184 Toward} a Sociological '['henry of Morality

Social proximity and moral responsibility

Responsibility, this building block of .ill moral behaviour, arises out of

the proximity of the other. Proximity means responsibility, and responsibility is proximity. Discussion of the relative priority of one or the other is admittedly gratuitous, as none is conceivable alone. Defusion of responsibility, and thus the neutralization of the moral urge which follows it, must necessarily involve us, in fact, synonymous with) replacing proximity with a physical or spiritual separation. The alternative to proximity is social distance. The moral attribute of proximity is responsibility; the moral attribute of social distance is lack of moral relationship, or heterophobia. Responsibility is silenced once proximity is eroded; it may eventually be replaced with resentment once the fellow human subject is transformed into an Other. The process of transformation is one of social separation. It was such a separation which made it possible for thousands to kill, and for millions to watch the murder without protesting. It was the technological and bureaucratic achievement of modern rational society which made such a separation possible.

Hans Mommsen, one of the most distinguished German historians of the Nazi era, has recently summarized the historical significance of the Holocaust and the problems it creates for the self-awareness of modern society:

While Western Civilization has developed the means for unimaginable mass-destruction, the training provided by modern technology and techniques of rationalization has produced a purely technocratic and bureaucratic mentality, exemplified by the group of perpetrators of the Holocaust, whether they committed murder directly themselves or prepared deportation and liquidation at the desks of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicher-heithauptamt), at the offices of the diplomatic service, or as plenipotentiaries of the Third Reich within the occupied or satellite countries. To this extent the history of the Holocaust seems to be the mene tekel of the modern state.⁸

Whatever else the Nazi state has achieved, it certainly succeeded in overcoming the most formidable of obstacles to systematic, purposeful, non-emotional, cold-blooded murder of people - old and young, men and women: that animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering'.⁰ We do not know much about the

Innards a Sociological Theory of Morality 135

animal pity, but we do know that there is a way of viewing the

elementary human condition which makes explicit the universality of human revulsion to murder, inhibition against inflicting suffering on another human being, and the urge to help those who suffer; indeed, of the very personal responsibility for the welfare of the other. If this view is correct, or at least plausible, then the accomplishment of the Nazi regime consisted first and foremost in neutralizing the moral impact of the specifically human existential mode. It is important to know whether this success was related to the unique features of the Nazi movement and rule, or whether it can be accounted for by reference to more common attributes of our society, which the Nazis merely skilfully deployed in the service of Hitler's purpose.

Until one or two decades ago it was common - not only among the lay public, but also among historians - to seek the explanation of the mass murder of Huropean Jews in the long history of European antisemitism. Such an explanation required of course singling out German antisemitism as the most intense, merciless and murderous; it was after all in Germany where the monstrous plan of total annihilation of the whole race had been begotten and put in action. As we, however, remember from the second and third chapters, both the explanation and its corollary have been discredited by historical research. There was an evident dicontinuity between the traditional, pre-modern Jew-hatred and the rmxiern exterminatory design indispensable for the perpetration of the Holocaust. As far as the function of popular feelings is concerned, the ever-growing volume of historical evidence proves beyond reason­able doubt an almost negative correlation between the ordinary and traditional, neighbourly', competition-based anti-Jewish sentiment, and the willingness to embrace the Nazi vision of total destruction and to partake of its implementation.

There is a growing consensus among historians of the Nazi era that the perpetration of the Holocaust required the neutralization of ordinary Germany attitudes toward the Jews, not their mobilization, that the 'natural' continuation of the traditional resentment towards the Jews was much more a feeling of revulsion for the 'radical actions' of the Nazi's thugs than a willingness to co-operate in mass murder; and that the SS planners of the genocide had to steer their way toward the Endlosung by guarding the job's independence from the sentiments of the population at large, and thus its immunity to the influence of traditional, spontaneously-formed and communally-sustained attitudes towards their victims.

186

Towards a Sociological Theory of Morality

The relevant and cogent findings of historical studies have been recently recapitulated by Martin Broszat: In those cities and towns where Jews formed a large segment of the population, the relations between the Germans and the Jews were, even in the first years of the Nazi era, for the most part relatively good and hardly hostile.'¹⁰ Nazi attempts to stir up antisemitic feelings and to re-forge static resentment into a dynamic one (a distinction aptly coined by Miiller-Claudius) - i.e. to inflame the non-Party, ideologically uncommitted population into acts of violence against the Jews or at least into an active support of SA displays of force - foundered on the popular repugnance of physical coercion, on deep-seated inhibitions against inflicting pain and physical suffering, and on stubborn human loyalty to their neighbours, to people whom one knows and has charted into one's map of the world as persons, rather than anonymous specimens of a type. The hooligan exploits of the SA men on a binge in the first months of Hitler's rule had to be called off and forcefully supressed to stave off the threat of popular alienation and rebellion; while rejoicing in his followers' anti-Jewish frippery, Hitler felt obliged to intervene personally to put a halt to all grass-root antisemitic initiative. Anti-Jewish boycott, planned to last indefinitely, was at the last minute cut to a one-day 'warning demonstration', partly because of the fear of foreign reactions, but in a large part due to the evident lack of popular enthusiasm for the venture. After the day of boycott (1 April 1933), Nazi leaders complained in their reports and briefings of the widespread apathy of all but SA and Party members, and the whole event was evaluated as a failure; conclusions were drawn as to the need of sustained propaganda in order to awaken and alert the masses to their role in the implementation of the anti-Jewish measures.¹¹ The ensuing efforts notwithstanding, the flop of the one-day boycott set the pattern for all subsequent antisemitic policies which required for their success an active participation of the population at large. As long as they stayed open, Jewish shops and surgeries continued to attract clients and patients. Frankonian and Bavarian peasants had to be forced to stop their commerce with Jewish cattle-traders. As we saw before, the Kristallnacht, the only officially planned and co-ordinated massive pogrom, was also found counter-productive, in as far as it was hoped to elicit commitment of the average German to antisemitic violence. Instead, most people reacted with dismay at the sight of the pavements strewn with broken glass and their elderly neighbours bundled by young thugs into prison trucks. The point that cannot be over-emphasized is that all these negative reactions to the

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187

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190 Inwards a Sociological Theory of Morality

something to look at with curiosity, a fossil wonder-animal, with the yellow star on its breast, a witness to bygone times but not belonging to the present, something one had to journey far to see.' "' Morality did not travel that far. Morality tends to stay at home and in the present. In Hans Mommsen's words,

Hedrich's policy of isolating the Jewish minority socially and morally from the majority of population proceeded without major protest from the public because that part of the Jewish population who had been in close contact with their German neighbours were either not included in the growing discrimination or were step by step isolated from them. Only after cumulative discriminatory legislation had pressed Germany's Jews into the role of social pariahs, completely deprived of any regular social communication with the majority population, could deportation and extermination be put in effect without shaking the social structure of the regime.¹⁷

Raul Hilberg, the foremost authority on the history of the Holocaust, had the following to say about the steps leading to the gradual silencing of moral inhibitions and setting in motion the machinery of mass destruction:

In its completed form a destruction process in a modern society will thus be structured as shown in this chart: