Genocide and Political Violence in The 20th Century

The 20th century stands out as the millennium that witnessed the greatest upheaval in the global social and political landscapes. The many cases of genocides and wars during this era paint a picture of a conflicted world where the elites unleash a wave of violence against those that they perceive as weak or a threat. Scholars on genocide debate what causes genocide, and there seems to be little progress in agreeing on whether there is any justification for such an atrocity. For these scholars, the overriding question is why something as terrible as genocide has happened and continues to happen. The enormous scope of this question and the problems created by theoretical grandstanding by social scientists necessitated the need to examine less complicated concerns. These concerns include exploring the conditions that underpin a genocidal event, identifying why some groups are targeted and why bystanders watch as perpetrators carry out mass executions. One of the issues, confronting scholars on genocide, is why political elites settle on the policy of genocide rather than seeking some other less catastrophic measures of addressing their concerns.

Several scholars have noted that a number of crises have preceded the genocides of the 20th century, meaning they have been foundational in the occurrence of these terrible events. These crises include the destabilization of national security, economy, and political arrangement, making the elite or dominant community identify a specific group negatively. For this community, dealing with these crises requires radical actions, and it is what causes political violence in many countries of the world. Even though the weak sides, including the poor people and minorities, can initiate such violence by arguing that it is the elites or majorities who are the primary causes of such crises in many cases. In order to understand why genocide happens, it is prudent to identify how the elites or majorities seek to address the above crises by conceptualizing the identity, interests, and potential actions of the victim group. In formulating genocidal policies, the perpetrators conceptualize the threat posed by the victim group and then entrench the belief that the continued existence of this group imperils the very existence of the elite or dominant community.

Undoubtedly, it is both evil and irrational to perpetrate genocide as a response to a crisis and a perceived threat to a particular section of society. Humanity will always question why the regimes of the Nazis, the Young Turks, the Khmer Rouge, and the Hutu Power chose to exterminate men, women, and children just because of their identity and what they represent. There is a consensus among genocide scholars and observers that such acts rest entirely on irrational suspicions, fears, and stereotyping. Helen Fein, a sociologist, observes that from the perspective of the perpetrators, genocide is apparently an “’a rational choice’” that is a goal-oriented means to an end. From the author’s sociological perspective, genocide is a rational choice not because of the ideas and perceptions upon which it is premised but on account of the decision-making process that leads to its perpetration. In his book, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, Doris L. Bergen explains genocide as a goal-oriented strategic policy by contending that the elite or dominant community perpetrates genocide to realize radical policy goals. In pursuit of these goals, Bergen argues that perpetrators employ strategies of extermination against a target group to compel its members to react in a way that they normally would not consider, which helps in the realization of these policies. Some of the ways that the target group responds to policies of mass killings are by freeing and abandoning their homes, submitting to a radical new way of life, and ceasing to support political or military opposition groups. Another goal pursued by genocide perpetrators is to counter perceived threats posed by a target group. According to Fein, the choice for genocide is arrived at after political leaders conclude that every other option for achieving their goals, including political repression and limited concessions to victim groups, proves ineffective or impractical. In this respect, ethnic mass killing happens when the elite or dominant community believes that the victims pose a real threat that can only be countered through extermination. Holocaust was Hitler’s campaign against the Jews in the name of eliminating racial impurity.

The narrative of extermination in explaining genocide is given substantial attention by many scholars who highlight three factors that underpin genocidal events. These factors include the identification of the victim group as foreign to the elite or dominant community, the identification of the victim group as dangerous, an ‘‘enemy within’’ whose continued existence imperils the very survival of the elite or dominant population and the identification of the victim group as subhuman. In essence, it is these three factors that perpetrators of genocide refer to in conceptualizing the victim group. In almost all the genocidal events of the 20th century, these conceptualizations of the victim group were significant in setting the stage for mass executions. By examining the Holocaust, Bergen explored the historical, political, social, cultural, and military contexts that underpinned the actions of the Nazis and the extermination of close to six million Jews. In order to give justice to the topic of genocide, the author does not stop with the mass killing of the Jews in Nazi Germany and Nazi-controlled regions of the Soviet Union. He also looks at how the Nazis terrorized Poles, homosexuals, disabled persons, and Soviet prisoners-of-war among other groups that the Nazi war machinery deems undesirable. On the aspect of conceptualizing the victim group, Bergen argued that the Nazis saw the Aryan race as subhuman, seeking its purification, and sought the expansion of their living space. While Fein explains the terror that the Nazis unleashed on the Jews, Bergen explains why they invaded territories outside Germany. Besides, by considering the killing of the Jews in Germany, the Third Reich extended its atrocities in the Soviet Union in lands that Hitler managed to bring under his control.

While the evil that the Nazis unleashed on the Jewish community stood out as the worst genocide in human history, it was one of the many that took place in the 20th century. In the book, Holocaust: A History by Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan Pelt, the authors contradicted popular wisdom by arguing that the basis of the Holocaust was not so much the anti-Semitic legal regulations of Europe but the perpetrators’ intention for social purification, the massacre of over 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks and the Terror of the French Revolution. Rather than look at the Holocaust as a singular historical event, the authors integrate it into the broader historical, political, cultural, and social context of the period. For example, when discussing the German subjugation of Poland, the authors focused on how the Poles viewed the extermination of the Jews as a precursor of the fate that awaited them. This perspective helps place the genocide against the Jews into a broader perspective as it precedes other genocidal events that take place in Europe. In commenting on the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, the authors point out how the revolutionaries pronounce anyone born of noble blood an obstacle to political and social change. This perspective challenges the notion that it is only the elite community that perpetrates genocide. Irrespective of the perpetrator, the Reign of Terror foreshadowed Hitler’s campaign against the Jews whom he saw as a barrier to racial utopia. In this respect, Hitler and his war machine conceptualized Jews as a real, racial threat. In Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder examines genocide in Europe by concentrating on the regions of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic region. Hitler and Stalin used these territories to stage horrific experiments of mass killings based on race and class. Stalin intended to subjugate the peasantry, which was the largest social group in the Soviet Union. He chose the best way by forcing a majority of them to forsake their lands and relocate to industrial towns. Through this tactic, Stalin built and sustained rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union. Collectively, Hitler’s Third Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Union murdered over 14 million people in bloodlines, a region that extended from central Poland to western Russia, passing through Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. While these regions witnessed genocide, Snyder argues that the magnitude of the Holocaust overshadows all due to its dominance of contemporary understanding of genocide. This selective attention to genocide has undermined a more comprehensive understanding of the culture and history of murder and annihilation in different parts of the world. 

While the Holocaust is associated with the Nazi's campaign for the Jews' extermination traditionally, several scholars used the term to refer to cases of mass killings in different parts of the world. Paul Preston in his book, The Spanish Holocaust, narrated how General Francisco Franco, using fascist-backed rebels, implemented a ruthless policy of detention, torture, forced disappearance, and extermination of thousands of people for political and ideological motives. The author used the term “holocaust” to describe the extent of cold-blooded mass killings, which happened on a scale similar to what happened in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. By examining genocide literature, one cannot tell much difference between the levels of atrocities committed against the Jews by the Third Reich and Tutsi’s mu Hutu militia. In The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda, Scott Straus uses social science lens to elaborate on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Through a careful examination of both primary and secondary sources, as well as systematic interviews of witnesses, the author yields new insights into this tragic event. The book revealed that a tremendous climate of political uncertainty and chaos preceded the violence that was unleashed against the Tutsi population. This political climate was caused by an unending conflict between Tutsi rebels and the government. In this case, Strauss argued that conflict underpinned the genocide logic, legitimized the killings, and empowered the perpetrators. In comparing the Hutu war machine and the Nazi’s actions, the author observes that the killers in Rwanda were not hateful, cruel, or economically disadvantaged but rather average people that feared what a Tutsi victory would mean for their safety. This revelation challenges the notion of the elite or dominant community in genocide perpetration.

Although the genocide narrative-focused majorly on the idea that the policy of violence while extermination was based on the conceptualizations of the victim group by the elite or dominant community, some cases showed that this might not be the case. In Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, Adam Jones examines political violence in different regions of the world in trying to seek clarification on this perspective. Looking at the conflicts in Mexico, Bolivia, and Haiti, the author identifies a case of “subaltern genocide,” or genocides perpetrated by the oppressed. Generally, genocidal assaults that happen as acts of revenge, retribution, or revolution are not likely to face the same level of condemnation as those perpetrated by political elites. Like racial purification. Jones argued that genocidal events like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings and the bombing of German cities by Allied forces are usually seen as justifiable because they were retaliation to undeserved provocation. This level of justification can be applied to the fate of ethnic Germans, living in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Central European countries at the end of World War II, because people could argue that the Germans “started it.” Hence, scholars noted that those who choose to deny the Holocaust tend to refer to the demonization of the Jews as cancer or conspirators by Hitler’s Third Reich.

In conclusion, genocide is arguably the worst case of political violence in modern history. The Holocaust, the campaign of Jews extermination perpetrated by Hitler and his war machine, the Third Reich, stands out as one of the worst and most historically significant genocide events of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the mass killings that took place in the Soviet Union, Rwanda, and Spain, as well as the political conflicts in Haiti, Bolivia, and Mexico, were an indication of the extent to which one section of society was willing to go to suppress or subjugate another. Scholars noted that genocide was based on the conceptualization of the victim group by the elite or dominant community. In formulating their genocidal policies, the perpetrators conceptualize the threat posed by the victim group and then entrench the belief that the continued existence of this group imperils the very existence of the elite or dominant community. Even though there are cases that show the oppressed population can also perpetrate genocide, the truth remains that genocides that occurred as a policy of extermination rather than revenge are condemned overwhelmingly.

Bibliography

1. Bergen, Doris L. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
2. [bookmark: _Hlk3199421]Dwork, Deborah, and Robert Jan Pelt. Holocaust: A History. New York, NY: WW Norton & Company, 2002.
3. [bookmark: _Hlk3199428]Fein, Helen. Genocide: A Sociological Perspective. London, UK: Sage, 1993.
4. Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2016.
5. Midlarsky, Manus I. The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
6. Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2012.
7. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Random House, 2011.