The meaning of Nazi concentration camps

[Mandryka]

Today is the  75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. That has prompted various reflections in me.

Did this happen because the Nazi people were (are still?) evil? Were they hypnotised? Or was it because there's a real fundamental problem with western values generally? Or what?

And how do we move on -- beyond remembering for a day and saying "oh how terrible!"?

There's a book by Margueritte Duras, La Douleur. Her husband wasn't a Jew, he went to Buchenwald for being part of the resistence. This isn't really, fundamentally, about anti-semitism, it's deeper than that.

[david johnson]

Did this happen because the Nazi people were (are still?) evil?  yes
Were they hypnotized?  some obviously fell for it
Or was it because there's a real fundamental problem with western values generally?  NO

[Mandryka]

In WW2 there were an awful lot of supporters of Hitler in Europe. It's not like there were just a few evil people, but practically a nation of evil, a continent of evil. That's why I'm not so sure that the event betrays a very fundamental flaw in western civilisation. It's not just a question of a few nazis, and it's not a question of anti semitism either IMO

[Que]

I don't think there was a fundamental flaw in Western values, which embody universal individual freedoms, the rule of law and parliamentary democracy.

The context in which these atrocities took place, rather developed by the rejection of those values. A development we can see again today in some quarters of the Western world, I might add...

The sheer scale and absurdity of the atrocities and general destruction that followed was the direct result of the madness taking hold of a powerful and technologically advanced nation like Germany.

Q

[Mandryka]

I don't think there was a fundamental flaw in Western values, which embody universal individual freedoms, the rule of law and parliamentary democracy.

The context in which these atrocities took place, rather developed by the rejection of those values. A development we can see again today in some quarters of the Western world, I might add...

The sheer scale and absurdity of the atrocities and general destruction that followed was the direct result of the madness taking hold of a powerful and technologically advanced nation like Germany.

Q

I take your point, and I to some extent agree, it was me who didn't express my thought very well. What I should have said is not that there's a flaw in western values, it's that there's a flaw in the systems we have created for inculcating those values into the human monkey. It's as if everything we do to try to create moral agents is superficial, the evil in our hearts breaks through . . .

Maybe what I want to say is this. That the experience of WW2 shows that western values and human nature are fundamentally at odds with each other. Western Values are inhuman.

[amw]

The Holocaust and the Nazi death camps are not a unique event in history; what was new was technology being used to industrialise mass murder in a way that hadn't previously been done. But prior to 1933-45 many similar acts occurred: the Spanish killed and enslaved tens of millions during their conquest of Central and South America, the British did the same during their conquest of North America, the Belgians did the same in Congo, the Turks the same to their native Armenian and Assyrian populations, and prior to cleansing Europe of the "lesser races" the Germans themselves got some practice in in Namibia. There are countless more examples—my mom still brings up the Crusaders burning down the city of Jerusalem with as many as 100,000 people inside during the First Crusade for example. These examples are relevant because the architects of the Nazi genocide were well aware of history: Hitler cited among his influences the Armenian genocide and the Native American reservation system in the United States.

I'm not sure what "Western values" are or if the term has any meaning whatsoever. If "the West" has any values that are specific to its particular geographic region those values do not seem to include the prevention of mass murder, or at least have never actually done anything to stop it.

(Not that mass murder is exclusive to the West of course. The modern era gives plenty of examples between Rwanda, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc and historic examples date back at least to the Mongol Empire.)

[milk]

I take your point, and I to some extent agree, it was me who didn't express my thought very well. What I should have said is not that there's a flaw in western values, it's that there's a flaw in the systems we have created for inculcating those values into the human monkey. It's as if everything we do to try to create moral agents is superficial, the evil in our hearts breaks through . . .

Maybe what I want to say is this. That the experience of WW2 shows that western values and human nature are fundamentally at odds with each other. Western Values are inhuman.

Richard Rubinstein wrote that, "we are more likely to understand the Holocaust if we regard it as the expression of some of the most profound tendencies of Western civilization in the twentieth century." He believed that "the cultural ethos that permitted the perfection of bureaucratic mass murder was most likely to develop in the land of Luther," although he also stated that his "intention is not to blame Protestantism for the death camps."
I would have to delve back into this (which I studied years ago) to understand better. But he wrote in the same vein:

          Beyond all conscious intent, it has produced a secularization of consciousness involving an abstract, dehumanized, calculating rationality that can eradicate every vestige of that same
          human dignity in all areas of human interchange. Furthermore, it is the biblical tradition that has led to the secularization of consciousness, disenchantment of the world, methodical
          conduct (as in both Protestantism and capitalism), and, finally, bureaucratic objectivity... The culture that made the death camps possible was not only indigenous to the West but was an
          outcome, albeit unforeseen and unintended, of its fundamental religious traditions.

I had a history professor in university who pointed out (in his book about "total war") that ALMOST all genocides in the 20th century happened in the context of war, for whatever that's worth.

As far as murderous hatred for Jews, I'm particularly irked when prominent Christian apologists, in arguments against atheism, try to say that the Shoah is a product of Hitler's atheism. The murder of the 6 million would simply not have been possible but for Christianity, Christian teaching and Christian history.

[Jo498]

The main differences to other historical events is the industrial scale and that it happened in a "civilized" country to fellow citizens (although they were mostly minorities and the majority of victims were of course from South/Central/Eastern Europe, not Germany).

The latter is not unprecedented either as there have been massacres in civil wars (e.g. the Vendée after the French Revolution). Denying the "uniqueness" of the Holocaust can get one into legal trouble in Germany but to me this seems both wrong and dangerous. We've had a bunch of genocides or simply mass murders on comparable scales both before and after (Great Leap in China, Cambodia, Rwanda...). Worse, we have also used the claim that a "second Ausschwitz" had to be avoided as an excuse for wars in the Balkans and the middle East which really is the most shameful abuse of the memory of the victims 80 years ago.

The morale, if any, is that being civilized does not necessarily avoid atrocities but it has at least led to seeing some of them as the atrocities they are not merely as business as usual (as probably the ancient Assyrians and Romans found their treatment of the Israelites or other conquered people).

[Mandryka]

Before the war Germany had a particularly well honed system designed to make people civilised -- the society invested a lot to make kids learn about ideas which had their roots in Jesus, Kant, Goethe.

It failed to make the people behave in a civilised way.

And yet, in the UK, we continue in much the same way, as if the concentration camps never happened. It's as if the lessons are too difficult, too imperfectly understood still.

What I don't know is whether other approaches to civilsating the animal are more secure. Or whether they all just apply a fragile surface sheen.

Tantra? Druids?

[milk]

Before the war Germany had a particularly well honed system designed to make people civilised -- the society invested a lot to make kids learn about ideas which had their roots in Jesus, Kant, Goethe.

It failed to make the people behave in a civilised way.

And yet, in the UK, we continue in much the same way, as if the concentration camps never happened. It's as if the lessons are too difficult, too imperfectly understood still.

What I don't know is whether other approaches to civilsating the animal are more secure. Or whether they all just apply a fragile surface sheen.

Tantra? Druids?

It's interesting to see Aung San Suu Kyi defending such atrocities.

[Herman]

Hitler en Henry Ford had a sort of mutual admiration society based on virulent antisemitism; obviously Ford's assembly line had some kind of influence on the industrial nature of the concentration camps.

In the 20s and 30s the British Royals were real fans of Nazism.

It's too easy to say nothing would have happened if Hitler or the Nazis would not have happened.

Now, if the nineteenth century had not happened it would have been a different story...

[vandermolen]

An interesting and, in my view, convincing psychological explanation of the mass-appeal of Nazism can be found in the chapter 'The Psychology of Nazism' in Erich Fromm's interesting book 'The Fear of Freedom'.

[Mirror Image]

Sounds like a good reason to listen to some Karl Amadeus Hartmann! (Not that I personally need any extra incentive.)

[vandermolen]

Sounds like a good reason to listen to some Karl Amadeus Hartmann! (Not that I personally need any extra incentive.)

One of my heroes!

[Mirror Image]

One of my heroes!