ABSTRACT
Recent Holocaust research has emphasized the role of utilitarian rather than ideological motivation for the participation in organized mass crime. The relevant literature, however, does not address the ‘structure-agency’ issue which is how the overall organization of the persecution apparatuses was related to individual wrongdoing. Since the structure of Nazi rule was rather ‘polycratic’ than monolithic, the core-group of perpetrators had to share power and resources with a variety of actors. The planners of the ‘final solution’ could not always rely on a hierarchical chain of command nor on anti-Semitism as a coordinating source of compliance under. Did the absence of monopoly in terms of power and resources create a market-style incentive structure at least as effective as coordination by hierarchy and ideology? Based on recent documentary and scholarly work on the looting of Jewish property in Vichy France, this paper presents evidence both supporting and challenging a related hypothesis. Competition for power and human resources was, indeed, an integral part of the ‘polycratic’ nature of the persecution apparatus making the motivational basis of the latter much more robust than anti-Semitism could have done. However, anti-Semitism, underlined by permanent threat of coercion, was an unmistakable signal indicating to everyone, regardless of individual ideological persuasions, the kind of compliance that would be honored by those in power. One may assume, thus, that the ‘ceaseless radicalization’ of persecution resulted from a combination of market-style incentives and ideological and coercive vertical integration.
Acknowledgments
An initial version of the prlesent paper was presented at the conference “Unternehmen im Nationalsozialismus” [Corporations in National-Socialism] der Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte [Association for Corporate History] in Frankfurt-Hoechst, Germany, January 14–15, 2000. The author gratefully acknowledges comments from the conference audience. He is indebted to Michael Th. Allen, Marc-Olivier Baruch, Philippe Burrin, Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Gerald D. Feldman, Hartmut Kliemt and Reinhard Zintl for helpful comments and advice. James Brice, Konstanz, was in charge of a first translation into English. The usual caveat applies.