Constructing the Ordinary: The Dialectical Development of Nazi Ideology
Author(s)
Murray, Jeffrey W.
Abstract
A recent debate among historians has concerned the complicity of “ordinary” Germans in the atrocities of the Holocaust. This debate, however, has failed to question the very idea of the “ordinary” German as a trans-historical subject. This essay argues that the transition from the existing anti-Semitism of 1918 to the initiation of Hitler’s “final solution” in 1941 was accomplished through a rhetorical dialectic, which included anti-Semitic propaganda, legislative action, and public performance. Moreover, this rhetorical dialectic functioned not only in the development of the Nazi ideology, but in the (re)construction of the Nazi subject position, this rhetorical texts within an on-going dialectical progression, and claims that an adequate understanding of the Holo9caust must recognize the rhetorically mediated dialectic through which the subject position of “ordinary” German was transformed into that of “Nazi.”
