Citation

Kallis A. Stud. Ethn. Nation. 2007; 7(3): 6-23.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1754-9469.2007.tb00159.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

From the moment that Nazi Germany launched its attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, a pandemonium of violence seized many areas of Eastern Europe. The crimes of the Einsatzgruppen and of Wehrmacht troops are well-documented. The brutality, however, of the pogroms in 1941, their frequency and geographic scope, the level of local participation in the acts, the vehemence with which they were carried out and the almost ritualistic ‘carnivalesque’ qualities of the spectacle, all point to deeper, more complex agencies at work. This paper explores the notion of ‘licence’ as the primary facilitator of genocidal violence in the eastern territories immediately after the launch of Operation Barbarossa. It argues that this ‘licence’ should be understood as a crucial facilitator of already formed (if latent or contained) violent eliminationist predispositions and intentions. This in turn helped demolish political, social and moral impediments to violent behaviour and catalysed a veritable ‘carnival’ of elimination against particular ‘others’, in which ‘ordinary’ people joined much more for ideological, cultural and/or rational reasons than because of blind conformity or coercion.