4, October 2009: 531- 559. 38
Theories of Intimacy and Intimate Violence Studies of intimacy have led scholars to conceptualize it as a polar concept that inherently contains numerous contradictions. Its semantic field encompasses a cluster of different patterns of behavior. Despite the conceptual and emotional paradoxes that intimacy is liable tospawn , one recurrent characteristic appears in many of the definitions of the term found in the literature. I am referring to the constant tension generated by familiarity and distance and similarity and difference. Intimacy is not a specific, well-defined and delineated condition but rather is represented by a dynamic reciprocal relationship with both parties engaged in an ongoing process of individual and inter-personal formation. In fact, the conceptual opposite of intimacy is not remoteness, but the lack of a significant relationship, or even apathy. Similar to its definition, intimacy is observed as a flexible and ambivalent state.
Current theories of intimacy display a common denominator, which is shared by many of the definitions of this concept and is manifested in a comparable structural description of the relationship between intimate partners. An intimate relationship implies familiarity, affinity and relevance. But these are not absolute. There is a definitive familiarity and similarity between the parties, which, when combined, create a shared sphere of emotional experience; however, they are relative rather than absolute.
Inevitably, an intimate relationship will also has a component of foreignness and remoteness.107 In fact, an intimate situation cannot endure without a certain amount of foreignness. It is this distance that the other person or group remains as an “other” who does not merge into the identity of the intimate partner. The dimension of foreignness or strangeness preserves the partial apartness of the intimate parties, thereby enabling them to continue to encounter one another as distinct entities and, each time, reaffirm their similarity. Lacan clearly evokes this paradox of
107 On this intimate tension that ranges from a merging of identities to the loss of autonomy, see George Levinger, “The Embrace of Lives: Changing and Unchanging,” in George Levinger and Harold L. Raush )eds.(, Close Relationships: Perspectives on the Meaning of Intimacy , Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977. 39
foreignness and affinity: “The thing that is foreign to me even though it is my heart of hearts.…”108
Intimacy may then be understood as a constant questioning of oneself by means of the intimate partner. It reflects the self by establishing and displaying points of resemblance between the intimate partners. Yet it is at the same time troubling, because the resemblance is incomplete. The intimate partner is always in some aspects alien. This familiar dissimilarity invites the individuals to reexamine their self-identity. The distress that such an examination may generate can, on occasion, translate into a pattern of intimate violence. The type of intimacy of which Lacan and, even more so, Miller refer to is accordingly closely associated with issues related to the “formation of self-identity” and the fundamental rifts that exist within the individual or group.109
One of the earliest and still most prevalent perceptions of the concept of intimacy stems from its original meaning of intimus, or “innermost.” This implication of the concept, as exemplified by Zeldin, stresses the gap between inner and outer.110 While the significance of the difference between inner and outer remains unclear, this concept emphasizes the contrast between polarities and insists that intimacy is “the innermost.” This contrast renders the intimate sphere less immediate and less transparent, and, perhaps, even lends an aura ofmystery . Yet, it is perceived as a most significant space that touches the self’s innermost core.
In her book , Jamieson characterizes intimacy in a similar fashion as Zeldin, calling it: “a degree of sympathy or emotional understanding which involves insight into an inner self.”111 She clarifies her observation by stipulating that the internality of the partner is associated with “singular knowledge” of the other. It offers a “true understanding” and an “inner understanding” of the intimate partner. This perception of intimacy goes beyond marking a common (innermost)
108 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960, ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. by Dennis Porter, New York: Norton, 1992, p. 71. 109 Jacques-Alain Miller, “Extimite,” in Mark Bracher )ed.(, Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject Structure and Society, New York University Press, 1994, p. 76. 110 Theodor Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity, London: Mandarin, 1995, p. 324. 111 L. Jamieson, , p. 8. 40
proximity between the intimate parties. It determines the content of the intimate occurrence, which is manifested in singular knowledge and an inner understanding of the partner.
The most common characterization of an intimate relationship spotlights the marking and blurring of boundaries. Intimacy is a condition that invites both constant confrontation and an examination of the relationship itself and of one’s own self-image, which helps elucidate why the process of boundary marking is inherent to the intimatestate of affairs . One of the indices that emerge from some of the definitions to be found in the literature is the extent to which third parties are excluded. Engendering exclusivity is one of the hallmarks of the concept of intimacy.112
Intimacy stakes out a common dynamic sphere that frequently excludes third parties and enhances the bond and the partnership between those who share it. This act of exclusion comprises two related features: (1) amplification of the foreignness of others who are not party to the intimate relationship, and (2) consolidation and intensification of inner resemblance. This forces the intimate parties to address the boundaries of their self- and shared identities frequently, on both a conscious and sub- conscious level. Periodic engagement with the periphery that surrounds one’s self-identity is compatible with the dynamism as well as the disturbing and vacillating nature of intimacy.
Surprizingly, violence is not fundamentally anomalous to intimate relationships. On the contrary, it is not only prevalent but can be instigated by intimacy. Intimacy generates a bewilderment about one’s self identity. At the same time there exists intense conceptual and emotional tensions that are subject to personal interpretation by the intimate partners. The difference between fruitful and constructive intimacy and its violent variant, lies in the way the parties process and act on both the familiarity and remoteness of the innermost being of their partner. Intimacy can encompasses bonds of inclusion and empowerment as well as allow the developing bonds to lead to brutal violence and even murder. The disturbing and protean nature of intimacy can be perceived as threatening a loss of self-identity. Ofra Maysless notes that the
112 This concept is underscored by Giddens in his discussion of the concept of “romantic love.” See Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, Great Britain: Polity Press, 1992, pp. 57-58. 41
anger and rage of intimate violence serve to maintain the status quo in an aggressive form.113 The violence is the immediate and direct response to the challenge presented by intimacy, since there is a rejection of the uncertainty and there is also identity games that are integral to an intimate partnership.
A Sociopolitical Construct of Intimacy Before defining intimacy in the social sphere, it is necessary to differentiate between two possible applications of the term. The first refers to the condition of intimacy that prevails in the inner discourse of a group and to its role within this discourse and to the rhetorical mechanisms of ideology. The second refers to inter-group intimacy, namely the marking of two groups that experience a special type of intimate bonding and thereby enjoy a close inner relationship.
Intimacy has considerable rhetorical power in the field of socio-linguistics because it touches on the concepts of existential identity and merges the individual within a group identity. This intimacy generates an ambivalent condition, one in which the individual is simultaneously part of his nation or group, yet still stands apart from it. Unlike interpersonal intimacy, this ambivalence is not a direct consequence of relations of familiarity and alienation, but rather the product of an imagined bond between the individual and the nation, developed from an abstract concept of intimacy. The role played by intimacy in the interpersonal realm may thus meet a social need by facilitating the mobilization of the masses. Hertzfeld goes further by asserting that the ambivalence of the term affords social immunity from internal criticism and change.114 As with the concept of personal intimacy, its socio-linguistic counterpart also constitutes a polarity of resemblance and foreignness and of affinity and remoteness. The bond between individual and nation is purported to be something intimate: an inner link, essential, tangible and reciprocal that constantly excludes third parties. Chauvinistic nationalism and hatred of minorities are simply violent manifestations of the pattern of exclusion promoted by the intimate language of nationalism.
113 O. Maysless, pp. 21-28. 114 Michael Hertzfeld, Cultural Intimacy, Social Poetics in the Nation State, London: Routledge, 1997. 42
These categories of inter-group intimacy as well as intimate inter-group violence have yet to be fully studied. However, by employing the approaches of Douglas and Simmel it may be possible to construct a workable model. Simmel defined the sociological phenomenon of the stranger as a situation in which the most familiar subject enters into a relationship marked by alienation.115 Douglas, in turn, defined impurity as a borderline state existing on the fringes of a group’s collective identity. In other words, the impure person or object lies at a point where it is possible to be included within the group’s self-definition. His designation of impure serves to clearly mark off the boundaries of the collective self.116 Similarly, when violence pervades the intimate relations between two groups, it serves to delineate the contours of the group’s self-identity.
The most proximate adversary thereby wields the most clout and the most danger, because it is the enemy within, an enemy familiar with the group and on intimate terms with it. By understanding the language and defining codes of the society it inhabits, this enemy can be an agent of change that threatens the existing order. The combination of immediacy and distance and of resemblance and foreignness between two groups can induce violence, since the ongoing reciprocal influence continually challenges the group’s identity and values. The sociological aspect of Douglas’s and Simmel’s concepts amplifies the potential for violence, because of the fact that it is articulated in an ideology that justifies group violence. Within an interpersonal relationship, violence stems from defense mechanisms and emotional history, whereas inter- group intimate violence is stabilized by virtue of being rooted in ideology and justified by means of a rational rhetoric. While intimate violence between two people may be rationalized, a national state can offer a linguistic and institutional mechanism for such justification.
Goebbels’ Intimacy with the Jews
Introduction
Ubiquitous in Goebbels’ writings are images of the Jews as foreigners. Yet, alongside these characterizations, the textual details also evince considerable familiarity between Jew and
115 G. Simmel,, pp. 402-408. 116 M. Douglas, pp. 29-41. 43
German. These passages create a common, delineated, and intimate sphere shared both by perpetrator and victim.
Goebbels portrays the Jew as the “enemy within,” the ultimate stranger; yet, at the same time he is cloaked among the German people. In addition to, depicting the spatial proximity between Jews and Germans, Goebbels also asserts a capacity for mutual “inner understanding.” Jews and Germans, he maintains, have extensive knowledge and full understanding of each other’s inner lives. It is by virtue of their familiarity with the Germans that the Jews occupy positions of influence and thus pose such a drastic danger. The radicalization of Goebbels’ anti- Semitism therefore stems from the perception of the Jew as a proximate and inner threat.
Exclusivity is a major component of an intimate relationship and is a fundamental element of Goebbels’ characterization of the relationship between the Germans and the Jews. The two peoples, in his view, are coupled together in a relationship that excludes other groups. The Germans’ confrontation with their Jewish enemy is thus unique in Nazi ideology.
Another dimension of an intimate relationship is that both parties share significant components of their identities. Goebbels characterizes the Jewish race as part of a natural order , not related to a social or political construct, which means that the war between the races is an inevitable consequence of biology. This bears a remarkable resemblance to the manner in which Goebbels and other Nazi ideologues conceptualize the Aryan race and correspondingly envision the Jewish race as the converse of the Aryan. He employs similar structural concepts in defining the two races, concepts that are exclusive to Jews and Aryans and are not applied to other races, peoples, or nations.
The intimacy portrayed in Goebbels’ discourse differs from the conventional concept—its components are opposite the aspects of warmth and inclusion that normally characterize intimate relations. Rather, the intimacy outlined by Goebbels resembles the psychological paradigm of intimate violence in which close familiarity elicits anxiety, hatred, aversion, and rage. The rhetorical intimacy displayed in Goebbels’ writing is a form of intimacy which provides the rationale for the rationalization and radicalization of Nazi anti- Semitism.
44
The Spatial Location of the Jew: The Enemy Within The measure of intimacy is not simply an understanding of the intimate party from within, but also spatial and emotional proximity. The intimate situation itself is one that invariably excludes third parties and intensifies the relationship between the two primary partners. When Goebbels and the Nazis cast the Jews as the enemy within, their rejection clearly stemmed from a close familiarity, rather than an immense remoteness. Goebbels notes that “there are Jews who cannot be identified according to external attributes—those are the most dangerous.”117 This explains Goebbels’ demand that Berlin’s Jews wear a yellow Star of David badge - to make this difference obvious. The Jews, he proclaimed, had become so integrated and assimilated into German society that Nazi mediation was required to mark their singular status. With Jews wearing the yellow patch, they were shown to be ubiquitous in society. After that demonstration, Goebbels’ aspired to remove Jews from the city and deport them to the East.
Goebbels attaches supreme importance to the expulsion of Berlin’s Jews, despite local opposition and bureaucratic obstacles, since these Berlin Jews ,more than any othersymbolized the nature of the Jewish enemy as an inner enemy. He reiterates: “The Jews are the enemy among us … the enemy is within us.”118 Throughout history, he claims, the Jews had sought to take over Germany from within. It was the Nazis who had consistently altered the balance. Even when the Jewish threat came from outside, it was still homegrown. “Since they could no longer conquer Germany from within,” Goebbels writes, “they began to try to conquer it from without.”119
Goebbels regarded the Jews as a form of familiar enemy, capable of assimilating from within and thereby delude their hosts as to the danger that they posed. The Jews, he claims, deceived the English and the Bolsheviks with their capability for social assimilation; “Jewry has so intellectually and politically penetrated the Anglo-Saxon states that they no longer even see or want to recognize the danger”. In the Soviet Union they camouflage themselves as
117 Goebbels, “Die Juden sind Schuld!” p. 86. 118 Ibid., p. 87. 119 Goebbels, “Die Urheber des Unglücks der Welt,” Das Reich, January 21, 1945, pp. 1-3. 45
Bolsheviks,”.120 In Germany, too, the Jew is the enemy from within: “The Jews are enemy agents among us.”121
In Simmel’s account, a group’s fathomless fear of the stranger stems from the very fact that the stranger is actively engaged in general society. The stranger is not only familiar but is located within, and is therefore well-placed to exert considerable influence. The stranger ostensibly appears to belong to society, but he comes and goes, bereft of commitment. His affinity is an illusion because he will always remain separate. Goebbels maintained that the Jews belonged to German society from within, but were at the same time estranged from society. Furthermore, in Goebbels view, their inner essence contradicts Germanism. According to Simmel, the sense of peril that generates violence is a direct result of affinity and assimilation. Goebbels’ rhetoric thus labels the Jews as dangerous, precisely because they have succeeded in infiltrating deep into German society.
The Inner Jew and Inner Understanding Goebbels sees the Jews as a secret, clandestine and invisible enemy. His attitude toward the Jews involves a clear distinction between the inner and the outer,. He stresses that the Jews are an internal, rather than external threat. But he also maintains that the Jew cannot be distinguished from the German by his external appearance or behavior. Goebbels’ Jew is an enemy that resides within the homefront, elusive and invisible.
Jeffery Herf asserts that the distinction between inner and outer was critical to Nazi ideology. The image of the invisible Jew, he writes, served Goebbels in constructing a theory that maintained that Jews surreptitiously controlled world politics. The tenet of Nazi ideology to which Herf refers, distinguished between the Jews’ overt political tendencies and their secret inner essence.122 The Emancipation, Goebbels asserts, was a success—Jews successfully integrated into gentile society. On the basis of his theory of German and Jewish identity, Goebbels claims that he possesses an inner understanding of the Jewish spirit and the core of
120 Cited in J. Herf, p. 193. 121 Goebbels, “Die Juden sind Schuld!” p. 91. 122J. Herfp.266. 46
Jewish motivation.123 He also claims that only Nazis have this capacity for understanding the inner nature of the Jew. Goebbels boasts that: “It requires sharp intelligence and sound instincts to see behind the Jewish facade.”124 He thus demarcates a clear border,l setting apart those who possess this singular understanding—Nazis and Jews—from those who do not. There is no semblance of remoteness in Goebbels’ relationship with the Jews. It is rather based on a structural affinity redolent with hate: “We know that they hate us from the bottom of their hearts. We enjoy the depth of their hatred.”125
Goebbels feels obliged to explain and justify the Jewish threat and why it is so dangerous. At the same time, he blames the Jews for Germany’s sorry state prior to the Nazis’ accession to power. One of the rhetorical axioms he uses to meet this dual challenge can be seen in this passage: “There must be some anonymous force behind all this … this is the same force that confronted us as National-Socialists when we fought in Weimar … the Jews are to blame.”126 The Jews are an anonymous power, ostensibly without a distinct identity.
On the surface, it looks as if the Jews are powerless. But, for Goebbels, this is a delusion. Jewish power is veiled. Only through careful scrutiny can it be detected and exposed. Its main danger lay in its being invisible. According to Goebbels’ thinking, there is no contradiction. Further, Goebbels equates the danger with the Jewish capacity for disguise as a subtle and exclusive danger to the German public.
A key concept in Goebbels’ antisemitic discourse grows out of his perception of the Jewish art of mimicry. He claims to be able to expose the Jew and to remove his mask, adding that the unmasking angers Jews and neutralizes their mechanism for hypocrisy. Goebbels demonstrates how uneasy Jews were with his ability to penetrate their outward guise and delve into their
123 Conceptualization of the inner essence was a rhetorical model that served the Nazis not only with regard to the Jews, but also in relation to their own hidden identity. See Boaz Neumann, Roi’attaOlartaNat it:Momrav,nup, Safa, Haifa University Press, 2002, p. 258. 124 Goebbels, “Der Krieg und die Juden,” Der steile Aufstieg, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944, pp. 268- 269. 125 Ibid., p. 269. 126 Goebbels, “Wer will den Krieg? ” Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Deutchland: G.M.B.H. Verlag, 1941), p. 94. 47
innermost Jewish essence. He believes his intimate form of anti- Semitism is corroboratedby the anger expressed when he blatantly exposes their cunning and their deepest secrets. In other words, the Nazis’ claim that they had the capacity to expose the inner soul of the Jews is an expression of intimacy. The argument proceeds in two steps: (1) Goebbels hypothesizes that the Jew has an inner and an outer side, a mask and a face, and (2) it is only the Nazis who are able to expose the Jew’s actual inner nature.
Goebbels employs a parallel argument when he addresses how the Jews’ dangerous invisibility enables them to bring together the Bolshevik East and the Anglo-Saxon West in a war against Germany.
Jews have penetrated the intellectual and political areas of Anglo-Saxon society in the most profound manner, to such an extent that one cannot discern the danger. In the Soviet Union the Jews disguise themselves as Bolsheviks, and in the Anglo-Saxon world they look like plutocrats and capitalists. We are familiar with the Jews’ characteristic methods of mimicry. For many years they have deluded their complacent hosts, who were thus paralyzed in the face of the existential threat to them … our inner understanding with regard to this problem has long since led us to comprehend the nature of the link between the internationalism of the plutocrats and Bolshevik internationalism, none of this was paradoxical or absurd. There is a significant and profound connection between these matters … West European Jewry shakes hands with that of the ghettoes in the East. The whole of Europe is therefore in danger.127
Goebbels began by noting the hypocrisy of the Jews—outwardly, they integrate into society, while at the same time secretly plot to undermine society from within. The danger remains unseen because the enemy, whose assimilation is but a ruse, is invisible. LaCapra has noted how central the image of false assimilation is to Nazi ideology. He asserts that one of Nazi anti-
127 J. Goebbels, “‘Nun, Volk steh auf, und Sturm brich los!’ Rede im Berliner Sportpalast,” Der steile Aufstieg, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944, p. 177. 48
Semitism’s major challenges is the rhetorical marking of Jewish differentiation, since the Jews had integrated almost completely into German society. According to LaCapra, “The big problem, from the Nazi point of view, was that of the Jew who could pass, and who in that sense was a kind of invisible presence that was presumably totally different but whose difference could not be perceived.”.128
The danger posed by concealment resembles that which Douglas associates with impurity. Since the impure is not evidently different, its resemblance to what is characterized as pure is troubling. The impure is marked during the process of excluding the similar and is designed to preserve group identity and solidarity. The rhetoric that portrays the Jew as a hidden enemy who mimics German society marks him as impure and as dangerous, especially due to the lack of a perceptible distinguishing difference. The integrated Jews are presented in a polarized fashion that matches the polarity of Douglas’ model. The Jew is at once similar and impure, dangerous even though he belongs, and is surreptitiously omnipresent. It is thus imperative to mark him clearly and definitively.
Goebbels further refers to “our inner understanding,” which, he says, led him to understand the Jew behind the mask. By specifying that it is the Germans’ inner understanding that enables them to understand the Jews from within, Goebbels creates a commonality between Jews and Nazis that no stranger could comprehend. It means that only the Nazis can fully understand the Jews. Goebbels warns that the Jewish issue was by no means straightforward and should be addressed with great caution. It requires not superficial outward understanding, but rather an inner and sensitive appraisal. “I have completed my article on the Jews,” he writes in his diary. “While public opinion is indeed focused on the Jewish question, the problem is that people too often approach this question from an incorrect perspective, even those in our camp.”129 The Jewish problem is something that one has to study and probe as part of a dynamic epistemological process. In “Mimicry,” Goebbels notes that: “in order to understand what is
128 D. LaCapra, p. 170. 129 Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, München: Saur, 2004, April 28, 1943. 49
happening we must be experienced and long-standing students of the Jews.”130 In other words, the Jews are to be the object of constant, careful research.
This understanding of Goebbels requires him to peer within, to learn and to to become fully acquainted with the object of his study. He is proud of his ability to discern the inner recesses of the Jewish mind. He claims to know the working of the Jewish heart, gaining an understanding that is not merely profound, but also prophetic—he purports to know how Jews think and what motivates them. “In the depths of his soul [the Jew] recognizes that the war he has begun, and which he expects to lead him to world domination, has instead become a struggle for racial survival,” Goebbels writes in his essay “The War and the Jews.”131
Jamieson describes intimacy as a type of inner understanding. Yet, when used with regard to intimate relationships, the term “inner understanding” appears only in an interpersonal and not a sociological context. Transferring the concept to the group level is fraught with methodological pitfalls, since it is unclear how one can understand and describe a group from within or how one can become familiar with its character and nature. Yet, this is precisely what Goebbels claims to do—he takes this concept from the sphere of interpersonal relations and applies it to his Jewish enemy. It follows that Goebbels relationship to the Jews follows a set of concepts derived from his own personal and intimate realm.
Goebbels explicitly thinks about and analyzes the concept of intimacy in his diaries, in particular, in the context of his relationship with Hitler. For example, he writes: “Afterwards, we conducted a long and intimate exchange of ideas. The Fürhrer was extremely candid and addressed all the issues directly. He sees matters clearly and without prettifying them.”132 Intimacy, for Goebbels, is portrayed as the deep understanding that characterizes a close friendship. In such a relationship, each party can divine the other’s intentions intuitively, without the other needing to speak. In other words, he takes the model of non-verbal understanding that he discerns in his intimate personal relations and applies it the Jews as a group.
130 Goebbels, “Mimikry,” Das eherne Herz, p. 526. 131 Goebbels, “Der Krieg und die Juden,” p. 270. 132 Goebbels, Tagebuecher, Dec. 12, 1942. 50
The sociological function of this rhetoric of inner understanding is to support the supposed discrepancy between the overt and the covert Jew, and to facilitate the persecution of the Jews because of the guilt of the inner Jew. The concept of inner understanding, enables Goebbels to make his claim that the inner Jew exists and that the Nazis alone can discern it. Herf has remarked on the link between conspiracy theories and Nazi antisemitic violence, citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an example of how conspiracy rhetoric helped generate violence. Herf’s model is a multi-stepstarting with a conspiracy theory that eventually leads to violence.133 I contend that the process comprises three successive, linked stages. First, the concept of inner understanding contributes to the creation of conspiracy rhetoric, which in turn contributes to the emergence of violence. Nazi violence was thus ultimately generated by the Nazi claim to understand the demonic and secretive Jewish essence from within.
Domination and Danger: Demarcating the Social Boundary These illustrations show that Goebbels uses a common terminology, based on affinity, to construct images of Germans and Jews. One of the major recurring themes in his diaries and speeches is the Jewish threat, namely the danger of Jewish domination.He proclaims it is the most serious and dangerous menace facing Germany. He exploits the most extreme rhetoric to depict the world domination sought by Jews and asserts that only the Nazi Party has prevented them from achieving their goals and perpetrating their evil.
The term “danger” seems to be incompatible with an intimate relationship and all the more so the term “domination”. They come from the outside, enforcing drastic changes with no attempt at an inner understanding or consideration of the individual. An earthquake, for example, is dangerous since it harms people indiscriminately and inconsiderately. A dictator exemplifies domination, since his will is law. He decrees without consulting, sometimes without knowledge of his subject’s wishes, and displays no sensitivity to their feelings.
A careful reading of Goebbels writings, reveals that the term “domination” is used in an altogether different way.
133 J. Herf,p. 266. 51
Goebbels links danger to impurity, in much the same way as Mary Douglas,. who expresses her view, that the impure and the dangerous are not alien to each other. On the contrary, the most dangerous people are those located on the margin of one’s self-identity. Because of their marginal status, they endanger prevailing social definitions. The most dangerous, in Douglas’ theory, is that threat which is closest and most similar, thus threatening the indistinct boundaries that exist within and around every existing society.
The impure is the familiar figure that has deviated from the sphere in which he resides. This deviation does not turn him into something external or into a stranger—and precisely for this reason he is all the more dangerous. Without a demarcation, the deviation may become the norm and undermine the existing order. The violent marking of the familiar deviant as impure and his subsequent expulsion turn him into something external. Marking him as dangerous and impure compensates for the lack of tangible differences and obvious dissimilarity. For Goebbels, the main danger posed by the Jew is that he is a proximate enemy. Because he is invisible, extreme measures are required to expose and eliminate him.
Goebbels uses the vocabulary of scouring and disinfection when he speaks of what needs to be done to the Jews. They cannot be dealt with through conventional violence. The radical concepts he employs indicate his need for the violent demarcation of this home-grown nemesis.
Goebbels is also profoundly contemptuous of Germany’s other enemies. He regards the Soviets, British, and Americans as marionettes manipulated by the Jews, but does not believe that they, in and of themselves, present a real danger to Germany. For example, he declares that “Bolshevism will collapse like a house of cards.”134 The only real danger to Germany, in his view, is the Jew, the enemy within. In his article “Communism with the Mask Off,” Goebbels focuses on the devastation communism wreaks upon humanity. The root of this global menace, however, is the Jewish threat. In discussing Communism in Germany, Goebbels underscores the role of the Jews, who constitute a real danger and in particular a danger from within. As early as 1935, at the end of a lengthy survey of Jewish communists in Germany, he writes: “We are
134 Guido Knopp, Hitler's Henchmen, Newton Abbot: Sutton Publications, 2005, p. 46. 52
witnesses to the fact that the objective of all these activities was to topple the German Reich.… ”135 In other words, only the Jews are capable of harming the Reich, and are thus the real root of the Bolshevik threat. This reinforces the claim that only the Jewish enemy is genuinely dangerous.
Goebbels frequently expresses his conviction that the Jews are directing the policy of the Allies. “It is the Jews who dictate the Bolsheviks’ propaganda campaign,”136 he writes. And Britain “to a great extent [lies] in the hands of the Jews.”137 In America, Goebbels contends, there “exists a Jewish government parallel to the official administration of the USA,”138 more powerful than the official regime. The Jews constitute a genuine danger since it is they who control and manipulate the state and its leaders: “This proves that the Jews in London, as in Washington, play a decisive role in shaping policy,” he declares.139 Goebbels is even mor fanatical regarding Russia, contending that Stalin has “Jewish masters.”140 Russia after all, is “not a bourgeois state but rather a Jewish proletarian state.”141 According to Goebbels, the social core of the Russian state is fashioned in the image of the Jew.
Goebbels confesses his admiration for the quality of Jewish propaganda. For example, on the day of the start of Operation Barbarossa, and the concomittant mass and systematic extermination of European Jewry, he writes in his diary:
I am reading a full account of the propaganda broadcast by the Bolshevik- Russian radio. This will present us with a number of tricky questions, since this is not stupid propaganda like British propaganda. This propaganda was probably written by Jews.142
135 Goebbels, Communism without the Mask, a speech delivered in 1935, Berlin: Muller and Sohn K.G, p. 18. 136 Ibid. 137 “Themen der Zeit: Juden beherrschen England,” directive 3004, August 16, 1940, p. 6. 138 “Das Hauptthema: Juden in den USA!” Zeitschriftten- Dienst 109, May 30, 1941: 4. 139 Goebbels, Tagebücher, March 16, 1943. 140 Goebbels, Tagebücher, June 5, 1941. 141 Goebbels, Tagebücher, March 4, 1943. 142 Goebbels, Tagebücher, June 21, 1941. 53
Jewish propaganda is difficult to counter because it touches on issues important and pertinent to the Nazis’ self-definition. The Jews are contaminating and dangerous in that they constitute a real and genuine threat to the existing order. Unlike the other dangers the Reich faces, which Goebbels conveniently dismisses, “The Jewish race is the most dangerous of the races that exist on this earth.”143 He fears the Jews because “If you have mercy on them, you invariably become their victim.”144 The tropes of danger and filth that Goebbels employs lead him to conclude that “one cannot speak of humanitarian treatment of the Jews … one must vanquish the Jews.”145 Goebbels invokes terms such as “cleansing,” “disinfection,” “disinfestations,” and “destruction” regularly in his writing and speeches, in particular with regard to the Jews.146 In keeping with Mary Douglas’s theory, the process whereby the Jew is to be denounced and by which Germany purified of Jewish defilement is wound up in the immanence of the Jews in German society. Goebbels’ propaganda stresses the extent to which the Jews have penetrated German society. His point of departure is an assumption of a previous affinity between the Jews and the Germans.
The Monogamous Exclusivity of the Jewish Threat Goebbels appreciates the Jewish talent for propaganda, and admits that the Jews have sharp eyes: “The Jews at the New York stock exchange are well able to differentiate between truth and propaganda regarding the American war effort.”147 In other words, he admires the Jews’ ability to discriminate, which resembles his own. The Jew, he maintains, is in command of substance, able to distinguish between truth and propaganda. “We must protect ourselves from the sophisticated treachery of the international enemy,” he declares.148 Goebbels frequently refers to the Jews’ sophistication, which constitute a clear and present danger precisely because it is covert. He recounts Jewish successes in various contexts, and in particular their influence over
143 Goebbels, Tagebücher, Feb. 18, 1942. 144 Goebbels, Tagebücher, Nov. 2, 1941. 145 Goebbels, Tagebücher, May 8, 1943. 146 For an image of lice and disinfestation in Goebbels, see Die Tagebücher, Nov. 2, 1941. Hygienic terms of disinfection are also cited in R. E. Hertzstein, The War that Hitler Won, N.Y.: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1978, p. 66. The terms of destruction appear in the diaries, for example: Goebbels, Die Tagebücher, May 13, 1943. 147 Goebbels, Die Tagebücher, May 1, 1942. 148 Goebbels, “Der Krieg und die Juden,” p. 270. 54
the Allies: “Turbulent Jewish party leaders and clever Jewish capitalists managed the most shameless coup one can imagine.”149
While the Jewish danger is global, it is first and foremost a deep-rooted German problem, and for this reason has be confronted exclusively by the Nazi party. “Prior to National-Socialism, Germany was subject to severe danger of this kind,” he maintains.150 It is the Nazis who discern the singular threat that the Jews pose to all things German, and they have single-handedly undertaken to address the problem. The accumulated material from which the image of the Jew is being constructed, indicates why an inner understanding is required to expose the threat posed by “the Jew from within”. It is their unacknowledged sense of affinity with the Jewish enemy that enables the Nazis and no others to expose the Jewish threat. The Nazis regard themselves as bearing sole responsibility for the Jewish question, and consider themselves to be the only ones able to understand the Jews and explain their actions:
The Jews continue their activity behind the scenes in order to create the illusion that the Bolshevik Jews in Moscow and the plutocratic Jews of London and Washington are bitter enemies. They have approached one another secretively … in order to liquidate us altogether. The entire matter becomes clear once their diabolical plan is revealed.…”151
Their plot has been exposed thanks to the Nazis, the only ones who can explain and responsibly act against it: “The Jewish world conspiracy which plotted and hatched this war, and which inflamed and sowed the seeds of hatred among nations, must emerge clear and lucid in the consciousness of world public opinion. We must explain to the world our compelling arguments through continual emphasis and persistence.”152 Of course, the Jews’ secret could be revealed to the world only by Goebbels himself, as the ultimate “student of the Jews.”
149 Goebbels, “Mimikry,” p. 527 150 Ibid. 151 Goebbels, “Mimikry,” p. 528. 152 Cited in Herf J., , p. 202. 55
Goebbels maintains that the Nazis alone possess the ability to transcend the illusion purveyed by the Jews and see through it: “They are perhaps liable to mislead a few harmless souls, but not us. We are well familiar with reality.”153 The Nazis are the only ones able to expose the true nature of the Jews, thanks to their “naturalness” and the healthy instincts of the German people. However not only Nazi ideologists exclude a Jewish entity in Germany he argues that the Germans’ )in general( healthy instincts, enable them to reveal the truth about the Jews. “The fact that the German people were the first people on earth to discern this phenomenon and to uproot it from its organism is evidence of its healthy instincts,” he maintains.154 The Jews thus, in his view, play an important role in constructing the Nazi version of German identity. It is the Germans’ exclusive ability to see the Jews clearly that certifies their national health and naturalness. According to this text, the Jews and the Germans define each other and affirm their mutual existence by means of a shared contradiction. There is exclusivity to this nexus that, according to Goebbels, leaves no room for a third party in the Jewish-German relationship. Only the Germans can expose the Jews, and only the Jews constitute a “real threat” to the Germans.
Goebbels uses his inner knowledge of the Jews to assess how the Germans’ nemesis would react emotionally to exposure of its true identity. “They are angry at having been exposed by us,” he declares. “They realize that we know them and know what they are really like. The Jew is secure so long as he is concealed. When someone discerns his characteristics, he loses his equilibrium.”155 Goebbels outlines how the Jew reacts when exposing their Achilles’ heel, and claims that his inner knowledge of the Jew enables him to predict their future actions. He believes that he has revealed the nature and methods of the Jew in a systematic and thorough manner. And he makes every effort to share this exclusive knowledge with the world. even though it is not a simple task.
We have discerned that the Jews present a national and international danger, and have drawn important conclusions from this knowledge. Upon conclusion of this war the German knowledge will become global
153 Goebbels, “Die Juden sind schuld!” pp. 87-88. 154 Goebbels, “Die Urheber des Unglücks der Welt.” 155 Goebbels, “Mimikry,” p. 528. 56
knowledge. We shall do everything in our power to ensure that this will indeed happen.156
Goebbels is not certain that the world will understand him and appreciate his deep familiarity with Jews. He realizes that this would require some time, and he expresses the hope that by the end of the war, when the task of extermination has been completed, all nations will come to understand how necessary it had been.
A Natural, Tangible and Substantive Enemy As a very real and baneful natural phenomenon, the Jew plays a critical role in Nazi conceptualization. Conceptual congruity and affinity between German and Jew is also evident in the rhetorical portrayal of Goebbels’ Jewish stereotype. The Jew is not an artificial enemy, but rather a natural and authentic one. “ [T]here are still Jews in Paris. According to nature and race, the Jews are and always will be our natural enemy,” he asserts.157 Goebbels reveals two points here. First, the Jews are a natural enemy, just as the Aryan race is natural. Second, the Jews will always remain an enemy. According to him, the Jews cling to their essential character, and they have a historical mission as well as a consistent and determined nature. The equivalent contrary image is that of the Thousand-Year Reich, which is likewise characterized by a historical mission and a consistent substance. The considerable similarity between the Jews and Aryans in Goebbels’ writing is illustrated by the criticism that Goebbels levels against their Italian ally.
The Italians exhibit serious laxness in confronting the Jewish problem … this matter once again shows how Fascism fails to get to the root of the situation and to its foundation, and to what extent Fascism is so artificial with regard to the truly important issues. The Jewish problem causes us much bother, even among our allies.… 158
156 Goebbels, “Die Urheber des Unglücks der Welt.” 157 Goebbels, Tagebücher, May 15, 1942. 158 Goebbels, Tagebücher, Dec. 13, 1942. 57
Here Goebbels points to the artificiality of the Fascist movement and castigates the Italian people for being “very lax in the way they treat the Jews.”159 In another part of this diary entry, he reiterates that the Jews are an inferior, impure, and rootless race, precisely as he has them presented in the propaganda film The Eternal Jew. Note, however, that his descriptions of the Jew and the Aryan have some things in common. The terms used to characterize both come from the same semantic field: the Jew and the Aryan are natural enemies and both are fixed competing historical entities.
Intimacy involves exclusion as well as inclusion, since it distinguishes who lies within and outside the discourse. For Goebbels, there is something artificial and superficial about Mussolini’s Fascism. Similarly, the countries arrayed against Nazi Germany are neither genuine nor natural nations. For this reason, the Nazis spurn them and do not regard them as genuine threats. Goebbels has little regard for the capacity of the Allies and maintains that the Soviet Union will soon collapse. But the Jewish race remains Germany’s natural foe. The structure of the intimacy that continually characterizes the line separating inner and outer, the familiar and the foreign, is manifested conceptually in this passage in Goebbels’ references to the singular sphere shared exclusively by Jews and Aryans.
While Goebbels also refers to the crimes of the Bolsheviks and the danger they pose, the Bolsheviks are always associated with the Jews. In “Communism Without the Mask,” Goebbels proclaims two central points. The first is that “it is the Jews who direct the Bolshevik campaign,” while the second is that “Bolshevism is a movement that opposes humanity itself.”160 Bolshevism constitutes a menace only when Jews are supporters. It is essentially the Jewwho is the palpable threat. Other nations constitute a concrete threat or danger to Germany only when Jews back them or have political influence . On their own, they do not warrant the regard accorded to the Jewish threat. Other nations are artificial entities (the Italians), do not present a genuine threat (the Soviets), and certainly do not threaten Germany from within (the Allies).
159 Ibid. 160 Goebbels, Communism without the Mask, p. 9. 58
Goebbels’ methodology purports to expose the Jew’s true nature, and to reveal that Jew stands behind the forces that oppose Germany. Herf points out that the linkage between the destiny of the Jews and the outcome of the second world war is a recurrent theme in Nazi propaganda. The Jew lurks behind the paradoxical alliance between East and West. Goebbels believes that the Jews have succeeded in creating the global anti-German alliance which according to Herf is substantiated in a directive issued at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa: “treatment of the Jewish question is the best starting point for the ideological confrontation.”161 For Goebbels, the Jews are an irreplaceable ideological and natural enemy as vital to the German nation as they were inimical to it. Their essence is diametrically opposed to the German essence, but at the same time affirms it: “The more a German individual or a German movement opposes the Jews, so does their net value correspondingly increase.”162 The marking of the Jew as a natural and substantive foe, that furtively engages in global schemes, contributes to the construction of an adversarial Nazi identity. The intimacy between the two peoples is manifested in the Nazis’ dependence on the essential definition of the Jewish collective. Anti- Semitism affirms the specific quality and attributes of the German people by means of an inseperable connection to the Jews.
The Jews’ demonic nature is a fixed feature in his writings, as unchanging as global anti- Semitism. Goebbels regards anti-Semitism as a position that can never be annulled by the German people. Those who advocate it can never be convinced to change their position. Anti- Semitism establishes roots, he maintains, asserting that “as soon as anti-Semitism takes root in people’s hearts it cannot be eradicated through any legal mechanism. In most cases, the passing of a law against hatred of Jews marks the beginning of the end for the Jews.”163 Goebbels believes that hatred of Jews, once it has emerged, cannot be redirected or moderated. This master of manipulation and expert in swaying public opinion maintains that when it comes to the topic of anti-Semitism, human beings have an inner and intimate insight that cannot be altered.
161 Cited by Herf G., pp. 96-97. 162 Goebbels, “Der Jude,” Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1935), p. 323. 163 Goebbels, Tagebücher, April 19, 1943. 59
The use that Goebbels makes of terms, such as “taking root in the heart,” demonstrates that he regards anti-Semitism itself as a fundamental, natural and inner principle. In other words, the anti-Semite and the Jew are both conceptualized in total and perpetual opposition to each other. The inner inevitability to which Goebbels is referring to whereby he perceives anti-Semitism as something existential that does not require proof, can be deciphered through an intuition of one’s own existence which renders proof of the superfluous nature of Jewish existence.
Closing Comments My assertion, as to the link between intimacy and the Holocaust, has already been made by LaCapra, but he does not develop it into a coherent theory, nor back it up with any evidence.
They did indeed owe so much to each other and were utterly hybridized as a people. The need to extirpate itself was indeed a very intimate part of oneself leads incredibly rash behavior. This is one aspect of it: in a sense, the problem of enemy brothers, where the animosity came from the Germans (not initially from the Jews, obviously) but was flowing overwhelmingly in one direction, and extreme hostility—that kind of crazy desire to get rid of something that is very much part of yourself is like ripping organs from yourself.164
Nazi Germany was far from being a coherent entity and Goebbels was not the sole source of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda. While the authorities successfully unified the German-speaking territories on a formal basis, the Reich government and particularly the Nazi party were in fact, oftentimes, at odds with official policy; i.e a decentralized system with multiple and competing centers of power. The Nazi machine was grounded upon an active, violent and revolutionary party tradition. There were, however, many fissures within the party machine, parallel lines of authority and severe confusion regarding the will of the Führer. On a number of occasions, the Nazi regime was hesitant and had to grope its way forward on both internal and international policies. Even on one of its most burning issues—the Jewish question—disagreement reigned
164 D. LaCapra, p. 170. 60
rampantly among the different government bodies, all of whom vied for supremacy in handling the issue.
There was a similar overlap in the sphere of propaganda. While Goebbels served as propaganda minister, the central press office was in the hands of Otto Dietrich, a state of affairs which generated both latent and overt competition between them. Because of this decentralization, I have only addressed the propaganda of Goebbels. Yet the mode of comprehending Goebbels that I have already demonstrated may prove to be a valuable tool for the analysis and understanding of other texts from the Nazi period.
For example, it illuminates the manner in which Himmler, compared the Night of the Long Knives with the extermination of the Jews, in his famous speech to German officers in the city of Poznan.165 The two events are ostensibly diametrically opposed, since it was German Nazis of the SA who were murdered during the Night of the Long Knives, while it was Jews that were murdered in the extermination camps. But the concept of intimacy shows how the two have a common point of origin—in both cases, it was the enemy within who was eliminated. In both cases, the familiar was excluded and censured precisely because it was close at hand and threatening.
The Holocaust’s singularity lies not in its being the only case of genocide, but in the fact that it manifests the political culture of the twentieth century, during which ideologically motivated genocide became ever more frequent. Discussion of the morphological components of Nazi rhetoric is therefore not confined to the history of Jewish–German relations during the Holocaust period. Other cases of genocide may also be considered via this concept of intimacy. This is not to say that the concept of intimacy is integral to the evolution of genocide. Yet, it appears that inter-group intimacy plays an important role both in motivating perpetrators of genocide and in developing their rhetoric and propaganda.
165 Cited in Y. Arad, Y. Gutmann, E. Margaliot (eds.), Documents on the Holocaust, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981, p. 344 See also http://www.holocaust-history.org/himmler-poznan/himmler-poznan-large.mov. 61
Chapter Two
Immer mit Liebe - Nazi Euthanasia and Empathic Rationalization of Violence
Introduction
The following chapter explores another aspect of violent closeness. It utilizes the concept of empathy, juxtaposing it to the testimonies of the doctors and nurses that took part in the mass murder of the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. As previously noted, intimacy and violence can be linked through the common fear of an identity breach created in some forms of intimate relations. Despite the fact that it is conceptually surprising to see that intimate relation and intimate rhetoric can descend into a violent form, still, this phenomena's universality is hardly disputed. The form of domestic violence affirms the ephemeral nature of intimate relations where love and mutuality can be transformed into hate and aggression. Both extremes feed on the same basic emotional and linguistic intimate sphere.
Intimate violence is usually transparent, one can often detect the point at which violence enters and begins to characterize the embodiment of this pathological state of closeness. The person or group inflicting the violence are keen to show their shift in attitude, which serves to provoke a false feeling of distancing themselves from the relationship and also provides an illusion of control and a coherent selfhood.
From a sociological perspective, and as evident from the Goebbels hate speeches, it is more difficult to notice remnants of intimate closeness during violent outbursts than to see explicit and obvious talkative violent discourse and conduct. The reason being that the relationship between empathy and violence is far more obscure . In most cases, an empathic discourse will categorically exclude a violent approach towards the other. Therefore, the violent aspect of empathy must be masked in a way that the violence can't be perceived. Empathic violence operates in sophisticated, cognitive and linguistic forms, in order to undermine or reframe its inherent violence and thus sustain a conceptual coherence of the empathic approach; which explains why empathic violence is so effective. Part of its conceptual construction excludes the possibility of violence and endorses a semantic field which relates to warmth, care and even altruism. In contrast to the inherent love-hate tension, intimacy encompasses a monolithic 62
empathy and as an idealistic quality, empathy is connected with the ability to 'feel with' another, to understand and care without demanding mutuality. Therefore it seems improbable for it to deteriorate into violence.
The modules of empathic violence herein presented highlight the elusiveness of this form of violence, which therein provides a platform for self legitimization by perpetrators. Due to the empathic discourse, murderous medical staffs could comfortably remain secure within the normative zone of empathic care givers, despite their violent actions. The main idea of this chapter is to elucidate the testimonies of euthanasia perpetrators and show how empathy toward their victims played a vital role in conceptualizing, legitimizing and radicalizing the murder of the disabled patients.
This research must also address some significant methodological issues. For example, how was perpetrator motive perceived? What does empathy mean? Why should we believe the perpetrators' testimonies? How could empathic violence gone undeteced ? How common was this form of violence? What is the relationship between Nazi propaganda and the empathic motive for killing? Therefore, I've decided to separate the research into several sequential stages to organize the various and interlinked aspects of this research:
1. A short overview of the euthanasia operations which will later be addressed in the analytic portion as a historical framing of events. 2. A review the common public, legal and academic attitudes towards understanding the perpetrator which at the time underestimated the role of empathy. 3. Since empathy is a widely studied term, the research provides conceptual framing of the term that is utilized throughout the research. 4. Six modules of empathic violence, as seen in the testimonies of the euthanasia perpetrating medical staffs, employ the following combinations of violent empathic reasoning: liberal empathy, national empathy, empathic blurring, euthanasia sabotage, self empathy and Christian Caritas. 5. Contextualizing euthanasia propaganda during the 30s with professional medical discourse of the early 40s, in order to strengthen the analytic argument by understanding the shift in historical discourse. 63
1. Euthanasia- background
Eugenic ideas of euthanasia and sterilization are rooted in Nazi ideology and propaganda from the very beginning of the rise of the Nazi party. These tendencies towards an anti-Semitic agenda, chauvinist nationalism and ideas of racial hygiene were part of contemporary European ideas at the time. Nevertheless, Nazi Germany was the first to prominently politicize these ideas and to mobilize all levels of the sovereign state to fulfill this new racial order. Two of the most striking examples of their success in politicizing a racial issue are the implementation of euthanasia and the mass destruction of European Jewry; both of which are highly related, ideologically and institutionally.166
The actual persecution of the disabled, mentally and physically, began in 1934 when the sterilization law was passed. This was the only occasion when the legal aspect of the disabled persecution was transparent; later on, the legality of the operation was ignored, in order to prevent public discomfort and resentment. Besides mental illnesses, the law listed nine categories of people, among them were hereditary blindness, deafness and severe alcoholism. Although the law didn’t force sterilization, but rather only enabled it to occur, in most cases, the victims were deprived of their right to choose whether or not to be sterilized, by virtue of the fact that they were defined as "unsuitable to decide". Therefore, despite the legal softness of the law De jure, there was a more vigorous application De facto. The doctors, nurses and beaurocratic staff were the judges as well as the executioners'.
The first stage of mass murder began in 1938, entailing an estimated 5000 children to the age of 3, were killed in a secret operation later known as the children’s euthanasia. The Chancellery in Berlin initiated and supervised the whole process, constantly issuing directives for selecting and killing the deformed and mentally ill children. The participation of doctors and nurses in the killing was crucial not only to in order justify what is considered a "life unworthy of living" but also to be the executioners that provided the lethal injections. At this point, there was no special preference of poisons; the medical staff employed drugs like luminal solution and veronal, which
166 H. Friedländer, ibid., 64
were in routine use to ease a patient's suffering. Use of the traditional medical arsenal of drugs, served to ease the conscience of these doctors
One year after the beginning of childrens euthanasia, another form of murder was introduced - adult euthanasia, better known as T-4 operation, named after the address of the euthanasia headquarters located in Tiggerstrasse 4. Most academic estimates suggest a total of about 70,000 people that were killed in 6 killing center,s specifically designed to accomodate these killings. Similar to children’s euthanasia, the participation of the medical staff was imperative to the efficiency and success of the project. The euthanasia killings served as fertile ground for the expansion of mass murder to the semi-industrialized form of killing namely the use of gas chambers and crematoriums, all carried out in secrecy, and with superior beaurocratic efficiency.
Euthanasia was not popular among the German Volk. During 1941, many anti-euthanasia protests were voiced, especially from Christian advocates. Galen's famous sermon criticizing and thereby publicizing Nazi euthanasia atrocities had a strong effect upon the German public; it created an awareness and opposition needed to force Hitler to officially stop the program in the summer of 1941. Peer pressure by public opinion had an effect which in fact was counterproductive. Indeed the official adult euthanasia was stopped, but only to make way for another more "permissive" and inclusive form of unofficial murder known as "wild euthanasia," which took place during 1941-1945. In this latter stage of euthanasia, the killing centers continued their activities as usual. Since the Berlin center loosened its grip over the project, each individual institute and/ or region established policy in accordance to war needs and geographic location. Moreover during these years there was an operation that wasn’t solely meant for the disabled, killing centers developed to liquidate over crowded camps and the socially / politically undesirable. Many scholars (Brayant167, Friedländer) view operation 13f14 and the inmate killings as the most prominent link between euthanasia and the extermination of European Jewry. The estimates of euthanasia’s encroachment to other killing fields is complex to calculate; it most probably amounts to a few hundred thousand disabled patients, camp prisoners and Jews.
167 Michael Bryant, Confronting the "good death" : Nazi euthanasia on trial, 1945-1953, Boulder : University Press of Colorado, 2005 65
2. The Common Approach to Euthanasia Reasoning
The Media and Juridical System
In March of 1965, the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, published an article entitled – Immer mit Liebe. It was an appraisal of the Nazi Euthanasia trials that took place in Germany at that time. The article, which did not spare any cynicism and was quite thorough, highlighted the following perplexing image:
"The dock looked like a bourgeois coffee party…. the 14 modestly dressed matrons … crouched sobbingly under the flash light … they are accused of assisting killing. Never before were there so many old and ailing women sitting in a German court together as was in the euthanasia trial that started last week in the Munich high court. All of them were nurses in the hospital Obrawalde/Meseritz (Brandenburg), where between 1942 and 1945, at least 8000 patients were killed."168 There are two opposing images presented in the article which create a puzzling image of the perpetrator group. On the one hand, these are "…old, ailing women…" yet, on the other hand, they "…are accused of assisting in murder." Throughout the article, the writer strives to establish a more coherent picture and therefore portrays these women simply as hypocrites, showing how beneath these “old” and "modestly dressed matrons" lie the executioners of "…at least 8000 patients." Although these nurses claimed over and over that their actions were motivated by empathy, newspaper coverage consistently point out the falsity of their claims. Newspaper reporting of these trials show how these women repeatedly attempted to appeal to the court as caring and loving nurses, only in order to escape or reduce the penalty for their crimes. Not only did the media put empathy aside as a motive to murder, the Judge as well fails to understand the nurses' "empathic" and "caring" argument, as quoted:
"This is the strangest thing about this case which we all have to deal with; that, as nurses, they wanted to help their patients and nevertheless they did those horrible things."169
168 "Euthanasie- Immer mit Liebe" Der Spiegel, 3.3.1965 169 Ibid 66
Euthanasia and empathy are in absolute contradiction in both newspaper articles as well as in the opinion of the judge's. The possibility of an empathic approach that motivates mass murder seems irrational and incoherent. As Judge Thomas concludes at the end of the trial, "nevertheless you did those things". In other word Judge Thomas’s basic assertion is that if these nurses did care as they claimed, then how was it possible to participate in the mass murder of their own patients? This is, in his own words, "strange". The term "mercy killing," voiced by the perpetrators during the trial, is reduced in the media to two logical avenues of approach, which attempt to explain the nurses' motivation:
(1) hypocrisy- they did not care for their patients, even though they claimed to kill them out of mercy
(2) obedience- they deeply cared for their patients, yet they pushed aside their compassion and killed out of obedience / fear of the Nazi regime
In effect, both explanations, rule out the nurses' most common justification in these trials - the idea of an empathic killing of suffering and severely ill people. Empathy in this context was presented as mere lip service and was denounced by the media as well as by the judicial system.
Even as early as 1946, long before the lenient approach towards the Nazi euthanasia criminals had the upper hand, the German courts ridiculed the possibility of empathy as part of the perpetrator’s logic for mass killing. The court draws a red line that separates the idea of empathic motives for killing and the guilt of the perpetrators. If the courts were inclined to believe the nurses' justification of "empathic ending of patients suffering", then they would be obligated to show more consideration towards the accused in their verdicts.
As reported after interrogating Wernicke, the medical director in the mental hospital and killing center at Meseritz-Obrawalde: "She was confident that killing the incurable mentally ill patients was the right thing to do in order to spare them from further suffering"170 She claimed that politics, race or religion had absolutely no influence on her decision. By saying
170 C. F. Reuter and Dick W. De Mildt (Eds.), Justiz und NS- Verbrechen, Amsterdam: University Press, 1968, Vo. 1,Trial No. 003 67
this, the accused, Ms. Wernicke, wants to explain that her agreement to take part in the euthanasia project was based purely on her human empathy and compassion…" The courts' decision denies her claim of "empathic motive": "…she did not select her victims because of human empathy, compassion or other noble reasons at all..."171 the court also points out that her patient visits and her medical reviews were "brief", thereby proving her empathic doctor- patient relationship was a façade. In order to sentence her to death, it was imperative for the Berlin court to rule out her argument for human compassion, not only as the main motive but also as a valid motive.
Disproving empathic motivation was so prominent in the courts outlook that the court even misread some of the testimonies. After carefully comparing the courts verdict and reasoning with the actual protocols, one can see how the judges altered Wernicke's testimony to their convenience. The court was so keen on pointing out the falsity of Wernnicke's empathy that it presented the following narration as representative of the misleading contradiction in Wernicke's testimonial logic:
"…her argument that her decision was only motivated by feelings of empathy is implausible… the court proceeds to prove this argument: … she defended herself, in the main trial, claiming that she never chose (in order to kill) the foreign insane patients since she felt compassion towards these foreigners. Although she did not find insane patients that were foreign and female as suitable for killing because of empathy, she did find the German females as suitable for killing because of empathy172 ."
This is a manipulation of Wernicke's words - all she said in court was the following:
"I especially looked after the needs of the foreign women, because I felt especially sorry for them, they were sick and far from their homes and relatives... Any thoughts to pursue sick people
171 Ibid 172 Ibid 68
because of nationality, race or political views have always been far from my personal outlook."173
In this context, Wernicke's empathy towards foreigners is very loosely linked to the idea of euthanasia. All she actually said is that she felt more empathy towards them due to their distance from home, without regards to her position on her participation in their killings. In fact, she says the opposite; race and nationality did not play any role in her perception of euthanasia - what mattered is that, "the death meant a salvation in the truest sense"174.
The Academic Overview of Perpetrator Motivation
In one of the first and most comprehensive collections regarding Nazi euthanasia, authored by Enest Klee, the following explanation is provided:
"The goal of the National Socialistic-state was never to grant a "mercy death" It was not about euthanasia, which means assistance to die. It was mass murder based on of economical and military reasons that had to be kept secret. The state wanted to cut costs and staff and also to create room for the ill. The murders were not even presented as ideological."175
Klee's assumption is that there is one utilitarian guiding motive of the Nazi euthanasia project- cutting costs. This theory presented by Klee is somewhat surprising since the documents he presents are complex and diverse and not clear-cut. Klee provides a few speeches from church officials that legitimize euthanasia. In one case the priest praises those who undergo sterilization voluntarily: "rejoice that your name is written in heaven!"176 The combination of Christian charity with euthanasia justification appears again and again in the documents presented by Klee.177 The texts themselves provide a challenge to his thesis; the concept of "cutting costs" cannot explain the constant insistence on the liberal notion towards the patient's well being, on
173 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.81, Hilde Wernicke, Berlin, 4.1.1946, p. 20 [5], The translation of these euthanasia protocols was done with the help of my colleague and friend Iphigenie Worbes. 174 Ibid 175 E. Klee, Documente zur "Euthanasie", p. 27 176 Ibid p. 56 177 Ibid p. 47, p. 54 69
the one hand, or the Christian concept of charitable euthanasia on the other. These examples of an empathic attitude towards euthanasia, that Klee's book provides, are systematically dismissed by the author.
In a later edited volume of research, focusing on the Dresden trial in 1947, the centrality of the utilitarian motive undermines the possibility of empathically motivated killings. Scholars differ in the various conceptual formulations, but all tend to agree that the perpetrators claim for the mercy killing motivation was cynical, just as presented in the media that covered the trial during 1947:
"…the accused Dr. Nitsche, came with the cynicism to say "maybe the time is not so far that we will praise these men and women that are sitting today in the defendant's bench as benefactors of humanity."178
Freibrandt and Markwardt portray the conceptual logic of the killings in terms of dehumanization and endeavor to disprove the perpetrators claim of an affective relationship with the victims:
"Eichler developed a distance from his patients and denied them humanity. This dehumanization, based solidly on the images of National Socialist propaganda, made it easier for him to put the killings in a moral framework."179
The research continues and tries to underscore the specific process and practical methods for dehumanization of these patients:
"The T4 system focused on creating a distance between perpetrators and victims whereby points of contact with victims were minimized through the division of labor in the killings."180
178 Quoted in: Boris Böhm and Gerald Hacke (eds.), Fundamentale Gebote der Sittlichkeit, Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2008, p. 83 179 Ibid p. 110 180 Ibid p. 115-116 70
The research provides a comprehensive and a more coherent view of the self justification process in mass killing of the disabled, yet it is within the framework of obedience, dehumanization and national utilitarian needs. Despite the outspoken centrality of the empathic motive, it is nevertheless perceived as false, and articulated by hypocritical perpetrators.
In another article, published in 1999, which deals with the question of perpetrator motivation, the same tendency of ruling out this empathic logic for mass murder is expressed. It begins with a normative statement which summarizes the explicit purpose of the research:
"The purpose of this article is to increase the awareness of the nurses' involvement, indeed sins against humanity, and in so doing presents various factors related to the individual nurses' decisions to commit these actions against patients in their care."181
Benedict and Kuhla find it essential to unravel the various possibilities for the killing motivation of people involved in euthanasia in order to better understand the moral melt down of individuals and, perhaps, contribute to future prevention. In their conclusion they suggest six possibilities:
a. Ideological Commitment, b. Obedience, c. Role of Religion, d. Role of Nursing Education and of Nursing Professional Organizations, e. Putative Duress, f. Economic Factors.182
Each one of the aforementioned motives has advocates within the academic community; many articles have been written in order to prove or disprove the centrality of the motives presented previously. Nevertheless, all the fine analytical analysis does not bring into account one of the most prominent motives mentioned repeatedly in the testimonies and trial affidavits that appear in the primary article. Even in recent, comprehensive academic reviews of Nazi euthanasia, the issue of empathy as a concept that provides a platform for mass murder is overseen or discharged and left out of the spotlight.
Recent researches have openly and extensively discussed the functional role patient care played in rationalizing Nazi euthanasia.183 Müller- Hill displays important conversations regarding
181 S. Benedict and J. Kuhla, pp. 246-263 182 Ibid pp. 258-261 71
leading figures that took part in euthanasia unraveling their informal and intimate discourse regarding their role. For example, Müller- Hill presents a compelling question regarding medical staffs that participated in the killings:
“What made doctors especially liable to become the apostles of destruction?”184 He thereafter demonstrates how the self perception of medical ethics had shifted in Germany focusing on the ‘priest oriented’ role of care givers.
The methodology he uses focuses on understanding the connection between medical discourse and Nazi ideology. The same connection can be traced in the use of empathy alongside the idea of euthanasia.
Klaus Dörner provides a more detailed and integral account regarding the influence empathic reasoning had upon Nazi euthanasia initiatives. Dörner demonstrates the psychiatric discourse and development in which eugenic ideology thrived. His research displays two parallel arguments. First, he juxtaposes Nazi euthanasia with the industrial revolution mindset which contributed to the revision of the mentally ill as useless eaters. Secondly, he showed how overt activism in the psychiatric discipline depicted euthanasia as an act of mercy complying with contemporary medical ethics. Dörner poses a link between the growing importance of empathy among psychiatrists and the potential for violent conduct.185 Gerrit Hohendorf, who provides a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of Nazi euthanasia, includes the idea of patient care and compassion as part of the killing discourse.186
183 Furthermore the researches of Nadav and Bock both provide a comprehensive account and show the linear connection between the prior Nazi policies to euthanasia; they also illustrate the widely excepted eugenic ideal European mindset., see: Giesela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986 and Daniel Nadav (Hebrew), Medicine and National Socialism, Israel: Ministry of Defense, 2006. 184 Benno Müller- Hill , Murderous science, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 92 185, Klaus, TötlichesMitleid, Neumünster: Paranus-Verlag, 2002.
186 Gerrit Hohendorf Der Todals Erlösungvom Leiden, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013. Hohendorf argues that the patient care oriented violence began before Nazi era and can be traced in various German eugenic advocates such as 72
However, Hohendorf concludes that Nazi policy favored the utilitarian logic of killing useless eaters and inefficient workers rather than following the racial code of eugenics. In addition he claims that the patient care discourse embraced the idea of compassion rather than empathy. Hohendorf’s findings are in tune with formal Nazi propaganda that portrayed the mentally ill as a burden on healthy Germens.187 Nevertheless, the ‘field level’ discourse of medical staffs presented in this paper demonstrate a greater deal of patient care oriented discourse. Furthermore, medical staffs articulate an empathic language and use role taking strategies that are derived from an empathic outlook.188
The Literal Meaning of Euthanasia - Empathic Killings
We are left with many questions regarding the perpetrators in these trials. Why did the media undermine the centrality of empathy? Why did the judges subvert the testimonies of perpetrators? Why was academic research inclined to present the motive of empathy as cynical and hypocritical?
One explanation, which derives from the German legal system and its verdicts during the late 50s and early 60s, is linked to the questions of responsibility, guilt and accountability. As opposed to the guidelines in the Nuremberg trials, on the one hand, and common temporal legal theory on the other, the German courts were very interested in the issue of motive- not intent. In this context, those in the legal system believed that if the crime's motivation had a positive aspect, for example, empathy, it could reduce the measure of culpability of the perpetrator and thereby
Jost’s writings )Adolf Jost, 'Das Recht auf dem Tod', Soziale Studie, Göttingen, 1985, p. 18) as well as Binding and Hoche’s famous Essay 'Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life'. 187 Most of the Nazi newspaper articles in Das Reich and Der Angriff leading up until the 40s displayed the mentally ill from a utilitarian standpoint. Similarly Nazi movie industry (for example: Opfer der Vergangenheit) tended to dehumanize the mentally emphasizing the financial costs of their hospitalization. 188 Hohendorf follows an idea introduced by Robert Lifton. Lifton refused to accept that Nazi doctors were no longer conceptually committed to their care giving tradition. Lifton highlights the psychological and linguistic mechanisms that enabled the medical staffs to participate in Nazi violence and perceive themselves as professional caregivers at the same time. See: Robert Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, (New York: Basic Books Publishers, 1986), 418. However, Hohendorf provides a more elaborate model wherein medical ethics and Nazi eugenics coincide. 73
contribute to lowering the legal penalty. This logic is not confined to the judicial system. Common knowledge, public opinion and the media share a tendency to pass judgment. If the perpetrator's reasoning was truly an empathic one, the outcome may be that the public condemnation against their participation in euthanasia would bediminished . It would be naïve to exclude academia from normative framing. The article of Benedict and Kuhla exemplifies openly the normative aspects, which exclude the empathic motive in this research.
Another explanation alludes to the inherent paradox of the word "euthanasia" - "good/easy death" and even more so in the lay interpretation of the terms – "mercy killing". The term presented is contradictory, immoral and incongruous for it combines killing with mercy, and it therefore challenges some basic categories of other- self perceptions. This makes it easier and elementary to "choose a side"- death or mercy. Although the idea is very common in current debates that deal with the shortening of life, there is an acute difference when this idea is utilized to legitimize large scale mass industrialized murder. How can empathy play a role in modulating formations of the conceptualization to kill the mentally ill and moreover how can rhetoric of mercy take part in the radicalization of the genocidal discourse? This broad gap between empathic discourse and violent conduct contribute to the marginal exclusion of empathy as one of the perpetrators main motives.
One of the main strategies for discharging the empathic motive was to dismiss the perpetrator’s claims. Even if the defendants proclaim arguments that will present them in the best possible light, i.e. as empathic figures, nevertheless, the quick rejoinder of "perpetrators cynical approach" seems unsatisfying. They might have also lied but they did not only lie, therefore their claim for having empathy should be revised and treated as a serious claim. Actually the idea of empathy may explain why some doctors and nurses were so keen to participate; it can explain how they overcame their guilt when killing their own patients and it can better account for the desensitization regarding the cruelty during the children's euthanasia. The empathic killing is presented as an altruistic one. The "other" (in this case the victim) stands at the center of the perpetrators concerns. It is not conceived of as violent action, but rather the opposite, the professional staff is entrusted with stopping the pain of their patients. The victim is not a victim but a redeemed disabled person and the executer does not have to carry the dissonance of his
74
actual violent actions. It seems that utilizing empathy within the framework of Nazi euthanasia killings in reality makes sense and provides persuasive values that fuel genocidal action.
3. Empathy- Framing the Argument
The term empathy was first introduced into the English language by Tichener in 1909 and was a translation of the German word einfühlung a word rooted in German aesthetics.189 The earliest documented use of the term by Vischer in 1873 and described a form of perception and only later did it acquire psychological significance.190 The term empathy covers two basic meanings which were later extended into two branches of psychological research: cognitive empathy and affective empathy.191 Cognitive empathy relates to the ability to see the other, to understand individuals from within and to participate in role taking. A characteristic of the empathic view is that it can predict action and even influence it by understanding the unique mechanism of the ‘other’. Nonetheless, this knowledge can be manipulated and misused. For example, in the case of torture, the cognitive understanding of the other enables an increase in the level of violence. Here the connection between empathy and violence is a simple and direct one. The other form, i.e. affective empathy, cannot be an indifferent one. The basic idea is that the viewer participates, and not only observes. The definitions differ in the degree of these "other- oriented feelings of concern…" from a mere "…general emotional tone…" on the one hand to "…compassion and tenderness…"192 on the other. Yet, the common denominator is the subjective aspect of the empathic experience, wherein the dichotomy and borders between self and other are constantly challenged and revised.
Philosopher Lou Agosta creates a link between cognitive empathy and the violence of the Nazi doctors in the following form:
189 EdwardB. Tiechener, Experimental Psychology on Thought Process, New York: Macmillan, 1909 190 R. Vischer, "Über das Optische Formgefühl ein Beitrag zur Ästetic", in Drei Schriften zum Ästetischem Formproblem, Halle: Niemeyer, 1873, pp. 1-44 191 Ervin Stuab, "Comintary on part 1" in: N. Eisenberg and J. Strayer (eds.), Empathy and its Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 103-115 192 Quoted in: N. Eisenberg and J. Strayer (eds.), pp. 3-4 75
"…this was based on Nazi empathy with the intended victims…Likewise, the web of lies which the intended victims of the gas chambers who were deported, cremated and executed were based on a sensitivity and access to the intended victims that makes the deeds all more chilling and execrable."193
Agosta explains that empathy is a cognitive tool of observation which is neutral and therefore can be used by the empathizer against the subject being observed. It would be easier to understand it if the doctors and nurses that took part in euthanasia did not care for their victims and only empathized with them in order to make the killings more uncomplicated. The main argument of this paper is to show the exact opposite; i.e. it is affective empathy in its caring and compassionate mode that played a primary role in these empathic killings. The closeness towards their victims did not fade out through the killings but rather took part in rationalizing, conceptualizing and even radicalizing these atrocities.
The forms of empathy herein discussed are derived mainly from the framing of affective empathy - focusing on how the caregivers' positive feelings to their patients inherently contributed to their ability to murder them. This framing is imperative for the following arguments: Violence within the concept of cognitive empathy does not need to be explained, the perpetrator is presented as a robot that uses his empathic abilities in order to gather important information for his own use. There is no emotional or cognitive gap. Therefore, it is more than logical that the cold blooded murderer will proceed with his activities. Nonetheless, affective empathy focuses on feelings that exclude this form of objectivity. The testimonies of most of the euthanasia perpetrators stipulated that they 'cared', 'loved' or felt for their victims. Cognitive empathy does not fit this research from both conceptual and historical angles.
4. The probability of Empathic motive for killing
It is surprising to see the degree to which the empathic motives were utilized within the testimonies of Nazi euthanasia perpetrators. True or false, they all felt inclined to show how much compassion and devotion they had towards their victims. One can argue that in the case of trial testimonies, these so called reflections are not reliable. Nevertheless, the fact that, to a large
193 L. Agosta, 2010, p.71 76
extent, the euthanasia justification lies within the realm of empathic reasoning, the issue must be addressed. Moreover, as will become evident in the trials of main Nazi medical figures such as Werner Heyde, Alferd Leu or Eugen Stähle, the defendants didn’t try to prove their innocence therefore leaving less bias in their testimonies and reducing the typical manipulative tendency. After mapping out protocols of about 20 defendants, I noticed that the most common theme for justification is neither the legal one related to obedience nor the ideological one related to the idea wherein the mentally ill are useless eaters. In their general rationalization, most defendants combined the original idea of mercy killings; i.e. providing assistance to ease the suffering of ill patients. The terminology of Hermann Wesse is an example of rhetoric commonly seen in their affidavits, repeatedly mentioning ideas of redemption and salvation of the ill:
“…this would be simply a blessing for those deeply mentally ill children that are not able to develop, to redeem them from their vegetating.”194
Some of the defendants felt that the legal (obedience to the law) and ideological (useless eaters) reasoning and justification was insufficient to explain the magnitude of their actions. Friedrich Mennecke, the chief doctor at Eichberg killing center, points out that considering euthanasia from this 'useless eaters' utilitarian stand point is: "… unreasonable, and, from the medical viewpoint, not justifiable."195 Similarly, Heyde, who stood as the supervisor of the psychiatric- neurologic and heredity research in Nazi Germany, goes even further, claiming that it wasn’t a consideration at all:
"Nobody talked about internal considerations. And any considerations about usefulness that would be significant for euthanasia were not even mentioned."196
Mennecke's accountability for his claims is quite substantial. He deliberately sabotages possibilities to reduce his penalty by openly admitting that a considerable part of his motivation to participate was driven by reasons of career and self benefit. "I had no capital…so it was my
194 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.81, Hermann Wesse, Marburg, 26.5.1951, p. 86 [3] 195 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.58, Friedrich Mennecke, Franfurt, 1946, 81 196 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.16, Werner Heyde, Limburg, 1961, p. 97 [68] 77
goal to get the job…" which included "… despicable methods in the institution Eichberg."197 In his testimony, he explicitly undermines the importance of the legal aspect of the euthanasia project, indicating that he was hardly aware of it. "I do not know about a Führer´s decree from the 1st of September 1939 that instructed assisting the mentally ill by redeeming them from their suffering. But I heard about an unpublished law with similar content."198
This is a unique aspect of his testimony since most doctors and nurses speak of the law as an essential part of their self justification. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of testimonies, the legal aspect was never isolated; the perpetrators routinely continued to explain the inner ethical logic of their action, regardless of the law. This ethical logic is most often linked to the idea of empathic killings as previously discussed. Even Wesse, quoted above, repeats his argument for legal obedience at least seven times in his testimony199 and yet, concomitantly, he explains why the idea of death being a 'salvation' for these poor mentally ill people is an ethical value on its own. Similarly, Wernnicke tried to claim throughout the trial that she knew very little, she was following orders and that she didn’t personally kill anyone; which makes her subsequent confession very surprising and also seems to counter her basic claim for opposing the idea Nazi euthanasia: “Only the really incurable, suffering with the most serious physically pain insanity, were euthanized, (those) for whom the death meant a salvation (in) its truest sense"200 One cannot be certain about the degree of astuteness in such testimony especially in the case of Wernnicke who explicitly mentioned her attempts to minimize her penalty. Nevertheless, the inner layers herein provide an insight into the importance of the empathic killing motive and to the process of formulating a self justification. Moreover, the fact that this motive juxtaposes with the rest of her arguments contributes to her liability.
197 Heyde,1961, p. 107 [77] 198 Heyde,1961, p. 87 [58] 199 Wesse, Ziegenhein, 25.10.1947, pp. 16-17 [1-2] 200 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.81, Hilde Wernnicke, Berlin, 30.9.1945, p. 14 [5] 78
The sensitivity to the motive of empathic killing is highly important for an understanding of the setting that these defendants established when formulating their arguments. They situate themselves in an empathic milieu. They express in their testimonies caring, compassion, mutuality, responsibility and devotion to their victims, implicitly implying the improbability of connecting their killings to ideological or obedient reasons. The logical continuation to this narration would be mercy killing motivated by the same exact empathic approach.
There are a few examples that demonstrate such a tendency, wherein the perpetrators situate themselves in an 'empathic location'. Schmidt reminds the court that "…we used the best soap for these children…"201, Wernicke describes the mutuality of her patient care: "My patients used to like me very much and they didn’t want to be placed anywhere else"202. Even bureaucrats like Pfanmüller made the argument that he was careful with the victims' life, checking and rechecking the forms: "I read every questionnaire twice."203 Heyde points out that the method of death alludes to an empathic attitude, trying to minimize the victims' pain and suffering throughout the process. "It was emphasized that it should be rapid, infallible and painless." (115) Painful deaths of the victims made the nurses "…very upset"204. One of the most striking anomalies is that the patients were described as feeling secure and loved by their caregivers not only during their lives but also at the time of their executions.
"When I gave them the dissolved medicine I did it with a lot of empathy. I told the patients before that they would just have take their medicine. Of course, I could have only told these fairytales to those patients who´s minds weren’t thinking clearly enough to understand. When I gave them the solution, I held them tenderly in my arm and caressed them"205
201 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.73, Walter Schmidt, p. 24 [21] 202 Wernicke, Berlin, 7.12.1945, p. 6 [5] 203 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.66, Hermann Pfanmüller, 10.4.1947, p. 36 [20] 204 Wernicke, Berlin, 7.12.1945, p. 2 [1] 205 Quoted in: Hilde Steppe, Ich war von jeher mit Leib und Seele gerne Pflegerin, Frankfurt: Mabuse, 1999, testimony of Anna Gastler. p. 55 79
In her testimony Anna Gastler shows how empathy played a functional role in the justification of her killings. Cognitively, she did not have to leave her safely guarded position as a nurse and care giver; she could maintain her beliefs as a Christian and perceive herself a moral human being. The idea of empathy that hovered over her being during her violent poisonings of the patients she cared for created an empathic location wherein all of her actions took place. Other nurses and doctor interpreted their horrific acts as providing a loving and soft death to their former patients206; the perpetrators are therefore spared from encountering the harsh reality of mass murder since the killings are presented within the framework of patient care and love. The tenderness of the doctors and nurses towards their patients throughout the murder itself does not offer a proper analytical answer that will explain the killing, but it rather contributes to the overall process of desensitizing the perpetrators. This example demonstrated an ethical diffusion of violent actions via the establishment of the discourse of an empathic approach.
Nevertheless, empathy is not only an overall justification, it is transformed into specific modules of rationalization which create a bridge between the medical profession and the industrialized killings. It is Lifton's main argument why the Nazi doctors had to adopt a form of "…doubling: a division of the self into two functioning wholes…"207, which enabled them to be at the same time doctors and murderers. His argument is highly relevant when considering the Auschwitz doctors, yet it doesn’t explain the empathic consistency toward some of the victims of the euthanasia program. Empathy enables the self to be a coherent one. Therefore, it is the same profession of devotion and caring that covers these empathic killings. Similar to Lifton, I wish to propose various forms of psychological mechanisms that play a role in the process of empathic reasoning for these killings. Empathy is a bridge between the perpetrators' self perception and their actual actions. There are a few different forms of empathic gap bridging that can be formulated. In the following discussion, I will show how these forms of empathic killing discourse are articulated.
Prof. Werner Heyde- Liberal Empathy
206 A. Ebbinghaus , Opfer und Täterinnen, Nörlingen: Delpphi Politik, 1987, testimony of Louise Erdmann, p. 233 207 Robert Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, New York: Basic Books Publishers, 1986, p. 418 80
Prof. Werner Heyde, who stood as the head of the T-4 medical department, attracted media attention due to his unique biographical story, vivid testimony and subsequent dramatic suicide. One can learn a lot about Prof. Heyde just by paying attention to the length and depth of the arguments provided in his nearly 200 page long affidavit in 1961 and the nine pages long suicide note in 1964. Although he tried and succeeded in hiding for over a decade, he spared no words when captured. The narration of Heyde's affidavit is not one that is common to a defendant; it seems more like an autobiography. Already in his first testimony in 1947, he commences with how he was perceived by other Nazi's. He goes on to explain how critical he was of their policies,208 and this tendency continues in his 1961 testimony209 when he explains the reason for his retirement from the T-4 operation.210 Heyde continues throughout his 1961 testimony and describes in great detail his sexual life, highlighting his homosexual experiences.211 He explains his worldview concerning the meaning of life212 and also offers reflective insights.
Nevertheless, not once does he try to undermine his responsibility, repeatedly accepting his part in euthanasia and yet clamoring for his innocence: "I was and I am sure I am not guilty and that is why I turned myself over to the police."213 Heyde's narration cannot be detached from his suicide that took place before the trial had even begun. In his suicide note, as argued by Burleigh, "…he did not consider himself as judicially or morally guilty."214 Prof. Heyde's affidavit appears more as a confession before death. Yet, unlike the classic Christian form of a remorseful confession, Heyde's words are a manifestation of his beliefs, wherein his arguments must simply be heard, even if the audience is just his own lawyer. After almost 200 pages, Heyde reaches a point where he himself is overwhelmed by his testimony: "I do not want to put further explanations on the record."215 His narration fits well with the paradox of the German Judicial
208 Heyde, Frankfurt, 17.2.1947, p. 2 [2] 209 Heyde, 1961, p. 181 [161] 210 Heyde, 1961, p. 231 [210] 211 Heyde, 1961, p. 91-92 [62-63] 212 Heyde, 1961, p. 120 [92] 213 Heyde, 1961, p. 88 [59] 214 Michel Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 284 215 Heyde, 1961, p. 249 [227] 81
system at the time, which displayed an inclination to prosecute yet were quite lenient in their verdicts. His comprehensive descriptions allude to the centrality these courts set on the question of killing motives. Heyde's orientation is to explain his motive. In a way he is more elaborate about this aspect than about his actual conduct of the killings. Although it is unreasonable to claim that he is trying to convince the court of his innocence it is probable that he is trying to show his inner moral logic and conviction of the Nazi euthanasia project; which makes his testimony of upmost importance.
At first Heyde's argument seems a common and simple form of empathic reasoning to legitimize euthanasia:
"They have explained the logic of this operation with the wish to help redeem the most seriously mentally ill patients that could have anyway hardly been called people."216
The word 'redeem' does appear as the common separation between regular people and those who 'can hardly be called people'. Moreover, it is usually presented in a passive form as if the doctors had just provided some help toward an inevitable outcome. Although Heyde says that he did as told, his own explanations are far more complex. In order to better understand his euthanasia ideology, it is imperative to scrutinize his testimony as a whole. Heyde himself builds up his own argument for advocating euthanasia and after 75 pages finally provides a full view and comprehension of the legitimacy of Nazi euthanasia.
Heyde was known for being a 'non-classical Nazi'. He claims that precisely for this reason his superiors wanted him in office; admiring his ability to see things from a different perspective. For example, although Heyde embraces euthanasia he denounces the idea racial theory and scientific racism as he states:
"… I pointed out that it is impossible to draw any conclusions from the outward appearance of a person, as was popular at the time; just from a mere appearance you can make no assessment of one's character."217
216 Heyde, 1947, p. 3 [3] 217 Heyde, 1961, p. 75 [46] 82
Heyde goes on to disprove the theory's scientific racial basis, defusing one of the most sacred posts of National Socialism. The idea of equality between races and universalism appears in his testimony in another interesting context. "There has never been any instruction to treat Jews differently than non-Jews."218 In his earlier testimony of 1947, Heyde stresses the idea of universal euthanasia demonstrating how this issue is actually an international one. "I knew, of course, that this was not only a German issue but a problem that has been discussed and argued throughout the whole world."219 Heyde provides a universal and liberal approach; in his view every individual is a seperate entity not to be judged by his external appearances but rather by who he is. This fits in with his argument that the questionnaires he wrote for patients were 'neutral' and therefore offered a form of equality.
The characteristics of equality, individualism and universalism allude to classical formal liberal thought. In German traditional liberalism, there were many thinkers that did not settle for this formal version of liberalism and made an attempt to describe a significant self, be it the Kantian idea of the romantic genius, the formation of Humboldt's educational ideology focusing upon constant and original self development or Goethe's literary images that undergo a 'Bildung' process wherein they slowly and continually evolve. Likewise, Heyde doesn’t only try to situate himself within a formal liberal tradition; he wishes to proclaim what he actually means when advocating equality and who, in his view, are those individuals that are liable for this privilege of equality? Who are the significant selves?
"For me, a person has always been an indivisible unit with his physical and his spiritual parts combined. The physical and the spiritual are inseparable units that are codependent. I saw every person as a God´s experiment (Versuch). I held the view that you can only dogmatically isolate the soul as a category on its own. Thereby, I do not want to express here a biologistic approach with which I never agreed."220
218 Heyde, 1961, p. 139 [120] 219 Heyde, 1947, p. 3 [3] 220 Heyde, 1961, p. 108 [79] 83
Continuing on this track, Heyde also opposed surgical procedures that separated parts of the brain from the body:
"I understood it as cowardice… the murder of the soul - by leaving just a mechanically working body…after the surgery there was something that was no longer a human being."221
For Heyde a human is solely a being whose mind and body are joined , operating as one entity. This is his understanding of what a significant self means; depriving one of this quality is regarded by him as murder. With this outlook, Heyde saw the mentally ill as suffering beings deprived of this human trait of a body-soul connection. Yet in order to legitimize murder, Heyde had to incorporate another element: an empathic motive.
"I felt that the existence of these absolutely hopeless and ill people was meaningless and worthless. I do not mean by their external conditions… it was simply beneath human dignity. The main element that defines the essence of an individual human being is herein utterly destroyed... I came to the understanding that from a humanistic point of view it would be a salvation for these people if they were not to live any longer."222
The logic of this sequential argument is the following: 1. There is a categorical form of 'human dignified living' (earlier portrayed as a significant self connecting body and soul) 2. These ill people are "beneath" this form of life and therefore are suffering by their mere existence 3. At this point, Heyde is inclined to help. It would be a salvation for them to end their lives since humans that live inhumanly signify hopelessness and suffering The first argument is his understanding of a liberal ideology that defines the 'dignified human;' the second is a logical linkage comparing two alternative forms of life and the third argument relates to an empathic perception motivating him to help in their salvation.
221 Heyde, 1961, p. 109 [80] 222 Heyde, 1961, p. 107 [78] 84
Heyde bases his claims on the assumption that life is either 'worthy' or 'unworthy' of living. This text is unique because of the fact that Heyde is prolific about what he means when saying a 'life unworthy of living'. Heyde provides an insight into the way he understands the meaning of an individual self, as seen in Heyde’s earlier definition. This idea is an adoption of liberal thought; it had evolved from the idea that focuses on the centrality of the individual, but takes it one crucial step forward. Heyde's argument is that the definition for an individual being is only when that individual is able to sustain a significant self. Without this essential human quality and without being an entity that maintains a connection between body and soul, life has no value or purpose. To his understanding, this aspect of the self is not complimentary but, rather, imperative; a human's value as such is solely derived from this basic foundation. The scope of the formulation of empathy is a product of two components: Heyde's projection towards the suffering of the mentally ill combined with his humanistic perception of the self. A mentally ill person, which means to be a human 'beneath human dignity', should be put out of this fundamental suffering, Such an unacceptable situation, in which these people carry the mark of shame, ought to be ended by putting them out of their misery, i.e. euthanized. In this argument empathy does not operate alone; it only fills a gap needed to fully legitimize the murders. His pseudo humanistic perception combined with his empathic motivation to provide help, create the normative foundation which was sufficiently stable to endure during the entire Nazi era and even for a period of time thereafter. Moreover, the empathic values proclaimed by Heyde are also part of his liberal approach; focusing on individual’s needs, wishes and well being is linked with the empathic view of the other. It is also related to 'emotional role taking,' which means to try to be sensitive to the other through his point of view and feelings. Therefore, Heyde's liberal empathy is not an eclectic combination of rhetorical self legitimizing components but rather a well thought out doctrine advocating euthanasia, as based upon empathic liberal values.
Dr. Paul Nitsche, a psychiatrist who was the deputy director of the Sonnenstein clinic, provides a description of Heyde's empathic attitude and points out the importance of role taking to his empathic approach: "I know for sure that Heyde, was a very soft person; we both had the same opinion about the issue of euthanasia; we really saw it from the patient´s perspective; this is the meaning of mercy
85
death, it is a liberation from a life, which for the patient and for his family is only a sheer torment."223
Nitsche combines Heyde's empathic like softness, emotional role taking and mercy killings. Nitsche claims that he shared with Heyde the view that euthanasia means to see life from the patient's perspective. In their view, the patient would have wanted to be 'liberated' from his situation. One of the most common elements of an empathic approach is related to the role taking ability, whether cognitive or emotional. Most common definitions of empathy allude to the following idea of empathy: "A definition of empathy that requires that an observer share the general emotional tone of the other…seems appropriate for most purposes."224 Heyde participates in this form of role taking. Although it may be inaccurate, this option is not meant to deliberately abuse empathic knowledge of the other as Agosta points out. It is rather the misguided manner of a keen attempt to provide help, care and positive involvement. The empathizer assumes he knows the 'other' from within and therefore follows, as absurd as it sounds, the biblical Golden Rule and moral guideline: "Love your neighbor as yourself"225 Warren Poland's work about the limits of therapeutic empathy shows how the growth of empathic awareness can devour its basic starting point, wherein the empathizer is able to reach into another person, and go full circle and evade the essence of true empathy: "No longer limited to perception, empathy was assimilated into the greater arena of the empathic response, with reaction now added to perception. )…(This misuse of empathy sidesteps the observer’s need for the uncomfortable work of self-analysis. One paradoxical result is an undermining of the patient’s separateness and uniqueness By soldering the response to perception, the analyst acts as if the patient wants and desires were already understood rather than being ultimately, and only partially, understandable."226
223 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.63, Paul Nitsche, Dresden, 2.5.1947, p. 164 [3] 224 N.Eisenberg and J. Strayer (eds.), Empathy and its development, , p. 4 225 Le. 19, 34 226 Warren S. Poland, "The Limits of Empathy" in American Imago, Volume 64, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 87- 93(88-89) 86
Poland shows how empathy can be paternalistic, that is, assuming 'all knowingness', moving from careful observation to decisive assumptions and from a perceptive state to a form of reaction. Poland talks about nuances in the field of therapeutical empathy, yet his idea of an empathic misuse, due to an assumingly humanistic and highly empathic approach, is very fruitful when explaining Heyde's empathic and sensitive form of justification.
That there is a difference between positive and negative empathy is fine. If our discussion were to be focused on dying vegetating patients we would meet a similar empathic dilemma: what would I wish for if I were in his place? Or better, what would the individual wish for if able to voice his opinion? Inaccurate role taking is the blind spot of the empathic view, and leads to a polar situation. On the one hand, the ability to leave the safety zone and visualize oneself as the other, carries the possibility of truly understanding the other person. Yet, on the other hand, the empathizer can also misinterpret the other person in a very profound manner.
Heyde's role taking is not only an emotional one but also an involved one. It is a reactionary attitude with an empathic approach that is inclined to be helpful. This attitude cannot accept the pain of the other; it is not a 'listening empathy' but rather a 'doing empathy'. This form of empathy stresses the detrimental aspect of empathy, the obsessive aspect that can't accept the existence of mere pain and provides a solution even if it ridicules and contradicts the main empathic idea. The care giver presents himself as a savior that takes away pain, since this pain in his highly sensitive empathic outlook is unbearable for the other. Heyde is an example of a rhetoric that is cleaned from traditional eugenic ideology, vanity, ambition and the comfort of obedience. He provides an insight to a convincing form of empathic violence. Empathy can override the other as such. The empathizer goes beyond caring and develops paternalism; he doesn't see the other, he swallows him up. He might not preserve the unique selfhood of the other so as to blur this entity. The overarching attribute of empathic care helps this haziness go unnoticed. Thus, what had begun with a genuine and fundamental view of another person devours itself and turns into implicit violence; it roots out the essence of the 'others'- wishes and needs. This stance does not see whether this patient's death is truly better than life or what the deep meaning and consequences to his own moral values. It, instead,
87
establishes categories that developed within the caring empathic discourse, yet now, stand in absolute contradiction to their original intent. As Oedipus had done, this 'child' unknowingly killed his own father.227
Dr. Eugen Stähle
National Empathy
Dr. Stähle was along time member of the Nazi party. Unlike Heyde, he does not stress the notion for deep self reflection nor the need for criticizing aspects of the Nazi discourse. Stähle participated in writing articles that advocated scientifically proven racial differentiation in one of the most popular Nazi medical magazines, "Die Volksgesundheitswacht". "We must go beyond this, to explore equally important differences in the inner organs of the body, differences that may reflect deeper, psychological differences among the races. Best known in this area is the "racial smell". Europeans find the smell not only of Negros but also of East Asians to be repulsive; even when they are clean."228 Already in 1939. he was an official in the Württemberg Ministry of Interior responsible for health care. It was under his jurisdiction and initiative that Grafeneck Castle was turned into a death center. Later, in November 1942, he took over as chairmanship of the Gaugesundheitsrat for Wuerttemberg-Hohenzollern. This position made him the main figure in charge of the euthanasia program in the region.
During the first three years after the second war. Germany and its judicial system tried to implement a process ofde-Nazification.At the time, there were a few verdicts that carried the death sentence and penalties for participation in euthanasia was far more severe than in later years. Moreover, the significance of the crime’s motivation wasn’t as important as it came to be
227 Heyde is not the only example of empathic (cognitive and affective) role taking. There is a very explicit example in the testimony of Luise Erdmann: "My attitude to euthanasia was, should I become incurably ill- I don’t make a difference between mental or physical illness- I would consider it a release…" in: Ebbinghous, p. 232 228 Quoted in: R. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1988, P. 78-79 88
later on. The most common ground for acquitting a defendant would be his or her lack of knowledge, or, obedience due to fear.229 In this context, the confessions of Stähle, that stands firmly behind his ideological claim, is not driven by the post Nazi historical context and anti- euthanasia orientation. He does not claim to be blinded, threatened or misled; rather the opposite is true, he elaborates about why he willingly took part in this obscene operation.
Dr. Eugen Stähle begins his testimony with an argument about his motivation to be a doctor, or more accurately in this context a care giver: "In my opinion someone who has the vocation to be a doctor, is someone who feels the will and the urge to help people in their illness and distress, this is not someone who just wants become rich in this profession."230
Stähle does not only provide an insight concerning medical ethics but also a better understanding of his testimonial narration. He tries to place himself in an altruistic positioning and tells us about his objective as a care giver, which he will also try to prove over and over again in his testimony. The main narrative concerning euthanasia, which also becomes repetitive in his interrogation, is the will to help. Stähle did not try to prove his innocence in the eyes of the court, yet he did try to frame the euthanasia project within the boundaries of the empathic attribute of the medical profession. In his view, he is not only innocent but also a wonderful doctor and a role model as an empathic care giver.
Stähle has more than one complex empathic form for legitimizing euthanasia with 'national empathy' and 'individual empathy' serving as the primary forms. These two forms are related, yet they also stand as justifications on their own accord. In order to understand 'national empathy', it is important to realize that the starting point of his argument begins with the individual. Before asserting his national empathy views he begins with his own version of the Hippocrates Oath: "Thereby there's no difference for the doctor the race, religion or nationality of the ill people, he
229 M. Brayant, Confronting the "Good Death", chapter 3 230 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.74, Eugen Stähle, Stuttgart, 26.6.1945, p. 112 [5] 89
must help every person in the same fashion"231
Just a few lines later, and after admitting a concern for the individual patient, he continues and explains the meaning of his empathy towards his patients, as he stated: "In addition the doctor is not only helper of the individual, but the doctor of the nation as well, the whole nation, he has to contrive ways and means to improve the physical conditions of the people´s community (Volksgemeinschaft) in every sense... But the doctor must have the objective to improve the genetics of the people´s community and to stop detrimental genetics from propagating and multiplying."232
As a doctor, Stähle is committed to be full of empathy. That is the core of his profession, yet his empathy is not solely focused on the individual, but, rather, on the nation as well. The individual’s empathy is dependent upon the condition that the individual's well being does not jeopardize the nation's prosperity. He is well aware of the tensions that exist between personal well being and individual empathy and the national one; he does not argue for the greater good but for the greater empathy- empathy to his nation.
Stähle provides another conceptual formulation that deals with the tension between the individual and the national empathies: "The patient can only be absolutely understood and thereby also treated in the right way by his doctor only if both belong to the same ethnic´s community. The ethnic´s communities are very different: mentally and physically and only someone who is natured the same way can understand the patient´s soul totally."233
The implicit outcome is simple: the individual's self meaning derives from the national good. This form of traditional fascism enables Stähle to bridge the empathic gap. If the individual's will is amalgamated with the nation, then euthanasia can be seen as the patients' inner will to sacrifice
231 Stähle, Ibid 232 Stähle, Ibid 233 Stähle, p. 113 [6] 90
themselves for the Volk. This is exactly what Stähle argues later on in his testimony: "If you expect from thousands of young and healthy people to sacrifice their lives for the community during the war, you can also expect this sacrifice from incurable ill people."234 The ill here aren’t dehumanized but actually compared to soldiers and civilians fighting for Germany. Therefore, euthanasia is their fight for the greater good of Germany. In this fight the individual isn’t lost but rather empowered by being led by his classification as a national individual. Stähle solution here is to incorporate national and individual empathies, which do not stand in contradiction to one another as seen previously, since the individual is a manifestation of national aspirations. Therefore, his will and the nation's will can be seen as one and united.
Another way in which Stähle deals with the competing individual and national empathies is through compromise. He tries to negotiate the logic of sterilization in a way which minimizes the gravity of the procedure; this in order to reduce the anxiety regarding the procedure: "Sterilization is not mutilation and does not make a person useless"235; moreover he tries to eliminate the responsibility in this surgery since the mentally ill wouldn’t be able to have children anyway: " Only because of the protected life in the institutions he is able to reach the age of propagation."236 He also adds that: "… the genital abilities are not damaged…"237 Although Stähle uses this argument in order to legitimize mentally ill sterilization and not actual killing, he provides another form of the argument which is empathically motivated. All three forms allude to Stähle's understanding that euthanasia must be explained with an empathic approach for the individual victims.
The national empathic logic stands in contrast to the idea of liberal empathy in the perception of euthanasia; it assumes euthanasia isn’t an optimal solution for the individual. yet it is a price that has to be paid. Advocators for 'liberal empathy' euthanasia however, would argue that the individual patients benefit greatly from being euthanized. Stähle establishes his own version of
234 Stähle, p. 119 [12] 235 Stähle, p. 11 [6] 236 Stähle, p. 11 [6] 237 Stähle, p. 11 [6] 91
empathic killing which views the euthanasia project not only as a national enterprise but also as an individual salvation, one granted specifically to the patient: "The word euthanasia has a double meaning. One is something I want to call assisting dying…The second meaning of the word is mercy-death or salvation-death. Personally I prefer the word liberation of being (Daseinsbefreiung)."238
This text provides an insight into Stähle's linguistic sensitivities; he understands the harshness and tension of the phrase 'mercy killings' the same way he understands the national- individual tension caused by participating in euthanasia. His solution is to confound the idea with the words for liberating and assisting.; Therefore, the doctor is not a murderer but a keen empathic figure. The passiveness of the word 'assisting' combined with the empathic connotation of the word 'liberating' frame euthanasia as part of the doctor's profession as a care giver. Warren Reich provides a similar analysis underlining a shift in the medical ethics perception concerning the role of the care giver in Nazi Germany. His main argument is that the term care Sorge was manipulated from its traditional and liberal form of Fürsorge to a Nazi and national form of Vorsorge. Fürsorge means clinical care of the individual whereas Vorsorge means preventive care. The notion of Vorsorge was objectified and it indicated the need to take care of measures against the mentally ill. Furthermore, it had also overridden the gravity of Fürsorge. Reich's findings basically show how the idea of care was used against itself: "Because their argument entailed the manipulation of the very idea of care, it is part of my thesis that at a deeper level of formative ideas the medical policies and medical crimes in the Nazi era constituted a betrayal of both the idea and the practice of care."239
The case of Stähle fits the Reich's policy, which transformed and revised traditional medical concepts of care, therefore favoring the nation over the individual. Stähle goes beyond Reich's guidelines, since he tries to sustain the basic meaning of empathy within medical discourse.
238 Stähle, p. 12 [7] 239 Warren T. Reich "The Care-Based Ethic of Nazi Medicine and the Moral Importance of What We Care About" in The American Journal of Bioethics, Vo. 1, No. 1, Winter 2001, pp. 64-74, p. 65 92
Similar to Heyde, Stähle also provides a definition of what a 'life unworthy of living' means: "In my opinion life is the ability to react in correlation to the influences of the environment. If this ability is already gone for many years and it cannot be retrieved, then this person in this situation can only be called a being, not a life anymore. Such a being carries a nameless misery, as you can observe on hundreds of people living in madhouses. Anyone who sees this distress must ask himself: is there no possibility to liberate these people from their misery."240 Unlike Heyde that focuses on the individual as an autonomic entity he defines a significant self as a coherent being whose soul and body are in correlation. Stähle offers a different form of correlation, which is the association of the individual and his social environment. These different definitions are related to the different forms of empathy, Heyde's liberal empathy emphasizes the autonomous self and Stähle provides a socially oriented definition, which fits in well with his form of national empathy. Although Stähle's basic reasoning is not linearly related to the idea of national empathy, there is still a common ground between the two- the allegedindivisible individual-national connection.
Empathic Executions
Unlike many high ranking Nazi doctors that didn’t participate in the actual killings themselves, Stähle's participation was total, not only in the preparation stage but in executing the euthanasia project as well. Basic ideological empathy might fit the normative and emotional logic of this Nazi project yet it fails to explain the emotional conduct of actual executions. At first glance, a person's death should be considered a harsh event, even when normatively justified. Stähle's empathic execution rhetorical strategy enables him to see not only the 'redeeming' outcome but also the act of death itself as a manifestation of empathy and kindness: "… in the door there was a small observation window… The patients sat as obtuse and as calm as before. When viewing through this observation window one could assume that they didn't notice the gas coming in at all. After a few minutes you could see signs of tiredness and sagging, some of them fell off the benches. A few minutes later there were no signs of life. )…( When able to enter the room again, one would have seen the deceased laying there, on the bench with peaceful and relaxed faces…I
240 Stähle, p. 12 [7] 93
was calm about this way of death, because all signs of suffering and agony were no longer there; the corpses had been now totally relaxed and had peaceful faces."241
Empathy acts as a narrow bridge between murder and consciousness so that the act of killing is deprived of its violent context and can be presented as a calm and soothing event. The fundamental aspect of taking a life seems equivalent to the description of an afternoon nap, all under the conceptual umbrella of empathic reasoning. Death herein is postulated aesthetically and it stands in contrast to the patients' uncleanness during their "unworthy" lives. Stähle creates a peaceful image of death as if the patients themselves affirm Stähle's narration of the redemptive quality of these mercy killings. Stähle points out how he follows this process, deploying a great deal of technical and emotional sensitivities while observing the death, thus utilizing empathic observation mechanisms and an empathic discourse. The patients' calm faces leave a vivid image that establishes a romantic ending for Stähle's patients.; Stähle had turned them from miserable creatures filled with pain into beautiful and calm corpses. Empathic rhetoric is enhanced when describing their deaths; this dissonance of a doctor murdering his patients does not contribute to the creation of new categories, but rather it deepens the fundamental paradox into a grotesque form of empathic killing.
In some cases empathy was used during the execution, not only to desensitize the perpetrator as presented above, but also to deceive the victims and make the process smoother. In the case of Anna Gastler, the conceptual frame of empathic care operated both ways:
"When I gave the dissolved medicine I did it with a lot of empathy. I told the patients before that they would just have to undergo a treatment.…. When I gave it to them I took them tenderly in my arms and caressed them"242
Gastler's empathy doesn't stand out as a red light denouncing murder, but rather as a tool of mediation that enables her to kill as long as it is done with empathy; it offers her blindness to the evil, wrong doing and vicious aspects of her daily murderous, routine. Empathy towards her
241 Stähle, p. 18-19 [13-14] 242 Opfer und Täterinnen, p. 239 94
victims, while killing them, reduces the feeling of guilt and suffuses her with the pride of a loving care giver.243 In this case, Agosta's ideas of manipulating empathy in order to make the deaths more efficient is relevant, yet unlike his theory it isn’t premeditated. Anna Gastler doesn’t understand the violent aspect of her empathy on the surface is highly emotionally involved with her victims well being. True, the outcome is similar but the empathic self legitimizing mechanism is far more complex and far less deliberate.
Dr. Walter Schmidt- Empathic Blurring
A six year sentence was handed down to Walter Schidt. Judging by the outcome, the court viewed the credibility of Walter Schidt's motives as weak. However, "Thanks to a carefully orchestrated clemency campaign by his friends, relatives and legal representatives Schmidt was released in 1953."244 In fact, during the trial itself, he succeeded in mitigating some of his responsibility. Brayant concludes with the court's attitude towards Schmidt: "Unlike Mennecke's motives for participation, Schmidt's were not self- referential…the court pointed out that Schmidt- perhaps because of bad upbringing- suffered from 'falsely understood subaltern loyalty to obey' which prevented him from refusing to collaborate with the euthanasia program."245 Therefore, it is difficult to state whether Schmidt's proclaimed motives at the trial are his real ones. He fit his testimony to the orientation of the court, which demonstrated receptiveness towards obedient motives and also leniency when perpetrators claimed their purpose was to minimize euthanasia. Nevertheless, the documents presented throughout the trial showed an ambivalence concerning Schmidt's attitude. In many cases, he helped cure the mentally ill, sometimes, even when they were designated for euthanasia. This evidence helps reinforce his own argument, whereby he differentiates the curable from the incurable. His testimony, however, is not homogeneous. There is a lot of apologetic testimony in which he undermines the importance of his participation and responsibility. The texts hereby presented focus only upon
243 It is important to note that Anna Gastler's case isn’t singular and this tendency appears in other testimonies of nurses conducting mass killings within the euthanasia project. (Opfer und Täterinnen, Louise E. 233).
244 Burleigh, p. 278 245 Brayant, p. 125 95
his explicit confessions of participation. Moreover, his testimonies which revealed another guide line, beside the idea of 'euthanasia sabotage,' was noticed by the court. One aspect of Schmidt's reasoning is a form of sympathizing confusion or 'empathic blurring'.
Schmidt explains to the court about the moment when he became convinced that euthanasia is justified: "This child was always lying in its own urine and messed up with it… In addition they had infections as a result of their excrement and injuries. At this time Dr. Helfemann came once and had introduced me to such a child. He said this would be an example for euthanasia and which made sense to me. In such a case you have to redeem the child before it suffers even more and gets more fever attacks."246
The way empathy is xplained herein is "we have to redeem this child before he suffers even more," that is stopping the pain due to the assumption that the patient is enduring extreme pain and that his misery is constantly being intensified. Schmidt does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of the individual as Heyde and Stähle do. His approach derives more from his immediate observation of the patient's pain. Empathy plays a simple role; it provides the drive to intervene and stop the patient's suffering. However, there is a question as tohow he reaches these two assumptions: that the pain is so great and that death is inevitable? I believe that Schmidt consistently employed a strategy of empathic blurring, which means combining two unconnected elements under the roof of empathic reasoning without validating the connection. The emotional semantic field provided by empathic discourse enabled Schimdt to confuse ideas in order to justify his actions.
There are two things that he mentions as if identical: the patient's lack of dignity when lying in his own urine and health problems dealing with infections. Combining the two was a prelude to the crucial moment when he accepted the legitimacy of euthanasia, it was not a mere coincidence, as exemplified in another part of his testimony: "All the children were seriously ill… there was an order that we must treat these children, this meant euthanasia... So I implemented the treatment, when a child was struggling in agony. )…(
246 Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.73, Walter Schmidt, 3.12.1946, Frankfurt, p. 23 [20] 96
When a child was deathly ill, I was called... When I saw that the death should be expected soon, I said: "Give me an emulsion injection." Then a morphine solution or luminal solution was composed and I induced a deep sleep, so the child had no pain anymore. )…( In agony they had mucus sputum or cramp conditions. They died then (hinübergeschlafen). Without the treatment they would have lasted maybe 1-2 days longer, yet they would have died in any case."247 Throughout Schmidt's testimony one cannot tell if it is the 'agony' the 'incurable mental illness' or the fact that the patient is on their deathbed; the categories are constantly blurred. Even when he underlines the conditions under which the patient would be part of the euthanasia program he combines the two: "… incurable seriously suffering people."248 The common denominator is empathy to all and the accompanying inclination to stop their suffering. It seems as if he actually waited until the critical point was reached, when they are about to die, and only then does Schmidt chivalrously arrive, so, to end the agony. Yet, legally, he and the court both know this isn’t the case. it is exactly the point asked by the prosecutor: "was the euthanasia limited for such people that would die anyway, people that were laying on the death bed?"249 Schmidt did provide an answer: "This is how we understood it, when these people were mental ill or a serious malformation with insanity or idiocy and when in addition they had a physical illnesses."250 Yet the prosecutor doesn’t give up and pinpoints the Eichberg death center: "… these people were not on their deathbed, were they?"251 Schmidt answers with a dash of reflection: "…it is so, I already said, you cannot put an exact border concerning these mentally ill people. There are mentally ill people that are already totally gone (stupid) and even with medical help you will not improve their situation. They were included in the euthanasia program."252 Schmidt cannot put 'an exact border, since doing so will exclude the legitimacy of most of the patients whom he murdered. Whether they were curable or not is debatable, but they were certainly not on their deathbeds. The overarching idea of empathy is used repeatedly in his testimony, yet he finds it most convincing when they are on their deathbeds. Therefore, in some
247 Schmidt, p. 25 [23] 248 Schmidt, p. 69 [38] 249 Schmidt, p. 76 [46] 250 Ibid 251 Ibid 252 Ibid 97
cases he says that the staff would patiently wait: "We waited until the child was ill, we waited with the elimination."253 The blurring of the different categories is imperative since it regulates and interconnects the empathic motive and the specific reality wherein the killings took place. If a situation of total idiocy or an incurable mentally ill child is equivalent to a patient in agony or a dying one, then they both can be justified in the same way by the doctor's empathy to end their suffering. The blurring of differences in medical states has a functional role to enable and justify empathic reasoning.
Euthanasia Sabotage- Dr. Alfred Leu
The case of Dr. Leu, who was a physician at the Sachsenberg psychiatric center, ended with the first German verdict to acquit a defendant that actually actively participated in organizing and conducting euthanasia A verdict upheld in the early 50's by the German Supreme Court. They beleived his basic argument, that he took part only in order to minimize the amount of murder. This was a novel and quite effective method for justification that many other defendants eventually adopted, Andrea, Mauthe, Creutz, all claiming their innocence despite their proven participation. The courts were receptive to the idea of "exertion of conscience"; defendants argued that their participation was part of their consciously motivated attempt to minimize euthanasia activity and so were not criminally liable. This judicial paradigm, which started in 1952, enabled defendants to offer a simple explanation for their actions in the euthanasia program, one that is most difficult to disprove.254 Therefore, these testimonies are methodologically very challenging, due to the fact that the defendants repeatedly claim the argument of euthanasia sabotage to their own benefit. Leu's testimony fits the profile whereby his empathy towards the victims is proclaimed through his declared hesitant participation. Although very little can be said about Leu's real motives, the importance of his testimony serves to better understand the connection between an overall empathic reasoning and the actual conduct of the killings.
253 Schmidt, p. 28 [25] 254 Brayant, pp. 198-203 98
Leu begins by explicitly laying out his active role in euthanasia "Frankly I admit that within the euthanasia project I treated 80 children. Nevertheless, I felt obliged to this operation and I was committed by my official position as I pointed out in my other interrogations. )…( Especially I must emphasize again that a large percentage of the children that were selected for euthanasia would have died inevitably even without the implementation of this project. I wished to take the least amount of children as possible... I was able to exclude 100 children out of a list of 180 that were to be euthanized…"255 Leu's explanation encompass three stages: 1. I did actually participate in euthanasia killings 2. Most of the children would have inevitably died 3. My drive to participate was in order to minimize the killings The logical sequence provided by Leu connects all killing activities with the concept of euthanasia sabotage. His strategy is to admit to the charges and yet to contextualize them under the framework of an anti- euthanasia agenda: "…it is the truth that I had always opposed euthanasia. With an inner conflict I didn't refuse to participate in the operation; this was in order to prevent something even worse."256 Leu continues and proves to the court that he understands the distinction between euthanasia and being a care giver: "I have to say that I had considerable concerns when I received instructions to kill my patients."257 The basic guideline that supports his argument is his consistency in being a care giver, a doctor and an empathic figure throughout the war. His empathic disapproval of euthanasia was translated into a partial co-operation wherein he could: "…follow orders in order to sabotage the given instructions as much as possible"258 The witnesses in his trial mentioned his empathic attributes: "After the conversation with the defendant I had the impression that he was a very humanistic person, caring for his patients with love and medical sensitivity."259 Empathy towards
255 Yad Vashem Archive, Alfred Leu, Box No. TR-10 2584.55, Köln, 31.10.1950, 147 [2] 256 Leu, Köln, 20.11.1951, p. 150 [1] 257 Leu, Köln, 30.1.1951, p. 156-7 [1-2] 258 Leu, Köln, 30.1.1951, p. 157 [2] 259 Leu, Köln, 20.5.1952, p. 166 99
the children that were to be savedwas the basic legitimization for his argued partial co-operation. In his trial testimony, there are several gaps and inconsistencies, especially when he mentions the relationship between the medical staff and the victims' families. Despite his narration of euthanasia sabotage and the illegitimacy of this project, he states the following: "I must say that in no case did I hear that the children´s families were upset about the intended euthanasia process, in fact, in most cases I came to the conclusion that relatives of these patients tacitly agreed with it."260
Why does Leu declare that euthanasia was largely accepted by the victims' families? What purpose did it serve in his euthanasia sabotage argument? This argument doesn’t fit in with the basic idea that euthanasia is wrong and is actually insinuating the opposite possibility, legitimacy of euthanasia's. This tension in Leu's testimonial logic was explained within an empathic rhetoric. which explains how he actually helped the mentally ill. Yet, what about those who he unwillingly killed and what about their families. This part of his testimony can be understood as self legitimization, regardless of the courts attitude. He didn’t do anything that families wouldn't want done; he was a genuine care giver. These two opposing arguments can be better understood in Leu's attempt to portray himself as a "euthanasian" empathic care giver.
Christian Ideals Religious Nurses and Nazi Eugenics
Unlike previous examples, which spotlighted single perpetrators, this section will combine various testimonies of nurses and Christian figures concerning eugenic thought and conduct in Nazi Germany. It is not the goal of this chapter to provide a comprehensive historical overview of all the various principles, ideals and paradoxes in Christian eugenic thought that were highly debated during the 30s and 40s . The main objective is to show how some Christian thinkers contemplated original solutions to the idea of a conceptual peace within the hybridization of Christianity and eugenics. A few of these linguistic forms will be presented focusing on the way in which old and traditional concepts of grace, charity and neighborly love were altered and adjusted to follow Nazi eugenic ideology. The issue of Christianity and eugenics is critical to
260 Leu, Köln, 31.10.1950, p. 148 [3] 100
understanding the mindset of nurses, since nursing training in Germany was marginalized by the Church. Religion and nursing were intertwined. Just a small percentage of the nursing schools were administrated by the Nazi party. Christian values of charity, care and aiding the weak were embedded into their education, thereby incorporating the professional discourse of these care givers with the religious Christian discourse of altruism. This second part will deal with a critical reading of four testimonies of Christian nurses that participated in euthanasia. Surprisingly their self legitimization is very different than the one provided by Christian thinkers who advocated for euthanasia during the 30s; while Christian Nazis offered their conceptual version which bridged the gap between eugenic ideas and Christianity; the nurses themselves enhanced this paradox and then turned to ideas of empathy and empathic violence to justify their actions.
Christian Eugenics
When euthanasia was introduced into the public German sphere in its light version of eugenic sterilization, it encountered a great deal of immediate objection especially by Christian advocators such as Paul Gerhardt, Braune, Wurm and Erzbisch261. Nevertheless some pastors, Christian thinkers and Nazi officials provided their answer to this conglomeration of the mentally sterilization agenda with Christian values of charity, grace, redemption, salvation and glory. These ideas were integrated into the religious discourse despite the obvious paradox that sterilization posed to classic Christian thought. During the 30s, and until euthanasia actually took place, many formulations were postulated to explain the correlation between Gods will and pre- euthanasia ideas.
How can the idea of providing help coincide with sterilizing the weak? How can the idea of Christian charity be implemented in this secular violent eugenic concept? In a symposium that took place in 1931 some answers were provided:
"Nevertheless the gospel does not demand to sustain the integrity of the body. If his god-given functions lead to evil and destruction of God's realm…, thus there is not only a right but also a moral duty to sterilize out of charity (Nächstenliebe - Christian term, loving your neighbor) and
261 Klee p. 151-198 101
in spite of the given responsibility for not only the temporary but also the following generation as well".262
The speaker points out that the duty of charity towards the next generations and towards the community overrides the individual right for charity. Moreover, the comparisons to an evil destroyer of god's kingdom dehumanizes the patient and contributes to the desensitization of the perpetrator. This is similar to the form of "National Empathy" mentioned previously with one fundamental difference; Stähle's national empathy is a secular formation of his normative discourse whereas here there is a fusion of religious ideas of Caritas which is incorporated into Nazi eugenic ideology. A more explicit example to this cross-bred idea is introduced in a book dedicated to "Caritas Science":
"Caritas has to be in the service of life, both for the presence and for the future. Caritas has to be an enhancement of life… Real Caritas service must be in favor of racial hygiene because of the fact that only through the improvement of the people (Volk) is it possible to establish the best foundation for the expansion of God´s kingdom on earth. The improvement of the people means to dedicate and enrich one's life for the service of the creator and redeemer."263
Prof. Franz Keller agrees that the idea of Caritas has to consider the community but his argument is far more radical. True Caritas is only a charity for God's kingdom, which is to his belief embodied in the German Volk. Keller uses Christian terminologies to rhetorically strengthen his argument. He tries to show how rerouting the Caritas from the mentally ill toward the nation, 'enriches the way one serves his creator and redeemer'.
A very different approach for combining eugenics with religious thought was to accept the fact that sterilization isn’t pure charity, that the victims do suffer, yet it is their holy sacrifice. Instead
262 In Klee p. 49, This refers to the following passage in the New Testament: "If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell." Mathew 5:29-30 263 Klee p. 54 102
of dehumanizing them, or undermining their right to charity, they glorify the victims portraying them as martyrs:
)…( There is a completely new understanding of what is written in Isaiah 56: "I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; A name age- during I give to him that is not cut off." Here he talks about the eunuchs, people without offspring. The church of Jesus Christ has to be the place where God will give those people names; people which will not put their eyes away from God´s eternal light even in their hard fate of being infertile. )…( But when a person obliterates his name )through sterilization) out of a personal voluntary sacrifice, the word of Jesus will become shining brightly for he who believe: "rejoice that your name is written in heaven!" Now our church has the mission to declare this."264
It is a sad irony that this biblical quotation, later used by the The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Yadvashem, was originally used by Pastor Dr. Kleeman in order to advocate sterilization. The victims are presented as holy, remembered by the almighty since they are deprived of their natural abilities to bare children. Moreover, if they participate willingly, they can 'rejoice' for their name is 'written in heaven'. The reader of this text may assume that by sterilizing these mentally ill patients he assists them in achieving closeness to God. The rhetorical framing here is within the boundaries of 'providing help'; and this help is considered a Christian one rooted in biblical ideas, which bridge the gap between man and god.
One of the most interesting attempts to regulate Nazi 'useless eater' ideology with the Christian idea of mercy, is given by Linder: The most important factor is the spirit of love and mercy… A person might seem to be useless in the local ethnic community, but for the kingdom of God, there are neither borders nor a useless life."265 The unique and novel aspect is that the patients can be simultaneously described as useless eaters and as part of god's kingdom in the same sentence. The belief in god's kingdom can compensate
264 Klee p. 56 265 Hilde Steppe, Krankenpflege im Nationalsozialismus Frankfurt: Mabuse Verlag, 1996, p. 67 103
for the harshness of sterilization. Religion can help blur the essence of these diabolical actions the same way that empathy can blur (Empathic Blurring) the gravity of euthanasia.
The nurses
All of the nurses' testimonies presented here stem from the Munich trials in 1965 and all relate to their participation in euthanasia at the Meseritz-Obrawalda institute. Since all nurses were acquitted, their family names in the edited volumes of the "Justiz und NS-Verbrechen" aren’t provided. They appear only in the original trial protocols. Steppe gathered some of these protocols and offered her analysis to the enigma of killer Christian nurses, yet she focused on the typological and descriptive aspects of their testimonies. Similarly, the more recent researches of Benedict and Kuhla introduced a spectrum of justifications for these nurses and they focus on the classification of the different layers of their self reasoning. The main theme of the defendants, when advocating their innocence, was their obedience to the doctors' orders, combined with undermining their active participation as much as they could.
"When I participated in the killings, therefore acting against my inner belief and conviction; I did it because I was used to obey the doctor´s commands and instructions unconditionally. I was raised and educated this way."266
This understandable line of defense was fruitful in achieving their acquittals but unsatisfactory to explain their actions. The testimonies are eclectic; in one testimony you can find not only various reasons of participation but also explicit paradoxes. For example, in the same testimony that Louise Erdmann mentions that it stood against her Christian belief (235f), she also points out that euthanasia is justified.267 There are many places where the nurses deviate from their main argument of defense, where they are elaborate about their empathies, doubts, ideologies and ambitions. The testimonies of these nurses seem simpler than the doctors' testimonies; their arguments are shorter and repeat the theme of obedience many more times. Although they are
266 All the nurses' quotes are from Ebbinghaus: Angelika Ebbinghous, Opfer und Taterinnen, Nördlingen: Delphi Politik, 1987, p. 234 267 Ibid 104
well aware of the proclaimed motives that could get them off the hook, they don’t maintain consistency of their acquitting arguments. The testimonies aren’t monolithic and they provide an insight into an inner processes of self conviction. Two of these deviations from the narration of 'obedient unknowing nurses' are: self empathy and Christian frame of belief (yet different than the "classic" form provided by Christian Nazi euthanasia advocators in the 30s).
At the time of the actual killings, the nurses that did participate in euthanasia help unravel a very different self legitimization process than the modules in Christian eugenics. In fact, in most cases, they emphasize the paradox. In a similar way to other nurses Louse Erdmann explains: "I was and still am without interruption of the Protestant faith. I must say that basically I describe the whole Protestant also as my faith. I would like to express by this that the commandments 'thou shall not steal ' is true for me. When I did the killings, I must admit I offended this commandment. But as I expressed in my questioning, I didn't do it with a light heart and only after serious inner fights…"268
Erdmann begins by introducing us to her Christian belief and to her background, thus framing her testimony within the logic of her religious convictions. Her normative values of 'thou shall not kill' derive from this belief. She contrasts between the Sixth Commandment and her actions as a nurse. Her heart was not 'light' as she presents her inner struggles. After polarizing Christianity and euthanasia, she concludes with the only possible and most common excuse: "I obeyed the orders".
The tendency to begin with religious framing and end with self reflection and guilt appears in at least four different testimonies of nurses in this trial (Anna Gastler, Louise Erdmann, Margareta T. and Marthe W.): Martha W. a nurse from Meseritz-Obrawalda institute, was accused of killing 150 patients. She provides an example of another version of this three stage argument seen above in Louise Erdmann's testimony: She begin with Christian framing and upbringing "I was brought up as a Catholic…" then she continues and makes a rhetorical reference to the biblical commandments "…I acted against the commandments…"and ends with the enigmatic and
268 A. Ebbinghaus, p. 234 105
reflective conclusion: "I burdened my conscience seriously"269. Even in the testimonies that don’t incorporate a Christian framing to the narration they present euthanasia as morally wrong and color their participation with a form of Aporia, and an inherently puzzling state of mind. The defendant nurse Erna D. concludes her testimony with the 'dead end' statement: "…I can't say why I didn’t refuse."270 Surprisingly and unlike previous forms of Christian eugenic propaganda the nurses denounce their participation. Instead of trying to bridge the gap between euthanasia and Christian normative concepts they deepen it and delegitimize their own actions. In contrast to testimonies of most of the euthanasia doctors mentioned above that explain the logic of euthanasia insinuating their just actions and innocence, the nurses engage in an argument that accepts their basic guilt, therefore directing their self justifications toward claims of obedience, unknowingness, and in retrospect Aporia.
Louise Erdmann's testimony is an exception in this context. As with many of the other nurses, Erdmann explains her main line of defense as an obedient nurse: "The permanent process of obeying the order of a physician becomes second nature to the extent that one's own thinking is switched off"271
Nevertheless, although admitting to her guilt of participation and claiming that her base motive was obedience, there are parts of her testimony that do not follow this line of argument. She provides an insight to the process of self justification when the common claim for obedience fails to sustain her need for coherence and reflection: "I had to consider that one physician who, after all, also is only a human being, could make mistakes in diagnosis of prognosis. I realize that I offended seriously the divine and moral law by participating in the killings. I would only moderate my guilt by trusting strictly that the physician didn't make a mistake."272
269 A. Ebbinghous, testimony of Martha W. p. 240 270 A. Ebbinghous, testimony of Erna D. p. 243 271 Ibid p. 234 272 Ibid p. 236 106
What does Erdmann mean by a 'mistake' in this respect? After all she is talking about euthanasia and the murder of mentally ill children and adults; what would be the opposite of a mistake in her view in this context? If it would be up to her what would be the right thing to do? Is it against the divine moral law or is it rather the doctor's good judgment? Would it be possible in any scenario to accept the doctor's eugenic killings, when the prognosis is correct? Erdmann explains that trusting the doctor does not take away her guilt but only moderates it. It is as if she said that trusting the doctors enabled her to be open to accept the rightfulness of euthanasia under some conditions, despite her original disapproval. It contributes to reducing the gravity of her action since she believes that in some cases the doctors may be right. This form of obedience isn’t the one where she 'switches her own thinking off,' it is a pragmatic form of self legitimization. Her argument herein isn’t targeted towards the judge, since it is counterproductive when admitting to have had doubts concerning following the doctor's orders. It is rather an opportunity to see the process of self legitimization in action; she explains to herself how her tendency towards obedience mediated her ability to participate and helped in relieving her conscience. But this isn’t enough for Louise Erdmann- she still leaves out the times when the physician is wrong, how then does she deal with this fundamental feeling of guilt? So she continues on and addresses this issue:
"But I couldn't completely exclude a mistake, I prayed to my God to forgive me in such a case"273 This is an example of how her Christian beliefs operate in the same manner as her explanation of obedience. By participating in these unjust killings, she had to find a way to mitigate her guilt and to moderate her perception of her actions. The role that her Christian confession played was to maintain her course of action and let out her disapproval through prayer. Erdmann does not coordinate between Christianity and the euthanasia killings -she employs religious strategies of confession that help her reduce her guilt, therefore contributing to the conceptual efficiency of the killings. This is a case where God's mercy grace and forgiveness towards the perpetrator is implemented to provide an emotional mechanism of guilt diminution. The idea of Obedience and God's merciful forgiveness do not satisfy her and she goes on with her reasoning for her participation:
273 Ibid 107
"In addition, I have to suppose that the ill people selected to be killed by the physicians were such seriously ill people that even in case of a mistake, I have to see it as a release for them."274 The most striking thing about this part of her testimony is that she says that she 'had to see it as a release for them'. Erdmann reflectively points out that she isn’t sure if she believes it is morally true- all she says is what she had to believe in order to kill. Erdmann does not exclude the possibility of such explanation as being an illusion, she needs to believe in something yet well aware of its fallacy at the same time; As in the case of her claim to be obedient, here too, she doesn’t only explain why she did it but also what belief is needed to actually enable her take part in it. It is as if she affirms the findings of this research in her own words, telling the court that she had convinced herself that she is releasing her patients from pain. Without this basic formula of empathic reasoning, which frames her in the sphere of care givers, she couldn't have explained it to herself. It is similar to the findings of Browning that showed how the participation in a killing unit can be the platform for the ideology , not only the outcome. In some cases, perpetrating murderous actions invite the conceptualization of these actions which in time is crystallized into a dogmatic and unchangeable ideological doctrine. In the unique case of Louise Erdmann this process is unmediated and transparent as evident from her own reflections. Therefore, it isn’t surprising to see in her testimony her own version of empathic role taking. Despite her repeated arguments for humble, unknowing obedience and constant objections of the euthanasia project, she explains her attitude towards euthanasia and its justification solely through an empathic role taking strategy:
"My attitude to euthanasia was, should I become inherently ill-I don't make a difference between mental or physical illness-I would consider it as a release is a physician or... another person would give me a dose releasing me from everything."
The daily routine of an executioner is not an easy task especially if you take into account the fact that the killings are on a industrial scale. It makes conceptualization far more difficult, as seen in many of the testimonies and memoirs of the Einsanzgruppen units.
274 Ibid 108
In the case of euthanasia, this difficulty is more disturbing since the murder is carried out by the care givers that, in many cases, know their victims. Moreover, and unlike SS soldiers, these nurses chose a profession which stands in absolute contradiction to their actions. Most of the nursing schools were Christian and the values they were educated upon were founded on the norms of Christian charity and grace. The participation of such nurses was not trivial, many of them point out this paradox quite openly.
Another strategy of self justification dealing directly with the harsh reality of the killings is given by Anna Gastler she switches between the perpetrator and the victim, enabling the empathic discourse to take place, yet, ironically focusing it on the perpetrators' troubling duty to kill as manifested in her testimony.
"Nurses too are human beings and their emotional strength is limited. I mean that nurses had to aid one another and help each other. The killing of a person is a hard on the executor´s emotional strength. It's possible that emotional strength of only one nurse just wouldn't have been enough. What I wish to say is that one nurse might have fainted or have abandoned her post. But if two or more worked together, one could help the other overcome her weak points." Gastler's strategy provides two contributions to euthanasia: the first is transforming the empathy towards the victims to empathy towards the perpetrating nurses and the second is making the system in fact more efficient, empathy is highly utilitarian because when the nurses are together they can support each other and go on with the killings. These two points were already noticed in the research concerning the mass killing of the Jews. In Himmler's most famous speech in Poznan he mentions how hard it is to see so many dead bodies and stay a decent person.275 Arendt explains the strategy of this empathic transformation towards the self:
"…The trick used by Himmler- who apparently was rather strongly afflicted with these instinctive reasons himself- was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them towards the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people! The murderers would be able to say: what horrible things I
275 http://www.holocaust-history.org/himmler-poznan/himmler-poznan-large.mov 109
had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders."276
The second strategy is perpetrator bonding and group behavior, although here the 'group' is far smaller. It was researched by Browning,277 again in relation to the killing units. Despite the noticeable difference in context, similar lines can be drawn between the two in the way that group comfort and joint actions contributed to the process of desensitizing perpetrators.
6. Contextualizing Euthanasia Propaganda
Academic Writing
The most famous essays, advocating actual euthanasia of the mentally ill, were first published in Leipzig in 1920. Dr. Karl Binding, a legal expert, and Dr. Alfred Hoche, a well known physician, joined forces to establish a legal and medical foundations of, to quote their own words, 'permitting the destruction of unworthy life'. The pro-euthanasia manifest they formulated offers an insight into the formal process for the academic legitimization of mass murder of the mentally ill. Both Binding and Hoche, addressed the correlation of sympathy to the mass killing head on. Binding also explains how illusive and unstable sympathy can be as he states: "Hate can assume the mask of sympathy, and Cain slew his own brother Abel." (Part 4). Hoche continues and claims that sympathy is irrelevant to euthanasia and that it must be excluded from its normative reasoning:
"…it is wrong to act towards them from the stand point of sympathy. Sympathy for lives not worthy living is based on the same inescapable conceptual error (or thoughtlessness) which leads most people to project their own thoughts and feelings into other living things."
Hoche stipulates that sympathy has a tendency to switch between perception and projection. Similarly to empathy, sympathy is a step towards the other; a risky step since it offers the possibility of a better understanding, yet carries the risk of misinterpretation and projection. Due to its instability and high risk of error, Dr. Hoche desires to separate empathic reasoning from
276 Hanna Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, NY: Viking Press, 1971 (1963) pp. 105-106
277 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men, New York: Harper Collins,1992 110
euthanasia. The same empathic grey zone that enabled doctors and nurses to participate in the killings and provided a justification is herein dismissed. The logic of euthanasia is attained from two opposite ends.
Hoche continues and explains the reason why these patients aren’t worthy of sympathy:
"Sympathy is the last emotional response which is relevant to the life or death of a mentally dead person: where there is no suffering there can be no sympathy."
Unlike the repeated argument for redeeming the patients and stopping their suffering, which became common in the 40s, Hoche's main assertion is that they are no longer human - they can't feel or know, so that their life isn’t a real life. A great deal has been said about the logical link between dehumanization and legitimization of genocide and mass murders. Since the individual's life is worthless, depriving him of life isn’t a crime and, moreover, it is the right thing to do. This tendency of dehumanizing a group of mentally ill patients was most common in eugenic propaganda during the 20s and in pro-euthanasia Nazi propaganda of the 30s. In a similar way, Binding employs the identical argument in a legal formulation, so as to deprive them of the need to consent to their own killing: "They have no will, neither to live nor to die. So, in their case there is no valid consent to be killed." (Part 4) Obviously, this leaves their fate to the mercy of doctors and / or family. Binding goes on and makes a distinction between humanity and the mentally ill:
"…these people, who are the fearsome counter image of true humanity, and who arouse horror in nearly everyone who meets them." (part 4) I assume that it would be a great surprise to Dr. Binding to see that the staff that partook in the actual killings hardly used his rhetorical framework, whereby mentally ill patients are portrayed as inhuman.
Another purpose for attempting to persuade readers of the necessity for euthanasia was a utilitarian one. Their main arguments are the following: The mentally ill are a burden on the German health system, their maintenance is very costly and their benefit should not come before the national one. Hoche brings these considerations into account:
111
"Thus, economically speaking, these same complete idiots, who most perfectly fulfill all the criteria for complete mental death, are also the ones whose existence weighs most heavily on the community."
Unlike the form of national empathy that tries to mediate between the nation and the individual, Hoche shows the contradiction between the two, and strongly favors the national interest:
"…one finds a contradiction between the individual's subjective right to exist and objective expediency and necessity."
Hoche doesn’t seriously address the questions of empathy or sympathy, but rather the issue of his duty as a doctor providing life. He establishes his permissiveness to violence through the following example: "…even the surgeon's professional acts of wounding the body are now here expressly permitted." He believed euthanasia was a necessity and a vital and crucial operation. He continues and explains: "The higher goal of restoring the majority to health makes the sacrifice of the minority necessary." The utilitarian reasoning of national interest overrides the individual's personal rights, thus establishing the justification for their unwilling sacrifice.
There is only one entry in both essays that uses the idea of sympathy to justify euthanasia. This short entry is far from convincing and pales in the light of the comprehensiveness of their other arguments. However, it is important to understand its role in the essay as a whole. In his concluding paragraph Karl Binding offers the following argument about the dangers of sympathy:
"Our sympathy grows beyond its proper bounds and becomes a horror. Not granting release by gentle death to the incurable who long for it: this is no longer sympathy but rather the opposite."
Binding's argument is similar to ones used by the actual euthanasia perpetrators.. Nevertheless the context is different. It is not his leading argument but rather a supplemental one. It is probable that the tendency of empathic reasoning did exist in the 20s and 30s. Therefore, the difference between the discourse of euthanasia during the 40s was the centrality provided to empathic motive for killing in their justification processes, as we have previously seen.
Film 112
As part of the large scale Nazi propaganda project, many movies were produced in order to establish public acceptance of Nazi ideology. Goebbels' ministry of propaganda produced hundreds of movies encompassing various issues: the inferiority of Jews (Der Jude Süs), the superiority of Arian race (Triumph des Willes) or eugenic ideas of euthanasia (Ich klage an, Dasein ohne Leben, Opfer der Vergangenheit). The themes of the movies during the early years of the Nazi regime focused on two main areas: the first is dehumanization of mentally ill patients and the second is utilitarian, calculating the high costs of these "useless eaters".
The movie Opfer der Vergangenheit was introduced to German public in 1937, just a year before child euthanasia had begun. The movie shows horrific footage of mentally ill patients and provides an oral explanation that guides the viewer through these grotesque images. In this respect, the movie shares a similar tendency to the Nazi film: Der Ewige Jude that portrayed the Jew as ugly, nasty and moreover as characters unfitting to the human race. An example of this dichotomy between human (Arian) and inhuman (Jew or in this case mentally ill) is noticeable throughout the film. The movie presents a good looking young German nurse and contrasts her with an image of a mentally ill patient. Simultaneously the narrator explains: "It is shocking when you see a young, healthy nurse next to such a poor creature". Healthy vs. terminally sick and pretty nurse vs. creature are the projected images. The mentally ill are deprived of their basic human characteristics and their dignity as human beings, being depicted merely as 'poor creatures'. A resemblance can be noted between this scene and the scene in Der Jude Süs wherein the Jews are compared to rats; both exclude the targeted group from humanity in order to justify the actions against them.
A common form of genocidal rhetoric is the one that creates a 'or ' equation. "It is a life and death struggle, the Jewish Bolshevik system must be eradicated once and for all." This quote comes from the head of the 11th army in the German Vermacht shows a simple linguistic formation used to legitimize mass violence: if we don’t kill them we will die, therefore the actual killings are a 'life and death struggle'. This form of dehumanization is repeated in one of the Nazi movies as seen in the script: "if we prevent weed (mentally ill) we promote worthy (healthy Germans)". The narrator goes on and accuses the previous generations for their permissiveness
113
when allowing the mentally ill to father children: "we also gave those people the possibility to duplicate and multiply their pain."278
The utilitarian motive in the film is not only a simple idea stating that: "With these sums we probably could have supported many healthy, strong, gifted children of our community in their jobs or life." It is also a more detailed and bold calculation, evaluating the actual costs: "The care and stay of these ill siblings of a family costs 154 Marks annually. How many healthy people could have been settled instead?" This method of justification does not provide an essential understanding of the unworthiness of the mentally ill but rather points out the cost the public must pay for their maintenance. The movie begins with the filming of the 'palaces' wherein the patients reside and contrasts their high living conditions to the poverty of some healthy Germans.
Although the movie does dehumanize these patients, it is strict about not blaming them for their unfortunate reality. Thus the movie is named: "victims of the past"; past crimes that enabled them to come into existence. This attribute that the mentally ill create misery that they shouldn’t be accounted for is in contrast to the anti-Jewish propaganda which focused on Jewish guilt as was alleged by Goebbels: "Die Juden sind Schuld",. The reason for this rhetoric and the main purpose of the movie was to legitimize the sterilization act of 1934 rather than to promote euthanasia killings. Nevertheless, it blatantly stated: "those creatures are not human".279
Newspapers
Newspaper distribution in Nazi Germany was widespread and so serve as an effective tools to introduce Nazi doctrine to the public and to influence public opinion. This was unique since it wasn’t under the solely responsibility of Goebbels. Otto Dietrich was formally entrusted with a significant part of the media, namely the press, thereby overlapping with Goebbels' official mandate . There are dozens of pro Nazi articles that were circulated at the time, (Das Reich, Der Angriff, etc.) offering the public a written conceptualization and legitimization of Nazi conduct.
278 All Quotes herein are from the movie: Opfer der Vergangenheit 279 Although there are a few remarks that relate sterilization to an empathic approach, nevertheless these entries are very few and they are outnumbered by slogans such as: "Much under animals there are idiots that are often not able to make themselves understood." 114
The newspaper industry, as is the case in many totalitarian regimes, provides an insight into the manner in which ideology is marketed to the public. The regime advocates what is perceived as their fundamental values via persuasive arguments in the media. Newspapers worked in congruence with the film industry and academic writing in promoting eugenic ideas to the German public, a public that was bombarded with weekly articles aimed at influencing public opinion and modifying public conscience towards the Nazi ideological agenda. Unlike the vulgar fashion presented in Der Stürmer and favored by Julius Streicher, the Völkischer Beobacthger was considered a more respected and moderate newspaper.
Surprisingly, in the VB there are very few newspaper entries concerning sterilization or euthanasia. During 1933 there were on average one to two articles that dealt with the Jews and about one article a month that addressed sterilization. This holds true for the year prior to the sterilization act in 1934, when it would have been most likely to engage in a massive propaganda effort. After 1939, when actual euthanasia took place, there is a serious decline in eugenic articles dealing with the mentally ill. Also, there are hardly any articles about sterilization. Unlike the heavy anti-Jewish propaganda that continued to dehumanize the Jew in the VB when mass murder was executed, the issue of the mentally ill was completely excluded from public discourse as soon as the killings began.
Nevertheless, there are themes from the early years of Nazi power that display a similar image of propaganda concepts and strategies to the ones seen in academic writing and film in later years. The main approach of these articles, when encountering the problem of the mentally ill and physically deformed population, are danger to society, national budget, national interest, dehumanization, scientific theories, Christian Caritas and renunciation of empathy.
During the months of June and July of that year, there was an increase in articles concerning eugenics and they focused on the so called danger of the mentally ill:
"The danger of genetic diseases is so great, since the propagation of a genetic ill person is double as strong as the propagation of a fully normal one. That is why we must aim to deprive the
115
following genetically ill people from propagation: mentally ill patients, imbeciles, criminals, drunkards, epileptics, etc."280
As seen here the danger the mentally ill posed is related to the fact that they are competing within the same genetic pool. The mentally ill aren’t only useless eaters they are an enemy struggling for their place within the nation. The leap from a relatively moderate discourse describing the mere costs of the mentally ill, as seen in many articles, is now radicalized and employs a violent rhetoric similar to the anti-Semitic tone:
"But the numerical strengthening is not enough, since the Volk are still in danger of the downfall of the race. This happens due to the mingling of the high race with foreign races and the expansion of genetic diseases in the Volk as a result."281
The articles link the Jews, or in the Nazi politically correct way, the foreign races, and the mentally ill. This fits in well with the way mentally ill are classified throughout the article, "creatures" and "inferior people".282 The more the Nazis felt a need to legitimize sterilization the more they placed emphasis on dehumanization. The utilitarian reasoning didn’t disappear, it was rather developed and enhanced by more convincing and fundamental arguments that presented sterilization, not only in the national interest, but as an urgent national necessity as well.
The question of empathy, or so called "modern humanity," was put aside by the advocators for sterilization to make way for this national necessity:
"This kind of modern "humanity" and social care for sick, weak and inferior individuals will cause a disastrous cruelty for the Volk and will bring them to ruin."283
This short quote not only dehumanizes the mentally ill but also creates a genocidal rhetoric that contrasts with the Volk against the mentally ill in the overall equation, 'us or them'. A later article is more explicit and vividly depicts this dichotomy, wherein the mentally ill aren’t sterilized:
280 VB, 10-6-1933 281 Ibid 282 Ibid 283 VB, 29-6-1933 116
"It is like when a strict devout Indian would rather let his child fall a victim than killing the serpent"284
Another interesting aspect, which appears in the Nazi eugenic films as well as in academic writings, is the question of Christian charity.
"Sterilization …has to be seen as an act of charity )Nächstenliebe - love your neighbor) for the future generation."285
How does the idea of Christian charity fit within the framework of promoting sterilization or euthanasia? Moreover, why did Christian charity so trouble Nazi propaganda officials whereas secular humanitarian notions towards the mentally ill did not?
After introducing the sterilization act in early 1933, a great debate spread throughout Germany prior to the implementation of the enactment on the first of January 1934. The main opposition against the act stemmed from the church, which stressed two basic ideas:
1. A person's body is holy as is and therefore shouldn’t be sterilized 2. The idea of Christian charity advocates to help the ill rather than to eliminate them.
Newspaper articles that dealt with these two issues claimed that god doesn’t demand body integrity (previously discussed) and that true charity is towards the nation. These articles provided the Nazi version of Christian charity and are dedicated solely to the “healthy” population of the Aryan race. The propaganda attempts to revise the idea of charity and to shift its focal point from the individual to the nation. Numerous articles introduce this new national form of Christian charity;286 all share the same tendency wherein suitability for charity categorically does not encompass the mentally ill. The Christian ideal of charity wasn’t used to mediate the harshness of the anti mentally ill propaganda, but rather to enhance it by utterly excluding them from the realm of charity.
284 VB, 17-8-1933 285 VB, 26-7-1934 286 VB, 17, 18-8-1933 117
The Silence of the 40s
There is a great difference between the eugenic propaganda aimed at the mentally ill (mainly German nationals) during the early years of sterilization and the lack of it during the later years when the primary target was Jewish extermination. Unlike the anti-Semitic propaganda that persisted throughout the war and was even radicalized as the killings began, the story of euthanasia propaganda presents the opposite narrative- as euthanasia of the mentally ill entered the killing phase, the propaganda decreased. Moreover the genocidal discourse shifted from a largely utilitarian and dehumanizing discourse, provided by Nazi officials and physicians, to an empathic discourse of patient care and preventing their so called suffering. How can this diminution of propaganda intensity be explained in light of the efficiency of the killings? Furthermore, and since both operations (mass murder of European Jewry and euthanasia) were considered highly secret, what is the reason for the difference between the progression of anti- Semitic propaganda during their mass murder and the decline of the propaganda against the
Despite the decline in a direct form of public propaganda dealing with euthanasia there was an implicit indirect propaganda that addressed the issue. One of the most famous and highly viewed movies in Nazi Germany was "Ich Klage an" (I accuse). The movie premiered in 1941in the midst of the industrial killings of mentally ill patients. This movie doesn’t match the traditional anti mentally ill films or articles that were circulating in Germany during the 30s. In this film, the mentally ill aren’t ridiculed. For example, in the only scene that hints at the birth of a disabled child, the child is embraced with love and compassion. The main character in the movie is a woman that suffers from a deadly illness and asks her husband to grant her a mercy death.
This movie was intended to spike the imagination of the viewer and to draw an imaginary linear line to the actual euthanasia killings that took place at the time. Yet, unlike earlier forms of propaganda, the victims are, in fact, humanized. The purpose of death is to end their suffering and the overarching reasoning of the movie is true empathy of the husband for his wife when injecting her with a the lethal dosage of poison. Earlier in this chapter it was shown how various modules of empathy can be integrated into a violent genocidal discourse. The earlier discussion was conceptual and dealt with a diverse formulation- how and what forms of violent empathies
118
can be tracked. Nevertheless, the temporal question, why did the genocidal discourse shift from utilitarian and dehumanization to empathic violence, is yet to be answered.
Empathy, Medical Ethics and Professional Doctors
Since ancient times the medical profession has been perceived as a practice that promotes and maintains life. Biblical passages indicate a connection between divine caring and the lord's ability to heal.
"Worship the Lord your God and his blessing will be on your food and water; I will take away sickness from among you".287 The strong occupational obligations to provide help and care became one of the trademarks of this profession and furthermore paved the way for establishing a formulation of a medical code, a moral foundation that links professional knowledge with care giving as an ideal. The wide acceptance of the Hippocratic Oath Oath exemplifies how morality, patient care and professional knowledge cannot be isolated. The Hippocratic Oath creates strict objective boundaries wherein doctors must operate and nothing beyond those boundaries is allowed.
"I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. )…( I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work."288
Caring and empathy share, in part, a common semantic field and can generate similar motivations for helping others. (Ibid reviewed; see Hoffman 60) Despite the minimalistic description of the ancient oath, patient care in recent versions of the oath show how deeply values of compassion, sympathy and empathy towards patients have been integrated into the medical profession:
287 Exodus 23, 25; see also Exodus 16, 26 and Deuteronomy 32, 39 288 Hippocratic Oath, 400 B.C.E. 119
"I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug."289
A hundred years before the word empathy was introduced into the English language the basic conceptual idea of empathic patient care already existed in a document that established a comprehensive platform for medical ethics. This medical code described the doctor's duty as an obligation to understand his patient and to practice role taking into another person's emotions so as to enhance the inclination and ability to help him:
"To weep with those that weep was the character of our divine master; and, to the honor of our nature, we are capable of the same generous sympathy. Vain and idle, however, are the softest emotions of the mind, when they lead not to correspondent actions. And he, who views the naked, without clothing them and those who are sick, without ministering onto them, incurs the dreadful denunciation…"290
Many scholars provide integrative definitions of empathy and try to combine its various features: cognitive empathy (role taking) affective empathy (emotional receptiveness) and the motivation(s) that incline towards action. (Hoffman Ibid) All three features can be noticed in this medical code. Also, Percival's unique definition of 'generous sympathy' is very close to standard empathy.
The importance of empathy in the physicians' trade and its’ routine use increased greatly during the 20th century: Of the spectrum of reactions physicians exhibit towards patients "Empathy is probably the most widely discussed; a PubMed search using the keyword “empathy,” covering the years 1950 through 2005, listed 7,526 citations"291
289 Hippocratic Oath (Modern version) Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today. In: http://guides.library.jhu.edu/content.php?pid=23699&sid=190964 290 Thomas Percival, Medical Ethics, Manchester: S. Russell, 1803, p. 119 291 Saul J. Weiner and Simon Auster, "From Empathy to Caring: Defining the Ideal Approach to a Healing Relationship", in Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 80 (2007), pp.123-130, p. 123 120
Discussions and debates concerning empathy are immense. The growth of empathic values within the field of medical ethics generated new perspectives and deepened the understandings related to the empathic care required within the framework of a doctor to patient relationship. Some early writings strived to confine the empathic approach and establish a minimalistic attitude of detached concern.292 Others wouldn’t settle for simple empathy, but advocated a more demanding moral formulation, focusing on the motivation to act in helping the patient:
"Empathy, whether cognitive, affective, or both, does not necessarily involve caring. Just because I say, “I feel your pain,” does not mean I am strongly motivated to do anything about it. Nor does it mean I will react in a way that is responsive to your needs, rather than to my own discomfort."293
Jodi Halpern who has reinforced the idea of medical empathy and has had a great impact on increasing the inclination toward an empathic doctor patient relationship describes the simple attributes of a professional medical empathic view: "Most likely, there is no single question for which physicians need empathy to get an answer. Yet in the daily grind of medical practice, an empathic physician gains a source of information that is at least as efficient as having checklists for the psychological needs of patients"294 What can be noticed in all the debates and discussions about medical empathy is how relevant and inherent empathy is to the profession.
A recent example of how successful integration of medical empathy into medical practice has been can be measured by the highly viewed series House. The attractiveness of this contemporary television series is produced by the contrasting empathic approach with that of
292 Fox R, Lief H., "Training for detached concern” In: H. Lief, editor, The Psychological Basis of Medical Practice. New York, NY: Harper & Row; 1963; W. Osler Aequanimitas. New York, NY: Norton; 1963 293 Weiner and Auster, p. 126 294 Jodi Halpern, "What is Clinical Empathy?" in Journal of General Internal Medicine, Volume 18, Number 8 (2003), 670-674 121
being a professional MD. This generates an enigmatic tension for the viewer, since it challenges his basic categories in the image of an un-empathic doctor.
"House: Is it still illegal to perform an autopsy in a living person? Lisa: Are you high? House: Its Tuesday I'm wasted. Lisa: It's Wednesday."295
In this case the viewer is fascinated by the anomaly that House's indifferent approach to performing an unconventional and dangerous autopsy in a nine year old child to actually save her life. The contrast and uniqueness of separating medical caring from professional medical abilities, brings the term detached care to an extreme and creates an ongoing and widespread interest - one which yielded eight fruitful and adventurous seasons.
The German ideals of proper medical health care didn’t vary in essence from Western ideas in which caring, together with professional medicine, were combined. The influential Christian nursing educational tradition in Germany coincided with the empathic medical care tendency and advocated for a deep and devoted medical care.296 Reich reaches the following conclusion: "My own inquiry into the ideas and ideals that most strongly influenced medical policies in the National Socialist era of German medicine has led me to the discovery that the key moral idea was the idea of care and fundamental moral principle was a principle of care."297
Unlike Steppe's argument for obedience and devotion to duty, Reich presents caring as the leading ideal of the pre Nazi era.298 Moreover and as mentioned in the case of national empathy, Reich believes that there was a consistency of caring ideals during the Nazi era. Although the
295 House, Season 2 Episode, minute: 25:30 296 H.Steppe, Krankenpflege Nationalsozialismus 297 Warren T. Reich "The Care-Based Ethic of Nazi Medicine and the Moral Importance of What We Care About" in The American Journal of Bioethics, Vo. 1, No. 1, Winter 2001, pp. 64-74, p. 65 298 H. Steppe, Krankenpflege Nationalsozialismus (1989), pp. 27-29 122
concept of care shifted from the individual to the national level, from Fürsorge to Vorsorge, it had always been seen as a form of empathic conduct.
The role of empathy was even more significant for the medical staffs entrusted with caring for the mentally ill. Dr. Valentin Faltlhauser, a psychiatrist, was a central figure in nursing education during both the Weimar Republic and under the Nazi regime as well. Faltlhuaser greatly criticized the way the mentally ill were treated. He stressed that the prisonlike walls of the mental institutes and the brutal attitude towards the mentally insane during the 19th century failed to see the simple truth: the mentally ill are sick and should be cured. He therefore advocated for the welfare of these patients and he embraced institutional change, wherein the mentally ill hospitals established libraries, gardens music halls and sports facilities for their patients. In guiding the nurses, he instructed that: "The mentally ill should be pitied even more in fact most of all patients, because he is robbed of the highest thing that a person posses, the mental faculties." Despite his empathic approach towards the patients, he participated in various Nazi euthanasia tasks and was later convicted for his murderous role.299
McFarland-Icke dedicates a chapter of her book to the nurses' education in the Weimar Republic, focusing on the embracing the new and empathic trends that psychiatrists favored. Her choice of extensively discussing the case of Faltlhauser implies that even pro-empathy psychiatrist followed the Nazi euthanasia policies. She concludes and explains the required approach that nurses were introduced to when dealing with the mentally ill: "Nurses were expected to feel not only compassion for their patients but also a certain degree of humility"300 Nazi eugenics came at a time when medical ethics concerning the mentally ill was undergoing a conceptual shift. The patients were seen more and more as human being with an illness and treated as such; harsh measures such as straitjackets lost their legitimacy and the way was paved for softer and more considered attitudes. A comprehensive overview of medical approaches
299 Faltlhauser, " Geisteskranhplege: Zum Unterricht und Selbstunterricht für Irrenpfleger und zur Vorbereitung auf die Pflegerprüfung" DI 26 (March 1922): 208 300 Bronwyn Rebekah McFarland-Icke, Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History, Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999, p. 45 123
towards the mentally ill would highlight a growing tension- on the one hand, enhancing empathy and humanism towards patients301 and on the other hand, integrating eugenic ideas which portray the mentally ill as inferior and therefore deprive them of their basic rights. In order to explain this tension, McFarland-Icke outlines a shift in the way medical terms concerning the mentally ill were used- from a neutral perspective to a judgmental one. The Nazis grasped at the very basic definition that described the patient's condition as unable to sustain proper neurological functions (minderwertig) and altered it into a normative attitude defining the patient as inferior. While psychiatrists viewed their aim as providing patients with a life worth living, the Nazis concluded that mentally ill live "unworthy lives". The link between Weimar Republic medical values that sided with empathic attitudes and the Nazis dehumanization entailed the Nazi revision of psychiatric medical categories The ability to rethink and divert the medical definition against the mentally ill enabled the physicians to sustain their scientific discourse and medical integrity.302 Reich provided a similar answer to this shift, wherein he claimed that the concept of empathy had been altered from the individual to the national level. But the extensive use of empathy within the discourse of these medical killings shows otherwise. These two contrasting aspects of perception, empathy and dehumanization, co-existed not only in the Weimar Republic but also during the Nazi era. Moreover, liberal empathy was a key component in the process of legitimizing murder; where the idea of dehumanization failed to catalyze and explain the murders the concept of individual empathy came to the rescue and helped conceptualize the legitimacy of the medical killings.
The idea of empathy addresses an inherent paradox that arises when medical staffs participate in executing mass violence. This is unique within the field of professional doctors and nurses. The principles embedded into the profession are providing life, caring and an empathic outlook of the patient. Lifton proposes the idea of a split personality -this can be seen as one possible solution that accepts the conceptual tension within Nazi medical ethics. Nevertheless, the idea of empathy enables medical staff to sustain their self understanding as caregivers in a coherent manner.
301 Ibid 59-60 302 Ibid 61 124
Reich points out that the killings were done within the framework of traditional medical ethics, i.e. the sacrosanct idea of patient care.
"The moral result was that physicians and nurses were expected to carry out medical offenses, even atrocities, not simply in obedience to the political grotesqueness but on the basis of a medical philosophy that was offered as a continuous with at least some of the fundamental and traditional functions of being a doctor."303
Empathy justified murder is rhetorically presented as genuine and deep care giving. The doctor isn’t killing but "releasing from pain" it isn’t murder but rather "granting a mercy death;" the genocide is portrayed as a form of redemption for the individual in the form of a very liberal empathy. Empathic modules of violence can blur the fundamental gravity of the violent activity and color them as acts of charity and compassion. The murderous killing Eisansgruppen units were entrusted with conducting mass murder of European Jewry. There was a psychological dissonance as some admit to have had. However, there wasn’t a basic ideological tension nor was there any professional ambiguity; the killings were exactly what was prescribed for them. On the other hand doctors and nurses encountered the problem of participating in an activity that stood, not only against their beliefs, but also against their professional values and traditions. The rhetorical discourse of radical dehumanization, that may have been fit for the genocidal discourse when killing Jews, didn’t fit with the medical staff that participated in euthanasia. Empathy was, as Arendt put it, a simple and very effective way to deal with killing. Yet what Arendt suggests for understanding of the murderous units, I find more applicable as an explanation of the conceptual framing of these massive medical killings during the Nazi euthanasia period.
Christianity Vs Nazi Eugenics
Christianity and nursing education share historical roots. Christian values are embedded in medical ethics in many ways. Clarke observes the various links nursing values have with basic
303 P. Reich, p. 68 125
Christian ideas. She shows how compassion, care, charity, friendly hospitality and helping those in need derived from classical Christian thought and played a role in establishing the moral principles of the nursing profession.304 Ideas of charity and caring for the weak and unprivileged is in contrast to the ideas of sterilization and euthanasia, which directly target the ill, the weak and the disabled. An exemplary figure that highlighted this paradox is the famous cardinal Von Galen who delivered three sermons against euthanasia despite the fact he had no proof at the time. Recent research shows that the main motivation that drove this bishop to oppose the Nazis was his fear of the abolishment of the German church.305
Von Galen's opposition is linked to the core problem of the inherent paradox between Nazi ideology and Christian tradition and autonomy. Von Galen pinpoints euthanasia to and accuses Nazi Germany of sinning by violating the fifth commandment "Thou shall not kill". Moreover, he stated that productivity cannot be a reason for killing. Earlier forms of opposition to sterilization and euthanasia did exist, but were always marginalized by the permissive mainstream which partially coincided with Nazi policies. Therefore, despite Von Galen open and non-compromising criticism, the majority of religious figures chose a different path. The German churches encountered a moral choice that had to be made between state and religion. The Catholic Church chose to mediate between the two favoring a compromise while the Protestant approach was to combine Nazi and Christian values.
Catholic authorities had much in common with Nazi official policies concerning family values, abortion, prostitution, pornography etc. This was the main reason that the Catholic Church chose the path of negotiating with Nazi policy makers rather than go directly head on with them in those eugenic issues that they opposed, i.e. the sterilization law and later euthanasia. Despite the fact that there was no formal solution to this problem, both sides had made some compromises. The catholic church didn’t openly denounce Nazi eugenic polcies, and priests adopted the
304 Fowler, Marsha D. (Ed); Reimer-Kirkham, Sheryl (Ed); Sawatzky, Richard (Ed); Taylor, Elizabeth Johnston (Ed ,)Religion, Religious Ethics, and Nursing ,New York: Springer Publishing, 2012, pp. 213-227 305 Beth Griech-Polelle, “Image of a Churchman-Resister: Bishop von Galen, the Euthanasia Project and the Sermons of Summer 1941” in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 41-57 126
sterilization law as long as it was done willingly. On the Nazi side, Christian physicians were exempted from participating in the process. Koonz explains how this “cold peace” between the Nazis and the Catholic Church enabled both parties to cooperate through conceptual and institutional negotiations. She provides the example of archbishop Groeber to show how the church addressed the issue of participation in the sterilization law: “He distinguished between "formal" and "material" cooperation, and applied it to the difference between filling out the initial papers (Anzeige) and signing the final contract (Antrag) recommending sterilization”306 This controversial solution indicates two tendencies concerning the conjunction of Catholic thought and Nazi eugenic values:
1. The catholic church felt a great discomfort with the sterilization law and generally opposed the idea of seeing the mentally ill as useless eaters 2. The Catholic Church, despite their opposition, found ways to mediate and negotiate their beliefs in order to avoid a direct confrontation with Nazi ideology and conduct.
The solution that was proposed by the protestant church was very different. While Catholics saw sterilization as an act that stood against the basic Christian idea of Caritas- helping those in need; the protestants found a way to integrate the sterilization law with their Christian ideals; even with the idea of Caritas. The protestant advocators for sterilization and later in favor of euthanasia saw the scientific progress as god’s blessing and embraced the idea of the Volk as a religious value; the most striking adjustment to Christian thought is the reconstruction of the idea of Christian charity- Caritas. Prof. Franz Keller, who stood as the first director of the Caritas Science institute in Freiburg explained the new meaning of the term in correlation to relevant Nazi eugenic ideas: “The idea of Caritas must adopt itself to help the people as a whole. It mustn’t overdo in favor of the unlivable and [mentally] ill therefore disadvantaging the livable and healthy people”307 Keller is well aware of the revision he offers and explicitly admits there is a
306 Claudia Koonz, “Ethical Dilemmas and Nazi Eugenics: Single-Issue Dissent in Religious Contexts” in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 64, Supplement: Resistance Against the Third Reich (Dec., 1992), pp. pp.8-31, p.24 307 E. Klee 54 127
conceptual shift and that Caritas must adopt national responsibility. Roland Bleich concludes his study case of the Adventist protestant church and states: “Collaboration led to the inclusion of the agenda of race hygiene and racism in the German Adventist health message and its justification on biblical grounds.”308
Hilde Steppe shows how Christian values were essentially a part of nursing education in two important ways. First, the majority of nursing education was not supervised by the Nazi party;309 and therefore most nurses in Germany were educated in a strictly Christian environment. Secondly, the Christian nursing schools had a deep affect on the values passed on to the nurses, focusing on compassion, care, charity and to help the needy. The Christian nursing schools took the liberty of fusing medical professional care with Christian ideals of devotion and compassion. The gravity of Christian medical tradition created severe problems when the health system underwent Nazification.
Ideas of sympathy, empathy, care, compassion, and helping the needy couldn’t have been just ruled out by new Nazi ideology that re-conceptualized the mentally ill as useless eaters; which was not consistent with Christian tradition . As the Protestants revised the idea of Caritas as a link between the two, the concept of patient empathy was another link. Earlier it was argued that empathy bridged medical ethics and the euthanasia killings; a similar process of reasoning can be seen in the case of many Christian nurses. Here the rhetoric of killing also adopted an empathic discourse with Christian ideas of welfare and charity; murdering the ill was described as a cure and redemption out of their suffering. Instead of using the mainstream Nazi discourse of national responsibility, the nurses were focusing on their devoted care to each of the mentally ill patient. The professional language was saturated with Christian terms as Caritas, salvation, suffering and redemption, etc. the empathic discourse brought the massive killings into the realm of Christian tradition and values and enabled them to sustain part of their religious coherence. The rationalization processes encompassing professional and religious values were mediated by adoption of various modules of empathic care.
308 Roland Bleich, “Health Reform and Race Hygiene: Adventists and the Biomedical Vision of the Third Reich” in Church History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 425-440, p. 439 309 H. Steppe ibid 128
Chapter 3
The transformation of Nazi anti- gay discourse into close hate
Introduction: structure and methodology
The case of anti-gay persecution in Nazi Germany is fundamentally different than the two other case studies in this research. The early Nazi propaganda that targeted Jews and the disabled was explicit and in many aspects consistent. Although all Nazi excluding propagandas underwent minor rhetorical and conceptual shifts over time; that of homosexual persecution are far more significant. This is precisely the reason for adopting a different methodological approach when addressing the evolution of anti-gay discourse and conduct during the years of Nazi rule. Earlier the focus of this research examined the role of conceptual analytic categories such as intimacy and empathy which was embedded in the genocidal discourse from a synchronizing point of view. However, the case of anti-gay persecution will be presented diachronically rather than synchronically. The previous cases showed how politics of closeness helped sustain the potency and relevance of a persecuting and genocidal discourse where as the following case will shed light on the process of rhetoric radicalization. In other words, it will show not only how intimate violence appears, but also how it evolves. As I will later explain, academic writing accepts the idea that Nazi propaganda is a amorphic and constantly changing. =- the case of empathic reasoning during euthanasia indicates how extreme these changes can be. Another example can be detected in the anti-Semitic rhetoric that was intensified immensely during the later years of Nazi occupation. The uniqueness of the anti- gay persecution is that it provides a fruitful and transparent example of the radicalization process which went hand in hand with employing sexual politics and an intimate discourse of hate. In other words the idea of intimate violence contributes to a better understanding of the historical development leading to anti gay genocidal rhetoric. Homosexuals, in the Nazi perception, began their way as a mere glitch in proper behavior, as a flaw in bourgeoisie manners, but later evolved into a fundamental danger to the existence of the Reich, thus threatening to devour it from within by infecting many good Germans with homosexual tendencies.
129
The first part of this chapter will address the idea of evolutionary ideology within Nazi Germany, comparing and highlighting the differences between cases of euthanasia and Jewish persecution, on the one hand, and anti-gay propaganda on the other. Afterwords the research is divided into three parts that highlight different years of gay persecution in Nazi Germany. The first begins before 1933 and ends with the Röhm affair. During these years traditional hetero- normative ideals (un- natural, improper) were most influential for constructing homophobic discourse and policy. After the 'Night of the Long Knives' the persecution intensified thus finding a new conceptual home. Homosexuality was therefore not only a sin against moral conduct but also a criminal act with wider implication to the nation's wellbeing. This approach was later revised by various Nazi advocates especially by Himmler during 1938. It it is not by chance that the radicalization of genocidal discourse and the preparations for war were intertwined. The third and final part begins with conceptual changes that took place during 1937-8 and ends with Germany's defeat in May 1945. It was during this period of time that the perception of anti- gay ideas was intensified advocating for harshening of the laws against the gay minority. At this point Nazi policy called for elimination of homosexuals rather than confining homosexuality. The radicalization of Nazi rhetoric used was linked to reimaging of the gay threat; Nazi propaganda encompassed intimate and sexual politics in their homophobic reasoning. Homosexuals were presented as an acute threat from within, as seductive close neighbors and as a potent danger. This third stage of development helps illustrate how sexual politics and rhetoric formulations of close and intimate hate went hand in hand with the increasing violence against the gay minority. This contributes to the overall argument of this research that highlights the violent potential of the intimate discourse of exclusion. This chapter finalizes the main changes in anti-gay Nazi rhetoric and compares it with other forms of intimate violence.
It is impossible and unprofessional to surgically separate anti- gay persecution into three clear cut periods. These changes are better explained as shifts, drifts in language, a continuing process one that constantly intensifying the anti-gay discourse. One can no doubt argue against these finding by offering loopholes in the policy of a given era . For example, there are many Nazi officials that address homosexuality as inappropriate activity even in 1944. Nevertheless, this research underlines the changing process, the acceptance and usage of new genocidal rhetoric 130
and most important the shift in what is the main focus of Nazi anti- gay propaganda. This approach has contextual and historical inclination. It contributes in offering a wider and more comprehensive scope of how the dynamics of proximity and violence took place.
The analysis this chapter offers is not limited to selected Nazi figures but rather provides a variety of texts and official documentation. The methodological approach does not only focus on micro-analysis of socio-linguistic ideas but also scrutinize sources. The methodology used in understanding Goebbels intimate hate for the Jews was a 'zoom in'viewpoint ; Similarly, euthanasia reasoning was voiced by presenting several specific and designated cases to show mechanisms of empathic violence. This chapter utilizes a 'zoom out' approach, showing an overall view of the changes that took place in anti-gay rhetoric. The twisted historical process that led to imaging homosexuals as a fundamental threat is fruitful for this research, it helps to perceive how images of close hate were used and how influential and convincing they were. For example, why did Himmler describe them as an unnoticed inner threat, or as a plague? He could have used traditional images of homophobia seeing them as unnatural immoral etc. I therefore argue that the potency and volatile qualities that intimate violence can entail are far greater than the traditional pre- Nazi homophobic discourse. It was during the euthanasia period that professional medical staffs downplayed genocidal rhetoric in order to sustain genocidal logic and consistency. The anti- gay discourse did the exact opposite- it upgraded the genocidal rhetoric to establish a linguistic critical mass of a pro genocidal argument. Both are relatively flexible and serve to execute Nazi genocidal policies.
This chapter is based upon diverse sources. In each part there is an attempt to bring together texts from different disciplinary contexts. Not only has the official propaganda undergone a change but also the legal discourse and the actual conditions of the gay minority in Nazi Germany were reformed. Private letters, post war confessions and survivor testimonies can contribute to understanding the change in discourse from other points of view. This is not an eclectic methodology but rather an inclusive attitude to sources in order to provide a greater comprehension and awareness of the shifts in Nazi rhetoric.
131
Evolutionary Nazi Ideology: The Case of Anti – Gay Discourse
From an external perspective, Nazi ideology appeared as unified, coherent and homogenous, In fact, a long and complex evolutionary process of crystallization and formulation was required for the development of the Nazi tactics and strategies towards their real and imagined enemies. . For example, the euthanasia program in which the initial propaganda changed from dehumanization to an empathic discourse, and the targeted victims, from disabled babies, to mentally ill adults and finally to political prisoners. Another example of the evolutionary change of the Nazi ideological discourse can be seen in the case of Goebbels. When he joined the party in the late 20s, his early writings showed a great admiration for the Russian form of socialism310 which changes over the years to a pure and increasingly intense anti- Communist propaganda campaign. In 1935, long before Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Goebbels published articles such as "communism without the mask,"311 that served to converge the Jewish problem with the Bolshevik threat. The most striking example of the evolutionary nature of Nazi ideology in current research provides concerns Jewish persecution. Despite the claims of Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz, that the speeches of Hitler in the Reichstag threatening to destroy the Jewish people were his intended plan of extermination,312 many scholars, after analyzing new archival data, regard the conduct and methods of Jewish persecution313 and extermination314 as
310 This can be seen in the first edition of the newspaper he published since 1927 "Der Angriff" 311 Goebbels, Communism without the Mask , speech delivered in 1935, Berlin: Muller and Sohn K.G 312 Lucy Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933-1945, USA: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1986 (1975), pp. 48-70 313 Aly Götz, ’FinalSolution’:Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jew , London : Arnold, 1999, pp. 33-87; Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 192-255
314 Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 277-310; Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, New York: Basic Books, 2010, pp. 155-186
132
evolutionary - plans and severity of the basic anti Jewish policy and ideology were constantly being molded into new forms.
In the case of gay prosecution, timely change of Nazi propaganda is not fundamentally different than other Nazi anti- minority enterprises. Yet the case of homosexuality remains far more complex than other forms of persecution due to the fact that homoerotic conduct was embedded within the daily behavior of many high ranking Nazi officials. Moreover, explicit gay activities which were an integrated part of the culture of the Nazi elite, including the famous case of Ernst Röhm, were rarely acknowledged or prosecuted.
Formal Nazi policy always denied the existence of homosexuality, seeing this activity as unmanly and unfitting for the superior image of the Aryan German race. Nevertheless, over time, Nazi denial waned and measures taken against this group were augmented. In one of the first comprehensive written expositions describing Nazi gay prosecution, Richard Plant traces the origins for the subsequent Nazi persecution of homosexuality in party statements made in the years 1928-1929.
"It is not necessary that you and I live but it is necessary that the German people live. And it can only live if it can fight, for life means fighting. And it can only fight if it maintains its masculinity. It can only maintain its masculinity if it exercises discipline, especially in matters of love. Free love and deviance are undisciplined. Therefore we reject you as we reject anything that hurts our nation.
…
But this we can achieve only one way- the German people must once again learn how to exercise discipline. We therefore reject any form of lewdness, especially homosexuality; it robs us of our last chance to free our people from their bondage which now enslaves us."315
Plant mentions this quote in order to show that early attacks against homosexuality were not fully understood by the gay community - the attacks were actually warning signs of things to come. He does not differentiate between the diverse reasoning found in the basic propaganda, but rather
315 Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle, USA: Henry Holt and Company, 1986, p. 50 133
shows a definite consistency in their views. He claims, that the area in which change does takes place, are the intensification of the anti guy measures.316
Looking back into antiquity, Foucault goes even further and describes early Greek fear or antagonism to all forms of sexuality as one that is prevalent and in agreement with the Greek ideals, "The ontology to which this ethics of sexual behavior referred was not, at least not in its general form, an ontology of deficiency and desire; it was not that of nature setting the standard for acts; it was an ontology of a force that linked together acts, pleasures, and desires."317 Therefore, the imagined problem with sexuality has to do with an individual's routine manly struggle to overcome temptations in general. Wrong or exaggerated sexual conduct is a sin since it signifies ones succumbing to a lower animal instinct rather than being in control over ones urges and desires. Unlike the modern secular fear of sexuality, which is based on a sense of danger and self identity, the Greek model downplays the idea of sexual misconduct to its basic level- one out of the many physical passions. The main themes seen in this statement are the following:
1. The ideas of fight and struggle: "…it can only live if it can fight." 2. The need of self discipline: "The German people must once again learn how to exercise discipline" 3. Generalization of homosexuality into a wider context, downplaying its uniqueness: "Free love and deviance are undisciplined …"
Homosexuality isn’t described as a fundamental sin, a degenerate conduct ruining the moral fiber of the nation but rather as an acute obstacle for improving the German nation. It seems the reasoning of early anti-gay German propaganda coincides with Foucault's theory, but with one serious twist. The Greeks targeted their moral guidelines to a personal level whereas the intent of Nazi propaganda was to project this flawed tendency as deleterious to the whole nation.
316 R. Plant, pp. 50-52 317 Michel Foucault, Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasures (trans. Robert Hurley), NY: Vintage Books, 1990 (1984), p. 43 134
Stage one: 'traditional' German homophobia: improper behavior (1918-1934)
In this early stage of anti- gay persecution Nazi discourse focused on ideas of improper behavior. This lenient yet ambivalent approach of Weimar Republic did not undergo an essential conceptual change. In this section the Nazi homophobic rhetoric will be exemplified with texts from the judicial, institutional and media levels, thus offering a comprehensive image of the first stage. In order to demonstrate how the later employment of sexual politics contributed to establishing a genocidal rhetoric it is imperative to follow the process from the beginning when these tendencies were rather rare.
Partial leniency
During the era of the Weimar Republic, there had been a liberal view towards homosexuality. "The average gay man could live unnoticed and undisturbed…"318 Although the actual law against homosexual intercourse did exist at the time, there was only weak enforcement of the law and only in specific cases where the police were actually interested in other crimes. Furthermore, lesbian activity, which wasn’t even legally banned , flourished at the time. One of the most striking figures advocating for gay rights was Prof. Magnus Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld's activities began long before 1918 and were part of the gay rights movement which made significant progress between 1918 and 1933. In 1919 he opened the institute for sexual research where one could gain comprehensive academic knowledge of sexuality to help counter the common and primitive views denouncing homosexuality. Not only in Berlin, but throughout Germany, there was an increase in homosexual clubs and bars, growth in the distribution of pro- gay newspapers (later to be shut down by the Nazi regime) and even negotiations with legislators to liberalize paragraph 175 of the penal code forbidding homosexuality. Although a less lenient approach was introduced by the Nazis already in 1933, I argue that the legal and policy changes did not mark an essential drift in the way they perceived the 'homosexual vice'. There are therefore similarities that can be drawn between classic German homophobia and early Nazi
318 R. Plant p. 27 135
anti- gay exclusions. Both are based upon a sense of German Bildung and a 19th century world view of proper manly conduct.
Improper homosexuality
“in view of the liberal image and 'casual' gay attitude of the Weimar Republic, mainstream public opinion of the time, as well as right wing political parties, were still against any regulation that would legalize homosexual activities. As was the case with emancipation of the Jews, the process of moderation in government towards acceptance/ rejection of homosexuality, in language and policy, were ambivalent. Homosexuality was considered indecent and contradicted the traditional image of a bourgeoisie society educated upon the Bildung values of family and self restraint. This was the reason for the ongoing link in public opinion between homosexuality, prostitution and other perversions and the artificialness and the decaying values in post world war Germany. Much has been written in the field of cultural history in relation to the idea of German Bildung and the links to ideals of proper bourgeoisie behavior and expectations. As Mosse asserts even erotic ideas underwent a transformation towards post industrial ideas of a romantic family norms. Furthermore, he links his form of 'proper' and 'decent' ideals to German nationalism. Traditional 19th century German literature is saturated with such ideals, showing how an individual obtains and maintains these qualities. Göhtes . The Grimm brothers rewrote folk stories in order to downplay the improper (especially when sexually inclined) aspects of the tales; thus trimming them to fit German national ideals of decency. Albeit other contradicting sides of German ideal of nationalism the part Bildung plays is substantial and is even relevant during the Nazi period. It would be a research study in its own right to define this cluster of German ideals. Therefore, for the limited purposes of this research an inclusive definition is suggested which embraces various forms of imaging improper behavior in contrast to the German concept of Bildung.
The juridical and public media aspects of the 'improper' factor
A pre-Nazi example of the connection between immorality and homosexuality can be seen in the newspaper coverage of the Fritz Haarman case. Haarman was a mentally unstable homosexual that worked as a police informant. He was charged and found guilty of being a
136
serial killer. Of the 147 death cases the prosecution connected to Haarman, he admitted to "only" 127. The striking point is that during the condemnation of his nefarious actions, the police and left wing parties made a link between his moral conduct and homosexuality. The formulated conception was that homosexuality was not only illegal but also morally wrong and for the misguided it became easy to portray Haarman as the "homosexual sadist"319 Even in this extreme case of violent conduct the newspapers link it to homosexuality through the prism of personality qualities such as un- controlled sadism. Later examples continue and underline some further aspects of the anti- gay excluding discourse framed within the concept 'improper behavior'.
At the beginning of Nazi rule, on the 23rd and 24th of February 1933 the Prussian Minister of Interior introduced three related directives - all dealing with salvaging common decency. The first focused on prostitution, the second with the closure of bars (mostly the ones that provided a meeting point for the guy community) and the third with selling indecent and pornographic magazines. The legislator explains the rationale behind the directives as follows:
"…the police authorities have let alone some public houses which are being misused for immoral purposes. I am thinking on the one hand of inns known to the police as Doshhouses or brothel like establishments and on the other hand taverns frequented solely or mainly by persons who indulge in unnatural sexual practices and establishments who's whole aspect means that they must be regarded as nothing other than disorderly houses. This rising anew of Germany is ultimately conditioned be a moral renewal of the German people."320
The text specifically embraces the public sphere, wherein it denounces several public "establishments", and condemns pornographic newspaper, etc. rather than focus criticism on the actual indecent acts. Along the same lines, the legislators avoid mentioning homosexuality in a direct form, but rather refers to "unnatural sexual practices". The battle against homosexuality under the Nazi regime is associated more with the alleged "moral renewal of Germany" and less with racial issues. The context of these decrees is part of the Bildung tradition which advocates for decent and restrained behavior, especially in the sexual sphere. Homosexuality is presented
319R. Plant, p. 48 320 Printed in: Volkswart. Monatsschrift zur Bekämpfung der offentlichen Unsittlichkeit, Vol. 5, 1933, pp. 56f. 137
as a sin against proper moral behavior and against the long-standing residual bourgeoisie values that were retained by Nazi ideology.
Nazi ideology was not a monolithic revolutionary ideology that aspired to disconnect with the past. In fact, Nazi advocates addressed the German past with great respect. The German idea of decency and of a moral and restrained self conduct was included as part of Nazi ideology as well. Nevertheless, there were paradoxes and dilemmas they had to overcome. One example of an ideological paradox during the war occurred when Nazi officials offered to supply German soldiers with prostitutes in order to avoid racial degeneration of soldiers who intermingled with the local population. In the case of Franz Stangl, the ideological paradox is quite noticeable, since he showed respect towards his victims by avoiding seeing them without clothes and by providing a "softer" attitude towards the victims.321 The initial struggle against homosexuality was driven by traditional ideals of public decency as can be seen in news articles describing the new directives. For example, after listing more than 10 public bars that were forced to close due to "complaints concerning morality" the newspaper writer adds:
"Major restrictions have also been ordered for dance halls and bars. Hostesses must no longer appear in dancing costumes to drink with barmaids employed on the premises, or allow themselves to be bought a drink."322
These restrictions frame the conceptual outline of Nazi rule for the persecution of homosexual centers, i.e. the struggle to sustain a decent and moral bourgeoisie public atmosphere. As Micheler points out,
"In their Persecution of same sex desiring individuals, the National Socialist regime relied upon a tradition of homophobia that was deeply rooted in German society and both preceded and outlived Nazi rule. Homosexual activities between men or women were incompatible with
321 Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience, NY: Vintage Books 1983 (1974), p. 169 322 Berliner Tageblatt 4 March 1933 138
traditional notions of morality and respectability and with the gender ideology of a patriarchal, hetero-normative bourgeois society."323
As part of the first stages of persecution, pro gay newspapers such as, "Der Eigene", "Die Insel" and "Der Kreis" were either forbidden or underwent serious inspection and sometimes confiscation. Magnus Hirschfeld's institute was totally demolished and other liberal gay rights institutes were shut down or had the scope of their activities seriously reduced. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that the anti- gay activities carried out by Nazi officials were not a game changer yet. The private sphere of homosexual conduct remained almost unharmed. Nazi reasoning was confined to ma inly excluding public displays thus corresponding with the Weimar policy of implicit leniency. True, there are some acute differences, yet the persecution shares a similar rhetoric and conceptual framing as well as a limited enforcement policy.
The third directive concerning the banning of indecent newspaper stated the following:
"The display of such publications and pictures involves a not insignificant threat to public order, for not only are they liable seriously to endanger the moral development of the young people, but also to some extent they are also an offence to adults. In the interests of the moral renewal of the German people, such displays can therefore no longer be tolerated."324
This text follows along the basic guidelines of the same bourgeoisie codes previously seen in the justifications of the new regulations wherein many bars were shut down. It does not include any racial inclinations that anti-Jewish propaganda carried. The text is moderate when compared to the Nazi propaganda concerning other political issues (such as socialism etc.). The newspaper coverage denouncing homosexuality stayed within the frame of indecent behavior rather than being presented as a fundamental or racial threat.
Although there were attacks targeting homosexual institutes, newspaper, bars and clubs, private homosexual activity was rarely prosecuted or monitored. Furthermore, the SA were well known for their homosexual tendencies and even Ernst Röhm's sexual preferences were far from being a
323 Stefan Micheler, "Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex-Desiring Men under National Socialism", Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 11, No. 1/2 (Jan-Apr, 2002) p. 98 324 Printed in: Volkswart. Monatsschrift zur Bekämpfung der offentlichen Unsittlichkeit, Vol. 5, 1933, p. 57 139
secret. In private daily life the gay community could have continued their lives almost as usual. Hitler himself in more than one incident protected Röhm, claiming that this was a private issue:
"Some people expect SA commanders… to take decisions on these matters, which belong purely to the private domain. I reject presumption categorically… The sole purpose of any inquiry must be to ascertain whether or not the SA officer… is performing his official duties… His private life cannot be an object of scrutiny unless it conflicts with the basic principles of National Socialist ideology."325
Two important insights are hereby provided. Firstly, homosexuality is a vice only in the public sphere; it is tolerated so long as it is kept private. Secondly, the struggle against homosexuality is not a basic principle of Nazi ideology, but rather a lesser issue focused on "cleaning up" of the public domain.
Up until the Röhm purge, homosexuality was a side issue that was enmeshed with other immoral behaviors. The regime denounced it publicly yet tolerated it privately. The values under which the persecution was validated were bourgeoisie ideals of decency, a heritage of the pre-Weimar era. The connection between homosexuality and racial theory was hardly, if at all, evident.
Stage two: Post Röhm spillover: nationalizing homophobic propaganda (1934-6)
Stage two is a mediating stage. Anti- gay Nazi propaganda in these years can hardly be assertively defined as a genocidal discourse. However without some of the conceptual, legal and institutional changes that took place, it is unlikely that later genocidal tendencies would have evolved. A multi- leveled process of group branding enabled the later discourse to target and thereafter radicalizes the violent measures against this designated group. Here too a comprehensive methodology is chosen. Therefore throughout this section texts from various aspects of Nazi administration will be highlighted, mainly in the following fields: Media, legal shifts, police policies and institutional changes. Since the year 1936 marks a clear change in persecution, I decided to separate it from the immediate post Röhm affair outcomes (1934-5).
325 Plant, p. 61 140
Although the concept of group branding is consistent in these years this chapter carries an approach that is more sensitive to the historical evolution gay persecution.
Historical background- the question of the chicken and the egg (1934-1934)
As part of the unification process that took place in Germany and the shifting of power in the country to a totalitarian regime, Hitler wished to gain complete domination over the legitimate armed forces. Pressure on Hitler came from both sides - the army and the SA. Both organizations were forcing him to choose and both parties were mutually suspicious and ambitious, thereby contributing to a grid lock political situation. Hitler's decision to assassinate the leading figures in the SA was a clever way out of this mess; he gained the trust of the army and at the same time created an atmosphere of fear and obedience in the heart of his opponents. The “night of the long knives” would have probably taken place regardless of any sexual tendency that the SA leaders might have or not have had. Nevertheless, the fact that some of the SA leaders, and especially Röhm himself, were homosexual, made the propaganda and explaining process easier and more acceptable.
When describing the escalation of anti gay persecution following the Röhm purge, Porter poses the following dilemma: "Once again the question arises whether homosexuality functioned here as a cheap method for character defamation or its use is as a pretext points to some hidden psychic repression."326 Or, in other words, did homophobia play a part during the purge or was it just a cynical political tool. Was homophobia the chicken or the egg? Either way, the persecution from this point on developed a life of its own leading to a spillover effect of anti-gay rhetoric. Besides some minor setbacks during the Olympic games in 1936, the movement escalated rapidly to the point where there was even a death penalty enforced for homosexual acts. In fact, the anti gay propaganda became harsher, bringing it closer to the extreme excluding discourse of the anti-Semitic rhetoric.
It is important to denote that the analytic choice of marking the year 1937 as a changing point in anti gay policy (ending the intermediate era of homophobic propaganda) is related to both
326 Jack Nusan Porter, (Trans. Gruab Page) Sexual Politics in the Third Reich: The Persecution of Homosexuals during the Holocaust, Massachusetts, 1990, p. 41 141
Himler's speeches at the time and to a further radicalization of anti gay persecution and propaganda. Giles defines the first stages of anti homosexual policy in relation to the Jews: "Anti homosexual policy, which in broad terms were embraced by the majority of the population, was a less rigid ideological tenet than the regime's unyielding opposition towards the Jews"327 It was only later that these two populations became equal enemies of the state. Nevertheless and as earlier pointed out, this is still considered as an evolutionary process the dateline can't be definitively marked. Alongside the criminalization (by actually prosecuting them) of homosexuality homophobic discourse was also politicized. Homosexuals were presented as a sub- group with egoistic and gay oriented political aspirations within Nazi administration.
Reframing homosexuality as a group danger
After the Rohm purge a shift in propaganda and legal discourse can be noticed. The main theme of this change is the process of reframing homosexual acts into a national context. The presentation of imagined homosexual threat exaggerated its private context of moral indecency and was presented as a national problem. Homosexuals were no longer considered a distanced unwanted random cluster of offenders but were rather seen as a designated group endangering the German Reich. The idea of homosexual group favoritism was presented as an argument that implicitly refined homosexuals as a specific group carrying their group targets, responsibilities and commitments. This form of reasoning explicitly framed the danger of homosexual acts as a national threat.
The argument of homosexuality as a cause of reducing German birth rate falls under the same line of national reasoning. Therefore, homosexuals are not simply a form of indecency, but also endanger national growth. The theme of homosexual danger was intensified during the ensuing homophobic Nazi discourse. They were rhetorically presented as seducers of their sexual preferences. This aspect was later developed further by Nazi propaganda into images of disease and even a plague. At the time some legal and policy changes took place under a similar conceptual logic. For example, the actual persecution was enhanced since offenders were no
327 Geoffrey Giles, "The Denial of Homosexuality: Same Sex incidents in Himmler's SS and Police" , Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 11, No. 1/2 (Jan-Apr, 2002), p. 259 142
longer perceived as improper individuals, but rather as a public offenders. The following selected texts show how the focus of homophobic propaganda shifted toward the level of national policy.
Favoritism
One of the most famous clichés used to contest homosexuality was the accusation of favoritism. This tendency began before the Röhm purge and became stronger thereafter. Diles, who was the head of the Gestapo at the beginning of 1934, published his concerns about homosexual officials focusing on the SA in Germany:
"You see if I had a choice between a beautiful but incompetent secretary and one who was competent but ugly, it would be all too easy for me to decide for the beautiful but incompetent one. Should these comrades [SA] retain their influence the affairs of the National Socialist State fall into the hands of such "creatures and their darlings"328
The reason provided by Diles is favoritism will adversely affect the professionalism and efficiency of the Nazi armed forces. It interesting to see the leap from the relatively soft argument of favoritism to a more dangerous one; accusing the SA of creating and promoting a homosexual clique at the expense of people with merit and abilities. Nevertheless, the idea of homosexuals favoring each other over "external" straight men set the ground for portraying them as a unified group looking out for their own interests. After the purge, the official Nazi press office released the following report:
"We are uncovering more and more evidence to support our suspicion that this plot can be attributed to a clique of like-minded conspirators…His [Röhm] widely known unfortunate predisposition over time resulted in so unbearable a strain a burden that Röhm, a leader of our movement and the chief of the SA, became torn by a profound crisis of conscience."329
328 Quoted in: J.N. Porter p. 27-28 329 Quoten in: S. Micheler, p. 106
143
Homosexual favoritism is thus transformed into a "conspirating" clique creating a dangerous sub-group within the German state. The link between Röhm's "unfortunate predisposition" and the "plot" against Hitler are linked together. Nazi gay propaganda began to address homosexuality beyond the perspective of purely immoral behavior or as a simple problem of favoritism. Homosexuals were not only presented as individual criminals but also as a powerful group whose goal was the undermining of state authority. Later on, in July of that year, this tendency became more explicit and direct; homosexuals were openly accused of formulating plans to overthrow the government; thereby placing an individual vice at the centerpiece of national loyalty.330
Reducing birth rate
Another important factor in the persecution of gay Germans was that they were perceived as non productive. Since Himmler realized that the war would take a costly toll in lives, marriage and children were crucial for Nazi renewal and maintenance of power. Himmler calculated the damage in population numbers that the gay community will cause. Their sexual preferences prevented them from providing the nation with offspring. This line of thought isn’t far from the first stages of the Nazi anti-disabled rhetoric whereby homosexuals were considered as a non- contributing population that burden the German nation. In both viewpoints, the overarching logic is utilitarian. This rhetoric began before the Röhm purge and survived long afterwards. Nevertheless, it became a defined category for the judicial system and for the media. During 1935, there were debates within Nazi Germany on whether to extend the persecution for lesbian activities. In a report provided by the official criminal law commission, Prof. von Gleispach explains in which scenario lesbian sexual conduct can be criminalized: "…if they are committed against children then they already constitute an offence under this version…"331 In a debate conducted in 1937 to clear the issue of female gay persecution, the chairman, Herr Strauss, explains the difference between gay men and women, "…as regards to lesbianinsm, it is certainly
330 Ibid 331 F. Gürtner, ed. Das kommende deutsche Strafrecht. Besonderer Teil: Bericht über die Arbeit der amtlichen Strafrechtskommission, Berlin 1935, pp. 116-118 144
true that women with lesbian inclinations nevertheless remain capable of reproduction…"332 Nazi propaganda claimed that gay men are not only uninterested but also at some point can't have children due to their sexual propensity. The propaganda linked the individual sexual acts with the public responsibility to the German nation. Homosexuality was not a private issue but an issue relating to and endangering the well- being of the entire nation.
Dangerous Seduction
This leads us to another aspect of the anti-gay rhetoric whereby it was portrayed as a dangerous activity. This phenomenon became more prominent over time and eventually- manifested itself into the codicils of section 175a of the German penal code detailing homosexuality laws. The danger of the homosexual conduct was connected to reducing the Aryan birth rate. Nevertheless, it was an indirect effect. In order to persuade and sustain public homophobia of the gay community it was presented in forms that appear as a direct threat.
In one of his many directives, Hitler proposed a gentle shift in discourse of the issue, from immoral to dangerous; thereby altering its context from disgust to fear:
"I expect all SA leaders to help preserve and strengthen the SA in its capacity as a pure and uncontaminated institute…"333 In other words clear of homosexual vice. "In particular, I should like every mother to be able to allow her son to join the SA, party and Hitler Youth without fear that he may become morally corrupted within their ranks." Although, "only" a moral corruption it is contagious. Hitler stressed that if there were to be homosexuals present they might corrupt the morals of the newcomers.334 The accusation against homosexuals as the cause of corruption among the youth was a common one and grew stronger after the purge and also contributed to the process of criminalization of homosexuality in Nazi Germany. In a report detailing complaints about homosexuals in the Hitler Youth of Hamburg, the connection between the danger of gay seduction and criminality are adjoined:
332 In the following quotations from German archives I have used Grua's translation along with the original archive reference. G. Grau, p. 76 or Bundesarchiv in Koblenz R 61/332 (Expanded committee on criminal law 16.4.1937) 333 N. Porter p. 67 334 Ibid 145
"Mr. Förster [the police inspector] outlined the main forms of homosexual activity and explained that time and again older, often dangerous, active homosexuals- most of them intellectual and influential people- managed to assume leading positions in the youth movement and paramilitary associations so they could carry out their mischief there undisturbed."335 Later the text continues on to the phenomena of gay rent boys and other homosexual abuses of the German youth. Presenting homosexuality as an immediate threat to German society was a tendency that was consistently employed in formal Nazi propaganda; at first presented as seducers and abusers of German youth and later as a degenerate element that is devouring the Volk from within.
Juridical changes in defining homosexuality
In Germany, gay sexual relationships were illegal since 1871. Under section 175 of the Nazi Reich’s Penal Code the law was further elaborated stating that: "An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed."336 In the original version of the law only actual sex acts were punishable. Furthermore, these acts were viewed as being unnatural and falling in the context of sex with animals. . The Nazi revision is different: "A male who commits a sex offence with another male or allows himself to be used by another male shall be punished by imprisonment."337 The new version introduced a few important changes. First homosexuality isn’t related to any bizarre unnatural acts, such as sex with animals, but stands as a vice on its own. The second is the definition as sex offences, rather than acts in which only intercourse like activities are punishable. Men who lie beside one another, cuddle or demonstrate physical intimate contact of any sort are liable for punishment.
The new law even addresses the different sex roles and imposes criminal responsibility for complying with same sex desires even when not initiating them. The New German law continues and adds an important addition, section 175a, which serve to enhance the severity of the crime in cases of violence, abusing relationships of dependents, underage seduction and public displays of
335 A. Ebbinghous/ H. Kaupen- Haas/ K. H. Roth, Heilen und Vernichten im Mustegrau Hamburg. Bevölkerungs- und Gesundheitspolitik im Dritten Reich, Hamburg, 1984 pp. 83-84 336 Reichgesetzblatt Vol. 1, 1935, p. 839-840 337 ibid 146
homosexuality. The Nazis connected these cases since they believed that homosexual acts involve an inherent seductive, violent and abusive aspect. Himmler saw homosexuality as a growing epidemic wherein homosexuals take advantage of their public position and power in order to satisfy themselves. The law provides another example of two ongoing processes evolving in the Nazi perception of homosexuality: criminalization and politicalization. The new law, as well as the propaganda previously mentioned, point out not only the immorality of these acts but also the social toll. The law links homosexuality with violence, abuse and seduction whereas at the propaganda level, they were categorized as unproductive, social misfits and even dangerous.
Criminalization had another aspect which made it easier to actually persecute homosexual crimes. Dr Leopold Shäfer explains the commentary to the legal amendment: "…the police could not proceed against evident homosexual practices unless they were able to prove such acts. This gap has now been filled, so that any sex offence between males renders them liable for imprisonment."338 In other words persecution against those violating the 175 code was not only de jure but also de facto.
As far as politicalization, they are presented more and more as an actual and significant group rather than a random collection of isolated individuals. They are responsible for creating cliques that favor the interest of their own kind. It was believed that their group loyalty subverts the loyalty to the German cause. Consequently, the law redefines criminality making the vice of same sex more inclusive. All same sex desire gestures are therefore criminally linked; the law is against homosexual in its wider interpretation as male- male physical sexual intimacy, as explained by the legal commission's report drafting the legislation: "concerning terminology, it should be noted that by sex offence the draft and this report understand intercourse and any other sexual activity…Thus sex offence without further qualifications may denote homosexual relations…"
It seems that the law makes major exertions towards banning homosexual identity, not only the mere act of gay intercourse. There is no discerning between different forms of male intimate
338 In: Deutsche Justiz 1935/28, pp. 994-999 Grau, p. 66 147
physical relationships, thus deflating the importance of the actual sex act and at the same time creating an image of any and all gay intimate physical contact as a vice. In order to persecute a minority, this minority must be defined and furthermore posses an evil aura and deformed identity. The new version of the law takes part in endowing homosexuality with a face. Homosexuality is not only intercourse but a whole spectrum of forbidden sex offences; gay people are not just acting against public order but are involved in criminally seductive, violent and abusive tendencies. Almost all minorities the Nazis persecuted underwent a conceptual process of re-shaping an image so as to become the enemy. The anti- Jewish propaganda is another example.
An analysis of this process is provided by Jeffry Herf showing how the international enemies and the Jews are formed into a single entity during the developing Nazi discourse.339 During the 30s Nazi propaganda made great efforts to establish the groundwork for the Euthanasia program and repeatedly portrayed the handicapped as hideous useless eaters.340 This process of imaging as a prelude to persecutions is a standard Nazi tactic and was used in the anti- homosexual agenda as well.
The 'cumulative radicalization' in 1936 of group branding homosexuality
From 1936 onwards, group persecution of homosexuals intensified. Before offering a comprehensive overview of the second stage of persecution a methodological restriction should be addressed. What kind of institutional synchronization occurred at the time? The process of nationally appropriating homophobic rhetoric does not necessarily signify an unambiguous trajectory, nor does it insinuate a premeditated agenda -even though anti gay policy during 1936- 1938 enveloped various centers of power - the judicial system, public propaganda and police force. Furthermore, Nazi perceptions of homosexuality were widely accepted so the severity of persecution was evident in all areas. Nevertheless, up until the beginning of the war in 1939 (and to some extent thereafter), there were still diverse decentralized authorities that participated in the persecution of unwanted minorities in Germany. As in the case of anti-Semitic conduct
339 J.Herf, 340 H. Fridlander ibid 148
during 1936-1939, there were three major authorities striving for dominance of anti Jewish policy. During that time, radicalization of anti gay policies did not maintain unified strategies, but rather a sporadic, but consistent tendency that reached a boiling point and generated genocidal conduct.
Therefore how can the decentralized character of Nazi anti- gay policies be analytically understood? Peter von Rönn has introduced the term "cumulative radicalization" in order to conceptualize this process. He tried to show the logic and consistency in the development of anti- gay policies carried out by Himmler. His argument was that Himmler's explicit motivation was adopted from the general population’s transformation of ideas and never really deviated from their line of thought.341 Von Rönn did highlight the rapidly developing tendencies of anti- gay Nazi attitude which elevated homophobic conduct. Nevertheless, his research failed to explain the conceptual aspect of this radicalization which changed some basic perceptions and rationalizations of the anti gay ideological motivation. Even if these policies were taken within a political context and began from a bourgeoisie ideological starting point, persecution and incitement have their own dynamic mechanism and inertia. The years before the beginning of the war exemplify how this evolutionary and dynamic advance in the anti gay rhetoric reasoning took place.
As mentioned a change can be noticed from 1936 and on; the process of imaging homosexuality as an organized group danger of the Volk continued. Although the change in anti –gay rhetoric might be less noticed, the anti- gay official policies were in line with seeing homosexuality as a group threat. The argument connecting homosexuality with the national danger of reducing German birth rate was crystallized by an the establishment of an official office to 'combat abortion and homosexuality'. The link to abortion reveals the conceptual frame of homophobic logic. Furthermore this institute established a concrete homosexual group by listing them in official documents. The change in climate can be noticed in the judicial system, criminal conviction of homosexual acts grew immensely. Furthermore police activities included an exponential increase in arrests and surveillance activities. Thus the criminalization and
341 Peter von Rönn, "Politische und Psychiatrische Homosexualitätskunstruktion im NS-Staat", Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung (June/ September 1988) p. 99-129 149
classification of homosexual acts was an ongoing process wherein the changes in rhetoric were followed by significant institutional changes.
The Reich Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion -1936
On the 10th of October 1936, Himmler ordered a secret decree establishing a police unit specifically assigned to register homosexuals throughout German state. "The serious danger to population growth and public health as represented by a relatively high number of abortions… as well as the homosexual activity… pose one of the greatest dangers to the youth, requires more than before the effective combating of these public scourges. […] In order to insure uniform guidelines for central registration and for effective combating of these offences, I hereby establish within the Prussian Land Criminal Police Bureau : Reich Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion"342 Grau stresses how crucial this office was in the radicalization of anti- gay persecution. "The regime's aim of compiling a complete register of homosexual men opened the flood- gates for both an unprecedented wave of public denunciations and arbitrary actions on the part of Criminal Police and Gestapo."343 Micheler, on the other hand, points out the limited enforcement scope of this office. "No attempt was made to establish a list or registry of "homosexuals" The … [office] established in 1936 required only members of certain groups within its premises."344 There is no argument that the office had only limited authority for registering homosexuals nor is it disputed that the phenomena of denunciation and harsh persecution followed the 1936 October directive. The registration project, even limited as it was, set the tone for group branding and incitement against the gay population. Furthermore, it enabled the beaurocratic mechanism to begin prosecution; later on implementing the same strategies within the general German public. One of the most significant obstacles to the anti- gay policy had been that these individuals were not a collectivized group; their so called vices were private and by and large remained undetected. In contrast, the persecution of Jews was far simpler - they were registered and constituted a defined cultural and ethnic group. Another
342 G. Grau, p. 88 or Federal/military archive in Freiburg-im-Breisgau H 20/479 (Himmler's secret directive on combating homosexuality and abortion, 10.10.1936) 343 G. Grau, p. 87 344 S. Micheler, p. 109 150
group, the handicapped, was singled out and in many cases institutionalized, making the conceptual and actual persecution process more convenient. As far as anti-gay persecution, the Nazis had to rely on denunciations, surveillances and a list of mail recipients of gay material from the former Weimar era,. That is why the registration office played such a decisive role; it enabled a formal "grouping" of the homosexual community. Alongside persuasive propaganda, and juridical revisions previously mentioned, the registration process completed the picture and established the final push to fully persecute the gay community.
Juridical and police activity- making persecution happen (1936)
The years following the establishment of Himmler's special office signaled a harsh shift in the juridical activity against the gay community - widespread indictments and convictions. Despite the Röhm purge during 1934, there were "only" about a thousand convictions of 175ers (accused of homosexual activity) that year. In 1936 this number grew immensely reaching 5310 convictions. This trend continued in 1938, a year in which there were 8562 cases of people legally convicted and punished for homosexual activity.345 The years between 1939-1945 should be addressed from a new, perspective, since most men were no longer simple civilians but rather soldiers, as Plant points out.346 Furthermore, the ratio of acquittals in 1936 dropped to a quarter of those delivered in 1918, under the same so called crime. German courts played a decisive role in establishing a public atmosphere promoting this anti-gay agenda and the propaganda, in turn, played a role in the judges' attitudes; the two movements played a mutual role in fueling each other. Legal persecutions between1931-1933 were as limited to 2319 cases. Between1936-1938 the change in public opinion and legal apparatus created a suitable environment so that 22,143 people were persecuted for homosexual activities in Nazi Germany.
The persecution of homosexuals was radicalized not only in quantitive terms but also in selecting "new" targets for persecution. The most prominent example was the "Cloister Trials," wherein priests and catholic clergy were systematically put to trial for homosexual crimes in an abusive context. They were portrayed as using their authority to manipulate and take advantage and thus
345 G. Grau, p. 131 346 R. Plant p. 80 151
corrupt the youth. Richard Evans highlights the pragmatic aspect of these persecutions was to underline a specific political group - since it involved a struggle for power, loyalty and moral authority between the Nazi party and the Catholic Church.347 The Nazis presented it simply as part of the anti- gay struggle. and demanded full coverage of these trials and a detailed and explicit public report of the homosexual activities: "For the propaganda it would be necessary to give as concrete details as possible about each individual trial, because it is this that makes the greatest impression on the people."348 Flanking this political power struggle, another process was taking place involving the public criminalization of homosexuality publically. These trials were "show trials"; the Nazi ministry of propaganda was consumed by the question of how to present the trials to the public. The Cloister Trials marks the widening and deepening of the homosexual persecution as well. Furthermore, they successfully contributed to creating a recognizable criminal profile connecting images of child abuse with homosexual tendencies.
To deal with the growing body of so called criminals during the years 1936-1938, there was a significant boost in police activity; artist who were suspected of homosexual activity were arrested, surveillances over public places was systemized and new police units and offices were established. Because of this police enterprise denunciations engulfed the entire community. New police regulations went hand in hand with the increasing severity in the treatment of the gay population. For example from the decrees of the 14th of December 1937 which authorized the police to use preventive detention against sex criminals349, especially homosexuals, actually meant their imprisonment in specific concentration camps.350 Initially , new harsh methods were introduced, But were considered as too radical and were later moderated to some extent. Due to the concealed fashion of this "vice," police officers would seduce suspects of homosexual inclination to prove their guilt. This method became common and quite useful but was eventually
347 Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power 1933 – 1939, New York: Penguin, 2005, 243-5. 348 G. Grau, p. 136 or Bundesarchiv Potsdam, AH 925, A 10, fol. 318f (Memorandum from Gestapo Headquarters, 8.4.1937) 349 G. Grau, p. 138-141 or Bundesarchiv Potsdam, Film 1123/AN 2885 838-844, (Decree of the Prussian Minister of the Interior, 14.12.1937) 350 G. Grau, p. 144-146 or Sachen-Anhalt Landsarchive, Magdenburg, Rep. C20 Ib, No. 1839, (Guidelines relating the decree on 'preventive combating of crime in the police') 152
discarded: "Although I do not deny that a ruthless struggle against homosexuality is urgently required to maintain the strength of the German Volk, I consider it intolerable for the reputation of the police that officers should put their own bodies up to trap homosexuals."351 The Reich Ministry of Justice, that issued this letter, did not undermine the crucial importance and need of radical methods to catch and indict homosexuals. The letter was designed only to protect the police department's reputation and therefore the human trap method was abandoned. The Reich's police and legal system draw a clear picture of the shift in anti-gay policy and conduct toward a systemized, operational and decisive anti- gay mechanism; thus bringing it closer to the threshold of homophobic genocidal level.
Stage three: genocidation of Nazi homophobia
Due to methodological logic this stage is also separated into two separate parts. The first one brings together the writings of three prominent Nazi officials (Meinsinger, Himmler and Klare) who advocated for a harsh anti –gay policy. This first part will demonstrate the crucial changes that the anti- gay discourse underwent. The figures presented are examples of how the ideal of hate turned into sexual politics, proximity was used to reframe and radicalize homosexual exclusion. During 1937-1939, there were only few policy changes in this respect and only after the outbreak of the war did these new ideals of hate find their way into actual policies on the ground. Nevertheless, it was during this phase that a genocidal discourse was established. The ideas of later genocidal exclusion used in official documents and decrees can be traced back to the cluster of homophobic images hereby presented. The second part of this chapter will illustrate the genocidal discourse and conduct during the early years of the war. It was only during those years that noticeable anti- gay genocidal regulations and acts took place. However the logic of extreme exclusion seen in later official deliberations is based on the fear of the near rather than the distant enemy. These changes show the effectiveness of the new concepts of homophobia. Beside the introduction of the death penalty and other harsh anti- gay violent acts,
351 G. Grau, p. 149 153
further radicalization of discourse can be seen developing. The cycle of violence began with grouping homosexuality then restructuring them as an intimate enemy. This led to formation of definitive categories thus essentializing the threat. During this time homosexuality was seen as a multi leveled form of degeneration. They were considered not only to be degenerates but also infectious; this discourse of 'disease' is similar to the anti-Semitic Nazi logic wherein exclusion is based on a twisted form of proximity.
Three examples of new homophobia
Meinsinger : proximity and sexual politics (1937) In the beginning April 1937 Josef Meinsinger, who was the head of the Reich Office, spoke in front of an assembly of medical directors explaining the Nazi rationale for combating homosexuality and abortion. He began detailing the logic of placing these two sex offences together by highlighting their uniqueness:
"Homosexuality and abortion appear at first sight to be two quite different offences. But in reality they have much in common particularly in their effect. First of all from the point of criminal law they differ from all other offence of the Penal Code by the fact that there is no victim, at least not in the narrow sense of the term…"352
Meinsinger's observation is that the main legal disadvantage of homosexual activity is that it is concealed and perceived as harmless. The main argument he tries to promote throughout his speech is the un-ambiguity of homosexual criminality via political propaganda and sexual imaging. The political anti- gay rhetoric of homosexual seduction and misguiding of youth can be detected as early as 1934. Nevertheless, Meinsinger elaborates and demonstrates how the luring strategies, involving intimate closeness and proximity, play a decisive role. An issue which became relevant and controversial at the time was the link between homosexuality and the Christian Church. In this case, monks were accused of misusing their authority by seducing and
352 Mecklenburgisches Landesarchiv Schwerin. Min. f. Untericht, Kunst, geschichte und Medizinalangelegenheiten, No. 967 in: Jahrbuch Des Reichkrimminalpolizeiamtes für das Jahr 1938 (Berlin 1939), pp. 20f, or quoted in Grau, p. 110 154
sexually assaultng children. Meinsinger presents the erotic anomaly wherein care and abuse coincide under the roof of violent physical closeness,
"But what if monasteries claim to give young people quite special protection from moral dangers, while in reality they abuse boys put in their care by trusting parents…"353 Meinsinger continues along these lines and after an apologetic introduction concerning the hideous crimes he provides a specific image of this erotic violence:
"Believe me gentlemen; it is impossible to describe in words the hideous things that came to light in the investigation in recent months in various monasteries. It was impossible to publish anything like that in the papers, starting with the intercourse during the confession, at the altar and so on."354
Monks were accused of many homosexual crimes. Nevertheless, the combination of activities that Meinsingers stresses over and over again is the misuse of proximity, abuse of trust and the impossible co-existence between intimacy and violence. He envisages a picture of a confession booth wherein the child shares his most intimate secrets, yet it is the place where his vulnerability is used against him. This criminality is a secret and "hidden danger"355 and the "trusting parents" become "weeping parents" after being notified of the crimes committed. 356 No discussion of whether there was or wasn’t consent is made and anyway is believed to be irrelevant. Rape was not the main issue but rather abuse of dependency and the luring of innocent children. They were presented with the loving image of sanctified monks but regretfully were ministered to with violence and abusive tendencies. Meinsinger uses one of the most powerful images of erotic discourse which embraces the polar existence of extreme trusting closeness with the egoistic and cynical use of that same trust. It therefore isn’t unanticipated to see the link Meinsinger draws between homosexuality and treason:
353 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 112-113 354 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 113 355 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 114 356 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 113 155
"Apart for being itself a punishable violation of that order, it is especially dangerous because it is often the starting point for a series of further crimes. Very often it comes as a preliminary to treason…"357 Treason in this case is when the link between trust and abuse is correlated. The greater the trust the more damage that can be done. Meinsinger understands that in order to undermine and radicalize anti-gay policy, arguments for immorality and birth rate issues aren’t sufficient; the new terms he coins are treason, misuse of trust and intimate violence. Sexual politics play an important role in the radicalization of the anti-gay discourse bringing it closer to the idea of allowing the death penalty and the subsequent eradication of homosexuals in Germany. It was Meinsinger who said that in ancient times these "homosexuals" would be killed immediately, thereby sparing the community the need to incarcerate them and put them on trial.
Meinsinger also points out how homosexual vice was spreading: "If a homosexual manages to win over a juvenile from a group or a crowd, then experience shows that his friends will also be abused by the seducer in question."358 The text speaks of consensual sex, yet one that nevertheless spreads the disease of homosexuality. Meinsinger also claims that this tendency actually is promoted and spreads through sexual intercourse activities. The seducer infiltrates the group of juveniles and then upsets their natural sexual tendencies. The medical aspect and physical outcome of homosexuality was clear to Meinsinger: "Since, as we know, homosexuals are useless for normal homosexual intercourse…"359 meaning their abilities to have reproductive heterosexual intercourse are gone. Here too, Meinsinger introduces sexually inclined medical concepts in order to establish persuasive criminality for this victimless crime. Depicting homosexual sexuality as the junction point for spreading diseases creates a strong fear and a collective threat; the enemy is unseen and the subdued violence is spread in domestic settings hidden from the public eye and yet posing a "…permanent threat to order in the life of the state."360
357 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 113 358 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 111 359 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 113 360 Ibid or G. Grau, p. 113 156
In his speech Meinsinger indirectly addresses an issue that later becomes increasingly prominent, especially in the anti-gay rhetoric of Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Klare. His argument is that homosexuality and male closeness played a role in the political power play of the church through the monastic communities, "I think I can speak openly here. Monastic life and homosexuality have for centuries been inseparable from each other. Homosexuality is a method the Church used to build the monastic settlements, the monastic communities."361 Male close relations are herein seen as a competent political tool; both Himmler and Klare admit to the importance and possibilities intimate male groups can have in terms of political power. Meinsinger does not comprehensively clarify how homosexuality operates as an extension of the idea of male bonding. Nevertheless, he created a link that became part of the homophobic discourse in Nazi Germany, showing how male-male group intimacy can be abusive and furthermore 67 dangerous.
Heimrich Himmler- gender roles, male bonding and Judification(1937)
Himmler provides a unique insight into how traditional ideas of homophobic discourse as seen earlier in stages one and two are revised thus forming a genocidal discourse of exclusion. Himmler transforms some 'old' homophobic concepts into a more radical frame of reasoning. There are six points hereby presented that illustrate the shifting severity of homosexuality in the Third Reich as affirmed in Himmler's written texts : Judification, genocidal discoursing, emphasizing sexual and gender politics, nationalizing homophobic propaganda, linking homophobia with Nazi ideological foundations (race, eugenics, etc.), traitor images of homosexuals as individuals and groups (erotic male bonding vs. Nazi male state). These various linguistic developments are interlinked and therefore will be presented collectively.
On the 18th of February 1937, Himmler delivered a speech in Bad Tölz in front of the SS group leaders.362 Himmler stipulated his world view at length especially the danger of homosexuality.
361 Ibid G. Grau, p. 112 362 Nara, RG 242, T-175. Roll 89, Frames 1828-1906 (Himmler Bad Tölz speech, 18.2.1937) Himmler Heinrich, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, Bradley f. Smith and Agnes F.Peterson (eds.) Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1974, This speech was translated with the help of my colleague Jonathan Matthews from the educational department of the Yadvashem museum. 157
This was a noteworthy speech since not only does it show the unique form of Himmler's homophobia but also because it marks a change towards genocidal discourse. In the course of 1937-1938 other public speeches and publications were distributed along the same lines, after exaggerating the growing number of homosexuals in Germany,
"…it is shown that approximately7 –8 –10% of the men in Germany are homosexual,"363 he continues to emphasize the threat posed to Germany using the traditional paradigm of "reducing child birth":
"This means that if the situation remains as such our nation (Volk) will evidently be destroyed as a result of this plague. ."364
Moreover, he introduces the term plague which connotes spreading of disease rather than to minimizing life. A disease is far more dangerous and therefore should be dealt with as harshly as possible. From the start, the speech combines new fundamental anti gay reasoning alongside the old traditional homophobic ideas. This tendency for radicalization of traditional homophobic concepts pointed out in this speech demonstrates a discursive shift in genocidal incitement and the linguistic persecution of “same sex desiring individuals” in Nazi Germany.
It was quite common to begin a speech with an introduction that deals with the questions on the basic fundamentals of the anti – gay arguments:
"…there are those who have the opinion: what I do is of no interest to anyone else, it is a purely private issue."365
Himmler was well aware of the fact that the criminality of homosexuality was not only hard to prove but also presented difficulties when gathering evidence. Therefore his rhetoric compensated for this disadvantage and with a decisive anti- gay ideological discourse.
363 Ibid, p. 93 364 Ibid, p. 94 365 Ibid, p. 94 158
"However, all things that take place in the sexual sphere are not a private matter of the individual, but are a matter of life and death of the nation."366
Himmler highlights an "or" (life and death us or them) equation and juxtaposes it with the gay questions. In this context, he was very elaborate as to what is at stake for Germany:
"We need to make this point clear. If we continue to allow this vice in Germany without responding to it properly, then that is the end of Germany, the end of the Germanic world. Unfortunately, it is not as easy for us as it was for our ancestors"367
The format in which the future of the German race is at risk from an internal threat was usually related to how Nazi leaders, including Himmler, referred to the Jewish question. Furthermore, the quick flip from an unseen enemy to one that can change the course of Germany’s future is also a common rhetorical tool employed by the Nazi propaganda machine to exemplify the Jewish threat. It is not an unequivocal "Judification" of the gay question in Germany but nevertheless presents similarities that are evident when comparing the two discourses; similarities that hardly existed in the Nazi official discourse before 1937.
One example can be seen by the way Himmler addresses the issue of favoritism in government, explaining the adverse effect of homosexual tendencies within the civil service:
"But once this erotic principle— of a masculine-feminine merit changes to a man to man principle: if such asexual principle take root in the Men-state then the destruction of the state begins."368
Favoritism resulted in inefficiency and also led to a "destruction of the state"; it is the fact that erotic and sexual tendencies play a role in the public sphere that jeopardizes the German state. This is not Himmler's personal new innovative idea nor can it be marked as a breaking point in anti- gay propaganda; it is in actuality the whole complex and comprehensive setting related to sexual politics that sets the scene for anti- gay genocidal actions.
366 Ibid, p. 94 367 Ibid, p. 97 368 Ibid, p. 95 159
A contribution that Himmler does provide in his speech is the way he casts homosexuals in a feminine dimension, and then reveals how this blurs the gender polarity leading to the degeneration and destruction of the German race. He created characteristics of an imagined homosexual profile depicting what he perceived as feminine attributes; first he defines him as "soft":
"…he is a soft person and because he lacks will and courage."369
Then he continues and illustrates how overly communicative and talkative a homosexual can be:
"Moreover, the homosexual has an uncontrollable desire to communicate in all spheres, especially in the sexual sphere."370
Later he adds two more qualities to enrich the established profile, regarding homosexuals as egocentric and un-loyal to the State and even to their friends.
"You usually find, that if one is caught he starts delivering information …about names of other people he knows. Since there is no honesty in this man to man love, the homosexual informs of everything without restraint, carrying the vague hope that by doing so he can somehow save his own skin."371
The idea of connecting femininity with homosexuality is well rooted in 19th century culture. Moreover, seeing such individuals as soft talkative and unable to establish true male loyalty etc. can be seen in early 20th century writing as well. Himmler sharpens this argument when he declares that distorting the polarity of gender definitions via homosexual activity will destroy Germany:
He begins by illustrating the relationship between obscuring of gender tension and homosexuality:
369Ibid, p. 96 370Ibid, p. 97 371Ibid, p. 97 160
"…we foolish men want to turn women into logical thinking instruments and educate them regarding everything, a This target will be possible only if we were to masculinize them, and this will eventually lead to the disappearance of the differences between sexes. Then the way to homosexuality will not belong."372
Then he continues to state the outcome of such foolishness is the decay of the Men-state which is the way he views Nazi Germany.
"…this nation will fall due to another reason. We are a men-state (Männerstaat), and, with all of its faults , we must hold on to it firmly, for the constitution of the Männerstaat is far better.[…] …this Männerstaat, however, is now in the midst of its annihilation because of homosexuality"373
Homosexuals are feared since they challenge the basic characterization that serve to polarize the genders. Himmler implicitly employs the finding of Magnus Hirschfeld categorizing homosexuality as a third sex and plants this idea firmly into his propaganda.374 It is not only because homosexuality is distant form of sexuality, but because it is so near to both genders that it creates a gap in the Nazi sexual order. It seems that the Douglas' theory regarding the threatening image of those who stand on the edge of society fits this form of paranoia. The closer and more challenging these insider and outsider people become, the greater the need for exclusion and the more radical the discourse and other practical aspects.375
Himmler saw homosexuality not only as a threat to gender polarity by deflating the Men- State he wished to establish, but also as competing for a Men- Bonding, considered essential to the Aryan race; Here again there is a partially hidden reference to anti- Semitism. Nazi propaganda saw the Jews as the ultimate enemy, that is in a constant status of struggle with the Aryan race. The image of a growing group, in Himmler's worldview, becoming more and more powerful and
372 Ibid, p.99 373 Ibid, p. 94 374 Magnus Hirschfeld, Men and Women: The World Journey of a Sexologist (1933), AMS Press, 1974 375 M. Douglas ibid.
161
spreading like a plague that can destroy Germany, was a common image in both anti-Semitic and anti –gay rhetoric.
An example of a significant gay male- union is given by Himmler when he accuses the Church of group homosexual activity:
"Religious organizations and their leadership the priesthood, is for most places an erotic male fostering of homosexuals…"376
The power, support and abilities of the Church as a whole and of monks specifically are related to the Male- Bond or Male- Union in which homosexuality serves as a platform. Himmler claims that not only the country must be protected from homosexuality but also the purity and distinctiveness of Male- Bonding:
"The only solution I see is as follows: we cannot let the qualities of the Männerstaat and the advantages of male society disappear through vices."377
Male societies and male bonding is delicate but extremely important and errors can be crucial. The reason for the persecution of homosexuals is due to the fact they supposedly desecrate this bond. This theme grows stronger during the persecution of homosexuals in in the camps and eventually became a common rhetorical tool for elevating anti- gay violence. Again, it is the similarity between the homosexual male bonding and the imaginary Men- State, that Himmler wished to create, that fueled this tension.
Himmler had single handedly succeeded in establishing a new discourse, wherein homosexuality was no longer an issue on its own right but rather a wide-ranging problem that corresponded with the main lines of Nazi ideology, such as the Jewish problem and the future purity of the German Volk and also with the "Law of Nature." He describes the simple and harsh forms of this "Law of Nature" as follows:
376 Himmler Bad Tölz speech, 18.2.1937 ibid 377 Ibid, p. 99 162
"The blood laws, however, were strict in a sense that no man and no women were allowed to have relations with a person of inferior blood. That law was kept uncompromisingly.…. If that rule were to be broken by the female, the death penalty would be the consequence."378
This rooted Nazi belief in the “Law of Nature” and the purity of German blood is diametrically opposite the "vice" of homosexuality:
"That was all natural; the social order then was clean and decent and acted in accordance with the laws of nature and not as our order today against the laws of nature."379
Himmler distinguishes again between the ancient natural and early period and the chaos of the modern era. Himmler uses this dichotomy to portray homosexuality as an unnatural tendency, one that goes against the basic racial logic. Homosexuality becomes more attractive to Nazi ideology since it is connected with eugenics racial theory, "Law of Nature" gender politics and German nationalism. Himmler goes on to combine the genocidal rhetoric of "or or" with the homosexual threat to the nation using the ideological reasoning of the "Laws of Nature":
"Gentlemen! An uncontrolled sexuality leads to the worse things one could imagine. To say we are carnalis an insult tothe beasts, for beastsdo not act in this manner. So, this question concerningproperly informedsexuality is a question of life [or death] for every human being."380The main shift in Himmler’s discourse is that he establishes an association between sexual politics and the life and death struggle of the nation. He explains and promotes this connection in order to expound his homophobic genocidal discourse. In these speeches, he supports the logic behind the killing of homosexuals and later goes on to advocate the death penalty for homosexual activity within the SS units.
378 Ibid, pp. 98-99 379 Ibid, p. 98 380 Ibid
163
"That was not an act of punishment, but rather just the liquidationof an odd form of life. Ithad to be removed, as much as we pull out nettles pile them and burn them. There was no feeling of revenge, it was a fact that the questioned personhad to go."381
He provides a convenient perspective for killing homosexuals that is justified by the logic of natural evolution. Therefore, there is no feature of revenge or penalty, but rather an exclusion of unwanted people. That is precisely the reason for linking homosexuals to mentally ill patients who previously experienced mass murder at the hands of the Nazi regime:
"In my experience homosexuality leads to a complete, or should I say almost say mental insanity and craziness."382
Himmler strengthens the ideological and rhetorical bond between homosexuality, sexual politics and racial- eugenic theory. Although he was lenient toward experiments to modify sexual tendencies, he never really believed they would work.
Himmler states that homosexuals pose a threat to civil German life; homosexuals are presented as an enemy within. He claims that they can sometimes be brave in battle but they nevertheless posses genuine flaws - their civil courage and their loyalty are imminently absent and therefore endanger the German state from within,
"Homosexuality therefore destroys all merits and everything based on these merits it brings to the destruction of the state from its roots. Moreover,the homosexual is by all means mentally sick. He is soft, and inmost important circumstances a coward. I believe that he can still excel at wartime; but when it comes to civil courage, he is one of weakest men there is."383
Again the theme of the "degeneration" of Germany is linked with the process of making the German men feminine, cowardly and un-loyal. The idea of blurring the gender definition through homosexual practice is repeatedly emphasized and is later used by Himmler to legitimize harsh and genocidal measures against the gay minority. It is this enemy within with borderline and
381 Ibid
382 Ibid, p. 96-97 383 Ibid, p. 96 164
vague identities that troubles Himmler; it is those groups that formulate male unions as in the SS with the potential for homosexual activities- that pose the greater to Germany. The Jew as well was presented by Himmler’s propaganda as the enemy within, also referencing the Jew to the image of a traitor. Already, during 1937, Himmler desires to impose an implicit death penalty specifically aimed at homosexuals within the SS organization. He saw them as traitors to the Nazi cause who should be treated as such and be 'shot while trying to escape':
"In the SS today we still have approximately one case of homosexuality a month. In the entire SS during one year approximately eight to ten cases happen. My decision was as follow: in each case these people will beby all meanspublicly derogated, expelled, and handed over to the courts. Following completion of the punishment as instructed by the court, I have ordered that they will be sent to a concentration camp, and they will be shot in the concentration camp in case of escape."384
Himmler introduces very few "new" ideas in the area of homophobic motivation. Many of the ideas were already circulating within the Nazi discourse in various forms over a number of years. It is the combination of the conceptual comprehensiveness of anti- gay traditional discourse with gender politics (male bonding, femininization, homosexual blurring) that makes his speeches so fundamental. Furthermore he connects the "new" avenues of reasoning with genocidal discourse, calling on the authorities to kill homosexuals within the SS and hinting at the extermination of all homosexuals within the German population. It is also not surprising to see that many of the images presented have an implicit reference to ant- Semitic propaganda - Jews too were seen as traitors, as an enemy within and as sexually dangerous. Himmler even brands homosexuals, in contrast to the Jews, as a group of "unknowing liars" :
"The Jesuit therefore is lying and knows it; he does not forget for a moment that he is lying. The homosexual however lies and believes it himself."385
384 Ibid, p. 97 385 Ibid, p. 96 165
Himmler shifts the anti- homosexual discourse from utilitarian ideas of minimizing the birth rates to a more perfidious concept of degeneration. He is responsible for nationalizing the anti- gay incitement and aligning it with not Nazi sexual and gender politics.
Explaining male bonding and homosexuality
The Nazi state was a male dominated state. Accurate gender roles were presented in Nazi propaganda and male solidarity was imperative for national welfare. This traditional form of male proximity, called Männerbund, was politically adopted by the Nazi state, as Oosterhuis points out in his research:
"The Männerbund, the community of men united in emotional attachment, fulfilled an important function in Nazism. It was the model for the National Socialist ideal of male solidarity and superiority to women and other outsiders, and of a strict hierarchy among men themselves".386
Oosterhuis addresses the incompatibility and tension caused by the anti- gay propaganda on the one hand and the embedded male bonding within the German society, army and SS units on the other hand:
"During the Nazi regime the tension between male bonding in German nationalism and latent homoerotic tendencies of the so-called Männerbund was pushed to extremes.387
His conclusions were that Nazi propaganda connected between erotic homosexuality and political favoritism and determined that this association could undermine the power of the state and form a 'state within a state'
Many of the Nazi functionaries were painfully aware of this linkage between Männerbund and homosexuality. In their communications, repeated reference was made to Hans Blüher's work that warns against homosexualitysince it can serve as fertile soil for the development of a secret state within a state that would threaten the National Socialist movement from the inside out.388
386 H. Oosterhuis, p. 198 387 H. Oosterhuis , p. 188 388 H Oosterhuis, p. 202 166
This understanding is based on common views and radicalized the idea of favoritism into a traitor like and politically criminal discourse of the anti gay incitement program, as seen in a news interview conducted in 1939.
"His (Blüher's) idea was to build a homoerotic men's league as a state like organization. Such a notion crops up again and again among criminals. It can be dressed up in the phrase: All power to the criminal. Just as a gangster wishes for a state all run by gangsters…"389
Oosterhuis' claim can explain the process of reasoning yet it falls short when trying to understand the motivation behind this reasoning and the process of radicalization. It is precisely such proximity that poses a far greater threat to German society. The similarity between male bonding and homosexuality created a tension and ambivalence within Nazi discourse and conduct which obliged a separation between positive and negative forms of male closeness. The exclusion of homoerotic tendencies grew harsher since they could have been misconstrued as mere male bonding. For this reason the Nazis believed that anyone, including the SS, can be seduced into this vice. It is a tricky and complex issue because it stems from a healthy tradition of German male closeness. In guidelines for medical officers of the Luftwaffe air division, the connection was presented in a straightforward fashion:
"The danger of homosexual activity is especially acute when healthy, youthful, and virile men live together in close physical and emotional comradeship, and have no opportunity to have sexual relations or friendships with women. This holds true for boarding schools, youth camps, and monasteries as well as barracks and other military facilities."390
Rudolf Klare- homosexuals as traitors from within (1937-1938)
Another aspect of anti gay reasoning that falls along the guidelines of close hate can be seen in the writings of Rudolf Klare. By using a potent rhetorical image of a traitor from within, a growing plague he establishes his hate and genocidal logic for the idea of intimate violence; a
389 Quoted in G. Grau, p. 224 390 G. Grau, pp. 181-182 or Federal/military archive in Freiburg-im-Breisgau H 20/479 (Instuructions for medical officers on the assessment of homosexual acts, 6.6.1944)
167
dangerous inner enemy. Furthermore, similar to Himmler, Klare too articulates homophobia with sexual politics readdressing group hate with concepts of proximity. Rudolf Klare was a Nazi jurist who advocated for intensifying the criminalization of homosexuality in Germany. His dissertation Homosexualität und Strafrecht was published in Hamburg in 1937 and again in 1938. Exploiting the same theme, he continued to publish numerous books on the same theme, such as Homosexuellen als politisches Problem. Klare was obsessed with the homosexual question and had an influence on Himmler's anti- gay views. Furthermore, Klare was also known for his atypical approach toward lesbians; he believed that lesbian activity too should be punished by law, just as for men.
"Female homosexuality should be regarded as punishable behavior, for it is likely to undermine blood values and to draw woman away from their duties to the Volk."391
This is just one example of how Klare racializes the anti- gay discourse; linking gay activity with the decay of blood values. Klare also pointed out that lesbian activity "draw" women away from their duties to the nation, i.e. their feminine duties. German femininity and lesbian activity are deplored; the issue of gay practice is therefore related to gender politics and to the paranoia of gender blurring by emasculating woman and feminizing men. Himmler made a point of preserving gender roles, to prevent gender motivated homosexual criminality within the German Volk.
Beside racial theory Klare creates another context for his argument in favor of augmenting the criminalization of homosexuality:
"The problem of punishing homosexuality was of high significance . The decay of morality and the strong emphasis of eroticism in the cultural life after the war supported those who were strongly against §175 and brought doubts and insecurity to those with a healthy (sexual) mind by nature."392
391 Rudolf Klare, "Die Homosexuellen als Politisches Problem", Part 2, 'Die weibliche Homosexualität' in Der Hoheitsträger, Vol. 3, 1938, p. 17 392 Rudolf Klare, Homosexualität und Strafrecht, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1937, p.11 168
Situating homosexuality within the frame of eroticism; this is not a theme emphasizing indecency of homosexual activity but rather the attempt to regulate and reorganize German national eroticism as he later says:
"The attitude towards homosexuality and its punishment from the time before WW 1 and Weimar demands a review. The basic redesign of our people´s life is of high importance for the question of this work." P.12
Combating homosexuality for Klare is in essence establishing a new Germanic erotic life. In his world view this was a "degeneration of the race" p. 13 therefore "great concerns are expressed" p. 13. This basic idea was later developed by Himmler who used this line of thought to stress that the crime of homosexuality poses a threat to male bonding and to true Germanic eroticism, which in his view must be nationalized as well. Klare does draw a line in his legal theory:
„As long as loving the same sex is on an intellectual level… no law can say anything against it“393
It is not male closeness (whether groups or individuals) per se that Klare wishes to exclude, it is only the erotic form of this male closeness. Men in his view can share an intellectual bond as long as eroticism is Germanic in character and follows the guidelines of an imagined German sexual "healthy" drives. He therefore demands that:
"So the Nordic- German race demands punishment for homosexual interaction“394
An example of the way that Klare viewed this erotic criminality is when he articulates how despite it being an ancient crime it is still fundamentally wrong:
"…for robbery, murder and cheating no one has asked for impunity the case of homosexuality is an intolerable crime as well.“395
393 Klare, 1937, p. 115 394 R. Klare, 1937, p. 12 395 R. Klare, 1937, p. 112 169
Comparing homosexuality with murder and robbery signifies that this crime carries not only an instrumental value but an essential one. Klare continues and proclaims:
„…by no means the only purpose of punishment is improvement…"396 so if not prevention and improvement what is the purpose? He continues and explains that:
"…the Classical crime law theory which combines an amendment- determent and atonement- function of punishing homosexuality“397; specifically denoting the function of atonement, meaning that the crime's guilt is autonomist and self evident.
Principal crimes such as murder and robbery are self explanatory, not only because of their anti social and undesired outcomes, but also due to the widespread perception as to their criminal "essence". In both texts the idea of homosexual crimes are fundamental .
In 1938 he depicts 5 points that explain the reasoning behind the political criminality of homosexual acts under the title: "The political danger from male homosexuals"398. It isn’t by chance that he begins his first argument with sexual politics and gender roles:
"…the reversal of man's nature given position in relation to woman and the total destruction of all character values."399 Gender is perceived in terms of identity; homosexuality in this case is therefore the destruction of character. For Klare, this isn’t only national degeneration but a decay of the self. Homosexuality is seen as something more than just a vice - it a reversal of "man's given nature" and it undermines and can even eliminate his masculine character. For this reason, Klare did not differentiate between male and female gay activities; he believed both are self destructive by abolishing gender uniqueness and roles.
Beyond gender roles, in which sexual politics is used to fundamentalize and politicize homophobia via new ideas of eroticism, Klare introduces an even more radical rhetorical
396 R. Klare, 1937, p. 116 397 Ibid 398 R. Klare, 1938, p. 17 399 Ibid 170
discourse, one that will play a decisive role later in the discourse within the Nazi concentration camps. The fifth point he states as follows:
"…a danger which, given there are 1.5 or 2 million homosexuals in Germany, should not be underestimated, as treason, perjury, breach of promise and suchlike are rife among homosexuals"400 Although here the word treason is explicit This is not the first time Klare indicates a direct link between homosexuality and enmity:
"But we also don´t want to forget that many people share the understanding that homosexuals are enemies and it is necessary to fight against them…"401
Himmler's image of homosexuals as professional liars is then developed and radicalized, rendering them as traitors. The traitor image was a significant step. It explains how, these homosexuals can appear loyal and fit into their national surrounding, but at the same time they cannot be trusted since they can destroy the state from within. Jews as well were characterized and presented as cunning traitors waiting for their opportunity to destroy the Aryan race. Although Klare, as with most Nazi anti –gay advocates, does not provide a new theoretical platform for persecution, he has made his contribution by imaging homosexuality with treason and linking it to sexual politics reasoning.
Genocidal tendencies of anti-gay discourse and conduct 1939-1945
Historical introduction
The breakout of WW2 in September 1939 did not seriously affect the civilmechanisms of anti- gay persecution. Moreover, since most males were recruited into the army at the beginning of the war, there was a decline in homosexual arrests and convictions. Furthermore, until 1942 the "175ers" were brought to trial under the same criteria as in the civilian courts, making the conviction process within the army tedious and drawn out. With the exception of the decrees concerning homosexuality in the occupied territories, the basic anti gay propaganda and guidelines stayed more or less the same. It was only after the invasion of the Soviet Union that
400 Ibid 401 R. Klare, 1937, p. 119 171
persecution reached new levels of severity and the anti-gay discourse expanded. Explicit death penalty decrees were issued in the army and a specialized police unit was introduced. Homosexuals were singled out in the camps and underwent clinical experimentation and genocidal ant- gay campaigns, . The special war situation that imparted constant male proximity and long durations away from home and from women, combined with the exterritorial atmosphere of the eastern front, brought on new homophobic directives from the State. At about the same time, June 1941, Jewish persecution underwent a crucial change - anti-Semitic persecution was elevated to full scale genocide. Part of this change is linked to the idea of a new Germanic order in which Germany "has nothing to lose" and traditional categories of morality were being challenged. Furthermore, the uniqueness of involvement in a long, cold and distant war undermined bourgeoisie norms of morality. Indeed Nazi initiated mass murder did begin before 1941 (euthanasia etc.) and so did population and starvation policies, nevertheless, it was the new conditions in the east that stimulated the development and carrying out of new and unique genocidal policies. It is in this extreme context of "total war," as voiced by Goebbels,402 that two conflicting developments concerning German homosexuals took place - increase in homosexual activity and the de facto increase of ant- gay violence. A memorandum from Hitler's headquarters shows another stage in the persecution and radicalization of homosexuals:
"Especially in the party and its various organizations, as well as the Wehrmacht, it is necessary to act with ruthless severity against the case of homosexuality that appears in its ranks."403
The idea of "ruthless severity" meant that homosexuals must be singled out without the possibility of clemency. Later in the memorandum a new line of thought is introduced, clarifying the designated group liable for the death penalty:
"In one organization however any case of homosexuality must be punished by death and that is in the Hitler Youth."404
402 Goebbels, “Nun, Volk steh auf, und Sturm brich los! Rede im Berliner Sportpalast,” Der steile Aufstieg (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944), pp. 167-204. 403 G. Grau, p. 166 or Bundesarchiv in Koblenz NS 2/57 (memorandum from Hitler's headquarters, 19.8.1941)
172
Categorization and essentiality
Due to the increase in homosexual activity, there was a necessity to define the circumstances under which the individual criminals would be held fully liable for their activities as hideous traitors and when they would not be held liable since they were seduced. Therefore the Wehrmacht published the following guidelines:
"A distinction should be made between:
1. Offenders who have acted out of a predisposition or an acquired and clearly incorrigible drive
2. Offenders who have strayed on only one occasion, especially if they were seduced
3. Offenders in whom a tendency remains a matter of doubt"405
This process of defining safely excludes the "one timers." Nevertheless, it enables a more targeted and violent attitude towards "real" homosexuals. Such categorization was not only an answer to the current juridical need but also contributed to imaging homosexuality as an essential tendency. There were three perspectives used to address homosexual vice: medical, racial and criminal. In many cases, simply establishing a tendency was the easiest form for branding the individual as "essentially homosexual" and then to prosecute this individual to the full extent of the law. As with the Jewish issue after the Nuremberg Rules when a dramatic shift in persecution took place, here too the defining process helped in pushing the homosexual issue closer to racial politics. Even the medical paradigm that advocated for clear cut medical definitions and supported reversal treatments, saw homosexuality as a fundamental and essential category of the self. A legal proposal from 1943 demonstrates the link between definition and violence:
"In serious cases, on the other hand, where a predisposition or acquired tendency to unnatural sex acts can be demonstrated in the culprit, the sentence should be served in a concentration camp-
404 ibid 405 G. Grau, p. 176 or Federal/military archive in Freiburg-im-Breisgau H 20/479 (new guidelines for the Wehrmacht, OKW, General Keitel, 19.5.1943) 173
with no account taken of time served at war in the case of penal servitude…"406 The process of categorization led to the possibility of filling the vague image of homosexual essentiality with concrete content; it broadened the ability to draw a foul profile and for the hateful targeting of this group and it established a scientific and legal façade of professional objectivity. This is why defining the "tendency" became so common and crucial:
"The tendency must be established in the discussion. The most careful inquiries are necessary..."407
A secret decree from May 1944 shows how the dangerous aspects of homosexual tendency exceeds the limits of criminality. Therefore even when sentencing is over the homosexual still poses a threat:
"A positive decision… must include an assessment that the culprit is a dangerous habitual criminal who, even after completing his sentence, will be a continual danger to the community"408
The idea of homosexuality as an essential threat and of homosexuals as racially defined by their tendency can be seen in several texts. Further, homosexuals are occasionally compared to Jews409 or even at times are considered more dangerous:410
406 G. Grau, p. 178 or Contemporary History Institute in Munich, FA 146, fol 70/71 407 G. Grau, p. 176 or Federal/military archive in Freiburg-im-Breisgau H 20/479 (General Keitel, 19.5.1943) 408G. Grau, Hidden Holocaust, NY: Cassel, 1995 p. 180 409 Quoted in Grau, p. 272 410 Despite the rapid radicalization of anti-gay discourse and conduct in Nazi Germany it had never amounted into an actual genocide. Furthermore, Nazi policy never implanted a total approach towards indicted homosexuals but rather tried to reverse them. The extent as well as the outcome was rather limited in comparison to other groups (there is an estimate of 5000-15000 homosexual "criminals" held in concentration camps out of which assumedly 50% perished). However the trajectory of hate was on a genocidal path and the propaganda as well as policy carried genocidal aspects as demonstrated in the textual examples.
174
"Never have criminal desires been dragged with subtler methods into the seemingly inviolable sphere of 'the spiritual'. Even the swinish Jews… with all their brutal honesty, could not hold a candle to these highly talented, organized corruptors of the nation's youth."411
There was an obsession with homosexuality to the extent that it was perceived as an acute national danger, so fundamental that trivialization was also seen as a danger. Even common curse words were viewed as a threat, one that must be reported to officials.
"Trivialization is just as dangerous as exaggeration. […] It must be made clear to them that expressions such as 'pansy', 'homo' or 'ass-fucker' are not allowed when speaking of sexual matters. That kind of slang is poisonous precisely for young soldiers. The aim should be that anything suspicious should be reported to the medical officer so he could intervene."412
Categorization and thereafter essentialization of homosexuality as a threat led to a more medical- racial understanding of homosexuality. This new perception of danger is linked to the idea of proximity as the fuel for genocidal hate.
The official and medical danger from within
In the guidelines for medical staff under the topic of "avoidance of an overheated sexual atmosphere" is the following directive: "A single irresponsible lad can infect the whole quarters (with homosexual tendencies)".413 The connection between the danger and the medical approach emphasizing a disease-like image of homosexual tendencies can be noticed as a basic rhetorical strategy of medical staffs to portray the so called vice of homosexuality. Understandably, medical staffs used the medical terminology. Nevertheless, the idea of "infection" and medical pollution can be seen in official documents distributed by Hitler's chancellery: "In order to keep
411 Quoted in Grau, p. 225 412G. Grau, p. 182 or Federal/military archive in Freiburg-im-Breisgau H 20/479 (Instructions for medical officers on the assessment of homosexual acts, 6.6.1944) 413 ibid 175
the police and SS clean of vermin with homosexual inclinations…"414 In another context in which Hitler is mentioned, the text provides a more specific medical terminology:
"Yesterday evening the Führer spoke for a long time about the plague of homosexuality"415 It is the plague image that enhances the perception of homosexuality as an acute danger: "… homosexuality is actually as infectious and as dangerous as the plague." (p. 165) which fuels the violent rhetoric:
"So wherever symptoms of homosexuality appear among the youth, they should be attacked with barbaric severity."416
Hitler's terminology of hygiene eugenics and medical racism is similar to the anti-Semitic propaganda wherein the Jews were described as a plague, as infectious as bacteria or as human parasites. Although these ideas were already voiced in Meinsinger's writing, here it is found in an official legal decree. The threat is an inner threat, one that emanates from within German society. Homosexuality carries medical like traits; it spreads, grows and impinges at all levels of society. Proximity plays a crucial role since infection can transpire only when the infected organism is near; thus a single lad can infect so many others. The idea of proximity played a decisive role in generating the policies that dealt with homosexuality in the occupied Nazi territories; the closer the country or group was to the inner German and Nazi circle the more they posed a fundamental threat. Unlike the Jewish problem that was presented as equally dangerous to the Germans wherever they located, homosexuality was presented as a “proximity linked” danger. Despite this difference, one similarity between Jewish and gay perpetrations can be pointed out - the propaganda was based on the image of an enemy within possessing dangerous and influential abilities. In both cases harsh measures should be taken in order to eliminate this threat. In other words, the radicalization of exclusion derives from an inclusive image of the targeted group.
With the occupation of various European countries came civil administration of the new territories. Some areas were under the jurisdiction of martial law, other areas were annexed
414 G. Grau, p. 193 or Bundesarchiv Potsdam Film 2782/AN 2741216 415 G. Grau, p. 165 or Bundesarchiv in Koblenz NS 2/57 (memorandum from Hitler's headquarters, 19.8.1941) 416 Ibid 176
outright to Germany and in several countries a pro Nazi government was established. Despite these differences, in almost all administered territories the Nazi regime addressed the question of homosexuality. The following texts exemplify the various trends in Nazi gay persecution in the territories, a trend that follows the logic connecting proximity and threat. In Poland, for example, the Nazis did not bother with the homosexual plague as long as it did not influence German sexuality.
"…if Polish men commit homosexual acts with one another. Insofar as much misconduct, both directly and in its effects, is exclusively directed against a different nation, it should normally be punished more leniently than in similar attacks against the German nationhood."417
In the Netherlands, the new Nazi law that was propagated wasn’t as harsh as the German one, but still it was enacted because the Nazis saw Holland as a part of the German Reich, therefore included this area under the roof of criminalization for homosexual activity.
"A man who commits a sex offence with another male or allows himself to be abused for a sex offence shall be punished with up to four years imprisonment."418
The actual German law and the persecution mechanisms of German gays were becoming far more advanced than what existed in the old days. The closer the homosexual approached the inner circle, the more dangerous he became and the more stringent the punishment. For example, a soldier that committed homosexual acts was sent to a concentration camp rather than to a civilian prison.
"In cases under category (1) a prison sentence should be passed, with a detention in perpetuity in a penal camp."419
417 G. Grau, p. 210 or Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden 463/1117, fol. 6, (22.1.1941) 418 G. Grau p. 214 or Bundesarchiv Potsdam Film 41870/AN 0190/91 (31.7.1940) 419 G. Grau , p. 166 or Federal/military archive in Freiburg-im-Breisgau H 20/57 (decree of the Luftwaffe commander in chief Reichsmarschall Herman Göring, 17.1.1942) 177
The proximity –danger equation contributed to the possibility of the death penalty for homosexuals in the army. Although there were no formal legal grounds for execution, the subtext was that in serious cases they should be killed using alternative legal grounds.
Furthermore, a directive to the Wehrmacht courts instructed a consideration to the effect that, "in serious cases involving unnatural sex practices where a long term of penal servitude is deemed necessary according to the provisions of general penal law, the death penalty should be inflicted on disciplinary grounds under the extended range of sentences."420
Unlike the universal German army service, the SS was a secret and elite organization, fully devoted to Hitler and the values of National Socialism. This is precisely the reason for taking homosexuality within its ranks so seriously. The death penalty was introduced for homosexual acts committed within the ranks of the Police or the SS:
"A member of the SS and Police who commits unnatural acts with another man or lets himself be abused for unnatural acts shall be punished with death."421
Even before this formal directive was inaugurated, the death penalty was recommended for offenders who were part of the Hitler Youth movement:
"In one organization, however, any case of homosexuality must be punished with death. If it is to be the elite of the nation, then misconduct in its ranks must never be given any other sentence."422 (p. 166)
In this case, the motivation mentioned herein for the death penalty blends in with the proximity- danger concept. Within the elite there cannot be any act of homosexuality. The basic idea behind the variations in anti- gay policies is that the closer homosexuality came to the Germans and to the Volk the more dangerous it became. Homosexuality was seen as a potent power that
420 G. Grau, p. 170 or Federal/military archive in Freiburg-im-Breisgau H 20/274 (a decision on a plea for clemency and its consequences, 12.8.1942) 421 G. Grau p. 193 or Bundesarchiv Potsdam Film 2782/AN 2741216 (decree of the Führer for cleansing the SS and Police, 15.11.1941) 422 G. Grau, p. 166 or Bundesarchiv in Koblenz NS 2/57 (memorandum from Hitler's headquarters, 19.8.1941) 178
undermined and devoured the nation from within; a danger empowered by closeness and infective traits and a traitor like image.
Conclusions, synchronization and comparison
The review herein given of the evolution of anti- gay propaganda and conduct was presented diachronically. There are fundamental changes that took place in this area of persecution. Despite the change in genocidal policy concerning the Jews that evolved with time; the basic anti-Semitic guidelines and rhetoric stayed in many ways similar and within the constraints of racial eugenic reasoning. The propaganda against the mentally ill and disabled did grow but also encountered setbacks after public criticism. Starvation policies against the Russian population were far from being a coherent linear plan. The case of homosexual persecution grew from a lenient attitude to a genocidal incitement all under Nazi rule and Nazi ideological reasoning. There are two basic reasons for arranging this chapter chronologically: (1) it is in tune with the way this genocidal discourse evolved, and (2) the' step by step' overview can help in highlighting the way sexual politics, close relations and intimate violence played a role in diverting and radicalizing the anti- gay discourse.
, in order to examine this chapter with the findings relating anti-Semitism and intimacy the major junctions wherein closeness and genocidal anti-gay incitement meet should be synchronically presented as well. Throughout this chapter many types of close hate relations and tendencies were pointed out. The following four points stand out as most important since they shed light on the meeting point between violence and closeness.
1. One of the most crucial starting points for the rhetoric of intimate violence is situating the enemy as an enemy within. The enemy mustn’t be a complete stranger nor can he be too similar; the Jew is devouring Germany from within, he is close but different, as Goebbels proclaims so many time. Obviously gay men are part of German society, they are within it but not as a group. The fact they stood out did not stand out for their benefit. The idea of favoritism that later developed into imaging homosexuals as a conspiring group within Germany, established this ambivalent image of the enemy within.
179
2. Homosexuals were seen as not masculine, lesbians as not feminine. These two groups challenged the basic gender roles that firmly stand as a major factor in the Nazi world view. Male and female identities were seen as a crucial element of safe selfhood in Germany. Homosexuality was feared due to the fact that they saw it as a new category, a residual one in Douglas' terms. They stood on the rim of gender definitions they aren’t "real" men it was claimed. They are like the Jews that seem to be German but are not, therefore aren’t really part of society. Both pose a threat by creating a border line amorphic situation, an identity breach by de facto dangerously highlighting the rim of the social circle.
3. The word degeneration in relation to homosexuality underwent many revisions. If at first it meant causing the decline of the birth rate and therefore jeopardizing German strength; it later was perceived as a contagious disease threatening to infect all Germans. The Jews too were compared to various illnesses, but mainly as pests and leeches which are yet still external in a way. The striking thing about the fear of homosexuality is that the Aryan Nazis believed they are not immune to it-the German people are vulnerable. Therefore if this population grew it could homosexulize all Germans. The explicit Nazi policy implicitly embraced the fact that homosexual tendencies are embedded within, therefore all Germans are prone to commit homosexual acts or even acquire a homosexual identity. It is interesting to denote that homosexuality in this respect is more dangerous than the Jewish threat since an Aryan can't be a Jew in their eyes but can become a real homosexual.
4. Nazis and especially Himmler saw German society and the German elite as a masculine society built on male loyalties and attributes. It is for this reason that he was so obsessed with the imagined danger of homosexual conduct. He believed that the gentle fabric binding men together in a productive and intimate way will be desecrated and will undermine the purity and competence of German male bonding. The danger of male eroticism to the idea of male bonding, in his view, is the outcome of similarity. As in the way Goebbels presents the Jewish trait as a trait of mimicry, so to these homosexuals may camouflage themselves as a legitimate form of male bonding. The "passing" as a true German, while actually being a threat, was a most useful rhetorical tool to dehumanize imaginary enemies, such as the Jews and same sex desiring German men.
180
Summary
The fact that the case studies are so diverse in their perspectives and yet, individually, are sustainable researches in their own right, can help demonstrate the broad analytic benefits and possibilities that the conceptual guideline of 'intimate' violence offers in cases of genocidal discourse. The current research explored the benefit of implementing a theoretical standpoint that takes into consideration intergroup proximity. The case studies presented, exhibit how familiarity and distance were intertwined in various forms of Nazi rhetoric. Examples put forward show how some concepts of perpetrator-victim proximity (intimacy and empathy) did not downplay violence, but rather fueled it and in fact rationalized a great deal of the Nazi genocidal mindset. This research does not attempt to argue that 'distancing' tendencies may fail to govern genocidal intent or conduct, rather, the objective of the case studies expounded was to offer a viable demonstration of how 'intimate violence discourse' plays a role in different facets of the Nazi propaganda rhetoric and genocidal rationale. Consequently, any noticeable differences between case studies strengthen the argument in favor of 'intimate violence' as an analytic (yet not necessarily wholistic) category. In subsequent remarks, I will summarize and perhaps clarify the specific role intimate violence played in the context of each case study.
In the first chapter of this research, I provided an in-depth analysis of the diaries and speeches of the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, and explored the potential of intimate violence emanating from his writings. Apparently, there are noticeable textual gaps overlooked in the current literature. In most cases, Goebbels emphasized the dissimilarity and hideousness of the Jews wherein his rhetoric also displayed proximity and even intimacy in the manner in which he depicted the Jews. Traditional theories that focused on dehumanization tended to downplay the importance of specific texts when those texts leaned toward a paradox. Intimate violence can also help explain how polar attributes of violence and affective proximity can co-exist.
A textual inspection of the writings suggests three approaches to intimate violence. According to the first approach, Goebbels takes obvious pride in understanding the Jews from within, i.e. he is in possession of intimate knowledge of his target victims. And it is due to this proximity that he intensifies the imagined threat as a fundamental danger to the survival of Nazi Germany. Therefore an ‘inner understanding’ )as a category of intimate proximity( of the Jews contributes 181
to the conceptual potency of the genocidal rhetoric. A second aspect is displayed in the way Goebbels ‘correlates’ the Jewish danger. In his writing, Goebbels defines Jews as both an internal as well as an external threat. He ascribes to them a cancerous image which connects proximity with danger and disease. Such Intimate violence also explains the in-out socio- linguistic dynamics which fueled the rationalization of violent exclusion.
In the third venue, Goebbels not only compares Jewish and Nazi entities, but makes an association between the disparate entities. His texts display aspects of dependency, co- dependence and even an articulation of mutual identity. His view of the Jews as an eternal threat serves, in part, to define the nature of the national socialist party movement. Furthermore, some categories Goebbels employed when defining this Nazi identity are also applied to Jewish identity. This form of proximity, wherein both parties are involved in identity dynamics, can be highly volatile, so that the posing of similarities with Jews can be rhetorically portrayed as a near and potent threat to German survival.
The second chapter deals with another genre of intimate proximity which is displayed in the rhetoric of empathic care. During the actual killings of mentally ill patients by their own care- giving medical staffs, perpetrator- victim discourse underwent a significant change, resulting in a wholly empathic outlook to explain their actions. Perpetrator- victim closeness was utilized in order to justify the genocidal conduct against the disabled. The vast majority of formal “anti- disabled” Nazi propaganda focused on presenting the disabled as a burden on German society, i.e. useless parasites. However, in the post-war confessions by members of the medical staffs, a fundamentally different rhetoric is evident, a rhetoric of mercy killings and of empathic violence. The testimonies of the Nazi euthanasia doctors and nurses demonstrate various forms of empathic reasoning when conceptualizing and legitimizing the wholesale murders of so many human beings.
Also, in this same chapter several models of empathic violence were presented: liberal, national, medical and Christian. Medical staffs utilized these empathic strategies as part of affective care and many perpetrators justified their actions by imagining themselves in their patients’ situation. They inclined toward mercy killings under the argument that, if positions were reversed, they would have also wished for a mercy death instead of a life-long suffering from a severe 182
disability. Empathic reasoning was therefore used to adapt Nazi eugenic ideology to the traditional dynamics of medical patient care ethics. This enabled Empathic care to contribute to the justification for violence, since it is presents the violence as an altruistic act .During their trials, members of the former Nazi medical staffs emphasized their empathic and patient care oriented motivation. In truth however, Doctor patient empathic proximity was used to generate a genocidal discourse which established rationalization and justification of the mass killings.
The second chapter expands the scope of the first chapter. It addresses various models of empathic violence proximity in different perpetrator case studies and shows how intimate violence appeared in cases of medical empathic killings. The idea of empathic patient care did not downplay genocidal logic but rather empowered it and enabled it to become a key element in perpetrator discourse.
In the third case study I reveal how the politics of intimate violence operates over time from a historically oriented stand point. My argument is that the discourse of intimate violence contributed to the radicalization of Nazi anti-gay propaganda and to violent conduct. As the discourse acquired a heightening genocidal language, the greater the role that proximity played in justifying the violence. At first homosexuality was considered a mere vice against German dignity; a crime often overlooked by authorities in the early years of the Nazi regime. Classifying homosexuality as an act that clashes with the idea of an honorable German citizenship falls short of establishing a genocidal motivation. Following the putsch of Ernst Roehm, new versions of anti-gay discourse were introduced in order to justify a harsher anti- gay policy. Many of these new rationalizations, implemented tendencies of proximity and sexual politics in order to radicalize hate discourse. Instead of attacking the idea of homosexuality, homosexuals themselves were persecuted.
During the Mid 30s, Nazi propaganda paraded homosexuals as an internal and implicit threat. Nazi discourse began employing an ‘in’ rather than ‘out’-group threat, an untraceable enemy within. In the late 30s and the early 40s, anti-gay discourse and conduct underwent another significant change. Homosexuals were compared to Jews and sexual aspects of the imagined danger they posed were intensified and Himmler insisted that homosexual erotic orientation endangered Nazi male bonding which he believed to be essential to Nazi society. It is 183
therefore apparent that proximity can be used as a tool advocating for genocidal exclusion. This follows a consistent and convincing logic that highlights how closeness is directly linked to the degree of danger posed.
In contrast to the first two chapters, which concentrated on specific perpetrators, the third chapter displays a wider scope and includes judicial material, Nazi directives, scientific Nazi journals, letters etc. The purpose of a synchronous approach is to show how the politics of proximity and violence can be traced to various social aspects of anti-gay persecution (not only to propaganda). Texts illustrating the argument in favor of intimate violence were collected from various tiers of Nazi society (high and mid-level officials). Overall, the final chapter demonstrates the role proximity played in hate justification from a multi level and wide-ranging point of view.
184
Bibliography
Source Material
Goebbels J., Communism without the Mask, speech delivered in 1935, Berlin: Muller and Sohn K.G
Goebbels J., "Die Nationale Intellegenz und Die Geistige Fuhrueng Auszurotten" Das eherne Herz: Reden und aufsaetze aus den Jahren 1942-43, 2nd ed. Muenchen: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944
"Der Jude," Der Angriff. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 322-324.
Goebbels J., "Die Juden sind schuld!" Das eherne Herz (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1943), pp. 85-91
Goebbels J., Die Tagebuecher von Joseph Goebbels , Muenchen: Saur 2004
Goebbels J., "Die Urheber des Unglücks der Welt," Das Reich, 21 January 1945, pp. 1, 3
Goebbels J., "Das Hauptthema: Juden in den USA!", Zeitschriftten- Dienst 109 (May 30, 1941): 4
Goebbels J. "Der ist schuld am Kriege!", Hans Schweitzer, Ministry fir Public Enlightenment and propaganda, spring/summer 1943. Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany, no. 003-020- 020
Goebbels J., 'Der Angriff'
Goebbels J., "Der Krieg und die Juden," Der steile Aufstieg (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1944), pp. 263-270
185
Goebbels J.,'"Hinter den feinmaechten :der Jude" Ministry fir Public Enlightenment and propaganda, spring/summer 1943. Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany, no. 003-020-02
Goebbels J., "Kampf dem Weltjudentum!" Zeitschriften- dienst 119, no. 5046 (August 8, 1941): 3-4
Goebbels J., Michael Voormann, 18 July, Deutschland: Ullstein, 1928 J. Goebbels," Mimikry" ,Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, Deutchland: G.M.B.H. Verlag, 1941, pp. 526- 531
Goebbels J., "Nun, Volk steh auf, und Sturm brich los!" Rede im Berliner Sportpalast," Der steile Aufstieg (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944), pp. 167-204.
Goebbels J.,"Themen der Zeit: Juden beherrschen England," directive 3004 (August 16, 1940)
Goebbels J., "Wer will den Krieg?" Die Zeit ohne Beispiel, Deutchland: G.M.B.H. Verlag, 1941,pp. 93-95
Goebbels J., "Wer ist am Kriege schuld?" Parole der Woche, November 18-24, 1942
Heyde Werner, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.16, Limburg, 1961
Himmler Heinrich, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, Bradley f. Smith and Agnes F.Peterson (eds.) Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1974
Klare Rudolf, Homosexualität und Strafrecht, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1937
Klare Rudolf, "Die Homosexuellen als Politisches Problem", Part 2, 'Die weibliche Homosexualität' in Der Hoheitsträger, Vol. 3, 1938
Leu Alfred, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.55, Köln, 31.10.1950
Mennecke Friedrich, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.58, Franfurt, 1946
186
Stähle Eugen, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.74, Stuttgart, 1945
Wernicke Hilde, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.81, Berlin, 1945
Wesse Hermann, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.81, Marburg, 1951 Schmidt Walter, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.73, 1946, Frankfurt
Academic Literature
Agosta Lou, Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, UK: Palgave Macmillan, 2010
Arendt Hanna, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1963
Arendt Hanna, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951
Barth Christian T., Goebbels und die Juden, Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003.
Bauer Bruno, The Jewish Question, Trans. Helen Lederer, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College– Jewish Institute of Religion, 1958
Bauman Zygmunt, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989
Benedict Susan and Kuhla Jochen, “Nurses’ Participation in the Euthanasia Program in Nazi Germany”, in Western Journal of Nursing Research, 1999, Vo. 21 No. 2 pp. 246-263
Benedict Susan and Chelouche Tessa, “Meseritz-Obrawalde: A Wild Euthanasia Hospital of Nazi Germany” in History of Psychiatry, 2008, Vo. 19 No. 1, pp. 68-76
Bleich Roland, “Health Reform and Race Hygiene: Adventists and the Biomedical Vision of the Third Reich” in Church History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 425-440
Blok Anton, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences,” European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 1, no. 1 (1998), pp. 33–56
187
Bock Giesela, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986
Boelcke Willi A, The secret conferences of Dr. Goebbels, October 1939-March 1943, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967
Böhm Boris and Hacke Gerald (eds.), Fundamentale Gebote der Sittlichkeit, Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2008
Bramsted Ernest, Goebbels and the National Socialist Propaganda 1925-1945, London: Cresset Press, 1965 Browning Christopher, Ordinary Men, New York: Harper Collins, 1992
Burleigh Michel, Death and Deliverance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994
Bryant Michael, Confronting the "good death" : Nazi euthanasia on trial, 1945-1953, Boulder : University Press of Colorado, 2005
Bytwerk Randall L., “The Argument for Genocide in Nazi Propaganda”, in: Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 91 (1), pp. 37-62, 2005.
Chirot Daniel and McCauley Clark, Why not kill them all? The logic and prevention of mass political murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006
Confino Alon, “A World Without Jews: Interpreting the Holocaust,” German History 27/4, October 2009: 531-559
Dardrian Vahakn N., “A Typology of Genocide” in International Review of Modern Sociology 5 (Fall 1975), pp. 201-212
188
Dörner Klaus, TötlichesMitleid, Neumünster: Paranus-Verlag, 2002.
Dawidowicz Lucy, The War against the Jews, 1933-1945, USA: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1986 (1975)
Douglas Mary, Purity and danger:ananal i opconcoct opcollutionannta oo , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966
Benedict Susan and Kuhla Jochen (eds.), Empathy and its Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987
Ebbinghaus Angelika, Opfer und Täterinnen, Nörlingen: Delpphi Politik, 1987
Ehrenfreund Jacques, “Citizenship and Acculturation: Some Reflections on German Jews during the Second Empire and the French Jews during the third Republic” in in Leo Baeck Year Book, Leo Baeck institution 1998, pp. 155-167
Evans Richard J., The Third Reich in Power 1933 – 1939, New York: Penguin, 2005
Faltlhauser, " Geisteskranhplege: Zum Unterricht und Selbstunterricht für Irrenpfleger und zur Vorbereitung auf die Pflegerprüfung" DI 26 (March 1922): 208
Foucault Michel, Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasures (trans. Robert Hurley), NY: Vintage Books, 1990 (1984)
Felson Richard B., Messer Steven F., "The Control Motive in Intimate Partner Violence" Social Psychology Quarterly, V. 63, No. 1 (Mar. 2000), pp. (86-94)
Foth Thomas, Caring and Killing: Nursing and Psychiatric Practice in Germany, 1931-1943, Osnabrück University, 2013
189
Fowler, Marsha D. (Ed); Reimer-Kirkham, Sheryl (Ed); Sawatzky, Richard (Ed); Taylor, Elizabeth Johnston (Ed ,)Religion, Religious Ethics, and Nursing ,New York: Springer Publishing, 2012
Freud Sigmund, The Taboo of Virginity, Standard Edition, Hogarth Press, London, 1953 (1917)
Freud Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents, Standard Edition,Hogarth Press, London, 1953
Frevert Ute, Saxer Roper, and Confino Alon, “Forum on History of Emotions,” German History, vol. 28/1, 2010: 67-80.
Friedlander Henry, The origins of Nazi genocide: from euthanasia to the final solution, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Friedländer Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, New York: Harper Collins, 1997
Giddens Anthony, The Transformation of Intimacy, Great Britain: Polity Press 1992
Giles Geoffery J.,, “Why Bother about Homosexuals? Homophobia and Sexual Politics in Nazi Germany”, A Lecture given in J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Annual Lecture 30 May 2001, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Giles Geoffrey, "The Denial of Homosexuality: Same Sex incidents in Himmler's SS and Police”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 11, No. 1/2 (Jan-Apr, 2002)
Girard Rene, Violence and the Sacred, translated by Patrick Gregory, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1977.
Gelles Richard J., Straus M. A., "Determinants of violence in the family: Toward a theoretical integration" in Contemporary Theory about the Family, 1979, V. 1, pp. 549-581, New York: The Free Press
190
Goldhagen Daniel J., titlom’ willingoxocutionom :omninam nomran anntrotolocau t,New York: A. Knopf, 1996. Götz Aly, ’FinalSolution’:Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jew , London : Arnold, 1999
Grau Günter (Trans. Camiller Patric), Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933-1945, NY: Cassel, 1995
Grau Günter, (Trans. Camiller Patric), Hidden Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany 1933-1945, NY: Cassell, 1995.
Graziadei J. M., Partners in Journey: A dialectic of psychotherapy. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1976
Griech-Polelle Beth, “Image of a Churchman-Resister: Bishop von Galen, the Euthanasia Project and the Sermons of Summer 1941” in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 41-57
Gürtner Franz, ed. Das kommende deutsche Strafrecht. Besonderer Teil: Bericht über die Arbeit der amtlichen Strafrechtskommission, Berlin 1935
Halfin Igal, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition 1918-1928, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.
Halpern Jodi, "What is Clinical Empathy?" in Journal of General Internal Medicine, Volume 18, Number 8 (2003), 670-674 Harff Barbara and Gurr Ted, “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and measurements of Cases Since 1945” in International Studies Quarterly, 1988, 37(3)
Harrison Sharon M., Female Killers, Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008
191
Helen Fein, “Genocide a Sociological Perspective” in Genocide an Anthropological Reader, London: Blackwell, 2002
Herf Jeffery, The Jewish Enemy ,London: Harvard University Press, 2006
Hertzfeld Michael, Cultural Intimacy, Social Poetics in the Nation State, London: Routledge 1997
Hilberg Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale: Yale University Press, 1961
Hirschfeld Magnus, Men and Women: The World Journey of a Sexologist (1933), AMS Press, 1974
Hohendorf Gerrit , Der Todals Erlösungvom Leiden, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013
Horkheimer Max and Adorno Theodor W., Dialektik der Aufklärung , 1947
Horowitz Donald, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001
Horowitz Irving L., Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power, New Brunswick: Transaction Books 1979
Horowitz Irving L., "Genocide and the reconstruction of social theory" in American Review, Vol. 37, No. 1, 1984
Ignatieff Michael, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic war and the modern conscience, NY: Henry and Holt Company, 1997
Irving David, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, U.K.: Focal Point, 1996
Jamieson Lynn, Intimacy: Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998
192
Jäkel Eberhard, Hitler's Weltanschauung, (H. Arnold trans.), Wesleyan University Press: Connecticut, 1972
Jost Adolf, 'Das Recht auf dem Tod', Soziale Studie, Göttingen, 1985,
Klee Ernst, Dokumente zur 'Euthanasie' , Frankfurt, Fischer Tachencuch Verlag, 1985.
Kolstø Pal,“The Narcissism of Minor Differences-Theory: Can It Explain Ethnic Conflict?,” Filosofija i Drustvo, vol. 33, no. 2 (2007): 153–172.
Koonz Claudia, “Ethical Dilemmas and Nazi Eugenics: Single-Issue Dissent in Religious Contexts” in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 64, Supplement: Resistance Against the Third Reich (Dec., 1992), pp. pp.8-31
Kressel Neil J., Mass Hate: The global rise of genocide and terror, NY: Plenum Press, 1996
Kuper Leo, The Prevention of Genocide, New Haven: Yale Universty Press, 1985.
Lacan Jacques, Ecrits, a selection / translated from the French by Alan Sheridan, New York: W.W. Norton, 1977
Lacan Jacques, The ethics of psychoanalysis, 1959-1960 / translated with notes by Dennis Porter New York: W.W. Norton, 1997, c1992
La Capara Dominick, Writing History Writing Trauma, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Langhinricksen-Rohling J. , Shlee K. A., Monson C. M., Ehernsaft M., and Heyman R., "What's love got to do with it? perceptions of marital positivity in H-to-W aggressive, distressed and happy marriages", Journal of Family Violence, 1998, V. 13 pp. 197-212
Leidner et al., "Ingroup Glorification, Moral Disengagement and Justice in the Context of Collective Violence," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36 (2010): 1115-1129.
Levene Mark, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: The Meaning of Genocide, New York: Tauris, 2005 193
Levinger George, “The Embrace of Lives: Changing and Unchanging” in: Close Relationships: Perspectives on the Meaning of Intimacy / edited by George Levinger and Harold L. Raush, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977
Lief Henriksen, (ed.), The Psychological Basis of Medical Practice. New York, NY: Harper & Row; 1963
Lifton Robert, The Nazi Doctors, New York: Basic Books Publishers, 1986
Lindner Evelin, "Gendercide and Humiliation in Honor and Human-rights Societies", in Gendercide and Genocide (A. Jones ed.), Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.
Longerich Peter, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford: Oxford University Press,2010
Luckert Steven & Bachrach Susan, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009
Mamdani Mahmud, When Victims Become Killers: colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda, Kampala: Fountain Publishers 2001.
Marcus Robert. F. and Swett Bruce, "Violence and Intimacy in Close Relationships" Journal of interpersonal Violence 2002, V. 17 No. (5) pp. (570-586)
Maysless Ofra, "Adult Attachment Patterns and Courtship Violence", Family Relations, 1991, V. 40, pp. (21-28)
McFarland-Icke Bronwyn Rebekah, Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History, Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999
Micheler Stefan, "Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex-Desiring Men under National Socialism", Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 11, No. 1/2 (Jan-Apr, 2002)
Miller Jacques-Alain “Extimite” in: Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject Structure and Society / edited by Mark Bracher, New York University Press, 1994 194
Mosse George, Nationalism and Sexuality, New York: Howard Fertig, 1985
Mosse George, The German Jews beyond Judaism, Bloomington 1985
Mosse George, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964
Moyn Samuel, "Gerrman Jewry and the Question of Identity, Historiography and Theory" in Leo Baeck Institute: Year Book' 1996, pp. (291-308)
Müller- Hill Benno , Murderous science, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988Nadav Daniel, (Hebrew), Medicine and National Socialism, Israel: Ministry of Defense, 2006.
Nandy Ashis, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983
Neumann Boaz, Nazi Weltanschauung - Raum, Körper, Sprache, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2010.
Oosterhuis Harry, Medicine, Male Bonding and Homosexuality in Nazi Germany in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 187-205
Percival Thomas, Medical Ethics, Manchester: S. Russell, 1803
Pfanmüller Hermann, Yad Vashem Archive, Box No. TR-10 2584.66, 1947
Plant Richard, The Pink Triangle, USA: Henry Holt and Company, 1986
Poland Warren S., "The Limits of Empathy" in American Imago, Volume 64, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 87-93
Porter Jack Nusan, (Trans. Gruab Page), Sexual Politics in the Third Reich: The Persecution of Homosexuals during the Holocaust, Massachusetts, 1990
195
Pramono Siswo, An Account of the Theory of Genocide, Working Paper’ social School Of Sciences, Australian National University October 2002
Proctor R., Racial Hygiene, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1988
Reich Warren T., "The Care-Based Ethic of Nazi Medicine and the Moral Importance of What We Care About" in The American Journal of Bioethics, Vo. 1, No. 1, Winter 2001, pp. 64-74
Reuter C. F. and De Mildt Dick W. (Eds.), Justiz und NS- Verbrechen, Amsterdam: University Press, 1968, Vo. 1,Trial No. 003.
Rosenthal Gabriele, 'Reconstruction of Life Stories - Principles of Selection in Generating Stories for Narrative Biographical Interviews' in R. Josselson and A. Lieblich (eds.) The Narrative Study of Lives, Vol. 1 (London: Sage Publications, 1993)
Rummel Rudolph J., Death by Government, NJ: Transaction, 1996
Russell Jacoby, Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence from Cain and Abel to the Present. New York: Free Press, 2011
Segal Raz, "Becoming bystanders: Carpatho-Ruthenians, Jews, and the politics of narcissism in Subcarpathian Rus'" in Holocaust Studies: a Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 16, No. 1-2, 2010, pp. 129-156
Semelin Jacques, Purify and Destroy: the Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, New York: Colombia University Press, 2007.
Simon Ernst A., ”How Was German Jewry”, in Perspectives on German-Jewish History in the 19th and 20th Century, Leo Baeck Institution: Jerusalem 1971
196
Simpson-Subotnik L., "Over Controlled and Under Controlled Types of Men Who Batter Women", Paper presented at the North American Meeting of the International Society for Research on Aggression, Victoria, British Colombia, 1983
Sorkin David, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840, Oxford University Press: New York, 1987 Stanton Gregory, "The eight stages of genocide" in The Genocide Studies Reader, S. Totten and P. R. Bartrop (eds.) NY: Routledge, 2009, pp. 127-128
Steppe Hilde, Ich war von jeher mit Leib und Seele gerne Pflegerin, Frankfurt: Mabuse, 1999.Taylor Fred, The Goebbels Diaries 1939-1941, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982
Steppe Hilde, Krankenpflege im Nationalsozialismus Frankfurt: Mabuse Verlag, 1996
Steppe Hilde, Ich war von jeher mit Leib und Seele gerne Pflegerin, Frankfurt: Mabuse, 1999
Tiechener Edward B., Experimental Psychology on Thought Process, New York: Macmillan, 1909
Thom Achim and Spaar Horst (eds), Medizin im Faschismus. Symposium iiber das Schicksal der Medizin in der Zeit des Faschismus in Deutschland 1933-1945, Berlin 1985
Tzamalauka M., Chatzifotiou G. S., S. and Chilaoutakis J., "Seeking for Risk Factors in Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in a Greek National Sample: The role of self-esteem", Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2009, V. 24, No. 5, pp. (732-750)
Snyder Timothy, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, New York: Basic Books, 2010
Stuab Erwin, "Comintary on part 1" in: N. Eisenberg and J. Strayer (eds.), Empathy and its Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987
Staub Erwin, The Roots of Evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989
197
Vanbeselaere Norbert, "Ingroup Bias in the Minimal Group Situation: An Experimental Test of the Inequity Prevention Hypothesis," Basic and Applies Social Psychology 14 (1993): 385-400.
Vischer R., "Über das Optische Formgefühl ein Beitrag zur Ästetic", in Drei Schriften zum Ästetischem Formproblem, Halle: Niemeyer, 1873
Volkov Shulamit, Anti-Semitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook.1978; 23:25-46
Volkov Shulamit, Germens Jews and Anti-Semitism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006
Venema Adriaan, The Persecution of the Homosexuals by the Nazis, LA: Urania Manuscripts, 1979; Frank Rector, The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals, NY: Stein and Day Publishers, 1981
Von Rönn Peter, "Politische und Psychiatrische Homosexualitätskunstruktion im NS-Staat", Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung (June/ September 1988)
Weindling Paul, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945, Cambridge 1989
Weiner Saul J. and Auster Simon, "From Empathy to Caring: Defining the Ideal Approach to a Healing Relationship", in Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 80 (2007), pp.123-130
Welch David, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda. 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 2002 (1993) Welch David, “Nazi Propaganda and the Volksgemeinschaft: Constructing a People's Community” in: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 2, Understanding Nazi Germany (Apr., 2004), pp. 213-238
198
Williams Kirk R., "Social Sources of Marital Violence and Deterrence: Testing an Integrated Theory of Assaults between Partners", Journal of Marriage and the Family, V. 54, No. 3 (Aug. 1992), pp. (620-690)
Wolff Kurt (Trans.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press, 1950
Woolf Linda M. and Hulsizer Michael, "Psychological roots of genocide: risk, prevention, and intervention", in Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2005, pp. 101-128
Zeldin Theodor, An Intimate History of Humanity, London : Mandarin Paperbacks, 1995
Zimmermann Moshe, Die Deautschen Juden 1914-1945, Muenchen : Oldenbourg, 1997
Zografou Magda and Pipyrou Stavroula, “Dance and Difference: Toward an Individualization of the Pontian Self” in Dance Chronicle, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 422-446; p. 424
199
סט ט
( 19 ' .) ' ' . . . ' . ' , . ' . , , , .(Goldhagen, 1996) . ' . , . , . , , . .
. ' , (La Capara, 2001) , . ' . )Semelin, 2007 ( : . ' . ' . ,) , , ( , :
200
. ' . .(Maysless, 1991) , .(Agosta, 2010) .
, . ' , , . . , ' ' . ' ' . ' . . (Jamieson, , , . , .1998) . . ' '
. (Klee, 1985) . , . . . , . .
201
) ( .' ' , . . .
. . . . , , . - , . , . .) , , , , (
. , . ' . . 12 , , , .1939-1941 . ' : . . '
202