Abstract
Germany did not unite into one country until 1871 under Bismarck. A new state, such as Germany, faces the question: how is the state to be defined—that is, who belongs to it and who is an “outsider”? The need to answer this question encouraged an anti-Semitic discourse, as the new rulers did not think that Jews (or Poles, French and others) would be loyal to the new state. This chapter shows that in building the new state, Bismarck purposely recruited civil servants, who were conservative and had antidemocratic, authoritarian values, so they would be loyal to the new state. After losing WWI, the imperial regime lost its legitimacy. The resulting revolution created a new republic. However, since none of the major political parties wanted to have this revolution, the Weimar Republic lacked legitimacy. Its legitimacy was further undermined by the reparations it had to pay according to the Versailles treaty. Since many civil servants continued to harbor authoritarian values and did not consider the Weimar Republic to be legitimate, they often sabotaged its policies. In addition, they were willing to support the Nazi regime, which they considered to be more legitimate. The German state was new and weak, so the Nazi promise of building a strong state gained it support and legitimacy. In explaining why some Germans were willing to commit evil acts, this chapter emphasizes legitimacy. This chapter also argues against Goldhagen’s thesis that eliminationist anti-Semitism caused the Holocaust.
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- 1.
Büttner (2008: 36) claims that the independent socialists were also against a revolution originally. In addition, the democratic wing of the party was against establishing a socialist republic and instead wanted a parliamentary system, but it wanted stronger guarantees against a return to authoritarianism than did the social democrats.
- 2.
Mann (2004: 198) similarly notes that, in the Weimar Republic,
22 murders committed by leftists resulted in an average sentence of 15 years for 38 persons plus 10 death sentences; 354 murders committed by rightists resulted in average sentences of four months for 24 persons—and no death sentences. Though in 1927 the 22 rightist killers who were members of the “Black Reichswehr” conspiracy received six death sentences and six long prison sentences, the death sentences were commuted, and only two of the defendants were still in prison three years later. When the rightist paramilitary Stahlhelm marched, police protection was arranged; when leftists marched, the police harassed them.
Grebing (1986: 152) gives slightly different statistics, but she reaches the same conclusions as the other authors cited here about the right-wing bias of the legal system.
- 3.
Technically it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire and not Austria, but the text refers to Austria.
- 4.
Other authors, who do not support Goldhagen’s cultural argument, still agree with him about the sadism which many perpetrators displayed, which they see as evidence against the banality-of-evil thesis. See, for example, Burleigh (2011: 401ff.)
- 5.
Many other scholars have also pointed out that the boycott was a failure; see, for example, Gerlach (2016: 47).
- 6.
It is now generally accepted that the Holocaust was not originally planned. Even general books not written by historians share this view. For example, Weitz (2003: 104) writes: “No less than Lenin, Hitler had a clear ideological vision; he was never only concerned with power for its own sake, despite what many early observers thought. If class was the central element in the Bolsheviks’ worldview, race constituted the essence of Nazism, and Jews the premier racial enemy. The specific policies, even genocide, were not preordained; they would emerge in the context of political and social developments—including, critically, total war—in the 1930s and 1940s.”
- 7.
Interestingly, although Mommsen’s approach plays down the role of anti-Semitism among bureaucrats, Herzstein (2002: 117) notes that Mommsen has personal reasons for downplaying this aspect of Germany in the Nazi era:
In 1935 Wilhelm Mommsen, father of Hans, published a book called Political History from Bismarck to the Present. In his foreword, Mommsen, according to Kautz, wrote about the younger, postwar generation as having grown up with a sense of “totally unbroken strength in the new Reich of Adolf Hitler , in whose rise it has to some extent already played a decisive role.” Mommsen was speaking of his four sons, including Hans, the future historian. Mommsen senior, Kautz continues, also branded Karl Marx “a typical representative of Jewish intellectualism,” and praised Richard Wagner for being “one of the first who saw the Jewish problem, not as a one of religion, but one with racial premises.” No wonder, Kautz adds, that the younger Mommsen has preferred to dwell upon the history of bureaucratic institutions. Speaking of the trio Jaeckel-Wehler-Mommsen, Kautz even declared that “They seek to rid themselves of their past and thereby deny their origins.”
- 8.
Kershaw (cited above) and Gerlach (2016: 48) also point out that the Nuremberg racial laws did not elicit the same level of opposition as did the more violent boycott of Jewish stores.
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Saxonberg, S. (2019). Nazi Germany and Non-Banal Evilness. In: Pre-Modernity, Totalitarianism and the Non-Banality of Evil. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28195-3_7
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