Stone-Cold Killers or Drunk with Murder? Alcohol and Atrocity during the Holocaust

Westermann, Edward B.

doi:10.1093/hgs/dcw003

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…To see this, we can consider the place of alcohol, drugs and other intoxicants in processes of militant mobilization and/or warfare across history. For example, despite the vilification of alcoholism within the Third Reich, great quantities of alcohol were shipped to the front lines and to the murder sites of the Holocaust (Westermann, 2016). Likewise, intoxicants have been reported as being used for similar purposes in the genocide of the Native Americans, during the atrocities of French Algeria and in Vietnam (Westermann, 2016).…”

Section: Becoming Militantmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, despite the vilification of alcoholism within the Third Reich, great quantities of alcohol were shipped to the front lines and to the murder sites of the Holocaust (Westermann, 2016). Likewise, intoxicants have been reported as being used for similar purposes in the genocide of the Native Americans, during the atrocities of French Algeria and in Vietnam (Westermann, 2016). Intoxicants appear to have been incorporated into these moments of violence, despite their violation of stated doctrine, owing to the sensually ‘dulling’ effects they have and the importance of that dulling effect for carrying out violence.…”

Section: Becoming Militantmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil

Austin

2020

Security Dialogue

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This is an essay about the personhood of militant violence, the phenomenological underpinnings of political evil and the friendship between two men. It begins by recounting the author’s street-side meeting with several Islamist militants in Tripoli, Lebanon, one of whom later described his preparations to become a ‘martyr’ in Syria. The essay takes my conversations with this man and his friends as a means of exploring the becoming of violent militancy as a fundamentally creative and essentially joyful series of encounters that lead to the emergence of extreme violence. To do so, I read the narrative account at the centre of the essay through the concept of social and political ‘fracturing’, which is described as the process through which individuals or groups are able to transcend traditional limits on knowledge, action and belief. This discussion of social and political fracturing is then brought into conversation with the question of what constitutes social or political evil in order to demonstrate that debates over what produces violent militant mobilization have generally missed the crucial relevance of a set of small, intimate and embodied rituals that suffuse evil, violence and war-fighting more generally with a fundamentally positive (yet eventually destructive) phenomenology.

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Section: Becoming Militantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Becoming Militantmentioning

confidence: 99%

The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil

Austin

2020

Security Dialogue

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“…Furthermore, there is evidence that alcohol also "served the men as a post-hoc mechanism for dealing with the psychological impact of their own actions" (Westermann 2016, 7). The most comprehensive study of the connection between alcohol and perpetration in genocide has been conducted by Edward Westermann (2016), who shows its significant role in the Holocaust. Even here, alcohol has a social aspect with the drinking encouraging social bonding and comradery between perpetrators who drink together before or after their task (3).…”

Section: Alcohol and Drug Usagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Complexity of Evil

Williams¹

2020

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S. secret ser vice ECCC Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia KGB Komitet gossudarstwennoi besopasnosti (Committee for State Security), Rus sian secret ser vice MRND Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement (Republican, National Movement for Democracy and Development), Rwandan party of President Habyarimana RPF Rwandan Patriotic Front, Tutsi rebel army RTLM Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines ( Free Radio-Television of the One Thousand Hills), hard-liner Rwandan media broadcaster S-21 Santebal-21, meaning Security Center 21 SAT Situational Action Theory UN United NationsThe Complexity of EvilThe Controversial Role of Identity and Ethnicity Given the fundamental impact of identity on conflict framing, the role of ethnicity has elicited controversial discussions in the genocide studies lit er ature. At the macro level, ethnicity plays a key role in the identification of many victim groups in genocide and can impact the outbreak of genocide, and this ethnic difference plays a major part as the foundation of many genocidal ideologies (see section 4.3 for more details). However, ethnicity's role at Rouge genocide in Cambodia from 1975(Hinton 2005, and the Armenian genocide (Mann 2005). 8 On top of these individual cases, other disciplinary approaches are important. There exists significant social-psychological and psychological lit er a ture that is explic itly or implicitly relevant for questions regarding motivations for and pathways into genocide participation (e.g.

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“…656 OFER, Dalia , y WEITZMAN, Lenore , (2004), Mujeres en el Holocausto: fundamentos teóricos para un análisis de género del Holocausto,UNAM, Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, Plaza y Valdés, México D.F., p.30. 657 WESTERMANN, Edward (2016), "Stone-Cold Killers or Drunk with Murder? Alcohol and Atrocity during the Holocaust", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 30, Issue 1, p.12.…”

Section: Ss-gruppenführer Y Comandante General De Las Waffen-ssunclassified

“…WESTERMANN, Edward (2016), "Stone-Cold Killers or Drunk with Murder? Alcohol and Atrocity during the Holocaust", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 30, Issue 1, p.12.…”

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confidence: 99%

Los triángulos rojos: Un estudio de género de la deportación femenina española en los campos de concentración del Nacionalsocialismo

Orquín¹

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Stone-Cold Killers or Drunk with Murder? Alcohol and Atrocity during the Holocaust

Cited by 9 publications

References 25 publications

The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil

The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil

The Complexity of Evil

Los triángulos rojos: Un estudio de género de la deportación femenina española en los campos de concentración del Nacionalsocialismo

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