The roots of the Holocaust: Intentionalists vs. Functionalists.

Great Debates
1

More than twenty years after the Historikerstreit first flared up all over Germany, I’d be interested in hearing from Dopers who’ve researched both the “intentionalist” and the “functionalist” arguments with regards to the roots of the Holocaust, and hear their conclusions.

To what extent is the issue now resolved/unresolved? Which historians have conclusively been proven wrong in the intervening years, and which ones have not? And in your personal view, which historians made (or still make) the best points?

2

Could you please define those terms for us, before we begin?

3

Damn, I must have missed that one. Perhaps it never achieved any recognition outside of Germany.
Could you summarize the main points of both sides?

4

And tell us about the Historikerstreit while you’re at it.

5

Intentionalist: Hitler/Nazi Germany set out with a plan to eradicate certain groups of people
Functionalist: No they didn’t - the outcome was emergent from the actions necessary to achieve the plan of trying to conquer the world.

Something like that.

6

Sorry about that, should have provided more context.

Roughly, “intentionalists” believe that the Holocaust was part of a Nazi “master plan,” in place from an early date. In this version of the events, the Nazi leadership had long wished to physically exterminate the Jews, and when they got their chance they ruthlessly carried out their plan.

“Functionalists” believe that no such “master plan” existed, that the Nazis lacked a clear idea about how to solve “the Jewish problem,” and that the Holocaust was instead the result of the cruel inner workings of the Nazi state. In this version of the events, a flurry of proposed “solutions”, including expulsion and ghettoization, were cynically bandied about over the years in all levels of the Nazi state, until at a fairly late date “cumulative radicalization” led to the idea of physical extermination, and hence the tragedy of the Holocaust.

“Intentionalists” tend to depict Hitler as an ideologically driven mastermind, and stress the extremely well-organized, disciplined, “all-orders-from-the-top”-type aspects of the Nazi state.

“Functionalists” tend to depict Hitler as more of a shrewd opportunist (though equally evil, I should add), and stress the messy, chaotic aspects of the Nazi state, fraught with infighting and conflicting individual initiatives from all manner of mid-level bureaucrats.

This discussion was very big in Germany back in the day, and bitterly divided the historians there: They duked it out in all the major newspapers, in heated TV debates, etc., etc. – it was a big, big deal, and of course it soon got very personal, too. It wasn’t long before both British and American historians weighed in, as well – and in any case I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re all still going at it.

I read up on all of this a couple of years back, though (I’ll admit) somewhat superficially, and without ever really forming a definitive opinion either way.

Others Dopers might have, though – hence my original query.

7

Well, I could buy that there was a systematic process early on of exiling and ghetto-izing Jews and other undesirables with the intent of driving them out of Germany and/or working them to death as underfed and neglected slave labour (more or less ‘passive’ extermination), and the systematic (indeed, industrial) ‘active’ extermination process didn’t get started until 1942 or thereabouts.

If it makes any difference.

8

No moral difference, that’s for sure – they were monsters either way.

9

I believe the “functionalists” are more correct. The Nazis were remarkable for the rather chaotic nature of their plans for their empire - often different factions of Nazi embracing mutually-contraditory plans, with the result of a veritable race to the bottom, morally speaking.

For example, different Nazis had different aims for their eastern empire - was it ethnic protectorates, creation of a slave class, or extermination and replacement by ethnic Germans? These goals are somewhat mutually exclusive (can’t exterminate people and use them as slaves at the same time, can’t enslave and enlist people in protectorates at the same time …) and the net effect, seen in places like Belarus, was to edge the Nazis into “extermination” by default.

The Holocaust had the same, downward trajectory.

10

The Intentionalists would be right at least as to everything after the date of the Wannsee Conference. Sending the Jews off to Madagascar or somewhere was not an option discussed; they were referred to plainly as “this enemy,” and putting an end to them once and for all, and specifically preventing any possibility of a future “Jewish revival,” was the stated goal.

11

My first thought, too. Does it make a difference?

Could it be a little of both? Could some have wanted all along to kill the Jews, some all along just wanted them out of [Greater] Germany, and in the end they all converged on the plan to kill them?

12

The Wannsee Conference was late in the history of Nazi-dom’s relations with Judaism, though - 1942.

13

Well, they certainly made up for lost time.

14

It seems to my poorly-educated mind that most historical events are caused by a combination of deliberate intent on the part of some agents and a more random reaction to circumstances on the part of other actors.

15

Like I said, it makes no moral difference – but apart from that, of course it makes a difference (a huge, huge difference) where it comes figuring out who the Nazis were, i.e. how they thought, what goals they had and how they worked (or didn’t work) towards realizing those goals, and in general how the Holocaust could ever happen, what led up to it, etc., etc., etc.

16

Correct.

If I remember correctly, its’ “lateness” was in fact a pretty common “functionalist” argument – after all, if the Nazis really wanted to physically exterminate the Jews all along, why wait until 1942 to take the final decision?

17

Probably true, I guess. What the debate was all about, of course, was to figure out to what extent this specific historical tragedy happened due to “deliberate intent,” and to what extent it happened due to “random reaction.”

Could it possibly be due to a combination of the two – “a little bit of both,” as other Dopers have suggested? Yes, certainly so.

18

Not especially. The centralized totalitarian form of government the Nazis embraced make such mass-killings possible (indeed, probable). Whether or not there were “good” Nazis early on, they surrendered rule of law to the casual brutality of whatever faction managed to be more ruthless than its rivals and sycophantic to the hierarchy.

It doesn’t matter if systematic extermination didn’t start until 1942, some nine years after the Nazi party took power. Those nine years represent a gradual elimination of the social contract (always a particularly delicate structure, even now) that made such exterminations impossible. If the Nazi goals were worthwhile, they would have becoming more civilized over time, not less.

19

You two aren’t disagreeing.

To my mind, the “functionalist” position makes Nazism more abhorrent, rather than less: it implies (and I think correctly) that there is something inherent in Nazism that makes horrors somewhat inevitable - whether perpetrated on Jews, Roma, Slavs, or some other target.

That “something” is I think a devotion to conflict and struggle between ethnic tribes as the central aspect of their vision of society, and a lack of any corresponding restraint on action based on an appreciation of humanity [for Communists, the centrality of class struggle lead to similar results].

20

I disagree.