State Violence in Nazi Germany

From Kristallnacht to Barbarossa

Emanuel Marx

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000735437
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Through analyses of three eventful years in Nazi Germany's history – the Kristallnacht pogrom, the invasion of Poland and the invasion of Soviet Russia – this book explores the violence of states. All three events were part of the Nazi colonial project and led to mass killings, eventually resulting in the systematic murder of Jews becoming a major war aim – one that Germany would pursue to the end, even when it became clear that the military conflict could no longer be won. Drawing on voluminous historical and sociological literature, as well as documentary and contemporary evidence, the author presents a new account of the phenomenon of extreme state violence as a special category of violence, in which the armed forces, maintained in a state of readiness, are used unnecessarily and excessively, often on thin pretexts, and, unlike coercive violence, only rarely for the purposes of carrying messages to the public. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and anthropology concerned with mass and state violence.

1 Types of violent events

Types of violence

In my 1976 study of violent behavior in the immigrant town Galilah in Upper Galilee, Israel, I offered a concise working definition of violence as “physical assault, or threat of physical assault, on persons or property” (Marx 1976: 7). To this definition, I would now add a clause that the victim must strongly object to this violence, even if he or she does not expressly say so. The definition should also exclude some popular misuses of the concept: we must not consider verbal abuse and insults which do not constitute a real threat, such as the “symbolic violence” discussed in book I of Bourdieu and Passeron’s Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977), or playful physical assaults, such as Radcliffe-Brown’s “joking relationships” (1952a, b) as violent, as their inclusion would trivialize the danger and destructiveness of violence. I also argue below that the popular concept “structural violence” (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004: 1) is so inclusive and undefined as to be practically useless. Some writers apply it as an epithet to any instance of social injustice or any social situation of which they disapprove.

Nor does the definition require a violent act to be “illegal,” as suggested by more than one scholar (e.g., Riches 1986: 3; Halbmayer 2001: 50). The issue of whether a violent act is legal or illegal is almost irrelevant to my study – first, because agents of the state engage in many varieties of legally permitted acts of horrid and repulsive violence. They customarily legalize, sometimes even post factum, their most heinous and unjust violent crimes. As the same deeds are prohibited to ordinary citizens, the agents and executors of the state describe them in understated neutral terms that disguise their violent nature. The state wages wars, combats terrorists, controls riots, arrests persons for various offenses (always employing only adequate force), commits them to prison and executes them, without ever using the more precise words, such as violating, maiming, torturing, killing or murdering. Furthermore, state agencies tend to claim that these often extremely violent acts are the right and proper way to deal with some of the most complicated social issues. Second, because there is a great deal of consensual violence between individuals that many people would consider relatively harmless and legal, such as fighting among children, martial arts and competitive sports, and consensual violence between sexual partners. Such acts often border on the illegal, but the state rarely prosecutes the perpetrators. Even when persons perpetrate clearly illegal violent acts, such as wife- and child-beating, or when teachers physically discipline unruly children and youths vandalize public property, the state often shows a surprising degree of leniency. This book is devoted to a full discussion of state violence, using material from Nazi Germany. In their 12 eventful years of rule, the Nazis violently persecuted perceived enemies of the state and conducted wars of extermination. The study concentrates on the crucial three years from November 1938, when the Kristallnacht pogrom announced a profound change in policy toward Jews, and August 1941, when the German leadership confronted the failure of the German lightning campaign (Blitzkrieg) against Soviet Russia and realized, at least for a brief moment, that it had lost the war. It also explores the background and the planning of the Kristallnacht pogrom, and explains why Germany declared the annihilation of Europe’s Jews a major objective of the war after failing to defeat Soviet Russia in the first assault.

For now, my aim is to establish a sociological typology of violent events that both demarcates the role of violent behavior in various types of event and, I believe, covers the full gamut of violent behaviors. The typology cuts across some widely accepted distinctions, such as personal versus collective violence, rational versus irrational violence and functional versus expressive violence or aggression. After careful consideration I found that the following five analytical categories may cover the whole range of the usage of violence:

1. Coercive violence, the violence that persons employ to achieve socially approved aims. The category may also fit acts of organized terror.
2. Violence as a cry for help. It encompasses acts of appealing violence and may also include some attempted suicides.
3. Eliminatory violence, violent acts which seek to annihilate a person, an imagined body social or even the self. The category comprises homicides and “genuine” suicides. It may well also explain the behavior of soldiers sent into battle, ordered to kill enemies and expected to “sacrifice their lives.”
4. Violence as a response to a physical stimulus. This category is often dubbed “aggression” triggered by “frustration.” Aggression theory used to be the psychologists’ favored explanation of violence.
5. State violence, the violence routinely exercised, or ordained, by states and other organizations in the fulfillment of their functions, or while advancing their interests. While it includes most types of violence, except perhaps the violent appeals exercised by individuals, most instances are the state’s numerous organized applications of violence. These range from the administration of public order, such as policing, combating crime, riot control, imprisonment, physical punishment, torture and execution of criminals, through the pursuit of war, military occupation and colonialist exploitation of human and natural resources, to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Max Weber (1964: 39) called it, not ironically, “legitimate violence.”

I reiterate that the term violence refers to a threat to cause physical harm to a person or an object, or actually causing such harm against their wishes. In order to explain violent acts, one clearly needs to know the relevant ethnographic details of an event involving violence, or in psychologist Kurt Lewin’s classical formulation “to describe the totality of those facts and only those facts which make up the field [studied]” (Lewin 1952: 62). An allegory will explain what I mean: the word “violence” can be compared to the word “fever.” Many diseases are accompanied by fever. No one would claim that the fact that a patient runs a high temperature is enough to diagnose his illness. This is so because medicine is a highly developed discipline that seeks to understand the causes, symptoms and remedies of many distinct varieties of illness. In a complex diagnosis, fever is a symptom that plays a subordinate role. Yet in the social sciences violence is still often treated as an analytical category. Politicians, social workers and the man on the street, as well as some respectable scholars, routinely speak about violence in schools, violence on the road, violence in the streets or violent crimes, as if each of them were a particular category of criminal violence and all the violent acts committed under the category were more or less identical. While social scientists have developed some rudimentary analytical categories, such as the distinction between expressive and functional violence, violence as a cry for help versus violence as a way to opt out of society, or “aggression” as an instinctive response to a frustrating experience as against calculated and controlled violence, many of them continue to use violence as a meaningful concept and still think they can pronounce general truths about “violence,” treat it as a social malaise and even offer remedies for it.

It is because there are several types of events, all of which involve threats of physical harm or actual physical harm, that I find the notion of a “continuum of violence” proposed by Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004: 1–2) less than helpful. The concept lumps together the numerous types of violent events, thus preventing the authors from fully understanding any of them. The concept is illustrated by unanalyzed reports of local violent incidents, which tend to move abruptly from “just so” stories to highly abstract moralizing statements about society. Thus, in a recent debate on violence in America, Scheper-Hughes (2008: 77–82), presumably basing herself on bystanders’ reports, offers thumbnail sketches of three “senseless killings” that occurred in Berkeley, California, and uses them to demonstrate major causes of violence in today’s America. Her approach invites some important questions. Does she think that “senseless” shootings are arbitrary and cannot be explained in sociological terms? Does she believe that they are the most salient and most typical form of violence? And, lastly, does she really believe that three randomly selected murders represent the whole gamut of violence? I suspect that she would reply in the negative to all three questions and argue that she is especially concerned with another issue altogether, namely, that of “structural violence.”

Structural violence is the most generalized and inclusive category on the predicated “continuum of violence.” It refers to the widespread suffering caused by the social order itself: “Suffering … is the effect of the social violence that social orders – local, national, global – bring to bear on people.” The equation of violence with suffering allows the anthropologist to define any aspect of the social order that she considers morally reprehensible as a manifestation of structural violence. This attitude is conducive to writings in which righteous indignation reigns supreme, and social analysis takes a backseat, if it is not entirely abandoned. (For a more severe critique see Wacquant 2004: 322.) I gladly concede, however, that some of these socially aware scholars have also produced original, insightful and often moving ethnographies. Good examples are Bourgois (2003), Das (2000), Farmer (2004), Green (1999) and Scheper-Hughes (1992).

In her insightful study of violence Hannah Arendt goes to the other extreme: she argues that all violence is a form of power that is used instrumentally (1970: 46). It is thus similar to my “coercive violence” and I ought to be very pleased, especially as her analysis is very astute. The problem is that she does not appear to be aware of other types of violence, such as organized state violence, murder, suicide and the largely involuntary instinctive “aggression.”

In the following passages I try to distinguish clearly between types of violent events, without ever forgetting that in reality these types shade into one another. I make a point of seeking out the undoubted connections between the various types and the merging of one type into another. I begin with a characterization of coercive and appealing violence, which I know best from my study of Galilah, a new town in Galilee, Israel, inhabited by Jewish immigrants from Morocco and other North African countries. I illustrate the account with thumbnail sketches of cases extracted from that study. I then briefly discuss the other types of violence, showing in which respects they diverge from coercive and appealing violence. My understanding of murder, suicide and the frustration-aggression complex is quite limited, and my discussion must therefore be quite brief. The fifth type, violence of the state, will receive special attention, as it introduces a full examination of the theme, the subject of this book. My ethnographic data derive from a case study of Nazi Germany, arguably the most extreme instance of state violence available. It is complemented by the hardly less severe case of the violent suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya of the 1950s by British colonial authorities.

Coercive violence

Coercive violence is a person’s or a group’s exercise of some kind of power to attain a socially approved aim. It is arguably the most common type of violence, and because most instances occur in ordinary daily life it is relatively easy to observe and thus amenable to sociological analysis. It encompasses a whole range of violent acts, from attempts of one person to coerce another into complying with his or her wishes by threatening or assaulting him, through organized strikes or other types of civil disobedience, to terrorist acts including those that require the perpetrator to lay down his own life. Acts of terror are, of course, relatively rare and harder to observe and interpret. Yet judging from what we know about them, some of them appear to possess many of the characteristics of coercive violence.

I claim that these violent acts are very complex forms of behavior, and that they are all structured in a similar manner. First, in each of them the violent act is premeditated, and carried out in a calculated and controlled manner for a defined and socially approved purpose. Here are some examples from my study of violence in Galilah. For instance, a patient threatened to beat up the physician at the local health clinic if he did not provide him with a sick leave certificate. He knew that the physician would submit meekly, as he had done many times before, and that there would be no further consequences (Marx 1976: 48). However, the violent person does not usually dominate the field to that extent. Instead, he interacts with other persons who do not necessarily share his concerns or approve of his actions. Furthermore, in the heat of the argument, he or she may lose self-control and become more violent than intended. This happened to a recently married woman who wished to move into a larger apartment. She tried to coerce the official of the national housing corporation by squatting a whole morning in his office and intermittently uttering threats. When the official wished to close the office for a lunch break she refused to budge. The moment the official walked out of the office she overturned his desk. When he rushed back she said: “I am not a dog to be left alone like that.” He called the police and lodged a complaint for trespass. The young woman was not only taken to court, but also forfeited the chance to obtain a new apartment (Marx 1976: 36).

Second, the violent act requires an audience, large or small, that functions as referee; it decides whether the demands of the perpetrator are justified and whether her violent behavior is appropriate to the occasion. As the assailant can never be certain of public approval, there is always an element of risk in the violent act. This happened to a notorious drunkard in the local café. After having had several drinks, he asked the bartender for just another drink. When the bartender refused, he took this as an insult. With one swing of his arm he swiped off all the glasses on the counter. The other customers just looked on. Then the drunken man decided that he had not caused enough damage and went on to break the glass shelves. At this point the audience disapproved of his behavior; several customers restrained him and delivered him up to the police (Marx 1976: 65–66).

Third, violence is always used in conjunction with other forms of power. I use the concept “power” as defined by Max Weber:

Power (Macht) means the chance that in a social relationship a [person’s] will prevails even against [the other person’s] resistance, no matter what this chance is based on. … Every conceivable characteristic, and every conceivable constellation may enable him to get his way in a given situation.

(Weber 1964: 38, my translation)

In other words, even a physical flaw, a weak spot, may in certain conditions become a winning asset. Nevertheless, a person who does not possess alternative sources of power will not engage in violence, because it may be too risky for him. To ensure success he employs a battery of various forms of power. Thus, in Galilah only persons with secure jobs or good links with the ruling Labor Party could threaten and coerce the Amidar national housing corporation official with impunity. I know of no instance of a powerless person attempting to coerce an official, or of desperate persons using violence as a last resort.

Fourth, the violent act must simultaneously achieve two aims: it should draw the attention of the intended victim and of the audience to the perpetrator’s prepared message, and it should also deliver that message in a pithy, easily understood manner. Logically, the arousal of attention should come first, to prepare the victim and the rest of the audience for the upcoming message. In reality, however, the violent act usually contains both elements. The violent act then is the message. In the cases observed in Galilah, the violent act and the message were bundled up and the audience instantaneously listened to and understood the message. I was witness to several threatened assaults by townspeople on officials controlling public resources that were in great demand, such as new apartments. People would threaten to smash chairs on the head of the local representative of Amidar, the national housing corporation. The message of the raised chair was that while the corporation was all powerful, it could not protect the local official’s body against physical assault. While he was a powerful official, he was still a vulnerable person and had therefore better accede to the assailant’s demands. The act was understood by all the parties concerned, and often yielded results. Some of the assailants obtained their new apartment, while others were turned down, and a few were arrested and charged with trespass (Marx 1976: 59–60).

Terrorist acts deliver a more powerful and no less persuasive message. For instance, on two separate occasions in July 2008 two Palestinians from the suburbs of Jerusalem drove bulldozers into cars and buses on Jerusalem’s main street, killing and wounding dozens of persons. Their message was clear: they protested against the Jerusalem Municipality’s policy of destroying houses that were built “illegally,” i.e. without applying for the unattainable (for Palestinians) building permits. It may come as a surprise to many, that even in the most revolting and blood-curdling acts of terror, the terrorists’ aim is not so much to kill people and destroy property, as to convey an important message to a specific audience. This is true even for the most extreme instances of murderous violence, such as the attack on the New York World Trade Center on 9/11, where the horrible spectacle of dead and maimed men and women amid destroyed buildings, was designed to arouse the public’s attention to the message of the perpetrators: “We faithful Muslims will not allow American capitalists and imperialists to run the world, and we shall win because we are prepared to give our lives for the cause.” The message of 9/11 was heard and understood around the world (see Baudrillard 2002: 90; Dostal 2008: 186; Hamid 2007: 73). While the American ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1 Types of violent events
• 2 Kristallnacht revisited
• 3 Three final solutions
• 4 Two or three Jewish policies
• 5 Subduing and annihilating Germans
• 6 Why states use violence excessively
• Epilogue
• References
• Index