review: _The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps_

[pynchonoid]

"By 1945, the factory system -- which, more than any
piece of machinery, was the real and major result of
the Industrial Revolution -- had been extended to
include the Manhattan Project, the German long-range
rocket program and the death camps, such as
Auschwitz."
-Thomas Pynchon, "Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?"


Michael Thad Allen. The Business of Genocide: The SS,
Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps. Chapel Hill
and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
xii + 375 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography,
index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8078-2677-4. 

Reviewed by L. M. Stallbaumer-Beishline, Department of
History, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.
Published by H-German (July, 2003) 

The Ideology of SS Bureaucrats

The major question driving Michael Thad Allen's The
Business of Genocide is what motivated mid-level SS
bureaucrats in their pursuits of industry, slave
labor, and murder. Allen rejects Hannah Arendt's
theory of the banality of evil, as well as the
explanation that SS bureaucrats were simply cogs in a
machine that operated beyond their control. Instead,
he argues that mid-level SS managers in the WVHA
(Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt, or Business
Administration Main Office) were driven primarily by a
"plexus of ideologies." In doing so, he challenges the
supposition of many studies, that Nazi bureaucrats
were repulsed by their actions. Rather, he argues they
were committed to the leadership principle of
"productivism," modernization, racial supremacy, and
the goal of creating an SS "New Order" throughout
Europe. SS ideals shaped the bureaucracy and provided
it with enough ideological consistency. Allen believes
that rather than factional disputes, far more
cooperation within the SS leadership was possible than
other historians have portrayed. 

Allen's study focuses on activities of the WVHA, which
was formed out of a desire by Himmler to introduce
modern, managerial practices to the financial
administration and economic enterprises of the SS.
Himmler's interests in the economy reflected his goal
to bring the SS worldview into private industry and to
create a new economic order founded on productivism
and German racial supremacy. [...] 

Allen demonstrates that the SS was interested in
modernization and technology, but according to his
analysis they did not pursue technology rationally
(this makes them no less modern in Allen's
definition). The SS managers of the commercial
operations showed an affinity for "sweet machines,"
the newest technology.  [...] 

TexLed's success can be explained by several factors,
including the simple fact that textile manufacturing
is a labor intensive job which proved perfectly suited
to the use of concentration camp laborers. Yet sound
management also contributed to TexLed's ability to
meet supply demands and run at a profit. TexLed was
managed by Fritz Lechler and Felix Krug, who fully
identified with the SS plexus of ideologies, and they
possessed modern, technological management skills.
Like Ahrens, they purchased the most modern sewing
machines that could increase output, but did not
require skilled laborers. Therefore, their operations
fully exploited concentration camp labor through
modern managerial techniques, controlled labor costs,
and profit-oriented operations. At both German
commercial operations, forced laborers were exploited
and treated cruelly (a topic that is discussed only
briefly), but TexLed demonstrated to Allen that
"ideological extremism" and business sense could be
integrated coherently (p. 70). [...] 

Hans Kammler, who led the SS construction corps,
appears to be the exception. He embodied the ideal,
modern SS bureaucrat, was dedicated to the SS cause,
and held a degree in engineering. The SS construction
corps earned great notoriety for building underground
manufacturing sites, as well as the concentration
camps. [...] Kammler was an interventionist manager,
who showed great skill at exploiting and moving forced
laborers from one construction site to another. This
is particularly evident in the construction of
underground factories. Kammler's construction corps
achieved their goal efficiently and promptly because
they were willing to exploit their laborers to the
point of working them to death. Ideology gave
Kammler's engineers common identity which improved
their output while treating the slave laborers under
their command brutally. 

In Allen's discussion of the concentration camps, we
realize that not all the SS branches were committed to
modernization. One branch of the WVHA was never fully
modernized: the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps
(IKL) which provided the labor for SS projects and
private enterprises. The concentration camp system
began in the Third Reich with the primary goal of
policing inmates. Only when labor shortages began to
develop in Germany by 1936-1937, was the use of
concentration camp inmates as laborers conceived.
While the commercial operations of the WVHA needed
productive workers, the IKL, administered by the
Death's Head Units, placed a "primacy on policing" and
encouraged brutal treatment of inmates. The WVHA
consistently struggled with the IKL over which of
these goals was more important, but they never morally
questioned the abuse of slave laborers. [...] 

Allen's study not only challenges scholars to rethink
the motivations of SS bureaucrats, but also boldly
challenges conventional interpretations about the
problem of modernity and the issue of polycracy in the
Third Reich. On the subject of modernity, Allen warns
us not "to conflate 'modernity' with 'rationality' and
'pure' technocratic instrumentalism, or insist that
modernization necessarily leads to a democratic
polity, or the full-flowering of the Enlightenment"
(p. 272).  [...] 

<http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=236351058984838>



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