60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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102 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness As marvellous as the successes are, as great as the progress is…Russia is on the whole still a huge disappointment for the individual. No culture, no paradise…the lowest level, fi lth, a humanity that shows us that we will have a huge task of colonisation here. 18 This conception of ‘primitiveness, barrenness, and backwardness’ 19 , as Christian Gerlach has reconstructed in many examples from White Russia, demanded from the German perspective the comprehensive redesigning and modernisation of the whole country without consideration of extant social, political and economic structures. Precisely this comprehensive redesigning was understood as colonisation. The land planner for East Prussia and later for the Reich division of Danzig-West Prussia, Ewald Liedecke, commented on the question of the treatment of local culture and settlements as early as 1939: In redesigning German land, we cannot stroll in Polish tracks and make Polish settlements and land divisions the basis of the German settlement landscape. Instead of this partial approach, a total colonizing act is necessary that encompasses the entire area, overturned and settled anew according to German conceptions. 20 The justifi cation for ruling the conquered lands was provided not just by the underdevelopment of the land but also by the supposed backwardness and immaturity of the inhabitants. According to Hitler, one needed ‘only to see this primal world [Urwelt]’ to know ‘that nothing will happen here if one does not allocate work for the people. The Slav is born a slave crying for a master’ (Hitler, 17 September 1941; in Jochmann 1980: 63). Himmler’s secretary, Johst, who travelled through Poland with the Reichsführer-SS (Reich leader, SS) in the winter of 1939-40, presumably refl ected his boss’s words, too, when he wrote: The Poles are not a state-building nation. They lack even the most elementary preconditions for it. I drove alongside the Reichsführer-SS up and down that country. A country which has so little feeling for systematic settlement that is not even up to dealing with the style of a village, has no claim to any sort of independent political status within the European area. It is a colonial country! 21 18 Cited in Gerlach (1999: 102); my translation. 19 Ibid: 102. 20 Liedecke, ‘Kolonisatorische Aufgaben der Raum-Ordnung im Nordosten des Deutschen Reiches’, Königsberg, 1 September 1939, cited in Hartenstein (1998: 79). 21 Johst, Hanns (1940), Ruf des Reiches: Echo des Volkes!, Munich, cited by Burleigh (2000: 447).
colonialism and the holocaust – towards an archeology of genocide 103 The parallels with colonialism are not just limited to ideological justifi cations for conquest and domination; they are also evident in the techniques of rule. With the exception of the settler colonies, where the ratio of Europeans to the indigenous population gradually shifted, a small elite consisting of colonial administrators and military ruled over a far more numerous local population that was unable to participate in government. Colonisers and colonised were ruled by diff erent legal systems, and this ‘dual legal system’ rested on racial criteria. Advantages for Europeans in this ‘racially privileged society’ (rassische Privilegiengesellschaft), however, were not limited to formal law (Zimmerer 2001a: 94-109). The situation coloniale penetrated all spheres of social interaction between colonisers and colonised. The former were always privileged in every respect. They had their own schools and kindergartens, their own counters at post offi ces and other government agencies. This constant symbolic subordination was evident, for example, in German Southwest Africa where Africans were obliged to salute whites, and forbidden to ride horses and use the sidewalk. In occupied Poland, too, Poles had to display appropriate humility before the Germans by making way for them on sidewalks, removing their hats and saluting. They were prohibited from attending cinemas, concerts, exhibitions, libraries, museums and theatres, and from owning bicycles, cameras and radios (Burleigh 2000: 450f). To be sure, this everyday discrimination pales in signifi cance in comparison with the contemporaneous mass murders, but it nevertheless provides an indication of an often overlooked line of tradition of German policy in the occupied territories. The ideal of the ‘racially privileged society’ is also the basis for the following statement by Hitler: ‘Our Germans – that is the main thing – must form a closed community like a fortress, outside the centers the lowest horse boy must stand above any of the natives’. 22 Of course, this only applied to that part of the local population whose right to life was recognised at all. Not only was the separate treatment of Germans and non-Germans, or whites and non-whites, prescribed legally and in everyday life in both colonialism and National Socialism, but active steps were taken to avoid any ‘mixing’ of the two populations. The problem of maintaining the separation of the privileged upper and the non-privileged lower strata was particularly acute in the settler colonies where there was a relatively large number of European residents. So-called people of ‘mixed-blood’ (Mischlinge), who blurred the boundaries between the races, were seen as a potential threat. Thus attempts were made to prevent such occurrences and, beginning in the English colonies 22 Hitler, 17 September 1941; in Jochmann (1980: 62-63).
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no. 50 | december 2008 Revisiting t
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Revisiting the heart of darkness -
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Acknowledgements The larger part of
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Dennis Brutus, born 1924 in then Rh
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8 development dialogue december 200
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In short, both the understanding of
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Behind most mass violence lurk econ
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ehind most mass violence lurk econo
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Is there a south perspective on gen
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is there a south perspective on gen
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The Voksenåsen Statement Genocides
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This Development Dialogue is publis
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60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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