Historical scholarship increasingly supports the functionalist view of Holocaust causation.

Evidence

For many years now historians of the Holocaust have been split into the ‘intentionalist’ and the ‘functionalist’ camps. The first insist that killing the Jews was from the start Hitler’s firm decision, waiting only for opportune conditions to emerge. The second credit Hitler with only a general idea of ‘finding a solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’: clear only as far as the vision of ‘clean Germany’ goes, but vague and muddled as to the practical steps to be taken to bring that vision closer. Historical scholarship ever more convincingly supports the functionalist view. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the debate, however, there is hardly any doubt that the space extending between the idea and its execution was filled wall-to-wall with bureaucratic action. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 306

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes intentionalist from functionalist historiography — a vocabulary item for the field.
• XREF: The intentionalist/functionalist split resonates with structure-vs-agency debates throughout critical theory. — connects to: The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 114; Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 251; Social engineering ambition combined with concentrated power produced the Holocaust — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 224 (+2 more)

Related

• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.84)
• All Holocaust scholarship is ultimately a debate over modernity’s self-image. (similarity 0.84)
• Scholars shifted Holocaust study from Hitler to the bureaucratic middlemen (similarity 0.84)
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust (similarity 0.84)
• The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality applied to maximum-efficiency ends. (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust was rational social management in scientific dress (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust fused antisemitism with social and political mechanisms of an entirely different character. (similarity 0.83)
• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust reveals civilization’s capacity for industrialized destruction as inseparable from its progress. (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust was a product of modern civilization, not merely its failure (similarity 0.81)
• Modern civilization was a necessary but not sufficient condition of the Holocaust. (similarity 0.81)
• Social engineering ambition combined with concentrated power produced the Holocaust (similarity 0.80)
• The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Social engineering ambition combined with concentrated power produced the Holocaust #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 224
• The Holocaust was rational social management in scientific dress #corroborates (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 207