Blacks and Gypsies in Nazi Germany
The Limits of the 'Racial State
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4778543 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eve Rosenhaft (0000-0002-1089-797X, University of Liverpool, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 72 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 161-170 |
| Publication date | 2011-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History Workshop Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-3554 • E-ISSN: 1477-4569 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/hwj/dbr023 |
| PMID | 22206118 |
| OpenAlex | W2024568790 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 2 |
Inflections of Race and Class: “Negroes” and “Gypsies” in Nazi Germany The mass murder prosecuted against the European Jews by the Nazi regime and rationalized in terms of ‘race’ poses a particular challenge to materialist historians. In one response to this challenge, many of us have adopted the term ‘racial state’ as shorthand for the sense that there is some kind of coherence in the multiple histories of internment, labour exploitation, sterilization and murder-or-letting-die, with systematic killing emerging at the end of a continuum of institutional dehumanization. However, close attention to the ways in which exclusionary and genocidal practices were devised, applied and experienced in everyday life throws up substantial evidence of incoherence. Drawing on case studies in the Nazi persecution of Blacks and ‘Gypsies’, this article explores what happened when the authorities attempted to impose a unitary, biological notion of race on a society with well-developed forms of everyday racism, and what opportunities the resulting tensions created for the victims of persecution to ‘answer back’. It invites us to consider the ‘racial state’ as at best a work in progress, and Nazi racism not as the logical culmination of a trajectory of modern racism, but as a unique and incomplete experiment in radically redefining race.
Criminology · Dehumanization · Nazism · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · European history and politics · Gender Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Medical History and Research
| Citations per year | 0.46 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2024 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |