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Clara Weiss on the Trotskyite site World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) has a very interesting interview dated 5 January 2023 with Christian Gerlach, Professor of Modern History at the University of Bern and a leading authority on the Second World War. He is obviously very left-wing indeed.
I recommend the whole interview which is about the German hunger plan to starve to death 20 million or more Soviet citizens.
That plan was not really put into practice but almost 3.5 million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered through a systematic policy of starvation.
The passage below from the discussion is topical now.
CW: You have done extensive research into the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany but also other genocides. Today, the term “genocide” is regularly used by politicians and the media but with little to no evidence provided and no serious discussion of what the term actually means. Can you explain to a lay audience what issues a historian needs to consider when it comes to the assessment of whether or not a given historical event constitutes a genocide?
CG: Genocide is an analytically worthless concept made for political purposes. I don’t use it. It serves for political condemnation and intervention, that is, as a pretext for war (whether with aerial attacks, ground forces or deadly “sanctions,” as economic warfare is warfare). It also serves for prosecution in show trials, as part of the two main remedies that bourgeois regimes offer: enforced regime change and a bit of re-education. But since the socioeconomic problems and conflicts underlying mass violence are not being addressed in that way, such interventions are as “successful” in stopping violence as they were in Iraq or Libya; often they aggravate it.
Historically, the term of genocide was coined in 1944 in the context of US imperialism, and the academic field of genocide studies became big in the 1990s and 2000s as an instrument of liberal imperialism, which was on the rise. The field reached its peak in the early 2010s and then entered a stagnation period together with a crisis of liberal imperialism.
As an action-oriented concept, “genocide” needs to be overly simplistic. It prevents people from understanding the deep roots and complexity of mass violence. Genocide studies tend to focus on ethnic or racial issues instead of multi-causality; on the state instead of social actors; on long-term “intent” for violence, on planning and centralization, instead of a process and autonomous groups; and on one victim group instead of many (See Christian Gerlach, “Extremely Violent Societies: An Alternative to the Concept of Genocide”, in: Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2006, p. 466.). Thus, the concept of genocide also produces hierarchies of victims of different value, hierarchies which are actually racist.
Everybody knows that the term “genocide” is being used abundantly and arbitrarily in public. I don’t have to explain this to a lay audience. This arbitrariness is also widespread among scholars, including “experts,” and to call something “genocide” (or not) is therefore merely a political statement and says nothing about what is going on in the country one refers to. Unfortunately, many people who think of themselves as radical leftists also employ the term “genocide” and think along its lines. This is a sign of the lamentable state of the left in industrial countries (and in many others), its reformism and analytical weaknesses.
CW: You have done extensive research into the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany but also other genocides. Today, the term “genocide” is regularly used by politicians and the media but with little to no evidence provided and no serious discussion of what the term actually means. Can you explain to a lay audience what issues a historian needs to consider when it comes to the assessment of whether or not a given historical event constitutes a genocide?
CG: Genocide is an analytically worthless concept made for political purposes. I don’t use it. It serves for political condemnation and intervention, that is, as a pretext for war (whether with aerial attacks, ground forces or deadly “sanctions,” as economic warfare is warfare). It also serves for prosecution in show trials, as part of the two main remedies that bourgeois regimes offer: enforced regime change and a bit of re-education. But since the socioeconomic problems and conflicts underlying mass violence are not being addressed in that way, such interventions are as “successful” in stopping violence as they were in Iraq or Libya; often they aggravate it.
Historically, the term of genocide was coined in 1944 in the context of US imperialism, and the academic field of genocide studies became big in the 1990s and 2000s as an instrument of liberal imperialism, which was on the rise. The field reached its peak in the early 2010s and then entered a stagnation period together with a crisis of liberal imperialism.
As an action-oriented concept, “genocide” needs to be overly simplistic. It prevents people from understanding the deep roots and complexity of mass violence. Genocide studies tend to focus on ethnic or racial issues instead of multi-causality; on the state instead of social actors; on long-term “intent” for violence, on planning and centralization, instead of a process and autonomous groups; and on one victim group instead of many (See Christian Gerlach, “Extremely Violent Societies: An Alternative to the Concept of Genocide”, in: Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2006, p. 466.). Thus, the concept of genocide also produces hierarchies of victims of different value, hierarchies which are actually racist.
Everybody knows that the term “genocide” is being used abundantly and arbitrarily in public. I don’t have to explain this to a lay audience. This arbitrariness is also widespread among scholars, including “experts,” and to call something “genocide” (or not) is therefore merely a political statement and says nothing about what is going on in the country one refers to. Unfortunately, many people who think of themselves as radical leftists also employ the term “genocide” and think along its lines. This is a sign of the lamentable state of the left in industrial countries (and in many others), its reformism and analytical weaknesses.
And nothing about the Ukrainian Holodomor? Soviets already had experience of implementing….
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