History of Modern Genocide

Abstract

Thesis: As genocide casts a specter over human history, the proper understanding of its causes in the case of the Holocaust and the Rwandan conflict of 1994 will allow us to further appreciate the role that the international community must bear in averting the flagrant extermination of people groups.

Expected Conclusions: I anticipate finding a historical lack of action based on indifference and diplomatic neglect that creates environments where genocide has the opportunity to fully develop.

In this paper, the author examines the historical foundations of anti-Semitism in the Roman Empire and guides the reader into a more thorough understanding that the root causes of genocide lie throughout the course of history. In the case of the Holocaust, strong intellectual movements based on sexism and racism led to scientific qualifications justifying the actions that ultimately led to the death of millions of Jews. In exploring this history, the author describes movements that did not occur overnight, even in the context of Nazi rule, but rather grew in slow increments with warning signs that grew apocalyptic with time.

The genocide proctored in Rwanda supplies an important parallel study for understanding human behavior in a global context, far detached from 1930s German culture and existing in its own demonstration of hate. The author continues with a comparison and contrast of the two catastrophes, highlighting their level of organization and implications in today's world. In the conclusion, one finds a brief examination of tactics used to combat genocide as well as a call for preemptive procedures that will identify areas of conflict before they have the opportunity to veer out of control.

History of Modern Genocide

When genocide infects a society, its ramifications impact people around the globe in modern times. It spills over borders and destroys lives, creating vacuums of knowledge and a dearth of optimism for entire generations. The recovery process can take decades or even centuries to recover a culture and hope, shattered in mass murder. Such deliberate killings carry a history in the lives of Jews that extends beyond the Holocaust and extends back to the Roman Empire in conflicts between both the government and even Christians. Such profane actions extend in recent years to the country of Rwanda, where tribal conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes led to over 500,000 Tutsi deaths. When such perverse slaughter takes place, the international community stands with an obligation to intervene in the cause of humanitarian justice and rectify these crimes. As genocide casts a specter over human history, the proper understanding of its causes in the case of the Holocaust and the Rwandan conflict of 1994 will allow us to further appreciate the role that the international community must bear in averting the flagrant extermination of people groups.

In the case of the Jewish people, genocide carries its roots in anti-Semitism. Especially after the Bar Cochba revolt of 132-135 A.D., the Roman empire viewed Judaism as a threat to law and order that carried the potential to upset their overwhelming balance of power; Jerusalem itself had even been blocked from Jewish entry (Gager, 1983, p. 89). The philosopher Euphrates, in the aftermath of another war from A.D. 66-73, relates his distaste for this people group:

For these people have for a long time rebelled not only against Romans but against all men. By their unsocial way of life and their refusal to have anything in common with others, whether food, libations, prayers or sacrifices, they are more removed from us than Susa, Bactria or the Indians beyond (p. 91).

The recounts of Euphrates serve to highlight ancient perceptions of the Jewish race, yet also provided historical exception to Roman policies rather than an overall rule. Some emperors, in an indirect endorsement of Jewish custom, went as far as circumcision and would inscribe the golden rule of the Torah on palaces and municipal buildings as a standard from which to judge others (p. 92-93). Still, the Roman treatment of the Jews reveals a delicate balance with an inherent recognition of their status as resident aliens. Emperor Augustus imposed a special tax called the laographia on all non-citizens in Egypt, effectively making no publically distinguishable acknowledgment between Jews and native Egyptians as compared with Greek citizens (p. 44). Their status as aliens in an alien land would leave them vulnerable to further mistreatment.

The development of anti-Semitism also centers around conflicts with Christians. Although relations have turned largely amicable especially among Evangelical Christians in America, ancient followers of Jesus Christ historically blamed the Jews for contributing to his crucifixion and death. After Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 A.D., Christians took advantage of their power to victimize minorities. Theodosius I went to marked efforts to protect Jewish clergy from Christian attacks and even ordered the rebuilding of a Jewish synagogue that had been destroyed by a Christian mob (p. 97). In fact, Gager consistently reports endeavors on the part of the empire to protect Jewish autonomy in the face of leaders in the church working to dissolve the protected status of Judaism (p. 98). Such cultural tensions would fester through the centuries, ultimately culminating in World War II.

Circumstances leading to the Holocaust did not develop out of thin air. Although vacuums of knowledge existed in Nazi ideology, their development of hatred propaganda was carried out in full view of the world. Friedlander (1995) presents evidence contending for a "policy of exclusion" based on genetic, anthropological, and psychiatric evidence that called for the exclusion of the "other" based on race (p. 1). Even in America and France, faux scientific policies ranked different people groups on their intelligence based on measurements of the size of their brains (p. 1). Popular sexist prejudices penetrated even the most learned fields of science as the founder of social psychology Gustave Le Bon contended in 1879 that "in the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. . . . No one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion" (p. 1-2). In 1864, German anatomist Carl Vogt felt compelled to state "the grown-up Negro partakes, as regards his intellectual faculties, of the nature of the child, the female, and the senile white" (p. 2). Such racist rubbish may not apply directly to Jews, but it does set a precedent for finding biological inferiority through the most respected echelons of science, ultimately providing a path the Nazis took advantage of.

Another precedent to the mistreatment of Jews manifested through a misguided biological focus on the merits of evolution. Ideologues such as Gregor Mendel supplied Darwinian-based theories presuming that heredity was the only factor contributing to the human condition, uninfluenced by the environment (p. 2). In Italy, such anthropologic based suppositions led to parallel views that certain criminals were "born for evil," as postulated by Cesare Lombroso (p. 3). Through genetics-based fault finding, one finds the seed of destruction with the potential for genocidal consequences.

Nazi ideology itself centered on eugenics based efforts to create a more perfect race of human beings. With its own parallels in the United States, the movement "was designed to isolate and record individuals with inferior intelligence and other social disabilities," thereby proving the subordinate status of select people groups (p. 5). Following World War I, the Weimar Republic broadly supported eugenics policies from all sides of the political spectrum (p. 10). In the shame and failure found in the aftermath of the First Great War, German pride desired to reclaim that which was taken from it. With a European-American scientific culture that so broadly accepted racial inferiority as fact, the historic table was set for implementation of the Holocaust.

To this point, I have shown that the genocide so viciously implemented in the Holocaust did not occur out of extraordinary circumstances; rather, precedent for it existed many generations before. Neither, in fact, did its implementation occur immediately and overnight, in spite of such public recollections of Kristallnacht on the night of 9 November 1938. One of the first signs pointing to organized genocide came in legislative actions five years before in 1933, relieving all non-Christian judges of public services and boycotting the business establishments of Jews (Hilberg, 1992, p. 12). Although there were protests among some politicians to protect the rights of Jewish veterans who fought alongside Germans in WWI, the specter of hate was clearly rising against them (p. 12). Next came legislated euthanasia of patients with a terminal illness in September 1939 (p. 15). This is important because by this point, Jews were clearly marked as inferior citizens and subject to gross harassment.

The implementation of euthanasia raised the possibility of elimination in mass of other "lesser" people groups. Jews were eventually singled out all over Europe according to societal needs and German allies, at best, embraced a racist policy towards this people group. In places where skilled Jewish services were considered essential, for example, they were retained and allowed to work next to a "double" who would learn from them as in the case with Jewish physicians in Hungary (p. 76). Public policies, as most corners of the world now recognize, ultimately devolved in the mass destruction of this people group.

April through July 1994 was a time for extraordinary mass murder in Rwanda, a tiny country with many lakes and a tropical climate in spite of its high altitude. This pastoral setting historically marred by violence provided the setting for conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. The conflict originates in the expansion of pre-colonial states of Mpororo, Ankole, and Rwanda where alliances were created between the Tutsis of Rwanda and the Hima of Ankole with counter-alliances between the Hutu of Rwanda and the Hiru of Ankole (Adelman & Suhrke, 1999, p. 4). After European colonists left and merged conflicting tribes into a single nation, the scene for conflict was set, led by the Hutu-led government of Rwanda calling for the mass destruction of Tutsis in coordination with the media. On 7 April 1994, the government called on the Hutu to avenge the death of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana who had been assassinated just the day before (p. 98). Perhaps serving as the breaking point for this regional conflict, Washington Post reported radio broadcast warning directed towards Rwandan Tutsis: "You cockroaches must know you are made of flesh. We won't let you kill! We will kill you!" (p. 98). Indeed, when the United Nations finally chose to intervene, the net effect was too late to save the lives of many of the innocent Tutsis and moderate Hutus (p. xii). The impact on those who finally did arrive was changed forever.

Former Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire (2004) reports gross atrocities in Rwanda as an omnipresent reminder to the result that inaction can play in genocidal conflicts. The author describes horrific scenes where women were subjected to unspeakable horrors: "They died in a position of total vulnerability, flat on their backs, with their legs bent and their knees wide apart. It was the expression on their faces that assaulted me the most, a freeze of shock, pain and humiliation" (p. 429). Dallaire's suffering in well-known documentation of this conflict and the lack of action on the part of the UN must play a central role in understanding future conflicts.

The genocide and ethnic cleansing in 1994 Rwanda and World War II Germany share some troublesome common traits that deserve comparison. Such conflicts inevitably stretch back over centuries of festering hate. The extermination of unaccepted people groups and ideologies came as a result of hatred and intolerance. This primal urge to kill the "other" lies at the root of mass genocide. In addition, intervention on the part of the international community did not stop the killing. In both cases, by the time aid arrived, most of the victims had already been maimed, gassed, starved, or otherwise mutilated in their eventual death. The international community, indeed, has a spotted track record for letting principled rhetoric take direct action.

Contrasts, nevertheless, abound in these two genocidal conflicts. The Nazi regime largely developed precedent for genocide over the span of an entire continent. They acted in terms of cerebral calculations with many theories implemented to justify their ultimate result. The level of organization employed to carry out such a task remains unparalleled, perhaps, in the history of the world. The regional conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda centered on largely tribal differences that seem comparatively impulsive in nature. The end result, however, was the same.

The international community has certain powers and limits in its fight against human oppression. Waxman (2009) contends that by "securing/controlling transportation routes and border, reinforcing peace operations, enforcing no-fly zones . . . , jamming broadcasts and other communications, precision-targeted strikes, or demonstrating presence," auxiliary countries can fill a role deterring genocide (p. 7). The task fundamentally requires a system that can quickly recognize where conflicts occur and the appropriate political will to deliver a "timely and decisive response" (p. 5). In spite of such clearly defined initiatives, the potential for genocide will continue to infect the common course of humanity. Clear minds must find ways to directly coordinate against these social evils in order to make a better future.

References

Adelman, H., & Suhrke, A. (1999). The path of a genocide: the Rwanda crisis from Uganda to Zaire. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Dallaire, R., & Beardsley, B. (2004). Shake hands with the devil: the failure of humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Random House Canada.

Friedlander, H. (1995). The origins of Nazi genocide: from euthanasia to the final solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Gager, J. G. (1983). The origins of anti-semitism: attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hilberg, R. (1992). Perpetrators, victims, bystanders: the Jewish catastrophe, 1933-1945. New York, NY: Aaron Asher Books.

Waxman, M. C. (2009). Intervention to stop genocide and mass atrocities: international norms and U.S. policy. New York, NY: Council on Foreign Relations.