Nazi Ideology And Ethics

Nazi Ideology and Ethics

Nazi Ideology and Ethics

Edited by

Wolfgang Bialas and Lothar Fritze

Nazi Ideology and Ethics, Edited by Wolfgang Bialas and Lothar Fritze This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Wolfgang Bialas, Lothar Fritze and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5422-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5422-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Wolfgang Bialas and Lothar Fritze.............................................................. 1 Ethical Conceptions Nazi Ethics and Morality: Ideas, Problems and Unanswered Questions Wolfgang Bialas ........................................................................................ 15 Did the National Socialists Have a Different Morality? Lothar Fritze .............................................................................................. 57 Nazi Perpetrators Hitler’s Motive for the Holocaust Gunnar Heinsohn ..................................................................................... 103 Nazis with a Clear Conscience? Civilian Functionaries and the Holocaust Mary Fulbrook ......................................................................................... 127 A Question of Honor: Some Remarks on the Sexual Habits of German Soldiers during World War II Regina Mühlhäuser .................................................................................. 149 Nazi Ideology and Propaganda Nazi Military Ethics during Total Combat Peter J. Haas ............................................................................................ 177 The Role of Evolutionary Ethics in Nazi Propaganda and Worldview Training Richard Weikart....................................................................................... 193 Nazi Ethics: The Medical Discourse Turning Away From the Individual: Medicine and Morality Under the Nazis Florian Bruns ........................................................................................... 211

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“Mercy Killing” and Economism: On Ethical Patterns of Justification for Nazi “Euthanasia” Uwe Kaminsky ........................................................................................ 237 The National Socialist Patient Murders between Taboo and Argument: Nazi Euthanasia and the Current Debate on Mercy Killing Gerrit Hohendorf ..................................................................................... 275 The SS as a “Moral Order” SS Ethics within Moral Philosophy Andre Mineau .......................................................................................... 307 Das Schwarze Korps and the Validation of the SS Sippengemeinschaft Amy Carney ............................................................................................ 323 The Moral Rigour of Immorality: The Special Criminal Courts of the SS Christopher Theel .................................................................................... 343 Post-Holocaust Debates and Memory Politics Universalism and Moral Relativism: On Some Aspects of the Modern Debate on Ethics and Nazism Wulf Kellerwessel ................................................................................... 367 National Socialism – Bolshevism – Universalism: Moral Transformations in History as a Problem in Ethics Rolf Zimmermann ................................................................................... 389 Ethics after the Holocaust: Jewish Responses Isaac Hershkowitz ................................................................................... 421 On the Moral Profile of Public History: German Television, Nazi Perpetrators, and the Evolution of Holocaust Memory Stewart Anderson and Wulf Kansteiner .................................................. 439 Contributors ............................................................................................. 463

INTRODUCTION WOLFGANG BIALAS AND LOTHAR FRITZE

Historiographic work on National Socialism has made much progress. There may hardly be any period in the history of mankind which has been researched in so much detail. This holds most of all for the historic events and the National Socialist system of rule. The description and analysis of systems of political rule form an essential part of the research on totalitarianism. However, the research of ideology-guided dictatorships – also called “ideological dictatorships” (“Weltanschauungsdiktaturen”) – must necessarily include the analysis of the ideology of the respective system. Among the essential elements of a system´s ideology there count the moral convictions expressed by the major ideologues and leaders. Who attempts to understand the rule of National Socialism as well as the crimes for which it is responsible will thus have do deal with the topic of “Ideology and Morality in National Socialism.” In so far it is probably no coincidence that more recent research on National Socialism – apart from analyses of its system and practice of rule – increasingly deals with this topic and looks at the ethical aspects of the National Socialist ideology as well as at the moral convictions of National Socialist perpetrators. In this context, in recent years the debate has been newly stimulated by keywords such as “perpetrators with a good conscience,” “the morality of immorality,” “morality of transformation” or so called “morality in quotation marks.” Any discussion of the topic of “National Socialist morality” faces a serious objection: “Is it not that precisely National Socialism must be considered the epitome of immorality and inhumanity, so that speaking of National Socialist morality and granting it any kind of morality is ruled out right from beginning?” Indeed, it is not easy to escape intuitive defensiveness expressed by this question and to critically question even this absolutely legitimate preconception. For, we might ask, what kind of a morality is that supposed to be, which justifies concentration and extermination camps, “euthanasia” and the Holocaust, and by what kind of moral intuition are the perpetrators in the camps and those responsible for establishing them supposed to have

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Introduction

been guided? Was it not rather that the National Socialists were out for doing “evil deeds?” Indeed, was it not that they themselves represented “the evil?” Nevertheless, in National Socialist texts of the various kinds again and again we find that moral reasons are given: National Socialist ideologues provided justifications for race policy. National Socialist authors worked with moral categories such as decency and dignity, honour and duty. Both National Socialist ideologues and perpetrators emphasized their belief to have acted within the framework of their own moral order and, as they understood it, to have behaved morally. One open question is most of all the one about the motivations and reasons of those who actively contributed to the crimes or who, by agreeing with them or by expressing an indifferent attitude, made them possible at all. What kind of self-understanding guided National Socialist perpetrators? Were they really convinced that their actions could be morally justified? Or did they simply take over those reasons and explanations as provided by the National Socialist ideology? The fact that some National Socialist perpetrators, as they often claimed, indeed considered massive violations of the human rights and even the destruction of European Jewry to have been morally correct and necessary will probably always be difficult to understand. This refusal of granting subjective moral motives even to National Socialist perpetrators can only be countered by becoming aware of the fact that understanding and comprehending human behaviour does not mean agreeing with it. Only in exceptional cases National Socialist perpetrators may be supposed to have been pathological criminals. Often they appear as average, ordinary people who under different circumstances would never have felt any inclination to contribute to crime and mass murder. Was it really that the perpetrators´s capability of judgement was so much restricted by ideological indoctrination that they must actually be considered to have been criminally insane or that, at best, they could claim diminished responsibilty? Granted: This discrepancy is a theoretical challenge only if one believes the justification arguments to be credible and does not think that the good conscience the perpetrators referred to was just a fake. However, the attempt to distinguish the former from the latter reveals the limitations of moral philosophy. This question as well as a number of others were the topic of an international congress held at the Hannah-Arendt Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism, Dresden (18-20 November 2010). Whereas research in the German-speaking countries has produced a number of studies on the ide-

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ology of National Socialism, studies on “National Socialist morality” are only in their beginnings. The here presented volume documents primarily the revised and extended contributions to the congress in Dresden. This congress was meant as an encounter of moral-philosophical, historiographic and medicine-ethical research discourses on National Socialism. Some contributions were included in addition. In his opening contribution, the first editor of this volume, Wolfgang Bialas, Hannah-Arendt-Institute for the Research on Totalitarianism, claims the development of an independent moral order of National Socialism. He reconstructs how National Socialist ideology, philosophy and medical ethics attempted to give reason to some race-ethical morality of which the National Socialists claimed that, being a scientific morality, it was in accordance with the laws of nature and life as well as of creation. The moral conditioning of National Socialist perpetrators aimed at developing a kind of “ethnic conscience” which restricted moral obligations to members of their own race community. Neither did they act without any moral orientation nor in the awareness that what they were doing was morally reprehensible. Among others, the following questions are discussed: – the conditioning of a “new man” as a “race warrior” or “political soldier” whose actions, as he is free of religious and humanist resentment, are guided by a race-ethical particular morality; – the mutual constitution of National Socialist ideology and morality in a German society which was charged with moral significance; – the replacement of bourgeois-Christian morality by the “speciesappropriate humanism” of this new race-ethical morality, justifying eugenics, euthanasia and race murder as being morally unobjectionable and necessary for population politics; – the National Socialist threat of destruction to bourgeois society and its humanist-Christian system of values of race-indifferent care and charity, for which cultural degeneration in the course of history is made responsible; – the entitlement to race-politically correct these developments, which was supposed to enforce again the unrestricted right of those being of high race, those being healthy and strong, in accordance with the law of natural selection; – the phenomenon of National Socialist perpetrators with a good conscience, which was emphasized by ideologically and politically motivated criminals, both the masterminds behind the scenes and

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Introduction

the opportunistic career offenders, so that, as they saw it, they would be able to act free of selfish, abject or reprehensible motives; – finally the ambivalent discrimination against Jews as belonging to an immoral race which was at the same time identified as the epitome of a race-indifferent morality of reason which, from the point of view of the Nazis, made them particularly dangerous. The second editor of this volume, Lothar Fritze, Hannah-ArendtInstitute for the Research on Totalitarianism, in his contribution pursues the question if the leading National Socialists had a different morality. At first the author states that also National Socialist perpetrators had accepted a system of moral norms while at the same time feeling the obligation to make their own behaviour subject to these norms. Among these norms there counted a minimum of moral basic norms which was mostly in congruence with that minimum which is also accepted by the citizens of democratic constitutional states. Thus, there is no necessity to consider National Socialist perpetrators immoral people, nor is it that they supported different moral basic norms. Furthermore, it is possible that they did what they did in the belief that they were acting in accordance with those norms they themselves accepted. If nevertheless these perpetrators committed crimes, this will be at least partially understandable, the author states, if we assume that their non-moral convictions were different. By non-moral convictions Fritze means convictions of a non-moral kind which, however, are included as premises into morally relevant considerations or may play a role with them. Non-moral convictions refer neither to a moral ought nor do they imply value judgements in the moral sense. However, they essentially decide about which scope rules, which reasons for justification and which derived moral norms will be accepted when it comes to the practical implementation of moral basic norms. This kind of interpretation does not at all rule out that National Socialist perpetrators, apart from other, nonmoral convictions, had also different moral convictions which became manifest by the practical implementation of moral basic norms. Finally Fritze comes to the conclusion: The perpetrators, being convinced of the moral justification of their actions, failed morally, insofar as they based their actions on untenable non-moral convictions, whose untenability they would have been able to see. Perpetrators with a good conscience violated most of all cognitive duties. Starting out from the frustration of widely accepted researchers of the Holocaust when trying to explain Hitler´s motivations for the destruction of Jewry, Gunnar Heinsohn presents the following hypothesis: Soon after World War I, Hitler identified Jewry as the originator of the ban on killing,

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particularly the ban on infanticide and genocide as well as on the killing of disabled people. With the development of the Jewish ethics of the sanctity of life and the protection of the stranger, traditional rights to kill were discredited and are now regarded a crime. According to Hitler, acceptance of this “Jewish ethics” resulted in inacceptable consequences. Due to the universal ban on killing, the fight of the peoples for territory is hindered and the fighting spirit of the Nordic races is undermined by a bad conscience. Based on this hypothesis Heinsohn, a sociologist, economist and genocide researcher, draws several conclusions: Hitler´s antisemitism, he says, was not of a racist-biologic nature, rather the attempt at disposing of the Jews must be understood to have been an attempt at extinguishing Jewish ethics and at reestablishing the right to kill everybody weak as well as all opponents in the racial war. Hitler, Heinsohn summarizes, had the Jewish people be shattered as he believed them to be a “source of infection” for all non-Jews, in order to erase the Jewish programme of the sanctity of life from the consciousness of the Germans. It was his goal to create a historical turning point, in order to make the pre-Mosaic, archaic tribal morality valid again. By the example of the memoirs of Udo Klausa, Mary Fulbrook, Professor of German History and Director of the Centre for European Studies at University College, London, analyzes the self-exoneration strategies of National Socialist perpetrators. From February, 1940, to early December, 1942, Klausa was the District Administrator of the District of Bedzin in Upper Silesia, a district with three towns and 63 rural municipalities. At that time the local population was expulsed to make room for German resettlers, and tens of thousands of Jews were deported to Auschwitz. After the war he kept hiding for a long time, to then – by help of “family connections” – be listed under the coveted Denazification Group No. 5 “exonerated.” Fulbrook demonstrates how Klausa, by condemning the practical implementation of National Socialist policy but not the basic goals of this policy, was able to keep a good conscience after the war. By always presenting other people as “real Nazis,” Klausa succeeded with distancing himself from the events, which Fulbrook considers key-tactics of self-exculpation. Furthermore, she also shows that these tactics only work to a certain degree. For Klausa´s narration shows that at least at the time when he was writing his memoirs he felt doubts and scruples concerning the legality and moral innocuousness of his activities as a District Administrator. That was why he found it impossible to admit that he contributed to certain events or even knew of them. The subjective possibility to ruthlessly participate in crimes is due, according to Fulbrook, to a kind

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Introduction

of “colonial racism” which was rooted in the assumption that there existed a hierarchy of peoples of higher and lower value. Still during the war Himmler told his SS men that “immoral behaviour” would not be tolerated. In countless writings, NS propagandists had emphasized that “racial purity” was a good deserving every possible protection, that it was indeed “holy.” From these ideologic premises there resulted clear guidelines for the behaviour both of the High Command of the Wehrmacht and the SS Leadership. Regina Mühlhäuser, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, in her contribution shows that and how under the conditions of the war these restrictive orientations were partly given up on in favour of a rather pragmatic way of proceeding: Indeed sexual encounters – both rape and prostituion as well as consensual relationships – with native women were considered “unwelcome,” as they contradicted NS ideas on race and endangered the military discipline, health and reputation of the troops. At the same time, however, virility was considered an expression of strength, male honour and, after all, helpful with achieving the goals of the war. The Hamburg historian makes clear that only seldom military commanders really tried to enforce existing bans in this respect. Instead, Wehrmacht and SS made much efforts to keep their men under control by help of a voluminous disciplination apparatus. Whereas the Wehrmacht, by referring to girl friends and wives at home, appealed to the morality of their men, the catalogues of rules of the SS, says Mühlhäuser, read like pragmatic instructions to minimize the health hazards of sexual intercourse. Based on a study on the NS regime´s “military code,” Peter J. Haas, Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University, attempts to gain general insights concerning the relation of “military codes,” that is those expectations and instructions referring to the behaviour of professional soldiers, and the ethical ideas of “civilian” society. According to Haas, the NS “military code” as it developed over the time particularly for behaviour at the Eastern Front showed that any attempt of formulating objective and generally valid ethics of warfare is doomed to failure. At least in modernity warfare, he states, is outside the limits of ethical restrictions. At first Haas makes clear that and how the Wehrmacht step by step adjusted to the racist National Socialist ethics of warfare. The National Socialist “military code” provided the individual soldier with a possibility to justify his deeds. According to the author´s conviction, it is impossible to develop any set of rules which will reliably enforce “humane warfare.” The treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, as it was codified and finally implementd by the “Commissar Order,” does not only reflect the evil nature of war as

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such but presents war as a rational system without any inner moral correctives. The National Socialists were supporters of Darwin´s evolution theory. Hitler and other leading National Socialists assumed that man originated from the animal world. Richard Weikart, History Professor at California State University, Stanislaus, summarizes the evolution theory-based National Socialist attitude towards ethics and morality by the term “evolution ethics” – a term which was in fact not used by the National Socialists. National Socialist evolution ethics, Weikart states, were based on a racist version of neo-Darwinism. By his contribution the author shows in which ways moral obligations were based on reaching back to laws of biology presented by curricula for the ideological education of SS and police. The fight against the three main causes of the decline of any people was considered a moral obligation for any German citizen and anyway for any member of the Nordic race: a declining birth rate, so called counter selection and the mixture of races. After all, says Weikart, the race policy of the SS did not only aim at supporting the interests of the Nordic peoples but – according to the self-understanding of the SS – was anyway meant to serve for the further development of mankind. Thus, evolution ethics contradicted democratic norms, humanitarian considerations and the idea of equal rights. Given the murder of mentally ill and disabled people – called “euthanasia” – as well as the murderous experiments on humans at the concentration camps, there is the question of how such blatant violations of elementary rules of humanity and medical care were possible. Looking for possible answers, Florian Bruns, a medical historian at the University of Erlangen, reviews the ethical standards pursued by German physicians between 1933 and 1945. Bruns asks about the moral convictions of German physicians at that time as well as in how far they were influenced by National Socialist ideology. Were there specifically National Socialist medical ethics, and if yes, who communicated them to physicians and students of medicine in Germany? The authors outlines the German ethics discourses in the realm of medicine and presents the crucial protagonists and institutions as well as their working in this context. Finally, Bruns demonstrates how, by way of the National Socialist practice of enforced sterilization, two constitutive principles of medical morality at the same time were officially made invalid – medical secrecy and the rule that a physician must not do any harm to a patient; he discusses the postulate that the individual had an obligation to be healthy and makes clear that obviously many physicians contributing to the “euthanasia” killings were convinced of doing the morally right thing.

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Introduction

The murder of psychically and mentally ill people during World War II – euphemistically summarized by the term “euthanasia” – is also in the focus of the study by Uwe Kaminsky. This medical and law historian shows on the one hand that even under National Socialism such killings needed justification, and on the other hand he shows how euphemistic justifications (“mercy killings,” “Freimachungsmaßnahmen (provisions to make room)” for purposes of air raid protection contributed to reducing the inhibition threshold towards transgressing the ban on killing. Kaminsky makes clear that eugenic arguments, which were taken up again in the period of National Socialism, did not automatically trigger off the “destruction of life unworthy of life.” According to Kaminsky, the thesis that National Socialist euthanasia can be logically explained by racial hygiene ignores both the National Socialist polycracy and the dynamics of events, which is due to rule-immanent competition. Accordingly, in analogy to the twisted road to the Holocaust the author speaks of the “twisted road” to “euthanasia.” His contribution works out the justifications and reasons given for the National Socialist acts of killing and makes obvious that in the course of the war medical selection criteria retreated to the back in favour of economic-utilitarian aspects. Then, it is stated, the “euthanasia” killings were justified most of all by considerations of utility and by referring to emergency. In this context, Kaminsky says, Protestant theologists indeed recognized in principle the possibility of an emergency indication, however in contrast to the attitude of official representatives of the NS regime they stated that actually such a situation was not given. Nevertheless, throughout the entire war the Churches rejected euthanasia. Gerrit Hohendorf, psychiatrist, medical historian and medical ethicist at the Technical University of Munich, asks if insights regarding the current debate on euthanasia can be gained from the history of National Socialist “euthanasia.” At first sight, he says, the matter is clear: The killings of ill people during National Socialism have nothing to do with euthanasia as we understand it these days. The National Socialists misused the term “euthanasia” to hide their true intentions. However, in the author´s opinion a detailed analysis of the genesis of the various forms of NS “euthanasia” reveals the slippery slope on which the debate on the legal status of so called “life unworthy of life” happened in Germany since the early 1920s at the latest. The way in which the euthanasia actions happened would have been impossible without the concept of medical relief. Hohendorf reconstructs the current German euthanasia debate and in this context points out to a problem which, in his opinion, is not appropriately reflected on. That is: Who decides about what life means for those being incapable of expressing their will? In case of patients who are incapable of making

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an autonomous decision, as is Hohendorf´s thought, it is still the physician who must decide about certain degrees of suffering, according to the principle of self-determination. An additional argument is that the legalization of killing on request or medical assistance with suicide on the basis of the principle of self-determination might result in severely disabled people who are suffering very much might feeling an obligation to decide for suicide, in order of not being a burden for society. The SS committed evil deeds at a large scale. At the same time it played an important role with conceptualizing National Socialist ethics. But still, asks André Mineau, Professor of Ethics and History at the University of Quebec, Canada, can “ethics of the evil” be imagined at all, as after all ethics are about the good? At first the author demonstrates that and how SS ethics combined deontological, consequentialist and perfectionist approaches, organized around moral concepts such as duty, the good and virtuousness, while at the same time bereaving these concepts of their universal nature. It replaced the universal validity of moral norms by some biologic egotism which was oriented at the law of natural selection. Accordingly, for SS ethics three dangers were relevant: The decline of the birth rate, counter selection and the mixture of races. For the SS, moral behaviour meant behaving in the interest of the German people, in the context of which belonging to the German people was defined on the basis of racial criteria, and the realization of the common good was understood in the sense of preserving the racial substance of the people. According to Mineau, this way of restricting the common good to one people legitimated every kind of violence, after all. By attributing value only to part of humanity, SS ethics pursued excessive egotism, thus at the same time showing a strong nihilistic component. Amy Carney, a historian from Ohio University, discusses Himmler´s efforts to make the SS a “kinship community” to which not only his SS men but also their wives and children as well as their descendants were supposed to belong. The precondition for access to this community was belonging to the Nordic race. On the basis of belonging to the common Nordic blood, she states, one had intended to overcome every difference – religion, regional identities, class differences – and to establish a raceconscious biologic and cultural community which was supposed to become the vanguard of the National Socialist race state. The author demonstrates how in this context the SS weekly “Das Schwarze Korps” became kind of an ideologic mouthpiece of the SS, focusing on topics such as eugenics, the significance of marriage and family as well as on the Third Reich´s population policy. “Das Schwarze Korps,” Amy Carney makes clear, was meant for spreading and explaining the biologic world view of

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the SS and after all served for the creation of a racist aristocracy in National Socialist Germany. The Dresden historian Christopher Theel in his contribution discusses the jurisdiction of SS and police. First of all it was supposed to have the function of a jurisdiction for the Waffen SS and thus be a tool of the political and military leadership in the hands of the Reichsführer SS. Furthermore, according to Himmler´s will it was supposed to develop into a new kind of jurisdiction, free of Roman legal thought and based on a Germanic sense of justice. Thus, it was supposed to develop a kind of jurisdiction which was in accordance with the nature of National Socialism and the tasks of the National Socialist state, claiming to finally become a model for criminal justice in general. As Theel demonstrates, SS and police courts were supposed to do the “pioneering work.” In this context the author discusses efforts of liberating the “judge” from the “inflexible framework of the law” and increasing his significance for the finding of justice as well as the thus connected attempts to replace the traditional “offence-oriented penal law” by an “offender-oriented penal law” considering the entire personality of the offender. Among others, the task of this kind of jurisprudence was supposed to provide the German people with a legal system which was grounded on a “völkisch sense of justice.” At the same time, however, one was aware of the fact that, for example concerning the question of the killing of “life unworthy of life,” such a sense of justice could not be assumed for the majority of the German people who still had to be educated towards a sense of justice in the National Socialist sense. By the example of the notorious verdict by the Supreme SS and Police Court against Max Täubner in 1943 Theel demonstrates the attitude of SS judges towards problems of legal practice resulting from the murderous task of the SS. In his contribution, the philosopher Wulf Kellerwessel from Münster points out to a grave difficulty of some contemporary moral concepts resulting from the problem of rational criticism of National Socialist norms of behaviour. He tries to prove that open or hidden relativism in ethics makes a reason-guided criticism of National Socialist norms of behaviour impossible. The author demonstrates this by the examples of the positions of G. Harman, B. Williams and M. Walzer. Both Harman´s and Williams´s meta-ethical convictions as well as Harman´s internalism are said to be problematic, and also Walzer´s reiterative “universalism” is said to lack critical substance. Of course, Kellerwessel says, these moral philosophers are not at all under the suspicion of sympathizing with an inhuman ideology such as National Socialism. Nevertheless their moral concepts are said to be inappropriate for a convincing criticism of National

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Socialism and its rules of conduct. A normative kind of universalism, Kellerwessel states, has an appropriate potential for criticism. This is particularly true for discourse-analytical universalism. The philosopher Rolf Zimmermann from Konstanz gives reasons to his thesis that both National Socialism and Bolshevism represent historical phenomena of being morally different and that their practice of mass destruction may be understood to have been racial or class murder out of morality. This interpretation, says Zimermann, looks less paradox if speaking about morality is not right from the beginning restricted to a certain topical preliminary understanding or to apriori structures. The analysis of both National Socialism and Bolshevism reveals their moral cores, socialpolitical structures of norms and violence structures as historical alternatives to the egalitarian universalism of the western tradition. In the author´s opinion, the “rupture of species” that National Socialism and in particular the Holocaust represented, indicates a transformation towards being morally different, with corresponding “sociocides” on the side of Bolshevism. Apart from important differences, the prospect of creating “new man” with a new kind of morality was the overarching common ground which, furthermore, resulted in an innerworldly “redemption morality.” According to Zimmermann, both moral-historical formations must be understood to have been radically particularistic entities, in contrast to a universalist kind of morality. Thus, in the course of a comparative consideration of morality, also the particular suitability of egalitarian universalism as a descriptive and normative guideline of alternative moralities becomes obvious. Zimmermann supports a concept of a meta-ethical pluralism which puts any kind of monistic moral consideration into question. Being a product of the historical development since the 18th century, universalism must be seen in its contingency. Its moral guiding concept of human equality is said to be not grounded in nature or reason but in the will to make all humans equal, something which can be historicallyprocessually universalized but not conceptually guaranteed. Isaac Hershkowitz, Professor of Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, provides a meta-ethical study on Jewish answers to the Holocaust. Based on a phenomenological overview of the range of answers to the question of which ethical conclusions must be drawn from the Holocaust, the author develops a model of Jewish ethical answers. According to Hershkowitz, at first two diverging approaches must be distinguished: the particularistic and the universalistic approach. Particularistic answers interpreting the Holocaust as the “sound of God´s trumpet” in reaction to a concrete mistake in the life of the Jewish community are classified as being “ideologic.” “Moral enlightenment,” Hershkowitz assumes, can be

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Introduction

expected only from universalistic answers, they are the only ones to provide a message which can be accepted by all mankind. Although different strands can be identified also within the universalistic approach, the various thinkers are characterized by a certain “moral restlessness” as well as by the opinion, on which they all agree, that they are facing the task of fixing the world. These Jewish thinkers feel the urge to reestabish the moral reputation of the world. Stewart Anderson and Wulf Kansteiner, cultural-intellectual historians at Binghamton University, claim that Holocaust studies lack a comprehensive critical analysis of the history and structure of the moralistic world of Holocaust remembrance. The authors differentiate between four types of moral interventions, namely primarily ontologically, ethically, normatively and applied-ethically oriented moral statements, distinctions that they apply in their analysis of ZDF television programmes about the Holocaust between the mid-1960s and the present. They consider the early 1980s – i.e. the period after the invention of the Holocaust paradigm and before the commercialization of German television – the most self-reflective and self-critical era of German history TV. Anderson and Kansteiner extensively discuss the so called Knopp TV of historical entertainment that has successfully combined politically correct anti-Nazi messages with ambivalent visual products celebrating Nazi power. Finally, they focus on the broadcasting of violent Holocaust Memory that they explore as a combination of Holocaust curiosity, philosemitic values and the overcoming of taboos and inhibitions.

ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS

NAZI ETHICS AND MORALITY: IDEAS, PROBLEMS AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS WOLFGANG BIALAS

National Socialism and the Holocaust were seen as the destruction of the moral fabric of the Western world and as a possible relapse of mankind to barbarism. In this context, the Holocaust was defined as a pathological deviation from modernity. Being the incarnation of man´s unnatural, always fragile domestication, morality was considered a kind of safeguarding which had been imposed on man in contradiction to his inherent nature. The Holocaust perpetrators were said to have revealed that, below the surface of cultural domestication and moral safeguards, man had been lying in wait for opportunities to become once more that beast he had always been despite his guise as a civilized being. However, Auschwitz was not only described as a break with European modernity but also as a consequence of its ambivalences and potentials for destruction.1 Finally, speaking of violation and failure as a species points to the destructive rationality of Nazi ethnocentric morality having prevailed over a universal morality of reason.2 Research on Nazi morality and ethics is still in its infancy in the respective German-language literature,3 and the discussion here has only just 1

Cf. Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds.), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, 2nd edition (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994). 2 Rolf Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz. Eine Neubestimmung von Moral in Politik und Gesellschaft (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2005). 3 Peter J. Haas, Morality after Auschwitz. The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic for English-language literature (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); Eve Garrard and Geoffrey Scarre (eds.), Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust (Aldershot/ Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003). For the German debate cf. Werner Konitzer and Raphael Gross (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2009); as well as Raphael Gross, Anständig geblieben. Nationalsozialistische Moral (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2010).

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Nazi Ethics and Morality

begun using buzzwords such as “Nazi perpetrators with a good conscience,”4 “the morality of immorality,” “nationalist transformational morality,” so-called Nazi morality, or “morality in inverted commas.”5 These concepts and metaphors as they are being utilized in the debate indicate that research sees accepting any autonomous Nazi morality as controversial. In the final analysis, what kind of morality could justify concentration camps, extermination camps, euthanasia, and the Holocaust? It is entirely appropriate to call Auschwitz “the reality of the morally impossible,”6 and there is no doubt that Nazism was the embodiment of immorality and inhumanity. The persecution, exclusion, and destruction of European Jewry was not only a crime for which there is no precedent, it was also deeply immoral. No further justification is needed for this statement, even though it leaves a plethora of questions unanswered. For instance, is it most crucially a question of comprehending why the Nazi perpetrators committed their crimes? Or does the greater challenge lie in understanding why they did not recognize what they were doing as criminal? Thus, assuming that they actually believed race ethics to be a justification for the necessity of destroying the Jews, did they really think they were morally justified?

I. The Nazi Value Revolution: Racial Ethics and the Conditioning of the New Man The Nazi value revolution aimed at reversing the bourgeois-Christian system of values. Its successful and sustainable transformation allowed the Nazi perpetrators to act on the belief that their behavior was morally unobjectionable or even imperative. Specific directives and behavioral expectations replaced traditional values. However, even when people start acting unjustly and immorally, they still seek to justify their behavior – that much more so when they explicitly overstep a set of informal limits of a culturally established moral order, in other words, when they do things that are criminal and immoral according to valid norms. Most people would recoil in horror from acting in a fashion they themselves believed to be immoral. 4

Lothar Fritze, Täter mit gutem Gewissen. Über menschliches Versagen im diktatorischen Sozialismusm (Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau, 1998). 5 Werner Konitzer, “Moral oder ‘Moral?’ Einige Überlegungen zum Thema ‘Moral und Nationalsozialismus,’” in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Gross (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2009), pp. 97-115. 6 Hartmut Kuhlmann, “Ohne Auschwitz,” Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 45 (1997) no. 1, pp. 101-110, here 107.

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Apparently, it is necessary to plausibly portray immorality as the morality of a new order to make sure that people are willing to fall in line. It was important for the Nazi perpetrators to appear to themselves as decent people acting in a moral fashion. There was a great likelihood that people who were not critical or skeptical of the Nazi system or who did not reject it outright would act as they were expected to. Most of all, they did not want to act conspicuously, which is why they preferred to live with as little disturbance as possible. In general, they had no moral scruples. Instead, they implied that it was neither moral nor immoral but just reasonable to think of themselves and to act in accordance with their own interests. The biological value revolution of Nazism did not just give up on conventional morality but substituted it with a new racial morality. It replaced universal values and thought patterns of bourgeois morality that it considered incompatible with race ethics while integrating others into its own value system. Among those taken on and incorporated into the new moral order were the conscience as the inner authority of moral self-questioning, ethically discriminating selfishness as something immoral, allowing for the possibility of having misgivings as a sign of moral seriousness, and overcoming the latter as a proof of moral strength. Nazi ethics also renewed the validity of common sense moral values and explicitly condemned lying, stealing, cheating, corruption, cruelty, and murder as immoral and therefore unbefitting of a decent German. Racial biological naturalism and metaphysical politics declared that humans were vehicles of higher principles. Their value was determined by whether they helped engineer these principles through their actions, stood in the way of those principles, or even promoted principles to the contrary. Within the framework of race ethics, individuals were reduced to being members of a race who jointly were either doomed to destruction if they happened to be Jews or destined to rule the world if they were members of the Nordic race such as the Germans. Their personal interests and intentions only counted if they were in line with their racial affiliation. As individuals they were considered subordinates to history, the nation, the party, and the Fuehrer whose goals they were supposed to support.7

7

Wolfgang Bialas, “Der Nationalsozialismus und die Intellektuellen. Die Situation der Philosophie,” in Idem/Manfred Gangl (eds.), Intellektuelle im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Bern/Bruxelles/New York/Oxford/Vienna: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 13-50.

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Nazism attempted to establish a scientific ethics by means of a biopolitical radicalization of Social Darwinism.8 Claiming morality to be in conjunction with the laws of nature and life was to ensure its plausibility in an era that believed in scientific and technical solutions to actual or ideologically constructed social problems. The Nazi worldview was highly compatible with the intuitive worldview of many people, whom it relieved of the burden of making their own moral judgments and to whose value system it gave systematic coherence and scientific plausibility.9 It also suggested what they needed to do if they wanted to be in harmony with this system of ethics. Many welcomed the fact that it relieved them of their responsibility and the necessity of having to morally judge their behavior. Nazi ideology and morality justified one another. The Nazi society was burdened with moral meanings, and Nazi racial morality itself was an ideological construct. The use of arguments concerning history, natural laws, race, population policy, national hygiene, and biology was supposed to provide the Nazi racial policy with a pseudoscientific framework of reference. Moral concepts such as decency, honor, loyalty, and duty played an important role in Nazi ideology. The Nazi movement tried to give the impression that it was guided by moral principles and values and that it also demanded its adherents to follow these principles. The Nazi ideology agenda was to create a new morality that justified itself on three levels: 1. by documenting a crisis of bourgeois morality, 2. through the vision of a new morality, and 3. through the moral conditioning of the new man.10 Nazi morality perceived itself as being: – a higher morality geared towards absolute values and ideas in contrast to an intuitive common sense morality, – a German morality in contrast to a non-German morality, 8

On social Darwinism see Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004); Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 11-60. 9 Peter J. Haas, “Doing Ethics in an Age of Science,” in Jack Bemporad/John T. Pawlikowski/ Joseph Sievers (eds.), Good and Evil After Auschwitz. Ethical implications for today (Hoboken/NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2000), pp. 109-118, here 110. 10 Cf. from the Nazi point of view Herbert Graf, Der neue Mensch im neuen Staat (Berlin: P. Schmidt, 1934) and Erich Jaensch, Der Gegentypus. Psychologischanthropologische Grundlagen deutscher Kulturphilosophie, ausgehend von dem, was wir überwinden wollen (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1938).

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– a racially conscious morality in contrast to a racially indifferent morality, – a national morality in contrast to the internationalist class morality which they claimed would split the nation and the people into hostile social groups, – a master morality for asserting the rights of the stronger in contrast to a morality of protecting the weak and needy from the encroachments of the powerful, – a racial morality with a global reach in contrast to and competition with bourgeois-Christian morality and Bolshevist atheism, and – an anti-Jewish morality. The following theoretical justifications and thought patterns were supposed to document the plausibility of Nazi morality: – the subordination of the individual to the functionality of a greater whole or the assertion of higher ideas, – the acceptance of eternal laws of nature and life, and in particular the law of natural selection, whose effectiveness was restricted by Christian-Jewish morality of equality and humanity, – the substitution of universal values with ethnic values based on the distinction between superior and inferior life, – the claim to intervene in the biological foundations and cultural conditions of human life for the sake of racial perfection,11 – the presumption of judging people according to their value and usefulness in the new racial order. Nazi morality was conceived as a procedural virtue ethics. It combined absolute virtues that demanded unconditional obedience with the attitude of social engineering and replaced common sense intuitions with an ideological catalog of virtues and commands. The ideal of the new man was the race-conscious and ideologically dedicated and knowledgeable worldview warrior (“Weltanschauungskrieger”) – the political soldier who would be able to perform crimes for the sake of the Nordic race and Germany with a clean conscience while at the same time perfectly convinced

11

Cf. Detlev J. K. Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde. Anpassung, Ausmerze und Aufbegehren unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Bund, 1982) as well as Peukert, “Die Genesis der Endlösung aus dem Geiste der Wissenschaft,” in Zerstörung des moralischen Selbstbewusstseins: Chance oder Gefährdung?, ed. by Forum für Philosophie (Bad Homburg) (Frankfurt a. M. 1988), pp. 24-48.

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of doing the right thing and acting morally.12 The trademark of this new type of man was his capacity of moral judgment as defined by Nazism that made him always act creatively on his own initiative and not just follow orders blindly or mechanically.13 He was not presented as someone who thoughtlessly took and obeyed orders without hesitation but as someone who consciously took on responsibility. Being physically and spiritually healthy and tough on himself, he always considered the consequences of his actions. When he made a decision, he insisted on doing what he considered necessary, just, and moral. “We want one thing above all- – to be honest to ourselves and know why we act one way and not another. We want to be aware of the consequences of our actions [...] We want to live in such a fashion that we can always be responsible for ourselves.”14 Nazi ideology asked the German people to develop biological attitudes and feelings as part of a racial character in order to form an “ethnic conscience”15 that only recognized moral obligations towards members of its own race. Attempts to create a racial conscience in contrast to racial indifference emphasized personal responsibility.16 The moral core of man was supposed to be his conscience, which was considered the symbol of his life as a moral subject. Guided by his conscience, he would have to prove that his actions would live up to his normative self-image. “Non-Aryans” and “parasites to the community” were refused moral care and charity. The new morality was only for the members of one's own race who were not suffering from any inherited disease. Nazi racial politics tried to prevent “foreign blood” from coming into contact with the community of Nordic Germans. In other words, in contrast to a supposedly diffuse concept of Christian charity, moral empathy was restricted to members of the Nazi racial people’s community whereas the racially inferior and those of alien race were excluded from mutual moral obligations. Altogether, the Germans were supposed to trust Nazi ideology and judgments based on race ethics more than their intuitive moral judgment based on their own experiences. Due to their racio-ethical indoctrination they 12

Gerhard Stoedtner, Soldaten des Alltags. Ein Beitrag zur Überwindung des bürgerlichen Menschen (Leipzig: Armanen-Verlag, 1939) and Paula Diehl, Macht – Mythos – Utopie. Die Körperbilder der SS-Männer (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2005). 13 Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2005), p. 22. 14 “Moral – kritisch betrachtet,” Das Schwarze Korps, August 31, 1944, no. 35, p. 3. 15 Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge/MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003). 16 Martin Staemmler, “Aufgaben und Ziele der Rassenpflege,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 3 (1933) no. 14, pp. 415-422, here 41.

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were to be capable of participating in the persecution of the Jews without any moral scruples. This was simultaneously portrayed as their racial and ethical upgrading (“moralische Aufartung”) to the level of the new man who supposedly needed the struggle for existence in order to stay healthy and to protect himself against weakening.17 The ideology of racial biology implied that racial membership and the corresponding affinity to a particular morality were generated by inheritance. The fact that the Germans belonged to the Nordic race placed a particular moral obligation on them not to forfeit the possibility of being a member of a superior race by racial misbehavior. The members of the higher race were supposed to act in a racially conscious fashion in order to prove that they were worthy of belonging. They were expected to demonstrate through their “commitment, struggle and personal dedication”18 to the cause of Nazism that they deserved to be counted among the racial elite. They were called upon to form a racial value system that would guide them not only in political clashes but also in their everyday lives. In other words, by taking part in persecuting and stigmatizing the Jews the Germans were supposed to demonstrate their assent to the new racial order. Their sacrifice and dedication to the cause of Nazism was supposed to demonstrate that they were personally ready to take advantage of the opportunities offered them by their racial membership. Nazi racial ethics allowed the members of the Nordic race individual space for development. The reason given was that if humans were already predetermined by racial membership, the concepts of responsibility, guilt, and failure would be inherently inapplicable. Any teachings that stated that people were exclusively biological would leave no room for personal success or failure but rather predisposed them to certain values, ideals, and convictions due to their racial belonging. Therefore, ordinary Germans were supposed to stress their predisposition to racial superiority through developing the appropriate attitudes and behavior already ascribed to them by their racial membership. The moral discrimination of the Jews was justified by means of a selective racial morality that replaced a universal morality of reason. Through personally participating in persecuting the Jews the Germans were expected to internalize the new morality of race-conscious toughness and mercilessness towards racial enemies and inferiors. It was true that the Jews were declared superfluous in a future society organized exclusively 17

Karl Kötschau, “Zur nationalsozialistischen Revolution in der Medizin,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (1934) no. 23, pp. 884-889, here pp. 884. 18 Kurt Leese, Rasse – Religion – Ethos. Drei Kapitel zur religiösen Lage der Gegenwart (Gotha: L. Klotz, 1934), p. 16.

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according to racial criteria. Still, they were functional for bringing about this order because they were needed to morally condition the new man to become a racial warrior and biological soldier. Being aware of his responsibility toward his race and his people, the new man was supposed to be capable of withstanding “all foreign temptations not in harmony with his race.”19 Since humans cannot rely on their drives to intuitively act in accordance with their kind in the way animals do, they would have to be trained to think, feel, and act biologically. Conditioning Germans to rely on their instincts to act morally was to make them act intuitively in harmony with race laws. Animals were deemed superior to humans in that they behaved in congruence with their own kind. Acting otherwise was practically impossible for them as natural selection was seen to filter out those who differed from their own and contradicted their nature. As Hitler put it in "Mein Kampf": According to "the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life [...] the stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel. [...] The consequence of this racial purity universally valid in nature is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races but their uniform inherent character. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can at best belie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice.”20 The history of human civilization, on the other hand, was considered a failed experiment in promoting variety, difference, and tolerance. Racial indifference that deliberately ignored race as a core principle of nature, life, and creation and also denied natural selection and racial coherence, was blamed for the decay, confusion, and suppression of human nature. More specifically, racial mixing and racially indifferent behavior were to blame for the decline of mankind. Humanity would have to reconcile with its biological nature, enabling it to resist the temptation to behave indifferently toward race and to cultivate the sovereignty of racial selfishness through a conscious attempt to thwart the cultural domestication ultimately

19

Franz Schattenfroh, Wille und Rasse (Berlin/Zürich/Vienna: Payer & Co., 1939), p. 182. 20 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971), p. 285.

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culpable for its estrangement. Conditioning people to act instinctively immediately suggested that such behavior was moral.21 The bio-political restructuring of society along the category of race perceived people as part of an anthropological experiment. In such an experiment, the master race was supposed to be morally conditioned to exterminate the racially inferior, those unworthy of life. The development of the new man who could exterminate those unworthy of life with a clear conscience propelled the new Nazi morality to supersede an allegedly defunct one. The SS, as the racial elite, demonstrated “that it was possible to fabricate a race by annihilating other races.”22 Their members saw themselves as the prototypes of the new man. As the racial avant-garde of Germany’s societal transfiguration, the SS even perceived itself as a fertile social and ethical microcosm within which they had already practiced the future morality of strength and ruthlessness.

II. The New Morality: Superseding Bourgeois Racial Indifference with Racially Appropriate Humanism The racio-biological differentiation of humanity that distinguished inferior and superior races stood in contrast to the value system of bourgeois society. Nazi ethics claimed to radically break with obsolete traditional humanistic ethics but also utilized traditional concepts of moral philosophy such as the Categorical Imperative. It declared a moral state of emergency which justified a political and holistic anthropological upheaval. An individual-oriented bourgeois morality was replaced by a völkisch morality of race and community. Adopting Nietzsche’s critique of Christian morality as a protection of the weak, needy, and inferior and those unworthy of life from the grasp of the strong and powerful destined to be the masters, bourgeois morality was criticized as a historically anachronistic slave morality that had managed to implant a guilty conscience in the master race.23 Nazi ideology and ethics countered this supposed universalization of a morality of weakness with the vision of a master race acting with moral superiority in good conscience. The new man was supposed to liberate himself from the fetters of moral obligations to the weak and needy and to subordinate his life to racial imperatives instead of following outdated precepts of unconditional humanity and charity. 21

“Dem Leben verschworen,” Das Schwarze Korps, May 20, 1943, no. 20, p. 4. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1976), p. 412. 23 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Der Antichrist,” in Idem, Werke in 6 Bänden, Bd. 4, ed. by Karl Schlechta (Munich/Vienna: Hanser, 1980), pp. 1161-1235, here 1168. 22

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During National Socialism, questions of ethics and morality were discussed not only in the social sciences and humanities24 or medicine25 but also in ideological diatribes,26 journalistic essays, prose, and poetry.27 This led to a varied array of conceptualizations of Nazi ethics: – As a “eugenic ethics”28 it was supposed to be grounded in “racial conscience.”29 – As a selective racial ethics directed against an unnatural morality of racially indifferent humanity it was restricted to the members of the German people´s community.30 – As a natural ethics of life it was supposed to boost life that conformed to the laws of nature and life.31 – As a soldierly ethics it saw struggle, strength of character, and willingness to sacrifice as opposed to old bourgeois values of an oversaturated society whose value system had not stood the test of time and therefore was defeated by competing value systems.32 – As a German ethics it was neither supposed to be a bureaucratic ethics nor a legal ethics but rather a morality of action, a master morality, a morality of the people, and a morality of struggle.33 24

Kurt Hildebrandt, Norm, Entartung, Verfall, Bezogen auf den Einzelnen, die Rasse, den Staat (Berlin: W. Kohlhammer, 1934). Georg Usadel, Zucht und Ordnung. Grundlagen einer nationalsozialistischen Ethik (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1935) as well as Gerhard Hennemann, Grundzüge einer deutschen Ethik (Leipzig: A. Klein, 1938). 25 Kötschau, “Zur nationalsozialistischen Revolution in der Medizin,” pp. 884-889. 26 “Arteigene Sittlichkeit,” Das Schwarze Korps, May 6, 1937, no. 18, p. 6. 27 Cf. Kurt Eggers, Vom mutigen Leben und tapferen Sterben (Oldenburg i. O.: Gerhard Stalling, 1935) as well as Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, Zwei Reden: Das Geistesleben in seiner volksbiologischen Bedeutung (Munich: Langen Müller, 1942). 28 F. C. S. Schiller, “Die Eugenik als sittliches Ideal,” Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, vol. 24 (1930), pp. 342-347, here 342. 29 Edgar Weidner, “Das neue ärztliche Denken im nationalsozialistischen Staate,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (1934) no. 13, pp. 486-490, continued and concluded in no. 14, pp. 524-527. 30 Friedbert Schulze, Das Sittengesetz des nordischen Menschen (Leipzig: A. Klein, 1933), p. 27. 31 Ernst Krieck, Mythologie des bürgerlichen Zeitalters (Leipzig: Armanen-Verlag, 1939), p. 86. 32 “Das Gesetz zur Sicherung der Einheit von Partei und Staat (1933/1934),” Nationalsozialistisches Jahrbuch 1938, pp. 148-163, here 152-153. 33 Cf. Hennemann, Grundzüge einer deutschen Ethik.

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– As a biological ethics it aimed at bringing about a rebirth of the biological instinct for spiritual health and a racially appropriate morality that Christianity’s “love-thy-enemy” philosophy had destroyed.34 Nazi racial ethics was incompatible with the political humanism of human and civil rights and the Christian welfare ethics of unconditional charity. Racially conscious behavior was to become self-evident through the development of biological moral attitudes and intuition: – A racial instinct was to be triggered in Germans that would condition them to intuitively act and morally judge in a race-conscious manner and thereby assume the biological responsibility for the people’s community. – While members of the racial people’s community shared a “common good based on reciprocity,”35 they were supposed to act according to their racio-biological self-interest toward inferior “nonAryans.” – The new man of Nazism was supposed to be a political soldier and racial warrior in the ultimate worldview struggle, in whom the unconditional trust in the “moral strength of judgment of blood” (“moralische Urteilskraft des Blutes”) could be placed. The inexorable bonds between the Nazi critique of bourgeois morality, the attempt at justifying and enforcing an original Nazi morality, and the moral conditioning of the new man was forged by challenging any universal morality encompassing all people.36 A racially indifferent morality deemed responsible for the weakening of the national organism was to be replaced by a racially appropriate biological humanism. Nazi ideology claimed a radical break with bourgeois ethics whose universal humanism it rejected as anachronistic and no longer up-to-date. At the same time it tried to make some of these humanist values such as human dignity, charity, and the common good based on reciprocity part of its own raciobiological ethical framework. Although they also used an aggressive and 34

Karl Pintschovius, “Die Wiedergeburt des Instinktes,” Das Reich, August 18, 1940, no. 13, pp. 17-18. 35 Das Schwarze Korps, November 28, 1940, no. 48, p. 12. 36 Ernst Tugendhat, “Der moralische Universalismus in der Konfrontation mit der Nazi-Ideologie,” in Werner Konitzer and Raphael Gross (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2009), pp. 61-75.

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anti-humanist rhetoric to criticize these and other fundamental values of bourgeois-Christian ethics, the underlying thrust of Nazi racial ethics portrayed the Nordic race as the predestined fulfillment of humanism. The development of racial attitudes and a reliable racial instinct were meant to enable the Germans to liberate humanism from racially indifferent exaggerations and place it on a racio-ethical foundation.37 The following examples of Nazi rhetorical patterns illustrate this balancing act of criticizing humanist and Christian ethics while simultaneously appropriating ethnic versions of humanist values and thought figures: – The Germans were supposed to listen to their conscience and moral intuition - guided by a racial instinct, and they were to judge and act intuitively based on Nazi racial ideology.38 – Nazi ideology appealed to the Germans' strength of judgment, their readiness to take on responsibility, and their conscientiousness, to the “power of judgment of blood” and their responsibility toward their race and people.39 – They were not supposed to be a faceless and characterless robotic mass but personalities with their own individual profile, that of the racially conscious ethnic comrade.40 – Nazi ideology pledged to give human dignity its due scope by enhancing the status of the racio-biologically strong, who alone would be granted a life of racial dignity .41 – The Germans were supposed to act in accordance with the principle of charity - once they had affirmed, informed by the racial laws of nature and life, who deserved due care as a fellow man and to whom, as an alien to the community for reasons of racial hygiene and national health, this was to be denied.42 37

Alfred Bäumler, “Der Kampf um den Humanismus,” in Idem, Politik und Erziehung. Reden und Aufsätze (Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1937), pp. 57-66, here 57-58. 38 “Geist, Instinkt, Glaube,” Das Schwarze Korps, November 5, 1942, no. 45, p. 4. 39 Walter Gross, “Die ewige Stimme des Blutes im Strome deutscher Geschichte,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 10 (1933), pp. 257-260. 40 “Das Ende des Lebens,” Das Schwarze Korps, March 25, 1943, no. 12, p. 4. 41 Walther Brunk, “Nationalsozialistische Erbpflege, Blutmaterialismus oder göttliches Naturgesetz?,” Der Schulungsbrief, vol. 6 (1939) no. 3, pp. 356-358 and Walter Hebenbrock, “Nationalsozialistische Wohlfahrtspflege ist Gesundheitsdienst,” Der Schulungsbrief, vol. 5 (1938) no. 12, pp. 440-446. 42 Walter Gross, “Unsere Arbeit gilt der deutschen Familie,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 9 (1939) no. 107, pp. 99-106.

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– Nazi ideology placed man at the center of this Nazi value revolution - but only in his capacity of functioning as “the temporary vessel for the maintenance of the hereditary pool (“Erbmasse”).”43 – It expressly recognized humanism, human rights, the freedom of belief, and the freedom of conscience – as long as these did not conflict with the racial laws, and their validity was restricted to biologically superior human beings.44 – Nazi ideology claimed to be committed to the holiness and inviolability of human life even after approving the systematic destruction of “life unworthy of life;” it took it for granted that its commitment applied only to racio-biologically valuable life.45 These examples demonstrate the contradiction between universal ethical concepts and their reduction to values valid only for the members of the Nordic race. The Nordic race claimed moral leadership in the name of racial humanism. This indicates that Nazi ideology was at least rhetorically serious about keeping the value system of humanism, but only for the racially superior. Nazism threatened to destroy the very bourgeois society that had cultivated it. The bourgeois value system was accused of having allowed Christian welfare ethics and culturally destructive fantasies of human and civil rights to supplant natural selection. Bourgeois humanism had supposedly destroyed the natural foundation of social development by undermining the struggle for existence in a pseudo-humanistic fashion. Nazi race ethics countered with the promise to liberate human behavior from unnecessary moral inhibitions. Nazism was not a “socialism of equality” but rather committed itself to a “natural and Godgiven inequality”46 of people. According to the Nazi worldview, there was no single humanity or human as such but rather only people with certain racial characteristics and hybridizations.47 The idea of the equality of all people pursued by Christian morality and bourgeois human rights had subverted the natural spirit of struggle and racial instinct 43

H. Finck, “Volksgesundheit und Liebesleben,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (1934) no. 8, pp. 287-294, here 289. 44 Hildebrandt, Norm, Entartung, Verfall, p. 276. 45 Gerhard Wagner, “Rasse und Volksgesundheit,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (1934) no. 18, pp. 675-685, here 683. 46 Idem, “Gesundheitsführung im nationalsozialistischen Staat,” Der Schulungsbrief, vol. 6 (1939) no. 1, pp. 45-46, here 46. 47 Walter Gross, “Rasse und Weltanschauung,” Weltkampf, March 1938, no. 171, pp. 97-108, here 105.

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of the superior race which jeopardized its survival.48 Unconditional empathy and humanity were discredited as the racially indifferent fraternization of mankind and an anachronistic relic of a bourgeois age that Nazism had outgrown. Nazi ethics rejected any universal value system that encompassed all peoples and races and, in particular, the idea of universal human rights.49 Instead, it based its ultimate justification on the value of race. People were neither equal nor of equal value but superior or inferior depending upon their racial membership and value.50 Human inequality was deemed a fact of nature whereas accepting equality supposedly stood in contrast to biological thought.51 The Nazi concept of justice promised not the same to everyone but to each his own.52 Membership in the racial people’s community was a prerequisite for staking a claim to the community’s morality. As strangers to the community (“Gemeinschaftsfremde”) were excluded from this community morality, they were deemed immoral. Consequently, they were either exposed to the caprices of the community or the precepts of a negative morality that sought to discriminate and destroy them. In other words, the higher humanity of the race was at odds with a “thoughtless humanity”53 that only protected the inferior. Belonging to a particular race determined the moral or immoral behavior of its members. Simultaneously, the members of the superior race were called upon to demonstrate their individual eligibility by forming the corresponding attitude. The racial order of values was supposed to transform itself into racial instinct. Nazism highlighted people’s natural bonds to their race and their ethical obligations to their people. As it was stated, the individual could only develop his or her capabilities and individual characteristics within the framework of his or her racial membership. Belonging to a certain race determined who deserved moral care and who did not.54 The new morality replaced Christian self-denial with the principle of self-assertion toward 48

Friedrich Wieneke, Charaktererziehung im Nationalsozialismus (Soldin: H. Madrasch, 1936), pp. 17 and 19. 49 Hennemann, Grundzüge einer deutschen Ethik, p. 5. 50 “Was ist Sozialismus,” SS-Leithefte (BA NS 31/421, p. 116). 51 Walter Gross, “Der Rassegedanke des Nationalsozialismus,” Der Schulungsbrief, vol. 1 (1934) no. 2, pp. 6-20, here 14. 52 Ferdinand Roßner, “Die Biologie im Kampf mit lebensfeindlichen Mächten,” Weltkampf, January 1937, no. 157, pp. 1-7, here 5. 53 Ernst Günther Gründel, Die Sendung der jungen Generation. Versuch einer umfassenden revolutionären Sinndeutung der Krise (Munich: Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1932), pp. 316. 54 Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, Der Einzelne und die Gemeinschaft (Munich: Langen Müller, 1939), p. 27.

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the inferior. As morality had been designated as a testing ground of natural selection, the strongest and most resilient also had to prove their moral superiority in the struggle for existence. The upshot of this clash was declared a moral ordeal, and whosoever emerged victorious in this struggle also asserted him-/ herself, morally. Selection in the struggle for existence was declared the most divine law of life, nature, and creation, which justified eradicating people incapable of or unfit for life as obstacles to the will of the Creator.55 Enforcing this law confirmed the holiness of human life and brought humankind closer to perfection and health whereas “liberalistic humanity as the safeguard of the inferior, the lazy and criminal”56 had thwarted the will of the Creator. Out of humility and respect for creation, man ought not, according to this ideology, question the moral ordeal carried out by natural selection and the struggle for existence. Blasphemous doubt in the normative validity of this judgment would be redeemed by destroying life unworthy of life out of respect for creation. This only reasonable response to the danger that threatened the health and existence of the German people claimed to be in accordance with the valid racial and community morality. The people was introduced as a biological organism exposed to the same dangers as every individual. After all, a people could be more or less healthy, capable of acting, subjected to mood swings, and prone to temptations. Before racially conscious behavior could be taken for granted as health-conscious behavior, a people might have to go through a crisis that threatened its very existence, according to this ethics. Racial awareness was to spring from confronting the potential downfall of the German people. The hope was that once Germans became aware of the dangers of racial indifference and the irresponsible neglect of the nation’s ethnic fiber the necessary change in consciousness would take place and make clear to them how their own lives and the state of the national organism were directly related. The Germans were blamed for having neglected breeding and their own race. Their indifference to the law of race had caused the decline of the German people and the “subversion of faith, character and morality” with the “infiltration of blood foreign to the race.”57 Intermarrying with non-Aryans had sapped the life force of the Germans and caused inner

55

Wagner, “Rasse und Volksgesundheit,” p. 683. Weltkampf, April 1936, no. 148, p. 183 (under the headline “World Jewification and Defense - Weltverjudung und Abwehr”). 57 Walter Gross, “Politik und Rassenfrage,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 3 (1933) no. 14, pp. 409-415, here 412. 56

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turmoil.58 Non-Aryans and those deemed inferior had to be excluded from the community so that all Germans could identify them as racial vermin and act accordingly. Their public and legally justified exclusion was expected to reduce the probability of racial intermarriage that subverted the community. Racial mixing came to be identified as a crime against the people.

III. Acting in Concert with the Laws of Life and Nature: The Racio-Ethical Justification for Eugenics and Euthanasia Nazism regarded itself as a movement that would help the German people recover by mobilizing their healthy life instincts.59 Caring for and breeding the strong and healthy replaced caring for the weak and ill. Keeping the inferior alive “artificially” was characterized as sentimentality alien to the Nordic race. Nazi racial politics insisted that life unworthy of life had to be eliminated, which would boost the “people’s sense of togetherness.”60 Showing empathy toward those suffering from an inherited disease was not only a violation of the laws of nature and life but also against the will of God and creation. Life does not concern itself with individuals and their trivial fates. Everyone was supposedly but one link in the chain of life and one drop in the great blood stream of history.61 The slogan “the common good over the welfare of the individual” underscored the intention of bringing basic selfish instincts under the control of the national community. From the Nazi point of view, everything revolved around the duties to the people’s community and not the rights of the individual. An individual’s value was determined by the extent to which he or she was of use to the community.62 The laws of life had to be brutal in order to ensure that the degenerate would be destroyed before it could endanger the existence of the race. Acting in conformity with the laws of life meant being hard and unsympathetic toward those who had no chance at survival in the struggle for existence if left to their own devices. Forming such an attitude marked the moral elite of the new man. If someone’s strength did not suffice in the 58

Gerhart Schinke, “Woran sterben Völker? Auslese und Gegenauslese,” SSLeitheft, vol. 5 (1939) no. 3, pp. 15-19, here 15. 59 Jaensch, Der Gegentypus, p. XXXII. 60 Ibid., p. 210. 61 Gross, “Politik und Rassenfrage,” p. 413. 62 Schattenfroh, Wille und Rasse, p. 193.

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struggle for survival, one ought to be refused all support for racio-ethical reasons. The Germans forged by the new racial morality were expected to make their own contribution to creating a society free of life unworthy of life and inferior races. Based on the merciless acceptance of natural selection and the destruction of inferior life, they were supposed to take it upon themselves to kill what life had already sentenced to death. As a result of the Nazis’ transvaluation of values, the terms weakness and need as well as strength and perseverance took on new meanings. The capacity for suffering, tolerance, and placidity no longer marked the morally chosen but rather indicated one’s incapability to hold one’s ground in the struggle for existence. The dominant in the struggle for existence were called upon not to bastardize it with supposedly false humanity and exaggerated pity for the inferior unfit for life. The concept of a universal humanity indifferent to race was blamed for abasing race and hindering the necessary eradication of the bad races while economically burdening the superior races. Due to their excessive increase progressively more resources had to be expended to keep alive the supposedly inferior and unfit who would not have survived on their own. Instead of supporting the healthy who were capable of working, inferiors were kept alive who burdened both themselves and the community. Nature, which allegedly always promotes the strong and healthy, would have long since mercilessly eradicated them.63 Human interference in natural selection had caused this degeneration. Nazi racial ideology argued that protecting those unworthy of life prevented the natural selection of the superior and the inferior. In other words, a morality of weakness had prevented the laws of life and nature from properly asserting themselves in the natural struggle for existence. That struggle was not to be restricted by any moral considerations as it supposedly benefitted the strong, granting them their “rightful” leadership role in society. Those of high racial quality were not supposed to feel remorse about exercising their mastery over the inferior. They were, instead, to develop a master morality that would justify their leadership position as natural. The strong needed to be protected from the moral blackmail of the weak. Cultural and religious resentments in the struggle for existence were blamed for moral decay and the suppression of natural instincts. Racio-biological ethics and euthanasia had been criticized even before the Nazis seized power. The argument ran that those who were too weak to stand up for, or to care for themselves needed special care and that dealing with them evidenced the value of the principles of humanity. In 1929, Emil Abderhalden, the editor of Ethik, replied to the customary euphe63

Gross, “Die ewige Stimme des Blutes im Strome deutscher Geschichte,” p. 259.

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misms of public health care that justified killing the racially inferior as being in their own interest as it relieved their pain and suffering and unburdened the community: “With a pure biological ethics, we can absolutely reconcile the destruction of weaklings. The idea of helping the weak and giving them special care is something entirely new from a biological standpoint. Caring for the mentally and chronically ill has increased so dramatically and the costs for lodging them and caring for them are so high that some think too little remains for the healthy. From a purely biological standpoint, it is ethically justifiable to kill the ill for the sake of the healthy, but our entire inner being rebels against such an ‘ethics.’”64 Instead of offering potential apologies and justifications for the killing of life unworthy of life, Abderhalden insisted on underpinning a biological ethics with the principle of unconditional humanity. After the Nazis seized power, he expressly committed himself to racial ethics, in which it was taken for granted that the public interest took precedence over self-interest.65 Nazi ethics set the right of nature against natural law. In their naturalist fatalism, the Nazis believed that they were endorsed by nature itself to assume eugenic control and racio-biological leadership. They perceived themselves as acting in accordance with the laws of nature, life and, in particular, natural selection.66 This law ensured that those fit for life prevailed over the weak and needy. Those incapable of asserting themselves in the struggle for existence were doomed to destruction. Only those who could survive on their own were granted the right to live. Racial hygiene was to cure the ills of society by counteracting the restriction of the supposedly cruel laws of life upon which humans had previously encroached. Eugenic encroachment in nature, which had been degenerated by race indifferent charity and humanism, was justified with the necessity of restoring an original state of nature untouched by ethical considerations. People had supposedly become estranged from their inner nature under the moral pressure of cultural norms. Instead of confidently following their natural instincts and intuitions they had accepted their having been culturally discredited with the consequence that they were no longer able to behave in accordance with their biological nature.

64

Emil Abderhalden, “Sind ethische Grundzüge wandelbar?,” Ethik, vol. 5 (1929), May, pp. 410-421, here 413. 65 Emil Abderhalden, “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz,” Ethik, vol. 12 (1935), Sept./ Oct., pp. 1-12. 66 Wieneke, Charaktererziehung im Nationalsozialismus, p. 43.

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The medical discourse of racial hygiene and national health played a pivotal role in the implementation of Nazi racial policy.67 The “new ethics of the doctor’s profession” saw the German physician as a “health leader” who was no longer concerned with “caritative welfare” for the needy but with “productive prophylaxis”68 against life unworthy of life. While the physician of previous times was motivated toward curing ill individuals, the “Nazi doctors” were no longer “physicians of the individual” but “physicians of the nation.”69 Cold humanism was neither a contemporary characteristic nor befitting of the new physician’s standing. The incurably ill and handicapped were denied medical care that only the racially superior could expect to receive.70 In the future, those with untreatable handicaps would not be born in the first place. The new physician was no longer supposed to be hampered by pseudo-humanist empathy71 for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped. Ethical and religious qualms about encroaching on the right to life of those suffering from an inherited disease were dismissed as unfounded.72 Humans may have all been equal before God but not before the German physician whose care was given only to “German racial comrades seeking help ”73 and to those free of hereditary illness. The German physician was supposed to be a “biological soldier.”74 Armed with his “race hygiene conscience,”75 he could efficiently combat inherited diseases and those who supposedly bore them without any hindrance from confessional or obsolete professional resentments of a sick zeitgeist. The systematic killing of racially inferior life was justified as the correction of untenable states in the people’s health through social hygiene. Euthanasia was introduced as a means of correcting a system of care for those in need which had supposedly gotten out of control, as it no 67

Cf. Ziel und Weg: Zeitschrift des Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Ärztebundes, 1931-1939. 68 E. Hamann, “Ärztliche Standesethik im Dritten Reich,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (1934) no. 17, pp. 641-645, here 645. 69 Th. Lang, “Der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Ärztebund,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 1 (1930) no. 1, p. 38-39, here 39. 70 Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, “Gedanken über das Wertproblem in der Medizin,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 5 (1935) no. 5, pp. 122-128, here 127. 71 Cf. Edgar Weidner, “Das neue ärztliche Denken im nationalsozialistischen Staate,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (1934) no. 13, pp. 486-490, here 489. 72 Wagner, “Rasse und Volksgesundheit,” p. 683. 73 Weidner, “Das neue ärztliche Denken,” p. 524. 74 Ibid., pp. 489-490. 75 Roderich v. Ungern-Sternberg, “Wie verhält sich die Rassenhygiene zur Sozialpolitik?,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (1934) no. 17, pp. 654-656, here 656.

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longer corresponded to actual conditions. This unresolved ambivalence between threatening to kill inferior life and promising to redeem it sparked the German debate on euthanasia before the Nazis seized power. The threat of systematically ending life that could only be maintained by external care highlighted the scarce resources of the social and the health policy. The argument ran that resources were disproportionally spent on caring for and keeping alive the incurably ill while the healthy and productive lacked basic health resources. In contrast, the promise to end a life forever reduced to pain and suffering allegedly took on the implied perspective of the incurably ill and mentally handicapped. The counterargument to moral scruples regarding killing the racially inferior and those suffering from inherited diseases was that ending their suffering was in the best interest of the afflicted who were perceived to be unfit to live on their own. Even if they realized that death was the only solution to their unbearable situation, it was assumed that they would be incapable of killing themselves. As they were too helpless to articulate their needs, they needed advocates who could empathize with their situation and find the best solution for both those affected and for society. It was assumed that, if these unhappy creatures themselves were able to communicate and act, they would most likely choose their own death as a relief from unbearable pain and suffering. Therefore, the understanding of those in favor of euthanasia was that it was about assisting those incapable of ending their own degrading, unworthy life. This made them dependent upon the help of others who saw their relief through euthanasia not only as a moral duty toward the community of the healthy but also toward those whose lives were reduced to such an extent that living was no longer worthwhile. Nazi racial ideology justified euthanasia and the Holocaust as means of elimination that would restore the healthy body of the people and rid humanity of racio-cultural diseases and its human pathogens. They regarded their political program of racial hygiene and restoring the people’s health as applied biology.76 Their ideological self-authorization to rectify faulty historical developments sought liberation from unconditional moral obligations among humans as members of the human species. Perfecting the human species biologically was to be achieved by selecting superior humans and simultaneously eradicating inferior humans deemed worthless.

76

Cf. Änne Bäumer (ed.), NS-Biologie (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1990). Peter Weingart/Jürgen Kroll/Kurt Bayertz, Rasse, Blut und Gene. Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992).

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Euthanasia and the Holocaust can be seen as variations of the destruction of humans whose genetic material was deemed damaged beyond repair. They were either considered incurably ill, or they were doomed to be eradicated by virtue of their fateful membership in the Jewish race. Though there was no direct path leading from euthanasia to Auschwitz, continuities and parallels are visible, for instance, in the technology of mass killing, the medical personnel involved in the campaigns of destruction, and the, albeit modified, racio-hygienically justified destruction of allegedly inferior life.77 As practicing charity and caring for one’s fellow men were decried as the Christian humanistic self-denial of human nature regardless of racial belonging or the quality of life, Germans were called upon to commit themselves to their own nature and break the chains of moral blackmail from an unnatural form of humanism. Nazi racial ideology stated that there was no reason for having a bad conscience about the superiority derived from belonging to the Nordic race while losing oneself to egalitarian fantasies. It was taken as self-evident that nature’s way of selecting only the best and fittest individuals in the struggle for survival was hard and cruel.78 Nazi racial ideologues claimed that the other extreme of caring for and maintaining all weak and crippled people, who were neither productive nor able to enjoy their lives, had a similarly devastating impact on the population.79 The Germans were considered members of the master race. Free from ethical, religious, or any other considerations that might have stopped them from acting out their racial superiority they were supposed to act in accordance with the precepts of a new morality which brought the unrestricted “natural rights of the stronger” to the fore. The goal was to ensure that history would also fall under the natural law of the struggle for existence according to the sole right of the stronger as it had once been. This normative naturalism perceived itself in harmony with biological evolution as nature knew neither sympathy nor morality but rather only the right of the stronger. The stronger was to follow his natural instinct by seeking to not merely defeat but to destroy the enemy. Morality was supposedly unnecessary for him; he was able to assert his will on the weaker by virtue 77 Robert N. Proctor, “Nazi Biomedical Policies,” in Arthur L. Caplan (ed.), When Medicine went Mad. Bioethics and the Holocaust (Totowa/New Jersey: Humana Press, 1992), pp 23-42, quote from p. 37. 78 Alfred Mjöen, “Die biologische Lebensauffassung und Sippenpflege,” in Michael Hesch and Günther Spannaus (eds.), Kultur und Rasse. Otto Reche zum 60. Geburtstag (Munich/Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1939), pp. 131-139, here 131. 79 Walter Gross, “Rasse und Weltanschauung,” pp. 103.

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of his own strength. Limiting the rights of the stronger to protect the weak and needy from their encroachments was decried as unnatural. In the drive to live, the humanity of nature as the morality of strength allegedly prevailed over an immoral humanity of weakness. Basing morality on the individuals’ need for protection, on the other hand, supposedly placed normative fetters on the community, the race, and the stronger individuals while the racial policy supported the process of natural selection by destroying the ill and weak. “A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital in its ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd fetters of the so-called humanity of individuals, in order to replace it by the humanity of Nature which destroys the weak to give his place to the strong.”80 Nazi racial ideology states that nature uses struggle as a means to keep life strong and healthy “because whatever cannot be victorious in struggle has to perish.”81 It was supposedly a law of life to destroy anything weak and inferior and allow only the strong to procreate.82 Only the racially superior and healthy were, therefore, granted the right to reproduce while reproduction was deemed impossible where it would mean suffering, misery, and damage to the individual and the community.83 Racio-hygienic precautions were supposed to ensure that the inferior and hereditarily ill were not born in the first place. Instead of artificially extending their lives with exaggerated care, they should be left to themselves, which usually meant certain death, or they should be systematically eradicated.84 While everything unhealthy and inferior in nature becomes extinct on its own, a culturally degenerated society supposedly has to consciously counter the decay with racial politics. The weak and needy were to be treated hard and mercilessly, and without humane care. To ensure the triumph of the racial laws of life, one had to be hard on oneself before one could be hard on others.85 80 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971), p. 132. 81 Von SS-Hscha Dr. Schinke, “Von den ewigen Gesetzen des Lebens,” SSLeitheft, vol. 4 (1939) no. 8, pp. 27-29, here 29. 82 Der Reichsführer SS (ed.), SS-Mann und Blutsfrage: die biologischen Grundlagen und ihre sinngemässe Anwendung für die Erhaltung und Mehrung des nordischen Blutes (Berlin: SS-Hauptamt-Schulungsamt, 1941), p. 5. 83 Walther Brunk, “Nationalsozialistische Erbpflege, Blutmaterialismus oder göttliches Naturgesetz?,” p. 356. 84 Heinz Neu, “Biologische Politik. Deutschland, das künftige Reich gesunder Wohlfahrt, sozialer Gerechtigkeit und pflichtbewusster Freiheit,” Weltkampf, February 1933, no. 110, pp. 43-51, here 49. 85 Walter Gross, “Volk und Rasse,” Der Schulungsbrief, vol. 6 (1939) no. 4, pp. 143-148, here 147.

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People were to resist the temptation to improve upon life and the world, i.e. the work of the Creator. They should instead allow nature and natural selection to differentiate between humans according to their fitness for life. Man ought not to meddle with or resist the will of nature but rather marvel at creation whose part he was. Only misunderstanding what it means to be human would lead him to support the weak and the unfit for life. What appeared to be humanity supposedly undermined the natural foundations of human existence. The laws of nature always ensure the triumph of the stronger over the weaker in the struggle for existence. The healthier and stronger a people was, the greater was the brutality needed for securing its continued existence and future.86 A culture oriented toward humanism and Christian charity obviously left nature few options for eradicating the inferior. The unconditional protection of the weak and valueless meant that the inferior would elude the “fate of early destruction they would have otherwise faced.”87 This is why the Nazi racial policy had to eradicate those unworthy of life.88 “Racially conscious superior men” living according to the healthy race instinct lacked moral scruples when killing those with inherited disease since they considered these killings necessary to ensure the future of the German people.89 Nazi racial ideology distinguished between negative eugenics, which focused on the eradication of inferior person, and positive eugenics, which sought to improve the racial substance of Aryans. Using the metaphor of a garden, people were called upon to eliminate the quickly multiplying “human weeds in culture” to put a stop to the “deterioration of the human race.”90 A positive eugenics would still be necessary, however, to enhance the human species and human life that consciously promotes the best, strongest, healthiest, and most capable. As expected, negative eugenics met with vehement resistance as it indeed violated, in particular, “humanitarian and Christian unconditional egalitarianism.”91 In Nazism, the Germans’ obligation to their racial community and the racial health of the German people replaced the common sense morality of 86

“Ächtung der Entarteten,” Das Schwarze Korps, 1 April 1937, no. 13, p.11. “Lebensgestaltung, wie wir sie wollen,” Das Schwarze Korps, 27 March 1935, no. 4, p. 10. 88 Karl Zimmermann, “Biologie und Rasse,” Weltkampf, April 1936, no. 148, pp. 145-159, here 150. 89 Karl Kötschau, “Ein Beitrag zur nationalsozialistischen Revolution in der Medizin,” Ziel und Weg, vol. 4 (3rd part) (1934) no. 1, pp.11-16, here 11. 90 Schiller, “Die Eugenik als sittliches Ideal,” p. 342. 91 Brunk, Nationalsozialistische Erbpflege, Blutmaterialismus oder göttliches Naturgesetz?, p. 356. 87

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human reciprocity. The unconditional and general prohibition of homicide fostered by universal humanism was supposed to be replaced by the commandment to kill individuals and groups identified as an incurable threat to the people’s health. The conditioned readiness to kill was contrasted with the culturally induced intuitive inhibition to kill, which included everyone, without exception. The killing of racial vermin and those deemed incapable of living in the community (“Gemeinschaftsunfähige”) was considered a moral imperative to the community, the German people, and the Nordic race. Killing the racially inferior and incurably ill was established as a racio-hygienic measure to restore health to the people’s body and to deliver humanity from biological-cultural illnesses and the human pathogens that caused them, thus: “Thou shalt kill the parasite!”92 A bourgeois-humanist ethics was blamed for shielding the weak and inferior from the risks inherent in the struggle for existence. It enabled them to survive natural selection even though they were no longer able to successfully fight for themselves in the struggle for existence. Nature clearly would have eradicated them because they were incapable of surviving on their own. Nazi ideology suggested that these people should be handled much more brutally and plunged headlong into the struggle for life. Of course, this implied that they would have no chance of survival because they would be helplessly exposed to the consequences of their handicap. In their case, natural selection would mean certain death. Surprising at first glance, Nazism called on people to have humility, to practice moderation in all things human, and to show reverence for life in the form created by God. It claimed to be strongly opposed to man’s presumptuousness when trying to impose his will on nature. Committing themselves to the biological laws of life and nature, Nazi ideologues argued against artificially extending life for those unable to live on their own. They insisted that people were not free in their actions but dependent upon race and blood. The concept of free will was said to contradict the laws of nature and life as well as being out of touch with racio-biological reality.

IV. Ethical Discrimination of the Jews The destruction of the Jews and their morality was justified as a means of rectifying history, whose natural order had been disrupted by moral restrictions.93 This moral transgression would not have been possible with92

Eggers, Vom mutigen Leben und tapferen Sterben, p. 71. Harold I. Kaplan, Conscience and Memory. Meditations in a Museum of the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 59. 93

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out a revaluation of all values. It did not suffice for the Nazis to merely oversee the life and death of the members of “inferior races” at their mercy. Dehumanizing those doomed to destruction through degrading living conditions supposedly led to the loss of self-respect and dignity instilling in them a sense of cultural, moral, and social death which preceded physical death that is if “natural death” from hunger or illness did not strike first. Moral categories no longer applied to them before their biological death. Jews were no longer granted dignity, respect, or the status of moral subjects. Their thoughts, feelings, and behavior became irrelevant to their assessment. As they had been reduced to belonging to a morally inferior race, the reference system of mutual moral obligations no longer applied to them. Hence, they were exposed to practices of degradation and dehumanization to make them resemble the ideological caricature of racially inferior subhuman creatures. Hannah Arendt succinctly captured this element of total power: “Once the movements have come to power, they proceed to change reality in accordance with their ideological claims.”94 As the Jews were defined by their racial belonging they had no way of escaping stigmatization. After all, the Nazis rejected their conversion to Christianity, cultural assimilation, or patriotism as a deliberate cunning strategy to endanger the Nordic race. It was repeatedly emphasized that the Jews were “the antagonists and deadly enemies of the highest values and most profound ideas of the European peoples.”95 Their foreign nature had nothing to do with their faith, morality, or education, which meant that it could not “be changed by converting, emancipation or assimilation”96 because of their fixed hereditary racial predispositions. Furthermore, driving the Jews out of Germany and settling them elsewhere in Europe would not solve the Jewish question; they would have to be driven out of Europe altogether. After the issue of the Jews’ future in Europe had been decided - they had no future there, the focus on the Jewish question shifted to “determine which group of persons was to be considered Jewish.”97 Importance was placed solely on racial considerations and not on religious affiliation, rootedness, or nationality. No Jew could escape the stigma of moral inferiority ascribed to the Jewish race. The anti-Semitic racial ideology did not merely characterize Jewish morality as negative but insisted on giving a face to Jewish immorality by enumerating morally reprehensible actions and attitudes of spe94

Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 471. Walter Gross, Zur Lösung der Judenfrage, p. 5. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 95

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cific Jewish criminals and perverts. The SA-weekly “Der Stürmer” in particular consistently utilized a stereotypical martial rhetoric to depict the “gruesome Jewish skull” and “Devil’s grimace” behind whose “mask of innocence” lurked all manner of vices. Depicted were Jews accused of race defilement, whose faces spewed horror and evil.98 The racio-ethical revaluation of values sought to replace independent sensory perceptions, experiences, and judgments as the common ground of moral intuitions with a framework of ideological stereotypes, images, and meanings. Exaggerated caricatures and staged images, much in the style of the primitive pornographic anti-Semitism of “Der Stürmer,” attempted to make the different but always prejudiced and stigmatizing views of the Jews perceptible. This ideological material was supposed to encourage Germans to use their imagination and make sense of anti-Semitic stereotypes such as the cunning, perverted, conspiring, and deceiving Jew. According to the totalitarian view, this ideology was deemed necessary due to a discrepancy between the deceptive surface of things and their actual essence. In a totalitarian society, “ideological thinking becomes emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five senses, and insists on a truer reality concealed behind all perceptible things, dominating them from this place of concealment and requiring a sixth sense that enables us to become aware of it. The sixth sense is provided by precisely the ideology.”99 The ideological conditioning of the five senses through the sixth sense of ideology aimed to make racio-biological truths visible. It sought, for instance, to make assimilated Jews who had covered up their Jewishness and were no longer recognizable as such identifiable. If the Nazis were to prove the inferiority of the Jewish sub-humans, the hidden threat of racial contamination, and a global Jewish conspiracy, mere abstract attributions would not suffice. Ideologically untrained, politically indifferent Germans in particular were provided with telling images, convincing statistics, and the scientific cogency of unequivocal expertise in the propaganda campaign against the Jewish danger that, as one of the eternal problems and threats faced by mankind throughout history, needed to be solved once and for all through the final solution of the Jewish question, i.e. the extermination of the Jewish race. The 1940 propaganda movie “Der Ewige Jude“ was a cunning cinematic stigmatization of “the eternal Jew“. Surely a masterpiece of inhumane propaganda, it served to ideologically prime the Germans for the destruction of the Jewish race. A sophisticated combination of unforgettable images, catchphrases, and suggestive proof, it conjured a multi-faceted 98 99

Cf. Der Stürmer, January 1938, special edition. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 470.

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image of the Jewish danger that was composed of Jewish craftiness and scrupulousness, big-city ghetto culture and a cosmopolitan appearance, abysmal primitiveness and shiftiness, and limitless adaptability coupled with ice-cold calculation. A Jewish world conspiracy was trumped up to portray the shape-shifting Jew as unswervingly focused on the execution of their ultimate goal: conquering the world through financial speculation and political conspiracies by means of capitalism, communism, and the racial contamination of their host people. Only one (ideo)logical conclusion could be drawn: the Jewish race had to be remorselessly eradicated in the interest of social hygiene, national health, self-preservation, and the very survival of the German people. Two examples in the movie point to the particular danger presented by assimilated Jews no longer identifiable as such who could racially subvert the German people, unbeknown. One scene depicts young men whose traditional clothing and beards explicitly mark them as Jews. By overlaying images of the same men, now clean-shaven with fresh haircuts and in Western clothing, the director underscores the contrast between their assimilated appearance and their former cultural markers. Finally, another scene shows Berlin salon and coffeehouse Jews in order to demonstrate that they had shamelessly adopted the milieu of modern urban culture so that the ideologically untrained eye could no longer distinguish them from ordinary Berliners. Precisely because many Jews were, to the casual observer, indistinguishable from Germans, their innermost essence had to be brought to the surface – their vanity and religious intolerance, their icecold rationality and ability to parasitically thrive, their greed, hypocrisy, and untruthfulness as well as their craftiness and cowardice.100 The supposed Jewish art of concealment served as a justification for the implementation of the Yellow Star: “As he does in his lifestyle, the Jew embodies a chameleon that circumstantially adopts the color of its surroundings. [...] Implementing the Yellow Star was a means of control of spiritual epidemics (“Maßnahme der seelischen Seuchenbekämpfung”) and a means of protection against physically camouflaged Jews”101 who could now be identified under their masks, especially when they superficially resembled Germans. Without sufficient ideological sensitivity and training, the Germans were supposedly at the mercy of the cunning deceptions of the Jews. Nazi 100

Cf. Werner Dittrich, Erziehung zum Judengegner. Hinweise zur Behandlung der Judenfrage im rassenpolitischen Unterricht, (Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1937), pp. 6-23. 101 Ahasver, “Ein Blick in das Verbrecheralbum,” Neues Volk, vol. 12 (1941) no. 9, p. 6.

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ideology provided vivid examples, images, and stories to illustrate the alleged racially inferior but also dangerous existence of the Jews.102 One decisive element of the anti-Semitic racial policy was translating ideological stigma into physical patterns of perception. The Jews were no longer portrayed as humans but as parasites, vermin, and subhuman creatures. Nazi ideology insisted that they had to be combated rigorously while a preemptive racial hygiene was to shield the German people. The Jew was, after all, not a human but rather the embodiment of decay that had lodged itself in the German people as a divisive bacterium (“Spaltpilz”).103 The struggle against the Jews was justified with the need for socio-hygienic prophylaxis, moral purification, and protection of the people’s community against racial infiltration and racial intermarriage. Supposedly differing from that of non-Jews, the Jews’ moral code explained why they could not expect to be treated in accordance with the moral standards of the German people. “Ridding all Europe of Jewry is not a matter of morality, but rather a question of state security. The Jew will always act in accordance with his nature and racial instinct. He cannot do otherwise. Just as a potato beetle destroys potatoes, the Jew destroys nations and peoples. There is only one solution: radical elimination of the danger.”104 While the Jews as the members of a purportedly inferior race were instinctively compelled to act immorally, Germans had yet to cultivate a comparable intuition to better equip themselves to act in line with Nazi morality. Their already-established racial instinct supposedly gave the Jews a temporary superiority over the Germans, who were still in disharmony with their own race because the racially indifferent ideas of charity, universal equality, and dignity that also extended to Jews still shaped their moral reasoning. It was not even possible to reproach the Jews for their immoral behavior as they were merely following their instincts which had conditioned them to destroy states and peoples. At this point, radical and effectual intervention free of moral resentment supposedly became necessary. Any other attitude would be foolish and irresponsible in respect to the German people and Europe as a whole. The magnitude of the danger demanded a

102

Cf. Julia Schäfer, Vermessen – gezeichnet – verlacht. Judenbilder in populären Zeitschriften 1918–1933 (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2005). 103 Walter Buch, Des nationalsozialistischen Menschen Ehre und Ehrenschutz (Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1939), p. 15. 104 Joseph Goebbels, “Überwundene Winterkrise. Rede im Berliner Sportpalast,” in: Goebbels, Der steile Aufstieg, (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944), p. 301.

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swift and thorough resolution. As “racial vermin,” the Jews could actually be compared “with a cancer, a rampant and destructive tumor.”105 The weekly newspaper “Der Stürmer,” edited by Julius Streicher, was particularly prolific in conditioning correct racio-political behavior. In practically every issue those who believed they could continue to act humanely and impartially towards Jews as friends, colleagues, neighbors, or customers were threatened with the publication of their names and addresses. They were given the chance to correct their supposedly politically naïve, simple-minded (or consciously provocative), and faulty raciopolitical behavior. Compliance with this demand did not go unmentioned but rather was showered with praise and held aloft as a shining example worthy of emulation. In this fashion, “Der Stürmer” repeatedly denounced non-Jewish Germans who were on friendly terms with Jews, conducted business with Jews, represented Jews in court, purchased Jewish commodities, or employed Jewish agents. Germans who had been noticed in the company of Jews at public venues - were treated by Jewish physicians, seen at Jewish funerals, and appeared publicly with Jews in other places as well as those who protected Jews, borrowed money from Jews, lent a table or silverware to Jews for family celebrations, not to mention those who had the temerity to wish a “Happy New Year” to Jews, all of them were named.106 Friendliness, neighborliness, or business encounters and relationships between Jews and non-Jews were to be prevented meaning that the coexistence of German Jews and non-Jews could lead to probation on racial grounds, during which Germans had to prove that they supported Nazi race politics.107 Nazism politically criminalized and prosecuted moral attitudes and actions that stood in contrast to race morality. Jews were denied the status of moral subjects, which absolved non-Jewish Germans from moral obligations toward them. Their discrimination and persecution as “inferior subhuman creatures” or “racial vermins” (“Volksschädlinge”) were expressly justified as a policy in conformity with the law in the interest of the German people and declared morally necessary for the health of the people. Many Germans were apparently grateful for the anti-Jewish laws that legalized the exclusion of Jews from the scope of moral obligations. The majority of apolitical Germans accepted the persecution of the Jews for

105

H.G., “Der asoziale Mensch. Ein biologisches Gleichnis,” Das Reich, 23 November 1941. 106 Der Stürmer, 6 February 1938. 107 Cf. Saul Friedländer, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008).

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fear of being disadvantaged or themselves or of becoming targets of persecution should they refuse to cooperate.

V. The Moral Attitude of the Perpetrators Initially, perpetrators were branded as violent pathological criminals. To this Hannah Arendt added the counter-argument of the inconspicuous personality structure of banal perpetrators unaware of the monstrosity of their crimes. Another approach insisted that the anonymization of the perpetrators through their categorization as cogs in the well-oiled machinery of the modern industrial society and bureaucracy absolved them of responsibility for their crimes. Christopher Browning's formulation of “ordinary men” or “ordinary Germans” highlighted that the perpetrators commonly stemmed from the midst of German society. There were perpetrators driven by a supposedly scientific worldview whereas others acted as desktop perpetrators (“Schreibtischtäter”) who considered whatever asked of them their unquestionable duty. There were also those who simply took the opportunities to advance their careers or to take advantage in other respects, with no concern for ideology at all. And finally, there were quite a few who were driven by their lower instincts while enjoying themselves as masters over life and death. However, Nazi perpetrators who were pathological criminals able to hide their disturbed personality under the screen of racio-political ideology were the exception. They often appeared as average normal human beings who neither would have had the opportunity nor would they have been tempted to take part in crimes and mass murder had the circumstances differed. This also holds true for those who did not actually participate in the crimes but tolerated them in silence instead of preventing them. In hindsight, these bystanders frequently blamed the zeitgeist or the ideologically charged atmosphere for their refusal to aid those persecuted for racial or political reasons. Either they claimed to have been intimidated by the Nazi system of terror or frankly admitted their sense of relief that they themselves had not been the target of discrimination and persecution. For this reason, they consciously avoided encounters with those who might have needed their help. In retrospect, they insisted that they would have stood up for them or at least not refused them empathy and respect had the circumstances been different. Along this line of argumentation, circumstances become central to the determination of a particular action as moral or immoral. Perpetrators portrayed themselves as victims of circumstances with which they had come to terms. They would have adapted to any circumstances simply because they considered it reasonable not to question any actions that

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appeared to be covered by laws and generally approved values. This in no way distinguished them from the majority of the Germans. Needless to say, they embraced the benefits of their willing cooperation with the system: recognition and professional advancement. For them, the advantages of the Nazi system vastly outweighed its disadvantages. They claimed to have had no interest in the ideological justifications of the Nazi policy. They were spared having to make their own decisions and judgments, for which they were grateful in retrospect as it left them unencumbered from personal guilt. According to this perspective, one can be guilty only if one breaks the law, violates moral standards, seeks personal profit at the expense of others, or deliberately causes others’ suffering. They insisted that none of that applied to them and that they were not to blame for their deeds as they had not initiated them. The perpetrators asserted that the ideological indoctrination had limited their moral culpability, which is why they lacked the freedom to make decisions whereas others even agreed with the criminal quality and moral reprehensibility of their deeds given they were granted extenuating circumstances that relativized their criminal responsibility as perpetrators. Or they claimed that they had been indifferent to the political circumstances and their ideological foundations so that they had not been aware of any wrongdoing or immoral behavior. As far as they could see it, they had acted lawfully and morally, i.e. in accordance with contemporary Nazi law and racial morality, i.e. Nazi law and race ethics. These arguments are well documented in recordings and interviews of Nazi perpetrators.108 The circumstances under which these recordings were made are crucial. Most were produced after the destruction of Nazism in connection with impending trials in which moral considerations were coupled with legal concerns. Even if it is patently clear that the perpetrators were trying to avoid a potential death sentence for crimes against humanity, these records are still valuable material promising to shed light on the moral order of Nazism. Furthermore, the distortions of their motives and reasons give us an idea about the perpetrators’ moral attitudes. These attitudes ranged from fanatical belief in the Nazi ideology right down to professional distance and a dutiful bureaucratic mentality. It is self-evident that we cannot simply accept their moral justifications although it would be misguided to ignore these transparent attempts at self-

108

Cf. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011); Steven Paskuly (ed.), Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Commandant at Auschwitz, Rudolph Höss (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1992).

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exoneration109 as irrelevant to explaining the behavior of Nazi perpetrators. As a rule, the Nazi perpetrators acted as members of military units or other political organizations within the hierarchies of command and decision-making, meaning they did not act on their own initiative or responsibility. Still, even though they were acting in accordance with the norms of their units or organizations, they had the opportunity and were encouraged to personally distinguish themselves. The Nazi racial worldview dictated their moral considerations and decisions, which made some of them claim in retrospect that their ideologically induced moral brutalization entitled them to reduced criminal responsibility in a fashion that is comparable to the emotional brutalization and psychological defects of sexual offenders. Most Germans either were adherents of Nazism because they shared its ideology or they supported Nazi policy by reliably carrying out supposedly unproblematic and nonpolitical professional duties. Even if they had been indifferent to the Nazi racial ideology and ethics, they were able to vigorously support its agenda.110 They felt obliged to give their best in carrying out their tasks, whose validity they did not challenge. From this it seems to follow that humans can act immorally without developing a personal immoral attitude. This paradox resolves itself when moral indifference itself is identified as an immoral attitude, as rejecting the moral assessment of a particular situation and acting accordingly. German physicians, judges, priests, teachers, commanders of concentration and extermination camps, and even train workers were deemed to have carried out their work with the kind of dedication, perseverance, and professionalism that seems to allow only one conclusion: All of these people, who kept the Nazi killing machinery operating for the Holocaust, and without whom it would not have functioned so smoothly and efficiently, believed that what they were doing was meaningful, useful, and morally unobjectionable. They did not just fulfill their duty or provide their services dispassionately but instead appreciated Nazism as the implementation of ideas to which they themselves were dedicated.111 It is a controversially discussed question whether classic ethical theories can at all be applied to extreme events such as the Holocaust, whose 109

Donald M. McKale, Nazis after Hitler: How Perpetrators of the Holocaust Cheated Justice and Truth (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012). 110 “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.” Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1964), p. 276. 111 Haas, Morality after Auschwitz, p. 1.

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possibility had not been foreseeable at the time these theories were formulated and thus could not, as historical reference, be adopted for the systematic rationale of such theories and the discussion as morally or immorally exposed practices. It is doubted that the norms judgments and justifications developed by classic ethics suffice to comprehend the Holocaust in its moral- ethical dimension.112 The assumption that Nazism had its own moral order can be seen as a reply to the historiographical and methodological skepticism with respect to understanding the Holocaust. In his book "Morality after Auschwitz" Peter Haas developed the concept of a unique Nazi ethics. It sparked an academic debate in the English-speaking world but attracted hardly any interest in Germany at the time.113 The debate centered on defining Nazi ethics and morality, the conditions under which morality is plausible, and the criteria for comparing differing moral systems. The main features of Peter Haas’ argumentation will be reviewed and discussed below. Haas defined ethics as an internally coherent system of convictions, values, and ideas that provided a standard for unambiguously identifying certain actions as moral or immoral. Ethical theories, according to Haas, either claim validity based on the fundamental principle of universalization or see their coherence in the plausibility of their judgments and valuations in the context of their specific origins and moral practices. Moral judgments are either justifiable as objective and scientific or they are considered plausible because of cultural specifics and the personal credibility of those who draw these judgments from their experiences and attitudes. Haas emphasized the cultural modes of thinking that a community of values shared and generally accepted linguistic conventions as grounds for the plausibility of a value system. While ethics enabled a systematic understanding of good and evil, morality designated the values of which ethics should consist. In other words, ethics should satisfy certain formal criteria and provide standards that enable people to describe specific goals as good or bad and the corresponding actions as right or wrong, appropri112

Cf. Rolf Zimmermann, “Moralischer Universalismus als geschichtliches Projekt sowie die entsprechende Kritik und Replik,” Erwägen, Wissen, Ethik, vol. 20 (2009) no. 3, pp. 415-496. 113 On the debate of Morality after Auschwitz cf. John K. Roth (ed.), Ethics after the Holocaust: Perspectives, Critiques, and Responses (St. Paul/MN: Paragon House, 1999). Jack Bemporad/John T. Pawlikowski/Joseph Sievers (eds.), Good and Evil After Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today (Hoboken/NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 2000). Emil L. Fackenheim, “Nazi Ethic, Nazi Weltanschauung and the Holocaust,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 83 (1992) nos. 1-2, pp. 167-172.

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ate or inappropriate. He considered the formal characteristics of ethics as more important for its success than its particular content. To be successful, ethics, according to Hass, must first be coherent and consistent, as well as compatible with what people already deem ethically plausible and moral. The key factor for a new worldview and moral paradigm to be accepted would be its compatibility with already established worldviews. People would be willing to accept an ethical system if it was consistent with their own worldview and their intuitive definition of moral or immoral.114 In an age of moral uncertainty and deprivation, scientific justification, above all, lends its plausibility to ethics and guarantees its approval. Indeed, Nazi authors who wanted biological racial morality to triumph insisted that such a morality was in harmony with the laws of nature and life and the will of God and Creation, i.e. with established scientific and religious authorities. Haas assumed that in Nazism as in all other political systems, internal criteria of validity decided which actions are to be considered morally imperative and which appear morally dubious or even immoral. He stressed that people always make moral decisions within the internal framework of ethics in which they themselves participate. Applied to Nazism, individual perpetrators could not be made responsible for the Holocaust. Instead, the ethical universe they belonged to would be crucial for their moral attitudes. It would have to be accepted that the moral insight of the Nazi perpetrators depended on the racio-ethical framework that was coherent for them, and that the moral quality of their behavior was decided by the norms which were valid and morally legitimate in their community of values. Scholarly literature often dismisses the pseudo-ethical justifications for the Holocaust used by Nazi perpetrators to justify their behavior as a transparent concealment of their true motives and feelings. Whoever seriously analyzes these absurd pseudo-intellectual sophisms of mass destruction for higher purposes becomes suspicious of having fallen prey to Nazi euphemisms while in the end conceding that the Holocaust might indeed have appeared legitimate from the perpetrators’ standpoint. Peter Haas, in contrast, accepted the perpetrators’ assertion that they were at peace with themselves and that they considered their actions to be morally unobjectionable. They claimed to have been conscious of the moral dimension of their behavior and that a coherent Nazi ethics enabled them to do what was right and morally demanded. Haas saw their belief that the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust were morally justified not as some empty rhetorical phrase but as a methodological challenge to integrate their moral reasoning in the attempts to understand their behavior. 114

Haas, Morality after Auschwitz, p. 38.

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The good conscience demonstrated by most Nazi perpetrators is disturbing. Not only perpetrators who believed in the Nazi worldview but also the desktop perpetrators and politically indifferent perpetrators insisted that what they had done was correct, necessary, morally demanded, and appropriate given the situation in which they had been. It was important to those involved in the ideological justification, propagandistic popularization, political implementation, logistical support, and immediate execution of the Nazi racial policy to appear free of selfish, base, and reprehensible motives to themselves. They appreciated that Nazi ideology provided “noble and honorable” reasons for supporting a racial politics that was justified as a necessary means to averting dangers to the people’s community by eradicating the Jewish parasites living off the German people. This spared the perpetrators all moral misgivings and human empathy toward their victims so that they did not have even the slightest doubts that the racial policy was justified. In a society where opportunism and indifference became the predominant behavioral pattern, it was possible to accept the consequences of Nazi ideology without sharing its contents, justifications, or premises. Even though the race-indifferent bourgeois-Christian system of values was no longer valid, it still had an impact on many Germans whose common sense morality it had shaped. Therefore, it had to be replaced with race ethics in order to guarantee that supporting the Nazi racial policy did not cause any moral scruples but appeared rather unproblematic, morally. Based on moral reasoning according to the value system of race ethics, Nazi perpetrators did not consider their actions morally reprehensible. Moral scruples only occur when people are expected to act in a way that is justified as politically lawful and necessary, and therefore also moral but, nevertheless, contradicts their still valid internal moral value system. The acceptance and internalization of race ethics helped prevent such a conflict of values. A new moral order hence made a behavior otherwise felt as problematic not only appear lawful in respect to its consistency with valid laws but also moral. The moral constitution of the perpetrators was composed of many elements and influences. Their motives for acting were just as decisive as the socio-cultural circumstances that they accepted unquestioningly and assumed to be unproblematic. Within the framework of their own moral order they had a clear conscience. They took it for granted that they were acting morally because they had pursued the higher cause of the German people unfettered by selfish motives. When justifying their crimes, they referred to a mix of historical constellations and ideological motivations

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and claimed that they had found the ethical justifications of the racial policy to be plausible. It is the entire range of attitudes and behaviors in Nazism that requires explanation: ideological fanaticism, the ethos of duty, opportunism and the indifference toward the victims of the Nazi racial policy, all these patterns of behavior were justified with moral reasons. However, even their indifference toward the ideological justifications of persecuting the Jews did not stop ordinary Germans from being loyal to Nazi politics. Ideological fanaticism did not necessarily contradict the principle of duty and bureaucratic virtues. The power of moral judgment requires maintaining a reflective distance to the groups to which one belongs without having chosen them. When people no longer trust their judgment, this certainly affects their moral accountability as they are no longer able to intuitively distinguish the moral from the immoral. This raises the question if someone who was unaware of any guilt while acting immorally can be held accountable in hindsight. Does their lack of awareness exonerate the perpetrators of personal responsibility for actions they believed lawful, moral, and in line with valid norms? It is this discrepancy between doubtlessly immoral criminal deeds and perpetrators who assert that they were unaware of any guilt that constitutes a problem. It is this discrepancy between undoubtedly immoral criminal actions and perpetrators who claim to not have been aware of any transgression which poses a problem. Nevertheless, such a discrepancy becomes a problem only when one assumes that the perpetrators had not, from the first, construed a claim intended to exonerate themselves against their better knowledge. One may presume that most of the individuals who attempted to exculpate themselves after the end of Nazism were driven less by a bad conscience about the moral reprehensibility of their actions than by the hope of getting off scot-free. Some pointed to the times, the laws, and the moral norms valid at the time that made their actions appear lawful and morally unobjectionable. Others claimed moral purification and retrospectively expressed remorse and regret. It is difficult to decide, which of these opposing attitudes were mere strategic considerations and which were genuine expressions of coming to terms with their Nazi past. It is questionable whether the testimonies they gave were attempts to justify their actions or expressions of sadness, or even shame and guilt that actually reflected the motives of these perpetrators. Do those who act immorally from our point of view share our standards of moral behavior so that they, when acting immorally, do so consciously? Or do they also act morally according to their self-conception justified by a new moral order developed for this very purpose: to make

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their actions appear morally right? Was the perpetrators’ supposedly good conscience only feigned, or was it the result of a revaluation of traditional values that redefined the meaning of moral and immoral? The reluctance to concede moral motives to Nazi perpetrators is understandable. It does seem absurd to believe that they themselves actually saw the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust as morally right and necessary. This simultaneously touches upon the key issue of assessing the effectiveness of racial ethics, i.e. the question of whether the perpetrators indeed found the moral justification of the Nazi racial policy convincing so that ethical considerations motivated their actions. This does not preclude other considerations from having played a similar or even more important role in their willingness to participate. After the end of Nazism, Nazi perpetrators attempted to justify their actions by pointing to the ideological indoctrination and hierarchies of responsibility and decision-making. They likewise frequently pointed out their political indifference and naiveté that supposedly kept them from recognizing the criminal character of the Nazi system. They regarded themselves as unpolitical because their crucial virtues had been reliability, hard work, and discipline. It is more likely, however, that they were aware of the moral reprehensibility of their crimes. Max Weber’s distinction between an ethics of conviction (“Gesinnungsethik”) and an ethics of responsibility (“Verantwortungsethik”) can also be applied to understanding the moral orders of Nazism. On the one hand, the person advocating an ethics of conviction does not feel responsible for the evil consequences of committing a crime based on pure conviction. On the other hand, the person subscribing to an ethics of responsibility counts on the average failings of people who are neither perfect nor acting based on pure conviction and who are therefore also responsible for the consequences of their behavior.115 The Nazi perpetrators with a clean conscience claimed to have selflessly placed themselves in the service of higher values. Paradoxically, distancing themselves from their personal inclinations and assuming that this turns them into moral humans makes people most prone to following an ideological ethics. Race ethics insisted that its value system had nothing to do with everyday life, which, for this very reason, took on an extraordinary meaning itself. The SS, as the vanguard organization of racial warriors, asked its members to intuitively follow their racial instinct when judging and acting, which would allow them to base their actions on the detached perspective of racial ideology that was supposed to enable them to keep a distance to 115

Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Idem: Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Tübingen: Mohr 1988), pp. 505-560, here pp. 551.

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the targets of racial exterminatory politics. SS men were also asked to commit themselves totally to the Nazi worldview and not just consider it a value system that would not at all affect their daily lives. The question remains if those who actively participated in the persecution and murder of the Jews had to repress or reinterpret their deeds or to numb themselves with alcohol in order to reliably humiliate, torture, and murder. Or did they actually feel that what they were doing was right and necessary? Did they consider it an honor to be entrusted with the job of transgressing moral boundaries that were believed to be culturally well established? Were they proud and satisfied with their atrocious deeds? Maybe they even derived pleasure from the fear of those unconditionally at their mercy. Perhaps exercising power over the life and death of others made them feel exceptionally good or even godlike. Neither psychologizing nor sociologizing morality plausibly links social circumstances with the perpetrators’ motives. While psychologizing ethics demonizes the perpetrators who presumably chose to act immorally, sociologizing transforms them into victims of the system that conditioned them to behave opportunistically. The inversion of civic humane morality portrayed humane common sense morality as absurd and unreasonable while committing crime was depicted as a patriotic duty.116 The Holocaust is among the inexcusable and unforgivable crimes for which there is no atonement. Even if the perpetrators felt remorse for their crimes later-on, they could neither atone for them nor expect to be forgiven. To put it differently, the Holocaust, as an expression of radical evil, can be defined as a crime “which men can neither punish nor forgive.”117 Nazi perpetrators remain responsible for their crimes even if historic constellations beyond their control considerably added to turning them into perpetrators. After all, making allowances for the circumstances under which people acted immorally does not necessarily relieve them of moral responsibility. After the collapse of Nazism the perpetrators distanced themselves from the crimes that they had instigated, committed, or silently tolerated. Many denied any personal responsibility. Some even replaced the question of personal responsibility altogether by reinterpreting the historic events at stake as a metaphysical tragedy. A case in point is Hans Frank, the former Governor-General of the occupied Polish areas who, during the trial in Nuremberg in November of 1945, developed an apocalyptic vision that fused the extermination of the Jews and the destruction of Germany into one mass of suffering humans: “We sit opposite the court. And the train of 116

Hannah Arendt talks about “conditions […] where the crime was legal and every human action was illegal.” Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 311. 117 Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 459.

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the dead goes endlessly by without ever getting interrupted. Pale and wan, without sound, in the dim yellow-gray light of eternity, this stream of misery flows on. All, all surge on without pause, enshrouded in dim mist, whipped by the flames of mankind’s agony–hither–thither–thither–on and on, and no end is in sight … The human beings torn from life in this war are the most gruesome booty of Death, raging in hate and destruction– youth and age, growth and existence, pride and humility … There they go– Poles, Jews, Germans, Russians, Americans, Italians–all nationalities, bleeding and wasting away. And one voice cries: ‘This war must come, for only as long as I live can it come about!’ Ah what hast Thou suffered to come to pass, Almighty God!”118 Frank transforms the many-layered reality of war and mass murder of the Jews into a metaphysical apocalypse of death, misery and war that exceeds human dimension, human imagination, and responsibility. This imaginary scenario does not distinguish between perpetrators and victims. In the dream sequence, people are metamorphosed into anonymous figures in an infernal play in which there exists no recognizable differentiation between various religious, ethnic, and national groups. The perpetrators and victims become one in the apocalyptic accord of death. Even the Jews, who just had been condemned as an inferior race doomed to a pitiless process of extermination, now appear as one nation among others. Death driven by hatred and the lust for destruction engages with life itself in an apocalyptic struggle. In this apocalyptic scenario, people are either torn away from life or death is denied its spoils. The message of this apocalyptic scenario is unmistakable: from the perspectives of eternity and the immensity of human suffering, the categories for differentiating human worlds fall short. A so to speak fateful event beyond comprehension or influence befalls humans. What they do to each other becomes irrelevant in the face of an overwhelming fate. Historic events are elevated to the timelessness of an appalling, depressing, and incomprehensible event, making their historical specificity unrecognizable. Few signs indicate the historical point of departure in which world history escalated from the bleeding to death of nations to the apocalypse. After everything is over, there comes Judgment Day, in which history itself, in the light of the procession of the death of the victims, declares survival tantamount to guilt in the Last Judgment. The guilty are not proclaimed but rather the perpetrators are lined up in an event that knows neither guilt nor innocence. If there is guilt, it is the common guilt of the 118

Gustave M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), p. 44. On Hans Frank cf. Joachim C. Fest, Gesichter des Dritten Reiches (Munich: Piper, 2002), pp. 286-299.

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living who survived such horror. In the trauma of survival, they are all guilty in light of those who did not survive, regardless of whether they had been involved in killing the victims or were victims who happened to survive their prescribed destruction. In this rhetoric, it was not the Nazis who raged but death, the eternal equalizer, who tore both the Jews and the Germans away from life. The suffering of flesh and blood is deemed the agony of humanity for which God alone, omnipotent and unfathomable, is responsible. Gilbert, who worked with Frank as a court psychologist at the Nuremberg Trial, has good arguments for casting doubt on the genuineness of his supposed agony of conscience. Frank was a “showman of the conscience” who “put his shame on stage” without any shame or sadness about his crimes.119 Gilbert’s skepticism is confirmed by Frank himself who, after having given the report of his dream sequence, made sure that his performance had left the desired impression, namely that of an individual seriously anxious to comprehend and overwhelmed by the extent of what had happened, who had been drawn into the undertow of apocalyptic events, guiltlessly.

VI. Conclusion: Moral and Immoral Behavior There are many potential explanations for why people act immorally. The assumption that people can intuitively choose between moral and immoral behavior bestows them with the ability to independently distinguish between moral and immoral. Furthermore, they are granted the capability to resist any attempts at ideological manipulation and the legal codification of immorality. Within the framework of an internal system of justifying morality as developed by Haas, this assumption appears illusory. Obviously, having been conscious of the moral reprehensibility of their actions did not prevent the perpetrators from acting immorally. Whosoever acts immorally knows that he or she might face the rejection or even the contempt of his or her fellow men. The only plausible rationale for accepting the moral contempt of others seems to be the assumption that the benefits of acting immorally at least compensate for the downsides. How do we know whether a certain behavior is morally reprehensible or imperative, whether it is problematic, unobjectionable, or even morally irrelevant? Assigning importance to this issue implies that people are not indifferent toward the moral assessment of their behavior. If acting in harmony with the valid value system is deemed “moral,” then any depar119

Arno Gruen, Der Fremde in uns (Munich: Klett-Cotta, 2002), p. 112.

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ture from it is deemed illegal and immoral. This statement simultaneously implies that those whose actions we judge as moral share our moral standards. If we accuse them of acting immorally, we intuitively assume that they are aware of the moral reprehensibility of their behavior or that they are at least capable of recognizing it. We take it for granted that there is a consensus as to what kind of behavior should be considered moral contrary to immoral behavior. If we morally evaluate people and their actions based on their belonging to a certain community, it is no longer a question of one's actions being approved by everybody but only by the members of one's own community. It is only their judgment that counts while the judgment of others is either considered irrelevant, or they are denied the right to make a moral judgment. People usually do not differentiate between the facticity and the validity of ethical norms in everyday conversation. They assume that behavior which is classified as moral or immoral is indeed moral or immoral. This intuitive equation does not allow them to identify politically and culturally sanctioned immoral behavior as such, which makes the systematic discussion of the ethical justifications of morally legitimate behavior all the more important. Accentuating an internal perspective of morality explains the formation of morality through belonging to a community that distinguishes itself from others by precisely this exclusive internal morality. Emphasizing an internal justification of morality makes it impossible to qualify specific actions or judgments as moral or immoral from an external perspective. Even conflicting systems of moral values and attitudes would have to be accepted as moral provided they offered ethical orientation within their own cultural system of validity. Whatever kind of behavior had been deemed moral or immoral could no longer be assessed from a cross-cultural standpoint. Moreover, a universalistic morality based on the mutual obligation of shared values and human rights would be pointless. Accepting an internal justification for morality not only touches upon the issue of its cultural plausibility but also raises the even more fundamental question of how different ethics can be compared from a standpoint outside of their value system. If the cultural power of ethical systems depends solely on their internal structure, they can no longer be compared with one another based on rational criteria. Moral attitudes would then obtain their plausibility from belonging to a community defined by its exclusive internal morality that also distinguishes it from other communities. If morality is defined as acting in accordance with an internal system of validity of ethical values and norms, then the reverse argument stating that those who do not belong to the

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respective community of values are considered immoral for no other reason than their lack of membership in the hegemonic community seems valid. Accepting the internal plausibility of every consistent value system leads to an ethical relativism or a positivism of morality. Whatever appears convincing, coherent, and intuitively right within the framework of a valid ethical system is then deemed moral. This assumption indicates that ethical systems and the values and practices they morally justify can neither be criticized from the outside nor compared, rationally. Thomas Nagel distinguished two potential perspectives in the analysis of human behavior between which we must strike a coherent balance to do justice to people and their actions. On the one hand, we grant people the status of autonomous subjects responsible for their own behavior. On the other, we know that their actions are the result of circumstances generally beyond their control, for which they cannot be held responsible. Nagel states that indeed everybody is morally subjected to fate, but this should not prevent us from morally judging them according to their actual actions or inactions without exonerating them ab ovo by asking how they would have acted had circumstances been more favorable to moral behavior.120 The sociocultural framework in which humans live conditions them. However, their moral conditioning does not exonerate them from moral responsibility. “The moral tests we face are importantly determined by factors beyond our control. It may be true of someone that in a dangerous situation he may behave in a cowardly or heroic fashion, but if the situation never arises, he will never have the opportunity to distinguish or disgrace himself in this way, and his moral record will be different . . . one is morally at the mercy of fate. . . . We judge people for what they actually do, not just for what they would have done if circumstances had been different.”121 How can feelings of pride and honor or mercy and empathy in regard to one’s fellow human beings be turned upside down? What went wrong with common sense morality? Are there limits to what human beings are able to do to each other? What does it take to turn ordinary human beings, who are neither pathological criminals nor perverted psychopaths, into functioning, willing executioners of immoral deeds? What can we learn from the Holocaust in this respect? These questions have been discussed again and again through sophisticated scholarly approaches. Each generation must ensure that the inherent challenges of these highly sensitive problems will still be alive and not be content with ultimate stereotypical conclusions. 120

Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck,” in Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 37. 121 Ibid, pp. 33-34.

DID THE NATIONAL SOCIALISTS HAVE A DIFFERENT MORALITY? LOTHAR FRITZE

Given the quantity and quality of the National Socialist crimes, one cannot help asking if National Socialists had a different morality, possibly a specifically National Socialist one. This question arises from the point of view of the majority society of the western democratic constitutional states in which universally valid human rights are recognized. To say that the National Socialists subscribed to a different morality is unproblematic and not at all uncommon in everyday language. Of course: If someone believes himself to be entitled to kill Jews or Communists, he has a “different morality” than those who believe otherwise. If, nevertheless, in the following, a seemingly taken for granted opinion, namely, that the National Socialists had a different morality, is to be made the topic of discussion this will transpire with the intention of visualizing the leading National Socialist perpetrators’ way of thinking and, furthermore, to make a contribution to the clarification of the “inner logic” of moral thinking in general.

I. Moral Convictions The term “morality” captures different aspects so that even moral philosophy finds it difficult to say what the specifically “moral” is or rather which aspects constitute the “realm of morality.” Given these difficulties, I am not intending to ask what “morality is” or what we mean by “morality” but, in accordance with the initial question, I would like to discuss what we mean (at least also) when we say that someone “has a morality.” Obviously, someone possessing morality has (also) moral convictions. But what are moral convictions? What characterizes moral convictions, in contrast to convictions we do not consider moral? Convictions are characterized by the cognitive attitude of believing something to be true or right. A convictions is a belief which refers to a certain content and is difficult to shake. Not any conviction must be rea-

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son-based. Convictions may also result from believing something to be evident. By “moral convictions” I mean convictions which constitute a certain kind of criteria for judging on human actions, that is, actions which are relevant not only for the actor himself. These are criteria on whose basis it is possible to decide whether an action is right or wrong and is, accordingly, to be accepted or rejected. Moral convictions are suitable for passing judgments about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of actions and ways of behaving. From these judgments, then, it is possible to deduce general demands made on actions. Thus, from the moral judgment “killing is wrong” follows the demand “Thou shalt not kill!” Such demands, which linguistically take the form of imperatives, express norms. Norms come in the form of a request; they are instruments of action control. They may take on the form of a commandment as well as that of a ban or permission. Norms as a rule determine what one is or is not to do. Yet, not only moral norms belong to the realm of morality. Additionally, moral principles are supported, too. Moral principles are the final criteria for giving reason to and judging subjective maxims for actions, moral judgments, and also norms. Such moral principles are, for instance, the Golden Rule, the Categorical Imperative, the principle of universalization of discourse ethics, and the utilitarian principle. Furthermore, normative premises can find their way into our moral thinking. One may, for example, assume a fundamental equality and an equal aptitude for all humans and demand equal treatment for them all, or one may, however, postulate the dogma of fundamental inequality and unequal value. There are also different opinions concerning what the moral quality of an action depends on or rather to which characteristics approval or disapproval refer: to the actor’s motives, the action itself, or the consequences of the action. Finally, notions about which entities shall be attributed a moral status, that is, which kinds of entities are considered worthy of protection and which respective orders of priority are to be accepted, also belong to the realm of morality. Moral ideas differ according to the ways in which moral contents are acquired. For example, moral contents may be deduced from non-moral factors such as the subjective interests of enlightened and discriminating individuals or, as in National Socialist thought, from the requirements of self-preservation and the empowerment of one’s own people; one may try to deduce them from holy scriptures or from reason, or from the concept of action itself; one may ascribe them to the rights humans have or which are attributed to them; one may, from the outset, at-

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tach the concept of morality to certain topical demands such as, for instance, those of equal consideration for everyone’s interests.

II. Different Moralities? All these convictions are convictions that come under the realm of what is commonly called “morality.” In general, it can be said: Moral convictions have normative references. They imply judgments on the scale of what one ought to do, and they contain the behavioral demands which are in accordance with these judgments. However, it must be taken into consideration that these convictions are found among the moral convictions of the populations of the West. This even holds, for example, for the utilitarian principle by which, in extreme situations, even the killing of innocent people can be justified. For the National Socialists, victim calculations of precisely the utilitarian kind were typical. Now, if one were to say that humans who hold different opinions concerning these questions also subscribe to a different morality, one would have to admit that also in the democratic constitutional states of the West rather different morality are advocated. However, I presume that it is not this kind of differences that one has in mind when one asks whether the National Socialists had another morality. Asking whether National Socialists had a different morality, we are asking if the morality of typical National Socialists differed from the moralities in the West beyond these differences. On the one hand, the conceptual background of this question consists of the many actions by National Socialists that we consider crimes and, on the other hand, by the presumption that it would not have been possible to consider these actions justified on the foundation of a Western human rights morality. What unsettles us and triggers this question are thus morally unacceptable actions in this case actions by National Socialists, whereby we are primarily concerned with comprehending the convictions whence these actions originated. Thus, the following can be concluded: If one is interested to understand what morality someone has, one must investigate all those moral convictions decisively influencing that person’s way of behaving, that is, his way of behaving toward others. However, the norms which one accepts oneself are decisive for what one does or does not do. The norms accepted by a person work as reasons for why certain actions are carried out or refrained from. Wanting to know which practically relevant morality someone has, one must most of all identify which moral norms he accepts. Thereby it is unessential for judging someone’s actions on which rationale these norms or on which moral principles the choices of action are based.

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III. What Does it Mean to Have Morality? Having morality, it obviously does not suffice to simply be acquainted with moral norms. Rather, what is required is that one also accepts norms. One accepts a norm after one has internalized it and if one is at the same time willing to systematically abide by it. The acceptance of a norm is attached to such willingness. Thus, having morality must also be connected to a feeling of obligation in respect to abiding by certain moral norms. “Having morality” means feeling an obligation to meet certain behavioral requirements which, as a rule, are also postulated by other members of the society. Such requirements in reference to carrying out and refraining from actions are called “moral norms.” An obligation to paying attention to moral norms is felt only in respect to those norms which one believes to be valid and thus accepts, whereby one declares a norm to be valid if one considers it reasonable, that is: if one is convinced of having a reason for obeying it. Thus, to possess morality means accepting moral norms while at the same time feeling the sincere obligation to pay attention to these norms as regards one’s own actions. One possesses morality if one is disgusted with one’s own moral behavior and develops respective guilt feelings in the case of an avoidable and, due to it being obligatory, to be avoided violation of a norm considered valid. In such a case, one speaks of the respective individual’s bad conscience being prompted. The conscience may be described as an internal control authority that registers a difference between the required and the actual behavior and signals this to the individual concerned. Acting morally is acting according to norms out of obligation, that is, on the basis of realizing that the norms are justified and the willingness to do justice by the thereby resulting obligations. One has morality if one has moral convictions of the kind mentioned.

IV. Did the National Socialists Have Morality at all? The question “Did the National Socialists have a different morality” assumes at least the possibility that the National Socialists had some morality at all in this sense. This is not a generally accepted assumption. Although the National Socialists themselves understood their fight as a fight against evil, many interpreters of the National Socialist outrages as a matter of course assumed that the perpetrators themselves had intended “the evil,” and that, indeed, they must have been amoral, profoundly degenerate people. This judgment does not appear real helpful for deciphering the thinking of National Socialists. This manner of speaking may

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foremost be an expression of the feeling of bewilderment which befalls us again and again in the face of National Socialist crimes. Instead, I am claiming that at least the National Socialists in authority actually had morality in the here addressed sense. National Socialists, too, accepted a socially valid system of moral norms from which behavioral requirements arose for everyone, and thus they felt the obligation to make their own behavior subject to these norms and to support them to the outside, where applicable. That also National Socialists were oriented to norms can be made plausible by many statements. When, for example, Hitler, in his speech on the occasion of the official opening of the International Exhibition of Automobiles and Motorbikes, explains: “Who drives an automobile bears [...] responsibility [...] for the lives of his fellow humans. But who deals with this irresponsibly behaves in a criminal and unprincipled way,”1 he postulates the validity of a general norm that is the commandment to prevent fellow humans from being harmed.2 Or: When Heinrich Himmler in one of his speeches exclaims that “conscience” commanded “to carry out this harsh cleansing [that is the final solution of the Jewish problem, L. F.],”3 it becomes obvious that one cannot speak of the absence of any moral will. Of course, it is an intellectual imposition to understand the “final solution of the Jewish problem” as an expression of moral will. But referring to the conscience which is said to command a certain behavior shows that both, intellectually and semantically, Himmler moved within a moral discourse and was bent on morally justifying his actions. When he explains that one was “not entitled” to “save for later anything grave and difficult which could be done today,” for one “could not bear the responsibility” to be so “indecent” as to leave the unsolved Jewish problem to one’s children,4 this shows that even Himmler, at least in as far as we may believe these explanations, made efforts to orient his actions to at moral norms. Yet, it is precisely this willingness to obey valid moral norms which is commonly understood as moral will. 1

Adolf Hitler, “(Rede zur Eröffnung der Internationalen Automobil- und Motorradausstellung vom 17. Februar 1939),” in Max Domarus, Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945, Bd. II/1 (Wiesbaden: R. Löwit, 1973), p. 1083. 2 However, this does not tell anything about the reasons given for this norm. E.g. Hitler calls those who are responsible for other humans being killed by road accidents “a pest of the people,” ibid. 3 Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen, ed. by Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Vienna: Propyläen, 1974), p. 204. 4 Ibid., pp. 202, 204.

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It is thus wrong to flatly ascribe moral disinterest to National Socialists, or to assume that they had been amoral beings, or to attest them a lack of general willingness to orient themselves to moral norms at all, or to believe them to be incapable of recognizing moral obligations. Quite obviously, Hitler, too, had moral convictions, and, within the framework of his own system of convictions, he reflected on how one might act morally. If it is true, however, that National Socialists possessed morality in the here addressed sense, there remains the question whether they had a different morality. This, as a matter of fact, is taken for granted by many authors.

V. Did the National Socialists Accept Other Moral Norms? Instead of asking whether the National Socialists had a different morality, I would first like to discuss if they accepted other moral norms. Thereby, I will initially address the question whether national Socialists accepted other norms exclusively to moral basic norms.

1. Basic Norms Usually, basic norms are formulated in an abstract and general way. Although they stipulate certain ways of behaving, they do not cover every situation. In particular, basic norms do not contain any definitions to which kinds of entities they refer, by which characteristics these entities are to be identified, and whether they are valid without restriction or only under condition and, if only unconditionally, which restricting conditions are recognized. Thus, for many concretely applicable cases, they do not contain any behavioral instructions. When two people advocate linguistically identical demands, they advocate, so my definition, the same norm. Here, basic norms means those norms occurring, in the most general formulation, still compatible with the action directive as expressed by the respective norm. The prohibition to kill, for example, is such a basic norm. However, also the prohibitions to harm other people, to expulse them, to deprive them of their freedom, to steal from them, and to lie to them are basic norms. Furthermore, commandments such as the commandments to care for one’s children, to help people in need, or to keep treaties belong to such basic norms. These basic norms may be found in all or almost all societies and at all times; thus they have cross-cultural validity. In accordance with this empirical conclusion, one can define: Basic norms have the same form everywhere, and they are socially and culturally invariant. A concentration on basic norms seems to be appropriate to me also because, among others, they correspond to the intentions of those authors

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who assume that National Socialists indeed possessed a different morality. Apparently, such authors believe that the National Socialists did not accept certain moral basic norms and thus felt entitled to systematically violate these norms or they even believe that National Socialists assumed the negation of these norms to be obligatory. Hannah Arendt seems to have held such an extreme position. She claimed that “Hitler’s ‘new’ law” had demanded “that the voice of conscience was telling everybody ‘Thou shalt kill.’”5 If this interpretation by Arendt is true, it is not only that the National Socialists did not only accept the prohibition to kill but instead propagated the norm “You may kill” or even “You shall kill!”

2. Concurrent Moral Basic Norms Of course, we know that National Socialists violated moral norms: They harmed and killed people, they drove them from their homes and forcibly resettled them, they deprived them of their freedom and enslaved them, they stole from them, lied to them, and they broke treaties. Yet, what must be concluded from this in respect to our initial question? Does the fact that norms were deliberately and systematically violated allow for the conclusion that these norms were not believed to be valid, or not accepted? This must be negated. The conclusion that the deliberate violation of a norm intended with a clean conscience means that one does not accept it is wrong within the here suggested terminological system. Instead, I am claiming that it is imaginable that National Socialists believed all basic norms to be valid and that they accepted them in the initially stated sense, and, at least in this sense, did not have a different morality. By the way, this also pertains to a number of basic values such as justice, freedom, security, and honor as well as to human virtues such as justice, loyalty, comradeship, willingness to perform, decency, chivalry, and willingness to make sacrifices which, in their abstract general form, were, just the same, advocated or rather demanded by National Socialists. To me, it seems to be virtually self-evident that National Socialists accepted basic norms. Accordingly, Hitler declared the Ten Commandments to be “absolutely laudable” as “regulating laws.”6 That he generally believed the orientation to moral norms to be obligatory could be made plausible by many statements. For example, in his already mentioned speech 5 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen (Munich: Piper, 1995), pp. 188-189. 6 Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944. Aufgezeichnet von Heinrich Heim, herausgegeben und kommentiert von Werner Jochmann (Munich: Orbis, 2000), doc. 43, p. 104.

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he went on to explain: “Basically, however, it is generally un-National Socialist to be inconsiderable towards one’s fellow Germans.”7 Not to be inconsiderate toward one’s fellow humans is a basic norm which we support, too, and which, in any case, may have cross-cultural validity. The same applies to Himmler. Of course, it was not his opinion that one was allowed to kill other humans without a justifiable reason. In May 1940, still, in a memorandum on the Eastern Policy which Hitler had approved, he had rejected “out of my inner conviction the Bolshevist method of physically extinction a people, as it is un-German and impossible.”8 He later changed his mind. Yet, not even then did Himmler believe that it was permissible to kill Jews as one pleases. Even the killing of Jews had to be substantiated and justified. Thus, he was not only well acquainted with the prohibition to kill, but he also accepted it; at the same time, he believed to be entitled to violate it in a certain respect or under certain conditions. Thus, it can be confirmed: Even if one violates a norm, this does not necessarily mean that one believes it to be invalid. The reason for this is simple and known to everyone: It is imaginable that one violates norms but believes this violation to be legitimate or even necessary. Such a kind of permission is only needed because the norm is valid. Whoever, for example, recognizes the legitimation of being permitted to resist an aggressor even by lethal means, if necessary, may at the same time accept the norm “Thou shalt not kill!” Would not any supporter of the death penalty (rightfully so) defend himself against the accusation that he rejects the prohibition to kill?

3. Perpetrators with a Clean Conscience As regards the leading National Socialists we are up against perpetrators who were convinced that their actions were morally justified. Leading National Socialists, among them Hitler and Himmler, were perpetrators with a clean conscience. They were convinced that they were acting in conformity with their moral convictions, particularly with the moral norms they accepted. Neither Hitler nor Himmler seemed to have seriously considered that they were committing crimes. What applies to most people also applies to them: It is always the others who are the “evil” ones. They believed their own actions to be justified. Neither were the conscious of 7

Hitler, “(Rede zur Eröffnung der Internationalen Automobil- und Motorradausstellung vom 17. Februar 1939),” p. 1083. 8 Heinrich Himmler, “Einige Gedanken über die Behandlung der Fremdvölkischen im Osten,” in Josef Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Göttingen/Zürich/Frankfurt: Musterschmidt, 1970), doc. 37, p. 299.

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the fact that they were doing something morally prohibited or evil nor did they intend to do so. This is also the reason why it was impossible within the framework of their thinking to develop a sense of guilt, which, however, does not rule out that they knew or presumed that others would view their actions as criminal. Wishing to comprehend the criminal nature of National Socialism, we must most of all comprehend how it is possible that humans violate moral basic norms while believing this violation to be legitimate or necessary. Thus, the clean conscience of many perpetrators which could be proved by many of their statements is the reason for the actual need for clarification. It must be explained how it is possible for people to err in regard to the moral illegitimacy of actions which quite obviously violate moral basic norms.9 If it is generally successful to make plausible that it is possible for other people to do things with a clean conscience which we, against the background of a human rights morality, consider crimes, we need not insist on the highly implausible assumption that the National Socialist perpetrators frequently had been amoral or wicked people, hence, people who were either not interested in norm-guided behavior or saw the goal and the purpose of their actions in harming others thus so to speak giving an example of a behavior that Kant called “devilish.”10

VI. The Specifics of Moral Norms Moral norms are to be distinguished from the norms of convention, mores, and etiquette. As a rule,11 we speak of a “moral norm” when it is of existential importance to the determination of its content, and if abiding or not abiding by it results in significant consequences concerning the gratifica9

See Lothar Fritze, Täter mit gutem Gewissen. Über menschliches Versagen im diktatorischen Sozialismus (Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau, 1998); as well as idem, “Täter und Gewissen. Zur Typologie des Täterverhaltens,” Aufklärung und Kritik, vol. 12 (2005) no. 1, pp. 82-94. From a legal point of view, recently Udo Ebert draws quite similar conclusions: Udo Ebert, Die “Banalität des Bösen” – Herausforderung für das Strafrecht (Stuttgart/Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 2010), part. pp. 5-19. See also Jörg Arnold, “‘Täter mit gutem Gewissen.’ Impulse einer moralphilosophischen Untersuchung über die DDR-Vergangenheit für das Strafrecht,” in Matthias Mahlmann (ed.), Gesellschaft und Gerechtigkeit. Festschrift für Hubert Rottleuthner (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2011), pp. 439-457. 10 Immanuel Kant, “Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft,” in Idem, Werke in zehn Bänden, Bd. 7, ed. by Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983), p. 35. 11 Here I am not taking into consideration opinions according to which we also have moral obligations towards nature.

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tion of basic needs, the mastery of existence, and the avoidance of suffering.

1. Validity and Approval In the following, I will speak of a moral norm when an accepted norm exhibits two (formal) characteristics.12 First: The norm is supported by claiming its general validity. Second: The norm is supported by claiming its general approval. About the first characteristic: Moral requirements are directed toward an addressee, and they refer to certain entities and cases of application. The claim for general validity is met if the supporter of this norm directs the requirement connected to a norm toward everyone in a similarly relevant position and claims it to be valid for all entities of the same kind as well as for any similarly relevant situation. For this purpose, the formulation of the norm may only include terms which do not arbitrarily restrict it to individual cases. In particular, the formulation of norms may not include any proper names or indexical expressions such as “I,” “you,” “we,” “there,” “here,” “now,” “my people,” “my religious community,” and the likes.13 Whoever makes the demand “Thou shalt not kill!” cannot only address certain people; by the same token, he cannot only address separate individuals or restrict them only to chosen locations or certain times. In this respect applies: Moral norms are supported by the claim to general validity. However, from this, it does not follow that a norm is considered generally (universally) valid only if it is directed to all humans as addressees and if the normed action simultaneously refers to all humans. The moral norm “Parents shall care for their children” meets neither the first nor the second condition. In this sense, also the demand to fight for the selfpreservation of one’s own people would be a moral demand. It addresses all the members of all peoples. About the second characteristic: The claim for general approval is met when the supporter of a norm feels that everyone (or almost everyone) has a good reason for opting for the societal validation of this norm. On the one hand, this does not mean that a norm is a moral norm only if it is factually accepted by everyone. Rather, it cannot be ruled out that a moral norm is supported by just one person. On the other hand, this does not 12

See Norbert Hoerster, Was ist Moral? Eine philosophische Einführung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2008), p. 13. 13 See Dieter Birnbacher, Analytische Einführung in die Ethik (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 33.

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mean that, under rationality conditions, literally everyone else really has a reason to agree with this norm. There may be exceptions. However, the supporter of the norm must be convinced that all (or almost all) other fellow humans also have a sufficient, subjectively good reason to accept this norm, and he must wish it to meet with general approval. In this respect applies: Moral norms are considered to be generally consensual and are supported by the claim to general approval.

2. Substantiation as a Condition for Application A morality of fundamental human rights that accepts a number of basic norms assigns to every human resistance or also entitlement rights, which may not be restricted without recognized justification. Unjustified violations of these rights are considered illegitimate. Now, to understand that even perpetrators who violate such rights may have oriented their actions to moral basic norms such as, for instance, the prohibition to kill, one must realize the need for the substantiation of moral norms. First: The universal claim of the validity of a moral norm does not say anything about its scope. The norm “Thou shalt not kill!” prohibits a certain action, that is, killing. So far, all that is clear is that it refers only to dealing with entities that can be killed at all, thus to living beings. Beyond this, however, it does not say anything about who or what may not be killed. Ignoring Buddhist ideas, the norm is usually understood as prohibiting the killing of humans but not of animals. Many understand this norm more in the sense of it meaning the prohibition of killing humans who have already been born, and many others understand it in the sense of it only prohibiting the killing of other humans, hence, not suicide. The norm “You shall not lie!” is understood in a similar way. From the formulation of the norm, it is to be concluded first of all only that it refers to dealing with beings that can be lied to. However, it remains unclear whether only humans or also other possibly existing rational beings may not be lied to. From this arises: Only the respectively accepted definition of the scope of a basic norm decides which concrete actions are legitimate or illegitimate. Second: In situations of concrete actions, moral basic norms must always be obeyed. As basic norms, however, are formulated in an unspecific way, they do not include any directions for what needs to be done under concrete conditions, and what not. For instance, basic norms do not include any directions for how to act in cases of emergency or in dangerous situations, for example, in cases when obeying them might be connected to massive impairment to the actor himself or to others concerned. They do not include any directions in case other people violate basic norms and

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thus do not meet their obligations to non-action. Also, they do not contain any regulation in case basic norms contradict each other. Thus, it shows: Whoever knows a basic norm does not yet completely know which concrete actions it prohibits. Third: Sometimes, basic norms are not directly abided by but transformed into more concrete norms by taking concrete circumstances into consideration. For example, the (concrete) norm demanding to fulfill a dying person’s desire to be relieved from pain is a substantiation of the basic norm to help other people. By taking characteristics into consideration which pertain to both the conditions for action and the actor himself, concrete norms can be derived from basic norms.

3. Scope Rules Reasons for Justification, Derived Norms From this results an essential consequence for the understanding of human “moral practice:” In order to know what needs to be done and what needs not to be done in a concrete action situation, it is sometimes not enough to know the moral basic norms. Beyond this, morally relevant decisions are determined by those scope rules and reasons for justification considered valid as well as by the subjectively recognized derived norms. We will be able to understand the behavior of perpetrators with a clean conscience to a considerable degree although not completely if we assume that they accepted different scope rules or other reasons for justification, or other derived norms.

VII. Scope Rules Basic norms determine only imprecisely what is or is not to be done. This is why their realm of application must be determined by scope rules. Scope rules determine to whom moral norms shall be applied. Some scope rules determine who is to be a member of the moral community. Other scope rules result from the function which certain members of the moral community have or rather in which capacity they are acting.

1. General Considerations The example of the prohibition to kill may have conveyed how vague basic norms can be. Furthermore, one ought to be aware that also other ways of understanding one and the same norm are possible, and one needs to realize that even the definition that the prohibition to kill only refers to (other) humans it is still imprecise: The prohibition to kill may not merely

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apply to humans who had already been born but to human individuals in general. Likewise, the prohibition to kill may refer only to human individuals with dreams of the future, or, generally, to beings who are capable of suffering or just to animated beings, or even to rational beings on the whole. Furthermore, the scope of the prohibition to kill may be restricted according to ethnicity, race, or also in reference to other (e. g. medical) criteria. To be able to obey the norm “You shall not kill any (other) humans!” one must know which forms of life represent human life and which forms of human life are considered “man” and thus come under the scope of this prohibition. However, even if the humanity of the being concerned is undisputed, the scope of this norm may be subject to further restrictions. For example, there would be an ethnic restriction if the scope were to coincide with the origin from a certain community or the membership in a community. Such a restriction existed when the prohibition to kill of the Decalogue was restricted to the realm of the People of Israel and had not yet, as in the post-exile period, step-by-step been extended from the traditional legal subject, the Israelite citizen, to man as such.14 The definitions of the scope of a norm are based on considerations of relevance. Whoever understands the norm ”Thou shalt not kill!” as the demand not to kill any other human thus expresses with this reading of the norm that, to him, only the killing of other humans is morally relevant. At the same time, he expresses that to him neither suicide nor the killing of non-humans represent violations of the prohibition to kill. We may thus state: No matter which criteria are brought into account for the definition of the scope of a norm, they must be considered morally relevant within the respective belief system.15 This means however: One must be able to produce reasons why, under the point of view of their possible killing, the not included beings are not considered to be similar in a relevant sense and thus also not morally equal. Otherwise, the criteria brought into account would collide with the claim to the universal validity of moral norms. A number of consequences arise from these considerations. First: Only by determining the scope of a norm and in connection with the wording of this norm is the respective moral obligation defined. Insofar as definitions of the scope of norms have normative consequences they, them14

See Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, “Du sollst nicht töten!” Das fünfte Dekaloggebot im Kontext alttestamentlicher Ethik (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2004), pp. 13, 68, as well as Matthias Köckert, Die Zehn Gebote (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), pp. 21, 76. 15 Which criteria should be taken into consideration for this at all and which reasons could be given for the acceptance of these criteria is not a topic here.

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selves, are thus morally relevant. The morality a person has is essentially dependent on the accepted scope rules. Second: Scope definitions which meet the demands for formal consistency do not affect the universal validity of the norm. The various ways of understanding the norm “Thou shalt not kill!” might all meet the universalization demand, however, they have different scopes. Third: Depending on the accepted scope rules, one and the same norm (formulation) of the norm “Thou shalt not kill!” may be compatible with actions (the killing of animals capable of suffering, abortion, infanticide, suicide, killing those not belonging to one’s own tribe or people, or killing the mentally disabled) which, from the perspective of other scope rules are considered illegitimate.

2. National Socialist Scope Rules Looking at the moral thinking of National Socialists, one finds that leading National Socialist ideologues did indeed advocate the same moral basic norms as we do, however with different scope rules. This thus raises the question of how scope rules are determined or rather what it depends on which scope rules we accept. The answer to this is: For the determination of the scope of a moral norm, non-moral convictions or rather non-moral assumptions play a crucial role. To illustrate this thesis I will present three non-moral theorems which were important for the determination of the scope of basic norms in the context of National Socialist thought. First: By referring to the race-and-culture-theoretical assumptions, National Socialists assumed a natural inequality and different value of peoples and races. Accordingly, they rejected the postulate of a normative equality of all humans. So, in Hitler’s opinion the so-called Aryan was so to speak the crowning glory of all of creation, the “prototype” of how the word “man” was understood.16 Hitler believed the Aryan’s entitlement for subjugating the members of inferior races to be justified due to the Aryan’s natural-born though to be proved in battle superiority as well as due to his cultural-creative competence and occupation. Hitler revered “the aristocratic pivotal idea of nature” and believed to be entitled to demand “the submission of the inferior and weaker” according to “the eternal volition ruling this universe.”17 This, however, means: Aryans and non-Aryans do not have the same status in respect to the validity of moral basic norms. Second: On the basis of evolution-theoretical and anthropological considerations, not all National Socialists accepted that all humans belong to 16

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. Zwei Bände in einem Band, 504.-508. edition (Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger 1940), p. 317. 17 Ibid., p. 421.

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one and the same human species. Some ideologues assumed that there were graduations regarding the quality of being human. One surely extreme example of this mindset was presented by Hermann Gauch. He wrote: “Thus, non-Nordic man is something between Nordic man and animal, most of all ape-man. Accordingly, he is not man in the proper sense, he is not man at all if actually compared to animal, but just a transition, a transi18 tional stage.”

With these theoretical assumptions, certain human beings (in this case non-Nordic humans) did not come under the scope of validity of the accepted moral norms. Indeed, statements by National Socialist perpetrators may here be quoted which give rise to the presumption that the members of various groups of victims of the National Socialists were not, or at least not in the full sense, considered human beings. The succinct statement by a member of one of the police battalions involved in the shootings of Jews, for example, goes in that direction: “The Jew was not recognized by us as a human being.”19 In spite of this I do not believe convincing the interpretation that the intellectually leading National Socialists, or those directly involved in shootings, had accepted a racially-based scope rule according to which Jews or also other victims were not classed among humans and thus no longer belonged to the circle of beings to whom the basic norms applied.20 Even if it were wrong to take a coherent National Socialist morality for granted, this interpretation is contradicted by the fact that also National Socialists made efforts to justify their killings and did this not only to impress third parties but also in order to be able to stand up to their own conscience. Such efforts would hardly be explicable if not also National Socialists had been convinced that, in the ordinary case, the killing of Jews was illegitimate as it was a violation of any human’s right to exist and had thus to be justified. At least a curriculum published by the SSHauptamt left no doubt that all humans, “no matter if they are Whites, 18

Hermann Gauch, Neue Grundlagen der Rassenforschung (Leipzig 1933), p. 77. Quoted after: Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitlers willige Vollstrecker. Ganz gewöhnliche Deutsche und der Holocaust (Berlin: Siedler 1998), p. 331. Goldhagen (in contrast to Christopher R. Browning) the espouses the opinion that in the thousands of pages of statements by members of Polizeibataillon (Police Battalion) 101 “there is no hint that Germans accepted Jews as human,” ibid. p. 641. 20 On this, see Lothar Fritze, “Moralische Rechtfertigung und außermoralische Überzeugungen. Sind ‘totalitäre Verbrechen’ nur in einer säkularen Welt möglich?,” Leviathan, vol. 37 (2009) no. 1, pp. 5-33, here 17-20. 19

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Orientals or Blacks,” show “certain, typically human features and characteristics apart from common reproduction capacities” and that thus all humans belong to one and the same species.21 Third: The political thesis of a universal struggle for survival of peoples and races constitutes the core of Hitler’s ideology. Independent of his race-theoretical assumptions and actually (unaware of being) in agreement with Thomas Hobbes, Hitler did not believe in the possibility of a longterm, stable, and peace-keeping cooperation under the conditions of the natural state, in this particular case under the conditions of a general competition among peoples and states. Accordingly, Hitler assumed that the struggle for scant lebensraum and resources prohibited making equal allowances for the interests of the members of other peoples and other races. Under such conditions, as Hitler was obviously convinced, every party (every state and every people) has, in Hobbes’ terminology, the “right to everything.”22 This way, the members of competing peoples and races did no longer belong to the circle of those to whom the basic norms applied. Thus, under the conditions of a morally and legally unsettled natural state, all that remains in the struggle of competing survival units is the “law of the jungle.” In the outcome, most likely all the leading National Socialists accepted scope rules which differed from those we accept in the framework of universalist human rights ethics, among them also some ethnically and racially justified ones. These differences are morally significant. They indicate differences between the “morality” of the National Socialists and ours. However, the question is: Why, for example, does someone assume that non-Nordic humans represented underdeveloped forms of being human and would therefore not need to be treated as actual humans? Is it because he himself is a bad person, amoral, and unscrupulous? Or is it because he has different notions concerning certain facts of the outer world because, for instance, he supports a different or a wrong theory? The answer to this question is to be found in the examples given. They show that what leads to the specific – morally relevant – scope rules are, in the end, extra-moral assumptions. In the examples given, these are considerations from the “SS-Hauptamt, Lehrplan für die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der SS und Polizei,” in Hans-Adolf Jacobsen/Werner Jochmann (ed.), Ausgewählte Dokumente zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus 1933-1945 (Bielefeld: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1961), pp. 1-10, here 2. See also Martin Staemmler, Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat (Munich/Berlin: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1937), pp. 14-15. 22 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Hamburg: Meiner, 1996), p. 108. 21

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realm of natural science or rather anthropology as well as from political philosophy.

3. Universalist Scope Rules? From the point of view of those who do not share the fundamental extramoral assumptions of people with different views, the thus resulting scope restrictions are an expression of a non-universalist morality. If, however, one is interested to grasp the self-consciousness of the National Socialists, one cannot describe these scope definitions as the relinquishment of the universalist point of view. It is such a relinquishment only from the point of view of those who do not accept the boundary drawn between superior and inferior races and peoples or rather perfect and imperfect humans or, however, Hitler’s struggle for life theory, and thus consider the scope criteria brought into account to be morally irrelevant. From a National Socialist point of view, however, there was no doubt that the basic norms it accepted could be supported while claiming their universal validity and general approval. On the one hand, the validity of the norms was accepted for all those who in a morally relevant sense were to be regarded as equal. On the other hand, approval did not depend on those who in a morally relevant sense were not regarded as equal. What is more, resulting from the fact of the irrevocable fight for survival among peoples and races, Hitler accorded every competitor the “right” to secure everything needed for the purpose of ensuring one’s own existence even by violent means, if necessary. He believed “all beings” on this earth to be “equal regarding their right to live.” All of them were “entitled to fight for this right.”23 At least as far as that went, Hitler had supported a universalist point of view in every respect (not only in the National Socialist one), a kind of universalism referring to the right to self-preservation. Of course, when fighting for one’s own self-preservation, the opponents’ interests will not be taken into account quite as much as one’s own. Hitler believed precisely the latter to be impossible given human experience. Every people so he was convinced strives to improve its own situation, also at the expense of other peoples; “any people believes to be entitled to what it has, and none asks: Let us consider if maybe, compared to the situation of other peoples, we are living too good a life.”24 23 Adolf Hitler, “‘Was wir wollen.’ Rede auf NSDAP-Versammlung in Oldenburg vom 18. Oktober 1928,” in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Bd. III/1 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1994), doc. 37, p. 168. 24 Adolf Hitler, “‘Wir und die Reichswehr – Unsere Antwort an Seeckt und Geßler.’ Rede auf NSDAP-Versammlung in München vom 15. März 1929,” in

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However, this preference of one’s own self-interest, which, for instance, we acknowledge also in our private dealings with the right to selfdefense, is indeed accorded to everyone. Yet, this is precisely why everyone who shares Hitler’s relevant anthropological and political convictions will be reasonable enough also to agree with his notion of the legitimacy of the fight for lebensraum and scant resources. Insofar as Hitler conceptually moved within the lebensraum theory and avoided any confusion with his racist convictions, he claimed for the German people only a right which he conceded to all peoples. In one of his speeches he stated: “With the lives of the peoples, the free play of forces will go on. Finally, the world’s most efficient people will rule. We do not know which people it will be. But we would not like to exclude our own people from the competition.”25

Whether the convictions underlying the respective justifications (such as the conviction that cooperation cannot prevent an irrevocable struggle for scarce vital resources) are to be accepted or not is not a moral question as it is not a question which could be answered by moral philosophical reflection. Convictions of this kind are extra-moral and not non-moral convictions. At the same time, some National Socialists had expanded the common scope of a universalist morality. Himmler, for example, viewed every kind of hunting as the murder of innocent creatures.26 Hitler, on the one hand, held the opinion that future humans also came under the scope of moral norms. On the other hand, he considered abortion a form of (illegal) killing.

VIII. Reasons for Justification Moral norms make a certain kind of behaviour or certain defaults obligatory; however usually those obligations as can be derived from them – this we must understand – are valid only under certain conditions, that is those of the ordinary case. Insofar these obligations are conditional; they are not unconditionally valid. In other words: The thus formulated obligations must be met as long as there are no extraordinary circumstances, no exceptional conditions allowing for not meeting an obligation27 which is obligaHitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Bd. III/2 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1994), doc. 6, p. 49. 25 Hitler, “Was wir wollen,” pp. 168. 26 Josef Wulf, Heinrich Himmler. Eine biographische Studie (Berlin-Grunewald: arani 1960), p. 9. 27 A not absolutely or not unconditionally valid obligation, that is under ordinary conditions, is sometimes also called a “prima facie obligation” (see, for example,

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tory under ordinary conditions. Such permissions for violating a norm, which themselves represent moral norms, are called “reasons for justification.”

1. General Considerations Reasons for justification refer to circumstances under which valid norms may be violated. Such circumstances may be the permanently given problem of securing one’s existence which unleash a struggle for scarce vital resources (as in a war for food or water). Just the same, there may be situation-related exceptional conditions necessitating active defense (e. g. an act of self-defense). Also, it may concern violations of valid norms sanctioned by a higher authority (some form of punishment that restricts individual rights or even, as in the case of the death penalty, completely eliminates them). Furthermore, there may be collisions with obligations, thus situations where the execution of an imperative act (such as coming to the rescue of someone who is being threatened) at the same time means the violation of another valid norm (such as lying to an illegal attacker). Finally, there may be victim calculations of the utilitarian kind so that the protection of certain interests necessitates the sacrifice of other interests, even the sacrifice of humans, if need be. Justification reasons rule out that the violation of a norm is (morally) illegal. If a moral justification reason exists, the usually forbidden violation of the moral norm is not illegal. Accordingly, it also cannot be sanctioned legitimately. Justification reasons are instruments of conflict regulation. They determine how action alternatives accompanying a violation of individual interests are to be decided such as how conflicting interests between two parties are to be handled in certain cases, or how a choice must be made between two possible states of the world. Justification reasons decide about the legitimacy of the violation of the interests of other parties. The fact that the violation of a norm is considered legitimate only if a valid justification reason exists, confirms the validity of the norm.

David Ross, Ein Katalog von Prima-facie-Pflichten, in Dieter Birnbacher/Norbert Hoerster (edts.), Texte zur Ethik, p. 253-269). I have myself sometimes used this terminology (see Fritze, Moralische Rechtfertigung und außermoralische Überzeugungen, pp. 5-33, as well as idem, Anatomie des totalitären Denkens. Kommunistische und nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung im Vergleich (Munich: Olzog, 2012), p. 373). However, it is rejected by other authors (see John R. Searle, Wie wir die soziale Welt machen. Die Struktur der menschlichen Zivilisation (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2012), pp. 329-331).

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Whether justification reasons have moral validity within a community depends on their societal recognition. For a practical judgment of actions it is to be differentiated if the validity of a justification reason or the existence of a valid justification reason is being debated. From these connections, the following consequence is derived: The moral legitimacy or illegitimacy of an action is not recognized alone by its outer form. An action such as, for example, A kills B, may violate a moral basic norm (here: the prohibition to kill) while still being morally legitimate.

2. Active Defense and Self-Defense Now, if one takes into account the National Socialist perpetrators, it is obvious that, often, they justified their actions by referring to active defense or rather to situations of self-defense or, when queried, had justified them as such. Invoking these kinds of justifications explains their clean conscience, but, of course, does not mean that they actually had been in such situations and that, accordingly, their actions had been justified. However, it must be noted that active defense and self-defense are recognized justification reasons also according to our morality. Hitler’s Lebenskampf theory cannot only be used for fabricating specific scope rules, it is likewise also suitable for deriving justifications by referring to justification reasons. After all, it does not matter for the most part how the justification for the permission to violate a norm is fabricated in the moral philosophical sense: either via a restriction of the scope or via the fabrication of a situation of active defense or self-defense. As already mentioned, Hitler accorded every people the natural right to fight for its self-preservation. Thus, this right was conceived as a universalist one. In the context of such a struggle for lebensraum and scarce resources, a Hobbes’ kind of “War of everyone against everyone,” the members of other peoples may be killed or enslaved if this is necessary either to avert the dangers derived from a lack or an undersupply of vital resources (water, fertile soil, raw materials etc.) or to resist attacks by enemies or competitors. A majority of justifications invoked by Hitler and other leading National Socialists were based on the justification reasons of active defense or rather self-defense. Hitler placed enormous importance on the active defense of the dangers he believed to have identified both for the German people and the Aryan race as well as for all of humankind. As such (alleged) dangers he identified, for example: the undersupply of lebensraum and the threat of overpopulation in Germany, a conglomeration of races and a worsening of the genetic pool, the influence of “greedy” capital and “international finan-

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cial capitalism,” Bolshevism and the “intentions for expansion by Slavdom,” the “Jewish predominance” in society, economics, and culture, and the thus resulting general “Judaization,” liberal democracy, the pre-eminence of materialism, and the “cultural decline.” From this risk analysis Hitler derived maxims for action which also included violent intervention. To really understand National Socialist thought it is indispensable to analyze the justification argumentations first of all independent of the question whether perhaps some of the arguments had been presented to justify actions which were to be executed based on entirely different deliberations. Only this way will one understand that even the National Socialists’ moral thinking showed the generally found internal structure of justifications. Of course, “rationalizations” of the kind indicated are to be expected. They shall be identified in another step. However, a perpetrator who does not believe in any of his own justifications but presents them with the intent to deceive would not any longer be considered a perpetrator with a clean conscience. The here suggested analysis scheme could be applied to such perpetrators. Hitler, however, and along with him other National Socialist ideologues and pragmatists, took these “threats” seriously. Without a doubt, Hitler felt obliged to secure the German people’s nutritional basis and to avert the danger of a renewed blockade of Germany by establishing a German predominance on the continent. He believed it to be impossible to “still feed” 62 million Germans “in the so-called peaceful economic way.” The German people, he said, lived in an “impossible territory,” was surrounded “by gigantic states” and was, furthermore, “infested with pacifism” and “poisoned by democracy.”28 He was convinced that Germany’s small supply basis of energy and raw materials needed to be expanded in the interest of national security. Then, there were the interior enemies. Apart from the Communists, Jewry was considered the main enemy appearing to Hitler as a devilish “`decomposition ferment´.”29 On the one hand, he claimed that a kind of contagious threat emanated from Jewishness. Thus, as he explained to the Hungarian governor, von Horthy, during a conversation on 17 April 1943, the Jews needed to be “treated like tuberculosis germs which might be contagious for a healthy body.”30 On the other hand, Hitler assumed that 28 Adolf Hitler, “’Geist und Doktor Stresemann?’ Rede auf NSDAP-Versammlung in München vom 2. Mai 1928,” in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Bd. II/2 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1992), doc. 268, p. 814. 29 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 498. 30 Andreas Hillgruber (ed.), Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Zweiter Teil. Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes 1942-1944 (Frankfurt a. M.: Bernard & Graefe, 1970), p. 257.

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Jewry was conspiring to destroy the German people. According to this suggestion it had brought the misfortune of the German acts of opposition upon itself. “When they decided about the plan to completely destroy the German people,” Goebbels was capable of stating, “they signed their own death sentence.”31 Furthermore, major justifications for one’s own actions were derived from the (real or alleged) threat of Bolshevism. It was considered the actual contemporary challenge. Hitler believed in an imminent war of annihilation which would be fought to the death and could not be evaded. Being himself the leader of an ideological dictatorship, he was convinced that, according to Marxist utopia, the Bolshevist leaders were pursuing an international revolutionary strategy which would “gradually shake the whole world and make it collapse.”32 He considered Bolshevism a threat to the entire western world. He saw himself confronted with an “ideologically founded will to attack,” with the “military power” of this will to attack increasing “rapidly every year.” And he added: “Considering the necessity of preventing this danger, all other considerations must retreat to the back, as they are completely irrelevant!”33 At the height of his power, during the German Wehrmacht’s summer offensive in 1942, Hitler summarized the motive for active defense and the transnational significance of the National Socialist revolution thus: “If in 1933 this victory of an ideology had not been achieved, if, in those days, one had not succeeded with the restoration of the Reich, with completely securing the unity of the Reich and, most of all, with restoring the German Wehrmacht, then in this or in some other year a completely unarmed, defenceless German nation would have fallen victim to a giant once again moving across Europe from Asia. [...] Who has seen the East knows by what this Europe of today not to mention at all our own home country 34 would be replaced.”

31

Joseph Goebbels, “Der Krieg und die Juden,” in Idem, Der steile Aufstieg. Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1942/43 (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1944), pp. 263-270, here 270. 32 Adolf Hitler, “(Rede vor dem Industrieklub in Düsseldorf vom 27. Januar 1932),” in Domarus, Hitler, Bd. I/1, p. 77. 33 (Adolf Hitler), “Denkschrift Hitlers über die Aufgaben eines Vierjahresplans,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 3 (1955) no. 2, pp. 204-210, here 204-205 (italics omitted). 34 Adolf Hitler, “Geheimrede vom 30. Mai 1942 vor dem ‘militärischen Führernachwuchs,’” in Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Ullstein, 1997), pp. 707-723, here 712-713 (italics omitted). See also (Adolf Hitler), Hitlers politisches Testament. Die Bormann Diktate vom Februar und April 1945. Mit einem Essay

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In all of his statements Hitler referred to the justification reason of selfdefense in a mode of preemptive self-defense which, at least in modern international law, is hardly or not at all accepted, except for the strategy of national security of the United States of America.35 As justification reasons themselves represent moral rules, it becomes obvious that, at least in this respect, namely in as far as they believed preemptive active defense to be justified, the National Socialists’ morality deviated (in any case from that of today’s German majority society). For comprehending National Socialism’s moral thinking it is essential to realize: National Socialists felt morally entitled to approach these and other problems in offensively and to react preemptively to threats, even if, this way, others’ interests were violated. Additionally, the Bolshevist crimes had long since become known in Western Europe so that the National Socialists, too, definitely had a correct view of Bolshevism, at least concerning the fact of these crimes. Thus, Joseph Goebbels matter-offactly said that to help fight this “infernal world plague” of Bolshevism, the “most blatant blood and terror regime the world has ever seen,” was “the duty of any responsible man.”36 Situations of danger and self-defense were also fabricated in other respects. In the National Socialist ideology, the Jews did not only appear as the most dangerous enemies of the German people both in the form of a so-called parasitic people within the “German racial corpus” as well as in the form of Jewish dominance of (alleged) financial capitalism but, particularly, in the form of “Jewish Bolshevism.” At the same time, there was the insinuation that they constituted an immediate threat (and be it only in the form of Germans becoming infected with those ways of thinking and behaving assumed to be typically Jewish) so that the German people, indeed civilization as a whole, was in a situation of self-defense. This is also how the systematic murder of the Jewish population in the East by SS brigades and police battalions was justified. Although the killing of the Jews “is originally not at all connected [...] to anti-partisan actions”37 but resulted from racist antisemitism as well as the fear of “Jewish

von Hugh R. Trevor-Roper und einem Nachwort von André François-Poncet (Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus, 1981), p. 79. 35 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002, in www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf (on 5 August 2005). 36 Joseph Goebbels, Der Bolschewismus in Theorie und Praxis (Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1936), pp. 8, 28. 37 Andreas Hillgruber, “Der Ostkrieg und die Judenvernichtung,” in Gerd R. Ueberschär/Wolfram Wette (ed.), Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion.

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Bolshevism,” after the fight against partisans in the rear of the German front had been started these actions could be passed off as preemptive antipartisan measures.38 The Jews were considered enemies at the rear of the Wehrmacht, and fighting them was seen a necessity of war.39 Himmler argued similarly when he justified the decision to make the Jewish people, that is, also women and children, “disappear from the earth.” He justified this by pointing out that he had not believed himself “to be entitled” just “to extinct the males” while at the same time “letting grow up the avengers to our sons and grandsons in the shape of the children.”40 However, giving such a reason is only necessary if also he was convinced that the killing of subjectively innocent humans would have been a moral wrong under ordinary conditions, and, thus, needed to be justified, or if, at least, he was convinced that his listeners held this conviction. After all, the mass shootings behind the Eastern Front by the so-called “SS-Einsatzgruppen” were primarily guided by the idea of a preemptive fight against enemies.41 Even after the war, Otto Ohlendorf, by profession a jurist, who had temporarily been the commander of one of the notorious “Einsatzgruppen,” justified their actions including the shooting of children as a definite necessity of war, identifying42 himself with the Fuehrer’s order “to even fighting even of a danger which might arouse in the future.”43 Similar justifications were brought forward for the curtailment of the rights of the disabled or for the campaigns for the destruction of worthless life. Here, too, it was about keeping fellow Germans and the German people as such from harm. Hitler called it “half-hearted to grant incurably ill people the permanent possibility to infest the other, healthy ones.” Alt“Unternehmen Barbarossa”1941, 2nd edition, (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2011), pp. 185-205, here 196. 38 See Hans Mommsen, Auschwitz, 17. Juli 1942. Der Weg zur europäischen “Endlösung der Judenfrage” (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002), pp. 120, 123. 39 See Saul Friedländer, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden. Zweiter Band: Die Jahre der Vernichtung 1939-1945 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2006), pp. 236, 239. 40 (Heinrich Himmler), “Rede bei der SS-Gruppenführertagung in Posen am 4. Oktober 1943,” in Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof, Bd. 29 (Nürnberg 1948), pp. 110-173, here 146. 41 See Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945. Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus (Munich: Herbig, 2000), p. 469. 42 See ibid., p. 541, FN 22. 43 Quoted after: ibid.

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hough the merciless “separation of incurably ill people” was a “barbaric measure for those being unfortunately concerned” it was “a blessing for the contemporary and future world.”44 All these defensive statements generate justifications which make a violation of the (under ordinary conditions) valid basic norms look morally justified.

3. Conflicting Duties If carrying out a morally imperative action is inevitably connected to the violation of another moral norm, a regulation is needed to determine how conflicts of interests or norms of this kind are to be resolved. In order to resolve collisions with obligations, usually, the rule according to which the fulfillment of superior duties allows the violation of inferior ones may be applied. Such a rule, as it is based on decisions on the significance of values, is of a normative nature; however, accepting the hierarchy which constitutes the basis may depend on extra-moral assumptions. The leading National Socialists considered peoples the actual “human reality” and as that kind of reality “which cannot be derived further,” whose secret “is to be received directly from the secret of life and becoming.” The people was considered a “common existence,”45 a “transpersonal and timeless common existence of one and the same blood and uniform mental and spiritual nature,” and the individuals were just considered “manifestations of their peoples.”46 Starting from this ontological thus extra-moral assumption, a normative precedence of the community, the people, the race, and also the state over the individual, indeed also the sum of individuals, was postulated. For Hitler, the state was an organization of individuals of “the same nature and essence” to “improve the possibilities to reproduce their kind as well as to achieve the goal of its existence as it had been predestined by fate.”47 According to this organic view, the individual appeared as a “construction cell” within the “racial corpus” and thus could “never be the end but just the means of political planning and

44

Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 278. Reinhard Heydrich, “Aufgaben und Aufbau der Sicherheitspolizei im Dritten Reich,” in Hans Pfundtner (ed.), Dr. Wilhelm Frick und sein Ministerium. Aus Anlaß des 60. Geburtstages des Reichs- und preußischen Ministers des Innern Dr. Wilhelm Frick am 12. 3. 193 (Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1937), pp. 149-153, here 149. 46 Werner Best, “Erneuerung des Polizeirechts,” Kriminalistik, vol. 12 (1938) no. 2, pp. 26-29, here 27. 47 Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 164-166. 45

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acting.”48 Accordingly, Hitler viewed “overall fate” to be “primary” and “individual fate” to be “secondary.”49 Insofar as Hitler was ready at all to concede the individual human an intrinsic value, he believed to be able to define the “value of a human” according to whether he could be “taken away without replacing him:” “If not, he is of value [...].”50 An individual is valuable insofar as he attends to a function within the greater whole. That is why the “individual happiness of the individual” must take a backseat “because,” as Himmler had it, “the true meaning and the fulfillment of individual existence is in the people and not in the self.”51 By declaring the preservation and the development of the people as the highest value, National Socialism had indeed established a new “value system,” a reversed hierarchy of values. The “völkisch” state was said to be a “‘state under the rule of law from top-down,’ i.e. state under the rule of law for the sake of the whole.”52 Whereas in the “individualist system”53 which had been overcome “no higher value” existed “to which one was entitled to sacrifice man,” the of the National Socialist state’s function could not be “to protect the individual and work for his benefit but solely to secure the preservation and development of the people.”54 From this, Werner Best concluded: “The individual is only a means to this end, which must be used and sacrificed according to what the vital needs of the people require.”55 This way, however, a very momentous justification had been accepted. From then on it had to be considered justified to indiscriminately violate individual rights if this seemed necessary for the self-assertion and development of the people. Therefore, it had to be permitted even to kill innocent people, as applicable. Hitler reduced the problem of how norm conflicts are to be resolved to a common denominator: “The right to per48

Heinrich Himmler, “Aufgaben und Aufbau der Polizei des Dritten Reiches,” in Hans Pfundtner (ed.), Dr. Wilhelm Frick und sein Ministerium. Aus Anlaß des 60. Geburtstages des Reichs- und preußischen Ministers des Innern Dr. Wilhelm Frick am 12. 3. 1937 (Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1937), pp. 125-130, here 127. 49 Adolf Hitler, “Rede auf NSDAP-Versammlung in Plauen i. V. vom 5. Mai 1928,” in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Bd. II/2 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1992), doc. 269, p. 831 (italics omitted). 50 Adolf Hitler, “‘Was ist Nationalsozialismus?’ Rede auf NSDAP-Versammlung in Heidelberg vom 6. August 1927,” in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Bd. II/2 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1992), doc. 160, p. 460. 51 Himmler, “Aufgaben und Aufbau der Polizei des Dritten Reiches,” p. 127. 52 Best, “Erneuerung des Polizeirechts,” p. 27. 53 By referring to § 1 of the “Verordnung zum Schutze von Volk und Staat” February 28th, 1933, the basic rights of the Weimar Constitution had been suspended. 54 Best, “Erneuerung des Polizeirechts,” p. 26. 55 Ibid., p. 27.

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sonal freedom retreats in favour of the obligation to preserve the race.”56 Perhaps nowhere is the difference between an individualistic human rights ethics and the moral convictions of the National Socialists expressed more clearly than in the distinction of the people as the highest value.

4. Victim Calculations of the Utilitarian Kind Argumentations justifying the approving acceptance of legal violations through the thus warranted protection of legally protected interests present quite a unique kind of justifications. A typical example is the killing of innocent people for the purpose of saving other, preferably a multitude of innocent people. As a rule, such calculations are based on a utilitarian principle, that is, the moral demand to orientate the decisions for actions “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”57 In contrast to the universalist principle of utilitarianism, however, the utilitarian considerations of the National Socialists were ethnically limited. Victim calculations of the utilitarian kind are orientated to the idea of minimizing sacrifice or suffering. They aim at minimizing the damage or rather maximizing the benefit. On the basis of such victim calculations, there was the attempt to provide reasons for the moral entitlement to kill or risk the lives of thousands and even millions of humans in order to save the lives of others or even of those who have not yet been conceived. This way, actions which in the light of everyday morality appear to be crimes are to become morally legitimated. It was felt to be a moral necessity to justify the impairment and the sacrifice of humans because one knew about the societal validity of the thus violated basic norms and, so the assumption, indeed accepted them oneself. On the basis of victim calculations of the utilitarian kind the moral legitimation, maybe even the necessity of a violation of individual rights, can be justified. Whoever is convinced of the validity of such justifications may under the given circumstances feel morally entitled to send humans to their death or even to kill them himself if, this way, a greater number of humans is saved or conditions emerge allowing more humans to live in times to come. We will understand the inner logic of a number of National Socialist actions only if we realize that precisely such considerations played a central role in Hitler’s thinking. Accordingly, he is reported to have told the 56

Hitler, Mein Kampf, S. 279. Sacrifice calculations of a certain kind may also be reasoned by treaty theory. On this see Lothar Fritze, Die Tötung Unschuldiger. Ein Dogma auf dem Prüfstand (Berlin/New York : de Gruyter, 2004), ch. II/3. 57

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League of Nations commissioner Carl J. Burckhardt that he was not able to accept that his people were suffering from hunger to then ask the rhetorical question: “Under such circumstances, would it not be better to leave two millions on the battlefield than to lose even more as a result of starvation?”58 This consideration demonstrates how Hitler would approach certain issues intellectually, and it also shows, most of all, his disregard for individual rights. His thinking was orientated to a radical way of understanding the utilitarian idea of the exchangeability of individuals. According to the principle of the exchangeability of individuals, the loss of one individual’s life can be compensated by having enabled the continuation of life or the thus realized birth of another individual. In this thinking, the individual is replaceable. The actual individual is so to speak just a place holder for a certain amount of life. Everyone’s life can be taken, even deliberately, if this way the total amount of human life will increase. This idea is incompatible with the granting of an unconditional right to life. Even the innocent individual may be sacrificed under the condition of his replacement. Accordingly, Hitler was convinced that, lastly, for the assessment of a statesman, the total balance of the gains and losses in human lives resulting for one’s people, and to be answered for by the statesman, was the decisive factor. Hence, Hitler had at his disposal a figure of thought which seemed to be suitable for justifying victim calculations even on a grand scale. “If Germany had a million children a year,” he stated in a speech in August 1929, “and 700,000-800,000 of the weakest were eliminated, in the end the result would perhaps even be an increase of power.”59 If one gets involved in this kind of accounts of gains and losses, there are hardly any limits to one’s imagination. After all, according to Hitler’s understanding, it was possible to include both the non-conceptions of the past as well as future births in the end accounts. With the help of such accounts it was even possible to justify the political decision to wage war. By also taking into consideration nonconceptions, Hitler, in a speech in front of junior military leaders in May 1942, presented the following account of his political actions: “Since 1918 there had been continuous birth restriction. This has been interrupted since 1933. [...] Compared to the situation of 1932 alone, the Na58 Quoted after: Carl J. Burckhardt, Meine Danziger Mission 1937-1939 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1962), p. 266. 59 Adolf Hitler, “‘Appell an die deutsche Kraft.’ Rede auf NSDAP-Reichsparteitag in Nürnberg vom 4. August 1929,” in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Bd. III/2 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1994), doc. 64, p. 348.

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tional Socialist revolution has succeeded with having 2 ½ million additional humans been born in just a few years. The current war has cost less than 10% of the thus created additional influx in human lives into the German 60 nation.”

And elsewhere he added: “[...] I hope that in ten years’ time there will be at least ten to fifteen million Germans more; [...] I am creating the conditions for their lives.”61 There may be no doubt: Also this is a moral way of argumenting, based on the validity (in the ordinary case) of the ban on killing. Hitler did not simply justify the right to sacrifice fellow citizens in order to achieve just any kind of goals (in this case: to conquer foreign soil) but connected this justification to the replacement of sacrificed life.

5. Argumentations for Justification Justification reasons describe conditions, situations, and prerequisites under which the obligation to abide by moral norms is suspended while simultaneously spelling out criteria to be met by the norm-violating actions. Now, if one asks on the basis of which kind of considerations the existence of justifying conditions will be decided, here, too, the answer is: Essentially, for the construction of these justifying conditions, extra-moral considerations come into play. So, questions of the actual existence of prerequisites for the application of moral principles cannot be discussed sensibly without taking empirical facts (such as, for example, the development of the weapons technology) into consideration or without an assessment of the opponent’s nature (such as his religious or ideological convictions). Just the same, an assessment of claimed victim end accounts must reach back to empirical data or the nomological knowledge of the real sciences. A discussion of the claimed priority of the people over the individual is to evaluate the dignity or rather the plausibility of the assumed ontology. Thus, even if we look at the argumentations for justification under the reference to the reasons for justification, we come to the same conclusions, that is, extra-moral convictions and assumptions may play an important and, under certain circumstances, even a crucial role. Furthermore, and this, too, should have become obvious, argumentations for justification are interwoven with moral convictions. Crucial to whether an argumentation for justification referring to reasons for justifi60

Hitler, “Geheimrede vom 30. Mai 1942 vor dem ‘militärischen Führernachwuchs,’” p. 715 (italics omitted). 61 Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, doc. 17, p. 58.

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cation may be seen as legitimate or rather meets with acceptance is the fundamental acceptance of the reasons, the figures of thought, submitted as a justification for a violation of norms as morally legitimate. The question of the acceptability of justification reasons is a normative question. Whether self-defense or also positive sacrifice accounts are accepted as justification reasons depends on one’s moral convictions; in the case of victim calculations it depends on whether one accepts a utilitarian moral principle. Even in the case of corresponding extra-moral convictions, the acceptance or non-acceptance of sacrifice calculations of the utilitarian kind may be crucial for considering an act morally legitimate or not. In cases of this kind, moral convictions are indeed crucial for the respective assessment. Thus, for example, if someone like Freiherr Axel von Bussche, who after pertinent experiences declared his readiness to attempt a suicide attack on Hitler, believes that the mass killing of innocent victims cannot be justified no matter what the reasons, had quite obviously a morality different from that of the National Socialists who considered such actions to be legitimate.

IX. Derived Norms Human actions are concrete. They happen under certain existential conditions and in certain situations. Humans who act have certain convictions, and they pursue certain goals. In many cases, moral basic norms alone do not tell one what or what not to do. To be able to obey them, they must be transformed into maxims of concrete action. Only the concrete action conditions in connection with the actor’s other non-moral convictions determine which behavior (action, non-action) is demanded in order to meet the basic norms. This way, based on moral basic norms, concrete principles of behavior (rules, norms) are derived whose compliance may violate basic norms.

1. General Considerations Practical life provides situations in which compliance with moral basic norms is precisely not in the interest of those concerned by action or nonaction. If, for example, a physician administers a life-saving transfusion to an unconscious accident victim, he assumes to act in the interest of the individual concerned; he assumes that if the individual concerned were aware of his predicament, he would agree to the bodily injury connected to it. The acting physician thus refers to putative consent.

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It may be a moral error to obey the wording of a moral basic norm. It may be that by obeying a basic norm (“You shall not injure anyones body!”) one violates another, more important basic norm in the respective situation (“You shall help a person in need!”). In contrast to an express and consciously given permission by a respective individual to the violation of his individual rights, the reference to putative consent is based on an interpretation of the interest of the individual concerned. These interests may refer to both those he would articulate if he had the possibility to express himself (e. g. if he had not lost consciousness) and those which he would express in the interpreter’s opinion if he were in an informed state and capable of judgment. The latter shall be called “objective interest.” In general, the following applies: If putative consent refers to objective interest and if the person’s or group of people’s objective interests have been interpreted correctly, a violation of articulated subjective interests may be legitimate or even imperative. However, this means that under these conditions, just as in the case of the physician helping without express permission, even a violation of basic norms may be legitimate or imperative. The case is different if an actor and the people whom the action concerns share extra-moral convictions which are not accepted by third parties either because they are not aware of these convictions or because they reject these convictions as unfounded or wrong. By taking specific extra-moral convictions into consideration, concrete norms (rules, principles of behavior) can be derived whose compliance actually violates norms, yet, simultaneously, constitutes a manner of realizing the behavior generally demanded by (other or also the same) basic norms.) This kind of moral practice differs from ours in the way in which the basic norms-violating behavior is considered morally legitimate or imperative for the realization of an interest protected by basic norms.

2. National Socialist Action Principles When it came to essential questions, National Socialists justified their actions by referring to putative consent. Although the figure of thought of putative consent, in connection with the idea of objective interests, did not have the same kind of fundamental importance in National Socialist thinking as that of active defense or self-defense, particularly in Hitler’s thinking, though, it was always virulent and, in many cases, provided a clean conscience which was maintained even while one suppressed others or

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entire peoples, deprived them of their freedom, or set oneself up as superior to them. Hitler and other leading ideologues believed that whoever has the appropriate insight has the right, indeed the obligation, to politically govern and to introduce the measures necessary for the struggle for life as well as for the transformation of life. Accordingly, the de facto abolition of parliamentarianism after Hitler’s assumption of power did not appear as a tyrant’s arbitrariness. According to National Socialist understanding, Hitler acted in accordance with the putative consent by the German people who had been exploited and humiliated since Versailles and who, now, were beginning to resist the suppressions and threats in the interest of every individual fellow citizen. If this requires the dictatorship of a reasonable, active, and benevolent leader, the practice of such a rule satisfies the objective needs of every individual as well as the people as a whole. As is well known, for Hitler, the fight against “Jewish Bolshevism” was imperative to the enforcement the progress of civilization. At the same time he was convinced that Germany was not only morally entitled but also politically obliged to lead the Germanic peoples in the inevitable decisive struggle against the Bolshevist enemy. For Hitler, it was a question of personal responsibility to devote his (alleged) insights on the natural laws of the struggle of peoples and races to the (objective) interests of the German people and, generally, all Germanic peoples as well as the Aryan race. He would have believed it to be immoral to make the recognition of this responsibility dependent on the people's communities themselves recognizing the vital necessity of conducting this fight offensively and to consent to his leadership. His conviction of being able to derive the appropriate policy from a correct insight into the conditions for the possibility of coping with existence made him convinced of representing the objective interests of the Germanic people and thus of acting by legitimately referring to putative consent. Goebbels had similar ideas. From Germany’s superiority, he derived both a “political obligation” and a “moral right” for the Germans to lead Europe.62 On the basis of such considerations it became possible to derive, for example, the basic norm “You shall (as a politician) act in the sense of societal progress!” which rendered it possible to derive the concrete norm “You shall, if demanded by the fight for progress, assume the initiative and the leadership!” Whoever follows the thus derived concrete principle of behavior because he is convinced of being entitled to legitimately refer to putative consent believes to be acting in the (objective) interest of those 62 (Joseph Goebbels), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Bd. II/2 (Munich: 1994), p. 223 (2 November 1941).

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concerned (that is of those who must submit to his leadership). That is why for Hitler neither his dictatorship nor the enforcement of the German claim to leadership toward those peoples who had also an interest in eliminating Bolshevism were connected to any violation of rights or interests. From the assumed putative consent followed the moral right to restrict the right to self-determination of both the German people and also the other Germanic peoples to the extent necessary. It was Hitler’s opinion that this was precisely how the basic norms were to be adhered to in order to keep one’s own people and one’s own race from harm and to advance societal progress.

3. Acting on Behalf of Those Concerned In contrast to justifications reasons, at least according to the actors’ understanding, derived norms are obeyed in accordance with the interests of those whose interests are considered worthy of protection. In the case of the National Socialists’ claim to leadership, this concerned only those opposite whom this claim was enforced and not those who fought the National Socialists. Thus, the claim to act in the interest of those concerned initially referred to the German people or the Germanic peoples as a whole. Hitler, however, still exceeded this. Like Aristotle, for whom the status of “being slaves” was “useful and just” for slaves due to their nature,63 he, too, believed that the “natives” in the occupied territories would, in the future, “have a much better life than today.”64 Enslavement, Hitler said, is in the (objective) interest of the enslaved!65 From the analysis of derived concrete action principles ensues: Despite consistent moral basic norms, what is morally demanded in different societies may be different. And vice versa: If in a society moral demands are valid which contradict those of another society, it does not follow that different moral basic norms are supported there. For, by referring to extramoral assumptions and convictions it is possible to derive concrete norms or principles of behavior. If these non-moral assumptions or convictions are different from each other, different derived norms will result from the same basic norms.

63

Aristoteles, Politik, in Idem, Philosophische Schriften in sechs Bänden, Bd. 4, translated by Eugen Rolfes (Hamburg: Meiner, 1995), 1255a. 64 Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, doc. 19, p. 63. 65 See also Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 324.

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X. How is it Conceivable to Do Evil with a Clean Conscience? If we speak about evil being done with a clean conscience, we mean a situation in which the moral basic norms are consciously and deliberately violated without any justification (from our point of view) while the actor is, simultaneously, convinced of the moral legitimacy of his actions.

1. Arguments for Justification Violating moral basic norms, it is possible to keep a clean conscience if one has justifying argumentations at one’s disposal. These argumentations must either demonstrate that, due to the accepted scope definitions, the basic norms in question do not include the entities harmed, or they must provide accepted reasons or facts, that is, justification reasons, which justify these violations, or they must make plausible that there had not been any violations of interests at all and that, instead of adhering to the concrete action principles, it had not been anything but a specific way of realizing principles which were protected by basic norms. In any case, the following applies: Very often it is extra-moral assumptions and convictions that decide which justifications are accepted for the violation of valid basic norms. The difference between us and the National Socialist perpetrators (as far as they were perpetrators with a clean conscience) does not exclusively, yet quite considerably, lie in the different extra-moral assumptions and convictions.

2. Extra-Moral Assumptions and Convictions By extra-moral assumptions or rather extra-moral convictions I mean assumptions or convictions of a non-moral kind. Among others, extra-moral convictions may consist of metaphysical or ontological assumptions, assumptions about contingent facts or theories on the nature and functioning of the natural and the social world, ideas concerning the behavior of humans or peoples and hypotheses regarding causal relationships as well as ideas about values and goals. Such non-moral assumptions may play quite an essential role in moral reflections, reflections about what is to be done and what not, as prescriptive premises, or as statements about facts, or also as non-moral value judgments. Non-moral value judgments refer most of all to conditions or events of the subject-

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internal or of the exterior world and judge them from the point of view of their desirability or preferability.66 However, also non-moral value judgments may gain moral relevance. They gain moral relevance if in principle it is possible to bring about or prevent the conditions and events judged by way of human actions and if the respective actions are indeed carried out. For, in as far as the moral quality of an action is judged also by those conditions or events, that is, by which non-moral values it realizes or intends to realize, non-moral value judgments prove to be relevant for moral action judgments.67 For an individual’s morality, also his (morally relevant non-moral) value judgments may be decisive.

3. Extra-Moral Convictions within National Socialist Ideology Not all convictions relevant to the political actions of National Socialists must necessarily have been genuine National Socialist convictions. Many, indeed almost all of their ideas and theorems may have been taken from traditional intellectual contexts. Which extra-moral convictions that we do not accept did the leading National Socialists have? In the following, let me list some of those which appear particularly important to me: Hitler’s opinion was that peoples (and states) exist in a morally and legally disorderly natural state which virtually cannot be left. This was true for him at least also insofar as, in his opinion, international legal agreements cannot be enforced given the lack of a state monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Accordingly, he believed that, in the long run, a peaceful coexistence of peoples free of domination was unrealistic; thus he proceeded from the assumption of an eternal fight of the peoples for lebensraum. In this context he assumed that the German people were suffering from a lack of lebensraum and would be able to effectively overcome the disproportion of the lebensraum and the population figure only through an expansion of its lebensraum. National Socialists identified a number of alleged dangers, among them a Jewish and a “Jewish-Bolshevist” danger threatening the German people or rather its vital interests. National Socialists assumed the existence of differently gifted races and, on this basis, postulated a worldhistoric mission of the Germanic race. National Socialists did not accept the postulate of the basic equality and the equal aptitude of all humans and did, at least, question the idea of the generic unity of the human race. 66 67

See Birnbacher, Analytische Einführung in die Ethik, p. 47. See ibid., p. 47.

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National Socialists supported an organic idea of community, that is, they viewed peoples and states as independently existing organisms, indeed as living beings. Furthermore, they attributed entities of this kind, namely, the German people or the Aryan-Germanic race, an independent value which had to be protected without fail. Corresponding to these ontological and axiological ideas, there emerged not only individuals from their notions of morality but also supra-individual beings, whose interests needed to be taken into consideration. National Socialists postulated an absolute priority of one’s own people over foreign peoples as well as a value-based priority of the collective over the individual. Accordingly, Hitler declared a people’s right to fight for its self-preservation by any means available and under any circumstances as an all-time priority, regardless of what the results might be for other peoples and their populations or even for the members of one’s own people.

4. Moral Sense of Guilt On the basis of these and other extra-moral convictions, National Socialists constructed argumentations which made the violation of moral basic norms, including the prohibition to kill, appear legitimate. Such arguments are the cognitive prerequisite for being able to keep a clean conscience even in case of a violation of moral basic norms. This way, National Socialists were able to believe that even the deliberate killing of innocent people or accepting the killing of both the members of other peoples and the members of their own people was morally legitimate. With other arguments one tried to allege that certain actions were not what they seemed, that is, legal violations, but rather that they were connected to the adherence to moral basic norms in a situation-related appropriate way. Still using other argumentations, one attempted to explain that the alleged violation of interests was actually in the correctly understood interest of those concerned. Even such argumentations ensure the perpetrators’ clean conscience and prevent any sense of guilt from developing. So it becomes evident: Actions which must be considered crimes, for instance, from the point of view of universalist human rights ethics, may be considered legitimate in the context of a different moral practice. The validity of justifications depends to a large degree on the acceptability of the extra-moral convictions adopted into them, including nonmoral value judgments. A certain kind of extra-moral convictions can be logically or empirically refuted. Another kind may be classified as nonacceptable as a result of coherence checks or plausibility considerations. Concerning yet another kind, one may ask if there are good reasons for

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accepting them. So, for example, it cannot be ruled out that the incorrect identifications of danger or self-defense situations or incorrect interpretations of interests can be recognized; by the same token, it is possible to refute theoretical assumptions or explanations. Over-hastily pointing to the “different morality” of the perpetrators would prevent this cognitive process. The situation becomes more difficult if the perpetrators base their justifications on metaphysical premises not accepted by us, that is, on those which cannot be rationally refuted. Moral convictions based on diverging metaphysical assumptions such as an ontology in which peoples or states appear as independent entities may be incommensurable.

XI. Did the National Socialists Have Different Moral Convictions? We have already seen that the National Socialists followed a particular kind of utilitarianism, that is, a utilitarianism referring to one’s own people or race. To Hitler’s way of thinking, the idea of minimizing the number of victims was of central importance. He was convinced that, due to his ability to analyze dangers, he was able to act morally responsible under the utilitarian aspect of minimizing the number of victims. “I only see” he explained his thinking and actions at the Fuehrer Headquarters, “the victims demanded by the future if today there is no sacrifice.”68 As demonstrated by written and oral statements, considerations of this kind dominated his way of thinking. In this context, he presented extremely vague calculations to justify concrete actions with huge numbers of victims. Hitler did not hesitate to derive principles of political action from theoretically founded speculations and to morally justify them. He believed, for instance, that lengthy peace times were connected to depravation phenomena, to which, typically, also belonged a decline in birth rates. Even peace had its price or rather its “victims.”69 However, thereby, the question of the justifiability of a war arises against the background of entirely unprecedented numbers of victims. Based on these extra-moral assumptions, calculations emerge, which must have consequences for the willingness to wage war. Yet, utilitarian considerations for the minimization of the number of victims are not at all genuinely National Socialist. Basically, even the socalled “Luftsicherheitsgesetz,” which was passed by the German Bundes68

Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, doc. 25, p. 71. See Hitler, “Geheimrede vom 30. Mai 1942 vor dem ‘militärischen Führernachwuchs,’” p. 715.

69

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tag and has meanwhile been declared a violation of the constitution, was based on the calculation of possible numbers of victims. Certainly typical for totalitarian systems are calculations of the numbers of victims on a grand scale; characteristic is also the willingness to sacrifice thousands, tens of thousands, indeedhundreds of thousands of currently living humans for the sake of the life and happiness of future generations. In this context, one might also ask if the principle of conduct anchored in the Organisationshandbuch der NSDAP is to be interpreted as a moral principle. There, it says that a National Socialist will “always act correctly if he examines himself daily and asks if his work and his conduct stand up to the Fuehrer’s expectations.”70 Later, Hans Frank had altered this principle in a manner reminding of Kant’s Categorical Imperative and demanded: “Act in a way that the Fuehrer, if he knew about your actions, would approve these actions.”71 Here, the alleged will of the Fuehrer is made the criterion for correct action. The individual’s responsibility consists of defining the correct way of conduct in a concrete situation from his knowledge of the general will of the Fuehrer. On the one hand, this principle in its intended effect, much rather had the nature of a controltechnological disciplinary instrument. On the other hand, one may say that the trick to this imperative consisted in reason having been thought to embody the Fuehrer’s will and that, hence, the interpreter of the reasonably bidden, namely the individual, appeared as a self-legislator quite in the sense of Kant. The principle according to which a marriage partner should “strictly and without exception” be chosen from among the members of the German people may be termed genuinely National Socialist. This “loyalty to the blood of one’s own people” was considered the “highest duty” which could not be violated unpunished; at the same time, its fulfillment was the “greatest honour for any individual.”72 This moral principle was seen as the instrument for the prevention of endangerment to the German people’s self-preservation ensuing from intermingling with inferior races. To which extent the National Socialists championed different moral principles and in how far these principles themselves were supported by extra-moral “ingredients” of the National Socialist ideology may, ultimate70

Organisationsbuch der NSDAP, published by Reichsorganisationsleiter der NSDAP, Zentralverlag der NSDAP (Munich: Franz Eher Nachf., 1936), p. 4 (italics erased). 71 Hans Frank, Technik des Staate, (Berlin/Leipzig/Vienna: Deutscher Rechtsverlag, 1942), p. 15. 72 Walter Gross, Deine Ehre ist die Treue zum Blute deines Volkes (Berlin: Elsnerdruck, 1943), p. 31 (italics erased).

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ly, be left open at this point. In any event, Hitler’s anti-individualistic point of view did not just make him give center-field to the concerns of the community, de facto, he was seeking moral principles which assessed the legitimacy of an individual’s behavior under the aspect of the desirability of the consequences which this behavior as a generalized one and designed to last for centuries, will presumably have for a society. Therefore, he assumed that although exercising certain rights is capable of satisfying an individual’s personal desires, generally granting these very rights may at the same time, however, have catastrophic consequences for future generations. Based on this consideration, he justified a universal testing procedure, that is, “evaluating any action which looks doubtful from the higher point of view: how would things be if that what currently we consider legal would have been considered legal already by our ancestors and if they had indeed behaved according to it.”73 From this, Hitler derived the principle of not tolerating any of the modes of behavior in contemporary times on whose account one must say that it was good that our ancestors had refrained from them or that it would have been better if they had desisted. According to this universalization principle, individual rights can only be granted if granting them generally does not only “make the [present] continuation of life possible” but if they “might also be fundamental for life.”74 It was never possible, he went on, to “follow the principle: the important thing is that we live” but, after all, one had to “follow the principle: the important thing is that those coming after us will be able to live.”75

XII. Once More: Did the National Socialists Have a Different Morality? Responding to this question with a simple “yes” would not do justice to the complexity of the problem. Precisely for the reason that the National Socialist practices give rise to condemnations one should try to avoid obvious but all too simplistic answers. First: The National Socialists accepted a minimum of moral basic norms similar to what we accept. In this sense, they did not have a different morality. 73 Adolf Hitler, “‘Ein Kampf um Deutschlands Zukunft.’ Rede auf NSDAPVersammlung in Dresden vom 18. September 1928,” in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Bd. III/1 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1994), doc. 26, p. 84. 74 Ibid., p. 83. 75 Ibid., p. 84.

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Realizing this fact, the diagnosis that in the case of traditional western moral thought and National Socialist thought we are confronted with two mutually exclusive moralities, will prove to be unhelpful, yes, even dangerous. For, this manner of speaking suggests that in order to avoid criminal actions we would just have to decide on the right morality. However, things are somewhat more complicated. In the course of human history, there have been indefinite numbers of crimes committed by people who accepted the basic norms of traditional morality. However, accepting these basic norms does not yet guarantee acting morally. Conversely, it does also not follow from a violation of moral norms that the action was morally wrong. Therein lies the problem! There are violations of moral basic norms which are considered legitimate and which we consider legitimate as well. This is the context on which, consciously or unconsciously, the clean conscience of many perpetrators is based. Any action violating basic norms is deemed legitimate if one succeeds in coming up with a plausible reason or with presenting a convincing argumentation on the strength of which a violation of norms is morally legitimate under the given circumstances. Whether we consider such a violation legitimate often depends on our extra-moral convictions. Therefore, an argumentative discussion about perpetrators with a clean conscience would, among others, need to start from their extra-moral convictions which are different from ours, of course. The claim that the National Socialists had accepted a similar minimum of moral basic norms which was similar to ours is not completely independent of the suggested conceptualization. For example, it is definitely possible, though uncommon and not really practicable, to include justification reasons in the formulation of norms. Deciding on such a linguistic regularization, diverse basic norms will be supported also in case differing justification reasons are accepted. Second: Crucial for understanding the moral thinking of National Socialists is the insight that besides other moral convictions (other moral principles, other justification reasons, and other normative premises) they also had other extra-moral convictions. This implies: National Socialists accepted relevance criteria which we do not accept; they considered justifications for violations of norms to be valid, which we do not consider valid, and they obeyed norms we do not obey. To a considerable degree, these differences can be traced back to the acceptance of different extramoral assumptions and convictions. Undoubtedly, the National Socialists considered justifications valid which we, from the point of view of a human rights universalism, do not

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accept. These justifications may rest upon moral rules or principles which we accept (such as the principle of self-defense) or to those, which we do not accept (such as the principle of the exchangeability of the individual). The National Socialist system of notions was thus suitable for justifying actions which we consider criminal. And, in this sense, they had a different morality. Third: National Socialists accepted different moral principles to some extent. Hence, the idea of the exchangeability of the individual may be seen as one of the main characteristics of the National Socialists’ moral thinking. National Socialists believed that it was morally legitimate to kill humans in order to preserve the lives of other humans or to make life possible for those as yet unborn. Actually, in extreme situations, it is possible to fall back on utilitarian calculations also in the western constitutional states; the excessive reference to this moral principle was, however, typical of National Socialist morality. Fourth: In the final analysis, Hitler’s thinking was concerned with creating the intellectual prerequisites necessary for enforcing the demands and the predominance of his own people. To Hitler, it was the creation of man which was predetermined but not moral norms. To him, the latter were based on interests and of an instrumental nature. Moral norms though, and that is the crucial difference to individualist ethics, moral norms must “stand the test” in the peoples’ inevitable struggle for life, so Hitler’s notion. In Mein Kampf Hitler explained in a somewhat similar fashion: “But if peoples fight for their lives on this planet, thus, are confronted with the fundamental question of to be or not to be, all considerations of humanity or aesthetics collapse completely, for all these ideas do not hover in the ether but come from man’s imagination and are tied to him. [...] [new paragraph] Thus, for a people’s struggle for its existence in this world all these concepts are only of minor significance, indeed they are completely ruled out as determinants for the forms of this fight, as soon as they may undermine the power of self-preservation of a fighting people.”76

Here, and in many other passages, Hitler reasons for an ontological and value-related priority of the people over the individual. According to this notion, the individual can “never [be] the end but only the means of political planning and acting.”77 The National Socialists connected an ontological predetermination, that is, seeing the individual as a part of the “racial corpus” with the postulate of a normative collectivism, and declared the 76 77

Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 195. Himmler, ”Aufgaben und Aufbau der Polizei des Dritten Reiches,” p. 127.

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preservation and the development of one’s own respective people to be the highest value. Accordingly, it is the task of politics to secure the preservation and the development of one’s own people. Furthermore, as Hitler’s explanations exemplify, from this “völkisch basic understanding” arise normative consequences both for dealing with the individuals of one’s own people as well as for those of competing or rather enemy peoples. Already the individual fellow citizen must subordinate himself to his people’s vital necessities, indeed he may even be sacrificed for this purpose, if necessary. This applies even more so to the individuals of other peoples fighting for the same lebensraum and resources. In Hitler’s estimation, when it comes to the struggle for existence, no people can be morally obliged to compromise its own chances for survival and development in favor of other peoples and their members. This is not to say that Hitler necessarily and in every respect had to have denied the legitimacy or validity of moral commandments in dealing with the members of other peoples. However, in his judgment, the obligation to be considerate expired the very moment such considerations undermined the realization of one’s own people’s existential interests, when, so his example, “the self-preserving vigor of a fighting people might be undermined.” From such conditions, so the resultant consequence, even the directly premeditated, respectively deliberate killing of members of other peoples is not to be objected to, morally.

XIII. A Relativization of the National Socialist Crimes? Does attempting to explain even the National Socialist crimes in the same fashion as any other crimes not mean the relativization of these crimes? Yes and no! Yes, it means a relativization in as far as, this way, it is claimed that these crimes do not differ enough from other crimes to defy a uniform explanation pattern or that they are completely incomprehensible. No, it does not mean a relativization for the reason that these explanations do nothing to change the fact of the moral condemnation of the crimes to be explained. The question which the perpetrators would have had to ask themselves in as much as they actually believed to have been doing something permissible is whether it was morally legitimate to base their actions on the respective extra-moral convictions. As regards this, we are confronted with a moral problem also in the case of the leading National Socialists. This moral problem is, in part, however, located on another level than sometimes imagined.

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It is not located, or at least not only, in the realm of moral volition or rather moral convictions but in the realm of judgments as well as of decision-making. It may also be due to which habits one has developed and which attitudes one has cultivated. On the one side, the National Socialists’ failure, in as far as they were perpetrators with a clean conscience, was a cognitive one; on the other side, it was a failure which can be traced back to irresponsible decision-making as regards their actions. On the one hand, it is true that every individual who wants to be accepted as a reasonable being is, by the same token, also responsible for his judgment and the formation of his will. The perpetrators failed morally because they based their actions on an untenable ideology, whose untenability they could have recognized. The perpetrators with a clean conscience violated cognitive duties. The fulfillment of cognitive duties in respect to relevant questions is the precondition for the possibility of acting rationally, thus responsibly. Insofar as these violations of duties were avoidable, they count against the perpetrators as a morale failure. On the other hand, not only is there a violation of cognitive duties to be lamented. Likewise, the perpetrators’ failure is based on an irresponsible attitude toward their own convictions. The callous insolence of believing oneself entitled to violating human rights, yes, even to sacrificing humans on a massive scale based on a vague “assumption of something being true” is typical for perpetrators with a clean conscience. I consider this to be an irresponsible attitude. Looking at these reasons for the failure of the National Socialist perpetrators, the National Socialists indeed had a different morality. However, it is a specifically National Socialist morality only to a lesser degree; most of all, it is a morality whose structure we observe in all large-scale criminals motivated by ideology or religion. Nevertheless, several of the extra-moral assumptions are specifically National Socialist. Speaking of a specific National Socialist morality may at best be harmless, yet contributes hardly anything to a better understanding. To understand and explain the National Socialists’ actions, it is indispensable to also identify their extra-moral convictions. Additionally, the attempt to explain the National Socialist crimes in the same fashion as certain other crimes is preferable in the following sense: The here presented explanation demonstrates what humans, who need not at all be described as evil, are capable of if they succeed in legitimating their actions to themselves, thus maintaining their personal integrity. To trace the National Socialist crimes back to the perpetrators’ amorality or wickedness from the outset would mean opting for the most convenient interpretation. As we believe ourselves to be morally upright, the thought

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that we might have become involved in crimes of this kind seems unimaginable. The difference between us who accept human rights ethics and the National Socialist perpetrators with a clean conscience does however not belong to the realm of moral volition but, at least frequently, to that of the extra-moral convictions. The here presented analysis has shown: Although perpetrators with a clean conscience fail morally, what they must be taught first of all is not morality but rational thinking, and a part of rational thinking is that one establishes a reasonable, sufficiently skeptical relationship with one’s own extra-moral convictions.

NAZI PERPETRATORS

HITLER’S MOTIVE FOR THE HOLOCAUST GUNNAR HEINSOHN

I. The Frustration of the Researchers Like nobody else, Léon Poliakov (1910-1997) dealt with the Holocaust as well as with all other murders of Jews. In North America he is called “Mr. Anti-semitism,” after his eight-volumed “The History of Anti-semitism” (1977-1988). From La Condition des Juifs en France from 1946 until the English reworking of the Aryan myth (The Aryan Myth) in 1996, it had been book after book and essay after essay for half a century. Nevertheless, until shortly before his death Poliakov’s helplessness toward Hitler (1889-1945) and the destruction of the Jews would not end. Is it thus really surprising that less experienced historians are despairing completely? Being an early master of research on Hitler and also a decades-long observer of the debate, Alan Bullock1 (1914-2004) also belongs to this group: “The more I learn about Hitler, the more difficult it is for me to find an explanation.”2 Also Ulrich Herbert (*1951), maybe Germany’s most renowned junior historian on the NS period3 and a Leibniz Award Winner already in 1999, is not able to find a satisfactory approach to the matter: “As there is no theory on the Holocaust, [...] it is basically discussing the event itself again and again which might lead our interest toward gaining insight.”4 Götz Aly (*1947), one of the most studious authors on the topic, is at best ready to rule out what cannot have played a crucial role: “These days, no serious historian will attribute [...] the main or even sole respon-

1

Cp. Alan Bullock, Hitler. A Study in Tyranny (London: Odhams Press, 1952). Idem, Hitler. Eine Studie über Tyrannei (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1953). 2 Ron Rosenbaum, Die Hitler-Debatte: Auf der Suche nach dem Ursprung des Bösen (Munich/Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1999), p. 7. 3 Cp. Ulrich Herbert, Best. Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903-1989 (Bonn: Dietz, 1996). Idem (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1939-1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1998). 4 Herbert, Best, p. 66.

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sibility for the murder of Europe’s Jews to ’Hitler’s obsessions.’”5 But even this minimal position meets resistance from his colleague Hanns C. Löhr (*1961) who is fifteen years younger: “There is no doubt about Hitler’s responsibility for the destruction of Europe’s Jews during World War II.”6 Both scientists are trying to give their best, indeed they summarize their life’s work writing on invitation by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the occasion of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (27 January 1945). Even more attention than the above mentioned authors is attracted by Ian Kershaw (*1953), currently the most extensive Hitler biographer.7 But even he is unable to provide more than a historic report: “In the worst possible way, Hitler demonstrated what we are capable of. ‘Auschwitz’ comes to the limits of what can be explained: historians can describe how it happened, but why it happened is a completely different question.”8 Even after seven more years of consideration, he has not come any closer to an explanation: “[Hitler was] an authoritarian type obsessed with an extraordinary and hardly explainable desire for destruction.”9 Hardly different from Kershaw are the results by the award winner of the Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels, Saul Friedlander (*1932). With his thesis of a specifically German kind of redemption-antisemitism he has produced one of the about fifty general Holocaust theories presented since 1945.10 However, he was perceived to a lesser degree as, at the time, everyone was still discussing Daniel Goldhagen’s (*1959) thesis of an extremely eliminatory kind of German anti-Semitism.11 However, Friedlander succeeded in being frustrated with the attempt of trying to grasp Hitler’s motivation even twenty years before Kershaw: “We know

5

Götz Aly, “Die vielfachen Tatbeiträge zum Mord an den europäischen Juden,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 15, 2002, p. 49. 6 Hannes C. Löhr, “Hitlers Befehl,”Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 24, 2004, p. 33. 7 Cf. Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889-1936 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1998). 8 Idem, “‘In gewisser Weise war er der Mann ohne Eigenschaften: Die Geschichte Hitlers ist auch die Geschichte seiner Unterschätzung.’ An interview with Ian Kershaw, the author of the new great Hitler biography,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 1, 1988, pp. 4-5. 9 Idem, “‘Was wäre gewesen, wenn?’, Interview by Frank Schirrmacher and Stefan Aust with Ian Kershaw,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 19, 2005, p. 36. 10 Cf. Saul Friedländer, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden, 2. Bde (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998). 11 Cf. Daniel N. Goldhagen, Hitlers willige Vollstrecker (Berlin: Siedler, 1996).

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the details of what happened; we know the chronology of events, but the underlying dynamics of the phenomenon evade our grasp.”12 Also Israel’s leading Holocaust historian failed his readers: “In principle, Hitler can be explained; but this does not mean that he has been explained.”13 Is an excursion into philosophy more helpful? As a moral philosopher, Hungarian author Agnes Heller (*1929) stands out in the genre,14 for which, after seven earlier awards, she was awarded the Goethe Medal in 2010: “The Holocaust can neither be explained nor understood. It did not serve any purpose; it was neither a kind of liberation nor an event within a causal chain. [...] What is irrational and unreasonable per se cannot be integrated.”15 Let us turn to Poland’s Wladyslaw Bartoszewski (*1922) who did not only himself suffer at Auschwitz but afterwards completed his education as a historian. He does not give us any hope either: “Today, the historic, political, theological, and philosophical literature on Auschwitz encompasses some thousands of books and an even larger number of smaller contributions, probably in all languages. The phenomenon of Auschwitz is a topic not only for scientists but also for artists. Nevertheless it remains incomprehensible, ungraspable, and most incredible.”16 What do educated laypeople say? Who could represent them better than Ernst Cramer (1913-2010)? He is one of the Jews who were saved in 1945, and in January 2006, on the occasion of Auschwitz Liberation Day at the German Bundestag, he condensed the sixty years of considering the question this way: “This genocide was the biggest catastrophe which has ever befallen the Jews, and at the same time [the] most ungraspable tragedy of German history.”17

12

Saul Friedländer, “Vom Antisemitismus zur Judenvernichtung. Eine historiographische Studie zur nationalsozialistischen Judenpolitik und Versuch einer Interpretation,” in Eberhard Jäckel/Jürgen Rohwer (eds.), Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Entschlußbildung und Verwirklichung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985), pp. 18-60, here 49. 13 Rosenbaum, Die Hitler-Debatte, p. 7. 14 Cf. Agnes Heller, A Philosophy of Morals (Oxford/Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1990). 15 Idem, “‘Schreiben nach Auschwitz? Schweigen über Auschwitz? Philosophische Betrachtungen eines Tabus. Die Weltzeituhr stand still,’” Die Zeit, May 7, 1993, pp. 61. 16 Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, “‘Unfassbar, unbegreiflich, unglaublich: Die Baupläne von Auschwitz,’” Die Welt, February 17, 2009, p. 7. 17 Ernst Cramer, “‘In vielen Menschen hatte der Teufel über Gott gesiegt’, ” Die Welt, January 28, 2006, p. 4.

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If science and philosophy fail, it is time to ask the artists. Arguably, nobody else has spent as much time on the destruction of the Jews as Claude Lanzmann (*1925) who in 1985 presented the nine-hour- long film Shoa: “I claim that there are no [historic explanations]. It was my iron rule not to be interested in understanding. To the question “why,” an SS man answered to the prisoner Primo Levi: There is no “why” here. That is the truth. Searching for “why” is absolutely obscene. Historians create their causal chains: the Great Depression, unemployment, the defeat in World War I, Bolshevism, the time of Hitler’s youth, and so on. These may have been some of the conditions which were necessary for the development of murderous anti-Semitism, but they are not sufficient.”18 Of course, there are also Holocaust researchers who, for reasons of popular education, are not interested in looking for Hitler’s motivation. They are afraid of whitewashing his countless helpers if they only concentrated on the overlord. Indeed, such a danger cannot be ruled out. However, once you have several hundred murders on your desk, it soon becomes clear that there is never a lack of ready and willing henchmen but that, in most cases, they do not occupy positions from which it is possible to give orders.19 Thus, the fact that perpetrators can be found in almost every case does not provide an explanation, for these people are available also before and after the killings. According to Léon Poliakov, the most experienced and medially multitalented of all researchers on Hitler was Joachim C. Fest (1926-2006). For 43 years he presented works on Hitler’s Germany.20 Two years before his death he seized the occasion to lament the futility of his work: “I do not comprehend it [the murder of the Jews – G. H.], and nobody who has ever dealt with it has even come close [...] to a convincing interpretation.”21 How are parents, educators, teachers, pastors, journalists, politicians, and professors to be able to explain it if their question “Why Auschwitz” can18

Claude Lanzmann, “‘Der Tod ist ein Skandal.’ Der französische ‘Shoah’Verfilmer Claude Lanzmann über sein Leben, seinen Memoirenband ‘Der patagonische Hase,’ die Erinnerung an die Judenvernichtung und die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit,” Der Spiegel, September 6, 2010. 19 Cf. Gunnar Heinsohn, Lexikon der Völkermorde (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1999). 20 Cf. Joachim Fest, Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches. Profile einer totalitären Herrschaft (Munich: Piper, 1963). Idem, Hitler. Eine Biographi (Frankfurt a. M.: Propyläen, 1973). Idem, Die unbeantwortbaren Fragen. Notizen über Gespräche mit Albert Speer zwischen Ende 1966 und 1981 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 2006). 21 Idem, “‘Mitleidlosigkeit bis zum allerletzten Punkt,’” Die Welt, September 10, 2004, p. 3.

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not even be answered by the best experts? Pupils despairing over their elders cannot even find a solution in Wikipedia shortly before class starts: “Only by Hitler’s permission and approval, and on his orders, as is the general consensus among historians, were the subordinate groups of the NS perpetrators able to systematically exterminate the Jews. Nevertheless, it is still being debated which factors were crucial for the escalation.”22 However, what is investigated is not Hitler’s motivation behind his “permission.” Only the controversies about the indeed not always easily comprehensible steps toward implementation are presented. For example, most experts see the Holocaust start as early as autumn 1939.23 Others do not deny the early killings in Poland but believe that things started as late as December 1941 because that is when the USA joined the war.24 However, the chronological distance between the shots he fires does not say anything about a murderer’s motives. About this, the analysts stay tight-lipped. However, the nestor among them all, i.e. Poliakov, does not look all too pessimistic anymore at the end of his long way. In his last essay “Les vraies raisons des crimes hitlériens” (“The real reasons for Hitler’s crimes”) - he quotes the following passage from his own French translation: “Hitler does not leave any doubt about his knowledge that his genocidal ‘methods’ are in accordance with archaic law. That is precisely why he wants to reestablish the pagan law of antiquity, which had had to give way to the Jewish law. On 6 August 1942 he monologizes: ‘I imagine that these days the one or the other wonder: how can the Fuehrer destroy a city like Petersburg (Leningrad)! When I recognize that the species is in danger, my emotions are replaced by ice-cold reason: all I see are the victims of the future if something is not sacrificed today. / Petersburg must disappear. Here, one must apply ancient principles, the city must be completely razed to the ground. (Also) Moscow as the seat of the (Communist) doctrine will disappear from the earth. / I do not feel anything when razing

22

Wikipedia, “Holocaustforschung,” in http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaustforschung, last access in November 2010. 23 Cf. Peter Longerich, “Die Eskalation der NS-Judenverfolgung zur ‘Endlösung’: Herbst 1939 bis Sommer 1942,” in Symposium on the Origins of Nazi Policy, (Gainesville/FL 1998). 24 Cf. Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann-Männer (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1993). Christian Gerlach, “Die Wannseekonferenz, das Schicksal der deutschen Juden und Hitlers Grundsatzentscheidung, alle Juden Europas zu ermorden,” WerkstattGeschichte, vol. 6 (1997) no. 18, pp. 7-44. Idem, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998).

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Kiev, Moscow and Petersburg to the ground.’25 / ‘Conscience is a Jewish invention’ Hitler espoused already at the beginning of the 1930s. By his decision for the extinction of Jewry, this obstacle to genocide was to be cleared out of the way.”26 This passage comes from Why Auschwitz?, which the author, two years after having presented a first version of the thesis in an essay27 – published in 1995.28 Soon, the psychoanalyst Béla Grunberger followed Poliakov.29 However, he was predominantly interested in the author’s thesis of the occidental hatred of Jewry as an expression of the conflict between the God of Abraham who spared the son, and the Christian God who sacrificed his son.30 In 1998, the Catholic intellectual Carl Amery (1922-2005) based his Hitler as Predecessor on Why Auschwitz? However, it was to take half a decade31 until with Dan Stone (University of London), a Holocaust researcher in the stricter sense, adopted the thesis of Why Auschwitz?.32 In 2005, Rolf Zimmermann followed with Philosophy after Auschwitz. In 2001, Jonathan C. Friedman (University of Maryland, College Park) adopted these ideas in The Routledge History of the Holocaust.33 Thus, the author did not have much to present which might convince his colleagues. But what are we talking about? Even for him in those days there was no doubt that the murder of the Jews had been decided before the begin25 Albert Speer, Der Sklavenstaat. Meine Auseinandersetzung mit der SS (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), p. 422. Bibliographic information is not in Poliakov’s translation of the original Heinsohn, 1995 (see below FN 28). 26 Léon Poliakov, “Les vraies raisons des crimes hitlériens,” L’Infini. Littérature, Philosophie, Art, Science, Politique, vol. 46 (1996), pp. 76-79, here 77. 27 Cf. Gunnar Heinsohn, “Umweltapokalyptiker und Ökokrieger: Die Zukunft des Völkermords,” in Joachim Wilke (ed.), Zum Naturbegriff der Gegenwart. Kongressdokumentation zum Projekt “Natur im Kopf,” Stuttgart, 21 -26. Juni 1993, vol. 1: Problemata, published by Kulturamt des Landeshauptamtes Stuttgart (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1993), pp. 225-260. 28 Cf. Gunnar Heinsohn, Warum Auschwitz? Hitlers Plan und die Ratlosigkeit der Nachwelt, (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1995), pp. 164. 29 Cf. Béla Grunberger/Pierre Dessuant, Narzissmus, Christentum, Antisemitismus: Eine psychoanalytische Untersuchung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2000). 30 At first Gunnar Heinsohn, Was ist Antisemitismus? - Der Ursprung von Monotheismus und Judenhaß. (Frankfurt a. M.: Eichborn, 1988). 31 Cf. Dan Stone (ed.), Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust (Amsterdam/Atlanta/GA: Editions Rodopi, 2001), pp. 94. 32 Cf. Gunnar Heinsohn, “What Makes the Holocaust a Uniquely Unique Genocide?,” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 2 (2000) no. 2, pp. 411-430. 33 Cf. Jonathan C. Friedman (ed.), The Routledge History of the Holocaust (London/New York Routledge, 2011), p. 509.

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ning of the war when he points to Reinhard Heydrich’s (1904-1942) secret order issued three weeks after the beginning of the war (21 September 1939). As the head of the “Reichssicherheitshauptamt,” Heydrich was Hitler’s executor but not the one providing him with motivation. Raoul Hilberg (1926-2007) said that not even Heydrich comprehended his Fuehrer: “Heydrich told him [Adolf Eichmann, 1906-1962]: The Fuehrer has now decided the physical extinction of the Jewish people. And even Heydrich seemed to have been disturbed. Even he was not able to really comprehend the extent of the consequences of these words.”34 Nevertheless, he issued the order for the extinction: “To the heads of all Einsatzgruppen of the Sicherheitspolizei concerning: the Jewish problem in the occupied [Polish] territory. I refer to today’s meeting in Berlin and once again point out that the intended overall measures (that is the final goal) must strictly be kept secret. It must be distinguished between the final goal (which will require longer periods of time) 1. The steps toward achieving the final goal (which will be carried out in the near future) The intended measures require the most thorough preparations both in respect of technology and of economy. It is a matter of course that from here the oncoming tasks cannot be determined in every detail. At the same time the following instructions and guidelines are meant to instruct the heads of the Einsatzgruppen to make practicable considerations.”35

Thus, even the allegedly arbitrary acts by which SS leaders are said to have changed the Holocaust into an independent process against Hitler’s wishes, or at least without his knowledge, are here directly ordered in the form of demanding “practicable considerations.”

II. Hitler’s Indisputable Motives for the Other Large-Scale Killings The first large group of victims of the more than 300.000 originally targeted by Hitler-Germany, more than 100,000 from September 1939 on, was 34

Raul Hilberg, “Podiumsdiskussion.” in Eberhard Jäckel/Jürgen Rohwer (eds.), Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Entschlußbildung und Verwirklichung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985), p. 187. 35 “Schnellbrief Heydrichs an die Chefs der Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei vom 21. September 1939, die ’Judenfrage’ in den besetzten Gebieten Polens betreffend.” in http://forum.ioh.pl/download.php?id=65003&sid=da446dc1a4f10 64e25c40689840351d4.

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eliminated because they were considered a costly burden for the nation, thus weakening it from the inside.36 Beginning in Poland, everywhere within the borders of the intended great empire the mentally and physically handicapped were killed. However, the handicapped outside of the demarcation lines were not targeted. Another large group of victims that was eliminated were the Sinti and the Roma: vasectomies were enforced from 1934 on, with deportations starting in 1936 and ending with at least 200,000 dead by 1945 because they were considered social parasites despite the fact that, doubtlessly, they were Indo-Aryan. The Roma living outside the borders of the intended great empire were not killed. The same holds true also for select contingencies within these borders although it is no over-interpretation to understand Heinrich Himmler’s so called Auschwitz edict of 16 December 1942 as the instruction for a final solution.37 Homosexuals were persecuted because they were under suspicion of hardly, or not at all, reproducing themselves and of ‘infecting’ others. Being stigmatized by having to wear a pink triangle, 5,000 to 15,000 of them were deported to concentration camps starting in 1935. Between 50 to 60 per cent of them died. Nevertheless, there were no intentions to murder all the homosexuals within the Reich or outside its borders.38 The Slavs were by far the largest group of victims of Hitler-Germany. The “General Plan East”39 targeted more than 150 million of them, 100 million from the USSR alone. About 11 million, not including the soldiers killed in combat, died after September 1939. They had been living in the territories which were meant to become the “Lebensraum” for 30 million German settlers. Slavs living outside the borders of the intended great

36

Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat. Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1983). 37 Distributed as an express letter from the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt [Imperial Criminal Police] of 29 January 1943. Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die nationalsozialistische “Lösung der Zigeunerfrage“ (Hamburg: Wallstein, 1996), pp. 301. 38 Cf. Rüdiger Lautmann/Winfried Grikschat/Egbert Schmidt, “Der rosa Winkel in den nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern,” in Rüdiger Lautmann (ed.), Seminar Gesellschaft und Homosexualität (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1977), pp. 325. 39 Cf. Czeslaw Madajczyk (ed.), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan. Dokumente (Munich: Saur, 1994).

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empire were not persecuted. This holds true also for Germanized Slavs (Ruhr Poles etc.) who might even have become settlers themselves.40 Probably the smallest group of minorities persecuted was that of the 25,000 to 30,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses who not even constituted 0.04 per cent of the Reich’s population. Their strict observance of the Jewish ban on killing, which found its expression in conscientious objection, was punished as their most severe crime. Almost one-half of all Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered persecution and imprisonment. 2,000 of them, – marked by a purple triangle, – were taken to concentration camps. About 1,500 of them died, and 270 were executed for conscientious objection.41 As they also rejected anti-Semitism, the ideological attacks on the Jehovah’s Witnesses were most similar to those on the Jews. The second-largest group of victims of Hitler-Germany persecuted immediately after 1933, whose loss totaled five-and-a-half million people, were killed Europe-wide. They were killed even in territories which were not meant to become parts of the Reich (Hungary, France, and the Balkans etc.). For the time being, there is no consensus at all in reference to Hitler’s motives for these mass murders: “One will have to turn toward Hitler once again. [...] At the top, it was Hitler alone!”42

III. Hitler’s Personal Hatred of Jewry From his time in Austria (1889-1913) “we do not know of any antiSemitic remark by the young H.[itler]. / Thus, the crucial question of when anti-Semitism became the pivotal element in Hitler’s thinking cannot be answered for his time in Linz and Vienna. Its development must be attributed to later years. When, in 1919, Hitler appeared as a politician in Munich, he was already using aggressive anti-Semitic slogans.”43 Apart from this, the question concerning the reason for Hitler’s personal hatred of the Jews must be considered “unanswered and possibly unanswera-

40

Cf. Isabel Heinemann, Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut. Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003). 41 Cf. Gerald Hacke, Die Zeugen Jehovas im Dritten Reich und in der DDR. Feindbild und Verfolgungspraxis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011). 42 Eberhard Jäckel, “Der SS-Intellektuelle: Bedurfte es keiner Befehle Hitlers, um die Vernichtungspolitik in die Welt zu setzen?” (Review of Herbert, Best), Die Zeit, March 29, 1996, p. 18. 43 Brigitte Hamann, Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Diktator (Munich: Piper, 1996), pp. 498-502.

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ble.”44 Of course, it further contributes to our frustration that, in Austria, the young Hitler had admired Jewish artists, defended Zionists against anti-Semites, definitely not been cheated by Jewish merchants, therefore leaving his small paintings only for them to sell, and also not been rejected by the Jewish professors at the academy of arts. As late as 1939, after the “Anschluss” of Austria in 1938, Hitler personally vouched for the safe passage of his admired family doctor, Eduard Bloch (1872-1945), from Linz to America.45 What then exactly did Hitler say against the Jews as early as 1920, when he was not spitting with rage as according to the Gemlich letter of 16 September 1919 with a similar content?46 “Do not think you will be able to fight a disease without killing the agent, without destroying the germ, and do not think to be able to fight racial tuberculosis without taking care that the people will be free of the agent of racial tuberculosis. The workings of Jewry will never stop as long as the agent, the Jew, is not taken away from us.”47

That this “illness” or “racial tuberculosis” was not referring to racistbiologist anti-Semitism becomes obvious already by the fact that Hitler did not hate Semites as such. Nevertheless, the Arabian-“Semitic” Palestinians were offered participation in the extermination of the Jews, and their leader, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (1893-1974), became obsessed with it.48 It was Husseini who made “Reichsleiter” Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946) work on a ban on the term “anti-Semitism:” “The use of this term will again and again hit the Arabian world which, according to statements by the Great Mufti, is in its overwhelming majority friendly towards Germany. The enemy countries use the fact that we use

44

Joachim Fest, “Der Auftrag kam von Hitler,” Die Woche, November 29, 1996, pp. 38-39, here 38. 45 Cf. Hamann, Hitlers Wien, pp. 56. 46 Cf. Eberhard Jäckel/Axel Kuhn (eds.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 19051924 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), pp. 88. 47 Ibid., pp. 178. 48 Cf. Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten. Eine politische Biographie Amin el-Husseinis, updated, fully revised edition (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007). David G. Dalin/John F. Rothmann, Icon of Evil. Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam (New York: Random House, 2008).

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the word ‘anti-Semitism’ to insinuate that this is also meant to express that we throw the Arabs into the same pot with the Jews.”49

The expression “racial tuberculosis” must be understood as a spiritual and not a biological reference emphasized by Hitler in one of his last statements (on 3 February 1945). There, he also made clear that he did by no means consider “Aryans” or “Germans” the peak of the human species, which should permanently reproduce itself toward ever higher superiority:50 “I never held the opinion that the Chinese or the Japanese, for example, were racially inferior. [...] I admit that their tradition is superior to ours. / Our Nordic racial consciousness is aggressive only towards the Jewish race. However, we speak of a Jewish race only for reasons of linguistic convenience, for [...] from the genetic point of view there is no Jewish race. Circumstances make us label in this way a racially and spiritually coherent group, membership of which is claimed by Jews all over the world, no matter which individual citizenship is given by passports. This group of people we call the Jewish race. [...] The Jewish race is most of all a spiritual community./ Spiritual race is tougher and more enduring than natural race. The Jew, wherever he goes, stays to be a Jew [...] and to us he must appear as a sad piece of evidence for the superiority of ‘spirit’ over flesh.”51

Nevertheless, Hitler was not without racism. In its purest form it was directed at Black Africans. About 2,000 of them who lived within his domain were taken to internment camps where many of them died as a result of brutal living conditions. There were no mass shootings or gassings.52 Others survived the war in Berlin, for example as entertainers, appearing in films on Africa. Until 1937, about 400 Afro-Germans were subjected to enforced sterilization.53 An Apartheid system was intended for the German 49

“Die Benutzung des Begriffs hat zu unterbleiben,“ http://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/antisemitismus/begriff_abschaffen.php. 50 Cf. Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 51 Hugh Trevor-Roper/André Francois-Poncet (eds.), Hitlers Politisches Testament. Die Bormann Diktate vom Februar und April 1945 (Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus 1981), pp. 66-69 (italic by G. H.). 52 Cf. Bettina Schäfer, “Nachwort zur deutschsprachigen Ausgabe,” in Michèle Maillet, Schwarzer Stern (Berlin 1994), pp. 187-188, here 188. 53 Cf. May Opitz, “Rassismus, Sexismus und vorkoloniales Afrikabild in Deutschland,” in Katharina Oguntoye/May Opitz/Dagmar Schultz (eds.), Farbe bekennen. Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte, (Frankfurt a. M.: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1992), pp. 17-64, here 58.

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colonies in Africa, which were to be reconquered. However, there were no intentions for a murderous “final solution of the Negro problem.”54 Hitler made unmistakably clear that his fight against Jewry served other purposes than his devaluation of Black Africans, when he discussed both in the same passage: “From time to time magazines tell the German Philistines that here or there for the first time a Negro has become a lawyer, teacher, or even a priest, nay, a heroic tenor or something. While the stupid bourgeoisie marvels at such a miraculous circus act, / the Jew is smart enough to use this as another evidence for the correctness of his theory of the equality of man, which he tries to ram down people’s throat. This completely rotten bourgeois world will not understand that it is criminal madness to train a born semiape man long enough to believe that he has been made a lawyer.”55

If by Jewish “racial tuberculosis” Hitler did not refer to anything biological but to a “spiritual race” which might “decompose” other mentalities, what would be its most important feature? Current interpretations are unable to imagine anything concrete, but they believe that Hitler considered Jews even to be “biologically immoral” and by their destruction tried to “rid the world of immorality”.56 Others are convinced that in no way does “spiritual race” refer to anything religious but rather that for the first time it “was not for their faith that the Jews were persecuted in Hitler’s day.”57 What now is the moral foundation of Jewish religion? This is expressed briefly in Hosea 6:6: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Its most impressive commandment is “Thou shalt not kill” (2 Moses 20:13 and 5 Moses 5:17). Its commandment for the protection of man is most difficult to meet: “If there is a foreigner living in your country, you shall not suppress him. He shall live with you like any native, and you shall love him like yourself” (3 Moses 19: 33-34). The creed on which all of Jewry agrees is condensed in the so-called “Golden Rule:”

54

Cf. Clarence Lusane, Hitler’s Black Victims: The Experiences of Afro-Germans, Africans, Afro-Europeans and African Americans during the Nazi Era (New York: Routledge, 2002). 55 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925/27), “Volksausgabe” in einem Band (Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1930), pp. 478. 56 Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic, p. 198. 57 Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945 (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 5.

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“Lo, today I have presented to you life and the good thing. / Today Heaven and Earth shall be my witnesses: I have presented to you life and death, blessing and curse so that you will choose life” (5 Moses 30. 15-19).

Already in antiquity other peoples were surprised at the principle of the holiness of life. At about 300 BC, Hekataeus of Abdera contrasted the Jewish ban on killing children with the Greek right of abandoning children and of infanticide.58 In the first century AD, Tacitus wrote on the Jews: “It is a deadly sin to kill an unwanted child.”59 Might it be that Hitler identified the “Jewish spirit” precisely in this commandment? At the Nuremberg Party Conference in 1929 he spoke directly against the Jewish law, – since Constantine the Great also a Christian one, on the protection of life: “If in Germany one million children were born each year and 700,000 to 800,000 of the weakest ones would be disposed of, in the end the result might even be an increase in power, after all. It is most dangerous that we ourselves cut off the natural selection process (by caring for the disabled and weak – G. H.). The clearest racial state in history, Sparta, did systematically carry out these racial laws.”60

Already in Mein Kampf Hitler had condemned the ethics of the holiness of life: “Not coincidentally it is first of all always the Jew who tries to implant such deadly and dangerous ideas (of birth control and keeping every new born child alive; GH) into our people.”61

The first large-scale killing, personally signed by Hitler, concerned fullblooded Aryans who, having been disabled or severely mutilated during the invasion of Poland (1 September 1939), lived in his domain. This “euthanasia” was definitely met with resistance. For example, Eugen Stähle (1890-1948), Hitler’s commissary for the killing of disabled people at the Grafeneck asylum in Wuerttemberg, defended himself against Senior 58 Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. Vol. 1: From Herodotus to Plutarch (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1976), p. 29. 59 Idem, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. Vol. 2: From Tacitus to Simplicius (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980), p. 26. 60 Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” 1890-1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), p. 152. 61 Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 149.

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Church Council member Reinhold Sautter from Stuttgart (1888-1971). During a private conversation this man with a basically national attitude accused him of violating the Ten Commandments by “killing life unworthy of living.” Stähle answered: “The 5th Commandment, ‘Thou shall not kill’ is not at all a commandment by God but a Jewish invention.”62 Now, one might object that Stähle was not Hitler. Also, this Wuerttembergian principal is not known for having been dealing with the history of the ban on killing. Yet, things were different under Hitler so that it may definitely be possible that Stähle was acting as a mouthpiece for his supreme commander. If this statement did not come from the latter, another source must be identified. Nevertheless, one cannot claim that Hitler knew the passage in Philo (about 15 BC-40 AD) on the Jewish ban on infanticide: “Not allowed (for us Jews) is the abandonment of children – a crime which is common with many other peoples, due to their innate misanthropy. [...] It would be stupidity to believe that those would be friendly to strangers who have betrayed those who are related to them. However, those laying their hands on them provide the clearest evidence that they themselves are manslayers and child murderers.”63

That already Philo no longer understood the ban on killing but idealizes it is something which cannot be discussed any further, here. From this author’s point of view it results from the ban on child sacrifice, which was perhaps circumvented by polytheistic Israelites who did not want to become monotheistic Jews, but, under its guise, committed infanticide for the purpose of birth control.64 If it was not Stähle but Hitler himself who attacked the ban on killing as a “Jewish invention,” we must return to the President of the Danzig Senate, Hermann Rauschning (1887-1992) who joined the NSDAP in 1932 but left it in 1934, yet in the in-between time met with Hitler up to

62

Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, p. 321. Philo, “Über die Einzelgesetze, 3, XX: 110-119,“ in http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book29.html. 64 Cp. Gunnar Heinsohn, “Theorie des Tötungsverbotes und des Monotheismus bei den Israeliten sowie der Genese, der Durchsetzung und der welthistorischen Rolle der christlichen Familien- und Fortpflanzungsmoral,” in Joachim Müller/Bettina Wassmann (eds.), L’invitation au voyage zu Alfred Sohn-Rethel. Festschrift für Alfred Sohn-Rethel zum 80. Geburtstag (Bremen: Unibuchladen Wassmann 1979). Gunnar Heinsohn, Die Erschaffung der Götter: Das Opfer als Ursprung der Religion (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Wassmann, 1997), pp. 147. 63

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thirteen times.65 The authenticity of Hitler’s statements in Rauschning’s Hitler Speaks is very much debated among scientists. Established historiography defends the basic substance of his reports.66 Other authors, among them some from the far right,67 completely reject him as a source.68 This is why several of the authors do not quote Rauschning at all whereas others use him cum grano salis. All the participants in the debate agree that Rauschning does not present any records of his meetings with Hitler and that his text includes his own interpretation. Here, I will follow neither the “mostly correct” fraction nor the other extreme position of “just a complete invention.” I will however make use of some similar passages which are known from other sources. If we simply reject what Rauschning reports on Hitler’s ideas on the “conscience” having been developed by Jewry, which are typically right-wing and Nietzsche-inspired, we must declare Rauschning to have been the inventor of these ideas. At least, the manuscript of Hitler Speaks (published in 1940) had already been completed by 1939, that is, before the large-scale killings began. Accordingly, the ideas look much more harmless than what was about to happen. “Not the entire book deserves defamation. Parts of it, most of all the two final chapters, are a mixture of literature and historic sources (maybe a comparison to the works by Alexander Kluge would be helpful), unique also because of the fact that they tell about events that took place in 1933/34 - and were written by a protagonist from an exposed territory. The book’s bad reputation is partly a result of historians initially using it as a convenient source of quotations. ‘From sensational excitement to scandalous condemnation’ might be a slogan for the history of its reception. But it is a his-

Cp. Theodor Schieder, Herrmann Rauschnings “Gespräche mit Hitler” als Geschichtsquelle (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1972). 66 Ibid. Martin Broszat, “‘Enthüllung? Die Rauschning-Kontroverse,’” in Idem; Nach Hitler. Der schwierige Umgang mit unserer Vergangenheit (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988). 67 Such as Wolfgang Hänel, Hermann Rauschnings “Gespräche mit Hitler” – Eine Geschichtsfälschung (Ingolstadt: Veröffentlichungen der Zeitgeschichtlichen Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt, 1984). 68 See also Fritz Tobias, “Auch Fälschungen haben lange Beine. Des Senatspräsidenten Rauschnings ‘Gespräche mit Hitler,’” in Karl Corino (ed.), Gefälscht! Betrug in Politik, Literatur, Wissenschaft, Kunst und Musik (Nördlingen: Greno, 1988), pp. 91-105. 65

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Hitler’s Motive for the Holocaust torical source written by an intelligent observer who got to the heart of the substance of the dictator and his work long before the latter’s end.”69

From his meetings with Hitler Rauschning distills: “This devilish ‘Thou shall, thou shall!’And that stupid ‘Thou shall not!’ We must clean our blood from it, from this curse of Mount Sinai! [...] The day will come when against these commandments I will erect the tables of a new law. And history will recognize our movement as the great battle for the liberation of mankind, liberation from the curse of Sinai. [...] That is it what we are fighting: this masochistic attitude of self-torturing, this curse of so called morality, which is made an idol to protect the weak from the strong, given the eternal fight, the great law of Divine nature. It is the so called Ten Commandments that we fight.”70

The few grandees of the Reich opposing the dictator seemed to understand him. And it is conspicuous that the Church representatives among them did not first of all refer to their Christian attitude but to Jewish ethics, which they felt obliged to as well. So, it was not a whimpering “Jesus died for my sins” based on the New Testament but the thunderous voice of the prophets of the Old Testament. Correspondingly, the Bishop of Muenster, Clemens August von Galen (1878-1946) condemned Hitler for the murder of disabled people during a public sermon on 3 August 1941: “Woe to mankind, woe to our German people, if God’s holy commandment ‘Thou shall not kill,’ which with thunder and lightning the Lord announced on Mount Sinai, and which right from the beginning God the Creator has inscribed into man’s conscience, is not only violated but if this violation is even accepted and exercised without punishment.”71

However, Hitler considered the ban on killing as well as the conscience not only a restriction to his interior demographic policy against disabled people but even more a restriction to his external plans for conquest and extinction. Accordingly, he was convinced (11 November 1941) that World War I had been lost most of all as a result of pious considerateness: 69

Bernd Lemke, “Rauschning, Hermann: Gespräche mit Hitler. Mit einer Einführung von Marcus Pyka, Zürich 2005” (Review), in H-Soz-u-Kult vom 02.08.2006, . 70 Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler (Vienna: Europa-Verlag 1988), p. 210. 71 Heinrich Portmann, Kardinal von Galen. Ein Gottesmann seiner Zeit. Mit einem Anhang: Die drei weltberühmten Predigten [1948] (Muenster: Aschendorff, 1961), p. 357.

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“During the World War we had this experience: the only religious state was Germany; and precisely that state lost the war.”72 Already before his attack on Poland he boasted in the presence of the League of Nations’ High Commissioner, Swiss Carl Jacob Burckhardt (1891-1974): “If I have to wage war, I would prefer waging war the sooner the better. I would wage it differently from the Germany of William II. which constantly had scruples about using its arms to the utmost. I will fight ruthlessly to the last.”73

During the mega-killings in the East aimed at tens of millions, Hitler’s thoughts circled around this gigantism, again and again: “The ridiculous number of one-hundred thousand Slavs will be absorbed or pushed away [to Siberia]. If, in this context, someone speaks about caring, he must immediately be sent to a concentration camp.”74

He knew that for this purpose he had to revoke the regulations of international law from the Jewish-Christian age: “We are obliged to depopulate, just as we are obliged to adequately care for the German population. A technique of depopulation will have to be developed. You will ask: What do you mean by depopulating? Do I want to get rid of entire peoples? Yes indeed, it will be something like that. / It will be one the most important tasks of German politics for all times to prevent by all means the further growth of the Slav peoples. Natural instinct tells every being that an enemy must not only be defeated but destroyed. In ancient times it was the conqueror’s good right to extinguish entire tribes, entire peoples. / Our revolution is not just a political and social one. It is only by our movement that the Middle Ages will come to an end. Mankind has been on the wrong track. The tables from Mount Sinai have lost their validity. The conscience is a Jewish invention.”75

Hitler read Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) original work on the “conscience,” The Happy Science, in 1924 during his time at Landsberg prison:

72

Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier. Vollständig überarbeitete und erweiterte Neuausgabe mit bisher unbekannten Selbstzeugnissen Adolf Hitlers, Abbildungen, Augenzeugenberichten und Erläuterungen des Autors: Hitler wie er wirklich war (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1976), p. 77. 73 Ernst Deuerlein, Hitler. Eine politische Biographie (Munich: List, 1969), p. 144. 74 August 6, 1942, Speer, Der Sklavenstaat, p. 422 75 Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, pp. 129, 210.

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Hitler’s Motive for the Holocaust “The sin is a Jewish emotion and a Jewish invention, and considering this background of all Christian morality indeed Christianity had the intention 76 to ‘Judaize’ the whole world.” In the same book, Nietzsche extends this finding by an understanding of that what later psychoanalysis will call the sublimation of drives, when calling the Jews “the moral genius among the peoples” because “they were more contemptuous of man inside than any other people.”77

Hitler researched history for patterns of mass killings of the likes which, only now, in the Modern Age, are punished as crimes against humanity. He wanted to go back to age earlier than that of Franciscus de Vittoria (1486-1546), who had demanded: “As a first legal title, the natural community and the community of all men may be referred to. / How may the innocent be treated during a just war? Firstly: ‘Though shall not kill the innocent and just’ [2. Moses 23:7 – G. H.] / In a state it is not legal to punish innocent people for the crimes of the evildoers. Thus it is also illegal to kill the innocent among the enemies for the crimes of evildoers. / Even if the Prince is powerful enough to wage war, still he must not at first look for opportunities and reasons for war but must ‘if possible, live in peace with all men,’ as St. Paul commands [Romans 12:18 – G. H.]. But also he shall consider again and again that the others are our neighbors whom we shall love as ourselves [3. Moses 19:18/33 f. St. Mark 12:31 – G. H.]. / Once war has started for just reasons, it must not be waged to destroy the people against which it is waged.”78

If Hitler’s movement was to conclude the “Middle Ages,” he apparently divided history into three ages, the final one being the one in which his own law would be valid. The first age had lasted until Moses’ Law was passed on Mount Sinai and had been determined by the common right to extinguish peoples. The second age, from Moses’ Law to Hitler, had been burdened by the blatant curtailment of the right to the extinction of peoples as well as the right to the selection of newborn children within one people in the Spartan way. The third age had begun with Hitler’s assumption of power which, for the Germans, meant that the rights to infanticide and 76

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft” [1882], in Idem, Werke, 2. Bd., ed. by Karl Schlechta (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966), Aphorismos 135. 77 Ibid., Aphorismos 136. 78 Franciscus de Vittoria, De Indis recenter inventis et de jure belli Hispanorum in Barbares [Vorlesungen über die kürzlich entdeckten Inder und das Recht der Spanier zum Kriege gegen die Barbaren, 1539], ed. by Walter Schätzel, (Tübingen: Mohr, 1952), p. 43.

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genocide had been restored. For, as he announced as early as August 1930: “The Jew destroys the natural instinct of self-preservation within every human.”79 Therefore, Hitler’s “revolution” of moral terms was directed against the biblical division of history into three ages. There, the First Age is the aera ante legem (the age before the law). It lasts from the beginning of mankind until the Ten Commandments are passed on Mount Sinai. The Second Age is the aera sub lege (the age under the rule of law). It lasts from Moses to Jesus. The Third Age is the aera sub gratia (the age under the grace of God). It lasts from the Incarnation (incarnatio) of Jesus until the end of all days. Thus, Hitler wanted to go back to pagan antiquity: “Already in antiquity whole peoples had been liquidated. Tribes had been resettled in passing, and just recently the Soviet Union had set an example of how things could be done.”80

The decline of this age was blamed on Jewish ethics: “That same Jew who in those days smuggled Christianity into the world and killed that wonderful thing, once again he has identified a weak spot: the guilty conscience of our world. / Peace will only be by way of a natural order. This order requires that the nations will be structured in a way that those being capable will lead. This way the inferior will receive more than he could achieve on his own. Judaism destroys this order.”81

Still, in the midst of victories, Hitler was obsessed by the idea that just a few Jews might undermine these successes. Accordingly, he adjured Croatia’s Minister of War, Slavko Kvaternik (1878-1947), on 21 July 1941: “If only one state were to accept a Jewish family, no matter for which reasons, it would become the germ centre for renewed decomposition.”82 Education was supposed to prevent such susceptibility, at least for the future. All men fit for military service would receive this in practical education. Since the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the soldiers were guaranteed not to be persecuted for war crimes; they could then act like the death squads of the SS because now, new archaic laws had be79

Enrico Syring, Hitler. Seine politische Utopie (Berlin: Propyläen, 1994), p. 42. Hildegard von Kotze, Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938-1943. Aufzeichnungen des Majors Engel (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974), p. 71. 81 Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, p. 106. 82 Andreas Hillgruber (ed.), Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler 1939-1942 (Frankfurt a. M.: Bernard & Graefe, 1967), p. 614. 80

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come a valid once more. As early as 13 May 1941, the soldiers were given a general license to kill: “Concerning acts committed by Wehrmacht members and those in their wake against enemy civilians, there is no obligatory legal persecution, not even if the deed is at the same time a military crime or offence.”83

For the time being, the victims were still restricted to members of the Communist Party (Order of 6 June 1941): “Thus they [the commissars], if encountered when fighting or committing acts of resistance, must generally be finished immediately. / Commissars are not recognized as soldiers; the protection provided by international law is not applied on them. After separation they must be finished.”84 Behind this order there is the confidence that convictions can be eliminated by killing those being convinced. At least Wilhelm Keitel (1882-1946) as the head of the Wehrmacht’s Supreme Command (23 September 1941) does not see any problems for such a practice. For him, the killing of the commissars means the “destruction of an ideology” with which he agrees and which he backs.85 Why should the Nazi leadership believe that the appropriate elimination of Jewish ethics would be less feasible than that of Leninism-Marxism? Those being selected for the SS were free to kill immediately whereas the Wehrmacht was still dominated by “Judaized” Christians: “These ‘tasks’ [the killing of the commissars] were so difficult [Heydrich] that ‘the army could not be burdened with it.’”86 Hitler closely observed the slow progress in the killer morality complaining on 18 October 1942 that: “Indeed he was aware that the army had only reluctantly followed the orders such as the Commissar Order. The Supreme Command was to blame, which was trying to change the profession of the soldier into that of a pastor. If it were not for his SS, what orders may not have been carried out!

83

“Erlaß über die Ausübung der Kriegsgerichtsbarkeit im Gebiet ‘Barbarossa’ und über besondere Maßnahmen der Truppe vom 13. 5. 1941” (Kriegsgerichtsbarkeitserlaß, Nuremberg-DocumentC-50), in http://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_de&dokument=0093_kgs &object=translation&st=&l=de. 84 Hans Buchheim/Martin Broszat/Hans-Adolf Jacobsen/Helmut Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967), pp. 501502 [Bold Type by G. H.]. 85 Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie: Politik und Kriegführung 1940-1941, 3rd edition (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 1993), p. 530, FN 62. 86 Buchheim/Broszat/Jacobsen/Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates, p. 452.

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Jodl replies that even in war international agreements are valid also for the sake of one’s own troops.”87

However, in the course of the genocide in the East, which was wrongly labeled the Polish and Russian campaigns, an ever increasing number of common soldiers participated in the killings. Nobody knows how many people were killed, however, as many as 50% are considered possible.88 “Dejudaization” and the removal of the Jewish aspect of Christianity remained the goal while changing the Wehrmacht into an SS, that is, in transforming all German soldiers into killers. Thus, in September 1943, Hitler declared that the “SS was the best he could leave his successor and that the build-up of the Wehrmacht in the Germanic countries had to happen under the supervision of the SS.”89 Nevertheless, his “decomposition” worries would not dissipate, which is why all German youths, long before they were fit for military service, were sworn to a new catechism where “Thou shall not kill” of Mount Sinai was replaced by an archaic commandment of the “eternal fight:” “Thou shall not spare your enemy but encounter him with grim defense, for he wants to be slain by you. His task is to goad you, your task is: to defeat him. Do not worry that one day there will be no enemy left; there will always be new ones. All vermin is overly fertile and hawkish; that is why we are forced to fight it.”90

For this education toward Dejudaization, nothing was left to chance. For example, the young elite who succeeded in being sent to the SS’ “Wewelsburg” ate at tables with skulls painted on them and assembled in chapels whose benches were also decorated with skulls and bones.91 Never again, these youths shall hear: “I have presented to you life and death, blessing and curse, so that you will choose life” (5 Moses 30: 15/19). For 87

Kotze, Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938-1943, pp. 130. Cp. Christian Hartmann, “Krieg und Verbrechen – Zur Struktur des deutschen Ostheeres 1941-1944,“ in Horst Möller/Aleksandr O. Cubar’jan (eds.), Mitteilungen der Gemeinsamen Kommission für die Erforschung der jüngeren Geschichte der deutsch-russischen Beziehungen, Bd. 2 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005), pp. 18-26, here 18. 89 Bernd Wegner, Hitlers politische Soldaten. Die Waffen-SS 1933-1945, 4th revised and improved edition (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1990), p. 314. 90 Theodor Fritsch, Der neue Glaube, 3rd edition (Leipzig: Hammer, 1936), p. 169. 91 Cf. Karl Hüser, Wewelsburg 1933-1945. Kult- und Terrorstätte der SS (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1987), p. 217. 88

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never before had Jews, who would have been able to tell them this, been destroyed for their religion in such a terrible manner.

IV. What Was the Destruction of the Jews Supposed to Achieve? Hitler wanted to revive the archaic tribal practices of infanticide and genocide, and in order to do this, he intended to extinguish the people of the Mount Sinai ban on killing. Soon after World War I he identified Jewry as the cause for overcoming the age-old custom of killing one’s enemies. He blamed “religious principles” for the defeat of the German Empire in the war of 1914-1918. These had been kept solely by the German side as a result of which the will to unconditional killing had been “dissolved.” Hitler made this analysis expressly without any personal hatred of the Jews. He was free of ‘hooligan anti-Semitism.’ Hitler did not see himself as a particularly ruthless violator of the Jewish ban on killing but as somebody who eliminated it unscrupulously. From his studies of history he drew the conclusion that before the development of the Jewish ethics of the holiness of life and the protection of foreigners, completely different norms had been valid, which allowed a people to become inwardly stronger by killing their disabled offspring as well as invincible outwardly by extinguishing instead of simply defeating the enemy. He wanted to make these traditional rights to killing valid once more for the sake of a leading role for Germany globally, and the Germanization of Europe all the way to the Ural Mountains. More than one hundred million Slavs were supposed to be eliminated by immediate killing, forced labor, “repopulation,” or deportation to Siberia. By the end of the war, about 11 million will have died. The elimination of the Jews in order to extinguish Jewish ethics was meant as a measure to reestablish the right to kill all internal “parasites” and “decomposers” as well as all territorial-political enemies, particularly most of the Slavs. That was the reason why this happened parallel to the conquest for lebensraum in the East. These were not regular wars such as the campaigns against France, Denmark, or Norway but genocidal megakillings under the protection of the Wehrmacht. It was indeed this intention, enforced with an ideological iron fist against the generals attempting to find alliance partners, which then strengthened the Slavs’ resistance. Never again were the German soldiers during their bloody and neverending work and “fight for nationhood” to win and defend such gigantic territories to be inhibited by a guilty conscience, which for Hitler had been

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a Jewish invention. In the midst of their extinction work, no-one should ever again be allowed to utter “Thou shall not kill” to them. And if anyone still did this, it was not to arouse any mercy within them. This is also why the SS, the Ost-Heer, and the Hitler Youth, who were doing the “job of a hundred years” (Alfred Rosenberg), – shall lead the Germans, also emotionally, toward the code of killing again. In cold, modern language, one might say that Hitler had the hardware, the Jewish people, smashed to erase the software, the Jewish principle of the holiness of life, from the German mind. Also non-Jews, particularly Christians, were to be eliminated if they actively supported their ethical Jewish heritage of the protection of life. This included most of all the Jehovah’s Witnesses – as they proved to be “infected” with Judaism. Thus, in the national socialist model country, the Warthegau, which had been annexed from Poland, not only were the Polish priests killed but the German Protestants were also made subject to the control by the SS; the Concordat which, formally, had remained valid in the Reich proper, became invalid. In the case of Christians, the ethics of love and life were in principle considered to be a “Jewish infection” which could be cured. After all, the belief in Christ’s sacrifice as an act of salvation, that is, the non-Jewish aspect of Christianity, provided enough religious matter for redemption. Jews, on the other hand, could not count on any mercy even if they forswore their religion. Since, after millennia of persecution, they were still present, they were considered to be incurably “infested” with the holiness of life and hence a dangerous “germ center” for all non-Jews. To get rid of Jewry, Hitler activated all available anti-Semites, religious opponents, racists, anti- Zionists, Palestinians, and economic competitors. So, Hitler was “the culprit who gave all the other culprits their chance.”92 Nevertheless, Hitler did not establish an anti-Semitic alliance. If only 50% of the 11 million Slavs killed were anti-Semites, he had as many antiSemites killed as Jews, and they were not even saved by previously having actively contributed to their extinction. By employing slurs such as “Jewish-plutocratic war-mongerers” in reference to Churchill and Roosevelt or “Jewish-Bolshevists” against the partisans behind the German front, additional pretexts were created to convince also those Germans who were not yet ready to kill. However, it was not the traditional kinds of anti-Semitism or the grasp on the Jews 92

Clive James, “Blaming the Germans: The much Lauded Revisionist Study of the Holocaust (by Goldhagen) goes too far,” The New Yorker, April 22, 1996, pp. 44, here 50.

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made possible by the war which almost automatically so to speak resulted in Auschwitz. Rather, more specifically, it was Hitler’s specific motive for eliminating all ethical restraints which then allowed all other anti-Jewish intentions to come into effect. This, at least, is the author’s opinion. However, he is not claiming to have the last word. If we take the year 1967 as the starting point for the most impressive, best-funded, and most unbroken wave of Holocaust research up to now, we may well assume, on the one hand, that the results presented will be quite different. On the other hand, it may be that Isaac Deutscher’s conclusions, which he had worked on intensively in 1967 until shortly before his death, will be supported: “For the historian trying to understand the mass destruction of the Jews, the most difficult obstacle is the absolutely unique nature of this catastrophe. It is not only a question of time and historical perspective. I doubt that in one thousand years one will be able to understand Hitler, Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka any better than we do today. Will we then have a more sufficient historical perspective? On the contrary, it might even be that posterity will understand things even less than we do.”93

93

Quoted from Friedlander, Vom Antisemitismus zur Judenvernichtung, p. 18.

NAZIS WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE? CIVILIAN FUNCTIONARIES AND THE HOLOCAUST MARY FULBROOK

Arno Lustiger – historian, Holocaust survivor, resident in Germany and native of the small Polish town of BĊdzin – once quoted Stanisáaw Jerzy Lec’s comment on Nazis who were not plagued by any sense of guilt: ‘“Ihr Gewissen war rein; sie haben es nie benutzt”;’ ‘their conscience was clean: they had never used it.’1 An examination of the roles and selfrepresentations of Nazi functionaries involved in the expropriation, exploitation, degradation and ghettoisation of the Jews of Lustiger’s hometown of BĊdzin and surrounding areas provides intriguing material for our understanding of Nazis with a ‘clear conscience.’ Such analysis can provide insights both into how the Holocaust was possible and into aspects of the legacies among those who went on to post-war careers as though they had never ‘really’ been Nazis. Arno Lustiger was one of the very few survivors of the once flourishing Jewish community of BĊdzin; tens of thousands who initially survived the ghettoisation and forced labour policies of the early years of Nazi occupation were eventually murdered in the extermination facilities of Auschwitz, situated a mere 25 miles or so to the south. There were three major waves of deportation: in May and August 1942, and then in the final ghetto clearance in the summer of 1943. Through the linked ghettoes of Sosnowiec and BĊdzin perhaps 85,000 Jews in total were transported to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. From the town of BĊdzin itself a total of some 25,000 former inhabitants were murdered (roughly half the citizens of the town), along with another 10,000 Jews or so from surrounding towns and villages within the Landkreis of BĊdzin, a district with three towns and 63 rural parishes in eastern Upper Silesia. A key precondition for the final roundup was the prior concentration of Jews within ever-more 1

Quoted in Arno Lustiger, Sing mit Schmerz und Zorn: Ein Leben für den Widerstand (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2004), p. 300.

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enclosed spaces, under ever-closer control and terrorisation – processes under the oversight of the Landrat, the principal civilian administrator or chief executive of the area. Udo Klausa was the Landrat during this period. Klausa was personally in charge of the area between his initial appointment in February 1940 until his final departure on military service at the beginning of December 1942 although he was physically absent on two shorter stints of military service: first, from 1 July to mid-October 1940, and then again from the spring to the late autumn of 1941. After the war, the former Landrat remained under cover until Allied denazification procedures had passed into German hands; then, through family ‘connections,’ he succeeded in gaining categorisation in the coveted denazification Group V of ‘Exonerated Persons,’ and went on to a successful career in the post-war West German civil service. His post-war story is one that may be summarised as a combination of ‘innocence and ignorance:’ he claimed that he was physically absent whenever anything unpleasant occurred, that he knew little or nothing about what was going on in the area for which he was responsible, and that, insofar as he was aware that crimes were afoot, he was neither involved personally nor did he wish to stay on any longer and risk ‘innocently becoming guilty’ (unschuldig schuldig zu werden). There are many respects in which his post-war self-representations – in both his memoirs (completed in 1980) and his various statements in connection with legal investigations coordinated by the Ludwigsburg Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes (Zentralstelle) – are at odds with the records in the archives. But the tricks of memory and mis-dating, the stories woven around particular incidents and the omission of others, all provide key clues as to how it was possible to have been an active Nazi and to have subsequently become a committed democratic and upright citizen of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany apparently untroubled by any pangs of conscience. Moreover, Klausa’s experiences, outlook and later stories are arguably typical of many others. A comparison of the archival sources and the later self-representations of the Landrat of BĊdzin can reveal the ambiguities and ambivalence on the part of those charged with carrying out Himmler’s racial policies on the ground. This analysis also suggests some of the strategies later deployed by former Nazis to deal with any stirrings of conscience and to dispose of any sense of personal guilt for their role in the unfolding persecution of the Jews.2 2

This article is based on my forthcoming book, to be published by Oxford University Press, provisionally entitled Ordinary Nazis. Parts of this article are drawn with only minor amendments from different sections of the book. I am very grate-

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I. ‘Colonial Racism’ and the Question of Empathy Lec’s comment, while characteristically pithy and pungent, and arguably true in many cases, glosses over a wider truth about the ways in which the mass murder of the Jews was effected in practice: many of those functionaries who laid the groundwork for the eventual programme of extermination neither intended this outcome nor sought to justify it. Historians remain deeply divided over the relative roles of perpetrators’ intentions, motives, political ideologies and social contexts in explaining the actions of perpetrators.3 In contrast to some of those ordering and carrying out the actual killing, many of whom may indeed have been personally motivated by a combination of sadism and antisemitism, many middle and lower level functionaries were often carried along more by the demands of their official roles in the system than by any personal animosities or ideological views on the so-called ‘Jewish question.’ Such functionaries were often shocked at the ultimately murderous outcomes of racial policies which they had themselves helped to implement and sustain. Racial policies in the newly annexed territories were implemented in the context of what might be called an ideology of ‘colonial racism,’ rooted in and accompanied by a willingness to rule by terror but not directly motivated by any anticipatory exterminatory intent. One of the ways in which local functionaries could later retain a ‘clear conscience’ was by evading the full realisation of their own roles in the run-up to the ‘final solution.’ The physical and psychological preconditions for eventual deportation were effected through the early war-time years. The facilitators of these policies were the local functionaries: they did not design the policies which were transmitted down to them through the channels of the administrative hierarchy nor were they at the front lines of violence in the same way as members of the SS, the Gestapo, or the ordinary police. But they played a key role in the implementation of racism on the ground through what was known as ‘Germanisation,’ an integral part of the unfolding tragedy that culminated in mass extermination. On his appointment as Landrat in 1940, Klausa was not new to the role of administrator of Nazi racism in newly occupied and incorporated terriful to the Leverhulme Trust for a Major Research Fellowship during which much of the research on BĊdzin was carried out; it is related to a wider research project on generations, discussed in Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence through the German Dictatorships (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 3 See for example the differences between Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men, and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners.

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tories. In the autumn of 1938 he had taken up a post in the Sudetenland, following the German takeover of this border territory after the Munich conference; he was then transferred to a role in the administration of Bohemia and Moravia after the German invasion of what was left of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939. With the invasion of Poland in September 1939, Klausa’s services were transferred again as he became personal assistant to August Jäger who was deputy to the new head of the Reichsgau Wartheland (often known as the Warthgau), Arthur Greiser. In the winter of 1939-40 Klausa became on his own admission only too well acquainted with the brutal character of the policies of ‘Germanisation,’ as hundreds of thousands of Poles and Jews were ousted from their homes, held in transit camps in appalling conditions, and transported over the new border into the German-occupied area of Poland that had become the General Government under Hans Frank. Finally, in February 1940, Klausa gained his career ambition, the much coveted post as Landrat in the district of BĊdzin in the narrow strip of land east of Kattowitz beyond the socalled ‘police border’ setting this region apart from the main territory of the expanded German Reich. The ‘Germanisation’ of the area for which he was now responsible was a task which, on Udo Klausa’s own admission, he was relatively happy to cooperate on, at least in part. This part related to the treatment of the incoming Germans. As he puts it in his memoirs although he was unhappy about the forcible expulsions deemed necessary to make way for the resettlement of Germans, ‘I pursued with more commitment the task of caring for the German population that was streaming into the area.’4 Here, he seeks to gain the moral high ground by emphasising that he insisted on the incoming Germans having the right to attend churches even though this was not entirely in line with Nazi policies at the time. His insistence on ensuring the possibility of religious observance was also helpful in gaining positive testimonials on his behalf after the war. And there can be little doubt from contemporary sources that Klausa was concerned to make the ‘resettlement’ of Germans into the Landkreis as smooth as possible for the newcomers: he gave instructions that the administration should ‘ensure all possible ways of easing’ the situation for the incoming Germans, including the ‘preparation of new areas for living in,’ and giving them preferential treatment in ‘acquiring furniture from the Polish property which has been

4

Landesverband Rheinland (henceforth LVR), Klausa 400, Udo Klausa, ‘Erlebt Davongekommen. Erinnerungen’, Bd. I: ‘Erlebt - Überlebt, 1910 – 1948’ (1980), henceforth cited as ‘Erlebt’ p. 144.

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seized.’5 There seems to be no hint of recognition in this contemporary document that the ‘seized’ goods and furniture should perhaps not have been taken from their original owners and handed on to incoming Germans in this way. It is a simple expression of the mentality of conquest, seeing forcible robbery as in some sense legitimate acquisition; and the mentality of colonial racism, in which the ‘needs’ of Germans are prioritised above the rights of other groups. Such a mentality also allows separation of policies in principle from responsibility for implementation in practice: it is the brutality of the implementation in practice that is wrong, not the policy itself; hence it is only those charged with acts entailing physical violence, and indeed only some kinds of physical violence, who are seen as engaged in wrongdoing. This then permits a separation between ‘real Nazis’ and those who were, presumably, only nominal or in some sense coerced into being members of the NSDAP. Treating Nazis as ‘others’ and self-distancing is a key tactic to preserve a sense of clear conscience. Despite having been a member of the NSDAP from February 1933 reported in terms which make it look as if he had little choice if he were to pursue his chosen career right through to the collapse of the Third Reich. Klausa, in his memoirs, repeatedly distances himself from those he terms ‘the Nazis.’ The Nazis are always someone else: fanatics, brown-shirts, or SS members. Civilian administrators are cast in the role they took on in fact only after the war: loyal servants of the state, in no sense political. This is a direct misrepresentation of the highly politicised nature both in terms of personal commitment and in terms of practical tasks and responsibilities of the civil service in the Third Reich. – But it reflects a very widespread willingness in post-war Germany to lay all the blame on a few people at the top in the ‘Hitler and his henchmen’ view of history - and on the front line of the Nazi physical force, particularly the SS and the Gestapo - while retaining a claim to the ‘decency’ of the Army, a claim that was only truly undermined in the public consciousness by the Wehrmacht Exhibition of the 1990s. Even though completed as late as 1980, Klausa’s memoirs are written in very much the 1950s mindset. This in his memoirs to continue with the example of the Germanisation policies Klausa suggests that the reverse side of the ‘resettlement’ coin, that of moving people out in order to make way for those being moved in, was something with which he would have nothing to do, having, he claimed, had ‘quite enough of this’ during his stint in Posen. He 5

Archivum PaĔstwowe w Katowicach, Starosta Powiatu Bedzinskiego, 771 / 69, circular of 14 April 1942 to the Bürgermeister and Amtskommissare signed by Klausa, Fol. 10.

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emphatically distances himself from the actual practices of removing people from their homes and sending them into the General Government, in order to make way for incoming German ‘resettlers,’ and typically shifts full responsibility onto the SS. With some self-contradiction, Klausa claims that he both witnessed terrible scenes that were carried out by the SS and, yet, was never actually present: “There was no need or opportunity for any participation. It was all done by the SS, and at best one could stand by with tied hands and see what heartrending scenes were being played out. I was never there.”6

Curiously, only a few pages later in his memoirs, Klausa concedes that the gendarmerie, for whom he had responsibility, did in fact assist in the ‘resettlements.’ Klausa may not have felt any need to be physically present at forced expulsions and ‘heart-rending scenes’ Yet, officially, he held ultimate responsibility for housing policies and forced population movements, with the civilian administration working closely hand in hand with the police authorities to ensure that German policies were imposed as ‘smoothly’ as possible. The records of the time indicate that the Landrat was deeply involved in the expulsion of people from their own homes and forcible ‘resettlement’ against their will, both in terms of his official position in principle and his actions in carrying out his duties in practice. But the archival legacies give us little sense of what this meant for the people involved, nor do Klausa’s memoirs. In Klausa’s own self-representations, there is barely a hint of what went on with respect to the tens of thousands of Jews in the Landkreis of BĊdzin; there is only a brief comment implying that some relocation had already taken place before his time. Referring to the northern areas of his district, Klausa comments: “There were no Jews in this part of the district, they were all concentrated in the three towns, if there ever had been any Jews in other areas. During my time no resettlement in this respect took place.”7

This, like much else in Klausa’s representation of the experiences of Jews in the Landkreis of BĊdzin, would appear to be a revealing and, indeed, in this case, a massive failure of memory. It is also a failure to register the effects of German policies on those who were their objects and victims. 6 7

LVR, Klausa 400, Erlebt, p. 143. LVR, Klausa 400, Erlebt, p. 151.

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During his time in BĊdzin, Klausa was instrumental to Germanisation policies in several ways. He agreed to and assisted in the implementation of a whole range of policies that increasingly restricted where Jews could live, how far and by what means they could travel, the hours during which they were permitted to be outdoors, the quantity and character of food available to them; he also oversaw the work of the gendarmerie in maintaining ‘law and order’ in the rural parts of his country, and supported the imposition of sanctions for transgression of any of the myriad of rules and regulations imposed by the Germans, including failure to display the stigmatising Jewish star. A systematic analysis of archival sources documenting the process of expropriation of Jews from their own homes, their restriction to increasingly over-crowded and unsanitary accommodation in poorer areas of town, and their eventual concentration in exclusively Jewish ghetto areas shows the guiding hand of the Landrat throughout. So too does an analysis of support for incidents of terrorisation through the imposition of retributions in ‘reprisal’ for any sign of disobedience on the part of the subjugated population. All of these activities, and the associated changes that took place in the living and working conditions of the Jews over the period from 1940 to 1942, eventually proved seminal in the way it was possible for tens of thousands of Jews to be deported to mass murder in the round-ups of May and August 1942 and the eventual clearance of the linked ghettos of Sosnowiec and BĊdzin in the summer of 1943. The process of ghettoisation may not have initially been intended as a stage on the way to mass murder, but, logistically, this was its eventual functional outcome. All the steps taken along the way made it ultimately possible for those at the front line of violence, the SS, the Gestapo and the ordinary police forces – to put into effect the selections, incarceration and deportation of some 85,000 Jews from this area to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Had they not been terrorised, humiliated, degraded and forced to live in appalling conditions on subsistence rations, physically constrained and constricted, the Jews would have had a somewhat less difficult time in seeking to resist or escape the fate which ultimately befell them. There was clearly a conflict of moral codes by the time Klausa came to write his memoirs. While in the archival documents he discusses quite factually the logistic questions surrounding the relocation of Jews into ever smaller areas of concentration, virtually none of this appears in Klausa’s own memoirs. In the latter, he often professes a degree of sympathy with the subjugated Jews of his area, commenting for example that they lived in the ‘most miserable’ circumstances in a particularly poor ‘Jewish quarter’ in town, and he suggests that experiencing acts of early terror ‘must have

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been frightful.’ But he denies either that there were any Jews ever living in areas other than this particular place, or that, if they did indeed once live somewhere else and were subsequently moved, he himself had nothing to do with this. The systematic concentration of Jews within ever smaller areas, cramped into ever worse housing conditions, which he as Landrat oversaw and implemented, finds no place in his memories. He claims that he finally left for military service in August 1942 before the final phase of ghettoisation into an enclosed space, which, in the chilling minutes of the meeting of the BĊdzin municipal authorities with Dreier, the Gestapo official in charge of the Jewish affairs at the Gestapo head office in Kattowitz explicitly intended to make the final clearance of the ghetto and the ‘cleansing’ of BĊdzin of its Jewish population so much easier. Klausa appears to have had little empathy at the time with those groups in the population who were the objects of Nazi discrimination and subordination. There is a failure of empathy and of any degree of thought for the impact of German policies on those who were being ousted from their homes, whose possessions and livelihoods were being taken from them, and who were being forced into living in unsanitary and often lifethreatening circumstances, falling prey to often fatal diseases exacerbated by malnutrition and unhygienic conditions, or being incarcerated and taken to slave labour, or put to death for failing to cooperate with their own enforced repression.

II. The Limits of the Civilising Mission Other functionaries, too, appear to have shared an unshakable faith in the superiority of the Germans and the inferiority of the different populations over which they had come to rule. The diary of one ‘Alexander Hohenstein’ (pseudonym) provides some evidence of contemporary responses; in particular, both his and Klausa’s growing disquiet indicate the limits of what was seen as acceptable from the perspective of colonial racism. Although their careers were dissimilar, with Hohenstein demonstrating markedly less willingness to go along with the system than Klausa did, a brief comparison is nevertheless revealing. For a year and a half, in 1941/42, Hohenstein was a lower-level local functionary (Amtskommissar) and mayor of the town of ‘Poniatowec’ (also anonymised) in the newly annexed Reichsgau of the Wartheland. Hohenstein was sent here, to the colonial borderland territory of the eastern provinces of the expanded Greater German Reich as a form of punishment for having got into some trouble with the Nazi authorities in his previous position back in the ‘old Reich.’ In the summer of 1942 Hohenstein was

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subjected to disciplinary procedures as a result of which he had to resign from his post, was expelled from the NSDAP, and returned to the ‘old Reich.’ Following a period working in industry, he was sent to the front; he survived the war but after the war was never able to take up his former career in the civil service again, having been discredited and tainted by a group III evaluation as a ‘lesser offender,’ later reduced to group IV, ‘fellow traveller’ (Mitläufer) in the denazification procedures. Increasingly bitter, he handed over his diaries to the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, who published an edited version in 1963.8 Klausa and Hohenstein were both members of the by now well-known ‘war-youth generation.’9 Hohenstein was born in 1901, Klausa in 1910. Educated professionals, they shared much of the latent racism of the day, viewing German ‘civilisation’ as inherently superior to the ways of the Polish people they were charged with subjugating. They both to some extent registered the suffering of the Jews in the areas for which they were responsible. In different ways, their disquiet about the escalation of Nazi policies into genocide is evident from their own self-representations, and in Hohenstein’s case also confirmed by the records of his career. While throwing himself with considerable energy and much by way of ideological aspirations into the mission of ‘civilising’ this borderland area, Hohenstein became increasingly troubled by Nazi racism in practice. He records with shock the conditions he witnessed in the overcrowded ghetto of his town. On being asked to take in more Jews, expelled from a neighbouring town, Hohenstein is pleased with the way he went to some personal lengths to ease their journey, organising some transport for possessions and those less able to walk the several kilometres to their new ‘homes,’ and trying to institute some sort of system for the allocation of cramped and scarce space in the already over-crowded Jewish quarter. A sense of class affinities overcame racial differences when Hohenstein invited the local leader of the Jewish Council and his highly educated and also professionally active wife to his own home, the Landrat’s official residence for an informal social evening in December 1941. It was on this occasion that Hohenstein allegedly heard the first intimations of the policies of mass murder now unfolding in nearby Cheámno, the first camp used for killing by gassing, starting already in December 1941. Hohenstein was also deeply shocked when asked to provide a sixth candidate for a public hanging in March 1942, which he failed to do; he also failed to 8

Alexander Hohenstein, Wartheländisches Tagebuch (Munich: dtv 1963). Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002); Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives.

9

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engage with the appropriate enthusiasm in this ritual of humiliation, instead signalling by his body language – looking down at his boots – his disapproval of the spectacle. This public hanging presaged the incarceration of the entire Jewish population of the town within the church and their subsequent deportation and murder, a sequence effected around one month later. It was in part because of many minor incidents and small intimations of discomfort on Hohenstein’s part with racial policy along the way, and in part because of his lack of full support of the public execution, that he was ultimately disciplined, stripped of his offices, and sent back to the west For Hohenstein, the civilising mission of colonial racism went up to, but did not encompass, the final stages of mass misery and murder. Klausa too appears to have become increasingly uncomfortable with the course of developments in the Landkreis of BĊdzin for which he was responsible although he never lost his position or jeopardised his career within the Nazi state over this. As far as we know, he cooperated fully in his far more significant position in the hierarchy of local government in a similar public execution which took place in BĊdzin in April 1942, again just one month before the first major deportation of Jews from the town to their deaths in the gas chambers, in this case at Auschwitz. He does not mention this hanging in his memoirs, but, given Klausa’s official position as Landrat, it seems highly likely that he would have had to play an official role gracing and observing the spectacle. With the deportations to death in May and August 1942, however, Klausa appears to have experienced a great deal of unease, arguably receiving psychosomatic expression in an indefinable sense of physical malaise and digestive difficulties – although these also perhaps resulted from the illness the previous summer and autumn that had caused him to be invalided out of the Russian campaign.10 Whatever the cause, the symptoms were not easily cured by physical means: his wife complains repeatedly in letters to her mother during the early summer of 1942 of Klausa’s ‘nerves.’ Although he returned from a lengthy rest cure visibly sun-tanned, well-fed and physically fit, his ‘nerves’ remained terrible, such that the rest cure appeared to have been totally wasted money. Yet after the major deportation of August 1942 had been completed, he appeared again more relaxed and his mood notably lifted. It was at this stage that Klausa seems to have made moves to return to the front. There are, as we shall see in a moment, difficulties with the story 10

This is the interpretative gloss provided by Ute Benz, who quotes under a pseudonym, ‘Elisabeth Hagen’, from the letters of Klausa’s wife Alexandra to her mother during this time. See Ute Benz, Frauen im Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente und Zeugnisse (Munich: Beck, 1993), p. 89.

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he later told, which is factually untrue in many details. But it is possible to see some underlying psychological logic to his tale of disliking what he saw and offering himself up to risk his own life at the front rather than remaining party to emerging crimes on an unprecedented scale in eastern Upper Silesia. Unlike Hohenstein, Klausa did not step sufficiently out of line to be disciplined; but it is quite possible that potential pangs of conscience began to make themselves felt at this point. Both Hohenstein and Klausa were, in different ways, constrained by the system to act in certain ways although with greater or lesser degrees of responsibility and constraint in each case. Hohenstein was indeed explicitly aware of them and commented at the time on the constraints of the system; Klausa, in his memoirs, only briefly raises the question of whether it had been right to serve such a system, only to dismiss this question as one too large to be addressed in that context. After the war, neither appears to have felt any qualms about the ways in which they had chosen to act, and both seem to have retained a sense of their own personal decency, with nothing on their conscience. Hohenstein, even after he had been disciplined, had lost his post and his membership of the NSDAP, and was on his way back to western Germany in some disgrace, bid farewell in his diary to the area of the Warthegau that he was leaving with a paean of praise to the superiority of the Germans and continuing support for the German ‘civilising mission’ with which his activities had been imbued throughout. Klausa repeatedly asserted his innocence, refusing to make the connections between what he had done and what was able to develop as a result of his actions. There were further mechanisms in play in Klausa’s case that allowed such a sense of innocence to remain unchallenged for the records of the time were not actually all that easy to square with a rather different postwar sense of morality. Hence, stories, gaps and absences are required to set the now increasingly unpalatable records of former times into a more acceptable moral framework of interpretation.

III. The Distortions of Memory and the Function of Stories The Jews were not only outside the bounds of the moral community with whom Klausa could empathise at the time, they were also apparently beyond his capacity to remember, at least explicitly in the later selfrepresentations available in the archival or family records. Neither in his memoirs nor his defence statements to the investigations coordinated by the Ludwigsburg Central Office, does Klausa recall even having actually witnessed any acts of brutality taking place in the county for which he was

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responsible, with a couple of significant exceptions, on which more in a moment. Klausa’s archivally documented words of praise for the local gendarmerie, when they undertook reprisal killings or when they shot Jews ‘attempting to escape’ – using the infamous phrase, ‘auf der Flucht erschossen’ – find no mention in his memoirs or defence statements. He fails to remember in his memoirs the incident at the little hamlet of Celiny in June 1940, when 32 innocent people were put to death by being shot against the wall of a house in ‘reprisal’ for the death of a German gendarme; his memory should have been jogged by the fact that this incident was thoroughly investigated by the Ludwigsburg Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes (Zentralstelle) in response to which he erroneously claimed that he was away fighting in France and not in charge of the county at the time. In sworn statements to the legal authorities in the post-war investigations, also Klausa wrongly asserts that he was again away on military service in the autumn of 1942, when a gendarme by the name of Paul Grytz shot dead a Jew by the name of Kupferberg and his son after they had been arrested simply for being found at large, walking across a field rather than remaining under Nazi control pending deportation to death. On both these occasions, Klausa demonstrably gives false dates of absence on military service. But it is difficult to explain away some events to which he clearly had to be a witness; and it is also difficult to claim a limited degree of opposition or resistance if one also claims one is unaware of the criminal nature of the regime. There are two key stories in Klausa’s self-representation which illustrate his desire to relay his own turning point in realisation and resistance without at the same time conceding more by way of knowledge of, even participation in, what was going on than he really cared to admit. When Klausa does admit to some limited awareness of or at least suspicion about the essentially ‘criminal’ character of what was going on in the area, he is able to represent himself as a sort of hero. He briefly concedes that he only once witnessed a deportation: he claims both in his memoirs and his defence statements that he saw, from a distance, a ‘miserable procession’ of perhaps 1,000 Jews passing near his house one lunchtime; flanked by their own Jewish militia and led by a mere two German policemen, they were headed for the nearby railway station. This story holds the status of ‘key experience’ in Klausa’s memoirs: he allegedly, on seeing this group, immediately telephoned the Sosnowiec Chief of Police, Alexander von Woedtke, who supposedly provided him with a reassuring story about their ‘resettlement’ in Russia. Nevertheless, according to Klausa’s account, he now felt that he should make an immediate

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move to get out of the area and no longer be associated with any criminal acts potentially underway there. He thus supposedly arranged an almost immediate return to military service at the front, rather than remaining in an ‘indispensable’ (unabkömmlich, uk) position on the home front, and further claims that he then left for the army within a matter of days. This story is factually incorrect on several counts. In reality, Klausa had been in BĊdzin on a period of extended leave from active military service on medical grounds; he had a scheduled medical examination that happened to coincide with the first day of the August 1942 deportations, on which occasion he was found fit to return to the army in a motorised capacity; and he did not in fact return to the front until as late as 1 December 1942. Moreover, in the course of the autumn he was in charge when the final ghettoisation pending the ultimate deportation in order to ‘cleanse’ BĊdzin of Jews was officially agreed. Yet, Klausa can use this coincidence of dating to tell a somewhat more heroic tale, one which also conveniently has him absent at key dates in the course of the autumn. Another part of this story has Klausa allegedly attempting to ‘save’ a Jew from deportation: his own housekeeper, gardener, janitor and factotum, one Laib Flojm, along with Flojm’s wife and two small children. The stories are mutually inconsistent and seriously misrepresent the details of the historical record. Piecing together what probably actually happened – although this is not completely possible – it would seem that Klausa, in order to save Flojm from deportation, in effect participated in the selection process taking place in a large sports ground just across the road from his own home, where some 24,000 Jews were held over a period of three days during which more than 4,000 were selected for sending down the railway tracks to Auschwitz. In the process, it would appear that Klausa persuaded the SS officers undertaking the selection that ‘his’ Jew, Laib Flojm, remained an essential worker in the area, as did many other local employers as well as the infamous SS Organisation Schmelt, an employer of tens of thousands of Jewish slave labourers in Silesia.11 The subsequent story of having hidden not only Flojm but also his wife and children until his own return to the front, portraying himself as at the mercy of ‘the Nazis’ almost as much as were the Flojm family, and hence ‘no longer’ able to help them provides Klausa’s self-representation with a semblance of courage in the face of all personal risks but is again not borne out by the facts of his own far later departure than that portrayed. Without going into further detail here, it is clear that Klausa constructed stories which both appeared to fit the known facts of what went on in 11 See further Sybille Steinbacher, “Musterstadt Auschwitz.” Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich: Saur, 2000).

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the area during the time in which he was nominally in charge, but which also provided him with an alibi of absence or ignorance, or both. It is quite possible that some of his own dating was hazy, and his memory less than accurate in every detail. But it is also notable that the varying dates he gives of his absences on military duties, when we know from the archival record that he was actually present in the area at the time, often conveniently got him off the hook as far as further legal investigations were concerned. Yet, there is perhaps an underlying truth to these stories: they register a feeling of unease about the ways in which colonial racism was being subsumed within a policy of genocide. It thus reflects some inner sense, if not the outer facts of the situation, and it allows Klausa at least partially to reconcile the details of that time, before 1945 with the shift in moral frameworks and self-interpretation that took place in the altered interpretive context of the post-war period. The function of story-telling in this way is evident throughout his memoirs: his stories, of which there are many, both smaller and larger, portray him constantly in a good light; perhaps this was in itself a defensive strategy to explain not merely to his family, for whom the memoirs were primarily written, but also to himself that he really need have nothing on his conscience.

IV. The Limits of All Evil: Behind the Gates of Auschwitz A major ploy for all former Nazis is to restrict the location and character of ultimate evil to Auschwitz. In a sense, for Klausa, too, ‘Auschwitz’ appeared as the ‘final threshold,’ the ultimate crossing of the moral boundaries, with the infamous archway entrance of Birkenau marking the gates to the real kingdom of evil. Here again, stories hold a key function in the clarification of conscience. Klausa claimed in his memoirs that he had only heard about Auschwitz, or perhaps about what was ‘really going on’ in Auschwitz, relatively late in the war, when by chance he met a former school comrade on a train. The old school- friend was wearing an SS-uniform, allegedly shocking Klausa (or so he represents it in his memoirs). On being asked by Klausa what his job entailed, the friend reportedly whispered back that Klausa should not ask, it was terrible. Klausa uses this story to demonstrate, once again, his own innocence and supposed ignorance of the worst depths of the Nazi regime. Such ‘train stories’ are a relatively typical way of conceding that one had in fact known ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing,’ but only indirectly, at second hand, registering with a degree of shock and self-distancing from responsibility.

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Even if we try to take Klausa’s version of this story at face value, his mode of expression is illuminating. As Klausa put it of his former school friend: “I am sure he did nothing wrong. I assume he had to stand in a watchtower and shoot if a prisoner escaped. He quite certainly had nothing to do with the actual task of execution in Auschwitz.”12

One does have to wonder what, in Klausa’s understanding, the ‘actual task of execution’ then really consisted in, if shooting at anyone trying to escape this place of mass murder, this ‘anus of the world,’ was not included. And who, if participation in evil really were restricted purely to those assisting in the functioning of the gas chambers and crematoria, would then be held ‘actually’ responsible? Perhaps only the members of the Sonderkommandos who did the dirty work of physically assisting the condemned into the ‘shower blocks’ and then subsequently pulling out the bodies and putting them into the furnaces but not the SS guards on the watchtowers whose task it was to imprison also these, who would in turn soon become victims of the same process? In any event, it is remarkable that some forty years after the war, in retirement in the affluent western Federal Republic of Germany, Klausa could still be resorting to the essentially Nazi notion that it was in some way intrinsically legitimate to shoot someone who was trying to escape, echoing the old phrase, ‘auf der Flucht erschossen’ used so many times when innocent people were killed as they sought to escape Nazi brutality or killed when they had been found after escape and brought back to Auschwitz. Klausa’s qualms and doubts had arguably already begun in the course of 1942, when he had himself realised what ‘Auschwitz’ meant, and not, as he claimed in his memoirs, some two years later in a supposed chance encounter on a train. As he put it in one of his defence statements made on 16 December 1975 although he allegedly did not at that time know where the transports were being taken nor was he then aware of what he called ‘this function’ of Auschwitz, nevertheless ‘it was clear to me that a crime was in train here. And I wanted to have nothing to do with this crime.’13 Wherever Klausa actually drew the line of where ‘evil’ really began, of significance here is the fact that he seems to have baulked at the final stage of the persecution of the Jews: their extermination by gassing, if not by shooting ‘while trying to escape.’ This is very likely a quite typical syn12 13

LVR, Klausa 400, Erlebt, p. 156. Bundesarchiv (henceforth BArch) B 162/7723, fol. 212.

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drome; and it is for this reason that an excessive concentration on the ultimate terror of ‘Auschwitz’ – while entirely justified in itself – can also inadvertently aid in the post-war camouflage of those who facilitated the Nazi system of racist persecution all the way up to, but not including, this ‘final threshold.’ The story has a further odd twist: Klausa shores up his assertions about his former schoolfriend’s alleged innocence by adding: ‘Besides, I heard after the war that he had after all succeeded in getting away from Auschwitz and getting to the front.’ Moreover, his former schoolfriend ‘survived and was probably also not pestered’ about his role before 1945.14 There are striking echoes here of Klausa’s own story: that this friend ‘succeeded’ in getting away from the ultimate place of evil and going instead to the front, and that he was never prosecuted after the war. This story as a whole functions, then, as what literary scholars call a mise-en-abîme, a text within a text, a miniature story mirroring the story as a whole: nearby, in some supposedly legitimate way assisting but not actually a culpable participant in a site of evil; escaping from the site of evil to the military front represented as entirely honourable; never being prosecuted or found guilty after the war, all, in a concentrated form, suggesting a pattern or composite package intended to convince others of one’s innocence. The cynical view would say that this partial admission of knowledge combined with a simultaneous self-distancing, this determination to profess a degree of fractured ignorance and yet proven innocence, was a postwar self-representation with which Klausa - and innumerable other former Nazis - could comfortably live. Not being brought to account by the German courts, which were notoriously tardy and lenient in their investigation and prosecution of those involved in the machinery of the Nazi state, was held up as definitive proof of innocence. Of course, in the strictly legal sense, all are innocent until proven guilty, but that of course depends on individuals facing a fair trial rather than evading justice and misrepresenting their past.

V. Absence and Amnesia Klausa was also far from alone in his later patterns of post-war selfrepresentation. Many of Klausa’s colleagues in the BĊdzin and Sosnowiec area professed that they, too, had nothing to do with and had known little or nothing of what was ‘really’ going on in the area: the Ludwigsburg files 14

LVR, Klausa 400, Erlebt, p. 156.

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are full of similar kinds of testimony from members of the civilian administration and individuals involved in economic exploitation of Jewish labour. People protested that they had never seen, heard or in any sense participated in anything untoward going on around them. None of the three key individuals who had worked closely together to agree and implement policies of ghettoisation, Sosonowiec police chief von Woedtke, Sosnowiec city mayor Franz-Josef Schönwälder, and BĊdzin Landrat Klausa seemed after the war to want to accept that they bore any responsibility for the ghettoisation of the Jews or even knew anything much about the bloody ending of the ghettoes they had created. The former city mayor of Sosnowiec from 7 January 1940 to 26 January 1945, Franz-Josef Schönwälder, made a statement to the Ludwigsburg investigation on 11 June 1960, at the age of 63, at which time he was a practising architect in Wesel. He alleged he had been on holiday in the summer of 1942 when on his account the one and only action against Jews in his area might have taken place; and he claimed that, he therefore had known nothing about and had nothing to do with any maltreatment of Jews in his area: “Up until summer 1942 no deportations of Jews took place. In the summer of 1942 I went on holiday. After my return I heard that I the meantime in the space of three days all the Jews apart from a work troop of around 1,200 men and women had been deported, and as far as I knew taken to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. As a reason for the deportation was given that the Jews if collected together in a larger camp could be more easily taken to work. What happened to them I don’t know.”15

Conveniently forgetting his own role in the ghettoisation of the Jews and indeed also the major ghetto clearance of the following summer, 1943, Schönwälder went on to assert: “I knew nothing of any maltreatment of Jews in Sosnowitz. The Jews were completely excluded from our communal administration. They were under their own Jewish administration, which in turn received its direction from the office for deploying Jewish labour under the leadership of the SSOberführer Schmelt.”16

Thus, any miseries of life in the ghetto were represented as, essentially, the problems of the Jews’ own ghetto administration and of the SS.

15 16

BArch B 162/1608, fol. 19R. BArch B 162/1608, fols 19R-20.

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A similar pattern is evident in the statements made by the former Sosnowiec police chief, Alexander von Woedtke. In his testimony of 8 March 1960, when he was living in retirement in Göttingen, von Woedtke tries to shift some of the responsibility onto Schönwälder while at the same time partially exonerating him: “I would like to mention that Herr Schönwälder as the city mayor of Sosnowitz had to carry the major burden of this moving of Jews. This action went without a hitch; it did not come to any excesses. I know that he [Schönwälder] was in fact a National Socialist, but was not a persecutor of Jews. Since Herr Schönwälder took his duties seriously, he was in part responsible for Jews.”17

Von Woedtke also lays the blame for Jewish living conditions squarely on the Jews themselves, omitting any mention of the ways in which the German administration was actually responsible for their appalling situation: “I would like to mention that the Jews in Sosnowitz had their own administration and their own militia.”18

Von Woedtke does concede the participation of police forces under his command in what he suggests was a purely ‘administrative’ role in ‘clearing’ the ghetto in the short time available, which occasioned some ‘difficulties:’ ‘The clearance of the ghetto had to take place in such a short time that I had difficulties with my police tasks of keeping order.’19 But he suggests that it was not his police forces, but rather those of the state police headquarters in Kattowitz, who were actually responsible for any ‘political’ aspects of this action: “I would like to emphasise that my office had only to fulfil police duties with respect to order and administration, in contrast to the political tasks of the State Police headquarters, which was subordinate to the Reich Security Main Office.”20

Curiously, however, even members of the state police headquarters in Kattowitz professed to have ‘known nothing about it,’ being away in other locations ‘for months’ (as Walter Baucke claimed) or claiming that (in the words of Franz Gawlik):

17

BArch B 162/1608, fol. 127. BArch B 162/1608, fol. 127. 19 BArch B 162/1608, fol. 129. 20 BArch B 162/1608, fol. 126. 18

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“I cannot say anything about the resettlement of the Jews, because I had nothing to do with it… Besides, there were no Jews any more in Kattowitz, but only in Sosnowitz still, where there was a big ghetto.”21

Others involved in various lower level capacities in the area had similar gaps in memory and made similar attempts to shift responsibility onto others. Rudolf Braune, a former Nazi businessman who had taken over Jewish concerns that had been expropriated, was aged 52 and living in Hamburg when in the summer and autumn of 1961 he gave intermittent statements, repeatedly breaking off or postponing meetings with the legal authorities. But he too claimed he knew nothing and witnessed little, even though he had allegedly tried to protect ‘his’ Jews from deportation.22 Johannes Karl Hähnel, a former postal services worker (Postbeamter) and now a ‘refugee from Upper Silesia’ (in post-war West German representations, then, one of the many ‘German victims’) living in the southern Bavarian resort of Lenggries in the foothills of the Alps, testified in 1960 that he knew that around 6,000 Jews from Olkusz (Ilkenau) were deported to Auschwitz. But according to his testimony, this had taken place at a time when he himself happened to be absent on unspecified other duties, elsewhere. He also claimed that on his return he did not actually register the fact that the Jews were no longer there, because even before their deportation they had not been allowed out of their houses and ghetto area, anyway, so their absence made little impact on him.23 Theodor Clausen, a former senior municipal inspector and registrar in Sosnowiec, and living in Munich at the time of his testimony, claimed that he had never seen anything ‘of actions against Jews or of their resettlement,’ nor had he ever witnessed any deaths or maltreatment of Jews or Poles in the town because his office lay on the other side of town, some three to four kilometres away from the ghetto, and because he worked ‘until late in the evening in his office.’24 Johan Weißfloch, a former criminal investigator in Sosnowiec, had similarly neither seen nor heard of any actions against the Jewish population, because his activities concentrated primarily on ‘the incoming post and the news service.’25 Even Heinrich Mentgen, Klausa’s much-praised former head of the gendarmerie in the Landkreis of BĊdzin, had seen nothing, knew nothing and could remember nothing. He too had allegedly been away - attending 21

BArch B 162/19657, fols. 506, 517. BArch B 162/1609. 23 BArch B 162/7711, fols. 126-8. 24 BArch B 162/7723, fol. 53. 25 BArch B 162/7723, fol. 45. 22

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his son’s wedding in either 1942 or 1943, he could not remember which year - when, so his driver supposedly informed him on his return, all the Jews of BĊdzin had been deported. He was taken to see the still evident bloodstains at the railway station, but had, he claimed, never witnessed anything himself.26 He was never challenged on where he had been during the ‘other’ year when his son was not getting married but another major deportation took place, nor on what he had been doing during all the months in between. In short, those who had been involved in running the German system in a wide variety of capacities in the area later professed that they had seen and heard nothing at all while an estimated 85,000 people were deported out of the towns, villages and surrounding localities and through the ghettoes of BĊdzin and Sosnowiec on their way to labour camps and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. These Germans all claimed, however implausibly, that they had been working late, were engaged in other duties, away on holiday, attending a son’s wedding – or in Klausa’s case, had ‘disappeared’ to the front – at the time of any violent incident or deportation that they might have been expected to have witnessed; and they had supposedly only at a later date gleaned, at second hand by being told something of what had allegedly taken place. For all the differences of detail, the general pattern of these stories is remarkably similar: engagement in purely routine and respectable duties; absence from the area when someone else did something wrong; later partial insights gained through snippets and clues. Whatever the reason for these post-war cover-ups, people like von Woedtke, Schönwälder and Klausa certainly had been more involved in events in the area than they were willing to admit. The cynical view, then, might see these apparent gaps and distortions in memory as in line with an unofficial post-war consensus that the best defence strategy was simply a blanket denial of any relevant knowledge. Whether this pattern of selfrepresentation was actively coordinated among former colleagues who were still in personal contact with one another (as we know at least some of them were), or by talking to people of similar experiences, views and outlooks, or independently and almost subconsciously as part of a general manner of talking and a ‘climate of the times’ in post-war West Germany, is not easy to judge. A more charitable view might say that Udo Klausa, in particular, had not been as proactive in pursuing antisemitic policies and taking the initiative to quite the same extent as von Woedtke and Schönwälder, and had genuinely been absent for longer periods although not quite as long as he 26

BArch B 162/7723, fols. 214-6.

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later claimed. He had perhaps been internally more opposed to developments than these colleagues and had felt a greater degree of unease about what it was he was inevitably being caught up in while remaining in his role in the area. He therefore perhaps did not feel that he personally had anything to cover up, and was not prepared to engage in a fuller discussion of his role, finding it easier to claim absence from the scene by a somewhat elastic treatment of his dates of army service. Possibly he had, by this time, even come to believe his own story, was by now genuinely confused about dates, and had in any event barely registered the effects of Nazi policies on the victims and the miseries all around him at the time, thus quite easily failing to ‘remember’ them later.

VI. Conclusions This story of an ‘ordinary Nazi’ thus has many ramifications for our understanding of ‘how Auschwitz was possible’ both in terms of mentalities and the consequences of behaviour. Caught in the system himself although in a very privileged position, with many options still open to him, unlike the victims of Nazism Klausa was perhaps internally immobilised. He was, and had been since his youth, committed to serving his state in civilian administration and fighting for his fatherland in war-time. Once he did finally realise what the former really meant in practice, which was a very long way down the road, but a road along which he was accompanied by very many others, Klausa was effectively trapped in an emotional and political impasse. He himself admitted that he dared not speak out, that ‘one had to be terribly careful,’ as he later put it in his memoirs, and he was clearly not willing to risk the lives and well-being of himself and his family by any outward resistance, however discomfited he may have been by belated but growing awareness of the murderous character of the system which he served. Suffering from ‘nerves,’ Klausa was unable to articulate, either then or later, any explicit opposition to what was going on, or even to acknowledge quite what he knew; he perhaps even did not want to ‘know’ what he knew. His only resort seems to have been to ensure that, despite continued and perhaps in part psychosomatic malaise, he managed to pass a scheduled army medical examination, persuade the authorities that he was fit for military service, and return to the army, pretending, arguably as much for his own psychological health and career as for avoidance of prosecution, that he really had ‘known nothing about it.’ Whatever Klausa’s private feelings and reactions at the time, it is also undoubtedly the case that he did not baulk at any stage in terms of his own

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actual behaviour and his faithful fulfilment of his official role along the way, which ultimately made Auschwitz possible: he played his allotted part in the system, throughout, and faithfully implemented the racial policies of stigmatisation, segregation, containment and ghettoisation. Colonial racism, which is not the same thing as what Goldhagen calls ‘exterminatory antiSemitism,’ was a key element in developing the preconditions for genocide. Nor, as far as the sources of the time reveal, did Klausa at any stage show any visible concern for the suffering caused to fellow human beings by Nazi policies up to this point until, several decades after the events he portrayed, he sought to evoke a sense of sympathy for the victims of Nazi policies in his memoirs. A strict separation in his mind between groups defined on ‘racial’ terms and ordered into a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority was a precondition for effecting the policies of colonial racism. It also allowed a lack of empathy with the victims of these policies: a total failure to imagine and sympathise with their experiences and conditions of life – and death. It is in part because of the attitudes and actions of people like this highly educated lawyer and professional civil servant - who appears only to have become queasy about his own involvement in the system once he realised what was to be the next destination in the chain, the eventual outcome of segregation and ghettoisation - that it was ultimately possible for those at the front line of violence to put the Holocaust into practice. Klausa’s case is perhaps located at a particularly significant position in the spectrum, having held a role of responsibility in civilian administration in a district so close to the gas chambers of Auschwitz; but it is also a very ordinary example in the sense that the same lack of empathy with the victims of racism at earlier stages and the later determination to have ‘known nothing about it’ were very widespread. This failure of empathy, this unwillingness to see or register what was actually going on, was a precondition for the functioning of the system and hence, eventually, for the machinery of extermination. For the facilitators of Nazi rule in this province, the denial of any knowledge of ‘Auschwitz,’ or rather of ‘this function of Auschwitz’ as a final threshold of evil, functioned as a convenient means of selfexculpation. From the post-war perspective of these facilitators, all that was needed were brief alibis and tales of absence at crucial times, sometimes combined with hints of fragmentary hearsay. The vast majority of those questioned by the West German legal authorities and answering along these lines were then able to live out their retirements in a degree of peace and affluence, untroubled by uneasy memories or any sense of an ‘unclear conscience.’

A QUESTION OF HONOR: SOME REMARKS ON THE SEXUAL HABITS OF GERMAN SOLDIERS DURING WORLD WAR II REGINA MÜHLHÄUSER

On 15 March 1946, Hermann Wilhelm Göring, the former Supreme Commander of the German Air Force during World War II, testified at the International Military Court in Nuremberg on the grounds of conspiracy (of launching a war of aggression), crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Göring himself claimed that his actions had not transgressed beyond the realm of normality in times of war. When his defense council, Dr. Otto Stahmer, questioned him about his attitude toward the criminal acts committed by soldiers under his command in the occupied territories, he stated that he had had “all of the cases that were of a serious nature” submitted to him personally and that it had not been unusual for him to suspend judgments already pronounced by the division courts ‘because they were too mild, especially when it came to the defilement of women (Schändung von Frauen). In such cases I always confirmed the death penalty pronounced by the courts, except when the insulted party submitted a plea for pardon. [...] In addition, I presided as legal counsel and judge (Gerichtsherr) over proceedings against some of the inhabitants from the occupied territories who had been put on trial before an Air Force court, for instance in cases where [...] the native civilian population helped enemy airmen on the run. It is self-evident that the war situation generally made it necessary to react vigorously. I would like to point out that it is also self-evident that, within this framework, the courts imposed the prescribed death sentence on women, too. In all the cases, however, which involved women, I never confirmed a single death sentence, not a single case during all of the war years. Instead, I pronounced a pardon in every case involving a woman, even in the most serious cases when there had been physical attacks and the partic-

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A Question of Honor ipation therein against members of my Air Force, I never put my signature for confirmation under a single verdict concerning a woman.”1

The way Göring told it, he had personally seen to it that Air Force soldiers who had committed serious crimes were punished, sometimes even by death. His first example referred to soldiers who had come before Wehrmacht courts for having been accused of “Notzucht” (contemporary term for rape). The extent to which the Air Force actually imposed death sentences on soldiers in cases of “Notzucht” in the occupied territories will need further investigation. The research conducted by Birgit Beck, however, has already demonstrated that the Wehrmacht generally did not consider cases of rape at the war front and in the occupied territories a “primary criminal offense.” The majority of the acts of sexual violence were not prosecuted from the onset. The few cases that eventually came to court were, for the sake of military efficiency, treated as violations of discipline and as danger to the reputation and cohesion of the troops. The final verdicts varied according to the territory, the stage of the war, and the occupation. The death penalty, however, seems to have been an exception. Furthermore, most of the men who were sentenced to comparably high prison sentences did not have to serve them in full.2 The way Göring comes to talk about the allegedly strict punishment of the perpetrators of sexual violence he was questioned about indicates that he used this narrative to present himself as a shining example of the honorable military commander who acted in accordance with moral principles even in the extreme situation of a war. He did not, so the implied message, violate the fundamental agreements of civilized nations at war in modern times. Göring was apparently not only concerned with legitimizing the war Germany had waged; above that, he also wanted to portray himself as a I would like to thank Carsten Gericke, Therese Roth, and the members of the International Research Group “Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict” (www. warandgender.net) for their enlightening comments and remarks on the subject. 1 Cited from: The Nuremberg Trial against the main war criminals, dated 14 November 1945 to 1 October 1946 [hereinafter referred to as IMT], Nuremberg 1947, volume 9, p. 404. 2 Birgit Beck, Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt. Sexualverbrechen vor deutschen Militärgerichten 1939–1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), pp. 427, 308-325. Christian Thomas Huber, Die Rechtsprechung der deutschen Feldkriegsgerichte bei Straftaten von Wehrmachtssoldaten gegen Angehörige der Zivilverwaltung in den besetzten Gebieten (Marburg: Tectum-Verlag, 2007), p. 95. David Raub Snyder, Sex Crimes under the Wehrmacht (Lincoln, NE/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), pp. 137.

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man of moral integrity. When the presiding judge of the Nuremberg Court, Robert H. Jackson, asked him a few days later whether it was correct that he had protested against translating the word “Schändung” (defilement) with the term “rape,” Göring reaffirmed that he was prepared “to absolutely and gladly accept responsibility for the most serious things that I have done. However, I explicitly reject this term [the translation of “Schändung” as rape; RM] since it contradicts my being.”3 Obviously, Göring regarded rape as an act of violence specifically directed at women as women. “Defilement,” on the contrary, appeared to mean to him a violation of honor that caused the most serious suffering to the male relatives of the victims (a fact that is also evidenced by Göring’s use of the phrase of the “insulted party”). His decisive rejection was hence not a show of empathy for any of the women affected but rather an affirmation of his own ethical framework and thereby a justification for the soldiers’ actions.4 In the mid-20th century, Göring’s rationale corresponded to the system of values and norms in Europe and the United States. It has only been since the mid-1990s that the sexual violence women experienced during wartime and what harm it did to the victims has been discussed by a wider public and, also, that such acts have been brought before international and internationalized courts as crimes against humanity, war crimes, or genocidal acts.5 In 1946, the Allies did not consider sexual violence a crime but rather a quasi natural side effect of war. They operated on the assumption that sexual violence was, in Gaby Zipfel’s words, “a natural although forced sexual act between a man and a woman that was not really harmful

3

IMT, volume 9, p. 624. Refer to Ruth Seifert, “Krieg und Vergewaltigung. Ansätze zu einer Analyse” for the topos of violating honor, in Massenvergewaltigung. Krieg gegen die Frauen, Alexandra Stiglmayer (ed.) (Freiburg i. Br.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993), pp. 85-108. 5 Ingwer Schwensen provides an overview of the literature on this topic, “Sexuelle Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten. Auswahlbibliographie für die Erscheinungsjahre 2002 bis 2008,“ Mittelweg 36, vol. 18 (2009) no. 1, pp. 67-90. For current discussion, also refer to Kirsten Campbell, “Transitional Justice und die Kategorie Geschlecht. Sexuelle Gewalt in der Internationalen Strafgerichtsbarkeit,” Mittelweg 36, vol. 18 (2009) no. 1, pp. 26-52. Carsten Gericke/Regina Mühlhäuser, “Vergebung und Aussöhnung nach sexuellen Gewaltverbrechen in Kriegs- und Konfliktregionen. Zur Funktion und Bedeutung internationaler Strafprozesse,” in Susan Buckley-Zistel/Thomas Kater (eds.), Nach Krieg, Gewalt und Repression. Vom schwierigen Umgang mit der Vergangenheit (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2011), pp. 91-111. 4

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as long as no extreme violence was involved.”6 Correspondingly, acts of sexual violence were not indicted at the Nuremberg Trials. Particularly brutal cases were mentioned during the hearings of the evidence but only to illustrate the perversion and the lack of “civilized behavior” on the part of the perpetrators. The next step in Göring’s argumentation, where he described himself as the rescuer of female enemy saboteurs and spies, referred to moral concepts also virulent in the Allied Forces. While many forms of violence were deemed necessary, even honorable, or at least acceptable in armed conflict, some of them violated the “male matrix of war” as Lutz Klinkhammer phrased it.7 One of the ways in which these boundaries were exceeded was in killing women and children. A number of Wehrmacht soldiers indeed experienced a sense of horror and shame at the killing of women and children in the Soviet Union as Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer demonstrated. In particular, higher-ranking soldiers feared the moral decay of young German men and, as a consequence, of the future generations. Neither any feelings of guilt nor negative visions of the future, however, prompted these men to oppose the killing campaigns or to launch rescue operations.8 The verve with which Göring insisted that he put in his best efforts in support of women threatened by the death penalty, even if they had seriously injured the soldiers under his command, seems thus all the more telling. Not only was he trying to portray himself as an individual with a spotless reputation but, first and foremost, as an honorable man. It becomes apparent that the way in which the soldiers generally acted toward women and the way they committed sexual violence might become a symbol marking the thin line between male/military honor and dishonor. While Göring used the example of death sentences for cases of rape to emphasize his respectability and, accordingly, that of the Wehrmacht, he implicitly branded the men who had committed sexual violence as “devi-

6

Gaby Zipfel, “Ausnahmezustand Krieg? Anmerkungen zu soldatischer Männlichkeit, sexueller Gewalt und militärischer Einhegung,” in Insa Eschebach/Regina Mühlhäuser (eds.), Krieg und Geschlecht. Sexuelle Gewalt im Krieg und Sex-Zwangsarbeit in NS-Konzentrationslagern (Berlin: Metropol, 2008), pp. 55-74, here 73. 7 Lutz Klinkhammer, “Der Partisanenkrieg der Wehrmacht 1941–1944,” in RolfDieter Müller/Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), pp. 815–836, here 834. 8 Sönke Neitzel/Harald Welzer, Soldaten. Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2011), p. 193.

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ant” perpetrators lacking “male self-restraint” (Manneszucht) and “moral fiber,” who had thereby disgraced the military. The picture he conjured had precious little to do with the reality of the war that had just come to an end. From a wide range of sources from all stages and territories of the war, occupation, and the “final solution,” we know today that acts of sexual violence were a virtually normal and accepted part of the war for many soldiers. Members of the Wehrmacht and the SS forced women (and sometimes men) to disrobe, fingered their orifices during body searches, photographed them naked, implemented sexual torture, perpetrated rape (with the penis, other parts of their bodies, or objects), and forced women into sexual enslavement.9 The sources indicate that such crimes were committed even by men for whom this would have been unimaginable before the war. Among the all-male troops of the Wehrmacht/SS, acts of sexual violence provided proof of and became a symbol for their victorious masculinity and, by extension, male honor, during the war and the occupation. In the following chapters I will take sexual violence as a symbol of honor/dishonor as a starting point for an inquiry into the connection between sexuality, gender, and male concepts of honor and morality. If at all able to speak of a “National Socialist morality,” it was definitely aimed at the way the “Volksgemeinschaft” (German national community) was to regard itself. Moral obligations existed towards those considered “Volksgenossen” (national comrades). Social norms, including sexual norms, were subject to change over the time, i.e. during the establishment of the regime and in the course of the war. Nazi sexual politics as well as the perpetration of the limits to violence were embedded in an “ethical” framework of its own. Following Raphael Gross, I am not going to use the term “Nazi ethics” as a normative but as a descriptive category: “as a designation […] of the values created during a specific period.”10 To describe which norms and values were induced during the war, I will first investigate the various forms of sexuality practiced by the mem9

See the source material for example in Wendy Jo Gertjejanssen, Heroes, Survivors. Sexual Violence on the Eastern Front during World War II, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota 2004. Doris L. Bergen, “Sexual Violence in the Holocaust. Unique or Typical?,” in Dagmar Herzog (ed.), The Holocaust in International Perspective, (Chicago: Northwestern Univ Press, 2006), pp. 179-200. Regina Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen. Sexuelle Gewalttaten und intime Beziehungen deutscher Soldaten in der Sowjetunion 1941–1945 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2010). Neitzel/Welzer, Soldaten, pp. 217–228. 10 Raphael Gross, Anständig geblieben. Nationalsozialistische Moral, (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2010), p. 16.

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bers of the Wehrmacht and the SS during the war in the Soviet Union. How did the men deal with heterosexual encounters?11 In the second part I will then discuss the military regulation measures. How did the Wehrmacht and the SS leadership try to keep their men in line ? The third part will pursue the connection between the situation at the front and in the occupied territories and life at home, within the borders of the Reich. Were other moral concepts at stake, in the one and in the other? To sum up, I will combine the various individual, institutional, and social scenarios and argue that there was a special code of morality among the German military leveling off the often contradictory ideas concerning the sexual behavior of “Aryan” men somewhere between “racial awareness” (Rassenbewusstsein), on the one hand, and the alleged normality of the “conquest of enemy women,” even if these were deemed “racially undesirable,” on the other hand. Finally, I will return to post-war reinterpretations such as those by Göring and ask about their lasting impact.

I. Sexual "Conquests” On 7 October 1941, General Major Jürgen W., an artillery officer with the 20th Infantry Division, wrote in his diary about a military success of his unit in the Nawlya region of Russia: “The village was purged, the 6th cp [company; RM] proceeded in a dashing attack à la military training ground, obtaining 120 prisoners and rich booty. They also captured a caravan full of “ladies” [“Damens”] for the brave Russians, although those inside had been slightly injured by M.G. fire; but why do they go to war. “Delicious girls” [“leckere Mädchen”], the privates commented upon their return.”12

11 The history of homosexual encounters of German men in the Soviet Union has remained largely unexplored to date. Refer to Geoffrey J. Giles, “The Denial of Homosexuality. Same Sex Incidents in Himmler’s SS and Police for the way the Wehrmacht and SS dealt with violations of Paragraph 175,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 11 (2002) nos. 1-2, pp. 256-290. Geoffrey J. Giles, “A Gray Zone Among the Field Gray Men. Confusion in the Discrimination Against Homosexuals in the Wehrmacht,” in Jonathan Petropoulos/John K. Roth (eds.), Gray Zones. Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), pp. 127-146. Monika Flaschka, Race, Rape and Gender in Nazi Occupied Territories, dissertation, (Kent State University 2009), pp. 137-176. 12 Jürgen W., Tagebuch in Russland (Archiv des Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung [HIS-Arch], NS-O 22, cardboard box 4).

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Ego documents such as this suggest that military actors did not necessarily understand acts of sexual violence as violence. In numerous written documents soldiers describe the “conquest” of women in a humorous and sometimes suggestive tone as something that seemed to have been beyond the “actual” war. The idea that the soldiers deserved compensation for the difficulties and deprivations they had to endure during war is all over W.’s diary. Week after week he wrote about “tasty” food and “fine” delicacies resulting (from looting trips) and tried to explain why he and his men deserved them. The language of the above cited diary-entry reveals that women, in his opinion, fell into the same category. The language in the ego documents of German soldiers generally indicates that many of them, – regardless of their political conviction, – believed that they had total power over “enemy women.” A conversation between the 23-years-old petty officer Helmut Hartelt and the 21-years-old sailor Horst Minnieur illustrates how sexual violence was directly interwoven with other forms of violence. Detained at a POW camp in Great Britain in 1943 and unaware of the fact that the British Forces had installed wiretaps to monitor the information they might be exchanging, Minneur at one point recounted a killing operation that he had witnessed as a worker for the Reich Labor Service in Lithuania. His narrative focused on “a beautiful broad” who, when he and his comrades had asked where she was going, had replied “to my execution.” At first the men had thought that she was joking; only later did they learn that she had indeed been killed. “Hartelt: Those broads, they were also shot there? Minnieur: Yeah. Hartelt: Did you see it [the execution; RM] when that pretty Jewess was there? Minnieur: No, we weren’t there anymore. We only know that she was shot. Hartelt: So did she say anything beforehand? Were you together with her again? Minnieur: Yeah, we were together the day before. The next day we wondered why she didn’t come anymore. Then we drove away with the machine (the motorcycle; RM). Hartelt: Did she also work there? Minnieur: She also worked there. Hartelt: Building roads? Minnieur: No, she cleaned our barracks. When we were there those eight days we came into the barracks, and slept there so that we didn’t have to go outside – Hartelt: So she certainly let herself get banged [sich hacken lassen], didn’t she?

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A Question of Honor Minnieur: She let herself get banged, but you had to be careful not to get caught. That’s not new, of course, they got laid, the Jewish broads, in a way that wasn´t nice anymore. Hartelt: So, did she say that she -? Minnieur: Nothing. Oh, we just chatted […] she had gone to the university in Göttingen. Hartelt: And she let them turn her into a whore! Minnieur: Yeah. They didn’t realize she was a Jewess, she was quite decent, and so on. Just tough luck that she had to bite the dust! 75,000 Jews were shot there.”13

These young submarine soldiers spoke in informal German, but, obviously, they did not know each other well. . . Nonetheless, they talked about mass shootings and sexual violence, topics that were obviously neither taboo nor unusual. Especially young men would interpret blunt talk about violence as a demonstration of their rigor and an affirmation of their masculinity.14 The expression “sich hacken lassen” reveals that the merging of sexuality and violence appeared natural to them. It was also not unusual that women were given the blame or at least a part of the blame for their fate. In this case, it was Hartelt who insinuated that the woman had already become a “whore” in Germany. In a way, Hartelt even offered his interpretation as an explanation and a justification for the woman’s murder. Minnieur’s reaction reveals the ambivalence that men felt at times in the face of situations such as this. Initially, he expressed his interest in the “beautiful woman” of whom he had learned some personal details in their conversation such as the fact that she had studied in Göttingen. At the same time, however, he agreed with Hartelt’s objection insinuating that she had tricked the men in Germany by hiding her Jewish origin. The conflict arising from the fact that his comrades had killed a former student he had liked obviously affected him, but in the end he resolved it with the succinct “tough luck.” She had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ultimately, he did not question the executions as such. Furthermore, the conversation illustrates that the Nazi criminal offense of “race defilement” (Rassenschande), according to which sexual intercourse with Jews was strictly prohibited, had only a limited influence on 13

Cited from: Neitzel/Welzer, Soldaten, pp. 164. Frank Werner, “Soldatische Männlichkeit im Vernichtungskrieg. Geschlechtsspezifische Dimensionen der Gewalt in Feldpostbriefen 1941–1944,” in Veit Didczuneit/Jens Ebert/Thomas Jander (eds.), Schreiben im Krieg. Schreiben vom Krieg. Feldpost im Zeitalter der Weltkriege (Essen: Klartext-Verlagsgesellschaft, 2011), pp. 283294, here 286. 14

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the behavior of German men. As Minnieur’s remark demonstrates, the primary worry of the soldiers seemed to have been not to get caught. Indeed, engaging in sexual activities despite the risk of punishment could be interpreted as particularly bold and thus respected behavior. Moral reservations, on the contrary, do not seem to have played a significant role, even though Nazi ideology clearly marked these sexual contacts as “damage to the body of the nation” (Schädigung des Volkskörpers) as according to “hereditary science” (Erblehre), “Jewish blood” was inherited; “impregnation science” (Imprägnationslehre), on the other hand, stated that any form of contact with a person deemed Jewish, for instance even when taking a swim in the same pool, would infect an “Aryan” with “Jewishness.”15 Being tainted by “Jewish blood” could also induce specific forms of sexual violence. In her memoir “I Will Survive” published in 1964, Sala Pawlowicz, a Polish Jewish woman, recollected how an “ethnic German” (volksdeutscher) policeman had forced her to undress and tortured her with a whip while insulting her because he was not “allowed to have her.”16 In general, many men seemed to have assumed that rules would be handled relatively liberally at the front in the Soviet Union. For example, some SS men stationed in Minsk publicly declared at the beginning of 1943 that the laws against “race defilement” were only valid within the borders of the Reich and not applicable “to the East.” Remarkably enough, this incident did not have any consequences.17 In many cases, German 15 The “impregnation science” of Dinter and Streicher which is frequently termed contagionistic anti-Semitism today and, according to which the “body of the German Volk” (thought of as feminine) would insolubly be “infected” by “the Jew/the Jewish,” was theoretically incompatible with contemporary inheritance biology. At the same time, however, both of these concepts remained virulent in the everyday Nazi imagination, for instance in court proceedings on “race defilement” (Cornelia Essner, Die “Nürnberger Gesetze” oder Die Verwaltung des Rassenwahns 1933– 1945 (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2002)). Furthermore, in some trials concerning “race defilement” within the borders of the Reich, the judges issued prison sentences to the defendants although they assumed that no sexual intercourse but only masturbation had been practiced. Here, we can see unequivocally that the topos of “race defilement” was not only about reproduction but at times also focused on the question of desire (Alexandra Przyrembel, “Rassenschande.” Reinheitsmythos und Vernichtungslegitimation im Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003)). 16 Sala Pawlowicz in collaboration with Kevin Klose, I will survive (London 1964), pp. 35-37. 17 Hans Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/1942 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1996), p. 479.

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soldiers also did not hesitate to get rid of rape victims who, by extension, had become witnesses to the soldiers’ violation of the Nazi racial laws. In his study on Einsatzgruppe D (one of the mobile killing squads of the SS), Andre Angrick reported that an especially insidious moment occurred when SS men promised Jewish women to spare their lives if they succumbed to their sexual desires. As soon as they had enough of them, or were in danger of getting caught, however, the women were killed.18 In the face of the catastrophic food shortage in many regions, members of the Wehrmacht and the SS also took advantage of the situation by the seeking sexual contacts in exchange for food or consumer goods. When filmmaker Ruth Beckermann asked a former soldier of the Wehrmacht’s medical corps in 1995 whether he had encountered violence against women, he replied: “I don’t believe there was ever a case of rape where I was. It was not necessary because the people were so hungry. Don’t misunderstand me: If women wanted to stay alive, they virtually had to prostitute themselves. I experienced that on the Kertsh Peninsula on the Crimea. [...] Soldiers who were a little sympathetic [...] let the children clean their mess tins. In any event, that’s what we made it look like so that the officers wouldn’t notice that we gave the children something to eat, because this was prohibited. There was a really sweet girl whose mother I sometimes gave my pots to for “cleaning.” I saw a soldier with her and asked her why she was doing that i.e. why she was getting involved with a German soldier. She replied that she did it because she was hungry. “But you just got some bread,” I said. She showed me the bread: it was not edible because it consisted of sawdust, only on the outside was there a little bit of flour.”19

The description by this former soldier illustrates that the boundaries between sexual violence and the sexual trade were often blurred. His description distinctly portrays the predicament that local women sometimes found themselves in and emphasizes the circumstantial factor due to which some women felt compelled to engage in sexual bartering. The food situation on the Crimean Peninsula (in the Ukraine) was indeed disastrous. In February 1942, 15 to 17 people died of malnutrition every day.20 The former Wehr18

Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003), pp. 359. 19 Ruth Beckermann, Jenseits des Krieges. Ehemalige Wehrmachtssoldaten erinnern sich (Vienna: Döcker, 1998), pp. 102. 20 Manfred Oldenburg, Ideologie und Militärisches Kalkül. Die Besatzungspolitik der Wehrmacht in der Sowjetunion 1942 (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2004), pp. 68, 87.

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macht soldier showed empathy for the women in this situation. In spite of his unusually open and critical perspective, however, he did not question male behavior. The connection of prostitution to the military does not always seem to be an entirely unpleasant one but rather a somehow natural and human part of a soldier’s life, even more so since it stands in contrast to rape. The sexual drive, as the subtext goes, needs to be satisfied just like hunger. This former soldier was not alone in the way he saw things. Prostitution as an axiomatic side effect of the Prussian Army had had a long history. For Wehrmacht soldiers and SS men a visit to professional prostitutes also constituted a normal part of military life. The Soviet leadership, however, had officially prohibited prostitution as “bourgeois degeneration” before the invasion of the Germans. Therefore, to enter into negotiations with a Russian woman, a German soldier either had to frequent the local brothel, enlist the help of third parties, or be directly addressed by a woman. In this respect, the local markets were a comparably easy avenue open to German soldiers on the lookout for sexual encounters.21 To keep the sexual activities of the soldiers under control, the Wehrmacht eventually set up its own militarily controlled brothels in 1942. The extent to which soldiers took advantage of this military offer has not been researched yet. Wehrmacht files show that there existed some rivalry among the customers, sometimes even ensuing in fist fights. In this, the concepts of honor and masculinity played a central role as the former Wehrmachtshelferin Ilse Schmidt (female auxiliary personnel of the Wehrmacht) clearly depicted in her autobiography: A colonel asked his men to join him for a visit to an only recently opened brothel, a demonstration of loyalty the individual man could not easily turn down.22 In the military rear, where the men were often stationed at the same location for weeks or months, which allowed for flirtation, consensual sexual affairs, or even lengthy relationships to develop. In his study on the Wehrmacht’s occupation policy on the Crimea, Manfred Oldenburg quotes from a letter Corporal Herbert K. of the 72nd Division wrote on 30 July 1942, when stationed near Sevastopol: “Lately, we have been stationed in the same location and have had enough opportunities to chat with girls. Many of my comrades have taken ample 21

Frank Vossler, Propaganda in die eigene Truppe. Die Truppenbetreuung in der Wehrmacht 1939-1945 (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich Schöningh, 2005), p. 353. 22 Ilse Schmidt, Die Mitläuferin. Erinnerungen einer Wehrmachtsangehörigen (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1999), pp. 47.

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From Herbert K’s point of view, a soldier should never lose sight of the war situation, on the one hand, for reasons of military security and, on the other hand, to maintain the allegedly necessary distance to the enemy. The emotional bond that some of the men developed to local women and led to a substantial number of applications for a marriage license, which disturbed military officers and administrative staff responsible the most. Especially long-term relationships were an expression of the fact that the regime’s “racial and ethnic aims” (rassen- und volkstumspolitische Ziele) were by no means congruent with the views and actions of individual men.

II. Military Regulations The military leadership was confronted with a dilemma: On the one hand, sexual activity was considered “undesirable” as it jeopardized military discipline, the health and the reputation of the troops, and increased the hazard of espionage, not to mention that it also violated the principles of Nazi racial ideology. On the other hand, masculine virility was considered an expression of male and national strength and ultimately beneficial to the war effort. In addition, the “conquest of enemy women” symbolized the victory over foreign territory. Accordingly, there were a number of military regulations forbidding “rape” or making “undesirable sexual intercourse” subject to punishment. These were, however, hardly ever put into practice. As early as 31 July 1940, one month after the German army had occupied France, the Supreme Commander of the Army, Walther von Brauchitsch, was grappling with the question of the “sexual habits of the soldier in the field” [Geschlechtsleben des Soldaten im Felde]. On 6 September 1941 his rules of action entitled “self-discipline” were disseminated among the troop leaders on the Eastern Front: “Since the predispositions of men differ, it is [...] inevitable that tensions and woes [Spannungen und Nöte] in the sexual arena will arise here and there which we cannot afford to close our eyes to. The issue (of soldiers’ 23

Unteroffizier Herbert K., 13.Kp./Inf.Rgt.105 (72 ID), letter of 30 July 1942 (Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte Stuttgart (BfZ), Sammlung Sterz), cited from: Oldenburg, Ideologie und militärisches Kalkül, p. 118.

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sexual habits; RM) can by no means be resolved by a ban on sexual activity. Besides other negative consequences, a ban such as this would increase the number of violent sexual crimes and the risk of offenses against article 24 175.”

Von Brauchitsch feared that, depending on their individual disposition, men would build up sexual “tensions and woes” which might threaten to explode in violent sexual or homosexual activities if there were no opportunities for moderate heterosexual encounters available. Von Brauchitsch’s view, according to which the soldiers were not autonomous individuals who made their own decisions but much rather objects subjected to their own biology, was widely accepted in the Wehrmacht. This is also apparent from some of the court cases against Wehrmacht soldiers accused of “Notzucht” (rape). In the judges’ opinion, a defendant was criminally liable only to a limited extent if he had been diagnosed as having suffered from “sexual compulsion” (sexueller Notstand) or the “build-up of sexual urges” (Triebstau) at the time of the crime. However, not much weight was attached to these circumstances if the judges suspected that the defendant could well have chosen another option to reduce his “sexual woes,” for instance, when he was stationed in a city where prostitution was easily available.25 To his mind, commercial sex was a way of preventing the soldiers’ potentially “deviant” sexual behavior, thereby guaranteeing the stability of the occupation regime. As a matter of fact, the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW), the Army High Command (OKH), and the Personal Staff Reichsführer SS (RF-SS) had already delved into the possibilities of controlling the sexual activities of soldiers in France, Poland, and the other occupied territories.26 Since sexual encounters were considered a normal and quasi unavoidable part of war, they did not aim at a general ban of heterosexual activities. Hitler expressed this conviction in April of 1942: “If the German man as a soldier” is supposed to be “ready to die unconditionally,” he should have “the 24

OKH, von Brauchitsch, Schreiben an den Generalquartiermeister, Betr.: Selbstzucht, 31.7.1940 (Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg,BA-MA, RH 53-7/v. 233a/167). 25 Cf. Beck, Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt for the term "sexual woes", pp. 272. 26 CF. Insa Meinen among others, Wehrmacht und Prostitution im besetzten Frankreich. (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2002. Max Plassmann, “Wehrmachtsbordelle. Anmerkungen zu einem Quellenfund im Universitätsarchiv Düsseldorf,” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, vol. 62 (2003) no. 1, pp. 157-173. Vossler, Propaganda in die eigene Truppe. Robert Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell. Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern (Paderborn/Munich/ Vienna/ Zurich: Schöningh, 2009), pp. 34.

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freedom to love unconditionally.”27 He thereby referred to the common idea that love and combat were the two most profound existential experiences of human or, more precisely, male existence. In combat, “love,” i.e. sexual and emotional satisfaction figured as a means of sublimating men’s fear of death.28 “The combatant who is given the job respectively the permission to kill, must be ready to do so (to exercise the power to inflict harm),” Gaby Zipfel writes, “in this, he must also face the possibility of being injured or killed himself.”29 Sexual desire can thus be seen as a form of trying to overcome one’s fear of death, which is why sexual activities are not officially legal but nevertheless tolerated, at least as long as they stay within the prescribed framework. In which way the soldiers’ heterosexual activities were ultimately assessed depended largely on the middle level of the military hierarchy, namely the officers whose responsibility it was to lead the units under their command as well as to plan, execute, and, in particular, be in control of military operations. In order to present the soldiers with opportunities to seek heterosexual encounters while, at the same time, minimizing the risks, the OKW and the OKH as well as the RF-SS pinned their activities to a graded system of disciplinary measures: instruction, sanitation, treatment, interrogation, and punishment.30 Normally, leaflets urging them to exercise sexual discipline were handed out to Wehrmacht-soldiers already during basic training. The most widely disseminated text entitled “German Soldier!” was issued by the Reich Ministry of War as early as 6 February 1936. Later on, it was distributed in slightly different versions to the soldiers stationed in France and in the occupied Polish and Soviet territories. One version handed out in the Ukraine in 1943 reads as follows: “German Soldier! Beware of sexual excesses! They reduce your performance and are not beneficial to your health. A soldier with a venereal disease is unfit for service. Self-inflicted disabilities are unworthy of a German soldier! Venereal disease can make you unfit for marriage and incapable of procreati Your fatherland does not only expect maximum soldierly perfor-

27 Henry Picker (ed.), Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier. Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus, 2nd edition (Berlin: Ullstein, 1997 [Original 1951]), p. 332. 28 Gaby Zipfel, “‘Blood, Sperm, and Tears.’ Sexuelle Gewalt in Kriegen,” Mittelweg 36, vol. 10 (2001) no. 5, pp. 3-20. 29 Idem, “Ausnahmezustand Krieg?,” p. 58. 30 Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen, pp. 175-239.

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mance from you, it also expects you to start a healthy German family and to present healthy offspring [...].”31

This leaflet called upon the military duty as well as the “ethnic and national responsibility” (volkstumspolitische Verantwortung) of the soldier. It focused on the idea of “male self-restraint,” therefore calling the individual man to moderation to ensure military power and “national health.” Along with the military education about the risks of uncontrolled sexual contacts, the distribution of condoms, and the publication of the up-to-date locations of “hygiene stations” (Sanierstuben where soldiers were supposed to go to disinfect their genitals after sexual intercourse), this leaflet was seen as a measure to raise the soldiers’ awareness and to control their behavior. Some Wehrmacht officers criticized the establishment of “sanitation stations” as well as the distribution of condoms. On 20 April 1943, the commander of Military District VII responsible for recruiting and training soldiers in Southern Bavaria warned that the Wehrmacht should “not let itself be deceived about the dangers, or take the problem of venereal disease too lightly due to prudery.” At the same time, it was his duty to prevent “soldiers from seeing the sanitary protective measures as tacit approval or even a stimulus to participate in extramarital sexual intercourse.”32 Especially young men seem to have believed that contracting a sexually transmitted disease would serve as proof of their potency and sexual adventuresomeness, virtually constituting a trophy. The Naval Office, in a “letter on military training” dated 15 July 1942 finally warned that the wide-spread attitude “of believing that contracting a venereal disease was not only honorable but even a sign of being especially masculine must be [...] countered with vigor.”33 If a man contracted a sexually transmitted disease, he was to have easy access to medical treatment. Ultimately, military generals came to the conclusion that disciplinary measures in the wake of sexual encounters were counterproductive: a man who feared punishment would probably not come forward to receive proper treatment. Consequently, heterosexual 31

OKH, Merkblatt Deutscher Soldat!, no date [1939] (National Archives and Record Administration [NARA], RG-242 78/189, sheet pp. 654). 32 Stellvertretendes Generalkommando VII A.K., re: Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten, 20 April 1943 (NARA, RG-242 78/189, sheet 6130737 f., here 6130737). 33 Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine, Schulungsbrief, 15 July 1942, Anlage Soldat und Frau, p. 8, cited in Franz W. Seidler, Prostitution, Homosexualität, Selbstverstümmelung. Probleme der deutschen Sanitätsführung 1939–1945 (Neckargemünd: Vowinckel, 1977), p. 102.

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encounters were often tolerated. Only in some cases did becoming infected with a sexually transmitted disease result in disciplinary action by a commanding officer. Even if they were not punished, though, soldiers sometimes had to undergo an investigation by the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD) aimed at finding out about the “source of infection.” An indictment of a soldier by a Wehrmacht court was usually derived from a charge of “Notzucht”- issued for instance by a translator or a fellow soldier, or sometimes also by a relative of the victim. In general, the proceedings centered on the fact that the defendants had violated military discipline and harmed the reputation of the Wehrmacht. Racial or ethnic considerations were usually ignored. To date, we have knowledge of only four division court proceedings on the Eastern Front that explicitly dealt with “race defilement.” In two cases, the defendants justified their actions by arguing that they had not been aware of the fact that the woman in question was Jewish. Regardless whether this excuse was true or untrue, the court exempted them from punishment.34 The most radical measure by which the Wehrmacht tried to control its men was the establishment of military brothels. The Wehrmacht hoped this form of organized prostitution would ensure military discipline and, at the same time, allow for the permanent medical monitoring of the prostitutes. In addition, the military leadership intended to raise the soldiers’ “combat morale” and sustainably bind them to the military system by demonstrating an understanding attitude for the soldiers’ situation and rewarding their willingness of going into combat.35 The SS leadership did not officially organize brothels, arguing that this would harm the reputation of Germany’s “racial elite.” As early as the end of 1941, before the first “official” Wehrmacht brothels were set up in the Soviet Union, the representative of the Higher SS and the Police Leader explained that while the establishment of brothels might be expedient for the Wehrmacht, the SS, and the members of the police, it would however be out of the question “due to our world view” (still, this did not mean that SS men did not take advantage of local Wehrmacht brothels).36 While the Wehrmacht tried to sensitize the soldiers not only to their military goals but also in terms of “racial hygiene,” the military and the “racial” agenda had been inseparably linked as a part of the SS-program from the onset. 34

Snyder, Sex Crimes under the Wehrmacht, pp. 191-200. Beck, Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt, p. 278. 35 Meinen, Wehrmacht und Prostitution im besetzten Frankreich, p. 75. 36 RMbO, gez. Dr. Runte, Schreiben an den RKO, Betr.: den ausserehelichen Verkehr zwischen Deutschen und Angehörigen eines fremden Volkstums, dated November 24, 1941 (BArch, R 90/460, pp. 170-171, here 170).

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Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler saw the “SS community of kinship” (Sippengemeinschaft) as the realization of a “racial selection” that was supposed to be the foundation for improving the human breed, ultimately cultivating the “Aryan race.” In respect to the idea of “racial breeding all SS men were supposed to discipline their sexual desire in accordance with the aims of the German “Volksgemeinschaft” and particularly those of the “SS kinship.” In times of war, however, this idea of the self-controlled Aryan collided with the assumption that men had to act out their sexual drives in order to unfold their physical and mental powers in combat. The SS leadership was aware of this contradiction: in spite of reminding them to restrain themselves, it was assumed that the men would engage in uncontrolled sexual contacts. At the end of 1938, the following educational leaflet was handed out to SS candidates: “Remember 1. Sexual abstinence does not damage your health. 2. All extramarital sexual intercourse can bring about venereal disease. 3. Excessive consumption of alcohol leads to sexual excess and this again to numerous infections. 4. Never engage in extramarital sexual intercourse without protection. The condom provides the best protection. 5. After sexual intercourse without protection, visit the medical ward. Medical help can prevent gonorrhea even up to 12 hours following intercourse. 6. The slightest change in your sexual organs (such as burning, discharge, soreness, or an abscess) requires that you immediately report to the medical officer. [...]”37

The members of the SS medical corps rarely concerned themselves with sexual contacts as such, instead, they concentrated on the potentially negative consequences as well as measures of prevention. The moral tone that was dominant in the Wehrmacht at least until 1944 was absent, here. In contrast to the above cited Wehrmacht publication “German Soldier!,” the educational leaflet of the SS spoke neither of the men’s duty, honor or morality, nor did it appeal to their reason. Instead, this publication had the character of an instruction manual. The potential side-effects of sexual encounters and the directions for the identification and handling of potential problems were elucidated in a pragmatic tone.

37 Chef des SS-Hauptamtes, SS-Sanitätsamt, Ausbildungsbrief Nr. 5, dated 15 November 1938 (BArch, NS 31/292, pp. 62-95, here 78).

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Here, too, “racial” considerations seem to have played a comparably minor role. It is a fact that Himmler advised the leaders of the SS and the Military Police in the Ukraine in 1941 to explicitly teach their men “that they may only respond to a liaison that they can account for to Germany, to their own blood, and to their future child.” At the same time he conceded that it was “pure coincidence whether the girl a soldier gets attached to is purebred or unfit.”38 Indeed, the criteria for “racial evaluation” were neither clear-cut nor fixed. They were based on physical features, medical diagnoses, character assessments, and the biography of an individual and, hence, actually ambiguous and subject to changes depending on the territory, the stage of the war, and the occupation.

III. Home Front Duties In Norway, the Wehrmacht had to deal with a number of suicide cases of soldiers who no longer felt capable of dealing with the situation of having a wife or a fiancé, and a family back home and a girl-friend in the occupied territory.39 In the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht leadership feared similar problems. In his “Briefing on the Prevention of Suicide” dated 6 October 1942 the medical inspector of the Air Force therefore instructed all the medical officers to give priority to the psychological problems of married or engaged soldiers: “Liaisons of soldiers who are married or engaged should be taken very seriously, in particular when these relationships have consequences, for instance when pregnancies occur or conflicts arise with the women’s husbands or the boyfriends. Cases where soldiers cannot figure out a way to evade their problems are extraordinarily numerous so that highest vigilance is called for. In 19.4% of the suicide cases in the Air Force processed by AF Div. 14, romantic or marital conflicts turned out to have been the main cause, […]. Reasonable advice and male understanding and camaraderie as

38

RF-SS Himmler, Rede auf der SS- und Polizeiführertagung in der Feldkommandostelle Hegewald bei Shitomir, dated September 19, 1942 (Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde [BA], NS 19/4009, pp. 78-127). 39 Kare Olsen, Vater: Deutscher. Das Schicksal der norwegischen Lebensbornkinder und ihrer Mütter von 1940 bis heute (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2000), pp. 25, 123.

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well as contact to the women back home [...] can prevent many an irrational act.”40

The Wehrmacht considered even the most private areas of the soldiers’ lives to be a military matter. The bond to their families and to their girlfriends back home was an essential motivation for many soldiers forced to continue fighting at the front. Therefore their lives were supposed to be kept as untroubled as possible. The same applied to the soldiers’ often long awaited leave (of absence) from the front which was supposed to serve as a period of rest and regeneration while simultaneously reminding the soldiers as to why and for whom they were fighting.41 Furthermore, it was of importance to the regime that the soldiers engaged in procreation during their home leave, i.e. with “racially desirable” women (in contrast to the women in the occupied territories).42 Crises, arguments, and jealousy between couples threatened to undermine this agenda, which is why the medical officers were called upon to defuse the situation tactfully and empathetically. Military and civilian authorities demanded that the women at the “home-front” show understanding for their husbands, fiancés, or boyfriends. Articles in women’s magazines as well as public authorities and welfare workers advised women that it was their duty to stand by their men ready for self-sacrifice, even if their partners seemed increasingly distant or reserved. In his “Letters by a Judge” of 7 June 1943, Reich Justice Minister Otto Thierack emphasized that it was a woman’s job to attend to “house and hearth, fulfilling her husband’s tasks in his place” and to maintain “his fighting strength through her loyalty.” If women did not defend or value their honor, they not only disappointed their husbands’ expectations but, beyond that, the expectations of the community. They

40

Inspekteur des Sanitätswesens der Luftwaffe, Anweisung für Truppenärzte über Verhütung von Selbstmord, Berlin, dated 6 October 1942 (NARA, RG-242 78/192, pp. 6135832-6135837, here 6135834). 41 In his study on the letters German soldiers sent home from the Eastern front, Sven Oliver Müller demonstrated that many men wrote to their mothers, wives, and girl-friends that they were fighting to ensure that German women were protected from the “Bolshevist hordes” (Sven Oliver Müller, Deutsche Soldaten und ihre Feinde. Nationalismus an Front und Heimatfront im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2007), pp. 163). 42 Gabriele Czarnowski, Das kontrollierte Paar. Ehe- und Sexualpolitik im Nationalsozialismus (Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag, 1991).

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could therefore no longer expect protection.43 By ascribing the origin of this “female duty to loyalty” to traditional Germanic mores, Thierack revealed that he viewed this issue in terms of “racial politics.” Innumerable letters bear witness to the fact of men as well as women fearing that their partners would not be faithful.44 The fact that men were often absent for years combined with the fact that the women back home increasingly became independent caused considerable insecurity on both parts. Husbands and wives bewailed their alienation, and the number of divorces rose rapidly. On the one hand, of course, the Nazi authorities actually promoted divorce on “racial grounds” and, on the other hand, they were not very concerned about the break-up of only recently celebrated “war marriages.” Still, they clearly considered the separation of “Aryan” partners who had been married for a longer period of time a threat.45 A dominant idea was that it had to be accepted as normal when men, who the war forced to be absent from home for long periods of time while being stationed far away, sought sexual contacts elsewhere. Women’s extramarital activities, by contrast, were considered “immoral” and denounced as “a decline of moral standards.” The Security Service Reichsführer SS (SD) warned in April 1944: “The effect that marital infidelity of soldiers’ wives has on the men at the front must be looked upon as particularly serious. The men are very troubled by the news they hear from neighbors about the moral conduct of their wives. Often the state is held responsible for this although it is in no position to keep a family in order while the men are at the frontline.”46

The SD’s reasoning also centered on the question of military efficiency. Their primary interest was not to upset the soldiers and the SS men. Traditional beliefs about sexual morality such as marital fidelity, however, 43 Verfügungen, Band IV, V.I. 28/348, dated June 7, 1943, also cited in: Birthe Kundrus, Kriegerfrauen. Familienpolitik und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Christians, 1995), p. 375. 44 Inge Marszolek, “‘Ich möchte Dich zu gerne mal in Uniform sehen.’ Geschlechterkonstruktionen in Feldpostbriefen,” WerkstattGeschichte, vol. 22 (1999) no 1, pp. 41-59. Ulrike Jureit, “Zwischen Ehe und Männerbund. Emotionale und sexuelle Beziehungsmuster im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” WerkstattGeschichte, vol. 22 (1999) no 1, pp. 61-73. Christa Hämmerle, “Entzweite Beziehungen? Zur Feldpost der beiden Weltkriege aus frauen- und geschlechtergeschichtlicher Perspektive,” in Veit Didczuneit/Jens Ebert/Thomas Jander (eds.), Schreiben im Krieg. Schreiben vom Krieg. Feldpost im Zeitalter der Weltkriege (Essen: KlartextVerlagsgesellschaft, 2011), pp. 241-252. 45 Kundrus, Kriegerfrauen, pp. 369-373. 46 Meldungen vom 13.4.44, p. 6483.

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ultimately became a hindrance to Nazi aims. Nazi ideologists such as Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg rejected the Christian values while, at the same time, attempting to build upon familiar turf and re-appropriate traditional elements of faith, for instance by speaking about “guilt” and “sin” against the “race” or the volk.47 In an order proclaimed by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler as early as 28 October 1939, the main duty of German women and girls “of good blood” was to “become the mothers of the children of the soldiers going to war and to do this in the most profound moral seriousness (in tiefstem sittlichen Ernst),” even outside of marriage. This, so the message, would be the only way to prevent the birth rate from dropping.48 Himmler’s proclamation was contested as it stood in crass contrast to traditional values and moral ideas.49 The historian Annette Timm assumes that this, among others, also led to the long-standing myth that the Nazi organization Lebensborn e.V. had been founded by Himmler in order to establish “breeding facilities” to bring SS men and “Aryan” women together for procreation.50 Ultimately, the Reichsführer SS stopped advancing these political visions publicly. He did however devise a longterm plan for the modification of traditional values: for instance by “enlightening married women, many of whom have become fanatics in regard to moral respectability after getting married” or by transforming the language: “The term “illegitimate” must be eliminated entirely.”51 Himmler and others understood the liberation from the traditional boundaries of sexual morality in terms of a “Germanic project.” However this vision, too, was not free of sexual restrictions and values. “Male selfrestraint” (Manneszucht), for instance, was seen as an “Aryan” characterristic that constituted an expression of noble character and “racial superiority.” In contrast, “sexual excess” was denounced as “deviant” and associated with “Jewry” or the “Marxism” of the Weimar Period. On the whole, however, many people resisted the redefinition of sexual values demanded 47

Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism. Memory and Morality in Twentieth Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 10. 48 Geheimerlass des Reichsführer-SS für die gesamte SS und Polizei (dated October 28, 1939), printed in: Norbert Westenrieder (ed.), Deutsche Frauen und Mädchen. Vom Alltagsleben 1933-1945 (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1984), p. 42. 49 George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality. Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (New York: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 166-169. 50 Annette F. Timm, The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth-Century Berlin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 51 See Martin Bormann, “‘... über das Problem unserer volklichen Zukunft ...,’” dated January 29, 1944, printed in Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Der Weg zur Teilung der Welt (Koblenz/Bonn: Wehr und Wissen, 1977), p. 274.

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by Himmler and others. Numerous writings of different origins published until the end of the war explained that the Nazi aims of “racial purity” and the national recovery depended on “premarital chastity, a monogamous and prolifically procreative marriage, and wholesome family life.”52 Especially Christian supporters of Nazism wanted to promote the traditional conservative values. To sum up, there was neither a consistent position on sexual morality nor a straight forward general directive on how to implement Nazi sexual policies. Still, as Dagmar Herzog argued in her book “Sex after Fascism,” overtime, an unmistakable trend against traditional morality as it had been handed down for generations appeared. The new morality was mainly directed toward the question of who was permitted to have sex with who, and this was discussed in terms of “racial politics.”53 Institutions deemed “Aryan” such as the HJ (Hitler Youth Organization) and the BDM (League of German Girls) promoted premarital sex within their institutions while at the same time sexual encounters between Germans and nonGermans were subject to surveillance, regulation, and in certain cases to bans and severe punishment. The “abuse and murder of those deemed unworthy of reproduction and life due to their purported ‘hereditary’ or ‘racial’ characteristics,” Dagmar Herzog concludes, “constituted the background against which those classed as superior were enjoined to enjoy their entitlements. The legitimation of terror and the invitation to pleasure operated in tandem.”54

IV. Conclusion Official Nazi sexual politics regarded sexual morality first and foremost as an issue of “racial and ethnic politics” (Rasse- und Volkstumspolitik). Over the years, who had sex with who and what was deemed necessary, permitted, tolerated, outlawed, or prohibited was increasingly geared to the question of whether it served the purposes of keeping “the race” pure and stabilizing the “Volksgemeinschaft.” This was by no means merely about reproduction, i.e., the birth of “racially desirable” offspring and the birth rate. In addition, the individual sexual interests of German men and women were supposed to obey “racial and ethnic” criteria, an aim that the regime hoped to achieve by way of “national education.” Various activities 52

Herzog, Sex after Fascism, p. 17. Ibid., chapter 1. 54 Ibid., p. 18. Cf. also Elizabeth D. Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism. The Doubly Unspeakable?,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 11 (2002) nos. 1-2, pp. 22-66. 53

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called upon the individual to behave responsibly, respect public policy and thus support the “Volksgemeinschaft.” Sexual self-control was seen as an agenda for and an expression of a higher morality as well as a source of (morally superior) Germandom. A whole series of activities, ranging from the work of the medical corps of the Wehrmacht in the occupied territories to the welfare workers in the Reich, were geared to influencing an individual’s behavior. For example, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, and having sexual relations under the influence of alcohol were seen as “chronic national diseases” (chronische Volkskrankheiten) which needed to be treated not only medically but also socially and in terms of the social welfare policy. The crucial point in racial thinking was inclusion, which was supposed to foster a feeling of belonging in Germans and boost their sense of community. Numerous measures such as financial aid or awards such as the Mother Cross were supposed to support this basic conception.55 However, what often appeared ambiguous already on the ideological institutional level turned out to be multifaceted and often contradictory in everyday practice. On the one hand, “racial” gray zones did exist. In many cases, the question of what was deemed “racially desirable,” “undesirable,” or “alien” could not be answered easily. The criteria for “racial” and “ethnic” evaluation were in fact not clear-cut and fixed but much rather subject to change over time during the different stages of the Nazi regime and the war. It was one thing that Jews were excluded as the “other,” as “elements subverting the Volksgemeinschaft” a priori, but the question of who was to be defined as a Jew as well as the criteria for “racial and ethnic evaluation” were transitional and constantly disputed. For instance, initially, relationships of German women and Polish forced laborers were punished severely within the borders of the Reich; toward the end of the war, however, –when the birth rate had dropped and the fear of defeat was becoming more intense, such relationships were frequently tolerated; sometimes children resulting from these relationships were even regarded as “desirable.”56 In addition, the respective territory had a substantial im-

55

On the development of the Volksgemeinschaft see Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung. Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919–1939 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2007). 56 Gabriele Czarnowski, “Zwischen Germanisierung und Vernichtung. Verbotene polnisch-deutsche Liebesbeziehungen und die Re-Konstruktion des Volkskörpers im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Helgard Kramer (ed.), Die Gegenwart der NSVergangenheit (Berlin/Vienna: Philo, 2000), pp. 295-303. Birthe Kundrus, “Forbidden Company: Romantic Relationships between Germans and Foreigners,

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pact on the interpretation of sexual measures and regulations, which, for example, showed itself by the fact that the Nazi criminal offense of “race defilement” hardly ever applied to the “occupied Eastern territories.” For the soldiers and SS men who went to war for the German “Volksgemeinschaft” specific sexual norms and morals applied, which were not completely detached from those within the borders of the Reich, however, they still differed considerably. As Ulrich Bröckling argues, the transformation of men destined for deployment to combat zones included unleashing their “individual potential for violence,” but at the same time this very potential needed to be kept under control by disciplinary measures.57 In order to compensate the men for the extreme demands made upon them during wartime and for the subjugation they were expected to endure, the military, as Jan Philip Reemtsma has observed, made special concessions.58 During the National Socialist war of annihilation, heterosexual activities, including sexual violence, were a part of these concessions, concessions that were not always legal but, generally, tolerated. It has been confirmed that strict bans on “undesirable” or “prohibited” sexual intercourse existed. Yet only in the rarest of cases did military commanders put these bans into effect. As a result, military authorities created “spaces of opportunity” (Gelegenheitsräume) for German men to engage in heterosexual activities, which they utilized or not according to the individual norms and habitual practices within their military units. Ultimately, however, neither the Wehrmacht High Command and the Army High Command nor the Reichsführer-SS limited themselves to “passive” sexual politics by generally refraining from intervention. By educating their men about the symptoms and risks of sexually transmitted disease, by passing out condoms, and by establishing hygiene stations and military-controlled brothels they actively created opportunities for their men to seek comparatively uncomplicated and inexpensive heterosexual contacts bearing only limited risk. Since male virility was considered to be an expression of strength, and as the “conquest” of “enemy women” symbolized the victory over foreign territory, heterosexual activities were ultimately deemed beneficial to the war effort. They were thus not only

1939–1945,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 11 (2002) nos. 1-2, pp. 201222. 57 Ulrich Bröckling, Disziplin. Soziologie und Geschichte militärischer Gehorsamsproduktion (Munich: Fink, 1997), p. 10. 58 Jan-Philipp Reemtsma, “Die Wiederkehr der Hobbesschen Frage. Dialektik der Zivilisation,” Mittelweg 36, vol. 3 (1995) no. 6, pp. 47-56, here 51.

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tolerated but seen as a positive factor and the “underlying fuel for the military machine,” as Annette Timm puts it.59 To which extent Wehrmacht and SS commanders systematically promoted the sexual activities of their soldiers, tolerated them willingly or with dismay, or disciplined their soldiers depended on the military and political situation as well as the norms and perspectives of the men involved. On the whole, men who voiced moral reservations, for instance by considering setting up brothels as counterproductive and damaging to the morality of an entire generation of young German men, were in the minority. Ego documents from soldiers and SS men demonstrate that many men felt that they had complete power over “the women of the enemy.” In the male-dominated front society, specific moral standards were created for the soldiers, discrediting frailty and doubt as feminine and emphasizing the ability to overcome scruples and doubts as masculine strength. Soft skills such as being able to cook or speak with sensitivity were respected, but only as long as a man’s rigor was beyond a doubt.60 In this situation, the men often acted in a manner which would have been unthinkable for them before the war. Breaking the rules of traditional morality in fact, was an experience that frequently created a strong bond among the men, thus strengthening and securing the ties within a military unit. “Violence, or the failure to act, did not have to be deemed morally offensive if it could be thought of as acceptable in terms of masculinity.”61 Sexual potency also, or maybe particularly when it erupted in sexual violence, – could become a proof of honor, a demonstration of strength and alleged invincibility, at least as long as they were deemed “combat-effective” and did not run counter to the military agenda. Acts of sexual violence were only rarely considered crimes, except for when they were deemed to be counterproductive in terms of military goals.62 The intertwinedness of sexuality, masculine ideals, and the use of force was systematically suppressed and denied after the end of the war. Similar 59 Annette F. Timm, “Sex with a Purpose. Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity in the Third Reich,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 11 (2002) nos. 1-2, pp. 223-255, here 254. 60 Thomas Kühne, Kameradschaft. Die Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges und das 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). 61 Werner, “Soldatische Männlichkeit im Vernichtungskrieg,” p. 289. 62 Louise Du Toit discusses the fact that there is still no societal agreement whether the acts of v sexual violence should be considered a crime (Louise Du Toit, A Philosophical Investigation of Rape. The Making and Unmaking of the Feminine Self, Routledge. New York: Chapman & Hall, 2009).

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to what Hermann Göring had stated in his testimony at the beginning of this article, the former Supreme Commander of the Army, Erich von Manstein, while testifying at the Nuremberg Tribunal, referred to the death sentences of two soldiers from his corps who had been accused of rape in 63 Russia. Without particularly being questioned about this, both former military commanders volunteered reports on incidences of rape and the alleged strict military handling thereof in order to prove that the German army as well as they themselves had not violated the basic agreements of the modern day civilization. During the war, the perpetration of sexual violence was often perceived as an expression of masculine strength and, by extension, of male honor (individually, and in relation to the respective military unit). The collective experience of the intertwinedness of violence and sexual arousal might indeed have been a factor that strengthened the male bond which was ultimately regarded as morally sovereign.64 In contrast, the post-war narratives by Göring and von Manstein presented soldiers who had committed rape as individual offenders, thus dishonoring the military. This shows that sexual violence was considered a symbol of both male honor and dishonor, military respectability and disrespectability, and national civility and barbarianism. This post-war reinterpretation is extremely effective, particularly as the intertwinedness of sexual desire and extreme violence is an emotionally explosive and morally highly sensitive topic. Although the war of annihilation as well as the crimes committed by German soldiers have become extensively researched and debated topics since the beginning of the 1990s, the question of sexuality, and specifically of sexual violence, had remained a largely obstructed topic until several years ago.

63

IMT, volume 20, p. 665. Also see Erich von Manstein, Verlorene Siege (Bonn: Athenäum-Verlag, 1955), pp. 176-177. Oliver von Wrochem shows the efforts made by von Manstein in the post-war era to rehabilitate the Wehrmacht (Oliver von Wrochem, Erich von Manstein. Vernichtungskrieg und Geschichtspolitik (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2006), p. 109). 64 On the moral sovereignty of comradeship see Thomas Kühne, Belonging and Genocide. Hitler’s Community 1918-1945 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2010).

NAZI IDEOLOGY AND PROPAGANDA

MILITARY ETHICS DURING TOTAL COMBAT PETER J. HAAS

In the following I propose to examine the Nazi “Warrior Code” as this was formed, articulated, and finally made fully operative during the unfolding of Operation Barbarossa in 1942. By using the term “Warrior Code,” I mean to refer to the general expectations, norms, and rules that define the behavior expected of the warrior class or, in today’s context, the professional military. Such a code covers the conduct of the members of the military during wartime (ius in bello) but often defines the “good manners” (chivalry, gentlemanliness) expected of soldiers in peacetime contexts as well. In modern times, such codes have often been written down and have become encoded in doctrine through “honor codes,” codes of conduct, field manuals, military justice systems, command letters, and the like. In this case study, I will look at command directives from the Nazi high military command instructing subordinates on how to deal with enemy troops and prisoners-of-war, in particular. As we shall see, the Nazi regime over time produced an explicit code of military conduct on the Eastern Front that stood in direct contrast to what we would normally define as moral behavior. That such a “warrior code” could be articulated and implemented in a modern military suggests that while such codes are important, and even necessary, their content is not fixed. In fact, I would like to argue that the case of the Nazi “warrior code,” among others, implies that any attempts to find objective and universally true ethics for warfare are futile, in the end. In other words, in the following I will argue that warfare, at least in the modern world, is ultimately and by its very nature outside the boundaries of ethical constraints. This is not to say that attempts to draw up and enforce viable warrior codes are useless; in fact, quite to the contrary, such codes are crucial for allowing soldiers to retain a sense of self-worth even while engaging in the gruesomeness of combat operations.1 On the other hand, however, it is also the case that, inherently, such codes are of limited use and ultimately are destined to fail in the face 1

See Shannon French, Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present (Lanham/MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

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of actual and sustained combat. I submit that what we witness in the Nazi “warrior code” is in fact the failure of the traditional norms of combat and that a kind of inverted “warrior code” was institutionalized in their place, which not only recognized the gruesomeness of war but in fact encoded it. In any case, when it comes to ethics, the military offers an odd framework. After all, it is the military’s job to kill the enemy, whoever that happens to be, and virtually by any means. It is what soldiers are trained to do. Maybe this is why the military has often felt the need for a code of conduct, a set of expectations including a sense of duty, honor, professional pride, and something we might even call chivalry. Thus, the professional military has often seen, and still sees itself not only as moral but as reflecting the highest moral standards of the state or nation it represents and defends; it claims to be, and is often seen as consisting of model citizens. My premise is that the Nazi military did indeed have a type of warrior code which established a high moral idea but at the same time allowed for the grossest maltreatment of enemy soldiers (especially that of the Soviet POWs). From this examination I hope to learn something more general about the relationship of “warrior codes,” on the one hand, and ethics as normally understood in “civilian” society, on the other. I wish to begin my investigation with a different war, that is, with a story from the American Civil War. On 2 September 1864, the Northern general William Tecumseh Sherman entered the Southern city of Atlanta, Georgia. The city was a key railway link and an important population and industry center of the Southern Confederacy. It was being defended by the Confederate General John Bell Hood and had by then been under siege for several weeks. Finally, Hood decided to salvage what was left of his army and to abandon the city, on his way out burning what military stores and depots he could. Union General Sherman entered the city the next day and ordered all civilians to leave the city within the week. Later, he ordered that all military and government buildings be burned but, whether by intention or not, many of the civilian parts of the city went up in flames as well. The burning of Atlanta was the beginning of a deliberate rampage and the destruction of the city pursued by General Sherman. In the weeks that followed, Sherman marched his army though southern Georgia on the way to the port city of Savannah. This so-called “March to the Sea” ravaged the area to such an extent that it is still largely unpopulated, today. The resentment over Sherman’s “scorched earth” policy has lived on in the minds of many Southerners as an act akin to genocide to this very day. The rationale for this policy lay in Northern politics. Sherman’s March was meant to convey the impression to the North that the South was on the edge of defeat. The Civil War had already dragged on for some four years

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and the North was war-weary. 1864 was an election year and the Democratic candidate, former Union general George McClellan, was running on a peace ticket. He promised to sign a truce and pull the Union forces out of the South. His opponent Abraham Lincoln, the “war president,” seemed likely to lose. General Sherman knew this, and his aim was to achieve a stunning victory so that Northern voters would vote Lincoln into office and allow the Union to push the war to a successful conclusion. His plan worked. The South was reeling from the shock of the destruction of Atlanta, the Confederate Army was on the run, the North saw victory just on the horizon, and shortly thereafter Abraham Lincoln won reelection. Not even two months after Lincoln’s election victory, Sherman wrote to Lincoln that he was giving him the port city of Savannah as a Christmas present. Sherman then turned north, accepted the surrender of Joe Johnson’s Army, combined forces with Ulysses S. Grant, and, within months, the Union forced the surrender of the last substantial Confederate Army, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. With this, the Civil War was over. Sherman’s “scorched earth” tactics may have been brutal and deeply immoral, especially in the framework of a Civil War fought for the Union of the North and the South, but it won the war. I have taken this as an opening example because William Tecumseh Sherman is famous for another reason. There are varying accounts, but it seems that one of his most famous quotes comes from a speech he gave to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy on 19 June 1879. There are different accounts, but here is what seems to be a fairly reasonable version: “I’ve been where you are now,” Sherman said to the cadets, “and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that someday you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!”

“War is Hell!” There are of course many ways to understand this quotation and the sentiment behind it. Sherman may well have meant it as a description of the horrible mixture of deprivation, starvation, pain, suffering, fire, and death. This would fit in with what he said in his order evicting civilians from Atlanta, “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.” Yet, others have suggested another meaning. The one I wish to focus on is

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found in Chapter Two of Michael Walzer’s 1997 book, “Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations.”2 There, Walzer argues that war is hell in the sense that wars (and especially modern wars) have no known bottom limits as to what can be inflicted on an enemy. However just a war may be in the beginning, each side triggers a reciprocal reaction on the other side, and the feedback loop spirals downward interminably to greater and greater cruelty. In this context, Walzer cites General Dwight Eisenhower, “When you resorted to force you didn't know where you were going [...]. When you got deeper and deeper, there were just no limits except [...] the limitations of force themselves.”3 For Eisenhower as well as Walzer war is “hell” as at last there are no innate limits to the cruelty and suffering it brings. It is open-ended, uncontrollable chaos. War, especially modern warfare, insofar as it inevitably goes beyond order and meaning, really is a kind of hell. This brings me back to the concept of a “warrior code.” The idea of war as hell as I have just articulated it runs precisely counter to this and to the long philosophical tradition in the West which has tried to enforce limits on warfare to define what is called a “just war” both in the sense of ius ad bellum (justly entering a war) and the sense of ius in bello (fighting a war justly). This has taken various forms. The Roman thinker Cicero already gave us the basic theory of bellum iustum. This tradition was most notably taken up in the early Church by Augustine of Hippo, refined by Thomas Aquinas, and has persisted through the ages to our own day. It has made itself felt in a variety of modern, secular forms: various treaties, the diverse Geneva Conventions, rules found in the military doctrines of various countries such as the Israeli “Tohar HaNeshek” (“Purity of Arms”) and the Bundeswehr’s concept of “innere Führung.” In the United States, military ethics is taught at all of the military academies, and military chaplains are charged with advising commanders on matters of morals and ethics, among others. Of course, actual war can never live up to the ethical standards posited in the classroom and taught in officer training sessions. Nonetheless, the ideal persists that a “just war fought justly” is not only possible but in some way actually “justifies” any military action underway. That is, modern states want to be able to claim that deploying their armed forces is not only morally justified but that such use is in accord with moral norms. Every society wants to claim that it is on morally high ground, and it is the enemy who has shown himself to be undeserving of the support of moral 2

Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 21-33. 3 Ibid., p. 23.

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individuals. This claim to morally high ground explains why we are shocked and scandalized when incidents of abuse occur such as the maltreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or the targeted killing of innocent civilians “just for fun” in Afghanistan. In part, this is because the members of a democratic society perceive the military as an extension of their own culture; after all, the soldiers engaged in fighting are its sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. Their actions reflect the nation whose uniforms they are wearing, and when soldiers burn down a village, torture and humiliate prisoners, or kill random civilians, not only outsiders, but also the people in their home country understand this to mean that the soldiers themselves are somehow at least partially to blame. This subsequent existential fear runs counter to what most citizens in a modern democracy deeply want to believe, namely that it is the other side, the enemies who behave like barbarians, who do not place sufficient value on human life, and who fight unfairly. Not only we as civilians retain a strong sense of ius in bello, of fighting wars in a just and “righteous” way, but often even soldiers themselves come away feeling dirtied by such activities. Perpetrator soldiers themselves also adopt these perhaps unrealistic standards and spend years, even the rest of their lives, having to deal with guilt and the various forms of the post- traumatic stress syndrome. For the reasons stated above, we can see that the military has an active interest in promoting a sense of military ethics even beyond the politics of governmental or popular support. The military wants to preserve the moral character of its soldiers as a simple matter of troop morale if nothing else. After all, soldiers need to feel proud of what they are doing, need to feel motivated, and need to be willing to maintain a solid sense of self-worth while continuing to perform their duty whatever this may entail. The resulting “warrior code,” of course, includes such military virtues as obedience, loyalty, and courage, but there is also a sense of chivalry and of honor, and of serving a higher calling. A major pragmatic function often cited by authors writing on the “Warrior Code” is that such a code helps preserve the psychological wellbeing of the soldiers.4 Soldiers are not just rampaging killers or murderers, yet, soldiers do kill, but for the most part reluctantly so in the line of duty and out of a perceived need to defend their family, country, way of life, or even democracy itself. Furthermore, soldiers must persist and be successful in battle and then come home to lead normal civilian lives. We all certainly know that many soldiers return home from combat suffering from depression and other psychological conditions, very often also having been seriously wounded. The “warrior 4

See for example French, Code of the Warrior.

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code” is one way to try to limit at least the psychological damage and to deal with the aftermath. The question is whether or not the notion of a “warrior code” is in fact realistic. If, as Sherman announced and as Walzer understood it, war is hell in the sense of it being beyond the reach of ethics; hence, the attempt to hide this fact with high-sounding warrior codes is ultimately useless and may even be harmful insofar as it denies the truth. This now brings me to the situation of the Nazi soldiers and the role of the military, both the normal Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS. Was there a “warrior code” in operation that allowed these soldiers to commit what, in retrospect, are clearly understood as acts of gratuitous brutality and genocide and to do this while maintaining a sense of self-worth?5 The answer I would like to suggest is that such a code did exist for the Nazi soldiers, offering them a way to feel justified or to justify their participation in the acts that were committed. To be sure, just like any code, it never was 100 percent effective. However, it seems to have been widely effective, considering the soldiers in the SS and, eventually, those in the Wehrmacht as well. The information is thus instructive as it sheds light on the extent to which such codes are able to fulfill their intended function more or less independent of their actual moral content.6 In the following, I will now look at the Wehrmacht, in particular. I will do this for two reasons. First, due to the fact that the Wehrmacht was a modern military organization with an already established history reaching back to the Reichswehr and its predecessors in ascribing to a code of chivalrous military conduct. It is thus historically and structurally different from the military formations of the SS, which were direct outgrowths of the Nazi Party and reflected Nazi ideology from its very foundation. In other words, the Wehrmacht was a Western military institution in the traditional sense, with roots outside the Nazi regime. Second, the implementation of the Nazi “warrior code” in the Wehrmacht offers a study in

5

“By setting behavioural standards for themselves, accepting certain restraints, and even ‘honouring their enemies,’ warriors can create a lifeline that will allow them to pull themselves out of the hell of war and to reintegrate themselves into their society,” French, Code of the Warrior, p. 7. 6 Gray notes that “the ugliness of a war against an enemy conceived to be subhuman can hardly be exaggerated. There is an unredeemed quality to battle experienced under these conditions […]. Traditional appeals of war are corroded by the demands of a war of extermination, where conventional rules no longer apply,” Jesse Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (Lincoln/NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), pp. 152.

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how radically a warrior code can change in content and still be coherent and operative for a modern military. Before turning to my specific examples, it has to be pointed out that the established German military elite, essentially the officer corps of the Wehrmacht, found itself involved in an intricate political situation as regards the Nazi Party. On the one hand, the official policy of Nazi Germany for rebuilding the German military via the reconstruction of military industries, rearmament, and more aggressive political initiatives to regain control of strategically important territory was fully supported by the military establishment. The military elite certainly was anxious to move beyond the constraints imposed by the Versailles Treaty. From the very beginning, the Reichswehr (its name changed to Wehrmacht in 1935) cooperated with the newly emerging National Socialist state.7 But a series of factors seemed to threaten the status of the Wehrmacht in respect to seeing itself as the country’s one and only true military and the way the Nazi government saw it.8 One such factor was the emergence of the Party’s own military structure, the SA, and then that of the SS with its later military component, the Waffen-SS. The rise of the SS, and particularly the Waffen-SS divisions, posed a threat to the Wehrmacht’s status as the only military institution of the Nazi government, and by the outbreak of war in 1939, the leadership cadre of the Wehrmacht was facing the possibility of being sidelined by the SS. This threat was exacerbated by a second factor, namely, the growing threat of war. By the late 1930s, the military high command felt growing concern about Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy, noting correctly that Hitler’s military strategy was overtaking the actual preparedness and capabilities of the Wehrmacht. This led to further disagreements over battle plans and deployments, although the rapid succession of victories in the West seemed to have sidelined most of these concerns. The concerns returned with renewed force, however, with Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union. In the spring of 1941, as preparations for Operation Barbarossa were well underway, the Wehrmacht generals faced what seemed to 7

See Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: R. v. Drecker’s Verlag, 1969), pp. 38. This does not mean that all officers immediately or fully adopted Nazi ideology, however. Ibid., pp. 58-62. 8 See Jörg Echternkamp, “At War, Abroad and at Home. The Essential Features of German Society in the Second World War,” in Ralf Blank/Jörg Echternkamp/ Karola Fings/Jürgen Förster/Winfried Heinemann/Tobias Jersak/Armin Nolzen/Christoph Rass (eds.), Germany and the Second World War, vol. IX/I: German Wartime Society 1939-1945: Politicization, Disintegration, and the Struggle for Survival (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 49.

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be an actualization of their fears of being overtaken by the Party, when they were briefed (or instructed) about the ideological and racial war that was about to begin, being forewarned that this would be conducted in a way different from what had been the case on the Western front. There is some dispute as to how the generals reacted and whether or not there may have been some opposition expressed at the time on the grounds of military honor and the morale of the troops. In fact, at least some of the military reservations about the direction of the policy seem to have come out in the open as indicated by a Fuehrer Directive of 21August 1941, in which Hitler stated outright, “the proposals by the OKH for the continuation of the operations in the East dated 18 August do not conform with my intentions.”9 Thus, the leadership of the Wehrmacht found itself in the difficult position of having to reconcile its evaluation of the situation with its own capabilities, absorbing the strategy imposed by Hitler, and coping with the rise of a competitive parallel military structure, all in the context of war looming overhead and then real war. In this politically charged context the Wehrmacht found itself maneuvered into a position in which it needed to bring itself into closer congruity with the extensive Nazi program for reshaping Germany, as indicated below.10 This is not to say that the Reichswehr (and later Wehrmacht) leadership gave up on the traditional code of military honor easily, or overnight, but it must be said that over time it came a long way in this process. Overall, it can be safely concluded that by the time of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the Wehrmacht had been largely aligned with Nazi ideology and policy. This was true not only for the upper echelons of the officer corps but also for the rank and file of the military, which was increasingly made up of conscripts who had grown up in Nazi Germany and often been part of the Hitler Youth, thus taking the need for a racial “war of extermination” more or less for granted. For all these reasons, the end result was that the Wehrmacht as an organization gradually fell into line with Nazi policy.11 Hav9

Cited in: James Steiner, Hitler’s Wehrmacht: German Armed Forces in Support of the Führer (Jefferson/NC/London: McFarland and Co., 2008), p. 92. 10 Jürgen Förster, “Ideological Warfare in Germany, 1919 to 1945,” in Blank/ Echternkamp/Fings/Förster/ Heinemann/Jersak/ Nolzen/Rass (eds.), Germany and the Second World War, pp. 501. In this process, 1935 seems to have been an important turning point. See Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, pp. 79105. 11 See the discussion in Wolfram Wette, The Wehrmacht: History, Myth Reality (Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 90-98 and 195. On the other hand, it must be noted that this “alignment” with Nazi racial war ethics was never accomplished.

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ing said all this, it also has to be noted that the “alignment” of the Wehrmacht with Nazi racial warfare ethics was never fully achieved.12 The notion of the soldiers being the representatives of the German people as a whole (a kind of fighting extension of the Volksgemeinschaft) was not without precedent, and had already been articulated in the early days following World War I.13 The Nazi ideal of rearming the military both materially and “mentally” was therefore not, in and of itself, out of the ordinary. What was different, of course, was the content; when the Nazi Party took hold of the state apparatus, the war that was being prepared was less about purely military gains but instead more about race and ideology. To be sure, the Wehrmacht continued its struggle to retain control over its own officer and enlisted training and indoctrination, but it appears that it was steadily being taken over by the Nazi leadership. This seems to have been especially true when the disaster of Stalingrad began to unfold in the winter of 1942/43. The concern was that a signal defeat would not only stall the military drive of knocking the Soviet Union out of the war but would also have a negative impact on troop morale, overall. This may also have been a response to the already declining physical and mental condition of the military forces in the East due to both the devastating losses among the combat units and the increasingly primitive conditions in which Wehrmacht soldiers found themselves.14 To deal with these developments, the Nazi leadership began to implement more rigorous ideological training and more severe disciplinary action. The establishment of Nationalsozialistische Führungsoffiziere in December and January 1942 reflects the first of these responses while the changes in military justice reflect the second approach.15 Bartov in fact has argued that by the last year of the war, or so, the remarkable resistance put up by German soldiers in the face of the advancing Red Army was a function not so much of group cohesion, which had been largely compromised by the high turnover in officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs), and regular troops nor by the fear of disciplinary punishment, although this was a growing factor, but by ideological indoctrination. As Bartov puts it when 12

See for example, Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, pp. 355-356. See Echternkamp, “At War, Abroad and at Home,” p. 51. 14 Omer Bartov, refers to these as the destruction of the “primary group,” which gave the Army its overall cohesion, and the “demodernization” of the front. See Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and Ware in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), esp. p. 28. 15 See Echternkamp, “At War, Abroad and at Home,” pp. 52-56. On the later, see also Manfred Messerschmidt/Fritz Wuellner, Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933-1945, 2nd edition. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005). 13

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talking about the outbreak of panic, desertion, and mutiny, “the Wehrmacht protected itself from most breakouts by harsh discipline but completely inoculated its troops against a panic epidemic by huge counterinjections of terror from the enemy.”16 It was these ideological injections Bartov goes on to argue, which allowed the Wehrmacht soldiers to come to terms with their own brutality.17 They were, after all, being told by the experts that they were fighting a barbarian army that would do the same to them and their families if given a chance. This indoctrination of the Wehrmacht soldiers brought them close to the Waffen-SS in their thinking and, in essence, supplanted the SS “warrior code” to the Wehrmacht.18 Another factor in all this, of course, was the fuzzy boundary between what constituted a military defense of the German homeland and the war of racial extermination, which was part of government policy. From the point of view of the German soldiers, especially as the Eastern front deteriorated and the Red Army began to advance toward Germany, these two components of the war merged into one bloody struggle. Particularly in the East the war descended into the kind of hellish moral wasteland of which Sherman (and Walzer’s interpretation of Sherman’s statement) had spoken.19 In the remainder of this paper I want to look at two examples of how this new, more radical “warrior code” was instantiated in the Wehrmacht. The first example of how a warrior code can be supportive even of genocide is provided by the so-called “Kommissarbefehl” (“Commissar’s Order”) which set forth the overarching doctrine governing the actions of the Nazi Wehrmacht in the East. The Befehl describes the military’s role in eliminating the ideological leadership of the Red Army (the “Commissars”) during the invasion and the anticipated conquest of the Soviet Un-

16

Bartov, Hitler’s Army, p. 104. See ibid., pp. 106. 18 See George Stein, The Waffen SS: Hitler’s Elite Guard at War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 119-136. Also Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NSStaat, pp. 354-355. 19 See for example, Peter Steinbach’s discussion in his essay, “Krieg, Verbrechen Widerstand: Die Deutsche Wehrmacht im NS-Staat zwischen Kooperation und Konfrontation,” in Karl Heinrich Pohl (ed.), Wehrmacht und Vernichtungspolitik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), esp. pp. 11-19. Karl Heinrich Pohl, in his essay in the same collection, “Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944” notes that “The leadership of the Wehrmacht, as regards the realization of the plans for a war of extermination, had not merely remained passive but had participated actively, agreeing, preparing, and executing” [my translation], p. 143. 17

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ion. In the version of 23 May 1941, while the final planning for Operation Barbarossa was underway, the directive stated, “In the fight against Bolshevism there is to be no expectation that the behavior of the enemy will be in accordance with the principles of humanity or international law. In particular, we can expect from the political commissars of all kinds, as the real bearers of resistance, the hateful, cruel, and inhuman treatment of our prisoners.”20

Building on this assertion, the Befehl goes on to say that therefore it is necessary to eliminate Soviet military and civilian commissars preemptively as soon as they are encountered, that is, even before any of them arrive at POW-camps. In effect, commissars, even civilian ones, are to be executed summarily.21 The reason given for this was that the German soldiers could expect the same from them, a rationale I will return to in a moment. The rhetoric and language of the Befehl is crucial for adducing its ethics. It begins by positing that “the enemy” will not act “in accordance with the principles of humanity or international law.” There are two points being made, here. The first one is that the enemy will not act in accordance with international law. The implication is that the Soviets have already rejected the applicability of international law in their fight against the Germans and so, in theory, the German warriors themselves have been given license to feel that they are not bound by international law in this case, either. An important foundation is being laid here: German warriors can engage in what in another frame of reference might appear to be a summary execution of civilian commissars. Here, however, the target population has already suspended the applicability of the normal moral and legal frame of reference and has indeed already condemned itself to live and die by the law of the jungle, as it were. The commissars thus deserve to be executed and the soldiers who carry out such executions are not morally culpable. The second element in the opening lines of the Befehl is that the enemy will not in any case act in a human way. Now, on the one hand, this can be seen as little more than an extension of the racial ideology of the Nazis. In comparison to Aryans, Russians as well as Jewish-Asiatic Bolsheviks were seen as sub-human. Yet, on a deeper level, this claim also justifies the inhuman, even “unhuman” behavior soon to be expected and 20

Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), p. 48. 21 See ibid., pp. 44.

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even demanded of Nazi soldiers. Again, what appears to be the execution of civilians is really something else, entirely. Not only was it the killing of already self-declared criminals but of criminals who were not even fully human. Here, then, we see that the military had already allowed itself to be drawn into a special kind of moral “warrior code.” But let me move on to my second example. This general directive was subsequently given its operational form by the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; “Supreme Command of the Armed Forces”). There is a striking letter written by General Hermann Reinecke, at the time a lieutenant general and the head of the General Office of the Armed Forces at the OKW. Under his aegis came also the office dealing with POWs. In September 1941, a few months after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Reinecke issued instructions as to the expected treatment newly arriving Soviet POWs at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Western Germany. His command letter is important as it explicitly puts into operational terms what was already the de facto policy in regard to the treatment of Soviet prisoners-of-war, as we have seen in the Kommissarbefehl. Reinecke begins by noting that “The war between Germany and Russia is not a war between two states or two armies but between two ideologies, namely, National Socialism and Bolshevism. The Red Army soldier must be looked upon not as a soldier in the sense of the word applying to our western opponents but as an ideological enemy. He must be regarded as the archenemy of National Socialism and must be treated accordingly […]. The fight against National Socialism is carried over into his flesh and blood. He conducts himself with every means available to him: sabotage, subversive propaganda, arson, murder. Thus the Bolshevik soldier lost every right to claim treatment as an honorable soldier or according to the Geneva Convention.”22

It should be noted that the enemy soldiers are not even called enemy soldiers instead they are cast as ideological combatants, which is why they are neither to be regarded as fellow soldiers-at-arms nor to be treated as such. This is based on a statement by General Alfred Jodl (Chief of Operation Staff, OKW): “In the war against Bolshevism, the conduct of the enemy according to the principles of humanness and of international law is not to be taken into account. In particular, one is to expect from the political commissars of all kinds a hate-filled, cruel, and inhumane treatment of our prisoners. Retaliation must therefore be implemented immediately and in full measure 22

Ibid., p. 46.

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against those persons, who are known as the carriers and originators of those well-known Asiatic, Barbarian methods.”23

Reinecke’s own letter goes further in specifying the implications of this view: “The Bolshevik soldier has therefore lost all claims to treatment as an honorable opponent in accordance with the Geneva Convention […]. The order for ruthlessness and energetic action must be given at the slightest indication of insubordination, especially in the case of Bolshevist fanatics. Insubordination as well as active or passive resistance must be broken immediately by force of arms (bayonets, rifle butts, and firearms) […]. Anyone carrying out this order who does not use his weapon or does so with insufficient energy is punishable.”24

There are a number of elements in this part of the letter which call for further consideration. Most striking is the call for “ruthlessness and energetic action” to be taken at the slightest perceived resistance. In practical terms, this means that even what appears to be passive resistance, say, a sick soldier being slow to follow an order barked in a foreign language is to be met with immediate and maximum force. Furthermore, any soldiers who do not do this, in particular those who do not use their weapon, are liable to punishment. In short, German guards and soldiers are expected, and even commanded as part of their warrior code, to treat the enemy without humane regard, and so to mete out punishment, including death, without hesitation or forethought. The soldiers who do this are not only 23 “Im Kampf gegen den Bolschewismus ist mit einem Verhalten des Feindes nach den Grundsätzen der Menschlichkeit und des Völkerrechtes nicht zu rechnen. Insbesondere ist von den politischen Kommissaren aller Art eine hasserfuellte, grausame u. unmenschliche Behandlung unserer Gefangenen zu erwarten. Die Vergeltung muss daher sofort u. in vollem Umgange gegen diejenigen Persönlichkeiten einsetzen, die also Träger u. Urheber jener bekannten asiatischbarbarischen Methoden bekannt sind.,” ibid., p. 46. 24 “Der bolschewistische Soldat [hat] jeden Anspruch auf Behandlung also ehrenhafter Soldat und nach dem Genfer Abkommen verloren. Es entspricht daher dem Ansehen und der Würde der deutschen Wehrmacht, dass jeder deutsche Soldat dem sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen gegenüber schärfsten Abstand hält. Behandlung muss kühl, doch korrekt, sein. Jede Nachsicht und sogar Anbiederung ist strengstens so ahnden. […] Rücksichtsloses und energisches Durchgreifen bei den geringsten Anzeichen von Widersetzlichkeit, insbesondere gegenüber bolschewistischen Hetzern, ist daher zu befehlen. Widersetzlichkeit, aktiver oder passive Widerstand muss sofort mit der Waffe (Bajonett, Kolben und Schusswaffe) restlos beseitigt werden.,” ibid., p. 181.

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seen as dutiful and thus as good Germans but may even be commended or rewarded. According to signs posted at a concentration camp memorial site in the Netherlands, the guards there had been ordered to shoot any prisoner (and these had been civilians) approaching the outer fence. Those who performed this task diligently were rewarded with a multi-day pass.25 Conformity with this warrior code was thus not only expected but rewarded. As any warrior code, this would certainly help the soldiers maintain their psychological balance during the otherwise ghastly jobs they found themselves doing. This order in and of itself is remarkable in its virtually open-ended justification for the use of maximum violence against a particularly vulnerable population, namely disarmed prisoners-of-war, or even civilians. From the point of view of the ordinary soldier, there is little room or in fact need for moral hesitation. Any action against a Soviet prisoner is fully warranted as they (the victims) had already removed themselves from any rules of law. In addition, they were not even fully human. On the other hand, failure to act on even the flimsiest of excuses could bring an official reprimand and a sense of personal failure or weakness. Any soldier in this situation could be counted on to play it safe rather than to be indecisive or cautious and so end up in trouble. The warrior code implicit in Reinecke’s order ensured that the soldiers would act in a certain way and would feel self-satisfied, indeed morally justified, by doing so. The military, the whole country, and even the German Volk would see them as such.26 What I have just discussed was, of course, based on one particular set of documents from one camp, within one small time frame, and against one particular group. But I believe that what happened in Bergen-Belsen is representative of the larger attitude that the highest level of command had 25

There are many examples of this. See for example, Michael Englishman, 163256: A Memoir of Resistance (Waterloo/ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007), p. 29. 26 This argument was actually based on academic work done on the concept of military ethics in the 1930’s. See for example, Max Simoneit, Wehr-Ethik: Ein Abriss ihrer Probleme und Grundsätze (Berlin: Bernard & Graefe, 1936), p. 134: “In addition, the honor of the individual due to his membership in the national community also depends on the honor of the community, for the nation doesn’t feel anything, but rather the individual. In such a situation, it is in no way possible fto give to the nation any other honor-norms than those the individual possesses.” (Original: Zunächst ist die Ehre des einzelnen durch seine Gliedschaft in der nationalen Gemeinschaft auch von der Ehre der Gemeinschaft abhängig, – die Nation empfindet ja nicht, sondern der einzelne. Bei dieser Sachlage ist es auf keinen Fall möglich, der Nation andere Ehr-Normen geben zu wollen, als sie der einzelne besitzt.).

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created and so of the larger process of making the Nazi “warrior code” operational in the Wehrmacht. This was a “warrior code” which, of course, would not only apply to the Wehrmacht, but to all the institutions across Nazi Germany in general. However, its establishment in the military has been my focus here as it articulates the basis for a code of behavior which is ultimately tied to the higher concepts of loyalty, Germaneness, and Good and Evil. It thus constitutes, as I have argued elsewhere, one type of ethics, a good example of how a “warrior code” can be framed irrespective of its content. To be sure, the nature of the Nazi’s “warrior code” and the extent to which the Wehrmacht conformed to it, or resisted it, became a matter of considerable reflection during the post-war formation of the Bundeswehr in 1955. What was the relationship of the Bundeswehr to be with its predecessor? What elements of the military traditions of the Wehrmacht (and the Reichswehr before it) were worthy of preservation and emulation, and what parts were to be rejected? To a large degree, of course, the answer depended on what memories of the Wehrmacht were going to be carried forward. This debate has a long and complex history and is associated with the larger issues concerning post-war Germany’s relationship to its own past and its perceptions of the role and use of its military both at home and abroad. While the picture which emerges is not a simple one it seems clear that, to some extent, the complicity of the Wehrmacht in the genocidal war of the Nazis was given a lower profile in favor of emphasizing the moments of reservation and resistance.27 In any case, it seems abundantly clear that the Bundeswehr profoundly pondered the Wehrmacht’s World War II experience and its implications of what happened at the time of formulating its own “warrior code,” including the doctrine of the “Innere Führung.” Nonetheless, regardless of the complexity of its content, the instantiation of the Nazi warrior code in the Wehrmacht stands as an example of the elasticity of the notion “warrior code.” This brings me back to my starting point with General Sherman and the notion of war as hell. The implication Walzer drew from this was, as noted, that anything goes in war because war is intrinsically by nature without any innate and externally objective moral rules. The Nazi “warrior code” as exemplified in the Wehrmacht by Reinecke and others seems to substantiate the argument that any set of rules can coalesce into a serviceable warrior code during a war, and so war is in fact a kind of hell insofar as it constitutes a chaotic situation in which anything and everything is 27 For a lengthier discussion of this part of history, see Wette, The Wehrmacht, pp. 251-291.

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permissible in the end, even an inverse moral code. In this sense, the treatment of Soviet POWs as codified in the “Kommisarbefehl” and instantiated by Reinecke and others was not a reflection of the evilness of war per se but, on the contrary, a reflection of the ultimate coherence of war as a rational system which has no built-in moral content outside of its own framework. The Nazis viewed the struggle in which they were engaged as a war of existential proportions, a war of Aryans against Asiatic Bolsheviks, of human against subhuman beings, of survival against extinction, of reason against mindless nature, perhaps even as a part of a kind of Manichean cosmic battle between Good and Evil.28 In this scenario, the Kommisarbefehl and Reinecke’s letter make perfect sense and constitute a warrior code appropriate for that kind of “racial” war. They preserve the honor of the soldier in the midst of violence, blood, gore, and death. War may be hell, but the soldier need not be a devil; as expressed in his “warrior code,” he simply operates within a particular moral order. The logic here is the logic once articulated by the one-time U.S. presidential candidate Barry Goldwater who is cited as saying, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” If in such a Manichean worldview, you are fighting the ultimate Evil, then moderation is a vice, even a sin, and extremism is in fact the ultimate virtue. Reinecke in his own mind was not calling on the German guards to be violent, cruel, or inhumane; he was calling them to a higher standard of moral virtue. Just as Sherman on the way to Savannah, the Nazi-soldiers were slashing and burning in the service of what they were told was a higher, maybe the highest Good.

28

“[...] indem statt vom ‘Zweck’ von der ‘Lebensfunktion’ im Sinne der Lebensnotwendigkeit gesprochen werden müsste, die infolge ihres göttlichen Ursprungs auch heiligende Wirkung auszustrahlen vermag.” (Translation: “[...] so that instead of having had to speak of the “purpose” of the “life-function” in the sense of the necessity for life, which as a result of its divine origin is also capable of emanating a sacred effect.”), Simoneit, Wehr-Ethik, p. 65.

THE ROLE OF EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS IN NAZI PROPAGANDA AND WORLDVIEW TRAINING RICHARD WEIKART

Even though Nazi propaganda never used the term “evolutionary ethics” to describe its position on ethics and morality, Nazis nevertheless often embraced the concept of evolutionary ethics as a core element of the Nazi worldview. By evolutionary ethics I mean a view of ethics that embraces two interrelated but distinct concepts: (1) the idea that morality is largely based on biological traits which arose from evolutionary processes and (2) the notion that moral goodness is defined by the evolutionary process, especially by what promotes the evolutionary progress. Many leading Nazis embraced both of these ideas, though the latter was more prominent and had a greater impact on Nazi policies. The evolutionary origin of morality was not a major theme in Nazi propaganda, though Hitler and other Nazis espoused it at times. However, Nazi propaganda continually stressed the biological determinism of the moral character as allegedly differing from one race to another. In my earlier work, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004), I examined the role of evolutionary ethics in the thought of a multitude of German scientists, physicians, philosophers, and social thinkers of the pre-World War I period. These advocates of evolutionary ethics had a profound impact on the development of the Nazi worldview. In Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (2009), I explained the significance of evolutionary ethics for Hitler’s worldview. In this essay, I would like to examine the way in which the Nazi regime used evolutionary ethics in its propaganda, especially in publications and courses designed to inculcate the Nazi worldview. Obviously, one of the most important publications promoting the Nazi worldview was Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which clearly promoted evolutionary ethics. Another propaganda piece personally endorsed by Hitler was Wofür kämpfen wir? (What Are We Fighting For? 1944), a pamphlet explaining the essentials of the Nazi worldview and included large doses of evolutionary ethics. Two SS manuals aimed at promoting

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their worldview: Lehrplan für die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der SS und Polizei (Worldview Training Curriculum for the SS and Police) and Rassenpolitik (Racial Policy) likewise gave a prominent role to evolutionary ethics. Finally, several popular scientific writings by the medical professor Martin Staemmler, which carried official Nazi imprimatur, promoted evolutionary ethics. Before proceeding to explain the importance of evolutionary ethics to Nazi propaganda, I must explode the misconception that a few scholars and even more websites have propagated and are propagating; this concerns the false claim that Hitler and the Nazis rejected biological evolution, especially the evolution of humans from other animals.1 In my book, Hitler’s Ethics: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress I have already proved that Hitler believed in the evolution of humans from primates, but there are also many other lines of evidence proving the Nazis’ devotion to biological evolution. First, the official Nazi biology curriculum included large segments on biological evolution and specifically taught the evolution of humans from primates and the evolution of the human races from more primitive progenitors.2 Second, the Nazi regime appointed German anthropologists who embraced evolution, including the most prominent evolutionary anthropologists in Germany some of whom were SS officers to professorships and honored them in many other ways. Racial scientists during the Nazi period, including many who joined the SS, were uniformly 1

Some examples of scholars denying that the Nazis believed in human evolution: George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Dunlop & Grossett, 1964), p. 103. Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 262, FN 2. Robert J. Richards, “That Darwin and Haeckel Were Complicit in Nazi Biology,” in Ronald Numbers (ed.), Galileo Goes to Trial and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 177. Peter Bowler, “Darwin’s Originality,” Science, vol. 323 (2009) no. 5911, p. 226. Michael Ruse, Interview, The Stanford Review Online Edition, www.stanfordreview.org/Archive/Volume_XL/Issue_7/ Features/features2.shtml, accessed May 7, 2008. 2 See Reichs- und Preußisches Ministerium, Erziehung und Unterricht in der Höheren Schule: Amtliche Ausgabe des Reichs- und Preussische Ministeriums für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1938, pp. 140-164. H. Linder & R. Lotze, “Lehrplanentwurf für den biologischen Unterricht an den höheren Knabenschulen. Bearbeitet im Auftrag des NSLB. Reichsfachgebiet Biologie,” Der Biologe, this appeared as a separate supplement without page numbering in vol. 6 (1937) (in the copy I saw, this appeared immediately after Heft 1).

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committed to biological evolution. Third, many Nazi periodicals, such as Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, Neues Volk, Volk und Rasse, and Der Biologe published articles and recommended books that taught biological evolution.3 They even published articles bashing creationism such as the infamous one by Konrad Lorenz which advocated the teaching of evolution as an antidote to racial egalitarianism.4 Finally, the publications which I am going to analyze in the remainder of this essay and which were some of the most official statements of Nazi ideology ever issued during the Nazi period, clearly taught biological evolution, including the evolution of humans and races. The form of evolutionary theory underlying Nazi evolutionary ethics was a racist version of neo-Darwinism. The fundamental idea was that population pressure forced organisms to compete for sustenance. The ensuing struggle for existence among the organisms would result in the survival and reproduction of those of the most favorable variations (the fittest) while others (the unfit) would perish leaving no progeny. Darwin called this process natural selection, which many German biologists and eugenicists often abbreviated as merely selection (Auslese). This competition was to occur among the individuals within a society, but the Nazis emphasized even more the competition among different races. Nazi racial theorists rejected Lamarckian evolutionary theory, upholding instead August Weismann’s theory of hard heredity as did most German biologists by the 1930s. Nazis often stressed the impossibility of changing biological traits by altering the environment. They minimized the influence of the environment on human behavior, embracing instead biological determinism. They argued that human intellectual and moral traits were determined primarily by heredity. The Nazi belief that heredity was basically fixed and not subject to environmental influences was not antievolutionary, however. On the contrary, it mirrored Weismann’s evolu3

Some examples are: Heinz Brücher, “Ernst Haeckel, ein Wegbereiter biologischen Staatsdenkens,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 6 (1935) no. 69, pp. 1088-96. Heinz Brücher, “Rassen- und Artbildung durch Erbänderung, Auslese und Züchtung,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 12 (1941), pp. 667-76. Gerhard Heberer, “Abstammungslehre und moderne Biologie,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 7 (1936) no. 79, pp. 874-90. Gerhard Heberer, “Die genetischen Grundlagen der Artbildung,” Volk und Rasse, vol. 15 (1940), pp. 136-37. Eugen Fischer, “Die Entstehung der Menschenrassen,” Volk und Rasse, vol. 13 (1938), pp. 229-36. Christian von Krogh, “Schausammlung für Abstammungs- und Rassenkunde des Menschen in München,” Volk und Rasse, vol. 13 (1938), pp. 193-94, etc. 4 See Konrad Lorenz, “Nochmals: Systematik und Entwicklungsgedanke im Unterricht,” Der Biologe, vol. 9 (1940), pp. 24-36.

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tionary theory and was completely consistent with the views of leading German biologists and eugenicists who were committed to Darwinian theory. Sometimes, Nazi theorists stressed the constancy of heredity over thousands of years and thus the futility of trying to induce change by altering the environment. However, none that I am aware of would have insisted that heredity remained constant over millions of years. In evaluating the relationship between evolutionary ethics and Nazi ideology, we must keep two points in mind. First, as important as evolutionary ethics was to the Nazi worldview, many elements of Nazi ideology were derived from other sources: Prussian militarism, nationalism, Christian anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, and others. Second, evolutionary ethics was a contested position among biologists and other scholars. Many Darwinian biologists, anthropologists, and physicians embraced and promoted it whole-heartedly while others, especially philosophers and sociologists, but also some scientists, warned against any attempts to apply Darwinism to ethics. The Nazis’ understanding of the evolutionary theory was in most respects in harmony with the best science of the day: they rejected Lamarckism and supported natural selection through the struggle for existence. However, the Nazis also adopted a racialized form of evolutionary ethics which, though widespread among scientists especially in Germany, was more controversial.5 Hitler almost never discussed what had influenced his thinking, so it is difficult and often impossible to pinpoint the sources that shaped his worldview. Probably, his views about evolutionary theory and evolutionary ethics came from a variety of sources.6 Hitler claimed that he had learned Darwinism in school, which is highly likely since Darwinism was widely accepted in German scholarly circles by the first decade of the twentieth century. The geneticist Fritz Lenz reported that Hitler had read his co-authored book on human genetics and eugenics while at Landsberg prison at about the time he was composing Mein Kampf. This is likely since Lenz’s publisher, Julius F. Lehmann, was a friend of Hitler’s who sent him copies dedicated to him of many of the books Lenz had published on racism and eugenics. If Lenz’s book was not one of Hitler’s sources, others of Lehmann’s many publications may have introduced Hitler to similar ideas. One of the more likely candidates was Lehmann’s periodical 5

For an example of a British scientist opposing the Nazi view of evolutionary ethics see Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1946). 6 See Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), for information on many possible sources.

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Deutschlands Erneuerung, which Hitler almost certainly read. It contained numerous articles promoting eugenics, the racial struggle for existence, and evolutionary ethics.7 Evolutionary ethics also played an important role in several passages of Mein Kampf, especially in the chapter on “Nation and Race.” This chapter was the only part of Mein Kampf published as a separate pamphlet, thus circulating widely during the Third Reich to promote Nazi racial ideology.8 In the opening pages of that chapter, Hitler explained why he thought racial mixing violated evolutionary principles: “Any crossing of two beings not exactly on the same level produces something in-between the levels of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating [i.e., breeding] the superior with the inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker or, else, sacrifice his own greatness. Only the born weakling will view this as cruel, but he is only a weak and limited individual after all; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher evolution (Höherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable.”9

This statement makes clear that Hitler believed that by promoting the victory of the stronger at the expense of the weaker, he would be operating according to “the will of nature” and would thereby promote the “higher evolution of organic living beings.” His eugenics and racial policies were thus based on the understanding that they would advance humans in the evolutionary process. A few lines later in Mein Kampf Hitler continued: 7

These influences were discussed at greater length in Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 8 See Othmar Plöckinger, Geschichte eines Buches: Adolf Hitlers “Mein Kampf” 1922–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), pp. 12, 414. 9 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), p. 285. The German term Entwicklung is the term biologists commonly used for biological evolution, though the term also has other meanings such as development. I have translated the term as evolution in this and other passages, but only when the context makes clear that Hitler meant change in biological organisms. Though Hitler never used the term Darwinism in his writings or speeches, but he often described the evolutionary process in Darwinian terms such as, e.g., transmutation of species occurring through natural selection and the struggle for existence.

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“In the struggle for daily bread, all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the male for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher evolution (Höherentwicklung).”10

Thus, Hitler opposed miscegenation because he thought it hindered the evolutionary progress, which for him was the highest good. Since the whole point of this passage was to apply these principles to human racial relations, it is apparent that Hitler believed that humans had evolved and were still evolving. Hitler’s racial policy aimed at advancing human evolution. In the first few pages of “Nation and Race” Hitler used the term “higher evolution” (Höherentwicklung) several times while describing changes in biological organisms. Though he did not use the term Darwinism, his explanation was essentially Darwinian, since he emphasized natural selection through the struggle for existence as the primary mechanism for biological evolution. His embracing evolutionary ethics was also apparent already in the first few pages of this chapter, since he did not only espouse evolutionary advancement as his main goal but called anything hindering the evolutionary process a “sin.” Hitler also claimed that anyone who disregarded the laws of nature pertaining to race “thwarts the triumphal march of the best race and hence also the precondition for all human progress.”11 Thus, for Hitler, racist philosophy and policies were the means for improving the human species, biologically. Elsewhere in Mein Kampf Hitler explained some of the concrete ways in which evolution influenced his ideas about the population policy and eugenics. He railed against birth control as, in this case, “the natural struggle for existence which leaves only the strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by the obvious desire to ‘save’ even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the seed of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more deplorable, the longer this mockery of nature and her will continues.”12

Hitler thus insisted that the natural laws, especially the evolutionary laws, were beneficial and needed to be obeyed, else biological degeneration would set in. As he saw the struggle for existence as a progressive force in evolution he thought that many forms of humanitarianism were misguided. 10

Ibid. Ibid., p. 289. 12 Ibid., p. 132. 11

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Hence he criticized those who objected to his views as inhumane, countering, “No, there is only one holiest human right, and this right is at the same time the holiest obligation to wit: to see to it that the blood is preserved pure and, by preserving the best humanity, to create the possibility of a nobler evolution of these beings.”13

Immediately following this statement Hitler explained the need for Germans to practice a racist form of eugenics to produce this “nobler evolution.” During World War II Hitler and other Nazi officials wanted to ascertain that German soldiers properly understood the Nazi worldview, especially as it related to the war effort. Therefore, in 1944, they produced the anonymously-written pamphlet Wofür kämpfen wir? The opening pages of this pamphlet contain a facsimile copy of a letter signed by Hitler commanding German officers to use this pamphlet as a resource to regularly instruct their troops in the essentials of the Nazi worldview.14 Aside from Mein Kampf, this is one of the most official statements about the Nazi worldview ever produced. One passage in this pamphlet discusses ethics directly, contrasting Nordic ethics with Jewish ethics. It claims that Nordic ethics was characterized by idealism and was a “community ethics” based on socialist principles. Jewish ethics, on the other hand, was individualistic and materialistic. While Nordics were selfless and obedient, Jews were self-indulgent and unrestrained. According to this creed, Jews had no feelings of loyalty or honor, which were the highest virtues of true Germans.15 Although this pamphlet does not explain how this radical divergence between Nordic and Jewish ethics had arisen, Hitler had explained this earlier in his career in a speech, “Why We Are Anti-Semites.” There he argued that the Nordic race had developed the duty to work for the community because of the harsh conditions it had had to face during the Ice Ages. He stereotypically characterized the Jews, on the other hand, as work-shy because they had allegedly faced easier living conditions which did not require as much cooperation. This difference had shaped their different conceptions of morality. He stated,

13

Ibid., p. 402 (emphasis in the original). See Wofür kämpfen wir?, published by the Personal-Amt des Heeres (Berlin 1944), pp. iv-vi. 15 See ibid., pp. 56-58. 14

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Hitler then went on to explain that these ethical traits were biologically ingrained hereditary traits. Although Wofür kämpfen wir? does not explain the evolutionary origins of morality, it clearly promotes evolutionary progress as the highest good. The passage providing the most overt answer to the question posed by the title of the pamphlet makes this abundantly clear: “Thus we believe in the task of the improvement of humans. In the final analysis, our fighting serves this cause, and our struggle must be inexorable against everything that opposes this task, for the appropriate fulfilment of this task is dependent on the most highly evolved, most creative, and most capable race retaining its decisive influence on the living arrangements of the peoples of the earth.”17

As the Nazis believed that the Nordic race was superior, they believed that promoting it at the expense of other peoples would lead to evolutionary progress. It would bring improvement to the human species. Following this quotation is a long section explaining the centrality of race in the Nazi worldview. This passage emphasizes the importance of evolutionary progress in Nazi racial thought and policies. It quotes the geneticist Stengel von Rutkowski who stated that “the natural laws according to which the cosmos of dying and becoming is transformed and evolves are divine laws.” (In this quotation, the phrase which I have translated as “dying and becoming” is “Stirb und Werde,” which was the title of a book about evolution by one of the most important popularisers of Darwinism in early twentieth-century Germany, Wilhelm Bölsche). These biological laws include racial inequality, the Nordic character of the German people, and the struggle among the different races for living space. The author then states, “We value the struggle as an irrevocable law of life, for only in the eternal struggle, the precondition for all selection, will personalities and tough

16

Adolf Hitler, “Warum sind wir Antisemiten?” (13 August 1920), in Eberhard Jäckel (ed.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905-1924 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), p. 190. 17 Wofür kämpfen wir, p. 67 (emphasis in the original).

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peoples (Völker) grow. Only through struggle can great things be spawned.”18

In this context, struggle and selection are clearly shorthand for the struggle for existence and natural selection, a usage which was quite common among German biologists and eugenicists in the 1920s and 1930s. Since the Nazis considered the Germans and related peoples (i.e., Nordic race) to be the biologically most advanced on the evolutionary scale, they believed that their worldview ought to revolve around promoting the good of the German people. The pamphlet clearly states the most important goal of the Nazi worldview: “In the first place stands the preservation and advancement of our people (Volk) and nationality.”19 This advancement was not merely a matter of making Germany a great nation, as the subsequent discussion clarifies. Rather, it was to entail Germans supplanting other races (through territorial expansion), which would result in evolutionary progress. This whole pamphlet, after all, justifies Hitler’s offensive wars of conquest to gain living space. However, this was not the only path to evolutionary progress. The pamphlet continually stresses the duty of Germans not only to preserve but also to improve their biological traits. It states, “National Socialism is the doctrine of the People’s Community knit together by blood and the doctrine of service for the people (Volk) as the highest moral law for every German. It is the doctrine of blood and honour.”20

By blood, the Nazis meant biological hereditary traits, and they did not construe these as static. The pamphlet urges Germans to strive not only to keep their blood pure but also to foster its improvement or “higher evolution” (Höherentwicklung).21 After delineating the guiding principles behind the Nazi worldview, the pamphlet then explains the concrete steps which would secure “eternal life for our people (Volk).” These involved combating the three main causes of decline in any race: a declining birth rate, contra-selection, and racial mixture. It then promotes prolific reproduction and eugenics measures to achieve biological improvement. It also calls on German officers to wisely choose their spouses with an eye on biologically improving the German people.22 In a later section on “What has National Socialism Brought the 18

Ibid., quotes on pp. 68, 71 (emphasis in the original). Ibid., p. 69 (emphasis in the original). 20 Ibid., p. 76 (emphasis in the original). 21 See ibid., pp. 70, 72. 22 See ibid., pp. 84-87. 19

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German People?” it explains that the Nazi regime was focused on improving the German race: “The racial question has become a question of life and death for the German people (Volk). Thus, the main demand of National Socialism is not only to preserve the racial hereditary material of the German people, but to increase its value.”23

It explains that racial laws, eugenics legislation, and laws to counter population decline were measures the Nazi regime had already implemented to achieve this goal. The importance of biological improvement is also emphasized a few pages later: “Our racial thought is merely the ‘expression of a worldview’ recognizing the higher evolution of humans as a divine command.”24

This last statement was a clear expression of evolutionary ethics which suffuses many passages in this pamphlet. The SS was also eager to disseminate evolutionary ethics as part of the Nazi worldview. Therefore, sometime after May 1942, they published a Lehrplan für die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der SS und Polizei (Worldview Training Curriculum for the SS and Police), which was organized into thirty-four lessons. The first four covered the history and organization of the SS, the next twelve taught the history of Europe and Germany, and the following ten focused on Hitler’s life and significance. The final section containing eight lessons was on “The Biological Foundations of Our Worldview,” which, as the title suggests, contained the core ideas of the Nazi worldview. The primary message of this final section was that humans were subject to the same biological laws ruling the rest of nature. It then focused on the biological laws most important to Nazi ideology: race, evolution, heredity, reproduction, and eugenics. One entire lesson was devoted to providing scientific evidence of biological evolution, and evolutionary concepts such as the struggle for existence and natural selection which were woven into other segments on heredity and reproduction.25 Biological improvement and evolutionary progress played a key role in defining one’s moral duty in this SS manual. Indeed, evolution determined one’s role in life: 23

Ibid., p. 105 (emphasis in the original). Ibid., p. 110. 25 See Lehrplan für die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der SS und Polizei, published by SS-Hauptamt, Berlin n.d., pp. 1-4, 71-88. 24

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“Evolutionary theory, i.e., the knowledge of the relationship of all organic beings, places humans in the whole process of nature and once again determines for us our attitude and behavior toward the organic world.”26

These attitudes and behaviors included avoiding racial mixture, preventing reproduction of those with hereditary problems, and carefully selecting one’s spouse. Following these and other moral imperatives would contribute to the biological improvement of humanity according to this manual. Another important contribution of evolutionary theory to understanding one’s role in life according to this pamphlet was revealing the importance of the struggle for existence to producing evolutionary progress. This curriculum claimed that the higher human races had arisen through a hard and relentless struggle brought about by the harsh conditions of the Ice Age in Europe. “The fundamental law of the eternal struggle, to which everything weak and inferior must succumb, thereby finds its high value.”

Not only so, but we must also always consider “that nature requires the struggle for the valuable ones.” Unfortunately, modern culture has set aside the natural struggle for existence with its beneficial effects. The author(s) asserted, “Every primitive people eliminates the inferior, and rightly so. Among the so-called cultured peoples, a false love of their neighbor borne into the broad masses above all by church circles even fosters contra-selection.”

The pamphlet pleaded for replacing the church’s command of loving one’s neighbor with the imperative to produce the greatest quality and quantity of children so that the race and species could advance biologically.27 The anonymously-written SS booklet Rassenpolitik (published sometime after August 1942), communicated many of the same points. It had evidently been designed as a training manual for SS men and policemen as a chart at the end of the book divides the material into eleven lessons. It teaches that the three main racial groups, Europeans, Mongolians, and Negroes, had diverged about 100,000 years ago. The pamphlet emphasizes the roles which the “struggle for existence” and “natural selection” play in the evolution of the races, with “selection and elimination” producing racial inequalities. The struggle for existence is presented as a positive force bringing about biological improvement, since “in the struggle for 26 27

Ibid., p. 78. See ibid., pp. 84-85.

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existence, only the strong and fit will triumph.” It also states that, in their struggle for existence, all races were confronted by three main dangers: declining birth rates, contra-selection, and racial mixture.28 Of the eleven lessons, three (the fifth, sixth, and seventh) were to be spent on these three racial dangers. The final two lessons concern a chapter entitled “The Racial Policy Task of the SS.” Although earlier parts of the pamphlet clearly discuss the evolution of the races through natural selection, they often only imply that evolutionary progress was the main goal of a racial policy. This final chapter, on the other hand, strongly and overtly promotes evolutionary progress as the chief moral goal for the SS. The opening section of this chapter reprints five SS statutes, four of which are measures to improve the German race, biologically. They are to encourage SS men to reproduce as prolifically as possible, but only with women considered hereditarily suitable. The next section of the chapter is on “The Meaning of Life” and begins with the exhortation: “To preserve oneself and to reproduce is the deepest meaning of life. […] However, the preservation and reproduction of life includes the urge for improvement, higher evolution, and perfection which resides in all living things.”29

As this statement and the subsequent discussion make clear, the urge toward higher evolution is a moral imperative that we must obey. The author implies that this inherent urge of organisms may have some kind of divine origin, but he still insists that the evolutionary process had occurred over millions of years, and had proceeded by struggle and selection: “The preservation and reproduction, the evolution and improvement of life come about in the struggle for existence to which every plant, every animal, every species, and every genus is subjected. In this struggle they are weighed, selected, and eliminated. Even humans and the human races are subject to this struggle, which decides their value and their right to exist.”30

SS racial policy was not just a matter of advancing the interests of the Nordic race, important as this was in their scheme of things. The closing section of the pamphlet stresses the need for conscious selection within the 28

See Rassenpolitik, published by Der Reichsführer SS (Berlin: SS-Hauptamt, n.d.), pp. 15-16, 25, 27-28, 40. 29 Ibid., p. 61. 30 Ibid.

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Nordic race to promote biological improvement. This would bring the Nordic people into harmony with the evolutionary process in nature. “For the higher evolution of a race and a people can, just as in all of nature, only proceed from the individual who, as the best and most capable individual, survives and in the course of generations multiplies accordingly and again and again produces a selection of the best.”31

It then suggests some measures to help bring about evolutionary progress: “The selection of Nordic-type men, the choice of spouses according to racial criteria, the duty to marry and to bear many children are the biological foundations on which the Order of the SS is built and through which it initiates and ensures the higher evolution of our people (Volk) for the future.”

One of the most important voices spreading racial and eugenics propaganda in the Third Reich was the Nazi Party member Martin Staemmler who was appointed professor of pathology in 1935 by the Ministry of Education first at the University of Kiel and later in the same year at the University of Breslau. Staemmler is not well known today, but he caught the attention of Nazi officials rather quickly because he supported Nordic racism and eugenics. Nazi officials tapped him in 1933 to teach genetics and eugenics in three-day physician training courses in Dresden. In the first year, over 5000 physicians attended these courses.32 Staemmler also published quite a few officially-endorsed books and pamphlets on eugenics and racial thought in Germany during the Third Reich. He completed the manuscript for his work Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat (Racial Care in the Ethnic State) several months before the Nazis came to power. It sold very well in the Third Reich; an edition from 1937 indicates that 59,000 copies had already been sold in the first four or five years and, sometime later, 81,000 copies were in print. This work had the official Nazi imprimatur in several ways. On the page following the title page there was the official statement that the Nazi Party’s Commission to Protect National Socialist Literature had found nothing objectionable in it. Further, in 1935, it was issued in a slightly abridged edition by the Nazi Party’s Racial Policy Office, giving it even greater official sanction.33 Also, in 1937, the Ministry of Education listed it as a book ap31

Ibid, pp. 63-64, quote on p. 63. See Ernst Wegner, Rassenhygiene für Jedermann (Dresden: Theodor Steinkopff, 1934) (which contains three lectures by Staemmler). 33 See Martin Staemmler, Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1937). 32

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proved for use in school instruction.34 Finally, in 1941, the German military reissued this book under a new title, Deutsche Rassenpflege (German Racial Care), to instruct the German troops about race and eugenics.35 Staemmler’s 1939 book, Die Auslese im Erbstrom des Volkes (Selection in the Hereditary Life of the People), was issued by the official Nazi publisher as a part of the series, “Nationalsozialistische Schulungsschriften” (“National Socialist Educational Works”). Staemmler published other works on racism and eugenics that appealed to the Nazis, including one republished by the Hitler Youth. Staemmler perfectly illustrates the Nazi zeal for evolutionary ethics. In several of his works, including Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat, Die Auslese im Erbstrom des Volkes, and Rassenpflege und Schule (Racial Care and the School), he spent some time explaining biological evolution and its importance for racial and eugenics ideology. He devoted an entire chapter in Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat to “The Law of the Evolution of Living Organisms,” wherein he rejected Lamarckian theory in favor of Darwin’s theory. He even claimed that Darwin was perhaps the greatest scientist of all time. Further, he made clear that humans were included in the evolutionary process.36 The first chapter of the book “Volk in Danger” sets the tone for the rest of the book. There, he explains that the perils besetting Germans were caused by their “disregard for the laws of nature.” He then lists the most important laws of nature not sufficiently heeded by Germans: “The law of the struggle for existence, fertility, selection, heredity, and others. These most holy of all laws, holier than those of the religions, peoples, or associations of nations, holier than all the laws of science, holier than laws of technology and economy, these holiest laws, some think they can overlook and brush aside, because they only live according to one law, that of the crassest materialism.”37

The four laws Staemmler called the holiest of all laws were directly connected to evolutionary biology. Thus, he was making evolutionary principles the highest values guiding human conduct. Not only is this obvious in 34

See “Verzeichnis der Lehrmittel über Erbkunde, Erbpflege, Rassenkunde und Bevölkerungspolitik,” Deutsche Wissenschaft Erziehung und Volksbildung: Amtsblatt des Reichsministeriums für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung und der Unterrichtsverwaltungen der Länder, vol. 3 (1937), p. 247. 35 See Martin Staemmler, Deutsche Rassenpflege (Tornisterschrift des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht Abteilung Inland, n.p. 1941), p. 3. 36 See Staemmler, Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat, pp. 17-22. 37 Ibid., p. 5 (emphasis in the original).

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the passage just quoted, but it is also manifest throughout the entire book. By ignoring these evolutionary principles, Germans had endangered their existence because nature is inexorable against those who “sin” against its precepts.38 The religious language, holy, sin, etc., makes clear that Staemmler is setting up evolutionary laws as the arbiter of all morality, and it implies that he wants to replace religious ethics with ethics derived from evolutionary laws. Staemmler also claimed that evolutionary laws supported the Nazi moral adage of “common welfare before individual interest” (Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz). This, he argued, was because the “fundamental law of nature is struggle,” and only the “best” would survive this competition. He continued: “These best ones [who survive the struggle for existence] serve the preservation of the species, of the race. The preservation, the strengthening, the further evolution of the race and species, this is the actual goal of nature. This is also what we must learn from nature: it is not the individual that matters; nature is completely indifferent to it [the individual]. The goal, which is advanced ruthlessly, without compassion, and without sparing victims, is the preservation of the species, of the race, of the Volk. Thus we see in nature the old German principle, which National Socialism has taken up anew: common welfare before individual interest. The individual is nothing; the Volk, the race is everything.”39

Since multitudes of individuals perish in the struggle for existence and, thus, seem of little consequence to nature, Staemmler thought that we as humans should not have a high regard for the individual. Further, Staemmler also justified the anti-democratic and antihumanitarian stance of the Nazi regime by appealing to the evolutionary laws of nature. He argued that modern morality erred by protecting the weak. Nature teaches us otherwise: “The tasks of racial care are the increase of fertility and selection. Selection means advancing those with high value and restraining the inferior. If one wants to carry this out, one must consider one thing above all: There are no equal rights for all. Those with high value have the right to be advanced, while the inferior does not have that right. Nature is not democratic, but rather aristocratic; it produces masses, but then breeds for quality.

38 39

See ibid. Ibid., p. 20.

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The Role of Evolutionary Ethics in Nazi Propaganda Whoever wants to carry out racial care must comply with the laws of nature. He must therefore also be harsh, just as it [nature] is.”40

This is one of the clearest statements showing how evolutionary ethics trumped democratic norms, humanitarian considerations, and equal rights in Nazi ideology. Nature is harsh against the inferior; so should we be. Nature is undemocratic; so should we be. Nature selects the best and dispenses with the inferior; so should we. Equal rights do not exist in the evolutionary process; neither should we adopt equal rights. Such was Staemmler’s reasoning, which was commonplace in Nazi racial and eugenics ideology. In addition to promoting eugenics among Germans to advance the Nordic race, Staemmler also argued that Germans needed to expand their living space (Lebensraum). Staemmler wrote this long before Hitler launched his expansionist war for living space, at a time when Hitler was publicly proclaiming that he was a man of peace (in order to lull his enemies into false security). He, like Hitler, believed that an important part of the human struggle for existence was the struggle for living space. Indeed, he believed that “all of history is the struggle of peoples for living space.” He then added that growing nations or races “have the moral right to expand their living space.” Elsewhere he called the right to more land a holy right. He considered a war fully justified if it was fought to provide increased living space for an ethnic or racial group.41 Thus, Staemmler, fully in line with other Nazi ideologists, promoted offensive warfare; his morality was not just aimed at Germany defending itself against its foes. The notion that all actions should be judged as moral or immoral based on whether or not they contributed to the advancement of the evolutionary process was a common theme in Nazi ideology and propaganda. Often, as I have shown, it was explicitly stated. However, even when it was not explicit, it was often implicit in Nazi propaganda pushing eugenics and racial policies. Obviously, even though it was a central concept, evolutionary ethics does not explain everything about Nazi ideology. It does not explain why they considered specific races such as the Jews to be inferior, on the one hand, yet threatening, on the other. However, it does provide a rationale for the harsh treatment and even the killing of those who, on whatever grounds, were designated as inferior. The Nazis believed that natural laws, especially natural selection in the struggle for existence, granted them the moral license for policies such as compulsory sterilization, the murder of the disabled, aggressive expansionism, and even genocide. 40 41

Ibid., pp. 42-43. See ibid, p. 32.

NAZI ETHICS: THE MEDICAL DISCOURSE

TURNING AWAY FROM THE INDIVIDUAL: MEDICINE AND MORALITY UNDER THE NAZIS FLORIAN BRUNS

I. Introduction “Medicine without humanity” (Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit), this was the title Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke gave their report published in 1960 on the NurembergDoctors’ Trial. This is a succinct formulation, expressing the unspeakable crimes German doctors committed during the Nazi regime, crimes which came to light in the course of the court hearings in 1947. This formulation is still valid for describing the darkest chapter of the history of medicine in Germany if not in the entire world, even today. An earlier version of this document was published already in 1947 but caused little reaction in Germany. The new edition published in 1960, however, gained significant attention, and continues to be among the foremost books on medicine under the Nazis.1 Still nowadays, the offenses tried in Nuremberg, primarily the lethal experiments on the humans in the concentration camps and the murder campaign labeled Euthanasie (Euthanasia) carried out on the mentally ill and the physically handicapped, confront us with the question of how these crimes against humanity could possibly have occurred. Why did doctors, who are professionally obliged to provide their fellow men with special care and protection, so flagrantly contravene the most elementary precepts of humanity and medical ethics? Why did most of the perpetra1

See Alexander Mitscherlich/Fred Mielke, Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit. Dokumente des Nürnberger Ärzteprozesses (Fischer Bücherei, Frankfurt a. M. 1960). This book is now in its 17th edition. For the English version see Alexander Mitscherlich/Fred Mielke, Doctors of Infamy. The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes (New York: H. Schuman, 1949). The psychiatrist Alexander Mitscherlich and the medical student Fred Mielke followed the proceedings as observers of the trial. For the trial and its aftermath see, amongst others, Paul Julian Weindling, Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical War Crimes to Informed Consent (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

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tors feel not only that they were absolved of any guilt after the war but that they had in fact acted in a morally correct way? Did all of them have a sadistic streak or abnormal personality structures which gave them a predisposition to committing such crimes? Even if such a category of perpetrators indeed existed, a psychopathological approach does not provide sufficient explanation either for the behavior of the doctors or that of other groups of perpetrators.2 The frequently made attempt by the elites of various groups in the post-war period to have the atrocities of Nazi medicine appear to be the work of a few abnormally predisposed doctors served only the interests of those who wished to protect the positive self-image of the medical profession. For a long time, representatives of the medical profession prevented anyone from exploring the deeper motives behind the behavior of doctors in the Third Reich. Such research could have brought to light disturbing findings, seriously incriminated colleagues, and damaged the reputation of the medical profession as a whole. The construct of a medical profession that had remained intact in its ethical core either, intentionally or unintentionally, failed to understand the powerful concepts of morality that provided the foundation for the inhumane medicine under Nazism in the first place.3 This paper centers on the formulation and dissemination of those moral concepts in medicine which were forged and shaped by Nazism. As a 2

Early studies on the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, such as those by court psychologist Gustave M. Gilbert, referred more to the “normality” of the majority of the defendants. See Gustave M. Gilbert, Nuremberg diary (New York: New American Library, 1961). Later studies confirmed these findings: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report on the banality of evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963); Christopher Browning, Ordinary men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). Recently: Harald Welzer, Täter. Wie aus ganz normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2005), pp. 7-12. 3 Concerning morality and medicine in Nazism see also Florian Bruns, Medizinethik im Nationalsozialismus. Entwicklungen und Protagonisten in Berlin (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2009); Arthur L. Caplan, “The Stain of Silence: Nazi Ethics and Bioethics,” in Sheldon Rubenfeld (ed.), Medicine after the Holocaust. From the Master Race to the Human Genome and Beyond, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 83-92; Robert N. Proctor, “Nazi Science and Medical Ethics: Some Myths and Misconceptions,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 43 (2000) no. 3, pp. 335-346; Ulf Schmidt, “Medical Ethics and Nazism,” in Robert B. Baker/Laurence B. McCullough (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 595-608. Robert Jütte, Medizin im Nationalsozialismus. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2011), summarizes the present level of research on Nazi medicine.

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means of supplementing and differentiating between the existing models for explaining the way doctors acted under Nazism, in what follows we shall put forward the theory that the actions of the doctors concerned were based on convictions arising from concepts of race and racial biology which lent moral justification to the actions of the perpetrators. The fact that doctors at that time frequently and relatively freely did things, which we would without question regard as simply immoral, today, should not tempt us to dismiss the idea of “Nazi ethics” as an oxymoron. This would blind us to the fact that Nazi ideology did indeed have a system of values. This system, in fact, made clear what doctors were supposed to do if they wished not only to act correctly but also to conform to Nazi ideology. Nazi medical ethics were clearly guided by values based on premises we would certainly reject today, but these premises have not become entirely lost in history and so remain potentially dangerous.4 First of all, the contemporary debate on moral issues in medicine in the years between Hitler´s seizure of power and the beginning of the Second World War will be examined. The law on enforced sterilization and the incipient campaign to murder mentally ill and physically handicapped individuals were turning points which provided the basis for the radicalization of the moral practices of the state in the war years. The subsequent section will begin by examining two academic disciplines that played a major role in formulating and mediating Nazi medical ethics:5 the subject of Medical History attempted the historical legitimization of a new medical morality while Medical Law and Professional Studies (Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde) taught those values to doctors and students. 4 See Peter J. Haas, Morality after Auschwitz. The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), for early general information on ethics and morality under Nazism. See also Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler. Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); idem, Hitler’s Ethic. The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Werner Konitzer/Raphael Gross, Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag, 2009); Raphael Gross, Anständig geblieben. Nationalsozialistische Moral (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2010). 5 “Medizinethik” (medical ethics; the term “ärztliche Ethik” was customary in the first half of the 20th century) is not understood exclusively in this context as a philosophical discipline in the sense of a theory of morality but also as a higherlevel concept for the values and morally justified behavior within medicine, the medical profession, und the relationship of physicians and patients. For the history of bioethics see, for example, Albert R. Jonsen, The birth of bioethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); idem, A short history of medical ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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With regard to both disciplines, the question is whether they met the corresponding expectations of the regime, and, if so, in which way. The section will end with a discussion of overarching aspects of medicine, morality, and war.

II. The Moral Upheaval in Medicine Before and After 1933 Two things are obvious from any historical classification of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, and not just with regard to the history of medicine: on the one hand, the obvious continuities in moral convictions and ways of thinking and, on the other hand, clear breaks and new beginnings, particularly with regard to the actual practice of what had previously been considered only in theory. Historical research on medicine under the Nazis must investigate both of these phenomena. In retrospect, eugenic and social-hygienic concepts, along with discussions regarding so-called “life unworthy of life” clearly belong to the continuities extending from the turn of the century to the time after 1933.6 Even before the First World War, nationalistic doctors and race hygienists advocated eugenics and Social Darwinism. This development went hand in hand with a process of weakening humanist ethics centering on the individual. Scientists who were driven by a fear of degeneration now propagated nationalist ethics defined on the basis of medical and racial criteria of inclusion and exclusion. Since these ethics were aimed at a supposed natural selection within society and at the supposed greater good of the people and future generations, the term used was “generational ethics.”7 Losing the First World War was perceived as a damaging “counterselection” from a biological point of view due to the large number of young men who had been lost in the war. This fanned the flames of a latent feeling of doom and destruction among nationalist circles. Some biologists, doctors and geneticists subscribed to the world view that the survival of the people was under threat as a result of the expensive care for the weak and sick. This view gained increasing numbers of supporters. In 6

See also, most recently, Sheila Faith Weiss, The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Lynn K. Nyhart, Modern Nature. The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2009). 7 See Wilhelm Schallmayer, “Generative Ethik,” Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, vol. 6 (1909), pp. 199-231, for a contemporary view. See also Sheila Faith Weiss, Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer (University of California Press, Berkeley 1987); Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler.

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this context, Fritz Lenz, later the holder of the first chair of racial hygiene in Germany and co-author of an influential standard work on the science of heredity, stated as early as 1917 that: “the individual personality cannot be the final goal of ethics. […] The people (Volk)as an organism is the goal of our ethics […].”8

The conception of the Volk as a metaphysical entity that has both a life and a value of its own belonged to the basic principles of Nazi medical ethics. It was exemplified by the term Volkskörper (people’s body) which played a crucial role in the rationale of Nazi medical ethicists. In the crisis years of the Weimar Republic, reputable psychiatrists such as Alfred Hoche and Ernst Rüdin (along with similarly minded doctors and lawyers) bluntly demanded that individuals should be assessed according to their state of health and efficiency and be assigned a graded right to life on that basis. This launched a discussion on the value of human life from a medical and economic point of view as early as the beginning of the 1920s, culminating in proposals to have “selection doctors” take action and kill individuals who were incurably mentally ill.9 Supporters of such endeavors however did not constitute a majority at this time, either among doctors or within the political hierarchy of the Weimar Republic.10 These brief highlights clearly show that the gradual shift in the standards and values of the healthcare and social welfare policy had begun long before 1933. We must not, of course, underestimate what a profound turning point the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship was in terms of medical ethics. It was only when Hitler seized power that the Nazi concept of morality was able to influence and determine actual policymaking and legisla8

Fritz Lenz, “Zur Erneuerung der Ethik,” Deutschlands Erneuerung, vol. 1 (1917), pp. 35-56, here 37. Lenz published this essay again in 1933 under the title “Die Rasse als Wertprinzip.” Lenz stated in the foreword that he did not have to make substantial changes because all of the elements of the Nazi world view had already been included in the original text. 9 Ernst Mann, Die Erlösung der Menschheit vom Elend (Weimar: Fink, 1922), p. 96. See also Karl Binding/Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens. Ihr Maß und ihre Form (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1920). For an overview see Michael Schwartz, “Euthanasie-Debatten in Deutschland (18951945),” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 46 (1998) no. 4, pp. 617-665. 10 The broad rejection of the petition for the destruction of “life unworthy of life” to be legally approved by the German Medical Conference in Karlsruhe in 1921 was exemplary of this. Cf. Hans-Walther Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” 18901945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), p. 122.

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tion. The new rulers were vehement in pursuing their break with the hated “Weimar morality of sympathy” and its Jewish-Christian origins. The National Socialist German Physicians’ League (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund, NSDÄB), an ideological combat unit of doctors organized in the NSDAP, took the lead in this movement with its programmatic demand for new medical ethics: “From the first day, we have made it clear that the major turnabout in the world view of our days, an essential portion of which is vanquishing the individual through experiencing the ‘people’ must be the guiding principle of the morality and ethics of the medical profession.”11

The association’s periodical, Ziel und Weg, drew the lines of battle with traditional morality very clearly: “It is specifically Christian charity that has […] through its concentration solely on the individual - contributed more than its fair share to disregard for the great nationalistic [“völkisch”] laws in the life of the nation. It is precisely such views and values which have given rise to the exaggerations of humane and sympathetic emotions which have finally peaked in the systematic cultivation of sick and inferior life forms. More and more, they have stolen away from our modern times all feeling for the value of strength, health, beauty, and youth. They have, in short, stolen our feeling for the strength of ascendant life.”12

The consequences they demanded indicated that, in the rationale of the Nazis, individuals classified as “inferior” deserved neither protection nor support: “If we are serious about our demands that our people and our race be kept healthy, if we really want to put into practice what the teachings of inherited health demand - and we will have to fulfill these demands if we wish our people to have any kind of future - then we will have to overcome this attitude of charity that not only offers benefit to both valuable and inferior life without distinction but which has also in fact led to the promotion of all inferior life to the detriment of the healthy.”13

In terms of medical care and governmental welfare services, these statements clearly demonstrate the intention of playing healthy people off 11

Anonymus, “Zur Berufsethik des Arztes,” Ziel und Weg. Zeitschrift des Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Ärztebundes, vol. 3 (1933), pp. 157-159, here 157. 12 Ibid, p. 158. 13 Ibid.

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against ill people. Or, putting it more simply, to praise the strong and to deprecate the weak.14 Gerhard Wagner, the chairman of the NSDÄB, was responsible for the editorial from which the here quoted passages have been taken. Wagner was appointed Reich physicians’ leader (Reichsärzteführer) in 1934. This gave him the opportunity to make the heralded break with traditional medical morality on a grand scale, and to make the new morality a part of everyday medicine. Wagner participated, for instance, in implementing the sterilization law and the Nuremberg laws and in preparing the “euthanasia” program. Among the first victims of these new ethics were not only patients but also doctors. The new ethics perfidiously turned the actual situation on its head by accusing Jewish doctors (or doctors who simply had different political attitudes) of a counter-morality that had supposedly damaged the medical profession. “Colleagues” with leanings towards Nazism15 accused such doctors of having suppressed race- specific ethics and morality (arteigene Ethik und Moral) and of having falsified the “medical concept of honor,” and they demanded that these doctors should be removed from the medical profession, immediately. Once again it was the NSDÄB that was in the forefront. A call to the “entire German medical profession” written by Gerhard Wagner in the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter reads as follows: “Clean up the leadership of our organizations, sweep away whosoever does not want to see the signs of the times. Make our profession German in spirit and esteem, just as the Reich and people have once again become in these recent weeks.”16

A particular concept of morality was also introduced and rigorously enforced within the medical profession. Mutual respect among medical colleagues, which had been much valued and much vaunted among doctors in previous decades, was now restricted within a group from which racial and political undesirables were excluded. This way of proceeding against members of one’s own profession mirrored the particular morality of the Nazi healthcare policy in society in general, a policy which dictated that selected groups of the population, for instance, what was known as ‘ballast existences,’ were no longer considered a part of the community which was to be protected.

14

See in this context Harald Ofstad, Our Contempt for Weakness: Nazi Norms and Values - and Our Own (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1989). 15 Völkischer Beobachter, Norddeutsche Ausgabe, 25 March 1933, 2. Beiblatt, p. 3. 16 Ibid.

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In other words, the principle “salus aegroti suprema lex” was less respected in everyday medical practice than the principle “salus populi suprema lex.” A formulation emphasizing the priority of the “people’s body” (Volkskörper) was also included in the new Reich Physicians’ Ordinance (Reichsärzteordnung) of 1935: “German doctors are called upon to maintain and to improve the health, genetic constitution and race of the German people for the good of the people and the Reich.”17 Nazi healthcare policy also placed just as much if not indeed more weight on the prevention rather than the treatment of illness. The idea of prophylactic medicine gave rise to a belief in a duty to be healthy, a duty young people in particular were expected to fulfill.18

1. The Forced Sterilization Law In July 1933 Hitler’s cabinet passed the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) that legitimated forced sterilization of individuals affected by specific “hereditary” diseases. The law came into force on 1 January 1934. These new provisions demanded that doctors register any patient for sterilization where there was the suspicion of hereditary disease or of serious alcoholism. Hereditary health courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichte) were created specifically to deal with the cases reported. Medical confidentiality, which had been a traditional pillar of medical ethics, was no longer applicable in relation to the patients this affected and indeed gave way to a medical obligation to inform. Even the pledge never to harm patients, a pledge that, in the form of “primum nil nocere,” had been a pivotal component of medical ethics since ancient times, was violated by the law and the doctors who acted in keeping with the law. The following clearly shows that this deep fissuring of the ethical framework of inter-human relations was not universally accepted without question and that it was felt that some attempt at justification was required:

17

Section 19 of the Reich Physicians’ Ordinance dated December 13, 1935, reprinted in Rudolf Ramm, Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde. Der Arzt als Gesundheitserzieher (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1942), p. 212. 18 Introducing compulsory treatment for patients was considered a logical next step during the war. The “Reichsgericht” [Supreme Court of the Reich] affirmed compulsory treatment in 1942 for individuals such as Wehrmacht soldiers. Cf. Thorsten Noack, Eingriffe in das Selbstbestimmungsrecht des Patienten. Juristische Entscheidungen, Politik und ärztliche Positionen 1890-1960 (Frankfurt a. M.: Mabuse-Verlag, 2004), p. 179.

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“This law constitutes wonderful progress in improving the race of our people through racial-hygienic measures. It will prevent the creation of inferior beings and thus reduce misery. We might expect that this aim would be applauded from all quarters. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are certain circles that detect the scent of ancient cruelty and even speak of the revival of Spartan customs and practices […].”19

The initiators of this new law were also aware of the break that was being made and argued on the basis of the prospective “people’s health,” a feature of the aforementioned generational ethics: “[This law] is the beginning of the provision for the race to come, the aim of which is to create a better and healthier future for our children and their children’s children. In other words, this law must be seen as a breach in the debris and small-mindedness of an outdated world view and the exaggerated suicidal brotherly love of bygone centuries.”20

A preliminary draft for some future state of affairs is not only typical of the generational ethics of the early 20th century. It is also a hallmark of Nazi medical ethics which had taken it upon itself to realize the utopia of the pure and healthy Volkskörper. As a result of this aspiration, more than 400,000 people had been forcibly sterilized in Germany by 1945, 6,000 of whom died from the effects of the operation.21 Over and above these figures, the overall significance of sterilization for medical ethics is evident: both professional discretion and the precept of not harming patients, principles that had previously been the foundation of medical morality, were, in effect, had been abandoned, officially. The attitude of Ernst Rüdin, a psychiatrist who was involved in writing this law, is exemplary of how the understanding of morality had changed among doctors. Rüdin insisted that “it was highly ethical to inhibit the

19 Albert von Rohden, “Verstößt das Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses gegen das Gebot der Nächstenliebe?,” Neues Volk, vol. 2 (1934), p. 8. 20 Arthur Gütt/Ernst Rüdin/Falk Ruttke, Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses vom 14. Juli 1933 (München, 1934), Vorwort. 21 The figures are cited according to Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), and quoted from Astrid Ley, Zwangssterilisation und Ärzteschaft. Hintergründe und Ziele ärztlichen Handelns 1934-1945 (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag, 2004), p. 17. The social debasement and exclusion associated with forced sterilization haunted the individuals affected throughout their whole lives. This fact contrasts dramatically with the argument of contemporaries that they wanted to reduce future misery.

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unhealthy, in order to open up the field of reproduction to the healthy.”22 He also stated that “it would be immoral for a doctor in the interests of his private practice to omit to register for sterilization any individuals suffering from an inherited disease.”23 Apparently, conscientiousness was supposed to replace conscience. It was not the ill person’s physical inviolability or medical discretion that was given as the point of reference for morality. It was, instead, the selfless readiness of the doctor in private practice to accept any financial disadvantages which might result from denouncing his patients. Rüdin does not even consider the possibility that a doctor would be deterred by anything other than financial considerations.24 We can also see from the attitude of the Halle-based physiologist and medical ethicist Emil Abderhalden that the standards in medical ethics had shifted. Abderhalden described eugenic measures as “ethics in the very best sense of the word”25 and propagated the notorious Nazi slogan “the common good comes before self-interest” (Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz). In the magazine Ethik edited by Abderhalden there happened a lively debate on the ethical issues in medicine until 1938 (although the arguments were increasingly aligned with the party’s interests).26

2. Euthanasia as an Internal War The successive erosion, as we would see it today, of people’s moral conscience gathered momentum after the outbreak of the Second World War. The government’s campaign of murdering handicapped and mentally ill individuals, which was launched in 1939, revealed the destructive potential of medical ethics deformed by Nazism.27 Years before, targeting sick 22

Ernst Rüdin, “Bedeutung der Forschung und Mitarbeit von Neurologen und Psychiatern im nationalsozialistischen Staat,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, vol. 165 (1939), pp. 7-17, here 11. 23 Ibid. 24 Studies clearly indicate that doctors in private practice who were afraid of possibly losing their reputation or business volume were much less willing to report individuals suffering from an inherited disease to the official agencies than their colleagues in the public health service (for instance, the public health officers). Cf. Ley, Zwangssterilisation und Ärzteschaft, pp. 159, 175. 25 Emil Abderhalden, “Zum Abschied,” Ethik, vol. 14 (1937/38) no. 6, pp. 241269, here 263. 26 This magazine ceased publication in 1938. For details see Andreas Frewer, Medizin und Moral in Weimarer Republik und Nationalsozialismus. Die Zeitschrift “Ethik“ unter Emil Abderhalden (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag, 2000). 27 There is substantial literature on the Nazi Euthanasia Program. See, amongst others, Maike Rotzoll/Gerrit Hohendorf/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/Christoph

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or otherwise “incapable” people, the Reich Physicians’ leader, Gerhard Wagner, made the following threat based on a dictum of Hitler’s: “If an individual no longer has the strength to fight for their own health, this individual no longer has the right to life in a world of struggle.”28 However, in spite of these early clues, there are still questions surrounding the actual genesis of the campaign of murdering the ill. We do not intend here to discuss in detail the explanatory models that historical research has come up with to date.29 However, there is much to be said for the belief that killing “useless” patients was the result of a mentality whose ideological roots had already taken hold before 1933. Once it had received government sanctioning in 1933, it escalated and was put into practice on a large scale. The example of the Göttingen-based pathologist and medical ethicist Georg Benno Gruber shows well the gradual turning to the “idea of euthanasia.” In 1937, Gruber still rejected the idea of killing patients, saying: “Nobody, not even a doctor, is authorized to extinguish the flame of life.”30 In 1941, he relativized this assessment: “It does not seem to me to be a new question that extinguishing a doubtlessly incurable life that is also devoid of any personal value and completely fruitless while substantially burdening the community is worthy of consideration.”31

The general public, by means of a variety of publications, was step-by-step prepared for the idea of euthanasia, although the term used in this process

Mundt/Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie“-Aktion “T4“ und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2010). 28 Wagner, quoted from Leonardo Conti, Reden und Aufrufe – Gerhard Wagner. 1888-1939 (Berlin: Reichsgesundheitsverlag, 1943), p. 31. 29 See Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Die Genesis der ‘Euthanasie.’ Interpretationsansätze,” in Maike Rotzoll et al. (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie“-Aktion “T4“ und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart, pp. 66-73. 30 Georg Benno Gruber, Von ärztlicher Ethik. Eine Vorlesung (Stuttgart: Hippokrates-Verlag, 1937), p. 28. 31 Idem, “Vom ungeschriebenen Gesetz des Arztes,” Die Gesundheitsführung: Ziel und Weg, (1941), pp. 197-202, here 200. See also Martin Mattulat, Medizinethik in historischer Perspektive. Zum Wandel ärztlicher Moralkonzepte im Werk von Georg Benno Gruber (1884-1977) (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007), p. 125 for both passages.

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was the euphemism “mercy killing.”32 Regardless of the “incubation period” (Hans-Walter Schmuhl) of the campaign of murdering the ill, the actionist element should be taken into consideration as it was an integral part of the killing of patients. From this point of view one might almost be able to interpret the killing campaign as a spontaneous measure, as a short-term reaction to the economic conditions and necessities of the war, which ultimately unleashed an unbridled (but, in the final analysis, voluntary) momentum of its own.33 There is no doubt that the conditions of the increasingly “total” war encouraged the murdering of the handicapped and mentally ill. However, it was the euthanasia campaign that provided evidence of the limits of the people’s readiness to abandon sympathy or to engage in excluding certain members from society. In contrast to its implementation of forced sterilization, the regime attempted to keep secret their legally unfounded mass murder of patients. No public or even scientific debate on the topic of euthanasia, as had been permitted before the war, was permitted after 1939. However, the leaders of the organization that became known as Campaign T4 (from its location on Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin) never had any difficulty in winning over medical personnel for the program of killing. On the contrary, when they started murdering patients at decentralized locations in 1941 (because of growing discontent among the population), a large number of directors of regional psychiatric hospitals eagerly began murdering their patients by means of lethal injections or by deliberately withdrawing nourishment. These murders continued right down to the last days of the war, and even beyond. With regard to this, it would not be an exaggeration to speak of people firmly believing in their crimes. These perpetrators acted without being under the pressure of a chain of command or any other military compulsion, and they put their particular morality into practice in their institutions as a part of Nazi medical ethics. This had lethal consequences for whoever was considered worthy of destruction rather than worthy of

32

The novel Sendung und Gewissen, written by the physician Hellmuth Unger and published in 1936 is an example of an implicit call for the killing of incurably ill individuals in the sense of “mercy killing.” 33 See for instance Winfried Süß, Der “Volkskörper“ im Krieg. Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1939-1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003) who goes into detail about the problem of distributing medical resources (such as personnel, bed capacities, and funds) during the war. Hitler is said to have made the often-cited statement during the 1935 Reich Party Conference that any “euthanasia” campaign would be postponed to a future war because it would be easier to put into practice at such a time.

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protection.34 Given the aforementioned statements by Rüdin and Abderhalden, we may reasonably assume that these medical perpetrators firmly believed that they were doing the morally correct thing. The assumption that some of them still had scruples does not create a contradiction. They were entirely capable of integrating into their medical morality of killing the awareness of having taken on a tiresome or even unpleasant job.35 What was more decisive was the inner certainty that it was good and appropriate to have contributed to the healing of the highly valued Volkskörper.

III. Legitimizing and Mediating the New Medical Morality A new moral order can be established more successfully and sustainably if it can be underwritten and legitimized by creating historical references. It is also necessary to ensure that the new concepts of morality reach the people for whom they are intended and that those people adopt the new concepts. We can see both of these things happening in medical ethics under Nazism: the attempt to interpret and transform traditional ethics in terms of Nazism and the communication of the resulting concepts of morality to doctors and medical students. It is no coincidence that the disciplines responsible for this, namely Medical History, Medical Law and Professional Studies, were generously funded under the Nazis and were even raised to the level of obligatory subjects in medical courses in the year the war began. These subjects were used between 1939 and 1945 to provide a theoretical basis for the Nazi health-care policy and the ideological training of prospective medical doctors. With regard to medical history, we might ask what role the historical tradition of medical ethics played under Nazism. Looking back at the medical crimes of the “Third Reich” and its doctors, the question is often 34 More recent research has demonstrated that criteria such as the capability to work, social behavior, and the expenditures for care (and less the medical prognosis) were decisive with regard to being counted among the patients worthy of protection as opposed to those to be destroyed. Cf. Gerrit Hohendorf, “Die Selektion der Opfer zwischen rassenhygienischer ‘Ausmerze,’ ökonomischer Brauchbarkeit und medizinischem Erlösungsideal,” in Maike Rotzoll et al. (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie”-Aktion “T4” und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart, pp. 317-324. 35 Cf. Welzer, Täter, p. 37. Remaining “decent” even while killing people (for instance, not enriching yourself with the possessions of your victims) was the central point in Heinrich Himmler´s notorious speech in front of the higher SS leaders in Posen on 4 October 1943. The speech is a key document of Nazi morality.

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asked as to how significant the Hippocratic Oath, in part of ancient origin, had been in creating the role model of the “ideal doctor.” Did doctors betray their ideals and break their medical oaths at that time? A closer examination of Nazi medical historiography and its representatives may offer some clarity. In 1939, the office of the Reich Physicians’ leader created a new subject for medical students called “Medical Law and Professional Studies” (Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde). There was, at the time, no other such course of studies. Surprisingly enough, from our point of view today, the creation of the new course gave rise to the seemingly paradoxical constellation in that the Nazis, of all people, were the first to introduce an obligatory course of instruction in ethics for medical students. This gives us good reason to question closely the Nazis’ motivations for introducing such a course. Who taught this subject at the medical faculties, and what were its contents?

1. Medical Historiography in the Service of Ideology The institutional roots of academic and medical historiography are to be found in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This subject area not only performed genuinely historiographical functions but also laid claim, in part at least, to sovereignty of interpretation with regard to medical ethics.36 Reputable representatives of this relatively young discipline pointed out to the many cross-over points between medical history and medical deontology which medical historians drew upon for a part of their legitimation within the medical faculties. In fact, this subject played only a small role in the scientifically and clinically driven canon of subjects in medical studies in the first decades of the 20th century. Various departments and institutes were founded in rather a piecemeal manner: the chairs in Leipzig and Berlin were the foremost schools in Germany for this subject area at the onset of the 1930s. The Nazis recognized at an early stage the possibilities this theoretical field of humanities offered them with regard to ensuring that their ideology would grow in importance within medicine. In the years after 1933, Nazi medical and college functionaries took the first steps to ensure that this subject could be used for political purposes. In turn, medical historians, in particular Paul Diepgen, the director of the Berlin Institute for the 36

See Andreas Frewer/Josef N. Neumann (eds.), Medizingeschichte und Medizinethik. Kontroversen und Begründungsansätze 1900-1950 (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag, 2001); Andreas Frewer/Volker Roelcke (eds.), Die Institutionalisierung der Medizinhistoriographie. Entwicklungslinien vom 19. ins 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2001).

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History of Medicine and Sciences, quickly discovered the benefits that could be derived from the higher level of attention paid them by the new rulers: “National Socialism, which has succeeded in arousing enthusiasm for the great past of German medicine, as no other previous form of government had done, has not only entrusted the study of the history of medicine in Germany with tasks of current interest but has also elevated it to the longmissed rank of equality of dignity with the other branches of medical research and teaching.”37

Diepgen directed a large number of messages of loyalty toward the regime, as did his colleagues in Leipzig, Goettingen and other places. The mutual convergence was made even easier by the fact that important representatives of this subject had begun sympathizing with the Nazis at an early stage for a wide range of reasons.38 Understandably, medical historiography in Germany did indeed experience an upswing. This became manifested by the fact that in 1939, when the new regulations for courses of studies were drawn up, medical historiography was included as a mandatory subject in the curriculum of medical studies. At the same time, other ideologically significant subjects were introduced to the curriculum such as the study of race, the science of heredity, and military medicine.39 This fact is worth mentioning in so far as the new regulations for medical studies were already set up to meet the requirements of a war, medical history thus having the status of a subject vital to the war effort. The Berlin Institute under Paul Diepgen was at the center of the alliance between Nazism and medical history, and this is where the closest personal interconnections between the Nazi party, the SS and medical historians can be found. Diepgen’s relationship to Nazism was multifaceted. He had been socialized in the bourgeois world of the German empire and had a German nationalist upbringing. He was also a successful professor who did not believe it was necessary to join the NSDAP in 1933. For this reason, and because of his Catholic belief, the leading party gran37

Paul Diepgen, “The Study of the History of Medicine in Germany,” Research and Progress. Bi-monthly review of German science, vol. 7 (1941), pp. 233-246, here 234. 38 For details see Florian Bruns/Andreas Frewer, “Fachgeschichte als Politikum. Medizinhistoriker in Berlin und Graz in Diensten des NS-Staates,” Medizin, Gesellschaft und Geschichte. Jahrbuch des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch-Stiftung, vol. 24 (2005), pp. 151-180. 39 We will discuss the subject of Medical Law and Professional Studies further below.

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dees did not consider him politically reliable and kept him at arm’s length concerning celebrations or representative occasions.40 Understandably, he accelerated his efforts by offering his services to the regime with his publications. His writings, published under Nazism, were definitely affirmative and lacked all critical distance or reflection. On the contrary, Diepgen had been one of the early advocates of sterilization and had expressly welcomed the fact that Nazism had created “a new national code of ethos.”41 With all the means at his disposal he underpinned the medical ethics of Nazism premised on this racist concept with statements on the “nationally conditioned character of medicine.”42 Diepgen also cultivated contacts with the highest representative of the SS and the health system, and he had close relationships to “Reich physician SS“ (Reichsarzt SS) Ernst Robert Grawitz (the head of all SS doctors) and also to Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician and “general commissioner for health and sanitation” (Generalkommissar für das Sanitäts- und Gesundheitswesen).43 Diepgen had no qualms about putting his expertise in medical history to the service of the regime and worked directly with Brandt (who was in overall charge of the euthanasia campaign) supplying him with literature on medical ethics when this was requested, and even supplied commentaries on these works.44 There is no record of what Brandt concluded from this ethical “briefing.” His responsibility for the murder of tens of thousands of patients is beyond question. We can gauge the increasing influence the SS had on medical historiography at the beginning of the war from looking at the staff of the Berlin Medical History Institute. Grawitz sent two SS doctors to Diepgen’s institute as students. They were to write their postdoctoral theses there, and it was planned that the two should set up an institute on the history of medi40

Cf. Bruns, Medizinethik im Nationalsozialismus, p. 58, n. 235. Diepgen, Study, p. 234. 42 Manuscript “Wesen und Leistung der deutschen Medizin” (1937), UAHU, Nachlass Diepgen, no. 49, sheet 2. 43 For Brandt see Ulf Schmidt, Karl Brandt. The Nazi Doctor. Medicine and Power in the Third Reich (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007). 44 Diepgen did not neglect to distinguish between authors according to the categories of the Nazis: “It is strange to see so many Jews among the authors.” Diepgen to Brandt, dated 29 January 1942 (UAHU, IfG, no. 27, sheet 145). Diepgen became an official member of Brandt’s staff in 1943, cf. Brandt to Diepgen, dated 25 September 1943; Diepgen to Brandt, dated 5 October 1943 (UAHU, IfG, no. 31, sheet 263 ff.). Diepgen wrote a plea for pardon for Brandt who had been sentenced to death in the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trials in 1947 and an “expert opinion” on “euthanasia” from the point of view of medical history although the whereabouts of the latter have not yet been discovered. 41

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cine, specifically for the SS. To begin with, Diepgen resisted having students who were under the wing of the SS, but over time he came to an arrangement with them, guiding them to their postdoctoral lecturing qualifications. It was the young doctor and medical historian Bernward Josef Gottlieb who measured up particularly well to the expectations of the SS. In 1941, he became the first director of the SS Institute for the History of Medicine (Institut für Geschichte der Heilkunde beim Reichsarzt SS). The fact that he was taken under the wing of higher-level SS leaders resulted in Gottlieb being appointed lecturer at the SS Medical Academy in Graz in Austria in 1943. Medical history was thus also integrated into the training courses of SS doctors there. Many of Gottlieb’s publications were based not on historical but on political interests. This consisted of making Nazi medical ethics appear historically legitimate. It was also no secret that Gottlieb’s publications were commissioned works, desired and demanded by Nazis on the highest level, as we can see from a letter Gottlieb wrote to Diepgen: “I should also report that, within the context of my political commission, I am processing material from the library of the Reichsführer and the Reichsarzt on the emergence of Freemasonry in England and on the Jewish question at the time of Paracelsus […]. As the Reicharzt-SS informed me, Reichsführer-SS Himmler has praised the work done to date.”45

In the writings which emerged from this pseudoscientific approach, Gottlieb constructed historical lines of continuity and historical parallels in order to provide a historical foundation for, e.g., racist anti-Semitism within the medical profession and for the alleged superiority of Nordic-Germanic doctors.46 High on the agenda of this interpretation of history premised upon racial ideology was a moral justification of Nazi medical practices; the interpretation was not meant to address a public with a specialist interest in history but the broad sweep of the medical profession: Gottlieb published his propagandistic essays in the widely read journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt. Medical history was supposed to help individual doctors who might not yet have fully internalized the new medical morality or who perhaps even questioned certain practices. It was supposed to constantly reassure doctors that they were on the morally correct path. Or, to express it differently, through new interpretations, the job of medical history was 45

Gottlieb to Diepgen, dated 14 August 1941 (UAHU, IfG, no. 28, sheet 62). See Sepp [sic] Gottlieb, “Paracelsus als Kämpfer gegen das Judentum,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt, vol. 71 (1941), pp. 326-328; Bernward Josef Gottlieb/Alexander Berg, Das Antlitz des germanischen Arztes in vier Jahrhunderten (Berlin: Rembrandt Verlag, 1942). 46

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to compensate for any possible ethical deficits in terms of legitimation. There were more than a few medical historians who willingly accepted this assignment.

2. Ideal and Reality: the Hippocratic Oath We can more easily trace the way historic sources were put to the service of a medical ethics driven by Nazism by examining how the Hippocratic Oath was dealt with. This ancient oath for physicians had frequently been considered the most important creed of medical ethics, regardless of the fact that its historical origin and original utilization were not entirely clear.47 This uncritical view was also widespread among medical doctors and laypersons at the time of Nazism. The Hippocratic ethos regularly was the subject of research and debate in reference to medical history, even though, in fact, it was not customary in the 20th century to demand that prospective doctors take an oath.48 The essence of the oath, not to harm patients, never to bring about their death, even if the patient demanded it, and always to maintain professional discretion toward third parties, fitted very well with Christian ethics, and thus the oath had a certain binding nature as an expression of ethical maxims within the medical profession. Even the Nazis could not ignore the binding effect of the oath (an effect resulting not only from personal morality but also supported to a certain extent by law) if they did not want to run the risk of losing the support of the medical profession and the population at large. To put it more pointedly, did Hitler work “with or without Hippocrates”?49 The reception of the Hippocratic ethos within the “Third Reich” indicates that there were differing trends in this regard. It was true that the Nazi medical ethicists avoided officially disputing the validity of the Hippocratic Oath. However, there were a sufficient number of doctors who, from the onset, attributed 47

For details see Karl-Heinz Leven, “The Invention of Hippocrates. Oath, Letters and Hippocratic Corpus,” in Ulrich Tröhler/Stella Reiter-Theil (eds.), Ethics Codes in Medicine. Foundations and Achievements of Codification since 1947 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1998), pp. 3-23; David Cantor (ed.), Reinventing Hippocrates (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002). 48 See Dale C. Smith, “The Hippocratic Oath and Modern Medicine,” Journal of the History of Medicine, vol. 51 (1996), pp. 484-500; Carsten Timmermann, A Model for the New Physician. Hippocrates in Interwar Germany, in David Cantor (ed.), Reinventing Hippocrates (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002), pp. 302-324. 49 Thomas Rütten, “Hitler with – or without – Hippocrates? The Hippocratic Oath during the Third Reich,” Koroth. The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science, vol. 12 (1996), pp. 91-106.

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no particular significance to the oath. As an example we may refer to those concentration camp doctors who, when questioned after the war, claimed that the oath of allegiance to Hitler they had to swear as SS doctors seemed much more real and binding than any vague rituals or ceremonies performed at medical school graduations.50 Beyond this, many of them doubted that this ancient tradition had any meaning to the medicine of the Modern Age, which is why they were in favor of dispensing with the Hippocratic tradition. For them, the medical ethos was something always linked to its time: “Every age has its own ethos, and ours is that of National Socialism.”51 Others did not cast any doubt on the basic validity of Hippocratic ethics, but they disputed its applicability in certain situations determined by the war. The SS hygienist Joachim Mrugowsky was among this latter group. He was responsible for lethal experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and he stated during the Nuremberg doctors’ trial that these experiments were not carried out on ill individuals but on prisoners who, from his point of view, were healthy. Therefore, they “were not patients of the doctor in terms of medical ethics or in terms of the understanding of the relationship between a doctor and a patient. This is the reason why it would be possible to apply what we comprehend as medical ethics to this case only in a very limited sense.”52

Mrugowsky added that he had never seen the Hippocratic Oath during his studies and had not been required to swear it. His co-defendant, Karl Brandt, whom we have already mentioned, questioned the validity for contemporary medicine of a text that was 2000 years old. Brandt said that he was convinced that Hippocrates would formulate the oath differently, today. Mrugowsky, even before the war, had also pointed to the fundamental mutability of moral concepts and emphasized the fact that the zeitgeist had customarily adapted itself to the times and to the dominant social circumstances.53

50

Cf. Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986), p. 207. 51 Ehrhardt Hamann, “Gedanken zum Thema: Ärztliches Ethos,” Ärzteblatt für Mitteldeutschland, vol. 3 (1940), pp. 153-154 as well as pp. 161-162, here 162. 52 Mrugowsky’s testimony in the Doctor’s Trial, quoted from Bruns, Medizinethik im Nationalsozialismus, p. 163. 53 Joachim Mrugowsky, Das ärztliche Ethos. Christoph Wilhelm Hufelands Vermächtnis einer fünfzigjährigen Erfahrung (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1939), p. 7.

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During the war, the SS attempted to set up new moral standards for doctors who belonged to the SS. Himmler and Grawitz, with the support of the SS medical historian Gottlieb, drafted a brochure reproducing excerpts from ancient writings on medical ethics. They gave it the title Ewiges Arzttum (“Eternal Physicianship”), and Himmler had it distributed to all SS doctors.54 Apparently, the editors were aware of the fact that it would not be in their favor to describe the oath as the “eternally valid” foundation of medical morality. The oath itself was not included in the text of Ewiges Arzttum; the discrepancy between the ancient ideal and what the SS doctors were doing to some groups of patients and concentration camp prisoners would have been too obvious.55 On the other hand, it became evident in the course of the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trials that the Hippocratic Oath was not a good “witness for the prosecution.” Karl Brandt asserted that the euthanasia campaign was nothing else, more or less, than a contemporary way of implementing the oath if the Volkskörper alone were regarded as the ethical point of reference. This was a cynical remark in many respects, but given the ambiguous and somewhat antiquated formulation of the oath it was not possible to convincingly refute this argument.56 The confusion about the fact that the content of the oath in its formulation could be interpreted in practically any fashion was combined with the court’s recognition that it was not in fact possible to read the oath as a timelessly valid document (a point which the defendants themselves always insisted upon). The Hippocratic Oath lost its claim to timelessness once and for all at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trials and was reduced to no more than a historic document. Against this background, new attempts at codifying medical ethics (such as in the Geneva Declaration of 1948) must be viewed skeptically. History indicates that doubts with regard to the preventative effectiveness of such rituals are well justified.

IV. Indoctrination of Future Doctors: Medical Law and Professional Studies For the responsible medical functionaries, securing the acceptance and the implementation of the Nazi health-care policy among doctors between 54

Cf. Ernst Robert Grawitz (ed.), Hippokrates. Gedanken ärztlicher Ethik aus dem Corpus Hippocraticum. Ewiges Arzttum Band 1 (Prague: Volk und Reich Verlag, 1942). 55 Cf. Bruns, Medizinethik im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 79-83. 56 Cf. Leven, “The Invention of Hippocrates. Oath, Letters and Hippocratic Corpus,” p. 4.

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1933 and 1945 was a never-ending challenge. It may be assumed that the spirit in a lot of clinics was not to the liking of the rulers.57 In focusing on the pointedly ethical issues regarding the medical treatment of certain groups of the population who could not necessarily count on unconditional medical care we ought to not overlook the fact that there was a certain number of doctors who resisted the attempts at indoctrination by party and state Even if these attempts, when it comes to drawing the line, were not what we might call resistance in the full sense of the word, the leading Nazi doctors were in no doubt as to the necessity of continued political training for a large number of their medical colleagues in order to bring them into line with the Nazi healthcare policy. In addition to the constant influence exercised by professional press publications aligned with party interests, the Nazis introduced new obligatory advanced training for doctors which was intended to advance technical and ideological “education.” The Führerschule der Deutschen Ärzteschaft, a special school to promote Nazi medical ideology to German doctors, was opened in 1935 in AltRehse, a town in Mecklenburg, to further improve the integration of doctors into the Nazi healthcare policy. With regard to the indoctrination into Nazi thought, prospective medical doctors were a particularly important target group. Medical students were seen as predestined for the future implementation of race-ideology and the Nazi healthcare policy because they, in contrast to the older doctors, had grown up and been socialized within the Nazi system. Up to this time, there had been no subject in medical studies that left enough space for the Nazi world view (Weltanschauung). The subject “Medical Law and Professional Studies” (Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde) was designed to fill this gap. The study regulations which came into force in April 1939 stated that, starting in the winter semester of 1939/40, Ärztliche Rechtsund Standeskunde was an obligatory course during the last semester of study courses. It also introduced other new subjects such as Medical History into the curriculum. In the course of the subsequent war years, lecturing positions at all medical faculties of the Reich were given either to external lecturers or to professors of forensic medicine. An analysis of the lecturing positions established for Ärztliche Rechtsund Standeskunde by 1944 shows that more than 80% were awarded to regional directors of the NSDAP’s Main Office for the People’s Health 57 Examples in Süß, Der “Volkskörper” im Krieg, pp. 373-378. Carly Seyfarth, Der “Ärzte-Knigge.” Über den Umgang mit Kranken und über Pflichten, Kunst und Dienst der Krankenhausärzte, 2nd edition (Leipzig: Georg Thieme, 1935), provides an early form of “clinical ethics” that did not follow the predominant morality of 1933-1945.

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(Hauptamt für Volksgesundheit der NSDAP). Of these regional directors, who in their areas were the “medical functional elite of the NSDAP,”58 75% were veterans of the Nazi movement (Alte Kämpfer), meaning that they had joined the NSDAP far earlier than 1933. For these lecturing positions, only ardent Nazi doctors were selected, doctors who credibly supported the ideology in practical situations. For instance, the Tübingen lecturer Eugen Stähle (who joined the NSDAP in 1927) was simultaneously also the coordinator of the “euthanasia” campaign in Wuerttemberg. There is a whole host of similar examples. Professors of forensic medicine took on the lectures at 19 faculties that did not have external lecturers in this subject. Of these professors, many were also members of the SS or demonstrated their active participation in the Nazi healthcare policy by working at the hereditary health courts where the decisions were made in regard to performing forced sterilization. A closer analysis of individual biographies indicates that all the lecturers in Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde were dedicated Nazi doctors. In some cases, the level of political commitment was particularly pronounced. The Berlin-based lecturer Rudolf Ramm is a textbook case. He not only had a successful party career but simultaneously also held several other offices. As the representative for postgraduate medical studies he was responsible for organizing the aforementioned ideological education courses, and he was a lecturer in Alt-Rehse. During the war Ramm also managed some of the foremost magazines for the medical profession, including Deutsches Ärzteblatt. He even wrote his own articles in the Walter de Gruyter field such as his 1941 essay on the “Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe.”59 In 1942 Ramm authored the standard textbook for Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde, which, today, enables us to draw conclusions regarding the contents taught in this subject.60 In assessing the account of this book, the medical historian Robert N. Proctor characterized Ramm as “the leading Nazi medical ethicist.”61 In his book, Ramm first presents, in minute detail, the Nazi world and its historic view and then speaks about the mission of the doctors in the 58

Süß, Der “Volkskörper” im Krieg, p. 114. For details on Ramm see Bruns, Medizinethik im Nationalsozialismus. 60 Cf. Rudolf Ramm, Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde. Der Arzt als Gesundheitserzieher (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1942). 61 Robert N. Proctor, “Nazi Doctors, Racial Medicine, and Human Experimentation,” in George J. Annas/Michael A. Grodin (eds.), The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code. Human Rights in Human Experimentation, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 17-31, here 17. 59

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Nazi state. Ramm is convinced that Nazism has brought the “reinstatement of a high level of professional ethics.”62 He welcomes the fact that by the time this book went into print “the profession had been extensively cleansed of politically unreliable elements foreign to our race” and also welcomes the “violent exclusion of Jews from those professions and offices of the state that are vital to our lives.”63 Ramm believes in the authoritarian role of the doctor as a “health leader” (Gesundheitsführer) and in the individual’s moral obligation to remain healthy: “It is the everlasting service of the Party to have changed the belief in the ‘right to one’s own body’ - derived from crass individualism - to belief in an ‘obligation to remain healthy’ and to have presented this as a demand arising from the National Socialism’s Weltanschauung.”64

Along with the issue of forced sterilization, a practice that had apparently long since been taken for granted in everyday medical practice by 1942, Ramm also addresses the “problem of euthanasia” and openly demands that doctors act as “forerunners” in killing incurably ill or handicapped individuals: “These creatures merely vegetate and constitute a serious burden on the national community. They not reduce the living standard of the rest of their family members because of the expenses for their care but also need a healthy person to take care of them throughout their lives.”65

Such unequivocal words and, in particular, the unashamed economic justification for murdering a sick individual were not common at that time, which makes it that much more remarkable to having been included in a textbook on medical ethics. No author described the principles of medical ethics as defined by Nazism so openly and extensively as Ramm. The morality propagated in his book subordinated the fate of individual patients to collective interests and, from the onset, excluded certain groups (such as Jews, the handicapped, or those suffering from an inherited disease) from the group of moral subjects. There is no direct proof, but we might perhaps assume that the contents of this book were one of the reasons for its great popularity. In any event, both reviewers and readers were unanimous in the welcome they gave to this book, and a second edition

62

Ramm, Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde, p. 46. Ibid. 64 Ibid, p. 148. 65 Ibid, pp. 103. 63

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was necessary as early as 1943. This second edition also sold out within a year.66 Taken together, the political leanings of the lecturers, as described above, and the contents of Ramm’s textbook provide an approximate picture of what medical students learned in the Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde course.

V. Medicine, Morality and War – Final Observations In 1939, the doctor and biologist Joachim Mrugowsky, then a lecturer in hygiene at Berlin University, published a book on medical ethics linking his understanding of Nazi medical ethics with the works of Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, one of the foremost doctors of the early 19th century.67 In this work, Mrugowsky retraced what had increasingly been medical practice in Germany since 1933: a movement away from universally valid ethics derived from the Christian concept of charity and towards a particularistic concept of morality that refused basic rights to certain social groups. In this concept of morality, Christian values were replaced with the value of the Volkskörper as the absolute.68 This particularistic morality was based on the Nazi belief of the natural inequality of people, which justified evaluating and “treating” them differently.69 In the context of this morality, the criteria for exclusion from the protective referential framework were fluid as a matter of principle. The upheaval in the standards and values accepted in medicine created new conditions for medical behavior. Doctors were called upon not only to protect the Volkskörper from imagined dangers but also to permanently improve it qualitatively (i.e. genetically). The practical framework for this was provided by a healthcare policy which ruthlessly subordinated the welfare of the individual to the collective interest. Any individuals unable to make a contribution to the welfare of the nation by virtue of their own strengths, or not allowed to do so due to the criteria of racial ideology, 66 Cf. Papiergenehmigung und Planung 1944/45 (Verlagsarchiv de Gruyter, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Depositum 42, 213/2). 67 Cf. Mrugowsky, Das ärztliche Ethos. 68 “Christianity encompasses many peoples, but it no longer contains the supreme maxim for our actions. […] The belief in our eternal people is our world view, and it is for the sake of it that we have abandoned the belief in teachings of two thousand years ago.“ Ibid, p. 8. 69 “Today, we are aware of differences with reference to human life itself. Life is not so valuable to our people that it would be worth sustaining due to its mere existence, but only if it is healthy and powerful.” Ibid, p. 10.

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were forced to suffer in the most horrible ways. This might mean having to undergo forced sterilization for eugenic reasons, being murdered for reasons arising from the economics of war, or becoming the involuntary subject of human experiments to advance the military medicine’s superordinated need for knowledge. It is shocking how willing doctors were to participate in these crimes. Even more shocking is the fact that they did more than simply obey orders. Many, in fact, frequently acted on their own initiative in performing forced sterilization, participating in the mass murder of the ill and the handicapped, or in conducting lethal human experiments at concentration camps. Other factors also played a role in this development. First of all, when the Second World War began, ethical standards shifted significantly once again, and the loosening of moral inhibitions progressed swiftly. Both the campaigns of murdering the sick and experiments on human beings at concentration camps became increasingly brutal and anarchical as time passed. Initially, this corresponded to a similar radicalization in medical ethics. The morality of war medicine was based on a crude form of utilitarianism and opened up more and more options for action deemed to be moral. We cannot, however, simply explain away all lethal experiments on human beings or “wild euthanasia” on the basis of the concepts of morality. Often, reality was even running ahead of the perverted ethical theory. Other situational factors also played a role. For instance, scientists aggressively engaged in research simply took advantage of the specific opportunities at the concentration camps, using the extremely deregulated moral situation for their own purposes. Beyond this, an ethics of over-fulfilling one’s obligations based on the Nazi version of the Categorical Imperative formulated by the Nazi jurist Hans Frank was instrumental in leading to and encouraging a greater readiness to act on one’s own initiative: “Act in such a way that the Fuehrer would approve of your actions if he were aware of them.”70 The effort to make the presumed will of Hitler their own might offer some explanation for the behavior of the aforementioned directors of institutions who murdered their patients without situational constraints or pressure from a chain of command. In the final analysis, medicine under the Nazis cannot be understood as arising from an absence of morality. Ethical concepts did in fact exist, concepts based on values that emerged from the Nazi ideology and dis70

Hans Frank, Die Technik des Staates (Berlin: Deutscher Rechtsverlag, 1942), p. 15. See also Kershaw’s model of “Working towards the Führer,” Ian Kershaw, “Working towards the Führer. Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship,” Contemporary European History, vol. 2 (1993) no. 2, pp. 103-118.

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placed the moral maxims which up to that time had been held to be valid. The possibility that such moral abysses could open up again in the future can by no means be dismissed. To quote Mitscherlich and Mielke: “Moral standards are an edifice built on volcanic ground.”71

71

Mitscherlich/Mielke, Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit, p. 7.

“MERCY KILLING” AND ECONOMISM: ON ETHICAL PATTERNS OF JUSTIFICATION FOR NAZI EUTHANASIA UWE KAMINSKY

How did the National Socialists justify their campaigns of mass murder? The view that they were just unscrupulous criminals without any ethics because they kept euthanasia and the Holocaust a secret is not tenable. The crime paradigm sheds little light on the matter when considering the wide range of people in society such as physicians, attorneys, nurses, and government officials who were contributors (and sometimes even accomplices) to these crimes. On the other hand, the notion that there are genuine Nazi counter-ethics still to be discovered and that these will emerge from some high plane ideologically independent of existing value patterns also seems to hold little promise. This viewpoint represents another extreme. A mediating thesis, according to which it was not necessary to overcome moral precepts or scruples to be ready to murder people, is followed by a whole array of approaches to Nazi mass crimes. For instance, Harald Welzer cites Norbert Elias when he argues that “We are confronted with a social development where respect for human life definitely does not depend on Christian or Enlightenment concepts of humanity. Instead, it depends on whether this life is defined as being functional or dysfunctional for the social model of the “We” group with its superior power.”1 In his Studies on the Germans, Norbert Elias had emphasized the “code of honor” that emerged in the second half of the 19th century and that was valid among the German bourgeoisie long before any “code of morality” with its humanitarian ideals.2 In addition, there was in Nazism a predominant concept of super- and sub-ordination premised upon a racist world view and the relativity of 1

Harald Welzer, Verweilen beim Grauen. Essays zum wissenschaftlichen Umgang mit dem Holocaust (Tübingen: Edition diskord, 1997), p. 10. 2 Norbert Elias, Studien über die Deutschen. Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990), pp. 130.

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values. That said, there was by no means a majority in favor of killing those who were different, although various Nazi protagonists saw this policy as being subjectively correct. Indeed, the killing programs had to be a blow to the reputation of a Fuehrer who rested his rule on charismatic legitimation. The justifications cited originally did not come from Nazism. Instead, they originated from already existing debates on topics such as racial hygiene and euthanasia. This essay will sketch out the basic patterns of the debate on euthanasia after the turn of the century. The multi-factorial character which is the trademark of the various Nazi euthanasia campaigns also applies to its ethical justification. However, two key reasons come to the fore: the metaphor of ‘mercy killing’ and the economic motives that emerged during the war. Both of these reasons pushed eugenic or racial hygiene reasons (and therefore exclusively ideological reasons) into the background. I will begin by surveying the development of the euthanasia discussion in order to identify the ethical concepts behind it. Here, I will focus on the interrelation of the euthanasia debate with the debate on eugenics and on the way the latter was amplified during the Nazi era. Next, I will discuss the resistance by the Churches as the ethical opposite to the destruction of life. Finally, I will describe the spontaneity with which euthanasia was carried out during the war based on the argument that there was an emergency situation. It is especially this “emergency” argument which reconnects the behavior to the ethical values that were respected before and after Nazism.

I. The Development of the Euthanasia Debate in Germany (1895-1933) There was a whole series of euthanasia debates in Germany starting at the end of the 19th century. The first stages of escalation were marked by Adolf Jost’s The Right to Death (Das Recht auf den Tod) from 1895 and Karl Binding’s and Alfred E. Hoche’s programmatic Approval for Destroying Life Unworthy of Living” (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens) from 1920.3 Commencing with a debate on eutha3

See the following collection of sources: Gerd Grübler (ed.), Quellen zur deutschen Euthanasie-Diskussion 1895-1941 (Berlin/Münster: Lit, 2007). JochenChristoph Kaiser/Kurt Nowak/Michael Schwartz, Eugenik, Sterilisation, “Euthanasis.” Politische Biologie in Deutschland 1895-1945. Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Buchverlag Union, 1992). See also the discussions by: Udo Benzenhöfer, Der gute Tod? Euthanasie und Sterbehilfe in Geschichte und Gegenwart, revised and updated edition (Göttingen 2009). Christian Merkel, “Tod den Idioten” –

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nasia alone, the discussion subsequently expanded to include the issue of “destroying life unworthy of living” (Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens). Even if the debate on euthanasia was motivated less by racial hygiene and more by considerations of utility, invoking the ideal of autonomy over one’s own life, it would have been inconceivable without a selectionist social Darwinism, which also abbreviated the concept of humanity. The abandonment of the idea that human beings were created in the image of God paved the way for this abbreviated concept. In stark contrast to the viewpoint of natural law reasoning, human life became a legally protected interest that could be balanced against other legally protected interests. The utilitarian version of the idea of euthanasia developed in close connection with the idea of sympathy.4 The rejection of everything transcendental made all suffering seem meaningless if there was no prospect of recovery. The secularization of value horizons previously dominated by Christian perspectives was an important historical constraint for exerting influence on the euthanasia debate. The initial focus of this debate was on the individual´s right to dispose of his or her own life. The state had the role of providing this right with validity by means of laws. The debate on euthanasia had been linked to the legal discussion since the turn of the century about whether killing on request should be punishable. This was considered a “privileged homicide offence” (privilegiertes Tötungsdelikt), the sentence for which could be as little as three years in prison. The proponents of euthanasia called for a reduction in the penalty for people guilty of killing byrequest, or even for letting them go unpunished. However, the primary focus was on assisting someone to die not on “destroying life unworthy of living,” where a bal-

Eugenik und Euthanasie in juristischer Rezeption vom Kaiserreich zur Hitlerzeit (Berlin: Logos-Verlag, 2006). Michael Schwartz, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland (1895-1945),” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 46 (1998) no. 4, pp. 617-665. Idem, “Eugenik und ‘Euthanasie’: Die internationale Debatte und Praxis bis 1933/45,” in Klaus-Dietmar Henke (ed.), Tödliche Medizin im Nationalsozialismus. Von der Rassenhygiene zum Massenmord (Cologne/Weimar/ Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), pp. 65-83. 4 See Kurt Nowak, “Euthanasie” und Sterilisierung im “Dritten Reich.” Die Konfrontation der evangelischen und katholischen Kirche mit dem “Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses” und der “Euthanasie”-Aktion, 2nd edition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), pp. 45-48 and Hans-Walter Schmuhl following him, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” 1890-1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), pp. 106-114.

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ancing of happiness and unhappiness in life was introduced in calculated units of value. The degradation of human life witnessed in the mass killing on the front lines of the First World War constituted a major escalation of this development. The reference to dying in war was ever-present as a background argument while the idea of relativizing life was enormously revaluated. However, it was not only death on the front lines and the experience of borderline situations between life and death that precipitated his change in outlook. It was also the extreme number of deaths at Germany’s nursing homes and mental-health facilities. In the final analysis, physicians were powerless and exhausted by a “war where you couldn’t spend any time on the dying because you had to dedicate your strength to seriously wounded soldiers who still had prospects of living.”5 All of these developments catalyzed the debate on euthanasia. The horror of the war and the way that it impressed itself on triage medicine under catastrophic circumstances shifted the debate away from euthanasia for specific, self-determined cases toward the wholesale “destruction of life unworthy of living.” The Berlinbased attorney Alexander Elster wrote in 1923 that “the World War swept away hecatombs of the best and eugenically fittest people, and it makes us less fearful of thinking about destroying life unworthy of living than before.”6 The programmatic work “Approval for Destroying Life Unworthy of Living: Its Dimension and Form” (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens. Ihr Maß und ihre Form) by Karl Binding (a teacher of criminal law) and the psychiatrist Alfred E. Hoche was published for the first time in 1920. This book raised the question: “Is there human life that has lost the property of being a legally protected interest to such an extent that its continuation has lost all its value for the individual and the society”?7 The authors’ answer was in the affirmative concerning three groups of people. First, it applied to “people who were irretrievably lost due to illness or having been wounded” and had an “urgent desire to be delivered from pain.” The second group was “the incurably imbecilic.” The third group consisted of coma patients who “would awaken to name5

See, for example, Ewald Meltzer, Das Problem der Abkürzung “lebensunwerten” Lebens (Halle/S.: C. Marhold, 1925), p. 70, and Merkel “Tod den Idioten,” pp. 305-328. 6 Alexander Elster, “Eugenetische Lebensbeseitigung,” Archiv für Frauenkunde und Eugenetik, Sexualbiologie und Vererbungslehre, vol. 9 (1923), pp. 39-47, here 39. 7 Karl Binding/Alfred E. Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens. Ihr Maß und ihre Form (Leipzig: Meiner, 1920), p. 27.

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less misery if they should be aroused from their unconsciousness.”8 Binding and Hoche demanded legal “Approval for Destroying Life Unworthy of Living” for these groups. After this book had been published (and subsequently had led to a heated debate among attorneys and physicians), the concept of euthanasia was increasingly considered a generic term which encompassed varying aspects of killing, including the destruction of life.9 By the end of the 1920s, euthanasia not only referred to painless killing, it also included “destroying life unworthy of living” (Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens). Furthermore, the targeted statutory regulation of assisting someone to die became a vehicle for expanding the scope of “destroying life unworthy of living.” Thus, the liberalization of policies on assisted dying was transformed into an anti-liberal duty to die those individuals had who were considered “unworthy of living” (lebensunwert).10 The uprooting of values brought on by the First World War made euthanasia a topic that many physicians and social-welfare politicians thought they could discuss openly. In addition, the economic problems of the Weimar social-welfare state meant that some people participating in this discussion felt euthanasia should be expanded in the direction of “destroying life unworthy of living.” After all, the costs of nursing care for those who were mentally ill without hope for a cure seemed too high to many people in the responsible positions of the social-welfare system, especially considering the economic misery of healthy people. A case in point is Paul Erfurth who was the director of the Bergisch Social-Welfare Institution in Aprath. Erfurth’s report on the conference of the German Association for Public and Private Welfare held in Frankfurt, Main on 7/8 March 1925 reflected the mood of many of those attending the conference. According to Erfurth, the unnamed representative “of a very large municipality that is now impoverished” had made the following statement: “I was with Bodelschwingh in Bethel where I saw a 30-year-old idiot well cared for in a nice bed. I have three orphans at home who are normal and they 8

Ibid., pp. 29, 31, 33. See Michael Opielka, “Psychiatrie in Deutschland auf dem Weg zur Vernichtung,” in Volk und Gesundheit. Heilen und vernichten im Nationalsozialismus, ed. by Projektgruppe “Volk und Gesundheit” (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1982), pp. 127-146, especially pp. 137-143. See also Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 25-28. 10 The practical relevance of assistance to dying discussed here was probably exaggerated. Meltzer pointed out that he was only aware of two cases in thirteen years of directing an institution with approximately 220 deaths “where I used narcotics to ease the symptoms and pain of dying” (Meltzer, Das Problem der Abkürzung “lebensunwerten” Lebens, p. 20). 9

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share one bed. I cannot go along with that. This is the reason why I am for eliminating these wretched [Elenden] so that my orphans can have a better bed to sleep in”11. Erfurth, previously a dedicated Lutheran proponent of racial hygiene, although a vigorous opponent of euthanasia,12 complained of the climate that became predominant after Binding and Hoche´s book had been published. “Some of the people talking in Frankfurt were not followers of Binding and Hoche, but in their eagerness to save money they unconsciously fell prey to the undercurrent.”13 Erfurth’s report notes that even the Saxon Ministerial Counselor Hans Maier was said to have communicated at the same meeting that his ministry intended to make proposals for “destroying life unworthy of living” to the Interior Ministry of the Reich. We should call to mind the emphasis placed on the economic pattern of reasoning that was set off by the experience of welfare state crises since these debates on euthanasia intensified whenever the costs for the welfare of supposedly “useless eaters” were perceived to be too high in periods of crisis.14 The debates on euthanasia and all of the arguments had already taken shape long before the period of Nazism. Euthanasia was discussed cumulatively or alternatively as a means for unburdening the economy, as an act of mercy (‘mercy killing’), and as an instrument of eugenics.15 In ethical terms, this was a mixture of individual ethics and collective ethics, but by the time the Nazis came into power the emphasis had shifted to a 11

Paul Erfurth, “Zur Verordnung über die Fürsorgepflicht vom 13. Februar 1924 und zur Verordnung über die Durchführung des Reichsjugendwohlfahrtsgesetzes vom 14. Februar 1924, in: Das Evangelische Rheinland II/7 (Juli 1925),” pp. 87-89 (partially reprinted in: Günther van Norden, Das 20. Jahrhundert (Dusseldorf: Presseverband, 1990), pp. 118-120), here p. 88. See the Christmas request by Erfurth, arguing in a similar fashion in 1931 (Uwe Kaminsky, Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” im Rheinland. Evangelische Erziehungsanstalten sowie Heilund Pflegeanstalten 1933-1945 (Cologne/Pulheim/Bonn Rheinland-Verlag, 1995), pp. 683). 12 Regarding Paul Erfurth (1873-1944): Kaminsky, Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” im Rheinland, pp. 142-144, 299-301. 13 Ibid., p. 300. 14 We not only want to emphasize the broad reception of the writings by Binding/Hoche in 1921-1925 following the radical changes of the First World War and the hyperinflation, but also the increased number of publications after the Great Depression and the establishment of Nazi rule in 1933-1936. See the chronological list of the people participating in the debate, most of whom were attorneys, in Merkel, “Tod den Idioten,” pp. 1-10. 15 See, for example, Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 115-125.

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kind of collective ethics individuals had to submit to. The “deadly sympathy” that shifted the “act of mercy” from a self-determined life to one determined by others concealed what had still remained of any memory of individual ethics, – for example, in the later metaphor “sacrificing for the national community” (Opfer für die Volksgemeinschaft). Of course, anyone who did not accept this sacrificial ethical imperative would have to be forced to obey a higher-level community ethics as codified in the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring” (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) in 1933.16

II. Euthanasia Debates at the Time of Nazism (1933-1941) Nazism’s rise to power marked an important step toward radicalization because it promoted the implementation of euthanasia into practical terms. However, there had to be a justification for this step. In his systematic description of Racial Hygiene, Nazism, and Euthanasia (Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie), Hans-Walter Schmuhl described the double-tracked nature of the debates on racial hygiene and euthanasia.17 On the one hand, the racial hygiene paradigm formulated at the end of the 19th century envisioned a program of negative eugenics. The goal of this program was to once again make what was happening in society subject to the natural laws which guaranteed the selection of the best genotypes. The method for achieving this goal was not only promoting people with genotypes that were considered “highly valuable” (hochwertig), but also preventing people from propagating if they had genotypes looked upon as “inferior” (minderwertig). “Eugenic ethics” took one of two forms, either 16

A similar point is made by Andreas Frewer with reference to Emil Abderhalden: Andreas Frewer, Medizin und Moral in Weimarer Republik und Nationalsozialismus. Die Zeitschrift “Ethik” unter Emil Abderhalden (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2000), pp. 237. 17 On this point see Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 29-126; there are similar overviews in Gerhard Fichtner, “Die Euthanasiediskussion in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik,” in Albin Eser (ed.), Suizid und Euthanasie als human- und sozialwissenschaftliches Problem (Stuttgart: Enke, 1976), pp. 24-40, and in Jochen Fischer, “Von der Utopie bis zur ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens,’” in Hans Christoph von Hase (ed.), Evangelische Dokumente zur Ermordung der “unheilbar Kranken“ unter der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft in den Jahren 1939 bis 1945 (Stuttgart: Innere Mission und Hilfswerk der Evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands Hauptgeschäftsstelle, 1964), pp. 35-65. The latter misses the double-tracked nature of the intellectual history as analyzed by Schmuhl, who cited both racial-hygiene theories and the debate on euthanasia.

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as “developmental ethics” (to quote the philologist and Social Darwinist Alexander Tille) or as “generative ethics” (to quote the race hygienicist Wilhelm Schallmayer). In both of these forms, the “obligations we have toward our race” and the duty of present individuals to subordinate their interests to those of future generations gave priority to “race as the unit of maintenance and developmental unity for continuing life” (to quote Alfred Ploetz), especially in terms of values.18 On the other hand, a debate about euthanasia and killing by request had been initiated in the 1890s, although it was based rather on utilitarian considerations than on racial hygiene. The negative value of an individual’s life was emphasized as a medical indication for killing, both to oneself and also to society. Adolf Jost demanded the “Right to Death” (Recht auf den Tod) in a controversial book in 1895 and took as its basis an individual’s situation “where there is a minimum of usefulness to his fellow man and maximum of suffering in his life.” “The value of human life might not only be zero but also negative.”19 The connection between these two developments can be seen in how limited the concept of considering human life as valuable was in those days. Selectionist Social Darwinism lurking in the background of the racial hygiene paradigm abandoned the Christian concept of human beings having been created in the image of God by only allowing for certain types of people. Considering human beings in terms of their utility while disregarding dignity and human rights also limited human existence to whatever human beings had to contribute to society. Still, the euthanasia idea was not central to the racial hygiene program, where strategies of preventing conception by prohibiting marriage, confinement in asylums, and later sterilization were seen as more promising. At the same time, racial hygiene considerations did not have a conclusive role to play in the debate on euthanasia or killing by request. There is, however, a link in the intellectual history of the debates about “eugenics” and euthanasia. The two con-

18

Peter Weingart, “Eugenische Utopien. Entwürfe für die Rationalisierung der menschlichen Entwicklung,” in Harald Weltzer (ed.), Nationalsozialismus und Moderne (Tübingen: Edition diskord, 1993), pp. 166-183, especially 175-178. Weingart states that the evolutionary utopias and ethics did not achieve the status of a quasi-religion. 19 Adolf Jost, Das Recht auf den Tod. Sociale Studie (Göttingen: Dietrich, 1895), pp. 6 and 26. For tracing the legal debate on euthanasia see Vera Große-Vehne, Tötung auf Verlangen (§ 216 StGB), “Euthanasie” und Sterbehilfe. Reformdiskussion und Gesetzgebung seit 1870 (Berlin: Berliner WissenschaftsVerlag, 2005). Christian Merkel, “Tod den Idioten.”

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cepts are not just “two different pairs of shoes.”20 Forced sterilization carried out after 1933 was an injustice in its own right and cannot be perceived simply as a preliminary stage to euthanasia.21 Most authors agree that the negative eugenic legislation of the Nazi state facilitated the transition from contraception through forced sterilization to destruction via euthanasia. However, historical research has proven that the idea of a programmatic development from contraception to destroying “life unworthy of living” was not sufficiently differentiated.22 The principal line connecting eugenics and euthanasia was the “biologization of the social” (Biologisierung des Sozialen) under social Darwinist precepts. This process devalued the principle that all people have the same rights, replacing it with a calculus of social utility.23 We can be sure that 20

See the criticism of the much too close association of eugenics and “euthanasia” by Michael Schwartz, “‘Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie?’ Kritische Anfragen an eine These Hans-Walter Schmuhls,” Westfälische Forschungen, vol. 46 (1996), pp. 604-622 and the answer by Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Eugenik und ‘Euthanasie’ – Zwei Paar Schuhe? A reply to Michael Schwartz.” Westfälische Forschungen, vol. 47 (1997), pp. 757-762. Recently Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Die Genesis der ‘Euthanasie’. Interpretationsansätze,” in Maike Rotzoll/Gerrit Hohendorf/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/Christoph Mundt/ Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie“-Aktion “T4“ und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/ Zurich: Schöningh, 2010), pp. 66-73. 21 Gisela Bock worked this out in a major study on the ideological framework, the political actions, and way people were socially affected by forced sterilization: Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus. Untersuchungen zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), especially pp. 348-351, 380-383; furthermore, Christian Gansmüller, Die Erbgesundheitspolitik des Dritten Reiches. Planung, Durchführung und Durchsetzung (Cologne/Vienna: Böhlau, 1987), especially pp. 34. 22 See Michael Schwartz, “Medizinische Tyrannei: Eugenisches Denken und Handeln in international vergleichender Perspektive (1900-1945),” especially considering international developments in eugenics, Jahrbuch der Juristischen Zeitgeschichte, vol. 7 (2005/2006), pp. 37-54. Idem, “Medizinische Tyrannei und die Kirchen. Christliche Haltungen zu Eugenik und ‘Euthanasie’ in international vergleichender Perspektive (1890-1945).” Zeitschrift für bayerische Kirchengeschichte, vol. 74 (2005), pp. 28-53. Furthermore, the articles in: Regina Wecker/Sabine Braunschweig/Gabriela Imboden/Bernhard Küchenhoff/Hans Jakob Ritter (eds.), Wie nationalsozialistisch ist die Eugenik? Internationale Debatten zur Geschichte der Eugenik im 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne/Vienna/ Weimar: Böhlau, 2009). 23 For this point see Peter Weingart/Jürgen Kroll/Kurt Bayertz, Rasse, Blut und Gene. Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), pp. 527.

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accepting the idea of mental illness being inherited facilitated the acceptance of mandatory racial hygiene measures. However, murdering mentally ill individuals was not at all based on any supposed inheritance of their condition. The hereditary health policy of the Nazi state provided a “substantial impulse in the direction of overcompensation”24 and had an “almost surplus radicalism”25 that tended to blur the boundaries between contraception and destruction. This crossing of boundaries was evident in the transition from a traditional form of discrimination, forced sterilization in the public fields of the economy, policymaking and culture, to a modern form of interfering with the private sphere, not to mention life and limb. A clear sign of this change was the introduction of a eugenic indication for abortions in 1935. This step facilitated the transition from preventing a life that will “suffer[s] from an inherited disease” through the destruction of unborn life to destroying already-born and adult life.26 Accepting the science of eugenics and the discriminatory ideology of the national community of Nazism doubtlessly lowered the level of inhibition against killing, especially at psychiatric institutions.27 This is where we should identify what might be characterized as “crossing boundaries” in the attempts to merge bioscience with biopolitics as Hans-Walter Schmuhl has documented in detail, exemplarily using the history of the “Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics” (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik).28 Only under Nazism was the state able to institutionalize racial hygiene29 because the polycratic structure (meaning the existence of various competing carriers of dominance) promoted radicalization on all levels. The fact that there were com24

Kurt Nowak, “Euthanasie” und Sterilisation im “Dritten Reich“, p. 38. See Schmuhl, “Eugenik und ‘Euthanasie’ – Zwei Paar Schuhe?,” p. 761. 26 See Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 348-349. Idem, “Krankenmord, Judenmord und nationalsozialistische Rassenpolitik: Überlegungen zu einigen neueren Forschungshypothesen,” in Frank Bajohr/Werner Johe/Uwe Lohalm (eds.), Zivilisation und Barbarei. Die widersprüchlichen Potentiale der Moderne (Hamburg: Christians, 1991), p. 302. 27 Peter Weingart, “Eugenik – Eine angewandte Wissenschaft. Utopien der Menschenzüchtung zwischen Wissenschaftsentwicklung und Politik,” in Peter Lundgreen (ed.), Wissenschaft im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp1985), pp. 314-349, especially p. 331. 28 Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Grenzüberschreitungen. Das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik 1927-1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2005). 29 See Bock, “Krankenmord, Judenmord und nationalsozialistische Rassenpolitik,” p. 292. 25

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peting blocks of power next to and opposite each other in the governmental and party framework intensified the struggle for special authorization and the “ health conduct” (Gesundheitsführung) of the Nazi state.30 For instance, the conflict between the governmental and the party health bureaucracy in 1936/37 led to discussions about changing the law on forced sterilization and resulted in the formation of a “Reich Committee for Hereditary Health Issues” (Reichsausschuss für Erbgesundheitsfragen). This committee of experts for making decisions concerning disputed cases provided the preliminary form of an organization for the later “children’s euthanasia” (Kindereuthanasie) and euthanasia involving patients at mental health institutions. This is where the radical advocates of the Nazi hereditary health policy gathered, simultaneously being the unequivocal supporters of “destroying life unworthy of living.” However, due to the lack of contemporary historical documents, we cannot demonstrate precisely to this very day whether there were any concrete, long-term, and deliberate plans to murder children. Therefore the eugenic argument which gained so much momentum in Nazism did not automatically lead to “destroying life unworthy of living.” In several studies, Michael Schwartz has pointed out that the utopia of a supposedly human eugenic reconstruction of society by sterilizing “people suffering from inherited diseases” could also be used in regard to euthanasia.31 Stefan Kühl argues that several prominent eugenicists participated in Nazi euthanasia because they were disappointed by the war with its counter-selective effects. In the moral universe of these eugenicists, the killing of people with disabilities was justified because it worked in the opposite direction and as something like a “peace policy” (Friedenspolitik).32

30

See Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Sterilisation, ‘Euthanasie’, ‘Endlösung.’ Erbgesundheitspolitik unter den Bedingungen charismatischer Herrschaft,” in Norbert Frei, (ed.), Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik in der NS-Zeit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), pp. 295-308. See also Michael H. Kater, “Die ‘Gesundheitsführung’ des Deutschen Volkes,” Medizinhistorisches Journal, vol. 18 (1983), pp. 349-375. Winfried Süß, Der “Volkskörper” im Krieg. Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1939-1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003). 31 Schwartz, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland,” pp. 660-664. 32 Stefan Kühl, “The Relationship between Eugenics und the So-Called ‘Euthanasia Action’ in Nazi Germany. A Eugenically Motivated Peace Policy and the Killing of the Mentally Handicapped during the Second World War,” in Margit Szölliösi-Janze (ed.), Science in the Third Reich, (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001), pp. 185-210.

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On the contrary, the thesis that eugenics was the same as euthanasia (a view that was repeatedly put forward by many conservative critics)33 was so threatening to the hereditary health policy and the forced sterilization program that in the early years of Nazi rule, Nazi advocates vehemently denied that they had any intention of creating a euthanasia regulation.34 The reason for this was not only to be found in tactical considerations but also in the fact that the Nazi regime’s policy of murdering children had been unclear in the beginning. Also, the not uniformly held positions of various representatives on the Nazi side were not brought into line, later. In June, 1934, Hans Harmsen, the director of the Health Care Department at the Central Committee for the Inner Mission, pointed out in the magazine Gesundheitsfürsorge that frequently “the question of sterilization is linked to the question of destroying life unworthy of living apparently from a lack of knowledge” in debates on the law on forced sterilization. In contrast to this, he emphasized the fact that “just as the Church and the Inner Mission reject the demands made from time to time to destroy life unworthy of living, the same applies to governmental offices and the party.”35 Harmsen appealed specifically to a speech by the Head of the Nazi Physicians’ League, Gerhard Wagner. At the end of 1936, the film department of the Reich Propaganda Ministry vetoed a scheduled euthanasia documentary entitled “Ruined Life” (Verpfuschtes Leben) because euthanasia was illegal.36 33

For instance, Paul-Gerhard Braune 1933. See Uwe Kaminsky, “‘Wer ist gemeinschaftsunfähig?’ Paul Gerhard Braune, die Rassenhygiene und die NSEuthanasie,” in Jan Cantow/Jochen-Christoph Kaiser (eds.), Paul Gerhard Braune (1887–1954). Ein Mann der Kirche und Diakonie in schwieriger Zeit, (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2005), pp. 114-139, especially 115-122. 34 This is the obligation the NSDAP State Representative Leonardo Conti, later “Reichsgesundheitsführer,” expressed at the beginning of 1933 in a reply in the magazine Arbeiterwohlfahrt; he promised to care for people with incurable illnesses and children with hereditary afflictions as “dictated by our people’s common bond and brotherly love,” as such countering the accusation of advocating euthanasia. See Schwartz, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland,” pp. 630 f. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Die biopolitische Entwicklungsdiktatur des Nationalsozialismus und der ‘Reichsgesundheitsführer’ Leonardo Conti,” in Klaus-Dietmar Henke (ed.), Tödliche Medizin im Nationalsozialismus. Von der Rassenhygiene zum Massenmord (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), pp. 101-117, especially pp. 109. 35 Hans Harmsen, “Sterilisierung – Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens,” Gesundheitsfürsorge, vol. 8 (1934), p. 125. 36 Karl-Heinz Roth, “Filmpropaganda für die Vernichtung der Geisteskranken und Behinderten im ‘Dritten Reich,’” in Götz Aly (ed.), Reform und Gewissen. ‘Euthanasie’ im Dienst des Fortschritts, (Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1985), pp. 125-

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Hitler’s supposed will (he always had the last word in the polycratic Nazi system of dominance) was not explicit in this respect in 1939. In Mein Kampf he had spoken more about restricting the reproduction of people who were “inferior” in his eyes than of “destroying life unworthy of living.”37 Still, his statements delegitimized the right to life of ill and handicapped people by attempting to eradicate everyone who was ill. This same program was also advocated in propaganda films by the “Racial Policy Office” (Rassenpolitisches Amt) such as The Sins of the Fathers (Die Sünden der Väter, 1935), Off the Path (Abseits vom Wege, 1935), Hereditarily Ill (Erbkrank, 1936), What You Have Inherited (Was Du ererbet, 1936), and Victims of the Past (Opfer der Vergangenheit, 1937). Initially, these productions were only internal party training materials with limited public impact.38 These films (along with a “cultural and a documentary film” that had been planned by the central euthanasia office after the end of 1939) attempted to promote revulsion when presenting “ballast existences” (Ballastexistenzen) and the argument of high expenses in an effort to morally legitimize and propagate euthanasia. However, these films did not have any impact on the decision-making process for Nazi euthanasia which had been underway since the spring of 1939. It was only the movie I Accuse (Ich klage an), released in 1941 and based on the novel by Hellmuth Unger that addressed the topic of euthanasia effectively. This movie had been planned and produced following the autumn of 1940 at 193, here 129. The press instructions were similarly reticent in discussing Unger’s novel “Sendung und Gewissen” (cf. Claudia Sybille Kiessling, Dr. med. Hellmuth Unger (1891 - 1953). Dichterarzt und ärztlicher Pressepolitiker in der Weimarer Republik und im Nationalsozialismus (Husum: Matthiesen, 1999), especially p. 75). 37 See the passages compiled in the bill of indictments of the Director of Public Prosecutions at the Frankfurt a. M. Higher Regional Court against Dr. Werner Heyde inter alia on 22 May 22 1962 in Thomas Vormbaum (ed.), “Euthanasie” vor Gericht. Die Anklageschrift des Generalstaatsanwalts beim OLG Frankfurt/M. gegen Dr. Werner Heye u. a vom 22. Mai 1962 (Berlin: Berliner WissenschaftsVerlag, 2005), pp. 14-16. Somewhat similar to Hitler’s final speech before the 1929 Nuremberg Party Conference: “Würde Deutschland jährlich eine Million Kinder bekommen und 700.000 bis 800.000 der Schwächsten beseitigt, dann würde am Ende das Ergebnis vielleicht sogar eine Kräftesteigerung sein. – If in Germany one million children were born each year and 700,000 to 800,000 thousand of the weakest were eliminated, the final result might even be an increae in power.” (Völkischer Beobachter, 7 August 7,1929, cited in Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus, p. 24). 38 Roth, Filmpropaganda für die Vernichtung der Geisteskranken und Behinderten im ‘Dritten Reich’, pp. 129-132.

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which time the protests and the resistance to people having to fill out registry forms for official records and euthanasia became noticeable.39 The change in the atmosphere after the Nazis seizure of power also became evident in legal documents on the complex of topics concerning euthanasia.40 The voices previously advocating “destroying life unworthy of living” became more publicly prominent, the memorandum by the Prussian Minister of Justice, Hanns Kerrl, from October, 1933 being an early example. Kerrl wanted to leave the issue of drawing up a legal policy for euthanasia to the state. The conservative attorneys around Reich Minister of Justice Gürtner in the official commission for punitive law in 1934/35 rejected this proposal, but the majority position in the commission changed by August 1939, putting forward the following counterrecommendation for a draft law: “The life of a person requiring permanent institutionalization due to incurable mental illness and being incapable of surviving in life can be ended early and painlessly for that person by imperceptible medical measures.”41

Proposals for laws such as those mentioned here were also discussed in the years when the mass murder of the mentally ill and the handicapped had long since begun. These attempts to create a statutory regulation on euthanasia (urged by the physicians involved to protect their own interests) continued until the autumn of 1940, when Hitler rejected them.42 This meant that, formally, euthanasia remained punishable by law during the entire period of Nazi rule. The euthanasia program was supposedly legalized only by authorization of the Fuehrer, and this authorization was supposed to be kept secret.43 Thus, during the war, euthanasia was increasing39

Ibid., pp. 132-147. See Schwartz, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland,” pp. 644, Merkel, “Tod den Idioten,” pp. 277-281. 41 See Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 291-297. Schwartz, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland,” pp. 656. 42 In a letter of summer 1940 to the head of the Reich Chancellery, Lammers, Reich Minister of Justice Gürtner stated that Hitler had expressly ruled out a statutory regulation in respect to the “euthanasia” question (Alexander Mitscherlich/Fred Mielke (eds.), Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit. Dokumente des Nürnberger Ärzteprozesses, 2nd ed, (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Bücherei, 1960), p. 201). See Karl-Heinz Roth/Götz Aly, “Die Diskussion über die Legalisierung der nationalsozialistischen Anstaltsmorde in den Jahren 1938-1941,” in Karl-Heinz Roth (ed.), Erfassung zur Vernichtung. Von der Sozialhygiene zum “Gesetz über Euthanasie” (Berlin: Verlagsgesellschaft Gesundheit, 1984), pp. 101-179. 43 This apparent legality was noted in various proceedings in the post-war era. Recently, the attorney Friedrich Dencker has argued that one should regard Hitler’s 40

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ly pushed to the sphere of the instrumental Nazi state, a sphere that expanded more and more at the expense of a state governed by moral and legal norms.

III. The Churches’ Rejection of Euthanasia It was not possible to violate the Biblical prohibition on killing in the period of Nazism without further ado. If we accept the view that Nazi rule was charismatic in its legitimation using the categories employed by Max Weber,44 it was possible to justify the open violation of moral norms only for good reasons. The Christian Churches remained firm in their moral opposition to any form of euthanasia. On the Protestant side, the Eugenic Committee of the Inner Mission had been in existence since 1931; from 1934 on it was called the Standing Committee for Race Maintenance and Racial Hygiene. This Standing Committee sought to have a hand in formulating the hereditary health policy but also to prevent the extensions of this policy in the direction of “destroying life unworthy of living.”45 The committee criticized the introduction of the eugenic indication for abortion in 1935. In advance, committee members saw this change as a breach in the dam preventing the destruction of life. They made a public declaration secret decree as a contemporarily applicable law. He considers the convictions of the post-war era to be disguised repercussions of a new (politically necessary) law. See Friedrich Dencker, “Strafverfolgung der Euthanasie-Täter nach 1945,” Jahrbuch der Juristischen Zeitgeschichte, vol. 7 (2005/2006), pp. 113-124. 44 For instance, Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. 45 For contemporary discussions see: Hans Harmsen, “Die Verwirklichung eugenetischer Forderungen innerhalb der evangelischen Liebestätigkeit,” in Hans Roemer (ed.), Bericht über die Zweite Deutsche Tagung für psychische Hygiene in Bonn am 21. Mai 1932 mit dem Hauptthema: Die eugenischen Aufgaben der psychischen Hygiene (Berlin/Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1932), p. 83-86, here 86: “Die betonte, rein wirtschaftlich zweckvolle Einstellung der Eugenik übersieht die tiefen Werte und die Bedeutung, die das Leiden in dieser Welt als Schule der Barmherzigkeit und zur Weckung der menschlichen Liebeskräfte hat. Es erscheint bedenklich, wenn die eugenetischen Maßnahmen nicht tiefer begründet werden, als in dem bloßen Ziel, die Wohlfahrtslasten zu vermindern. d. h. mit reinen Nützlichkeitserwägungen.” Also see the assessment by Jochen-Christoph Kaiser, Protestantismus im 20. Jahrhundert. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Inneren Mission 1914-1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), pp. 358-359, 365-366; concerning the Treysa Declaration see Kurt Nowak, “Sterilisation, Krankenmord und Innere Mission im ‘Dritten Reich,’” in Achim Thom/Gennadij I. Caregorodcev (eds.), Medizin unterm Hakenkreu (Berlin: Verlag Volk und Gesundheit, 1989), pp. 167177, here 171.

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against the new policy, without being able to prevent its implementation. On the Catholic side, abortion was in any event seen as equivalent to destroying human life, which they rejected for reasons of natural rights.46 Again, in 1936 and 1937, the Protestant Standing Committee paid a great deal of attention to the debate on euthanasia. The Medical Counselor Ewald Meltzer had come to the fore in 1925 with vehement criticism of Binding and Hoche’s book which, since 1920, had strongly influenced the debate on “destroying life unworthy of living.”47 At a meeting in the summer of 1937 Melzer restated his position opposing “destroying life unworthy of living.” Using arguments that paralleled his 1925 book criticizing euthanasia, he asserted that “if there had been an order in 1916 that idiots were supposed to gently be conveyed out of the realm of the living, we would have had to apply the emergency paragraph of that time. This is probably the intention for the new penal code. It states that we are not interested in destruction and that this will be reserved for a special ordinance. I would understand a step such as this in serious cases of food shortage or where space is urgently needed for the wounded. A strong and healthy individual must risk his or her life; in a similar way, also the ill individual must pay his or her tribute to the fatherland. In a case such as this, I would consider it acceptable. May God grant that we never have to find ourselves in such a difficult position.”48 In this response to the commission’s work on the penal code Meltzer espoused a hierarchy of values which indicated that, in emergency situations, he would agree to destroying the “ill” (Kranke). In other words, Meltzer, who also advocated the same position in published form,49 pointed the way to a specific situation that would provide a basis for consensus among Conservative/Christian elites.

46 See Nowak, “Euthanasie” und Sterilisierung im “Dritten Reich,” in Katholizismus und Eugenik in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich. Zwischen Sittlichkeitsreform und Rassenhygiene, Ingrid Richter (Paderborn/ Munich/Vienna/ Zurich: Schöningh, 2001), pp. 140-176 and 493-510. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Die Katholische Kirche und die ‘Euthanasie,’” Jahrbuch der Juristischen Zeitgeschichte, vol. 7 (2005/2006), pp. 55-63. 47 Ewald Melzer, Das Problem der Abkürzung “lebensunwerten” Lebens (Halle/S.: Marhold, 1925). 48 Verbatim protocol, dated April 14, 1937 (ADW CA/G 1601/1, sheet 91-96, sheet 92-93). Also see Schwartz, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland,” pp. 650-654. Also cited from Ernst Klee, “Die SA Jesu Christi.” Die Kirche im Banne Hitlers (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989), p. 97. 49 Refer to Ewald Meltzer, “Die Euthanasie, die Heiligkeit des Lebens und das kommende Strafrecht,” Christliche Volkswacht (1936), pp. 135-143.

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The SS attempted to obtain an expert opinion on euthanasia from the Catholic moral theologian Josef Mayer50 in advance or in view of the current “campaign.” The date of his memorandum is not sure. Mayer was apparently regarded as a supporter of euthanasia because of his 1927 dissertation on the Lawful Sterilization of the Mentally Ill (Gesetzliche Unfruchtbarmachung Geisteskranker). Critics of Mayer’s dissertation reproached him for his argument that a state of emergency would justify eugenic action by a society against certain individuals because this action might also encompass a right to kill.51 There is also an expert opinion handed down under the name of Erich Warmund with the title of Euthanasia in the Light of Catholic Morality and Practice (Euthanasie im Lichte der katholischen Moral und Praxis) which is attributed to Mayer.52 A short version was probably not ready until mid-1940 so that it could not be used to justify the beginning of the campaign for euthanasia. Nonetheless, the expert opinion highlights the Nazi supporters’ stance for ethically justifying euthanasia in the case of a state of emergency. In a similar fashion, it was possible to find open approval for euthanasia only among Protestant outsiders. For instance, we might think of the attitude of the senior physician of the Neuendettelsau Institute, Rudolph Boeckh as recorded in the manuscripts of the speeches he gave in the spring of 1939. Boeck wanted to assign the right to kill to the state.53 The 50 According to the statement by SD member of staff Albert Hartl in 1967 at the Frankfurt Trial Court of General Jurisdiction, Hitler was the one who gave the command that introduced “euthanasia” in the expert opinion, due to the fact that he did not specifically reject it. On the problem of how to assess this statement, see Wolfgang Dierker in Himmlers Glaubenskrieger. Der Sicherheitsdienst der SS und seine Religionspolitik 1933-1941 (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2002), pp. 114-116. Ingrid Richter, Katholizismus und Eugenik in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich, pp. 502-507. 51 Josef Mayer, Gesetzliche Unfruchtbarmachung Geisteskranker. Studien zur katholischen Sozial-und Wirtschaftsethik (Freiburg: Herder, 1927). On the debate, see Richter, Katholizismus und Eugenik in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich, pp. 497-502. 52 See Udo Benzenhöfer/Karin Finsterbusch, Moraltheologie pro “NSEuthanasie.” Studien zu einem “Gutachten” (1940) von Prof. Josef Mayer mit Edition des Textes (Hannover: Laurentius, 1998). On the supposed authorship and the great “proximity of Mayer to the basic pro-euthanasia statement of the expert opinion” see Richter Katholizismus und Eugenik in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich, pp. 507-509. 53 These speeches (assuming they were given at all) did not have a great impact. See the articles by Hans Rößler, “Die ‘Euthanasie’-Diskussion in Neuendettelsau 1937-1939,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Kirchengeschichte, vol. 57 (1988), pp. 199208 and idem, “Ein neues Dokument zur ‘Euthanasie’-Diskussion in

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book by the theologian Wolfgang Stroothenke on Cultivating Inheritance and Christianity (Erbpflege und Christentum) was published only in 1940. Stroothenke’s book made things much more difficult because it was regarded as the expression of a Lutheran theologian.54 Stroothenke advocated euthanasia in a governmentally regulated procedure in cases of incurable illness. Stroothenke’s thesis of a person having the right to escape meaningless suffering was criticized by Bodo Heyne, the director of the Bremen institution, who was also familiar with the topic. In a rather negative review of Stroothenke’s book Heyne included the following ambiguous sentence: “The author is apparently not aware of what disturbing consequences this basically individualistic principle might have.”55 At that time, there were already various attempts to resist the campaigns for murdering the ill, which became public in the spring and summer of 1940.56 The synods of the Confessing Church and expert opinions especially written on this topic by Hermann Diem, Ernst Wilm, and Heinrich Vogel between 1940 and 1943 rejected “destroying life unworthy of living” in any fashion.57 Despite the fact that they had known about the euthanasia action Neuendettelsau 1939,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Kirchengeschichte, vol. 57 (1988), pp. 87-91 and Christine-Ruth Müller, “Die Neuendettelsauer Anstalten und die Verlegung der Pfleglinge,” in Christine-Ruth Müller/Hans-Ludwig Siemen Warum sie sterben mußten. Leidensweg und Vernichtung von Behinderten aus den Neuendettelsauer Pflegeanstalten im “Dritten Reich,” (Neustadt a. d. Aisch: Degener, 1991), pp. 54-58. Boeckh advocated justifying “euthanasia” in specific cases following abortions in a draft titled “Zur Euthanasie-Frage” (on the question of euthanasia), dated 23 February 1939. “Euthanasie ist die letzte Konsequenz der Eugenik.” (Rößler, “Ein neues Dokument zur ‘Euthanasie’-Diskussion in Neuendettelsau 1939,” p. 89). It was possible to date this text to March 1939 contrary to Rößler dating the speech “Über die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” to 1937, as the speech was given before the physicians’ committee. 54 Wolfgang Stroothenke, Erbpflege und Christentum. Fragen der Sterilisation, Aufnordung, Euthanasie, Ehe (Leipzig: L. Klotz, 1940). Cf. Kaminsky, Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” im Rheinland for an assessment of Stroothenke’s views of the Inner Mission, p. 313. 55 Bodo Heyne, “Bücherschau,” Wächterruf. Evangelische Zeitschrift für die Volkssittlichkeit und Volkskraft, vol. 56 (1941) no. 1, pp. 13-14 (book cover). 56 See Uwe Kaminsky, “Die Evangelische Kirche und der Widerstand gegen die ‘Euthanasie,’” Jahrbuch der Juristischen Zeitgeschichte, vol. 7 (2005/2006), pp. 64-88. Nowak, “Euthanasie” und Sterilisierung im “Dritten Reich,” pp. 131-158. 57 See Nowak, “Euthanasie” und Sterilisierung im “Dritten Reich,” pp. 152-158. See also Ernst Wilm, “Referat über die Stellungnahme der Kirche zur Tötung der ‘unheilbar Kranken,’” in Hase Hans Christoph von Hase (ed.), Evangelische Dokumente zur Ermordung der “unheilbar Kranken” unter der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft in den Jahren 1939-1945 (Stuttgart: Innere

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since the summer of 1940, Church institutions, for example, Protestant institutions, were able to maintain only a “broken refusal” (gebrochene Verweigerungshandlung) against the program. They declined to fill out the report forms on individual patients that had been distributed by the Reich authorities in charge of the euthanasia program. This cautious approach can be traced to the institutions’ loyalty to the state and to their hope that this action, which violated all customs and morality, would end soon.58 We should, however, note that the main opponents of “destroying life unworthy of living” were on the side of the Churches in their ethical evaluations.

IV. The Spontaneity of Euthanasia as a “Measure” and a “Campaign” The alleged desire of handicapped and mentally ill people, to whom euthanasia or “mercy killing” was to be administered, was based on the idea of the individual’s autonomy which those people were incapable of expressing themselves. At the same time, in the debate of the 1920s and 1930s individual euthanasia had been combined with the debate on the extent to which euthanasia would improve the gene pool and relieve the nation’s economic distress. The historical genesis of the euthanasia debate points to the danger of crossing boundaries to euthanasia which is discussed and geared to the postulate of autonomy and the execution of mass murder.59 Mission und Hilfswerk der Evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands Hauptgeschäftsstelle, 1964), pp. 23-27 (also see Landeskirchliches Archiv Bielefeld, Bielefelder Archiv zum Kirchenkampf, Sammlung Wilhelm Niemöller, no. 5.1/374 F. 1 sheet 37-41). Hermann Diem, “Das Problem des ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’ in der katholischen und in der evangelischen Ethik” (1940), in Idem, ed. by Uvo Andreas Wolf, Sine vi – sed verbo. Aufsätze, Vorträge, Voten. Aus Anlaß der Vollendung seines 65. Lebensjahres am 2. Februar 1965 (Munich: Ch. Kaiser, 1965), pp. 102. The Lutheran voices gathered and evaluated in an expert opinion for the Limburg euthanasia trial in: Ernst Wolf, “Das Problem der Euthanasie im Spiegel evangelischer Ethik,” in Erich Dinkler (ed.), Zeit und Geschichte. Dankesgabe an Rudolf Bultmann zum 80. Geburtstag im Auftrag der alten Marburger und in Zusammenarbeit mit Hartmut Thyen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1964), pp. 685-702 (also in Zeitschrift für evangelische Ethik, vol. 11 (1966), pp. 345-361). 58 See the detailed discussion in Kaminsky “Die Evangelische Kirche und der Widerstand gegen die ‘Euthanasie,’” pp. 76-80. 59 A view of NS “euthanasia” reduced to a loss of morality and to crime, declaring that this story is irrelevant to a philosophical or systematic theological debate, relieves itself of the historic contextualisation of its own position (see, for instance, Michael Frieß, “Komm süßer Tod” – Europa auf dem Weg zur Euthanasie? Zur

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Most researchers agree that the negative eugenic legislation of the Nazi state facilitated the transition from contraception via forced sterilization to destruction by way of euthanasia. Recent empirical research has demonstrated that earlier conceptions of a programmatic advance from contraception to destroying “life unworthy of living” had not been sufficiently differentiated.60 In fact, the euthanasia idea was not central to the racial hygiene program, rather this was where concepts such as preventing conception by prohibiting marriages, institutionalization, and later sterilization were viewed as more promising. Furthermore, racial hygiene considerations played a conclusive role in the debate on assisted dying and assisted suicide. Nonetheless, there is a link concerning the history of discourse in the debates on eugenics and euthanasia. These notions are not just “two different pairs of shoes” (zwei unterschiedliche Paar Schuhe).61 It is not easy to find an approach to the motives of the planners and actors because virtually every statement on euthanasia was made in the framework of providing justification for court proceedings during the postwar period. This is the reason why the sources on the contemporary motives are rather sparse. Furthermore, some of the reasons and patterns of justification can only be discovered indirectly from letters of protest from the Churches or from the minutes of meetings of attorneys or psychiatrists, where those responsible at the T4 Central Office made their statements. The situation is just as difficult in reference to the motives of assisting physicians, nursing staff, and administrative workers, because their motives were so diverse. In what follows, I would like to sketch out one approach to the existing sources. First, we should begin with the potential ‘planners’ although these days it is not possible to document long-term preparations or rather plans for the euthanasia program. In the early 1930s it was possible to identify radical groups within the NSDAP and the SS that were proponents of “destroying life unworthy of living.” These groups included not only Hitler himself but theologischen Akzeptanz von assistiertem Suizid und aktiver Euthanasie (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2008), especially pp. 20-32). This oversimplified view, which asserts that NS “euthanasia” was a crime that in the present-day debate only works as a conversation stopper, does not get to the heart of the matter. 60 Especially on the topic of international developments in eugenics, see Schwartz, “Medizinische Tyrannei.” Idem, “Medizinische Tyrannei und die Kirchen.” Furthermore, the articles in: Wecker /Braunschweig/Imboden/Küchenhoff/Ritter (eds.), Wie nationalsozialistisch ist die Eugenik? 61 See Schwartz’s criticism of the entanglement of eugenics and “euthanasia” being too intimate,“‘Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie’?” and Schmuhl’s reply, “Eugenik und ‘Euthanasie’ – Zwei Paar Schuhe?” Recently also HansWalter Schmuhl, “Die Genesis der ‘Euthanasie.’”

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also the Heads of the Nazi Physicians’ League, Gerhard Wagner and Leonardo Conti.62 Unfortunately, we cannot rely only on the subsequent (and therefore unreliable) statements by Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack and others at the Nazi Doctor Trials in Nuremberg and later court proceedings. These witnesses testified that, full of excitement, the Head of the Nazi Physicians’ League, Gerhard Wagner, had suggested a regulation for euthanasia to Hitler after the decision was made to accept eugenic indications for abortion at the 1935 party congress in Nuremberg.63 Hitler had then pointed out that it would be easier to carry out a euthanasia program in wartime rather than in peacetime. However, whether Hitler predicted or strove for euthanasia during a war as early as 1935 is at least doubtful. We can document a wide-ranging debate among attorneys and physicians on this topic during the succeeding years although we cannot prove that Nazi policymaking had taken any specific steps, and we can only interpret the introduction of the eugenic indication for abortion as the first step toward a possible euthanasia program from the standpoint of a radical effort to protect life. Even unintended deaths as a result of forced sterilization cannot be interpreted in retrospect as a first step toward a contempt for human life.64 Instead, these accidental deaths reflect a disregard for the individual rights of those affected. This disrespect led to death in many cases, in a fashion similar to the deaths of some of the political victims of the Nazi regime. However, we cannot discover here any systematic campaign of mass murder. 62 For Conti, see Schmuhl, “Die biopolitische Entwicklungsdiktatur des Nationalsozialismus und der ‘Reichsgesundheitsführer’ Leonardo Conti,” especially pp. 106 and 109. 63 Brandt’s statement in: Mitscherlich/Mielke, Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit, p. 184. All the statements are compiled in Vormbaum (ed.), “Euthanasie” vor Gericht, pp. 21. Burleigh (Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany, c. 1900-1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 97-98) and other researchers interpret Brandt’s statement as an indication of “euthanasia” being planned long in advance. This interpretation may be correct although these statements are connected to the attempts of a justification because the same statements also include a rejection by Hitler and his reference to wartime when it would be better to carry out these measures due the likely resistance on a part of the Churches. It also placed the sole responsibility on Wagner and Hitler, who were no longer alive at that time. See the biography of Karl Brandt by Ulf Schmidt, Hitlers Arzt Karl Brandt. Medizin und Macht im Dritten Reich (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2008). 64 For instance, in reference to depriving people of their ability to bear or beget children due to the primacy of the state as presented by Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 372-389.

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The novel Mission and Conscience (Sendung und Gewissen) by the writer and ophthalmologist Hellmuth Unger (1891-1953) was published for the first time in 1936. This book became one of the reference points for contemporary considerations for a euthanasia regulation by the advocates of the Nazi regime. This discussion went beyond the academic debates following Binding and Hoche’s book. Unger worked at the press department of the Head of the Nazi Physicians’ League, Gerhard Wagner. In this novel in letter form there is a physician who believes himself justified and obliged to carry out euthanasia in various specific cases.65 A debate also erupted during the spring of 1937 in the SS magazine “Black Corps” (Das Schwarze Korps) concerning a farmer who had shot and killed his mentally ill son and then been sentenced for it by the Weimar trial court. The senior public prosecutor said in response to this case that such a killing would no longer be considered murder under the future penal code. Letters to the editor of the Black Corps, the official organ of the SS, openly demanded a law for “mercy killing.”66 In addition, there had always been individual voices among the population that vigorously favored relaxing the prohibition against killing. For example, various requests proposed that commissions work out a regulation for the relief of human suffering as defined by the debate that had followed the Binding/Hoche book.67 These requests were forwarded to Nazi Party offices or the Chancellery of the Fuehrer.68 For instance, Forest Superintendant A. von Hippel from Hildesheim reported to the Rosenberg Office in mid-February of 1939 that he had followed this suggestion and, as a “follower of the euthanasia movement,” had sent his draft of a “law on expanding the authority of physicians” to the Reich Medical Associa65

Hellmuth Unger, Sendung und Gewissen (Berlin: Brunnen Verlag, 1936) (2nd changed edition Oldenburg 1941). Also see Emil Abderhalden, “Grenzfälle der Ethik: Euthanasie – Sterbehilfe – Gnadentod,” Ethik, vol. 13 (1937), pp. 104-109. For classification: Kiessling, Dr. med. Hellmuth Unger, especially pp. 72-78. 66 See Das Schwarze Korps, dated March 11, 1937 and “Zum Thema Gnadentod,” Das Schwarze Korps, dated March 18. 1937, p. 9 (Excerpts in: Kaiser/Nowak/ Schwartz, Eugenik, Sterilisation, ‘Euthanasie‘, pp. 224-225). Cf. Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat. Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 1983), p. 62. Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 179. 67 For instance, Binding proposed a “release committee” with a physician, a psychiatrically trained doctor or psychiatrist, and an attorney who was supposed to be directed by a neutral chairperson without voting rights (see Binding/Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, p. 36). 68 The statements in the post-war trials always pointed this out; however, it has not been possible to discover any specific requests to date.

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tion.69 His draft referred both to the book by Binding and Hoche and the novel Mission and Conscience by Hellmuth Unger. These open demands for euthanasia were linked to the motive of sympathy, which was considered the ethical justification that would most likely foster a consensus for transgressing the prohibition of killing in peacetime. The only reliable indications for the systematic compilation of the (pro and con) arguments are from the year 1939. Hitler’s personal physician, Theo Morell, was assigned the role of working out an “expert opinion” that would also propose a formulation for a “law on destroying life unworthy of living” and the various means for implementing the law.70 Morell took advantage of several files made available to him by the “Reich Commission for the Scientific Registration of Hereditary and Constitutionally Severe Disorders.” In the three, out of five still preserved original files there is a collection of articles on the euthanasia debate between 19011939 as well as a compilation of book reviews collected by the Meiner Publishing House on the Binding/Hoche book published there. The reviews were marked with symbols indicating the reviewers’ evaluation (+ = pro, – = con, 0 = neutral).71 Morell’s expert opinion was probably submitted in August 1939, and his memorandum contributed to the formulation of what is known as Hitler’s euthanasia decree of October 1939 later backdated to 1 September 1939, the day the war started. Hitler’s euthanasia decree emphasized the idea of “mercy killing” based on a medical evaluation process. The responsibility for such evaluations was not handed to a government office but to a physician and a party functionary, instead. The first euthanasia program, the murder of handicapped children and the “adult euthanasia” carried out on institutionalized patients, had a strangely improvised character which was internally designated as a “campaign,” the “‘Columbus House’ Campaign” or the “Reich Commission Campaign.”72 This linguistic cover-up not only emphasizes the secrecy surrounding it but also the near-spontaneity in which euthanasia was 69

See v. Hippel to Reichsleiter Prof. Bäumler (Rosenberg Office) o. D. [received 21 February 1939] (Bundesarchiv Berlin [hereinafter referred to as BA], NS 15/211 [old: 62 Di 1 FC NSDAP Rosenberg Office 720P, sheet 359506-359511]). 70 See the imprint in: Kaiser/Nowak/Schwartz, Eugenik, Sterilisation, ‘Euthanasie‘, pp. 208-209. 71 Vera Große-Vehne, “NARA, T-253, roll 44, file 81”– ‘Euthanasie’-Quellen bei T. Morell,” Jahrbuch der Juristischen Zeitgeschichte, vol. 7 (2005/2006), pp. 135147. The same indications of certain tendencies were later used by the experts in the context of “Aktion T4” when assessing the report forms for the patients to be selected! 72 See the documentation corresponding to these designations in Kaminsky, Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” im Rheinland, p. 333.

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initially implemented. It is important to emphasize the improvised character of the program because of the view, especially represented in the dated literature, that Nazi euthanasia had been a logical next step derived from racial hygiene. This fallacious view is based on an ideological and programmatic conception of the former history of euthanasia. The misconception ignores both the Nazi polycracy and the dynamism of events fed by the competition for dominance within the Hitler regime. The issue of Adolf Hitler’s ethics is a fascinating element73 although it points far beyond the issue considered relevant here as we are not talking about reducing the history of Nazism to Hitler as an individual. Hitler played an important role as the final decision-maker, and it would be absurd to speak of euthanasia having been carried out against his will. However, the following questions still remain: How was the Nazi campaign for murdering the mentally ill and the handicapped set into motion and how was it executed? What motivated the physicians and governmental employees participating in this program along with the nursing staff in the various social arenas to violate the prohibition against killing? The so-called “children’s euthanasia” program, also called the Reich Commission Campaign by contemporaries, provided a link between the forced sterilization and the mass murder by poison gas of institutionalized patients in the “T4 Campaign.” The children’s program had an important connective function. The idea of the “mercy killing” of seriously handicapped children made it easier to cross the boundary to eugenic sterilization, eugenic contraception, and the destruction of what was termed “worthless lives” since in this program killing was more highly individualized and medicated than in all the other campaigns to murder the “ill.” The story of the “Knauer Child” (Kind “Knauer”) or “Leipzig Case” (Fall Leipzig), where a father supposedly asked Hitler to kill his child, seems to have been resolved by recent research although one historian has also revised his earlier viewpoint.74 However, the Knauer case seems to have 73

See Richard Weikart, Hitler's Ethic. The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), especially pp. 179-187. 74 See most recently Udo Benzenhöfer, Der Fall Leipzig (alias Fall “Kind Knauer”) und die Planung der NS-“Kindereuthanasie” (Münster: Klemm & Oelschläger, 2008) and idem, Der gute Tod? Euthanasie und Sterbehilfe in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), pp. 97105. Earlier, idem, “‘Kindereuthanasie’ im Dritten Reich. Der Fall ‘Kind Knauer,’” Deutsches Ärzteblatt, vol. 95 (1998) no. 19, pp. A-1187-A-1189. Idem, “Bemerkungen zur Planung der NS-‘Euthanasie’W,” in Der Sächsische Sonderweg bei der NS-“Euthanasie,” published by Arbeitskreis zur Erforschung der nationalsozialistischen “Euthanasie” und Zwangssterilisation, Berichte des

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been more of an ad-hoc action than the start of a murder campaign of longstanding preparation. In 1938 or 1939, – the exact date is still unclear, Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician, came from Berlin to Leipzig to evaluate a mentally and physically handicapped child whose parents had supposedly asked for euthanasia. Afterwards, according to the post-war statements by individuals who had been involved, there had been discussions at the “Reich Commission for the Scientific Registration of Hereditary and Constitutionally Severe Disorders” about implementing a euthanasia program for children. This commission was established in the spring of 1939. The upshot of these discussions was a registration decreeing that children were to be recorded in “special children’s departments.” Willing and eager physicians and other personnel were quickly recruited. This development not only means that we can conclude that the idea of euthanasia had spread throughout society, but also that there must have been a network of involved physicians. Scientific research institutes such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics which had existed since 1927 and the Institute for Brain Research constituted the organizational core of this network. A large number of physicians had been scientifically socialized through these institutes.75 A network such as this could function without any central direction. It had an impact by making recommendations to be passed on. In any event, due to the loss of some of the files we cannot document any prolonged planning phase for the “euthanasia of children.” The brain pathology research carried out in the wake of killing the children provides the indication of their having been selected for this special form of euthanasia. It hadmade all kinds of research possible which was documented in various ways already at the Trials of the Nazi doctors in Nuremberg.76 For example, Hans-Walter Schmuhl in using Berlin as an Arbeitskreises 1 (Ulm: Klemm & Oelschläger, 2001). Idem, Der gute Tod? Euthanasie und Sterbehilfe in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999), pp. 114-123. Furthermore, Ulf Schmidt, “Reassessing the Beginning of the ‘Euthanasia’ Programme,” German History, vol. 17 (1999), pp. 543-550. Idem, “Kriegsausbruch und Euthanasie: Neue Forschungsergebnisse zum ‘Knauer Kind’ im Jahre 1939,” in Andreas Frewer/Clemens Eickhoff (eds.),“Euthanasie” und die aktuelle Sterbehilfe-Debatte. Die historischen Hintergründe medizinischer Ethik (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2000), pp. 120-141. 75 On this point see Schmuhl, Grenzüberschreitungen. 76 See, in general, Ernst Klee, Was sie taten – was sie wurden. Ärzte, Juristen und andere Beteiligte am Kranken- und Judenmord (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986), especially pp. 174-187. Gerrit Hohendorf/Volker Roelcke/ Maike Rotzoll, “Von der Ethik des wissenschaftlichen Zugriffs auf den

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example (of about 700 victims whose brains had been removed) emphasized the “intimate symbiosis between brain research and the murdering of ill people.”77 In other words, the research interest of medical scientists had a co-determining impact on the course of euthanasia involving children, which was known as the Reich Committee Procedure. If we disregard the transparent metaphor of compassion presented in a whole series of post-war trials, the ethically involved people emphasized a utilitarian calculation that held out the promise of “special treatment” for the children. Two decrees required reporting the diseases and/or disabilities of the children. The research on the children to be killed had no healing or therapeutic value. Instead, the studies were intended to prevent future defects. The goal was to better understand the supposed heritability of disabilities. It was the members of the research personnel themselves who benefitted directly because they were relieved of military service in order to conduct research projects at university institutes. The researchers also opened up an interior scientific space with their murderous “crossing of boundaries” so that they could claim a higher purpose which even reMenschen. Die Verknüpfung von psychiatrischer Forschung und ‘Euthanasie’ im Nationalsozialismus und einige Implikationen für die heutige Diskussion in der medizinischen Ethik,” in Matthias Hamann/Hans Asbeck (eds.), Halbierte Vernunft und totale Medizin - Zu Grundlagen, Realgeschichte und Fortwirkungen der Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Schwarze Risse, 1997), pp. 81106. Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 278-284. Jürgen Peiffer, Hirnforschung im Zwielicht. Beispiele verführbarer Wissenschaft in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Julius Hallervorden, J.-J. Scherer, Berthold Ostertag (Husum: Matthiesen, 1997). Idem, “Die wissenschaftliche Auswertung der Gehirne von Opfern der Krankentötungen 1940-1944 im Raum BerlinBrandenburg sowie in Bayern,” in Martin Kalusche (ed.), Arbeitskreis zur Erforschung der nationalsozialistischen Zwangssterilisierungen und “Euthanasie,” Frühjahrstagung 1997 (25.-27. April 1997, Diakonie Stetten, Kernen i. R.). Tagungsdokumentation, Ebeleben 1997, pp. 85-97. Tuberculosis inoculation tests were performed on handicapped children in Kaufbeuren und Stadtroda. See Gernot Römer, Die grauen Busse in Schwaben. Wie das Dritte Reich mit Geisteskranken und Schwangeren umging: Berichte, Dokumente, Zahlen und Bilder (Augsburg: Presse- Druck- und Verlags- GmbH, 1986). Martin Schmidt/Robert Kuhlmann/ Michael v. Cranach, “Die Psychiatrie in der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Kaufbeuren 1933-1945,” in Michael von Cranach/Hans Ludwig Siemen (eds.), Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus, Die Bayerischen Heil- und Pflegeanstalten zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), especially pp. 39-41. 77 See Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Hirnforschung und Krankenmord. Das KaiserWilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung 1937-1945 (Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2000) (also in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 50 (2002) no. 4, pp. 559-609).

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sisted political influence. This perspective provided strategies for defending one’s actions after the end of the Nazi rule by claiming to have prevented things which might otherwise have been even worse.78 We can only document specific steps taken in the direction of the “T4 Campaign” (i.e., ‘adult euthanasia’) from the summer of 1939 on.79 Within the regime, there was apparently a genuine struggle behind the scenes for the leadership role in carrying out euthanasia. According to a letter from Reich Director of Health Leonardo Conti to Bormann dated June 1943 we know for certain that Conti had been permitted to address Hitler on this topic.80 In spite of this, Conti was not given the position to implement this measure. Instead it was given to Hitler’s personal physician, Karl Brandt, and the director of Hitler’s Chancellery, Philipp Bouhler. It took until spring 1940 to set up a central administrative office in Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin which is where the abbreviation T4 originates from. The T4 leadership had to recruit personnel within an institutionalization phase of just less than half a year as well as to guarantee the cooperation of various health departments in the Prussian provinces and the German states. All the circumstances, including the regional fluctuations during the implementation, indicate an ad hoc project, one which was carried out without a long planning phase. By August 1941, the mass murder set in motion had claimed about 70,000 lives. Especially during the course of the war, medical selection criteria came second to economic and utilitarian considerations and focused on the data in the registration forms used for selection. This approach favored the dominance of economic usefulness and, due to the high expenditures for 78 Some examples of this defensive strategy can be found in: Sigrid OehlerKlein/Volker Roelcke (eds.), Vergangenheitspolitik in der universitären Medizin nach 1945. Institutionelle und individuelle Strategien im Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007). 79 See the attempt at a reconstruction in Bernd Walter, Psychiatrie und Gesellschaft in der Moderne. Geisteskrankenfürsorge in der Provinz Westfalen zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Regime (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1996), especially pp. 651-666. Schmuhl’s thesis seems plausible that the various blocs surrounding Hitler and vying for power were decisive for issuing the order to murder and the type of order. See Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 190/191. Jeremy Noakes, “Philipp Bouhler und die Kanzlei des Führers der NSDAP. Beispiel einer Sonderverwaltung im Dritten Reich,” in Dieter Rebentisch/Karl Teppe (eds.), Verwaltung contra Menschenführung im Staat Hitlers. Studien zum politisch-administrativen System, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), pp. 208-236, especially 227-229. 80 Conti an Bormann 23.6.1943 (BA, R 18/3810), cited in Kaminsky, Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” im Rheinland, p. 433.

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nursing care on the institutional level, the selection criteria.81 One-third of the patients killed were incapable of working and required a great deal of costly nursing care while only five percent were productively employed; 74.6% of the victims’ records contained negative behavioral evaluations.82 The people selected for euthanasia were different from the group of victims affected by forced sterilization. Those who suffered forced sterilization were primarily people with slight mental handicaps or a minor mental illness; they were not likely to have a long stay at an institution if they were institutionalized at all. The ones murdered were primarily those with severe handicaps or serious illnesses necessitating extended stays in institutions. 83 81

This view is also advocated by Philipp Rauh, “Medizinische Selektionskriterien versus ökonomisch-utilitaristische Verwaltungsinteressen. Ergebnis der Meldebogenauswertung” und Gerrit Hohendorf, “Die Selektion der Opfer zwischen rassenhygienischer ‘Ausmerze,’ ökonomischer Brauchbarkeit und medizinischem Erlösungsideal,” in Maike Rotzoll/Gerrit Hohendorf/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/ Christoph Mundt/Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie“-Aktion “T4“ und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010), pp. 297-309, 310-324. 82 Gerrit Hohendorf/Maike Rotzoll/Paul Richter/Christoph Mundt/Wolfgang U. Eckart, “Die Opfer der nationalsozialistischen ‘Euthanasie-Aktion T4.’ Erste Ergebnisse eines Projektes zur Erschließung von Krankenakten getöteter Patienten im Bundesarchiv Berlin,” Der Nervenarzt, vol. 11 (2002), pp. 1065-1074, p. 10721073. Further, Petra Fuchs/Gerrit Hohendorf/Philipp Rauh/Annette HinzWessels/Paul Richter/Maike Rotzoll, “Die NS-‘Euthanasie’-Aktion-T4 im Spiegel der Krankenakten. Neue Ergebnisse historischer Forschung und ihre Bedeutung für die heute Diskussion medizinethischer Fragen,” Jahrbuch der Juristischen Zeitgeschichte, vol. 7 (2005/2006), pp. 16-36. Finally, the essays in: Maike Rotzoll/ Gerrit Hohendorf/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/Christoph Mundt/Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie“-Aktion “T4“ und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart (Paderborn/ Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010). 83 Regional research has discussed this development for a longer period of time. For instance, refer to Bernd Walter, “Anstaltsleben als Schicksal. Die nationalsozialistische Erb- und Rassenpflege an Psychiatriepatienten,” in Norbert Frei (ed.), Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik in der NS-Zeit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), pp. 217-233, especially 230-232. Petra Fuchs/Maike Rotzoll/Paul Richter/Annette Hinz-Wessels/Gerrit Hohendorf, “Die Opfer der ‘Aktion T4’: Versuch einer kollektiven Biographie auf der Grundlage von Krankengeschichten,” in Christfried Tögel, Volkmar Lischka (eds.),“Euthanasie” und Psychiatrie (Uchtspringe 2005), pp. 37–78. Petra Fuchs/Maike Rotzoll/Ulrich Müller/Paul Richter/Gerrit Hohendorf (eds.), “‘Das Vergessen der Vernichtung ist Teil der Vernichtung selbst.’ Lebensgeschichten von Opfern der nationalsozialistischen

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The Wehrmacht, the SS, and the Main Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans accelerated the removal of the inhabitants from institutions in an attempt to assert their interest for utilizing the asylums and care facilities for new and different purposes. Some of these special interests influenced the timing and the methods used for killing the ill. In the provinces of Pomerania and Eastern Prussia as well as in the occupied Polish areas later on, the ill and the handicapped were shot or killed in gas vans during the early stage in 1939. Once emptied, the Polish institutions were almost exclusively turned over to the SS. The three government agencies temporarily used former institutions as resettlement camps and, later on, as barracks84 and accelerated the killing during the “T4 Campaign” in certain regions including Bavaria, Wuerttemberg, Badania, and the Rhineland.85 ‘Euthanasie’” (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2007). Rotzoll inter alia (ed.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie”-Aktion “T 4” und ihre Opfer, p. 191-219. See also: Boris Böhm/ Ricarda Schulze (eds.), “…ist uns noch allen lebendig in Erinnerung.” Biographische Porträts von Opfern der nationalsozialistischen “Euthanasie”-Anstalt Pirna-Sonnenstein (Dresden: Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten zur Erinnerung an die Opfer Politischer Gewaltherrschaft, 2003). 84 See Volker Rieß, Die Anfänge der Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens“ in den Reichsgauen Danzig-Westpreußen und Wartheland 1939/40 (Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Bern/New York/Paris/Vienna: Peter Lang, 1995), and Heike Bernhardt, Anstaltspsychiatrie und “Euthanasie in Pommern 1933 bis 1945. Die Krankenmorde an Kindern und Erwachsenen am Beispiel der Landesheilanstalt Ueckermünde (Frankfurt a. M.: Mabuse-Verlag, 1994), pp. 87-90. 85 Patients were moved to make room for the accommodation of resettlers, setting up hospitals for the Wehrmacht, and establishing a national political education facility at Bavarian institutions (such as the Lutheran nursing homes in Neuendettelsau and various Catholic institutions) as well as at institutions in Wuerttemberg and Badania. A similar action occurred when the “Rheinische ProvinzialHeil- und Pflegeanstalt Bedburg-Hau” was emptied in order to create a reserve hospital in March 1940. Only after the transfer of patients did the “euthanasia” Central Office with its apparatus become involved in the selection, transport, and killing of patients. See Müller/Siemen, Warum sie sterben mussten, especially pp. 96-108, 148-157, and the documents on pp. 204-224. Furthermore, the statements in: Ein Jahrhundert der Sorge um geistig behinderte Menschen, vol. 2: Hans-Josef Wollasch, Ausbau und Bedrängnis: Die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by Verband katholischer Einrichtungen für Lern- und Geistigbehinderte (Freiburg 1980), pp. 99 (Attl), 105 (Burgkunstadt), 109 (Ecksberg), 115 (St. Josefshaus/ Gemünden), 116-117 (Gremsdorf), 124 (Lautrach), 128 (Reichenbach), 129 (Schönbrunn), 130-131 (Schweinspoint), 131 (Straubing), 132 (Ursberg). Heinz Faulstich, Von der Irrenfürsorge zur “Euthanasie.” Geschichte der badischen Psychiatrie bis 1945 (Freiburg i. Br.: Lambertus, 1993), pp. 223, 269 and the references in Götz Aly, “Endlösung.” Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den

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V. War and the State of Emergency We should not underestimate feelings of pity or their flipside revulsion and fear of the mentally ill and physically handicapped as motives. These motives also played a role in the argumentation those responsible at the central euthanasia office threw into the balance in speeches at various gatherings, linking the euthanasia program to an economic strategy. In view of the war already underway, this was the most decisive factor brought up to convince the advocates of the Churches as well as municipal leaders, judges, and physicians.86 For example, the people gathered at a meeting of the German Association of Town Councils in Berlin on 3 April 1940 were told of the “nursing care expenditures” that had accrued for “worthless social misfits.” “They vegetate like animals” and “only take away healthy people’s food.” If we have to implement precautions today for maintaining healthy people, then it is that much more necessary to eliminate these creatures, even if this measure were to be only for the better maintenance of the ill in nursing homes who can be cured.”87 Friedrich von Bodelschwingh and Paul Gerhard Braune were the institute directors and representatives of the Lutheran Church who protested against killing the ill at a meeting that took place at the Reich Interior Ministry on 10 July 1940. Viktor Brack and Herbert Linden told them that “the necessity of the war demanded that food, people’s strength, and space needed to be saved. This is the reason why these ill people must be sacrificed.”88 Karl Brandt also justified Nazi euthanasia in a conversation with Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, the director of the Bethel institution, at Bellevue Castle in February 1943. He referred to “the many people dying in Stalingrad:” – “All other deaths are minor in relation to that.”89 At the conference of the Presidents of Regional Appeals Courts and Chief Public Prosecutors on 23 April 1941 Werner Heyde emphasized that europäischen Juden (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 1995), pp. 190, Kaminsky, Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” im Rheinland, pp. 337-338. 86 See for the metaphors of war: Merkel, “Tod den Idioten,” pp. 305-328. 87 Quoted based on the report of the representative of the City of Plauen on the “secret discussion at the German Local Government Conference on 3 April 1940,” in Götz Aly (ed.), Aktion T4 1939-1945. Die “Euthanasie”-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstraße 4 (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1987), pp. 50-52. 88 Quoted from Kaminsky, Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” im Rheinland, pp. 691-693. 89 According to v. Bodelschwingh’s stenographic notes quoted from: Anneliese Hochmuth, Spurensuche. Eugenik, Sterilisation, Patientenmorde und die V.Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel 1929-1945, published by Matthias Benad (Bielefeld: Bethel-Verlag, 1997), pp. 154-156, here 155.

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only “incurably ill people” and those who were “useless for common and productive life” were the ones targeted for euthanasia.90 Heyde’s comments were recorded in the outline notes taken by the President of the Cologne Regional Appeals Court during the speeches by Heyde and Viktor Brack. The reasons cited there for “destroying life unworthy of living” find their vanishing point in emphasizing usefulness and the supposed state of emergency of the war situation. In addition, the registration according to the directives of the planned economy appealing to “catching the people in the planned economy,” which was the reason given in the cover letter accompanying the registration form for selection in the “T4 Campaign,” underscores the importance of usefulness concerning the goals of the program despite all the veiled metaphors.91 The rationale of a supposed “national emergency” was accepted only by a part of the conservative critics of euthanasia it targeted. For instance, during the post-war period, the Goettingen professor of psychiatry, Gottfried Ewald, was considered as having been a shining example of uncompromising resistance. In addressing his refusal to collaborate with the euthanasia program he stated at a meeting of physicians that he would have accepted the argument of an emergency situation if the situation had really been as it was described.92 It is a fact that Ewald and the representatives of the Churches, who had some understanding for the argument in respect to an emergency situation, at that time did not assess the situation in Germany as that of an emergency. They assigned a higher value to some of the arguments against euthanasia such as the program’s intrusion upon God’s magisterial rights, the right to personality, the destruction of the people’s feelings for morality, the loss of Germany’s status as a cultural nation, and the promotion of distrust against physicians. These considerations left little room for doubt about where the limits of the Conservative Christians’ readiness to cooperate were.93 The Lutheran theologian Her90

Quoted from the facsimile of the meeting notice in: Götz Aly (ed.), Aktion T4 1939-1945. See Vormbaum (ed.), “Euthanasie” vor Gericht, pp. 303-316. Ernst Klee (ed.), Dokumente zur “Euthanasie” (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985), pp. 216-220. Merkel, “Tod den Idioten,” pp. 288-293. 91 See Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 197. 92 See his report quoted as a facsimile in: Götz Aly (ed.), Aktion T4 1939-1945, pp. 58-63. See also the subsequent letters from Ewald to Heyde, Conti etc. in Vormbaum (ed.), “Euthanasie” vor Gericht, pp. 290-299. 93 The counter-arguments mentioned can be found in Braune’s memorandum dated 9 July 1940, Wurm’s letters to Reich Interior Minister Frick dated 19 July 1940 and 5 September 1940, the letter of the chairperson of the Fulda Bishops Conference, Cardinal Bertram to the head of the Reich Chancellery, Lammers, and Reich Minister of Justice Gürtner dated 11 August 1940 and 16 August 1940, and the

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mann Diem made this position clear in his expert opinion written in 1940 on the “Problem of Life Unworthy of Living” (“Problem des lebensunwerten Lebens”). Diem asserted that hypothetically there might be an indication in favor of euthanasia during a state of emergency in analogy to the medical indication for abortion. However, there was no such indication in the present war situation, and, if there were, it would be necessary to cast doubt on the goals of the war.94 Reich Director of Health Conti’s reply to Ewald’s reasons for rejection has been preserved. Conti had been Ewald’s student when he attended Ewald’s lectures in Erlangen. Conti did not want to “set down in writing” his diverging opinion: “I would just like to say that I am entirely convinced that the attitudes of the entire German people are going through a transformation in these matters, and I can very well imagine that things that seem reprehensible in one period will be declared the only correct thing in the next. We have experienced this innumerable times in the course of history, let me just refer to the sterilization law as the most recent example. This is how far the process of reshaping our thinking in reference to this matter has progressed already.”95 The hoped-for “transformation” in the German people’s attitude concerning euthanasia thus refers to one’s own minority opinion which will have to show in the future whether it was correct to attempt to “reshape the people’s thinking concerning this matter.” This self-immunizing and self-righteous ethics of a supposed avant-garde was only conceivable within the framework of the “bio-political development of the dictatorship of Nazism.”96 letter from the Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Faulhaber, to the Reich Minister of Justice dated 6 November 1940; all of these documents are reprinted in: Vormberg (ed.), “Euthanasie” vor Gericht, pp. 262-284. Also the sermons by the Catholic bishops Galen und Machens (see Gabriele Vogt, “Bischof Dr. Joseph Godehard Machens (1934-1956) und die Caritas im ‘Dritten Reich,’” in Hans Otte/Thomas Scharf-Wrede (eds.), Caritas und Diakonie in der NS-Zeit. Beispiele aus Niedersachsen (Hildesheim/Zurich/New York: Olms, 2001), pp. 129-157, esp. 155. 94 Diem, “Das Problem des ‘lebensunwerten Lebens’ in der katholischen und in der evangelischen Ethik,” pp. 104. Diem believed that he could use the constructed example of an emergency in connection with food scarcity during the occupation of La Rochelle in the Huguenot Wars to demonstrate that it could not be God’s will to sacrifice “people who were unfit for living;” instead, it would be necessary to revise the war goals. 95 Conti to Ewald 11.9.1940, cited in Vormbaum (ed.), “Euthanasie” vor Gericht, p. 299. 96 On this point see Schmuhl, “Die biopolitische Entwicklungsdiktatur des Nationalsozialismus und der ‘Reichsgesundheitsführer’ Leonardo Conti.” Idem,

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The arguments of saving expenditures and averting a state of national emergency during wartime projected outwardly played a pivotal role in the legitimization of the central euthanasia office’s own stance in various discussions and addresses. The euthanasia office was not merely attempting to bring conservative opponents into the fold with reasons linked to their range of values. This thesis is validated in part by the subsequent calculation of the costs saved by murdering sick and handicapped people in what became known as the “Hartheim Statistics.” These statistics can be dated back to the summer of 1942.97 When Karl Brandt talked to Curd Runckel, the Director of the central euthanasia office in mid-1944 he requested a comparison of the deaths at German nursing homes during the years 1914-1918 and those of the first four years of the ongoing war.98 Along with its purely statistical purpose, this reference to the numbers of patients who had died during the First World War was to serve as a justification to the questions raised by some of the departments. In addition, what was known as the “planning department” of the central euthanasia office, left behind a whole series of reports on trips that had been planned to various parts of the nation. The fact that this department had been in existence already since the spring of 1941 indicates that saving expenditures at mental institutions had been targeted by central planning at the Reich level. There, it was self-evident that euthanasia would find its place.99 It is true that the activities of the planning department were limited to dry runs after the official stop of the T4 gas murder campaign in August 1941 since wartime conditions made it impossible to effect fundamental changes at the institutions. However, plans were being made.

“Das Dritte Reich als biopolitische Entwicklungsdiktatur. Zur inneren Logik der nationalsozialistischen Genozidpolitik,” in Tödliche Medizin. Rassenwahn im Nationalsozialismus, published by Jüdisches Museum Berlin (Berlin: WallsteinVerlag, 2009), pp. 8-21. 97 See the reprint of the statistics in Klee, Dokumente zur “Euthanasie,” pp. 232233 and Andrea Kugler, “Die ‘Hartheimer Statistik.’ ‘Bis zum 1. September 1941 wurden desinfiziert: Personen: 70.273,’” in Wert des Lebens. Gedenken – Lernen – Begreifen. Begleitpublikation zur Ausstellung des Lande OÖ in Schloss Hartheim, published by Institut für Gesellschafts- und Sozialpolitik an der Johannes Kepler Universität Linz (Linz: Trauner, 2003), pp. 124-131. 98 See Runckel’s letter to Nitsche, dated July 24, 1944 including Runckel’s note on his conversation with Brandt on 18 July 1944 (BA, R 96 I/7, p. 127916-127923). 99 See Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 265-278. The report forms that the institutions had to fill in out 1940 not only included the notorious report form 1 for individual patients but also report form 2, which requested statistical data on each of the institutions.

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The reasons supplied for moving marginalized patients, who after 1941 became the victims of decentralized euthanasia, ran from “anti-aircraft defense work” to “evacuation.” Furthermore, the leaders of the NSDAP districts (Gauleiters), almost all of whom also were Reich Defense Commissioners, ordered these moves.100 The rationale was to provide space and supplies for national socialist comrades who were convalescing and still capable of doing work. The Allied war effort, in particular the air war against German cities, formed the backdrop for an effort to achieve efficiency and economy in a society from which mentally ill people and physically handicapped people had long since been permanently ‘desocialized.’ Due to the impact of events on the “home front,” the vehemently critical voices that had arisen in 1941 and played their part in bringing the “T4 Campaign” to a halt, became more and more restrained. In the subjective understanding of growing numbers of Germans, the doubts that had been cast on a state of emergency on the “home front” gradually dissipated. The notions that the status of a cultural nation should to be maintained or that national morality needed to be preserved were increasingly undermined. The involvement of more and more parts of the Wehrmacht, the SS, and of “ordinary Germans” in the Nazi regime’s policy of destruction throughout Europe also became apparent. The fact that the number of deaths of the inhabitants of nursing homes and mental institutions grew larger than ever before after the supposed halt of the “T4 Campaign” in August 1941 demonstrates the process of marginalization institutionalized patients suffered and the loosening of moral principles during state emergency situations. This study has examined the euthanasia campaigns with the largest number of victims although there were other murder campaigns that can also be seen as a part of Nazi euthanasia. By their very nature, however, those campaigns were much rather cases of racial extermination. First of all, this concerned the people kept at asylums pursuant to Paragraph 42b of the Reich Penal Code due to the fact that their behavior had overstepped legal boundaries. Some of these forensic inmates were deported from institutions to the gas murder institutions in the spring of 1940 via intermediate stops at special locations in the context of the “T4 Campaign.”101 100

See Winfried Süß, “Zur Rolle der Gaue in der regionalisierten ‘Euthanasie’ (1942-1945),” in Jürgen John/ Horst Möller/Thomas Schaarschmidt (eds.), Die NSGaue. Regionale Mittelinstanzen im zentralistischen “Führerstaat” (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), pp. 123-135. 101 See Sonja Schröter, Psychiatrie in Waldheim/Sachsen (1716-1946). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der forensischen Psychiatrie in Deutschland (Frankfurt a. M.: Mabuse-Verlag, 1994). Martin Roebel, “Forensische Patient/innen als Opfer der

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Beyond this, German, Polish and Soviet citizens living in asylums were murdered in present-day Poland (then called the Danzig-Western Prussia and Wartheland Reichsgaue), Eastern Prussia, and Pomerania as early as 1939/40 and at the beginning of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. These killings were carried out by firing squads of the SS task forces or the Wehrmacht or by portable or stationary gas chambers. There was no direct organizational connection between these murders and the central euthanasia office at the Chancellery of the Fuehrer. Instead, they were based on the arrangements made by the regionally responsible Gauleiters with the SS. The institutions were cleared out to make room for resettled Baltic Germans and for SS units.102 Several thousand residents of institutions were considered a mass that could be disposed of at will, and they were killed simply in order to put their space to different use. This fact alone bears witness to the loss of all levels of inhibition that still had an influence at the beginning of the war. This concerned not only citizens from enemy states in reference to whom we might think of the shooting ‘Aktion T4,’” in Maike Rotzoll/Gerrit Hohendorf/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/ Christoph Mundt/Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie”-Aktion “T4” und ihre Opfer. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2010), pp. 137-142. 102 For an account of the murders at the beginning of the war see Volker Rieß, Die Anfänge der Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” in den Reichsgauen DanzigWestpreussen und Wartheland 1939/40 (Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Bern/New York/Paris/Vienna: Peter Lang, 1995). Rieß emphasizes “pure destruction” as a motivation (such as in the Wartheland, apparently due to the lack of well thoughtout utilization plans; ibid., p. 359) and the interests of the SS as the subsequent user of the institution . The desire to use the buildings for the accommodation of Baltic Germans is also not disregarded as a motivation. See ibid., pp. 29-53 (using the Conradstein institution as an example), especially p. 104 (on Pomerania), pp. 355-62 (altogether). In contrast, Aly clearly argues for putting clearing these institutions into a single framework. In his view, the evacuations were conducted primarily to accommodate ethnic German resettlers, even if it is not possible to unambiguously answer the question of prior planning or using the institutions subsequently “opened up by murdering,” due to a lack of documents. See Götz Aly, “Hinweise für die weitere Erforschung der NS-Gesundheitspolitik und der ‘Euthanasie’-Verbrechen,” in Eberhard Jungfer/ Christoph Dieckmann (eds.), Arbeitsmigration und Flucht. Vertreibung und Arbeitskräfteregulierung im Zwischenkriegseuropa (Berlin-Göttingen: Schwarze Risse/Rote Strasse, 1993), pp. 195-204, especially 203 as well as idem, “Endlösung,” pp. 114-126. To weigh these issues against one another, see Heike Bernhardt, “‘Euthanasie’ und Kriegsbeginn. Die frühen Morde an Patienten aus Pommern,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 44 (1996) no. 9, pp. 773-788.

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deaths of the Polish clergy, the Jews, and local prostitutes but especially also of psychiatric patients (Polish and German). The killing carried out by SS task forces continued during the clearing out of nursing homes and mental institutions in the Soviet Union after the summer of 1941.103 Finally, the killing of the Jewish patients from German mental institutions in 1940/41 ought to be seen as a race policy action of a slightly different shade and in anticipation of the later Jewish Holocaust, regardless of the patients’ psychiatric diagnoses.104 After 1943, Polish citizens and so-called “eastern workers” i. e. Soviet citizens who were forced to do slave labor in Germany were murdered also in a similar fashion for racist reasons. If these slave laborers proved to be mentally ill or handicapped and incapable of working, they were moved from the asylums in special transports and then killed.105 The fact that they were useless due to their incapacity to work was also the main motive for killing the Jewish concentration camp prisoners and and others termed “social misfits” in the “14f13” campaign after the spring of 1941 as can be seen from the code name for their files.

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See the example of the White Russian Institution in Mogilew: Ulrike Winkler/Gerrit Hohendorf, “‘Nun ist Mogiljow frei von Verrückten.’ Die Ermordung der Psychiatriepatienten in Mogilew 1941/42,” in Babette Quinkert/Philipp Rauh/Ulrike Winkler (eds.), Krieg und Psychiatrie 1914-1950 (Berlin: Wallstein-Verlag, 2010), pp. 75-103. 104 Henry Friedlander, Der Weg zum NS-Genozid. Von der Euthanasie bis zur Endlösung (Berlin: Berlin-Verlag, 1997), pp. 418-448. Idem, “Jüdische Anstaltspatienten im NS-Deutschland,” in Götz Aly (ed.), Aktion T4 1939-1945. Die “Euthanasie”-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstraße 4 (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1987), pp. 34-44. Lutz Raphael, “Euthanasie und Judenvernichtung,” in Euthanasie in Hadamar. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik in hessischen Anstalten. Begleitband zu einer Ausstellung des Landeswohlfahrtsverbandes Hessen, published by Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen, p. 79-90; Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 215-216. 105 See Matthias Hamann, “Die Ermordung psychisch kranker polnischer und sowjetischer Zwangsarbeiter,” in Götz Aly (ed.), Aktion T4 1939-1945. Die “Euthanasie”-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstraße 4 (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1987), pp. 161-167. Idem, “Die Morde an polnischen und sowjetischen Zwangsarbeitern in deutschen Anstalten,” in Götz Aly/Angelika Ebbinghaus/Matthias Hamann (eds.), Aussonderung und Tod. Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren, 2nd edition (Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1987), pp. 121-187; as well as Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie, pp. 237-239.

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VI. Summary Upon closer scrutiny, the question as to which kind of ethics was pivotal for implementing the Nazi euthanasia campaigns as well as the question whether a new and independent form of ethics had possibly emerged there indicates an insidious devaluation of human life during the period of Nazism which became more radical following the beginning of the war. All the relevant patterns of reasoning had been established already in the early years of the 20th century and only required updating to become suitable for the new political framework of Nazism. There was no straight path to euthanasia from eugenics and forced sterilization. Instead, we can describe a long and winding road to euthanasia, picking up on the twisted road metaphor for the Jewish Holocaust. However, in spite of the insidious devaluation of institutionalized patients in the 1920s and 1930s which became accelerated both by the welfare crises in the Weimar Republic and the Nazi racial ideology, euthanasia was by no means an automatic consequence of the ideology of racial hygiene. There was a debate about “destroying life unworthy of living” among medical and legal circles as early as between 1918-1939. This kind of destruction was most vehemently opposed by the Christian Churches. When the Nazis came to power they enforced the policy of legally codifying forced sterilization. Also, it is a fact that the eugenic tendency of the social policy of the Nazis delegitimized the right to life of handicapped and mentally ill people. However, it is still not possible today to document any long-term plans for the destruction of life. Nonetheless, pro-euthanasia voices in medicine, the justice system, and among the general population became more prominent during the 1930s. Within the NSDAP, especially the radical advocates of euthanasia felt encouraged to take action although the Nazis did not create any legal regulations on the destruction of life nor was there any open call for it until the beginning of the war in September 1939. Hence, euthanasia was organized by secret commissions competing with each other within the party, whose temporary point of regulation was the secret Fuehrer decree dated 1 September 1939. Scientific and economic arguments and reasons became pre-eminent when the campaigns for killing the sick and the handicapped were carried out starting in 1939 with those committing these crimes attempting to ethically justify transgressing the prohibition on killing by appealing to a state of emergency created by the war. Even when this reasoning was aimed at the Christian Conservative elites in the Nazi state, many people did not accept it, particularly those within the Churches. It is a fact that we can only discover a “broken attitude of rejection” in real-life practice.

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However, both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches rejected euthanasia throughout the entire war. The disrespect for the lives of handicapped people and psychiatric patients became most murderous during the second half of the war. The society at war saw things in terms of their usefulness and many of its citizens lost all moral sensitivity so that they accepted the deaths of tens of thousands of institutionalized patients without protest. These findings place Nazi euthanasia in the framework of war events that caused all inhibitions to be removed, and, due to being under the dominance of the Nazism apparatus, promoted the most severe radicalization. Speaking more generally, it points to the real dangers of the modern-day world placing a primarily economic value on people and loosening the prohibitions on killing in a social state of emergency. Placing a preeminent emphasis on the moral imperatives of community ethics in contrast to individual rights, whether in wartime or during a civil catastrophe, is an indicator of a society’s moral condition.

THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST PATIENT MURDERS BETWEEN TABOO AND ARGUMENT: NAZI EUTHANASIA AND THE CURRENT DEBATE ON MERCY KILLING GERRIT HOHENDORF

I. Introduction: “In the Name of a Higher Morality” and “National Socialist Morality” At the end of their work on “Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy or Life)” the authors, the renowned penologist Karl Binding and the well-known psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, place their demand to put people who are ill and unfit for life out of their misery into a wider historical context: “There was a time, which these days we consider barbaric, when it was a matter of course to get rid of those born or otherwise become unfit for life; then there was the period, still running today, when finally the preservation of any life, no matter how worthless, was considered the highest moral obligation; there will be a new time which, from the point of view of a higher morality, will give up on permanently implementing the demands of an exaggerated idea of humanity and its overestimation of the value of life, thus making severe sacrifices.”1

In this time of higher morality – as is Hoche’s prophecy – we will mature to understanding “that getting rid of the mentally completely dead is no crime, no immoral attitude, no emotional brutality but a legal, useful 1

Karl Binding/Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens. Ihr Maß und ihre Form (Leipzig: Meiner, 1920), p. 62 (italics in the original edition). On the historic classification and the impact of the study see Ortrun Riha (ed.), “Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens.” Beiträge des Symposiums über Karl Binding und Alfred Hoche am 2. Dezember 2004 in Leipzig (Aachen: Shaker, 2005).

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act.”2 Accordingly, Binding and Hoche move from infanticide in Sparta and the ancient idea of understanding (medically provoked) death as a liberator3 as far as to revaluating human life according to its social usefulness. By way of logical legal arguments and the evidence of medical experience they attempt to define certain kinds of human life as not falling under the protective scope of the state, and while doing so they consider themselves – in contrast to contemporary prejudices of “exaggerated humanity” – the vanguard of a “higher morality” to which a dozen years later, in the period of National Socialism, there was constant reference. How perfectly this revaluation of human life – formulated in 1920, without reference to any political party, however with a “völkisch”-national orientation – fit to programme and propaganda of the National Socialist state was demonstrated by Joseph Goebbels in a speech on the occasion of the Reichsparteitag 1938, delivering a parody of the ideal of bourgeois charity, as it is formulated by the six corporal works of mercy according to Mt. 25, 35-36: “We do not assume that there is only one Man, we do not support the idea that one must feed the hungry, quench the thirsty and cloth the naked [...]. Our motivations are of quite a different kind. Most succinctly, they can be summarized by this sentence: We must have a healthy people to push through in the world.”4

Thus, essential norms of “National Socialist morality” are identified, which place health and the power of one’s own people above the interests of the individual as well as above the interests of humans belonging to other peoples and races. This way – quite in the sense of social-Darwinist thought – charity and caring for weak, ill and poor people are devaluated as being unbiological or unnatural. Now one may argue that this way Joseph Goebbels is outside any discourse on morality. For, can there be any ethical behaviour which categorically places the rights of the more powerful as well as the rights of one’s own people above the justified interests of individuals? – Insofar as ethics are a method to judge morally on actions 2

Ibid., p. 57 (italics in the original edition). On the concept of euthanasia in antiquity see Udo Benzenhöfer, Der gute Tod? Euthanasie und Sterbehilfe in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999), pp. 13-42. 4 Goebbels delivered his speech to the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt on the occasion of the Reichsparteitag on September 12th, 1938. It is partly printed in: Hellmuth Störmer, Das rechtliche Verhältnis der NS-Volkswohlfahrt und des Winterhilfswerks zu den Betreuten im Vergleiche zur öffentlichen Wohlfahrtspflege (Berlin 1940), p. 36. 3

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and rules of actions which necessarily relativizes the interests of individuals or individual groups of humans and claims universal validity, a particular or “völkisch” morality categorically supporting the interests of a hereditarily healthy, powerful and “racially pure” German people cannot be an ethical theory in the closer sense.5 Also, this kind of “völkisch” morality cannot claim universal validity, even if formally and linguistically it claims to be moral and refers to being obliged to virtues such as faithfulness and honour.6 Insofar as such a kind of morality refers to a higher morality, it cannot claim to be human. However, the National Socialists were precisely not interested in humanity but in reestablishing the laws of nature (“struggle for life”). Insofar it does not come as a surprise that such a “higher morality” was enforced by terror and violence resulting in destruction and death. Thus, the debate on any “National Socialist morality” might leave it with this, referring to the answer given by Article 1 of the Federal Republic of Germany’s Basic Law from 1949, which is the claim for the universal validity of the dignity of man and the thus connected basic rights.7

II. The Ethical Question of “Life Unworthy of Living” Now there are definitely more subtle moral gateways through which the idea of the “destruction of life unworthy of living” has made its way, as far as to justifying the National Socialist “euthanasia” actions. These are:

5

See the contribution by Wulf Kellerwessel in this volume, see also the reasons given by Ernst Tugendhat to an egalitarian, universalist morality from the point of view of contractualism, “Der moralische Universalismus in der Konfrontation mit der Nazi-Ideologie,” in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Gross (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2009), pp. 61-75. 6 See Wolfgang Bialas, Die moralische Ordnung des Nationalsozialismus. Zum Zusammenhang von Philosophie, Ideologie und Moral, in Ibid., pp. 30-60. 7 According to the traditional jurisdiction of Germany’s Constitutional Court, the dignity of man or of human life is solely due to being man, independently of specific human qualities – such as moral autonomy and freedom – currently being realized. By this transcendental way of giving reasons to the core of human dignity the Constitutional Court follows the concept of dignity in Immanuel Kant. There is a violation of human dignity particularly if man is degraded to being merely an object of (state) acting and is no longer recognized as a subject, i.e. as an end in itself, see Tatjana Geddert-Steinacher, Menschenwürde als Verfassungsbegriff. Aspekte der Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zu Art. 1 Abs. 1 Grundgesetz (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1990), pp. 31-38.

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1. the demand for a “right to death” the autonomous individual is said to have, including the right to decide about one’s own life and body,8 2. the idea that in situations of incurable illness and unbearable suffering humans and in particular physicians should provoke death out of pity,9 3. the idea that the value of human life cannot only be defined subjectively by somebody being concerned him/herself but that it may also be defined from the outside, according to the degree of his/her usefulness for society and after having dropped out of societal relations.10 These – from an ethical point of view – debate-worthy assumptions form the theoretical foundation of the above mentioned work by Binding and Hoche. The crucial question of this work is: “Are their individual human lives which have lost their status of being a legally protected interest to such a degree that their continuation has permanently lost any value both for the bearers of these lives and for society?”11

From this rhetoric question Binding does not only deduce the impunity of suicide under the condition of this life having no value anymore but also the legality of voluntary euthanasia in case of incurable illness, the killing of those being unconscious who would wake up to unbearable suffering as well as redeeming those “ballast lives” at asylums who are considered “mentally dead.” The latter are neither willing to live nor to die, and thus killing them is not illegal.12 The crucial aspect from the ethical point of view is that considering certain states of suffering or kinds of human life 8

See Adolf Jost, Das Recht auf den Tod. Sociale Studie (Göttingen: Dietrich, 1895), p. 37: “Thus he who, when being incurably ill and suffering from pain, is able to evade life, shouzld not be excused but justified if he commits suicide; he simply acts according to what he is entitled to.” (italics in the original edition). 9 See ibid., p. 6. 10 See ibid., p. 13: “From a purely natural point of view, the value of a human life can only consist of two factors. The first factor is the value of this life for the one concerned himself, that is the balance of joy and pain he experiences. The second factor is the balance of usefulness and damage this individual means for his fellow humans.” 11 Binding/Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, p. 27 and 51 (italics in the original edition). 12 Ibid., pp. 13-34 and 53-58.

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“unworthy of living” as well as “redemption” desired by those concerned and the destruction of those who (allegedly) are not able anymore to express their will seems to be justified. In this context, considering life “unworthy of living” from an outside perspective depends on how value is defined by society. Accordingly, also the autonomously expressed desire for terminating life by medical means induces a slippery slope, that is if criteria set by society are supposed which make the termination of life by medical means legal. For, then these conditions (incurability of illness, unbearable suffering, uselessness of further living) also suggest the involuntary termination of life e. g. in states of “mental death.”

III. The Consequences of the “Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Living” – the Economy of Putting out of Misery In the Weimar Republic, Binding’s and Hoche’s study was debated among both jurists and physicians.13 The interpretation pattern of “life unworthy of living,” however, became the point of reference of the debate on euthanasia still in the 1960s.14 It also served for the ideological and legal justifi13

On the debate on euthanasia in the Weimar Republic see Michael Schwartz, “‘Euthanasie’-Debatten in Deutschland (1895-1945),” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 46 (1998) no. 4, pp. 617-665, here 625-640 and Gerrit Hohendorf, “Von der medizinischen Sterbebegleitung zur ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens.’ Euthanasiedebatten in Deutschland und Österreich 1895 – 1945,” in Brigitte Kepplinger/Florian Schwanninger/Irene Zauner-Leitner (eds), Geschichte und Verantwortung. Der Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim, Trauer, Linz, in press. 14 See e.g. the appellate decision of the Federal Court of Law from December 6th, 1960 (1 StR 404/60), which resulted in clearing the head of the health department of the Bavarian Home Ministry, Walter Schultze, from all accusations. Schultze had been responsible for the transfer of patients at Bavarian asylums to the death institutions of the National Socialist “euthanasia” Action T4. It might not be “ruled out that the defendent […] was of the opinion that Hitler’s death action referred only to those incurably mentally ill persons who were lacking any natural will to live and that thorough examinations by renowned physicians would guarantee that only such ill people would be concerned by the action. In the opinion of this Assize Court this cannot be refuted. Then, however, […] the defendent with his alleged mistake of law had been in accordance with the opinion of scientists who can hardly be accused of having had criminal intentions and who, within the aforementioned strict limits, had spoken in favour of the destruction of `life unworthy of living’ even before the appearance of National Socialism, something to which the appeal rightly points out.” Quoted after: Ermittlungsverfahren gegen Walter

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cation of the killing of ill people during National Socialism.15 In the 1930s, the terms coined by Binding and Hoche are also found in individual psychiatric medical files, which may not claim to be representative for German psychiatry but sheds a dubious light on the attitude of individual heads of asylums and might explain why the deportation of the patients who had been entrusted to them to the death asylums of the “euthanasia” action did not on the whole meet more resistance among German psychiatrists. For example, about 32 years old Adelheid B., who was suffering from a mental development disorder and had been at asylums since her childhood, it says: “Still terribly difficult and troubling. Life unworthy of living!” Another entry says: “Nothing new. Every few weeks there is some injury or ulceration. But survives every mishap. – More animal-like than any animal.”16 About Helene N, suffering from schizophrenia, one of the last entries of her records says: “Same as before. Mentally dead. The file should be closed, as also in the future there will be no change. The only entry worth the effort is noting the date of death.”17 In 1940 both patients were transferred to the gas murder institution of Grafeneck on the Schwäbische Alb and murdered.

Schultze Staatsanwaltschaft München 1 Js 1793/47 (Staatsarchiv München StA 19501, Bd. 3, S. 370-377, here p. 374 recte). 15 After the war, one of the officials in charge at the Fuehrer’s Chancellory, which was in charge of the killing of ill people during the period of National Socialism, stated that one had built on the insights of scientists who had had nothing to do with National Socialism, such as Katl Binding and Alfred Hoche, see Udo Benzenhöfer, “Bemerkungen zur Binding-Hoche-Rezeption in der NS-Zeit,” in Ortrun Riha (ed.), Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens“. Beiträge des Symposiums über Karl Binding und Alfred Hoche am 2. Dezember 2004 in Leipzig (Aachen: Shaker, 2004), pp. 114-133, here 131. 16 Medical files of Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Wiesloch (Bundesarchiv Berlin R 179/24496), on the biography of Adelheid B. see Gerrit Hohendorf, “Adelheid B. ‘...wiederholt fast beständig eine eigentümliche Reihe von Tönen,’” in Tödliche Medizin. Rassenwahn im Nationalsozialismus, published by Jüdisches Museum Berlin (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009), pp. 24-29, on the context see also Juliane C. Wilmanns/Gerrit Hohendorf, “Der Verlust des Mitgefühls in der Psychiatrie des Nationalsozialismus,” in Hans Förstl (ed.), Theory of Mind. Neurobiologie und Psychologie sittlichen Verhaltens (Heidelberg: Springer, 2007), pp. 183-206, here 199-201. 17 Medical files of Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Wiesloch (Bundesarchiv Berlin R 179/24884).

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In the German Reich, from spring 1939 on, a circle of experts at the Fuehrer’s Chancellery18 organized both the selection of mentally and physically disabled children at the children’s wards and the recording and selection of patients at asylums (“Aktion T4,” 1939-1941), seemingly legitimated by a writing by Adolf Hitler which had been dated back to the beginning of the war on September 1st, 1939. On the territory of the German Reich alone, a total of about 300,000 people became the victims of the various forms of National Socialist “euthanasia.” This includes those who were purposefully starved to death or overdosed, ways of killing of a practice of decentralized “euthanasia” which over the years of the war became ever more undifferentiated and were continued until the end of the war in 1945, that is even after the tactical stop of “Aktion T4” in the summer of 1941. In the context of “Aktion T4,” from autumn 1939 on, asylums on the then territory of the Reich received one-page registration forms with more or less differentiated questions about person, family members, clinical picture, duration of stay at the asylum, kind of admittance as well as about behaviour and labour performance at the asylum. The decision about life or death was made exclusively according to the information provided by these registration sheets, by 4 experts from a circle of psychiatrists. Based on the decisions of these experts, transport lists were made at the T4 headquarters, according to which finally the selected patients were directly or indirectly via intermediate asylums deported to the gas murder institutions.19 18 From the spring of 1940 on, the department at the Fuehrer’s Chancellory which was in charge of organizing the murder of ill people had is seat at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin, thus the shortage “T4.” 19 On the history of NS “euthanasia” see the standard works by Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im Dritten Reich. Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens,” revised edition (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2010). Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance. ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany c. 1900-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) (German: Tod und Erlösung. Euthanasie in Deutschland 1900 – 1945 (Zurich: Pendo, 2002)). Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995) (German: Der Weg zum NS-Genozid. Von der Euthanasie zur Endlösung (Berlin: Berlin-Verlag, 1997) and Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie 1914-1949. Mit einer Topographie der NSPsychiatrie (Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998), for a summary see Gerrit Hohendorf, “Ideengeschichte und Realgeschichte der nationalsozialistischen ‘Euthanasie’ im Überblick,” in Petra Fuchs/Maike Rotzoll/Ulrich Müller/Paul Richter/Gerrit Hohendorf (eds.), “Das Vergessen der Vernichtung ist Teil der Vernichtung selbst“. Lebensgeschichten von Opfern der nationalsozialistischen “Euthanasie” (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), pp. 36-52.

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In recent years it has been possible to gain essential new insights on how “Aktion T4” was carried out, as unexpectedly 30,000 medical files out of a total number of 70,000 victims were discovered at an archive of the GDR’s Ministry of State Security.20 In the context of a research project, a random sample of the 30,000 preserved files of the victims of the centrally organized “Aktion T4” was analyzed. This way it was possible to reconstruct – by help of a comparative random sample of surviving patients – the criteria for the selection of victims. Judging on the labour performance at the asylum proved to have been the decisive criterion for selection: whereas 46.3% of T4 victims did not work at all and 26.9% were considered to be of little use, 43.5% of the survivors were considered “productive workers,” and the labour performance of 26.5% was judged on as average.21 Only who was able to work productively had a chance to survive. This economy of putting out of misery becomes obvious also by the so called “Hartheim Statistics” where the public funds saved by the

20

On the history of the medical files of victims of “Aktion T4” see Peter Sandner, “Die ‘Euthanasie’-Akten im Bundesarchiv. Zur Geschichte eines lange verschollenen Bestandes,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 47 (1999) no. 3, pp. 385-400 and idem, “Schlüsseldokumente zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der NS-‘Euthanasie’-Akten gefunden,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 51 (2003) no. 2, pp. 285-290. 21 Maike Rotzoll/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/Gerrit Hohendorf, “Die nationalsozialistische ‘Euthanasieaktion T4.’ Historische Forschung, individuelle Lebensgeschichten und Erinnerungskultur,” Der Nervenarzt, vol. 81 (2010), pp. 1326-1332, here 1330, see also Gerrit Hohendorf, Empirische Untersuchungen zur nationalsozialistischen “Euthanasie” bei psychisch Kranken – mit Anmerkungen zu aktuellen ethischen Fragestellungen (Munich: Habilitationsschrift Technische Universität, 2008), pp. 79-116 and Gerrit Hohendorf, “Die Selektion der Opfer zwischen rassenhygienischer ‘Ausmerze,’ ökonomischer Brauchbarkeit und medizinischem Erlösungsideal,” in Maike Rotzoll/Gerrit Hohendorf/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/Christoph Mundt/Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie“-Aktion “T4“. Geschichte und ethische Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2010), pp. 310-328. In the context of the statisticaI assessment a logistic regression of the criteria of lacking productive labour performance was conducted: a stay at the asylum of more than four years, trouble-making behaviour at the ward, increased intensity of care, unusual social behaviour before the stay at the asylum and hereditary nature of the illness, in order to decide about killing or survival. Lacking productive labour performance proved to have been the most important factor.

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“disinfection” of 70,273 people until August, 1941, are given as 885,439,800 Reich marks.22 Whereas as a result of the impossibility to keep secrecy, increasing uneasiness among the population and the public protest by the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Kardinal von Galen, “Aktion T4” was interrupted in August, 1941,23 the murder of children and youths at the so called “Kinderfachabteilungen (children’s wards)” was continued until the end of the war and at some places even after the end of the war.24 In contrast to the summary selection procedure of “Aktion T4” mentally or physically disabled children were usually observed over a more or less longer period of time before the “Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden” issued a “permission” for treatment, i.e. killing. The parents were told that any available modern possibilities of treatment would be exhausted, which was not according to the facts, and one tried to suggest natural death as a result of pneumonia. In reality, the children were killed by overdose. Preserved letters or memos show that parents did not only express their hopes for an improvement of their children’s physical condition or protest against assumed killing, but in a number of cases there is an outspokenly ambivalent attitude. This group of parents considered the death of their children a “relief” but did not want to be included in decision-making on the killing of their children, indeed they did not want to know about it, if possible.25 The following 22

So called Hartheim Statistics, a document found by Major Charles H. Dameron on June 21st, 1945, at the killing institution of Hartheim near Linz/Austria, listing the money and food saved by the “disinfection” of 70,273 asylum patients calculated for ten years after 1941 (National Archives an Records Administration, College Park/MD, US-Army Europe, Record Group 549, Box 491, p. 4). 23 See Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie 1914-1949, pp. 273-288 and Winfried Süß, Der “Volkskörper” im Krieg. Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1939-1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003), pp. 127-151. 24 See Sascha Topp, “Der ‘Reichsausschuß zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erbund anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden.’ Zur Organisation der Ermordung minderjähriger Kranker im Nationalsozialismus 1939-1945,” in Thomas Beddies/Kristina Hübener (eds.), Kinder in der NS-Psychiatrie (Berlin: be.bra Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2004), pp. 17-54. For the continuation of the killings of patients inside the “Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Kaufbeuren“ after may 8th, 1945 see Michael von Cranach/Hans-Ludwig Siemen (eds.), Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus. Die Bayerischen Heil- und Pflegeanstalten zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), p. 295. 25 See Petra Lutz, “NS-Gesellschaft und ‘Euthanasie’: die Reaktionen der Eltern ermordeter Kinder,” in Christoph Mundt/Gerrit Hohendorf/Maike Rotzoll (eds.), Psychiatrische Forschung und NS-“Euthanasie“. Beiträge zu einer

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letter from 1943, by a mother to Johann Duken,26 the Director of the Heidelberg paediatric hospital, on whose orders three-years-old Christel had been transferred to the children’s ward at Eichberg, illustrates the significance of the idea of “putting out of misery” for the parents of the murdered children. “Dear Professor! [...] After a stay of five days at the asylum of Eichberg, our dear little Christel died on June 30th. This sudden death at Eichberg came as a severe shock to me, and at first I thought the child had not been sufficiently cared for there, as she was so lively when I took her there from Heidelberg. Had I had an idea that this little life would soon come to an end anyway, I would not have undertaken this cumbersome journey and would have let the child in Heidelberg. Did you believe already then that the child would die so soon? I remember your words, that probably the child would not have lived for many years and also that it would never be healthy, and I find comfort by the thought that now it has been put out of its severe misery. Thus we parents have been relieved from great concerns for the future. I express my dear thanks and am Yours sincerely Mathilde N.”27

In another letter the desire for relief is expressed more clearly. After the Director of the asylum at Eichberg, Dr. Walter Schmidt, had informed the father of two-years-old Heinz that “there is little hope for improvement,” the father wrote to the physician: “Truly, for us it is a difficult task to know that a child is still alive while there is no hope for rescue anymore. What will be left to him of his life is Gedenkveranstaltung an der Psychiatrischen Universitätsklinik Heidelberg (Heidelberg: Wunderhorn, 2001), pp. 97-113. 26 On Johann Duken as well as on the Heidelberger Kinderklinik in the period of National Socialism see Gerrit Hohendorf/Maike Rotzoll/Sigrid Oehler-Klein, “Der Pädiater Johann Duken im Dienst nationalsozialistischer Gesundheitspolitik,” in Sigrid Oehler-Klein (ed.), Die Medizinische Fakultät der Universität Gießen im Nationalsozialismus und in der Nachkriegszeit: Personen und Institutionen, Umbrüche und Kontinuitäten (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007), pp. 323-357. 27 Brief der Mutter von Christel N. an Prof. Duken vom 6.7.1943 (Universitätsarchiv Heidelberg, Bestand Kinderklinik Acc. 15/01 L-II, Krankenblatt Christel N. Prot.Nr. 1648/1943).

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his suffering, possibly suffering without end. Judging from your last letter, according to current medical experience there is no hope for improvement. Thus, there is only one last favour we ask for, if there is no rescue a. improvement, or healing over the time; So take care that the dear little boy will not have to bear his severe suffering all too long. We suppose that operating the brain is as impossible as operating the heart. We are ready for everything, both for him dying and for his death.”28

Indeed, the parents’ desire for putting their mentally disabled children out of their misery is not just a product or National Socialist propaganda, this desire is already impressively documented by a survey the head of the Katharinenhof, a Protestant asylum for mentally disabled children in Saxony, Ewald Metzger, had conducted in the early 1920s among the parents of the children entrusted to him. Originally, Metzger had intended to empirically refute the demands by Binding and Hoche. However, the result came as a surprise: the majority of parents did not object against putting their children out of their misery: to the question if they would accept the lives of their children being terminated without pain if experts had found that their children were incurably imbecile, 119 out of 162 parents answered “yes” and only 43 “no.” Among those saying “no” there were only 20 who rejected the painless killing of their children under all circumstances.29 It is conspicuous that for the positive answers economic reasons played a considerable role. A letter by a miner expresses this openly: “Is it not that these mentally dead are a burden for state and society as well as for their relatives?”30 Apart from these or similarly expressed utility considerations, the idea is stated that putting these children “out of their misery” was a charitable act. 28

Schreiben des Vaters von Heinz F. an Dr. Schmidt vom 25.10.1941 (Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, Abt. 430 / Nr. 11074 Krankenakte Heinz F.). The words “nicht mehr zu denken” and “sein schweres Leiden ertragen” were underlined by the asylum at Eichberg, which indicates that for the perpetrators it was of significance that the killing was legitimated by the parents’ wish. On the children’s ward at Eichberg see Gerrit Hohendorf/Stephan Weibel-Shah/Volker Roelcke/ Maike Rotzoll, “Die ‘Kinderfachabteilung’ der Landesheilanstalt Eichberg 1941 bis 1945 und ihre Beziehung zur Forschungsabteilung der Psychiatrischen Universitätsklinik Heidelberg unter Carl Schneider,” in Christina Vanja/Steffen Haas/Gabriela Deutschle/Wolfgang Eirund/Peter Sandner (eds.), Wissen und irren. Psychiatriegeschichte aus zwei Jahrhunderten – Eberbach und Eichberg (Kassel: Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen, 1999), pp. 221-243. 29 Ewald Meltzer, Das Problem der Abkürzung “lebensunwerten” Lebens (Halle/S.: Marhold, 1925), pp. 85-101. 30 Ibid., p. 93.

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Precisely by the example of the killing of disabled children in the period of National Socialism it is possible to demonstrate that the National Socialist functional elites, physicians, jurists and administrative experts, had skilfully known how to solve a question which was considered a problem by society, that is the question of medically putting the incurably ill “out of their misery,” in a radical way, while hoping for tacit agreement by parts of the population. The result is both horrifying and brutal. The results of scientific research on the genesis and practice of the National Socialist killings of ill people can be summarized as follows: 1. For the debate on euthanasia, the individual’s free decision about his/her life and death was the starting point, however it was not an inflexible limit. Rather, the euthanasia discourse showed an inherent tendency of progressing from killing those who had clearly stated their wish to die to putting also those “out of their misery” who were not able anymore to express their will or who were considered to be incapable of willing.31 2. The connection of “putting out of misery” according to the expressive wish of those concerned and the killing of those who were incapable of stating their minds was essentially overarched by pity, which also covered people incapable of stating their minds, as well as considering their lives as being “unworthy of living.” By the concept of “life unworthy of living” it was possible to define a certain group of people as not falling under the scope of the protection of life as guaranteed by the state. “Not worthy of life” was not only defined according to the subjective feeling that one’s own life or suffering did no longer make any sense but most of all by its lacking usefulness for environment and society. This way the concept of “life unworthy of living” was given a quasi objective nature, determined by social values. People in need of care, being physically or mentally disabled became “ballast lives.” By the example of the 31

See also Michael Wunder, “Des Lebens Wert. Zur alten und zur neuen Debatte um Autonomie und Euthanasie,” in Maike Rotzoll/Gerrit Hohendorf/Petra Fuchs/Paul Richter/Christoph Mundt/Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.), Die nationalsozialistische “Euthanasie”-Aktion “T4.” Von den historischen Bedingungen bis zu den Konsequenzen für die Ethik in der Gegenwart (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/ Zurich: Schöningh, 2010), pp. 391-401, here 391, see also Michael Wunder, “Medizin und Gewissen. Die neue Euthanasie-Debatte in Deutschland vor dem historischen und internationalen Hintergrund,” in Andreas Frewer/Clemens Eickhoff (eds.),“Euthanasie” und die aktuelle SterbehilfeDebatte. Die historischen Hintergründe medizinischer Ethik (Frankfurt a. M./ New York: Campus, 2000), pp. 250-275.

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“euthanasia of children” it is possible to demonstrate that under the special conditions of the war the covered offer of putting the children “out of their misery” was accepted by a part of the population. 3. An analysis of the selection criteria of “Aktion T4” makes the cold economic calculus of National Socialist euthanasia obvious – independently of the justification strategies of the physicianperpetrators. Historically seen, the allegedly high-minded claim of “putting out of misery” of the idea of euthanasia is based on determining the value of human life first of all according to its economic usefulness.

IV. Regarding the Current Debate on Euthanasia: the Autonomous Decision by Those Concerned Does not Provide a Stable Limit The current debate on euthanasia in Germany is strongly characterized by the idea of autonomy and the right to decide about one’s own life and death.32 Also the German advanced health care directive act from 2009 must be understood this way.33 However, the current international and German debate on euthanasia shows that even presently the autonomy postulate does not provide a stable limit.34 In the Netherlands, worldwide the first country with a euthanasia law,35 apart from ways of medical kill32

Concerning the number of publications, the current debate on euthanasia in Germany is hardly assessable anymore. Two compilations may be mentioned: Adrian Holderegger (ed.), Das medizinisch assistierte Sterben. Zur Sterbehilfe aus medizinischer, ethischer und juristischer und theologischer Sicht, 2nd advanced edition (Freiburg i. Ue./Freiburg i. B./Vienna: Herder, 2000) with regard to the international debate, and currently with emphasis on the concept of autonomy, and Felix Thiele (ed.), Aktive und passive Sterbehilfe. Medizinische, rechtswissenschaftliche und philosophische Aspekte, 2. Edition (Munich: Fink, 2010). As a monograph and still worth reading, while presenting interesting ways of arguing in the context of the euthanasia debate: Markus Zimmermann, Euthanasie. Eine theologisch-ethische Untersuchung, 2nd advanced and revised edition (Freiburg i. Ue./Freiburg i. B./Vienna: Herder, 2002). 33 Drittes Gesetz zur Änderung des Betreuungsrechts, Bundestagsdrucksache 593/09, adopted by the German Bundestag on 19/06/2009, see the overview Thorsten Verrel/Alfred Simon, Patientenverfügungen. Rechtliche und ethische Aspekte (Freiburg i. Br./Munich: Alber, 2010). 34 See also Wunder, “Des Lebens Wert“, p. 394. 35 See Elena Fischer, Recht auf Sterben?! Ein Beitrag zur Reformdiskussion der Sterbehilfe in Deutschland unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Frage nach der Übertragbarkeit des Holländischen Modells der Sterbehilfe in das deutsche Recht

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ing while keeping certain criteria of carefulness (killing by the expressive demand of those concerned and suicide under medical assistance) there still exists a practice of involuntary euthanasia. According to empirical surveys, in 2005 there were about 550 cases (0.4%) per year in which the lives of seriously ill people were medically terminated without expressive demand by those concerned; in the overwhelming majority of these cases the termination of life was on demand of relatives.36 Compared to previous surveys from 1990, 1995 and 2001, the number of cases of involuntary euthanasia has slightly declined. What is worrying, however, is the fact that before killing them there had been the possibility to ask some of the patients, most of whom were in the final stages of an incurable illness, if they wanted to be put out of their misery by help of a deadly medicine; at least this is suggested by the studies from the years 1990 and 1995.37 The current survey does not provide sufficient information on the question if the killed patients had been capable of agreement. In 60% of cases the interviewed physicians stated that they had acted according to the previously expressed desires of the patients.38 Thus, in respect of quantity one (Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Bern/Bruxelles/New York/Oxford/Vienna: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. XIX-XXVI. In the Netherlands, the criteria for the permission of killing on demand and medically assisted suicide are: the voluntary nature of the demand as well as previous thorough consideration. 2. No hope for improvement as well as the suffering being unbearable. 3. Being informed about the medical situation. 4. Lack of any other acceptable solution. 5. The independent opinion of a second physician. 6. The measure must be carried out with all medical care. 36 Agnes van der Heide/Bregie D. Onwuteaka-Philipsen/Mette L. Rurup/Hilde M. Buiting/Johannes J. M. van der Delden/Johanna E. Hanssen-de Wolf/Anke G. J. M. Janssen/H. Roeline W. Pasman/Judith A. C. Rietjens/Cornelius J. M. Prins/ Ingeborg M. Deerenberg/Joseph K. M. Gevers/Paul J. van der Maas/Gerrit van der Wal G, “End-of–Life Practices in the Netherlands under the Euthanasia Act,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 356 (2007) no. 19, pp. 1957-65. 37 The 1990 study considered 36% of patients killed without expressive demand to have been capable of judgement (“competent”), see Loes Pijnenborg/Paul J. van der Maas/Johannes J. M. van Delden/Caspar W. N. Looman, “Life-terminating acts without explicit request of patient,” The Lancet, vol. 341 (1993), pp. 1196-99, here 1198, table II. According to the study from 1995, 21% of patients killed without expressive demand had been capable of judgement, see Paul J. van der Maas/Gerrit van der Waal/Ilinka Haverkate/Carmen L. M. de Graaff/ John G. C. Kester/Bregje D. Onwuteaka-Philipsen/Agnes van der Heide/Jacqueline M. Bosma/Dick L. Willems, “Euthanasia, Physician-Assisted Suicide and other Medical Practices Invilving the End of Life in the Netherlands.,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 335 (1996) no. 22, pp. 1699-1705, here 1704, table 4. 38 Van der Heide et al., “End-of-Life Practices in the Netherlands under the Euthanasia Act,” p. 1960.

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will not be able to speak of an increase of euthanasia without the person concerned expressively demanding it, but we may state that during the past 20 years there has been some kind of uncontrolled abuse of the existing regulations. Furthermore, however, in the Netherlands the scope of the medical termination of life has been extended in a way as weakening the originally strict criteria for euthanasia. For example, there is a debate if active termination of life by physicians shall be possible also for people suffering from dementia, both in respect of expected suffering in the early stages of this illness and by preliminary demand for the case of not being capable to express agreement.39 Furthermore, currently in the Netherlands a euthanasia practice for severely disabled newborn children on demand of the parents is being established,40 although this is not in accordance with the original definition of euthanasia. Also the debate in Germany is currently on incapacitated people: e. g. on the question of terminating artificial nutrition in cases of persistent vegetative state according to the patient’s assumed wish and on the question of so called early euthanasia concerning severely disabled newborn children. In this context, the perception of society and the ethical judgement of patients in so called persistent vegetative state has clearly changed in the past 10 years. If still in the 1990s it was undebated that people in persistent vegetative state, due to the fact that they are incapable of clearly communicating their will, are particularly vulnerable and need particular care,41 the debate on the legally binding nature of the advance health care directive has resulted in a situation in which the termination of artificial nutrition and thus letting (vigilant) coma patients die is an option which is said to be justified if it is in accordance with the assumed or stated in advance (in written form) will of the patient. The Munich lawyer Wolfgang Putz who, by being cleared of the accusation of attempted homicide by the German Federal Court on June 25th, 2010, has achieved a pioneering ver-

39

Tony Sheldon, “Dutch approve euthanasia for a patient with Alzheimer’s disease,” British Medical Journal, vol. 330 (2005), p. 1041. 40 Eduard Verhagen/Pieter J. J. Sauer, “The Groningen Protocol – Euthanasia in Severly Ill Newborns,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 352 (2005) no. 10, pp. 959-962. 41 See Dirk Lanzerath, “Selbstbestimmung und Fürsorge. Zur ethischen Diskussion um die Behandlung von Patienten mit komplettem appallischen Syndrom,” Zeitschrift für medizinische Ethik, vol. 42 (1996), pp. 287-305.

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dict on the legal judgement on terminating medical treatment,42 gives an illustrative description of a definitely happening change of societal values: “The increasing spread of advance health care directives will contribute to influencing general values. The more people will resist a medically possible continuation of life, the more the basic consensus of society will be shifted. Then even people who did not perfectly care for themselves in this way will benefit from this changed world of values. The situation will be reversed: who in the future wishes ‘continuation of life at any cost’ will have to state this by an appropriate advance health care directive. In the normal case there will not be any years long vegetating on the feeding tube.”43

By these sentences it becomes obvious that finding out about the patient’s will – if the latter is incapable of agreement – does not happen as independently as demanded by the originally intended concept of autonomy. Wolfgang Putz predicts a change of societal values in the sense of “normally” considering life under the conditions of reduced consciousness and artificial nutrition to be undignified. However, if according to generally accepted values a society considers life under conditions of reduced consciousness as well as artificial nutrition and intensive care to be uncommon or unusual, the leeway for decision-making about a continuation of such a life will be reduced, and the individual’s autonomy will be restricted, after all. In respect of active euthanasia in case of severely disabled newborn children, from different angles the jurists Norbert Hoerster and Reinhard Merkel have spoken out in favour of legalizing this kind of involuntary – as not being based on an autonomous decision by the individual – euthanasia if severe, otherwise incurable suffering is stated. Reinhard Merkel believes that already according to established law the active killing of severely disabled newborn children in case of incurable suffering is justified as a “necessity as justification” according to § 34 German Penal Code if the newborn child’s “interest in dying” is clearly bigger than its “interest 42

Verdict by the Federal Court from June 25th, 2010 (BGH 2 StR 454/09). The lawyer Mr. Putz had advised a client to cut the tube for her mother’s artificial nutrition, after the home for old aged people, despite a previously negotiated compromise, had restarted the artificial nutrition of her mother, who had been in a coma for five years as a result of cerebral bleeding. The Federal Court considered this a termination of treatment justified by the mother’s “actual” wish (stated by the mother to her daughter during a conversation) and thus not a penal killing. 43 Wolfgang Putz/Beate Steldinger, Patientenrechte am Ende des Lebens. Vorsorgevollmacht, Patientenverfügung, selbstbestimmtes Sterben, 3rd edition (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007), p. 27.

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in life.”44 Merkel admits that this decision must be made from the outside, by physicians and the concerned parents. Hoerster, on the other hand, believes active euthanasia in case of newborn children and on demand of the parents to be justified if medical euthanasia is in accordance with the assumed desire of the newborn child: “The child’s state of suffering must be so grave that the child itself, if it was capable of judgment and informed about its state and after careful consideration, would opt for euthanasia.”45 In Hoerster, the justification of this kind of involuntary euthanasia follows from the basic justification of “humane” (active) euthanasia on expressive demand of those concerned. For, Hoerster asks, why should humans living in states of comparable suffering be disadvantaged only because they are not able to expressively ask for it?46 Analogously, Hoerster also justifies involuntary euthanasia for adults who have never been capable of judgement. In his book “Sterbehilfe im säkularen Staat (Euthanasia in the Secular State)” Hoerster constructs the following example, to at least theoretically justify the ethical legality of involuntary active euthanasia: “Assuming that A has been severely and incurably mentally ill for his entire life. Now he has also an incurable kind of cancer which will cause unbearable pain until his natural death, without any possibility to compensate for this by any positive experiences which might be possible for him. In such a case, as definitely A has never rejected active euthanasia, and considering his state of suffering, is it not that we must assume that he does desire death as soon as possible, that is active euthanasia?”47

Just like in the case of severely disabled newborn children, also with this example there is – strictly spoken – no place for speculations on the patient’s will, as there exist no statements made when being capable of agreement which would allow for finding out how precisely this individual 44

See Reinhard Merkel, Früheuthanasie. Rechtsethische und strafrechtliche Grundlagen ärztlicher Entscheidungen über Leben und Tod in der Neonatalmedizin (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2001), pp. 528-534. § 34 StGB says: “Who in case of a current danger for life, freedom, honour, property or any other legally protected interest which could not be prevented otherwise commits a deed to prevent this danger from him/herself or from somebody else, does not act illegally if, under consideration of the conflicting interests, namely the concerned legally protected interests and the degree of the threat, the protected interest is considerably higher than the affected one.” 45 Norbert Hoerster, Neugeborene und das Recht auf Leben (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1995), pp. 106-107 (italics in the original edition). 46 Ibid., pp. 104-106. 47 Norbert Hoerster, Sterbehilfe im säkularen Staat (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998), p. 97.

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patient would decide in this situation of grave suffering, if he would be capable of a decision. Thus, the point of view taken by Hoerster depends exclusively on general values and attitudes, as becoming obvious already by the suggestive nature of his question: a value which humans capable of judgement would reasonably support in such a situation is assumed as the patient’s presumable will: is it not that anybody in such a situation of unavoidable and unbearable suffering would desire to die soon, thus consequently demanding active euthanasia? However, Hoerster ignores one crucial point: the wish to die soon does not necessarily, so to speak automatically, result in a desire to be killed. One may definitely hope for death without wanting to be killed by somebody else. On the other hand, in Hoerster’s opinion there exist states of suffering which are so unbearable that in such a situation any reasonable human would opt for being killed by a physician. Thus, so to speak objectively, that is independently of the patient’s individual, subjective point of view, these states of suffering must be considered not to be “worth living” anymore, thus resulting in the assumption that the concerned individual, if he/she could, would demand active euthanasia. The outside view at states of severe suffering requires a value judgement for which no reasons can be given by the subjective feeling of a human capable of expressing his/her mind. Even if the example given by Hoerster is a constructed one and he emphasizes that one should be particularly careful when investigating the presumable will in order to justify active euthanasia, this point makes also a fundamental problem of the justification of active euthanasia on expressive demand of the concerned person obvious: there is the logical question if not also humans who are no longer capable of expressing their mind and are in situations of grave suffering have a right to active euthanasia, as they would be disadvantaged if they were refused active euthanasia. Both the historical discourse on euthanasia and the current German and international debate on euthanasia show this tendency towards an extension, from voluntary to involuntary euthanasia. Accordingly, in the already mentioned study by Adolf Jost, titled “Das Recht auf Tod (The Right to Death),” it says: “If we watch an incurably ill person lying in agony, under unbearable pain, with the dull prospect of maybe months-long infirmity, without hope of recovering, if we walk the rooms of an asylum, and the look of a man raving with madness or that of the paralytic make us feel as sorry as ever possible, then, despite all the prejudices we are soaked with we must have this thought: ‘is it not that these people have a right to death, is it not that hu-

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man society has the obligation to grant them this death with as little pain as possible?’”48

The crucial point for both cases, that of the (capable of agreement) incurably ill person and that of the (incapable of agreement) incurably mentally ill person, is the pitiful suffering which is considered to be so unbearable that it can only be ended by the “right to death.” However, Jost makes the right of the physically ill person who is capable of agreement the first of his demands. Putting the (incapable of agreement) mentally ill out of their misery is only the second step of a process of fundamentally reforming the way of dealing with life and death in society.49 If we see the current debate on euthanasia in its historical context, from which it cannot be completely separated, it becomes clear that there is a transition from voluntary to involuntary euthanasia which results from the logic of the discourse. Thus, and this can definitely be learned from discussing the history of the modern idea of euthanasia, the debate on euthanasia cannot be restricted to the autonomous decision of the individual because as a second condition for legal active euthanasia there is the unbearable suffering of the concerned person which, as is considerably evident, is true also and particularly for people who are currently incapable of agreement or unable to express their minds.

V. Structural Features Through the Epochs: Life Unworthy of Life For the Australian bioethicist Peter Singer and his co-author Helga Kuhse a debate on “life unworthy of living” is unavoidable also in Germany, as Helga Kuhse writes in “Deutsches Ärzteblatt,” 1990.50 Singer’s and Kuhse’s justification of euthanasia for disabled newborn children caused great sensation in those days.51 However, Singer’s fundamental argumen48

Jost, Recht auf den Tod, p. 6. “Accordingly, accepting the right to death of mentally ill persons will in practice be less considered, as naturally in this case the patient’s agreement with being killed would be lacking, and as this condition, at least in the early stages of the reform, might be slightly problematic.,” ibid., p. 47. 50 Helga Kuhse, “Warum Fragen der Euthanasie auch in Deutschland unvermeidlich sind,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt, vol. 87 (1990), pp. 1243-1249. 51 For example, in his book “Practical Ethics,” published in 1979, Peter Singer writes: “When the death of a defective infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the defective infant is killed.” According to Singer’s interpretation of classical utilitarianism, newborn children are in principle replaceable (Peter Singer, Practi49

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tation on the right to death and his criticism of the principle of the sacredness of human life goes much farther. For him, humans have an inviolable right to live only if they meet the criteria for being a person and show the qualities of self-consciousness, rationality and autonomy, i.e. the capability to develop preferences for their own future.52 Non-personal human beings – such as newborn children who are not yet able draft their own future or people with restricted consciousness, are subject of a simple, utilitarian account of expected feelings of happiness or pain. If this account is negative, the life of non-personal human beings should be terminated, as their lives mean more suffering than happiness.53 Given different philosophical or ideological premises, there is an astonishing analogy with which Peter Singer in 1979 and Alfred Hoche in 1920 exclude certain groups of humans from the state-guaranteed and inviolable right to live. Both here and there we find comparisons with the animal world. For example, in Singer it says provocatively: “Killing a snail or a day-old infant does not thwart any desires of this kind, because snails and newborn infants are incapable of having such desires [regarding their future].”54 Both here and there we find the argument that a lack of selfconsciousness rules out any personal interest in living. Accordingly, in Hoche it says about the “mentally dead:”

cal Ethics, Cambridge/London/New York/New Rochelle/Melbourne/Sydney 1979, p. 134, see also Peter Singer, Praktische Ethik, 2nd revised and advanced German edition (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994), p. 238). His conclusion regarding the problem of euthanasia for disabled newborn children is: “Nevertheless the main point is clear: killing a defective infant ist not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.,” ibid. (1979), p. 138, ibid. (1994), p. 244. See also Helga Kuhse/Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants (Oxford/New York/Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985). 52 On the definition of a person in Singer see Singer, Practical Ethics (1979), pp. 76-84 and Singer, Praktische Ethik (1994), pp. 120-136, critically on this see Robert Spaemann, Personen. Versuche über den Unterschied zwischen ‘etwas‘ und ‘jemand’ (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1996), pp. 252-264. 53 Singer, Practical Ethics (1979), pp. 84-90 and 130-139, see also Singer, Praktische Ethik (1994), pp. 136-146 and 232-246. 54 Singer, Practical Ethics (1979), p. 78, almost identical Singer, Praktische Ethik (1994), p. 123. For sure, Singer’s criticism of giving reasons to the right to live in a way which only refers to man, without taking the right of animals to live into consideration, is justified and requires a differentiated reaction. But the inversion of the argument, concluding from the lack of respect towards the lives of higher animals to devaluating the right to live of those humans who in Singer’s opinion are no persons is very dubious.

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“The crucial point, however, is the lacking possibility to become aware of one’s own personality, the lack of self-consciousness. The mentally dead are at an intellectual level as we find it only in the animal world, and also their emotions do not go beyond most elementary processes which are tied to animal life. Thus, a mentally dead is also incapable of inwardly making any subjective claim to life, just as he is incapable of any mental processes.”55

And Singer defines the connection between self-consciousness and the right to live as follows: it seems to be “plausible that the capacity to envisage one’s own future should be a necessary condition of possessing a serious right to live.”56 And consequently it says elsewhere: “The lives of those who are not in a coma, and are conscious but not selfconscious, have value if they experience more pleasure than pain; but it is difficult to see the point of keeping such beeings alive if their life is, on a whole, miserable.”57

Even if Binding’s and Hoche’s work must be understood as being a product of social Darwinism, whereas Singer belongs to the tradition of the utilitarianism of British Enlightenment and tries to present rational arguments, regarding the problem of euthanasia both come to the conclusion that the right to live must be made dependent of certain criteria, such as self-consciousness, autonomy and rationality. These criteria are not met by non-personal human beings. Their lives are subject of negotiation – in the case that their suffering outweighs their joy. However, their lives are threatened with being terminated most of all if under worsened economic conditions social solidarity and human affection do not seem to be worth the effort anymore. That is something Peter Singer would have been able to learn from discussing the genesis of the crimes of National Socialist “euthanasia.”58 55 Binding/Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, pp. 5758 (italics in the original edition). 56 Singer, Practical Ethics (1979), p. 83 (italics by the author), see somewhat more differentiatedly Singer, Praktische Ethik (1994), p. 133: “To have a right to live, one must – at least at some time – have (had) an idea of continous existence.” Here Singer discusses the position of the American philosopher Michael Tooley. 57 Singer, Practical Ethics (1979), p. 83, see also Singer, Praktische Ethik (1994), p. 245. 58 In contrast to this, discussing the crimes of National Socialist “euthanasia” is not done in a much differentiated way in Singer. For example, in the first edition of “Practical Ethics” it says: “The Nazis committed horrendous crimes; but this does not mean that everything the Nazis did was horrendous. We cannot condemn eu-

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VI. The Value of Life and the Slippery Slope The strongly formulated position of the Prussian Royal physician and Director of the Charité in Berlin, Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, who as early as in 1806 warned against the purposeful medical termination of life, must be seen against the background of euthanasia as it was practiced already in the 19th century:59 “If an ill person is plagued by incurable illness, if he himself calls for death [...] how easily, even in a good man’s soul, may thus rise the idea: should it not be allowed, should it not even be an obligation, to relieve this suffering individual from his burden [...]? No matter how much seems to support such a consideration, no matter how much it may even be supported by the heart, still it is wrong, and acting this way would be highly unjust and indictable. It really contradicts the nature of being a physician. His task is to preserve life, and nothing else is allowed for him; if this is good or bad luck, if it is of value or not, this is not his concern, and not even does he arrogate to himself to make this consideration part of his business, as the consequences are unforeseeable, and the physician becomes the most dangerous man in the state; for if once the line has been crossed, suddenly the physician believes to be entitled to decide about the necessity of a life, only step by step progress will be needed to apply the demerits and thus the needlessness of a human life also to other cases.”60

thanasia just because the Nazis did it, anymore than we can condemn the building of new roads for this reason.” (Singer, Praktische Ethik (1979), p. 139, in the second German edition (1994) this sentence is missing). Certainly, together with Singer we must emphasize that the motivations of the National Socialist leadership for carrying out the murders of ill people cannot be compared to those being presented by euthanasia supporters in our days. Such a comparison is not at all intended. Rather, it is about the impossibility of understanding the practice of the National Socialist murders of ill people without understanding the justification patterns of the “right to death,” of “life unworthy of living” and of the idea of “mercy death” resulting from pity. Insofar, a differentiated debate on the continuities and discontinuities of the historical and the current debate on euthanasia does make sense. 59 See Michael Stolberg, “Active Euthanasia in Pre-Modern Society, 1500-1800: Learned Debates and Popular Practices,” Social History of Medicine, vol. 20 (2007) no. 2, pp. 205-221 and idem, “Pioneers of Euthanasia: Two German Physicians Made the Break around 1800,” The Hastings Center Report, vol. 38 (2008) no. 3, pp. 19-22. 60 Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, “Die Verhältnisse des Arztes,” Hufelands Journal, vol. 23 (1806), pp. 15-16, quoted after: Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, Enchiridion medicum oder Anleitung zur medicinischen Praxis. Vermächtniß einer fünfzigjährigen Erfahrung, 3rd edition (Herisau: Litteratur-Comptoir, 1837), p. 502.

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Certainly in retrospect, given the history of euthanasia in the 20th century and of medicine during National Socialism, the correctness of this prophecy can be stated. What Hufeland formulates here, however, is a classical argument of the slippery slope: an action which is understandable from an ethical point of view is nevertheless considered wrong because its social or legal admission will bring a number of side effects which contradict the original intention and produce an undesired final result. Thus, also the argument of the slippery slope does not refer to fundamental or categorical ethical judgments but is based on the application practice of moral norms.61 It is quite obvious that in this context also historical experiences may play a role. Referred to Hufeland, the argument of the slippery slope can be reconstructed as follows: both emotional and reasonable arguments seem to support the admission of medical euthanasia, however the inclusion of killings into the repertoire of medical activities would change the physician’s tasks and occupational image in a way which is highly undesired: the physician would become the most dangerous man in the state, which was terribly confirmed during National Socialism – in those days apart from justice, police and Wehrmacht physicians indeed counted among the most important executors of the National Socialist policy of destruction. The reason for restricting the physician to his/her original task of preserving life (we might add the tasks of alleviating suffering and caring for the dying),62 as demanded by Hufeland, is that after all the phy61

On the structure and classification of arguments of the slippery slope see Barbara Guckes, Das Argument der schiefen Ebene. Schwangerschaftsabbruch, die Tötung Neugeborener und Sterbehilfe in der medizinethischen Diskussion (Stuttgart/Jena/Lübeck/Ulm: G. Fischer, 1997), pp. 15-78, see also the differentiated judgement on arguments of the slippery slope in the euthanasia debate by Roland Kipke, “Schiefe-Bahn-Argumente in der Sterbehilfe-Debatte,” Zeitschrift für medizinische Ethik, vol. 54 (2008) no. 2, pp. 135-146. The power of differentiatedly stated arguments of the slippery slope is in confronting the conceptually normative level of justifying active euthanasia by referring to the right of self-determination with the empirical level of the practical application of moral norms. Ach and Gaidt attribute a discursive meaning to arguments of the slippery slope: they result in a reversal of the burden of proof. Supporters of the admission of active euthanasia would have to prove that the plausible fears of their opponents are unjustified, see Johann S. Ach/ Andreas Gaidt, “Am Rande des Abgrunds. Anmerkungen zu einem Argument gegen die moderne Euthanasie-Debatte,” Ethik in der Medizin, vol. 6 (1994), pp. 172-188. 62 See Bundesärztekammer, “Grundsätze der Bundesärztekammer zur ärztlichen Sterbebegleitung,” Deutsches Ärzteblatt, vol. 108 (2011) no. 7, pp. A 346-348, here 348: “It is the task of the physician to preserve life while respecting the patient’s right to self-determination, to protect and reestablish health as well as to alleviate suffering and to care for the dying until their death.”

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sician is not capable of judging on the value of a human life and thus should stay away from it. For, such a judgment on the value of a human life, on which medical killing is necessarily based even if it happens on the expressive and serious demand of the person concerned, may indeed be extended onto people who are considered incapabable of agreement. Thus, these are the steps of progress feared by Hufeland, which are due to the logic of the debate on active medical euthanasia (both historically and currently seen). Now, certainly the value of a human life could be defined in different ways, for example by its value for society, as Binding and Hoche did, or by hypothetically weighing the positive and negative experiences and emotions somebody may experience in the future, as they result from a utilitarian position.63 After all, however, judging on the value of a life cannot be a concern of others; it may well be that subjectively, under the given circumstances of severe suffering, somebody considers his/her life “unworthy of living” and desires his/her own death as well as medical assistance for it. Only, there is the question if (painless) killing by a physician or medical assistance for suicide are the appropriate answer to such desires.64 In this context, the ambivalence expressed by patients’ desire for death must be particularly taken into consideration, as often it is not really about the desire for death as such than about not wanting to live anymore under the given circumstances of suffering. On the other hand, the well-considered, direct killing of a human is necessarily based on the judgement that under the given circumstances a certain life shall be no more, unless the physician considers himself somebody submissively obeying the patient’s wishes. But also in case of medical assistance for suicide the message of agreeing with the patient’s desire for death is communicated. Thus, at least the negative judgement on the life of the person intending suicide is comprehended and confirmed. However, in my opinion the appropriate answer to desires for medical euthanasia is doing everything possible to physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually alleviate the patient’s suffering and to give him/her a feeling that his/her life, no 63 See already Adolf Jost, Recht auf den Tod, p. 13: “From a purely natural point of view the value of a human life can only consist of two factors. The first factor is the value his life has for the concerned person, that is the balance of joy and pain he will have to experience. The second factor is the balance of usefulness and damage this individual will mean for his fellow humans.” On the judgement on non-self-conscious forms of human life in the sense of classical utilitarianism see Peter Singer above. 64 See Gerrit Hohendorf/Fuat S. Oduncu, “Der ärztlich assistierte Suizid. Freiheit zum Tode oder Unfreiheit zum Leben?,” Zeitschrift für medizinische Ethik, vol. 57 (2011) no. 3, pp. 230-242, here 231-232.

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matter how much it is marked by imminent death or by severe disablement, is a welcome part of his/her relationship to the physician, to those caring for him/her, and to his/her relatives. What makes us obliged to this beyond any indoctrination by a specific doctrine or a specific religious or metaphysical orientation, is the solidarity of a society in the face of suffering, death and severe disablement. Both dealing with death wishes and with people after suicide attempts as well as experiences from palliative care demonstrates that desires for death and for active euthanasia are temporary and can be absorbed if the emotional suffering and desperation behind them are recognized and meet response.65 That in individual cases there may be a borderline situation as well as relationships in the context of which one may feel obliged to lend assist to suicide because for this particular person one may not see any alternative, no way to live a life, can definitely not be denied. Only, such actions in exceptional situations should not lead to any norming of professional codes of practice66 or ethics of a legality of euthanasia or medically assisted suicide. Accordingly, there may be single cases when a norm is violated for good reasons, it is only that in each individual case reasons must be given why there is no alternative to this violation of norms. These are situations of an ethical dilemma which evade any generalized norming. Giving reasons to the ethical legality of medically assisted suicide and active euthanasia on the basis of exceptional situations and individual cases would mean declaring such exceptional situations a frequent, regular situation. In this case, however, we may predict that an originally very strict regulation will be extended in the course of its practical application. Furthermore, due to the lacking objec65

Ibid., pp. 235-239. The amendment to the code of ethical ethics, passed on the 114. Deutschen Ärztetag in Kiel in 2011, expressively bans physicians from lending assistance to suicide (§ 16): “Physicians must care for the dying while preserving their dignity and while respecting their will. They are forbidden to kill patients on the latter’s demand. They are not allowed to assist suicide,” (http://www. bundesaerztekammer.de/downloads/MBO_08_20111.pdf from 24.10.2011). On the legal-ethical possibility of medically assisted suicide see Gunnar Duttge, “Der assistierte Suizid aus rechtlicher Sicht ‘Menschenwürdiges Sterben’ zwischen Patientenautonomie, ärztlichem Selbstverständnis und Kommerzialisierung,” Zeitschrift für Medizinische Ethik, vol. 55 (2009) no. 3, pp. 257-270, here 263-265. Critically on active euthanasia and medically assisted suicide being banned by professional law see Bettina Schöne-Seifert, “Ist Assistenz zum Sterben unärztlich?,” in Adrian Holderegger (ed.), Das medizinisch assistierte Sterben. Zur Sterbehilfe aus medizinischer, ethischer und juristischer und theologischer Sicht, 2nd advanced edition (Freiburg i. Ue./Freiburg i. B./Vienna: Herder, 2000), pp. 98-118 and Urban Wiesing, “Ist aktive Sterbehilfe ‘unärztlich’?,” in Ibid. pp. 229-241.

66

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tivization of concepts a regulation working with after all only subjective concepts which must be determined from the point of view of the concerned person, such as unbearable suffering, will prove to be unrestrictable. And if we try to objectivize them, i.e. leaving the decision about the legality of active euthanasia to the physicians, the principle of the patient’s autonomy which is crucial for the legality of active euthanasia will be restricted. This may be called a moral paradox.67 Physicians are well advised to stay away from judging on a human life as being “unworthy of living” in an objective sense, i.e. on grounds of medical facts. However, such a decision about the value of a human life is implicitly or explicitly made if the physician actively terminates a life or participates in a patient’s suicide: for, if an act of killing is supposed to be ethically grounded, it cannot be separated from stating that in a certain situation of suffering a certain life shall be no more. This is also true if this statement is in accordance with the patient’s personal judgement. This is not all to say that any human life must be continued at any cost. For the problem of starting and terminating life-prolonging measures it is crucial if these measures are intended by the patient and if these measures are suitable at all for achieving the treatment goal. The termination of lifeprolonging measures (so called passive euthanasia) mean that somebody is allowed to die, it means that the tools of the medical prolongation of life are removed, that a death which sooner or later will be inevitable is accepted. Of course, this acceptance of dying must be in accordance with the patient’s wishes. In the case of killing a human by applying medical means, on the other hand, it is the physician who is causal for this death, who must want this death on demand of the patient and must make it the goal of his own actions to be capable of this action at all. Insofar – despite any consequentialist arguing68 - in respect of judging on human life as being unworthy of living there is a fundamental difference between active and passive euthanasia, between killing and letting somebody die. Against the background of the historical experience of the National Socialist murders of ill people and their genesis from the debate on “mercy death,”69 we may formulate an argument of the slippery slope in two ways: 67

See Henk ten Have, “Euthanasia: moral paradoxes,” Palliative Medicine, vol. 15 (2001), pp. 501-511 and Fuat S. Oduncu, In Würde sterben. Medizinische, ethische und rechtliche Aspekte der Sterbehilfe, Sterbebegleitung und Patientenverfügung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), pp. 145-146. 68 See James Rachels, “Aktive und passive Sterbehilfe,” in Hans-Martin Sass (ed.), Medizin und Ethik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1989), pp. 254-264 69 See also Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Die Geschichte der Lebens(un)wertdiskussion. Bruch oder Kontinuität,” in Ute Daub/Michael Wunder (eds.), Des Lebens Wert.

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1. As the active killing of incurably ill people on their demand (and in principle also medically assisted suicide) requires a value judgement on certain states of life, there is the danger that this judgement will be extended also on people who are no longer capable of an autonomous decision. Both the historical and the current debate on euthanasia make obvious that the autonomy principle does not provide stable limits. 2. It may be that the legalization of killing on demand or medically assisted suicide by the penal law or in the context of professional codes of practice make feel patients with severe disablement or in states of suffering urged to express such a desire because they do not want to be a burden for themselves, for others or for society. Between the lines of the euthanasia debate, which is characterized by the idea of autonomy, the message that in certain situations it is appropriate or common to demand one’s own death cannot not be hidden completely.70 Accordingly, those in support of active euthanasia would have to state clearly if and how they want to prevent any extension of active euthanasia on people who are currently capable of expressing their mind. Those in support of making medically assisted suicide legal in the context of professional codes of practice would have to explain if and how they want to avoid a transition to making active euthanasia legal (for assisted suicide is only an option for people who are capable of acting). And finally it would have to be made clear in how far for both kinds of euthanasia explicit of implicit judgments from the outside perspective on the value of a particular human life could be avoided. And finally it would have to be made clear how much space and appreciation a solidarity-oriented society is ready to grant the ill, the disabled and the old-aged. The historical findings on the reception of the idea of euthanasia among the German population during National Socialism is ambivalent;

Zur Diskussion über Euthanasie und Menschenwürde (Freiburg i. Br.: Lambertus, 1994), pp. 51-60. 70 See Gerrit Hohendorf, “Die nationalsozialistischen Krankenmorde zwischen Tabu und Argument. Was lässt sich aus der Geschichte der NS-Euthanasie für die gegenwärtige Debatte um die Sterbehilfe lernen?,” in Stefanie Westermann/ Richard Kühl/Tim Ohnhäuser (eds.), NS-“Euthanasie” und Erinnerung. Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung – Gedenkformen – Betroffenenperspektiven (Berlin/ Münster: Lit, 2011), pp. 211-229 and Hohendorf, Empirische Untersuchungen zur nationalsozialistischen “Euthanasie” bei psychisch Kranken, pp. 174-182.

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we find acceptance, agreement, but also courageous resistance,71 not at last as a result of a courageous word by the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Count Galen, it was possible to stop the “T4 gas murder action.” This was the easier – from the point of view of the “holyness of human life” – the more clearly the right to live of any innocent human could be expressed.72 Sobering on the other hand is our view at the physicians. Among them there was gloom and withdrawal, however no open resistance. By far the great majority of asylum doctors actively contributed to the various ways of murdering the ill, either out of conviction or of opportunism and belief in authority.

VII. The “Euthanasia” Taboo: National Socialist Euthanasia as a Knockout Argument? Often supporters of active euthanasia see the sheer reference to the genesis of National Socialist “euthanasia” as a kind of “knockout argument,” stated for the purpose of preventing an open debate.73 I believe that the opposite is true.74 The history of euthanasia in Germany and Europe (the mur71

Kurt Nowak, “Widerstand, Zustimmung, Hinnahme. Das Verhalten der Bevölkerung zur ‘Euthanasie,’” in Norbert Frei (ed.), Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik in der NS-Zeit (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991), pp. 235-251. 72 Clemens August Count Galen’s public sermon from August 3rd, 1941, is printed Klaus Dörner/Christiane Haerlin/Veronika Rau/Renate Schernus/Arnd Schwendy (eds.), Der Krieg gegen die psychisch Kranken. Nach “Holocaust:” Erkennen – Trauern – Begegnen. Gewidmet den im “Dritten Reich” getöteten psychisch, geistig und körperlich behinderten Bürgern und ihren Familien, 2nd edition (Frankfurt a. M./Bonn: Mabuse-Verlag, 1989), pp. 112-124. 73 E.g. Frank Czerner, Das Euthanasie-Tabu. Vom Sterbehilfe-Diskurs zur Novellierung des § 216 StGB (Dortmund: Humanitas, 2004), pp. 87-88: “Thus, the sometimes superficial-apodictic instrumentalization of [National Socialist] ‘euthanasia’ (as the true killer argument) does not only put an end to a social- and criminal-political debate but finally also it results in a complete legislative refusal. In this context, coming to grips with the German past works a quasi-legitimation for the normative passivity of the lawmaker.” 74 Regarding an appropriate reception of the state of historic research on the discussion of the historical argument see critically Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Nationalsozialismus als Argument im aktuellen Medizinethik-Diskurs. Eine Zwischenbilanz,” in Andreas Frewer/Clemens Eickhoff (eds.), ‘Euthanasie’ und die aktuelle Sterbehilfe-Debatte. Die historischen Hintergründe medizinischer Ethik (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 2000) pp. 385-407. On the justification of a historical way of argumenting in the debate on euthanasia see a. o. Karl Heinz Leven, “Die NS-‘Euthanasie’ und die gegenwärtige Debatte um aktive Sterbehilfe,” in Franz-Josef Illhardt/Wolfgang Heiss/Matthias Dornberg (eds.),

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ders of ill people happened in the majority of the territories dominated by Germany) in the 20th century cannot so easily be excluded from a society’s cultural and moral memory and be attributed to a far away age which has nothing to do with our current situation and our current problems. The loss of trust, particularly in the realm of psychiatry, which results from the medical destruction of life, is too complete; the hidden continuity of the idea of “euthanasia” and the “destruction of life unworthy of living” far into the post-war decades, which found its expression by declaring the “euthanasia” physicians innocent, by lacking recognition of “euthanasia” victims by society and by lacking compensation for their relatives,75 is too much alive. The “euthanasia” taboo can only be lifted by recognizing the genesis of the National Socialist murders of ill people as a part of our history, and also as a part of the history of the medical profession, and by thus making the historical experience of NS “euthanasia” a topic also of current debating, in a critical way and without fixed expectations.

Sterbehilfe. Handeln oder Unterlassen. Referate einer medizinethischen Fortbildungsveranstaltung vom Zentrum für Ethik in der Medizin und dem Zentrum für Geriatrie und Gerontologie Freiburg am 19. und 20. Januar 1996 (Stuttgart/New York: Schattauer, 1998), pp. 9-23. 75 E.g. for the field of psychiatry see Franz-Werner Kersting/Karl Teppe/Bernd Walter (eds.), Nach Hadamar. Zum Verhältnis von Psychiatrie und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1993) and Gerrit Hohendorf, “The Representation of Nazi Euthanasia in German Psychiatry 1945 to 1998. A Preliminary Survey,” Korot – The Israeli Journal of the History of Medicine, vol. 19 (2007/2008), pp. 29-48.

THE SS AS A “MORAL ORDER”

SS ETHICS WITHIN MORAL PHILOSOPHY ANDRÉ MINEAU

In a sense, it may look strange to talk about SS ethics or about an SS preoccupation with morality, given the origins and tasks of the Black Order.1 The SS emerged from the notion of shock troop, in relation to the battlefield experience of the Great War. A first version of it was the Stoßtrupp Hitler of the year 1923. When this elite bodyguard was recreated as the Schutzstaffel in 1925, it specialized in the protection of Hitler and other key Party speakers. It was a police force inside the Party before it succeeded in invading Germany’s police apparatus between 1933 and 1936. Throughout the duration of the Nazi regime, the main task of the SS was to fight and to eliminate the enemies of the interior, and the notion of “interior” expanded along with the Reich’s borders during the first half of World War II. More specifically, when the country was at war once again in 1939, the SS had to see to it that the Dolchstoß of 1918 would not be repeated, and that the war would have a happy ending this time. Obviously, given the type of action in which SS and police forces indulged, the use of the term “ethics” may not seem appropriate. The SS committed evil of a great magnitude, by waging war against the civilian populations in occupied Europe, and by organizing and supervising the Holocaust. Knowing that they committed the absolute evil, one may ask whether an ethics of evil could ever be conceivable, since ethics, after all, is about the Good. The SS was one of the main power instruments of Nazi totalitarianism: its activity, consequently, made sense in relation to an ideology that conveyed a strong moral component. Here, we must bear in mind the nature of totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism may be defined as a political attempt at invading social life in its totality for the sake of a regenerative Weltanschauung encompassing the essence of truth and good. In other words, it 1

In the notes, the primary sources are designated as follows: “BA” for Bundesarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde (Germany) and “IMT” for the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (Germany). The author wishes to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support.

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seeks to force upon anyone and anything a vision of the superior interest of the community, along with a system of morality that tells the right from the wrong. And Nazi ideology was obviously totalitarian, since it was out to implement a “scientific” vision of the racial Volk as the supreme value or as the embodiment of the Good, thus commanding an all-encompassing morality in relation to which any political action would be justified. By the way, it is worth mentioning here that the Nazis never succeeded in controlling the totality of life in Germany, which proved to be impossible. In fact, totalitarianism is always an intention, a political project, or a series of steps towards an absolute that, as such, can never be reached. Thus, in a totalitarian system, the main power brokers are always concerned with ideology along with ethics attached to it because the global political venture in which they participate would have no meaning, no raison d’être, outside ideology and ethics. In this sense, it is not only possible but also necessary to posit a system of ideas and norms called SS ethics under the auspices of Nazi ideology as, by necessity, the former grew out of the latter. Globally, the SS leaders believed in the Nazi notion of the Good that is to say in the nation’s grandeur, militarism, claim to Lebensraum, and racial purity, and they approved of a morality that would help the SS serve the Nazi common good, regardless of the fact that they themselves often failed to abide by their own moral norms. But the SS did not confine itself to a passive role in the world of Nazi ideology and ethics. It was not interested in merely defending a regime, the ideology and ethics of which would be conceived by other agencies of the Party and the state. To the contrary, it played a major part in conceptualizing and in teaching ethics through numerous speeches, lectures, and written publications intended for various audiences. In other words, the SS was a key agency of ethical thinking in Nazi Germany, and this was due largely to the idiosyncrasies of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The latter, who occupied the top position in a hierarchical system largely of his own making, attached a large amount of value to ethics. He saw himself as a clever and skilled moralist,2 and he envisioned Nazi ideology and SS practice in terms of the necessary accomplishment of a moral system.3 He spent a great deal of time and energy lecturing about morality, in general, and about the SS as a Nazi apparatus governed by ethics. Of course, SS ethical thinking cannot be reduced to Himmler since many SS leaders of all ranks participated in the thinking and in teaching ethics. Although he 2

Richard Breitman. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). 3 André Mineau. Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2004).

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was very meticulous, Himmler could not control all that was said or written by SS authors and speakers. But he was very much present within the system and, obviously, enjoyed the priority of control and communication in his own apparatus. His influence therefore was enormous, as was the importance of ethical thinking in the SS system.

I. The Framework of Moral Philosophy An ethics is a system of ideas, values, norms, and practical judgments aimed at giving weight to the alter against the ego, that is to say, at actualizing a concept of the good that transcends individuality. Obviously, several types of meaningful constructions are possible in the domain of ethics, given the vast array of possible meanings for concepts such as value, norm, good, evil, duty, other, and ego. The theoretical limits of ethics, however, are marked by nihilism and egotism. On the one hand, pure nihilism, insofar as it entails the negation of any claim to truthfulness or to goodness, cannot carry an ethics as it would negate it by definition. On the other hand, pure egotism would not be able to be a form of ethics either because the complete identification of the Good with the pursuit of selfinterest would disqualify ethics as exceedingly redundant and therefore meaningless since someone would necessarily be ethical somewhere at all times. In practice, people seldom go to extreme forms such as egotism or nihilism. But we may say in a relative manner that marked tendencies toward either pole weaken the case of any discourse that claims to be valid as an ethics. On such a basis, prima facie, SS ethics could fly. It valued some forms of the other as limitations to individualism, and it purported to serve some common good that should have precedence over self-interest. It was not nihilistic as such since it aimed at constructing reality according to concepts of truth and good presented as valid and undisputable. Of course, it was not egotistic since it insisted so much on self-sacrifice for the sake of much-valued otherness. Looking back at the history of moral philosophy, and leaving aside the critical stances that considered as invalid some or all ethical concepts, we can see that there always were three main approaches to ethics: deontological, consequentialist, and perfectionist. The deontological approach posits that human actions are moral inasmuch as they result from an a priori knowledge of duty, entailing that duty is a necessary and sufficient condition for moral action. The consequentialist perspective, especially in its modern formulation, bases itself on an a posteriori knowledge of the practical good, stating that morality lies in the performing of actions that result

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in good consequences in a way that increases the utility for the great many. And perfectionism understands ethics as a reflection on the meaning of human life in terms of happiness resulting from personal growth and from the progressive betterment of the self. Here, we realize that these three approaches take the alter into consideration, making him or her the pole of attraction of morality. In the deontological perspective, the notion of duty establishes a relationship that makes sense as recognition of the other’s status and value. Consequentialism, in its modern version, insists on achieving the good of the many since human equality forbids any favoring of the favoring of the ego against the alter. And perfectionism values a form of personal excellence from which others will ultimately benefit since moral virtue is called justice as soon as it turns itself toward the community and fellow-citizens. These three main approaches were present in SS ethics. The latter considered that human actions had to abide by some principles known a priori, that they had to carry good consequences for the many that is to say the German Volk, and that they had to be the reflection of personal attitudes testifying to personal growth in maturity. In other words, SS ethics were based on a structure of ideas and judgments that articulated these three aspects together. It revolved around duty, the common good, and virtue.

II. SS Ethics as a Deontological System The notion of duty played an important part in SS ethics because it conferred a moral character to all actions performed within the service in compliance with orders formulated by competent authorities. By definition, a duty is a morally appropriate action aimed at accomplishing a form of the good that is so important that reality and practice cannot ignore it. In this perspective, of course, it was obviously assumed within the SS that the Nazi ideology encompassed truth and the good. Therefore, any instruction from competent SS authorities or from Hitler himself was considered as encapsulating the good, making the ordered action dutiful and thus moral. And the moral character and value of the ordered action was enhanced by the fact that the SS man would choose to do his duty against his personal feelings and sentiments. As a moralist, who was at the same time the Reichsführer SS, Himmler was the most competent authority with regard to the definition of duty in SS ethics. According to him, the morally appropriate action was the action accomplished not only in compliance with duty but also and mostly out of duty, which tended to achieve a superior good located above the individual and excluded personal feelings and sentiments from the determination of

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the act. Understood in this manner, Himmler’s “categorical imperative” was obviously a distortion of Kant’s. Yet Himmler conceived it in these terms, as exemplified in numerous speeches. According to him, any SS agent should always act in such a way as determined by duty: morality required the psychologically difficult exclusion of any usual human feeling that might oppose duty. To Himmler, the Holocaust represented the ultimate test to which his moral concept of duty was ever to be submitted. On the one hand, the mass murder of civilians in general, of helpless women and children in particular, generated powerful, almost overwhelming feelings of repulsion, which were quite normal in “decent” human beings such as SS officers. On the other hand, however, the duty to proceed to these mass murders was absolutely compelling, not only because the Jews embodied a mortal threat to the Volk in a war in which the repetition of 1918 should be avoided at all costs but also, and mostly, because a superior order demanded the genocidal procedure. Himmler insisted that he had received an order to eliminate the Jews and that such an order weighed heavily on his shoulders. In several speeches, Himmler harped on this extreme challenge to his concept of duty. For example, in Posen on 4 October 1943, he praised his superior officers who had gone through genocide and remained decent (anständig). “We had the moral right, we had the duty toward our Volk” to bring down the hostile Jewish people.4 In Bad Schachen on the 14th, Himmler made it plain that he expected harshness whenever necessary, even to put out “small fires.”5 In 1944, in speeches to Wehrmacht superior officers, Himmler was even more explicit about the psychological conflict generated by the opposition of feelings to moral duty. As he said to his audience, the Jewish question was solved without any compromise. Since he considered himself a soldier, too, he had received a soldierly order that proved extremely difficult to carry out. But he did what he had to do, nonetheless, out of obedience and persuasion. And he reacted to possible objections with regard to the inclusion of children: He said that this was a conflict with Asia (the European moral standards did not apply to this) and that Germans were not authorized to allow these hateful avengers to grow up so that German children and grand-children would have to confront them due

4

Rede Himmlers bei der SS-Gruppenführertagung in Posen am 4. Oktober 1943, pp. 145-146. IMT, 1919-PS. 5 Rede Himmlers auf einer Befehlshabertagung in Bad Schachen vom 14. Oktober 1943. IMT, 070-L.

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to this generation’s weakness and cowardice.6 Here, Himmler posited a logic of duty that contradicted normal human feelings, except that duty required precisely that these feelings had to be left aside. Also, he linked the murder of children to morality: it was the moral thing to do whereas the alternative was obviously immoral given the consequences that would result from moral vices such as cowardice and weakness. Furthermore, Himmler repeated what he had told other groups earlier: they would be able to get through this “experience” without suffering damage to their soul and to their morality, and this was the most difficult thing of it all. Therefore, the morality and the soul were endangered due to the normalcy of humanitarian sentiments, but the inflexibility of duty was moral in itself. The same line of argumentation about duty was presented in another speech to a comparable audience. Regarding the Jewish question, Himmler declared that “it was good that we had the harshness to exterminate the Jews in our sphere.” He mentioned once again how difficult it was to carry out such an order. Yet, it was necessary. Once again, he came back to the issue whether the children should have been included. As he said, these children would grow up eventually. “Do we want to be so indecent (unanständig)” as to be weak and let the German children deal with Jewish avengers in the future? This would be irresponsible. Since “we” could not act cowardly, a clear solution was implemented, regardless of how difficult it was.7 One month later he declared that the German soldier’s first duty was to show no compassion and to expel anything unworthy.8 As he said somewhere else, misplaced sentimentality could not win wars. Sometimes, “we” must have the harshness to kill even our own blood, even if it proves very difficult. Duty is something serious and sacred.9 Himmler remained consistent with himself. Years before, in the Lebensregel für den SS-Mann, he had extolled the duty of performance. In fact, the whole line of presentation was couched in the language of duty with regard to the Volk as the ultimate reference. As he said in substance:

6

Rede des Reichsführers SS auf der Ordensburg Sonthofen am 5. Mai 1944, fol. 70-72. BA NS 19 / 4013. 7 Rede des Reichsführers SS in Sonthofen am 21.6.1944 vor Generälen der Wehrmacht, fol. 173-176. BA NS 19 / 4014. 8 Rede des Herrn Reichsführers SS und Befehlshaber des Heimat-Heeres vor Offizieren … am 21.7.44, fol. 17-27. BA NS 19 / 4015. 9 Rede des Reichsführers SS in Salzburg am 14. Mai 1944, fol. 172, 189. BA NS 19 / 4013.

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“we have the duty to employ any strength, which is in any German, for performances and, with it, for our Volk’s grandeur.”10 In this perspective, the Holocaust could be understood and was meaningful through the prism of duty. It appeared as the result of a series of moral acts accomplished by duty, for the sake of the Volk’s superior good.

III. SS Ethics in a Consequentialist Perspective Within SS ethics, duty was oriented toward the accomplishment of the Nazi notion of the general good. On such a basis, actions were evaluated in the function of their potential consequences on the common good. More specifically, morally appropriate actions were actions that resulted in the maximization of utility for the Volk as a whole to the point of suppressing any legitimacy linked to self-interest as such. In its racial definition, however, the Volk represented the ultimate ontological locus of value as well as the limit of the sphere of morality. In a document intended for potential recruits of the German police, SS values were presented in the function of the Volk as their ultimate point of focus in reference to the general guidelines laid down in a speech by Himmler. “As the representatives of the State, a police officer must be the best friend of the Volk, while he must be the representative of the Volksgemeinschaft against all criminal elements it is possible to be at the same time the true friend of every anständig German and the resolute adversary of every enemy of the Volk.” The task of the police is always: “to help strengthen the Volk’s body inside, to help purify this Volk’s body from the noxious elements that do not belong to him, and to contribute to the worthy representation of this Volk’s body toward the outside.” Police service is honor service to the Volk. The policeman is like a soldier: in the police force, he can stay faithful to his desire to be a soldier, and he guarantees the protection of the nation toward the inside.11 And in accomplishing police duties, as Himmler said, “we” must always be harsh. This may sometimes be cruel, “but this behavior serves then the good of the whole.”12 To the SS, morally appropriate actions were dutiful actions intended to serve the good of the whole, which had to be understood in terms of the preservation of the Volk’s racial substance. However, this valuable racial 10

Lebensregel für den SS-Mann, p. 1. BA NS 19 / 1457. Willst Du zur Polizei? 3rd edition, pp. 5,12, 14. BA RD 18 / 25. 12 Ansprache des Reichsführers-SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei Heinrich Himmler anlässlich der Besprechung der Kommandeure der Gendarmerie am 17. Januar 1941, fol. 5. BA NS 19 / 4008. 11

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substance was threatened mostly with three major dangers: declining birth rates, counter-selection, and racial mixing. Consequently, the Volk’s general good entailed the multiplication of healthy heredity and the protection of blood purity: morally good actions were those resulting in these consequences, and they were all the more mandatory as the Volk’s survival was at stake. A Volk that maintained its blood pure would live eternally.13 The Volk’s ontological value was connected to the notion of immortality. In a short text entitled “Ewig ist das Blut,” an SS author expressed the view that blood is immortal. According to him, people live in a community whose borders are made by blood. And this community is where our soul survives, in our children and in our works. We exist through time today as we existed yesterday and will exist tomorrow. What flows in us is the blood of free Germanic peasants who have always been the pillars of higher culture due to the outstanding creativity of the blood. And he concluded with this recommendation: “Fight for the future of that blood! In this way, you were, you are, and you will be, from eternity to eternity. You are immortal in your Volk.”14 Himmler liked to dwell on this motif as well. He thought that the Volk would have access to eternal life if it could preserve its blood, which represented a fountain of youth. To him, this was the knowledge underlying the marriage law of 1931: “A Volk may have eternal life only if its pure blood is transmitted as the holiest heritage from generation to generation… We, SS, military order of Nazi men, we believe that we are the ancestors of future generations, for the eternal life of the Germanic Volk.”15 According to the author of the SS Handblätter für den weltanschaulichen Unterricht, the general good entails the building up of an order of life that guarantees the Volk’s eternal life. Such an order requires that good and valuable blood be maintained and promoted, and that anything minderwertig and foreign be eliminated. And this is precisely what morality is about: “Sittlich ist, was der Arterhaltung des deutschen Volkes förderlich ist. Unsittlich ist, was der Arterhaltung des deutschen Volkes entgegensteht.”16 The Volk lives within nature, where struggle for survival represents the basic law. Everything (food, soil, etc.) must be won by means of fighting. The deepest meaning of that eternal fight for destruction is that anything 13

Rassenpolitik, pp. 27-28, 51. BA NSD 41 / 122. SS-Leithefte, L. 2 / 25 March 1936. BA NSD 41 / 77. 15 “Magyarsag” of 20 December 1942. Die Deutsche Schutzstaffel: Die SS bei Himmler, fol. 4. BA NS 19 / 1454. 16 SS Handblätter für den weltanschaulichen Unterricht, p. 3 and sq. BA NSD 41 / 75. 14

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weak or minderwertig will be exterminated. Consequently, maintaining the handicapped and the incurably ill is irrational and costly. State policies must serve only the maintaining and promotion of the Volk’s valuable body and its best race. And anyone who is aware of hereditary defects and still has useless children infringes upon the laws of life: he sins against his Volk and race. When and where this sense of responsibility is lacking, the state’s duty is to meddle in the individual’s so-called rights. It is a duty to avoid giving birth to burdensome lives.17 In Nature as the locus of a permanent state of war, the general good comes before private interests. The individual is nothing, but the Volk and race is everything. The Volk, therefore, and not the individual, posits any moral standards of the good. By and large, in SS ethics, the concept of the good excluded a humanity whose ontological value was too low for being granted access to the sphere of moral obligations. On the basis of this exclusion, which apparently complied with the laws of nature and with the discoveries of racial science, the Holocaust was a set of morally appropriate actions which, as such, were to bring about positive consequences for the many the Volk was and would be composed of, now, and in the future.

IV. SS Ethics as a Form of Perfectionism In Greek moral philosophy, the notion of virtue designated the individual’s excellence in the art of living that is to say in actualizing the demands of the good concerning all circumstances of daily life. SS ethics recycled the notion and used it in this specific sense especially in Himmler’s moral language. In this perspective, virtues qualified individual SS excellence in pursuing the Volk’s good through the accomplishment of duty. SS education aimed at fostering a process of self-perfectionism in the SS man, leading to moral excellence in the art of forgetting the self for the sake of the Volk. In Himmler’s mind, moral excellence could be accomplished in a way that accounted for inevitable differences between different people. There was however a minimal level that was compulsory for everyone in the SS: correctness or decency (Anständigkeit). It referred to the capability of practicing virtues in general, of performing one’s duties, and of living one’s life as a responsible moral agent. In most of his speeches, Himmler insisted a great deal on the encompassing virtue of Anständigkeit.

17

SS-Mann und Blutsfrage, pp. 5,6,34. BA RD 18 / 19.

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To an audience of gendarmerie commanders, he declared that he wished to have a German police that would be incorruptible, faithful to duty, anständig, willing to fight (kämpferisch), and courageous, a police that would be harsh where it should be so. “We are capable of solving all tasks given to us if we keep in mind the spirit of the Nazi Weltanschauung, the recognition of the value of our Volk and our blood.”18 The notion of Anständigkeit designated general virtues as the accomplished or actualized good. It was applied to the moral characterization of the SS and of the racial Volk that the SS represented, but it drew a line of demarcation between good and evil, a line where morality ceased to apply. On 13 July 1941, Himmler said in Stettin that Germany was now engaged in a struggle between Weltanschauungen, a struggle of races. “In this struggle, there is Nazism, a Weltanschauung built on the value of our Germanic Nordic blood, and there is a world [...] that is beautiful, anständig, and socially just [...] On the other side, there is a 180-million-people, a mix of races and peoples [...] whose form (Gestalt) is such that one can shoot them together without mercy and compassion [...] Your holy duty is there, at any place where you are, to fight in faithfulness to your oath.”19 Himmler used to dwell at length on the virtues which he deemed essential in the context of SS moral perfectionism. He classified them in different ways depending on the audience and the circumstances etc., but the same key principles and virtues worded differently were repeated most of the time. For example, in an article published in late 1942, he wrote that SS moral thinking could be summarized in four essential principles. The first principle was blood, recognized as selection principle favoring all those who embodied the ideal of Nordic humanity: over time, those without character, the weak-willed and those who were not there with heart and soul, would be excluded. The second principle concerned love for freedom and the fighting spirit. The third principle lay in faithfulness and honor. To Himmler, they were inseparable. Hitler had expressed this in the form of: Meine Ehre heisst Treue. This meant that many things in life could be forgiven but never unfaithfulness as it was a matter of the heart and not of reason. Reason might be wrong, but mistakes could be corrected whereas the heart always beats in the same rhythm. “Faithfulness designated faithfulness to Hitler and, through him, to the Germanic-German Volk, to its values and nature, to its blood, to its grandfathers and grand18 Ansprache des Reichsführers-SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei Heinrich Himmler anlässlich der Besprechung der Kommandeure der Gendarmerie am 17. Januar 1941, fol. 11-12. BA NS 19 / 4008. 19 Der Reichsführer-SS zu den Ersatzmannschaften für die Kampfgruppe Nord am Sonntag, dem 13. Juli 1941, in Stettin, fol. 34-35, BA NS 19 / 4008.

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sons, to its future and past, to its comrades, to its honesty.”20 As to the fourth principle, obedience, it referred to unconditional obedience to all the orders from Hitler or from other authorities. In the Lehrplan für die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der SS und Polizei, we encounter a similar classification. The general order formulated by the Reichsführer SS posits in substance that “only noble blood, only real race can guarantee real performances in the long run.” Hence, there is the necessity of selection to recruit the best in terms of blood and character. This selection is to be guided by four principles and virtues: 1) the realization of the racial idea, so as to select those who are as close as possible to Nordic humanity in height and general look; 2) the fighting spirit or the commitment to struggle; 3) faithfulness and honor toward the Fuehrer, the German Germanic Volk, blood, ancestors, descent, and the laws of decency (Anstand); 4) obedience.21 Himmler’s often-quoted speech to the SS-Gruppenführer, in Posen, contains a complete treatise on virtues. In regard to the matters of ethics Himmler says that a basic SS principle is absolute: SS men must be “honest, decent, faithful, and comradely toward people of our own blood and toward nobody else. Our duty is our Volk.” Then, SS virtues are presented as follows: “Faithfulness represents the capital virtue directed toward Volk, Reich, and Fuehrer: the lack of faithfulness cannot be forgiven. Obedience concerns high-ranking officers as well as lower ranks. It is presented as unconditional, and it is linked to responsibility. Courage must be strengthened by faith and optimism. Truthfulness applies especially to giving one’s word. One must keep one’s promises and honor one’s commitments. However, this is morally binding only within the German Volk: only toward Untermenschen, usefulness or practical utility would be the only criterion. It is important to remark that the status of Untermenschen was sufficient for abrogating morality along with any moral obligation or duty. Honesty is linked mostly to respect for property and to struggle against corruption. Comradeship means the avoidance of conflicts, good manners, and the avoidance of expressions of anger.

20

Magyarsag” of 20 December 1942. Die Deutsche Schutzstaffel: Die SS bei Himmler. BA NS 19 / 1454. 21 Lehrplan für die weltanschauliche Erziehung in der SS und Polizei, pp. 9-12. BA NSD 41 / 61.

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Joy toward responsibility is a strange formulation in a sense, and Himmler is not very coherent in his description. What he means however is that the individual officer is to accept responsibilities joyfully, gladly welcoming and executing them. Valiance refers to a daily necessity, especially because of the war, and any type of work that is useful to Germany is valuable. Avoidance of alcohol is also an important virtue, and Himmler insists a great deal on self-control.”22 When talking to Wehrmacht superior officers, as in many other speeches, Himmler harps on the necessity of an uncompromising ideological education aimed at promoting the major SS virtues: faithfulness, obedience, truthfulness, harshness, strength, and justice.23 Several weeks later, once again, he presents ideological education as directly connected with SS virtues: courage, stability, obedience including abstaining from criticism, discretion, truthfulness, and true comradeship which remains subordinated to faithfulness toward Volk and Fuehrer.24 For obvious reasons, self- control is a key virtue within a selfperfectionist moral approach. On numerous occasions, Himmler rehashes the theme of moderation and praises the virtue of temperance against the excessive consumption of alcohol and nicotine. Responding to Himmler’s inspiration, other authors and speakers also address these issues. For example, in an SS newsletter one can read that SS members must be warned against the excessive consumption of alcohol as it suppresses healthy inhibitions, and against the cravings for nicotine as it has a lulling effect on one’s nerves and on one’s willpower. For the education of troops, some posters were to be mounted in the dormitories, featuring a selection of phrases such as: “Maintain your health for your Volk,” “National Socialism is the fight against individual desires and unrestrained drives,” “Don’t only talk about National Socialism: live it.”25 Since SS moral perfectionism applies to the SS moral agent as a whole, it concerns also all personal aspects related to private and family life. In a text entitled “Unser Ziel: Die rassisch wertvolle, erbgesunde, kinderreiche 22

Rede Himmlers bei der SS-Gruppenführertagung in Posen am 4. Oktober 1943, pp. 122-123, 149-165. IMT, 1919-PS. 23 Rede des Reichsführers SS auf der Ordensburg Sonthofen am 5. Mai 1944, fol. 79- 92. BA NS 19 / 4013. 24 Rede des Reichsführers SS in Sonthofen am 21.6.1944 vor Generalen der Wehrmacht, fol. 188-192. BA NS 19 / 4014. 25 Ausbildungsbrief Nr. 5 des SS-Sanitätsamtes, 15. November 1938, fol. 22-25. BA NS 33 / 87.

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SS-Sippe,” one reads that an essential part of the Nazi construction plans for the future is the reorganization of the German family. More specifically, the goal of the Nazi family policy is the creation and the promotion of families that can display these characteristics: high racial value, hereditary health, and many children. In the future, people of valuable heredity must reproduce more than the bearers whose heredity is of a lower value. The SS clans, stemming from a selection of bearers of the best German heredity, carry special responsibilities, here. Any SS man must get personally involved in such a project by making the right choice for a spouse and by procreating many children: this is part of the moral way to virtue and selfperfection. In that perspective, the author establishes a list of ‘Ten commandments’ for choosing a spouse: “1. Remember that you are a German: you are who you are not because of your own merits but through your Volk. You belong to your Volk whether you like it or not. The general good stands above individual interest. 2. If you are healthy, you should not remain single. The qualities of your body and mind are a piece of heritage, a gift from your ancestors, and they are alive in you through an unbroken chain. Whoever remains single breaks that chain. Your life is nothing but a fleeting phenomenon: the clan and the Volk have precedence. 3. Keep your body pure (so as to be able to serve your Volk) 4. You have to keep your mind and soul pure. Keep away from everything that is foreign to you, that contradicts your nature, and that goes against your conscience. 5. As a German, choose only a spouse of the same or of Nordic blood. Racial mixes lead only to degeneration and ruin, but Nordic blood binds the whole Volk together. 6. Ask your potential spouse about her ancestors. Remember that you marry not only your spouse, but her ancestors as well. And valuable children depend on valuable ancestors. 7. Health is the precondition also for external beauty. 8. Get married only out of love 9. Marriage is not a game but a lasting bond, the meaning of which is the child. 10.You must wish to have as many children as possible. Three or four children are necessary to secure the future of the Volk. You will pass, but what you pass on to your progeny will remain. Your Volk is eternal.”26 26

SS-Leithefte, L. 2 / 25 March 1936, pp. 14-17). BA NSD 41 / 77.

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SS authors understand moral agency as a path toward personal development through education and the actualization of virtue. In the words used by Reinhard Heydrich, “We the SS, we must work on ourselves. We must keep and anchor to ourselves the eternal foundations of our Weltanschauung, given to us by the Fuehrer. [...] In order to protect our Volk, we must be hard toward the adversary. We must deepen the good elements of our German heredity. In all hardness, we must be just or fair, we must be the most faithful, and our comradeship must be the best one [...] we must become the best ones in all domains [...] We must work at increasing our knowledge about our ancestors. This is the knowledge of all the values that God has given to our Volk: our blood, our nature, our true historical past. We must be examples and live in tune with the eternal principles given by the Fuehrer [...] And we, the SS, want to be the ideological Stosstrupp and the Schutzstaffel of the Fuehrer’s idea as well as an inner protection corps of the Nazi state by fulfilling our tasks as state police.”27 Obviously, genocide took place in the wake of self-development and decency. In fact, the moral excellence of individual SS men made the Holocaust possible, as a result of virtue.

V. Conclusion By and large, SS ethics failed to live up to the standards of the philosophical approaches from which its concepts were directly or indirectly borrowed. It organized itself around moral concepts such as duty, the good, and virtue. Yet, on the basis of Nazi logic, it deprived these concepts of their characteristic universality. With regard to the concept of duty, Kant excluded all sentiments from the moral determination of action because they could have no claim to universality apart from respect for the law and respect for humanity whose rationality understands the law. However, when the SS authors pleaded for the exclusion of sentiments to the benefit of duty, they meant specifically humanitarian (therefore, more universal) sentiments, but they proposed in fact the precedence of another sentiment, namely love for the German or Germanic Volk. More importantly, they chose to disregard Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative which commands one to act in a way that always considers humanity as an end and never as a means. However, humanity per se had no value within SS ethics.

27

Reinhard Heydrich, Wandlungen unseres Kampfes (Munich/Berlin: Verlag Franz Eher, 1935), pp. 18- 20.

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Similarly, SS ethics focused on a notion of the good that lacked in universality. The ultimate good that was to be pursued was the Volk’s good located above that of the individual according to the laws of nature. Yet these laws legitimized any sort of violence as well as any form of biological egotism. The supreme good, thus, was racially limited. Consequently, it fell short of universality by denying the value of humanity per se. Now, excellence in the art of performing one’s duty for the sake of the Volk’s good was called virtue, and SS ethics celebrated several types of virtue. By extolling the virtue of harshness, however, the SS ethics of virtue became murderous. Also, it was somewhat bizarre to posit human excellence and self-perfectionism in relation to mental dispositions that gave a moral character to the destruction of humanity. Due to its denial of universality, SS ethics ultimately failed doubly because of excessive egotism and nihilism. By valuing only a racial subset of humanity, SS thinking proposed nothing but a “natural” form of egotism that excluded any genuine otherness. And by denying a significant value to other subsets of humanity, SS ethics had a strong nihilistic component. SS ethics could and did legitimize any sort of violence against humanity for the sake of a racial subset that embodied the apex of ontological value. It represented biological egotism turning nihilistic according to the laws of nature. SS ethics was predicated on SS ontology, into which it ultimately imploded.

DAS SCHWARZE KORPS AND THE VALIDATION OF THE SS SIPPENGEMEINSCHAFT AMY CARNEY

On August 10, 1939, Das Schwarze Korps, the newspaper of the SS, published an article entitled “Is this unmanly?”1 The subject in question was fatherhood; was being a father and taking care of one’s children unmanly? Throughout the text of the article, the author asserted that the answer was ‘no.’ He averred that a father should not take over the responsibilities of a mother, but that it was permissible for a man to help his wife with her domestic duties. With this assistance he would prove his position as “a genuine man and a proper husband.”2 The pictures accompanying the article reaffirmed this message and demonstrated the care that a father, or any SS man for that matter, should provide for his children. The captions below the pictures gave further encouragement, arguing specifically, “Why shouldn’t the father also provide for his child […]? In such a case he loses nothing of his masculinity, but he shows that his love for his wife and his child is not only lip-service.”3 This article was one of many pieces routinely published in Das Schwarze Korps which focused on fatherhood, children, and the SS family. Such depictions furnished a persuasive argument with respect to the vital participation of a father in the daily life and upbringing of his children; they demonstrated that while mothers still remained the primary caregivers within a family, fatherhood encompassed far more than biological responsibility. The articles imparted the vision of an active father who cared for his family, and they publicly stated that fatherly admiration and care were acceptable and admirable traits. There was nothing unmanly in fatherly affection. By including such material, the newspaper created a public discourse on fatherhood and the family. It articulated for its readers the family values that this particular Nazi organization espoused. 1

“Ist das unmännlich?,” Das Schwarze Korps, 10 August 1939, 14. Ibid. 3 Ibid. 2

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In fact, fatherhood and the creation of a family represented essential ideals within the SS which helped define its current and future purpose. The SS had begun in 1925 as a small elite bodyguard unit staunchly dedicated to Adolf Hitler. However, its function and image as an elite organization shifted over the course of the two decades which followed. The person primarily responsible for shaping the SS and defining its status as an elite order was its final leader, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. He was not interested in creating an organization that would simply serve the needs of the Nazi party and the Nazi state in the present; he wanted to establish a community (Gemeinschaft) which would become the vanguard and new aristocracy of Hitler’s Thousand-Year-Reich.4 In particular, Himmler envisioned creating a family community (Sippengemeinschaft) to which not only his SS men but their wives, children, and all future descendents had the potential to belong to and to contribute. However, unlike communities in the past, which were built on commonalities such as class, ethnicity, history, language, and/or religion, the one that Himmler sought to construct was based on something far more immutable: a person’s biological lineage. A person’s heredity defined whether he (or she) would be able to belong to this community; although specific traits such as blond hair and blue eyes were valued, the more important aspect of an individual’s heredity was proving that he (or she) belonged to the esteemed Nordic race.5 Both popular and scientific literature from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had proclaimed that the Nordic race represented the apex of civilization and culture.6 As an advocate of this perspective, Himmler used this racial ideology when fostering his SS family community. Among the resources he selectively utilized was the science of eugenics; eugenic-based measures constituted the foundation of

4

The concept of the SS as an aristocracy was developed by Herbert Ziegler in Nazi Germany’s New Aristocracy: The SS Leadership, 1925-1939 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 5 Fritz Lenz, a prominent eugenicist whose work Himmler selectively drew upon and who periodically worked with the SS on racial matters, had specifically argued that “blond hair does not guarantee a noble race and dark [hair] does not exclude it.” Fritz Lenz, “Die Stellung des Nationalsozialismus zur Rassenhygiene,” Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie 25 (1931), pp. 300-308, here 303. 6 A few authors who describe the importance of the Nordic race to western and German civilization include Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), Hans F. K. Günther, The Racial Elements of European History (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1970) and Richard Walther Darré, Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (Munich: JF Lehmann, 1934).

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the family community and provided scientific legitimacy to his goal of establishing a racial and blood-based aristocracy. By only allowing people of Nordic descent to join the SS either as members or spouses, Himmler limited the biological right to belong. His family community was therefore directly defined by who was allowed to become a member as well as indirectly defined by the exclusion of everyone else.7 However, Himmler’s goal of creating a community concerned more than excluding the majority and including a minority. Using biology to delineate the SS family community was the cornerstone of a much larger ideal, one which sought to re-conceptualize the purpose and value of the family. With this greater end, the SS family community was as much a cultural construct as a biological entity. Although not an independent nation but an organization within the Nazi party, the SS can as such be conceived of as community within the Third Reich by applying the definition of a community as outlined by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities.8 The SS was not only defined by its political dimensions, but by its social, cultural, and economic ones as well. With a population reaching almost 800,000 men at its apex, the members of this community were bound together by a common Nordic heritage although they would never all know one another.9 It was also a limited community, one designed solely to accept people whose heritage was deemed to be racially impeccable. This community was almost sovereign; once the SS had proved its fealty, the organization and its leader were limited by one thing, the will of the 7

As both Anthony W. Marx and Olivier Zimmer have shown, the use of inclusion and exclusion to define a community or a nation has a long history in Europe. Anthony W. Marx, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Oliver Zimmer, Nationalism in Europe, 18901940 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 8 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso: London, 1983), 6-7. Although he created a slightly different definition of a nation and nationalism, Eric Hobsbawm also suggested that a nation is a cultural construct in Nations and Nationalism Since 1870: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 9-11. 9 “Stärke der SS am 30.6.1944,” Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde [hereafter BA] NS19/1471, 5 and letter from Richard Korherr to Heinrich Himmler, 19 September 1944, United States National Archives and Records Administration [hereafter NA] T175/103/frames 2625511-2625512. Koehl cited higher numbers based on taking in account wartime losses; see Robert Lewis Koehl, The SS: A History 1919-1945 (Stroud/Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing Limited, 1989), p. 237, and idem, “The Character of the Nazi SS,” The Journal of Modern History 34 (1962), pp. 275-283, here p. 275.

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Fuehrer. Nonetheless, as long as the SS operated within the boundaries set by Hitler, and remained loyal to him, it was fairly free to carry out whatever operations and functions it deemed necessary to sustain its existence and to increase its power. Finally, it aspired to be a community not simply because of the many varied uses of the word Gemeinschaft, but because the SS, through its ideal of the Sippengemeinschaft, sought to build an eternal camaraderie among its members and their families.10 All other factors that might have divided them, including religion, regional identity, or socio-economic status, were to be overcome through unity based on their common possession of Nordic blood. In order to construct this racially-based community, Himmler needed to convince his SS men, and by extension their wives and families, of its purpose and value. He and officials within the relevant branches of the SS, especially the Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt, RuSHA), needed to provide a framework through which they could educate SS men and promote race-conscious attitudes. They needed to develop a system that would foster positive attitudes and feelings toward racial biology and eugenic thinking among SS men and their families. To achieve these aims and, consequently, build the family community, Himmler and other SS officials had to cultivate a discourse which expounded on the relevant topics and promoted the validity and the objectives of the Sippengemeinschaft as a biological and cultural entity.11 The subsequently created discourse embraced a wide range of measures. Some of these measures were solely designed for an SS audience, including commands, speeches, letters, pamphlets, and ceremonies. Others aspired to show the entire German nation how the SS sought to become the vanguard of the Nazi racial state through its population policies and goals.12 One of the most important resources through which the organization was able to articulate its views publicly was its newspaper, the aforementioned Das Schwarze Korps. This newspaper was not just the most prominent SS publication, but it was also a leading weekly newspaper in the

10

Other uses of Gemeinschaft included Volksgemeinschaft, Blutsgemeinschaft, and Lebensgemeinschaft. 11 The concept of a regulated discourse, especially with regards to sexuality, was developed by Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, volume 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 11, 34, 39, 108-09, and 147. 12 The concept of the “racial state” comes from Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany, 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

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Third Reich, second in circulation only to Das Reich.13 Due to this prominence, Das Schwarze Korps was a conduit through which the SS was able to reveal its ambitions to the German people. As SS-Gruppenführer August Heißmeyer, the head of the SS Main Office (Hauptamt), asserted just two months into the run of the paper in May 1935, “in no other press product is the spirit of the SS presented in so clear a manner as in [Das] Schwarze Korps.”14 For SS readers, the articles presented in their newspaper reinforced the private initiatives beckoning them to be mindful of their family’s biological heritage when marrying and establishing a hereditarily healthy family that would augment the SS family community. For the greater German audience, the articles in Das Schwarze Korps provided the SS with an outlet to demonstrate how dedicated its men were to their Fuehrer and to the Reich and what an example they were setting for the entire Volk by adhering to the principles of eugenics. By publicly displaying the domestic goals of the organization, the newspaper divulged how the most loyal members of the party and the regime were poised to lead the German Volk when it came to family life and reproduction in the name of creating a racial state and a greater Volksgemeinschaft. The newspaper covered a wide range of topics. However, the SS remained at the forefront of the contents in Das Schwarze Korps and was always presented in a positive light, thus helping to create a public perception of the SS. In this regard, the newspaper’s chief editor, Gunter d’Alquen, created a newspaper geared toward the SS although it was aimed at and reached a wider audience. Having an extensive readership meant that Das Schwarze Korps was an ideal conduit through which the SS could expound on the biological and cultural aspects of its family community as well as justify its legitimacy. With this justification, most of the articles dedicated to marriage, children, and the family espoused the promotion of racially healthy unions and legitimate offspring. However, 13

Das Reich was launched by Joseph Goebbels in 1940; by 1943, each weekly edition was running approximately 1.5 million copies. Das Schwarze Korps sold over 1 million copies by 1939, and the next closest weekly newspaper was Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher’s anti-Semitic screed, which ran almost 400,000 copies as of March 1944. Richard Grunberger, 12 Year Reich: A Social History of the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), p. 400, Norbert Frei and Johannes Schmitz, Journalismus im Dritten Reich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989), p. 102, William L. Combs, The Voice of the SS: A History of the SS Journal ‘Das Schwarze Korps’ (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), p. 20, Fritz Schmidt, Presse in Fesseln, eine Schilderung des NS-Pressetrusts (Berlin: Verlag Archiv und Kartei, 1947), p. 218 and “Befragung von Herrn Gunter d’Alquen am 13/14 Januar 1968 im Mönchen-Gladbach,” Institut für Zeitgeschichte, ZS/2, pp. 29-31. 14 “SS-Zeitung ‘Das schwarze Korps,’” 27 May 1935, BA NS31/354, 47.

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the newspaper did not limit itself to the conventional definitions of family. Many articles did accept extramarital relations among racial peers for the purpose of procreation; such children were welcome additions to the family community and the racial state.15 Yet, few illegitimate children were born to SS men, meaning that while the newspaper endorsed the more liberal sexual mores advanced by the head of the SS, most articles, including the ones discussed here, primarily focused on the promotion and application of racial values within the context of children born to and raised by SS men and their wives.16 One of the biological topics important in the SS as well as in Nazi Germany was hereditary hygiene and racial care. Das Schwarze Korps therefore ran articles emphasizing the significance of population politics (Bevölkerungspolitik) in the Reich and the value of preserving and passing on healthy Nordic blood.17 Articles about blood and race also mentioned their importance for the goals of the SS, emphasizing that it was an organization of racially valuable soldiers who respected racial selection.18 A couple of articles explained the process that an SS applicant had to go through to join the order.19 One article from late 1935, “The Inner Security of the Reich,” summarized the overall purpose of the SS, connecting its vetting process with its core ideals of honor and loyalty.20 Twice, this article declared that the SS had imposed the selection laws on itself and was taking them so seriously that the children born to SS men would not have the privilege of being accepted into the organization automatically; 15 Selected articles that discussed illegitimacy include “An ihren Früchten,” Das Schwarze Korps, 9 July 1936, 11, “Kind = Kind,” Das Schwarze Korps, 18 March 1937, 9, “Darauf können wir stolz sein,” Das Schwarze Korps, 16 November 1939, 1, “Ich fand wieder zu mir selbst zurück,” Das Schwarze Korps, 9 May 1940, 6 and “Gute Gelegenheit,” Das Schwarze Korps, 4 July 1940, 2. 16 For more information on the regulation of extramarital sex, see Annette M. Timm, “Sex with a Purpose: Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity in the Third Reich,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (2002): 223-255 and for more on illegitimate children, namely those born in the Lebensborn program, see Georg Lilienthal, Der Lebensborn e.V.: Ein Instrument nationalsozialistischer Rassenpolitik (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1985). 17 For example, “Erbgesund – Erbkrank,” Das Schwarze Korps, 3 March 1935, 11, “Ewiges Blut,” Das Schwarze Korps, 26 June 1935, 14, “Der neue Weg,” Das Schwarze Korps, 10 March 1938, 3-4 and “Erst hinterher weiß man es,” Das Schwarze Korps, 1 June 1944, 4. 18 “Lebensgestaltung,” Das Schwarze Korps, 27 March 1935, 1. 19 “Was bin ich für ein Rassentyp?,” Das Schwarze Korps, 12 December 1935, 14 and “Wer will unter die Soldaten,” Das Schwarze Korps, 17 December 1936, 3. 20 “Die innere Sicherung des Reichs,” Das Schwarze Korps, 21 November 1935, 1-2.

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they too would have to be evaluated so that only individuals with the very best German blood would belong to the SS. Including this last point appears axiomatic in hindsight, given the Gruppenführer oath that Himmler required of all SS Gruppenführer and Obergruppenführer.21 He had created this oath asserting that one of the “greatest dangers to the future of the SS” would be if the wives and sons and daughters of SS men were automatically admitted into the organization as members without prior examination. Future generations, he argued, would not be admitted solely based on the merits of their forefathers. Just because their fathers had belonged to the SS was not reason enough to allow their admission as strict conditions for entry needed to be imposed on each generation. As a result, the Gruppenführer oath bound the highestranking officers to serve as “the guardians of the blood and life laws of the Schutzstaffel.”22 These officers were responsible for inspecting all possible candidates and spouses while simultaneously being aware that such scrutiny might lead them to have to reject their colleagues’ wives and children, or even their own. However, Himmler created this oath in November 1936, one year after the newspaper had printed the aforementioned article. A segment within the SS, the young editorial staff of Das Schwarze Korps, had anticipated such an element in the Reichsführer’s population policies and goals.23 Beyond this precept, the article “The Inner Security of the Reich” brought up another issue: the engagement and marriage order. Himmler had issued the original order on December 31, 1931.24 It was the first and most significant of his eugenic-based orders. It established the racial and biological foundation of the SS family community, consequently legitimizing the purpose and value of all subsequent racial politics. The article in Das Schwarze Korps acknowledged that this 1931 order represented the first SS selection law, although it was neither the first nor the last article to discuss the order. Others explained the purpose of the order, delving into the various aspects of it, such as elucidating why RuSHA required both an SS man and his fiancée to submit a genealogical tree tracing their respective lineages back to 1800 as well as clarifying why the wife of an SS man 21

“Grundgesetz über die Vereidigung der SS-Obergruppen- und Gruppenführer als Hüter des Bluts- und Lebensgesetzes der Schutzstaffel,” BA NS19/3902, 125. 22 Ibid., 126. 23 At the start of the newspaper, Gunter d’Alquen was 25. His co-editors were his brother Rolf d’Alquen, aged 23, and Rudolf aus den Ruthen, aged 22. Mario Zeck, Das Schwarze Korps: Geschichte und Gestalt des Organs der Reichsführung SS (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 2002), pp. 68, 71, and 73. 24 “SS-Befehl – A – Nr. 65,” 31 December 1931, BA NS19/1934, 147.

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had to be racially and hereditarily worthy to be accepted.25 Subsequent articles also defended the original engagement and marriage order, proclaiming that the Reichsführer had intervened in the private affairs of his men as a means of protecting the German race. Promoting healthy marriages meant promoting healthy children, which in turn promoted a healthy Volk.26 These selected articles revealed the marital ideals, racial beliefs, and future ambitions of the SS. Others conveyed the overall importance of a healthy marriage to the entire Volk and presented a larger context for readers beyond the immediate SS audience. Part of that larger context was provided by a Reich ministry health official, Dr. Arthur Gütt.27 Contributing an article in late October 1935, he briefly outlined the various hereditary health laws passed by the Nazi government.28 Among them, he discussed the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German Volk (Gesetz zum Schutz der Erbgesundheit des deutschen Volkes), which the state had issued one week prior. Gütt defined the law as one designed to promote the birth of valuable children by ensuring healthy unions and preventing undesirable ones based on racial and hereditary grounds. This law showed how race and hereditary health were inseparable, a point which, as Gütt acknowledged, the SS had already recognized. The organization had taken a leading role in protecting the blood and hereditary health of the German Volk. Gütt further proclaimed that the government could pass the laws, but that individuals themselves were ultimately responsible for achieving the goals laid down in them, something that SS men and their wives recognized and accepted with regard to their marriages and families. Additional articles promoted the biological merits of healthy marital bonds, classifying marriage as the germ cell (Keimzelle) of the Volk. They reinforced the idea that a marriage represented the beginning of a family whose task was to preserve its heritage for the future. Its importance lay in producing children; therefore, a childless marriage would be unable to 25

“Wie ich meine Ahnen suche,” Das Schwarze Korps, 3 October 1935, 4, “Seine Braut war zwei Zentimeter zu klein,” Das Schwarze Korps, 26 December 1935, 5, “Eine Mahnung an Saboteure,” Das Schwarze Korps, 13 February 1936, 6 and “Die arische Großmutter,” Das Schwarze Korps, 3 December 1936, 4. 26 “Warum Heiratsgenehmigung?,” Das Schwarze Korps, 3 April 1935, 10 and “Das sogenannte Privatleben,” Das Schwarze Korps, 16 March 1939, 1-2. 27 Gütt was also the chief of the SS Office for Population Politics and Hereditary Health Care (Das Amt für Bevölkerungspolitik und Erbgesundheitspflege im Stabe des Reichsführers-SS). 28 Arthur Gütt, “Ehegesundheitsgesetz und SS,” Das Schwarze Korps, 24 November 1935, 1-2.

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contribute to the Volk.29 As one piece directly noted, “the marriage is the child and its upbringing in healthy and harmonious surroundings.”30 The newspaper continually promoted the connection between marriage and family by publishing articles emphasizing the efficacy of an early marriage. The basic message remained the same in every article: the younger the couple was at the time of marriage, the greater the possibility for raising a family consisting of four or more children.31 Overall, these articles connected race and heredity with marriage and family, thus promoting the biological worldview espoused by the SS and the Nazi state and highlighting their ambition to endorse the notion of purposeful sexuality, that is having sexual relations for the purpose of procreation rather than pleasure.32 In addition, the racially-based discourse found within the pages of Das Schwarze Korps promoted the SS family community as a legitimate biological entity with the specific purpose of establishing the future of the Third Reich. The articles clearly articulated that race and heredity defined the SS family community. However, while race and heredity formed the core of all SS population policies and goals, the SS family community was more than a simple biological entity. Das Schwarze Korps also printed articles that publicized other ideals relevant to the foundation and success of the SS family community. These ideals promoted the validity of the Sippengemeinschaft as a cultural entity. Taken in tandem with the biological basis, they justified the objectives and importance of the SS family community within the Third Reich. One of the frequent topics in the newspaper was the family, and there were two sections dedicated to familial matters, one or both of which appeared in nearly every edition of the newspaper. The first was called “On Relations and Family” (Aus Sippe und Familie). The initiative for this 29

“Ein Rechtswahrer zur Ehescheidungsreform,” Das Schwarze Korps, 24 December 1936, 6, “Ahnenehrung einst und heute,” Das Schwarze Korps, 18 February 1937, 6 and “Das Kind heiligt die Ehe,” Das Schwarze Korps, 21 October 1937, 6. 30 “Im Mittelpunkt: das Kind,” Das Schwarze Korps, 21 October 1937, 6. 31 “Wann sollen wir heiraten?,” Das Schwarze Korps, 10 September 1936, 2, “Ein Problem, das noch nicht geklärt ist,” Das Schwarze Korps, 31 December 1936, 2, “Eine unerläßliche Voraussetzung,” Das Schwarze Korps, 21 January 1937, 2, “Weitere Vorschläge erwünscht,” Das Schwarze Korps, 18 February 1937, 2, “Unsere Leser schlagen vor,” Das Schwarze Korps, 4 March 1937, 6 and “Jung gefreit,” Das Schwarze Korps, 8 June 1939, 10-11. 32 The term “purposeful sexuality” comes from Timm, “Sex with a Purpose,” 225. In addition, both she and Dagmar Herzog have shown that sexuality was about more than procreation, namely also pleasure. Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

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segment came from Himmler, who wanted all family news published under this heading. He requested that the men be made aware that they needed to report their family news to RuSHA, which then forwarded the material to Das Schwarze Korps.33 This column ran periodically from May 8, 1935 until the last edition of the paper on March 29, 1945. As one of the semi-regular columns of the paper where SS men could list their marriages and the births of their children, “On Relations and Family” communicated the everyday reality of SS families. Throughout the publication of the newspaper, the style of this column and its placement in the paper varied, but the information it presented remained relatively consistent. Early editions listed engagements and marriages first and then births in a column primarily located on page four of the more than twenty-page newspaper. The column took up about one quarter of a page on which engagements, marriages, and births were divided according to the unit in which a fiancé, husband, or father served; the date of birth and the gender of the newborns were often listed as well. In August 1936, Himmler decided that engagements should no longer be included.34 Other than this omission, the column remained the same for most of the pre-war period. It varied only in the first five issues of 1939. Its heading changed to the lengthier “We have the will for the victory of the children, and we are gaining this victory” and only recorded births.35 At that time, the newspaper did not list the men by unit or the children by date of birth; instead, the five issues were organized completely at random. After this alteration, the heading returned to “On Relations and Family.” For the remaining months of 1939 the column, however, appeared on page five of the still more than 20-page newspaper, now taking up the entire page instead of only a column. The most dramatic change was that the column now also contained pictures of newborn babies, infants, and toddlers. Starting with the May 18 edition, one final change was implemented: the birth announcements now stated the number of children per SS family. Although the number went as high as ten children for some families, the majority of the SS families announced the birth of their first, second, or third child.

33

“Familien-Nachrichten für ‘Das Schwarze Korps,’” 30 March 1935, BA NS31/354, 46 and “Familien-Nachrichten für ‘Das Schwarze Korps,’” 15 June 1937, BA NS2/155, 4. 34 Letter from Rolf d’Alquen to Heinrich Himmler and RuSHA, 1 August 1936, NA T580/329/ Ordnung 50/no frame number. 35 “Wir haben den Willen zum Sieg des Kindes und wir werden diesen Sieg erfechten.”

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Following a twenty-one month hiatus from mid-August 1939 through mid-May 1941, the “On Relations and Family” column was resumed, returning to a text format similar in size and style to that of earlier editions.36 Marriage announcements and some intermittently included engagement announcements were still placed above the birth listings. However, the latter were organized differently: the births were listed by gender with the boys born to SS men heading the list followed by the girls, both in order by date of birth. These announcements also gave the newborn’s first name. The 1942-1945 editions continued this format, although when it came to reporting births, they often announced how many children an SS man had altogether. Most of the articles were to be found on page six, occasionally turning up instead on page seven, eight, or nine, which was closer to the end of the paper. During the war, the total length of Das Schwarze Korps shrank to about eight to ten pages per issue. “On Relations and Family” was consistently placed near the end of the much shorter newspaper. In fact, in the final edition of Das Schwarze Korps on March 29, 1945, “On Relations and Family” was the last column listed on the backpage. Appearing almost 300 times throughout the ten-year-run of the newspaper, the “On Relations and Family” column made a significant contribution regarding the topics of marriage and the SS family. First and foremost, this column publicly demonstrated the establishment of Germany’s new racial elite; it literally catalogued the naissance of Nazi nobility, giving tangible credence to Himmler’s population policies. Publicizing the birth announcements on a superficial level demonstrated the success of eugenics as it gave definitive evidence of the growing number of births. Seen from this angle, the number of the most racially fit members of the German Volk was continually growing. Additionally, this birth announcement column served to promote the ideal of prolific parenthood. It highlighted the merits of having a large family, especially during 1939 when the announcements were listed by the number of children a family had. This type of familial announcement openly demonstrated eugenic success since announcing the birth of their child publicly revealed that an SS man and his spouse had fulfilled their biological duty to the Reichsführer SS, the Fuehrer, and the Reich. Like36

The newspaper halted publication of this column between August 17, 1939 and May 15, 1941 without citing a reason. As these dates roughly correlate with the weeks prior to the opening of the Second World War through a month before the commencement of Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, perhaps the paper felt it necessary to concentrate on the successful war efforts of the German armed forces, including the Waffen-SS, which had its own section in the paper.

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wise, the birth of a baby literally meant the child’s victory on the home front parallel to military triumph on the battlefield during the early years of the war. These newborn babies were to be the Germans who, in the future, would safeguard what their fathers had conquered. Lastly, “On Relations and Family” kept the ideal of parenthood alive for a decade. Its continual presence in the newspaper connected children with the sustenance of Germany. The column clearly held greater importance in the early years when it occupied a position closer to the front of the newspaper. It was never headline news, but it warranted considerable attention due to having been placed in the front section of the paper. Its significance grew during 1939 when photographs of babies, infants, and toddlers accompanied the announcements, thus bolstering the idea of family in the pre-war months. During the middle and later years of the war, the significance of this column diminished, which could be seen by its placement close to the end of the increasingly shorter newspaper. Nonetheless, once Das Schwarze Korps had resumed its publication in 1941, the “On Relations and Family” column remained until the end to uphold the idea that the children of the SS represented a key element to the future of the Third Reich. Another section in Das Schwarze Korps relating to familial matters was called “Family Announcements” (Familien Anzeigen). First appearing on June 19, 1935 and running fairly consistently through the last edition on March 29, 1945, the column served a similar function as the “On Relations and Family” column.37 Featured in the classified section of the newspaper well over 450 times, it also announced engagements, marriages, and births. However, “Family Announcements” differed from “On Relations and Family” in several ways. To begin with, the initiative for this column did not come from Himmler, and the newspaper did not receive any information for it from RuSHA. On the contrary, “Family Announcements” were privately placed and paid for advertisements.38 The newspaper routinely ran a small blurb on the page of the column that indicated when and where the information to be published had to be received and how much it would cost. The editors requested that the material be submitted by the end of the week to the advertising department located at the paper’s main office.39 As with most classified sections of newspapers, the “Family An37

There were only two gaps without this section, in April and May 1937 and from mid-May to late July 1941. 38 This concept is much clearer in German as the word Anzeigen also means advertisements. 39 At first, ads had to be submitted by Saturday morning. Then, as of July 1936, the newspaper requested submission by Friday morning. From then until the end of the

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nouncements” column was located toward the end of the paper and, depending on how many announcements there were, the column took up anywhere from one-fifth of a page to two full pages. Most of the announcements were placed by SS families. While the parents of a couple periodically placed ads, most SS couples announced their engagement and marriage themselves. In every case, a couple would announce their names and the date of their engagement or marriage and the man’s SS rank and military unit. For example, SS-Standartenführer Kuno von Eltz-Rübenach, later a Brigadeführer in RuSHA, announced both his engagement and his marriage, as did SS-Standartenführer Gunter d’Alquen and SS-Untersturmführer Rolf d’Alquen who, like his brother, worked for the newspaper.40 As for the birth announcements, again, they were primarily placed by SS couples, although on a few occasions, it was only the SS man who made the announcement or an entire SS unit which placed a collective announcement on behalf of its men.41 The parents typically listed the name, gender, and date of birth of their newborn. Occasionally, they added which number child it was. Sometimes they even phrased the announcement in a somewhat cutesy manner such as stating that their first son had become a big brother or that their three boys had a baby sister to welcome into the family. Some of the SS officers who announced the birth of their children in “Family Announcements” included SS-Obergruppenführers Richard Walther Darré, Friedrich Krüger, and Udo von Woyrsch, SS-Gruppenführers Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, August Heißmeyer, Reinhard Heydrich, Günther Pancke, and Karl Wolff, and SS-Brigadeführers Werner Best and Richard Hildebrandt.42 Similar to “On Relations and Family,” these purchased announcements served two purposes. Within the SS, routinely paper’s run, the day changed periodically, primarily back and forth between Thursday and Friday. 40 The announcements were placed on the following dates: Kuno von EltzRübenach (7 October 1937, 22 and 19 May 1938, 18), Gunter d’Alquen (21 October 1937, 18 and 11 November 1937, 18), and Rolf d’Alquen (30 December 1937, 18 and 14 April 1938, 17). 41 For an example of the latter, see 20 March 1941, 12. 42 The ranks listed were not necessarily the highest obtained by each man, but the rank listed at the time of the announcement: Richard Walther Darré (8 September 1938, 18), Friedrich Krüger (19 March 1936, 14), Udo von Woyrsch (16 July 1936, 18), Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (27 August 1936, 19), August Heißmeyer (19 March 1936, 14, 7 October 1937, 22 and 12 December 1940, 14), Reinhard Heydrich (20 April 1939, 32), Günther Pancke (19 November 1936, 18 and 24 August 1939, 18), Karl Wolff (23 January 1936, 12 and 30 March 1938, 18), Werner Best (3 August 1939, 17), and Richard Hildebrandt (16 July 1936, 18).

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including such information in “Family Announcements” promoted the celebration of a new life and the expansion of the SS family community. It also set a good example for other SS men to follow, especially when highranking SS officers placed announcements; their announcements sent a stronger message than the listings in “On Relations and Family” because SS men voluntarily announced their family news as opposed to RuSHA supplying the relevant details. There was one other noteworthy element to “Family Announcements.” Engagements, marriages, and births only constituted one part of the column; many spaces were filled with the obituaries of fallen soldiers.43 The vast majority of these obituaries were those of SS men, although occasionally SS men and their families placed an announcement to commemorate the loss of a parent.44 Most of the obituaries, however, were placed by SS men seeking to honor a fallen comrade from their unit, and sometimes a soldier’s widow placed an announcement. Standing out from the other three types of announcements by its black bold print edging, an obituary gave the deceased soldier’s name, rank, age, military unit, and death date; oftentimes it also included kind words about the departed comrade, commending him for his bravery and loyalty. Prior to the war, obituaries took up no more than half the space allocated for “Family Announcements.” They frequently occupied little space or none at all. This greatly changed as the war progressed and death began to occupy more space than life to the point where an entire page or more was often devoted to mourning those who had lost their lives fighting for Germany. Within a few editions after the start of the war, most of the obituaries also displayed a cross with a small swastika in the middle, the same basic design as that of the various medals which soldiers could earn while alive. Therefore, while the other announcements attested to the steady growth of the SS family community, the obituaries drew attention to its potential decline as soldiers lost their lives fighting for the fatherland. Furthermore, as of late July 1941, there was a correlation between the “Family Announcements” and the “On Relations and Family” columns: the former only reported deaths and the latter only marriages and births. There were a few editions where one appeared and the other did not (normally “Family Announcements” did and “On Relations and Family” did 43

“Aus Sippe und Familie” did list deaths, but these listings were rare and only at the beginning of its run. 44 The families of Darré, Himmler, Heydrich, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner all purchased announcements following the loss of a parent: Darré’s mother (30 July 1936, 17), Himmler’s father (5 November 1936, 18), Heydrich’s father (1 September 1938, 18) and Kaltenbrunner’s father (15 September 1938, 18).

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not), but on the many occasions when both were issued, they appeared on the same page, one above the other. By the later years of the war, the columns appeared in tandem, bearing witness to the state in which the SS family community found itself. Combined, “On Relations and Family” and “Family Announcements” were the most important columns of Das Schwarze Korps dedicated to the SS family. They illustrated to both the SS readership and a wider audience the place which marriage, children, and family occupied in the organization’s population policies. These two columns were a prominent means of public discourse that promoted the significance of the SS Sippengemeinschaft as a cultural community. However, other individual articles published in the newspaper supported the notion of showcasing the SS family as a model for the Volksgemeinschaft, thus demonstrating that the ideal for these families was to serve as both the racial ideal and the role model for German society. One way in which Das Schwarze Korps endorsed the significance of the SS family was by publicizing family-related events of the SS. The most notable of those events was the family night (Sippenabend). These evenings were promoted by RuSHA, which wanted the get-togethers to be occasions where the family and friends of SS men could gain greater insight into the purpose of the SS.45 In particular, it was important for the wives and fiancées of SS men to attend these get-togethers so that they could gain some understanding about the community to which they and their men belonged and become willing to participate actively in that community. On a dozen occasions, Das Schwarze Korps ran small blurbs reporting on family nights that had taken place in various SS units throughout the Reich.46 Most of these articles commented that the evenings were meant to solidify the SS family community. Invited speakers, generally highranking SS officers, spoke on relevant topics such as the development and the tasks of the SS, the responsibility to have a healthy family, and the 45

RuSHA’s expectations for the Sippenabend can be found in “Wie gestalten wir einen Sippenabend?,” BA NS2/82, 185 and “Der Sippengedanke der SS im Kriege,” BA NS2/42, 1-2. 46 “Sippenabend der Sanitäter,” Das Schwarze Korps, 25 March 1937, 3, “Sippenabend der Sanitäter,” Das Schwarze Korps, 1 July 1937, 4, “Erster Sippenabend in Linz,” Das Schwarze Korps, 7 July 1938, 4, “Sommerfest mit unserem FM,” Das Schwarze Korps, 18 August 1938, 3, “Sippenabend,” Das Schwarze Korps, 16 March 1939, 4, “Sanitätsabteilung,” Das Schwarze Korps, 13 April 1939, 4, “Sippenabend,” Das Schwarze Korps, 4 May 1939, 4, “Sippenabend,” Das Schwarze Korps, 18 May 1939, 4, “Sippenabend,” Das Schwarze Korps, 25 May 1939, 4 and “Sippenabend,” Das Schwarze Korps, 8 June 1939, 4. Although all of these citations are from before the war, the documents from RuSHA cited above indicate that family nights were still held during the war.

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fight against the declining birthrate. In addition, there were refreshments, singing, and dancing as well as musical and artistic performances. The inclusion of the SS family nights demonstrated how the newspaper kept its SS readership updated on activities within the organization and its non-SS audience informed about how the SS was contributing to the Volk. It was one more way for Das Schwarze Korps to succeed in exemplifying how the SS family was an integral and leading element of the Volk. However, the newspaper was not satisfied with simply speaking about the family in generalities. Active parenting was another component, and many articles promoted the parents’ involvement in raising their children. For a long time, the mother had been seen as the primary caregiver in the German family, and the newspaper maintained this perspective.47 Whereas it certainly never argued for parity between parents or suggested that a husband take over the responsibility for child-rearing, it did publish articles emphasizing a father’s essential role in the life of his children. While never downplaying the significance of race and heredity with regards to reproduction, the newspaper nevertheless promoted the view that fatherhood was not limited to a biological contribution. As already shown in the aforementioned piece “Is this unmanly?,” fathers were expected to participate in raising and educating their offspring in addition to, although never in replacement of, the care provided by mothers. One article which emphasized the active role of the father was entitled “Best Friends.” It focused on the time a father should spend with his older children, especially his sons.48 The authors emphasized the fond memories

47

The following articles praised women for their work as mothers: “Wie man die deutsche Mutter nicht ehren sollte,” Das Schwarze Korps, 22 May 1935, 5, “Aussicht auf Mutterschaft,” Das Schwarze Korps, 22 May 1935, 16, “Die Mutter,” Das Schwarze Korps, 19 June 1935, 10, “Frauen sind keine Männer!,” Das Schwarze Korps, 12 March 1935, 1-2, “Junge Mutter,” Das Schwarze Korps, 28 May 1936, 11, “Noch einmal das Generationsproblem,” Das Schwarze Korps, 11 June 1936, 6, “Frau soll Frau sein,” Das Schwarze Korps, 3 December 1936, 12, “Mutter,” Das Schwarze Korps, 7 October 1937, 8, “Heilig ist uns,” Das Schwarze Korps, 30 December 1937, 3 and 9, “Die ganze Aufgabe der Frau,” Das Schwarze Korps, 22 June 1939, 6 and “Das Wunder nach einmal erleben,” Das Schwarze Korps, 22 February 1940, 4. Many historians have also researched women as mothers including Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (New York: Barnes and Noble, Books, 1975), Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987) and Lisa Pine, Nazi Family Policy 1933-1945 (Oxford: Berg, 1997). 48 “Die besten Freunde,” Das Schwarze Korps, 17 August 1939, 8-9.

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they had of their fathers.49 These interactions included playing boyhood games and listening to their fathers telling them about when they were young. The authors claimed that in this time together, the father ceased to be an authority figure and instead became a comrade who taught his sons the value of love, respect, and trust. “[We] believe today,” the authors contended, “that something like a camaraderie developed between us and our fathers in these hours.”50 They argued that all fathers could make time for their children and that no father was able to claim the opposite because, if nothing else, he could spend time with them when he was on vacation. The authors also derided as cowardly the fathers who would not be seen outside cavorting with their children, chastising “Daddy, you are foolish!”51 Nothing can replace the time a father spends with his children and, while acknowledging that the activities might be tiring, the authors enthused that the rewards were worthwhile. As with the article “Is this unmanly?,” “Best Friends” was written in the month preceding the start of the Second World War. With the outbreak of the war, the newspaper had many new issues and concerns to address. Nonetheless, the family remained a relevant topic, as already seen in the continuing presence of “On Relations and Family” and “Family Announcements.” The same can be said for the issue of fatherhood; the newspaper published many articles upholding fatherhood as a responsibility no less significant than any other contribution to the war effort. Article after article appealed to SS men to have children: “[T]he victory of arms must also be the victory of the commitment to the child.”52 However, while the basis of this responsibility was biological in nature, many articles continued to sustain the argument that fatherhood was about more than just biology and that all fathers had the possibility to continue to participate in the lives of their children in spite of the war. One means of sustaining an active paternal role was through correspondence. Das Schwarze Korps printed letters from fathers at the front, showing them taking pride in their children from far away. For example, the newspaper reported the immense joy felt by SS-Obersturmführer Jurgen V. when he became the father to both a son and a daughter within two years of his February 1940 marriage. “Through my splendid children,” 49 The article was written anonymously in the third person plural. However, it was most likely written by Gunter d’Alquen, Rudolf aus den Ruthen, and/or Rolf d’Alquen, all of whom were fathers of at least one child when this article was published. 50 Ibid., 8. 51 Ibid., 9. 52 “Neues Leben für vergossenes Blut,” Das Schwarze Korps, 15 May 1941, 8.

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he wrote, “whom I could hold in my arms for only a few days, I have become infinitely rich.”53 Juergen V. found in his children a reason for fighting the war, as did other soldiers who professed that despite the hardship of being separated from their offspring and having to miss out on seeing them grow up, they now fought so that their sons would not have to fight in the future.54 Beyond finding in their children a reason for fighting the war, these letters demonstrated how fathers remained a part of their children’s lives during the war. Das Schwarze Korps published several letters from fathers at the front to their children to demonstrate how men could still influence the upbringing of their offspring. In a letter from February 1941, a father used his own frontline experiences to teach his son about the value of vigilance. As a soldier in the Waffen-SS, he related everything in terms of military preparation. He advised his growing boy to perform his duties thoroughly, and he warned his son never to hesitate, but to act decisively, especially when facing an opponent.55 Whereas the communication between a soldier and his children for the most part took place by way of letters, occasionally a soldier would have the opportunity to see them when on leave from the front.56 This time at home, according to the newspaper, allowed the father to influence his children, as shown in the article “Father on Leave.”57 It shared the daily interactions of a father with his family while on a reprieve from military service. Neither the father nor his children could conceal their elation at seeing one another. The boys vied for their father’s attention and bombarded him with questions about the front, which the father patiently answered. The article related how the family members found mutual comfort in each other’s presence. Even after the father had returned to the front, the sons did not let his memory slip away. They relived their encounter with him over and over again and recalled what their father had said and done while at home. As in earlier articles that highlighted the interaction between fathers and their children, this one had pictures of the father playing games with his children, tucking them into bed, and demonstrating his 53

“Stärker als alle Einwände: Ein glücklicher Vater,” Das Schwarze Korps, 1 October 1942, 4. 54 “Für meine drei Jungen,” Das Schwarze Korps, 25 January 1940, 7 and “Übertriebene Lebenssicherung,” Das Schwarze Korps, 7 September 1944, 2. 55 “Frontsoldat schreibt seinem Sohn,” Das Schwarze Korps, 27 February 1941, 7. 56 Other examples of letters from fathers to their children are in “Der Soldat an seinen Sohn,” Das Schwarze Korps, 15 May 1941, 7 and “Brücke der Gedanken,” Das Schwarze Korps, 18 December 1941, 5. 57 “Vater auf Urlaub,” Das Schwarze Korps, 4 January 1940, 11-12.

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duties at the front. These pictures proved that even during wartime, a man had the ability to serve as both a soldier to the Reich and a father to his children. Overall, as these few examples illustrate, Das Schwarze Korps emphasized both the biological and cultural aspects of the SS family community. Its articles justified the value of the family community as a legitimate biological entity with a specific purpose in the SS and the Third Reich, and they aspired to show how the SS sought to become the racially superior vanguard of the Nazi state. The material published in the newspaper was completely relevant to the SS as the men of this organization remained its target audience. Yet, the newspaper also aimed at reaching a wider audience, and as the second largest weekly in the Third Reich, Das Schwarze Korps was the public “voice” of the SS.58 There is no doubt that anyone who read this newspaper would have had a clear idea of what the SS stood for and how its family community was an important part of its identity. By the end of the Third Reich, the SS family community had not achieved the population goals that Himmler had hoped it would. Nonetheless, exploring its contours and some of the public measures used to create an SS community within the larger Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, such as the articles found in Das Schwarze Korps, provides a stronger understanding of the organization and how it sought to validate its attempt to become the racial aristocracy within a racial state

58

Combs described the newspaper using this term.

THE MORAL RIGOR OF IMMORALITY: THE SPECIAL CRIMINAL COURTS OF THE SS CHRISTOPHER THEEL

I. The Criminal Jurisdiction of the Armed SS and Police Former SS Oberführer Dr. Günther Reinecke unwittingly described the essence and efficacy of the SS and police criminal courts when he was questioned as an SS witness in the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on 6 August 1946: “If an organization has criminal goals and has developed criminal behavior, the criminal courts of an organization such as this by their structure, content, and activities give evidence that they back these criminal purposes and activities.”1 Afterwards, he asserted that “exactly the opposite was the case. As long as it existed, the SS had the principle of combating criminality at all costs in conjunction with an entirely well-ordered administration of justice.”2 However, we may assume that Reinecke knew better. Since 1936, he had been the head of one of the main departments of the SS Court3 that reported directly to the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. In this position he had directed the preparations for the introduction of SS and police criminal courts and had promoted the process of establishing them in October 1939. Later on, he supervised their expansion. He became the head of the central SS Legal Office of the SS Court which, because it had just 1 Testimony of Dr. Günther Reinecke on 6 August 1946. In: Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg 14. November 1945 - 1. Oktober 1946, 42 volumes, volume XX, Nuremberg 19471949, pp. 453-472, here 467. 2 Ibid. 3 Cf. Die SS. Geschichte, Aufgabe und Organisation der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP, ed. on behalf of the Reichsführers SS by SS-Standartenführer Gunter d’ Alquen (Berlin 1939), pp. 15-16, 21, 30 (organigram) and Organisationsbuch der NSDAP, 1st edition, published by Reichsorganisationsleiter der NSDAP (Munich, 1936), pp. 419 and 422.

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been raised to the level of an independent Main Office SS Court (Hauptamt SS-Gericht) in June 1939, made it the “central office and ministerial level for the special criminal courts of the SS and the police.”4 As such, it was his job “to rearrange the entire legal system on behalf of the Reichsführer SS [...] that was supposed to find its way from the SS to the people.”5 The idea behind the new SS Court was to subject members of the SS to courts that were filled with SS members who had not only proved themselves as soldiers but also by their world view. They were best-suited to determine the laws in the SS.”6 It was also to “develop truly National Socialist legal practices that would later sweep away the general criminal justice system.”7 Since 1942, Reinecke had also been the permanent chairman of the Supreme SS and Police Court at the Main Office SS Court in Munich. The SS Legal Office and the chairmanship of the Supreme SS and Police Court were linked to each other, “to guarantee the uniformity of legal views and court decisions in the SS and the police.”8 This is the reason why all verdicts by the SS and Police Courts constituting more than one year of imprisonment were assessed by their own department (“current criminal cases”) at the Main Office SS Court. In other words, the overall direction of the legal and court system of the SS and the police was in Reinecke’s hands long before he finally became the nominal deputy head of the Main Office SS Court in July 1944 pursuant to “Basic Guideline 4 Organisationsbuch der NSDAP, 7th edition, published by Reichsorganisationsleiter der NSDAP (Munich, 1943), p. 420. See the order by the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police, dated 1 June 1939, on transforming the SS Court into an independent SS Court Main Office (BArch Berlin, NS 19/3901: SS-Befehle, volume 2 (1934-1944), sheet 77). 5 Assessment in the proposal for promotion to SS-Standartenführer, dated 23 February 1943 (BArch Berlin, previously BDC, film role SSO 019 B: SS-FührerPersonalakte Dr. Günther Reinecke * 18 April 1908). 6 Dr. Günther Reinecke, “Referat über den Entwurf einer SS-Strafgerichtsordnung, given on May 31, 1938 in Dresden,” in Werner Schubert (ed.), Akademie für Deutsches Recht 1933-1945. Protokolle der Ausschüsse, volume VIII: Ausschüsse für Strafrecht, Strafvollstreckungsrecht, Wehrstrafrecht, Strafgerichtsbarkeit der SS und des Reichsarbeitsdienstes, Polizeirecht sowie für Wohlfahrts- und Fürsorgerecht (Bewahrungsrecht) (Frankfurt a. M., 1999), pp. 475-480, here 475. 7 Bericht über die Dienstbesprechung der dienstältesten SS-Richter in Danzig und Zoppot vom 30. April bis 2. Mai 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/4: Erlass-Sammlung des Hauptamtes SS-Gericht volume 3 (January to June 1942), sheet 110-117, here 110). 8 Letter from SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Günther Reinecke to the SS judge with the Reichsführer-SS, SS-Obersturmbannführer Horst Bender, dated 4 August 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/8: Organisation des Hauptamtes SS-Gericht (1940-1944), sheet pp.9.

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No. 1” by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler “that a lawyer may never be the head of the SS Court.”9

II. The Täubner Trial 1943 Three years before Reinecke was interrogated as a witness in Nuremberg, he served as the presiding judge of the Supreme SS and Police Court in Munich, which imposed a ten-year penal sentence on SS Untersturmführer Max Täubner on 24 May 1943. Täubner had been the commander of a maintenance repair platoon at the “Command Staff of the ReichsführerSS” in the Ukraine. On this assignment, he had instigated his subordinates to shoot and kill large numbers of Jewish men, women, and children between September and November 1941. Additionally, many of the victims had been brutally maltreated before they were murdered, something in which Täubner had also been involved. Altogether, Täubner and his men had murdered approximately one thousand people in only two months. Furthermore, Täubner had the atrocities committed by himself and his men photographed. As the Supreme SS and Police Court declared in its judgment, “these were for the most part pictures that record the most frightening disturbances, and many of them are shameless and arouse disgust.”10 When soon afterwards he had even bragged about his deed and shown the photographs around for this purpose, the SS and police criminal courts became aware of his activities and had him arrested at the end of April 1942.11 The verdict of the Supreme SS and Police Court in Munich in the Täubner criminal case started with the words: “The defendant is a fanatical enemy of the Jews.”12 The grounds for the judgment state that “the de9

“Grundsätzliche Richtlinie Nr. 1 des Reichsführers-SS,” dated 16 August 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 19/1913: SS- und Polizeigerichtsbarkeit. – various matters (1942), sheet 9). 10 The wording of the verdict of the Supreme SS and Police Court in Munich, dated 24 May 1943, is printed almost in its entirety in Ernst Klee/Willi Dressen/Volker Rieß, “Schöne Zeiten.” Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer, 5th edition (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1988), pp. 183-192, here 185. An English translation is available under the title The Good Old Days (New York: Free Press, 1988), pp. 196-207. 11 Yehoshua Robert Büchler offers the most detailed description of the facts and circumstances “‘Unworthy Behavior’: The Case of SS Officer Max Täubner,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 17 (2003) no. 3, pp. 409-429, here 412-416. 12 Verdict by the Supreme SS and Police Court, dated 24 May 1943, quoted by Klee/Dressen/Rieß, “Schöne Zeiten,” p. 184. Cf. also Dick de Mildt, “Getting Away with Murder: The Täubner Case,” in Nathan Stoltzfus/Henry Friedlander

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fendant shall not be punished because of his activities involving the Jews as such. The Jews have to be destroyed, thus none of the dead Jews is a loss. Even if the defendant were to have said that destroying Jews was the job of commandos especially set up for this work, we should make allowances for the fact that he might have believed to be authorized to participate in the destruction of Jewry. Actual hatred of Jews is the driving motivation for the defendant. Unfortunately, he let himself get carried away [...] to perform acts of cruelty unworthy of a German man and an SS Fuehrer [...] It is not the way of Germans to apply Bolshevist methods when destroying the worst enemy of our people. Unfortunately, the defendant’s actions border alarmingly on this type of behavior [...]”13

III. Military Jurisdiction of the German Waffen-SS Being the military courts of the Waffen-SS and the police, the SS and police criminal courts probably prosecuted most of the “normal” crimes of SS and police members. Altogether, we only have a minority of verdicts by the SS and Police Courts because the SS judges (turning a well-known phrase by Rolf Hochhuth from Causa Filbinger on its head) were smarter than those in the Army, Navy and Air Force and destroyed their files at the end of the war.14 To judge from its content and the choice of words, the Täubner verdict rendered by the Supreme SS and Police Court may have been an extreme exception. In other words, there were greater odds of its escaping the ravages of war and being passed down to posterity because of its exceptional significance. Truth be told, the reasons for the verdict in the Täubner case express the substantial legal convictions of the SS that emerged from their elitist and exclusive concept of law and decisively shaped the way in which the SS and police criminal courts applied the

(eds.), Nazi Crimes and the Law (Cambridge/Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 101-112. 13 Verdict by the Supreme SS and Police Court, dated 24 May 1943, quoted by Klee/Dressen/Rieß, “Schöne Zeiten,” pp. 187-188, see also BArch Berlin, NS 7/1017: Strafsache Max Täubner (copies from his SS Führer Personal File, BArch Berlin, previously BDC, film role SSO 171 B: Max Täubner *22 May 1910). 14 Cf. Rolf Hochhuth, “Schwierigkeiten, die wahre Geschichte zu erzählen,” Die Zeit, dated February 17, 1978, No. 8, p. 41, and generally Heinz Hürten/Wolfgang Jäger/Hugo Ott, Hans Filbinger, Der “Fall” und die Fakten. Eine historische und politologische Analyse (Mainz: v. Hase & Koehler, 1980) and Wolfram Wette (ed.), Filbinger – eine deutsche Karriere (Springe: zu Klampen, 2006).

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law.15 It was no coincidence that after its introduction it reads triumphantly: “The times belong to the past when the SS man was subject to civil courts that were not capable of empathizing with the vision of the SS and were therefore incapable of doing justice to their functions.”16

In general, the same laws were valid in the Wehrmacht as in the WaffenSS during the war. However, just as the courts of the Wehrmacht, the SS and police criminal courts did not have independent jurisdiction according to the rule of law. Instead, they were an instrument of military leadership.17 Their main task was maintaining the “manly discipline” of the soldiers and the “troops’ fighting effectiveness.” We can see the extent to which the special criminal courts of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS had the mission of being an instrument of military leadership from the fact that “the lord of the court” (Gerichtsherr), meaning every military commander, was the sole master and convening authority of military criminal proceedings in the war.18 It was he who ordered preliminary investigations, and it was he who then ordered either an indictment or the proceedings to be discontinued. He also appointed the court and those judging the case and decided on the council for the prosecution. When the court had come to a verdict, the lord of the court subsequently decided whether or 15

Cf. Bernd Wegner, “Die Sondergerichtsbarkeit von SS und Polizei. Militärjustiz oder Grundlegung einer SS-gemäßen Rechtsordnung?,” in Ursula Büttner (ed.), Das Unrechtsregime. Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus, volume 1 (Hamburg: Christians, 1986), pp. 243-259, as an excerpt also printed in Bernd Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933-1945. Leitbild, Struktur und Funktion einer nationalsozialistischen Elite, 3rd extended edition (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 1997), pp. 319-332. Bianca Vieregge, Die Gerichtsbarkeit einer “Elite.” Nationalsozialistische Rechtsprechung am Beispiel der SS- und Polizei-Gerichtsbarkeit, 1st edition (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002). 16 Disziplinare und gerichtliche Bestrafung (BArch Berlin, NSD 41/3 – 1940/41: Mitteilungen über die SS- und Polizeigerichtsbarkeit. Herausgegeben vom Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei, Hauptamt SS-Gericht. volume I (1940/41), issue 2 (Oktober 1940), pp. 25-30, here 27 f), also quoted by Vieregge, Die Gerichtsbarkeit einer “Elite,” p. 17. 17 Cf. Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmachtjustiz 1933-1945 (Paderborn/ Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2005). See also James J. Weingartner, “Law and Justice in the Nazi SS: The Case of Konrad Morgen,” Central European History (CEH), vol. 16 (1983) no. 3, pp. 276-294. 18 Cf. Manfred Messerschmidt, “Der Gerichtsherr,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (ZfG), vol. 52 (2004) no. 6, pp. 493-504.

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not to confirm the judgment. The court judgment was only final, and thus enforceable, if the lord of the court had confirmed it. Otherwise, the judgment had only the status of an expert opinion.19 Contrary to the Wehrmacht, the military laws within the SS were not only meant to maintain “manly discipline.” They also had the special purpose of safeguarding the ideological foundations of the Order and the world view of the SS man.20 This is the reason why “manly discipline was not only equivalent to soldierly obedience, but also obedience to a world view, meaning complying with other duties that are the responsibility of the other national comrades.”21 The SS judges were very casual in handling the legal facts and circumstances. They believed “that there is no longer law in and of itself with an independent existence in paragraphs bearing no relationship to the life of the people”,22 and Nazi criminal law did not assign any decisive meaning to them anyway.23 Both general criminal law and military criminal law were supposed to be interpreted and applied “analogously” and “in a form commensurate to the basic views of the Schutzstaffel.”24 When “the special concerns of the Schutzstaffel” called for it, SS judges should be able to deviate from applicable law in their rulings while disregarding the fundamental concept of a law. In cases such as these, they should “delve into the legal situation in detail, so as not to expose themselves to the charge of a lack of legal knowledge.”25 When in doubt, the SS judges were not supposed to be hindered by a contrary 19

See “Erläuterungen zur Verordnung über das militärische Strafverfahren im Kriege und bei besonderem Einsatz (KStVO), dated 17 August 1938,” in Rudolf Absolon, Das Wehrmachtstrafrecht im 2. Weltkrieg. Sammlung der grundlegenden Gesetze, Verordnungen und Erlasse (Kornelimünster: Bundesarchiv Abteilung Zentralnachweisstelle, 1958), pp. 179-189. 20 “Fehlurteile” (BArch Berlin, NSD 41/3 – 1940/41: Mitteilungen über die SSund Polizeigerichtsbarkeit, volume I (1940/41), issue 6 (Dezember 1941), pp. 147150, here 150). 21 Ibid. (Italics in the original). 22 Ibid., p. 149 (Italics in the original). 23 Cf. especially Wolfgang Naucke, “Die Aufhebung des strafrechtlichen Analogieverbots 1935,” in NS-Recht in historischer Perspektive. Kolloquien des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte (Munich/Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1981), pp. 71-108, printed again without changes in Wolfgang Naucke, Über die Zerbrechlichkeit des rechtsstaatlichen Strafrechts. Materialien zur neueren Strafrechtsgeschichte (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000), pp. 301-335. 24 Auf dem Wege zu einem selbständigen SS- und Polizeistrafrecht (BArch Berlin, NSD 41/19: Hinweise für den SS-Richter. Herausgegeben vom Reichsführer-SS, Hauptamt SS-Gericht, issue 3, dated 15 December 1944, pp. 37-43, here 37). 25 Bericht über die Dienstbesprechung der dienstältesten SS-Richter in Danzig und Zoppot 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/4, sheet 112).

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law but “to apply the best of their knowledge and belief to find the law that best serves the community of the SS.”26 True to the principle of the “community relationship” of all law – “all law is rooted in the community and grows and thrives with it”27 – the SS judges had to assess “actions that are contrary to duty and qualified for punishment” in terms of “whether and to what extent they have damaged our community and call for retribution for the sake of protecting this community and its honor.”28 This means that it was not just the legal facts and circumstances that determined the punishable nature of a crime. First and foremost, it was “the community’s need to be protected and its call for retribution.”29 This was how the head of the special jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht, the highest ranking judge in the German Armed Forces High Command (OKW), Dr. Rudolf Lehmann, described “the mission of the preserver of the law of the Wehrmacht:” “It is not the function of a court to search for any truth that does not exist in and of itself. It is the function of a court in the framework of the community that it is placed in to use the instrument of the law to sustain the said community. In this sense, also for us, there applies the well-known quotation by the Reich Legal Leader concerning what is legal,”30 namely: law is whatever is useful to the Wehrmacht, and injustice is whatever is detrimental to it.31 In the opinion of the Main Office SS Court, this “elasticity”32 in handling criminal law would have to “play out in favor of the perpetrator. It would consequently have the effect 26

Ibid. Also refer to Dr. Günther Reinecke for this, Vom Richtertum (BArch Berlin, NSD 41/19: Hinweise für den SS-Richter, issue 1, dated 1 January 1944, pp. 2-3, here 2). 27 Auf dem Wege zu einem selbständigen SS- und Polizeistrafrecht (BArch Berlin, NSD 41/19: Hinweise für den SS-Richter, p. 37). Also refer to Georg Dahm in this framework, “Verbrechen und Tatbestand,” in Karl Larenz (ed.), Grundfragen der neuen Rechtswissenschaft (Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1935) [ND 1995], pp. 62107, here 85: “Alles Handeln und Sein hat Sinn nur aus der Gemeinschaft [...]. Die Gemeinschaft wird nicht von außen geordnet, sondern trägt ihr Recht in sich.” 28 “Fehlurteile,” p. 149 (emphasis in the original). 29 Reinecke, Vom Richtertum (BArch Berlin, NSD 41/19: Hinweise für den SSRichter, issue 1, p. 2). 30 Rudolf Lehmann, “Die Aufgaben des Rechtswahrers der Wehrmacht,” Deutsches Recht 9 (1939), Edit. A Vol. 25, 5 August 1939, p. 1265-1269, here 1267. 31 Also see my article, “Von Metz nach Wiesbaden. Die Geschichte des SS- und Polizeigerichts XIV,” Nassauische Annalen, vol. 122 (2011), pp. 325-336, here 328. 32 Cf. Manfred Messerschmidt, “‘Elastische’ Gesetzesanwendung durch Wehrmachtgerichte,” in Wolfram Wette (Hg.), Filbinger – eine deutsche Karriere, zu Klampen (Springe: Zu Klampen 2006), pp. 65-80.

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that incidents constituting a punishable offense in and by themselves would be more leniently punished or even go completely unpunished if they could be attributed to an appropriate attitude or are in accordance with an SS position (dismissal because of insignificance), assuming this is in conformity with our community’s sense of justice, so that any other ruling would seem to be a misjudgment.”33 The judgments of the SS and police courts, such as those against Max Täubner and others, have to be read and comprehended in this context. Hermann Lübbe described the ideological legal views and the purposive concept of law in the SS as an expression of their “totalitarian legal devoutness,”34 and, simultaneously, Wolfgang Naucke calls them an expression of a particular social morality with the corresponding need to punish. Put together, they formed a general standard for assessing certain crimes during the war that can be illustrated by the example of treating “Shooting Jews without Orders or Authority,” as Täubner’s crimes were officially designated.

IV. The Random Execution of Jews In Täubner´s case, the judgment of “Shooting Jews without Orders or Authority” was probably also known to Reinecke’s associate judge at the Supreme SS and Police Court, SS Obersturmbannführer Dr. HansBernhard Brauße. In a 1942 letter addressed to Horst Bender, senior SS judge on the Reichsführer’s personal staff, Brauße asked for Himmler´s ruling while simultaneously making the opinion of the Main Office SS Court clearly known. The occasion was the criminal proceedings against Police District Lieutenant Wölfer of the Order Police before the SS and Police Court XV in Breslau. In February 1942, Wölfer, along with his colleagues, had shot dead the Jew Mandelmann in Radom; the victim was supposedly an informer performing services for the Security Police who had also incriminated Wölfer and his colleagues. Brauße wrote the following about this incident: “It is intolerable that everybody goes around shooting Jews without any orders or authority. The motivations have to be decisive for assessing this unauthorized shooting. The laws on murder and manslaughter would have to be applied if they were shot dead out of hei33

“Fehlurteile,” p. 150 (emphasis in the original). Cf. Hermann Lübbe, “Totalitäre Rechtgläubigkeit. Das Heil und der Terror,” in Hans Maier (ed.), Wege in die Gewalt. Die modernen politischen Religionen (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000), pp. 37-35. Hermann Lübbe, “Politischer Moralismus. Über die Selbstermächtigung zur Gewalt,” in MariaSibylla Lotter (ed.), Normenbegründung und Normenentwicklung in Gesellschaft und Recht (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999), pp. 87-95. 34

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nous or selfish motives, in particular for covering up their own crimes or the offenses of third parties. If they are shot dead purely for political reasons, we would probably be able to refrain from criminal persecution, unless punishment is called for to maintain order.”35 However, Brauße apparently thought that murdering the Jew Mandelmann was acceptable. In any event, he remarked “that just using a Jew as a contact to observe others of his race or persons belonging to foreign national traditions seemed acceptable, although it may never lead to spying on German national comrades. When a Jew is held accountable for accusations against policemen, regardless of the cause, this would not be objectionable [...].”36 Himmler concurred with the attitude of the Main Office SS Court in this fundamental matter right down to his formulations and notified his jurists that: “There will not be any punishment in cases of purely political motives, unless it is called for by the need to maintain order [...] The person shall be punished by the court if his motives are selfish or sadistic or if the person has sexual motives, even in cases of murder or manslaughter.”37

The SS judges also followed these rules in the Supreme SS and Police Court´s verdict against Max Täubner. They repeatedly pointed out that the defendant Täubner “was a fanatical enemy of the Jews,” so that “a genuine hatred of the Jews [..] was the driving force for the defendant” who therefore “did not act out of sadism, but founded on a genuine hatred of the Jews.”38 This is how they justified why the defendant was not supposed to be “punished because of the activities against Jews as such [...].”39 Since the SS judges assessed Täubner’s murderous anti-Semitism as a political motive for his crimes, they exempted him from punishment for these 35

Letter from SS-Sturmbannführer and SS Judge Dr. Hans-Bernhard Brauße to the SS Judge with Reichsführer-SS, SS-Obersturmbannführer Horst Bender, dated 26 September 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/1168: Strafsache gegen den Revierleutnant der Schutzpolizei Wölfer u. a. wegen Judenerschießungen ohne Befehl und Befugnis vor dem SS- und Polizeigericht XV in Breslau (1942), unpaginated). 36 Ibid. 37 See the letter from the SS Judge with Reichsführer-SS, SS-Obersturmbannführer Horst Bender, to the Main Office SS Court, dated 26 October 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/247: Bestrafung von Judenerschießungen ohne Befehl und Befugnis (1942), sheet 2 = IMT Nuremberg Document NO-1744), printed by Vieregge, Die Gerichtsbarkeit einer “Elite,” p. 263. 38 Judgment of the Supreme SS and Police Court dated 24 May 1943, quoted by Klee/Dressen/Rieß “Schöne Zeiten,” pp. 184 und 188. 39 Ibid., p. 187.

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crimes, a decision which was in accordance with the orders of the Reichsführer-SS and the Main Office SS Court for punishing the “Shooting of Jews without Orders or Authority.” In spite of this, Täubner was punished because punishment was called for “to maintain order” i.e. “manly discipline.” In the eyes of the SS judges, Täubner had “allowed his men to become so horribly brutalized that they followed his example in acting like a wild horde. This means that the defendant had put manly discipline at risk in a way that could hardly be imagined worse.”40 In other words, he had “neglected his supervisory duty in such a blatant manner, which in the opinion of the SS also included that he did not allow his men to become emotionally depraved.” Beyond this, the SS judges identified “a serious lack of character” and “an extensive inner brutality” in Täubner’s personality because he allowed himself to be carried away and perform acts of cruelty and maltreatment during the “‘necessary destruction’ of the Jews.”41 Furthermore, the judges were worried about the photos Täubner had taken and shown around: “These pictures can bring about the greatest hazards to the security of the Reich if they get into the wrong hands. How easily might they have been leaked from Southern Germany,” where Täubner had the pictures developed on home leave and instantly showed them to his wife and friends, “through Switzerland to enemy propaganda.”42 The SS judges saw this as “a particularly serious case of disobedience. Luckily, these pictures were only known to a small group of people.”43 Täubner was sentenced to a ten-year penal sentence “for not maintaining manly discipline” and partially due to the aggravation of his sentence pursuant to Section 5a of the Special Wartime Criminal Law Ordinance (i.e. exceeding the legal range of punishment). His crime was “violating the Fuehrer principle,” which not only included neglecting his supervisory duty but also military disobedience as well as various other crimes. He was expelled from the SS and declared “unworthy of fighting.” However, he only had to serve one- and-a-half years of his ten-year sentence at the SS and Police penal camp in Dachau. The Reichsführer-SS pardoned Täubner in mid-January 1945 and placed him on probation at the front, where Himmler expressed the expectation “that T. will show in every way that he is worthy of this pardon and act just as correctly at the front as he

40

Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., p. 189. 42 Ibid., p. 188. 43 Ibid., p. 189. 41

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had at the penal camp.”44 Although “it has got around among the troop that you are quickly sent to the front with serious crimes and major punishments,” as the Main Office SS Court notified the Reichsführer´s jurists in 1944,45 Himmler also held the view in Täubner’s case that “we cannot let any condemned criminal stay in penal execution any longer than necessary in the present war situation. We will have to accept the discrepancy between a major punishment and brief enforcement period during the war.”46

V. The "Events" in the Soldau Transit Camp While the SS and police criminal courts played a limited role, the so-called “Occurrences at the Soldau Transit Camp”47 in East-Prussia provides an example of the type of inner attitude the SS leadership expected from the people who committed mass murder. Years after these events, they were ordered to investigate the suspicion that prisoners had been subjected to arbitrary and very serious maltreatment, although in the final analysis their investigations did not have any consequences. The Soldau Transit Camp was built in the winter of 1939/40, specifically as a civil prison camp to discreetly kill members of the Polish elites who were viewed as “political activists” and “enemies of the state” in the context of ethnic and political “purges.”48 Soldau had been used by the East-Prussian Gestapo as a central place of execution since the beginning of February 1940. Patients from nursing homes from all over East-Prussia and the Wartheland region were murdered there.49 Beyond this, the Gestapo had been using the Soldau 44

Letter from SS-Sturmbannführer and SS Judge d.R. Helmut Gießelmann, office of the SS Judge with Reichsführer-SS, to the Main Office SS Court, dated 16 January 1945, quoted by Klee/Dressen/Rieß, “Schöne Zeiten,” p. 192. 45 Speech note of the SS Judge with the Reichsführer-SS, SS-Standartenführer Bender, dated 20 June 1944 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/319: Divergenz zwischen hoher Strafe und geringer Vollzugszeit bei Urteilen der SS- und Polizeigerichte (1944), sheet 1). 46 Letter from the SS Judge with Reichsführer-SS, SS-Standartenführer Bender, to the director of Office in the Main Office of the SS Court, SS-Standartenführer Dr. Reinecke, dated 17 July 1944 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/319, sheet 2). 47 Cf. BArch Berlin, NS 7/1187: Ermittlungsverfahren wegen Erschießungen und weiteren kriminellen Vorkommnissen im Durchgangslager Soldau (1943-1944). 48 Cf. Minutes of the interrogation of SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Dr. Otto Rasch, dated 16 June 1943 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/1187, unpaginated = IMT Nuremberg Document NO-1073). 49 Gabriele Lotfi, “SS-Sonderlager im nationalsozialistischen Terrorsystem: Die Entstehung von Hinzert, Stutthof und Soldau,” in Norbert Frei/Sybille Steinbacher/Bernd C. Wagner (eds.), Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit.

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Camp since May 1940 as a “labour education camp” for Polish forced labourers who were “unwilling to work.”50 Several thousand people met their death in Soldau in the early years due to mass executions as well as from brutal maltreatment, criminal neglect, disease and hunger. It was only in 1943, when the conditions at this camp sparked off internal SS investigations against the camp commander and his supervisors.51 The commander of the Soldau Transit Camp from the beginning of 1940 to the end of September 1941 was SS Hauptsturmführer Hans Krause. He had previously been a member of the SS-organized “ethnic German Self-Defense,” but now he was overtaxed with the job of a camp commander. Krause not only ordered the shootings commanded by his superiors, but he also participated in them, using his own service pistol. In 1943, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) questioned SS Hauptsturmführer Dr. Friedrich Horst Schlegel on the occurrences in Soldau; Schlegel was the former personal assistant of the inspector of the Security Police and Security Service of the SS (SD) and temporary deputy Stapostellenleiter of Königsberg. Schlegel supervised the Soldau Camp, representing the responsible inspector of the Security Police and SD. He had reported that he knew that Krause “repeatedly expressed the fact that liquidating the Poles was not a pleasant thing to him, but that he carried out his duty in loyalty to the cause.”52 The inspector of the Security Police and SD in Königsberg from November 1939 to May 1941 was SS Brigadeführer and General Major of the police, Dr. Otto Rasch. He subsequently led the Task Force C in the Ukraine from June to the beginning of October 1941 and carried out mass murders of Ukrainian Jews; approximately eighty thousand people had been murdered by the end of October 1941. Rasch (who ordered the Soldau Camp to be established in 1939) was also questioned about the incidents at the camp in 1943. He told the following about the camp commander: “I had an excellent experience with Krause from the beginning. He was an extraordinarily dutiful person with Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik (Munich: Saur, 2000), pp. 209-230, part.(!) 216-223, here: 222. 50 Ibid., and more detailed on this Uwe Neumärker, “Soldau,” in Wolfgang Benz/Barbara Distel (eds.), Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, volume 9 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2009), pp. 612-621. 51 See the report by the Chief of the Security Police and SD, SS-Gruppenführer and Major General of the Police Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner to the SS Judge with Reichsführer-SS, dated February 1943 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/1187, unpaginated = IMT Nuremberg Document NO-1076). 52 Minutes of the interrogation of SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Friedrich Horst Schlegel, dated 3 June 1943 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/1187, unpaginated = IMT Nuremberg Document NO-1074).

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a high level of moral earnestness who took on his difficult task with a dedication that could only have been nurtured by the most profound National Socialist attitude. He also maintained strict discipline among his men and never asked anything of them that he did or would not be willing to do himself [...]. I exchanged views with Krause very frequently on the necessity of the harsh measures we are undertaking and found that he accepted this policy completely. I also noticed that he had the moral inhibitions he needed not to sink into uncontrolled behaviour [...].”53 Based upon this testimony, Krause was released from imprisonment at the Gestapo’s own prison in the Prinz-Albrecht-Straße in Berlin and the investigation by the SS and Police criminal courts came to an end. Even if Krause supposedly gave the impression of being a completely broken man and lived in constant fear of being arrested again, he was told when he was released from imprisonment “that there was nothing else against him and that everything was all right.”54 What Rasch and Schlegel tell about Krause provides an image of the “decent” criminal55 who did “his difficult duty” in an objective, cool, and rational manner “in loyalty to the cause” and who was convinced of its necessity and had “the moral inhibitions he needed not to sink into uncontrolled behaviour.” This means that he acted in an exemplary fashion towards his subordinates and was aware of his responsibility, and he made sure (as Himmler himself repeatedly expressed in speeches in 1943) that it was possible to carry out the “difficult task” of the mass murder of European Jews “without our men and our officers having suffered damage to their spirits or souls, as I believe I can say.”56 Krause, as Rasch and Schlegel describe him, was just the sort of person the SS wanted to carry out 53

Minutes of the interrogation of SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Dr. Otto Rasch, dated 16 June 1943 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/1187, unpaginated = IMT Nuremberg Document NO-1073). 54 Letter from the Higher SS and Police Leader with the Oberpräsident of East Prussia to the SS Judge with Reichsführer-SS, dated 17 August 1943 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/1187, unpaginated). 55 See Karin Orth, “Die ‘Anständigkeit’ der Täter. Texte und Bemerkungen,” Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen, vol. 25 (1996) no. 2, pp. 112-115. 56 Speech in front of the Reich Leaders und Gauleiters in Posen on 6 October 1943, printed in Bradley F. Smith/Agnes F. Peterson (eds.), Heinrich Himmler Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und andere Ansprachen (Frankfurt a.M./Berlin/ Vienna: Propyläen-Verlag, 1974), pp. 162-183, here 169-170, as well as in his speech in Posen before the SS-Gruppenführers on 4 October 1943, printed in: Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg, volume XXIX, pp. 110-173, here 146 (= IMT Nuremberg Document 1919-PS).

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mass murder. He represented the exact opposite of the unpredictable and excessive criminal as embodied by Max Täubner who was “without any moderation and does not possess any inner discipline.”57

VI. Nationalsocialism and Legal Thought Whoever speaks of the moral rigor of a special criminal court cannot ignore the legal circumstances that define the essence of this court. This is especially true when the court contributes to creating a climate that sets the backdrop for atrocities (or at least did not prevent them), atrocities that under other circumstances would have to have been punished by the courts pursuant to criminal law. “There cannot be any doubt that court decisions will have to leave the path of the old methods so that the SS and Police Courts will be pioneers. The laws that have come down to us are inadequate. Still, it is not enough just to have new and better laws. The main thing is not just applying a law. We have to find justice. And that is the mission of strong judicial personalities who” as stated above “operate on the assumption that there is no longer justice in and of itself carrying on an independent existence in paragraphs bearing no relationship to the life of the people [...]”58

The head of the SS and Police Court VI in Cracow, thirty-one-year-old SS Sturmbannführer and SS Judge Dr. Norbert Pohl, considered himself precisely such a judicial personality. Just as many lawyers of his time, Pohl dreamed of revitalizing jurisprudence and saw its mission as “once again giving the German people a legal system and legal formulations that did not spring forth from logic but from a national sense of justice [...] These lawyers were of the opinion that it is the eternal mission of the Germanic and Old German judge and preserver of the laws not to create the law but to make the law already existing in the German way of life visible, i.e. to find it.”59 The primary task for Pohl and many other NS lawyers was renewing criminal law “because it is most intimately linked to a state’s polit-

57 Judgment by the Supreme SS and Police Court, dated 24 May 1943, quoted by Klee/Dressen/Rieß, “Schöne Zeiten,” p. 190. 58 “Fehlurteile,” pp. 148 (Italics in the original). 59 Ernst Anrich, “Die deutschen Universitäten und der Geist unserer Zeit,” Volk und Reich, vol. 17 (1941) no. 11, pp. 752-769, here 757-758 initially quoted by Lothar Kettenacker, Nationalsozialistische Volkstumspolitik im Elsaß (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1973), p. 188.

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ical foundation.”60 This was where the reorganization after the Nazi seizure of power was intended to be “a totally political reorganization, founded upon the quality of the law as a world view and avowing a dynamic conception of the law.”61 This was the precondition for the SS and its jurisdiction, as stated, for example, in 1941 in an official bulletin of the Main Office SS Court on the occasion of Church protests against the murdering of ill people at “euthanasia institutions” in the course of the “T 4 Campaign:” “[finding] the right answers to questions that our laws have not yet satisfactorily given, such as the question of killing worthless life. There is no doubt for us. But we do not want to fool ourselves: our people also have to be educated to feel and think correctly.”62 Given these facts, at the beginning of 1942 Pohl wrote to the head of the Main Office SS Court in Munich on a different aspect of renewing criminal law that was also significant for the case of SS Untersturmführer Max Täubner: “An upheaval of gigantic proportions is taking place in criminal law right before our eyes in the sense that the person of the perpetrator will be the key issue not only in the trial today and in future but also in the legal determination. This is what is new, and we will not tire in working on. In the final analysis, this is what the destiny of SS jurisdiction is founded on as the Fuehrer wants to see it. It is not the formal trial that we need the person of the defendant for. The defendant’s personality also commands the legal determination, not primarily the law.”63

Pohl still thought that the law remained “a very essential source of insight into justice. However, it has to remain bloodless and reduces judges to the level of a mechanical tool if the defendant’s personality and his community orientation, meaning the needs of the troops, are not taken as sources of insight before the law.”64 This is the reason why Pohl made his urgent 60

Gottfried Boldt, “Rechtspolitische Wandlungen unter der Herrschaft des Reichsstrafgesetzbuches,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft (ZgesStW), vol. 96 (1936), pp. 475-509, here 475. 61 Ibid. 62 “Fehlurteile,” p. 149 (Italics in the original). 63 Bericht des Chefrichters des SS- und Polizeigerichts VI, Krakau, SSSturmbannführer und SS-Richter Dr. Norbert Pohl, an den Chef des Hauptamtes SS-Gericht, SS-Gruppenführer Paul Scharfe, dated January 22, 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/318: Bericht des SS-Sturmbannführers Dr. Pohl über die Probleme mit der gutachterlichen Tätigkeit des Hauptamtes SS-Gericht (1942), sheet 1-31, here 4, Italics in the original). 64 Bericht des Chefs des SS- und Polizeigerichts VI, Krakau (BArch Berlin, NS 7/318, sheet 6).

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appeal to the head of the Main Office SS Court, referring to the most current development in Nazi criminal law at that time: “We will not be able to pioneer any new developments if we do not first gain insight into the significance of this normative type of perpetrator that [Georg] Dahm called him in forming the facts of the case and the issue of the crime committed and the perpetrator’s guilt. We can see everywhere that ordinary jurisdiction uses what is known as the “criminological” type of perpetrator for sentencing.”65

However, the goal both for the ordinary criminal courts and the special criminal courts of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS was “finding material justice out of the perpetrator’s personality and only out of it as a part of a community placing obligations on it. However, we must initially take this path and I am putting all of my strength of purpose into this as long as I am allowed to be active in SS jurisdiction.”66 This concept of a “national” community justice “for our own species” was not specific to the SS and Police criminal courts. However, during the war we might say that it was extensively implemented in court decisions. They found their origin in thinking within specific frameworks or also along “a concrete philosophy of order” (Carl Schmitt)67 which placed the interests of the community above those of the individual meaning that it was very appropriate to the constitution of a “Fuehrer State” and “Volksgemeinschaft.” In the “Third Reich,” justice did not exclusively include the moral requirements of the community cast in the form of the law although it also contained this. Rather, it had to serve the community’s “need to protect” and “desire for retribution.” Simultaneously, legal thinking meant thinking in moral categories in the framework of the community’s purposes and interests and the substance of injustice, and therefore the punishable nature of a crime was primarily dictated by the damage it caused to a community. The sentence was set forth based upon the perpe65

Bericht des Chefs des SS- und Polizeigerichts VI, Krakau (BArch Berlin, NS 7/318, sheet 4, Italics in the original). 66 Bericht des Chefs des SS- und Polizeigerichts VI, Krakau (BArch Berlin, NS 7/318, sheet 4, Italics in the original). 67 Cf. Carl Schmitt, Über die drei Arten rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens (Hamburg Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934) and idem, “Nationalsozialistisches Rechtsdenken,” Deutsches Recht, vol. 4 (1934) no. 10 pp. 225-229. See also the assenting discussion with Georg Dahm, “Die drei Arten rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens,” ZgesStW, vol. 95 (1935), pp. 181-188 or also Dahm’s report on literature, “Gegenstand und Methoden des völkischen Rechtsdenkens,” ZgesStW, vol. 98 (1938), pp. 735-744.

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trator’s personality, his or her position in the community and his or her duties in relation to the community. The decision was made as to what punishment the perpetrator “deserved” for his or her crime. Substantial values of the Nazi world view were consulted to assist in making decisions and also as a measure of assessment (in the sense of “substantial decisionism”).68 While SS judge Dr. Norbert Pohl hoped that future criminal law would increasingly be the law of criminals and no longer the law of offenses, Georg Dahm, a member of the “Kiel School”69 on which Pohl based his scholarly ideas, realized at a relatively early stage that the dream of a national criminal law would breed monsters. He pointed out as early as 1940 “that criminal law is initially criminal law of offenses today and that it will remain a criminal law of offenses in the future. In any event, it is not criminal law of perpetrators that links punishment to the criminological existence of a perpetrator. Instead, even today the judge makes his judgment based upon more or less defined crimes, in specific mentalities and the guilt for a specific crime, although not in the criminal’s overall personality.”70 And in 1944, when everything around him was transformed into ruin and ashes, he stated with resignation: “a purely criminological criminal law of perpetrators is just a dream, an ugly dream.”71

68

Cf. Hubert Rottleuthner, “Substantieller Dezisionismus. Zur Funktion der Rechtsphilosophie im Nationalsozialismus,” in Idem (ed.), Recht, Rechtsphilosophie und Nationalsozialismus. Vorträge aus der Tagung der Deutschen Sektion der Internationalen Vereinigung für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (IVR) in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland vom 11. und 12. Oktober 1982 in Berlin (West) (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983), pp. 20-35. 69 Cf. Jörn Eckert, “Die Kieler rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultät – ‘Stoßtruppfakultät,’” in Heribert Ostendorf/ Uwe Danker (eds.), Die NS-Justiz und ihre Nachwirkungen (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003), pp. 21-55. 70 Georg Dahm, “Der Tätertyp im Strafrecht,” in Festschrift der Leipziger Juristenfakultät für Dr. Heinrich Siber zum 10. April 1940, volume I (Leipzig: Weicher, 1941), pp. 183-246, here 189 p. (Italics in the original). 71 Georg Dahm, “Gerechtigkeit und Zweckmäßigkeit im Strafrecht der Gegenwart,” in Probleme der Strafrechtserneuerung. Eduard Kohlrausch zum 70. Geburtstage dargebracht (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1944), pp. 1-23, here 18.

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VII. Résumé: The Criminal Jurisdiction of Waffen-SS and Police as an Instrument of Power As we know, Max Täubner survived the war.72 He returned to Germany from Soviet captivity in 1949. The attempts of the criminal prosecution authorities to bring him to justice for his atrocities were unsuccessful because the courts (including the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe) were not prepared to question the principle of ne bis in idem (not twice for the same) determined by the rule of law just to satisfy the desire for punishment in his case.73 The efforts of the Memmingen Department of Public Prosecution to put Täubner on trial again in 1959 drew the attention of the Bavarian Judiciary to the 1943 verdict of the Supreme SS and Police Court in Täubner´s case as well as to former SS Oberführer and chairman of the Supreme SS and Police Court, Dr. Günther Reinecke who was responsible for that verdict. He had established himself as an attorney in Munich in 1950. His attorney’s license was revoked by order of the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice in 1961, justified by the fact that Reinecke had participated in a verdict that was so dehumanizing as to make himself guilty of behaviour that made him appear unworthy of exercising the profession of an attorney.74 All of the people involved in the Täubner trial of 1943 came together once again in Munich in the subsequent professional tribunal proceedings of the Bavarian Bar Association at the end of 1961 and the beginning of 1962.75 The former SS judges defended themselves by saying that the incriminating formulations in their judgments, namely “the Jews have to be destroyed and none of the dead Jews is a loss,” were Himmler’s own words. The operative part of the judgment took on these anti-Semitic 72

Refer to Büchler, “’Unworthy Behavior,’” pp. 424-425, and de Mildt, “Getting away with Murder,” pp. 110. 73 See a wide range of things in Edith Raim, [Review of] “Nathan Stoltzfus/Henry Friedlander (Eds.), Nazi Crimes and the Law, Cambridge/Massachusetts 2008,” in Sehepunkte, vol. 9 (2009) no. 6 (URL: http://www.sehepunkte.de /2009/06/ 15904.html, last access on 1 July 2011. 74 See Order of the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice, dated March 13, 1961 (Ludwigsburg State Archives, EL 317 III Bü 968, sheet 3-11, here 10). This order was suspended again by the decision of the Bavarian Professional Tribunal for Lawyers on 20 February 1962. 75 See Unterlagen des Bayerischen Ehrengerichtshofs für Rechtsanwälte betr. Dr. Günther Reinecke, Bay. EGH I 4/1961, contained in the files of the preliminary investigations at the Stuttgart Department of Prosecution from 1973 against Horst Bender for shooting Jews dead and participating in persecuting individuals who had participated in the attempted assassination of Hitler (Ludwigsburg State Archives, EL 317 III Bü 965-974, here 968).

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expressions to make sure that the lord of the courts with jurisdiction, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, would confirm their judgments. After all, only four months after the verdict against Täubner, Himmler addressed the highest ranking SS and Police officers at Posen, stating: “We had the moral right and we had the duty to our people to kill the people that wanted to kill us.”76 We cannot rule out the possibility that these considerations actually were the attitude of the SS judges at that time. In any event, they definitely did not correspond to the facts. Täubner was not supposed to be punished “because of his activities with the Jews as such.” The SS judges believed the defendant´s testimony when he said that political motivations had been decisive for his actions, namely his extreme hatred of Jews. Himmler’s directive on the assessment pursuant to criminal law of “Shooting Jews without Orders or Authority” as dated 26 October 1942 did not provide for any punishment with purely political motive “unless punishment is called for to maintain order.” Since Täubner was supposed to be sentenced and punished only because of the accompanying circumstances, namely the “lack of discipline” when committing his crimes, which was most certainly the way Himmler wanted it, there could not be any doubt in the judgment being confirmed. However, this was not the essential point in assessing the SS and police criminal courts. What was more decisive was the fact that the SS judges conceded the possibility of not having to punish a perpetrator because his crimes were committed “in loyalty to the cause.” As in Täubner’s case, they took advantage of this justification and only sentenced him because of the accompanying circumstances of his crimes while, contrary to truth, deeming his crimes “just retribution for the suffering the Jews had inflicted on the German people.”77 We can clearly assume that the SS judges saw the crimes as such. However, since they subjected themselves to the moral rules of their Order and made it an element of their court decisions, they made themselves accomplices regardless of what their own moral convictions were, both with their clients and the people committing crimes.78 76

Himmlers Posener Rede vor den SS-Gruppenführern am 4. Oktober 1943 printed in: Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg, volume XXIX, pp. 110-173, here 146. 77 Verdict by the Supreme SS and Police Court, dated 24 May 1943, quoted by Klee/Dressen/Rieß, “Schöne Zeiten,” p. 188. 78 Generally see Hubert Rottleuthner, “Krähenjustiz,” in Dick de Mildt (ed.), Staatsverbrechen vor Gericht. Festschrift für Christiaan Frederik Rüter zum 65. Geburtstag (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003), pp. 158-172.

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This is an extreme expression of the nature of courts whose right to make their own decisions had been taken away from them or who surrendered it themselves. As a political and military instrument of leadership they only punished crimes if the political and military leadership had an interest in punishment. At an early stage, Dr. Hans-Bernhard Brauße, later an SS Standartenführer and the head of Office IV at the Main Office SS Court (also the court associate of Reinecke in the Täubner proceedings) developed something akin to an “ethos” from the spirit of obedience involved while describing the mentality of the military judges. The SS and police criminal courts were supposed to be an instrument of the political and military leadership.79 However, the SS judge was “not supposed to be just a passive and mindless tool but a follower who consciously included himself in the ranks and gave his best.” He differed “from the normal subordinate by actively going along and by happy and willing obedience, by the manly discipline of a comrade-in-arms.”80 In particular, the SS judge was supposed to be the “preserver of the roster of duties of our community in his capacity as a “teacher from our order [...] and guardian of its most holy values” and simultaneously a “conscious political fighter and aggressive soldier in his basic attitude.”81 Therefore, it was “no question that he follows the greater insight of higher leadership that, for the judge who thinks in terms of leadership, originates from the same will and desire for the whole [...]. This means that without exception he works as an assistant to the political leadership and has to be grateful when this leadership unequivocally communicates to him what it considers necessary. He will look upon obeying these necessities as his self-evident duty.”82

The SS and police criminal courts were primarily the internal courts of the Waffen-SS, the military subdivision of an ideologically sworn Order whose political program included the destruction of other people. The SS judges were supposed to be the guardians of the “most holy values” of the 79 Rundschreiben des Chefs des Amtes I im Hauptamt SS-Gericht, SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Günther Reinecke, an die Chefs der SS- und Polizeigerichte vom 5. November 1942 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/5: Erlass-Sammlung des Hauptamtes SSGericht volume 4 (July-December of 1942), sheet 209-211, here 210). 80 Hans-Bernhard Brauße, “Führer und Richter in soldatischen Verbänden,” Zeitschrift für Wehrrecht (ZWR), vol. 3 (1938/39), pp. 81-96, here 84 (emphasis in the original). 81 “Fehlurteile,” p. 149. 82 Vom Fingerspitzengefühl (BArch Berlin, NSD 41/19: Hinweise für den SSRichter, issue 2, dated 1 April 1944, pp. 18-20, here 19).

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“roster of duties” of this community which they therefore had to make a component of their court decisions. In other words, they had to serve the needs of the community. All crimes harming the community were to be rigorously prosecuted, and all other crimes which may have conformed to the community’s purposes were to be prosecuted only if the political and military leadership had an interest in it. It was not infrequent that the SS and Police Courts were supposed to cover such actions “in loyalty to the cause” and even facilitate them with the judicial means in their hands while always avoiding anything that might taint the reputation of the SS and Police criminal courts to the outside.83 Even though we should not overestimate the influence of the SS and police criminal courts on “conditioning the behaviour” of SS men, it certainly had a role to play in enabling crimes with its court decisions that served the purpose of immorality” in the sense of “reassessing all values”84 and possibly even more so by refraining from taking action. .

83

Refer, for example, to the note of SS-Hauptsturmführers and SS Judge d.R. Helmut Gießelmann, dated 4 June 1944 on his speech at the Reichsführer-SS on 2 June 1944 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/264-2: Politische Aktionen in Belgien – Terroristische Handlungen von germanischen und freiwilligen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS, der Devlag und der Rex-Bewegung: Allgemeines und Einzelfälle (1944/45) sheet 65) and the file memorandum of SS-Hauptsturmführer and SS Judge d.R. Friedrich Killing on “Weisungen des Reichsführers-SS über die Behandlung von Gegenterror in Belgien,” dated 2 August 1944 (BArch Berlin, NS 7/405: “Gegenterrormaßnahmen” im besetzten Belgien (1944/45), unpaginated). 84 Roland Freisler at a conference at the Reich Ministry of Justice, dated 24 October 1939, quoted by Ralph Angermund, “‘Recht ist, was dem Volke nutzt.’ Zum Niedergang von Recht und Justiz im Dritten Reich,” in Karl Dietrich Bracher/Manfred Funke/Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (eds.), Deutschland 1933-1945. Neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft, 2nd complemented edition (Dusseldorf: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1993), pp. 57-75, here 68.

POST-HOLOCAUST DEBATES AND MEMORY POLITICS

UNIVERSALISM AND MORAL RELATIVISM: ON SOME ASPECTS OF THE MODERN DEBATE ON ETHICS AND NAZISM WULF KELLERWESSEL

I. Introduction The aim of this essay is to point out a serious difficulty in some of the contemporary moral theories resulting from the possibility of rational criticism of the Nazi standards of behavior. It is meant to demonstrate that some modern relativistic and some only apparently universalist conceptions of morality are not capable of convincingly criticizing the Nazi moral precepts (which in turn are also relativistic). For the same reason, we will also hereinafter criticize the relativism of Gilbert Harman and Bernard Williams, the normatively inadequate universalism of Michael Walzer’s “reiterative universalism,” and the so-called “historic universalism” of Rolf Zimmermann. Of course, none of the moral philosophers mentioned above are suspected of having any sympathy whatsoever for an inhuman ideology such as that Nazism. However, this does not rule out the possibility that their moral theories are not suited to convincingly criticize the moral precepts of Nazism. Only a normative universalism, as e.g. implied by the discourse-analytical ethics sketched at the end of this paper, has the potential for an effective criticism of this kind. The first thing we need to do is to elucidate the meaning of the terms “relativism” and “universalism.” Afterwards, we shall clarify in which sense the Nazi moral precepts should be classified as “relativistic.” Having done so, we will then be able to demonstrate why the positions mentioned above are not capable of convincingly criticizing the Nazi moral precepts in contrast to the full-blooded normative universalism provided by discourse-analytical ethics.

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II. “Relativism” and “Universalism” In ethics and legal philosophy, a moral or legal system is called “relativistic” if and only if its application or validity is limited to a certain claim. According to relativism, every morality or legal system seems to depend on context, time, culture or, generally speaking, on communities. According to the opinion of relativists, the validity of norms, principles, rules, standards, values, and assessment criteria for morality, the binding nature of virtues, or even of laws or rights are limited to cultural, ethnic, or linguistic communities, world views, or social groups. In other words, they cannot be considered binding beyond the limits of the relevant group of individuals. Validity seems to be “relative” to the groups specified. In contrast, universalism takes the opposite position and claims that some moral norms, principles, rules, standards, values, virtues, and rights are justifiable for all individuals. This means that they do not depend on any ethnic or other group affinity. We can distinguish between descriptive relativism (which states that there are in fact different systems of morality in the world), meta-ethical relativism (which holds that there are different moral terminologies that cannot be translated back and forth), and normative relativism (which asserts that there are diverging and contradictory moral contents such as norms, principles, values, or virtues) and that it is not possible to make a purely rational decision in terms of their validity. This is the kind of normative relativism on which this paper focuses. In the course of this paper we want to demonstrate that Nazi conceptions of morality meet the criteria of normative relativism (Chapter 4). However, at first, some pivotal elements of this conception will have to be pointed out (Chapter 3). Having done so, a serious problem for modern normatively relativistic conceptions of morals comes into view which has not received sufficient attention as yet: the above mentioned incapability of criticizing normatively relativistic moral conceptions such as Nazism (Chapter 5).

III. Elements of the Nazi Conception of Morality The pivotal elements of the Nazi conception of morality are relativistic in a normative way.1 Some examples are the hostility toward universalist 1

As sources, apart from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and Rosenberg’s “Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, we would like to mention the following publications: Otto Dietrich, Die philosophischen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus. Ein Ruf zu den Waffen deutschen Geistes (Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt, 1935). Heinrich Himmler,

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(liberal or individualistic) Enlightenment and universalist concepts of natural law (both towards liberal Enlightenment and Catholic concepts).2 We might also mention the emphasis on “Volk” (“people”) and “race” as the only “organic” source of morality and law, that is, racism. The idea that “peoples” are different not only in a genetic but also in a morally relevant sense was furnished by race theories which were accepted by the Nazis as the scientific foundation for their moral views (although these theories were not entirely uniform). The construction of hierarchies of “peoples” of different value leads to relativism by way of a naturalistic fallacy about the way things should be: individual “peoples” are assigned different virtues and values and also different “missions” (in connection to the generally insinuated mission of “preserving” one’s own “people”) and therefore diverging moral rules and norms. All this is embedded in Social Darwinism which supposedly justifies the struggle of a “people” for its “survival” in history. According to Dietrich, the German Reich rests “on the immortal values of the Nordic race”3 and, according to Himmler,4 being German means being (as proven by members of the SS) “honest, decent, faithful, and good comrades […] toward those belonging to our own blood and to no one else.” Obedience, bravery, truthfulness, justice, honesty, industriousness, and acceptance of responsibility are added to this list of alleged German characteristics which are reinterpreted in a relativistic fashion because their field of application is restricted by basic racist assumptions.5 Furthermore, protecting one’s own people is considered a “holy law.” This “Einige Gedanken über die Behandlung der Fremdvölkischen im Osten vom 15.4.1940,” in www.nationalsozialismus.de/dokumente/texte/heinrich-himmlereinige-gedanken-ueber-die-behandlung-der-fremdvoelkischen-im-osten-vom-1504-1940.html. Idem, “Speech in Posen on October 4, 1943,” in http://www. nationalsozialismus.de/dokumente/texte/heinrich-himmler-posener-rede-vom-0410-1943-volltext.html. Cf. also David E. Cooper, “Ideology, Moral Complicity and the Holocaust,” in Eve Garrard/Goeffrey Scarre (eds.), Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), pp. 9-24. Richard Weikart, Hitler’s Ethic. The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 2 Cf. Fabian Wittreck, Nationalsozialistische Rechtslehre und Naturrecht. Affinität und Aversion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 3 Cf. Dietrich, Die Philosophischen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, p. 35. 4 Cf. Himmler, “Speech in Posen on October 4, 1943.” 5 Cf. Gesine Schwan, “Wussten sie nicht, was sie tun? Die Deutschen in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus,” in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Groß (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2009), pp. 140-167, here 145.

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means that according to Himmler individuals belonging to other nations may be used at will for “German purposes” whether or not “10,000 Russian women collapse from exhaustion or not when building a tank trench only concerns me [Himmler] to the extent that the tank trench will be completed for Germany.”6 Worrying about these Russian women would be a crime against Germans. Finally, in Himmler’s opinion shooting people in Poland was morally justified for the same reasons as exterminating the Jews: it was expressly declared a “duty” toward one’s own people. Heydrich believes the Jews to be “the deadly enemy of all racially healthy peoples governed by Nordic principles.”7 Himmler adds: “We want to apply Asian laws to those foreign (i.e., non-Germanic Slavic) peoples.” Furthermore, Himmler states that Norwegians or Dutch individuals “of good race” should be treated in a friendly fashion, according to “panGermanic laws.”8 The non-German population of the East should learn “that it is a divine law to be obedient to the Germans.”9 Altogether, we can agree with Bialas that the moral precepts of the Nazis focused on the following pairs of opposites: they assumed a “higher” morality for themselves in opposition to common sense morality, a “German morality” in contrast to a “non-German” morality, a “racially conscious morality” instead of a “racially foreign,” and a national (“völkische”) morality in contrast to an international morality or a universalist morality.10 This means that relativistic differentiations in terms of the value of individuals and obeying to rules replaced universal values and rules. The different norms and the motives associated with them for the various groups of the population together with the relativism of the Nazi ideology are as obvious as the belief that the members of the group cannot avoid being assigned to a group due to the underlying racist premises of this conception. This means that racist divisions prevented people from overstepping the boundaries between groups.

6

Himmler, “Speech in Posen on 4 October 1943.” Cf. Heydrich, “Wandlungen unseres Kampfes,” in www.nationalsozialismus.de/ dokumente/texte/reinhard-heydrich-wandlungen-unseres-kampfes.html. 8 Himmler, “Speech in Posen on 4 October 1943.” 9 Himmler, “Einige Gedanken über die Behandlung der Fremdvölkischen im Osten,” dated 15 April 1940. 10 Cf. Wolfgang Bialas, “Die moralische Ordnung des Nationalsozialismus. Zum Zusammenhang von Philosophie, Ideologie und Moral,” in Werner Konitzer/ Raphael Groß (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2009), pp. 30-60, here 39. 7

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The Nazi philosophers also defended nationalistic, racist, and relativist positions.11 For example, if we follow Lehmann’s text “Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart” (“German Philosophy of the Present”), it states that “the concepts of politics and philosophy are very intimately linked to each other.”12 Further on we read: “the political philosophy of the present is in this sense [referring to the national community] obviously the expression of the new order of our social and governmental structure brought about by Nazism as a national political movement.”13 In accordance with this conception, the assumption of different characteristics of peoples (with corresponding differing value) pervades Haering’s study of “Die deutsche und die europäische Philosophie” (“German and European Philosophy” 1943). It declares culture and “essence” to be partially determined by their racist foundations. Finally, Günther introduced his own moral imperative which is apparently formulated along Immanuel Kant´s Categorical Imperative. However, in contrast to Kant´s universalist moral imperative, Günther´s moral imperative is racist and relativistic: “Act in such a way that you could always think of the direction of your will as the basic direction of a Nordic race-legislation.”14

IV. The Nazi Conception of Morality as a Form of Normative Relativism Taking the aforementioned as a foundation, the moral precepts of Nazism can be characterized as a form of normative relativism as they set forth various standards for the correct behavior of various actors, demand the corresponding motivations, and also put forward various criteria for the individuals affected by these actions. Even if the (or at least some) Nazis 11

For the philosophy of Nazism, cf. Bialas, “Die moralische Ordnung des Nationalsozialismus.” Gereon Wolters, “Der ‘Führer’ und seine Denker. Zur Philosophie des ‘Dritten Reichs,’” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 47 (1999) no. 2, pp. 223-251. Also cf. the articles in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Groß (eds.): Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2009). 12 Gerhard Lehmann, Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 1943), p. 493. 13 Ibid., p. 494. 14 Quoted according to Dietrich Böhler, “Die deutsche Zerstörung des politischethischen Universalismus. Über die Gefahr des – heute (post-)modernen – Relativismus und Dezisionismus,” in Zerstörung des moralischen Selbstbewußtseins: Chance oder Gefährdung? Praktische Philosophie in Deutschland nach dem Nationalsozialismus, ed. by Forum für Philosophie (Bad Homburg) (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), pp. 166-216, here 193.

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believed that they were objectivists and universalists due to their “scientific” concepts of race, they were by no means universalists in their moral philosophy.15 The content of the conception of morality of National Socialism varies in terms of its morally relevant actions and moral rules (just as with the values and virtues connected to them) in accordance with ethnic origins both of the actors and the individuals affected (“race” in Nazi terminology). This means that it introduces a normatively relativistic element at a pivotal place. It uses racism to deny the equality of all people and even designates the assertion of equality as “absurd and unacceptable.”16 In contradistinction, the idea of “race” arises “from the basic inequality of people and groups of people.”17 Furthermore, it is necessary for their “own race-related subjectivity to form the basis” for their value judgment on races.18 For this reason, it is self-evident that “Nordic people” especially respect the achievements of the Nordic “race” and their essence.19 There are no “absolute” (meaning no “race-related”) objective judgments.20 Accordingly, “just” distribution should replace equal rights and obligations based on “to each his own” according to a “principle of achievement” (that is not defined in any greater detail at this point) which is non-egalitarian.21 Therefore, the Nazi moral precept has relativistic

15 Böhnigk stresses the Nazis’ claim that their world view was scientific and universal, and he also emphasizes the claim by a part of the Nazis that race theories were universally valid; cp. Böhnigk, Kant und der Nationalsozialismus. Einige programmatische Bemerkungen über nationalsozialistische Philosophie, p. 6 and passim. But the fact that some representatives of Nazism refer to Kant is no evidence of any moral universalism. Those who did not outright reject Kant (such as Krieck) or were not trying to “overcome” him based their ideas on Kant’s concept of the activity of thinking and placed the emphasis on wanting in practical philosophy. In general, the Nazi philosophers who were favorably disposed towards Kant reinterpreted Kant’s ethics in a nationalistic or racist fashion (such as Dietrich).  But it is worth mentioning that there are nationalistic images to be found in Kant’s “Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht” and statements on “human races” in ”Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen“ (1775) and “Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace” (1785) outside of his main writings on moral philosophy. 16 Walther Gross, “Der Rassegedanke der Gegenwart,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, vol. 14 (1943), pp. 508-525, here 513. 17 Ibid., p. 514. 18 Ibid., p. 517. 19 Cf. ibid. 20 Cf. ibid. 21 Cf. ibid., pp. 518.

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consequences due to its racist foundation,22 and its content should be characterized as normatively relativistic.23 In the words of Tugendhat: “The Nazis rejected universalism.”24 Böhler speaks of the destruction of universalism,25 and Konitzer notes: “morality is looked upon in Nazism so to speak as a characteristic of groups.”26 This means that we have unacceptable positions that are based on insufficient arguments and preliminary assumptions: an unfounded racism (dividing peoples into “races”), an unfounded biological determinism (defining characteristics of individuals based on their “race”), a naturalistic fallacy, if this is meant to generate values and norms from (supposedly) factual statements or a genetic/naturalist fallacy due to racist voluntarism or decisionism (evaluating the “racial characteristics” according to history, inclination, and prejudice).27 Beyond this, we can note a lack of insight into the meaning of the moral vocabulary or the language of morality and language games for providing justifications. Nevertheless, there are positions in present-day moral philosophy which can be shown as incapable of effectively criticizing the Nazi concept.

22 Also cf. Böhler, “Die deutsche Zerstörung des politisch-ethischen Universalismus,” pp. 196. 23 Where moral decisions are thought to be justified only because a specific person made them, the moral philosophy of the Nazis is highly subjective. This is expressed in Hans Frank’s moral imperative: “Act in such a way that the Fuehrer would approve of your actions if only he had knowledge of that action” (quoted according to Werner, Konitzer, “Moral oder ‘Moral’? Einige Überlegungen zum Thema ‘Moral und Nationalsozialismus.’” in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Groß (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2009), pp. 97-115, here 112). – The immense difference between this and Kant’s Categorical Imperative (which he is apparently attempting to imitate in formal terms) is all too obvious because it calls for suspending one’s own practical reason. 24 Ernst Tugendhat, “Der moralische Universalismus in der Konfrontation mit der Nazi-Ideologie.” in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Groß (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2009), pp. 61-75, here 61. 25 Cf. Böhler, “Die deutsche Zerstörung des politisch-ethischen Universalismus,” p. 171. 26 Konitzer, “Moral oder ‘Moral’?,” p. 108. 27 Cf. Böhler, “Die deutsche Zerstörung des politisch-ethischen Universalismus,” pp. 178.

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V. Systems of Morality and Their Assessment Based on a Different Understanding of Morality: A Problem of Relativism and some Inadequate Universalisms Harman and Williams argue explicitly in favor of a normative relativism. Unfortunately, the moral conceptions of Walzer and Zimmermann display an undesirable, implicit proximity to this kind of relativism even though both of them call their conceptions “universalistic.” All of the aforementioned moral theories are equally inadequate as a basis of a well-founded criticism of the Nazi conception of morality. Harman’s normative relativism is based on his meta-ethical relativism and his distinction between two types of moral judgments, “evaluative judgments” and “inner judgments” which leads to normative relativism.28 “Inner judgments” say that “NN should (not) carry out action H” if NN is a “normal” member of the moral community. This means that NN feels obliged to follow the same moral principles as the person who expresses this judgment. The personal morality of NN needs to be taken into consideration by “inner judgments” and also the fact that NN has a reason for acting like other members of his moral community.29 However, it is different with moral judgments concerning outsiders about whom we can form “evaluative judgments” saying, for example, that they are evil. These judgments do not assume that the person judged had any reasons to act differently. Harman’s opinion is that “inner judgments” are relative to the reasons for acting. In relation to extremely serious political criminals such as Hitler this means that it does not make any sense to formulate an “inner judgment” about Hitler because he was moving outside the limits of “our” morality.30 This is the reason why, in the final analysis, – he cannot be made the object of “inner judgments” such as “Hitler should not have ordered the extermination of the Jews” since he does not share “our” morality and reasons for acting.31 Of course, Hitler could be judged and evaluated as “evil.” However, from a relativistic point of view based on an “inner judgment” we might not say of Hitler that his behavior was morally 28

Cf. Gilbert Harman, “Moral Relativism Defended,” Philosophical Review, vol. 84 (1975) no. 1, pp. 3-22, here 4. 29 Cf. ibid., p. 8. 30 Cf. ibid., p. 7. Idem, Das Wesen der Moral (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1981), p. 109. 31 Cf. ibid., p. 109.

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wrong when he ordered the Jews to be murdered because he did not have any objective reasons for not doing so.32 Therefore, according to Harman, an important class of moral statements, i.e. the class of normative obligatory statements, is relative and Harman conceives of moral obligations as a four-point relationship. This concerns the actor, an action, the circumstances of the action, and the motivational attitude of the actor, that includes his or her reasons which depend on his or her morality. In this context, a moral norm is binding only for those who accept it, that is, those who are motivated by this principle.33 In other words, Harman’s opinion is that there are diverging consistent systems of moral norms that allow totally different actions. Which actions are morally right or wrong depends on the context one happens to select or accept.34 Morality also depends on interests so that morally obligatory statements cannot be accepted without any regard to the interests that play a role for practical reasons. The demand that NN do something although NN does not have any reason for the demanded action is a muddled statement. Since an actor must accept a moral demand he or she is confronted with, there are no universal claims (i.e. no moral demands which are not relative to an actor and his or her group).35 This means that the basic premise for Harman’s argument is the interlocking of motivational and normative statements or his “internalism” which, in view of their motivational positions, rules out any criticism concerning NN’s actions through “inner judgments.” Also, Williams advocates a kind of normative relativism although, in contrast to Harman, he does not justify it by means of internalism. Williams subscribes to a descriptive relativism saying that there are different systems of morality within different societies with incompatible options for action.36 Actors may either accept such a normative system seriously, or not. A case in point for us would be the fact that we cannot really consider the possibility of adopting the form of life of a Medieval Japanese 32 Cf. Gilbert Harman/Judith J. Thompson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), pp. 60, 62 - All references to this book refer to passages in Harman. 33 Cf. Harman, Das Wesen der Moral, p. 67. 34 Cf. Harman/Thompson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity, pp. 3, 13, 41. 35 Cf. Gilbert Harman, “What is Moral Relativism?,” in Alvin I. Goldman/Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Values and Morals. Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson and Richard Brandt (London: D. Reidel, 1978), pp. 143-161, here 152. 36 Cf. Bernard Williams for this and the following, “Die Wahrheit im Relativismus,” in Idem (ed.), Moralischer Zufall (Königstein i. T.: Hain, 1984), pp. 143154, here 151-153. The following remarks are limited to a central argument of Williams’ normative relativism but do not apply to his meta-ethical relativism.

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Samurai or a Bronze Age chief with their respective systems of moral rules. Moreover, it is stated that there are no issues of ethical evaluation in the case of being confronted with foreign ways of life such as these. These foreign contexts of action elude any evaluation at least to a limited extent (as they are in no relevant relationship to our concerns), and we would have to consider these actions as relative to our ways of life, at least to some extent. Internalism, i.e. linking actual motives to what one should do, is pivotal to Harman’s relativism and its limited potential for criticism but it is highly disputable. In particular, there are considerations which counter Harman’s internalism: 1. There may be a good reason for or against a certain action even if it does not motivate. People might not follow a specific reason due to motives such as dominating inclinations, fears, drive, or egotism. This does not rule out the possibility that the actor could or should have been motivated by this reason. 2. Motives for an action cannot be solely decisive for evaluating actions if it is possible to explain that we do something morally good based on bad motives (and vice versa). 3. There are cases where an actor may have reasons but is not aware of them due to a lack of information or a lack of readiness to procure the information, thus being morally responsible. Here, responsibility is not actually linked to having the motivating reasons for acting but to the capability and opportunity to acquire the reasons for acting. This means that motives for action and reasons for acting are two distinct entities and that they are logically independent of each other. In addition, motives are not the sole decisive factor for morally judging actions. What is relevant are the reasons given. Furthermore, acquiring reasons for not doing so may be subject to moral evaluations. This points to a significant distinction: we should distinguish between actually existent motives and reasons one should have and the latter are significant for assessing moral issues. Considering something a reason means accepting a standard, regardless of one’s inclinations. This differentiation makes it possible for us to distinguish between reasons and irrational desires motivating our actions, and it also allows for a rational criticism of the Nazi moral precepts. This shows that Harman’s main argument of relativism with its lack of potential for criticism is untenable.

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Williams espouses that we should refrain from criticism when two forms of life diverge so dramatically that a transition from one to the other is not possible. Unfortunately, this limits the possibilities for criticizing the Nazi moral precepts. Williams’ relativist criterion and its consequences are unacceptable as an example by Putnam makes clear. If there is a confrontation between a Jew and Nazism, there is no transition to that other way of life for the Jew. Nonetheless, a Jew would hardly abstain from evaluating Nazi actions.37 On account of the racism it involves, this example can be applied to other groups of people who also do not have any “transition option.” Therefore, in such cases, this seems to leave no room for criticism. This means that Williams’ conception of ethics does not have any appropriate potential for criticism in such cases, either.38 Moreover, Williams has not shown that it is generally impermissible or impossible to abstract from the contexts when evaluating actions so that actions derived from foreign contexts cannot be evaluated. An example will demonstrate that such evaluations are possible. There could be a moral norm in my society which, according to Williams, I would be able to criticize as a part of my lifeworld. A moral norm with the same precepts that would demand the same actions or refraining from actions might also apply in a society that is sufficiently foreign to me. In Williams’ opinion this would be beyond my evaluation. By the same token, a member of the other society would be able to criticize moral norms in his or her own lifeworld but not the same norms in my lifeworld! This seems unacceptable because of the fact that a norm which belongs to a specific society is hardly a necessary criterion for criticizing it. The applicability of criticism or evaluations of moral norms do not depend on the particular speaker and his or her relation to the society whose norm is being criticized or evaluated. It depends on the reasons that can be cited for following it, and it is certainly true that these reasons can be the same in two vastly different societies. To this extent, we should reject seeing the fact that somebody cannot realize or choose a specific way of life for him-/herself as a reason 37 Cf. Hilary Putnam, Für eine Erneuerung der Philosophie (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1997), p. 104. 38 Moreover, there is another serious problem in Williams’ conception. Williams believes that theoretical contents can be known objectively. For example, it might turn out that the religious beliefs of the Aztecs were based on factually incorrect premises concerning the existence of their gods. If the practice of the Aztecs was based on untrue convictions which were supposed to be subject to criticism while theory and practice were interwoven, this would hardly protect the practice from criticism (cf. ibid., p. 106). This would also apply to Nazi racism provided that it functioned in a morally relevant fashion as a basis for behavior.

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for thinking that evaluations of this way of life are impossible. Apparently, the only general prerequisite for a critical statement is understanding the norms in question (and their social consequences). Therefore, the possibilities of (mutual) rational criticism go far beyond what Williams is willing to concede. This means that only a lack of comprehension can be identified as a limitation placed on (justifiable) rational criticism. This deprives Williams’ type of relativism of its foundation. There are serious reservations toward explicitly relativistic moral theories that are incapable of criticizing Nazi moral precepts. Their critical limitations should not be accepted as they are based solely upon factual motives or facts about membership in a society. Walzer attempts to avoid this normative relativism in his “reiterative universalism,”39 a kind of universalism that supposedly emerges from interpreting sharedrepeated basic experiences from various societies. Morality is said to arise from inside a society while taking inner-societal motivations into account. On the one hand, the resulting human rights emerging in or from various societies are universalistic and contrary to the Nazi moral precepts. On the other hand, it does not include other moral common grounds, criteria, or reasons which are inter-societal or transcend the community. Zimmermann’s moral universalism is explicitly directed against Nazism and is supposed to provide a “motivationaler Begründungssinn” (“motivational sense of justification”)40 as historical universalism.41 However, in the final analysis it leads to normative relativism because, just like Harman, it relies on motives and, like Walzer’s conception, it relies on inner-societal developments that are supposed to lead to universalism although they cannot guarantee it argumentatively or make it reasonable. Regarding Nazism, Zimmermann is probably correct when stating that 39 Cf. Michael Walzer, “Zwei Arten des Universalismus,” in Idem (ed.), Lokale Kritik – globale Standards (Hamburg: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1996). 40 Cf. Wulf Kellerwessel, [editorial on] “Rolf Zimmermann: Philosophie nach Auschwitz,” Totalitarismus und Demokratie, vol. 4 (2007) no. 1, pp. 194-198. Wulf Kellerwessel, “Geltungstheoretischer, begründungsorientierter Universalismus versus motivationalem, historischem Universalismus,” Erwägen – Wissen – Ethik, vol. 20 (2009) no. 3, pp. 444-446. Tugendhat, “Der moralische Universalismus in der Konfrontation mit der Nazi-Ideologie.” 41 Cf. Rolf Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz. Eine Neubestimmung von Moral in Politik und Gesellschaft (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt-TaschenbuchVerlag, 2005). Idem, Moral als Macht. Eine Philosophie der historischen Erfahrung (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2008). Idem, “Moralischer Universalismus als geschichtliches Projekt,” Erwägen – Wissen – Ethik, vol. 20 (2009) no. 3, pp. 415-428.

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some Nazis believed that many of their actions were morally “correct.” They had an “alternative morality” as well as their own experiences, values, moral precepts, and motives which frequently led to their murderous actions. They were supposed to be justified by the Nazi moral precepts that did not recognize all human beings as equivalent moral subjects, and therefore were not taken into consideration for their actions. Zimmermann thinks that human rights universalism is an advisable reaction to these experiences of injustice in the Nazi period. Walzer’s reiterative universalism, like Zimmermann’s version of universalism, shows deficits in its foundational parts. After all, even if the same experiences encountered by many nations may have contributed to the general acceptance of human rights as Walzer claims, this fact (if it is a fact) is not a reason supporting universal moral norms or human rights. Walzer restricts himself to statements on the genesis of these norms or rights. Unfortunately, we cannot deduce anything normative or obligatory from factual experience. In particular, we cannot deduce anything that is universally obligatory as long as there are no binding or general criteria for interpreting or choosing moral contents. If we confine ourselves to interpretations whose starting points are actually existing systems of morality, these rules may contain something that would be “immoral” in a different system of morality. After all, representatives of the Nazi moral precepts believed that they were reacting in a morally appropriate way to what they regarded as wrong societal developments based on what they believed to be scientific discoveries on race. If we intend to evaluate these systems critically, we will need a standard and point of view that is independent of its genesis. And, as Walzer confirms, it does not make any relevant difference that a similar experience sometimes actually leads to actually established similar systems of morality (as shown by Nazi ideology and Fascist ideology) since other interpretive reactions remain open. Walzer says that systems of morality should fit the particular experience and requirements arising from them42 and that even if these experiences are confronted inappropriately or dishonestly, it is hardly conceivable that they will ignore them altogether.43 To be able to decide this, it seems that we need a standard that does not depend on any particular genesis. Only if we accept such a moral standard will we be able to criticize the grave transgressions of Nazism.44 42

Cf. Walzer, “Zwei Arten des Universalismus,” p. 162. Cf. ibid., p. 162. 44 A comprehensive criticism of Walzer’s conception of morality can be found in Wulf Kellerwessel, Michael Walzers kommunitaristische Moralphilosophie (Münster: Lit, 2005). 43

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If we, like Zimmermann, intend to reject the particular Nazi morality, we must describe moral universalism as a morally superior alternative. We cannot just present it as one alternative among others that one may be motivated to follow without demonstrating that one should reasonably prefer it. But this implies that it cannot just be an issue of historic experience and experience-based motivation such as that of Zimmermann. After all, also the Nazis drew their conclusions from historic l experience and their historically developed concepts of racism. For example, Groß says: “The idea of race originated from a view of the nature of man and the course of history.”45 Strub confirms: “The only valid strategy for justification is then [in the framework of emphasizing the Germanic features of Nazi ideology] genealogical stories of what is presented as German history;46 however, the content of the resulting moral norms is completely arbitrary.”47 All this suggests that the basic difficulty emerging from Zimmermann’s and Walzer’s positions is the fact that the representatives of Nazism had their experience in the light of their preliminary ideological assumptions and interpreted it within the framework of their ideologies. This is the reason why they arrived at different evaluations or interpretations which, in turn, led them to different motives or norms. As Zimmermann says, the Nazis believed that they were acting “correctly,” which means that they believed to be acting in accordance with justifiable motives, every one deriving his motives from the way he understood history. Their “psycho-moral attitude” and their inclinations might be substantially different from those of other people due to their different ideological foundations. Hence, in contrast to Harman and Zimmermann, it does not suffice philosophically to start with attitudes and motives without placing convincing reasons in moral theory. Furthermore, it is only possible to prove that universalism should be preferred if it is an alternative that is not simply equivalent to other historically developed systems of morality arising from specific groups, experiences, interpretations, and evaluations. This holds true regardless of whether they are explicitly conceived as relativistic as in Nazism (and in theories such as Harman’s or Williams’), or if they are only implicitly relativistic (as in Walzer and Zimmermann). Instead, it is important to 45

Gross, “Der Rassengedanke der Gegenwart,” p. 524. Christian Strub, “Gesinnungsrassismus. Zur NS-‘Ethik’ der Absonderung am Beispiel von Rosenbergs ‘Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts,’” in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Groß (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2009), pp. 171-197, here 182. 47 Cf. ibid., p. 183. 46

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make it unmistakably clear that universalism is a normative position able to correctly or convincingly claim validity. The positions discussed exhibit the same common flaw in different forms. They all place too much emphasis on the issue of the origin of moral aspects or the genesis of morality. Harman attributes a particularly high value to the significance of the origin of motives while neglecting aspects of validity, and Williams links moral evaluations to their societal origin, thus curtailing their critical range and limiting their application. Walzer emphasizes the origin of moral rules in communities but overlooks the fact that facts about origin have no justificatory force per se. The same is true for the development of universal moral precepts in specific societies as Zimmermann sees them. All of them apply a method also applied in Nazism: you create a morality (or important components of a morality) that fits your own motives and experiences as a reaction to societal circumstances, believing to have found a workable justification for your moral concept. But validity cannot be deduced from genesis, otherwise everything that has happened would also be valid, and this prevents any and all criticism. What is more, societal situations do not provide any normative standards for development: the Nazi moral precepts also emerged as a reaction to the circumstances of their time as they interpreted them, even if they were filled with entirely different contents than the positions mentioned above.

VI. Discourse-Analytical Universalism48 A justifiable universal morality rejects all normative relativism and distinguishes itself from reiterative and historical universalism primarily by the fact that it is not only derived genetically from motives or experiences but that it aims at rational justification as well. After all, comprehending universalism from the dynamics of history toward universalization or from its genesis is something entirely different than giving reasons for universalism. The latter is a question of the rationality of arguments while the former is a question of contingent historic development (which may be in harmony with reason, but does not have to be). This means that neither the actual existence of different systems of morality nor a descriptive relativism or an account of the genesis of these moralities can decide matters of validity. 48

Cf. for details: Wulf Kellerwessel, Normenbegründung in der Analytischen Ethik (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003), ch. 3 and idem, Michael Walzers kommunitaristische Moralphilosophie, ch. 3.3.

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This is why efforts to improve justificatory arguments for morality and the provision of a discursive rationale of fundamental moral norms intelligible to any language user are so important. All we need for our foundational effort is to appeal to discursive capabilities concerning basic norms. The justificatory reference to discourses and language games of justification is a kind of linguistic apriorism based only on the capability of participating in a rational discourse that goes beyond cultural borders and ethnic affiliations. Anyone capable of correct rule-conforming language use is provided with the required insight into the correct way of justifying basic norms, and the task of moral philosophy is to uncover the best reasons. Justification has to do with language and especially with those language rules which provide criteria for successful justification. In one’s search for important moral norms and human rights which all individuals capable of language use (or obeying rules) can accept and protect, it is therefore natural to take advantage of the considerations concerning justification. This rules out racism and anti-Semitism from the outset as well as any other politically motivated group selection. Even Nazis who attempt to justify their positions use the rules of ordinary language and are subject to their inter-subjectively applicable rules. This also extends to the rules of argumentation stating that a justification is only convincing if it can be made intelligible to everyone capable of language use and if that individual can pass this insight on to any other language user who is capable of mastering the rules of the language game of justification. There is no doubt that this also includes all language users from groups the Nazis attacked or persecuted. Finally, this implies that all individuals participating in the discourse remain unharmed members of the discourse for the entire time and should therefore be protected as individuals participating in the discourse. One way to spell out the basic idea behind discourse-analytical justifications is as follows: If we conceive of a “discourse” as the linguistic medium of arguing, disputing, and justifying, then there are various rules for applying language in discourses, including the following: Speakers implicitly accept certain obligations in their justificatory practice when they assert, argue, and dispute something. After all, their statements would not only lack justification but would also be pointless if not even their authors believed them to be worth defending. Everyone participating in the discourse has these obligations because an argument can only be said to be convincing if it can convince (theoretically) any one individual capable of participating in a discourse i.e. anyone who is capable of observing the rules of correct argumentation. This means that claims to validity (once again considered theoretically) can be made and redeemed vis-à-vis any-

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one capable of discourse if arguments are supposed to be convincing. Of course, they can only be really convincing if they can be defended against critical queries or alternative theses. This includes the possibility of individuals participating in the discourse to ask such questions or to set up such theses. However, since all participating individuals need to be convinced, everyone would have to be able to ask questions or submit theses. To this extent, there is a formal equality in the discourse regarding the choice of speech acts of asserting and denying etc. In this process, the ethnic origin of the speakers does not play a role, in contrast to their linguistic skills or capability to act in accordance with the rules of language. Certain rules apply to every discourse, thus restricting the range of statements (statements formulated by a speaker) that can be justified convincingly. There are not only semantic (logical) contradictions, i.e. (formal) logical fallacies such as violating the principle of contradiction that should be avoided. There are also pragmatic contradictions that should not be accepted. The hallmark of pragmatic contradictions is the fact that something is done with an expression that is ruled out by its content (the information for the addressee). A case in point is when somebody says something such as “I’m not talking now” or “I’m dead.” This means that the act of expression and the content of the expression are in a contradictory, non-semantic relationship to each other. The fact of expressing something is incompatible with what is expressed. These pragmatic contradictions play a crucial role in discourseanalytical ethics because pragmatic contradictions which arise in the course of claiming validity for normative correctness are also unacceptable. The following example might shed some light on this. If a speaker states that “‘Norm N1 should be complied with,’ but this statement does not claim to be correct,” the speaker’s statement should be classified as pragmatically contradictory: its second part implicitly demands not considering that N1 is actually obligatory. In an analogous fashion, it is not possible for a speaker to argue convincingly for the fact that the speaker does not have any justificatory obligations when justifying normative demands. If someone asks for the justification of a normative thesis, it either remains unjustified so that there is no reasonable justification for the questioning individual to accept it, or the speaker tries to justify his or her thesis so that the speaker will seek to comply with his or her justificatory obligations. This indicates that the speaker has accepted this obligation, and it reveals the pragmatic contradiction implied in the act of disputing. This can also be illustrated by an example: “Nobody should justify any normative claim (if asked)” is in and of itself a normative claim. If it remained unjustified when queried, an opponent would in any event be free

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to reject it (without committing a mistake in the argumentation). If an individual arguing for this thesis tried to justify it, he or she would thereby produce a pragmatic contradiction because he or she would feel obliged to justify a normative claim when queried. This would mean that this person would accept or at least follow a normative claim for justification. Carrying out speech acts such as “asserting,” “disputing,” or “doubting” always constitutes entering into discursive proceedings where various rules of language or rules concerning argumentation apply. It follows that there is no justification toward anyone who is not subject to the rules of discourse. These rules of discourse (still to be explicated) equally apply as linguistic rules to all individuals participating in the discourse, which does not rule out the possibility of any de facto violations of rules. In other words, there are presuppositions for discourses which must be respected if we intend to argue without making a mistake. This means that certain rules are presumed and that the individuals participating in the discourse must accept them (which may be done implicitly). This also applies to discourses about normative matters. Our next task is to show that such a discourse also presupposes some basic moral norms so that anyone participating in it has already accepted these fundamental norms or is bound to accept them. The corresponding basic thesis for justifying norms in discourse analysis states that anyone participating in the discourse (and therefore inquiring the validity of moral rules) has already (explicitly or implicitly) accepted certain fundamental moral norms (not just concerning correct language use as such). Therefore, such an individual cannot dispute them without running into pragmatic contradictions. In other words, the disputant cannot meaningfully call norms into question which are accepted, at least implicitly, by all the disputants. This is precisely the reason why they are argumentatively convincing and protected from any expressions of doubt: everyone participating in the discourse has permission to select and carry out such speech acts as asserting (i.e. proposing theses) or disputing. Furthermore, as we have shown, they have the obligation to justify their claims (at least theoretically) to whoever is participating in the discourse. The crucial point is that all participants in a discourse must make claims of correctness to all the participants and that those claims must be redeemed for or against them. This is only possible if individuals participating in the discourse are not obstructed in their communication so that we can no longer speak of convincing someone of the correctness claimed. It follows that individuals participating in the discourse are under obligation not to prevent the other individuals from contributing what he or she intends to say. In other words, the discourse must be free of coercion. This also means that accept-

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ing the rules of discourse constitutes accepting certain moral norms. This implies that neither the latter nor the former can be correctly disputed in terms of their validity in the discourse. After all, there is one rule of discourse which has always been accepted as valid: that of stating that everybody is free in his choice of speech acts. Hence, everyone must presume that the (basic moral) norms presupposed by participating in the discourse and the choice of speech acts are valid. This can be shown by uncovering some pragmatic contradictions in cases where this assumption is disputed. The statement “I accept that you are free to choose and carry out speech acts in our discourse and, at the same time, I deny that I must accept the minimum necessary condition which includes not murdering you” can be classified as pragmatically selfcontradictory. When such a statement is produced, the second part of the sentence renders the first invalid. Giving oneself both the permission to generally obstruct (by way of murder) an individual from carrying out a freely chosen speech act and acknowledging the freedom of that individual to freely engage in that choice renders the utterance altogether invalid. In other words, there are non-contingent relationships between the rules of discourse and some basic moral norms. Some of these fundamental moral norms or the compliance with them are necessary conditions for respecting the rules of discourse. If someone violates these fundamental norms, this individual violates per se the rules of discourse to be accepted. If it is proven that the latter is not permissible, the violation of these moral norms that secure or maintain the discourse is not permitted either. Therefore, certain non-linguistic intrusions in speech acts are ruled out in the discourse, and this is the reason why certain basic norms must be complied with and violations of these fundamental norms must be prevented. In other words, if we want to make sure that speech acts can be chosen freely, it is evident that the following cannot be permitted: 1. Murdering an individual participating in the discourse, because this (forever) deprives said individual of an opportunity to select and carry out any speech acts. Accordingly, the following basic moral norm applies: you are not allowed to murder anyone. 2. I Other individuals participating in the discourse frustrating the free choice of speech acts by invading their autonomy. This includes impairing others’ health as well as encroaching upon their freedom to act and their freedom to will. This leads to a prohibition of mutilation, injury (physical and psychological), rape, a prohibition of depriving someone’s freedom, extortion, and the forced administration of drugs. These actions are not permitted at any time (at least

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assuming there is no conflict of moral norms) because all of them (at least temporarily) impair the capability of the individuals in question to participate in the discourse. Threatening actions such as these are also prohibited provided they hinder the free choice or use of speech acts. 3. Beyond this, the moral right to freedom of opinion and freedom of speech emerges from the prohibition of preventing others from the free choice of speech acts. We should also add the prohibition of lies and deceptions which eliminate or undermine the lied to or deceived individual’s capability of participating in the discourse. In short, this means that life, limbs, including an individual’s freedom of movement, and the psyche should be protected normatively to ensure that individuals can freely participate in the discourse. In this context, it is worth emphasizing that questioning these basic moral norms of the discourse is one thing and that doubting the validity of other moral norms which do not secure the discourse or protect the mental integrity and physical autonomy of the individuals participating in the discourse is another. The difference becomes obvious as the fundamental norms which secure the discourse can no longer be the subject matter of negotiations. Casting doubt on them leads to conflicts with the rules of discourse which manifest themselves in pragmatic contradictions. This means that you cannot honestly grant someone free choice and the egalitarian option of carrying out speech acts while at the same time depriving individuals participating in the discourse of that possibility by way of murder, mutilation, injury, or the deprivation of their freedom (or threatening them with such actions). Thus, if these basic norms become an issue in the discourse, they will be recognized as already being complied with or as something that should be complied with in the discourse.49 These general conditions of the discourse apply to all creatures capable of participating in a discourse, and therefore they also apply to representatives of the Nazi persuasion. To the extent to which they are incompatible with the needs of discourse-analytical ethics, they should be abandoned because they cannot be convincingly defended or justified in a discourse. It is also not possible to evade the aforementioned arguments in a justifiable manner by not participating in the discourse as whosoever refuses to participate in the discourse has no possibility of justifying his or her posi49

However, the individuals participating in this debate can rationally and voluntarily suspend their compliance with these basic standards in reference to themselves as in giving one’s permission to a physician to use anesthesia before an operation or to cause pain etc. in order to maintain one’s capability to debate in the future.

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tion. This also extends to Nazis who refuse to participate in the discourse. No-one who has the required linguistic capability (these attempts are pragmatically self-contradictory) can justifiably exclude him- or herself from the discourse. It is also not possible to justify an arbitrary decision as to who may or may not participate in the discourse; this prevents anyone from being excluded due to their ethnic affiliation or racist positions such as that of Nazism. This universalist discourse-analytical ethics also generates a universalist criticism of the Nazi moral precept, which should be obvious from this outline sketch of justification. This is the reason why this position, in contrast to normative relativism, is not subject to the critique that it lacks the capability of criticizing the Nazi moral conception. Since discourseanalytical ethics implies that criticizing the Nazi moral precept is justified, it is in this sense superior not only to the apparently universalist positions of Walzer and Zimmermann but also to the relativist conceptions of Harman and Williams.

NATIONAL SOCIALISM – BOLSHEVISM – UNIVERSALISM: MORAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN HISTORY AS A PROBLEM IN ETHICS ROLF ZIMMERMANN

In recent years, I have developed various interpretations of National Socialism (NS) and Bolshevism that aim at a moral conceptualization of the specific traits of these socio-political formations. By taking the analysis of the moral catastrophes of the Holocaust and the Holodomor as starting points, I have come to the conclusion that an understanding of the motives of the protagonists of these epochal crimes leads to a seemingly paradoxical diagnosis. The extermination of the Jews or kulaks is carried out under normative premises which indicate an image of alternative moralities or a moral otherness of their own. This means that we can speak of racial or social murder in the name of “morals.”1 A reading such as this may provoke objections if one is only disposed to speak of “morals” in the sense of “true morals” or presumes that “morals” should always be conceived of as a singular unit in combination with connotations of an unchangeable or holy level of authority. However, it is impossible to follow such a way of thinking any further, if we take experiences which reveal substantial moral changes and moral transformations of humans seriously. Additionally, the question arises as to how to come to grips with the historical status of modern universalism itself and how to deal systematically with the problem of a plurality of moralities standing in opposition to each other. In what follows, I will give an outline of my comparative approach to a historical reading of substantial moral alterna-

1

Cf. Rolf Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz. Eine Neubestimmung von Moral in Politik und Gesellschaft (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2005). Idem, Moral als Macht. Eine Philosophie der historischen Erfahrung (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2008).

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tives in the context of discussions that were stimulated by it.2 My major points are to show the relevance of moral diversity and to develop concepts adequate to such a diversity. First, it is necessary to make some distinctions in speaking of “morals” and to put a comparative study of morals in its right place (1.). Secondly, to pursue this comparative study further, it is necessary to work out the essential characteristics of divergent moralities by taking moral universalism as a descriptive and normative orientation. In this way I arrive at contrasting characterizations of NS (2.) and Bolshevism (3.) which include the self-interpretations of these formations in moral terms. One outcome of such an analysis is that not only Nazism but also Bolshevism represents a form of particularistic morality of its own. By analyzing in this fashion, deep moral diversity newly poses the question of the moral image of man and stimulates the view of a historical conception of egalitarian universalism (4.).

I. Introductory Remarks on Morals and Method The moral contrasts and transformations I am going to discuss are related to three levels of research. To begin with, we can ask in a rather formal way what is to be understood by a general concept of morals or morality without deciding in advance what must be considered the “true” or only “acceptable” sort of morals. On this level, we can speak of a set of norms or imperatives shared by a community to regulate its social life and a corresponding set of sanctions which are mutually accepted in cases of deviations which are seen as relevant. I do not intend to develop a concept of morals on this general level for which I have mentioned only some catchwords. Instead, I wish to simply distinguish the problem of a general concept of morality from the different ways for filling it with moral content.3 It is important to stress the question of a formal concept of morality in advance because this helps avoid an unreflected limitation to an already 2

Cf. idem, “Moralischer Universalismus als geschichtliches Projekt. Hauptartikel mit kritischer Diskussion,” Erwägen Wissen Ethik (EWE), vol. 20 (2009) no. 3, pp. 415-485. Idem, “Replik: Moralisch-geschichtliche Selbstauslegung als Problem der Ethik,” EWE, vol. 20 (2009) no. 3, pp. 485-496. 3 A general social concept of morality which formally points out to the reciprocity of claims has already been developed by Peter F. Strawson, “Social Morality and Individual Ideal,” in Idem, Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1974), pp. 26-44. A productive version of a formal concept of morality is nowadays to be found in: Ernst Tugendhat, Anthropologie statt Metaphysik, 2nd edition (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2010), Ch. 5.

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accepted morality and it opens the view towards an empirical study of different moral self-interpretations of humans. This also meets certain desiderates derived from disciplines such as social anthropology4 as well as from my perspective of hermeneutic ethics of historical experience. This leads to the second level of research which concerns one of the crucial points of my considerations. Here it is relevant to discern different conceptions of morality as manifested in NS, Bolshevism, and the universalist paradigm of Western communities and to assess them comparatively. The main emphasis is on a qualitative comparison of the essentials of those moralities which have gained world historical importance. To my mind, we can only arrive at results in this field if we combine historical research focusing on NS and Bolshevism with a philosophical sensitivity for moral questions.5 There is no doubt that Hannah Arendt´s work on totalitarianism stimulates research to the present day. The analysis of the moral dimension of both sorts of totalitarianism, however, deserves a revised conceptual framework which enables us to situate moral self-interpretations of humans in history. The last years have shown articulations of a “moral turn” in history.6 Parallel to such an endeavour, I would like to argue for a “his-

4

Cf. Monica Heintz, “Introduction: Why There should be an Anthropology of Moralities,” in Idem (ed.), The Anthropology of Moralities (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009), pp. 1. 5 This is in accordance with Jonathan Glover, Humanity. A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London: Pimlico, 2001). To my mind, it is not possible to study Aushwitz without the competence of historical research as suggested by Jean-François Lyotard, Le Différend (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1983), sect. 93. I do not believe global approaches like those of Adorno's and Horkheimer's “dialectics of enlightenment” to be helpful for any interpretation of Nazism. From a gobal perspective, Agamben declares the concentration camps the “nomos“ of modernity. His interpretation of Aushwitz seems little more than an echo of Arendt's “banality of evil“ and a comment on Primo Levi's well-known report on Aushwitz which tries to identify the “Muselmann“ as the clue to the whole phenomenon: Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books, 1999). Albeit Agamben is right in seeing a break of ethical thinking, his reflections are not far-reaching enough for an adequate conceptualization in terms of moral philosophy. 6 Cf. George Cotkin, “History's Moral Turn,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 69 (2008) no. 2, pp. 293-315. Cf. also Charles S. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era,” American Historical Review, vol. 105 (2000) no. 3, pp. 807-831. With regard to the Twentieth Century Maier develops the perspective for “moral narratives.”

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torical turn” in ethics.7 To be terminologically clear, I am speaking of ethics in the sense of “moral philosophy,” whereas moralities or morals in whatever sense constitute the universe of the ethics discourse. Finally the third level of my discussion is guided by the question of how to understand historically the morals of egalitarian universalism, of how it unfolds into human rights and of how to justify it systematically. In particular, I only delve into the question of justification in outline. In any event, it suffices for my present purposes if I succeed with convincing readers that hopes for a priori justifications of universalism are as vain as the trust in anthropological structures. What we can hope for, so it seems, are inter-human relationships cultivating psycho-moral attitudes of tolerance towards diversity and non-discrimination.

II. Rupture of Species: The Problem of Moral Otherness in Nazism and the Analysis of Moral Diversity The moral catastrophe of the Holocaust stimulates ongoing efforts of analysis and explanation and is rightly seen as the most disastrous outcome of Nazism. Its “unprecedentedness” - as Yehuda Bauer says8 – spells out a challenge, not only to historians but also to philosophers in questioning the moral view of man. In the last twenty years, the broad research carried out on Nazism and the Holocaust has pieced together a detailed image of the Holocaust encompassing the development of Jews-baiting after 1933, the terroristic suppression after 1938/39, the mass murders in the context of the German “Ostfeldzüge” and what is known as the “final solution” in the gas chambers of Aushwitz and other extermination camps after 1942. It is eminently important to study the Holocaust in its various aspects and to provide a holistic view of it. In the context of the work of historians such as Saul Friedländer or Peter Longerich – to give just two examples of outstanding historical research – my interpretation of the Holocaust in moral terms runs as follows: The pivotal feature of Nazism is its denunciation of Judaism or the Jews and its permanent struggle against the “Jewish enemy.” Nazism denies the Jews the right to exist and, by its exterminating strategies and practices, leaves the path of moral unity of the human species. No longer does mankind refer to all human beings but is split into 7

Cf. Berel Lang, “Philosophy's Contribution to Holocaust Studies,” in Eve Garrard/Geoffrey Scarre (eds.), Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust (Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), p. 8: “[…] the Holocaust should teach philosophy to ‘speak history.’” 8 Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 20.

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those who are real humans and those who are not. Nazism establishes a new order of values under its “Weltanschauung,” part of which is the central dogma of a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world which is set forth in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Albeit a forgery, this “document” was considered absolutely authentic by Nazism. The Jews were seen as the main enemy, not only of the Aryan-German community but of all mankind. Nazism constructs an enmity toward the Jews as a homogeneous collective that incorporates certain essential qualities as a people or race in strict contrast to the Aryan-German collective designated the “Volksgemeinschaft.” The Jews obstruct the mission of the Aryan-German race to advance its creative and idealistic potential and dispute the principle of history that consists of a never-ending struggle between races.9 The construct of adversarial qualities in collectivistic terms of race leads to a view of the Jews as a “spiritual race” that is responsible for a universalistic picture of man brought to power in the French Revolution under the idea of equality. This is the reason why the Nazis’ fight against the Jews is a struggle against a universalistic self-image of man.10 The radicalism of this type of anti-Semitism provides the leading motive for the Holocaust. This does not rule out other motives, so that not every humiliation or atrocity committed during the processes of persecution and extermination of the Jews can and must be seen under this heading. But the existential enmity toward an alleged threat of a collective Jewish predominance over the world constitutes the framework of anti-Jewish activities and operations on any level. I propose the term “rupture of species” (“Gattungsbruch”) to characterize the radicalism of Nazism in moral terms.11 This term is meant to signify the overthrowing of traditional moral limits in order to transform mankind into a new world of moral other-

9

Cf. the illuminating study of Barbara Zehnpfennig, Hitlers Mein Kampf. Eine Interpretation (Munich: Fink, 2000). 10 This in general agreement with Avishai Margalit/Gabriel Motzkin, “The Uniqueness of the Holocaust,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 25 (2006) no. 1, pp. 65-83. The significance of humiliation of the Jews, which doubtlessly played an important role, is, however, somewhat overstated by the authors to construe a Nazi-identity. 11 In the moral significance of the term I feel close to: Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World. Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (New York: Schocken, 1982), p. 250: “The continuity is broken, and thought, if it is not itself to be and remain broken, requires a new departure and a new category […] because the Holocaust is not a relapse into ‘barbarism’, a ‘phase in a historical dialectic’, a radical-but-merely-‘parochial’ catastrophe. It is a total rupture.” Fackenheim’s theological reflections, of course, are not my concern.

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ness.12 In the long run, however, it was not only the “Jewish” ideas of human equality that were supposed to be abolished but also the Christianhumanistic tradition. Heinrich Himmler, “Reichsführer-SS,” denounced Christianity as an enemy comparable to the Jews.13 The road to moral otherness was interwoven with a utopia of founding man anew (“neues Menschentum”) which found its expression by a vision of an empire of thousand years. Thus one can interpret the dynamics of the moral change induced by Nazism as a moral transformation of mankind as a whole. We can see that this is not a view that is very far away from actual history, as can be witnessed by the substantial support the Nazi project was able to generate on all levels of German society, not to mention parallel tendencies abroad. It was no illusion to conceive of a substantial moral transformation and to expect a broad tendency of solidarity in this fashion. It was not even unrealistic to expect the new society to accept or tolerate the extermination of the Jews, for some time to come. This is a lesson that can be learned from the work of historians who have documented how little resistance was encountered when Germans became witnesses of the deportation of Jews or other discriminated peoples and how openly the extermination-project was communicated at certain times by the Nazi élite or the Nazi press. The dissolution of traditional moral boundaries in a dominant mainstream of engagement for the Nazi movement forces us to take these historical experiences seriously and to recognize the fragility of moral standards hitherto believed sacrosanct. Therefore, on the one hand the Nazi project of moral transformation can be seen in the moral rupture of species with regard to its active dynamics. On the other hand, it can be seen in a moral fading away of the concept of species in its various modes of everyday support or silent toleration. Terminologically speaking, one can refer to this process of dissolution as a failure of species-commitment. In Saul Friedländer’s term, the central focus of Nazism’s radical anti-Semitism is a “redemptive antiSemitism”14 which attempts to “liberate” the Aryan-German community 12 In analyzing Hitler's writings and other sources, Heinsohn (Gunnar Heinsohn, “What makes the Holocaust a uniquely unique genocide?,” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 2 (2000) no. 3, pp. 411-430) stresses the moral antithesis between Hitler's thought and Jewish morality concentrated on the “sanctity of life” in a universal sense. I agree with the moral antithesis but leave it to historical research whether Jewish morality can be interpreted as universalistic from the beginning. 13 Cf. Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), Ch. III. 14 Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. I: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), Part I, Ch. 3.

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and the whole of mankind from the Jews. The moral transformation I have characterized enables us to speak similarly of a morality of redemption. The religious meaning of “redemption” is converted to a mundane project of this world. No longer there is an otherworldly redemption, and the Last Judgment is exercised in real history. The shocking historical experience of Nazism and the Holocaust lays bare in a very general sense the opposition that existed between a Nazi morality of redemption and a type of morality we might call a morality of integration. Integration is the leading idea in so far as it is presumed that every human being is a part of the human species and a member of mankind simply by his or her existence. Nazism contests this seemingly trivial, standardized inclusion of every human into the species. It is indeed true that the Jews are recognized as members of the human race, although the Jews are not part of “true” mankind. A morality of integration can also be ascribed in an elementary sense to a hierarchical or otherwise traditional society which denies equal rights to all humans but holds it to be selfevident that every human is an integral part of mankind. To be clear, moral norms inaugurated by religions of whatever kind should also be placed under the heading of a morality of integration and not under the above mentioned meaning of a morality of redemption. In contrast to Christianity, according to which “redemption” is not of this world but otherworldly in a realm of transcendent salvation, the orientation of the Nazi morals of redemption is purely intramundane. By these distinctions it becomes obvious that the specific sort of a morality of integration, which has developed in the Western world since the eighteenth century as a universalism of the equality of man and equal rights for all men, marks fundamental and insurmountable opposition to Nazi morals. Hannah Arendt was one of the first to come to see Nazism as being incompatible to the Western moral traditions and to give a reading of it as an order of its own.15 I further propose considering this opposition in a systematic fashion by taking into account the fact that Nazism had succeeded with constituting a type of revolutionary moral order which, in contrast to other forms, one might call a form of moral sozialization or communitari-

15

Cf. Hannah Arendt, “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule: Report from Germany,” Commentary, vol. 10 (1950), pp. 342-353. Idem, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951), Part III. In the following I will leave aside discussions on Arendt's concepts of “radical evil” or the “banality of evil” which I have interpreted elsewhere: Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz, pp. 25. My concepts of rupture of species and failure of species-commitment avoid the complications of these concepts.

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zation. To simplify matters, I will speak of divergent moral orders and characterize them in the sense of Weberian ideal types: First, there has to be a basic moral self-understanding as a moral centre, defining obligations for the respective I-orientations or Weorientations. For the Western-universalistic type this means that every woman and man ascribes the same moral status to herself or himself as to every other woman and man and is led by the self-understanding as a member of a We-community in which every member follows just this selfunderstanding. The relevant self-understanding becomes manifest in the reciprocal recognition of equal rights for every member of whatever community. Nazism sets a centre of its own against this universalistic centre. The Germans or the Aryans claim a higher moral status than NonGermans or Non-Aryans and follow the self-understanding of a Wecommunity which gives dominance to an order of normative inequality under racial standards. The particularistic self-understanding is strictly opposed to any universalistic conviction which is seen as “Jewish” in principle. Second, there is a network of social norms and institutions tied to the moral centre. For the universalistic type, some of the elements of this network are a civil life free of violence, social and public protection against discrimination of whatever kind, and a system of law founded on human rights which also defines constraints in respect of the political sphere of constitutional democracy both in domestic and foreign affairs. Contrary to this setting, Nazism aims for the strengthening of the GermanAryan community under the guidance of the “Fuehrer” (“Führerprinzip”). Neither domestic nor foreign affairs are limited by law, the interests of the people’s community (“Volksgemeinschaft”) are given priority over all other considerations. Carl Schmitt, one of the leading jurists and intellectuals of the Nazi period, created the doctrine of “Der Führer schützt das Recht” (“The leader defends the law”), thus giving the leader authority on a higher sphere of lawmaking where he is in a position to create the “true” law of the community.16 Third, there is its relation to violence which characterizes a certain type of moral order. The universalistic type requires – note that I am speaking of ideal types – reconciling conflicts within a community by means of non-violent processes and by respecting the state monopoly of legitimate violence. For the Nazi morality type, violence is a legitimate means of enforcing the homogeneity of the community against its enemies, defined in racial terms or other “unhealthy” elements. Analogously, in Hitler’s 16

Cf. Carl Schmitt, “Der Führer schützt das Recht,” Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, vol. 39 (1934) no. 15, pp. 945-950.

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opinion, the violent fight for race domination in the context of a global struggle is the true human right of a community. Even the constitutional law is overridden in order to secure the place of the Germans in history.17 By the same token, wars of aggression are declared actions of self-defense. Compared with this, the universalistic type limits military power and violence to situations of self-defense and demands respect for the law of nations. The existence of divergent thus characterized moral orders poses a systematic problem to ethics. It no longer seems justifiable to speak of morality simply in the singular because historical experience indicates a farreaching moral variability of humans and their possible moral transformations. The stronger the moral oppositions appear, the weaker seems the belief in moral convictions or principles, regardless of historical contexts. To differentiate my argument further, let me point out to Dan Diner’s concept of the “rupture of civilization” (“Zivilisationsbruch”).18 Originally this term was conceived to analyze the major difficulties the Jewish victims had with rationalizing the motives and deeds of the Nazis. The Nazi project of exterminating the Jews was pursued further, contrary to their own economic interests and contrary to priorities in their conduct of war. From this perspective Diner ascribes a cognitive incoherence to the Nazis because they abandoned the focus on purposive rationality and selfpreservation which can be called self-evident in the tradition of Western civilization. The Nazis, therefore, did not simply act irrationally. They stood for a counter-rationality which doomed the hope of some Jewish leaders to failure that they might survive with their community by working efficiently for the Nazi system. This strategy could be successful to a certain degree, but on the whole the recourse to the rationality of the homo oeconomicus was negated by Nazism. My concept of rupture of species is designed to clarify the moral dimension which must be taken into account with regard to Diner’s epistemic concept. My concept serves as a clue to the counter-morality of Nazism, characterized above as being in opposition to Western civilization in normative terms. However restricted in details Western tradition may be – it is the normative tradition of egalitarian universalism. If we become aware of the counter-morality of Nazism, even the prima facie counter-rationality 17

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 248.-251. Edition (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), p. 105. 18 Dan Diner (1987), “Zwischen Aporie und Apologie. Über Grenzen der Historisierbarkeit des Nationalsozialismus,” in Idem (ed.), Ist der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987), pp. 62-73.

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Diner exposes transforms itself into a fatal logic of its own. Recently, Diner has once again stressed the epistemic meaning of his concept. Furthermore, he has taken issue with tendencies to water down the exceptionality of the Holocaust by shifting away from the specific fate of the Jews to anthropological considerations about a new phenomenon of evil or to a “dubious international culture of morality now in crystallization” for which the Holocaust is merely “the icon of the negative.”19 I consider criticizing such tendencies and arguing for relevant distinctions in comparative perspectives on different genocides justified. But it should also be evident that we need a moral concept of rupture which avoids a levelling of the moral problem we are dealing with. This is the function of my concept of the “rupture of species.” That a concept such as this is required can be grasped in contemporary talk about historical responsibility where just the moral meaning of rupture is articulated in German-Jewish dialogues. In a speech delivered in the Knesset (2008) the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, used the term ‘rupture in civilization’ and at the same time declared German responsibility for the “moral catastrophe” of the Shoah. It seems clear that there is a desideratum to articulate the Shoah in a moral vocabulary adequate to the moral significance of this epochal event. In my opinion, the concept of the rupture of species does clarify the moral significance of the Holocaust. There are three additional points I would like to clarify: the question of the coherence of NS morality, the question of “normality” of the perpetrators, and the relevant contrast between universalism and particularism. As to the coherence of NS morality, it is not necessary to work with the fiction of a closed system of inner consistency. To my mind, it is sufficient to contrast the normative essentials of moralities in opposition as above and to describe the details of the concomitants and consequences within the socio-political rule of NS. Detailed studies of the moral order of NS20 have always to be aware of the dynamics of NS and the moral developments in processes of human transformation. Such processes pertain, for example, to the relation of morality to law, to give a perhaps remote example in this field. Roland Freisler, subsequently presiding judge at the “Volksgerichtshof,” identifies morality with “völkische Sittenlehre” and emphati-

19

Idem, “Rupture in Civilization. On the Genesis and Meaning of a Concept in Understanding,” in Moshe Zimmermann (ed.), On Germans and Jews under the Nazi Regime (Jersualem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2006), p. 47. 20 Cf. Wolfgang Bialas, “Die moralische Ordnung des Nationalsozialismus,” in Werner Konitzer/Raphael Gross (eds.), Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2009), pp. 30-60.

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cally declares it the “nutritive substance of law” to revise the rules of criminal law.21 The substantial transformation of society and man invoked by leading figures of the NS ideology22 was not a creatio ex nihilo but had to constantly distinguish itself from prior norms of morality or political institutions.23 Thus the constitution of the “Weimarer Republik” was never suspended officially but superposed by new lawmaking. That is to say that adherents of the former republic with its constitutional enumeration of personal rights were, albeit in minority, the representatives of a still vivid morality in opposition to the NS transformation. On the other hand, former adherents of NS who subsequently became critical of the system on moral grounds relied on resources of Western moral traditions or of Christian morality. The historical constellation, therefore, seems adequately described as a permanent conflict of divergent moralities, no matter how dominant the Nazi morality was at times. The process of moral transformation can be studied in parallel within the armed forces (“Wehrmacht”) or in the descriptions given by special units that participated in killing campaigns, thereby transforming their moral identity.24 Even the leading figures of NS, such as Himmler, developed their plans for the “final solution” only step-by-step. Although the extermination of the Jews was a steady option for the NS leaders, its modes of realization changed over time. In 1940 Himmler favoured the “Madagascar Plan” which avoided physical extermination, as this was deemed alien to the Teutonic spirit.25 There is little doubt that this plan of establishing a ghetto on the island of Madagascar was motivated by the idea of exerting some pressure against Great Britain and the United States to reduce the influence of Jewish activists especially in the US. Albeit far away from concrete realization, it shows the transformations of the Nazis’ options to fight the Jews. This does not alter the disposition to give the 21 Roland Freisler (1936), “Gedanken zur Technik des werdenden Strafrechts und seiner Tatbestände,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, vol. 55 (1936) no. 1, p. 511. 22 Cf. Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Hoheneichen Verlag, 1935): In a preface he explains that the political revolution of the state has to be accomplished by the transformation of mentalities. 23 Cf. Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge/MA/London: Belknap, 2003). 24 Cf. Harald Welzer, Täter. Wie aus ganz normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 2005). 25 Cf. Peter Longerich, Holocaust. The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), Ch. IV, E.

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genocidal project its radical scenario at Aushwitz, but it underlines the processes of transformation in practicing the moral rupture as such. The SS and its organizations were an exemplary community of moral transformation. In our context it is important to remember that the SS represents not only the highest type of a Nazi community in respect of the militant combination of ideology and racial struggle. At the same time this community delivered the elitist paradigm of ideal Nazi socialization and moral transformation, which could serve as an educational model for the whole society. Ideal virtues like loyalty, obedience, honor or comradeship were posed in direct relation to Adolf Hitler as a person and the personification of those concepts culminated in every SS-man´s oath of allegiance to maintain loyalty to Hitler to the death. This development shows the suspension of a concept of conscience in the Christian tradition which was open to each individual’s moral reflection. This way, breaking the moral limits was continuously encouraged.26 The moral significance of the transformations I have outlined is echoed in Hitler’s phrase that the breakdown of Christianity was one of the greatest revolutions history had ever seen.27 Christianity and egalitarian universalism are on equal footing, as far as integrating every man into the human species is concerned. My second additional point can be put briefly. The Nazi movement was not a product far away from our world but generated under the social, cultural, and political conditions of Europe. The bewilderment caused by the Holocaust and other moral catastrophes is a bewilderment about deeds of people like ourselves: “[…] the tragedy of the Shoah was not its inhumanity but the fact that the Nazis were humans, just as we are.”28 Especially in the moral context we are dealing with it is important not to exclude the protagonists, supporters or perpetrators of NS from the domain of human normality in a broad sense of the term, however sharply their ideology or moral convictions may be criticized. We have to leave open the field of human possibilities and take a realistic view of history which 26

Cf. Bernd Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933-1945, 7th edition (Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zurich: Schöningh, 2006). 27 Cf. Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler. Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), pp. 104. 28 Yehuda Bauer, “Einige Überlegungen zur Shoah,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 54 (2006) no. 6, p. 547. (My translation). Cf. analogously: Peter J. Haas, Morality after Auschwitz. The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), p. 232: “Although the Holocaust is unique in its awfulness, it is a firm part of normal human history […] In studying the Holocaust, we study not only a particular society of the past but ourselves as well.”

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presents human developments with very different outcomes.29 Moral diversity has to be recognized also in the wide field of human unfoldings. The third point I want to add is the reading of NS morality as particularism in opposition to egalitarian universalism. Sometimes my concept of the “rupture of species” is countered by the argument that the Nazi movement did not negate the human status of the Jews. This is in one sense right, but in the relevant sense it is wrong.30 We have to account for an ambiguity in the concept of mankind. On the one hand, “mankind” is used as a descriptive term of ordinary language and refers to the facts of global conditions of individuals, groups, peoples, nations and religious communities as a whole. In this sense, Jews are part of mankind. On the other hand, however, “mankind” stands for “true mankind” (“wahres Menschentum”) as a normatively limited concept not at all accepting the common facts of mankind. In this sense, the Jews are not part of mankind but are eliminated in order to achieve a purified kind of mankind. This normatively restricted concept is the counterpart of the “rupture of species.” Hannah Arendt made this clear when she concluded her report on the Eichmann trial with a critique of the Nazi hybris of being entitled to decide who should live on earth and who should not.31 The morality of redemption I have exposed above, therefore, is in accordance with the normatively restricted concept of mankind. Its claim to save mankind as a whole is pseudo-universalistic, as it aims at the predominance of a certain form of life. In reality, its claim is radically particularistic not least of all in view of its own morality. Thus the substantial opposition to egalitarian universalism defines the frame for further discussion.

III. Creating the New Man: Bolshevik Utopia and Moral Transformation As in the case of NS, one can take the moral catastrophes of Stalinism as a starting point to delve into the history of Bolshevism and the moral transformations it has led to. By following this track I am in agreement with 29

Cf. Inga Clendinnen, Reading the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 111-112: “I do not pretend that ‘understanding’ men like Hitler, or Himmler, or Stangl is an easy matter. I would only insist that the problem is not qualitatively different from the problem inherent in understanding any other human beings – and that our understanding of our fellow human beings will not be and cannot be complete.” 30 Cf. Zimmermann, “Replik,” p. 488. 31 Cf. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), Epilogue.

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recent historical research which very differentiatedly underscores the fruitfulness of making comparisons between Stalinism and Nazism.32 The question of a specific Bolshevik morality, however, is goes far beyond the epoch of Stalinism. We must also consider the family resemblance between Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin to get the clues to Bolshevik morality. There is little doubt that Trotsky is not at all responsible for the cultural revolution under Stalin. However, his conceptual endeavours to define Bolshevik morals can be taken as an ideal type for founding a morality in the sense of a communist morality of redemption which does not differ in principle from the Stalinist form of Bolshevism. In the following I would like to briefly call the moral disasters of Stalinism to mind in the context of Bolshevik utopia. Then will I consider the ongoing moral change during the Stalinist period as worked out by historians. In relation to communist utopia, the impetus of moral transformation can be studied on a general level in Trotsky’s “Their morals and ours.” This opens the question of adequate conceptual interpretations of Bolshevik morality and puts it in the larger context of the vision of New Man in Modernity. The term “Holodomor” pertains to the rigid collectivization of agriculture which caused the death of millions of people in the years 1932/33. It is composed of the Ukrainian words “holod” for “hunger” and “mor” for “epidemic disaster.” The regions of the Ukraine, Northern Caucasus and Kazakhstan were the main countries devastated by a broad wave of starvation with the sum total of victims being estimated to have been 6 millions or more. More than half of the victims died in the Ukraine which in the meantime has inaugurated a commemoration day of Holodomor every year in November. This catastrophe was not the wellspring of natural forces to cause a human disaster but the result of the revolutionary strategy toward a “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” (Stalin).33 Kulaks were 32 See Michael Geyer, “Introduction,” in Michael Geyer/Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism. Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge/MA: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 1-37 for a history of research on relevant comparisons and contemporary perspectives. 33 As I give only a minimal sketch I refer in sum to a few sources: Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, 3rd edition (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Nicolas Werth, “Ein Staat gegen sein Volk. Gewalt, Unterdrückung und Terror in der Sowjetunion,” in Stéphane Courtois/Nicolas Werth/Jean-Louis Panné/Andrzej Paczkowski/Karel Bartošek/Jean-Louis Margolin/Rémi Kauffer/Pierre Rigoulot/Pascal Fontaine/Yves Santamaria/Sylvain Boulouque/ Joachim Gauck/Ehrhart Neubert, Das Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus (Munich: Piper, 1998), pp. 45-295. Cheryl A. Madden, “The Holodomor, 1932-1933,” Canadian American Slavic Studies, vol. 37 (2003) no. 3, pp. 13-26. Orlando Figes, The Whisperers. Private Life in Stalin's Russia

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generally denounced as an exploitive class without providing any clear definition to the term “kulak” itself. In reality there was no homogeneous class of kulaks, which means that “kulak” vacillated between a small group of wealthy peasants, peasants who were in opposition to the project of collectivization or just people whose attitudes put them under the suspicion of being kulaks. Some Bolshevik groups advancing collectivization decided by drawing lots who was to be counted as kulaks and who was not. To illustrate the grotesque scenery of class struggle by just one example, let me call to mind a letter by the writer Sholokhov. He was an eyewitness in Northern Caucasus and addressed his complaints to Stalin about the brute force, including torture, by which Bolshevik activists were about to break the real or presumed resistance of peasants who were afraid of losing all their reserves. To put an end to the excesses, he asked Stalin to send “true communists” to save the kolkhozes. Stalin answered by regretting the “transgressions” but insisted that there was a life-or-death struggle going on with the peasants who were acting against the Soviet state. To be sure, some leading Bolsheviks like Bukharin or Rykow opposed Stalin’s rigorous line at times because they saw the danger of famine, although they were silenced by Stalin’s dominance. I am not discussing here the extent to which the famine can be characterized as a strategic means for restructuring rural population and agriculture. But one can hardly dismiss even the strong verdict of genocide through famine. At any rate, it was a catastrophe Stalin and his adherents consciously accepted as a consequence of the fight against the kulaks in order to create the higher society of communism. The Holodomor revealed not only the brutality of installing a new form of life against rural social conditions and agricultural science. At the same time, it brought about the intensification of deportations and the broad extension of the Gulag system. This system of repression, which totally deprives people of all of their rights and threatened civil life with permanent arbitrariness of denouncement and punishment, became another salient trait of Stalinism. As a final culmination of repression may be added the phase of the “great terror” (1936-38) which finally brought about the liquidation of former Bolshevik “stars” like Bukharin. The dimensions of the crimes under Stalinist rule can only be understood and analyzed in the context of Bolshevik ideology and its dimension of the utopia of New Man with new moral standards. I am going to use Jörg Baberowski’s characterization of the “cultural revolution” under Stalin as a context for my further (London: Lane, 2007). Norman M. Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

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considerations: “what … in the writings about Stalinism is called cultural revolution was a fight to gain the souls of the subjects … the cultural revolution was no mere epoch, it was the heart of Stalinism. During the cultural revolution the Bolsheviki not only cleared out the memory of society and tried to construe it anew but at the same time removed the enemies from society. The communist ‘engineers of the soul’ (Stalin) could carry out their work only if the former representatives of social interpretations lost their dominance and were deprived of power. The social enemy could be imagined and fought by the Bolsheviki only as a member of a collective. As the friend belonged to the proletariat, so the enemy belonged to a society of adherents to the old times, the owners of properties, the capitalists, the kulaks. Because there was no possibility to escape the group of stigmatized people, finally the revolution became successful as a campaign of extermination. Thus the cultural revolution, the dream of a new man, took up the form of a terrorist orgy of violence. This symbiosis of cultural revolution and violence is called Stalinism.”34 This telling characterization is in accordance with the broad historical research of the last years. I take it as a summary of the cultural dynamics of Stalinism in continuing Bolshevik ideals. Such a transformation of society would not have been possible without a substantial change relating to psycho-moral attitudes and the moral self-interpretations of members of the new social world. This process of transformation encompasses not only Bolshevik agents on different levels but equally all cultural and social surroundings influenced or dominated by the Bolsheviki. There is much evidence that, notwithstanding its own specifics, the Stalinist era was part of the Bolshevist project as a whole. Stalin’s engineers of the soul sound similar to Lenin’s phrase that man can be made in a way the Bolsheviks desired him/her to be or to Trotsky’s construction of a higher socialbiological type, something to which I will discuss below. It is no accident that a Tsheka bulletin declares the old systems of “ethics and humanity” obsolete as early as 1919 and proclaims a new ethics of “absolute humanity,” the ideal of which is said to legitimize bloody violence. With this and other examples, it seems plausible to view Stalin as an heir of Lenin35 and to study processes of moral transformation over the whole era of Bolshevist rule. We can learn a lot about the “Bolshevik discourse on the psyche” in the 1920s and 1930s from impressive studies by Igal Halfin who focussed 34

Jörg Baberowski, Der rote Terror. Die Geschichte des Stalinismus, 2nd edition (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2004), p. 112 (My translation). 35 Cf. Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. The Age of Social Catastrophe (London: Cape, 2007), Part I.

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on the Bolshevic attempts to construct proletarian identities and an adequate moral self-interpretation.36 They used the “term ‘Bolshevik moralists’ to refer to a wide group of otherwise diverse experts who expressed concern with Communist ethics.” There were autobiographical tests and self-reflections to scrutinize the inner attitude of becoming a true proletarian. Discussions at universities among Bolshevik students focused on questions of morals, including questions of sexual behaviour. Bukharin’s recommendations for a “dramatic change in human qualities, habits, feelings, wishes,” including the everyday life of man, was echoed in “Komsomol commandments” which transformed the biblical decalogue. In a sense, the classic Marxist conception of the social class was transposed into a concept of class as a “psychological type.” The Bolshevik work on the self qua inner purification of man became predominant for Stalinism and defines the normative ground of the “Great Purge.” Therefore one can speak of Stalinism as an “ethical system.”37 This fits well with my above-made proposal to distinguish divergent moral orders. Now will I turn to the more general diagnosis of Bolshevik morality, by using Trotsky’s elaboration as a guideline. I will concentrate on some essentials of Trotsky’s “Their morals and ours” while leaving aside the polemical parts of his essay, including his critique of Stalinism. First of all it is relevant to the moral phenomena in question that Trotsky himself uses a conceptual frame by which he distinguishes different concepts of morals. “Our morals” refers to Bolshevik morals, the morality of the proletarian revolution, which not only is opposed to “democratic morality” as related to the epoch of liberal capitalism and to the morality of fascism (10) but also to “the reactionary police morality of Stalinism” (16).38 Trotsky insists on Bolshevik morality in the spirit of Lenin and accomplishes the wellknown Marxist view of morality as a function of class struggle which more than anything else dominates social relationships and behaviours of men. That there is no general morality beyond the social classes expresses Marxist common sense. But to this creed Trotsky adds specific elements which disclose his Bolshevik radicalization.

36

Cf. Igal Halfin, Terror in my Soul. Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge/MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2003), Ch. 3. To the following especially pp. 108. See as well Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on my Mind. Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge/MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2006). 37 Halfin, Terror in my Soul, p. 2. In my terminology this is equivalent to “moral system.” 38 For simplicity’s sake I use the following source putting side numbers in brackets: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm

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To begin with: “The highest pitch of the class struggle is civil war which explodes into mid-air all moral ties between the hostile classes.” (8) The construction of the revolutionary party of the proletariat can only succeed in “complete independence from the bourgeoisie and their morality” (17) and only the party can pave the way for the inauguration of a society without social contradictions. But to reach that society, it is necessary to use “revolutionary, that is, violent means” (19) because the class struggle is a life-or-death struggle. The heart of the fight is the revolutionary party which is “everything” to a Bolshevik. (24) Thus to “a revolutionary Marxist there can be no contradiction between personal morality and the interests of the party, since the party embodies in his consciousness the very highest tasks and aims of mankind” (25). The morality of the proletarian revolution and the mission of the Bolshevik party are the crowning achievements in world history. The Bolsheviks are the “inveterate warriors” (5) of the socialist idea who found in Lenin the superior leader of a “higher human morality” (25). With his eulogy to Lenin and the actualization of true Bolshevik morality twenty years after the Russian Revolution (1938), Trotsky is not only in continuity with his former proclamation of the “transformation of morals” (1923).39 He also makes explicit the systematic problem of Bolshevik morals conceived in a dialectics of class struggle. The construction neglects moral individuality, in favour of party consciousness without fixing any standards of liability or commitment. The consequences of this neglect are twofold. On the one hand the leading group of the party or their leading figure, whoever may be in this position, is given carte blanche to decide what is the best way to pursue the development towards a classless society. There is no argument that reflects the party’s organization in terms of rational rules for dealing with possible alternatives in face of the high social goals; the “dialectics” of class struggle guarantees for all. Correspondingly, no one takes the idea of institutionalizing rules seriously to govern a democratic process of forming the party’s will. The democratic deficits range from Lenin’s prohibition to forming party factions which was sustained by Trotsky (1921) up to Stalin’s “democratic centralism.” It is true that this does not preclude any discussions within the party or on party conventions, but the Bolsheviki did not realize the need for a canon of moral or political liability. Especially if violent means are declared the medium of revolutionary action and progress, the absence of definite moral limits to repression, physical threat, terror or torture will become fatal, as shown by the history 39 Leon Trotsky, “The Transformation of Morals” (1923), in http://www.marxists. org/archive/trotsky/1923/ 10/morals.htm

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of Stalinism and its catastrophes. Again we should not blame Trotsky for special traits of Stalinism; but the credo of the revolutionary party is very similar. For Stalin as well, the party is “everything” and sometimes declared a “knights’ order of swords building the soul of the organs and doings of the Soviet state”.40 On the other hand, the carte blanche of the party’s leadership to govern the dialectics of the revolutionary process confronts the individual with the hard question of how to identify adequately with the party’s will and how to integrate the moral self into the party’s consciousness of social advancement. As Trotsky postulates the congruence of personal morals and the party’s moral substance as there was the permanent question for individuals to purify themselves in order to become true proletarians worthy to participate in historical progress. The conception of Bolshevik morality Trotsky is arguing for, therefore, cannot be separated from the consequences concerning an essential syndrome of personal tragedies under Stalinism: how to merge with the partyline.41 Trotsky’s self-interpretation of Bolshevik morals could be analyzed further, above all in respect of his “dialectics” of means and ends to explicate systematic deficiencies.42 Instead, I turn to the relation of Bolshevik morality to the utopia the revolutionary party is striving for as “the highest aims of mankind.” In Trotsky’s words we meet a megalomania of the New Man on the basis of the economics of socialist society: “The human species, the coagulated Homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training. This is entirely in accord with evolution … Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman ... Social construction and psycho-physical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process … the shell in which the cultural construction and self-education of Communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become 40 Sergej Slutsch, “Macht und Terror in der Sowjetunion,” in Volkhard Knigge/Norbert Frei (eds.), Verbrechen erinnern (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2002), p. 113. 41 Cf. Igal Halfin, Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2009), p. 10. 42 Cf. John Dewey, “Means and Ends,” in Idem, Later Works, vol. 13 (Carbondale/IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), pp. 349-354.

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National Socialism – Bolshevism – Universalism more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.”43

The utopian verve of Trotsky conceives of moral transformation as part of a transformation of mankind as a whole. At the same time we see the influence of Nietzsche on the language of New Man. Before commenting these points further, let me briefly reflect on the peculiarity of Bolshevik morality and its comparison with Nazi morality. First of all, we must clearly distinguish the pseudo-universalism of Bolshevism from egalitarian universalism. It is correct in descriptive terms to say that Bolshevik communists “believed in a universal humanity, professed themselves the heirs and perfectors of enlightenment values.”44 However, this is wrong in terms of normative judgment. Why? Because of the diagnosis Halfin himself gives of the Stalinist purge, calling it “hyperrational, a result of the ironclad resolve to enfold all reality into the communist order.” This exactly is the qualification which made Bolshevism a pseudo-universalistic ideology - in other words: a form of particularism - because of its attempts to establish a form of life on a global scale. On the contrary, egalitarian universalism does not induce a homogenic form of life but provides a normative frame for different forms of life. This point is important enough to be argued further. We can go back to a version of classic Marxism which can be called universalistic to make the difference to Bolshevism more transparent. I do not maintain that this version is the only Marxist ideal type one can build, although certainly it is a possible reading of Marx or some of his pre-Bolshevik successors. In this reading, which combines evolutionary and revolutionary means of social emancipation, it is conceivable that the abolition of class society does not rule out the possibility of integrating the adherents of the old classes into the new society without denying to them their social or moral membership. They lose power or dominance through revolution, but not elementary rights. There is, however, a problem in respect of the Marxist critique of human rights as an ideology of the bourgeois class. However, a self-reflective critique in the tradition of enlightenment might illuminate this point.

43

Leon Trotsky, “Literature and Revolution” (1924), in http://marxists.org/ archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo /index.htm, last section. 44 Halfin, Stalinist Confessions, p. 2, the following quotation ibid., p. 8.

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In this version, the Marxist slogan ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’ could be called a coherent universalistic outlook and not a travesty. Contrary to a Marxist ideal type such as this, Bolshevism and Stalinism pursue a utopian project which transforms the social revolution into a particularistic movement of social and moral discrimination with ongoing practices of physical extermination. The Marxist ideal type takes on the function of an ideological make-belief of emancipation. Bolshevik particularism does not subscribe to social mediation or moral tolerance any longer. Similar to Nazism, Bolshevism also favoured the extermination of enemies of the new society – here: class enemies – as the most promising strategy to accomplishing its goal of creating the New Man. Like with NS, mankind is normatively restricted by Bolshevism, and its hybris could equally be characterized by the presumption of “being able to decide who should live on earth and who should not.” To come back to my reading of Nazi morality, there is a parallel to Bolshevism in terms of a morality of redemption. This is directed to a mundane project of this world which carries out the Last Judgment by establishing a purified mankind. The differences, however, have to be dealt with in greater detail. The term I employed above, the “rupture of species,” will not do to cover the specific traits of Bolshevik outrages. Nazism was focussed on one main active enemy, the Jews, who had to be exterminated.45 Bolshevism, on the other hand, was directed towards a plurality of enemies who had to be fought (nobility, bourgeoisie, kulaks, counterrevolutionaries) and annihilated in different contexts. But it was possible to give up membership in those hostile classes or groups to join the proletarian movement under the Bolshevik party. In principle it was possible to gain a new Bolshevik identity, whereas Jewish identity was fixed as unchangeable. Thus the extermination strategy in Bolshevism is more appropriately characterized as a development of successive “sociocides” to purify society. This matches the term “cultural racism” which is proposed by historians for Stalinism.46 I leave the question of to which extent the cultural revolution of Stalinism was supported or accepted in a broad sense by the people of the Soviet Union to the historians. In my terminology, this would be the question as to how grave the failure of species-commitment 45

This implies no discrimination of other victims but only states the priorities of Nazism. 46 Jörg Baberowski/Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Ordnung durch Terror (Bonn: Dietz, 2006), p. 89.

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(cf. above 2.) was. It is true that the Soviet people consisted of a much wider range of heterogeneous sections than the German population which can be called more homogenous in their standards of civilization and which in its majority supported Nazism. A comparison on this level seems more difficult in the case of the Soviet people. In retrospect of my clarification of divergent moral orders, I can summarize the Bolshevik morality as follows: first, there is a basic moral selfunderstanding of every man as being part of an exclusive community of proletarian equals which is held to be morally superior to all other forms of socialization hitherto known. Second, there is the revolutionary party as the leading level of authority for all social norms and institutions, defining the priorities of communist development and setting rules of law (including criminal law) on all levels. Third, there is the party’s monopoly on organizing violence in the name of the state and in the interest of revolutionary progress to secure the homogeneity of proletarian socialization against all class enemies however defined. Given the comparison of egalitarian universalism and Nazi morality as explained above in the ideal-typical way, the divergence of the three moral orders is evident. As in the case of Nazi morality, Bolshevik morality challenges a view of ethics which abstains from historical contexts, at least with regard to the historical epoch in which the divergent moralities appear. It is perhaps no accident that the thesis of a divergence of moralities in history was put forward by Friedrich Nietzsche who at the same time created the vision of a new morals for the “higher man.” Nietzsche can be seen as a seismograph for social and cultural tendencies which were given full weight in the twentieth century. Albeit sensible in his historical view on moralities, Nietzsche was an ardent critic of egalitarian universalism and in this respect close to both Nazi morality and Bolshevik morality. In addition, his radical critique of Christian morality and the French Revolution poses the question of how to interpret and justify egalitarian universalism itself in the course of modern developments since the eighteenth century. It is significant that the above quotation of Trotsky’s utopia relates to the Nietzschean “superman,” perhaps better translated as “higher man” (“Übermensch”). This shows the influence of intellectual sources on the Bolshevik self-image which were not at all random.47 The same can be said of influences in terms of eugenics which are foreign as such to tradi-

47 Cf. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World. From Nietzsche to Stalinism (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).

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tional Marxism.48 Thus extending the horizon of cultural reinforcements of the Bolshevik utopia of the New Man, we acquire an awareness of the ambivalence of modernity which is simultaneously brought out by the New Man of Nazism. Here again we meet Nietzsche as a relevant cultural source. Without blaming Nietzsche for later radicalizations in Bolshevism or Nazism, it is indisputable that his philosophy opened dimensions of moral transformations in construing the New Man.49 Studying conceptions of the New Man in Stalinism and Nazism, Peter Fritzsche and Jochen Hellbeck point out to alternatives of modernity which have to be considered seriously to beware of a simplistic narrative of Western progress: “The New Man was an alternative, but not completely unfamiliar figure because he was designed by help of the tools of science and rationality and in accordance with basic premises of Western ‘progress.’ In exploring this design, we ultimately pose the question about the still dominant assumption that liberalism is the basic default position of the West. We show that liberalism is a highly contingent position, under furious attack for much of the twentieth century.”50

If we take egalitarian universalism as the moral centre of liberalism and follow my reading of divergent moralities as explained above, we are in a position to analyze what is “contingent” in the normative story of the West, what can be said of its normative “progress,” and what is the elementary moral opposition it sets against different types of “illiberal modernity.”

IV. Egalitarian Universalism and Moral Diversity in History The various subsets of moral orders standing in opposition to egalitarian universalism throw light on a historical dynamics of moralities within which we have to situate egalitarian universalism itself. This not only means a closer look at its history but also questioning its normative peculiarity. As is well-known, there is Richard Rorty´s thesis of contingency of 48

Cf. Gerd Koenen, Utopie der Säuberung. Was war der Kommunismus? (Berlin: Fest, 1998), ch. 6. Hans Günther, Der sozialistische Übermensch. M. Gorkij und der sowjetische Heldenmythos (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 1993). 49 For details see Zimmermann, Moral als Macht, ch. 2. 50 Peter Fritzsche/Jochen Hellbeck, “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany,” in Michael Geyer/Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism. Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 302. The following quotation ibid.

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universalism, who radicalizes his critique of an objectivist or transcendentalist version of universalism to the dictum of the “ethnocentricity” of universalism and human rights.51 With Rorty I share the historical approach, although I see no cogent reason to suspend the talk of universalism if it is conceived of as historical universalism in the universe of divergent moral orders. My distinctions explore substantial differences in moral content which define the orientation of its adherents for every moral order. Therefore the metaethical vocabulary adequate to reflect these moral constellations in history would be “pluralism” and not “relativism” with all its pejorative connotations.52 A “monistic” conception runs contrary to a pluralistic view of morals in history. The pluralistic view of morals I propose gets its framework of reference from the unfolding of divergent moral orders in real history and not from armchair reflections of what might be. That is why in the EuroAmerican sphere the talk of universalism has been intertwined with the growth of moral self-understanding and forms of social practices since the eighteenth century. The reading of universalism as a historical achievement is the first step - as is the historical diagnosis of its adversaries. Ethical reflection, critique or justification start out from historically situated forms of moral socialization and the order I have formulated by typical ideal types. I am giving a sketchy picture of some essentials of universalism as a basis for further philosophical reflection. It is important to take the epochal events of the American and French Revolutions not only as changes in the political dimension but as innovations towards a new self-image of man. On the one hand, the well-known declarations of human rights can be traced back to concrete contexts of social and political conflicts. On the other hand, they inaugurated a new moral and political semantics accepted by relevant and successively predominant parts of society. Notwithstanding their racial and sexist limitations, the egalitarian messages of the Revolutions were transformed into real processes of emancipation. The fight 51

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), ch. 3. Idem, Truth and Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ch. 2. In a commentary on a critique Rorty says that his “ethnocentric particularism” reduces to a denial of an objectivist universalism. This is compatible with a historical reading of universalism: Idem, “Erwiderung auf Udo Tietz,” in Thomas Schäfer/Udo Tietz/Rüdiger Zill (eds.), Hinter den Spiegeln. Beiträge zur Philosophie Richard Rortys (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001), p. 108. 52 This comes close to a constructive reading of Rorty in: Richard J. Bernstein, “Can We justify Universal Moral Norms?,” in Don Browning (ed.), Universalism vs. Relativism (New York: Roman & Littlefield, 2006), pp. 16.

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against slavery and the progress of women’s struggle for equal rights are main issues of permanent advances in building communities according to egalitarian principles. Different stages of these developments can be exemplified in constitutional law and corresponding activities of “higher lawmaking” in Western countries. One can speak, therefore, of a universalization of egalitarian universalism in the course of history and the interdependence of a dynamics of universalization and constitutional dynamics.53 Speaking of a universalization of universalism is not redundant if we define universalism as a moral content in opposition to other moralities. The content of universalism and its relation to human rights can be summarized as follows: the same human status is ascribed to every human being, i.e. every human being is recognized as a member of a community of beings capable of moral attitudes and attitudes of respecting each other. Every man is held to have his own dignity and is simultaneously expected to respect the dignity of others. The basic postulate of egalitarian universalism consists, therefore, of a postulate of mutual respect among men as men. Whosoever follows this postulate abstains from insulting other humans or from threatening or injuring them physically. Discriminating against others for reasons of race or gender is also ruled out. From the perspective of each individual, practicing mutual respect means committing yourself to a position of interhuman respect and expecting the same attitude from others. There is a complementarity between committing oneself to interhuman respect and self-ascribing a claim to interhuman respect. To this extent we can set down a concept of egalitarian universalism independent of the issue of human rights.54 But it is conceptually cogent and historically adequate to continue the universalistic postulate of mutual respect in terms of human rights basically conceived of as individual rights. The mutual commitment to interhuman respect is then articulated as a mutual commitment to moral rights shared by every individual. Political and juridical rights spell out the message of moral rights. “Taking rights seriously“ (Dworkin) in my reading, therefore, amounts to taking seriously the dynamics of egalitarian universalism while at the same time leaving the traditional view of “natural” rights. Moral rights in a universalistic sense should be seen as shared by volition and not by nature. This corresponds to a volitive norm of equality which can be traced back to the eighteenth century when humans started considering themselves 53

Here I make use of: Bruce Ackerman, “Rooted Cosmopolitanism,” Ethics, vol. 104 (1994) no. 3, pp. 517-535. 54 Cf. the discussion in: Zimmermann, “Moralischer Universalismus als geschichtliches Projekt,” p. 483. Idem, “Replik“, p. 486.

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anew. To give a stylized version in retrospect of the moral innovation, one could state: “From now on we will understand ourselves as humans amidst humans in such a way that we ascribe to ourselves the same moral status and see ourselves as endowed with equal rights.” From a contemporary perspective we can reaffirm that postulate and follow the Dworkian line of explication in maintaining that what matters is the “right of all men and women to equality of concern and respect, a right they possess not by virtue of birth or characteristic or merit or excellence but simply as human beings with the capacity to make plans and give justice.”55 It seems to be a typical feature of volitive equality that it is always in opposition to a main historical adversary which has to be overcome: traditional authorities and hierarchical structures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Nazism and Bolshevism in the twentieth century, violations of human rights all over the world in the present century. In our context, it is significant to stress the meaning of our volitive concept of equality as a concept of the equality of individuals and their individual rights, leaving room to individual peculiarities and differences. Nietzsche’s reading of equality in the sense of modern levelling is incorrect, as is the radicalization of equality to proletarian equality in Bolshevism or to racial homogeneity in the Nazi community. In addition, I would like to call to mind the ideal type design of my concept of volitive equality as the moral centre of the Western form of socialization noted above. We all know that there is a multitude of social inequalities in the realm of Western communities and that there is are man unsolved questions of justice. Nonetheless, these questions can only be discussed on the understanding that the moral centre is defined in the egalitarian sense. The same is true in a global perspective set by the UN declarations of human rights. As their history shows, the Western origins of universalism and human rights have meanwhile been integrated into an autonomous process of adopting moral universalistic content and rights. This too is reflected in my interpretation of the universalization of universalism. To complete these differentiations, let me also call to mind the question of balance between universalism and forms of particularism which is not strictly adverse to universalism. There is a broad range of particularistic phenomena, from local patriotism through athletic patriotism right down to national or economic egoisms, that should be dealt with in a spirit of mediation consistent with universalistic criteria. Maintaining a symmetrical balance of interests seems a never-ending task in a universalistic 55

Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge/MA Harvard: University Press, 1978), p. 182.

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frame within which particularistic tendencies can be simultaneously tolerated and criticized. For the sake of clarity, I would like to add another reflection concerning the meaning of universalism and particularism. Grasping upon my characterization of divergent moral orders and focusing on the meaning of universalism as a morality unfolding in historical dimensions, one may wonder whether universalism itself may be said to be, in a very general sense, a form of particularism. A reflection such as this may seem plausible especially in view of discussions in social anthropology.56 However, for conceptual and historical reasons, the term “egalitarian universalism” has the advantage of keeping things more distinct. The particularity of egalitarian universalism does not make it a form of particularism. There is, particular indeed, the integration of all human beings within mutual relations of equality. All tendencies towards a rupture of species or other forms of breaking species-integration are normatively ruled out, as seen above. But this may also be said of traditional forms of moralities that may nonetheless be moralities of hierarchical inequalities. It follows that we have to distinguish moralities not only with regard to the alternative defined by the opposition between moralities of redemption (Nazism, Bolshevism) and moralities of integration (cf. above p. 4), but additionally with regard to the concept of equality they assume to be basic. Moralities can be grouped along their leading concepts of equality: equality of Germans/Aryans in the “Volksgemeinschaft,” proletarian equality in communism, human equality with hierarchical restrictions etc. None of these concepts coincides with the specific qualification that is constitutive of egalitarian universalism: equality of humans simply as humans, and equality of individual rights. We can rest assured that appreciating the success of universalism and a culture of human rights in the course of history cannot foster the hope of securing the objectivity of universalism by argumentations in the mode of a priori justifications or of essentialist criteria. Notwithstanding the internal difficulties of these kinds of justifications, there are the historical experiences of divergent moral orders which constituted their norms in a radical way beyond species-commitments. To my mind, therefore, Kantian paradigms of ethics are obsolete, not simply due to historical facts but by systematically reflecting historical facts and moral experiences.57 The only 56 See Thomas Widlok in, discussion: Zimmermann, “Moralischer Universalismus als geschichtliches Projekt,” pp. 479. Idem, “Replik,” p. 494. 57 Arguing this point further would be, evidently, a discussion of its own. In principle, I agree with John Silber's critique of Kant as presented in: Richard J. Bernstein, “Radical Evil: Kant at war with himself,” in Maria Pia Lara (ed.), Rethinking

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possible means for egalitarian universalism to get, in a sense, an ahistorical standing is in the course of history itself, in other words: to become increasingly accepted by global processes of universalization and achieve a de-historization of universalistic content in this fashion. The history of human rights can demonstrate how universalistic content has been successively anchored in psycho-moral attitudes of mutual respect and tolerance that are motivated by emotional and rational protest against repressions of whatever kind as well as the desire to open up human avenues of free exchange as equal persons.58 This can be expressed in systematic terms by focusing on a basic attitude of inter-personal recognition, of personal inclusion in I-You-relations or We-You-relations, setting up the open dimension for all to participate. The substance of this basic attitude is confirmed even in conflicts, emotional resistance, social crises or moral critique and condemnation. All problems appear to leave the basic attitude of personal inclusion intact, whatever difficulties may be faced. Conceived in this fashion, the predominance of the basic attitude of personal inclusion is not at all self-evident but has its sources in motivations related to socio-cultural contexts and historical constellations. As it is adequate to ascribe motives only to individuals, it is cogent that people can compare their motives in order to combine them and give them weight in common attitudes or actions. My comparative perspective on egalitarian universalism, Nazism, and Bolshevism could thus be enlarged by an analysis of motivations and the role they play as reasons for attitudes and actions. The psycho-moral profile of a basic attitude of personal inclusion, however, is sufficient for my present context. Once again we are pointing to the contrast to moralities of redemption which in both cases, Nazism and Bolshevism, militantly refrain from basic attitudes of personal inclusion, in order to build exclusive moral orders beyond any speciescommitment. The judgment that these orders are orders of inhumanity in an elementary sense is well founded by the standard of universalism and the weight of historical experiences, especially when we take the victims of their militant actions and exterminations into account. Another aspect of judging Nazism and Bolshevism by the standard of universalism consists of reflecting on the asymmetry between the opposite moral orders we are dealing with. If we identify ourselves with universalism, it follows that species-commitment includes all perpetrators such as Hitler, Stalin and Evil (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 80. Cf. my critique of Christine Korsgaard in Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz, pp. 46. 58 Cf. Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights (New York/London: W. W. Norton & Co, 2007).

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their followers. They belong to mankind and its diversity in history, albeit they themselves defy an unrestricted concept of human inclusion. Set in the context of the analysis I have given thus far, I am now going to conclude with some remarks as how not to conceptualize the moralities of Nazism or Bolshevism. There are proposals for reading Nazism as “twisted deontology” and Bolshevism as “twisted consequentialism.”59 Sometimes Nazism is seen as a radicalized version of utilitarianism parallel Bolshevism.60 The specific traits of both moralities I have characterized thereby seem lost in rather vague analogies. I therefore renounce these proposals in respect of the clear contrast between the particularism of both, Nazism and Bolshevism, to universalism. In the modern context, however, deontological or utilitarian or consequentialist conceptualizations of ethics are on equal footing with universalism, notwithstanding the different universalistic explications they may deliver. To characterize, therefore, Nazism and Bolshevism under headings of deontological or utilitarian ethics would make sense only if their moralities could in some sense be called universalistic. But this would necessitate seeing mankind not normatively restricted and in agreement with species-commitment – which is a contradiction to the normative contents of the moralities of redemption. An interesting wrinkle on the idea of including Nazi morality in a conventional frame of morals was recently suggested by Lothar Fritze.61 He concentrates on “totalitarian perpetrators” and develops the thesis that perpetrators of this sort might agree with basic moral norms shared by citizens of a constitutional democracy. The difference does not lie in the basic norms but in the range of the norms and in additional moral rules which both are dependent on divergent “extra-moral” convictions. “Extramoral” convictions are those which relate to characteristics of the world, facts of social life and human behaviour or considerations of value, although not to those of judging in the sense of “moral right or wrong.” For the sake of argument, I ignore for a moment the contrast I have drawn between the moral order of Nazism and the Western-universalistic type. In a sense, it may be said that both orders have something in com59

Jonathan Glover, Humanity. A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London: Pimlico, 2001), p. 327. In many other points I agree with Glover, especially with his characterizations of moral transformations in Nazism and Bolshevism (ibid., pp. 26, 33.). 60 Cf. Micha Brumlik, Michael Hauskeller in, discussion: Zimmermann, “Moralischer Universalismus als geschichtliches Projekt.“, pp. 430-431, 435-436. 61 Lothar Fritze, “Moralische Rechtfertigung und außermoralische Überzeugungen. Sind ‘totalitäre Verbrechen’ nur in einer säkularen Welt möglich?,“ Leviathan, vol. 37 (2009) no. 1, pp. 5-33.

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mon if we take the norm of not killing other humans as being relevant to both orders, a norm Fritze uses as a paradigm. But this only shows that every society has to lay down rules in respect of questions of violence and questions of life and death. Which answers are given in detail, for example in fields such as criminal law, depends on the relevant normative-moral centre of the community. It is no surprise that, in justifying purification and extermination, the Nazis tried to argue that basic norms of not-killing had to be suspended. This is not the least because of the traditions of norms such as these and with regard to constituting acceptance both within and outside the “Volksgemeinschaft.” If one concedes Hitler and Himmler and others that they were driven by motivations of a moral kind, then it seems clear that they did not limit the range of quasi-universally shared basic moral norms depending upon their extra-moral convictions. Instead, they tried to make their actions and plans coherent with their own normative-moral convictions. This point can be argued further by considering the reasons which, in Fritze’s view, were crucial for legitimizing the extermination of the Jews. The belief in the “Jewish danger” and conspiracy as a threat to the whole of mankind was the “extra-moral” conviction that dominated the actions taken against the Jews. This belief caused them to go beyond moral limits in order to fight the “Jewish enemy” with all means at hand. There is no question that this type of argument was used frequently by NS leaders and NS perpetrators. But the important question is how the extra-moral conviction that there was a Jewish danger could gain overwhelming predominance without leaving behind conventional moral standards hitherto believed to be self-evident. The best example to demonstrate this case is to see how the NS leaders stubbornly adhered to the above-mentioned forgery of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Interestingly enough, these “Protocols” were discussed in the international press during the 1920s and temporarily described as authentic. A short time afterwards, however, the London Times reported that the “Protocols” were in all probability a forgery. Hitler’s comment in Mein Kampf was that just the fact that the Frankfurter Zeitung, a Jewish foundation, was reporting the forgery-story should be proof enough of their authenticity,62 whereas Himmler said that the statement of forgery was either a product of the Jews themselves or influenced by Jewish money.63 62

Cf. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 337. Felix Kersten, Totenkopf und Treue. Heinrich Himmler ohne Uniform (Hamburg: Moelich, 1952), p. 40. 63

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The moral relevance of these statements is in refuting empirical tests for presumed facts of utmost moral importance because of the consequences regarding the fight against the Jews. If we assume traditional moral standards, it seems clear that planning potentially deadly actions against enemies can, if at all, be only legitimated by verifying as scrupulously as possible the “extra-moral” convictions which are serving as reasons for these actions. Whosoever refuses to do this can only be judged as acting morally wrong or in the name of another morality. This other morality normatively blocks relevant information in terms of Fritze’s extramoral beliefs. He is right in stressing the analysis of the Nazi system of beliefs. Whereas moral attitudes need to be analyzed in the mode of assertoric sentences, normative conceptions organizing the beliefs need to be analyzed as practical reasons relating to motives and normative identifications. This can be decisively brought out by granting for a moment that the conviction of a Jewish conspiracy may be correct. But what follows from this? Evidently there are practical options differing widely from the Nazi strategy of extermination. It would be possible to react more defensively in the frame of species-commitment by searching coalitions to ban and contain the danger, etc. In any event, it is not at all a cogent consequence to draw the conclusions the Nazis drew. Evidently, therefore, it is the process of moral transformation in and of itself and not simply some kind of “extra-moral” conviction that is responsible for the disastrous consequences. The radical particularism bringing about these consequences should be conceptually held apart from traditional ethical vocabulary. We have to face the phenomenon of a moral otherness which deserves an interpretation in a terminology of ethics close to its main traits. The same can be said of the morality of Bolshevism.

ETHICS AFTER THE HOLOCAUST: JEWISH RESPONSES ISAAC HERSHKOWITZ

I. Introduction Eliezer Berkovits (1908–1992),1 an American rabbi who was very well known and highly respected for the profundity of his thought, wrote in his collection Faith after the Holocaust2 that, as he himself was not a Holocaust survivor, he could not permit himself to judge any survivors’ behavior from a religious perspective. He explains that whereas he completely empathizes with those Holocaust survivors who decided that they could no longer adhere to God’s decrees as they had undergone the experience of his absence in such a tangible and painful way, the opposite reaction is no less valid. Thus, he says, just as he cannot censure those who lost their 1

Born and raised in Hungary and a student of Rabbi Yechiel Ya’akov Weinberg, Berkovits was the author of many books and articles on the nature of Jewish philosophy and Jewish law. During the years before WWII he served as a rabbi in Berlin, but with the outbreak of hostilities he fled to England. After the war, he accepted a rabbinical post in Sydney, Australia, and later in Boston. From 1958 until 1976, he was the head of the Department of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew Theological College of Skokie, Illinois. Upon his retirement, he relocated in Israel. On Berkovits’ complex Holocaust theology and moral thought, see: David Hazony, “Eliezer Berkovits and the Revival of Jewish Moral Thought,” Azure 11 (2001) 23–65; Zachary Braiterman, “Anti/Theodic Faith in the Thought of Eliezer Berkovits,” Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy 7,1 (1997), pp. 83–100. Braiterman’s perspective is dealt with in length in Marc A. Krell, “Eliezer Berlovits’s Post-Holocaust Theology: A Dialectic Between Polemics and Reception,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37, 1 (2000), pp. 28–46. Also see: John J. Johnson, “Are We Asking the Wrong Questions about the Shoah? Eliezer Berkovits as PostHolocaust Jewish Apologist,” Conservative Judaism 57, 1 (2004), pp. 65–86. 2 Faith after the Holocaust (Jersey City/NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1973), pp. 94–107. The idea of human responsibility for the world, as opposed to philosophies that emphasize God’s responsibility, is fully developed in his important compilation: Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha (Jersey City/NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1983).

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faith, by the same token, it was inappropriate from an ethical perspective to express anger or bewilderment toward those who found God’s presence in the midst of the abyss. He contends that anyone who did not experience the horrors first-hand must refrain from any attempt to derive direct theological implications from the events and the atrocities. Such a person, he writes, simply cannot comprehend the overwhelming spiritual upheavals that Holocaust survivors must have experienced. Nonetheless, Berkovits claims that every human being, and specifically every Jew, must derive certain moral lessons from the Holocaust as a metaphysical event of enormous import:3 In a sense, God can be neither good nor bad. In terms of His own nature He is incapable of evil. He is the only one who is goodness. But since, because of His very essence, He can do no evil, He can do no good either. God, being incapable of the unethical is not an ethical being. Goodness for Him is neither an ideal, nor a value; it is existence, it is absolutely realized being. Justice, love, peace, mercy are ideals for man only. They are values that may be realized by man alone. God is perfection. Yet because of His very perfection, He is lacking – as it were – one type of value, the one which is the result of striving for value. This text, strongly influenced by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook,4 contains a significant theological concession for a rabbinic figure. Berkovits boldly expresses a notion that many would deem heretical: God should not be measured in ethical terms. Thus, according to Berkovits, God is to be released from responsibility for any ethical misdeeds both during the Holocaust years as well as more generally throughout the totality of human history. God teaches humanity how to act ethically, and He is the source of our knowledge and intuition, but He Himself is not subject to human ethical norms. Berkovits thus marginalizes the deeply entrenched religious notion of Imitatio Dei and, consequently, also raises questions regarding the concept itself as his formulation leads us to the conclusion that God is not He 3

Faith after the Holocaust, pp. 104–105. Rabbi Kook (1865–1935), a Lithuanian rabbi and thinker, was the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel and one of the most influential figures of twentiethcentury Judaism. His influence is especially noticeable within religious Zionist circles of Modern Orthodoxy in present-day Israel. On Rabbi Kook see: Dov P. Elkins, Shepherd of Jerusalem: A Biography of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Northvale/N.J: Jason Aronson, 1995). For a more thorough analysis on Rabbi Kook’s influence on ideological circles in Israeli society see: Dov Schwartz, Faith at the Crossroads: A Theological Profile of Religious Zionism (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 4

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whom we should look to as a model to be imitated in order to attain moral perfection. I emphasize that this is only one possible conclusion of Berkovits’ words since I believe that he assuredly meant otherwise. In this chapter, I am following in Berkovits’ footsteps by attempting to flesh out a Jewish ethical response to the Holocaust or, to be exact, a metaethical study on Jewish responses to the Holocaust.5 However, before embarking on this somewhat impossible endeavor, I will first outline what a “Jewish” response must entail by its very definition and explain how such a rough generalization can be both meaningful and of significant value in our attempts to incorporate ethical concepts into a discussion of the Holocaust. The remainder of this chapter will hopefully provide satisfactory answers to some of these perplexities.

II. What Is a “Jewish Response”? One of the methodological protests raised against definitions of any ethnic ethical stance, strongly influenced by Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget, focuses on the pretension involved in the very attempt to speak of a “them” or, in this case, to speak of a “Jewish” ethical response to the Holocaust. Since morality, according to Kohlberg, should be reviewed in light of the individual’s moral development, a range of moral responses to any phenomenon is in fact a sequence of moral stages. According to this model, there is little room for ethnical uniqueness. Moral development is de-

5

A similar initiative was carried out by Michael L. Morgan in his paper: “Jewish Ethics after the Holocaust,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 12, 2 (1984), pp. 256– 277. However, the two papers have very little in common. Morgan, even though discussing the “Jewish element” of ethics, derives his theory from Jewish history and traditional morality as expressed in Jewish Law (halakhah) and does not establish his insights on the Jewish ethical responses to the Holocaust as a distinct genre. This is a result of his exclusive reliance on the religious ethical responses of Emil Fackenheim to whom I do not intend to relate, specifically. Fackenheim, a worthy thinker and master of Jewish and modern philosophy, cannot be considered the sole ethical thinker regarding the Holocaust, or even the most important one. Thus, conversely, my intention here is to establish a broad range of Jewish ethical responses with which, I believe, we can associate most thinkers that deal with Jewish ethics and the Holocaust. A phenomenological review of this range of ethical responses gives us a more probable “authentic” model of Jewish responses, the criteria Morgan endeavored to trace in Fackenheim’s works (see idem., pp. 258–259, and throughout the paper).

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rived from an objective justice, a prima facie absolute justice.6 Piaget, however, agreed with Emile Durkheim, who called for a study of human morality as motivated by a person’s “attachment to society.”7 Durkheim contended that morality is part of society and is not external to actual social life and culture.8 Following Immanuel Kant who required a rational foundation for human morality, Durkheim also identified the need for individuals to “reach beyond” their natural selves. Yet, Durkheim did not dissociate moral rules and development from society but rather identified them as emotionally grounded products of society.9 However, since world- Jewry is very diversified and made up of numerous ideological, social, and religious subdivisions it would be pretentious or perhaps even childish to so much as claim to define a “Jewish response,” even within a framework that might accept such a definition in principle. Yet, I believe that the attempt to illustrate a basic common denominator shared by two major sources of Jewish ethical perspectives can be useful. This is true even though I readily concede that these sources present the views of hypothetical communities and not necessarily those of actual assemblages. Thus, I do not wish to superimpose a category of Jewish ethics on Jewish responses but to trace mutual elements within various Jewish responses to the Holocaust which, intuitively, but not essentially, are distinct from general responses outside of Jewish society. In order to initiate our search for a “Jewish response,” we must first identify what the word “Jewish” means, today. The twentieth century found Judaism in a very fragile state, numerous inner schisms threatening to tear apart what had previously been regarded as a unified people. Orthodoxy, conservative, reform, reconstructionist, neolog, and so on are all names denoting different Jewish religious factions. Moreover, Orthodoxy itself contains dozens of different distinct subgroups, some of which do not communicate with one another owing to the deep ideological differences between them. Yet, when we talk about “the Jews,” we usually do 6

See Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development, Vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981). 7 See Emile Durkheim, “Progressive Preponderance of Organic Solidarity,” in idem., On Morality and Society, edited by Robert N. Bellah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 63–85; Jean Piaget, Judgement and Reasoning in the Child (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1928). 8 Also see Anthony Cortese, Ethnic Ethics: The Restructuring of Moral Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 7–42. 9 Chris Shilling and Philip A. Mellor, “Durkheim, Morality and Modernity: Collective Effervescence, Homo Duplex and the Sources of Moral Action,” The British Journal of Sociology 49, 2 (1998), pp. 193–209.

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not refer only to the religious component but rather mean to include in the discussion camps of both atheists and assimilated Jews. Thus, it seems that when we speak of “the Jews,” “World Jewry,” and so on, we must admit that, in truth, we are describing an imagined community, not a real one. Louis Newman formulated the problem of both defining Judaism and attributing it a common ethical code:10 “Within the history of Judaism a wide range of positions on questions of both applied and theoretical ethics have been held and are preserved in Jewish literature. Although the fact that this diversity exists has been recognized, its implications have generally not been fully appreciated.”

Moreover, it would seem that anti-Semitic speakers and thinkers tend to utilize generalizations relating to all Jews as one united group sharing a joint vision as well as a view in respect to the appropriate means for actualizing it. The truth, of course, is a far cry from any such simplistic generalization. This methodological problem of definition becomes even more involved when we try, for instance, to trace the “Jewish elements” in a person’s philosophy, commentary, or speech. What do we mean by a Jewish element? Is it the reference to literary sources in the Old Testament or the massive rabbinical legacy of the oral Torah, halakhah, and thought that makes a text “Jewish”? Perhaps the criterion is some specific mental or cognitive propensity, one that can be discovered through recourse to an accepted approach to confronting and dealing with various issues?11 There is, however, an additional, more general and troubling problem as well. As noted by Joseph Sermoneta:12 “It is impossible to relate to Jewish Philosophy as cut off from general thought. Philosophy is ex definition something universal. It raises questions which a person asks himself in every period […] you cannot attach to these questions a particular label, assigning them to one specific group.”

The difficulty inherent in the attempt to define a “Jewish philosophy” is identical to the one we meet when we attempt to describe and discuss a 10

Louis E. Newman, Past Imperatives: Studies in the History and Theory of Jewish Ethics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 3. 11 See Raphael Jospe, What is Jewish Philosophy? (Tel-Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 1988). 12 See Shalom Rosenberg, Jacob Levinger & Joseph B. Sermoneta, “What Is Jewish Philosophy? A Symposium,” in Moshe Hallamish & Moshe Schwartz (eds.), Revelation, Faith, Reason (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1976), pp. 145– 169 (Hebrew).

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“Jewish ethical” response,” and, thus, we find ourselves back at square one: (a) there is no way to trace the “Jewish element” in any response. (b) Ethics as well as philosophy deal with human cognitive achievements. Ethical claims should therefore not be assigned national or ethnic labels, for such labeling contradicts their existence as universally valid arguments. Moreover, as Judaism does not embrace a united and coordinated community, it is impossible to speak of the “Jewish” stance or the coordinated “Jewish” viewpoint in regard to any given issue.

III. Guidelines for “Jewish Responses” I believe, then, that we have to aim for a more modest goal, one that can allow for a greater degree of precise definition. We must focus on the attempt to trace a number of competing “Jewish ethical responses” to the Holocaust in the plural and at the same time note and delineate certain common denominators within them.13 Despite the ideological and educational differences among the different thinkers, their responses often resemble one another. I believe that through this approach we will discover that the attempt to draw the contours of a Jewish discourse on the question of the ethical lessons to be learned from the Holocaust can be a fruitful endeavor. When examining the major paths of Jewish ethical confrontation with the Holocaust, one finds a clear distinction between two divergent trends: the particularistic as opposed to the universalistic approach. The particularistic approach characteristically includes a call for an inner-directed rectification of “Jewish” misbehavior both from a religious as well as a nationalistic point of view. In other words, such an approach identifies some concrete flaw purported to have existed in Jewish communal life and then proceeds to interpret the horrors of the Holocaust as a divine clarion call intended to ignite a wholesale re-evaluation of Jewish lifestyle and faith. As opposed to what one might instinctively assume, such a theological standpoint is not limited to the Ultra-Orthodox circles. (I in no way mean to imply, of course, that all Ultra-Orthodox religious thinkers and leaders 13

A large number of works deal with aspects of ethical issues in Jewish philosophy regarding the Holocaust. Yet, these works did not attempt to trace the “Jewish gene” of these responses. See, e.g.: John K. Roth, Ethics during and after the Holocaust (Hampshire-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); David Patterson and John K. Roth, After-Words: Post-Holocaust Struggles with Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Justice (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004).

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relate to the Holocaust in this way.) Somewhat surprisingly, a similar mode of thought was also found within certain nonreligious circles in the immediate aftermath of the war. It was prevalent as well among hard-core Zionist ideologues in the early stages of the war, before the horrific magnitude of the events had been properly appreciated. A thorough analysis of this last claim can be found in Dina Porat’s work.14 To sum up this ambivalent attitude toward the catastrophe, I will cite the words of Francis R. Nicosia:15 “These attitudes included the notion that the Yishuv considered the Jews in Palestine as the only worthy Jews, as the antithesis of Diaspora Jews who were doomed and hardly worth saving. In reality, however, Zionist commitment to the rescue of European Jews after 1942 was based on deep empathy in the Yishuv for the Jews of Europe in their suffering, coupled with a pragmatic realization that, ultimately, there might not be a Jewish state unless the Jews of Europe survived in appreciable numbers.”

There was a similar mode of self-criticism in the Ultra-Orthodox circles, albeit in a counter direction. Here, the catastrophe was understood as a divine punishment resulting from the general trend toward assimilation, secularism, and, above all, Zionism, which had been so widespread in the prewar Jewish communities.16 The main problem with these types of responses, and the reason I do not focus on them hereinafter, is that they contain little more than the writer’s attempt to convince the general public to adopt his or her own ideological worldview. I find that the vast majority of the responses are not derived from the study of the Holocaust as an unprecedented flagitious historic occurrence but as outgrowths and continuations of well-known and established ideological stances that had been preached years before the atrocities began. As such, they cannot be seen as ethical lessons derived 14

Dina Porat, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 15 Francis R. Nicosia, “The Yishuv and the Holocaust,” The Journal of Modern History 64, 3 (1992), pp. 533–540 (Review). This citation is from p. 536. Also see idem, “Ein nützlicher Feind: Zionismus im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, 1933–1939,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 37 (1989), pp. 367–400. 16 The leading figures espousing this position were Rabbis Elchanan Wasserman, Yoel Teitelbaum among others. See: Gershon Greenberg, “Foundations for Orthodox Jewish Theological Response to the Holocaust, 1936–1939,” in Alice L. Eckardt (ed.), Burning Memory: Times of Testing and Reckoning (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993), pp. 71–94; Zvi J. Kaplan, “Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, Zionism, and Hungarian Ultra-Orthodoxy,” Modern Judaism 24, 2 (2004), pp. 165–178.

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from the historic event but must rather be regarded as little more than an ideological pitch in disguise. Therefore, I will now focus on the universalistic responses as these may provide us with effective moral edification as well as with a message that can be appreciated by all of humankind.

IV. Orthodox Ethical Responses Many Jewish Holocaust thinkers, including Emanuel Levinas, Elie Wiesel, and Primo Levi among others, are known for their humanistic ethical calls resulting directly from the horrors they witnessed, first hand. Yet, before turning to some of the better-known ethical responses, I want to begin this section with a discussion of approaches suggested by some less wellknown thinkers. The fact that these responses have remained relatively unknown has to be attributed, I believe, primarily to their authors’ Orthodox identity as well as to the fact that their writings have not been translated from the original Hebrew.17 Despite their relative anonymity, these religious leaders’ ethical responses are morally inspiring, anchored in the traditional religious proof-texts, which thus endows their calls with an aura of pious merit at least in the eyes of their religious disciples.18 Rabbi Shimon Efrati (1908–1988)19 is known as one of the most important response authors on halakhic (religious legal norms) questions that were raised during the Holocaust. This specific genre includes works by Rabbis Tzvi Hirsch Meizel, Ephraim Oshri, and Joseph Tzvi Karlebach as well as by many other European rabbis. The questions dealt with in these works evidence the despair in which Orthodox Jews lived during the Holocaust not only in the struggle to simply survive but also in coming to terms with the impossibility of adhering to the religious norms as regarded eating (kashrut), praying, and marital obligations as well as the observance 17 See Meir Ayali, “Ethischer und religiöser Widerstand im Spiegel der Response Literatur,” Kairos 36–37 (1994–1995), pp. 105–110. 18 For a broader discussion of the responses of some of the thinkers cited here, see Isaac Hershkowitz, “Rabbinic Nazi Camp Survivors and the Call for a Religious Protection of Human Prerogatives,” in Marianne Neerland-Soleim (ed.), Prisoners of War and Forced Labor: Histories of War and Occupation (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), pp. 138–149. 19 Efrati, a rabbi in Bessarabia, was expelled to Siberia during WW II. After being liberated from Russia he returned to Poland and served as a rabbi for displaced refugees. He eventually immigrated to Israel and became an important figure in the Chief Rabbinate.

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of the holidays and the Sabbath.20 They looked for guidance and support as to how they could or should meet these soul-rending challenges. Efrati wrote an ethical preface to his halakhic work,21 in which he derived a unique lesson from the Holocaust:22 “The Five Books of Moses instruct us that our goal in life is not to be led by our evil inclination, inasmuch as human inclination is faulty from youth. The aim and purpose of our Pentateuch is to revolutionize human nature and create a turning point in the world’s behavior […]”

Our Mosaic laws tell us to do “that which is right and good,” and inculcate within us the eternal sentiments of love and fraternity toward all who were created in God’s image. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4)23 […] The world is possible only within God, meaning, the entity that is the world is but a degraded divine revelation, so that in every existing object resides a Godly essence, all the more so in man’s soul. One Hassidic sage explained the verse: “There shall be no strange God within thee” (Ps. 81:10) He shall not be a stranger in the inner realms of the soul.24 “Man’s duty is to raise and elevate himself, and to emulate God’s moral characteristics. […] As He is merciful – so must you be; as He is compassionate – so be you.”25 20

For a comprehensive appraisal of this genre see: Hirsch J. Zimmels, The Echo of the Nazi Holocaust in Rabbinic Literature (New York: KTAV Publication House, 1977); Jonathan I. Helfand, “Halakha and the Holocaust: Historical Perspectives,” in Randolph L. Braham (ed.), Perspectives on the Holocaust (Boston: KluwerNijhoff, 1983), pp. 93–103. Also see: Isaac Hershkowitz, Netivei Halakhah Institute, Holocaust Responsa Project (A Comprehensive Database of Scholarly Responsa Pertaining to the Holocaust) (Jerusalem, 2006); and “Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History,” 15, 3 (2010), pp. 97–99 (review). 21 From the Valley of Slaughter (Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 10–16. 22 Ibid., pp. 14–15. 23 Efrati did not wish to establish a utilitarian ethical system that strives to create a functional society. Rather, he believed that the Pentateuch’s primary social goal is that of utilizing the Jewish community to spearhead a campaign designed to spread and transmit a moral message of goodwill to the rest of humankind. Not all Jewish ethicists agree with this educational aim; see, i.e. Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed 3:27 for a more modest vision of the ethical demands in the Torah. 24 See Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, Ma’or ‘Einayim (Slavita, 1808), 78a-b. 25 This is an alternative method of practicing the aforementioned religious precept of “Imitatio Dei.”

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Efrati wrote of a religious decree to honor and respect all of humankind, regardless of ethnicity or of any other social separation among people. Asserting a panentheistic outlook much inspired by Hassidic sources that traditionally emphasized God’s inherent presence in the world and, especially, in one’s soul, he calls for a lifestyle with respect for all because wherever man looks, Godliness is present, residing within other people. One might think that Efrati’s use of a theological basis on which to ground his demand for a moral code of human conduct is merely a rhetorical tool. In line with such conjecture, one could claim that his true goal was to establish a general regard for the value and respect of human dignity. Although I cannot disregard such a possibility, I believe his use of the Hassidic notion of God as a potential “stranger” within the individual’s psyche is an authentic one.26 He sincerely believes that only religious piety can grant man the power to overcome his evil inclinations. Rabbi Yissakhar Shlomo Teichtal (1885–1945), a rabbi in Piestany, Slovakia who died in Auschwitz, treads along a similar path but without employing any mystical parlance. He asserts that the core problem of Western morality is its powerlessness in the face of the imperfections of human nature. Kantian naiveté led to the formulation of pure and sublime yet inefficient moral norms, which were logically inspiring but abstract and unrealistic. According to Teichtal, these categories merely serve as ornaments for decorating the pages of philosophical works, entirely devoid of any practical value. Moreover, he contends that only a religious moral code, a code emanating from a transcendent entity, offers the hope of truly influencing human behavior.27 Both Efrati and Teichtal believed that the secular bases of moral interpersonal relations had proved utterly lacking, to say the least, in any attempt to create a human community based on the notion of the preservation of moral prerogatives. A divine element must be present in order to ensure the maintenance of long-term moral human relationships. According to Efrati, God is present within every human being, and it is this divine spark within man that must be preserved and safeguarded. Teichtal, on the other hand, had a more conservative view in which God is portrayed as the divine master of human moral behavior. Both men, however, believed that only God’s presence and the imprint of that presence in human consciousness can restrain human behavior.

26

See Tzipi Kaufmann, “‘Ke’oved Le’uvda Zu:’ A Strange God and Idolatry in Hassidic Thought,” Akdamot 19 (2007), pp. 87–104 (Hebrew). 27 Yissakhar Shlomo Teichtal, Refined Faith in the Holocaust Furnace, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 93–106.

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Seen in the light of Teichtal’s and Efrati’s meditations, Berkovits presented a remarkable ethical response. In absolute contrast to Teichtal he calls upon humankind to liberate itself from the dependency on God:28 “Man can be frightened; but he cannot be bludgeoned into goodness. If God did not respect man’s freedom to choose his course in personal responsibility, not only would the moral good and evil be abolished from the earth, but man himself would go with them. For freedom and responsibility are of the very essence of man. Without them man is not human. If there is to be man, he must be allowed to make his choices in freedom. If he has such freedom, he will use it. Using it, he will often use it wrongly.”

Not only does Berkovits reject the call for the Almighty to frighten humankind and to restrain men and women from doing evil, he declares that in God’s eyes freedom is the essence of human life in the world. God, he wrote, was coerced into allowing man to do evil in order to justify the world’s autonomous state. Without such permission, the world would become valueless, with the theological experiment of creating a world of good will revealed as doomed to fail. Hence, the source of ethical behavior cannot originate from a divine decree but, rather, should be found in human nature and tendency. Yet, this is not Kant’s imperative: Berkovits still believes that God has a part in human normative behavior:29 “If man is not to perish at the hand of man, if the ultimate destiny of man is not to be left to the chance that man will never make the fatal decision, God must not withdraw His providence from His creation. He must be present in history […] He is present without being indubitably manifest. He is absent without being hopelessly inaccessible.”

In other words, God plays a role especially in human aspirations for good and salvation. Man should leave room for divine providence; he must feel as if he is watched and monitored even though there is no actual deterrent to his actions. Despite the fact that they differed on substantial points, all three thinkers made room for a divine entity in the moral code of life. They all understood that humanity needed help in order to incorporate an appropriate ethical system for all mankind. Indeed, they wrote of universal values, yet, it is clear that all three called for a Jewish re-thinking: their writings were addressed to Jews, and they used Jewish terminology, so I believe that 28 29

Faith after the Holocaust, p. 89. Ibid.

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their work can be considered “Jewish ethical responses,” colored by the uniqueness of Orthodoxy, which attributes a crucial role to God as the starting point. In the following pages I will attempt a more difficult task: I will seek to find a Jewish common denominator among Jewish thinkers who did not speak and write in an Orthodox context.30

V. Primo Levi and the Call for God as a Moral Source In this section, I will relate to several thinkers in parallel in order to trace the “Jewish gene” of their moral lessons. I decided not to focus on prominent Jewish thinkers such as Elie Wiesel, Emil Fackenheim, and Emanuel Levinas but, rather, to deal with some innovative conclusions from less well-known personalities which, I believe, complement the meditations of those well-studied thinkers. However, as an exception, I am relating here to Primo Levi, the famous writer and intellectual, because the moral aspects of his thought regarding the Holocaust that I wish to emphasize are rarely studied. Immediately after the Holocaust, Levi wrote a poem called “Shem’a.”31 The Shem’a, considered the most important Jewish prayer, which is recited at least twice a day should be the focus of intellectual efforts to strengthen the notion of monotheism. While reciting the Shem’a, one should articulate one’s understanding of the perfect dominion of God on every spatialtemporal level and, of course, specifically, in one’s own soul. It is this basic notion known to every Jew who has been granted even the most elementary religious education that Levi was challenging when he penned this ambiguous poem, which is described by Rowland as one that “comprises a bitterly ironic parody:”32 “You who live secure In your warm houses Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces: 30

I wish not to label any of these thinkers, but only to introduce them in their own contexts: some were religious thinkers, i.e., concerned with religious ideas, and some were non-religious thinkers, i.e., concerned with universal, secular ideas. 31 On Levi’s poem, see Anthony C. Rowland, “Poetry as Testimony: Primo Levi’s ‘Collected Poems,’” Textual Practice 22, 3 (2008), pp. 487–505. Rowland defines Shem’a as a meta-testimony, in which Levi calls for legitimizing the survivor’s voice as a critic of human evaluation of the Holocaust. 32 Primo Levi, Collected Poems, trans. Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann (London: Faber, 1988), p. 9. Also see: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shema/

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Consider whether this is a man, Who labors in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for a crust of bread Who dies at a yes or a no. Consider whether this is a woman, Without hair or name With no more strength to remember Eyes empty and womb cold As a frog in winter. Consider that this has been: I commend these words to you. Engrave them on your hearts When you are in your house, when you walk on your way, When you go to bed, when you rise. Repeat them to your children. Or may your house crumble, Disease render you powerless, Your offspring avert their faces from you.”

Levi’s unrestrained rage should not divert us from the dissonance between the poem’s title and its content. The title has a religious implication, especially when it appears in a foreign language (as the word shem’a is the imperative form of the Hebrew word “hear”; when given in Hebrew, it might have a neutral meaning as well, even though that is not likely) whereas the poem itself does not have a religious motif.33 Moreover, in its original context, the Shem’a is a divine call for mankind to hear and proclaim God’s voice and being whereas the shem’a in Levi’s poem is a call among humans. A radical theological interpretation of the poem as a call for God’s awareness and evaluation of a dire situation that developed under His providence might also be legitimate. In that case, “the curse on the head” of the one who did not prevent it is, in fact, a defiance targeted at God. This poem articulates the early stages of Levi’s evolving ethical outlook, which was further developed in his masterpiece, If This Is a Man.34 Levi called for a human obligation to listen to and identify the essence of hu33 On Levi’s (non-)religious character and influence see: Michael Rothberg and Jonathan Druker, “A Secular Alternative: Primo Levi’s Place in American Holocaust Discourse,” Shofar 28, 1 (2009), pp. 104–126. Their paper compares the Holocaust ethos inspired by Levi to Elie Wiesel as the two major models of interpreting the Holocaust in America: a secular versus a sanctified model. 34 Levi, If This Is a Man (New York: Orion Press, 1959). The manuscript was completed in 1946.

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manity. Man is human not only in his individual vitality and his involvement in community life but also in his agony, loneliness, and despair. Perhaps the true man would be the man who has no normal life, who is shorn of his protective covering, and remains naked in a state of simple humanness. He should be the subject of a moral call; he should be called man. Yet, is this really a dialogue with God? Does Levi “need” God in this equation, or is God the means by which Levi searches for answers to: What is humanity? and to: What should be humanity’s moral attitude toward the other who is weird and vile? It seems that in his attempt to define the essence of humanity, Levi comes to the source of life in order to evaluate it at its final and most insignificant moments. The moral call here (and the sanctions that Levi wishes to impose on those who disregard that call) is not for a change in behavior or a reassessment of social codes but rather for an attitude of honor and dignity, for an intrinsic appreciation of human life.

VI. Ignaz Maybaum’s Early Holocaust Meditations Ignaz Maybaum was one of the most well-known and controversial Jewish thinkers in the context of the Holocaust.35 Born in Vienna and raised in Germany, he received his rabbinical ordination from Berlin’s Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1926.36 He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Marburg and held pulpits in Bingen, Frankfurt an der Oder and, eventually, in Berlin. In the wake of the Kristallnacht and the Nazi persecutions against prominent lay and spiritual Jewish leaders, he and his family immigrated to Great Britain, where he served as a rabbi in London and taught at the re-established Leo Baeck Institute. Maybaum is particularly well known for suggesting the concept of the Akedah (The Binding of Isaac) as a pivotal element in the Jewish response to the Holocaust. I am not in any way arguing with this association, but I 35

For contemplative biographical notes on Maybaum, see the recently published work of Friedrich Lotter, Rabbiner Ignaz Maybaum – Leben und Lehre (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2010), pp. 13–16. Also see Alisa Jaffa, “Ignaz Maybaum: Memories of My Father,” in Nicholas de Lange (ed.), Ignaz Maybaum: A Reader (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), pp. ix–xv. For a vivid description of Maybaum’s contribution to the Leo Baeck College after the war, see Hillel Avidan, “My Student Years at Leo Baeck College,” European Judaism 39, 1 (2006), p. 50. 36 On the Hochschule and its mission, see Edward Ullendorff, “The Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums: Marginalia, Personalities, Reminiscences,” in Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt (ed.), Jewish Education and Learning (Chur/Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 195–202.

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do contend that it was his final assessment of the Holocaust that brought Maybaum to this conclusion, rather than intuitive reasoning. As early as in February 1941 Maybaum published a book entitled Man and Catastrophe,37 in which he recorded some of his initial responses to the Kristallnacht and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. At this point, not long after the outbreak of World War II, he also thought it incumbent upon himself to introduce his audiences in the synagogues as well as Christian readers to homilies designed to calm their anxious souls and to suggest moral and spiritual goals. As implied in the title, Man and Catastrophe deals with the existential problem of calamity. Yet, most of the book does not confront existential matters but, rather, emphasizes the collectivity of Judaism and the meaning of being a Jew in a liberal Christian world. Firm in his belief that Judaism is a universal mission, Maybaum does not include any mystical or even particularistic concepts in his Jewish outlook. He does, however, deal with the basic Jewish concepts of spirituality, priesthood, suffering, and responsibility. He gives expression to true altruism when he notes the following:38 “People today speak of it as a crusade. We do so. And it is right that we should do so. For since Revelation is the possession of all and people either accept Revelation or they are pagans, so every war must be more than a struggle for our own selfish interests […] if they wage war they may wage it, may lift up their swords against others, only if their war is a holy war […] To use the word ‘good‘ as synonymous with ‘my own interests‘ is the pagan point of view which prevails today in Germany […] Good is what is just, and also what is true.”

This deontological stance creates a distinction between Nazi utilitarianism and Jewish morality (or perhaps monotheism would be a better term). Moreover, this call for a war against preserving a society’s interests when those interests trample on innocent people is, in fact, a call for an inner war within each individual. Every human being, even the righteous and the pure, sometimes wishes to promote some particular interest such as his or her prosperity and welfare many times without considering the other. This is an imperfect stance in Maybaum's view but a very common one. Nazism, according to Maybaum, is an extreme example of this condition, and it led to a time that saw the consequences of unrestrained human evil inclinations. But what are the means by which such a profound message can 37 38

Man and Catastrophe (London: Allenson & Co., 1941). Ibid., pp. 144–145.

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be advanced to reach and lodge in the public’ soul? Following his great master, Franz Rosenzweig, Maybaum asserts: “What is the Jew? […] the Jew is the wandering priest […] we are aliens in our priestly destiny […] we can say to the world. And behold, holiness visible to all eyes.”39

It is the Jew, each and every Jew, who should move from place to place and educate his society to adopt an altruistic way of life. As opposed to all of the thinkers I have surveyed so far, Maybaum imposes a highly demanding mission on the individual Jew. He is the only one among the writers that I have discussed here who specified the “Jewish mission” of morality in the world as a unique and distinctive form of moral undertaking as a transitive as well as an intransitive action.

VII. Conclusions I have discussed several major Jewish ethical responses to the Holocaust and attempted to trace their shared foundational components. To do so, I followed two major trends in the various responses, the first a particularistic one and the second a universalistic one. The particularistic trend calls for an inner rectification of misdeeds from both a religious and a nationalistic point of view. As I noted earlier, my focus is on the universalistic trend which may provide effective moral edification regarding humankind. Within the universalistic trend we can find yet another division. Some of the universalistic thinkers take a stand that calls for an autonomic moral code, somewhat based on the Kantian imperative. They believe that the horrors of the Holocaust exemplify the fate of humans who did not listen to their inner voice, and that the slaughtered victims call upon us to reinforce the human code of respect for the other and the responsibility for their well-being. As in Kant’s meditations, yet with a different emphasis on the infrastructure of human morality, they believe that moral behavior is natural to humans and that the unique mission of the Jewish nation (another common denominator of many Jewish thinkers) is to encourage adherence to these concepts within society. This group includes Primo Levi and Emmanuel Levinas, among others. The second division of the universalistic trend is fascinating because of its call for a change in Jewish/non-Jewish relationships on both a historical and a moral account. This stand is motivated principally by religious passion, an existential need to rectify the human misdeeds that caused such an 39

Ibid., pp. 63–65.

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appalling desecration of God’s name and image (in Hebrew: Hillul HaShem, one of the most serious religious faults). The moral call for a change in human behavior comes from and goes to a universal sphere for which, owing to the eternal covenant between Israel and God, Jewry is responsible. The covenant does not grant its two sides with special rights, only with extra responsibility for humankind. Fackenheim’s critique on Kant’s Moral Imperative, for example, derives its foundation from the fundamental recognition of God’s voice commanding humanity “Thou shalt not murder!” The priestly status, to use the words of Rosenzweig’s pupil Maybaum, is to dictate a lifestyle of liability on the world’s moral level. It is not a Jewish interest but rather a Jewish decree. The lesson is an internal one: Judaism must take its place as the beacon of humankind, and the guardian of all who are oppressed. This latter outlook is shared by reform, Orthodox, and conservative thinkers, as well as by non-religiously identified Jewish intellectuals. Despite the fact that these two factions of the universalistic trend set and emphasize different ethical missions and goals, they have something unique in common: a moral restlessness. All of these prominent thinkers who come from very different backgrounds and cultural milieus contend that the mending of the world lies on their shoulders. Notwithstanding the problematic aspects of speaking of a “Jewish” ethical response to the Holocaust, one can speak of Jews feeling driven by the Holocaust toward actions to restore the world’s moral image. This drive is indeed common to almost every post-Holocaust Jewish thinker, and its interpretation is derived from the spiritual and moral stature of each and every one of them.

ON THE MORAL PROFILE OF PUBLIC HISTORY: GERMAN TELEVISION, NAZI PERPETRATORS, AND THE EVOLUTION OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY STEWART ANDERSON AND WULF KANSTEINER

Holocaust memory is a deeply moralistic discourse. Stories about the “Final Solution” seek to convey moral lessons to their audiences, and the proper representation, packaging, and teaching of the Holocaust have always been debated in moral terms. The moral charge of Holocaust memory becomes particularly obvious when existing memorial practices are criticized and recalibrated according to changing moral and political priorities. In spring 2012, Dana Giesecke and Harald Welzer pursued just this kind of recalibration when they argued that German Holocaust education, as it is carried out in schools, the media, and public memorial sites, forces young people to adopt a politically correct memorial habitus. In their opinion, the institutions of public history thus undercut the teaching of democratic values and nonconformist behavior that are presumably the overriding objective of all Holocaust education. Giesecke and Welzer advocate divesting historical education from explicit moral instructions and broadening the contents of our curricula and media practices. They hope to educate young generations about the terror as well as “the moments of happiness, success, and civilisatory progress” that are also part of human history.1 The Giesecke/Welzer intervention, echoed by a number of their peers,2 is a provocative exercise 1

Dana Giesecke/Harald Welzer, Das Menschenmögliche: Zur Renovierung der deutschen Erinnerungskultur (Hamburg: Körber, 2012), p. 25; see also Welzer, “Vom Zeit zum Zukunftszeugen: Vorschläge zur Modernisierung der Erinnerungskultur,” in Martin Sabrow/Norbert Frei (eds.), Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), pp. 33-48. 2 Volkhard Knigge, “Zur Zukunft der Erinnerung,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 60/25-26 (2010), 10-16; Ulrike Jureit, Gefühlte Opfer: Illusionen der Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2010); Martin Sabrow,

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in applied ethics. They are not favoring replacing existing value systems; in their perception, current teaching practices are out of sync with longheld convictions and objectives. Such provocations are a routine element of democratic historical cultures -- rendered more intriguing in this case since the criticism appears to reflect the formation of a post-1968 political generation whose members seek to retool the historical culture of their predecessors.3 Any attempt to escape the gravitational pull of the Holocaust paradigm and cast history, including 20th century German history, in a more positive light constitutes a considerable political risk – as a historiographical debate from the 1980s nicely illustrates. In 1986, Rainer Zitelmann, a member of the Welzer generation but operating from a very different political vantage point and in a different ethical context, pursued a re-emplotment of Naziera economic and social policies as value-neutral catalysts in the march towards modernization in Germany. He was promptly denounced by many historians.4 In one review, the historian Peter Longerich contended that Zitelmann’s conclusions were not only empirically unsound (because he attributed intention and inner conviction to Hitler’s ramblings about modernity when other evidence suggests that Hitler’s mention of modernization was primarily a rhetorical and tactical ploy), but also morally questionable. Longerich argued that “any reconstruction of Hitler’s ‘sociological’ worldview which did not pay attention to his perception of the “Jewish Question” would necessarily paint a flawed picture.”5 Other academic readers similarly demanded recognition that the Holocaust cast a shadow over German modernization both before and after the war. At no point did the critics offer explicit ethical arguments in support of this position. Zitelmann was taken to task for not recognizing Hitler’s evil schemes and the suffering of Holocaust victims and depriving uninitiated readers of the moral truth. That ethical position appeared self-evident within the “Welche Erinnerung, wessen Geschichte?: Das neue Interesse an der Vergangenheit,” in Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft (ed.), kultur.macht.geschichte: Kulturpolitik und kulturelles Gedächtnis (Essen: Klartext, 2010), pp. 36-46. 3 Birgit Schwelling, “Memory Fatigue: Some Reflections on the Current Debate on Memory Practice and Memory Studies in Germany,” public lecture at the conference “The Future of Memory,” Konstanz, Germany, 7 May 2012. 4 Rainer Zitelmann, “Nationalsozialismus und Moderne: Eine Zwischenbilanz,” in W. Süß, ed., Übergänge: Zeitgeschichte zwischen Utopie und Machbarkeit (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1989), 195-223; Zitelmann, Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs, 3rd rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990). 5 Peter Longerich, “Adolf Hitler – ein Revolutionär?,” Die Zeit, October 2, 1987, pp. 39-40. (“eine Rekonstruktion der ‘soziologischen’ Vorstellungen Hitlers, ohne Einbeziehung der ‘Judenfrage,’ ergibt zwangsläufig ein schiefes Bild”)

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context of the Holocaust paradigm but it marked a decisive departure from the moral universe of historical scholarship during previous decades when academics had pursued all kinds of research projects about the rise and fall of the Nazi regime without paying much attention to its genocidal policies.6 The Zitelmann case raises interesting didactic and moral questions about Gieseke’s and Welzer’s initiative, questions reminiscent of the discussion about the historicization of National Socialism. One wonders what balance of positive and negative history Gieseke and Welzer have in mind and how many and what kind of positive elements they would like to integrate into their teachings of Nazi history. The moral dimension of Holocaust memory has clearly varied over time both in terms of its intensity and in terms of the kind of moral arguments that different artifacts of Holocaust memory present. Holocaust stories reflect a wide range of values, notions of historical justice, and moral truths. In light of that fairly self-evident observation it is somewhat puzzling that a hyper-self-reflective field such as Holocaust studies lacks a tradition of meta-ethical inquiry.7 Ethics and the Holocaust have attracted considerable scholarly attention since at least the 1990s. But most publications focus on the impact of the Holocaust on ethical thinking in continental philosophy or highlight the moral shortcomings of specific objects of Holocaust memory.8 The texts do not provide a comprehensive critical analysis of the history and structure of the moralistic world of Holocaust remembrance. As a result, we do not know how Holocaust morality has changed over the years, what moral strategies have been deployed particularly frequently and which types of interventions have been embraced by their respective audiences. 6

For the historiographical context and an analysis of the debate see Wulf Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory. History, Television, and Politics after Auschwit (Athens/Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006), pp. 100-104. 7 The Encyclopedia of Ethics defines metaethics, also called second-order ethics as “the philosophical study of the nature, justification, relationality, truth-conditions, and status of moral codes, standards, judgments, and principles, abstracting from their specific content,” Lawrence Becker/Charlotte Becker (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics (Routledge, London, 2001), p. 1079; see also John Roth (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, p. 622; and esp. Marcus Düwell/Christoph Hübenthal/ Micha Werner (eds.), Handbuch Ethik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2011), pp. 25-35. 8 For recent examples see Jennifer Geddes/John Roth/Jules Simon (eds.), The Double Binds of Ethics after the Holocaust: Salvaging the Fragments (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2009); Berel Lang, Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence (Waltham/MA: Brandeis UP, 2009); and Dorota Glowacka, Disappearing Traces: Holocaust Testimonials, Ethics, and Aesthetics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012).

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Holocaust memory has become a moral imperative since the 1970s. But simply considering the Holocaust a mandatory lesson in German history ignores at least two potential meta-ethical problems. First, participants in a conversation may not share the same ethical codes and consequently produce and perceive memory texts with very different objectives in mind. Thus, it seems vital to examine the ethical foundations of any particular memory product as a first step to assessing its moral usefulness. Second, Holocaust representations differ from one another not only in terms of ethical assumptions, but also in terms of form. Moral interventions, much the same as any other discursive gestures, differ in their structure, approach, and purpose. We take our conceptual cues from the discipline of ethics, i.e., the systematic philosophical study of human morality, which encompasses general reflections about the nature of human goodness and human justice, inquiries into the nature and operative procedures of existing and desirable normative systems, and reaches all the way into the variegated field of applied ethics. As non-experts, we take the liberty of suggesting four heuristic analytical categories that should help us define a given intervention’s primary point of ethical concern. In general terms, four types of moral interventions seem the most relevant ones for the topic at hand. We differentiate between primarily ontologically, ethically, normatively, and applied-ethically oriented moral statements.9 Ontological strategies for depicting morality center, as the term suggests, on the question of being. An ontological moral lesson reveals a moral truth that constitutes a considerable moral challenge.10 For example, when Sophocles’ Oedipus discovers that he has killed his father and that his wife is really his mother, the moral decisions and choices he makes immediately take on a very different character. He is no longer a king and honorable warrior, but a murderous son and an incestuous husband. For the intended audience of a Holocaust production, then, an ontological intervention will seek to inform viewers about the gravity and

9

For these four types of moral interventions see Stewart Anderson, Big Lessons from the Small Screen: Television Fiction, Media Consensus, and the Reinvention of Morality in East and West Germany, 1956-1970 (PhD Diss., Binghamton University, 2011), pp. 31-37. 10 The notion of moral ontology owes a heavy debt to Martin Heidegger and his critic David Webb, who both understood the term as a commonly assumed or shared set of assumptions about human nature. See Webb, Heidegger, Ethics and the Practive of Ontology (New York: Continuum, 2009).

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immensity of the event, for instance by revealing the moral essence of the perpetrators’ actions.11 Programs pitched on an ethical level focus on the central questions of moral self-reflectivity, i.e., how to lead a good life and attain justice, by giving principled answers to clearly circumscribed moral dilemmas.12 A relatively pure example of an ethical intervention is Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” While the ant gathers food all summer, the grasshopper feasts on what it finds in the field, never storing anything for the winter. When winter finally comes, the ant survives and the grasshopper perishes. The simple question here, to work or to play?, finds a definite answer: work. In terms of memory and television, ethical interventions tell viewers what guidelines should be followed in the tasks of working through the Nazi past and defining one’s own relationship to that past. Ethical interventions may, for instance, identify the principles best applied in the process of remembering the crimes and punishing the perpetrators. Normative interventions aim to prescribe (or proscribe) types of behavior and actions in concrete terms.13 More than the other categories, normative moral lessons involve the visualization of a complex character or situation, showing viewers how to implement ontological insights or ethi11

Throughout the 20th century, scholars have argued a great deal about the existence of ethical truths. For many years most experts assumed that existing epistemological protocols do not permit us to arrive at ethical truths that exist independently of a given observer’s point of view and standards of judgment. Since the late 20th century and not coincidentally after the demise of post-structuralism and the rise of Holocaust consciousness, ontological skepticism has given way to ontological curiosity about context-independently valid moral judgments, see Marcus Düwell/Christoph Hübenthal/Micha Werner (eds.), Handbuch Ethik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2011), pp. 31-33. 12 Jonathan Glover has argued that ethics is the complex phenomena of good and evil, not a set of strictly philosophical arguments and principles. Our understanding of “ethical” in this chapter proceeds from this point. Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), p. 11; for a succinct definition see also Otfried Höffe (ed.), Lexikon der Ethik (Munich: Beck, 2008), p. 71-72. 13 This notion of normative morality accords with David Copp’s, who argues that they are based on an intricate understanding of standards of judgment. See Copp, Morality, Normativity, and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 9. Our category of normative statements is derived from the conventional differentiation between normative and descriptive ethics. While the latter seeks to describe existing moral systems or practices from an external and ideally neutral point of view, the former engages in moral judgments in pursuit of social justice and morally sound ways of living, see Düwell/Hübenthal/Werner, Handbuch Ethik, p. 25; Roth, International Encyclopedia of Ethics, p. 621.

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cal premises. A classic example of this is Shakespeare’s character Hamlet. Having been confronted with ontological U-turns (he learns from his father’s ghost that his uncle murdered his father) and soul-penetrating ethical questions (should Hamlet seek revenge for this treachery? Should he kill himself? Should he run away?), the audience watches his ultimate reaction and is implicitly encouraged to do the same in similar situations: he confronts and duels with his uncle. In the realm of Holocaust memory, the most applicable role models are: the German rescuer, who encourages viewers to protect victims of racism, poverty, sexism, or any number of injustices or hardships; the self-flagellant, but largely innocent, German bystander, who likewise encourages viewers to do more to help their fellows; and the negative role model, often a concentration camp guard or Nazi official, who embodies immoral selfish, racist, or conformist behavior and attitudes. Normative interventions feature concrete emotional entry points, offering viewers for instance a chance to engage with moral dilemmas on the basis of a strong sense of empathy for the victims of the Holocaust. The final category, applied ethical interventions, plays an important quantitative role in public history and differs only in degrees from normative interventions. Applied ethical statements focus on the real or imagined outcomes of specific discursive interventions. In an effort to reduce moral complexity, the texts in question pay little attention to the origins and theoretical foundations of their moral positions or the examination of abstract questions of what constitutes right and wrong as distinct from the representation of a specific moral dilemma.14 Thus, for example, the author of a Holocaust memory play in which Catholic nuns rescue Jewish children from deportation hopes that the audience focuses its attention on the nuns’ specific, noble actions and not on what the play omits: the fate of the childrens´ parents. Only a very specific moral decision is scrutinized and stripped of its context, and the result, a valorization of the nuns’ actions, says little about how to develop a basis for moral judgment generally. As the last two categories illustrate, our heuristic model is best imagined as a spectrum of interdependent and overlapping gestures of moral self-reflection, reaching from far-flung abstract interventions all the way to 14 Applied ethics did not play an important role in philosophical studies until the 1960s but has since turned into a philosophical growth industry spawning off important new subdisciplines such as bioethics. Considered from this perspective, public Holocaust history is part of a pervasive moralization of a number of professional and public settings of which television has perhaps the greatest cultural reach, on applied ethics see Düwell/Hübenthal/Werner, Handbuch Ethik, pp. 243247; and Becker/Becker, Encyclopedia of Ethics, pp. 80-83.

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very concrete, narrowly conceived moral judgments. As complex cultural artifacts, TV programs feature components of all four different categories, although they are generally considered particularly suitable for the delivery of normative and applied ethical lessons. We will explore this spectrum by examining the types of moral arguments forwarded by ZDF television programs about the Holocaust between the mid-1960s and the present. We argue that televisual representations of the Holocaust, particularly because they assume moral dimensions so readily, are ripe for this type of formal analysis and that such a move will be useful in explaining motives and trends, as well as in expressing concerns about the direction of Holocaust memory production.

I. Invisible Nazis In the 1960s and early 1970s, during the first decade of ZDF broadcasting, the station’s editorial staff had a tough time living up to the specific moral challenge of representing the perpetrators of the “Final Solution.” At that point in time, generations whose members were adults during the Third Reich were still running the show and representing a large share of the audience (including, invariably, the people in control of the dial). As a result, the SS criminals and their many German and Eastern European collaborators who had committed the genocide of European Jewry rarely appeared in the ZDF coverage of Nazi history. The record is more mixed on the memory front. When ZDF journalists and directors reported on contemporary attempts to come to terms with the Nazi past, they focused on legal history and individual attempts at Vergangenheitsbewältigung without depicting the crimes in any detail. Nevertheless, a few select broadcasts in the memory category provided self-critical and morally ambitious representations of the perpetrators and their crimes and thus differed markedly from the vast majority of strictly historical programs. In 1967 and 1970 respectively, ZDF broadcast two primetime TV plays demonstrating vividly that West German society had never come to terms with the challenge of having so many Nazi perpetrators in its midst. Death of a Fellow Citizen by Jürgen Gütt dealt with the panicky reactions of friends, relatives, and political allies of an industrial tycoon who reveals in his will that he is a wanted war criminal and insists on being buried under his real name.15 Confession by Oliver Storz focuses on a priest who is deeply troubled by the confidential, anonymous confession of a former

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Der Tod eines Mitbürgers, 8 March 1967.

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member of an Einsatzgruppe who refuses to give himself up.16 Both plays ran head to head against very popular programs on ARD and therefore received poor ratings, although Confession was at least a critical success.17 More importantly, however, both TV plays, while dedicated to the cause of historical education, never visualized the “war crimes” nor, for that matter, the criminals themselves. The well-intended interventions supported the problematic assumption that West German society had no choice in the matter and needed to wait for the invisible Nazi ghosts to come out of the woodwork on their own volition. Lacking a concrete blueprint to guide viewers’ actions and responses, these early dramas proved unable to generate effective ethical and normative lessons. Viewers were not subjected to clear moral instructions in the tradition of Aesop’s fable; nor did they see credible, Hamlet-like role models providing concrete behavioral advice about finding and confronting the hidden Nazis among them. Instead, Gütt and Storz highlighted their own moral helplessness with disarming honesty. In this way they raised as yet unfocused but disturbing questions regarding the moral challenge of the Nazi past in 1960s Germany. Death of a Fellow Citizen and Confession were not seminal moments in the process of coming to terms with the past. Instead, they represent the kind of ontological rumblings that permeated West German historical culture 20 years after the war and laid the foundation for the self-critical memories of future decades. The ambiguous aesthetic choices in the realm of TV fiction correspond to belated, often timid attempts of visualizing the perpetrators of the “Final Solution” in non-fiction programs. The features and documentaries in question are part of the coverage on the attempts by West German courts to punish Nazi perpetrators, and most were marginal television events. In the end, for the years from 1963 to 1991, we are left with a handful of nonfiction programs which attained average ratings of merely 10% of television households, comprised each less than 50 minutes of air time, and, with two exceptions, were broadcast during off-primetime hours. 217 minutes in 28 years! The first noteworthy production entitled The Last Stop was aired in 1964 on the occasion of the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt.18 Director Thomas Gnielka summarized the events in Auschwitz relying on photographs and excerpts from a Polish documentary by Maria 16

Die Beichte, 11 November 1970. See also Der Fussgänger, 7 August 1988. Both TV plays were watched by 16% of TV households, for a representative review of Die Beichte see Ulrike Piper, “Die Beichte,” Vorwärts, 19 November 1970. 18 Die letzte Station: Eine Dokumentation zum Auschwitz-Prozess, 11 January 1964. 17

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Kwiatkowska. In addition, Gnielka offered a short synopsis of the lives of six of the defendants, telling viewers about their behavior in Auschwitz and their unremarkable postwar careers. After 12 years of silence, ZDF broadcast a first truly remarkable perpetrator documentary entitled Dr. W.: An SS physician in Auschwitz.19 Dutch director Rolf Orthel assembled a complex picture of Eduard Wirth on the basis of extensive interviews with friends and relatives. Wirth had served in Auschwitz for several years, participated regularly in selections, but had occasionally also helped prisoners. He committed suicide in 1945. Dr. W. is an excellent example for the early pensive engagement with the legacy of the “Final Solution” which presents Auschwitz as a moral enigma and refrains from espousing ontological truths or ethical-normative certainties. The documentary was part of a modest increase of Holocaust coverage that was produced by ZDF and ARD a few years before news about the NBC mini-series Holocaust crossed the Atlantic. This coverage laid the foundation for the remarkable reception of Holocaust and later turned into a wave of TV stories about the victims and survivors of the “Final Solution.” The invention of the Holocaust paradigm represents an important turning point in the historical culture of the West, among other reasons because survivors finally received the public recognition they deserved. In Germany, however, the special attention paid to the survivors of the “Final Solution” quickly turned into yet another factor deflecting attention from the perpetrators. On several occasions, survivors participated in this pact of silence. Some were simply not able to talk about their tormentors. Others were appreciative of the educational efforts of their mostly younger German interviewers and conscious of the political difficulties which they might face at home. Consequently, with polite reserve, they refrained from what could be perceived as inflammatory statements and failed to volunteer information about the names and specific crimes of the Germans who had caused them so much pain. Consider, for example, the truly exceptional and path-breaking documentary Mendel Schainfeld’s Second Trip to Germany by Hans-Dieter Grabe which ZDF broadcast in 1972.20 Schainfeld and Grabe talk at length about Schainfeld’s family background, his experiences in ghettos and camps, and his continued physical and psychological suffering. Whenever the talk turns to perpetrators they use the passive voice and generic phrases for the “bad people whose names I prefer not to mention” (5:10). The earlier dramas and documentaries lacked a precise ethical and normative profile but kept insisting, for 19 20

Dr. W.: Ein SS-Arzt in Auschwitz, 12 September 1976. Mendel Schainfelds zweite Reise nach Deutschland, 13 March 1972

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instance by taking a more or less probing look at the average Nazi perpetrators, that the “Final Solution” constituted an essential moral challenge for German society. With survivor dramas like Mendel Schainfeld, the Holocaust coverage assumed a clear moral focus. Now television highlighted the ontological centrality of the Holocaust for the history of the 20th century and provided implicit or explicit ethical guidelines concerning German responsibility for the wellbeing of said survivors. But as one moral element of the Holocaust came into focus, another retreated further into the background. As far as the perpetrators are concerned, Schainfeld’s suffering barely registers as an ethical model because the Nazis remain nameless and faceless; even the grasshopper from Aesop’s fable seems to have more depth of character. With precision and restraint Grabe presents Schainfeld as a gracious victim who deserves our empathy and may serve as an excellent vehicle of historical education. But the program fails to convey a similar sense of normative urgency regarding the fate of the perpetrators. Despite this important qualification, the early 1980s – i.e, the period after the invention of the Holocaust paradigm and before the commercialization of German television and the onset of Knopp TV – represent the most self-reflective and self-critical era of German history TV. A number of noteworthy perpetrator documentaries were broadcast during those years, including the subtle My Grandfather: KZ-Guard Konrad Keller.21 Director Paul Karalus accompanied the young journalist Kurt Kister during his attempts to research the life of his grandfather who was a guard in Dachau and also a much-loved family patriarch. As Gnielka and Orthel before them, Karalus and Kister put the perpetrator front and center, visually as well as discursively, and explored the disconcerting concurrence of extreme brutality and everyday kindness that characterized the lives of so many NS perpetrators and never seemed to have caused them much discomfort during or after the war. But the strained self-reflectivity of the programs often turned them into moral liabilities. The documentaries and features, few as they were, are best characterized as self-involved and selfsufficient contemplations of the complex enigma of the Nazi perpetrators. The programs urge viewers to contemplate German innocence lost but otherwise cast their audiences into a passive ethical position; they are sedate, elegiac exercises in mourning, not forceful ontological statements or effective calls for normative or applied-ethical memory activism – and that despite the fact that the filmmakers celebrate themselves and their subjects as memory trailblazers. 21

Mein Grossvater: KZ-Aufseher Konrad Keller, 25 July 1982.

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Apparently, it took exceptionally favorable conditions and a lot of determination to land an NS perpetrator documentary in ZDF prime time. Jürgen Meyer accomplished that feat in 1977 with his devastating report about the Majdanek trial, one of the longest NS trials in West German history.22 Meyer presents a few of the defendants and calmly documents the extensive use of Neo-Nazi jargon by the defense attorneys, the terrible treatment of survivors by officers of the court, and the complete indifference of the public towards the proceedings. Only the determined philosemite Lea Rosh really broke the mold of contemplative passivity and, at the same time, managed to retain a prime time broadcasting slot. In November 1982, a week before the re-broadcast of Holocaust on ARD, ZDF aired her bluntly entitled feature Holocaust: The Crime and the Perpetrators.23 Rosh had done her homework and presented a seemingly endless sequence of West German judicial scandals. Like her few predecessors dealing with the unpopular genre of perpetrator television, Rosh described the lives and crimes of a few Nazi thugs but added another devastating level of analysis by informing the ZDF audience about the outrageously lenient sentences that German courts meted out to the perpetrators. One could argue, as some reviewers have done, that Rosh’s fury clouded her judgment and that she failed to present a balanced view of the West German judiciary.24 Also, judging by the production file, Rosh must have been difficult to work with.25 Nevertheless, The Crime and the Perpetrators stands out as the only prime time document that deals with perpetrator history and conveys emotions of rage and grief that, in an ideal world, would have been expressed by many more journalists, politicians, and normal citizens. The Crime and the Perpetrators features a new frame of judgment and thus demonstrates how (West) German TV could have attained a sense of moral justice in its perpetrator coverage. Rosh’s documentary marks a turn away from the vagueness and passivity with which earlier productions approached the challenge of assessing the crimes of the Nazis. Rosh’s unconcealed outrage at the failures of the FRG court systems, fueled by 22

Die Vergangenheit kehrt zurück: Nach 33 Jahren – der Majdanek-Prozess, 27 November 1977. 23 Holocaust – die Tat und die Täter: Die Amnestierung der NS-Gewaltverbrechen durch die deutsche Justiz und Nachkriegsgeschichte, 1 November 1982. 24 “Kritisch gesehen: Holocaust: Die Tat und die Täter,” Stuttgarter Zeitung, 11 November 1982. 25 A substantial production file documenting for instance serious budget disagreements during and after the production of Die Tat und die Täter is retained in the ZDF archive “Zentrale Registratur” under the production number 6471/0284.

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the perception of the Holocaust as a crime of singular importance, constitutes an unprecedented, powerful ontological statement about the moral essence of the “Final Solution.” For this purpose, Rosh unabashedly manipulates the feelings of her audience. The opening shot of the documentary features, for instance, the restaged execution of a pregnant Polish woman by two Nazi officials. Right after witnessing the harrowing scene the audience is informed that the two murderers never served a day in prison for their crime. In essence, the program visually and discursively performs what Rosh perceives as a fundamental mismatch: the absolute evil that was the Holocaust cannot be appropriately grasped, let alone redeemed, through the laborious rituals of Western justice rendered impotent by right-wing judges and cunning defense attorneys. That impotence is again nicely captured in a visual metaphor: the film contains extensive, digitally remastered footage of Nazi defendants whose anonymity is painstakingly protected. The former Nazis have committed unspeakable crimes, but the rules of due process prevent the camera team from showing their faces to the audience. Rosh thus combines absolute ontological certainty with an indictment of large-scale normative failures. But she also places the audience in an (applied-)ethical void. By focusing exclusively on the shortcomings of the West German justice system Rosh invites her viewers to share her rage, but she does not outline any alternative venues of meaningful, morally sound memory work. The new ontological framework is not (yet) translated into corresponding operational norms and applied ethical procedures.

II. The Visual Construction of German Innocence The relative dearth of perpetrator history on German TV was one of the preconditions for the success of the ZDF division for contemporary history in the 1990s. TV historian Guido Knopp and his associates started to fill the void by pursuing concepts of Nazi history and Nazi crimes that had a long tradition in other realms of German historical culture. For the purpose of visualizing conventional perceptions of Hitler and his henchmen as the primary perpetrators of war and genocide, Knopp and Co. relied extensively on visual documents crafted by the Nazis themselves. The films and photos would be digitally remastered and integrated into slick, fast cut sequences of eyewitness testimony, animation, and restaged historical scenes. The resulting documentaries filled a long-existing gap in Germany’s visual culture and gave ZDF an edge in the competition with recently founded, increasingly successful commercial TV networks. But the films accomplished a lot more. By combining explicit, politically correct anti-

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Nazi messages with much more ambivalent visual products celebrating Nazi power, Knopp and Co. invited their viewers on an unprecedented ride. The ZDF audience was offered an opportunity to play Nazi while remaining (safely?) grounded in Germany’s mainstream, anti-totalitarian historical culture.26 Without empirical reception studies there is no way of determining if this type of historical coverage had positive or negative consequences for the development of collective memories in Germany. The illicit pleasure of temporarily reveling in Nazi power might have brought viewers into the ZDF fold who otherwise had little interest in historical education. But the ZDF media revolution had problematic consequences for the representation of ordinary perpetrators. Part of Knopp’s innovation consisted of a shift in emphasis from addressing traditional historiographical problems – why did the Nazi catastrophe happen – to pursuing much more emotionally driven questions – how did it feel to experience the Nazi era, how did it feel to be a victim or a bystander. This shift engendered an innovation in normative morality, providing viewers with a present-day emotional entry point and inviting them to participate in the memory construction process. Such an intervention required evocative editing techniques which, among many other consequences, put a premium on the emotional, not the historiographical content of eyewitness testimony. The turning point in the visual construction of historical witnesses occurred in the late 1990s. The success of Hitler: Eine Bilanz catapulted a number of Knopp’s programs into primetime slots. The extraordinary import of this programming decision is illustrated by the fact that in the two decades before Hitlers Helfer ZDF only broadcast two non-fictional programs about National Socialism in the 8:15 pm slot (which traditionally marks the beginning of prime time on German television). Historical witnesses have been handled in a completely different way since this decisive turning point, especially at ZDF. In visual terms, the interviewees are rendered radically anonymous and interchangeable. Their appearances are limited to short clips of about 20 seconds and are subordinated to the offscreen narration. As a result of this set up, the witness can no longer convey personal memories that contradict the producers’ aesthetic and ideo26 On the exceptionally successful Hitler-focused Knopp productions, including the series Hitler: Eine Bilanz (1995) and Hitlers Helfer (1997-98), see Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory, p. 167-180; and Kansteiner, “Macht, Authentizität und die Verlockungen der Normalität: Aufstieg und Abschied der NS-Zeitzeugen in den Geschichtsdokumentationen des ZDF,” in Martin Sabrow/Norbert Frei (eds.), Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), pp. 320-353.

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logical design. The producers simply cut out what does not fit and replace it with a sound bite from another witness. The ZDF producers succeeded in adapting and weaving together traditionally incompatible components of the history documentary genre, i.e., film and photo material, witness testimonies, and animations (for instance maps) so that a well integrated tapestry of images appeared on the screen. This carefully calibrated product was further visually enhanced by innovative and evocative re-stagings of historical scenes. In its traditional appearance, the historical documentary constantly frustrated its viewers’ interests in entertainment and immersion. The long-winded interviews, copious black-and-white film clips, and clumsy didactic visual aids, all of which displayed at best tenuous connections to the accompanying academic offscreen commentaries, were in and of themselves hardly capable of engaging viewers visually and emotionally. Moreover, this slow-moving discourse was constantly interrupted, as the films ponderously switched aesthetic gears by cutting from tedious historians sitting in front of brightlycolored bookcases to extensive quotes from black-and-white newsreel footage. The traditional historical documentary thus featured a deadly combination of intellectual-emotional stagnation and aesthetic interruptions and had consequently been banned from prime time.27 Knopp’s new film language worked very differently. On the one hand, the editing rythm had been accelerated to neck-breaking speeds. On the other hand, all individual segments were now carefully aesthetically integrated. A seamless stream of images, nicely attuned to the commentary, offers the viewer an opportunity of emotional immersion that last for the entirety of the broadcast. This documentary style cultivates feelings, not historical knowledge.28 The sonorous voice of the commentator, the measured, catchy music, and the carefully constructed visual homogeneity convey a sense of emotional security, especially for the experienced Knopp audience. At the same time, on the basis of this sense of visual Heimat, the productions rush from one borderline experience and emotional highlight to the next, staging in short order stories of suffering, love, loneliness, redemption, power, and death. The programs are powerful, technologically sophisticated elegies which broke a number of political

27

For a description of this documentary aesthetic, see, “Zur Geschichte dokumentarischer Formen und ihrer ästhetischen Gestaltung im öffentlichrechtlichen Fernsehen,” in Rainer Wirtz, Thomas Fischer, Alles authentisch (Konstanz: Uvk Verlags GmbH, 2008), pp. 109-136. 28 The critic Dieter Deul consequently wrote of “Siegeszug des Gefühlsfernsehens über die teuflische Zeitgeschichte,” General-Anzeiger, 16 November 2003.

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taboos and, in the very specific historical context of the 1990s, enticed many viewers to enter the imaginary landscape of ZDF’s Hitlerland. Knopp’s innovation gave rise to a remarkably effective assembly-style manipulation of eyewitness testimony: the interview partners are cleverly illuminated in front of the famous black/blue background.29 With spotlights from above, the entire face is easily recognized, although one half (usually the left) is much more brightly illuminated. The contrast gives the faces depth and plasticity. Highly visible wrinkles mark the old men and women as “historical” and convey an aura of gravitas and authenticity. But this visually constructed authority is quickly passed on to the production because nobody actually listens to the witnesses. The short interview excerpts, often presented in 20-second-segments, serve as visual footnotes to the commentary. They anecdotally confirm the speaker’s general statements about dispair, death, torture, and suicide. Captured from the same camera angle, the individual witnesses and their comments are easily interchangeable. Their appearances and statements lend credibility to the slick documentaries without interrupting their aesthetic flow. In the new paradigm, the editors have won the power battle with generations of historical witnesses. They have robbed them of their individuality and reduced them to convenient markers of authenticity. But they have done this so elegantly that the programs have become, visually as well as symbolically, far more attractive than their predecessors. The TV historians thus inadvertently exposed our historical desires vis-à-vis the historical witnesses. We do not want to listen to awkward, uncomfortable, boring old men on television; rather, we appreciate our elders cut up into small, entertaining, user-friendly media packages. In this fashion we welcome their baldness, wrinkles, and old-fashioned glasses as hallmarks of historicity which prove that the old people have actually suffered during the terrible 1930s and 1940s. It would be misleading, however, to conclude that the new documentary genre cannot advance historical education. In Holokaust, broadcast in 2000, television producers deployed the tools of their trade with remarka29

This famous background could not gain any traction and was only used by ZDF and ARD. Cf. Reinhold Viehoff, Edgar Lersch, Geschichte im Fernsehen (Berlin: Vistas Verlag, 2007), p. 203. As a result, the witness interviews, originally designed to be deployed at will appeared so dated within a few years that they could no longer convey the important illusion that the TV viewing experience and the witness testimony were roughly contemporaneous events. (see Frank Bösch, “Geschichte mit Gesicht: zur Genese des Zeitzeugen in HolocaustDokumentationen seit den 1950er Jahren,” in Fischer, Alles authentisch, pp. 51-72, here 68).

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ble precision. For instance they carefully interlaced commentary and subtitles providing precise syntagmatic and paradigmatic cross references which anchor the witness testimony in time and place. In this way the testimonies of German soldiers were lined-up with the testimonies of Jewish survivors, forming precise, multi-perspectival descriptions of individual crimes. In the first episode of Holokaust this technique succeeds with describing the mass murders in Libau with exemplary vividness. It remains to be determined if the viewers are interested in such precise cross referencing or whether they primarily appreciated Holokaust as a rapid sequence of standard Holocaust narratives and iconography. In any event, during key segments of the program historical consultants on Holokaust helped attain an impressive level of historical rigor and thus demonstrated that televisual and historiographical appropriations of Nazi history can be integrated in a complex, multifaceted media product without compromising each other. At one point, however, this peaceful coexistence ends. Holokaust contains a number of serious shortcomings most likely not caused by any conscious apologetic motives on the part of Knopp and his co-workers but attributable to the fact that they have fallen victim to their own editing techniques and strategies of witness management. By deliberately adapting the programs to the apparent emotional sensitivities of the German public the producers create a surprisingly flat moral terrain while addressing events of moral extremity. In this way they honor allegedly normal moral behavior and construct an implicit viewer who avoids all kinds of ‘extremes.’30 As with many Holocaust programs, the Jewish survivors’ remarkable competence and aplomb is immediately noticeable. In a certain way, their competence decreases the emotional effect of their testimonies. To their credit, the ZDF producers never tried to undermine their composure through aggressive interviewing methods, as for example pursued by Claude Lanzmann (and as one only seldom observes on ZDF screens).31 However, against the backdrop of the competent, composed survivor statements, ZDF producers stage a number of emotional testimonies by German soldiers whose status as non-perpetrators and empathy-deserving “normal” witnesses is carefully protected in Holokaust. The testimony of one Ger30 See the helpful analysis of media constructions of social normality by Jürgen Link, Versuch über den Normalismus: Wie Normalität produziert wird (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2006). 31 On Lanzmann see Dominick LaCapra, “Lanzmann’s Shoah: ‘Here There is No Why,’” Critical Inquiry 23/2 (1997), pp. 231-269. Perhaps the most problematic broadcast from a moral perspective in Knopp’s voluminous oeuvre is the documentary, Kinder des Feuers: Die Zwillinge von Auschwitz, 15 March 1992.

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man soldier constitutes the emotional highlight of the first sequel. The commentator lays the groundwork by stressing that the soldier is speaking for the first time about the mass shootings in Libau which he observed as a witness. Since the soldier is crying heavily, his remarks are not easily decernible and might not have been understood by all viewers. But his statements are so problematic that he should have been highlighted for the audience. The soldier says: “If I had reported it at once, perhaps it would have been stopped.” The soldier invokes here the important myth that the crimes took place without Hitler’s or the army leadership’s knowledge and that notifying them would have stopped the murders. Because no producer followed up on his remarks, however, the myth not only remained unscathed, but the program never touched upon the essential question of how one should morally judge on the behavior of the many German witnesses. What can one expect of people in such a situation? Are they morally guilty and, if so, how could they have avoided this? Did they perhaps become perpetrators themselves? These questions attain even more relevance through the fact that many of the interviewed soldiers, only identified by name and their former military rank, belonged to the leadership of the German military after the war (for instance, Ulrich Maiziere). Both German soldiers and survivors appear as victims of history and equally deserving our empathy. The second episode contains a similar scene in which the focus on the interviewee’s emotional suffering as a result of becoming a genocide witness eclipse questions concerning the crimes of the German perpetrators. In this case, however, normality is protected at the expense of honoring exemplary integrity, not at the expense of the critical deconstruction of dubious contemporary rationalizations. A German soldier is visibly shaken as he recalls seeing children being shot. He reports that this experience has haunted him ever since. No one asks which conclusions the soldier drew from his experiences. The scene is constructed in precisely the same manner as the interview with the soldier from the first episode. One could suppose, then, that the emotional suffering of a German soldier is again given center stage and that questions about moral failures and the perpetration of violent crimes are systematically avoided. The two interviews are certainly constructed in the same way. But in the latter case the disinterest in the person of the witness and the focus on the emotional highlights of his testimony keep the viewer completely ignorant about the man’s courageous resistance activities in the Third Reich. The witness is none other than Heinz Droßel, who rescued numerous Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and has been honored as one of the Righteous Gentiles. The average viewer, who knows nothing of this, is protected from the important,

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difficult moral questions that Droßel’s courage raises about the behavior of all the other German witnesses. The program forcefully endorses the ostensibly normal, passive behavior of the average German soldier of the Wehrmacht. In addition to collected victims and emotional bystanders, Holokaust features a few “real,” non-German perpetrators, including the Lithuanian Hilfspolizist Maliksanas. According to his testimony, he always tried to hit the Jewish star so that his victims would die quickly. Even in Maliksanas’ case, the witness’s confession and admittance to the gallery of Holocaust witnesses leads to a relativization of his moral responsibility. The moral integrity of the Holocaust survivors is apparently automatically extended to all witnesses, including perpetrators, by way of the program’s homogenous aesthetic design and flat moral profile. One could almost speak of a visually-based expectation of innocence for all historical witnesses who would have to go to extraordinary lengths to forfeit this “bonus” on camera.32 The German witnesses in Holokaust certainly elegantly avoided this danger, with the help of ZDF aesthetics. They represent the emotional point of gravity of the series and therefore their outbursts constitute the psychological-visual highlights of the shows. The German witness is accepted as a normal human being just like you and I and offered up as a comfortable projection screen for viewer identification. But this media figure embodies a very problematic guideline for action: the normal citizen, equipped with a healthy moral conscience, avoids risky acts of resistance, keeps his opinions to himself, and gives teary-eyed testimony once the danger has subsided. The visual assumption of innocence attributed to the witnesses in Holokaust resurfaced in many subsequent programs. One good example (among many) is the Knopp program Die Gefangenen (The Prisoners), aired at primetime in 2003.33 The series is an intellectually dissatisfying production. The suffering of Russian soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians is dutifully mentioned and supported with statistics, but all five parts 32

On the aesthetic production of collective innocence in Knopp TV, see especially Judith Keilbach, Geschichtsbilder und Zeitzeugen. Zur Darstellung des Nationalsozialismus im bundesdeutschen Fernsehen (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2008), pp. 224-236; see also Michael Elm, Zeugenschaft im Film. Eine erinnerungskulturelle Analyse filmischer Erzählungen des Holocaust (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2008), pp. 279-283. 33 Die Gefangenen 1: Ab nach Sibirien, ZDF, October 14, 2003; Die Gefangenen 2: Willkommen im Camp, ZDF, October 21, 2003; Die Gefangenen 3: Schlimmer als die Hölle, ZDF, October 28, 2003; Die Gefangenen 4: Zwischen Tod und Liebe, ZDF, November 4, 2003; Die Gefangenen 5: Die Heimkehr der Zehntausend, ZDF, November 11, 2003.

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of the series concentrate on the experiences of German PoWs during the war. Die Gefangenen reached an average of 4.11 million viewers per installment, which equals a market share of 12.9%. With such numbers, the series represents one in a long line of successful broadcasts of ZDF’s division of contemporary history. The series liberally employs Holocaust iconography – railway tracks, barbed wire, camp architecture – for the moral restitution of the German PoWs. The visual embedding of the soldiers of Hitler’s armies into the ultimate victim discourse represents a stylish, well calculated transgression in a post-unification context in which the German society imagined itself as the historical victims of Allied bombing raids and persecutions.34 The Knopp paradigm presents itself as a complex moral landscape consisting of various levels of moral reflection that exist independently of each other and often call each other into question. The programs features role models of various background and experiences whose memories and past actions are subsumed under a halo of innocence. As a result of this generosity, the viewers are not enabled to discern positive from negative behavior. On the normative and applied-ethical level, the Knopp paradigm of historical entertainment strenuously avoids passing judgment on anybody other than Hitler and a few select Nazis who obviously never appear as eyewitnesses in front of the camera. At the same time, the programs routinely invoke the evil of Nazism as an ontological principle and thus leave their viewers with a fairly useless piece of advice, i.e., that they should avoid becoming victims of history and genocide. The combination of one-dimensional ontological truths and similarly flat and hollow normative lessons amounts to a massive failure of ethical self-reflectivity. The programs simply refrain from asking any difficult moral question about the past, which should be the very essence of historical education conceived as an exercise in moral self-definition. The participation of large numbers of German citizens in genocide, the culpability of the (German) bystanders, the decades of relative silence on the subject, and the memory obligations of future generations devoid of political responsibility – none of these ethical dilemmas are addressed in any meaningful way. The programs take flight from all ethical questions, leaving only an implicit, and highly problematic, ethical framework in which the past simply serves the psychological needs of those living in the present. The success of the Knopp paradigm thus appears to depend on a serious ethical disconnect and a great deal of slippage between the different 34

The mixture of political correctness and victims’discourse was well captured by the critic Heinen, “Geschichte wird gemacht: ZDF-Doku-Reihe über Deutsche in Kriegsgefangenschaft,” Frankfurter Rundschau, October 14, 2003.

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channels of communication and levels of moral self-reflection. On the basis of seemingly firmly established ontological truths, the programs engage in considerable, aesthetically driven normative and applied-ethical obfuscation. On the ontological level, Knopp and Co. incessantly confirm the centrality of the Holocaust for modern German history and the special status of its survivors. These ontological insights imply, among other things, that there is a fundamental moral difference between the victims, bystanders, and perpetrators of genocide. But when faced with the task of conveying the truths through specific narrative and visual examples, the ZDF staff members systematically equate very different historical experiences and present-day vantage points. As a result of a number of ingenuous and pervasive editing strategies, all historical eyewitnesses assume, for example, an aura of innocence and integrity that, once translated into more abstract ethical principles, directly contradicts the apparently firmly established ontological certainties. Also, given TV’s penchant for applied ethics, one may safely assume that most viewers found the moving yet ethically sterile witness testimony more engaging than the routine incantation of Holocaust exceptionalism.

III. Violent Holocaust Memory The combination of Holocaust curiosity, philosemitic values, and the overcoming of important representational taboos and inhibitions caused another interesting twist in the infatuation of German media with Nazi history and inadvertently revealed the drawbacks of Holocaust culture. By the mid-1990s a considerable share of Germany’s elite had been engaged in memory work for many years. As a result, television could report on particularly laudable exemples of the new species of self-reflective Germans and their philosemitic deeds.35 A particularly revealing program about good Germans, entitled Temporary Grandchildren: German Conscientious Objectors in Prague, was broadcast in 1995 and illustrates that the best-intended memory work may yet have unwelcome consequences.36 35

In this vein, in 1988, ZDF highlighted the path-breaking memory efforts of twenty-five German adolescents who had helped build a synagogue in Lyon in the 1960s; see Kontext: Reise in die Vergangenheit: 1963 – Junge Deutsche bauen eine Synagoge in Lyon, ZDF, October 28, 1988. 36 Enkel auf Zeit: Deutsche Zivis in Prag, ZDF, December 10, 1995. The feature by Michael Koechlin was originally scheduled for 9:15 P.M. on July 21, 1995, but postponed on short notice; see ZDF-Programm for July 21, 1995, and December 10, 1995. It was watched by 1.4 million viewers, representing 3 percent of TV households in unified Germany.

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For ten days a ZDF camera team observed three German conscientious objectors who provided essential social services to Holocaust survivors in Prague. But six minutes into the program the producers felt the need to share with their viewers a harmless slip of the tongue that they had caught on tape. The conscientious objector Fabian and the survivor Ms. Ernstowa appear side by side on an outdoor bench while the interviewer asks the young man whether he finds any important differences between knowing abstractly about the Holocaust and sitting next to a survivor who has lived through the actual events. Fabian dutifully confirms the difference and adds that in fact he finds it impossible to relate the two: “Fabian: It is something different and somehow I cannot integrate these two images. Ms. Ernstowa as a living women [she is laughing, he is blushing] as, I mean, alive in terms of her personality [...] Ms. Ernstowa (interrupting quietly): Yes, I know, yes. Fabian: and the reports that have so much hopelessness about them and that are just on paper.”

While Fabian’s lapse appears not to have damaged his good relationship with Ms. Ernstowa, one cannot help but wonder about the psychological fallout from another scene included in Temporary Grandchildren. The interviewer, who has already asked the Aushwitz survivor Ms. Pechanowa how important Fabian’s daily visits are for her, has pointed out that she was tortured by young Germans and now has a young German in her apartment. As a result of these less than subtle inquiries, the interviewer elicits from her explicit statements affirming Fabian’s innocence and his superior work ethic. But the interviewer has a very specific plan in mind – in fact, it seems that he has already decided on the title of his film – and therefore digs deeper. The camera first offers a close-up of an old red and black photograph depicting three Soviet soldiers and two women in camp uniform. The camera then slowly moves up the arm of the person holding the photograph before coming to rest on the tattoo on the women’s left forearm. After a cut the camera provides a top-down close-up of the face of Ms. Pechanova, an old, small woman who sways awkwardly back and forth (the viewers already know that she walks with the help of a cane). The scene is accompanied by voice-over comments before we hear Ms. Pechanova herself. For the duration of the scene the camera remains closely trained on her face: “Comment: A Russian soldier took this photo. The bowed down Hedwiga Pechanowa during the liberation of Aushwitz on her 30th birthday. The

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On the Moral Profile of Public History: concentration camp number 74901 is the external sign for that what has changed her life forever. Ms. Pechanova: There is, there is in me [...] I had during the Heydrich years here, I had tragically lost both parents, both parents and 52 relatives. Now I am all alone in the world. Interviewer: Is it under these circumstances particularly important that Fabian comes by every day? Ms. Pechanova: Yes, it is very important. Interviewer: What kind of relationship do you have to him? How would you describe it? Ms. Pechanova (swaying more intensely and briefly leaving the field of vision of the camera, then laughing a little): Very friendly . . . Interviewer: If the war, the persecution, and the Nazi period had not occurred, a grandchild, perhaps one’s own grandchild would come to you. Is Fabian [...] Ms. Pechanova (swaying, interrupting the interviewer quickly, speaking fast then remaining silent): Yes, yes, yes, no. It is like you say it. Interviewer: What kind of, what kind of grandchild is he? Is he a good grandchild? Ms. Pechanova (nodding and laughing a little, then remaining silent): Good, good, good, good, good. (21:53–23:43)”

A camera, a good conscience, and steadfast dedication to the cause of coming to terms with the past can create a sanctimonious, even violent mix. The scriptwriter and the interviewer of Temporary Grandchildren seem strangely reticent when they refer to Nazi crimes in general terms (e.g., “that which has changed her life”) but pull no punches when engaged in the face-to-face questioning of survivors. The interviewer cannot quite make himself say “your grandchild,” but he otherwise forces Ms. Pechanova to walk the line established by his script and his underlying assumptions. Watching Temporary Grandchildren one has to wonder whether the history of German memory politics is really one of unequivocal progress. Are the self-righteous memory professionals of the 1990s with their allegedly postallosemitic disposition (that is, neither philo- nor antisemitic) really more open and self-aware than the inhibited, hypocritical philosemites of the 1960s? Both groups are masters of flowery, circumspect communication about German crimes and German guilt, but at least the philosemites of the earlier period did not seize the opportunity to abuse survivors on national television. Temporary Grandchildren is not a perpetrator documentary and yet it draws its whole raison d’etre from the powerful symbolic presence of the absent Nazi grandfathers. 50 years after the end of the war, Fabian and his peers are cast in the role as moral counterpoints to their forefathers and despite their own personal integrity they will never attain a similar media

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presence. Moreover and more importantly, the program illustrates in exemplary fashion how quickly the best intentioned normative agenda descends into symbolic violence against the victims of Nazism once the producers shift focus from the plight of the victims to the admittedly admirable deeds of a few German Gutmenschen. Half a century after the Holocaust, German memory obviously still proved to be a very slippery slope for a group of well trained media professionals far removed from any personal responsibility for the Nazi catastrophe. We have our doubts that things have drastically changed in the meantime. Therefore, we are also skeptical about desires to present a balanced view of German history that pays a lot of attention to the positive aspects of 20th century German history – even if the positive coverage merely consists of an altogether too enthusiastic celebration of the moral accomplishments of people like Fabian. High school students and TV viewers might very well feel that they have engaged with every aspect of Nazi history and do not need to be bothered any more. But that is hardly an accurate assessment of recent media history. As our analysis has clearly demonstrated, ZDF television, which represents one of the key players in the German memory landscape, has very rarely directly and successfully responded to the extraordinary moral challenge of crafting stories about Nazi perpetrators. The programs of the 1960s failed to develop compelling normative role models for German memory work, although a few notable productions kept insisting that the Nazi criminals constituted a severe moral challenge still to be reckoned with. The programs of the late 1970s and 1980s attained considerable ontological progress without necessarily being able to fill the appliedethical and normative void. Knopp and his associates seized on that opportunity and invented an altogether fictitious normative landscape that, under the cover of ontological Holocaust memory, displayed a great deal of empathy for German suffering during the war. As far as ZDF is concerned, the Nazi perpetrators are still waiting for their fair share of media attention, since the really difficult ethical questions have not yet been addressed at prime time.

CONTRIBUTORS

Wolfgang Bialas (*1954) just finished a research project on Nazi Ideology and Ethics at the Hannah-Arendt-Institute Dresden. His areas of specialization are Nazism and the Holocaust, political Philosophy and European intellectual history. He is the author of Politischer Humanismus und Verspätete Nation. Helmuth Plessners. Auseinandersetzung mit Deutschland und dem Nationalsozialismus (2010) and the co-editor of the volume Nazi Germany and the Humanities (2007). Lothar Fritze (*1954) is a scientific collaborator at the Hannah-ArendtInstitute Dresden and professor at the Technical University of Chemnitz. He is the author of nine books and numerous articles in scientific journals and co-editor of the scientific journal Aufklärung & Kritik. His areas of specialization are the ideology of totalitarian societies, political philosophy and ethics. His last publication is Anatomie des totalitären Denkens. Kommunistische und nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung im Vergleich (2012). Stewart Anderson (*1979) received his PhD from Binghamton University in August 2011 and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His main research interests include postwar Germany, media history, and collective memory. Besides his dissertation, he has published articles in several journals, including a piece entitled Modern Viewers, Feudal Television Archives: How to Study German Fernsehspiele of the 1960s from a National Perspective (in Critical Studies in Television). Florian Bruns (* 1978) is currently Research Assistant at the Institute for the History of Medicine, Center for Health and Human Sciences at the University of Berlin (Charité), Germany. His research topics are: History of Medicine in the 19th and 20th century, History of Medical Ethics, and Clinical Ethics. Latest publication: Bruns, F./Frewer, A.: Ethics Consultation and Empathy. Finding the Balance in Clinical Settings (2011).

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Contributors

Amy Carney (*1981) is an Assistant Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, the Behrend College where she teaches courses in modern European and German history. She earned her PhD in German history in 2010 from Florida State University. Her research examines the notion of fatherhood in the Nazi SS. She analyzes how SS leaders selectively employed eugenic-based ideas in order to transform the SS into a racially superior family community that could become the blood-based aristocracy of the Third Reich. Mary Fulbrook, FBA (*1951) is Professor of German History at University College London. Recent books include Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence through the German Dictatorships (OUP, 2011). In addition to books surveying the broad sweep of German history, and on historical theory, she has written widely on the GDR, including Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR (OUP, 1995) and The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (Yale UP, 2005). Peter Haas (*1947) earned a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies in 1980 from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He has been on the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and has held the Abba Hillel Silver professorship of Jewish Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio since 2000. His publications have dealt with moral discourse, military ethics, and Jewish and Christian thought after the Holocaust. His most recent book is on human rights in Judaism. He received ordination as a Reform rabbi in 1974. Gunnar Heinsohn (*1943) is a German sociologist and economist and the head of the Raphael-Lemkin Institut for Comparative Genocide Research at the University of Bremen. His contributions to genocide research include an encyclopedia of genocides, a generalized version of youth bulge theory and a new theory of Hitler´s motivation for the Holocaust. Isaac M. Hershkowitz (*1977) works at the Department of Philosophy Bar-Ilan University, Israel where he teaches talmudic, biblical and philosophical aspects of the Jewish heritage. His areas of specialization are religious Zionism, Jewish Ethics, Jewish Studies and Holocaust Studies. Gerrit Hohendorf (*1963) lectures history and ethics of medicine at the Technical University of Munich and works as a psychiatrist at the University Hospital in Munich. His research interest is medicine in National Socialism, its after-effects and its ethical implications for modern

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bioethics. He co-published “Das Vergessen der Vernichtung ist Teil der Vernichtung selbst” - Life Histories of Victims of the Nazi Euthanasia. (2007). Uwe Kaminsky (*1962) studied history and social sciences in Essen. He works as a scientific collaborator at the Ruhr University of Bochum, faculty of Christian Social Science. His research interests include modern history and social history. He co-published Gehorsam - Ordnung - Religion. Konfessionelle Heimerziehung in der Bundesrepublik 1945-1975 (2012) and Abschied von der konfessionellen Identität? Säkularisierung und Ökonomisierung sozialen Handelns als Herausforderungen für Caritas und Diakonie (2012). Wulf Kansteiner (*1964) is Associate Professor of European History at Binghamton University (SUNY). He has published widely in the fields of media history, memory studies, historical theory, and Holocaust studies. He is the author of In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (2006) and, most recently, co-editor of Den Holocaust erzählen: Historiographie zwischen wissenschaftlicher Empirie und narrativer Kreativität (2013). He is also co-founder and co-editor of the Sage-Journal Memory Studies. Wulf Kellerwessel (*1963) is Professor of Philosophy in Aachen. His areas of specialization are Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of language and analytical philosophy. His publications include Normenbegründung in der analytischen Ethik (2003) and Wittgensteins Sprachphilosophie in den “Philosophische Untersuchungen” (2009). Andre Mineau (*1955) is currently Professor of Ethics and History at the University of Quebec at Rimouski, Canada. He is the author of Operation Barbarossa: Ideology and Ethics against Human Dignity (2004) and SS Thinking and the Holocaust (2012). Regina Mühlhäuser (*1971) works as a researcher at the Hamburg Institute of Social Research in the research group "War and Gender" and the international working group "Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict". Her research areas include sexual violence in war, the history of international law, gender and sexuality in Nazism and memory politics in Europe and Asia. She is the author of Eroberungen. Sexuelle Gewalttaten und intime Beziehungen deutscher Soldaten in der Sowjetunion 1941–1945 (2010).

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Contributors

Christopher Theel (*1978) studied modern history, political science and constitutional law at Dresden University. In October 2008 he joined the School of International Studies at Dresden University as a lecturer and administrative official. In his current doctoral research he focuses on the military jurisdiction of the Waffen-SS. His further research interests are German legal history in the twentieth century, history of political thought and international relations, history of National Socialism and the Second World War. Richard Weikart (*1958) is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus. He has published four books, including Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (2009) and From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004). He has published numerous scholarly articles and reviews on the history of social Darwinism, evolutionary ethics, bioethics, and related issues. He is currently working on a book on Hitler’s religion. Rolf Zimmermann (*1944) worked as a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Konstanz. He is the author of Philosophie nach Auschwitz. Eine Neubestimmung von Moral in Politik und Gesellschaft (2005) and Moral als Macht. Eine Philosophie der historischen Erfahrung (2008) and wrote the main article Moralischer Universalismus als geschichtliches Projekt for Erwägen Wissen Ethik (2010).