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easier by the fact that those who'directed the bombingoffensives and those who carried them out remainedcuriously insulated and detached from the consequencesof their work. Photographs taken at thirty thousand feetgave no clue to the human effects of a raid, nor didother sources. "'~Euphemistic language plays an important role inenabling ordinary people to be involved in killingprojects. "' As Kelman has noted, "Moral inhibitionsare less easily subdued if the functionaries, in their ownthinking and in their communication with each other,have to face the fact that they are engaged in organizedmurder. . . The difficulty is handled by the well-knownbureaucratic inventiveness in the, use of language. "'~In the Holocaust, for example, deportation to the deathcamps was code-named "evacuation to the East, " andthe actual killing was termed "'special action" and"special treatment."'~ In World War II, likewise, thedeliberate fire bombing of cities crowded with civilianswas known as "strategic bombing, " and the specificattacks on neighborhoods filled with German factoryworkers, which killed thousands and women andchildren, was intended, in the official jargon, to"de-house" those workers. '~ The Persian Gulf War of1991 was no exception to the tendency to "sanitize"the killing by the use of euphemisms. Hence, bombingraids were called "sorties"; inadvertent killing ofcivilians was "collateral damage"; bombs of variouskinds were referred to as "ordnance"; and the accidentalkilling of American and British soldiers by theircompatriots was termed "death by friendly fire. "'"The bureaucratic organization of modern genocidesand wars plays an extremely important role infacilitating the participation of psychologically normalindividuals in projects designed to mass murderinnocent men, women, and children. As RichardRubenstein has observed: "Usually the progress indeath-dealing capacity in the twentieth century has beendescribed in terms of technological advances in weaponry.Too little attention has been given to the advancesin social organization that allowed for the effective useof the new weapons. In order to understand how themoral barrier was crossed that made massacre in themillions possible, it is necessary to consider theimportance of bureaucracy in modern political organization.Four features of bureaucratic organizations serveto promote the overall efficiency of modern genocideand warfare as well as to enable individual contributorsto carry out their tasks with a minimum of questioningor doubt. These four features are: hierarchical authority,division of labor, amoral rationality, and organizationalloyalty.Hierarchical authority refers to the formal,top-down decision-making arrangements ofbureaucra-cies which enable people at lower levels to have areduced sense of personal responsibility for either thepolicy they are helping to implement or its finaloutcome. They are, after all, only "following orders"that have descended through all the levels of theorganization above their own.'"Division of labor involves the breaking down ofcomplex tasks into compartmentalized sub-tasks. Associologist Fred Katz observes, "Bureaucracies aresocial machineries for accomplishing complex objectivesin relatively orderly fashion. . . The individualbureaucrat typically focuses on a particular task,without considering the wide implications, includingbroader moral issues. "'"Amoral rationality involves preoccupation withthe best means of attaining a particular goal, orcompleting a given task, while tending to ignore moralor human implications of the goal or task. Bureaucra-,cies deliberately strive to render moral and humanconsiderations irrelevant with respect to the task athand. ' As sociologist Helen Fein suggests, "Bureau-cracy is not itself a cause of the choice of destructiveends, but it facilitates their accomplishmentby routiniz-ing the obedience of many agents, each trained toperform his role without questioning the ends ofaction. "'"Finally, organizational loyalty refers to thetendency for members of bureaucratic organizationsto become preoccupied with maintaining or expandingtheir particular organization as an end in itself. Suchconcerns may obscure moral and human implicationsof given policies. Markusen has examined the role oforganizational loyalty in both the Holocaust and theBritish and American strategic bombing campaigns inWorld War II, as well as in the preparations for nuclearIn closing this section, it should be emphasizedthat all of the psychological and organizational forcesdiscussed above can mutually reinforce each other tocreate a powerful momentum toward genocidal killingCONCLUSIONSGil Elliot, one of the pioneers in the study ofcollective violence, was quoted above as saying that"the scale of man-made death is the central moral aswell as material fact of our time. " Unfortunately, theenergy and resources devoted to understanding andpreventing mass killing have been negligible. As IsraelCharny has written, "At this point in its evolution,mankind is deeply limited in its readiness to experienceand take action in response to genocidal disasters. Mostevents of genocide are marked by massive indifference,126 GENOCIDE
silence, and inactivity. "'" Our understandingof thiscrucial realm of human behavior, despite the effortsof a relative handful of dedicated scholars and activists,remains rudimentary and dangerously inadequate.'"Finally, in view of the fact that the preparationsfor nuclear omnicide could well lead to the worstcatastrophe of human history, it is extremely importantto note that psychological and social factors similar tothose operating in more "ordinary" forms of masskilling, like genocide and modern war, have beenobserved in the individuals and organizations responsiblefor inventing, building, operating, and planning forthe use of nuclear weapons. '" Thus, some of the sameprocesses that have accounted for mass killing in thepast, and that have made the present century the mostlethal ever, are also at work in creating the potentialend of history.NOTEs1. William James, "The Moral Equivalent of War, "in War and Morality, ed. by Richard A. Wasserstrom(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,originally published in 1910.1970), 4. James' essay was2. Irving Louis Horowitz, Taking Lives: Genocideand State Power, 3d ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: TransactionBooks, 1982), 2.3. Randall Collins, "Three Faces of Cruelty: Towardsa Comparative Sociology of Evil, " Theory and Society1 (1974): 32.4. Gil Elliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972), 1.5. Elliot, 6.6. Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics,V. III: Fluctuations of Social Relationships, War, andRevolution (New York: The Bedminister Press, 1962),37. Originally published in 1937.7. Sorokin's data are summarized in Quincy Wright,A Study of War V. l. (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1942), 656.8. Sorokin, 342.9. Pitirim Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (NewYork: E. P. Dutton, 1954), 203.10. William Eckhardt and Gernot Kohler, "Structuraland Armed Violence in the 20th Century:-Magnitudesand Trends, " International Interactions 6, no. 4 (1980):347-375 and William Eckhardt, "Civilian Deaths inWartime, " Bulletin of Peace Proposals 20, no. 1(1989): 89-98.11. William Eckhardt, "War-Related Deaths Since3000 BC, " a paper presented to the 1991 annualmeeting of the International Society for the ComparativeStudy of Civilizations, Santo Domingo, theDominican Republic.12. Table derived from data in Eckhardt, "War-Related Deaths, " 7.13. Eckhardt, "War-Related Deaths, " 1.14. Eckhardt, "War-Related Deaths, " 2.15. Eckhardt, "Civilian Deaths, " 90.16. See, for example, Roy L. Prosterman, Survivingto 3000: An Introduction to the Study of Lethal Conflict(Belmont, CA: Duxbury Press, 1972).17. R. J. Rummel, "War Isn't This Century's BiggestKiller, " Wall Street Journal (7 July 1986): Op-Ed page.18. Helen Fein, "Genocide: A Sociological Perspective," Current Sociology 38, no. 1 (1990): 83.19. Eckhardt and Kohler, 348.20. Horowitz, 34.21. Eckhardt and Kohler, 365.22. Eckhardt, "Civilian Deaths, " 97; see also R. J.Johnston, et al. , "The Geography of Violence andPremature Death: A World-Systems Approach, " in TheQuest for Peace, ed. by Raimo Varyrnen, et al.(London: Sage Publications, 1987), 241-259.23. Russell Watson, "A Farewell to Arms?" Newsweek(10 February 1992): 32-33.24. Quoted in Michael McQueen, "Bush and Yeltsin,at Camp David, Forge Closer Ties but Reach NoSpecific Pacts, " Wall Street Journal (3 February 1992):A-12.25. Leonard S. Spector, 7he Undeclared Bomb: TheSpread of Nuclear Weapons, 1987-88 (Cambridge, MA:Ballinger Publishing Co, 1988).Genocide and Modern War 127
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GenocldeIn OurTlme- ,*"f* *An Annot
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DEDICATIONTo Raphael Lemkin(1901-19
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Chapter 5:The Armenian Genocide: Re
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Appendix 167Appendix: Chronology of
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ending sources of joy and hope. In
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Massive human suffering caused by p
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world without any reification and u
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CIIAPTER IETHNOCIDEby Alison Palmer
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als are tempted away by the promise
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Interactionsof Ethnocide and Genoci
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Chapter 1: AnnotatedBibliographyRea
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the inevitable extinction of tribal
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upon the purge of cultural and scie
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traditional ethnic and socio-cultur
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whites. Lizot proposes that integra
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¹ 1. 53 ¹Olson, James S. , and Ra
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tion of indigenes into state politi
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as a potential irredentist national
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serious questions about the notion
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ate and beleaguered institutions th
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In one of the most important works
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focusing on children, the most vuln
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~ 2. 35 ~Sereny, Gita. Into That Da
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were less than 200 Jewish survivors
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~ 2. 68 ~Nomberg-Przytyk, Sara. Aus
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of the war. The movement was known
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~ 2. 103 ~Wyman, David S. The Aband
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* 2. 122 ~Wiesenthal, Simon. The Su
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and Christianity. He argues that it
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Chapter 3THE ISSUE OF THE HOLOCAUST
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if we are to escape the mystificati
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outside the normal dimensions of ou
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historical event. All transformatio
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32. For an excellent understanding
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3 7Berenbaum, Michael. "The Uniquen
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Holocaust, a meaning with which we
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the Nazi exterminating drive, a pos
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framework, Marrus accepts the Holoc
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as "the cement of Jewish identity,
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'cry and you cry alone. ' So we kep
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of the body, combined with so many
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10. Lawrence Langer, Versions of Su
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Page 88 and 89: Appendix: The Diaryby Agi Rubinwith
Page 90 and 91: ella story. We could have eaten all
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Page 96 and 97: Chapter 5THE ARMENIANGENOCIDE:REVIS
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Page 100 and 101: Abdications and Retributions Turkey
Page 102 and 103: scene. They primarily targeted the
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Page 108 and 109: supporters of Armenian independence
Page 110 and 111: that the history of the Armenians c
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Page 114 and 115: designed to falsely accuse Ottoman
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Page 118 and 119: ambition to retain as much of Russi
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Page 132 and 133: or religious group, as such. "" The
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Page 148 and 149: * 7. 47 +Nolan, Janne E. , and Albe
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Page 152 and 153: able to evaluate various nuclear we
Page 154 and 155: In an angry, stimulating book, Aske
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Page 158 and 159: This is a pioneering collection of
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Page 162 and 163: take consistent ethical actions aga
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Page 166 and 167: This indicator refers to an advance
Page 168 and 169: 14. Louis Rene Beres, "Genocide, St
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Page 180 and 181: Dwork, DeborahDyer, Gwynne. . . . .
Page 182 and 183: Morgenthau, Henry . . . . . '. . .
Page 184 and 185: TITLE INDEXThe Abandonment of the J
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"Epilogue: The Nuclear Arms Raceand
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The Industrialization of Soviet Rus
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Psychiatric Aspects of the Preventi
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When Memory ComesWhile Six Million
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