The Eight Stages of Genocide

¶ … Structure and Functions of Pre-Genocidal Societies: Nazi Germany and Cambodia

Between the two of them, the genocidal societies of Nazi Germany and Cambodia murdered around 8 million innocent civilians before being stopped by the international community. Not surprisingly, the targeted civilians in these genocides were also subjected to enormous economic discrimination prior to these respective "final solutions," and these issues form the basis of this analysis. This paper explores the relevant literature to describe the structure and functions of these two pre-genocidal societies with an emphasis on economic discrimination, including the historical background, the stages that a society tends to experience preparatory to genocide, and the economic conditions within these modern states prior to genocide. In addition, an analysis of the economic conditions of the people persecuted and their role within the economy prior to genocide is followed by an assessment concerning how these two states economically discriminated in the years leading up to and during the genocide. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings concerning these two pre-genocidal societies is provided in the paper's conclusion.

Historical background of Germany and Cambodia prior to genocide and the groups that were eventually discriminated against

Nazi Germany. The stage was set for the rise of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Worker's Party that became abbreviated as "Nazi" (Munk 9). At this point in its history, Germany had been brought to her knees by World War I and the draconian terms of the Versailles Treaty and the country was especially hard hit by the global economic downturn the followed the Great Depression. For instance, writing while World War II was still being prosecuted, Munk advises that pre-Nazi German economy was "born out of certain social and economic conditions: the decadence of genuine liberal competition, the end of laissez-faire, the vagaries of the trade cycle, the growing awareness of insecurity, unemployment, and frustration in both the classes and the masses" (9). In sum, Adolf Hitler was able to seize power due to the "deprivations and mood of Weimar Germany in the 1920s and 1930s" (Sneider 3).

More to the point, Hitler was also able to seize power during this turbulent period in Germany's history because of his focus on what he perceived to be the source of the country's problems: its Jewish population. In this regard, Sneider confirms that, "The consuming hatred for Jews and the belief in an all-powerful Jewish conspiracy [were] key to Hitler from his earliest days in politics" (3). In fact, by 1936, massive Nazi Party rallies were already taking place at Nuremberg, but many modern historians discount eyewitness reports concerning the economic conditions in pre-Nazi Germany because of the assignment of official chaperones that limited their access to mainstream German society (Bennell 1). What is known for certain is that beginning in the late 1920s, the Nazi Party leveraged the resentment against the Versailles Treaty and harsh economic conditions being experienced by the German people by making all Jewish people a scapegoat for all of Germany's problems (Nazi Germany 2). For instance, one historian reports that, "From 1929 onwards, the worldwide economic depression provoked hyperinflation, social unrest and mass unemployment, to which Hitler offered scapegoats such as the Jews" (Nazi Germany 2).

Following Hitler's appointment as chancellor, the Jews in Germany found their predicament increasingly untenable and in 1935, the enactment of the Nuremburg Laws represented the start of institutionalized anti-Semitic persecution that would become the genocide which would be termed the "Final Solution" (Nazi Germany 3). The Final Solution can be said to have begun in early November, 1938, when a teenaged Polish Jew purportedly attempted to assassinate the German Embassy's Second Secretary in Paris (Doescher 131). After the second secretary died a few days later, the Nazi Party seized on this event as an excuse to launch a series of pogroms that targeted German Jews in which has become known as the "Kristallnacht" (Crystal Night or Night of Broken Glass) (Doescher 132). According to Doescher, "During and after this spasm of violence and plunder, about 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds would perish in the following months" (132). The events of Kristallnacht provided Nazi leaders with the reassurances they needed that even more drastic anti-Semitic efforts would be supported by mainstream German society (Doescher 133). In this regard, Doescher points out that, "[Kristallnacht] clearly showed the Nazi regime that it could count on the wide support of the general population, both young and old, to support it in its anti-Semitic actions" (133).

More telling still, modern historians discount the assertion that most German people were unaware of what was happening around them with respect to the Jewish population. As Doescher concludes, "Kristallnacht clearly reveals the participation of all classes of society in the November nation-wide pogroms. The assertion voiced and heard in Germany during many post-war decades that nobody really knew what was happening to the Jews belongs in the world of myth" (133). The Kristallnacht pogrom that occurred between November 9 and 10, 1938, is widely regarded today as representing the beginning of the end for German Jews. For instance, y Jantzen and Durance report that, "Indeed, the Kristallnacht pogrom marks a point of transition between the escalating anti-Semitism of German politics in the 1930's and the massive violence associated with the Nazi wartime Holocaust" (538).

Emboldened by the effectiveness of the outcome of Kristallnacht, the Nazi Party was able to persecute the remainder of the Jewish population in Germany and throughout the Reich. Although precise numbers are unavailable, there is a general consensus that at least six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and increasingly scarce German resources were still being diverted from the military to achieve the Final Solution up until the closing days of the war, an outcome that reflected Hitler's all-consuming desire to achieve this goal if nothing else (Doescher 133).

Cambodia. The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge, assumed control of Cambodia in April 1975 (Khmer Rouge history 2). During the period 1975 through 1979, approximately 2 million innocent people, many of them professionals, were murdered under the regimen of the dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (Copeland 44). According to one modern historian, "The murderous spree of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and early 1979 led to the deaths of an estimated two million Cambodians, or roughly 25% of the population, including virtually every educated professional" (Metraux 176). These events followed more than 20 years of civil war and widespread aerial bombings of the country (with the aid of the United States), a process that also devastated the country's economic infrastructure (Khmer Rouge history 3).

The harsh economic conditions that existed prior to the genocide in Cambodia were surpassed only by the outcome of these events. In this regard, Metraux advises that, "There were only ten doctors in the country after the fall of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. There were no teachers, health workers, or any functioning schools or hospitals. The national infrastructure was in total ruin" (176).

Even several (the actual number is unknown) Americans and other foreign nationals fell victim to Pol Pot's regime during this brutal period in Cambodia's history and certainly the vast majority of the Cambodian people suffered as a result, with most families losing at least one and some even more members (Metraux 176). As Metraux points out, "Nobody was left unscarred by the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, an intensely nationalistic regime that attempted to construct a puritanical Communist society where all people would live and work together as equals in massive rural communes" (176). Like the Nazi's targeting of Jews and other minorities, the Pol Pot regime likewise targeted foreigners, professionals and even Cambodians with "an urban background" as enemies of the state as part of their genocidal efforts (Metraux 176).

The two sites that experienced the most carnage were Tuol Sleng ("hill of the poisonous trees"), a former high school building that was turned into the notorious prison "S-21" in which civilians were tortured and killed, and Choeung Ek, also termed "the killing fields" due to the mass graves that were used for the murdered victims (Copeland 44). According to Copeland, "Today, Tuol Sleng houses a genocide museum and Choeung Ek is the site of a Buddhist memorial park. Both sites receive one to two hundred visitors per day" (Copeland 44). Indeed, these two locations have become a major international tourist attraction. In this regard, Metraux reports that, "Pol Pot casts horror scenes of killing fields, genocide, and the virtual death of a nation. Ironically these images today are annually drawing hundreds of thousands of tourists to Cambodia" (176).

Because bullets were too expensive (the Khmer Rouge boasted to ordinary Cambodians that they manufactured their own bullets out of scrap iron), most victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide were killed in especially brutal ways, including smashing children's heads against "the killing tree" that contained loudspeakers to mask the screams which has also become a macabre tourist attraction today (Metraux 176).

If these types of extremely brutal execution methods seem bizarre to the extreme to modern observers, it is because they were, and even modern historians have difficulties making sense of the genocide that occurred during this period in Cambodia's history. In this regard, Metraux emphasizes that, "The method of massacre which the Pot criminals carried upon the innocent people of Kampuchea cannot be described fully and clearly in words because the invention of this killing method was strangely cruel so it is difficult for us to determine who they are for" (176).

A plaque posted by the Cambodian government near the killing tree also underscores the extremes taken by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and suggests that, if possible, the cruelty even transcended that used by Hitler's Final Solution: "Even in this 20th century, on Kampuchean soil the clique of Pol Pot criminals had committed a heinous genocidal act. They massacred the population with atrocity in a large scale. It was more cruel than the genocidal act committed by the Hitler fascists, which the world has never met" (cited in Metraux 176). In sum, although certain segments of Cambodian society were specifically targeted by the Khmer Rouge, the victims appear to have been largely random, making this genocidal episode in human history especially inexplicable. For instance, the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor points out that, "While the Khmer Rouge was in power, they set up policies that disregarded human life and produced repression and massacres on a massive scale. They turned the country into a huge detention center, which later became a graveyard for nearly two million people, including their own members and even some senior leaders" (Khmer Rouge history 4). Some insights can be garnered concerning these questions, though, by examining the stages that a pre-genocidal society tends to experience preparatory to genocidal actions, and these issues are discussed further below.

Explanation of the stages that a pre-genocidal society experiences

The eight stages of genocide identified by Genocide Watch are as follows: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial (Gorton 421). All of these stages can be discerned in varying degrees in the years leading up to the genocide in Nazi Germany, with Jews and others being classified as undesirables, symbolized by the obligatory Star of David, dehumanized by German society, the Nazi Party organization that coordinated these efforts, the polarization of German society into the master race and those who did not satisfy the Aryan criteria, pilot tests of optimal approaches to mass executions in preparation, the actual extermination that occurred in the Nazi death camps and the subsequent denials that the Holocaust ever really took place. By very sharp contrast, these stages are far less evident in the genocide that took place in Cambodia.

The definition of genocide provided by the International Law Commission states that "the distinguishing characteristic of the crime of genocide is the element of specific intent, which requires that certain acts be committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such" (cited in Southwick 189). This definition is certainly applicable to the genocide that took place in Nazi Germany because specific groups, including Jews, gypsies, the mentally ill, Catholics and other minorities were specifically targeted, but it is less relevant for the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge because all segments of society were affected despite the overall targeting of professionals, foreigners and those with an "urban background."

In any case, "certain acts" were certainly carried out in both genocides, but the intent on the part of Nazi Germany was more clear-cut in its goals compared to the practices employed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. In Nazi Germany's case, Jewish people and other undesirables were dehumanized by the mainstream press, the Nazi Party, and the German military to the extent that exterminating them seemed like a logical thing to do by a master race that was destined to rule the world. In the case of Cambodia, though, the dehumanization process never really occurred since the genocidal actions taken by the Khmer Rouge immediately followed their assumption of power with little or no opportunity to cast their targeted victims as less than human. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that not all stages have to be met for a genocide to take place. In any case, though, certain economic conditions can fuel the genocidal fires as discussed below.

Economic conditions within these modern states prior to genocide

Nazi Germany. Prior to the genocide that would be termed the "Final Solution," the German economy was in complete shambles. For instance, Krugman cites the "hyperinflation of 1923, when people carted around wheelbarrows full of cash" but many modern observers remain unaware of the "much more relevant deflation of the early 1930s, as the government of Chancellor Bruning -- having learned the wrong lessons -- tried to defend Germany's peg to gold with tight money and harsh austerity" (2). In fact, even before the global economic downturn that occurred in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the German economy was suffering, with German gross domestic product (GDP) declining 29% during the period 1913 to 1919 (Krugman 2).