Hist 33D, L 10: Reserve Police Battalion 101
by Prof. H. Marcuse, UCSB, Oct. 23, 2003

Is mass murder something "ordinary people" can commit? If so, under what conditions?
Or: Were the men who committed it somehow "special"? How?

• Admin: field trip; proposals; return Q2

• Discussion of readings
  • Wannsee

  • Langer

  • Browning vs. Goldhagen [saved for next Tuesday--be sure to read!!]
  • Markle

• Videos in Kerr Hall?

• Field trip to LA: sign up sheet going around:
  categories: Passengers; Drivers; already in LA; not on 11/2

• Journal entries 3 & 4 due Tuesday, 10/28

• Q3 on Tuesday: Goldhagen, Rumk., Perech.

• Final project "drafts" ->group proposals

• due next Thursday, 10/30

• With exact contribution of each person, and contact info (name, phone, e-mail)

Project groups

• Auschwitz & camps

• Auschwitz, doctors, medical expts
• Denial
• US public "in denial" back then
• non-Jewish victims (e.g. homosexuals)
• Women: general, perps, Anne Frank
• France
• pre-Hitler (1920s) & Hitler
• justice / trials

Wannsee Film Discussion (same categories as last time)

• June 22, 1941: invasion of Soviet Union

• July 31, 1941: Göring order to Heydrich
• Sept. 29-30, 1941 at Babi Yar, Ukraine: 33,771 massacred
• planned mtg for Dec. 9, 1941, postponed evidence about Hitler's intention / decisio
• Who was invited: state gov't AND SS gov't
  (structuralism!). Note different behaviors
  of 3 groups: SS around Heydrich (Lange w/ dog, short balding Gestapo-Müller, Nazi functionaries (yellowish/green-suited rep. of Nazi governor of occupied Poland), civilian state bureaucrats (Interior w/ headcold, Reich chancellory w/ glasses at head of table).
• How did the men behave/compete? (functionalism)
  "preemptive obedience"
  "working towards the Führer"

E. Langer: "100 Little Hitlers"

• comments, questions?
• motivations? ("race-based"? legal distinction)
• how should we deal with them?
• how were they dealt with? (Morris Dees and SPLC)

Browning vs. Goldhagen: "Ordinary" or specifically German?
[almost no one had read this, so saved for next Tuesday. BE SURE TO READ IT! (Q3)]

Sources?
Methods?
Arguments?
Conclusions: Motives?

Markle discussion

68r86: "paradox of sequential action" (Baumann)
Sequencing: "functional division of labor"
Where to draw the line?
75r89: "Habit, routine, tradition" (Hilberg)
87r95: "cumulative radicalization" (Mommsen)
95r99: race as a social construction
43r101, also Browning (Hilberg's stats): Mar. 42-Feb. 43 (Wannsee to Stalingrad): 1/2 of all 6 mio. Jewish victims of  the Holocaust murdered
45r102: "crushing conformism and careerism"
56r108: "radical situationalism"

Roundup of (indiv.) Motivations

• racism (race-based antisemitism) (hate)

• ideological indoctrination (master race)

• obedience to orders (role of situation)

• deference to authority (bible: Abe vs. Sarah)
• careerism (preemptive obedience)
• conformity (peer pressure; solidarity)
• special selection of perpetrators

• wartime brutalization (situation)

• segmentation and routinization of task

• Economic / Int'l / Elite / Ideology / peOple