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Rational Means and Irrational Ends: Thoughts on the Technology of Racism in the Third Reich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Alan Beyerchen
Affiliation:
Ohio State University

Extract

Among the most haunting features of the culture of murder created by the Nazis are the ruthless efficiency and sheer scale of their success in killing millions of human beings. There are those who link both to the earlier efficiency and scale of death in the titanic and grinding battles of the Great War. And there are others who would associate both with the alternatives of quick or lingering death promised by nuclear war. Efficiency and scale seem common to the mass death produced or proposed in the twentieth century, and many observers view both as attributes of the process of modernity.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1997

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