Bloxham, Donald. “Organized Mass Murder: Structure, Participation, and Motivation in Comparative Perspective.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22, no.2 (2008): 203-245.
Donald Bloxham writes about how organisational structures have taken part in key roles in modern state-sponsored mass murder. Bloxham criticises and combines present scholarship by focusing first on historiographical debates about the Holocaust. Bloxham then writes about other events of state-sponsored mass murder including the Stalinist purges, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Armenian Genocide and other theoretical literature. Bloxham shows the ways in which organisational systems and individuals have worked together with other motives to form the behaviour of mass murderers in distinct historical events.
The article breaks down into several parts such as: 1) Comparing Structures and States, 2) Organizing the Final Solution, 3) Two Snapshots: The USSR and Rwanda, and 4) The Armenian Genocide: Whither Bureaucracy?
Bloxham argues that organisational structures provide more than the collection of things, people, and parts to any activity. The division of labour brings in a reasonably high degree of efficiency per person as the larger the scale and difficulty of the task, the larger and more refined the model organisational structure is, and thus the more distinguished the division of labour within or among its component parts. Modern states are particularly suited to large tasks such as mass murder, because of their control over powerful bodies of administration and coercion. Because of its special authority, it may also legitimately justify broad participation, regardless of the activity horrific or not.
Bloxham states that it would be incorrect to infer that traditional bureaucrats and bureaucracies (i.e., those called upon to destroy people they had previously administered) cannot carry out a vital role in mass murder as in the Final Solution, the genocide would not have been what it was without the involvement of many pre-Nazi agencies of the German state and bureaucracies in allied or vassal states. In all cases, organisations had to rely on perpetrators with various balances of commitment and motivation. A great deal of enticement increased the capacity of the machineries of destruction by motivating agencies and individuals in both the public and private sectors. Furthermore, Bloxham writes that there was a high level of civilian participation in Rwanda as a great deal of those directly involved used machetes to kill than guns. The participation and actions in the Soviet Union were carried out more by bureaucratic and policing institutions. The Armenian Genocide however featured less administrative and bureaucratic culprits despite the mass ethnic cleansing.
I think Bloxham should included the Herero and Namaqua genocide in his comparisons of state-sponsored mass murders as a compelling contrast between the German states (German Empire and Nazi Germany) can be made in terms of structure, participation, motivations, etc. Also, the Second Boer War in which concentration camps are utilised compared to the Holocaust.
Apologies for this blog being late.