Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories

272 Pages·2003·7.69 MB·English

by  Omer Bartov

Germany's War and the Holocaust

Germany's War and
the Holocaust
DISPUTED HISTORIES
•
Orner Bartov
CORNELL
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and
London
Copyright© 2003 by Cornell University
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First published 2003 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2003
Printed in the United States of America
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bartov, Omer.
Germany's war and the Holocaust: disputed histories I
Omer Bartov.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical~ and index.
ISBN o-8014-3824-1 (alk. paper)-ISBND-8014-8681-5
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) 2. World War, 1939-1945
-Germany. 3. Germany-Armed Pon:es-History-World
War, 1939-1945. 4. World War, 1939-1945-Campaigns
Eastem Front-Atrocities. 5. National socialism-Historiog
raphy. 6. War crimes. 7. World War, 1939-1945-Atroci
ties. I. Title.
D804.3.B362 2003
940.53'18-dc21
2002014121
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Contents
Introduction ix
PART ONE WarofDestruction
1. Savage War: German Warfare and Moral Choices
in World War ll 3
2. From Blitzkrieg to Total War: Image and Historiography 33
PART TWO Extermination Policies
3· Killing Space: The Final Solution as Population Policy 79
4· Ordering Horror: Conceptualizations of the
Concentrationary Universe 99
5· Ordinary Monsters: Perpetrator Motivation and
Monocausal Explanations 122
PART THREE Interpretations
6. Germans as Nazis: Goldhagen's Holocaust
and the World
7· Jews as Germans: Victor Klemperer Bears Witness
8. Germans as Jews: Representations of Absence
in Postwar Germany 216
Abbreviations 237
Acknowledgments 241
Index 243

Introduction
I
n the last few years, three issues have been at the forefront of
historical scholarship on modern Germany, and especially
the Thild Reich. First, the study of the Holocaust and other
aspects of Nazi Germany's policies of mass murder has expanded
enormously. Second, the relationship between the German military
and the regime's policies of occupation, subjugation, 11ethnic cleans
ing," and genocide has received increasing attention. And third, a
growing volume of literature has focused on the impact of World War
n and genocide on the formation of postwar identity and the politics
of memory, especially in Germany, but also in many other European
countries, the United States, and Israel.
Several events can serve to illustrate the new focus in research and
writing on, as we1l as public interest in, the criminal nature of Ger
many's war between 1939 and 1945, the genocidal policies pursued by
the Nazi regime, and the links between the two. One prominent ex
ample is the publication of and subsequent debate on Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners.1 Based on the study of
several reserve police units involved in the murder of thousands of
Jews, an examination of a number of Nazi labor camps, and a recon
struction of some of the death marches during the last months of the
war, the book argues that the Holocaust was the direct outcome of a
uniquely German type of exterminationist antisemitism. Goldhagen
insists on erasing the distinction between Nazis and Germans and as
serts that by the time of the Third Reich, following a long process of an
evolving culture of antisemitism, the vast majority of Germans would
have.been glad to participate in, and certainly supported, the elimina
tion of the Jews of Europe.
This book tmleashed a major scholarly and public debate in the
1 D. J. Goldhagen. ffitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Gmrums tmd the Holocaust
(New York, 1!)96).