The Genocidal Temptation: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Rwanda and Beyond (review)

All but one of the seventeen chapters of this book are reprinted from the journal BRIDGES: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science. The subtitle hints at the subject matter: ethics in light of the enormities of the twentieth century. The editor claims its originality in the following terms: "This is the first time that—in one volume—compelling integrated focus has been directed towards the Nazi killing programs, American atomic bombings in Japan, Tutsi massacres in Rwanda, Soviet genocide in Lithuania, and other mass killing and repression programs" (p. xvi, emphasis in original). Given this idiosyncratic assortment, it is hardly surprising that no other book reprises exactly the same list. Thus we have Darrell J. Fasching, Eric Markusen, David Blumenthal, Konrad Paul Liessmann, Alan Milchman, and Alan Rosenberg reflecting on ethics after Auschwitz and Hiroshima; Samuel Totten, Henry Huttenbach, Steven L. Jacobs, and Peter V. Ronayne thinking about genocide and condemning the reluctance of the USA and others to call what transpired in Rwanda in 1994 by that name. Robert Frey, Steven Carter, and Hans Askenasy worry about "the bomb," while Askenasy, in a second chapter, condemns what he calls Daniel J. Goldhagen's "Holocaustbabble" and asks whether we are all Nazis; Warren K. A. Thompson links the Holocaust and masters degrees in business administration, and, in a contribution that is difficult to relate to the others, Dovilé Budryté writes about the Soviet deportations of Lithuanians during World War II.

Apart from the Budryté chapter, which is historical in character and tries to say something new to English-language readers, the analyses are neither compelling nor integrated. For one, the chapters are far too short (one is 2 _ pages!) to be able to do more than raise a question or two and advance a thesis. As many of the writers are well-known in their respective fields, it is more profitable to consult their elaborated arguments elsewhere. Neither are these their best performances. The questions posed are unoriginal and the theses advanced no longer particularly interesting. Wringing one's hands about the human capacity for evil explains nothing and, at least here, impedes clear vision. Some of us wonder why genocides do not occur more often. Moralizing is no substitute for sober historical analysis. At times, the essays appear to argue that these crimes could be prevented if people behaved ethically: if we were nice to one another then we would not be beastly, a circular argument of dubious value.

And yet the book does not focus solely on the individual. The challenges of modernity are also a constant theme, above all the role of value-free science and instrumental rationality in inuring their agents to the consequences of their actions. The commentary and endnotes reveal a heavy and usually uncritical reliance on Weber, the Frankfurt School, Arendt, Bauman, and other critics of rationalization. It is not that the authors are wrong. It is that they are conveying banalities about scientific civilization. Certainly, one does not find here the creative operationalization of their ideas evident, for example, in Omer Bartov's 1996 Murder in Our Midst. The discussion is extremely derivative and offers nothing new for those interested in these issues. Because the basic concepts are not explicated adequately either, the book cannot not serve as a primer or introduction.

If the contributors wanted to advance our understanding of why genocide occurs in particular forms in modernity, they would have needed to link rationalization to various racisms (such as antisemitism). But ideological issues are almost totally absent from the book. Then there is the polemic against the "uniqueness of the Holocaust." The catholic gesture of subjecting the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and other instances of mass death to comparative analysis is commendable, but not if it entails flattening out their differences by viewing them as but instances of modern pathologies. I miss the careful negotiation of the general and the specific features of these...