Language:
English
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Genocide Research
Angaben zur Quelle:
9,4 (2007) 601-615
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Analyzes letters from German soldiers, many of whom were not simply witnesses of the genocide but its perpetrators. Notes that the letters do not contain any notion of a "holocaust", i.e. the deliberate, centrally-planned operation to annihilate all of the Jews. The soldiers describe the killings either as necessary military actions or as cleaning up the "human dirt" of the conquered areas. Despite the racist indoctrination picked up by virtually all the soldiers before and during the war, the motives and pseudo-legitimations of the murders put forward by them do not stem from Nazi ideology. Contends that the letters blur the artificial idea of opposing intentionalist vs. functionalist explanations of the Nazi genocide. Whatever the ideas of the planners of the Holocaust may have been, the mass murders were perpetrated by people who had their own motives.
DOI:
10.1080/14623520701644424
URL:
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