Scholars shifted Holocaust study from Hitler to the bureaucratic middlemen
Evidence
In the 1970s and 1980s, the lonely, pioneering work of Raul Hilberg and a few others was followed by a growing wave of historical scholarship. The bulk of these works that were devoted to studying the perpetrators (as opposed to those studying the victims and bystanders) focused on the decision and policymaking processes, the structures and functioning of the Nazi regime, and the plethora of institutions and professions beyond the notorious SS that had played a crucial role in one way or another. While the centrality of anti- Semitism to Hitler’s psyche and ideology was not seriously questioned, in creasingly this was seen as inadequate to explain the capacity of the dictator to harness so many others to the enterprise of mass murder. The focus shifted away from Hitler at the top and the actual killers at the bottom to the institu tions, political processes, and bureaucratic personnel in between. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 47
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Focusing on obeying subordinates ignores genocidal initiators and degrees of evil — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 2007; Holocaust scholarship distorted past Jewish persecution by forcing a continuity narrative — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 493; The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality rather than an anomaly (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- The Holocaust exemplifies modern bureaucratic rationality rather than an anomaly
#corroborates(0.85) - Holocaust scholarship distorted past Jewish persecution by forcing a continuity narrative
#corroborates(0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 493 - The Holocaust was rational social management in scientific dress
#expands(0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 207 - Historical scholarship increasingly supports the functionalist view of Holocaust causation.
#corroborates(0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 306