Mass Killings and Genocide: The Holocaust

Small children learn to chant the mantra that sing-songs the fact that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Idealistic youth tell themselves they will create a better world when they are in charge, and adults, in many cases, seem to lose their way completely. The result is polarization into camps that often define themselves as being good and others as being evil, sometimes based on race, sometimes on nationality, ethnicity, or religion. The end result is always the same. Mankind has to make universal laws to control himself and to stop himself from murdering his fellowman en mass and for no other reason than some petty hatred whose fires were flamed by jealousy and/or envy. This sort of thinking is fertile ground for governments who could care less about either side. What governments are after is power and, if setting one group against another is the easiest way to obtain power, then that is the road they will take; and the government will be only too happy to be the murderous arm of the people. Sadly, this is the environment in which genocide takes place today and in which it took place during the Holocaust of World War II (Rummel, 2002).

Definitions

Before even discussing what is commonly referred to as the Holocaust, it is necessary to understand the difference between mass killings and genocide, as well as the very definition of genocide itself. Mass killings are just that, huge numbers of people killed at the same time, usually in the same place, and for the same reason. Mass killings usually are directed at a definable and finite group of people and, when the mass killing is over, that particular incident is ended. However, there have been incidences of mass killings that were part and parcel of genocide. In these cases, the opportunity to kill a large number of the target population presented itself and the perpetrators, most often the government, took advantage of the situation (Rummel, 2002). In these situations, a mass grave is later found, as evidence of the mass killing that occurred there.

Genocide is a term that has, in the past few decades, been expanded to include a number of different means of eliminating a population. However, when the term was first used, extensively, it was used in conjunction with the Holocaust of World War II. In reality, genocide is a word that was created from the Greek word for a race or a tribe (genos) and the Greek word for killing (cide) (Rummel, 2002). Therefore, genocide actually means exactly what it says, i.e. the killing of a race or a tribe. Genocide may include mass killings, but is usually a slower process, in which the members of the targeted group are killed when and where they are found, or transported to a common killing ground, such as the German concentration camps of World War II. In all cases, genocide is directed at a specific group of people and is based on their ethnicity, their religion, or on some other identifiable characteristic.

In response to the genocide of the Holocaust, the United Nations General Assembly passed an international law, in 1946, making it illegal to attempt to destroy any group of people based on their religion, ethnicity, race, or national origin. By that time, the U.N. had to go even farther and define these illegal attempts at the destruction of a group of people to include such means as simple killing, preventing births, removing their children and relocating them to other cultures, deliberately leaving a group in harm's way, knowing it would be killed or destroyed, and causing either serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the targeted group (Rummel, 2002). An example of this expanded definition would include the removal of American Indian children from their native lands and forcing them to assimilate in white schools in other parts of the country. Another example would be the rape camps in Bosnia, where Muslim women are raped until they become pregnant, knowing that neither they, nor their child will ever be accepted back into their culture. However, initially, the term genocide was applied to the Holocaust and, even in the 21^st century, the mention of either genocide or Holocaust brings an immediate thought of the killings that took place at the hands of the German government during World War II (Rummel, 2002).

Unfortunately, genocide, as a term, may not be the umbrella term that is it commonly thought to be. Rummel (1992) has also defined democide, which includes all individual killings for the same reasons genocide is committed. Thus, it is not enough to list off popularly touted numbers about how many Jews were killed in the concentration camps in Germany as being all of the people who were killed in the Holocaust. One must also consider the Gypsies and other minorities killed in occupied territory, as shown in the table below.

This brings the total of those killed in the Holocaust not to the almost 6 million commonly thought of in Germany, but to almost 29 million throughout Europe and the Eastern European nations. On the previous page, is a listing of these numbers and graphically shows the extent to which one group of human beings is capable of turning on another group of its human brothers.

Why Then, the Jews?

The Holocaust was, admittedly, aimed at ridding Germany of the Jewish people and creating a master race, of Germans, who would somehow take over the world and administer it all as a Christian nation. A sweeping statement, indeed. Yet, it did not start out that way. This was an invention of Adolph Hitler and he embellished upon it as he went along and as he grew in power. Following World War I, Germany had been saddled with a war debt that it was never going to be able to pay. That was a given. History looks back today and can see that was a product of Protestant Christian reforms. These included a prescription not to borrow or lend money and never to charge interest. While these were worthy goals, it was impossible for the ordinary German to survive without an occasional loan. Since Jews had been pointed out as Christ-killers, they were often refused jobs and had no other alternative than to become money lenders, the very occupation that was so hated by the Christians. As the fortunes of some Jews increased, so did the resentment of Germans who were reeling under the debt left by World War I. It was easy for Hitler to point to the Jews and proclaim that all their problems would be over if they could only expel the Jews from Germany. This was in 1920. Within two years, he was detailing how he would kill them all. By 1939, he had poisoned the minds of the German people and his plans for the final solution to the problem of the Jews had come together. It was to be carried out by the government. It was organized. It crossed international boundaries. It had begun and it was genocide (Stein, 2000).

None of these positions, touted by Hitler were new. They had been a source of friction between Christians and Jews for centuries. However, Hitler seemed to be a past master at putting the picture together in such a way that the only Christian path for Germans to take was the complete destruction of the Jews, the Gypsies, and many Catholics as well. Of course, Hitler is now known to have been seriously mentally ill toward the end of his life, so his genocidal tendencies ended up including almost anyone he thought might, for any reason, be a threat to him (Stein, 2000). The result, sadly, was the extermination of almost 29,000,000 human beings in less than a decade, simply on the basis of their nationality, or their ethnicity, or their religion, or for any reason they could be tied to any of the groups Hitler had tagged for eradication.

Could Hitler be Stopped?

There is always the possibility that somewhere, somehow, Hitler could have been stopped. However, that is doubtful. It must be remembered where the Holocaust took place and the era in which it took place. Yes, Hitler was power mad. Yes, the Christians were faltering under an unfair debt-load. Yes, the world was ignoring them. However, Germany did not exist in a vacuum. This entire area was the one in which Protestantism had, not all that long ago, broken free of the Catholic Church, and it had not done so bloodlessly and without developing some very strong prejudices. This was a lingering legacy for the people of Germany; one of which Hitler and his supporters took full advantage. For example, a Jew had been baptized a Christian and had become a priest. He then disagreed with the memory of a political hero. Hitler's associates blew that up into a huge diatribe of a wolf in sheep's clothing and Jewish blood in a priest's robe. The words evil and poison and the devil were bandied about. There was no way that the people of Germany could get enough peace from the eloquence of these men's speeches to allow cooler heads and reason to take hold (Stein, 2000). This is not to excuse the behavior of the German people, simply to explain part of how the Holocaust could have begun and how it took on, seemingly, a life of its own. In reality, it was simply the well crafted ploy of Hitler and his associates, to grab and hold power (Stein, 2000).

Who Commits Mass Murder?

Understanding the situation of the German people prior to Hitler coming to power, as well as how he manipulated them into accepting that the Jews must be killed, is one thing. However, mass killing is something quite different. For a mass killing to take place, there must be a fairly large group of victims and a relatively small number of killers. These killers are human beings who must be willing to pull the trigger on their guns over and over and over again; murdering often hundreds of people, while listening to the sounds of their last moments of life. What kind of person can commit such an act? Are they born killers? Were they created by their environment? Are they no longer human by the time they participate in a mass killing? For the answers to these questions, it is necessary to turn to more modern analyses. Here we find that, according to Waller (2002) it is possible to turn almost any human being into a mass murderer if they are exposed to the us/them concept long enough and with no access to any other form of reasoning. This is what Hitler was able to accomplish. He had been poisoning the minds of the German people for almost 20 years before the first victim of the Holocaust was ever killed. By the time young German soldiers were alone, across the border in other European nations, faced with large populations of Jews and other so-called undesirables, they had been programmed all their lives that these were lives that were unworthy to live and, if the German race were to survive, meaning their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and children, if they were to ever have any, then these dehumanized beings must die (Waller, 2002). To the modern observer, watching as religion after religion repeats the same language across the Earth at the beginning of the 21^st century, there is no doubt at all that mass killings and genocide are exactly as they are claimed to be, i.e. with us still.

Is Social Control Theory Appropriate?

When one considers the work of Shaw, concerning Social Control Theory, it would seem that the motivation for and participation in mass killing and genocide versus how delinquency develops in large, modern cities, might not be related to each other. However, the fundamental issues of the manner in which the Holocaust and modern urban disintegration developed is exactly the same. Shaw noted that the rise of crime and delinquency is directly related to the breakdown of the family, the school, the church, and local government (Vanderbilt, 2007). These are all situations that were faced by the people of Germany. During the time just prior to the Holocaust, the German family was under a great deal of stress because of the economic difficulties following World War I. Education and the church were in disarray following upheavals between Protestants and Catholics, as well as because of new scientific discoveries. No one knew what to believe anymore, nor who to believe. Local governments were weak and radical changes in the form of government had openings to take place, and did. Socialism came to Germany and was overcome by Hitler and his orators. Nothing in the lives of German youth could be counted on to be stable throughout their lifetime. In effect, they were as adrift in the ocean that is the world as any teenager in a ghetto in any large city in the world at the beginning of the 21^st century. They were desperate for an identity and to belong, somewhere and to something. Hitler saw that, recognized it, and capitalized on it by building one of the most powerful killing machines ever known to man. In effect, he built a gang of killers.

If, as Shaw suggests, homogeneous neighborhoods are agents of social control (Vanderbilt, 2007), then Hitler fully understood this principle and used it to maximum effect. Viewed from the 21^st century, the people in the German neighborhoods were criminals, cold blooded killers. To them, they lived in a homogeneous neighborhood. Their sons went off to war. They were protected from their enemies. They went to church, shopped at the market, and enjoyed a nice life. They did not seem like criminals to themselves or to each other, and this is a huge factor in Hitler's ability to lead them into becoming mass murderers and agents of genocide. If disorganization brings crime, and organization brings lack of crime (Vanderbilt, 2007), then this is what Hitler provided for this population. Organization that made it seem as if all was well and they were on the right side of a very volatile issue.

How then, could a society, knowing that people were going to die, continue to allow this juggernaut to move forward? Shaw has the answer (Vanderbilt, 2007) in his Social Control Theory. It seems that a comfortable and functional society is built around protecting its own self-interests. If there is crime in its peripheral vision, the members of that society are willing to let it continue as long as it does not interfere with their daily lives. This was, in all likelihood, one of the major means used, by Hitler, to lull the German people into allowing, if not participating in, the Holocaust. The German people were tired, after World War I. They were poor. They were not well thought of in the world community. Hitler gave them a vision of themselves as beautiful people, living in lovely neighborhoods, with beautiful children and grandchildren (Stein, 2000). They wanted to believe it. They wanted life to be normal and safe. What they got, in return, was their sons turned into monsters and the living legacy of almost 29 million victims of genocide and mass killings. This is Social Control Theory in reverse. Rather than attempting to bring a population out of the social conditions in which crime is a given, this is Hitler's masterful ability to take a Christian population and turn it into a producer of the most murderous army that has ever existed.

Conclusion

The human mind can be a wonderful thing. It can take man to the stars and beyond. Yet, it can also take him to the depths of what many would call Hell. Left to live alone, one man cannot accomplish much good, but he cannot commit much evil either. Unfortunately, man is not a solitary animal. He lives in packs, called societies, and is, thus, capable of both great good and great evil because of the multiplied power of the pack. Social Control Theory, as defined by Shaw (Vanderbilt, 2007) puts a system of checks and balances on man's ability to commit institutional evil. These come in the form of laws and punishments for breaking those laws. Unfortunately, during times of great social upheaval, life itself often becomes confused and entire populations are adrift. If someone like Hitler comes along, at just the right moment, and provides such a society with a seemingly rational, relatively crime free format for their social order, it is possible for a Holocaust to happen. It happened once and it could happen again. There are those who claim such atrocities have never stopped. Certainly the World Court has never lacked for cases and the United Nations has not had to close its watchdog activities for lack of business.

Additional studies have expanded on the social control theories of Shaw, and applied them to other areas of investigation, such as Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative action (Deflem, 1994). From this viewpoint, the individual is a part of the society in which he or she lives, and must live in communication with others in that society. If the relationship is to be a positive one, then the individual must not only believe those things that are believed by the other members of the society, but must also be able to communicate that to them as well. This brings up the question of what is to be done about crime, and especially about heinous crimes that are, seemingly, condoned by some societies. Deflem (1994) is quite candid about this issue and suggests that, whether the rest of the world thinks a particular behavior, or set of behaviors, is a crime or not is immaterial. What matters, to the group, is whether they believe the behavior to be criminal or not. This supports the work of Shaw that implies that societies are willing to put up with what they perceive to be small crimes, in order to continue to live a life in peace. The people of Germany had been inoculated, by Hitler, for a term of almost 20 years before he actually began having what he deemed to be undesirables killed. By that time, they were a cohesive group, with a set of norms and mores that were firmly entrenched. It is very unclear whether any of them saw their genocidal behavior as being a crime. Hitler had done his work well and the youth of Germany went happily off to war to commit some of the worst atrocities ever committed by human beings (Rummel, 1996).

One can only hope that renewed interest in the Holocaust, with its mass killings and genocide, will not be lost to the collective memory of humankind. That is an uncertain hope, as people see more and more violence all around them. At the present time, more is understood about these phenomena than ever before, yet there is still nothing understood about how to avoid these atrocities happening again. Indeed, there are graphic pictures, on cable news, about genocide around the world. One has to wonder if the relative comfort of most human beings today is part of Shaw's observation that a little crime is permissible as long as it does not get too close for comfort. One also has to wonder if the monsters of this world, men such as Hitler, can be identified through the appropriate utilization of theories of criminology, such as Social Control Theory, and their careers cut short by exposure for what they are. Surely, if the memory of the Holocaust can be preserved, then mankind can at least try to protect himself and his children from the next man who would be a Hitler.

References

Deflem, M. (1994). Social Control and the Theory of Communicative Action. International Journal of the Sociology of Law 22(4):355-373. Retrieved: May 11, 2007 from: http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zjurgsoc.htmRummel, R.J. (1992). Democide: Nazi genocide and mass murder. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Retrieved May 11, 2007 from:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE3.HTM

Rummel, R.J. (2002). The Holocaust: in comparative and historical perspective. In Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Consequences
PIOOM, 1996 Retrieved: May 11, 2007 from: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/HOLO.PAPER.HTM

Stein, S.D. (2000). Antisemitism, Christianity, Pogroms: backcloth to destruction. Retrieved: May 11, 2007 from: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/antisem15.htm

Waller, J. (2002). Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing [Excerpt]. Oxford University Press. Retrieved: May 11, 2007 from:
(Hardcover). http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0195189493/ref=sib_dp_pop_ex/002-7737792-6658427?ie=UTF8&p=S00Q#reader-link

Vanderbilt University. (2007). 1 Social disorganization theory: a type of criminology theory. Retrieved: May 11, 2007 from: http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/files/l/l3Bguk/socdis.pdf

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