Category Archives: HIST375-Archive

The Racial Paradigm: Hitler and the Holocaust

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Both Stargardt and Kershaw discuss Hitler’s leadership style. Each specifically discusses Hitler’s leadership as it relates to the extermination of the Jewish population in Germany, or the Final Solution. Kershaw discusses Hitler’s leadership style as a bottom-up approach. Stargardt similarly argues that Hitler relied on local leaders to implement his policies.

It is commonly known that Hitler had his inner-circle of advisors whom he relied on for advice and implementation. However, both articles brought up the racial issue that was central to Hitler’s regime. To orchestrate something as large as the Holocaust, mass organization was necessary.

Stargardt has a section of his article titled “The Racial Paradigm” in which he addressed the complexity of race during the Holocaust. He argued that although political decisions were made within the inner-circle, the majority of participation came from middle class lobbyists. Stargardt’s claim is logical, as mass participation had to occur in order for society’s perception to change.

This brings up the subject of societal consciousness. Although there was mass participation, was society aware of the bottom-up format of government, or were they still under the impression that this was solely Hitler’s doing?

 

Intentionalist v. Structuralist and the Final Solution

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Both Nicholas Stargardt’s “The Holocaust” and Ian Kershaw’s “Hitler and the Holocaust,” address the various interpretations surrounding Hitler and his ideology, and how (and to what extent) this translated into the “Final Solution,” the mass extermination of the Jewish people in the name of achieving an ideal race. The two main categories of classification for scholars studying this topic include “intentionalist” versus “structuralist” responses.

Also referred by Kershaw as “Hitlerism,” intentionalists believe that Hitler was at the forefront of anti-Semitic ideology and its execution. Scholars argue that Hitler had always possessed the specific desire to exterminate the Jewish population, and that the policy changes implemented by the Nazi Party were all purposeful in achieving that end goal. They cite evidence such as Hitler’s Mein Kampf, as well as personal anecdotes from his life to demonstrate the presence of these desires as early as 1918. In contrast, structuralists assert that to place the blame solely on Hitler and his desires is too simplistic, and that there is a need for greater analysis. They argue that Hitler may not have possessed the specific idea of mass extermination, citing his use of common vague phrases such as “getting rid of the Jews.” However, structuralists believe that policies implemented as a result of vague directions by Hitler, as well as the subsequent actions of the lower bureaucrats within the Nazi system are what instigated the “Final Solution”.

The structuralist approach suggests that the haphazard and unplanned shaping of Nazi policies towards Jews resulted in the implementation of the “Final Solution.” After reading about Hitler’s leadership style and reflecting on the structuralist versus intentionalist theories, can we consider the Holocaust an event that would have happened inevitably?

 

 

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Conflict of Perceptions: Intentionalists vs. Structuralists

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In Nicholas Stargardt’s “The Holocaust” and Ian Kershaw’s “Hitler and the Holocaust”, many different interpretations as to the relationship between Hitler’s personal agenda and the “Final Solution” are presented. The two prevailing modes of thought in regards to Hitler’s influence in the mass extermination of the Jews within these texts are the “intentionalist” perspective and the “structuralist” perspective.

The “intentionalist” thinkers seek to place Hitler as the main fountain from which the anti-Semitic actions of the Nazi regime spilled forth. Intentionalism, also known as “Hitlerism”, assumes that Hitler had always desired and intended the annihilation of the Jews, and that the major policies of the Nazis in regards to the Jewish population was a result of his own aspirations. Structuralists, on the other hand, believe that there was a greater context than just Hitler’s own misgivings about the Jews that led to the eventual implementation of the Final Solution. They claim that it was the “improvised shaping” of Nazi policies towards Jews that led to the ultimate order for their extermination. ((Kershaw, Ian. “Hitler and the Holocaust” in Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, 239.))

There is evidence for both interpretations; Hitler clearly despised Jews, which intentionalists use as support for the idea that individual autonomy can influence the course of history dramatically. On the other hand, historian Hans Mommsen pointed out that Hitler also despised decision making (though in my opinion, this could be used to detach him from all policies of the German state he was not explicitly involved in) and that the Nazi policy towards Jews went through multiple stages and considered several options before arriving at their Final Solution.

There is also a compromise between these two interpretations of history: that the plan to kill the Jews came from Hitler, but only after a long deliberation and this was not his original intent. ((Kershaw, “Hitler and the Holocaust”, 244-5)) This interpretation leans towards the intentionalist approach, however, as it directly involves Hitler whereas structuralists seek to incriminate a much large German participating audience.

A common falsity pointed out in “Hitler and the Holocaust” is that because Hitler made clear his desire for the eradication of the Jews, and because such an episode eventually occurred, many historians draw the conclusion that “Hitler’s expressed ‘intention’ must have caused the destruction”. ((Kershaw, “Hitler and the Holocaust”, 246)) Besides being an egregious oversimplification of the contingency of the Final Solution in a wider historical context, it also ignores vast amounts of evidence that the Nazi government was primarily responding to public demands with their increasingly hostile policies towards the Jews; to say that Hitler was the sole cause of their destruction is to cast away notable events such as the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws and the incorporation of Poland’s three million Jews at a time when the Nazis were attempting to rid the country of them. ((Kershaw, “Hitler and the Holocaust”, 252))

There is also a great deal of research supporting the intentionalist approach. According to Stargardt, Hitler and the Nazis “created an atmosphere in which this was discussable”. ((Stargardt, Nicholas. “The Holocaust” in German History Since 1800, London: Arnold, 1997, 349)) However, the evidence presented in this text supports only Hitler’s hatred of Jews and his intent to remove them- not the contingency of the Holocaust on Hitler’s plans.

A particularly striking delineation I found was the attribution of a “traditional notion” of totalitarianism to intentionalists; that society bends to the will of its dictator. This is contrasted with the structuralist concept of the state bowing to the people. This contrast illuminates some of the deeper differences between the two schools of thought. As for myself, the structuralist approach seems to make more sense, as it takes into account the broader implications of the day.

 

Italian resistance to “Everyday Mussolinism”

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The unification of Italy, or lack thereof consistently occupies a central space in the academic dialogue around Fascism.  R.J.B Bosworth in “Everyday Mussolinism” through archival sources created a picture of the complexities and contradictions of life under fascism in Italy.  One aspect of “Everday Mussolinism,” the prevalence of the client-patron relationship emphasized the difference between the ideology presented by Mussolini’s regime and the reality of life for the Italian public.  Moreover, the system undermined the push towards unification and encouraged loyalty to provincial, not national, state power.

The patron client system, based in ancient Rome, created a mechanism that subverted the new Man ideology proposed by Fascism and relied on more traditional terms of favor granting and nepotism. ((R.J.B. Bosworth, “Everyday Mussolinism,” Contemporary European History 14, no. 1 (February 2005): 29))  The raccomandazione system created small, localized bases of power.  The establishment and perpetuation of these small bases of power made Italians rely on the whims and favors of their local padrone.  Regionalism intensified and in Bosworth’s own words the local patron “might have been rehearsing to play the part of the local Godfather,” utilizing crime and violence to ensure his continued power. ((Bosworth, “Everyday Mussolinism,” 33))  In many ways the raccomandazione system served as the antithesis to the goal Fascist goal of unification and progress in Italy. These small bases of bases further fragmented Italy, ambitious people relied on the favor of their local leader not on the purported merit system of the Fascist regime.

The continued reliance on a traditional system of nepotism instead of the new state run merit system provides just one example of the everyday Italian resistance to Fascism.  The reliance on traditional and local customs begs the question: Why did the Italian population resist the ideology of the Fascist state?  Furthermore, how does this resistance narrative change when compared to Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany?

 

Italian Fascism: The Non-Authoritative Dictatorship

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In Bosworth’s article “Everyday Mussolinism: Friends, Family, Locality and Violence in Fascist Italy”, ((Bosworth, R. J. B. “Everyday Mussolinism: Friends, Family, Locality and Violence in Fascist Italy.” Contemporary European History 14, no. 1 (February 2005): 23-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20081243.)) the pervasive and totalitarian nature of the Italian Fascist regime is brought into question. Bosworth argues that even the Duce himself was aware of how ineffective his government was at implementing policy into change of everyday behavior. An anti-Fascist under current developed and was reoccurring without being institutionally controlled. ((Bosworth, Everyday Mussolinism, 28)) By examining multiple individual cases and examples, Bosworth successfully shows the multitude of ways the Italian public found opportunities to undermine Mussolini’s supposedly complete system of statist control. His view of the limited forcefulness of Fascism is summarized as, “a fragile influence, an ideology and a system which could readily enough be evaded. Its announced intention radically and permanently to change the Italian present, past and future was a long way from realization.” ((Bosworth, Everyday Mussolinism, 27)) Bosworth admits that the historiography in the field of the ordinary life of citizens under Italian Fascism is limited. He cites the works of Stalinist historian Fitzpatrick and Nazi historian Peukert as examples of quality writing including case studies of day to day existence concerning the Soviet Union and Germany that are not comparably present in Italian historical writing. ((Bosworth, Everdyday Mussolinism, 25))

In more ways than one, Mussolinism comes across as the weakest of the European totalitarian regimes of the 1930s. Especially in comparison with the clear danger present under Nazism and Stalinism, each which utilized a terrorist state police force, surveillance system, and camp system, Fascism seems the gentler of the three in term of prosecution of enemies of the state. In fact, Bosworth presents the Facist regime as so corrupted that it was actually easily manipulated by the populace. In Hitler’s Germany and the Soviet Union, it was completely the opposite, with the public being controlled by the powerful administration.

In all three systems violence, fear, and nationalism was a reoccurring theme. However, the levels of public fear were clearly the lowest in Fascist Italy. In addition, trying to unify a country, as each regime did, while also attempting to create a hyper-controlled state was contradictory to the extreme and eventually led to the downfall of each dictatorship. The majority of the public eventually realized that the government could not be trusted with such highly opposing domestic goals. Bosworth gives the sense that this opinion was highest and most vocally expressed in Italy, where very few people took Fascism seriously and most attempted to carry out their lives and families’ traditions as normally as possible. Although Mussolini hoped to instill a strong, masculine, national Italian public life, his citizens rejected his hopes and emasculated the Fascist regime by retaining their distinct, individual, and regional Italian identities in contradiction with Mussolini’s proposed ‘one Italy’. ((Bosworth, Everday Mussolinism, 41)) If you were a citizen of an oppressive regime, under what circumstances and / or threats would it take for you to change your way of life or beliefs to appease the state?

 

 

Mussolinism

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While Fascist Italy under Mussolini sought to control its people and implement a new united world of ideas and ways of life in Italy, it did not succeed. Bosworth’s article, “Everyday Mussolinism: Friends, Family, Locality and Violence in Fascist Italy” demonstrated the disunity and corruption under Fascist rule.1 Bosworth cited numerous examples of Fascist leaders who corrupted the system. They reverted to the well known political practices. They appeared almost like American gangsters from the same era. Most of the men who were sent to exile used violence, threats, and terror to control their regions and gain desired power.
There was an interesting parallel in Fascist Italy to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. In the opening story, a group of men were reported singing a communist song while in a drunken state.2 As in Nazi Germany, there was a fear of communism and those who held communist beliefs. Also, as in both other regimes, citizens denounced one another for undesired behavior. Yet, did this protect Italians from themselves being denounced, as it did initially in the Soviet Union? Or did it backfire as during the Great Terror?
Another parallel to the Soviet Union and Germany was the punishment of those deemed unproductive, that drained the economy. The drunken communist was denounced as lazy and an alcoholic.3 This added to peoples dislike for him, and he was sentenced to a common punishment, exile. Although most leading Fascist officials who were sentenced to long terms of exile had the sentences overturned after just a few months. Was this due to other Fascists condoning their behavior?

1. R.J.B. Bosworth, “Everyday Mussolinism: Friends, Family, Locality and Violence in Fascist Italy”, Contemporary European History, 14 (2005) 23-43.
2. Bosworth, “Everyday Mussolinism”, 23-24.
3. Bosworth, “Everyday Mussolinism”, 24.

The Epiphenomenon Of Fascism

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Fascist Italy did not experience the same strict adherence by its citizenry to party ideologies like Nazism or Stalinism did. People who claimed they were loyal Fascists remained more indulged in self-serving behaviors than members of the other two regimes. Many accounts of this are given in Bosworth’s Everyday Mussolinism and it leads to speculation. What reasons evoked the ubiquitous corruption under Mussolini’s rule that appears far less prevalent under Hitler and Stalin?

Mussolini’s Fascism has no definitive goal. It mentions expansionism and transformation, but does not mention to what ends. It embraces the struggles of life, but fails to redirect the energy put towards life’s battles towards a unified vision. It has almost no inherently cohesive aspects. Perhaps this lack of unifying elements attributed to Fascism’s failure to overhaul cultural priorities such as communism or Nazism did. It appears Fascism became flexibly subjective depending on who wanted to do what–and claiming to be a member of the Fascist party could be used as justifying explanation for all behaviors, especially ones that affected family.

Corruption manifested as a byproduct of both a lack of common dream and authority. The police forces under Mussolini proved incomparably calm to both the SS and NKVD. The officers could be coerced, and according to Bosworth, acted out of their own self interests rather than the states. Bosworth claims that the evidence against societal dissidents often proved vague and there appeared to be a lack of uniform method of police control.

Comparatively, this type of conspicuous and and counterproductive behavior would have been impossible to carry out under Stalin. Why was there so little corruption and so little fear under Mussolini?

Denunciation and the Great Purges

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“…he ‘hunted for enemies everywhere with a magnifying glass’.” ((Sheila Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles” in Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism; Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, 206)).

In Shelia Fitzpatrick’s “A Time of Troubles” she analyzed the impact the Great Purges had on everyday life and what mechanisms allowed the wide-spread terror to occur between 1937 and 1938. ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles”, 199)). The Great Purges differed from earlier purges the Soviet Union experienced in that the term “enemy” was no longer associated with solely class. The classification of “enemy” became much broader and more difficult to identify. This broader characterization combined with flexibility of social identification and the ability to forge documents and family histories (as we discussed earlier in the semester) made individuals who would have been obvious targets for Soviet terror indistinguishable from others. The broader definition and atmosphere of suspicion created self-perpetuating mechanisms that caused the spread and escalation of the Great Purges in Soviet society.

Denunciation was one of the most notable mechanisms that allowed terror to proliferate. This public condemnation pitted colleagues against colleagues, workers against managers, communists against other communists of the same organizations. ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles”, 207-208)). This was a result of competition, friction and power struggles between people and organizations to gain support from the government. In the Soviet Union during this time it became important not to “step on anybody’s toes”, even seemingly small incidents had the potential to become problematic. ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles”, 208)). During the pinnacle of the Great Purges some people became professional denouncers as a way to protect themselves. Fitzpatrick uses an excellent example to illustrate this point. A senior soviet official secretly denounced many of his colleagues, after his death approximately 175 written denunciations were found in his apartment. ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles”, 209)).

Fitzpatrick also discusses the role of newspapers in the spread of terror- To what extent do you think the Great Purges of 1937-1938 were prompted by newspapers? Do you think that the Great Purge would have reached the same heights without such media outlets? Additionally, Fitzpatrick states that the majority of the population had low levels of education. Would you argue that lack of education among the population quickened or slowed the spread terror during this period?

On a final and somewhat unrelated note, I also found it interesting how peasants rationalized the purges. The Great Purges were viewed by peasant as inevitable or unavoidable problems, comparable to disasters along the lines of floods, wars, poor harvests, famines and other “great misfortunes”. ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles”, 192)).

Know Your Enemy

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Fitzpatrick’s chapter regarding the Great Purges of the Soviet Union reads like a dystopian novel. Even the epigraph at the beginning stirs thoughts of “Big Brother”; it reads “You know they are putting people in prison for nothing now”.  Fitzpatrick attributes this quote to an anonymous “local official”, circa 1938, the temporal heart of the Great Purge. ((Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “A Time of Troubles,” in Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. (Oxford University Press, 2000), 190.))  This epigraph highlights a concept touched on throughout the rest of this chapter: no one in the Soviet Union, whether they be members of the communist party or ordinary citizens, escaped the wrath of the purge.

In other cases of state sponsored violence studied in this course thus far, a specific group finds themselves in the cross-hairs of the government. In Nazi Germany, the state took aim at the Jews. In Soviet Russia, however, the target never stayed the same. As Fitzpatrick notes, “enemies of the party” came under heaviest scrutiny, which ranged from people politically opposed to the rule of Stalin, to those ‘bourgeois degenerates’ who used state money to make their living situation more comfortable. ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles,” 197.))  These high born degenerates suffered a great number of trials and tribulations due to their perceived offences. Public scapegoating came into common practice. These scapegoatings, as Fitzpatrick notes, often occurred among workers towards an individual in a position of power above them. These “Stakhanovites” organized meetings, and in them, flung insults at whomever they chose, calling them “bureaucratic barbarians” and comparing the accused to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda. ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles,” 200.)) Still, however, at this point in the purge, the elites suffered, not the commoners.

The Great Purge did not spare the common, government fearing citizen.  In fact, as Fitzpatrick eloquently points out, it did not spare anyone. This all occurred because of denouncement. Neighbors snitching on neighbors to secret police and spies. Students on teachers. Factory workers on one another. Even members of the communist party sought fit to report crimes. No one, not even an innocent (albeit troubled) 8 year old boy, found themselves under an umbrella of safety from this disturbing phenomena. It is this that made the Great Purge so terrifying and effective.((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles,” 207-208.))

Sending people to the Gulag on a tip from their neighbor, persecuting political prisoners, and denouncing members of the privileged elite created, in essence, a state of fear in Soviet Russia. It fostered obedience to the state. Why? In times of most stark oppression, as seen in Italy under Mussolini (who met his end at the hand of his own people) and in Kenya during the Mau Mau era, people often organize, revolt, and overthrow the government; every society has its breaking point. How far would Stalin have to have gone in order to incite a revolt among his own people? If mass imprisonment, murder, and development of total paranoia among all members of society didn’t do it, what would?

Habitual Terror

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The In Sheila Fitzpatrick’s book Everyday Stalinism; Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, the chapter “A Time of Troubles” analyzes the nature and evolution of the Great Purges of 1937-1938. She introduces the notions of surveillance, when the State monitors its population, and terror, when the population are the target of extreme State violence, and tracks their relationship in the Soviet Union ((Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “A Time of Troubles,” in Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. (Oxford University Press, 2000), 190.)) . She writes about how State violence, originally aimed at specific classes, eventually turned inward and escalated due to paranoia and publicity.

I was particularly intrigued in the self-perpetuated escalation of terror within the Soviet Union. The State targeted elite Communist leaders in 1937 because of they abused their regional power, stole money from the State, lived lavish lifestyles, undermined the State, and developed dangerously powerful personal cults ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles,” 196)). These habits defined a new type of bourgeoisie class that the Communist Party feared and battled. The public trials by which the State tried these leader, and highly detailed coverage of them, wrecked the state, heightened public interest and awareness. In the same public manner, everyone connected to a guilty individual faced the real threat of State persecution. These criminalization of human interactions and connections set ablaze a wild fire of paranoia among the populous. I am impressed how the nature of the Great Purge naturally changed.

In many respects, the Great Purge outgrew the State. It became a self perpetuating terror. Citizens turned in neighbors for the slightest remarks, suspicions, or seeming self preservation. Fitzpatrick captures the evolution of the Great Purge with the example of Andrei Arhilovsky. This former political prisoner’s attitude towards the Purge shifted over time through three stages. He originally praised the arrest and elimination of enemies of the State, then feared their overwhelming presence as the number of arrests escalated, and ultimately viewed them as “‘a replay of the French Revolution. More suspicion than fact” ((Fitzpatrick, “A Time of Troubles,” 215)). The Great Purge’s fanatic nature fueled it but eventually out grew and consumed itself. Was the escalation of the Great Purge inevitable? Were the Great Purges a product of Modernity or Communism?