Prevention of Genocide: History, Causes, and Solutions

Introduction: Defining Genocide

Humankind has committed disastrous acts against its own kind from its earliest ages, and it seems that people are bound to hurt one another at the slightest opportunity. Murders take place constantly, and killers do not always need solid reasons for taking the lives of others — any difference of opinion between killer and victim can provide a motive in most cases.

The concept of genocide is highly controversial, as most people do not exactly know what it involves and typically picture a mass killing as the defining image. Part of the controversy stems from the fact that some nations would not consider a mass murder to be genocide if the motives were political rather than racial.

One often thinks of the Holocaust when hearing the word "genocide," as it is one of the main reasons for the word's existence. The term has its roots in 1944, when Raphael Lemkin, a Polish scholar of international law and a secular Jew, first presented it in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Heidenrich).

Genocide comes from the combination of the Greek prefix genos and the Latin suffix cide. Together they refer to the killing of a nation or of a particular group (Heidenrich). Lemkin emphasized that genocide does not necessarily require the outright murder of a nation; it can also mean the destruction of the means necessary for a nation to survive. Lemkin died in 1958, but the word he invented lived on, leaving people to debate which actions qualify as genocide. Unfortunately, scholars tended to study the act rather than find means of stopping mass murders. Lemkin had strongly favored creating an international law that would prohibit genocide worldwide in order to protect minorities and hold perpetrators accountable (Hirsch).

His intentions appeared idealistic to members of the UN because of the enormous resources that a law against genocide would require. Although the convention traveled quickly around the world, most countries were reluctant to ratify it, fearing that it would give the UN a pretext to intervene in their internal affairs. Despite the passage of the UN's Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, cases of genocide have continued to occur around the world without triggering timely international intervention.

In most cases, those who carry out mass murders are not personally acquainted with their victims, nor are they fully aware of what crime the victims have supposedly committed. People have always needed something to live and fight for — a place to call home and a community to call their own. Today it may seem that violence and crime are natural features of any society, yet there are certain communities that know no crime and whose members are unfamiliar with the concept of anger, even when those communities have been assaulted and tortured by outsiders. The Senoi, people who inhabit the jungles of Malaysia, are known for their remarkable peacefulness and absence of vengefulness (Heidenrich). Their way of life has attracted worldwide attention, as observers are astonished by a community that appears to know no anger.

Historical Cases of Genocide

One of the most terrible forms of genocide occurs between members of the same nation or even the same family. The twentieth century witnessed approximately 36 million deaths caused by genocide — none of the victims having died as a result of conventional warfare.

Genocide was present in the world long before World War II, with accounts of mass murder reaching back thousands of years. The first concentration camps are believed to have been established by the Spanish in Cuba in the late nineteenth century, later followed by British and Nazi camps (Heidenrich).

Among the first racially motivated genocides was the episode of the "Young Turks," in which the First World War was used as a pretext to remove racial minorities from Turkey. Millions of Armenian Christians were left to starve in the desert as a result.

The Holocaust and Nazi Germany

The Holocaust stands as one of the worst disasters in the history of humankind. The Nazi war machine murdered millions of innocent people in its campaign of so-called European cleansing. Virtually every factor points to the conclusion that the Nazis committed genocide primarily for racial reasons.

After Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the fate of the Jewish population was sealed. Jews began to suffer immediately, yet conditions remained relatively calm until the night of November 9, 1938, when Hitler unleashed widespread violence during Kristallnacht. During that night, approximately one hundred Jews were murdered and thousands more were taken to the first Nazi concentration camps. Jews had been categorized as a problem for Germany primarily because they occupied prominent positions and were considered wealthier than much of the rest of the population.

Another reason for the persecution of Jews was that Hitler blamed the Jewish race for everything he considered evil in the world, and in Germany especially. Jews were generally oppressed because they demonstrated a remarkable capacity to preserve their national identity wherever they lived. In Hitler's view, the Jews were the very opposite of the ideal Aryan race, and he believed there was no alternative but to annihilate them in order for Germany to prosper. Hitler's subordinates were fanatically devoted to their leader and were convinced that all Jews were Bolsheviks and enemies of Germany — a conviction driven by both fanaticism and the need for a scapegoat.

To achieve his goals, Hitler developed the Endlösung — the "Final Solution" — which involved the mass murder of all non-Aryan people. Some analysts suggest that the war with Russia was itself a pretext for killing as many Jews as possible, though most believe the Final Solution grew out of the failure of earlier efforts to deport the Jewish population.

Although the genocide committed by the Nazis targeted several ethnic groups, the Germans focused most intensely on the Jewish population. Alongside Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and people with mental or physical disabilities received similarly lethal treatment, because none of these three groups could alter their circumstances as could communists, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, or homosexuals.

The first reports of Germans committing acts of genocide date to 1941, when Hitler ordered Himmler, the leader of the SS, to carry out mass shootings of Jews. The Nazis later shifted from mass shootings to killing by gas in specially constructed chambers within concentration camps.

The Holocaust was not confined to German perpetrators and Jewish victims. Hitler's regime provided other countries with justification for eliminating ethnic minorities within their own borders. In Croatia, for instance, Catholics and Muslims used their alliance with the Nazis to exterminate the Serbian minority along with other groups the Nazis wished eliminated. Approximately 750,000 Serbs were killed by Croatian forces during the Holocaust on account of their religion (Mathuna).

Hitler's regime directly murdered an estimated 17 million human beings before and during World War II, and caused millions more to perish through deliberate neglect. As Heidenrich documents:

"The noncombat victims of the Nazis included some 5 million Poles, primarily intellectuals; at least 6 million Soviet civilians and captured prisoners of war, most of them starved to death; nearly 800,000 Serbs, most butchered in atrocities inflicted by the Nazis' Croatian allies; hundreds of thousands of Roma (Gypsies); and, most notoriously, some 6 million Jews — including 1 million Jewish children." (Heidenrich, 2001)

The Holocaust has given the world cause for lasting regret and shame. It remains almost impossible to believe that human beings in a supposedly civilized society could carry out genocide on such a scale.

While the Nazis believed the individual was determined entirely by biology and that only those of Aryan descent could thrive, the Marxist-Leninist Communists held that individuals are defined by their upbringing and training. Both Nazism and Communism have been shown to be deeply dangerous and destructive to humanity. Among the conditions that made the Holocaust possible were Hitler's calculated schemes and an environment in which ordinary Germans were searching for a scapegoat to blame for their hardships.

Conclusion: Reducing the Risk of Future Genocide

The world is witness to genocide cases in the present, with innocent people from around the world suffering for an unjust cause. Darfur, the Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, and Somalia are just some of the states in which acts of genocide are being committed and are likely to be committed in the future. One of the primary reasons genocide continues to exist is the persistent lack of willingness to act on the part of those who have the power to intervene and actually make a difference.

Works Cited

Heidenrich, John G. How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001.

Hirsch, Herbert. Anti-Genocide: Building an American Movement to Prevent Genocide. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.

Leblanc, Lawrence J. The United States and the Genocide Convention. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.

Mathuna, Mac Sean. "The Role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia's Holocaust." The Holocaust Revealed. 30 Oct. 2008. http://www.logon.org/_domain/holocaustrevealed.org/Yugoslavia/Yugoslavia-Croatia.htm

Morton, Joseph C. The American Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Oberschall, Anthony. "Preventing Genocide." Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 1, Utopian Visions: Engaged Sociologies for the 21st Century (Jan., 2000), pp. 1–13.

Protection against Genocide: Mission Impossible?. Ed. Neal Riemer. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000.

"Cambodia's Brutal Khmer Rouge Regime." BBC News. 2007. 30 Oct. 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7002629.stm

"Genocide Monitor: October 23, 2008." Genocide Intervention Network. 2008. 30 Oct. 2008.

"Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened." BBC News. 2004. 30 Oct. 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1288230.stm