Timothy Snyder How Could the Holocaust Have Happened Mon Feb 25th 2013

good morning I have to apologize to you on behalf of the caterer apparently they're stuck in traffic somewhere and weren't able to be here to start our continental breakfast at nine I promise you those of you who've come hungry that we will make those bagels available to you as soon as they get here but we are on a very tight schedule this morning because Dr Snyder has a flight to catch that's earlier than we would like to have it going but he's going all the way to the east coast we'd like to keep him here forever actually but we're going to start with the lecture now and somehow rather we'll get the bagels in here Dr Snyder okay what I'd like to do this morning is um is to come is to try to complement what I did last night last night I asked the question of how 14 million human beings could have been killed as a matter of deliberate policy in a certain part of Europe and asking that question is one way to try to explain the Holocaust it's a way to try to explain many other things as well but it's one way to try to explain the Holocaust because those 14 million people are killed where the Holocaust happens in other words six million Jews are killed more or less alongside eight million people who aren't Jews and so what I tried to do last night was give you a sense of why it was that this territory was so important and of course as I make the argument I note along the way that there are special features to Hitler's attitude towards Jews that the Holocaust is different from other killing policies and that it involved the attempt to kill every child woman and man of a given group know their policy is like that what I'd like to do today is proceed from a different kind of argument rather than starting with territory and numbers I want to start with the things which I just barely mentioned last night start with with a very special character of Hitler's anti-Semitism move from there to an argument about how that anti-Semitism could actually be realized how Hitler's vision of a world without Jews could actually be brought into practice and then talk for a moment about rescue and then if I have some time give you a sense of what I think all this means for the world that we're living in now I want to start with what I take to be a big problem uh which isn't always seen as such and that is how could it be that Mein Kampf was a description not only of Hitler's mind but also of what actually came to be that's not an easy question at all we can think about it in a kind of circular fashion we can think well Hitler was an anti-semite Hitler had had a vision of a world without Jews therefore it happened but of course that's not it's not as simple as that at all Mein Kampf was one of literally thousands of preposterous World Views which were published in the early 1920s the early 1920s was a very fertile period for people with catastrophic apocalyptic seemingly impossible ideas about how the world might be transformed Mein Kampf is one of literally thousands if not tens of thousands of pamphlets the huge majority of which have naturally been forgot cotton because their Visions weren't realized how is it that this one vision of the world actually came to describe the world how how is it that Hitler made this vision of the world become something that looks like the world this seems to me to be in fact a very very difficult question and the one that we've had a hard time answering so what I'd like to do this morning is to put before you a pretty simple argument in which I first try to be clear about what Hitler's world view was and then in the second part try to give you a sense of how I think it became possible for him to put that worldview into practice okay so what was this world view the world view in in my view uh is has to be understood precisely as an understanding of the planet okay so in a way when we talk about Hitler's anti-Semitism we move very quickly to the word anti-Semitism we're at risk of minimalizing or trivializing or failing to see the full extent of this of this view because after all an anti-semite can be various different kinds of of person anti-semite could be someone who doesn't want Jews in medical school who doesn't like Jews doesn't want his daughter to marry Jews this sort of label doesn't really capture or begin to capture what we're talking about we are talking about an understanding of the way the entire planet works we are talking about as I see things a kind of ecology okay what do I mean by ecology the way Hitler describes the world in mineconf and indeed in subsequent writings his worldview is very coherent and indeed the problem with it is that it's so coherent the way he describes the planet is this the Earth has only a certain amount of surface on this surface there's only a certain amount of the key resource which is food therefore the way that history works and everything that happens in history is just a matter of races competing for food races in the biological sense Germans slobs and so on competing for food now this is a a sort of desperate way of seeing the world it means that and this is sort of crucial the only good thing in the world for Hitler is the struggle itself the struggle is the only good and natural thing this this this the nature being read in tooth and cloth that's the only good the universe has the struggle among species in the natural world the struggle among races in the human world that struggle is all we have that's it as far as Hitler is concerned that's the only good thing that is the harmony of nature that is as far as he is concerned the only thing that really exists which we might want to preserve now you might be thinking well what about the Germans isn't he a German nationalist not exactly not exactly he thinks that the Germans are the superior race he thinks that they're going to master the world he thinks that in a free competition among Races they will Triumph and their needs will be satisfied and they will dominate much of the world he thinks that but if they don't that's fine with him too if we see as we see by the end of the war when the Germans are defeated what does Hitler say he says well it's turned out that the Russians were stronger than I thought so much the worst for the Germans and then he orders that German cities German cities be destroyed so it's not that Hitler is just an extreme anti-semite or an extreme German nationalist those terms don't quite capture what Hitler was all about Hitler had an ecology he had a view of the planet in which the only good thing was struggle and and therefore his fundamental goal is he's pursuing what he regards as as morality is what he regards as the good thing the fundamental goal that he has to assign himself is to restore that struggle okay here is where we come to the Jews the basic problem with the Jews in Hitler's worldview is not that they are an inferior race or a superior race Hitler doesn't think the Jews are inferior the Jews in his mind are capable of all sorts of things that other people are not that's not inferiority it's also not that they're a superior race either the problem with them is that they break the rules of nature the problem with the Jews is that they break the rules of nature the Only Rule of nature as far as Hitler is concerned the only thing that matters the whole organizing principle the universe of the Godless universe that Hitler sees is this struggle and what Jews do is that they ruin the struggle the Jews do things which break the laws of nature how do you break the laws of nature well the law of nature is struggle among races how do you make how do you how do you undermine this natural as Hitler sees it naturally good struggle among races you create ideas that cut across racial divisions you create ideas which lead to understanding and solidarity across racial divides what are these ideas they're very basic things like the law right so what is something which prevents racial struggle or just struggle in general law okay Jewish invention the state the idea that there should be a political order and that Jews non-jews people in general could be members of that political order they could be citizens Jewish communism right communism the idea that there should be solidarity across working classes right around the world that's Jewish too capitalism capitalism the idea that there are property rights that these rights are General that you can have trade around the world that also creates bonds among different kinds of people according to Universal principles so also Jewish right so all of these main things which in fact you know organize the world of the 1920s and 1930s the state the law communism capitalism from Hitler's point of view these things all stand in the way of the only good outcome which is racial struggle and they are all says Hitler um Jewish inventions now what follows from this is fairly obvious the the the only way to get rid of these various distractions that we have the law the state capitalism communism is to get rid of the Jews and so the fundamental task of politics is to find some kind of black hole to find some kind of place where the Jews can be put that is the main thing which politics should be doing politics should be making sure that there is some place that the Jews can be put now this has a couple of interesting other implications which I wouldn't stress because you'll they're relevant for the Holocaust it means that as the Germans as Hitler looks for a place to put the Jews the Germans are always victims okay in this world view where the Jews have have have wrecked the laws of nature the Germans are always victims no matter what they do to Jews in Hitler's view they are always victims because the primary crime the major crime the metaphysical crime the crime that supplants in in in in in in transcends all other crimes is Wrecking the laws of nature that the Jews have done that and so now anything that is done to the Jews in response to that is precisely a response by the victims of this terrible tragedy right so the Germans are always victims no matter no matter what they do okay now that said this is the highest view this is the fundamental view of how Hitler sees the world but Hitler doesn't see the world only in these abstract ways Hitler understands that we are not just like animals that what we do in the world is not just dig for food in the ground he understands that the world is more complicated than this there's a second level of his worldview which I would describe as as global Hitler is aware that in fact it's not true that every person has a farm and that's where we get our food he knows that we are not just dependent upon the land in that simple biological way he understands that in fact food is a commodity that food is traded internationally that um who has food and who doesn't have food in fact is a result of a world political economic order now this world political economic order as Hitler sees things and not entirely incorrectly is dominated by the British the British are the the British are the superpower of the 1920s and 1930s the only one really and as Hitler sees things and as I say this is not incorrect as Hitler sees things British control of the sea Lanes means that Britain that that that the British control access to food now this is not just an abstract lesson of course it's it's the truth about the world economy everyone in the world economy is dependent upon almost everyone's depending on someone else's food that food is transported by by boat across oceans but the British are the only ones who have a fleet who can actually defend their their access to food and they can use that Fleet to make sure that you don't get food right this is the lesson that Hitler draws from the first World War the first world war as you might remember involves a blockade of Germany by the British Navy which is designed to starve the Germans out with some considerable success and and this is crucial to how Hitler sees the world because from Hitler's point of view the defeat in the first World War is the key historical mystery which has to be resolved the Germans could not have lost the first world war because the Germans are of course Superior to everyone else so they could not have lost it the only way they could have lost it is by way of this blockade and the blockade where did the blockade come from the blockade comes from the British but deeply it comes from the Jews this is Hitler's view Hitler's understanding is that the way that the Jews dominate their enemies is that they deny them food and from his point of view the first world war is an example of that the first world war is an example of how World jury uses food to dominate the people who should be who should be winning now notice what this means for ideas about capitalism because this is about capitalism here's what Hitler is saying about capitalism capitalism is not a free market everyone says it's a free market the British say they're in favor of free trade but as soon as there's any pressure on that system what do you have you have the opposite of free trade you have a blockade right you have people cutting off other people's access to food so capitalism says Hitler is not some neutral system it's not something where everyone obeys the rules in fact says Hitler it's a facade like all these other things are a facade says Hitler for Jewish power so the only way to break through Jewish power is going to be to become is going to be become independent economically the only way to break through British power which you can't break through directly because you don't have a Navy you're basically a country without a Navy the only way to become independent to become powerful is to become economically self-sufficient to use the word that everyone used in 1930s from fascists to Communists you have to become autarkic you have to become your own economy your own world economy so how do you do this well here is where um here's where Hitler's thinking becomes geographical and I spoke about this a bit last night the way that you become autarkic is you conquer a land Empire the the world is not open to you at least not for the time being the British are too strong they control the waters so in order to become autarkic in order to become self-sufficient you have to control Eurasia you have to move East into the Soviet Union and turn that into a colony thereby ensuring yourself access to food now I want to stop here and say a word about food because the only reason that we're thinking about food is that the Caterers didn't come this morning right I mean we have been denied what we think is our Birthright which is the regular access you know right you see the regular access to far more calories than we really need right that that is the only reason why we are thinking about food right now normally we wouldn't be thinking about about food if there weren't traffic if the Caterers had come and our bellies were full we wouldn't be thinking about food instead we'd be listening to the lecture so what I what I need to get across is that for for Hitler not just for Hitler in the 1930s food was a very serious issue you could see it as a natural resource because we hadn't yet and we hadn't yet invented or developed the key Technologies of nitrate-based fertilizers hybridization and so on which are going to make create the world that we have now which we're going to make possible to Bagels that we didn't eat this morning we didn't have that technology then in 1930 it was coming online in the U.S the Germans had invented a lot of it actually but it hadn't come online so they didn't have the problem that there was too much food which is our problem they had the problem that food was like a natural resource it was something that came up out of the ground in limited quantities a little bit like oil is under the ground in limited quantities it was a kind of natural resource now I'm describing it as it could have appeared in the 1930s that turns out not to be true right these inventions come online before you know it Germany has too much food it's important to note though that Hitler specifically says in mineconf science cannot solve this problem science can't solve the problem of the shortage of food he's wrong right science is going to solve this problem at least for the next few decades he says science can't solve the problem the only thing that can solve the problem is technology now what is a technology technology are tanks okay this is a very important distinction science if science solved the food problem in 1933 or for that matter in 2012 or 2050. if science solves a food problem in principle it solves it for everyone because the solution that you find whether it's nitrate fertilizers or some hybrid of rice that can eventually be applied for lots of lots of people technology on the other on the other hand always favors the people who have it so just to use the very simple example I gave you if you've got the best tanks then you're going to be the one who control can control the food or the oil or whatever whatever it might be that you're concerned about so Hitler says that science isn't going to solve this problem if science isn't going to solve it that means that you have no choice here reasons but to use the technology you have to conquer the land that you think you need now there where does this idea come from okay so Hitler also understands that we don't just eat food because we're hungry he unders he understands that food isn't just about satisfying an animal or even human need he understands that food is part of something which is very important in the 20th century which is the standard of living now I'm now going to talk about the parts of mineconf in Hitler's second book which people don't generally talk about but which seem to be very important when Hitler is talking about food and when he's talking about getting lebensrom living space in order to get food he's not just talking about Germans having enough food that's not the point at all it's not just that you need enough food to survive that's not it you need enough food so that you believe you're eating as well as the Americans okay so I'm not just making fun of us for no reason here Hitler believes that globalization in the 1920s and 1930s means that German Housewives a very important category in his thought by the way German Housewives know that American housewives are able to put more and better food on the table not to mention and he talks about all these things not to mention where more interesting clothing right so globalization means that access to food isn't just a matter of having enough of it in some physical sense it's also a matter of German households not falling behind American households America this is his this is his comparison right Germany cannot fall behind the United States and this is this is not an idle comparison because um Hitler sees United States not only as the coming superpower and heroin has to admit that he's right and not everybody saw this in the 1920s he sees America not only as the coming superpower but he sees America as the example of how you can in fact become a land Empire right remember Maritime Empire is closed off to you most the world is covered with colonies anyway you don't have a Navy so the only way you can become a great power can control enough food to have a high standard of living is to control land who has shown how that can be done in Hitler's lifetime in the United States of America says Hitler the United States of America has shown that this can be done how can it be done from Hitler's point of view the United States of America is this it's a core group of Scandinavian and Germanic settlers who because of their racial superiority have managed to destroy the native population and to enslave enough people in order to carry out a Westward Expansion right so the thing that we call the frontier Manifest Destiny that's what Hitler called labensvale the United States was his demonstrated for Hitler that motivated racially Superior people can create a land Empire in the modern world we were his model now um this is this is and he's very literal about this I mentioned last night he says things like the vulgar will be our Mississippi right and you know for Thomas Jefferson the Mississippi was the line Beyond which Indians were either to be expelled or to be killed the Volga that's what Hitler means these analogies come up over and over again you know when he talks about access to food he says who remembers the Indians you know it's quite clear that this is what he's thinking about when he talks about partisan Warfare he talks about Cowboys and Indians it's not the point is not that his he he fully understands the U.S the point is that the US is his model the U.S shows he thinks that this sort of thing can be done but there's another reason um why why he thinks that this kind of thing can be done and it has to do not just with capitalism but but but with Communism so where is this Empire this German Empire going to be it's going to be in the East it's going to be where the Soviet Union already is right in order to create this Empire what's what Hitler has to do is to conquer the fertile soil of of Ukraine now why is this going to be easy why is this something that you can already be thinking about in Mein Kampf in the 1920s well before you control the German State well before you have any power why does it seem like this is going to be plausible or even easy now the answer for Hitler and you see all the time what I'm doing is I'm trying to describe to you the levels of his anti-semitic worldview so you can see how big it is and how and how and how productive it is of destructive action the the reason why this is going to be easy is that like capitalism a Jewish plot communism is also a Jewish plot the reason why the Soviet Union is going to be easy to destroy is that the Soviet Union is not what it purports to be the Soviet Union is not a working-class state the Soviet Union is instead says Hitler um just an example of a few Jews who are exploiting the massive and racially inferior Slavs okay so um there are two things that are very critical about this the first thing is that this is a form of Hitler's racism which we want to make sure we understand the first form is this planetary form that the Jews stand outside the rules of nature they spoil the rules of nature therefore have to be expelled from nature the second form is this political form Jews are responsible for capitalism and they're responsible for communism this specific idea is called judeo-bolshevism a Jew is a Bolshevik and a because a Jew a very very powerful idea to this day by the way many people still believe in some in some version of this identification but what it means is that in you it's going going to be easy to destroy the Soviet Union just like the the Americans could roll over the the the native population of North America right it'll be easy for the Germans to roll over the the Soviet Union because all the Soviet Union is is a bunch of Jews manipulating millions and millions of racially inferior Slavs if you go in there and destroy the Jews right you see how this logic works if you go and destroy the Jews all this land will just fall into your lap and you'll be able to control it because the Russians the ukrainians the yellow Russians these people are racially inferior um they're stupid they've never had their own state they're incapable political organization in other words the Soviet Union this is how Hitler sees history the Soviet Union is just a short interval I I can't believe you're coming in the middle of this I don't know what I'm going to do now there's okay all right it's not we're in the 1930s we're trying to understand Hitler's world view the fundamental thing about Hitler's worldview is that he sees the Jews as standing outside the planetary natural struggle they've got to be removed now we're talking about politics politics is the next level of Hitler's worldview in politics Hitler identifies the Jews with major forms of political life like capitalism and communism this explains for Hitler how he's going to be able to change the world that's where that's where we are now okay now just please nod like that was all really clear all right I love you and thank you okay so the so so what does this mean it means that if you go in and destroy the Jews the whole thing will fall like a house of cards which that's Hitler's analogy the Soviet Union another another analogy from Hitler is a giant with a feet of clay you just go in and kill the Jews and it falls into your lap so the history of the Slavs as Hitler sees things is this the Slavs have never been able to have their own state for all of their history it was the Germanic peoples who organized statehood for them and now there's this brief little interval since 1917 where the Jews are doing it for them all you have to do is get rid of those Jews and you can restore history to its natural course which is that the Germans are going to be dominating Eastern Europe the Germans are going to be manipulating the Slavs using the Slavs the way that they want now what follows from this obviously is that there's going to have there's going to be a war against the Soviet Union and the war against the Soviet Union is going to be a war against a Jewish State as Hitler sees things in other words it's going to begin a war against Jews right you're going to see how important this is when we get to the Holocaust itself now the problem with this way of thinking of course is that it's anarchic you know it's it's against everything you're against capitalism you're against communism you're against the law you're against the state you're against the states that actually exist you want to wipe them out how do you come to power and Implement anything like that right if you're a kind of ecological Anarchist which I think is what Hitler was you've got this problem because how are you going to implement any of this you're not going to do it by yourself it's not going to be you and your friends you know when Hitler and his friends tried in 1923 with a beer hall Pooch they get easily dispersed they get humiliatingly dispersed some of them are killed how are you going to do this thing this is the this is the weakest part of Hitler's thought because it's not like Hitler really thinks that Germany is so wonderful or so important as far as Hitler is concerned the German state is just there to get this whole whole process moving right um when he talks about what the German State should be like the example that he uses and this is really interesting the example he uses are the Balkan States okay I'll try to catch a real German nationalist saying that Germany should be like Serbia right no German Nationals that's the opposite of what German Nationals think but that's what Hitler thinks the reason Hitler thinks that Germany should be like Serbia is that he sees the little Balkan nation-states the ones that started the first world war remember he sees them as the way that states should actually look and how do they look this is interesting basically no domestic policy the entire budget is the military budget and and all policy is foreign policy and all foreign policy is war I'm simplifying somewhat but not very much right this is how Hitler think Germany should look Germany should be all foreign policy foreign policy should be War but how you can imagine that right I mean you can imagine that but how do you actually come to power and and make and make that come true so the short of it is that in order for Hitler to come to power as he does after he after he's released from prison um during the Great Depression in a story that's been told very well um in order for him to come to power what he has to do is basically submerge all of the things which I've tried very hard to explain to you and run for office on completely different kinds of arguments Hitler's anti-Semitism is almost completely submerged when he when he runs for office he certainly doesn't talk about how when he wins the Germans are going to take part in this planetary struggle etc etc he does the kind of rhetoric which is in mind comfy is not on he's not on the election Trail um so he he comes to Power by way of legal means but there's a critical thing that happens in here which I want to make sure that I stress um when when Hitler comes to power there are many things that are special about the way it comes to power I'm just going to mention one when Hitler comes to power he does so by way of winning an election and after he comes to power he begins to destroy the German he begins to transform the German state from within the critical thing that Hitler brings with him is the this is the idea that the party is more important than the state and the institution that embodies this idea is something called the SS now I can't go into all of all of the history of the SS there's just one part of it which I want to emphasize to you the thing which is interesting about the SS and which is and which is and which is worth knowing to see the future what's going to happen with the SS is the SS is not a state institution it's not like the police or the army or other instruments of violence which are subordinate in a more or less natural legal institutional way to authorities whatever the authorities might be the SS is a party organization the SS is part of the Nazi party it is not something which can be subordinated to a state it's something else the way that it functions in fact is to disperse to eliminate state power wherever it touches okay now in this in the 1930s in Germany what can this mean it means two things it means the SS penetrates institutions that already exists especially the police the police are organized in such a way that Himmler is at the very top Himmler is in charge of the SS Handler's at the very top and people in the police forces are recruited into the SS people from the SS are put inside the police forces that's the one thing so the police in Germany cease being a normal State institution like they are here and it's the same men but it becomes a different kind of institution they become or they're meant to become what Hitler calls racial Warriors in other words people who are thinking along the kinds of lines that I've been talking about as opposed to doing your normal job of directing traffic or arresting miscreants or whatever it might be the second thing the SS does is the SS runs concentration camps now why is this so important what is a concentration camp I ask you to think about it for a moment legally because I'm sure you have all kinds of knowledge about what a concentration camp is legally a concentration camp is a little patch of territory where the law does not function where the state does not exist this is not something I'm making up this is how German jurists talked about it a concentration camp is a place in Germany where German law does not touch in other words it's a stateless Zone okay now if we think about this category of statelessness if we think about the destruction of the state then we are getting close to the argument about as to how Hitler could actually bring his worldview about if we want to understand how Hitler actually brings his worldview about we have to see how Hitler makes that world view possible in a place where there are in fact barriers to it and the main barriers are something very boring so boring that we Overlook them um and that is other states so Hitler's come to power in Germany how is that going to lead to the Holocaust of European Jews so this is I mean this is this is a hard question it's not quite as hard a question as how do you get from Mein Kampf to the end of European Jews but even how you get from Hitler being in power to the end of European Jews is also a very hard question why is that a hard question because there aren't very many Jews in Germany there aren't very many Jews in Germany Jews in 1939 in Germany are one quarter of one percent of the population of Germany it's a tiny minority in Germany Jews don't live in Germany for the most part Jews that we know of lived in Germany Albert Einstein lived in Germany very many important interesting people lived in Germany but for the most part Germany is not a place where Jews live right so the person who's ruling Germany cannot is not automatically the person who decides the fate of European jewry right it's simple it's something who thinks don't really have that much to do with each other the connection is pretty loose the Jews live and it's making a really simple point but I'm going to stand and say it make it really slowly because no one ever makes it the Jews live in other states they are citizens of Poland they're citizens of the Soviet Union they're citizens of Hungary they're citizens of Lithuania and so what happens to them isn't determined at least not in a direct way what happened by what happens in Germany right what happens to them and again this is a really simple point but it's worth stressing is going to be determined by what happens to their own States not by what happens in Germany Germany in some way is going to have to affect these other states for a holocaust to happen right it's a very simple thing but I think there we begin to see the answer to how Hitler can change the world and realize his worldview it's something which comes about um as a matter of experimentation um Germany cannot destroy the European Jews by itself for two reasons the first one I've already mentioned there just aren't that many Jews in Germany even if Germany killed all of its Jews which it didn't half of them survived but even if Germany killed all of its shoes that wouldn't be the Holocaust that we're that we're we're thinking about and trying to explain but there's another reason and it's one that the Germans learned from experience and the experience was kristallnacht what is kristallnacht kristallnacht is is the the huge wave of pogrom's half organized by by the German State and by the and by the SS in um in in in in November of 1938. when we think of kristallnacht and we commemorate Crystal knocked we think of it as the kind of the low point of of how far how low Germany could get and it was a kind of outrage at the time um people were shocked that something like this could happen in Germany itself but from the point of view of the German leadership Crystal knocked actually showed a kind of limitation if what are you doing if you carry out pogroms on your own territory right like if if we go into Dallas um and and organize a pogrom what are we doing I mean aside from the obvious horror that we're perpetrating on our fellow human beings we are violating the law in many obvious ways if we break glass right if we loot a store we are violating the law it's not so the problem that Hitler and Himmler and and guring understood with Crystal locked was that if you tried to if you tried to if you try to intimidate or kill the Jews on your own territory you're weakening the state you're weakening your own State you're destroying your own State and that's the thing you can't do people often ask why the Holocaust doesn't happen in Germany and these are the answers these are the really simple answers there aren't that many Jews in Germany and the Germans understand as of late 1938 that if you if you undertake massive violence on your own territory it might intimidate and kill Jews but also will prevent you from doing anything else because you're destroying your own state so the Holocaust can move forward then insofar as other states are destroyed and now we reach the history of the Second World War but we're going to tell it in a slightly different way um let's let's begin with the states that are first destroyed Austria is destroyed in 1938. Germany's Southern neighbor Austria is incorporated into into Germany in something called the Angelus what does this mean for the progress of of what the Germans call the final solution well when you it's a very simple point I'm sure but I'm sure you'll see it as soon as I make it if you destroy Austria what are you doing you're getting rid of Austrian law all kinds of things that hadn't been possible are now possible right just imagine for example if we if we just okay the fantasy of destroying Canada I'm not going to allow you to have but if if you destroy a neighboring state you have a moment where you can do all kinds of things which wouldn't have been which are not possible for you at home and they're also not possible in that state right so when Austria is destroyed it becomes relatively easy for for Eichmann who is the person who's the who innovates here for Eichmann to strip Austrian Jews of their property and to force Austrian Jews to flee so more Jews flee from Austria in a few weeks in 1938 than had fled from Germany in the previous five years why because it's hard to even even if you have the power of the state this is the irony it's hard to find ways to force Jews to leave about half of them go but it's hard it's slow it's difficult you always have to be thinking about the consequences for the wise for the businesses for the code of law Etc in Austria you don't think about any of that because you've gone and you've cleared out the whole civil code and you're going to start again eventually you're going to incorporate Austria into Germany but in the meantime you can do whatever you want something similar happens in Czechoslovakia okay Czechoslovakia is destroyed in early 1939. what do what do czechoslovak Jews know in advance they know in advance that they're going to lose their property right if you think the Germans are going to destroy Czechoslovakia and you're a Jew and there are very many Jews in Czechoslovakia were quite well off what do you know is going to happen you know that if as soon as the Germans come in you're going to lose them you're going to get nothing for it therefore you're inclined to sell what you have for a pittance ahead of time so that you can get out that's what happens in Czechoslovakia so the Germans are able to aryanize that's what they call taking a Jewish property in Czechoslovakia very quickly very easily because of the threat the Czechoslovakia is going to be destroyed which in fact it is destroyed so the two things that the Germans have been trying to do inside their own country get Jews to leave and and steal their property happen much more easily once the state has been destroyed but that in a way is is the is just the beginning of the story that's the acceleration of policies that that the Germans are already undertaking inside their own country where things begin to change in quality is when the Germans actually have to fight a war where the Germans have to fight a war they have to fight a war against Poland now that the Germans fight a war against Poland because Poland you know you all know the story that Poland's the first of the European states to actually resist German aggression so the Germans have to fight a war against Poland this is this is really important because it means that the Germans are not only destroying a state as they did with Austrian Czechoslovakia they're destroying it with malice they're destroying it with the intention of making sure that Poland will never rise again okay Austrian Czechoslovakia were Incorporated either partially or entirely into the Reich there was no notion that you were going to go in there and shoot all the educated people because you needed some of those educated people to staff your bureaucracies and so on and besides many of them were German Poland is an entirely different story the Germans enter Poland with the idea that Poland not only is going to be defeated in a war it's never going to exist again as an entity as a nation the way this is going to be prevented is by shooting all the people who have an education right no polish political class no polish Nation no Polish state now and forever that's the idea that idea is carried out messily and and incompletely but that's a different story is carried out by the einsatz groupman what are the Einstein the einsights group and are the state destroyers they are the special units organized by the SS whose job it is to destroy political entities and this is the important thing remember I mentioned how the SS is the is institution you have to follow inside Germany because the SS means a kind of acid for the state the SS is there to destroy the state wherever the SS is there is no state so the einsatzpoop and enter Poland with the mission of destroying the Polish state permanently this is not a war like other Wars where you destroy an army you occupy and then you sign a treaty no this is a war in which you destroy the state and the nation the Polish nation in the first instance um now this is just so note what the Einstein's group and have done to Poland even if you don't care at all about Poland which I think you should or about the polls which I also think you should know what the Einstein have done in Poland because it's going to be very important in just a moment for for the Jews in a very direct way the other thing which happens when when the Germans enter Poland is that they carry out State destruction by proxy okay so I've spent this whole time talking about the Germans meanwhile there's another state the Soviet Union you know which I've only described in terms of how Hitler sees it Hitler sees it as this Jewish State Etc which is which where the Jews manipulate the Slavs meanwhile there's another state the Soviet Union which is really really good at State destruction that's what it does uh so to speak for a living and when the Germans invade Poland remember they're not invading Poland by themselves they're invading Poland in an alliance with the Soviet Union okay so at what am I saying when Germany invades Poland it's it's carrying out State destructive measures by itself it's improvising it's trying to figure out how to do it it's also carrying out State destruction by proxy the Soviets are coming in from the East they're destroying Eastern Poland they're killing the Polish Elites much more effectively than the Germans by the way they're deporting hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens including very very many Jews and they're also destroying the three Baltic states Estonia Latvian Lithuania destroyed by the Soviets in 1940 out of the picture incorporated into the Soviet Union okay and again even if you don't care about the estonians of latvians and lithuanians notice this because it's going to be absolutely crucial for what happens to the Jews and how the Holocaust proceeds what about the Jews well in the German occupied parts of Poland the Jews are taken in and placed in ghettos with the idea that they're going to be sent to Madagascar Now Madagascar at this point is that black hole on the planet that Hitler thinks the Jews have to be found in in his calculations Madagascar at this point is where the Jews are going to be sent by putting the Jews and ghettos and occupied Poland something very important happens to to them or many important things happen but one is it is demonstrated that they no longer exist according to the law now that may seem like a really trivial thing to be saying isn't to get a much more dramatic than that I think it's actually very Central to what happens because not existing according to the law means among other things you don't have the right to have property when someone is physically removed from his house in a town and forced to go to forced to go to the Warsaw Ghetto or taken out of one neighborhood in Warsaw enforced to go to another and his property is up for grabs somebody will take it right and this is not a law of you know polish microeconomics this is a law of General microeconomics right microeconomics will tell you how things will proceed very well if some people aren't allowed to own property and other people are allowed to own property right so if you take if you take the Jews out of the houses you force them into the ghetto other people go into those houses not only that if you take Jews and put them in the ghetto they're professional niches as Artisans or Tradesmen right whatever it might be those are now empty and they're filled up by other people they're filled up by the people from the countryside who live there what does that mean it means that you have an entire I'm over saying this slightly but only slightly you have an entire society which has an active wish that those Jews not come back right because if your property and your professional advance which are very very important factors in the Holocaust depend upon someone else's absence you don't want them to come back and that's a side and apart from whether you're an anti-semite I would even go so far as to claim that one once you have stolen from the Jews you are much more likely to become an anti-semite right because that is the way of rationalizing this thing that you have done which is obviously quite immoral and in the previous regime quite quite illegal okay now I mentioned Madagascar I have to say another word about this the reason why the the Germans can't send the Jews to Madagascar is that the war is not proceeding the way they expect they expect the British to drop out of the war they expect the British to help them in fact ship the Jews to Madagascar the British stay in the war there's no possible way that the Germans can actually get European Jews to Madagascar or to anywhere else and this is the state of things when Germany invades the Soviet Union in June of 1941. now you you can see why the invasion of the Soviet Union is the crucial turning point in all of this the the invasion of the Soviet Union is the moment that Hitler himself has been waiting for in some sense all these other things from which the Germans have learned Austria Czechoslovakia Poland these are all just distractions along the way to the war against the Soviet Union and the war against the Soviet Union as you also know is going to be fought as a war against the Jews and and it's going to be fought in order to destroy the Soviet Union as a Jewish State now what does this mean it means that the Ironside scooping the state destroyers are going to be deployed in the Soviet Union just as they were deployed in Poland almost exactly the same way their job is going to be to come in and make sure the state is not only destroyed but can never arise again the way that you do that is that you kill the political class but now the crucial question becomes who is the political class in Poland from a Nazi point of view the political class was this strange educated group of polls who never should have existed anyway because the Slavs are inferior right you get rid of them no Poland in the Soviet Union the Nazi definition of the political class is different the Nazi definition of the political class includes at its Center Jewish males right so now the einsatzupin who killed who killed tens of thousands of poles in 1939 entered the Soviet Union and kill tens of thousands of Jews now this begins um as a kind of strange politics right admittedly um it's a very it's a perverse sort of Politics the belief that the Soviet Union are Jews and the Jews of the Soviet Union and killing the Jews is going to help you destroy the social Union Etc is a kind of perverse logic but it is nevertheless a political logic what happens though is that it encounters um a new reality which was created by the Soviets themselves okay how can this be when this when the Germans invade the Soviet Union and now I wish I had my pointer in my map when when the Germans invade the Soviet Union what are they invading they're not invading the Soviet Union they're invading territories that the Soviet Union has just invaded itself it's a big difference the Soviets in 1939 have themselves invaded Eastern Poland they have then themselves occupied in the next the Baltic states in 1939 right 23 months before the German invasion 23 months after the Soviets come in the Germans come in when the Germans invade the Soviet Union they're invading territories they're starting with territories that the Soviets themselves have just taken right so you have a case which is pretty much unheard of in European history of a double occupation moreover you have a case and this really is unheard of in European history of double State destruction the Soviets have come in and they've destroyed these states not just in the sense of making them cease to exist but killing their Elites deporting their Elites and so on now the Germans come into these places and they're coming into them with their general idea that if you kill the Jews you destroy the Soviet Union but this idea has a particular resonance right on places where the Soviet Union has already been this judeo-bolshevism it for us it's a total it's all it's a total abstraction in pre-war Germany it actually wasn't really that important because you know there wasn't you could see that Communists weren't Jews and the Communists themselves were disempowered in 1933. but once you bring that judeo-bolshevik idea into places where there is bolshevism where the Bolsheviks are actually in power then it has a completely different sort of resonance which I'm going to try to explain the judeobolcific idea becomes an idea of what the Germans call Liberation they tell the latvians estonians lithuanians that what they are doing is they are liberating them from Soviet power and of course Soviet power has been disastrous for these places and humiliating which may be even more important when the when the Germans come in they say we are liberating you from the Soviet Union but from from what exactly we are liberating you from the Jews and that is the only Liberation that we are bringing and therefore if you want to take part in your own Liberation you join our project for murdering the Jews now this doesn't have to work on everyone and it doesn't work on everyone it has to work on a few thousand people and it does work on a few thousand people and the result of this is a crucial breakthrough the Einstein themselves could not possibly have murdered the Jews of the Soviet Union the iron sauce group and are only a couple of thousand men the iron sauce Groupon are helped by other German forces and they're helped crucially by locals the number of locals who take part in the murder of Jews is much much higher in fact the number of Germans and the only way that that the shooting campaign against Jews that continues over 1941 can take place is with this local collaboration what I'm trying to say is this local collaboration is a result of this judeo-bolshevik idea and the judeo Bolshevik idea has purchase because these states have already been destroyed so the Holocaust starts the mass murder of Jews starts on terrains where the state has been destroyed not once but twice and and this is this is as far as this argument's really going to go because we know um where the Holocaust stops okay we know geographically where it stops wherever there's Soviet power there isn't going to be a holocaust wherever as far as the Germans get into the Soviet Union there's going to be a holocaust so this is as far as the argument is going to go the Holocaust in the sense of a total Destruction of the Jews becomes possible as a result of one two State destructions plus plus Hitler's worldview okay so let me try to propose this argument in in a different way Hitler has been looking for this black hole into which the Jews can be put he thinks for a long time this black hole is most likely Madagascar when the Germans invade the Soviet Union their idea is this black hole is the gulag this black hole is Siberia once we've defeated the Soviet Union we'll just drive the Jews across the Volga River we'll drive them into Siberia that will be the end of it that's the final solution as of spring summer 1941 that's the black hole in fact it turns out that the black hole is right in the middle of Europe the black hole the place where the Jews can be dealt with where the Jews can be removed eliminated is right in the middle of Europe it's the place where the germ where German power encounters Soviet power and where the Germans begin their war against the Soviet Union that lesson that the black hole is here in Europe and also the other lesson that the way to get rid of Jews is not to deport them which turns out to be impossible but to kill them these are the lessons that are learned in 1941. after that comes the things that are that are technique which we tend to remember the gas Chambers at Belgian sobi boy Auschwitz those things are a change in technique they're not a change in policy the policy of eliminating all Jews is there from the beginning the realization that you kill that you get rid of them by killing them is something which is learned in 1941 the immediate technique is bullets and half of the Jews who die in the Holocaust are going to be killed by Poets the gas Chambers are a technical improvement from the German point of view which spares them a lot of labor but they're not a change in policy so this is as far as the argument is going to go now let me try um to reverse the tone a little bit and try to give you a sense of why this why this argument might actually be right in general by talking to you for for a brief moment before we close about the idea of rescue now very often we think about the Holocaust we start from the idea of rescue right the the Hollywood movies that are made about the Holocaust generally are organized around some kind of rescue right from Schindler's List to to um Defiance about the bielski brothers these are all stories of rescue and therefore and this is what I want to make clear they're totally marginal to the way the Holocaust actually happened we need rescue psychologically because rescue is what makes the story not completely black but rescue is in fact something rather marginal to the Holocaust um and and wind rescue happens when Jews are saved this very much has to do with the kinds of political factors that I've been trying to stress okay let me try to give you an example of this take two places that are rather similar uh Denmark and Estonia small Scandinavian states which have very small Jewish populations minimal in the case of Denmark histories of anti-Semitism almost no history of anti-Semitism and Estonia right very comparable places what happens to the Jews in Denmark and what happens to the Jews in Estonia some of you will probably know what happened to the Jews in Denmark most of them are rescued it's it's it's a it's a heartening tale of Gentiles behaving well and so on um the in 1943 most the Jews of Denmark are taken by boat to Sweden as a result roughly 99 percent of Denmark Danish Jews survive what happens to estonia's Jews 99 of them are killed that's a very very big difference right all of them are killed all of them are saved how do you explain that it can't be because these are such different countries with different traditions of anti-Semitism because they're not that's not the case at all the difference has everything to do with the way that these two places fit into the German Empire when Denmark is invaded the entire state is preserved the occupation is a traditional one the Danish government functions when the Jews are finally gotten rid of which is what the Germans want it's basically a Cooperative policy between the local German planet potentiary and and the Danes themselves he tells them the final solution is going to happen he makes sure the Navy doesn't get involved he makes sure the Army doesn't get involved he knows what's happening with the rescue he watches it happen and when it's happened he reports back to Berlin that we resolve the Jewish question in Denmark Denmark is very important it's functionally a German Ally it provides a whole 10 percent of the German food supply over the course of the war the Germans do not want to disrupt these relations Denmark is part of a western series of invasions where the Germans do not destroy the local state where the Germans do not destroy the local Elites these places are not part of the German Colonial vision there are more or less accidents they're diversions their distractions the German Colonial vision is in the East so Estonia is in the middle of German Colonial Vision Estonia has already been destroyed by the Soviet Union once the German inter Estonia and the organized local police forces who very quickly carry out the murders of Jews and others who were guarded as enemies now you cannot understand this it simply can't be done by saying that estonians are not nice and Danes are nice it's just the historical record just does not bear that out the difference between these radically different cases just demonstrates a general fact about European life during the second world war the more State there was the more likely it was that Jews were going to survive okay so I'm introducing now what social scientists like to call a variable so the constant is Hitler wants to eliminate the Jews that we know wherever German power reaches he wants to eliminate the Jews that's German policy the variable is how much state is there and if you just think about that you go a long way into understanding the different fates of Jews across the European continent I'll give it to you in the in the in the general way I gave it to you last night which is to say that if you are in a state if you were in a state which is not destroyed even if that state is Nazi Germany even though state is a Nazi Ally Hungary Romania Bulgaria Italy France and you were a Jew your chances of surviving are about one in two if you were in a place where the state is destroyed Estonia Latvia Lithuania Poland the western part of the Soviet Union your chances of surviving are one in 20. right so a tenfold difference a radical difference and and their their mechanisms for this there are reasons for this and I'm going to try to just summarize them for you because I can't go through all the individual National stories which by the way is how this this is always almost always analyzed right so if we talk about Denmark we only talk about Denmark and therefore it seems like it must be you know the heroic Danes and so on if we talk about Estonia we only talk about Estonia I think it's only when we put all of these countries together and look at them that we can actually see the pattern and the pattern is that state destruction isn't just the mechanism State destruction is the explanation State destruction is the one thing that explains the variation among cases okay so why is this well think about it internally what are some of the things that happen internally when the stage is destroyed it means the presence of the SS okay the SSR the state destroyers the places where the SS are in charge is where the state is destroyed and there the SS runs things there okay let me I'm over some fine a bit but not much the SS is largely in charge in the East it's not in charge in France France is a military occupation another another factor is the is the destruction of law okay I've already mentioned this several times but it's it's very very important in France uh French law continues to function in Poland there is no polish law the Polish state has officially ceased to exist being extracted from the civil code is not the most dramatic way to characterize the Holocaust but it's a very important part of the Holocaust if you are no longer a legal person um then anything can happen to you let me try to give you a a an example which might bring make this clear think about the Holocaust in France who dies in the Holocaust in France French Jews right no the largest group of Jews were killed in the French Holocaust are polish Jews more polish Jews are killed in the French Holocaust than French Jews why is that it's because there is no Polish state and when French Jews are taken to camps the selection for the death trains is done according to are they Soviet Jews are they polish Jews then they go right many French Jews do go but the people who are most at risk are the ones who are stateless right who do not have any state to protect them those people become as Hannah arment would put it they become superfluous another thing which happens when the state is destroyed or to put it less passively more actively when you destroy the state is that you get to control the institutions of the state that were already there most importantly the police so consider the Polish police for a moment in 1938 what were the Polish police doing aside from the other normal things that policemen do they were very busy trying to stop pogrones why were they trying to stop pogroms well for the reasons I mentioned when I talked about Crystal knocked pogroms are a violation of law there's a violation of property rights Poland is a Bourgeois country commercial law is very important Etc so the police tried to stop for drums not because they like Jews right it's important to remember that not not to understand everything emotionally or in terms of racial attitudes they do it because it's their job so in 1938 again and again and again the Polish Police Stopped programs these same men in 1942-43-44 chased Jews across the countryside and killed them the same men now they weren't rescuing Jews in 1938 because they loved them and I think it's pretty clear that in 1942 43-44 they weren't chasing them across the countryside and killing them because they hated them they might have hated them but that wasn't the difference the difference was that there is now a different power in charge right so if you destroy the state that means you get to control the police forces the state fragments and you're and you're on top of the little bits that are left over the final thing I want to mention is what I call the dark Market um if you destroy the state then you can manipulate the market in a way which is otherwise impossible and this is a big part of the explanation of how Jews are killed who escape the death transport to escape the ghettos if you were a Jew and you escape a transport you escape a ghetto and you run to the countryside naturally I mean I'll just make the obvious points you're meeting the population which might be hostile for religious reasons your mean a population which knows that if it rescues you it it and its family are subject to the death penalty these are not trivial things I mean let's ask ourselves how many of us really would save someone if we knew there was a death penalty for doing so probably none of us right but that's not really the whole story the story is um that you could that the market itself has been changed and this is I put the argument this way because the way we think about the whole world has to do with the way we think about free market economics but let's think about what free market economics means if some people are transformed from actors in an economy to Commodities right if I can take the people over here and say you are no longer actors with rights you are Commodities you were worth one bag of flour which is a true example you were worth two bottles of vodka you were worth a certain amount of sugar you were worth 5 dollars that will dramatically affect how these people behave and this is just exactly this is just what microeconomics will tell you if I can transform them into property if I can say your incentive structure is if you turn them in you get money and if you rescue them you will get killed I have radically changed your incentive structure no matter how good you are how any submitica you are how filo Semitic you are whatever it might be so the market then functions exactly as you would expect it to function microeconomics then predicts for you very well how people actually behave in that situation so in other words what I'm trying to say is this thing that we call the free market it's a very simple point it depends on the civil code and the equality of all citizens and it depends upon Commodities being Commodities and humans being humans right we take that for granted but if the state is destroyed you can mess with the market you can turn Some Humans into Commodities and you can turn the rest of them in effect into part of the giant death factory for those people which is what Poland becomes okay now sovereignty in the existence of the state think about it from the from the external point of view now what does it mean if there is a state what does it mean to be a state it means fundamentally two things it means that you have citizens and it means you have foreign policy okay so Hungary Romania Italy they have citizens among those citizens are their Jewish citizens they might have anti-semitic policies they might be run by anti-semitic people in the case of Romania but those Jews are their citizens they want to decide decide what is going to happen to these people so if Germany in 1942 says send your Jewish citizens to the camps they don't do it right why don't they do it because not because they love the Jews that's again everyone has to remember that like how One feels personally about Jews is very often not what's important in these things it's because it's a question of sovereignty perhaps I will have my own anti-semitic policies but they are my own anti-semitic policies turning over my citizens to you is compromising my sovereignty something which I want to be really careful about since you're stronger than me anyway and especially in 1943 when it's clear that you're going to lose the war right and this is when policy Source Jews begin to shift in all of these countries I can't tell the story of each one of them because we don't have time but in 1943 when it's clear that the Germans are going to lose the war their own allies switch around their Jewish policies why because they think that the Germans are going to lose the Americans are going to win and they want to be able to present a better face to the Americans that's what sovereignty means that's the second point it means you have citizens that you have to care about because citizenship is the same thing as sovereignty and it also means you have a foreign policy and a foreign policy is something that can be changed it can be changed from or less to pro-german and that's the way that many Jews survive now I want to stress that the point I'm making is not that Vichy France or Romania God forbid was a good place to be a Jew what I'm stressing is there is a different there's you're in a different position if there is a state than if there's no state if there is no State there is nothing between you and death if there's a state even a perverted one even one alive with Nazi Germany there are institutions and there are norms which are between you and being killed now let's ask about rescue then um I'm trying to make the point that these larger politics are the larger politics are are pretty much key to explaining who can rescue and there's there's a there's a there's a there are a series of examples which make this plain who are the main Rescuers in in occupied Europe who were the heroic Rescuers who are the people who say many many many people they're mostly diplomats is this a coincidence is this because diplomats are nice people with good manners no it's because diplomats are the only people who have the power on a small scale to reverse the general Trend that I'm talking about the way that a diplomat can save you is that he can give you a Visa or a passport or some form of legal recognition which means that you become if only temporarily for a few days or weeks before you escape you become a human being again right so the Chinese Consul in Vienna rescues hundreds of people the Japanese Council and colonists rescues a couple thousand people um uh the the the Swedish Ambassador in Budapest rescues hundreds of people Etc et cetera et cetera these kinds of things are not possible unless you have some access to state power then the final thing I'm going to say about rescue is that the rescues that we like to think about the ones that are carried out by individual human beings in the darkest places of the Holocaust in Poland and the Soviet Union and the Baltic states these tend to be motivated by really unusual kinds of human interest interest sometimes it's romantic love people will sometimes rescue the person they're married to or engaged to very often it's communism people who have been who have close relationships Jews and non-jews because they were already underground in an illegal party in Poland very often it is Protestant apocalypticism that is Protestants who identify with Jews non-mainline Protestants who identify with Jews and who believe the Holocaust is the end of the world right these are the sorts of of motivations that are not in the mainstream to put it mildly and all of the studies the psychological studies that non-rescuers come to the same conclusion that the people who rescue are people who in their lives generally went against the mainstream so the point I'm trying to make is that rescue was not only irrational because it was so risky for you and your family it was also psychologically very different difficult because you were going against all of these forces that are released when the state is destroyed and when the Holocaust has has begun okay we're short on time so I should I should wrap this up and just um and just and just close with one word about what this might mean for the future to say two very quick things three very quick things the first is rescue the Holocaust was not ended by rescue if we are facing some truly catastrophic moment in the future we should be clear that we will not rescue ourselves by some kind of heroic improvisation right that's that's our natural way of thinking about the world uh As Americans it's not a lesson which the Holocaust teaches us second thing if it's true that state destruction is one of the crucial things that that leads to the Holocaust one then might want to be very critically attentive to ideologies whose goal is the destruction of the state right those ideologies are still with us there were various kinds of social Darwinism that emerged in the 19th century they took on communist forms they took on Nazi forms and there's also a capitalist variant the idea that you should get rid of the state because in that way capitalism will function very well how capitalism actually functions when there's no state is something that we can learn about a little bit from the Holocaust itself the next thing which is worth thinking about here is the rid of totalitarianism when we think about how the how how the Holocaust happened we often think okay Germany was a totalitarian state which killed its own people but that's not how it happened most German Jews survived 97 of the Jews who were killed were non-germans who were killed Beyond Germany so the totalitarian idea that their their states who kill their own people and that's the problem that might be true in some cases but it's not the story of the Holocaust the story of the Holocaust is one state destroying a lot of other states and killing their citizens right now if you if you understand that it changes the way you you think about when you might intervene in the world and not and then the funny thing I would stress is Hitler's attitudes about science now why do I stress this because I think we are entering into a moment of ecological Panic which is not so different from the 1930s in the 1930s Hitler and he wasn't the only one could look around the world and say science is not going to solve the food problem that we have we are beginning to have a food problem ourselves and a water problem because of global warming and we also are tempted by the idea that science is not going to solve this problem for us in fact many of us are attempted by the idea that science can't even explain it to us once you decide that science isn't going to solve it for you you're left with technology in other words who has the best tanks right so there's an opening for us in the 21st century to repeat a whole lot of things which happen in the 20th and it's I think that's one more reason why it's important for us to understand the Holocaust as it actually happened okay foreign okay Dr Snyder has graciously agreed to answer two questions [Laughter] unless unless they're really short yes or no questions there have there have to be questions yes sir [Applause] um [Music] foreign I'm a historian and you know you know about causality we talked about it I'm a historian and so naturally I think in terms of plural causality I'm never going to make an argument which says there was one thing and that thing brought about the Holocaust that would be absurd clearly a lot of things were involved if we ask about the church the the thing we just have to be clear about is that the kind of the the kind of influence that the church had socially and intellectually did not itself bring about the Holocaust right that's just where we need to start the Christian Church exists in in Europe for 1500 years in Eastern Europe for a thousand years Christians kill a lot of Jews along the way but there is nothing like the Holocaust you can take all of the things in Jewish history all the pogromski uprising all the Dreadful things in that way of seeing Jewish history you can add them all up and you're getting about one week in October of 1942. the Holocaust is something on a completely different scale than than traditional if you like Christian violence against Jews so one I one can't say that you know Christianity brings it brings it about or Christian attitudes bring it about I think that Christianity plays into it in in two important ways and there are three ways one at the top one in the middle one at the bottom at the top the Christian idea that Jews around the world are some kind of unity that they're spread all around the world and that they're always in touch with each other in some kind of odd way that Christian idea is one feature of Hitler's anti-Semitism that's an idea which which the Catholic Church um uh undoes in 1962 but not in 1932 or not in 1892. and and that that particular part of the Christian worldview that it's not that Jews aren't just people who happen to be concentrated here or there but that they're all over the world and they're somehow in a Unity that matters that's not Church institutions though that's that's something about Christianity semitism that's at the top and the middle um most most Christian institutions can be explained their behavior can be explained by the same logic that I've just given you that is to say most Christian institutions are associated with the state and what they do follows what the state does um so you you do not and this is because you know the whole history of the post-reformation in Europe The Taming of Christianity by the state there there are not generally Christian institutions which behave differently when the state than the state behaves and when the state is destroyed Christian institution has become one more thing that you can push around as a state destroyer in general the exceptions are Christian institutions which are not allied with the state interestingly enough so it's not so much something about Christianity but I think it's more something about politics um the Greek Catholic Church as I mentioned you earlier in in Western Ukraine um its head Andres chaptitsky saves 150 Jews including the future foreign minister of Poland including the future Chapel of the Israeli Armed Forces including all sorts of really interesting people um but the Greek Catholic Church was a church which was oppressed under polish rule it wasn't it wasn't co-opted and then in the Soviet Union you see Mennonites and methodists and Baptists and other people who were regardless belonging to sects Satan Jews during the second world war generally identifying with Jews both biblically because they were Old Testament Believers themselves and identifying with the Jewish catastrophe as being a world catastrophe now that's a very minority thing but it it demonstrates the point that the Christians who manage to think theologically and and and and sympathetically about Jews were those who had been cut off from the state before the second world war this is pretty much how I see it in the middle at the bottom what you could think of as Christianity symptoms matters in 43 44 45 when Jews are on the run and when they're looking for someone to rescue them and the fact that that so much anti-Semitism was preached from the pulpits particularly in Poland it's all over Europe though by the way I mean the the Judea Bolshevik idea which I've defined as Hitler's idea for our purposes that was an idea which priests were preaching in the 1930s in Spain in France and Poland in Italy across across Europe in fact but the fact I think that so much of this was preached in Poland in the 1930s made it harder for Jews to find people who would rescue them mainly because of the anticipation that your neighbors were anti-semites and therefore they would turn you in if you tried to rescue a Jew so that's how I think it matters I think you have to break it down I think you can't you know the church has to be broken down to various parts and its influences have to be looked at in as different kinds of influences um yes ma'am [Music] without dressing trade with doctors and your own uh German people but majority of people here okay so the question Bears on the relationship between the euthanasia movement as a European movement and euthanasia so-called euthanasia policy in Germany to to the Holocaust that there's a very there's some really interesting connections which I didn't have time to go into here one of them is that this notion of racial hygiene as you've said I quite agree the idea of racial hygiene that you need to improve the race by some kind of selection you know the social Darwin idea which was widely held here in this country as well in the 1920s and 30s that if it's true that races compete and species compete and so on you should intervene to make your species or your race better by getting rid of what was undesirable and supporting what was desirable that was very widespread um and youth and various kinds of racial hygiene were practiced in a number of European countries well after the war for that matter um and here too I mean it's a whole interesting judicial history here of how this stopped the Germans were different in that they they uh they They carried out racial hygiene at the level of murder so the main policy of mass murder that was carried out inside Germany um was in addition to the Holocaust was this the so-called the so-called euthanasia um getting rid of what Hitler called life Unworthy of life people were taken in trucks from all around Germany to six facilities where they were gassed with carbon monoxide now the relationship between this and the Holocaust is a double one the first is this was it's a bit like what I said about Crystal Market this happened inside Germany and it proved to be very difficult to do inside Germany because of course these people who were killed had had parents and relatives and friends and there was protest chiefly Christian protest against this and it had to be shut down or at least it had to be put much more underground it had actually continued but the Germans did call it off and then those technicians and doctors the ones who had been killing uh who had been killing the so-called handicapped in Germany about one half of those people were then sent to uh to advise on the construction of the gas facilities at belgets and sobibor and Treblinka so the technology that was developed carbon monoxide to kill the so-called handicapped in Germany was then applied to the European Jews the same the same technology so that's that's the other connection probably go thank you okay thanks [Applause] please [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Bass School at UT Dallas

Views: 113,278

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Id: BsKrWLf7Kg4

Length: 77min 20sec (4640 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023