The "Ethics" of Nazism

I attended an outstanding talk on Sunday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City by Holocaust scholar Thorsten Wagner on the subject of what one might call "Nazi Ethics" -- the emerging notion that the Nazi system of  terror might be understood as grounded in a coherent (while also of course evil and horrifying) set of ethical norms.  This enterprise is no exercise in Holocaust denial or justification -- far from it.  It is rather an effort to understand the Germany of 1933 to 1945 as in some way continuous, rather than discontinuous, with ordinary (perhaps even universal) human experience.

A centerpiece of Wagner's presentation was an astonishing excerpt from a speech that Heinrich Himmler delivered in October of 1943 to a large gathering of SS officials in Poznan (German: "Posen"), Poland.  Most obviously astonishing is Himmler's frank discussion of mass murder in simple, direct terms, without any of the code language that the leadership typically used to conceal their program.  At a level beneath that, though, is the equally astonishing ethical framing of Himmler's appeal to the SS.  That framing should be quite recognizable to us all; it's the invocation of the honor that comes from a loyal commitment to the uglier aspects of duty.

The excerpt lasts about 6 minutes.  If you have the time, have a look/listen:

 

Comments

[Matt Bodie]

Thanks for sharing this. Very hard to listen to. It's remarkable to hear about the SS having "remained decent" in the face of the Holocaust, but understanding the moral logic is important to locating it within human experience, as you say. One note: I believe the June 30 reference is to the Night of the Long Knives?

[Eric Muller]

Matt, yes, that's what he was referring to.

[Len Rotman]

Eric,

Another important post you have made regarding the Holocaust and the Nazi atrocities carried out under it. The matter-of-factness that characterizes most of Himmler's speech is bonechilling, given its substance. This is, indeed, difficult to listen to, but important for all to know about. Thanks for posting it. Len

[Adventure Racing]

Great thanks for sharing this! This is quite interesting fact to read on.

[Daniel S. Goldberg]

Also extremely important here is the idea of contamination, and Himmler's reference to the bacillus that is money and valuables that were in Jewish possession. Robert Jay Lifton's concept of the biocracy in the Third Reich accounts for this idea very well, of the infection in the Volk that the Jews represented, and that the contagion of this impurity had to be prevented at all costs.

Thanks for posting this, Eric.

[Robert P. Burns]

If I remember correctly, Hannah Arendt discusses that speech in her Eichmann in Jerusalem in the chapter on "The Final Solution."