Das Fußvolk der “Endlösung:” Nichtdeutsche Täter und die europäische Dimension des Völkermords Thomas Sandkühler

Abstract

Abstract If one looks less at the normality of the crime than at the semantics of the term “normality,” “normal” can stand for “not National Socialist,” but also for “average” or “everyday.” But what is gained with the insight that “normal organizations” made the murder of Jews possible and “normal men” carried it out? Couldn’t one say with equal right that the anomalies of violent National Socialist organizations reflected the social normality of that time? That men who violently killed millions of civilians must be denied normality per se? Perhaps it would be time to break away from the normative category of normality and to allow the insight that under the conditions of a coercive political order, coercive organizations can be founded that will stop at nothing (p. 328).