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The functionalists approach to understanding the Holocaust is unconvincing, unlike their intentionalist opponents perspective. Discuss.
The academic debate between the functionalist and intentionalist historians is a heated one. The question to whether one side of the argument, the intentionalist perspective, is more convincing is quite tricky. This essay will outline the historical debate and the main questions involved before discussing functionalist and intentionalist arguments to try and deduce whether one is more convincing than the other. To conclude I will suggest that a third option may be the most convincing argument and essentially disagree with the notion that the intentionalist perspective is more convincing. An outline of the Historical debate Following the end of World War II most historians subscribed to the contention that the final solution was a planned process that stemmed from the beginnings of the Nazi party in 1919. Throughout the 1960s the conception of Hitler was of a Supreme Machiavellian working tactically to bend government policy into his ideological aims.1 The Third Reich was seen as a totalitarian state with Hitler being its supreme leader, and the genocide of European Jewry was also seen as a result of Hitlers intentions and a culmination of his long standing goals. The notion that Nazism could not be divorced from the person of Hitler and the final solution was the terrible consequence of his racist anti-Semitism and Hitlers supreme role within the Nazi state can also be placed under the heading of the intentionalist school. It was Hitlers intentions that led to genocide.2 Leading intentionalist historians that will be noted throughout this essay include Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, Karl Bracher, Eberhard Jckel and Lucy Dawidowicz. The intentionalist schools essential Hitler-centric views are challenged by the functionalist view that claiming the Holocaust was just a result Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation Oxford University Press New York, 4th Ed 2000, pg 73 2 ibid pg 72 - 75
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of Hitlers intentions is too simplistic, that the Third Reich was a polycratic state rather than monocratic and that it was a culmination of an increasingly radical Nazi bureaucracy that led to the final solution. Functionalists also contend that the Holocaust was not always Hitlers goal, that there was no master plan to kill 6 million Jews.3 Notable functionalist historians include Christopher Browning, Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen. Hitler; the man with the plan, an intentionalist view A central tenant of the intentionalist school of thought would be that Hitler had a master plan for the Jewish race, that the Holocaust was always his goal. Lucy Dawidowicz is a proponent of this view, which she succinctly outlines in A Holocaust Reader. He (Hitler) never swerved from his single minded dedication to the goal of their (Jews) destruction4 Dawidowicz points to documents throughout Hitlers political career that lead one to the conclusion that he always planned for the destruction of the Jews and only needed the opportunity to do so. In a letter to Adolf Gemlich in 1919, Hitler apparently outlines his short and longterm strategy for his anti-Semitic program, Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of Jews altogether.5 From this statement Dawidowicz deduces Hitlers view that a National Government should vehemently oppose the Jews and expel them. This notion is reinforced with statements Hitler made in a speech to a NSDAP meeting on August 13th 1920, where he repeats this idea of removal of the Jews from our Nation. 6 Dawidowicz then goes on to note that in Mein Kampf Hitler mentions the gassing of thousands of Jews in WWI rather than German soldiers on the Western Front.7 So from these statements the intentionalist view becomes clearer, the repetition of Hitlers intention of removal of the Jews before the Nazi party even took power produces a convincing notion that Hitler had a master plan. This view, that Hitler had ibid pg 77 - 80 Dawidowicz, Lucy (ed) A Holocaust Reader, New York: Behrman House, 1976 pg 26 5 ibid pg 30 6 ibid 7 ibid pg 26
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produced a plan to remove and destroy the Jewish race in Europe as early as 1919-1925 is regarded to be a kind of hard-line intentionalist view. Eberhard Jckel shares this view and produces evidence that Hitler had a view of extinction and extermination by 1924, he quotes Hitler stating that While working out my book I have come to the realization that in the future the most severe methods of fighting will have to be used to let us come through successfully. I am convinced that this is a vital question, not just for our people but for all peoples. For Juda is the plague of the world.8 These views similarly reinforce the contention that Hitler had a desire and plan to destroy the Jews in the 1920s. Kershaw sums up this point of the argument, stating that Hitler held these views consistently since the 1920s all the way up until his suicide. So if his own actions were directed by his ideological obsessions and the Third Reich was directed by Hitler; therefore the Fuhrers ideology became implemented as government policy.9 A functional rebuttal: The crooked path. In the previous paragraph we outlined an intentionalist view that contends that Hitler had plans to kill the Jews as early as 1919-1924, which eventually came to fruition in the Holocaust. One moderate functionalist argument contends that this was not the case and that Hitler and the Nazi party first aimed to expel the Jews from Europe and only after this failed was genocide decided upon. In order to substantiate these claims functionalist historians question the reality of Hitlers statements and also point to the Madagascar Plan as evidence that genocide was not always the plan. Christopher Browning, who identifies himself as a moderate-functionalist, contends that the decision to wipe out the Jews was reached in 1941, rather than the 1920s.10 Browning says that while antiSemitism was a central theme in Hitlers ideology, the intention of systematically murdering European Jews was not fixed in Hitlers mind before the war, but in Jckel, Eberhard Hitlers World View: A Blueprint for Power Wesleyan University Press 1972 pg 57 9 Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship pg 72 10 Browning, Christopher The Decision Making Process, in Dan Stone (ed) The Historiography of the Holocaust, London: Routledge, 2004 pg 178
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1941 when other solutions, including deportation, became unworkable and the prospect of an attack on the Soviet Union would have provided a vast increase of Jews within the Nazi empire.11 According to Kershaw, up until the end of 1941 the Nazis were still toying with a plan of mass deportation, the Madagascar Plan. This plan had been approved by Himmler and had been mentioned in talks between Hitler and Mussolini.12 Jewish representatives had been told that an unidentified colonial territory was what the government had in mind.13 Browning believes that the mass killings of Russian Jews by the SS-Einsatzgrupen marked a distinct radicalization of Nazi policy toward the Jews and that this radicalization spiralled into the Final Solution, we will attend this point later.1415But the point that the functionalist argument is making here is that if there was a plan to deport the Jewish race from Europe, up until 1942, then how could it also be true that Hitler had planned to kill all of Europes Jews from the beginning? What about all of Hitlers plans for extermination that we see in his statements throughout the 1920s and 1930s? Hans Mommsen, another functionalist historian, argues that Hitler was first and foremost a propagandist. He contends that Hitlers ideological statements should be viewed in the lens of propaganda rather than as firm statements of intent.16 And if we view Hitlers statements in lieu of plans to actually physically remove the Jews from Europe via deportation then the statements provided by the intentionalists can be seen as just that. Granted the removal of a race from a geographic region is still genocide, but not one of mass murder. I think that this functionalist argument is a convincing rebuttal towards the intentionalist view that Hitler had planned the mass murder of the Jews in the 1920s.

ibid Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship pg 112 13 ibid 14 ibid pg 113 15 Browning, Christopher Hitler and the Euphoria of Victory, in David Cesarani (ed) The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation New York: Routledge 1994 pg 137 16 ibid pg 77
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Lachlan Peters Hitler and the Final Solution: orders from above?

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On the 30th of January 1939, Hitler made this statement in a speech before the Reichstag Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!17 Intentionalist historians will point to this statement as one indication that Hitler was well aware of his intention to annihilate European Jewry and that he was the prime instigator in propelling the Final Solution forward. This notion also carries the idea that Germany under Hitler was a totalitarian state and that the state was coordinated in a manner that answered to Hitlers orders from above unquestionably.18 Intentionalist historians take the view that the orders for the final solution came from the top, rather than in the bureaucracy below Hitler. If we look at an extract from Rudolf Hoess, commander of the Auschwitz extermination camp, he states that Himmler told him "The Fuhrer has ordered that the Jewish question be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to implement that order. 19 This line also seems to indicate an order coming from Hitler in regards to the killing of the Jews. This line of functionalist argument also stems from the notion that Hitler really was the supreme and omnipotent leader of the Nazi state and that there was some kind of Fuhrer Order of the destruction of the Jews. Karl Bracher contends that Hitler had organized the Reich to fuel antagonism between rivaling parties and agencies and produce power hierarchies, to divide and rule.20 All these competing factions were bent towards Hitlers will, evidence to this is the consequence of following his worldview (Weltanschauung): the genocide that took place. Jckel views the Nazi regime as Alleinherrschaft, which literally means sole-rule, therefore all the N.H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, I, London, 1942, pp. 737-741. Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship pg 74 19 Documents on the Holocaust, Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1981, Document no.164. pp.350-353 20 Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship pg 73
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decisions of importance in the Reich were the direct result of Hitlers world view.21 22Hilgruber takes a hard-line view of No Hitler, No Holocaust, contending that if Goebbels or Himmler had been the leader of the Nazi state, their softer ideology would not have led to the Holocaust.23 This intentionalist view that Hitler can be solely placed as the man who caused the holocaust is appealing, but I do not find it to be particularly convincing. The moderate functionalist view of this issue is, for me, a more convincing one. Just blame Hitler? The moderate functionalist view of the implementation of the Final Solution does not disregard Hitlers large importance in the genocide, but rather contends that it was a culmination of factors and increasing radicalisation that led to the Final Solution and that the orders for much of the killing throughout Europe may have been given by leaders in the bureaucracy under Hitler. Hans Mommsen is a prime proponent of these ideas. He contends that while there is a consensus of opinion that Hitler approved the rising intensification of persecution and that his attitude served as its legitimising authority. This does not mean that he actually pored over and initiated each decisive step.24 Mommsen also contends that for all Hitlers violent rhetoric, he never spoke in concrete terms about the Final Solution even within his most intimate circles, nor did he speak in concrete terms about other mundane domestic policy issues.25 Mommsen argues that while there may have been a series of vague orders in regard to the killing of Russian Jews by the Einsatzgruupen in 1941, these murders are separate from the Final Solution to the European Jewish Question, and that there is a lack of evidence to support the fact that Hitler ordered the systematic destruction of the Jews. Mommsen contends that Hitler was the ideological and political originator of the final solution, however eager subordinates wishing to prove their Jckel, Hitlers World View pg 69 Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship pg 74-75 23 ibid pg 73 24 Mommsen, Hans The realization of the Unthinkable in Hans Mommsen (eds) From Weimar to Auschwitz: essays in German history translated by Philip O'Connor, Cambridge Polity Press, 1991 pg 227 25 Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship pg 99
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diligence, the efficiency of their machinery and their political indispensability seized upon this objective.26 Martin Broszat shares a similar analysis when he states that there had been no comprehensive general extermination order at all, but rather a programme for killing Jews gradually developed and gained determinative character after the implementation of death camps in Poland from December 1941 through to July 1942.27 These contentions are not meant to be excusing Hitler from blame for the Holocaust. Both Mommsen and Broszat, according to Kershaw, go to great lengths to explain that they were not morally excusing Hitler from responsibility and that he approved, sanctioned and empowered the liquidation actions, whenever they were suggested.28 The functionalist approach widens the scope of culpability to implicate large sections of the Nazi bureaucracy as well as the army and some industries, rather than simply blaming Hitler. In this instance it is somewhat more convincing to take the functionalist side of the debate, yes while Hitler played a vital role in the genocide, there was no single order to destroy the Jews, but rather a vaguely expressed intent which was turned into a reality by government agencies which developed their own impetus.29 A convincing argument? I think that far from being more convincing, the intentionalist argument is not substantiative enough, although if coupled with aspects of the functionalist argument, a synthesis of the two, we are left with an encompassing and convincing argument. Yehuda Bauer and Ian Kershaw (who has been used extensively throughout this discussion) are scholars who promote this viewpoint. It seems too radical to claim that Hitler did not play a large role within instigating the Final Solution, while the opposite argument, that he was the only instigator and that every single decision within implementing the Final Solution was decided upon by Hitler is similarly far fetched. The point of the last paragraph, that a cumulative radicalisation of the army and of the bureaucracy ibid ibid 28 Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship pg 100 29 ibid pg 104
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under Hitler, combined with the radical rhetoric and intent of Hitler seems to be the most convincing proposal. Bauer concisely defines this position, Plainly, some of the historians debates are now out of date: Hitler was the decisive factor, though by no means the only one, and he was not the weak dictator that some historians have posited. He was directly involved. He pointed out the direction in which he wanted things to develop. German society was involved, too, both at the top and at the middle, and the lower ranges became part of the consensus.30 So in relation to the question for discussion, it seems that the intentionalist view is appealing on the face of it, but it is quite unsatisfactory. The functionalist (especially moderate functionalist) viewpoint is, in my opinion, a much more convincing argument. However a synthesis of both these arguments provides the most convincing argument. Conclusion Throughout this essay the discussion has centred on the main points of view of both the intentionalist and functionalist schools of thought. The intentionalist views that Hitler had a master plan for the destruction of the Jews as early as 1919, that Hitlers extreme anti-Semitism was the decisive and single factor within the Reich that was the catalyst for genocide, and that Hitler was the supreme ruler within the Reich who played a part in all aspects of the Final Solution. The intentionalists of course take the differing viewpoints that Hitler had no master plan to destroy the Jews and that it was a culmination of events that led to the Final Solution, the crooked path, they also hold the notion that a wider scope of blame can be placed upon the radicalisation of the bureaucracy below Hitler who acted upon his vague objectives. I then alluded to the argument promoted by scholars who propose the notion that both of these arguments can be synthesised to produce a much more compelling argument. In relation to the question, I must reiterate my stance that I do not find the

Bauer, Yahuda Rethinking the Holocaust, New Haven: Yale University Press 2001 pg 6
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Lachlan Peters functionalist argument to be unconvincing, and I certainly do not find the intentionalist argument to be more convincing. Bibliography * Aronson, Shlomo Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews New York : Cambridge University Press, 2004.

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* Browning, Christopher The Decision Making Process, in Dan Stone (ed) The Historiography of the Holocaust, London: Routledge, 2004 * Browning, Christopher Hitler and the Euphoria of Victory, in David Cesarani (ed) The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation New York: Routledge 1994 * Bartov, Omar (eds) The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath Lond: Routledge 2000 * Bauer, Yahuda Rethinking the Holocaust, New Haven: Yale University Press 2001 *Crew, David (eds) Nazism and German Society 1933-1945 New York: Routledge 1994 * Dawidowicz, Lucy (ed) A Holocaust Reader, New York: Behrman House, 1976 * Documents on the Holocaust, Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1981, * Gtz, Aly Hitlers Beneficiaries: plunder, racial war, and the Nazi welfare state translated by Jefferson Chase. New York Henry Colt & Co 2007 Document no.164. * Jckel, Eberhard Hitlers World View: A Blueprint for Power Wesleyan University Press 1972 * Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation Oxford University Press New York, 4th Ed 2000 * LaCapra, Dominick Representing the Holocaust: reflections on the historians' debate [Chapter 7 and endnotes] Harvard University Press 1994 * Mommsen, Hans The realization of the Unthinkable in Hans Mommsen (eds) From Weimar to Auschwitz: essays in German history translated by Philip O'Connor, Cambridge Polity Press, 1991 * N.H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, London, 1942