War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

“Discussing the Nazi era raises some thorny problems of vocabulary. Should one say ‘Nazis’ or ‘Germans’ when referring to the people of Hitler’s Germany? Some scholars have argued that using the term ‘Nazis’ in this general way is misleading. It implies that Hitler’s supporters were not themselves Germans and that the ‘real Germans’ were somehow untouched by Nazism. On the other hand, simply saying ‘Germans’ suggests that all Germans marched in step behind Hitler. That was not the case either. […] Throughout this book, I try to be as precise as possible in my use of terms, while recognizing the impossibility of avoiding overgeneralization.”

This quote briefly explores the semantics in discourse regarding Nazi Germany. By acknowledging scholarly disagreements about which terminology to use—“German” or “Nazi”—Bergen makes her opinions on the matter clear and diminishes the chances of being misinterpreted in future chapters.

“In 1898, a small group of British military on an expedition south of Egypt encountered resistance from local Sudanese tribesmen. The British, armed with machine guns, opened fire. The Sudanese, mounted on horseback and equipped with swords and other weapons for hand-to-hand combat, rode wave after wave into the barrage. The British killed an estimated eleven thousand Sudanese and lost only twenty-eight of their own men. Such events must have contributed to a sense among Europeans that human life—at least the lives of people they considered inferior—was extremely cheap. Notions of racial superiority were by no means unique to Germany.”

At the turn of the 20th century, the rising popularity of eugenics and the fizzling age of New Imperialism cleared a path for Nazi ideology to take hold. This prewar anecdote contextualizes German Nazism as the logical extremity of beliefs that were held by many Europeans. Though Bergen emphasizes intentionalism when examining Hitler’s reign, she makes it explicit that Nazism was not an isolated catastrophe incurred by the madness of one dictator alone.

“In this book I proceed on the assumption that in order to understand the causes of Nazi crimes we need to study those who initiated and carried them out.”

This quote alerts the reader to two key details. The first is that Bergen is stating an intention: A significant portion of this work is dedicated to exploring the internalities of Nazis, including who they were, what they believed, and how they interfaced with the world as individuals and as a group. The second is that Bergen is asserting a philosophical approach: This book primarily approaches historical events with a focus on contemporary individuals’ experiences.