Language:
German
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Modernität und Barbarei
Angaben zur Quelle:
(1996) 137-155
Keywords:
National socialism Philosophy
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
This article is based on a paper delivered at a conference in Hamburg, May 1994. Argues that the "Final Solution of the Jewish problem" was originally a minor part of Nazi Germany’s vast demographic resettlement program. When the larger program failed, all efforts were concentrated on the Jews; since they could not be resettled, they had to be exterminated. The agencies responsible were given almost complete autonomy; the competition between them led to escalating radicalization. Finally, all central authority broke down and the machinery ran by itself; eventually nothing, not even an order from Himmler, could stop it. The moral sense of SS-men, Kapos in concentration camps, police units which carried out massacres, foremen in factories employing forced labor, even the law courts had become blunted by habituation. They were activated not by ideology but by a sense of uncontrolled power. In his response, "Dialektik der Aufklärung Revisited" (pp. 156-174), Alois Hahn asserts that the process described by Mommsen would not have been possible without its legitimation by Nazi ideology. Uta Gerhardt, in "Charisma und Ohnmacht: Bemerkungen zur These der Verwilderung der Herrschaft als Dynamik der Barbarei" (pp. 175-193), elaborates on Mommsen’s thesis on the basis of sociological concepts.
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