Crime/s against mankind, humanity and civilisation

Richard Albrecht

2007

“To realize that the sky is blue everywhere – and all over – one need not travel around the world.”
J. W. Goethe “Maximen und Reflexionen”

Under the title „CRIME/S AGAINST MANKIND, HUMANITY, AND CIVILISATION“ which includes historical crimes as criminis magna against humanity and civilisation within the 20th century, the author, an experienced political scientist, and social psychologist, presents the grounded concept of his approach to what he identified as the three basic genocidal events during the World Wars in Europe: Armenocide, Serbocide, Holocaust.

The first essay is the printed version of Richard Albrechts paper which was delivered to the “Second International Meeting on Genocidal Social Practices” (November 20-24, 2007), at Universidad de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentinia, focussing on the continuity on Genocidal Social Practices including relevant aspects of preventing genocidal actions, too.

According to the printed version of this GRIN-booklet, Richard Albrecht wrote two specific appendices: (i) under the title “On Genocidal Affairs or What Had Happened” the author publishes three very short notes on what stayed in his mind, to be remembered by a productive anti-genocidal memory, as Ernst Bloch puts it, “which does not only remember what happened but also what still is to be done“; (ii) under the title “Murder(ing) Jews - secondly, academically, coldly …The “final solution” in Germany, 1941-45, as “realizing Utopia”: On the false world of a prominent German tenure-historian the author as scholarly as thoroughly reviews, as a radical critic, the long-living, and most effective, complete reversal (“Umwertung aller Werte” [Friedrich Nietzsche]) Hans Mommsen (*1930) did the last forty years in his various publications, which were – and are - widely accepted as legitimate contributions of a genocide scholar in that Gebilde named international “scientific community”.

Richard Albrechts booklet also presents the authors c.v. and short notes on the books the author published the last years, 2005-07.

Murder(ing) People
Genocidal Policy Within 20th Century.
Description, Analysis, and Prevention:
Armenocide, Serbocide, Holocaust As Basic Genocidal Events During the World Wars

“Nothing but a memory is productive which does not only remember what happened but also what still is to be done“
(Ernst Bloch)

In this smart piece the author, an experienced German social psychologist, and political scientist, tries to sum up the very content of his own approach to genocide, genocidal action, genocidal policy, and genocidal mentality as a general pattern which was worked out, at first, in his inaugural lecture February 1st, 1989 (Albrecht 1989), and which the author recently published in his books on Genocide and Armenocide when discussing comparative and theoretical aspects of genocidal policy within 20th century (Albrecht 2006); the third volume of the authors trilogy on genocidal policy within 20th century (“Genozidpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert”), presenting the first scholarly verification of the notorious speech Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), as chancellor of the German Reich and Führer of the German people, delivered to his Supreme Commanders at Obersalzberg, on August 22nd, 1939 is actually prepared: the key sentence can be valued as a sort of “genocidal connection” between Armenocide and Holocaust: „Who [the fuck] is, after all, today speaking about the destruction of the Armenians ?“[1]

Needlessness to state that the author, who, as a scholar of genocide[2], recently published a short piece summing up the second genocide during World War II - named Serbocide[3] - is by no means one of that dubious guys self-naming ´genocide scholar´ but, in fact, either ouvert or covert, proclaiming such cloudy issues like hierarchies of the three genocidal victimgroups during the two World Wars – the Ottoman Armenians (1915/16), the European Jews, and the Serbs in “Satellite Croatia” (1941/45) which the author looks upon as the three basic genocidal events during the two World Wars.

Whenever looking on genocide politically, the author feels that the best anti-genocidal perspective in fact is an anti-fascist and anti-racialist one – although whenever looked upon the genocidal phenomenon as a scholar that cannot be regarded as a vital essential condition or conditio sine qua non: according to the dialectics of general and special features of the genocidal field and its sufficient condition(s), empirical details, and random aspects, a society must neither be classified as a ´fascist´ one to be regarded as a ´genocidal´ society: the Italian society between the World Wars indeed was a ´fascist´ but by no means a genocidal one like the South African, which basically was a racial one (like some of the Southern US-states were at that time). Any genocidal society is a racial one but non vice versa: not any racialist society is a genocidal or a fascist one. Moreover, the German society since 1933 soon became both a fascist and a racial societal basic structure causing another Great War (like in 1914) which also belongs to the historical context in which both the very genocidal crimes committed in Ottoman Turkey (1915/16) during the First and in Satellite Croatia (1941/45) during the Second World War – another feature which demonstrates the very meaning of the event Great or World War within 20th century either caused by a genocidal regime like the German or actively using the given occasion (in the meaning of opportunity structure/s) either by Young Turk or by Ustase leadership in 1915 and 1941 under the umbrella of the German Reich as the most powerful ally.

I take the liberty – if I may – and address me scholarly readers, she or he, that I will, for reasons, not name what happened in 1915 “the Armenian Genocide” as “the terrible Holocaust” (Bernard Lewis) with about one and half a million Ottoman Armenians exterminated – “unquestionable the greatest crime of the First World War” Hirschfeld/Gaspar 1929: 510). For I know, of course, that not only in the so called ´scientific community´ this terrible slangversion is more and more used instead of what must be precisely indicated, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica does in her latest CD-Rom version (2004²), “the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915”. Insofar I agree to distinguished genocidal scholars like Irving Louis Horowitz and Vahakn N. Dadrian when talking about the “Turkish Genocide” and the “Genocide against the Armenians”. Moreover, I feel that as rubbish as moronic talk - “Armenian Genocide” - is, indeed, not only as confusing as cretinous but also a sort of complete reversal in the very sense of Umwertung aller Werte (Friedrich Nietzsche) under most relevant moral, intellectual, political, historical, and linguistic aspects, declaring victims for perpetrators, and perpetrators for victims. I am not sure but do hope that, three generations later, the linguistic reversal as expressed in that false metaphor “Armenian Genocide” neither mirrors nor expresses the victory of the former genocidal violators as another final solution ... I may also remind me readership of three facts of life the German poetical playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) had worked out in other contexts: (i) whenever injustice happens too often it will not become justice because it happens very often; (ii) in the last instance the truth cannot be suppressed but must be publicly repeated again and again even after it had been once recognized as the very truth; (iii) within the intellectual field democracy indeed means transforming the small circle of connoisseurs towards the large circle of connoisseurs – a ´sociological experience ´ which should never be forgotten by any genocidal scholar whenever engaged in preventing genocidal action/s, too, for a basic virtuality must be taken into consideration: “Human actions are not destined be the very facts but by the perceptions of the facts acting humans have got.” (Alexander v. Humboldt)

I. Genocide is not only mass killing and killing masses as traditionally well-known like massacres, mass atrocities, pogroms, riots, and slaughter, but ´modern´ serial killing, strategically planned and organized, not only of masses but of peoples as entire populations for racial, religious, ethnic, political, and even ideological reasons: neither traditional massacres and atrocities nor well-known mass slaughters, pogroms, and riots, and also not only administrative murder of masses (as a conventional measure applied by absolute rulership, dictatorship, tyranny, colonialism etc. before World War I.), but of people. After World War I. traditional „administrative mass-murder” (Al. Carthill) became modern „administrative mass-murder as organised by a state” (Hannah Arendt) which later on was described as “policy of extermination” (Majorie Housepian), and as „organized state murder” (Helen Fein), and defined as „structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus” (Irving Louis Horowitz), indeed, as an outstanding „crime against mankind and civilisation as planned and organized by a state” (Richard Albrecht)[4], “the blackest page in history” (H.A. Gibbons).

II. Needlessly to stress that not only these but all the pieces on genocide worked out and published by the author within the last two decades are lead by a central principle according to a grounded problem of any research work on genocide which the author himself once named, in summer 1989, the urgent „development of an early warning system against genocidal tendencies” („Entwicklung eines Frühwarnsystems gegen Völkermordtendenzen. Pilotstudie zu einem unbearbeiteten Grundproblem einer kultur-, sozial- und politikwissenschaftlichen Friedensforschung“ 1989, 2 p., not printed [in German]). Given this setting, the author emphasizes the very meaning of a basic ´historical memory´ (Jorgé Semprún) which inevitably also includes „what still is to be done” (Ernst Bloch) as one of the central presuppositions and conditio sine qua non for preventing genocide.

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