The regime refused to legally define the category it was exterminating

Evidence

Himmler’s vehemently urgent request “not to issue any decree concerning the definition of the term ‘Jew’” is a case in point; for “with all these foolish commitments we will only be tying our hands” (Nuremberg Document No. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2654

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why would refusing to define ‘Jew’ be functionally useful for extermination? The passage suggests definiteness would constrain bureaucratic action, but the full mechanism deserves examination.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is a genuinely paradigm-shifting insight for bureaucratic rationality and genocide: the target category is deliberately left legally undefined precisely because definition limits the scope of violence. Sits with Weber on formal rationality.
• XREF: connects to: Expellees and repatriates were denied the migrant label by official discourse and scholarship — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 53