Holocaust and Historiographical Issues

[Kitschum]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


By the same reasoning you could say that Belgium was headed down that road.

Already in 1904 Germany perpetrated genocide on people they considered sub-human to prepare the land for German settlers. This rapacious imperialism certainly influenced the Nazis. Altough not on the same absolute scale as the Jewish genocide, nor as close to home, as opposed to what Germany has done after WW2 the ideas and institutions that caused the Namibian genocides weren't examined to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

Anyway, it might have appeared like it but I wasn't making the point of early indicators solely from that example. German nationalism, from at least Fichte on, was of a very mystical and exclusive kind. This might in part have been a consequence of that for a long time "Germany" existed only in dreams (the lost homeland) and not on maps. Those two traits made it all the more susceptible to racism and nazism, which excells at mysticism and is obsessed with exclusion (which became extermination). Your bringing up Belgium is interesting, but the crises that rocked Germany, if only by virtue of its size and position at the center of Europe, brought to action forces much more cataclysmic than could ever have appeared in small, wedged-in Belgium.

[Ben Kenobi]

The thing about the Holocaust that is unique is that it was a genocide based on pure racism.

If that's the case, what about in the American South with the blacks and the Native Americans? Different volumes, same attitude.

Genocide requires that one strips a person of all their legal rights, and this happened in the US to blacks and Native Americans, just as it happened to the Jews in the Holocaust.

[MrFun]

Ben definitely has a good point there . . .

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Kitschum


Already in 1904 Germany perpetrated genocide on people they considered sub-human to prepare the land for German settlers. This rapacious imperialism certainly influenced the Nazis. Altough not on the same absolute scale as the Jewish genocide, nor as close to home, as opposed to what Germany has done after WW2 the ideas and institutions that caused the Namibian genocides weren't examined to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

Anyway, it might have appeared like it but I wasn't making the point of early indicators solely from that example. German nationalism, from at least Fichte on, was of a very mystical and exclusive kind. This might in part have been a consequence of that for a long time "Germany" existed only in dreams (the lost homeland) and not on maps. Those two traits made it all the more susceptible to racism and nazism, which excells at mysticism and is obsessed with exclusion (which became extermination). Your bringing up Belgium is interesting, but the crises that rocked Germany, if only by virtue of its size and position at the center of Europe, brought to action forces much more cataclysmic than could ever have appeared in small, wedged-in Belgium.

French nationalism included mystical, militarist elements, and post 1870 included as many anti-semitic elements as German nationalism did.

and Germany also had plenty of rational, liberal, "klein deutsch" nationalists as well as the radicals.

In any case my original point was that the Nazi holocaust was shocking because it was out of character. I think my point stands, despite mystical German nationalism, the massacre of the Hereros etc.

Massacring 3rd world natives had been part and parcel of western imperialism for a long time. The Belgian congo atrocities, different in kind from the Herero massacres, but on a far larger scale, had taken place only a few years earlier. The massacre at Wounded Knee, perpetrated by my own country happened just a few years earlier. Britain perhaps was further along towards humaness (last big massacres I can think of were after Sepoy mutiny, almost 50 years earlier - when were the last Aborigine massacres in Australia?). Not sure about France. Perhaps Germany was behind the curve on humaneness in colonial possesions. There is no way someone could have forecast in 1907 that Germans would treat people who had been full German citizens for decades, who were at the center of German financial and cultural life, the same way they treated an obscure people in a far off desert(and by the way, even a pessimist like Herzl did not forecast it - he expected genocide in Russia, and the west closing its doors, and perhaps the spread of popular antisemitism - not state sanctioned genocide in Germany or anywhere else in the West) . Ditto with regard to mystical German nationalism and antisemitism. ISTR that the most aggressive antisemitic policies proposed in Germany were to cut off Jewish immigration - and that failed. Similarly actions against Poles involved pressures to assimilate.

[Az]

I fully agree. The US are just as bad as the Nazis. There, I said it.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


If that's the case, what about in the American South with the blacks and the Native Americans? Different volumes, same attitude.

Genocide requires that one strips a person of all their legal rights, and this happened in the US to blacks and Native Americans, just as it happened to the Jews in the Holocaust.

well lets see despite terrible losses in the middle passage and under slavery, and lynchings, there was no organized campaign of genocide against the blacks. Such genocidal acts against native americans as took place where not centrally planned and coordinated, much less were they central to the ideology of any US govt.

And they were in character for all western govts at those times. Slavery had existed in the west since roman times - african slavery was started by a Spain that still knew medieval slavery and serfdom. It was continuous. The history of the abolition of slaverly was a long slow march of progress. First it was abolished here, then there, etc till it was gone. Ditto attacks on non European native peoples. The Nazi holocaust happened in a county where such things DID NOT HAPPEN - and hadnt happened in HUNDREDS of years. It was an unpredictable jump backwards - an impossibility - a "wonder" if you'll forgive the wording.

[Japher]

Genocide requires that one strips a person of all their legal rights, and this happened in the US to blacks and Native Americans, just as it happened to the Jews in the Holocaust.

No. NA and AA did not have any rights to begin with, really, to have taken away. What the Nazi's did was a kin to entrapment

"Come, make our country great... O-kay, thanks, We kill you now"

where we were just murderous bastards

To the blacks:
"Come, make our country great or we will kill you"

To the American Indians:
"Thanks, now go away, or we will kill you."

Totally different.

[lord of the mark]

again dont misunderstand me - Im not saying these other instances arent genocides. Im just saying that they are different in IMPORTANT ways (and not just scale) from the Nazi destruction of the Jews and the Roma.

[Japher]

again dont misunderstand me - Im not saying these other instances arent genocides

Ditto

[lord of the mark]

again Ben, I must ask that you read Fackenheim - his point is that the Nazi holocaust must be viewed with "radical amazement" What i see here is an attempt to reduce to part of the normal course of history, which is full of atrocities. I really cant make the argument as well as he can. If you are at all concerned with these issues, you should read his book.