The Holocaust’s methods emerged from expert judgments on feasibility, not from Hitler’s orders.

Evidence

According to the functionalists’ findings, ‘Hitler set the objective of Nazism: “to get rid of the Jews, and above all to make the territory of the Reich judenfrei, i.e., clear of Jews” – but without specifying how this was to be achieved.’ Once the objective had been set, everything went on exactly as Weber, with his usual clarity, spelled out: ‘The “political master” finds himself in the position of the “dilettante” who stands opposite the “expert”, facing the trained official who stands within the management of administration.’ The objective had to be implemented; how this was to be done depended on the circumstances, always judged by the ‘experts’ from the point of view of feasibility and the costs of alternative opportunities of action. And so the emigration of German Jews was chosen first as the practical solution to Hitler’s objective; it would resulted in a judenfrei Germany, were other countries more hospitable to Jewish refugees. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 79

Categorization

• XREF: This Weberian ‘dilettante vs. expert’ split, plus goal-displacement, will recur in the Islamophobia readings as the mechanism of bureaucratic distancing that enables state violence. — connects to: The authentic mass man will resemble Himmler’s bureaucracy more than Hitler’s fanaticism; The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82; The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Track how the judenfrei objective expanded stepwise from Reich to Europe — the process of goal escalation through routine means is worth comparing to how policy targets ratchet in liberal statecraft.

Related

• The authentic mass man will resemble Himmler’s bureaucracy more than Hitler’s fanaticism (similarity 0.93)
• The Holocaust is a product of modern rational society, not a Jewish problem alone (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust is a by-product of runaway modernist design (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. (similarity 0.82)
• No scientific method can adjudicate moral responsibility for the Holocaust. (similarity 0.82)
• Extermination was chosen through routine bureaucratic procedures, not fanatic ideology. (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust combined long-festering social tensions with the rational instruments modernity created (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. (similarity 0.81)
• Holocaust perpetrators were ordinary citizens acting without personal anti-Jewish resentment. (similarity 0.81)
• All Holocaust scholarship is ultimately a debate over modernity’s self-image. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust reveals civilization’s capacity for industrialized destruction as inseparable from its progress. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust functions as a laboratory test revealing modernity’s hidden capacities. (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity’s institutions actively enabled and supplied the Holocaust (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust demonstrated how to liquidate minority and statelessness problems (similarity 0.79)
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• The Holocaust must be read as integral to modernity, not as its aberration. #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 630
• The Holocaust was a product of modernity, not pre-modern barbarity. #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 82
• The Holocaust is a possibility modernity contains, not its paradigm #qualifies (0.74) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 49