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An Organizational Analysis of the Nazi Concentration Camps

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An Organizational Analysis of the Nazi Concentration Camps Chaos, Coercion, and Organized Resistance; An Organizational Analysis of the Nazi Concentration Camps DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Thomas Vernon Maher Graduate Program in Sociology The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Dr. J. Craig Jenkins, Co-Advisor Dr. Vincent Roscigno, Co-Advisor Dr. Andrew W. Martin Copyright by Thomas V. Maher 2013 Abstract Research on organizations and bureaucracy has focused extensively on issues of efficiency and economic production, but has had surprisingly little to say about power and chaos (see Perrow 1985; Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006), particularly in regard to decoupling, bureaucracy, or organized resistance. This dissertation adds to our understanding of power and resistance in coercive organizations by conducting an analysis of the Nazi concentration camp system and nineteen concentration camps within it. The concentration camps were highly repressive organizations, but, the fact that they behaved in familiar bureaucratic ways (Bauman 1989; Hilberg 2001) raises several questions; what were the bureaucratic rules and regulations of the camps, and why did they descend into chaos? How did power and coercion vary across camps? Finally, how did varying organizational, cultural and demographic factors link together to enable or deter resistance in the camps? In order address these questions, I draw on data collected from several sources including the Nuremberg trials, published and unpublished prisoner diaries, memoirs, and testimonies, as well as secondary material on the structure of the camp system, individual camp histories, and the resistance organizations within them. My primary sources of data are 249 Holocaust testimonies collected from three archives and content coded based on eight broad categories [arrival, labor, structure, guards, rules, abuse, culture, and resistance]. These testimonies produced 440 “prisoner-camp” events for the analysis of nineteen camps including death camps (Birkenau, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka), labor camps (Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Buna, Dachau, Flossenburg, Gross- Rosen, Mauthausen, Płaszów, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof), and transit camps (Bergen-Belsen, Drancy, Theresienstadt, and Westerbork). In the first chapter, I show that the camp system was formed with a clearly defined set of draconian rules and punishments designed to control political prisoners. Yet, as the war progressed, broad institutional changes (including the introduction of competing economic and ideological goals), shifting organizational conditions (particularly the rapidly expanding size of the camps), and ideological beliefs (including a racial-ethnic hierarchy that encouraged dehumanization and division) coalesced to create a context where guard behavior could decouple from the formal structure of the camp. The decoupled conditions created an ambiguous and often chaotic environment for prisoners. In the second chapter, I focus to how power and coercion varied across the camps. Drawing on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) (Ragin 1989; 2001), I locate the organizational characteristics and methods of control associated with high and low mortality in the camps. I find that camps with chaotic and bureaucratic control or chaotic conditions and surveillance were associated with high mortality. Conversely, camps with bureaucratic control and structural violence (but without chaotic control) as ii well as labor camps with absent or negligent bureaucratic and chaotic controls were associated with low mortality. I draw on these set conditions to theorize four broad coercive organizational forms – coercive, negligent, chaotic, and tyrannical, and how they relate to power. Finally, my third chapter investigates the organizational and demographic camp characteristics associated with the emergence of organized resistance groups. I find that camps with chaotic organizational conditions and a high proportion of Jewish prisoners were more likely to hold organized resistance groups. Conversely, camps with cruel low level elites and low proportion of Jews were more likely to have no organized resistance. Collectively, these findings show that prisoners’ assessments of threat were exacerbated by the chaotic conditions of the camps but that resistance groups needed sympathetic, or at least agnostic, low level elites in order to have space to resist. The rules and regulations of the camps provided a brutal basis for control, but as demographic, economic, and ideological pressures expanded, camp conditions became more chaotic. However, these conditions were not evenly distributed across camps. The camps where prisoners were most likely to describe chaotic conditions –in conjunction with bureaucratic controls or surveillance –were most likely to have high mortality rates. Chaotic conditions also motivated resistance as some groups of prisoners, seeing fewer opportunities for survival and more severe threats to their lives, were motivated to organize resistance groups. These findings hint at the possibility that the characteristics that made the camps monoliths of terror, also offered the means and motivation for resistance. iii Dedicated to Thom and Elaine Maher iv Acknowledgments I would like to start by thanking my excellent committee, Craig Jenkins, Vinnie Roscigno, and Andrew Martin. I cannot conceive of how I would have finished this project without their helpful support and advice. Craig has supported me, and this project, from the moment that I arrived in Columbus. He gave me the space and time to think through issues, especially at crucial stages after generals, and provided insightful and timely feedback throughout the process. More broadly, Craig taught me how to recognize and practice good research and I will be forever grateful. I thank Vinnie for being an optimistic and realistic voice throughout my time in graduate school, and for being willing to take me on as an advisee even though he was about to take a sabbatical. Vinnie taught me how to do historical research that values cases and people without losing sight of the big picture. He also came through with absolutely critical practical and big picture advice about how to collect, code, and analyze historical data. So critical that I would probably still be coding testimonies if it were not for him. I thank Andrew for his steadfast support for the project, and for his patience for my erratic updates. He offered insightful comments on early aspects of the project, and, more broadly, has helped to teach me to write professionally with an eye toward publication. I would also like to thank Rachel Einwohner for her willingness to mentor me into graduate school, her friendship, and the invaluable advice and support that could only come from someone with similar experience dealing with such sensitive subject matter. I thank Randy Hodson for his thoughtful insights on coding and aggregating qualitative material for analysis, and for pointing out that ambiguity, chaos, and Franz Kafka can be considering in more sociological ways. I am also indebted to Kay Meyer, Eitan Alimi, Greg Maney, and Steve Boutcher for their support and encouragement at multiple stages in the process. I benefited from the research assistance and guidance of Michlean Amir, Vincent Slatt, and Megan Lewis during my visits to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Their willingness to help me locate sources and references was invaluable. Colin Odden helped with web scraping, data retrieval, and numerous conversations about the project. I am also indebted to Lindsay McCord who conducting reliability coding for the project. I also thank Ohio State University for provided early support for traveling to the archives through an AGGRS grant, and a Presidential Fellowship that gave me a year of uninterrupted focus on data collection and analysis. I cannot thank Julia Miller- Cantzler, Alexa Trumpy, Anne McDaniel, Lisa Neilson, Tate Steidley, and especially Carrie Smith-Keller enough for helping me think through the project at all of its stages. I am lucky to have met, lived with, and gotten to know so many amazing people during my time in graduate school. Marc Auerbach, Kevin Snorteland, Nick Crane, Paul Malackany, and especially Brookes Hammock were great roommates who were always willing to share food, time, beer, and laughs. Graduate school would have been significantly less fun if it were not for Josh Taylor, Lauri McCloud, Jamie Lynch, Alexa Trumpy, Lindsey Peterson, Carrie Smith-Keller, Pat Keller, Salvatore Restifo, Julie Restifo, Casey Knutson (you are missed), Colin Odden, Rachel Durso, Amanda Miller, Lauren Pinkus, James Davis, and Yolanda Gelo. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to meet, and get to know such a great group of brilliant, funny, hard-working, and inspiring people. This is particularly true of Dan and Jen Carlson without whom I doubt I v would have survived graduate school, and, simultaneously, because of whom I almost did not survive graduate school. I am also thankful to have friends like Aidan, Trisha, and Sidney Heinzerling, Ryan and Sarah Recker, Dan Olejko, Cheyenne Hohmann, Brad Thomson, and Josh Kuntz who have been nothing but supportive, encouraging, and inspiring. Lastly, I could not have done this without my family. My grandparents, Thom, Rose, Bill, Barb, and Vern, for their pride and encouragement. My parents, to whom this is dedicated, you have been supportive and encouraging
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