60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

138 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
ies’ – ‘the genocide model’ – which are susceptible to analysis. 8 Thus
he challenges the predominant focus on ethnic and racial issues rather
than ‘multi-causality’; the state instead of society; a preoccupation
with a single victim group rather than multiple groups; and ‘longterm
“intent”, planning and centralization instead of a process and
autonomous groups’ (Gerlach 2006: 466). Gerlach proposes an alternative
concept of extremely violent societies in which
various population groups become victims of massive physical violence,
in which together with state organs, diverse social groups
participate for a multitude of reasons (Gerlach 2006: 460).
‘Mass violence’, which Gerlach defi nes as ‘widespread violence against
non-combatants, that is, outside of immediate fi ghting between military
or paramilitary personnel, but reaching beyond mass killings’
(Gerlach 2006: 455), springs from ‘complex processes deeply rooted
in the society in which they happen or by which they are generated’
(Gerlach 2006: 458). In what follows I will address each of Gerlach’s
concerns in regard to intent, state-centrism, the number of victim
groups, criteria of group identifi cation, popular participation, and a
great amount of physical violence.
Firstly, in regard to the question of intent, Gerlach is of the view that
‘genocide’ suggests an outdated mechanistic model for the origins
of violence: a homogenous, centralized crime based on long-term
planning (this rests on a factually outmoded intentionalist explanation
for the murder of European Jews) 9 (Gerlach 2006: 465).
8 Since Gerlach posits an alternative to the concept of genocide he needs fi rstly to
explicitly defi ne his notion of the ‘de-facto concept of “genocide”’ insofar as it may diff er
from the concept we fi nd in Article II. Accordingly, and despite clearly identifying several
problematic areas in the fi eld of genocide studies, it is diffi cult to interpret his claim that
‘the concept of “genocide” does not appear functional for analysing the phenomenon
of “extremely violent societies”’ or the statement that ‘the genocide model’ ‘tends to
prevent “genocide” being used to explain the phenomenon [extremely violent societies]
outlined here’ (Gerlach 2006: 463). The fact that the concept of genocide is highly
contested is all the more reason to specify which concept he is targeting.
9 If by ‘intentionalist’ Gerlach is referring, for example, to the Goldhagen thesis or to Arno
Mayer’s curious preoccupation with promoting any number of explanations for the
genocide of the Jews except the most obvious – i.e., ‘because they were Jews’ (Browning
1995: 84) – his point is well taken. Nonetheless I fi nd convincing Browning’s painstaking
analysis of the process of radicalisation between September 1939 and October 1941 that
culminated ‘in the ultimate Final Solution of systematic mass murder. Jewish policy could
evolve no further in concept. It remained to be implemented through action’ (Browning
2005: 424). Moreover that Hitler, ‘simply by his existence, exerted a continuing pressure
on the political system, which included a competition among the faithful and ambitions
to advance ever more radical proposals and carry out Jewish policy in an ever more
brutal and comprehensive manner’ (Browning 2005: 425). Still it needs to be stressed
that most ‘Holocaust’ scholars acknowledge the other categories of victims of Nazi terror.
It is Gerlach who in this article stresses the fate of European Jewry.