Christopher Browning
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The Obedience Alibi Milgram 'S Account of the Holocaust Reconsidered
David R. Mandel The Obedience Alibi Milgram 's Account of the Holocaust Reconsidered "Unable to defy the authority of the experimenter, [participantsj attribute all responsibility to him. It is the old story of 'just doing one's duty', that was heard time and again in the defence statement of the accused at Nuremberg. But it would be wrang to think of it as a thin alibi concocted for the occasion. Rather, it is a fundamental mode of thinking for a great many people once they are locked into a subordinate position in a structure of authority." {Milgram 1967, 6} Abstract: Stanley Milgram's work on obedience to authority is social psychology's most influential contribution to theorizing about Holocaust perpetration. The gist of Milgram's claims is that Holocaust perpetrators were just following orders out of a sense of obligation to their superiors. Milgram, however, never undertook a scholarly analysis of how his obedience experiments related to the Holocaust. The author first discusses the major theoretical limitations of Milgram's position and then examines the implications of Milgram's (oft-ignored) experimental manipula tions for Holocaust theorizing, contrasting a specific case of Holocaust perpetration by Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police. lt is concluded that Milgram's empirical findings, in fact, do not support his position-one that essen tially constitutes an obedience alibi. The article ends with a discussion of some of the social dangers of the obedience alibi. 1. Nazi Germany's Solution to Their J ewish Question Like the pestilence-stricken community of Oran described in Camus's (1948) novel, The Plague, thousands ofEuropean Jewish communities were destroyed by the Nazi regime from 1933-45. -
Holocaust Glossary
Holocaust Glossary A ● Allies: 26 nations led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union that opposed Germany, Italy, and Japan (known as the Axis powers) in World War II. ● Antisemitism: Hostility toward or hatred of Jews as a religious or ethnic group, often accompanied by social, economic, or political discrimination. (USHMM) ● Appellplatz: German word for the roll call square where prisoners were forced to assemble. (USHMM) ● Arbeit Macht Frei: “Work makes you free” is emblazoned on the gates at Auschwitz and was intended to deceive prisoners about the camp’s function (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Aryan: Term used in Nazi Germany to refer to non-Jewish and non-Gypsy Caucasians. Northern Europeans with especially “Nordic” features such as blonde hair and blue eyes were considered by so-called race scientists to be the most superior of Aryans, members of a “master race.” (USHMM) ● Auschwitz: The largest Nazi concentration camp/death camp complex, located 37 miles west of Krakow, Poland. The Auschwitz main camp (Auschwitz I) was established in 1940. In 1942, a killing center was established at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II). In 1941, Auschwitz-Monowitz (Auschwitz III) was established as a forced-labor camp. More than 100 subcamps and labor detachments were administratively connected to Auschwitz III. (USHMM) Pictured right: Auschwitz I. B ● Babi Yar: A ravine near Kiev where almost 34,000 Jews were killed by German soldiers in two days in September 1941 (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Barrack: The building in which camp prisoners lived. The material, size, and conditions of the structures varied from camp to camp. -
Essays on Holocaust and Genocide Editor: Colin Tatz
Genocide Perspectives IV Essays on Holocaust and Genocide Editor: Colin Tatz The Australian Institute for Holocaust & Genocide Studies UTSePress 2012 2 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Tatz, Colin Genocide perspectives IV : essays on holocaust and genocide/Colin Tatz. ISBN: 9780987236975 Genocide. Antisemitism. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) 304.663 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume owes much to Sandra Tatz. It was Sandra who initiated the collection, contacted the contributors, arranged the peer reviews, helped organise the framework, proofed the contents, and designed the layout of this volume. My thanks to Gabrielle Gardiner and Cornelia Cronje at the University of Technology Sydney for this e-book and Agata Mrva-Montoya and Susan Murray-Smith from Sydney University Press for hard copies. Thanks to Konrad Kwiet, Graeme Ward, Winton Higgins, and Rowan Savage for their assistance and to Torunn Higgins for her cover design. Three of the essays are modified, extended and updated versions of articles that have appeared elsewhere, as indicated in their contributions here. We acknowledge Oxford University Press as the publishers of the Michael Dudley and Fran Gale essay; Patterns of Prejudice (UK) for the Ruth Balint paper; and Interstitio (Republic of Moldova) for Shannon Woodcock's essay. Cover design: Torunn Higgins The essays in this volume are refereed. Copyright rests with the individual authors © 2012. 4 CONTENTS Colin Tatz The Magnitude of Genocide 5 Rowan Savage ‘With Scorn and Bias’: Genocidal 21 Dehumanisation -
Hitler's Green Army: the German Order Police and Their European Auxiliaries, 1933-1945 Volume II Eastern Europe and the Balkans by Antonio J
Hitler's Green Army: The German Order Police and their European Auxiliaries, 1933-1945 Volume II Eastern Europe and the Balkans By Antonio J. Munoz Color Plates by Darko Pavlovic Above: the Band and Standard of the German Police in 1938. Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Foreword 7 Introduction to the Balkans Section 9 Chapter 1 - 19 Poland 19 The Growth of the German Police 19 The SS and the Order Police Invade Poland 20 Notes on the Einsatzgruppen Officers 23 Additional SS and Police Units 30 The Mission Assigned to the SS and Police Forces in Poland 30 Chapter 2 - 43 Garrisoning Poland 43 German Order Police Battalions in Poland, 1939-1945 53 The German Kolonialpolizei 60 Auxiliary Police Forces in Poland 65 The Polish Blue Police 65 The Ethnic-German Selbstschutz and Sonderdienst in Poland 67 The Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft and Galician Police 67 The Jewish Order Police 69 Polish Guerrilla Forces and Regions 71 Collaboration of the Police in the Extermination of the Polish Jews 74 Garrisoning Poland: The 72nd Police Battalion - a Typical Occupation Unit 80 Garrisoning Poland: The Realities of the German Occupation 81 Chapter 3- 87 Complicity in the Atrocities by the German Order Police Forces in Poland 87 The Partisan War Escalates in Poland 97 The Polish Partisan Army 101 Jewish Bolshevism? 102 The Ukrainian Nationalist Guerrillas 103 The War Against the Polish Partisans in 1943 104 The War Against the Jews in 1943: The Warsaw Ghetto No Longer Exists! 109 Revolt in the Bialystok Ghetto Ill Revolt in the Sobibor Death Camp 112 TheLuftschutspolizei andFliegergruppez.b.V. -
Holocaust and Genocide 16:1
“Anticipatory Obedience” and the Nazi Implementation of the Holocaust in the Ukraine: A Case Study of Central and Peripheral Forces in the Generalbezirk Zhytomyr, 1941–1944 Wendy Lower Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Numerous recent studies of the Holocaust as it occurred in the occupied So- viet territories have shifted attention from the central German leadership to the role of regional officials and administrators. The following case study offers an example of the ways central Nazi leaders directly and indirectly shaped the Holocaust at the regional level. In Zhytomyr the presence of Himmler, Hitler, and their SS-Police retinues created a unique setting in which the interaction of center and periphery can be traced. On this basis the author argues for the reconsideration of Berlin’s role in regional events generally. Since the appearance of Raul Hilberg’s path-breaking study The Destruction of the European Jews, which masterfully reconstructed the “machinery of destruction” that drove the Holocaust, historians have placed differing emphases on the role of the oper- ative functionaries and the leaders. In the past decade several young German historians (inspired by the work of Götz Aly and the sudden deluge of Nazi material from the former Soviet regional archives) have followed Hilberg’s lead by stressing both the role of district-level leaders in the “Final Solution” and the regional features of the Holo- caust itself. Indeed these scholars have impressively demonstrated the inner workings of what might be called the “regional Holocaust.” Recent Holocaust scholarship has shifted our attention away from the origins of the genocide at the level of state policy to the role of regional leaders and events on the ground in the former Soviet Union. -
One Day in Jozefow
ONE DAY IN JOZEFOW fiom:Peter Hayes (00.), Lessons and legacies: 11le Meaning a/the Holocaust in a Changing World (Evanson, ll: fion of "One Day in Josefow," by no means all of of the mass shootillgs Northwestern 1991), 196-209; reprinted in D. Crew in occupied Poland and the Soviet !lnion were performed by the 5S or (00.), Nazism'and Gennan Society. the Gestapo. Otherwise quite "ordinary men" (in this instollce, H01ll burg police officers, some of tltem from 'working-class backgroullds) ONE DAY IN JOZEFOW found themselves caught lip in the "Final So/ution" because the 5S simply did not have enough manpower to murder the milliolls of Jews Initiation to mass Inurder under German rule. What made tile men in this police unit hunt down and shoot thou Christopher R. Browning ~ sands of Polish Jews? Certainly, it was not fear of punishment. BI'OW1! j ing shows that some members of the unit were able to refuse from the outset to participate in the mass killings, or to stop killil1g once the mass 1 murders had begun, without suffering serious consequences. Yet, these Pel/kert's essay expands the concept of the "Final Solution" to illcl'Uie 1 were the exceptions. Tile majority, who simply wellt ahead a1ld did lire ti,e perseCfltioll and exlermi11atiol1 of large 11umbers of non-Jews who . 1 "job" they had been given, appear fa ]lave been motivated by relatively were regarded by tile Nazis as racially or biologically "inferior," as mrmdal1e considerations. Some simply did not want to damage their "lives uHworthy of life." But the attempt to t1'llce racism back to science future career prospects by showing tIwt tlley were "UllfU" for iraI'd and rhe welfare state could perhaps risk leaving us with a story of duty. -
The Quest for Racial Purity: African Germans
the quest for racial purity: Germans with Mental and Physical Disabilities, African Germans, and Roma rom the moment that hitler took power in germany, he began implementing his vision for a new Germany—one that elevated “Aryan” Germans to the top of the Nazis’ racial hierarchy and that ranked all other groups along a spectrum of relative inferiority. Nazi leaders wasted no time conceiving and adopting measures that would safeguard the “Aryan” German race, thereby ensuring that future genera- tions would be—in their eyes—racially pure, genetically healthy, and socially productive and loyal to the state. This goal meant, above all, stigmatizing, discriminating against, and ultimately killing those whom the Nazis identified as being biologically and racially flawed. In such a context, especially Jews (see chapter 5), but also Roma (Gypsies), people with mental and physical disabilities, and African Germans, faced direct and immediate danger at the hands of the Nazis. In time, the Nazi decision to go to war would advance those long-term goals in pre- viously unimaginable ways. Territorial acquisition went hand in hand with population engineering as the Nazis sought to increase the number of “Aryan” Germans while simul- taneously thinning the ranks of those they considered inferior by virtue of race or biology. The state of national emergency created by the war would eventually provide the pretext and cover for increasingly radical steps. Nazi racial persecution was unique, for there was no escape—not even for those who were German by birth—from the harsh verdict of inferiority. For those who were targeted, national loyalty or communal solidarity were of no consequence: only “Aryans” who met the racial and biological standards of the Nazis could claim membership in the National Community (Volksgemeinschaft). -
7. the Holocaust
7. The Holocaust The more we come to know about the Holocaust, how it came about, how it was carried out, etc., the greater the possibility that we will become sensitized to inhumanity and suffering whenever they occur. EVA FLEISCHNER OVERVIEW Chapter 7 focuses on the deliberate murder of one third of all the Jews in the world. The Nazis singled out children, women, and men for destruction solely because of their ancestry. Winston Churchill called that act “a crime without a name.” In the years that followed people have given that crime various names. In the United States, it is referred to as the Holocaust, a word people have been using since ancient times. “The word ‘holocaust’ means complete destruction by burning; all matter is totally consumed by the flames,” writes Paul Bookbinder. “Although the word is of Greek origin, it has become synonymous with the destruction of European Jews by the Germans during the Second World War. The crematoria of Auschwitz brought the word ‘holocaust’ to mind, and in its sound the enormity of the horror of those days was confirmed.”1 The Holocaust 307 Over the years, Auschwitz has become a symbol of the Holocaust. It represents the thousands of camps through which millions of Europeans died. Israel Gutman, the Director of the Center for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem in Israel, estimates that about 85 to 90 percent of all those murdered at Auschwitz were Jews. Among the others were Russian prisoners of war and “Gypsies.” Most were selected for immediate death. The rest were kept alive for slave labor. -
In the Face of the Holocaust Part III
In the Face of the Holocaust Part III. The Perpetrators and Their Collaborators 1. Divide the students into five groups and give each one a photograph (supplements 15‒20). Next ask the students to, first in groups, then in a class discussion, describe the situation that they can see in the photograph, based on the following scheme: • Look closely and examine the individuals in the pictures and describe their behavior. Who are they? What are they doing? What can you say about the emotions that the people in the photographs are displaying? 2. Once the students have presented all of the photographs during the class discussion have them point out the individuals, in these pictures, that they feel are the perpetrators as well as their collaborators. Next, discuss the question of the difference between the perpetrators and their collaborators as well as the problem of guilt and the responsibility of given individuals for the Holocaust. • Who can we consider a perpetrator and who can we look upon as a collaborator? • What is the basic difference between these people? • Do all of them hold the same responsibility for what had happened to the Jews? • Can we place the same blame on all of them for the crime that was committed against the Jews? 3. The role of the German occupiers of Poland Present to the students the audiovisual materials from the collection of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute: testimony 3—In the Face of the Holocaust. The Perpetrators and Their Collaborators (part 1: fragment of testimony by Majer Grosman) and ask them to read the texts of source material (supplement 4), then based on this, discuss the following questions: • Majer Grosman speaks in his testimony about the time he saw a German soldier cold bloodedly kill a Jewish girl. -
1 Auxiliary Police Units in the Occupied Soviet Union, 1941-43: A
Auxiliary Police Units in the Occupied Soviet Union, 1941-43: A Case Study of the Holocaust in Gomel, Belarus “…the corpses lay with their faces on the dirt. Hands on their heads. One woman lay in a way that showed she had been kneeling, and she fell over her baby. There were four identifiable corpses that revealed a bloody wound on their heads. It was established that they were not old bullet wounds, but it was clear that they and the baby had been murdered; with what extraneous object remains unclear. It was clear that people had been beaten with heavy objects and had then been (disorderly dumped) in a hole. One boy had clearly been buried alive. The corpses were in underwear, without clothes.” 1 This statement, given by Ivan Abramovich on January 16, 1944, was part of the ‘Soviet Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate Fascist Crimes Committed by the Invaders and their Accomplices on Soviet Territory’ during an investigation of German crimes in Gomel, Belorussia. The Soviet regime conducted similar investigations and hearings throughout areas formerly occupied by the Germans in an effort to understand precisely what horrors had occurred beyond the front lines. As the investigations progressed, they learned that the scope of the crimes was tremendously large. Even more disturbing, however, was the discovery that locals across Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine were deeply implicated, principally through service in auxiliary police units that openly collaborated with the German forces and participated in atrocities at almost every level. Without the auxiliaries, the Nazi’s murderous intentions toward the Jewish population on the Eastern Front would not have been nearly as deadly; the role of the auxiliary police was pivotal in the Holocaust on the Eastern Front, as they provided support, manpower and critical knowledge of the local region and language to the German forces. -
The Jewish Holocaust: Ordinary Germans Made Killers by the Third Reich by Fergus Tuohy
The Jewish Holocaust: Ordinary Germans Made Killers By The Third Reich by Fergus Tuohy I Introduction Of the major political, social, and cultural events which took place in the twentieth century, certainly one of the most sensitive and heatedly debated is the Jewish Holocaust, which claimed the lives of some six million European Jews. During the mid 1980s, a significant debate among respected German scholars (named the Historikerstreit, or Historians’ War) attempted to deal with this issue. On one end, participants argued the Holocaust was an anomaly, without place in the progression of “normal” history. On the other end were the so-called “revisionist historians,” who sought to tie this horrific event into a history based on causality. What the scholars in the latter category attempted to show was that the destruction of the European Jewry was a reactionary measure spawned by German fears of Bolshevism and Soviet hegemony. This position was somewhat weak in that these scholars failed to demonstrate effectively, a concrete relationship between a Bolshevist threat and the European Jewry. The revisionists, already on the defensive, were without much ammunition. While the arguments of such men as Ernst Nolte and other revisionists were flawed, their fundamental intent (to connect the Holocaust to a historical progression of causal relationships) was important. This study will find that the Jewish Holocaust was in fact the culmination of an increasing and evolving, carefully planned assault on European Jews. Moreover, this assault was based in the Nazi Party and the Third Reich’s need for a scapegoat and a common enemy. Indeed, before the Third Reich, there was an existing anti-Semitism among many Germans. -
Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiments
Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust By Nestar John Charles Russell A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Policy. Victoria University of Wellington 2009 Although the most common interpretation of Milgram’s findings is that participants did not wish to harm the learner, the motives generated in this paradigm may well have been more mixed or ambivalent in many participants. Unfortunately, the manner in which people actually regard the act of punishing others when they make mistakes . has been virtually ignored in discussions of the obedience research. However . harming is a widely accepted form of child discipline . Most people are hardly unequivocally opposed to the use of physical punishment under absolutely any circumstances. That a majority approve the use of capital punishment in this country [the United States] might serve as another illustration —Miller (2004, pp. 198-199). if humanity can survive the violence of our age, [our descendants] might consider us as late barbarians —Elias (1991, pp. 146-147). ii Abstract Two leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer and Christopher Browning, have in recent years independently asked how so many ordinary Germans (most of whom in the 1930s had been moderately anti-Semitic) could become by the early 1940s willing murderers of Jews. Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had years before been interested in finding answers to similar questions, and to that end in the early 1960s carried out his widely debated “Obedience to Authority” (OTA) experiments at Yale University.