Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 10:51:21 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-I: Hitler's willing executioners


In message <Pine.SOL.3.94.970827214736.21673D-
100000-AT-utkux4.cas.utk.edu>, Andrew Wayne Austin
<aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu> writes
>The exchange went like this:
>
>Siddharth Chatterjee wrote: "As regards Nazi Germany which killed millions
>of Jews, gipsies, socialists, communists, homosexuals in death camps -
>there can be little doubt - that this culture and ideology of deep-rooted
>anti-semitism - played a main role in perpetrating the genocide." 
> 
>To which Jeff replied: "Of course, fascism utilises the native racist
>traditions. But that doesn't explain anything." 
>
>Please note, James, that Chatterjee is talking about GENOCIDE. Jeff is not
>talking about genocide--he is talking about FASCISM. GENOCIDE does not
>equal or reduce to FASCISM. No way. No how.
>
>What Chatterjee is putting forward *explains what Goldhagen is
>explaining*. Siddharth is with it. Jeff isn't even in the ballpark. Jeff
>has reduced the Holocaust to fascism.


Well I'm sorry Andrew but that seems about as clear as mud to me!

Siddarth charges responsibility for the genocide to a variety of
abstractions: 'Nazi Germany [is 'Germany' the subject, or does the
predicate 'Nazi' play the active part?] ... killed millions'; 'this
culture and ideology ... played a main role in perpetrating genocide' -
as if it was ideas that killed people!

Missing from this ideology-driven explanation is an understanding of the
way that the racial policies of the NSDAP were generated in a struggle
against a combatative and popular working class movement whose policies
were, in the main, internationalist in character. The twin policies of
military expansion and race laws were forged to divide the German
working class along racial lines and to subordinate them to military
discipline. As a counterweight to the popular support for the KPD and
SPD, the NSDAP mobilised a social base amongst the impoverished middle
classes.

These unique historical features of German society establish the
preconditions - only the preconditions - for the holocaust. Many nations
had a history of racism and anti-semitism: that was hardly unique to
Germany.

You put much store on distinguishing between Fascism and the Holocaust -
it is true that they are distinct, but the former is a precondition for
the latter. Without the imposition of registration, exclusion from
professions, ghettoes, segregation, transportation and forced labour in
concentration camps under the Nazi's race laws, the scene for the
extermination could not have been set. As to the immediate causes of the
holocaust itself Arno Mayer's Why did the Heavens not Darken gives the
best explanation. Louis Proyect gave an good precis of the argument a
few postings ago:

"The point of "Why the Heavens Did not Darken" is to establish the
difference between the genocide and the type of antisemitism that
preceded it. He makes a convincing case that the reversals on the
Eastern Front in the ill-fated Barbarossa Campaign caused the German
ruling class and the Nazi top echelons to embark on an irrational self-
destructive course. The shock of losing important battles to the
Russians and the recognition that the Third Reich was doomed threw the
state apparatus into a frenzy. In this period, from 1943 on, a decision
was made to exterminate the Jews. Mayer argues that there was no signs
of such a plan beforehand."

The advantage of Mayer's argument is that it does distinguish between
the holcaust and anti-semitism in general, but still situates the
holocaust within the specific historical conditions of its day. 

The hidden moral of this argument is this: more than most others the
German working class resisted national chauvinism and racial policies.
They pulled Germany out of the first world war, and they fought fascism
when the European ruling class was courting it. Arguably, the American
and British working classes were much more acquiescent to the imperial
and racial policies undertaken by their ruling classes. After all, the
British ruling class did not have to imprison the leaders of the British
working class to starve 3 million to death in Bangladesh in 1943 - the
British Labour and Communist party leaders went to India during the war
to persuade Congress to set aside their claim for independence until
after the war.
-- 
James Heartfield


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