Wolfgang Seibel, Dr. rer. pol.
Professor of Political Science
University of Konstanz
Geboren 1953 in Barsinghausen, Niedersachsen
Studium der Politikwissenschaft, Germanistik und Verwaltungswissenschaft
an der Universität Marburg und an der Deutschen Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer
Project
Holocaust and Polycracy in Western Europe, 1940-1944
Das nationalsozialistische Herrschaftssystem wird in der Forschung als fragmentiert, "polykratisch" und, was die von Deutschland seit 1939 besetzten Gebiete betrifft, geradezu als "organisiertes Chaos" charakterisiert. Dazu steht der effektive Apparat der Repression und der Verfolgung der jüdischen Bevölkerung in denkwürdigem Kontrast. Mein Aufenthalt am Wissenschaftskolleg dient dem Abschluss einer Monographie, die der Aufhellung dieses Paradoxons gewidmet ist. Zugrunde liegen zwei konkurrierende Hypothesen, wonach Arbeitsteilung und Machtdifferenzierung in den Verfolgungsapparaten die Durchsetzung der Verfolgungsmaßnahmen sowohl behindert als auch begünstigt haben können: Einerseits bedeutete jede Art von Machtteilung und Dezentralisierung für die Kerngruppe der Verfolger, SS und Gestapo, eine Beschränkung ihrer Handlungsmöglichkeiten. Andererseits erweiterte sich die motivationale Basis der Helfer der Verfolger, ohne die, zumal in den besetzten Gebieten, die Durchführung der "Endlösung" undenkbar gewesen wäre. Diese Annahmen werden überprüft am Beispiel Frankreichs, Belgiens und der Niederlande, Länder, die starke Unterschiede bei den Opferraten unter der jüdischen Bevölkerung aufweisen (25% Deportierte in Frankreich, 43% in Belgien, 76% in den Niederlanden).Lektüreempfehlung
Seibel, Wolfgang. "The Strength of Perpetrators: The Holocaust in Western Europe, 1940-1944." Governance ( An International Journal of Policy, Administration,
and Institutions 15 (2002): 211-240.
-. "A Market for Mass Crime? Inter-Institutional Competition and the Initiation of the Holocaust in France, 1940-1942." Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 5
(2002): 211-257.
Seibel, Wolfgang und Jörg Raab. "Verfolgungsnetzwerke: Zur Messung von Arbeitsteilung und Machtdifferenzierung in den Verfolgungsapparaten des Holocaust."
Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 55 (2003): 197-230.
Colloquium, 23.11.2004
State Structure and Mass Murder
Some states are more likely to produce large-scale crime than others. The textbook case is dictatorship as opposed to democracy. State-organized crime results not only from the mere absence of the rule of law but also from the concentration of power and a strictly hierarchical apparatus of enforcement. "Power kills; absolute powers kills absolutely," is how the genocide expert R.J. Rummel has modified Lord Acton's famous phrase ("power corrupts and absolute powers corrupts absolutely").
The mass murder of 6 million Jews under German rule in Europe during World War II does not easily fit that assumption. The Holocaust was organized by a regime that in mainstream literature is described as "polycratic" in the sense of being subject to rivalry between a variety of power centres. What is more, Nazi administration is characterized as being disorganized, quasi-chaotic and, accordingly, ineffective. The puzzle is obvious: Are mainstream assumptions on the nature of Nazi rule wrong? Or, alternatively, are they applicable to the regime as such but not to the machinery of persecution that murdered millions of Jews in German-controlled Europe? Or do we have to modify Rummel's hypothesis in an effort to explain the murderous effectiveness of dispersed power and disorganized administration?
My research focuses on the latter assumption. No evidence challenges the mainstream accounts on the polycratic nature of Nazi rule and nothing could justify the assumption that the organization of the Holocaust was not an integral part of the regime, sharing its crucial characteristics. Rather, what recent research stresses is that the Holocaust was a division-of-labour-based crime involving a broad variety of institutions outside immediate SS and Gestapo control. These institutions had their own agendas, not necessarily compatible with what the persecutors intended. However, we know rather little about what actually made subsidiary institutions comply. What one may assume is that differentiation of power and division of labour within the persecution apparatuses, while reducing immediate control of the core group of persecutors, enhanced the motivational basis of compliance among the indispensable helpers on the periphery, thus accelerating rather than restraining the radicalisation of the persecution.
In an effort to test the above hypothesis, I am focusing on the Holocaust in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 1940-1944, where Jewish victimization varied substantially (25 % of the Jews deported from France and subsequently murdered in Auschwitz relative to 43 % in Belgium and 76 % in the Netherlands). The degree of victimisation co-varied with the degree of centralisation of power on the German side according to the organisational structure of the respective occupation regime. And yet such formal correlations blur rather than clarify the actual causalities unless we analyse the relevant processes of decision-making. In doing so, we discover differentiation of power and division of labour as important structural determinants of the persecution whose impact was, however, contingent on the agency of elites involved in quasi-contractual arrangements and control of persecution networks and more or less able or willing to make moral and political judgements.
Publications from the Fellows' Library
Seibel, Wolfgang (Frankfurt, 2005)
Seibel, Wolfgang (New York, NY [u.a.], 2005)
Networks of Nazi persecution : bureaucracy, business, and the organization of the Holocaust Studies on war and genocide ; 6 [i.e. 7]
Seibel, Wolfgang (2003)
Seibel, Wolfgang (2003)
Seibel, Wolfgang (2002)
The strength of perpetrators : the Holocaust in western Europe, 1940 - 1944
Seibel, Wolfgang (2002)
Seibel, Wolfgang (Manchester [u.a.], 2001)
The nonprofit sector in Germany : between state, economy and society Johns Hopkins nonprofit sector series ; [10]
Seibel, Wolfgang (Berlin, 1996)
Verwaltungsaufbau in den neuen Bundesländern : zur kommunikativen Logik staatlicher Institutionenbildung Modernisierung des öffentlichen Sektors
Seibel, Wolfgang (Baden-Baden, 1994)
Seibel, Wolfgang (1992)
Theoretische und methodologische Perspektiven der Analyse "abweichenden" Verwaltungshandelns
