WW2 & Genocide timeline, UCSB Prof. Marcuse

UCSB Hist 133 B, Winter 2007 (homepage)
German History, 1900-1945

Prof. Marcuse (homepage)
marcuse@history.ucsb.edu

War, Genocide & Human Behavior
(pdf print version-1 page)

Timeline (Genocide events are indented) (back to top)

1939, Sept: invasion of Poland
- Sept: first ghettos created
1940, Spring: Denmark, Norway, Holland; Belgium, France ("Vichy" gov't; Madagascar Plan)
1940, Aug.-1941, Feb: "Blitz" on London
- Nov: Warsaw ghetto sealed; 50-400/day die of disease and starvation
1941, by April: Greece, Yugoslavia conquered; Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria allied
1941, June 22: "Operation Barbarossa:" Kiev, Leningrad, Moscow
- July: first mass shootings near Riga (Latvia, north of Poland)
- Sept. 29-30: Babi Yar massacre near Kiev, 33,771 Jews murdered in 2 days
- Oct: first gassings in sealed trucks at Chelmno/Kulmhof near Lodz
1941, Nov: Russian winter begins, Germans retreat
1941, Dec. 11: Hitler declares war on US
- 1942, Jan. 20: Heydrich's conference at the Wannsee villa in Berlin (Göring on July 31, 1941)
1942, Spring-Summer: German advances on all fronts, but no decisive victory;
- July 22-Sept.21: deportation of 300,000 from Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka (6000/day)
1942, Nov: Allies land in north Africa (7th); Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad (19th)
1943, Jan. 31/Feb. 2: German General Paulus surrenders at Stalingrad
- Apr 19-23 - May 16: Warsaw ghetto uprising
- Aug 2: Treblinka uprising
- Oct 14: Sobibor uprising

Mentalities of the Murderers (back to top)

Types of perpetrators
- hands-on: shooters at executions, police in ghettos, doctors administering injections
  slightly more removed: loading trains, guards in camps, dumping cyclon B (?)
- mid-level: officers in the field, doctors evaluating index cards (Kommandant Höss in Auschwitz; Major Trapp)
- professional: engineers, architects, intellectuals (bureaucratic "desk" murderers)
- administrative/organizational: policy-makers, factory CEOs
Different motivations for genocide
- ideology/prejudice: antisemitism; social Darwinism; master race
- dehumanized victims: ghettoization, excruciating train journeys
- opportunism/careerism: a question of values
- situational/peer pressure: group spirit, camaraderie
- "ethical universe:" the moral blindness of leadership (Himmler, "Papa" Trapp)
- professional, scientific attitude (cold cult of professionalism): medical "experimenters"
- obedience to authority: (Auschwitz Kommandant Höss, Milgram experiments)

Taxonomy of Behaviors from Active Perpetrator to Passive Victim (back to top)

The vertical axis is less-to-more agency (individual); the horizontal axis is more-to-less power (structural).

"Aryan" (on the "dishing out" side)	intermediate groups (element of choice) nations: Hungarians, Lithuanians, … organized beliefs: Comm., Jeh. Witn.; behavioral: prostitutes, homosexuals, …	Jews, gypsies (on the "receiving" end)
active perpetrators: develop initiative to realize goals of system	resistor: actively works to destroy system role of moral principle (conscious risk and choice)	resistor: works to destroy system (also a survival strategy)
accepts and carries out dictates of others	altruist: takes risk to thwart system goals; ameliorates consequences	survivor: attempts to shape own fate, works to thwart aspects of system
passive: "neutral" bystander, "doesn't know"		victim: accepts own fate, does not take action

Some Concepts (back to top)

handout prepared for web by H. Marcuse on Feb. 21, 2007, updated: /07
back to top; to UCSB Hist 133b homepage, to Courses Page; Prof. Marcuse's homepage