War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

“In 1898, a small group of British military on an expedition south of Egypt encountered resistance from local Sudanese tribesmen. The British, armed with machine guns, opened fire. The Sudanese, mounted on horseback and equipped with swords and other weapons for hand-to-hand combat, rode wave after wave into the barrage. The British killed an estimated eleven thousand Sudanese and lost only twenty-eight of their own men. Such events must have contributed to a sense among Europeans that human life—at least the lives of people they considered inferior—was extremely cheap. Notions of racial superiority were by no means unique to Germany.”

At the turn of the 20th century, the rising popularity of eugenics and the fizzling age of New Imperialism cleared a path for Nazi ideology to take hold. This prewar anecdote contextualizes German Nazism as the logical extremity of beliefs that were held by many Europeans. Though Bergen emphasizes intentionalism when examining Hitler’s reign, she makes it explicit that Nazism was not an isolated catastrophe incurred by the madness of one dictator alone.

“In this book I proceed on the assumption that in order to understand the causes of Nazi crimes we need to study those who initiated and carried them out.”

This quote alerts the reader to two key details. The first is that Bergen is stating an intention: A significant portion of this work is dedicated to exploring the internalities of Nazis, including who they were, what they believed, and how they interfaced with the world as individuals and as a group. The second is that Bergen is asserting a philosophical approach: This book primarily approaches historical events with a focus on contemporary individuals’ experiences. This stance bears out. Throughout War and Genocide, Bergen frequently describes and speculates about the lives and intentions of major historical figures, minor players, and anonymous civilians.

“What would it actually explain even if the rumor of Hitler’s ‘Jewish blood’ were true? Obviously nothing, just as it would explain nothing if there were any truth to the claims that Hitler was secretly homosexual or that he had only one testicle. (Both of those common allegations, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, are false as well.) Such claims reflect a desire to find easy explanations for historical processes that in fact have many complicated causes. Rumors of that kind also reflect a widespread tendency to blame the victims for their misfortunes, as if someone who was ‘part Jewish,’ or ‘secretly homosexual,’ or in some way physically deformed might somehow be expected to initiate programs to murder Jews, persecute gay men, or kill people deemed handicapped. An honest understanding of history requires a critical—and self-critical—response to such simplistic notions.”

Bergen dismisses conspiracy theories about Hitler’s background by posing a hypophora, or a rhetorical device in which a writer raises a question and then provides an answer. This allows space to rebut the implicit assertion behind questioning Hitler’s ethnicity, sexuality, and physical fitness.

“The civil service ban and the boycott were less successful for Hitler’s new regime than Nazi activists hoped. For one thing, there was no concrete definition of who exactly counted as a Jew. So it was not always clear to whom the ban applied. […] It was important not to antagonize potential ‘Aryan’ supporters by mistaking them for Jews. Moreover, by April 1933, German Jews had not yet been isolated from the rest of the population. The Nazi government did not dare impose measures against Jewish veterans of World War I, for example, or against Christian spouses of Jews.”

This quote illustrates the complexities and setbacks involved in the early stages of the Third Reich. In retrospect, it is easy to imagine an overnight hostile takeover and an instantaneous crackdown on Hitler’s targets. Events like the failed Jewish boycott of 1933 exemplify the gradual transition from an integrated society to a divided totalitarian state.

“Nazi leaders learned some lessons from these early anti-Jewish experiments. First, they realized that it was easiest to attack people who were already marginalized. Second, they learned that members of the general public were more likely to participate in or at least tolerate attacks on minorities if they stood to gain rather than to lose from such initiatives. In any case, leading Nazis found out that unanimous approval was not required. Indifference of the majority was all that was needed to carry out many plans.”

This quote highlights how convenience and true race hatred interlock. Even staunch “true believers” of Nazi dogma recognized the practical benefits of assailing vulnerable groups beyond simply being rid of them. Likewise, offering German civilians benefits instead of denying them conveniences (as the 1933 Jewish boycott did) made them much more amenable to the mistreatment of already marginalized groups.

“As the Nazi regime established and reinforced its power, it involved even larger numbers of people, who in turn developed a stake in its continuation. Through this dynamic, Nazi ideas gained acceptance, even among people who might earlier have opposed them.”

Much as the Nazis’ assault on marginalized groups materially and politically benefited them, sharing those benefits with ethnic German civilians made them complicit in the persecution of minorities as well. Even true believers who undertook the enrichment of Aryans as a virtuous act in and of itself also understood the strategic benefits of doing so.

“Pageantry was the flipside of Nazi terror, another show of strength. The first months of Hitler’s rule featured endless torchlight parades with columns of marching men. Observers after the fact often interpret the footage of those events as evidence of the unanimity of Germans behind Hitler. It would probably be more accurate to see those demonstrations as efforts on the part of the new regime to create an image of unanimity that itself worked to prevent opposition.”

This quote illustrates the self-fulfilling power of Nazi propaganda. Flamboyant displays of power, wealth, and pride created the appearance of undaunted consensus, which in turn intimidated critics, emboldened proponents, and swayed neutral parties.

“In another act of centralization, Hitler united the offices of president and chancellor in his own person. That did not change or substantially alter Hitler’s actual duties, nor did the president’s death remove a major obstacle to the expansion of Hitler’s power. Hindenburg had done little to check Hitler’s activities in the first year and a half of Nazi rule. Nevertheless, for some Germans the death of the old man Hindenburg meant the end of any hope that Hitler and Nazism would be stopped.”

Bergen’s discussion of Hindenburg’s death is less interested in its political ramifications than in its effect on Nazi optics and civilian morale. Bergen consistently presents Hitler as highly sensitive to public opinion in the early years of his rule. Though she characterizes his claiming of the presidency as a lateral move, doing so under the auspices of Hindenburg’s death helped preserve what Bergen calls Hitler’s “veneer of legitimacy” (80).

“Decades after the Munich Conference, it and its most famous spokesman, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, are still synonymous with the term ‘appeasement.’ […] It is neither fair nor accurate to accuse Chamberlain and the others so harshly. They wanted peace, whereas Hitler was set on war.”

This is one of several passages in which Bergen explores the discourse around collaborationism and appeasement. Her lenience toward figures often criticized for abetting Hitler’s regime—whether by accident or by design—belies her interest in the nuanced human decision-making that spurred World War II and the Holocaust forward.

“Hitler’s approach to foreign policy was to talk peace and plan for war.”

This summation of Hitler’s activities on the global stage supports Bergen’s intentionalist approach to Holocaust studies. She appraises Hitler’s actions in terms of his grandiose aims and interprets each one as a deliberate and decisive action in service of long-term plans.

“First, Nazi leaders encouraged experimentation—even rivalry and organizational confusion—among the people who carried out their plans. Rather than easing the situation of those targeted for persecution, such chaotic conditions often increased the victims’ vulnerability and exacerbated their suffering. Second, German decision makers endorsed the notion of divide and conquer. Whenever possible they stirred up dissention and hatred among those over whom they ruled in order to advance their own cause.”

This passage describes how the Nazis weaponized every possible facet of the conquering process. The infliction of violence and pain upon “inferior” persons was simultaneously strategic and cathartic for true believers.

“[Heydrich, Hitler, and Himmler] wanted to reduce the Poles to a people of slaves, to destroy their intellectuals and their sense of tradition—anything that might give them a way to organize against Germany. Accordingly they encouraged German forces to target Polish Catholic priests. […] They also humiliated, arrested, and murdered many other prominent Poles—for example journalists, professors, and artists. German authorities prohibited any activity that advanced the education of Poles, fostered communal ties, or promoted national feelings. They imposed curfews and seized Polish businesses. They shut down Polish newspapers and used forced labor and public hangings to make examples of Poles who defied them. Members of the SS, police, and regular military, along with local collaborators, also terrorized Poles in less organized ways that included theft, beating, castration, and rape.”

Bergen specifies the shocking extent of Hitler’s totalitarianism outside of Germany. By presenting the horrors of German domination over Poland alongside the Nazis’ chilling plans, Bergen paints a desolate picture of Polish suffering.

“All of the German schemes in Poland relied on the notion of divide and conquer. Privileging ethnic Germans turned their neighbors against them. Dangling promises of Jewish property in front of gentile Poles gave them a stake in the attacks on Jews and encouraged them to betray Jews to the Germans.”

This describes the grim practicality of Nazi Social Darwinism. Bergen indicates that the stratification of German society under Hitler was not driven solely by earnest hatred for “untermenchen” or love for Aryans; it was also tailored to benefit Nazi leadership.

“There is no denying that German officials used the Jewish Councils to their own ends; they had been created for that purpose. Beginning in late 1941, the councils prepared lists for transports out of the ghettos—to killing centers. Often they used their own police forces to help round up those slated for destruction. Not surprisingly, they generally sent first those people in the ghetto they viewed as least useful: the sick, old, very young, and weak. Outsiders such as Gypsies could also expect to be on the early transports.”

This quote highlights the dire circumstances that were prevalent in the Jewish ghettos of Nazi Germany and occupied Europe. It also points to a more granular outcropping of “divide and conquer”: Even within the most tyrannized communities, hierarchical stratification still turned peers and neighbors against each other.

“Life seems to have been worth very little. For example, in one Polish town during the war Germans promised a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of salt to anyone who brought in the head of a Jew. Local Ukrainians fanned out through the nearby forests and returned clasping severed heads.”

This anecdote presents the reader with the extreme barbarity of life under Nazi occupation. This barbarity was not simply perpetuated by antisemitism and race hatred but also by poverty and desperation.

“This early phase was known in Britain as the ‘phony war.’ The French referred to it as a ‘drôle de guerre’—a ‘funny war’—and the Germans spoke of a ‘Sitzkrieg,’ an immobile ‘war of sitting’ in contrast to the rapid ‘Blitzkrieg’—'lightening war’—in Poland.”

Though the impact of World War II was severe across Europe, this quote highlights the disparity between Nazi activities in the east compared to the west. While the Polish were swiftly and mercilessly terrorized, the power wielded by the French and British—along with their supposed racial superiority over Slavs—insulated them from the worst of Nazi brutality.

“It can be tempting to set up competitions in evil between Hitler and Stalin. Who was worse? Who caused more murder and misery? This brief survey of the events of 1940, however, reminds us of an even more terrible reality; Nazism and Stalinism coexisted in time and place, and for many Europeans the horrors of one vicious system served to increase the destructive force of the other.”

Bergen calls for nuance, empathy, and practicality when studying or comparing Nazism and Stalinism. This quote reminds us that suffering is not a competition, nor is evil. Violence does not occur in a vacuum.

“For every one German whom Yugoslav partisans attacked or killed, German authorities ordered a certain number of Yugoslavians shot. Sometimes the ratio was fifty to one; sometimes it was one hundred or even two hundred to one. The victims seized included people of all ages, female as well as male. Germans used reprisals—often based only on fear and suspicion of partisan actions—as an excuse to massacre hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavians.”

This quote highlights the extremity of the Nazi government’s brutality. It also illustrates the rhetorical and strategic value of the Nazis’ commitment to their designated “master race.” The Nazis were able to use retribution as an excuse to perpetrate mass murder.

“It was not just the normal dynamic of war that served to multiply human suffering as World War II continued. The Nazi principles of special expansion and ‘racial purification’ meant that more and more killing was itself a direct goal of the German war effort.”

Bergen asserts that death was not a byproduct of Nazi ideology; the pursuit of killing was a core motivation for Nazis in and of itself. She suggests that barbarism was both the ends and the means for Nazis.

“Like so much Nazi writing, the General Plan East was full of euphemisms. Instead of spelling out the goal as to kill people or make sure they died of starvation, overwork, or disease, the document talked about ‘reducing’ or ‘removing’ certain populations. Nevertheless its intentions were obvious.”

Despite genocide’s centrality in Nazi ideology, documents like the General Plan East—which outlined the Nazis’ plan for genocide and colonization in Eastern Europe—were simultaneously obfuscatory and blatant. Even those Nazis who believed what they were doing was “right” were leery of bluntly proposing mass murder in so many words.

“SS leader Himmler summed up dominant German views in a speech to top SS men in October 1943: ‘We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian or a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. […] Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards those human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them.’”

Himmler’s speech sits in bizarre contrast to the sterile language in the General Plan East. He openly accepts the mass deaths of non-Aryans and in the same breath urges his people to be “decent.” When viewed in light of the fact that death was the Nazis’ goal and not simply a byproduct of their activities, this speech becomes even more hypocritical and dissonant.

“Approximately 160,000 German soldiers died in 1940-1941. In 1944, that number increased almost fourfold to some 600,000. The all-or-nothing mentality of Hitler’s Social Darwinism made all lives cheap, including those of the German people.”

These figures illustrate the ultimate folly of committed Social Darwinism. Even though all the Nazi Party’s actions were ostensibly in service of the Aryan race, the core logic behind Nazi ideology vaunts superiority. The German army was unable to live up to that standard, which made soldiers disposable to their superiors.

“Whether they had been victims, perpetrators, or bystanders in Nazi barbarity—and many Europeans had reason to count themselves in more than one of those categories—people faced the challenge of building lives for themselves and what was left of their families and communities with scarce resources and restricted freedom, and in a climate of distrust and grief.”

This quote acknowledges the universality of World War II’s devastation across Europe. It also highlights the complexity of its social impact. Many of the war’s victims were simultaneously complicit in it. Bergen doesn’t tell the reader how to feel about this fact; she merely reminds us to acknowledge it.