Post by ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐๐ด๐ป๐ธ on Mar 30, 2023 7:59:50 GMT
Intentionalism v Functionalism
Some posters are stuck on their personal Holocaust, stuck in a whirlpool of mire. To them the Holocaust revolved entirely around the fumigant Zyklon B. Anyone who deviates from this view is a "denier". The poster carries on to suggest the major Historians are in concord.
Chris Browning has noted that historians are not in phase. His discourse can be read here as a pdf file.
From the mid-1960s, interpretations of Nazi Germany for the most part have
been divided between two schools, which are characterised as the
โintentionalists' and the โfunctionalists'. Intentionalists focus on Hitler and
his ideology. In their view, the course of the Third Reich was primarily
determined by the decisions of Adolf Hitler, which were โintended' to realise
the goals of an ideologically derived programme to which he had clung with
fanatical consistency since the 1920s. Functionalists focus on the structures
and institutions of the Third Reich, explaining the Holocaust as an
unplanned โcumulative radicalisation' produced by the chaotic decision making process of a polycratic regime and ideological motivation to rid
Germany of destructive elements. This debate has continued to polarise
Holocaust historians and it is only recently that some sort of compromise has
been reached.
C. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution,
Cambridge, Cambridge & New York, 1992, p. 86.
been divided between two schools, which are characterised as the
โintentionalists' and the โfunctionalists'. Intentionalists focus on Hitler and
his ideology. In their view, the course of the Third Reich was primarily
determined by the decisions of Adolf Hitler, which were โintended' to realise
the goals of an ideologically derived programme to which he had clung with
fanatical consistency since the 1920s. Functionalists focus on the structures
and institutions of the Third Reich, explaining the Holocaust as an
unplanned โcumulative radicalisation' produced by the chaotic decision making process of a polycratic regime and ideological motivation to rid
Germany of destructive elements. This debate has continued to polarise
Holocaust historians and it is only recently that some sort of compromise has
been reached.
C. Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution,
Cambridge, Cambridge & New York, 1992, p. 86.
While there is a debate, it begs the question what the Holocaust is.
A Holocaust without gassing would be like Christianity without Jesus.