I’ve never really thought about it before, but just wondering if there were additional incentives besides exploiting antisemitism to gain power and control.
I know there was forced labor at the camps, but was there also anything similar to a private prison incentive like we see in the U.S.? Government contracts are provided, and the more people you hold in your prison (or at least process as entering the prison) the bigger the government contract, and higher the profits.
What about transportation companies that owned the trains that transported people to the camps? Was everything already purchased (or confiscated) and owned by the government when they used it to imprison people, or did they contract out to private businesses?
If everything was property of the government rather than privately held, who decided where money would be allocated, and how were the decisions made?
This article gets into a lot of your questions. Here’s an excerpt:
Nazi Germany maintained a supply of slave labor, composed of prisoners and concentration camp inmates, which was greatly expanded after the beginning of World War II. In Poland alone, some five million people were used as slave labor throughout the war. Among the slave laborers in the occupied territories, hundreds of thousands were used by leading German corporations including Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben, Bosch, Blaupunkt, Daimler-Benz, Demag, Henschel, Junkers, Messerschmitt, Siemens, and Volkswagen, as well as the Dutch corporation Philips. By 1944, slave labor made up one-quarter of Germany’s entire civilian work force, and the majority of German factories had a contingent of prisoners.
Notably, they dispossessed the inmates of everything they had and gave their businesses to those friendly to the regime.
The Nazi government developed a partnership with leading German business interests, who supported the goals of the regime and its war effort in exchange for advantageous contracts, subsidies, and the suppression of the trade union movement.[19] Cartels and monopolies were encouraged at the expense of small businesses, even though the Nazis had received considerable electoral support from small business owners.[20]
Huh, history always repeating itself. It looks like reference 19 links to a book but not the actual text. I would like to know more about those contracts.
More prisoners, more labor, but was there a monetized incentive to actually just process as many people as possible to enter into the camps?
Like would a private business have given the government more money if they could just churn out numbers to simply show they were processing more humans vs actual production of material for the business?
Do you know if any of the camps were privately owned?
You may want to read Death is my Trade by Robert Merle. I’m partial to him as one of my favorite authors but I thought it was eye opening.
Everything Rudolf did, he did not out of viciousness, but in the name of the categorical imperative (the central tenet of Kant’s moral philosophy) of duty, of loyalty to his commander, in submission to orders, out of respect for the State. In short, as a ‘man of duty’; it is precisely for this behavior that he is monstrous. (Robert Merle, 27 April 1972, preface to the book.)
Yeesh, this describes every loyalist that continues going into work on a daily basis, pretending like their job terrorizing children and families is a duty that must be done. Somewhere inside of themselves they probably know this is wrong, but they’re all waiting for somebody else to be the one to refuse to go forward with the orders being given. There are definitely some sadistic assholes who are gleefully carrying this shit out, but they all keep their faces covered bc they know they should be ashamed.
I kind of wonder if thinking about it as simply a question of morality actually makes it easier for some people to rationalize their behavior. It is definitely immoral, but in some ways, only looking at it as moral vs immoral almost leaves too much room for debate, diffusion of responsibility, and rationalizing actions in the specific context.
I was reading about the Southern Strategy earlier and Barry Goldwater’s refusal to support the Civil Rights Act, despite having a fairly progressive reputation and voting record on racial issues at the time. His argument to oppose it really wasn’t because he supported racial discrimination, but due to his libertarian beliefs that the federal government should never enforce “morality” laws on to states.
I would say a town not allowing risque businesses to advertise, or serve alcohol, are examples of morality laws. Racial discrimination is immoral behavior, but established laws allowing and often enforcing inequality weren’t just immoral, they were unjust. The same applies to the camps. Morality is more of a spectrum while injustice doesn’t leave much of a gray area. The entire premise of a segregated society, or a race/ethnicity based prison camp is immoral. But an individual within both immoral contexts has to acknowledge that an injustice being carried out or stopped, relies on their actions (following orders, using a position of power to support rights for others) or inactions (refusal to follow orders, refusal to use your position to help others obtain equality and the same rights that you expect for yourself).
Recognition of injustice should have made them feel morally obligated to do something to stop it. Failure to recognize these contexts as unjust for others who were at their mercy, kind of negates any argument that the context of their actions should be considered when making a judgment since neither did what they did out of malice. The phrase “as a ‘man of duty’; it is precisely for this behavior that he is monstrous,” applies to both men, and to anyone who refuses to acknowledge the power of their own choice within a given context.
The people at your mercy have no say. You do. Regardless of if you believe that what you do will actually succeed or make a difference, defaulting to being a cog in an unjust machine is itself an act of injustice to others.
This can also be applied to weaponized AI being used to commit murder of innocent civilians. There is a long chain of command between Peter Thiel/Alex Karp selling an AI weapon to the Israeli army, and the weapon actually being used to commit murder. Diffusion of responsibility helps them distance themselves from any perceived culpability. Did they not know what they created would be used unjustly, or, did they simply not view mass civilian casualties as unjust? I hope they, along with many others in the current administration, will be forced to provide an answer to these kinds of questions under oath someday.
Private sector participation in Nazi crimes
So this is more along the lines of what I was looking for, and it’s depressing as fuck to think about every individual that played some seemingly run of the mill role in making the fucking Holocaust possible. Even down to the companies that made the ventilation systems and produced the gas that was used to execute victims. There are no small acts of compliance in genocide.
The genocide of Jews and others was facilitated by technologies sold by German companies. Degesch, a subsidiary of IG Farben and Degussa, produced Zyklon B gas, marketed by Tesch & Stabenow. Although it was mostly used for the killing of lice and other pests, about 3 percent of the gas was used for mass killing of prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other Nazi concentration camps. The directors of the companies were well aware that the gas was used for mass murder of humans. Topf and Sons built the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other concentration camps, and also built ventilation systems for the gas chambers so that prisoners could be murdered more efficiently.[7]
Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the Dutch railway company, was paid the equivalent of 3 million euros (2019) for transporting more than 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands to concentration and extermination camps.[8]
