Deadly Documents : Technical Communication, Organizational Discourse, and the Holocaust—Lessons from the Rhetorical Work of Everyday Texts 9780895038036, 9780895038029

Citation preview

DEADLY DOCUMENTS: TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION, ORGANIZATIONAL DISCOURSE, AND THE HOLOCAUST Lessons from the Rhetorical Work of Everyday Texts

Mark Ward, Sr. .

University of Houston-Victoria

Afterword by Steven B. Katz Clemson University

Baywood’s Technical Communications Series Series Editor: Charles H. Sides

Baywood Publishing Company, Inc. AMITYVILLE, NEW YORK

Copyright © 2014 by Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., Amityville, New York

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free recycled paper.

Baywood Publishing Company, Inc. 26 Austin Avenue P.O. Box 337 Amityville, NY 11701 (800) 638-7819 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: baywood.com

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2013017863 ISBN: 978-0-89503-801-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-89503-802-9 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-89503-804-3 (e-pub) ISBN: 978-0-89503-803-6 (e-pdf) http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/DOC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ward, Mark, 1958- author, Deadly documents : technical communication, organizational discourse; and the Holocaust : lessons from the rhetorical work of everyday texts / Mark Ward, Sr., University of Houston-Victoria ; afterword by Steven B. Katz. pages cm. -- (Baywood’s technical communications series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-89503-801-2 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-89503-802-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-89503-804-3 (e-pub: ) -- ISBN 978-0-89503-803-6 (e-pdf) 1. Communication of technical information--Germany--History--20th century. 2. Technical writing--Germany--History--20th century. 3. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche ArbeiterPartei. Schutzstaffel. Sicherheitspolizei. 4. Jews--Persecutions--Germany--History--20th century--Sources. 5. Gases, Asphyxiating and poisonous--War use. I. Title. T10.65.G3W37 2013 601’, 4--dc23 2013017863

Dedication

To my wife Donna and her unfathomable love and to the Six Million and their unfathomable loss

This page intentionally left blank

Table of Contents

Preface by Mark Ward, Sr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. 1 . 1 . 5 . 10 . 16

CHAPTER 2: From Darwin to Death Wagons Origins of European Anti-Semitism . . . . . . The Rise of Racial Anti-Semitism . . . . . . . Development of the Gas Vans . . . . . . . . . Operational Challenges in the Field . . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

19 19 25 28 31

CHAPTER 3: The People’s Community . Organizations as Open Systems . . . . . . Unifying Principles of Institutional Culture Aspects of SS Organizational Culture . . . Lines of Organizational Authority . . . . . German Bureaucratic Document Protocols

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

35 35 37 42 47 49

CHAPTER 1: Can Genocide Be Regulated? An Ontological Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . Revisiting the Final Solution . . . . . . . . Sample, Method, and Chapter Organization . The Importance of the Study . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

CHAPTER 4: The Participants and Their Motives . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Personnel of the Gas Van Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Individual Relationships and Motives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 CHAPTER 5: Documents for Destruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Setting Up the Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Introducing the Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 v

vi /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

CHAPTER 6: A Community of Killers . . . . . . Constructing the Rhetorical Community . . . . . . A “Safety” Narrative and Protean Metaphors. . . . Discovering Organizational Genres in the Texts . . Rhetorical Community in Organizational Contexts. Visuality in the Rhetorical Community . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. 91 . 91 . 94 . 99 . 104 . 110

CHAPTER 7: Discourse of Death . . . . . . What Discourse Analysis Can Add . . . . . . The Killers’ Use of Linguistic Resources . . . Reconstructing an Organizational Discourse .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

133 133 134 143

CHAPTER 8: Revisiting “Expediency” . Boundary Work in Action . . . . . . . . Lanzmann and the “Why” Question . . . Implications of the Lanzmann Alterations

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

151 151 152 158

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

167 167 169 172 177 184 190

CHAPTER 9: Bridging the Boundaries An Ahistorical Consensus? . . . . . . . Expediency Without Ethics . . . . . . . Protecting Rhetoric and Rhetoricians . . Safeguarding Science and Civilization . Converging on a Comfortable Distance. What the Orderings May Reveal . . . .

CHAPTER 10: Some Ethical Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 A Bias for Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Prescriptive and Descriptive Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Afterword: The Reality of Words and Their Aftermaths Steven B. Katz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Preface

The Final Solution was largely accomplished in 11 months; its executors, the Nazi SS, faced the constant problem that as killing and plunder escalated, so did internal competition and corruption; and the SS deliberately cultivated an intensely competitive and polycratic organizational culture that fit the Nazi worldview of life-as-struggle. By tying these three observations together—that the Final Solution was punctuated, entropic, and polycratic—the problem arises: How did SS communications manage, just barely long enough, to create a temporary social reality that regulated the internal contradictions of its genocidal project and fragmented bureaucracy? This study contends that through its organizational and technical communication—the outwardly normal and communally validated regime of formatted documents, official stationery, preprinted forms, filing codes, organizational nomenclature, and bureaucratic catchphrases—competing SS personnel found a common frame of reference to socially construct rules for temporary cooperation. Thus, their documents became boundary objects (Oswick & Robertson, 2009; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Wilson & Herndl, 2007), which bridged competing organizational interests within the rhetorical community (Miller, 1994) of desk-murderers. To explore this thesis, an evidentiary sample of surviving documents is selected from a single but representative SS bureau, the Security Police (Sipo) Technical Matters Group, which administered the mobile gas van program. The documents are analyzed according to Longo’s (1998) cultural research methodology for technical writing in which texts are examined in their historical and cultural contexts and then analyzed as discourse, followed by an interrogation of how the texts have been ordered by their analysts for purposes of study and the analysts’ relationships to the texts. The organization of this book follows this methodology as chapter 1 introduces the problem; chapter 2 provides a historical narrative of the gas van program and its antecedents; chapter 3 reviews the integrative aspects of the Group members’ national and institutional cultures, and the differentiating aspects of their organizational culture and its various subcultures; chapter 4 vii

viii /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

describes the biographies and postwar testimonies of the Group’s principal actors; chapter 5 introduces and describes the documents themselves; chapter 6 offers an analysis, grounded in Miller’s (1994) concept of the rhetorical community, of the documents’ textual and visual rhetorics; chapter 7 provides a discourse analysis of Group members’ use of linguistic resources; chapter 8 explores various postwar orderings of the lengthiest and most notorious of the gas van texts, prior to and including Katz’s (1992a) introduction of the document into the technical communication literature; chapter 9 interrogates how subsequent analysts within the discipline have ordered the text and what this may reveal about their relationships to it; and chapter 10 elaborates possible implications for technical and organizational communication ethics. The research problem is answered with the claim that, rather than understanding the Final Solution only as the operation in extremis of Weberian bureaucratic rationality, the deskmurderers may be viewed as a rhetorical community that held chaos at bay through boundary objects—their documents—that deployed narratives, metaphors, and genres onto which competing interests could project their own interpretations while constructing temporary spaces of cooperation. This claim suggests, as the book’s subtitle conveys, “Lessons from the Rhetorical Work of Everyday Texts,” which I believe are threefold. First, we will learn more about the dynamic role of everyday texts in organizational processes. Second, as we see these processes—perhaps inherent to all organized communities, including our own—at work, even in the extreme case of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, the comforting distance that we now maintain between “them” and “us” is necessarily diminished. And third, our newfound discomfort may open productive spaces to revisit conventional wisdoms about the ethics of technical and organizational communication. Mark Ward, Sr. April 2011

Acknowledgments

Our careers in academe begin when we are mentored as students and continue as we mentor students of our own. So it is in the nature of our profession that the people we meet, students and colleagues, come and go. Though we may stay in touch with some, mostly our lives intersect for a semester, a year, perhaps several years. Then life moves on. If we are fortunate, many intersections will leave us better off than before. If we are blessed, a few individuals will change our lives—often out of all proportion to the time we knew them—in ways both wondrous and unimagined. Even more, their examples show new ways for our own lives to benefit others who intersect with us. As I write this, the untimely passing of Summer Smith Taylor is of recent memory. Though her intersection with me was mostly over a single year, this book originates in that intersection. For during my first full week as a doctoral student at Clemson University, in a class on writing pedagogy, she assigned me to read Ornatowski’s (1997) chapter on rhetoric from his edited volume, Foundations for Teaching Technical Communication. Among the works cited, I noted a reference to Steven Katz’s (1992a) article, “The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust.” The title caught my eye because I had recently completed a master’s thesis in which Holocaust Studies was my secondary research area. So I looked up the essay, thought to myself Katz made a telling point about rhetoric but his thesis about the Holocaust necessarily did not incorporate current historical scholarship, and promptly wrote an article (Ward, 2009b) that was published in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. Two outcomes ensued from that reading assignment in my pedagogy class. First, Dr. Taylor went on that year to reawaken my excitement about teaching as she helped me discover the productive synergies between pedagogy and research. That first semester under her tutelage, I researched the connection between audience and student motivation, a study that she encouraged me to publish (Ward, 2009c) and that has beneficially informed my pedagogy ever since. ix

x /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Second, I learned that Dr. Katz had, since “Ethic of Expediency,” moved to my own institution. He naturally took an interest in my JTWC article and (as was my intention) graciously saw my work as building upon and extending, rather than contesting and contradicting, his original line of inquiry. “Did you read my sequel [Katz, 1993] to the first article?” he asked. And with his gift of an offprint copy in hand, I wrote what would become a second JTWC article (Ward, 2010b) that fleshed out my perspective on the Nazi technical memo in “Ethic of Expediency.” In so doing, I concluded that he and I were agreed on the crucial point that phronesis necessarily follows the lines of a society’s constructed norms for prudence and morality. Not long afterward, the dissertation project I had originally envisioned was rendered moot by a faculty retirement. But no matter, for by then I was invested in my research on the Nazi document and intrigued by the potential for illuminating aspects of technical communication, organizational communication, and the Holocaust. Thus, one evening when Dr. Katz and I chanced upon each other in the hallway, it so happened that he generously expressed his interest in mentoring my research even as I inquired about his interest in chairing my dissertation. Since then, his contributions to my project have been invaluable, not only in leading my committee but in becoming a mentor, counselor, critic, colleague, and friend. I also wish to thank Donald McKale, David Novak, and Sean Williams, members of the dissertation committee who provided rigorous critique and ongoing encouragement; Victor Vitanza who, as director of the PhD program, gave me a chance and then mentored me to make the most of it; the many PhD faculty members of the English and Communication Studies Departments who helped guide specific aspects of my research throughout my course of study; Katherine Hawkins, who supervised my teaching and offered valuable professional advice; the many others, including fellow students, journal editors and reviewers, and conference paper reviewers and respondents, who gave of their time to comment on aspects of my project; my children, Mark and Laura, their spouses, and my mother Carolyn, who have offered constant encouragement and support; and most of all, my wife, Donna, who lovingly, unstintingly, and joyfully embarked with me on the adventure of a midlife entry into academe and, in ways both large and small, made it possible.

CHAPTER 1

Can Genocide Be Regulated?

AN ONTOLOGICAL SHIFT In popular imagination and cultural memory, the potent phrases “Final Solution” and “Six Million” impart to the genocide a monolithic quality, a single allencompassing crime perpetrated against a symbolically composite victim. And this tendency to deal with the unfathomable enormity of the Holocaust by reducing it to a singular act has important consequences for how the genocide is understood. Some ascribe “the Holocaust” to mystery and give it the singular quality of a radical and inexplicable (see Bauer, 1990) disjuncture in history (e.g., Fackenheim, interview with Rosenbaum, 1998, p. xvi; Wiesel, 1989, 2006). A variant on this theme is the view that the Holocaust is an aberration in the otherwise generally upward progress of Western civilization (e.g., Moore, 2005). Others believe “No Hitler, No Holocaust” (Himmelfarb, 1984) and emphasize the driving force of a singular will (e.g., Fleming, 1984), while in stark contrast, Goldhagen (1996) controversially argued that a desire to eliminate the Jews was a “monolithic” (p. 33) German cultural axiom that the dictator merely catalyzed. Still others see in “the Holocaust” not a singular mystery but a singular continuity—whether a tragic culmination of great social forces rooted in the sweep of European history, as analysts (e.g., Freud, 1939; Lyotard, 1990; Sartre, 1948; Steiner, 1971) and historians (e.g., Cohn-Sherbok, 2002; Fischer, 1998; Mosse, 1978) of anti-Semitism point out, or the horrific denouement to generations of lived experience, a reality lived by the actual Jewish victims and by their descendants in the Jewish Diaspora of today. All of these perspectives offer their own contributions to our attempts at understanding the genocide. For they rightly draw our attention to what was radical and unprecedented about the Final Solution; or to the dynamics of a totalitarian dictatorship; or to the interplay between cultural attitudes and individual actions; or how a potential for genocide was latent in European anti-Semitism; or how any history of the Shoah that ignores the victims’ experience is inadequate and incomplete. 1

2 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Yet to explore the organizational and technical communication of the Final Solution, as this study endeavors to do, we must begin by limning the consequences of another reductionist ontology, which is prevalent in the scholarly study of organizations, and then suggesting the possibilities opened by two alternatives to that ontology. Since the discipline of “management science” emerged a century ago, scholars in organization studies have historically hewed to a functionalist or positivist ontology (Corman, 2005). In this view, “organizations” are ontologically distinct entities whose behaviors are driven not by individual mindsets but by the constant quest to maximize efficiency and productivity. Thus, from observations of organizational behaviors can causal theories be derived and predictions made “with the consciousness of the actors being superfluous,” since decision makers are impelled “to choose the option that best fits the situation and produces the best outcomes” (Donaldson, 2003, pp. 44–45). This way of thinking is, with respect to the Final Solution, neatly expressed by what Bauman (1989) called the “bureaucratic definition of the Holocaust,” wherein he contended that “except for the moral repulsiveness of its goal . . . the activity did not differ in any formal sense . . . from all other organized activities designed, monitored and supervised by ‘ordinary’ administrative and economic sections” (p. 14). As such, the Final Solution “fits well the sober description of modern administration offered by Max Weber,” that efficiency and productivity are “raised to the optimum point” by an objective “discharge of business according to calculable rules and without regard for persons” (p. 14). Since Bauman (1989) first advanced his thesis more than 20 years ago, his insight has made a signal contribution to Holocaust studies. First, in addition to centuries of religious anti-Semitism, the modern development in Western culture of a capacity for bureaucratic and technological organization must likewise be regarded as a necessary condition for the Final Solution. Second, recognition that the Final Solution was a latent potentiality of Western bureaucratic and technological culture—indeed, the reverse side of a coin whose more familiar face is the “progress” we so often admire—is a profoundly important ethical insight. Yet no thesis is final. Bauer (2001) cogently pointed out that Bauman constructed an ontologically prior entity called “modernity” as the mainspring of the Final Solution, leaving little room for individual actors and their motivations. Here again we see, in reference to the Holocaust, the same ontological conversation found in organization studies between functionalist scholars who give primacy to the organization and other scholars who give primacy to organizational actors. Thus is “the Holocaust” itself transformed into an ontologically prior “organization” that, as a singular “object,” may be “experimentally” manipulated as scholars observe in the historical record of the Nazi bureaucracy various organizational behaviors, advance theories about their causes, and make predictions about what further research will reveal, confidently assured that individual mindsets and local voices are, in the end,

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED?

/

3

superfluous since “The Final Solution” was inexorably driven to optimize its manufacture of death. The project of universalizing the lessons of the Holocaust and then deriving pertinent “laws” about human collectivities comes, so it is hoped, within reach. But what if we take another perspective? What if we look at the Final Solution with a different ontology, an alternative way of seeing the world? What if we hold up a different lens; one that looks with incredulity at grand narratives that, for all their value to our understanding of the genocide, would ultimately reduce the Holocaust to the monolithic singularities described above? And more specifically, what if we leave behind the notion there are autonomous entities called “organizations” and instead see them as temporary clusters of consensus— fitfully negotiated and constructed through members’ communicative interactions—in the ongoing contest between larger historical, cultural, and social discourses? Indeed, what if we see the individuals themselves—even the bureaucratic murderers of the Nazi SS—not as fully integrated sites of intentionality but, instead, as sites of contestation between multiple voices? What insights might this shift of perspective impart to our understanding of the Holocaust and, in particular, the organizational and technical communication of the Final Solution? Such an ontological shift opens the way, I believe, to new perspectives that can complement and expand our understandings of the genocide. We will better appreciate, for example, how the Nazi SS—the organization with primary responsibility to execute the Final Solution—was a fragmented hothouse of internal competition among highly personalized fiefdoms and overlapping power bases “that remained unresolved from the beginning” (Langerbein, 2004, p. 41), inhabited by men schooled in Nazi doctrine “to be a fighter on principle, a fighter for fighting’s sake” (Buchheim, 1968, p. 322). Thus, within the “key domain of the SS and police, [Weberian] administrative traditions no longer held sway” as the emphasis on a “‘fighting administration’ meant the dissolution of traditional administrative practices” (Wildt, 2010, p. 435). We will see how the goal of a rationally controlled genocide was constantly undermined by an inherent contradiction within the project itself, as the SS was “confronted with an ongoing and intractable issue: How to stem wanton murder in an organization set up for mass murder; how to stem widespread corruption in an organization set up for large-scale looting” (Friedländer, 2007, p. 544). And we will see, as Browning (1998) averred, that the SS genocidal project was “not a gradual or incremental program stretched over a long period of time but a veritable blitzkrieg, a massive offensive requiring the mobilization of large numbers of shock troops” who then executed “a short, intensive wave of murder” that was largely accomplished in 11 months (p. xv). Polycratic, entropic, punctuated. These adjectives are not typically used to describe the Final Solution. Many valuable studies (e.g., Allen, 2002; Aly & Heim, 2002; Hilberg, 2003; Orth, 1998; Segev, 1987; Westermann, 2005) have looked at the machinery of destruction from a functionalist ontology (as

4 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

organization studies scholars define functionalism), which emphasizes the shared organizational values of SS members. But a shift in perspective—one that allows us to see the polycratic, entropic, and punctuated qualities of the genocidal program—permits us to appreciate how two other ontologies within organization studies, the interpretive and the postmodern, can add to our understanding. The interpretive view (e.g., Allen, 2005; Heracleous, 2006) regards organizations as “social realities . . . constructed by the actors in those situations, acting together” (Hatch & Yanow, 2003, p. 69). And postmodern scholars (e.g., Boje, Gephardt, & Thatchenkery, 1998; Burrell, 1988; Chia, 2003; Cooper, 1989; Cooper & Burrell, 1988; Gergen & Thatchenkery, 2006; Kilduff & Mehra, 1997; McKinlay & Starkey, 1998; Taylor, 2005) in organization studies deny Schein’s (1992) classic formulation that organizations are “a pattern of shared basic assumptions” (p. 12), rejecting the metaphor of organizations as “containers of tasks, technologies, and job functions” in which “communication is the way to attain message fidelity [and] organization is the means of attaining productivity and efficiency” (Putnam, Phillips, & Chapman, 1996, p. 395). Instead, they see organizations as fragmented and decentered constellations of temporary consensus embedded in larger historical, cultural, and social discourses, sites where knowledge is ambiguous and power is contested via multiple discourses. A functionalist approach would see Nazi SS organizational and technical communication as instruments for optimizing the organization’s awful purpose. And because functionalists “assume that organizational communication is encapsulated within the confines of an ontologically prior entity, the organization,” then “communication so situated is of course influenced if not determined by its pre-established [organizational] wrapper” (McPhee & Poole, 2001, p. 503). But through an interpretive approach, we can see how communication was not just one of many things that the SS “did” but was constitutive of the organization itself, as its members negotiated and constructed a sense of themselves. And through a postmodern approach, we can grasp how the social spaces SS members negotiated through their organizational and technical communications were constantly in flux, riven by contests among multiple voices over power and knowledge. In the end, as I will argue, we will see how Nazi SS communications—and in particular, their everyday documents—functioned as what Star and Griesemer (1989) called “boundary objects,” which span the interstices of organizations because they are “both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (p. 393). As such, these objects (in the Star and Griesemer study, the objects were geographical maps, specimen collections, and museum displays) come “to form a common boundary between the worlds [of project participants] by inhabiting them both simultaneously” (p. 412). Wilson and Herndl (2007) extended the concept to demonstrate how a boundary object (in their case, a project organization chart) can work rhetorically to negotiate

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED?

/

5

differences when parties are driven by “integrative exigence” to form a “trading zone” or “temporary space of cooperation and exchange between different disciplines or subdisciplines” (p. 132, citing Galison, 1997). Further, Oswick and Robertson (2009) contend that boundary objects constitute texts and, as such, can be parsed from an organizational discourse-analytic perspective that limns “the social construction of boundary objects in everyday interaction and the real-time negotiation of their meaning and their use” (p. 190). This, too, is an important extension of the theory since previous studies explored boundary objects that were deliberately and consciously introduced to serve as vehicles for integrating participants’ various perspectives. Also pertinent to the present study, Oswick and Robertson take us beyond the “overly optimistic and positive conception of the role played by these artifacts in [rendering] knowledge transformation and change” coherent, univocal, desirable, and achievable among “collaborating parties with complimentary interests” (p. 190). Instead, when we see boundary objects as plurivocal, everyday social constructions whose meanings are negotiated in real time, then “multiple readings are possible [regarding] . . . distribution of power and contrasting goals between groups of social actors [whose] resultant outcomes/objects are likely to be far more ambiguous, fragmented and contested than the existing literature would have us believe” (p. 190). This study will demonstrate how everyday documents of the Nazi SS functioned as boundary objects in holding together a fragmented bureaucracy just barely long enough to execute its genocidal blitzkrieg. As an alternative to the functionalist view that organizational communications are primarily instrumental, I will show how the texts’ rhetorical plasticity permitted competing SS interests to map their own interpretations onto the documents, while at the same time marshaling a common fund of rhetorical resources by which these interests, under the goad of an integrative exigence, negotiated a temporary space of cooperation. This thesis is in keeping with, and indeed illustrates the value of, the interpretive and postmodern perspectives in organization studies that, respectively, hold that communication is constitutive of organization and that organizations are sites of contestation and consensus between multiple discourses.

REVISITING THE FINAL SOLUTION The historiographical implications of an interpretive and postmodern view of the organizational challenge faced by the Nazi SS—that is, a view that takes into account the polycratic, entropic, and punctuated qualities of its genocidal project—are dramatically suggested by the testimony of Franz Stangl, the former commandant of Treblinka. In a 1971 prison interview, he could still recount in vivid detail his first sight of the death camp in the late summer of 1942:

6 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

I drove there, with an SS driver. . . . We could smell it kilometers away. The road ran alongside the railway. When we were about fifteen, twenty minutes’ drive from Treblinka we began to see corpses by the [railway] line, first just two or three, then more, and as we drove into the Treblinka station, there were what looked like hundreds of them—just lying there—they’d obviously been there for days, in the heat. In the station was a train full of Jews, some dead, some still alive—just lying there—they’d obviously been there for days. . . . When I entered the camp and got out of the car on the square I stepped knee-deep into money; I didn’t know which way to turn, where to go. I waded in notes, currency, precious stones, jewelry, clothes. . . . The smell was indescribable; the hundreds, no, thousands of bodies everywhere, decomposing, putrefying. Across the square, in the woods, just a few hundred yards away on the other side of the barbed-wire fence and all around the perimeter of the camp, there were tents and open fires with groups of Ukrainian guards and girls—whores, I found out later, from all over the countryside—weaving drunk, dancing, singing, playing music. (Sereny, 1974, p. 157)

Stangl’s account beggars belief, conjuring a scene so fantastic as to recall the fevered hellscapes of Heironymous Bosch rather than anything human. Treblinka opened its gates July 22, 1942, and gassed its first victims the next day; within five weeks the operation had murdered some 312,000 Jews (Friedländer, 2007, p. 432) and deteriorated into the surreal tableau described by Stangl. Another SS officer who arrived about the same time corroborated the scene, adding that SS guards stood on nearby rooftops and shot indiscriminately into arriving transports of Jewish victims in an improvised attempt at crowd control. But the shooting elicited such screams and cries that the SS hastily assembled a small orchestra in hopes of drowning out the noise and calming the new arrivals (Evans, 2009, p. 290). At least in its opening phase, if the Nazis’ own accounts are to be believed, the lethal chaos of Treblinka belied Bauman’s (1989) “bureaucratic definition of the Holocaust” (p. 14) in which mass murder on an unprecedented scale depended on the availability of well-developed and firmly entrenched skills and habits of meticulous and precise division of labor, of maintaining a smooth flow of command and information, or of impersonal, well-synchronized coordination of autonomous yet complementary actions: on those skills and habits, in short, which best grow and thrive in the atmosphere of the office. (p. 15)

If we write a historical interpretation of the Final Solution that eschews a functionalist ontology and instead emphasizes the polycratic, entropic, and punctuated aspects of the genocide—that is, if we choose to proceed not from an assumption that organizations such as the SS and the Nazi state and party are entities with autonomous existences, but that organizations must be constantly negotiated and constructed by their members—then we are compelled to address

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED?

/

7

the question, How did the genocide progress from its initial disorganization to its later organization? After all, on second thought, would it not be more reasonable to expect that, in an operation as massively unprecedented as the Vernichtunglager, rapid deterioration and degeneracy should have been the norm? Treblinka “processed” 312,000 victims in its first five weeks; Belzec 75,000 in four weeks; Sobibor 100,000 in three months; Chelmno 97,000 in six months (Friedländer, 2007, pp. 357, 363, 432). Try to imagine the unimaginable: packed trains arriving daily, hundreds or thousands gassed within hours of debarkation, heaping mountains of decaying corpses, bulging warehouses of ownerless valuables, workers prying gold fillings from dead teeth, captors increasingly desensitized to any restraints. Nothing like this had been attempted in human history. Even the perpetrators lacked the cognitive apparatus to assimilate such a fantasy world. “Oh God, the smell. It was everywhere,” Stangl later recalled of a visit to Belzec in spring 1942, “the pits . . . full, they were full. I can’t tell you; not hundreds, thousands, thousands of corpses.” His lasting impression was the sight of a mass-burial pit filled so far above its capacity that “putrefaction had progressed too fast, so that the liquid underneath had pushed the bodies on top up and over and the corpses had rolled down the hill” (Sereny, 1974, p. 111). Belzec began receiving victims March 17, 1942, using gas chambers of crude wooden construction that “were constantly breaking down, leaving deportees waiting for days without food and water,” and forcing the commandant to shut down the operation during June and July while new concrete gas chambers were built (Evans, 2009, p. 286). After Sobibor commenced killing operations in mid-May 1942, its mass graves, like those at Belzec, soon overflowed; when the putrefaction also entered the water table and began to contaminate the camp water supply, the pits had to be excavated with a bulldozer (p. 287). The Sobibor gas chambers were shut down more than 2 months for reconstruction and expansion (Kogon, Langbein, & Rückerl, 1993, p. 222). Treblinka started gassings on July 23, 1942, but the camp was even more inefficient than its predecessors, as “gas chambers frequently broke down, sometimes when the victims were already inside, where they were forced to wait for hours until repairs were completed,” and the inability to dig new burial pits fast enough meant “soon there were unburied bodies everywhere” (Evans, 2009, p. 291). To deal with the numbers, guards at times reverted to shooting Jews on arrival rather than gassing them. Lack of housing for camp guards forced them to pitch tents outside the fence, where they drank through the night with local prostitutes. Likewise, the system of transports was often conducted through inefficient trial and error. Many Jewish survivors tell stories of lengthy and circuitous train journeys to the camps and of being made to wait for days at a time along the way. As late as 1943, the SS was still experimenting with transport procedures. In June of that year, victims in one transport were stripped naked prior to departure in hopes of preventing escapes en route; half of the 50 freight cars

8 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

arrived without a single passenger left alive (Evans, 2009, p. 288). From the German point of view, it was far more efficient for the victims to walk the last mile themselves. Yet the influx of victims was at times so great, cattle cars packed with Jews were left standing for hours or days on a siding until the victims— those who had not died in the interim—could be processed. And the death camps themselves were ad hoc responses to the mounting disarray of the genocide’s first wave, what Desbois (2008) has evocatively called “The Holocaust by Bullets,” in which the ranks of roaming SS death squads experienced massive nervous breakdowns and even suicides as their execution-style killings escalated into the tens and hundreds of thousands. Although the SS established nerve clinics for traumatized killers, “Psychologically for the perpetrators, and perhaps even more for their superiors, it became increasingly difficult to deal with the repercussions of the mass executions” (Langerbein, 2004, p. 48). The SS itself was the apotheosis of the unbureaucratic, personalized “polycracy” that thrived in Hitler’s Reich and gradually undermined the German civil service tradition of rational state government, creating real “problems [for] analyzing the National Socialist state in terms of a Weberian model of bureaucratization” (Wildt, 2010, p. 435). Even in 1943, when SS chief Heinrich Himmler was also named Reich Interior Minister, he still “struggled to control what was rapidly becoming less an organization than a collection of disparate mini-empires,” prompting a key SS leader to quip that Himmler was “really organizing disorder” (Mazower, 2008, p. 256). Though a broad consensus existed about the supposed reality of “the Jewish enemy” and the justice of its physical annihilation in wartime, SS bureaus competed bitterly with each other and with outside agencies—the Party, the state apparatus, the military, the business cartels—to control aspects of Jewish policy according to their own priorities on killing methods, timing, labor utilization, and resource allocation. This struggle is symptomatic of the very inability of the Nazi polycracy to economically (Overy, 1995) and politically (Mazower, 2008) rationalize German territorial gains, which was a major factor in Germany’s defeat. Nazi strategy was founded on blitzkrieg victories rather than a long war of attrition and thus on exploitation rather than integration of conquered territories. Then, too, even as the SS succeeded in murdering millions, its “success” at genocide and exploitation sowed seeds of disorganization through increased infighting, looting, corruption, and barbarization in its own ranks. The Final Solution, like the Nazi system itself, constantly fought to control a restlessly destructive dynamism that animated the entire enterprise in the first place. As it was, the major SS offensive against the Jews spanned, by Browning’s (1998) reckoning, only the 11 months between mid-March 1942 and mid-February 1943 (p. xv). In March 1942, the Jewish communities of Europe were still largely intact and 80% of the Six Million still alive; 11 months later, Jewish communal life in Europe was destroyed and 80% of the Six Million were dead. In fact, the Final Solution—if it is defined as the programmatic attempt by the Nazi SS at

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED?

/

9

physical annihilation of the European Jews on a continental scale—can be conceived as three phases: (a) the initial period, roughly from the summer of 1941 through the summer of 1942, in which the operations of the SS mobile shooting squads and then the openings of the death camps were characterized by widespread breakdowns; (b) the most “productive” period, roughly from the fall of 1942 through the voluntary closing of most death camps between the spring and fall of 1943; and (c) the final period in 1944 when the remaining camps were briefly revived for “mop up” operations. Thus, the middle period—the one that lives on in popular imagination as typifying vaunted German efficiency—lasted little more than a year, albeit with the breathtaking destruction documented by Browning. Chelmno was in operation for about 16 months (until April 1943, although briefly revived for 3 months in 1944); Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka for about 15 months (until October 1943); Majdanek for about 13 months (until November 1943); and only the gas chambers at Auschwitz kept going through the end of 1944 (Kogon et al., 1993, pp. 220–224). By the fall of 1943, the signs of bureaucratic breakdown were apparent. In October, Himmler publicly threatened capital punishment for camp officers who took “even one fur, even one watch, even one Mark or cigarette,” and sacked the commandant and administration of Auschwitz after SS investigators uncovered massive corruption and unauthorized killings of prisoners (Friedländer, 2007, p. 544). By 1944, Himmler’s control was starting to slip; when he ordered deportations of Hungarian Jews suspended, Eichmann’s team circumvented the new policy by forcing 27,000 Jews to leave Budapest on foot (Cesarini, 2004). In the end, however, Treblinka and the other death camps—Auschwitz chief among them—experienced an initial chaotic phase but ultimately settled into a semblance of lethally bureaucratic discipline. How did this happen? The outcome was not inevitable; countering the inherently entropic tendencies of the Final Solution was contingent on individual and corporate action. But what action? This study argues that communication—specifically, organizational and technical communication—is the action that we must examine, for “organizations exist only in so far as their members create them through discourse . . . the principle means by which organization members create a coherent social realty that frames their sense of who they are” (Mumby & Clair, 1997, p. 181). The Treblinka that confronted Stangl in the late summer of 1942 was not coherent; left in that condition, the camp might have succeeded at its initial spasm of murder but been incapable of organizing a sustained program of genocide. Yet somehow, communication created coherence and imparted identity. That is the process this study aims to explore. By proceeding from interpretive and postmodern perspectives that take into account the polycratic, entropic, and punctuated aspects of the Final Solution, we can reformulate our problem this way: How did SS organizational and technical communications manage, just barely long enough, to create a short-term social reality that regulated the internal contradictions of its genocidal project and

10 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

fragmented bureaucracy? This study will demonstrate how SS documents served as boundary objects onto which differing interests could map their own knowledges, triangulate mutually acceptable rules of action, and socially construct spaces for temporary cooperation, thereby achieving the modicum of discipline and self-regulation (Deetz, 1998; Foucault, 1977, 1980, 1988; Jacques, 1996) required to mobilize and temporarily hold together a short-term genocidal blitzkrieg. While acknowledging the value of Bauman’s (1989) functionalist “bureaucratic definition” of the Final Solution, the interpretive and postmodern perspectives also have much to offer. For one, they fit the historical record that portrays the SS as a distinctive social world characterized by constant struggle. The interpretive view recognizes that organizations are created by their members’ discourses, while the postmodern view forsakes “the premise that there is some pre-existing social object called ‘organization,’ which is defined by formal features and cohesive behaviors” and allows the analyst to see in SS organizational and technical communications “an array of multiple meanings . . . that require careful deconstruction in order to reveal the concealed and marginalized elements within them and thereby open them up for alternative interpretations” (Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004b, p. 17). In fact the functionalist, interpretive, and postmodern approaches can be complementary rather than mutually exclusive, as suggested by Martin’s (1992, 2002; Martin, Frost, & O’Neill, 2006) observation that at any given time, organizations manifest the three dimensions of integration (what organization members share), differentiation (how members inhabit different values, practices, and subcultures that must be negotiated), and fragmentation (how members forge temporary and issue-specific consensus amidst organizational change, confusion, and ambiguity). Given the complex interplay of these three dimensions, organizational texts may have surface structures that appear stable and centered but also reveal structural processes by which “subjectivity and social reality are (re-)produced in an organizational milieu.” Collaboratively authored texts “are not singular, stable, or consensual” and potential meanings for stakeholders are “both precarious and prolific” (Taylor, 2005, p. 122). Surface consistency is belied as organizational interests splinter “into networks based on tasks, relationships, information, and functions” and members “create many belief systems or subcultures” so that “competing assumptions and values create a fuzziness where assumptions and values are contradictory” (Keyton, 2005, p. 37). How are these contradictions reconciled, if only temporarily? As I endeavor to show, organizational actors can generate boundary objects to meet the needs of their integrative exigences. SAMPLE, METHOD, AND CHAPTER ORGANIZATION In exploring the organizational and technical communication of the Final Solution, it is, of course, impossible to survey all surviving documents. A sampling is necessary, one that is both manageable in size and yet representative. Such

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED?

/

11

a sampling is found in surviving documents from the SS Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei or “Sipo”) Technical Matters Group that administered the so-called Sonderwagen or mobile gas van program. When roving SS shooting squads or Einsatzgruppen proved psychologically unprepared and logistically too few as the killing of Soviet Jews escalated, the SS attempted the expedient of bringing poison gas to their victims, before later settling on the method of bringing their victims to the gas. Browning (1991) has thus suggested, Though the gas van was in retrospect a temporary solution to some of the technological and psychological problems facing the Germans in carrying out the Final Solution, it was not an insignificant episode. The fall of 1941 and spring of 1942, when the gas van was being developed and produced, spanned a crucial period in the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy when systemic mass murder of Jews outside Russia was just getting underway. . . . In this regard the history of the gas van reveals at least some continuity between the Einsatzgruppen operations and the subsequent attempt to extend the Final Solution to the rest of European Jews, and rather extensive cooperation by central authorities in Berlin. (pp. 57–58)

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the SS Einsatzgruppen roamed behind the advancing front to liquidate Jewish communities in the East. Though the death squads had received their charge from Berlin and were supplied with munitions and vehicles, SS field commanders decided their own movements and targets. The gas vans, however, represented a transition to the primacy of central administration, for the Sipo Technical Matters Group “was not only responsible for the constructions of the gas vans, but it directed/orchestrated centrally . . . the operations of the gas vans, providing the vans, drivers, and . . . parts/equipment; it controlled/supervised and coordinated the operationing [sic] of the vehicles” (Beer, 1987, p. 415). Although in postwar trials, the automotive and chemical experts of the Sonderwagen program disclaimed knowledge of the vehicles’ purpose, Browning (1991) noted, “Their own documents portray a different picture” in which Berlin technicians were “kept fully abreast of the problems arising in the field,” responded with innovative adjustments to garner acceptance from superiors and internal clients, blamed others for what could not be fixed, and “developed the euphemistic code language so typical of the Final Solution—it hid reality from [private subcontractors] and at least partially from themselves” (p. 67). Here we see, in the first attempt by the SS to centrally administer its Final Solution, the role of organizational and technical communication in—as Mumby and Clair’s (1997) thesis would predict—creating a coherent social reality and framing members’ identities. Thus, an analysis of documents from the Sipo Technical Matters Group offers, first of all, the opportunity to examine a sampling of the Final Solution in microcosm at the moment when decentralized killing was giving way to central administration. Second, the gas van program was of limited duration and run by a

12 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

single, relatively small SS bureau, so that its surviving paper trail—seven documents in all—is manageable. Yet third, the Sonderwagen program was large enough to yield a representative cross-section of documents (a routine letter, field report, engineering proposal, requisitions, replies—all replete with visual cues, filing codes, and often extensive handwritten marginalia) and SS personnel (executive, expert, managerial, nonmanagerial, clients). Fourth, extensive testimony from gas van program participants at all organizational levels was taken for postwar trials, and their “organizational stories” (Boje, 1991, 1995, 2001; Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1983) offer much information on the organizational life of the Group and its personnel. Fifth, by examining a corpus of documents from the same bureau, rather than analyzing single texts in isolation, the analyst can see the flow of documents in light of their historical and cultural contexts and the biographies of the actors, permitting an attempt to reconstruct (or deconstruct) the organizational discourse of which the texts were a part. And sixth, the lengthiest of the documents has received wide attention in the technical communication literature (e.g., Dombrowski, 2000a; Katz, 1992a), so that new insights from this study may be compared with other scholars. The literature on technical communication also furnishes an appropriate methodology for this study, namely, Longo’s (1998) proposal that cultural research into the object of technical writing be delimited in five ways: (a) the object as discourse; the object within its (b) cultural and (c) historical contexts; (d) the object as ordered by its analyst; and (e) the object’s relationship to its analyst. In operationalizing this method, this study will rearrange Longo’s ordering of her five delimiters, as illustrated in Figure 1.1. The study will begin by providing the historical context of the SS gas van program (chapter 2); move next to the cultural contexts by proceeding in descending order from the integrative dimensions of Nazi German national culture and the institutional culture of the Nazi movement, and the differentiating dimensions of the organizational culture of the SS and its various bureaus (chapter 3), to the fragmenting dimensions of local organizational subcultures and their various actors and interests (chapter 4); explore the discourses of the Sipo Technical Matters Group by first introducing and describing the gas van documents (chapter 5) and then analyzing the killers’ use of textual and visual rhetorics (chapter 6) and language (chapter 7) to do the “boundary work” (Wilson & Herndl, 2007) required to temporarily bridge their differing interests and (re)produce their rhetorical community; follow the different orderings imposed on the most notorious of the gas van documents by tracing the surprising postwar provenance of the distinctive translation that Katz (1992a) first introduced into the technical communication literature (chapter 8) and by tracing how the document has since become a boundary object in bridging the diverse interests and motivations of technical communication scholars around a consensus interpretation of the document’s ethical implications for their discipline (chapter 9); and finally suggest the ethical implications of the “ontological shift” proposed by the

/

Figure 1.1. Modified cultural research methodology.

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED? 13

14 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

present research in which the document is viewed in social rather than solely individual terms (chapter 10). In a broader sense, the book also has two major divisions. The first, composed of chapters 2 through 5, is a “traditional” history, and the second, in chapters 6 through 10, is the “nontraditional” analysis set up by the “ontological shift” proposed above and then traced through rhetorical, genre, and discourse analyses of the Nazi documents. For the first division, I decided, in following Longo’s (1998) method of initially limning the historical and cultural contexts of technical writing, that it is helpful to exposit these contexts in a conventional manner and thus provide the twin foundations of historical facts (so far as the historian can lay claim to “facts”) and a working narrative with which to comprehend the SS gas van program and its milieu. This decision is not without risk, for it introduces a methodological tension into the book that demands patience from the reader. Yet because the historical and cultural contexts of the gas van murders are not well-known beyond specialist scholars, I believe most readers will benefit by first following a straightforward, traditional account of the kind suggested by Kynell and Seely (2002) for historical research in technical communication. And so, as described above, chapter 2 will relate relevant historical contexts of the Nazi gas van program; chapter 3 an exploration of the national, institutional, and organizational cultures that may have informed the murderers; chapter 4 a review of individual actors’ biographies and testimonies; and chapter 5 an introduction to the individual documents. Armed with these foundations, readers may then engage the “nontraditional” portion of the book that begins in chapter 6 with a look at the primary source material of the Sipo Technical Matters Group documents. This methodological tension between the two broad divisions of the book can, in my view, be productive, as the “conventional” history furnishes a set of common topics on which to then deliberate “unconventional” interpretations from the social constructionist and postmodern perspectives in organization studies. Debates over method are no stranger to the historians’ craft. In fin de siècle Germany, an acrimonious Methodenstreit was touched off by Windelband’s now-famous contention that, as Ringer (1997) recounted, “the empirical disciplines in fact fall into two groups: the Gesetzeswissenschaften pursue ‘nomothetic’ knowledge of the general in the form of invariant ‘laws’; the Ereigniswissenschaften strive for ‘idiographic’ knowledge of singular patterns or events” (p. 32). Thus, claimed Windelband, the natural sciences investigate what one phenomenon has in common with another, while the cultural-historical sciences explore a given phenomenon to elicit its own defining qualities. Not surprisingly, this distinction was contested by historians who saw theirs as a scientific discipline capable of eliciting universal laws. A similar debate over historical method also raged in France around the same time (Friedman, 1996). Weber, the pioneering German sociologist of the early 20th century, wrestled with the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic knowledge and strove to

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED?

/

15

unify the two approaches (see Weber, 1949). His method proposed that, as Ringer (1997) summarized, “we begin by supposing that the relevant agents rationally pursued appropriate ends”; in essence projecting our own means-end rationality upon past actors and then “proceed to ‘compare’ the behaviors we anticipate with the courses of action pursued in reality” to pinpoint how historical agents may have acted irrationally or how their modes of reasoning diverged from ours (p. 4). Yet Weber did not live to see the rise of 20th-century totalitarianism, a development that Arendt believed creates a “problem of understanding” (Hannah Arendt Papers, n.d.) that “explodes” historians’ scientific presumptions (Arendt, 1950, p. 49) and calls “objective” historiography into question (Arendt, 1953, p. 79). For one, she argued that the Holocaust confronts historical science with an unexpected phenomenon that shatters its accustomed explanatory frameworks; for another, any historiography of the genocide that seeks objectively and without anger to conserve the past necessarily condones it. Yet as Megill (1989) later observed, the community of professional historians still reflects “the continuing authority of a somewhat outdated, but still in many ways influential, philosophy of science” (p. 627). Elsewhere, I explored the impact of this philosophy on Holocaust historiography (Ward, 2009a). And we will revisit the matter in chapter 9 when comparing historians’ epistemology to the very different way of knowing with which technical communicators have comprehended the Nazi gas van document that Katz (1992a) introduced into the literature. For now, though, suffice to say that the tension between the two broad divisions of this book—between the traditional history of chapters 2 through 5 and the rhetorical and discursive approaches in the remaining chapters—is intentional. The earlier chapters present not “the” history of the Nazi gas vans as essential truth, but rather “a” history, meant to furnish a set of common topics for the rhetorical and discursive analyses to follow. The purpose here is to follow neither a nomothetic epistemology that seeks generalizable laws nor an idiographic epistemology that projects our own reasoning on the SS murderers and then compares how their assumptions diverged from ours to finally arrive, like Weber proposed, at a singular causal analysis that “explains” their killings. Arendt (1950, 1953) has forcefully critiqued the “problem of understanding” the world of the killing fields. Rather, after sketching in chapters 2 through 5 the historical and cultural contexts of the Sipo Technical Matters Group for the nonspecialist reader, I endeavor in later chapters to plumb the killers’ own rhetoric and language, and glimpse the horrific and lethal social reality they created for themselves. Many productive studies in organizational behavior (see Bjerregaard, 2011; Van Maanen, 2011; Watson, 2011; Ybema, Yanow, Wels, & Kamsteeq, 2009) and technical writing (see Doheny-Farina & Odell, 1985; Katz, 2002) are based on ethnographies of contemporary organizations. This study, perhaps unusually, investigates a historic organization through what Vaughn (1996)—who reconstructed the decision processes leading up to the space shuttle Challenger

16 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

disaster—called historical ethnography or “an attempt to elicit organizational structure and culture from the documents created prior to an event . . . [through studying] the way ordinary people in other times and cultures made sense of things by ‘passing from text to context and back again, until [one] has cleared a way through a foreign mental world’” (p. 61). So, while this book delves into history, it is not primarily a historical work in the traditional sense and makes no pretense of resolving the longstanding debate over historical method. Instead, the book is intended chiefly as a contribution to the literature on organizational and technical communication. Thus, in following Longo’s (1998) cultural research methodology for technical writing, I opted in the early chapters to offer a conventional telling of the Nazi gas van program’s historical and cultural contexts, believing that approach is best suited in my particular study to “setting the table” for subsequent analysis of the documents as a discourse. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY Continued study of the Holocaust is important because factors that contributed to the Final Solution—bureaucratic specialization and the technology to wield power at a distance from its consequences—are accelerating in our own generation beyond what could be imagined even in the Third Reich. Investigating the extreme case of the Final Solution puts into stark relief the dynamics by which organizational and technical communication can be employed to regulate and control even self-contradictory and ultimately destructive ends, thus furnishing an extreme-case sample of great significance for denaturalizing this regulatory dynamic in contemporary organizations. This project likewise has significance for Holocaust studies. Historians themselves are now suggesting “the bureaucratic models of modernization theory” are inadequate, and investigations of the Nazi state should be conducted “in light of more recent sociological organizational and institutional theory” (Wildt, 2010, p. 435). Yet I am not aware of any close studies of the organizational and technical communication of the Holocaust, certainly none that meaningfully bring to bear the relevant literatures of these two disciplines. In the 20 years since the sociologist Bauman published Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), his thesis—that the genocide was not an aberration of Western modernity but a result of potentialities latent in its capacity for bureaucratic and technological organization—has gained broad acceptance. As it happens, I agree with Bauman that the Holocaust “uncover[ed] another face of the same modern society whose other, more familiar, face we so admire” (p. 7). But I cannot go so far as his assertion that “the very idea of the Endlösung [Final Solution] was an outcome of the bureaucratic culture” (p. 15). This is the functionalist view that organizational imperatives ultimately drive individual actions, a view that is increasingly questioned within organization studies. Thus, against Bauman’s contention that organizational cultures drive ideas, my study suggests that ideas construct

CAN GENOCIDE BE REGULATED?

/

17

organizational cultures as those ideas are communicated among organization members. A similar rejoinder to Bauman’s thesis was advanced by the eminent Holocaust historian Bauer (2001). The German bureaucracy, he noted, “often was a fumbling, ineffective, contradiction-ridden machine, where each fiefdom in the Nazi state had its own interests and fought against everyone else to preserve them,” so that “the unique efficiency they showed in destroying the Jews, often for pseudo-pragmatic reasons, really showed the remarkable impact of ideology on them” (p. 78). My study illustrates how competing desk-murderers negotiated spaces for consensus. Thus, the Holocaust is not evidence for the capacity of modern bureaucratic culture to produce either progressive or destructive ideas, but rather the capacity of progressive or destructive ideas to cohere as social realities through the communications of modern bureaucrats.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 2

From Darwin to Death Wagons

ORIGINS OF EUROPEAN ANTI-SEMITISM What destructive ideas, then, ultimately cohered as social realities through the communications of the SS gas van bureaucrats? Because ideas and ideologies are historical rather than natural—although the dominant interests in organizations would wish it to appear otherwise—then an answer to this question must excavate the historical discourses that formed the ideologies. Such is the kind of broad inquiry that Kynell and Seely (2002) advocated for employing historical methods in technical communication research, an inquiry that broadly explores historical contexts and interpretations while generating a framework for gathering data and evaluating their relevance so that the analyst can identify patterns, construct a narrative, and advance an interpretation. Piecing together a narrative of the Sonderwagen program can provide a working set of facts from which to contextualize the murders. Even more, the exercise permits the cultural critic to historicize that which had become the naturalized “common sense” of the Sipo Technical Matter Group, exposing axioms that, because they broadly and unconsciously resonated among the Group’s competing interests, enabled members to produce texts that could become boundary objects and temporarily bridge intraorganizational differences. Such bridging was required in part because the SS desk-murderers “clearly understood that their deeds were not positive except in the value system of the Third Reich” (Lozowick, 2000, p. 8) and needed a countervailing ideology to overcome long-held and traditionally ingrained Christian beliefs against the killing of innocent life. By the time of the Final Solution, however, history had produced such an ideology, one that ultimately made Judeocide the “common sense” of a vast modern bureaucracy. What was this history? Though the Jews of Europe created over two millennia a rich and vibrant culture, their story is indelibly marred by tragedy and victimization, which culminated in the greatest crime of the age. Their culture and identity were shaped by 19

20 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

a diasporic history in which they faced ongoing pressures and hostilities from the dominant cultures in which they resided. “Jewish history cannot be told as the history of the Jews only, because they have nearly always lived within the context of other civilizations” (Dimont, 1962, p. ix). And nearly always they have lived within the context of anti-Semitism. In Christian Europe, the roots of anti-Semitism “can be traced back to New Testament teaching,” noted Cohn-Sherbok (2002), for whether or not one believes “the Gospels and Paul’s epistles are inherently anti-Jewish, there is no doubt that the Church has used Scripture as a framework for its teaching of contempt” (p. 34). And further, as Crossan (1996) observed, “Without that Christian anti-Judaism, lethal and genocidal European anti-Semitism would have been either impossible or at least not widely successful” (p. 35). Dimont (1962) has divided Jewish history into six phases, each of which presented challenges that threatened the Jews’ survival: their encounters with ancient Egypt and the Mesopotamian empires; with the Greco-Roman empires; with diaspora throughout the Mediterranean world; with the Islamic empire; with the Christian Europe of the Middle Ages; and with the modern age of virulent anti-Semitism. Similarly, Carroll (2001) has characterized Jewish history as defined against the three genocides committed against the Jews by ancient Babylonia and Assyria, by the Roman empire, and during the European Holocaust. While the history of the Jewish nation extends more than 4,000 years, one place to begin the story of European Jewry is the year 63 BCE, when the Jews of Palestine were first confronted by a European power. That year, Rome conquered Jerusalem and instituted a brutal colonial occupation. When the Jews revolted through a series of three wars in 66–73, 113, and 132–135 CE, the Romans first destroyed Jerusalem and its Jewish Temple, and finally expelled all Jews from Palestine. Estimates of the Jewish population at the time range from half a million to 2.5 million, but “the ratio of Jewish dead in Palestine at the hands of Rome may well approximate the twentieth-century record of one in three” Jews worldwide who died in the Holocaust (Carroll, 2001, p. 79). Thus, the Roman genocide may have killed as many as 800,000 Jews before selling the survivors into slavery and exiling any escapees from their homeland. “In the second century CE, the majority of Jews were stateless and dispersed into every corner of the Roman world, from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over three continents” (Dimont, 1962, pp. 118–119). And they were cast into a world that regarded them with hostility disproportionate to their numbers. In Greco-Roman times, noted Johnson (1987), “the specific hostility towards the Jews was a function of Jewish monotheism and its social consequences.” Their custom of male circumcision “was regarded by the Greco-Roman world as barbarous and distasteful,” while Jewish laws of diet and cleanliness discouraged social intercourse with Gentile society and “perhaps more than any other factor, focused hostility on Jewish communities”

FROM DARWIN TO DEATH WAGONS

/

21

(pp. 133–134). Riots against the Jews broke out in many cities, and the Jews were excoriated by Cicero (for being “superstitious barbarians”), Horace (“proselytizing and credulous”), Livy (“atheists”), Seneca (“accursed race”), Quintillian (“a curse”), Apion (ritual murderers), Martial (lechers and beggars), Tacitus (“base and abominable”), and Juvenal (mercenary beggars). Thus, the Romans “had already concocted all the libels, issued all the slurs, made all the jokes, and promulgated all the misunderstandings that would cause the Jews of Europe twenty centuries of suffering . . . [and] laid the groundwork for classic European anti-Semitism” (Konner, 2003, pp. 83–89). How did Jewish culture and identity survive the destruction of its capital, the end of its historic political and religious system, and the genocide and dispersion of its people? “They responded to this new challenge with another formula for survival: Diaspora Judaism” (Dimont, 1962, p. 118). Thus, the stage was set for the subsequent history of the Jews of Europe—a people without a national territory, keeping themselves apart from their hosts, thereby retaining a religious and ethnic identity but also inspiring the suspicion and hostility of others who regarded the Jews as aliens in their midst. This situation was then cemented by two critical developments. First, the Jews replaced the destroyed Temple system of national leadership, which had been based in Jerusalem, with a decentralized rabbinical or Diaspora Judaism in which rabbis (teachers) presided over local synagogues. Their “creation of a religious-legal code, the Talmud . . . served as a unifying force and a spiritual rallying point . . . [that] almost invisibly ruled the Jews for close to fifteen hundred years” (Dimont, 1962, p. 17). The second development that shaped the subsequent history of the European Jews was the rise of Christianity. With “Greco-Roman antipathy . . . as the background for the emergence of Christian hostility towards the Jewish nation” (Cohn-Sherbok, 2002, p. 17), the Roman Empire’s conversion to Christianity under Constantine in the fourth century made the Church heir to the pagan world’s anti-Jewish prejudice. “The virulence of Christian Jew-hatred stemmed from grafting the blame of the Gospels [for allegedly killing Christ] onto a trunk and root already thick and deep” (Konner, 2003, p. 89). And when the once-powerless Christian church became an imperial institution, its animus against the Jews was no longer “relatively benign propaganda” but instead “turned lethal” (Crossan, 1996, p. 152). Thus developed an uneasy coexistence as separatistic Talmudic Judaism and a Christian host culture that was largely anti-Jewish were thrown together in the same geographic space. Over the ensuing centuries, the two cultures could at times coexist in relative peace. Jews were invited to settle in Italy, France, and Germany during the sixth through eighth centuries to help found cities and encourage trade. By the 11th century, a sophisticated Sephardic Jewish culture emerged in Moorish Spain and Portugal, and a vibrant Yiddish-language Ashkenazic Jewish culture arose in France and Germany. But in time, the pendulum again swung back toward persecution. Jews fled the Rhineland in 1096 when Crusaders slaughtered

22 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Jewish communities on the way to the Holy Land and “blood libel” accusations arose that charged Jews with the ritual murder of Christian children. By the 14th century, Jews were blamed for the European outbreak of bubonic plague because, perhaps due to their cleansing regulations, they survived in proportionately greater numbers than their gentile neighbors. Jews fled to Poland and the Slavic lands after more than 350 Jewish communities in Germany were destroyed by mobs (Dwork & van Pelt, 1996, p. 33), even as Jews were banished from England and France and forcibly baptized in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition was instituted in 1478 to root out “converted” Jews who secretly practiced their first religion, until the Sephardic Jews were expelled altogether from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Official ghettoization of the Jews began in 1555 when Pope Paul IV mandated the creation of a sealed Jewish enclave in Rome (Kertzer, 2001, pp. 27–28). Europe’s Catholic rulers followed suit in their own countries throughout Southern Europe, and then Protestant lands in Northern Europe took up the trend. These walled ghettos, invariably situated in the least desirable quarters of a city, were intended to prevent all but narrow commercial contacts between Jews and Christians. The “solution” of sealed ghettos occurred naturally to the European mindset of the age since the continent’s polity was based on selfadministering dukedoms, baronies, and guilds. Councils of ghetto elders, charged with collecting heavy taxes and raising the funds to support community services, soon evolved into corrupt oligarchies that shifted the burden to the peasantry. The Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe were also ghettoized. But because Poland (then an imperial federation of Poland, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Lithuania) had few large cities, segregation evolved into the founding of exclusively Jewish villages and hamlets, which were administered by regional councils of elders who also favored their own cliques. “While the Jews enjoyed communal autonomy . . . they could not participate in political life” so that, as the Polish empire began to pull apart under a welter of competing ethnic elites, the Jews’ already weak situation worsened over time (Dwork & van Pelt, 1996, p. 34). The desperation of Jewish life gave rise to Hasidism, a mystic and revivalist variant of Judaism that in time became dominant in Eastern Europe. The Protestant Reformation weakened the power of a Catholic Church implacably opposed to Jewish influence (Kertzer, 2001). For a time, many Reformers defended Jews as people under a covenant with God (Cohn-Sherbok, 2002, pp. 157–163). Thus, in the 16th century, “a small number of Jews ventured a return to Central Europe” but found “their reception was not congenial— not in an age of religious turmoil” in which “they encountered the animus of Protestant Reformers and Catholic Counter-Reformers alike” (Sachar, 2005, p. 4). Only after the Protestant-Catholic Thirty Years War (1618–1648) ended “with religious passions largely exhausted . . . did Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand III allow substantial numbers of Jews to resettle” in imperial cities such as Prague, Budapest, and Frankfurt, so that “other German princes also then relaxed

FROM DARWIN TO DEATH WAGONS

/

23

their bans on Jews” (p. 4). But permission for Jewish resettlement in Central and Western Europe was not motivated by humanitarian concern. Since Jews were viewed as aliens and denied participation in the European feudal land system, they had instead developed alternative vocations in trade and moneylending. “Determined to exploit this Jewish talent for producing liquid wealth, substantial numbers of rulers were willing intermittently to protect ‘their’ Jews as dependable sources of taxes and loans” (p. 5). By the mid-18th century, the Jewish population of Central and Western Europe may have totaled 300,000 to 400,000 persons. But with the feudal system in decline and the powerful trade guilds alarmed by Jewish immigration, local rulers ensured that Jews remained confined to vocations disdained by gentile society. “Perhaps as many as three-fourths of the Jews in Central and Western Europe were limited to the precarious occupations of retail peddling, hawking, and . . . moneylending” (Sachar, 2005, p. 5). And because most Jews struggled to survive, “they generated a sizable underclass of beggars, fencers, pimps, even robbers, thereby creating a self-fulfilling gentile scenario of Jews, one that would be endlessly invoked by Jew-haters throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (p. 5). In Eastern Europe, meanwhile, the end of the 18th century saw the breakup of the Polish federated empire and partition in 1772 by Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The latter restricted Jews to remaining within the “Pale of Settlement” in former Polish lands and prohibited immigration further east into Russia proper. Yet, as the 19th century dawned, “in the East, the circumstances of Jewish life were steadily worsening . . . in the West there was tentative prefigurement of better times to come” (Sachar, 2005, p. 17). This was the culmination of a trend that had begun in Western Europe as early as the 16th and 17th centuries. National identities had emerged as monarchs asserted control over previously autonomous feudal lords, thus providing for centralized governance, language, military, universities, coinage, weights and measures, maps, and roads. “These ambitious projects ensured royal wealth by creating the conditions for sustained economic growth and consolidated royal power by creating loyal subjects” (Dwork & van Pelt, 2002, p. 10), a development that by the end of the early modern period impacted Western and Central European Jews in two ways. First, the Jews’ experience in moneylending and trade now offered a “wider vocational leeway” so that “as trade and manufacturing moved beyond traditional guild jurisdiction, Jews began moving into occupations substantially more diversified than moneylending and peddlery” and emerged as leading dealers in cattle, timber, textiles, silks, satins, gold, silver, and gems (Sachar, 2005, p. 21). Second, some “Enlightenment philosophers took the principle of homogenization and universalism to its logical conclusion: social equality” (Dwork & van Pelt, 2002, p. 10). Emergent democracy, however, proved a two-edged sword for Jews. On the one hand, they were offered equal rights of full citizenship as “emancipatory movements quickly spread throughout western and central Europe

24 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

in the wake of the French revolution and Napoleonic conquests” of 1799–1813 (p. 13). But the revolutionaries favored reason over religion and national community over ethnic identity, so that the expected requirement for full citizenship was assimilation into the dominant Christian culture. The vistas opened by the twin prospects of enlightenment and emancipation prompted a split in the Jewish culture of Western and Central Europe. The Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment, opened new avenues of study, new possibilities for intellectual engagement. For the first time, the study of traditional Jewish texts was joined by a pursuit of general knowledge: science, mathematics, contemporary world affairs, the languages and literature of the gentile world. These enlightenment Jews steadily increased in numbers throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. They developed radically different ideas from their traditional co-religionists about scholarship and education, communal organization and leadership, and, ultimately, lifestyle. They wished to establish a new relationship with the gentile world, to be citizens of the country in which they lived. Emancipation was their goal. (Dwork & van Pelt, 2002, p. 11)

Though the 1814 defeat of Napoleon led to a rejection of French-imposed Jewish emancipation in the nations he conquered, the humanist ideals unleashed in the French Revolution could not be altogether stopped. In the Potato Famine year of 1848, for example, democratic revolutions, though quickly put down, broke out in France, Germany, and other European countries. The second half of the 19th century witnessed the demise of Jewish ghettos in Western and Central Europe and the emergence of Jews into significant roles in commerce, banking, science, art, academia, and the free professions. In a survey of the most important figures of art and science throughout human history, Murray (2003) noted that between 800 and 1800 CE, only eleven figures were Jewish; but between 1870 and 1950, the world Jewish population, just 2.2% of the global total, produced 12.4% of the 1,277 leading figures. The emancipated Jews of Western and Central Europe were also, in their turn, impacted by increasing contact with the dominant Christian culture during the 19th century. “This long-awaited and eagerly sought development was bittersweet. Many Jews who cared about their distinctive identity as Jews saw here a profound dilemma: how to both accept the offer to join the body politic on equal terms and to remain meaningfully Jewish” (Dwork & van Pelt, 2002, p. 13). Some clung to Orthodox Judaism, while the many Polish Jews who began migrating into Central Europe maintained their Yiddish language and mystic Hasidic faith. Others were inspired by the Jewish Enlightenment to launch Reform Judaism and translate the sacred texts and liturgies of their religion into vernacular languages. In 1897, Theodor Herzl of Hungary founded the secular Zionist movement and urged Europe’s Jews to prepare for a return to the Holy Land, while in 1898, the Bund (League) of revolutionary Jewish socialists was

FROM DARWIN TO DEATH WAGONS

/

25

founded and attracted even greater support (Gilbert, 2001, pp. 20–29). Meanwhile, masses of ordinary Jews simply assimilated into the dominant culture by either becoming secularized and nonobservant while still retaining a Jewish identity or by intermarriage or outright conversion to Christianity. Thus “when the twentieth century opened there were three main ways of life which Jews followed or aspired to,” namely, the settled life of assimilation, or emigration away from ongoing social barriers and economic hardships, or “bringing about a revolutionary change in the Jewish situation” through Marxist socialism or through a Zionist rebirth of Jewish nationalism (pp. 19–20). But the 19th century emancipation of Western and Central European Jewry also prompted a reaction among the Christian majority. Most gentile Europeans retained their traditional anti-Semitic animus against an outgroup. To that animus was added a growing resentment against what seemed to be a disproportionate representation of Jews in merchandising, retailing, finance, and the free professions such as academia, law, and medicine. As Europe rapidly industrialized in the 19th century, traditional small merchants, artisans, and rural smallholders were being left behind. Jews were an easy target for their resentment, especially when Jews were their creditors or when Jewish department stores (then a new retailing concept) displaced small independent merchants. Many Europeans, for whom religious anti-Semitism had long been a settled fact of their culture, now gave heed to stories of supposed Jewish economic domination and began to speak of a “Jewish problem.” Yet an even more ominous development was also on the rise: an anti-Semitism based not on religious or economic discrimination, but on race. THE RISE OF RACIAL ANTI-SEMITISM On the one hand, religious anti-Semitism envisioned a solution to the “Jewish problem” through conversion to Christianity; on the other, liberal anti-Semitism pushed for Jewish emancipation that would lead to assimilation into the national community. Both solutions sought the eventual disappearance of the Jews, though both addressed the “problem” by believing Jews would voluntarily change when offered the self-evident blessings of Christian religion or society. Yet racial anti-Semitism held that Jews could not change. Religious confession and social integration were mutable qualities, but race was immutable. For racial anti-Semites, it followed that the “Jewish problem” could be solved only by the segregation, exclusion, and ultimate removal of racial aliens from the racial community. How did such a pernicious doctrine arise? While religious anti-Semitism is as old as the Common Era, and economic discrimination had been practiced since at least the feudal era, racial anti-Semitism was a modern development. The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

26 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

inspired a worldwide intellectual ferment. The sensation brought wide attention to an 1855 work, Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, by the French ethnologist Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau. His thesis, which “obsessed on the idea that history was entirely determined by race,” had little impact in France but was widely endorsed in Germany where many local Gobineau Societies were established (Dwork & van Pelt, 2002, pp. 20–22). Germans were attracted by Gobineau’s argument that “racial vitality” is the engine of human history. Since this vitality varied among the races, these races are innately unequal with the White race (and especially the putative Aryans) occupying the top of the hierarchy. Retaining that position required Aryans to avoid interbreeding with lower races. In 1869, an English cousin of Darwin, Sir Francis Galton, published Hereditary Genius, in which he coined the word “eugenics” and contended that inherited intelligence levels are distributed across populations in the same way as the inherited physical norms of height and weight. A leading German popularizer of Social Darwinism, the zoologist Ernst Haeckel, claimed in his General Morphology of 1866 that nation-states may be compared to biological organisms and thus subject to the laws of natural selection and survival of the fittest. By century’s end, his views had gained such currency within German society that his Social Darwinist paean, The Riddle of the World, “became a runaway bestseller when it was published in 1899” (Evans, 2003, p. 36). The word “anti-Semite” was coined in an 1873 pamphlet, The Victory of Judaism Over Germanism, written by Wilhelm Marr. Between 1870 and 1900, an estimated 1,200 publications were printed in Germany on the “minority” question, more than all other political topics combined, and the vast majority of these from an anti-Semitic perspective (Goldhagen, 1996, p. 64). Yet all the anti-Semitic tracts then in circulation “were overshadowed by the Anglo-German writer Houston Chamberlain’s The Foundation of the Nineteenth Century,” published in 1899. Chamberlain, the son-in-law of famed German composer and anti-Semite Richard Wagner, “argued that the antiquity and mobility of the Jewish people illustrate the confrontation between superior Aryans and parasitic Semites” (Cohn-Sherbok, 2002, p. 215). The significance of Chamberlain is that he popularized a connection between the “scientific” Social Darwinist ideas swirling through Germany in the second half of the 19th century and the emerging popular resentment against the recent legal emancipation of Jewry. “It took Wagner’s circle to introduce explicit anti-Semitism into racist discourse” by simplifying Gobineau’s view of history as a racial struggle into “a struggle between the Aryan or Nordic type and the Jew, the race and counter-race” and connecting that struggle with German national destiny (Dwork & van Pelt, 2002, p. 23). No longer could the “Jewish Question” be solved through baptism and conversion; the Jews were not redeemable, for, while they could change their religion, they could not change their race. In contrast to 19th-century liberals who legislated Jewish emancipation in the hope that the Jews would disappear

FROM DARWIN TO DEATH WAGONS

/

27

through assimilation, racial anti-Semites believed the only solution was exclusion of Jews from Aryan society. Onto this stage strode Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party and, from 1933, chancellor of the German Reich. The degree to which Hitler either reflected or shaped the society around him is debated by Holocaust scholars (e.g., see Rosenbaum, 1998), although historians on all sides agree that his movement constructed its political maxims out of German nationalist and völkisch themes, which long predated National Socialism. Hitler’s (1943) own manifesto, Mein Kampf, cobbles together such themes with its assertion, for example, that “all occurrences in world history are only the expression of the races’ instinct of self-preservation” (p. 296). In the dictator’s cosmology, finite individuals were nothing and could find their fulfillment only in the eternal life of the race and, in particular, the state, which is “the living organism of a nationality” and “assures the preservation of that nationality” (p. 394). Because it is “racial elements which bestow culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind” (p. 394), the races may be classed, from highest to lowest, as either culture-founding, culture-bearing, or culture-destroying. The highest races preserve themselves by safeguarding their blood against intermixture with lower races, while the lower seek to raise themselves by diluting the blood of their betters. As such, life is a struggle for existence and the two powerful life-instincts of “hunger and love” (p. 285) are the engines of human action. For by satisfying their hunger, humans can live today, and by satisfying their loveinstinct, humans can live on tomorrow in their offspring. Yet even while Hitler was rising as a political figure during the 1920s and early 1930s, the eugenics movement represented cutting-edge science throughout Europe and North America (Black, 2003; Friedlander, 1995). Thus, when the Nazis came to power, their program of “positive” and “negative” eugenics (i.e., encouraging the fit to breed and discouraging the unfit) gained significant support among the German elites who shaped public opinion. Government loans to encourage fecundity were widely applauded by the masses. A law authorizing sterilization of the handicapped—long advocated by eugenicists and seriously considered prior to the Nazi takeover—was promulgated in July 1933, less than six months after Hitler was appointed German chancellor. An estimated 300,000 people were sterilized in the years before the war (Friedlander, 1995, p. 30). As a leading German physician wrote at the time, “All work has only one great meaning: the Volk” and to ignore this reality would reduce medicine to mere technique. Nazi reform of medical education must therefore begin “by refashioning the curriculum to include such new disciplines as demographic policy and racial eugenics” so that institutions can “teach the student that the health of the Volk stands above the health of the individual as the ultimate aim of the art of medicine, [and] hence to be a doctor to the [collective] people is more important than science itself!” Physicians thus had a “holy obligation” and “duty as an alert biological soldier” to implement the sterilization law as

28 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

“a pillar of the National Socialist state” and to “be concerned not only with the present generation, but should strive to transcend it and direct its efforts toward the health of the eternal Volk” (Löhr, 1935, as cited in Mosse, 1966, pp. 233–234). DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAS VANS As early as 1935, Hitler told intimates that when the time came and under the cover the war, he would move from sterilization of those deemed unfit toward their active euthanasia (Friedlander, 1995, p. 39). Then in 1938, when Hitler was petitioned by a Leipzig couple to grant a “mercy death” to their incurably deformed infant, the dictator took the occasion to authorize secret planning toward a general child euthanasia program. This program, run by his personal chancellery, commenced in the summer of 1939, even as war broke out that September. The following month, Hitler signed a general remit—symbolically backdated to September 1, the start of the war—for his chancellery head to initiate euthanizing handicapped adults. But Hitler’s personal chancellery was too small to run such a large operation. Additional staff were hired and housed in a confiscated Jewish villa at Tiergarten Strasse 4, so that the program became known among intimates simply as “T4.” And because a number of chancellery officials were members of the SS, they called upon the Black Corps for assistance. “Euthanasia” centers were secretly established at sanitoria and other converted buildings across the Reich. Rooms in these centers were sealed and outfitted to admit gas from carbon monoxide canisters. Officials in the program estimated 70,000 “eligible” adults lived in German lands, and by the summer of 1941 achieved their goal. But the need to transport victims on public roads, and afterwards to issue suspiciously faked death certificates to their families, sparked widespread rumors. Protests, often voiced through the churches, were heard. Hitler decided in August 1941 that, because the euthanasia program had achieved its numerical goal and now domestic tranquility was needed as the war expanded into the Soviet Union, it was time to quell popular discontent and end the “official” euthanasia project. Besides, euthanasia operations could surreptitiously continue among SS concentration camp inmates. This program, code-named “14f13” after a paragraph in the camp regulations, claimed some 20,000 lives (Friendlander, 1995, p. 150). And as the SS moved toward its “final solution of the Jewish question in Europe,” the experienced euthanasia personnel were instrumental in setting up stationary gas chambers at the SS death camps. Gas vans were initially used in the euthanasia program and likely originated with the Criminal Technical Institute, an SS police lab that could obtain the gas canisters needed for the child and adult euthanasia programs (Friendlander, 1995, p. 139). Who invented the vans is unclear, but by 1940 they were used by a special SS commando to kill asylum patients in Polish territory annexed

FROM DARWIN TO DEATH WAGONS

/

29

to the Reich; territory that included the village of Chelmno where, in December 1941, the first operational death camp—and the only one to kill with mobile gas vans rather than stationary gas chambers—was established. But the vans employed in 1940 used carbon monoxide gas from canisters rather than exhaust gas. Such vans would have been difficult to operate in Soviet lands invaded by Germany in June 1941 since the bulky, heavy, and expensive canisters could not practicably have been supplied from factories in the German Reich to the distant East. Shortly after the invasion, however, the notion arose of employing mobile gas vans that used their own exhaust gas, rather than carbon monoxide canisters, to kill victims. The idea was a response to a growing “problem” being experienced by special SS shooting squads, the notorious Einsatzgruppen, which since June 1941 had fanned out across the conquered lands with a mandate to massacre Soviet Jews. That problem came to a head on August 15, 1941, when Himmler visited Einsatzgruppe B in Minsk and asked its commander, Arthur Nebe, to execute 100 Jews so that the Reichsführer-SS might see an Aktion for himself. When Himmler was visibly disturbed, he was told of the mounting psychological strain experienced by the shooters. Later that day, Himmler asked Nebe to devise a less unnerving procedure for killing Jews (Hilberg, 2003, p. 343). So the SS commander asked for and received permission from the Reichsführer to attempt dynamiting a test group of victims. As it happened, though, Nebe was an administrator from Berlin on temporary assignment to gain field experience. His normal position was head of the Reich Criminal Police Main Office, Germany’s plainclothes detective police force that operated as a branch of the mammoth Reich Security Main Office headed by Himmler protégé Reinhard Heydrich. Nebe asked a deputy to have a chemist at his bureau’s police lab, the Criminal Technical Institute, procure the dynamite and conduct the experiment (Browning, 2004, p. 354). Yet the month before Himmler’s visit, Nebe had experienced his own close call with death after driving home drunk from a party and falling asleep in his car with the motor still running. He mentioned to lab director Walter Heess the possibility of using exhaust gas to kill Jews rather than the bottled gas used in the euthanasia program. Heess relayed the idea to his chief chemist, Albert Widmann, when the two were riding the Berlin subway together (Browning, 2004, p. 355; Dwork & van Pelt, 2002, p. 276). Thus, when Nebe summoned Widmann to bring both dynamite and hoses for experiments in Minsk, the latter knew what was in prospect. For the dynamite procedure, mental patients from a nearby asylum were rounded up. “The gruesome experiment required two explosions to kill all the test victims locked in a bunker and left parts of bodies strewn about and even hanging from nearby trees” (Browning, 2004, p. 355). By contrast, mental patients were more “satisfactorily” killed after being placed inside sealed rooms into which exhaust gas was introduced via hoses from vehicles parked outside.

30 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Based on these impromptu results, Heydrich decided to move forward with more tests. But the Criminal Technical Institute was primarily a police lab. So the task was assigned to Walter Rauff, head of the Technical Matters Group within Heydrich’s Administration and Finance Office. Rauff oversaw five separate divisions, among them the Security Police transportation service headed by Friedrich Pradel. In turn, Pradel supervised the Berlin motorpool, whose 4,000 vehicles were maintained by foreman Harry Wentritt. Since Rauff was preoccupied by ongoing high-level negotiations with the Wehrmacht High Command to obtain munitions for the Einsatzgruppen shooting actions (while also splitting his time in Prague performing special tasks for Heydrich), practical execution of the project fell to Pradel. He asked Wentritt if it was feasible to vent exhaust gas into a closed van, and received an affirmative reply. Rauff then suggested to Pradel that he acquire truck compartments from Gaubschat, a Berlin factory, on the pretext that the specially sealed boxes were needed to transport dead victims of a spotted fever epidemic. The company also agreed to mount the superstructures onto truck chassis that Pradel would provide (Beer, 1987). But the latter’s initial attempt to acquire five truck chassis from the Wehrmacht was turned down, necessitating Rauff’s personal intervention to secure the vehicles (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 53). Once the chassis and bodies were assembled by Gaubschat, the vans were taken to Wentritt’s garage. There in secrecy, his mechanics ran a removable hose from the exhaust pipe to a hole drilled in the van compartment. To find out how long it took for carbon monoxide levels to reach 1%, trials were conducted by police lab chemists wearing gas masks. A prototype van was then tested on a group of about 30 Russian POWS from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Results were “satisfactory” and, by November or December 1941, about 20 Sonderwagen (“special vans”) were ready for service. Three were furnished to the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Warthegau (a Polish district annexed by Germany) at the request of its Gauleiter (Nazi regional governor) in order to liquidate the Lodz ghetto (Kershaw, 2008, pp. 60–88) and make room there for new shipments of Jews deported from the West; the remaining vans were dispatched for field service with the Einsatzgruppen in Soviet territory (Browning, 2004, p. 355; Kogon et al., 1993, p. 53). At the same time, Rauff hired August Becker, a chemical expert who had worked with the Criminal Technical Institute in the earlier euthanasia program, to act as field inspector for the gas van program. In time, a fleet of about 20 gas vans was in operation, about half on Soviet territory and the rest in Eastern Europe. When the vans were deployed by early 1942, Heydrich planned for such devices to become the chief killing method. At the infamous Wansee Conference of January 20, 1942, when Heydrich convoked high-ranking officials from the various government ministries to coordinate implementation of the Final Solution, he reportedly remarked to his guests upon the “buses that are used to transport the Jews from the train station to the camp, from the camp to the work

FROM DARWIN TO DEATH WAGONS

/

31

sites, and into which deadly gas is pumped during the drive” (Wildt, 2010, p. 326). Even as early as October 1941, plans were afoot to employ gas vans in stationary death camps at Chelmno in the German-annexed section of Poland, and at Riga and Minsk in what the Germans called the Reichskommisariat Ostland (Wildt, 2010, p. 326). Only the Chelmno camp was built, becoming the first operational death camp on December 8, 1941. Yet even as vans were being supplied by Rauff’s office to the Einsatzgruppen and the Chelmno death camp, competing alternatives for “humane” killing methods were being devised by other SS bureaus. During the Final Solution, a total of six killing centers were operated: one (Chelmno) by the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Posen Region, which encompassed the Warthegau; three (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka) by the SS and Police Leader of the Lublin District, who had originally been charged by Himmler with establishing a “Jewish reservation” in Polish territory not annexed by the Reich; and two (Auschwitz, Majdanek) by the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office as extensions of its concentration camp system, so that its two killing centers also housed prisoners for slave labor (Friedlander, 1995, p. 287). While the Posen camp employed gas vans, the Lublin camps procured former euthanasia personnel to install gas chambers using carbon monoxide pumped in from stationary engines (Treblinka used a diesel engine from a captured Russian submarine). And the Economic and Administrative Main Office camps employed prussic acid pellets; because its camps also housed slave labor, supplies of Zyklon B were already on hand as a pesticide to keep down vermin. OPERATIONAL CHALLENGES IN THE FIELD The importance of the Sonderwagen project is suggested by the fact that Heydrich’s former personal chauffeur was assigned to be its first driver (Breitman, 1991, p. 214). But in this hideous competition, the gas vans were seriously “disadvantaged.” From the first, the vehicles created unanticipated problems. Given their specialized use, Pradel had to acquire chassis and truck bodies from separate sources. The exigencies of wartime meant that he could not always obtain chassis from the same manufacturer. Work on the bodies had to be outsourced to Gaubschat. Then to preserve secrecy, final modifications were made by SS welders in Wentritt’s garage. Once the gas vans entered service in the field, complaints quickly mounted. A memo dated 27 April 1942, discussed how the “cargo” might be unloaded more quickly if vans could be modified with equipment to tip up the truck compartment or its floor (Beer, 1987). Then a report sent by Becker (Hochstadt, 2004, pp. 137–138) from Kiev and dated 16 May 1942, stated, “The trucks . . . get stuck in the rain” and “The place of execution . . . [lies] off traveled roads and is thus by its location already hard to reach, in damp or wet weather not at all.” When ordinary wear and tear occurred, parts could be obtained only “by

32 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

persuasion and bribery,” since “transport to Berlin [for repairs] would be much too expensive and require too much fuel.” Then, too, “Because of the uneven land and the indescribable condition of the roads, the seals and rivets came loose over time.” Thus, during Aktionen, the SS personnel had to be “kept as far away as possible . . . so that their health won’t be harmed by leaking gases.” Even then, SS personnel who unloaded the bodies “complained to me about headaches which appear after each unloading.” Nor were prisoners conscripted to do the unloading, for “fear that [they] . . . would use an opportune moment to flee.” Finally, reported Becker, The gassing is without exception not properly done. In order to finish the action as fast as possible, the drivers fully open the throttle. With this method those to be executed suffer death by suffocation and not, as planned, by being put to sleep. My instructions have shown that by proper use of the pedal, death comes more quickly and the prisoners fall asleep peacefully. The distorted faces and excretions, which have been seen previously, can no longer be noticed. (Hochstadt, 2004, p. 138)

By the time of Becker’s report in May 1942, the SS had already been engaged for at least half a year in its “Final Solution,” or an organized programmatic attempt (rather than ad hoc or sporadic persecution) at the physical elimination (rather than the mere removal and deportation) of the Jews on a continental scale (rather than only Soviet Jews). But this SS program was also competing for resources—building materials, rolling stock, fuel supplies, budget allocations— with the Wehrmacht (which was in the midst of the largest military invasion in history) and civilian agencies that advocated conservation of Jewish labor until after the war. Voices competing to control aspects of Judenpolitik were many: regional Gauleiter such as the demagogic Streicher; Goebbels’s propaganda ministry; Goering’s Four Year Plan office; Ribbentrop’s Foreign Office; Frank’s General Government of occupied Poland; Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories; the Interior Ministry; the Justice Ministry; the Economics Ministry; the Armaments Ministry; the Plenipotentiary for Labor; the Party Chancellery; the Führer Chancellery; various regional and local agencies; and Himmler’s SS. Even to run the gas vans, the SS depended on the Wehrmacht for allocations of motor fuel and therefore had to compete with other military priorities (Tooze, 2007, p. 481). In fact, by May 1942 (about the time of Becker’s report to Rauff), Heydrich was confiding to intimates that the Sonderwagen program was “an attempt that failed, to [his] great regret, due to inadequate technology. The buses are too small and the death rates too low; in addition there are other annoying problems” (Wildt, 2010, p. 326). So in the spring of 1942, even as the Sipo Technical Matters Group discussed among themselves various technical improvements to remedy the gas vans’ operational shortcomings, other SS bureaus, relying on the

FROM DARWIN TO DEATH WAGONS

/

33

experienced T4 experts, prepared to open extermination camps with stationary gas chambers. Soon the SS would discover it was vastly more efficient to transport the victims to the gas than vice versa. And other momentous events beyond the Group’s control also intervened. Heydrich was attacked by a car bomb in Prague on May 27 and died eight days later, so that Rauff lost his powerful sponsor. A month later, Rauff decided his future was not in running the Sonderwagen program; better to prove himself again in the field. In late July, he accepted command of an Einsatzcommando that was being formed to travel behind Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps; if the planned conquest of Palestine was achieved, his unit could liquidate Jews in their own homeland. Thus, the gas van program Rauff left behind began to wind down. Though 20 vans had been built by the end of June, an order for 10 more special compartments remained unfilled (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 54). By fall, Rauff had officially relinquished his position as head of department II D (Nizkor, 2002). In September 1942, Becker wrapped up his inspection tour. About that time, the Wehrmacht’s second and final offensive against the Soviets was bogging down near Stalingrad, thus limiting the scope for new Einsatzgruppen operations. Besides, “By the end of 1942, the Einsatzgruppen and their SS cohorts had largely fulfilled their mission” (Rhodes, 2002, p. 257). Then, too, the stationary gas chambers had proven their superior “efficiency” and were manufacturing death at horrifically unprecedented rates. Heydrich’s Reich Security Main Office had failed in its bid to directly conduct the exterminations through its gas van technology. Compared to the millions murdered in the gas chambers of Poland—or even the estimated 1.5 million executed in mass shootings—the mobile vans were retired from their deadly service with “only” some 150,000 victims “credited” to their account, along with another 150,000 murdered by the vans assigned to Chelmno (Greif, 2001, p. 231).

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 3

The People’s Community

ORGANIZATIONS AS OPEN SYSTEMS Boundary objects, as described in the opening chapter, are said to bridge the interstices of organizations because they combine plasticity with elements “robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Star & Griesemer, 1989, p. 393). And as noted in the previous chapter, one of the integrative elements in facilitating a common identity for the gas van murderers of the Sipo Technical Matters Group was a shared culture of anti-Semitism. The religious and economic basis of this hatred had a long history in European society and, since the emergence of Social Darwinism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had intensified by acquiring a racial animus. Thus, the basis of anti-Semitism shifted from the mutable trait of religious confession to the immutable trait of racial identification, a historical development that helped the killers overcome more traditional inhibitions against murder. In time, the Nazi establishment developed what Browning (2004) called a “chimeric anti-Semitism.” Yet this chimera gained directive force because it intersubjectively cohered with an even more powerful schema in German culture, that of the Volksgemeinschaft or racial people’s community. Thus, the commonplace slogan “The Jews Are Our Misfortune” (Die Juden sind unser Unglück) may have interlocked with Germans’ self-perception as a historically exceptional if ill-starred community of fate, while the common metaphor JEWS ARE PARASITES may have gained resonance by offering a neatly symmetrical contrast that instantiated Germans’ communitarian view of themselves. The chimera of the wandering Jew (an age-old myth), of the “rootless cosmopolitan” (a common phrase of the time), may have interlocked with Germans’ cultural schemas regarding their own metaphoric vision of a Volksgemeinschaft that was organically bound through Blut und Boden (blood and soil), and which therefore excluded not only Jews but other Fremde (strangers) such as the Sinti and Roma, while 35

36 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

frowning on such nonconformist or “asocial” Germans ranging from homosexuals to Jehovah’s Witnesses. For that reason, Popular support for National Socialism was based on ideological norms which had little directly to do with anti-Semitism and persecution of the Jews, and which can be summed up most adequately by the sense of social, political, and moral order embodied in the term Volksgemeinschaft (“National Community”), ensured by a strong state which would suppress conflict to guarantee strength through unity. (Kershaw, 2008, p. 185)

Exploring the cultural touchstones of Nazi German society is important for grasping how the everyday documents of the Sipo Technical Matters Group may have functioned as boundary objects to create spaces for its competing interests to temporarily cooperate. The broader picture of Third Reich culture matters because, as postmodern scholarship in organization studies asserts, organizations are not closed systems (as in the traditional “container” metaphor). As Alvesson (2002) explained, Organizations can be understood as shaping local versions of broader societal and locally developed cultural manifestations in a multitude of ways. Organizational cultures are then best understood not as unitary wholes or as stable sets of subcultures but as mixtures of cultural manifestations of different levels and kinds. (pp. 190–191)

Martin (2002) demonstrated how drawing boundaries around organizational cultures (again, as in the container metaphor) is problematic because boundaries are “moveable, fluctuating, permeable, blurred, and dangerous” (p. 315). Rather, “an organization is a nexus, in which a variety of internal and external cultural influences come together” (p. 339) and where the latter may be related to race, gender, socioeconomic status, national culture, industry, and profession. Indeed, suggested Keyton (2005), it is “more accurate to think of any organizational culture as being many cultures that are blurred, overlapped, and nested to create an organizational multiculture” so that “the way in which subcultures relate to one another is the organization’s culture” (p. 67). Everyday documents are, as this study endeavors to demonstrate, vital means for organizational subcultures to negotiate their relations. Using as a framework Martin’s (1992, 2002; Martin et al., 2006) “three-perspective theory,” which suggests that organizational cultures manifest aspects of integration, differentiation, and fragmentation, this chapter begins by exploring those cultural aspects (national, institutional, organizational) that may have been integrative for the SS gas van program participants, and ends by introducing a key differentiating aspect of SS organizational culture, namely, its unsuccessful attempt, as an ideologically driven Party formation, at absorbing Germany’s professionally driven regular police forces. Then the next chapter picks up the differentiating

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

37

aspect of the Sipo Technical Matters Group’s subcultures, before finally exploring the fragmenting aspect of individual members’ motivations and the shifting nature of their interrelations. For if we can see the killers’ organizational milieu not as a stable “container-like” unity, but as a fluid environment of constantly shifting consensus and dissensus that reflected larger as well as local discourses, we can begin to see their documents as objects that worked across boundaries when the integrative exigence of the Final Solution arose. UNIFYING PRINCIPLES OF INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE Elsewhere (Ward, 2008) I have argued that, based on my discourse analyses of autobiographies by ordinary Germans who lived through the Third Reich, Germans of the period may have broadly shared a cultural schema in which humans are seen primarily as objects rather than initiators of action. Thus, at a broad societal level, this cultural view of human activity may have been an integrating aspect of organizational life for members of the Sipo Technical Matters Group and provided one basis for negotiating their relations and constructing at least a short-term coherent social reality that encompassed genocide. This assertion is based on the assumption that one function of culture is to cognitively organize shared knowledge into schemas that permit culture members to swiftly derive cultural meanings enchained to words, phrases, images, and concepts. These skeins of meaning may cohere into cultural models as they become “organized into prototypical event sequences enacted in simplified worlds” (Quinn & Holland, 1987, p. 22). By triggering shared schemas that delineate concepts and the relations between them, culture members swiftly communicate inferences, listeners quickly fill in missing information to accurately interpret those inferences, and members are provided with mental scenarios with which to frame their encounters and experiences with the world. As cultural models coalesce—perhaps around expert opinion, folk theories, intrinsic persuasiveness, lived experience, conformity with observed conditions, or cultural sanction—they gain broad acceptance and become socialized until the models accord with individuals’ views of themselves, what they find motivationally satisfying, and what they experience as obligations. Thus, a cultural model that saw humans as the objects of action may have gathered directive force for Nazi-era Germans because the model was built on schemas that “hung together” and had coherence for their lived experience. That lived experience is repeatedly expressed in the autobiographies I analyzed, through recurring references to the severe dislocations caused by the First World War (1914–1918), the Communist revolution (1918–1919) and monetary hyperinflation (1922–1923) that followed, and the Great Depression (1929–1932). These events are touchstones for the majority of life stories examined. The cultural model that underlies these accounts is a simplified world where the prototypical sequence of events reveals the action of external

38 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

forces over which the individual has no control. Given the stability of this schema, as suggested in the autobiographies, the momentous events of “national reawakening” during the Third Reich and emergence of a heroic leader may have instantiated for ordinary Germans the cultural model INDIVIDUALS ARE OBJECTS and thus “facilitated the task of communicating familiar inferences about the world” and “allowed these inferences to be made swiftly and accurately in the first place” (Quinn & Holland, 1987, p. 52). Just as my earlier research suggested a connection between this cultural model and the willingness of SS field personnel to accept killing orders, in the same way the model may have contributed to the willingness of SS headquarters personnel, including members of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, to administer those orders and, under the integrative exigence of orders from above, at least temporarily negotiate among their own competing interests the consensus required to do so. The cultural model INDIVIDUALS ARE OBJECTS may also help explain the popular salience, as described above, of the Volksgemeinschaft myth. At bottom, the concept of the racial people’s community formed the basis of what Koonz (2003) has called the “Nazi conscience.” She pointed out, “Although it may be repugnant to conceive of mass murderers acting in accordance with an ethos that they believed vindicated their crimes,” the Nazis were “modern secularists” who “followed a coherent set of severe ethical maxims derived from broad philosophical concepts” which “they saw as appropriate to their Aryan community.” In “assert[ing] the superiority of their own communitarian values,” they fostered a racial-ethnic public culture that offered not just “its savage hatreds but its lofty ideals,” “relied not only on repression but also an appeal to communal ideals of civic improvement,” and built “a vibrant public culture founded on self-denial and collective revival” (pp. 1–3). Thus, Koonz concluded, “The road to Auschwitz was paved with righteousness.” In his exposition of modern political religions, Burleigh (2007) describes how “the fundamental structure of the Nazi creed was soteriological, a redemptive story of suffering and deliverance, a sentimental journey from misery to glory, from division to mystic unity based on the blood bond that linked souls.” Indeed, “Even when Nazism appeared most indebted to modern science, namely in claiming that its racism was ‘scientific,’ this discourse was as much cultural and religious, as anyone . . . can readily establish” (pp. 105–106). The power of this story, of the reawakening and redemption of the mystic People’s Community, was such that Hitler’s personal hold on the vast majority of Germans stemmed from and expressed, as far as the content of his message went, three different and suprahistorical creeds: the ultimate purity of the racial community, the ultimate crushing of Bolshevism and plutocracy, and the ultimate millennial redemption (borrowed from Christian themes known to all). (Friedländer, 2007, p. xx)

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

39

The concept of Volksgemeinschaft—variously translated into English as either national community, people’s community, or racial community—also instantiated in the German mind a binary opposition between Gemeinschaft (“community”) and Gesellschaft (“society”). The former was associated with Kultur and the organic life of a people, while the latter was linked to Zivilisation and the atomistic tendencies of urban and industrial modernity. Thus, Volksgemeinschaft became the unifying conception for the institutional culture of the National Socialist movement. For Hitler and his circle saw National Socialism as a great popular movement. The Party was only the political expression of that movement, while the Volksgemeinschaft embodied the “socialist” side of National Socialism and its goal of creating a racially based national community in which class privilege was leveled and all citizens of German blood could advance by merit. Such a “national reawakening” struck a responsive chord in a people who had been (unjustly, they believed) defeated in war and devastated by hyperinflation and depression. By the same token, the regime stoked this popular sentiment with myriad measures to increase racial consciousness (e.g., see Burleigh & Wipperman, 1991; Fritzsche, 2008; Koonz, 2003). For example, after the September 1935 enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, “By 1936 almost all Germans—all who were not Jewish—had begun to prepare for themselves an Ahnenpass, or racial passport,” carefully filling out blank forms “that could be purchased in any bookshop” and then using the document “to enroll in a Nazi youth group, serve in the Wehrmacht, get married, or take a [state-subsidized] vacation trip” (Fritzsche, 2008, p. 76). The literature on the place of the “people’s community” in Nazi thought and popular discourse during the Third Reich is vast. But in relation to Nazi ruling structures, the historian Wildt (2010) argued that “the regime intentionally created a specific kind of state order in the sense of a racist ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ whose institutions were then capable of this kind of radical practice . . . [for which] such a ‘Volksgemeinschaft [was] precisely the prerequisite” (pp. 435–436). As regards the Nazi institutional culture that may have influenced the discourses of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, two facets of the Volksgemeinschaft may stand out as examples. First, Nazi institutional culture advocated a distinctive view of technology that reinscribed technological pursuits as aesthetic expressions of Volksgeist or the spirit of the people’s community. This explains how the Nazis could have preached a seemingly preindustrial vision of blood and soil while at the same time embracing the technological fruits of rational Enlightenment meansend calculation. Schoenbaum (1966) argued the Nazi stance toward technology was a “double revolution” (pp. xxi–xxii) in which the Nazis cynically employed technological means to achieve nontechnological ends, thus using technology in a tactical sense but without really believing in it. By contrast, Herf (1986) convincingly argued that the Nazis did believe in technology, but by reinscribing its meaning. Under National Socialism, technology became not a rational

40 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

manifestation of Enlightenment values but an aesthetic expression of Volksgeist. Every dazzlingly modern autobahn and train, every model factory and farm, every people’s car (Volkswagen) and people’s radio (Volksempfänger), expressed the national will-to-power. There was no disjunction for the Nazis between industrial and agricultural virtues, for they incorporated technology into their romantic ideology. Thus, Herf (1986) contended, as “reactionary modernists,” the Nazis rejected Enlightenment rationality while embracing its technological fruits. They “succeeded in incorporating technology into the symbolism and language of Kultur—community, blood, will, self, form, productivity, and finally race—by taking it out of the realm of Zivilisation—reason, intellect, internationalism, materialism, and finance” (p. 16). As Horkheimer and Adorno’s (2002) dialectical theory might suggest, National Socialism responded to the alienating effects of the post-Enlightenment myth of “rationality” by positing a new communitarian myth of its own. Indeed, as Allen (2002) documented, the many industrial enterprises run by the SS were known to install machinery that was operationally inefficient but satisfied an aesthetic desire to glorify the Volk by employing the most “modern” devices. In the same way, the automotive and chemical experts of the SS gas van program operated in an institutional milieu in which technical skill was lauded for its contribution to the people’s community. Second, according to the Nazi Führerprinzip (“leadership principle”), Hitler proclaimed that “the chief purpose of the state was to promote higher personalities to positions of authority: It builds not upon the idea of majority, but upon the idea of personality” (Overy, 2004, p. 100). In the same way, the Leader of the nation would emerge from the people and, in the “truest” sense of democracy, rise naturally as an expression of the national will. The dictator cribbed his Prinzip from a vulgarized reading of Nietzsche that was popular in fin de siécle Europe (p. 103) and promoted by the Pan-German movement that Hitler followed as a young man in Vienna (Hamann, 1999, pp. 243, 236–237). In Germany, too, “Notions of ‘heroic’ leadership had been part of the political culture of the nationalist Right in the years before the First World War” whereby “a rebirth of the nation was promised through the subordination to a ‘great leader’ who would invoke the values of a ‘heroic’ (and mythical) past” (Kershaw, 1998, p. 180). Thus, the Nazi Führerprinzip “was not something grafted on to German political culture, but derived its appeal from a wide, though by no means universal, expectation of a German redeemer” (Overy, 2004, p. 105). In his autobiography Mein Kampf, written in 1924 while Hitler was still a fringe politician, the future dictator declared, The movement must promote respect for personality by all means; it must never forget that in personal worth lies the worth of everything human; that every idea and every achievement is the result of one man’s creative

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

41

force and that the admiration of greatness constitutes, not only a tribute of thanks to the latter, but casts a unifying bond around the grateful. Personality cannot be replaced; especially when it embodies not the mechanical but the cultural and creative element. (Hitler, 1943, p. 352)

Further, wrote Hitler (1943), the importance of the outstanding personality is seen in the fact that “The prerequisite for the creation of an organizational form is and remains the man necessary for its leadership.” Organizational forms are useless without “the suitable leader” whose personality is needed “to direct and drive it forward.” For that reason, while leadership requires ability, “greater importance must be attached to will and energy than to intelligence as such, and most valuable of all is a combination of ability, determination, and perseverance” (p. 349). The Führerprinzip was seen as an antidote to the dysfunctional special-interest politics of the Weimar Republic. Interminable parliamentary wrangling and decision-by-committee would, according to Hitler’s theory, give way to a system in which the ablest leaders would naturally emerge, not by birth or wealth but by merit, as an expression of the group’s collective will, thereby establishing clear lines for action, responsibility, and accountability. In Hitler’s own practice of the Führerprinzip, he set in motion a “polycracy,” a Social Darwinist jungle world where Nazi satraps competed for power and Hitler’s approval. Both before and after his accession to power, Hitler deliberately put followers into overlapping offices (see Read, 2003). This tactic served five purposes: His followers competed with each other rather than potentially combining against him. Disputes could be settled only by Hitler, preserving his power. The “ablest” followers rose to the top. Meanwhile, since Hitler was famously reluctant to make decisions, he could bide his time to see which side prevailed and back the winner. And the system freed Hitler, a notorious bohemian who detested regular hours and working habits (see Speer, 1970), from daily involvement in the minutiae of state affairs. These factors combined with horrific effect to bring about the Jewish Holocaust as the dictator let it be known he desired solutions to the “Jewish question” (Judenfrage), his subordinates competed in “working towards the Führer,” and the competition produced a “cumulative radicalization” that resulted in bulging Jewish ghettos and, ultimately, mass murder. Hitler himself (or at least the myth of the Leader) functioned as a boundary object for temporarily holding together the polycratic Nazi system. Thus, “working towards the Führer” was a key to how the Third Reich operated. . . . Hitler’s personalized form of rule invited radical initiatives from below and offered such initiatives backing, so long as they were in line with his broadly defined goals. This promoted ferocious competition at all levels of the regime . . . In the Darwinist jungle of the Third Reich, the way to power and advancement was through anticipating the “Führer will,” and, without waiting for directives, taking

42 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

initiatives to promote what were presumed to be Hitler’s aims and wishes. (Kershaw, 1998, pp. 529–530)

While the leader cult around Hitler is well-known, the Nazis advocated the Führerprinzip as the organizing principle for all levels of society. The peculiarly egalitarian rank systems of the Nazi Party, Hitler Youth, SA, and SS, in which virtually every rank is designated a Führer, is but one expression of the leadership principle. A similar trend has been noted in contemporary organizations. Citing Deetz’s (1995, p. 87) observation that modern corporations engage in “managing the ‘insides’—the hopes, fears, and aspirations—of workers, rather than their behaviors directly,” Alvesson and Willmott (2004) reported how organizations strive to regulate employees’ self-identities and “produce the appropriate individual” by employing “the now widely used terms ‘leader’ and ‘team leader’ . . . which appeal to the positive cultural valences assigned to discourses of supremacy and sport” (p. 437). In the Third Reich, the historian Peukert (1987) affirmed, “Not the least of the achievements of National Socialist mass organizations was that . . . they provided a considerable number of people with tasks and jobs which boosted their sense of self-esteem and even offered real if limited opportunities for promotion” (p. 72). And as we will see below, the Nazi “leadership principle” was an important integrative element within the cultures of the SS and the Sipo Technical Matters Group. The principle facilitated the rhetorical boundary work of their documents by bringing into being an organizational culture that provided explicit frames for the roles of senders and receivers while simultaneously giving implicit sanction to the competition between them over power and knowledge. As boundary objects, then, documents created zones that could accommodate both custom and contestation. ASPECTS OF SS ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE The Führerprinzip, with its idea that outstanding personalities should by their merits rise to leadership as an expression of a group’s collective will, introduced the broader cultural theme of Volksgemeinschaft into the organizational life of the Third Reich. Eighty years before Alvesson and Wilmott noted how organizations tap into attractive cultural themes by employing the terms “leader” and “team leader,” thereby channeling employees’ aspirations into “appropriate” self-identities, the SS was already doing so. Thus, the personnel of the Sipo Technical Matters Group included a “senior storm unit leader” (Rauff), “main storm leader” (Pradel), and “junior storm leaders” (Wentritt and Becker). Such SS rank titles not only affirmed the place of the Führerprinzip in its organizational culture, but also highlighted two other aspects of that culture that are especially salient for the present study: the valence given to “fighting spirit” and the ongoing internal friction that resulted from the absorption of Germany’s civil-service professional police forces into the ideologically driven Party organization that was Himmler’s SS.

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

43

As described at the outset, the SS was the archetype of Nazi polycracy. The practical outworking of the Führerprinzip in SS organizational culture resulted in ceaseless internal competition among overlapping power bases. Because the SS grew ad hoc as Himmler accreted new offices and powers, SS personnel often held multiple positions within different SS sections—or combined SS activity with positions in state government or the Nazi party—to consolidate their personal power. And because the Schwarzecorps (Black Corps) styled itself as a kind of elite third branch of government—not the state, not the party, but the Leader’s personal executive (Krausnick, Buchheim, Broszat, & Jacobsen, 1968)—Himmler sought to cultivate a kaempfende Verwaltung (“fighting administration”) by recruiting university men, many of whom held doctorates, with Faehigkeit zur Hingabe an den absoluten Wert einer Idee or the ability to devote themselves to the absolute value of an idea (Wildt, 2003, pp. 129, 205). Reflecting the Social Darwinist worldview of the Nazi movement, SS training programs urged each member “to be a fighter on principle, a fighter for fighting’s sake” (Buchheim, 1968, p. 322) and cultivated an “open” leadership style through training that “abandoned overly simplistic indoctrination in favor of . . . inventiveness” and initiative (Aly, 2000, p. 55). Substantive doctrine and theory “was astonishingly meager” and educational materials “no more than . . . vaporizings” (Buchheim, 1968, p. 319); in fact, because the SS had no central animating vision except to be elite defenders of the National Socialist state— and since it operated as a “irregular” executive within the regime’s extralegal sphere—then “all that mattered was maximum readiness and ability on the part of the SS man for certain concrete and specific purposes” and the emphasis on fighting spirit really meant that “in practice success was all that mattered” (p. 327). The SS mentality, then, stressed “heroic realism,” “soldierly bearing” and “hardness,” but grounded these concepts in the Nazi worldview of Volk and Führer in order to uphold the movement’s ideal of the “political soldier” (pp. 319–348). Thus could Himmler, in his infamous Posen Speech of October 1943, extol the “glory” of genocide as expressing the “fundamental principle” that SS members could remain “honest, decent, loyal, and comradely” by practicing “the most important virtues” of loyalty, obedience, bravery, truthfulness, honesty, fellowship, acceptance of responsibility, industry, and abstinence (Westermann, 2005, p. 93). However, the culture of the SS (a Party organization) collided with that of Germany’s regular police forces (a State apparatus) when the two were merged after 1936. Browder (1990, 1996) has written extensively on Himmler’s accumulation of power: his 1929 appointment as leader of the Party’s Schutzstaffeln (Protective Squad) that guarded Hitler; his competition with Goering and Goebbels to build a Party security service; his 1934 ascendance over the Sturmabteilung (SA stormtroopers) when the unruly brownshirts were brought to heel by Hitler; and his gradual takeover of the pre-Nazi political police forces of the various German states. But the key moment was Himmler’s June

44 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

1936 appointment by Hitler as Chief of the German Police, at one stroke freeing Himmler from interference by the Reich Interior Ministry and allowing him to consolidate the SS and regular police into a single entity. Yet the melding of SS subculture and professional police subculture never quite “took.” Himmler himself expected it would require a generation to mold the organizational culture he envisioned. Prior to Himmler’s 1936 appointment, there had never been a national police body in Germany, not even an equivalent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police forces answered to the various state and municipal governments, although the Reich government mandated adoption of some common standards as a condition for receiving federal subsidies. Thus, most state’s police forces were divided into uniformed Order Police (Ordnungspolizei or Orpo), which encompassed the metropolitan Protective Police (Schutzpolizei or Schupo) and the rural Gendarmerie; and the plainclothes Criminal Police (Kriminalpolizei or Kripo) for ordinary detective work, and political police for combating the political street violence, strikes, putsch attempts, and other threats to public order that were rampant in Weimar Germany. The political police in Prussia, the German state that occupied two thirds of Reich territory, were called the Secret State Police (Geheimestaatspolizei or Gestapo). Each of these branches had, as Browder (1990, 1996) has documented at length, their individual subcultures, training requirements, professional standards, rank titles, and career paths. At the same time, by 1936 the SS had, as a Party organ, created its own Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst or SD) under Heydrich as an intelligence bureau for monitoring threats to the state. The SD had developed its own subculture, appealing to individuals who were drawn to espionage and the ideological mission of shaping the new Nazi state. When Himmler became Chief of the German Police, he allowed the regular uniformed police (Orpo) to retain a separate organization. But he put Kripo and Gestapo under a new umbrella to be called the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo), which was then placed under Heydrich. Thus, the professional plainclothes detectives of the Kripo and Gestapo were thrown together with ideologically motivated Party spies of the SD to create an entity known as “Sipo and SD,” whose subcomponents were often in friction. Himmler’s overarching vision was to combine SS and police into a single State Protection Corps. But as Höhne (1969) has described, the Sipo and SD were as difficult to combine as oil and water. The members of the Sipo and SD were drawn from different backgrounds. The Sicherheitspolizei consisted primarily of the traditional police officials and administrative law experts; the SD intelligence organization, on the other hand, was a bustling, heterogeneous collection of men thrown up by the arbitrary SS career regulations—a further reflection of the fact that the SD was a Party organization and the Sicherheitspolizei a State institution. (p. 253)

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

45

The SD did not have access to State funds and its budget was chronically in deficit. Thought was given to abolishing the SD, but Himmler feared that other Party rivals might rush in to fill the void. SD personnel not only feared losing their jobs if the Service was disbanded but also feared losing their positions if merged with the trained professional detectives of the Gestapo and Kripo. By the same token, Heydrich was concerned that a merger of SD and Sipo would bring an influx of legal-administrative personnel who would hinder the SD’s freedom of action. Then, too, Himmler’s soundings of the Nazi inner circle “convinced him that the Party leadership would never permit a combination of a Party organization with a State institution to form a new official superauthority” (Höhne, 1969, p. 256). Party leaders did not want an intelligence agency backed by State authority looking into their affairs. Thus, in September 1939, Heydrich at last created a “Reich Security Main Office” (Reichssicherhietshauptamt or RSHA) that amounted to “no more than a feeble compromise” (p. 256) since the Sipo and SD retained separate organizational identities and budgets, the one still a State organization and the other dependent on the Party. So as not to alarm Party leaders, the RSHA was never allowed to use the name in public; the instructions laid down that the letter-heading “Reichssicherheitshauptamt” was not to be used in correspondence with other authorities. The RSHA, in fact, led a shadowy existence; officially no one was supposed to know of it. It remained an organization valid for internal purposes only; the only title appearing on the surface was that of “Chief of the Sicherheitspolizei and SD” (CSSD). Even the dream of combining the SD with the Sicherheitspolizei came to nothing. Party and State refused to mix. (p. 256)

Thus, members of the SD and the Gestapo continued to compete with each other in the field of intelligence (even as both competed with the intelligence operations of the Wehrmacht and the Foreign Ministry). The inability to mix Party and State is seen in microcosm with Walter Rauff, who simultaneously headed the Technical Matters Group of the Security Police (RSHA Amt II D) and of SD foreign intelligence (RSHA Amt VI F). And as the men of the SD who had come up through SS recruiting standards feared merging with regular police professionals, the latter also were confronted with a perhaps unwelcome array of confusing new rules after their organizations were brought into the SS. These included pressure on career police professionals to apply for membership in the SS, the conditions under which membership and an SS rank equivalent to their police rank would be granted, expectations that those accepted into the SS would quit their membership in other Party organizations, and requirements to wear SS service dress and insignia. Numerous and often confusing and conflicting directives were issued. In practice, however, those who served in the regular uniformed Order Police received nearly automatic acceptance into the

46 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

SS at an equivalent rank; but for the plainclothes professional detectives of the Security Police, rank parity “was contingent upon a whole series of conditions” (Buchheim, 1968, pp. 203–213). Police personnel, who often had years or decades of professional training and experience in their duties, were also subjected after 1936 to ideological training designed to instill in them the “soldierly” SS ethic and to “create an organizational culture in which anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism emerged as institutional norms” (Westermann, 2005, p. 98). Those police accepted into the SS thereby submitted themselves to the organization’s requirements for physical stature and mental aptitude, documented “Aryan” ancestry (both for the SS member and any woman he proposed to marry), attainment of the SS sports badge, and regular participation in SS membership activities in addition to their police jobs (p. 101). Some police veterans no doubt disapproved of special treatment given to police candidates who came up through SS recruitment channels so that “preference in recruiting police officers [was] given to those men who were members of the Hitler Youth, the SA [storm troops], or the SS” (p. 95). Under 1937 guidelines issued by Himmler, police were to receive ideological training from the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) in coordination with SS training directors and special lecturers. When the RuSHA became overwhelmed by the large scale of the program, indoctrination of police was taken over by the SS Training Office (pp. 103–104). Nevertheless, training was intended to be practical rather than strictly doctrinaire: The guidelines encouraged the selection of a speaker with a previously established personal relationship with the listeners. The latter measure was intended to encourage questions and the free exchange of ideas between comrades united in a shared mission. The ability of the lecturer to relate the material to the everyday life and experience of his listeners was also viewed as critical to successful instruction. Guidelines for these presentations, however, reminded the lecturer of his responsibility to “reflect on the fact that he is neither political prophet nor priest but rather stands as a political soldier in front of political soldiers.” (Westermann, 2005, p. 105)

Again may be seen the SS emphasis not on theory and dogma but on practicality, initiative, and “soldierly” freedom of action within the framework of the general Nazi worldview—an unfamiliar mix for police veterans who had made their careers before the advent of the new regime. These organizational contexts may help explain why, in the Sipo Technical Matters Group, the career police officer and transport manager Pradel insisted on being addressed according to his police rank and, as we will learn in the next chapter by exploring the biographies and motivations of the Group’s individual actors, why Pradel disliked and did not get along with Rauff. How the values, practices, and subcultures that each man inhabited were differentiated within the Group is

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

47

important to understand, for they are the two main players in its discourse on the gas vans. Where then did Rauff and Pradel, and the other senders and receivers of the Sonderwagen documents generated in the spring and summer of 1942 by the Sipo Technical Matters Group, fit within the organizational structure of the SS? Or perhaps we might rephrase the question as it pertains to the rhetorical work of the boundary objects they produced. We have seen how the institutional culture of the Nazi movement and the organizational culture of the SS provided many integrative elements, and also how the clash of SS and civil service cultures generated a tacit and ongoing element of differentiation within the newly created Sipo and SD. But what were the formal divisions in the organization that differentiated the gas van killers into their various subcultures and created the formal boundaries that their texts were required to span? LINES OF ORGANIZATIONAL AUTHORITY By the time that the Sonderwagen program was ordered in the late summer and early fall of 1941, the SS comprised the Allgemeine SS (“General SS”) and Waffen-SS (“Armed SS”). The latter were military formations that participated in frontline duty, while the former was concerned with internal security through its police powers, intelligence operations, camp system, and slave-labor industries. Power bases within the Allgemeine SS that were significant players in the Final Solution included the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) headed by Reinhard Heydrich, the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) headed by Oswald Pohl, and two regional SS officials—Wilhelm Koppe and Odilo Globocnik—who held regional posts in the system of SS and Police Leaders (SSPFs) that Himmler established as his personal representatives in the Occupied Eastern Territories. The RSHA conducted “The Holocaust by Bullets” (Desbois, 2008) through its mobile Einsatzgruppen shooting squads that operated in captured Soviet territory from June 1941 through the end of the war, though most mass executions were completed by 1943. In response to Himmler’s August 1941 order that a less psychologically stressful method of mass killing be devised, the RSHA (as described in chapter 2) launched a fleet of mobile gas vans that ultimately numbered about 20 vehicles and operated throughout the occupied Soviet lands and in the Balkans. Gas vans were also furnished to Koppe, who in December 1941 set up the first operational death camp at Chelmno in former Polish territory that had been annexed to Germany proper. Arthur Greiser, the Nazi governor of the territory, wanted to make his district Judenrein (“Jew-cleansed”) as soon as possible; as a condition for accepting 20,000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies to be deported from Germany, he asked Himmler and Koppe for assistance in liquidating 100,000 Polish Jews from the overcrowded Lodz ghetto, thus saving him the expense of feeding them.

48 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

The vans offered certain advantages for the RSHA because they could be quickly built, and Einsatzgruppen personnel were already in the field to employ the vehicles. Permanent gassing facilities would take months to construct and would not easily fit into the RSHA organizational structure. However, stationary gas chambers that killed with prussic acid were developed by the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) and its Concentration Camp Inspectorate, which ran the dual slave-labor-and-extermination camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek. And gas chambers that killed with carbon monoxide were built by Globocnik, a Himmler favorite and the SS and Police Leader of the Lublin District in occupied Poland, at the extermination-only camps of Belzec, Treblinka, and Sobibor. Thus, the Final Solution ultimately encompassed some 1.5 million shootings and 150,000 gas van murders committed under the aegis of the RSHA by the Einsatzgruppen in the field; an estimated 150,000 murders at Chelmno overseen by Koppe and conducted with gas vans supplied by the RSHA; and some 4 million gassings at the two WVHA camps (which also held prisoners for hard labor) and the three Aktion Reinhard camps (built solely for exterminations) managed by Globocnik. Nevertheless, the RSHA had a presence in all the extermination facilities since, under its internal security mandate, its Gestapo units selected those to be detained in the camps and then monitored potential resistance activities by the inmates. The SS chain of command for the Final Solution began with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. All those in charge of killing operations—Heydrich of the RSHA, Pohl of the WVHA, and the system of SS and Police Leaders—reported to Himmler. The RSHA itself was composed of seven divisions: Amt I, Personnel; Amt II, Administration and Finance; Amt III, Domestic Security Service; Amt IV, Gestapo (Secret State Police); Amt V, Criminal Police (plainclothes detective force); Amt VI, Foreign Security Service; and Amt VII, Ideology (Hilberg, 2003, pp. 284–285). During the war, Heydrich was also named Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, or governor of occupied Czechoslovakia, where he was assassinated by Czech partisans and died June 4, 1942. Until then, Heydrich engaged in constant turf battles with the SS Order Police (regular uniformed police), while his Security Service struggled for supremacy with the intelligence services of the Wehrmacht and Foreign Ministry. Amt II, Administration and Finance, headed by Hans Nockemann, was composed of four departments. Among these was IID Technical Matters, led by Walter Rauff. The SS lieutenant colonel, however, reported directly to Heydrich (going over the head of Nockemann) and was responsible for negotiating with the Wehrmacht High Command for allocations of munitions and vehicles with which to supply the Einsatzgruppen. It was not uncommon in the RSHA for important subordinates to work directly with Heydrich, as did Adolf Eichmann. In contrast to the “banal” bureaucrat famously portrayed by Arendt (1963), Eichmann displayed (in keeping with SS officer training) considerable independent initiative and dexterity when at Heydrich’s direct request he organized

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

49

Jewish deportations to the death camps, even though he technically reported to Gestapo (Amt IV) chief Heinrich Müller. Under the nomenclature of the RSHA, the units responsible for the gas van program were IID (Technical Matters Group, headed by Walter Rauff of the Administration and Finance Office), IID3 (Sipo transportation, directed by Friedrich Pradel), and IID3a (Berlin main garage, managed by Harry Wentritt). Rauff’s brief included IID1 (film, photography, criminological equipment), IID2 (telephone and teleprinter communications), IID4 (armory), and IID5 (supplies). He was also head of the Technical Matters Group (VI F) of the Foreign Security Service (Amt VI), in which capacity he performed personal tasks for Heydrich in occupied Czechoslovakia. In the initial testing of the gas vans, Group IID received assistance from the chemical experts of the Criminal Technical Institute, a detective police lab designated Group V F of the Reich Criminal Police Main Office (Amt V). Internal clients for the mobile gas vans were officially the Sipo and SD Regional Offices, which the RSHA had set up in the occupied Eastern territories. These offices nominally oversaw the Einsatzgruppen so that orders for the vans were initiated by Sipo and SD regional officials. In turn, the Sipo Technical Matters Group furnished both the vans and their drivers, along with any spare parts that might be needed during operations. When these “special missions” were completed, the vans and drivers were returned to the motor pool in Berlin. In addition, the Technical Matters Group employed a field inspector (August Becker) to check on operations, alert Berlin to any problems, and recommend options to remedy the deficiencies. Thus, we see a number of formal boundaries relevant to any consideration of the Group’s documents. Rauff was the executive conduit between the gas van program and its stakeholders—the top echelon of the RSHA, the program staff, the internal clients, the vendors, and suppliers. Pradel was the midlevel managerial conduit between Rauff and the motor pool employees. Wentritt was the junior-level conduit between Pradel and the Berlin mechanics. Becker was the conduit between Rauff and the program’s field operations. And in contrast to the executive, managerial, and technical staff who worked in Berlin, Becker and the drivers were deployed in the field and worked with the end users of the vans. In numerous ways, the organization was subdivided “into networks based on tasks, relationships, information, and functions” (Keyton, 2005, p. 37) that could—and did—lead to multiple and contradictory realities. Or, as Martin’s (1992, 2002) theory holds, we now see the outlines of organizational differentiation as members inhabited differing subcultures that had to be negotiated. GERMAN BUREAUCRATIC DOCUMENT PROTOCOLS Understanding the lines of organizational authority within the SS, and in particular Heydrich’s Reich Security Main Office, is important for another reason. For the authorship and routing of the gas van documents produced by the

50 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Sipo Technical Matters Group cannot be grasped without a knowledge of its organizational relationships, imperatives, and prerogatives. On June 1, 1940, a directive was issued and circulated to all RSHA offices that set out exacting guidelines for document creation. These included explicit instructions on filing codes; the bureaucratic implications of letterheads and departmental symbols; who had authority to sign documents in his own name, who had authority to sign for his immediate superior, who did not have such authority, and how authority or nonauthority should be indicated; how handwritten notations should be made in colored pencils according to rank; and that “Long, complicated sentences should be avoided, and margins should be left for comments” (Lozowick, 2000, p. 48). These RSHA guidelines also reflected standard bureaucratic protocols observed in German governmental organs from the First World War through the Third Reich. As Lozowick (2000) explained, The signer of a document generally was not the person who wrote it, and often the writer was not the person who initiated it. In many cases, there is great doubt today as to the identity of the document’s creator, which is to say the person who determined what the content would be. This is a major stumbling block for historians because the tendency is to conflate these processes and attribute them to the person who signed the document. The signer was indeed responsible for what the document says, but the question is whether he was the only one responsible. (p. 44)

Document protocols reflected the common assumption that, The head of the system expresses his will, at the middle levels it is translated into detailed instructions, and at the junior levels it is carried out. When underlings run into a problem or into new possibilities, they notify their superiors at the middle level, who in turn draft new proposals for action, and present them to the top man. He approves, and proposals return to the working level in the form of instructions. The assumption is that this method integrates in a maximal way the broad outlook of the senior official with the lower officials’ view of reality in the field. The mid-level officials must be an efficient pipeline in both directions—they must transfer principles of policy from above to below, and report the difficulties or opportunities for action from below to above. (p. 45)

Rauff held a position at the rank of Referent and, because he therefore served as “chief technical adviser and aide of the Minister, Secretary, and Division Director, he was in charge of a particular field of work . . . [and was] actually in control of most current business, once policies have been approved by his superiors” (Brecht & Glaser, 1940, p. 25; as quoted in Lozowick, 2000, p. 46). Thus, for example, in the German original of the technical proposal that various scholars (e.g., Dombrowski, 2000a; Katz, 1992a) have analyzed, the signer of the

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY /

51

document—the dispatcher Willi Just—signed by hand his last name only. Above his name, Just also handwrote the initials “I.A.” This means Just was signing im Auftrag, as opposed to in Vetretung or “I.V.” Only the agency head under whose institutional symbol a document was issued could sign in his own name. A person one rank below was permitted to sign I.V. or “as the representative of” his superior, which in fact meant he was “signing at his own discretion, under the authority that his commander had granted him” (Lozowick, 2000, pp. 48–49). By contrast, “A person signing I.A., ‘at the direction of,’ was not signing at his own discretion, but rather by order of his commander, who did not want to be bothered signing himself. The source of authority for the signature is not the rank of the signer but the rank of the person who gave the order to sign” (p. 49). Thus, Lozowick pointed out, The greater our sensitivity to these author codes, the greater our accuracy in describing the shaping of policy—and, when the issue is creation of policy within a bureaucratic system, there is no objective testimony. This is even more true with regard to the testimony of bureaucrats of murder. . . . Decisions were not made by a specific person, but rather sprouted from within an undergrowth of senior officers who could make decisions and subordinates who knew what to propose. . . . They all understood their mission clearly and pursued it out of choice. When they faced groups of officials with other intentions, they reacted in a way that was meant to advance, as best they could, the policy that they had chosen. (p. 56)

In his postwar deposition 30 years after the fact, Rauff still placed great stress on the matter of representational authority. How the issue of Heydrich’s representation was regulated when I returned to the RSHA at the beginning of 1941 [and Heydrich was posted to Prague as Deputy Reich Protector of occupied Czech territory], I don’t know. I can only assume that someone represented him in his absence, without however being able to say who that could have been. Also for the time of his activity in Prague and for the time after his death, I don’t know what the representation regulation was. I can only assume that during this time the heads of department were directly subordinated to Himmler. Furthermore a man like, for instance, [Gestapo chief Heinrich] Müller would never have subordinated himself to . . . another head of department at the same level. I neither knew anything about whether there was a regulation regarding the representation of one head of department by another. I would personally say that, in case of impediment affecting one head of department, the respective head of division became active under his own responsibility or turned directly to the head of the main office. (Nizkor, 2002, p. 13)

Rauff was shown a document by postwar investigators and immediately interjected, “I cannot explain why in the letter from section IIA2 of 19 November 1942

52 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

shown to me, Dr. Siegert is mentioned as ‘head of department in representation’ and why this letter is also signed by Streckenbach ‘in representation’” (Nizkor, 2002, p. 13). He also observed how, in 1939 before his stint as Technical Matters head and when he held a junior rank, “Although I am mentioned as a participant in most of these [department head] meetings and although the initial under the protocols [meeting minutes] is without doubt my own, I have no memory at this time of having taken part in these meetings. . . . I consider it possible that . . . being the youngest of those present, I was put in charge of writing the protocol” (p. 8). Another vital clue for understanding the origins of RSHA documents is their filing codes, which were regulated by the June 1, 1940, directive. Thus, the notation on the technical proposal signed by Willi Just—“IID3a(9) Nr. 214/42 g.Rs.”—is a filing code that means: File under Department IID3a [Pradel’s motor pool] (9) [Just’s identification] 214 [subject code; documents presented at Nuremberg suggest the 200s may have referred to Sonderwagen matters] 42 [year] g.Rs. [classified Geheime Reichssache or “Secret Reich Matter”]. These insights into German bureaucratic protocol in general, and RHSA practice in particular, highlight the importance to heed Lozowick’s (2000) warning and avoid the tendency “to conflate these processes and attribute them to the person who signed the document” and instead realize that “The signer of a document generally was not the person who wrote it, and often the writer was not the person who initiated it” (pp. 44–45). Keeping in mind, then, that German bureaucratic documents were usually collaborative products that emerged from a thicket of junior, midlevel, and senior personnel, who were the members of the Sipo Technical Matters Group? If we imagine for a moment that organization and fragmentation represent two poles of social existence, the first a state of (at least temporary) consensus and the second an opposite state of complete fragmentation into individual interests, it is relevant to ask, What were those individual interests that the Group held at bay, via the rhetorical work of their boundary objects, to stave off fragmentation and thereby collaborate on documents of such stunning calculation and callousness toward the mass murder of other human beings?

CHAPTER 4

The Participants and Their Motives

PERSONNEL OF THE GAS VAN PROGRAM Organizations at any given time manifest, as we learned earlier, the three dimensions of integration, differentiation, and fragmentation (Martin, 1992, 2002; Martin, Frost, & O’Neill, 2006). Perhaps boundary objects might therefore be conceived as putting forth integrative discourses that strive to resonate with what organization members share in order to negotiate those members’ differentiated values, practices, and subcultures in a way that, when prompted by an integrative exigence, can produce temporary and issue-specific consensus amidst the change, confusion, and ambiguity of organizational fragmentation. Thus, to illuminate the integrative dimension of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, we have so far followed Longo’s (1998) cultural research methodology by first exploring the historical and cultural contexts that the killers broadly shared— the long history of religious and economic anti-Semitism and modern history of racial anti-Semitism and German cultural touchstones about the natures of human activity and community as these were subsequently picked up and expressed in the Nazi doctrines of Volksgemeinschaft and Führerprinzip. These historical and cultural contexts are salient, we discovered, because organizations are open systems that absorb larger societal discourses and then shape local versions. Next we investigated the differentiating dimension of the Sipo Technical Matters Group by exploring the varieties of values, practices, and subcultures its members inhabited—the differentiation between ideological Party followers and career police professionals and the myriad organizational divisions of the SS and its Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Now we can move on to the dimension of fragmentation within the Sipo Technical Matters Group, how competing interests dealt with change, confusion, and ambiguity as they contested, negotiated, or resisted attempts at temporary and 53

54 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

issue-specific consensus. This fragmentation of the Group’s culture into multiple competing voices will be traced in the present chapter by reviewing the biographies and postwar testimonies of its chief actors at each organizational level—executive, midlevel management, junior-level management, technical experts, technicians, field personnel, and internal clients. Their biographies will help us see their diverging interests, and their testimonies will shed light on their differing perspectives of the Group’s organizational life and how each actor related to the others. If, as this study argues, their documents functioned as boundary objects, then we must grasp the fragmentation of interests and interpretations those documents had to temporarily bridge. Exploring in this chapter the flux of their consensus and dissensus will better inform our readings of the documents themselves in chapter 5 and then facilitate our move in chapter 6 to the next level of Longo’s (1998) method as we begin to analyze the texts they produced as a discourse between multiple voices. The roster of gas van murderers begins with Walter Rauff. In his role as head of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, he was to “The Holocaust by Bullets” (Desbois, 2008) what Adolf Eichmann was to the Holocaust by gas. Once the Final Solution had become policy, Eichmann was the executive manager who implemented the gassing phase by negotiating with agencies such as the Reichsbahn (national railway administration) and arranging the logistics of transporting Jews to the death camps. In the same way Rauff was the executive manager of the initial shooting phase of the Final Solution, negotiating on Heydrich’s behalf with the Wehrmacht High Command to obtain the munitions required to gun down an estimated 1.5 million Jews. Both held the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel). Yet Eichmann is better known to the postwar world because Auschwitz, rather than Babi Yar, came to symbolize the Holocaust. The liberation of the camps exposed the gas chambers and crematoria for all to see, while the dead of the Einsatzgruppen shootings remained scattered across vast territories and their locations often unknown. The film footage taken by the Allies at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen have shocked the world since they were first shown at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. By contrast, the Einsatzgruppen officers reentered postwar German society, many to respected positions in civil service and industry. When put on trial in the 1960s and early 1970s, they were prosecuted only as accomplices to murder, and many were acquitted or given light sentences. For his part, Rauff fled to South America and lived out his days under the protection of the Chilean government until his death in 1984. Born in 1906, Rauff was the son of a banker who raised him with martial discipline. Too young to see service in the Great War, he joined the German Navy in 1924 and rose to first lieutenant and the command of a minehunter. When charges of adultery and a messy divorce compelled his resignation from the navy in 1937, Rauff was befriended by a former shipmate and reserve naval officer who simultaneously held a commission in the SS. In fact, Rauff was so

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

55

desirable as an SS recruit that he suffered no obstacles from his “hurried” remarriage to a woman whose former husband was Jewish. “Rauff repaid his benefactors with a zeal that always earned the highest accolades in his personnel file” (Browning, 1991, p. 60). Through his personal connection, Rauff was hired in 1938 by the SS Security Service and made a mobilization expert in preparation for the 1939 German invasion of Poland. Heydrich was organizing Einsatzgruppen to follow behind the Wehrmacht and murder Polish leaders and intelligentsia. Thus, Rauff joined a specially created bureau charged with compiling a personnel card file “to provide a comprehensive list of SS and police personnel who could be called on to form a special command for action in Poland” and later to “select SS officers who would work ‘ruthlessly and harshly to achieve National Socialist aims’” (Rossino, 2003, pp. 11–12). He was present at numerous high-level meetings and at least once entrusted with preparing the minutes (Nizkor, 2002), much as Eichmann assisted Heydrich in drafting the infamous Wansee Protocols. Rauff “was thus very well informed about the mass murder taking place in Poland since the beginning of the war” (Mallmann & Cüppers, 2005, p. 4). After the success of the Polish campaign, Rauff received permission in 1940 to volunteer for a naval tour as commander of a minehunter squadron in the English Channel, a potentially important posting as Hitler weighed a seaborne invasion of Britain. But Operation Sealion was abandoned as Hitler decided instead to prepare an invasion of the Soviet Union. Heydrich personally interceded with Admiral Raeder, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, to have Rauff returned to the RSHA in early 1941. His Polish experience would be valuable as Heydrich was mobilizing Einsatzgruppen for the upcoming Russian campaign. Then, too, Heydrich had likewise joined the SS (in 1931) after being cashiered from the Navy over charges of sexual impropriety and breach of promise, so that he and Rauff had their naval backgrounds in common. Rauff was put in charge of the technical department that would supply the Einsatzgruppen preparing for “special tasks” in conquered Soviet lands. As the roving SS death squads massacred Soviets Jews, The Wehrmacht aided and abetted such shooting operations, and sometimes requested them. . . Murdering Jews would free up food and, according to Nazi logic, prevent partisan uprisings. . . . The Wehrmacht systematically cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen and the [SS] police forces in the destruction of Jewish communities . . . with the army often providing trucks, ammunition, and guards. (Snyder, 2010, pp. 200–201)

Rauff’s successes in negotiating with the Wehrmacht High Command to secure these supplies ensured that he quickly “rose on the SS ladder” and became “one of those most centrally responsible for the mass murder of the Jews” (Mallman & Cüppers, 2005, p. 5). At the same time, his boss, Heydrich, had been

56 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

appointed (in addition to his RSHA post) by Hitler as the chief civil administrator of occupied Czech territory. Thus, while retaining his RSHA positions, “Rauff followed his superior Heydrich to Prague when the latter was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia [in September 1941]. Rauff’s job there was to direct organizing the technical intelligence service in Heydrich’s new office” (Mallman & Cüppers, 2005, p. 5). As such, Rauff split his time between Berlin and Prague. The project of adapting the concept of gas vans, used previously in the “euthanasia” program, was given to Rauff’s Technical Matters Group since the Berlin motor pool was already supplying vehicles to the Einsatzgruppen. The vans entered service by December 1941 but were attended by constant breakdowns and unanticipated operational difficulties. And within 6 months, the mass shootings and mobile gassings were beginning to wind down, especially as purpose-built extermination camps would soon be coming online. After Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942, the following month Rauff took an SS field command in Africa. Eventually he ran a slave labor camp in Tunis and by war’s end headed Gestapo operations in Milan, Italy. Freidrich Pradel, who reported to Rauff as head of the Sipo transportation service (IID3), was born in 1901 and went on to attain his Abitur and briefly attended university. He trained 3 years for a career in sales, but in 1925 changed direction and entered officer training for the Prussian municipal police force, where Pradel achieved the rank of major and became a specialist an automotive affairs. After the absorption of German police forces into the SS in 1936, a year later he was brought to the Berlin headquarters of the regular uniformed police. Soon, however, he was transferred to Heydrich’s Security Police and put in charge of its 4,000 motor vehicles (Browning, 1991, pp. 60–61). Rauff testified after the war about the friction between them: For the provision of the motor vehicles of the Security Police my subordinate Pradel was responsible. Pradel, who had come from the Order Police, didn’t like me and was in a certain conflict with me. As to whether I had differences with him regarding the [gas vans] . . . I consider that possible, but cannot remember it exactly. (Nizkor, 2002)

The friction between the two men is suggested by an incident regarding Pradel’s transfer from the Order Police to the Security Police. A year after Pradel came to Berlin, he was granted an SS rank equivalent to his rank of major in the municipal police. That same year, 1938, he was granted Nazi Party membership retroactive to 1937 (Browning, 1991, pp. 60–61). But Pradel continued to identify professionally with the uniformed police. The gas van field inspector, Becker, testified after the war that even though Pradel was given the equivalent SS rank of Hauptsturmführer (captain), he preferred to be addressed by his police rank of “Major” (Klee, Dressen, & Riess, 1991, p. 69). In fact, Pradel did not officially

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

57

request a transfer from the regular uniformed police to the Security Police until February 1942. Rauff supported the transfer but damned Pradel with faint praise. He lacked leadership qualities, Rauff asserted, and neither could his “inner attitude” (political reliability) or Weltanschauung (ideology) be vouchsafed. But Pradel managed automotive affairs “with considerable success,” Rauff allowed, and the Security Police could not develop such expertise on its own any time soon (Browning, 1991, pp. 60–61). The transfer was granted but not until December 1943. Pradel’s limited leadership skills and initiative are also seen in the fact that he was unable to secure the chassis needed for the first gas vans so that Rauff had to intervene with the Wehrmacht. Since the superstructures would have to be outsourced to a contractor, it was also Rauff who suggested the ruse of ordering the specially sealed truck compartments on the pretext of needing them to transport corpses infected with spotted fever (Beer, 1987). The nature of Rauff’s orders to Pradel for the gas vans was disputed by the two men after the war. “Pradel claimed he protested to Rauff, but was told that any difficulties he made would have to be reported to Heydrich. Rauff denied that he threatened Pradel; the latter was so ambitious, he said, that that was totally unnecessary” (Browning, 1991, p. 101). In any event, Pradel had already organized vehicle supply for the Einsatzgruppen and had heard from drivers of the mass shootings. Since he had also seen a number of the Einsatzgruppen daily situation reports, he knew of the mass murders occurring in Soviet territory (p. 61). As for his ambition, Pradel’s may have been of a different sort than Rauff’s since he was arrested by the SS in 1944 for black marketeering. Accused with several co-workers of trading gasoline for liquor, he was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp but then released in January 1945 to serve on the Eastern Front with the Waffen-SS. “Thus Pradel fell far short of the Nazi ideal but was useful for his technical expertise until he succumbed to the temptation of corruption” (p. 61). After the war, Pradel resumed his police career until his 1961 arrest and subsequent trial for his gas van activities. He and Wentritt were tried together and both convicted in 1966, Pradel receiving a 7-year sentence and Wentritt 3 years. Harry Wentritt was born in 1903, the son of a Berlin trolley driver, and at age 16 entered vocational training to become an electrical mechanic. He was an “old fighter” who joined the Nazi Party in 1932, before Hitler’s accession to power, and was active in the National Socialist Motor Corps and a motorized SA stormtroop. Wentritt in 1935 found work with the Gestapo as an auto welder and subsequently transferred a year later from the SA to the SS (Browning, 1991, p. 61). In June 1941, when the chief mechanic at the Sipo garage in Berlin was transferred to similar duties at the Sipo and SD Regional Office in Minsk (Langerbein, 2004, p. 107), Wentritt was appointed to the job. Within 3 months, Wentritt, who held the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant), learned from Pradel about the orders to construct mobile gas vans. “Though admittedly

58 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

not endowed with a quick mind, in the course of time he too realized that the proposed gas vans were for killing Jews” (Browning, 1991, p. 61). August Becker was born in 1900, the son of a factory owner, and after brief service in World War I, went on to earn a PhD in chemistry in 1933. His political reliability was unimpeachable, having joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SS in 1931, serving in the Gestapo in 1934 and in an armed SS regiment in 1935–1938, and then moving to the Security Service (SD) in Berlin, where he was put in charge of the bureau responsible for replicating inks and photocopies. In December 1939, he was loaned to the T4 euthanasia program (Friedlander, 1995, pp. 210–211), where he participated in the first test of a gas chamber. He then organized distribution of carbon monoxide canisters to the killing centers (Browning, 1991, p. 58) and showed their personnel how to install and operate the apparatus (Weale, 2010, p. 181). Among T4 personnel, he was known as “Red Becker” for his hair. When T4 was officially closed in August 1941, Himmler recalled his SS personnel in order to use their newfound expertise. As field inspector for the gas van program, Becker left Germany in January 1942 and over the next 9 months visited each of the four Einsatzgruppen operating in Soviet territory, demonstrating (as he did in the T4 program) how to operate the gassing equipment and keeping in frequent contact with Rauff (Beer 1987; Browning 1991, pp. 68–71). Yet even Becker’s dulled ethical threshold was finally exceeded at the end of his inspection tour. In September 1942, he arrived in Minsk, where SS units were in the midst of clearing the Jewish ghettos in the Ukraine and Ostland. In the last major operation of the gas vans, some 55,000 Minsk Jews were killed (Rhodes, 2002, pp. 255–256). This was too much even for Becker, who after 3 days in Minsk hitched a ride on a truck bound for Warsaw and then back to Berlin (Klee et al., 1991, p. 71). Becker was promoted in 1943 from SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) to SS-Obersturmführer (first lieutenant), worked for a time at a state-sponsored agricultural products company in the occupied East, and returned to Berlin with the RSHA Foreign Security Service (Amt VI). After the war, he was sentenced by the Allies to 3 years in a labor camp for his membership in the SS—deemed a criminal organization—and remained free until 1960, when he was condemned by a German court for his role in the T4 and gas vans murders. But his 10-year sentence was commuted for health reasons and Becker was released to a nursing home; he died 7 years later. Albert Widmann was born in 1912; though the son of a locomotive engineer, he earned a 1938 doctorate in chemistry from Stuttgart’s respected Technische Hochschule. During his student days, Widmann worked during his vacations for Dr. Walter Heess, a Stuttgart police lab chemist who in 1938 was appointed head of the Criminal Technical Institute (KTI) of the Reich Criminal Police Main Office (RKPA) in Berlin. Heess brought along his protégé Widmann, who had just graduated, and made him head of the KTI chemistry section. Active in the National Socialist Motor Corps since 1933, Widmann was granted Nazi Party membership in 1937 and then entered the SS in 1939. When the KTI was asked to advise the

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

59

T4 euthanasia program, Widmann performed animal tests. His recommendation that pure carbon monoxide gas be used as the killing agent was accepted. Once the Einsatzgruppen mass shootings commenced and Himmler in August 1941 asked that a less stressful killing method be devised, RKPA chief Arthur Nebe summoned Widman to make tests—conducted on asylum patients—of dynamiting victims and of killing through vehicle exhaust gas. Later in Berlin, when Heydrich ordered construction of a gas van fleet, Widman rounded up Soviet prisoners from nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp and conducted tests to determine what level of carbon monoxide would be lethal. “Attracted by tasks ‘more important to the war effort’ than fighting crime, Widmann would subsequently become involved not only in the gas van but also in demolition, poison gas grenades, and poison bullets” (Browning, 1991, p. 58). Willi Just, born in 1899, was older than the youthful “up-and-comers” such as Rauff (born 1906) who were prized by the SS, and also had been professionally surpassed by the younger Pradel (born 1901) and Wenttrit (born 1903) to whom he reported. His SS personnel file shows that Just saw frontline duty during the First World War, worked as a welder, and in 1920 joined the Schutzpolizei (Schupo) or regular municipal police. These experiences may have distinguished Just from the younger Rauff, Pradel, and Wentritt. For one thing, those who were born too late for frontline service often felt cheated of a defining life-experience and sought other ways to compensate. Also, Just obtained steady postwar civilservice employment that insulated him from the hyperinflation of 1922–1923, a time when younger persons often struggled to establish themselves, as was the case with Pradel. After the Schupo was absorbed by the SS, Just went to work in 1937 as a welder for the Gestapo. He was “expected” to seek SS membership and was accepted in 1938 but did not join the Nazi Party until 1941. The overall picture of Just is a steady blue-collar worker who was content with the job security afforded by civil service and not driven as much by ideological or professional zeal (Browning, 1991, p. 102, n33). Wilhelm Findeisen had been Heydrich’s personal chauffeur until assigned to be a gas van driver. In prior years, however, his career had been both colorful and checkered. During the hyperinflation that wrecked the German economy after the First World War, Findeisen left his apprenticeship to a designer and instead worked a series of jobs as a driver, newspaper deliveryman, and oil factory worker. Even before the Nazis came to power, Findeisen felt he had at last found secure work when the SA hired him as a driver. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, he obtained a permanent post as the personal driver for the Berlin police chief. But when the SS Security Service offered higher pay, he joined the Black Corps in time to serve as a driver for the Einsatzgruppen during the 1939 German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Then followed a brush with fame: On November 9, 1939, Hitler narrowly missed an assassin’s bomb, and the SS suspected (erroneously) that two British agents were involved. The SS lured the agents to a café just across

60 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

the Dutch border and conducted a daring abduction. Findeisen, the driver for the raid, was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class by Hitler himself and promoted to be Heydrich’s personal driver. Soon, however, Heydrich sacked him for habitual drinking and returned Findeisen to his old post in the RSHA. Later that same month, in November 1941, Findeisen’s superiors gave him a chance at rehabilitation by assigning him to the top-secret Sonderwagen project. He would operate one of the vans being furnished to the Sipo and SD Regional Office in Ukraine. Though he kept his position, Findeisen was among the minority of specialists who never attained SS officer rank (Langerbein, 2004, pp. 108–109). After the war, Findeisen testified that he refused orders to shoot victims: “My job was simply to drive the van” (Klee et al., 1991, p. 72). Thomas Gevatter (not his real name; Langerbein, 2004, p. 108) was reassigned to drive gas vans in June 1942 after serving during the previous year as a driver for the Einsatzgruppe B shooting squad. An SS-Hauptscharführer (technical sergeant), he was drafted in the summer of 1941 for active SS duty in Russia, leaving his position as a driver for the State Police in occupied Czechoslovakia. Gevatter had apprenticed 10 years earlier as a truck driver but lost his job during the Depression. He launched an independent trucking business and also joined the SS in 1931 in hopes of bettering his employment prospects, attracted also by the group’s smart uniforms and elite image. Gevatter’s business nevertheless failed but, when the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was made an auxiliary police officer to help round up leftist opponents of the regime and then awarded a permanent position as a driver with the State Police in Dresden. After war broke out in 1939, he subsequently served as a driver in Czechoslovakia and Russia before his transfer to the gas van program. Emanuel Schäfer appears in the surviving gas van documents as an internal client of the program, the Sipo and SD chief in occupied Yugoslavia who requested a gas van for a “special mission.” A member of extreme rightwing paramilitary Freikorps units, which were active after the First World War, in 1925 he earned a doctorate in jurisprudence but remained involved in rightwing organizations and joined the SS in 1931. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, he held top police positions in Breslau, Oppeln, Kattowitz, and Cologne. At the Kattowicz posting, he was the first Gestapo chief with jurisdiction over the newly established Auschwitz concentration camp (Langbein, 2004, p. 287), and in 1941, he oversaw the first deportations of Jews from Cologne. Heydrich transferred him in January 1942 to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where Schäfer, by then an SS-Standartenführer (full colonel), headed the Sipo and SD Regional Office. There he made a “thoroughly humane impression” and, unlike the usual “pigheaded SS man,” was seen as “reasonable” and “very accommodating,” even “beloved” by his immediate staff. After the war, judicial authorities noted his high education and described Schäfer as a “correct and honest official” who was “not to be viewed as an evil Gestapo functionary, rather as an official who—to be sure an enthusiastic National

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

61

Socialist with early knowledge of the criminal practices—did his duty, but showed humane tendencies and endeavored to remedy the excesses of the regime” (Browning, 1991, p. 59). Nevertheless, he was condemned to sixand-a-half years in prison for ordering the gas van murders of nearly 7,000 Jewish women and children. These, then, are among the key players in the SS gas van program. They represent each subculture of its organization—executive, expert, mid- and junior-level management, technicians, field personnel, clients. But beyond recounting individual biographies for each representative figure, we must now turn to their interactions. If “the way in which subcultures relate to one another is the organization’s culture” (Keyton, 2005, p. 67), we must explore the interrelationships within the Sipo Technical Matters Group to grasp the rhetorical boundary work their texts were required to perform. INDIVIDUAL RELATIONSHIPS AND MOTIVES For the personnel of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, their experiences of organizational life were governed in large measure by their working relationships with each other and with those in whom the organization had contact. A framework for their relationships was provided by the RSHA organization chart (see Figure 4.1): SS leader Himmler was equivalent to a Minister of Police Affairs and Heydrich as head of the RSHA was equivalent to a ministerial director-general. The heads of the seven RSHA divisions, including Amt II Administration and Finance chief Hans Nockemann, were equivalent to deputy directors-general. One level below was Rauff, who as head of II D Technical Matters held the rank of Referent, a post that functioned as chief technical adviser “in charge of a particular field of work . . . [and] actually in control of most current business, once policies have been approved by his superiors” (Brecht & Glaser, 1940, p. 25; as quoted in Lozowick, 2000, p. 46). In turn, Pradel was equivalent to a department commander as head of IID3, the Sipo transportation service. For his Sipo brief (IID), Rauff oversaw five bureaus, one of which was the Sipo transportation service (IID3) managed by Pradel, who in turn supervised chief mechanic Harry Wentritt of the main Berlin motor pool (IID3a). Handwritten notations on the back of a gas van document show that one of Wentritt’s employees, Willi Just, acted as a dispatcher in routing vehicle repair orders. Becker, the expert field inspector, reported independently to Rauff. The drivers, including Findeisen and Gevatter, were on the Berlin payroll but worked in the field so that their primary relationships were with the Group’s internal clients, namely, the Sipo and SD regional offices and the individual Einsatzgruppen units to whom the gas vans were furnished. Though Rauff, as head of technical matters for both the Security Police and the Foreign Security Service (i.e., head of II D and VI F) answered nominally to

62 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 4.1. Reich Security Main Office and Technical Matters organization charts.

the directors of those bureaus, he reported directly to RSHA chief Heydrich on the Einsatzgruppen project and in the personal tasks Rauff performed when Heydrich was also named Nazi governor of occupied Czechoslovakia. That Rauff

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

63

had minimal dealings with his nominal superior is suggested in a voluntary deposition he gave in 1972: If further confronted with the name [of] Dr. Nockemann, I can say that he also was, as far as I remember, head of Department II. About Dr. Nockemann I remember that he had a car accident at which his wife and his driver lost their lives. Dr. Nockemann then left Department II and was later killed in action in Russia. I cannot say, however, when the accident was and when he left Department II. I would now say that Dr. Siegert was Dr. Nockemann’s successor, but I cannot state this with certainty. (Nizkor, 2002, pp. 3–4)

When Rauff returned from his naval tour to the RSHA in 1941 and was named head of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, he recalled in 1972, “Regarding the equipment of the Einsatzgruppen in the Russian campaign I must have received my instructions from the then-in-charge head of department, without being able to say if at the time it was Dr. Nockemann or Dr. Siegert” (Nizkor, 2002, p. 9). Later, when Rauff was ordered to construct a fleet of gas vans, he remembered, “I don’t think that Dr. Siegert was involved in these matters at the time, although he probably knew about them” (p. 12). That Heydrich would deal directly with a Referent was not unprecedented since the literature on Adolf Eichmann (e.g., Cesarini, 2004; Lozowick, 2000) has demonstrated that the latter, as manager of the Jewish affairs bureau (IVB4) of the Gestapo, frequently had direct dealings with Heydrich as well as his nominal superior, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller. For example, Rauff noted that negotiations with the Wehrmacht to obtain supplies for the Einsatzgruppen “were even conducted by Heydrich himself whenever I was not getting any further” (Nizkor, 2002, p. 9). Even if Rauff was hazy in his memory of his nominal Amt II superior, his recollections of Heydrich were clear and vivid: Heydrich was an insanely ambitious man, a fox who was extremely suspicious and tolerated no one next to, let alone above, him. He was also a person who could not lose. Not even in a game. Accordingly the relation between him and all other persons at a very high level . . . was very difficult due to Heydrich’s personality. I can thus repeat my statement mentioned above that an honest and straight person . . . had a shocking effect on Heydrich. (Nizkor, 2002, p. 13) When confronted with the following characterization of Heydrich, “Vindictive person, exceptionally fast on the uptake, always exactly informed. Arguing with him was useless—he stuck to decisions that were often against any reason—during such arguments he made tough and unjust statements to the point of being insulting, leaving no room for opposition,” I would . . . myself underwrite this statement word by word as being accurate. (Nizkor, 2002, p. 15)

64 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Rauff then related a telling organizational story about the RSHA chief: I myself never tried to fight through an argument with Heydrich because that was useless. . . . In this context I would like to repeat that Heydrich could not bear to lose in a game and that therefore my comrades and I in Prague had agreed to let him win at “Doppelkopf” [a card game]. On the other hand it is certainly correct that Heydrich could be a very charming and attentive host. (Nizkor, 2002, p. 15)

Yet another organizational story was told by Findeisen, who for a brief time served as Heydrich’s personal driver. During an outing on a cold winter night, the RSHA chief smelled alcohol on Findeisen’s breath and decided to teach him a lesson in hopes of sobering up his chauffeur. Heydrich took the wheel, dropped Findeisen off at his quarters, and commanded him that night to walk several miles through the snow and report back to the office. When Findeisen quickly reappeared and was still visibly drunk, he admitted to Heydrich that he had found a ride back to headquarters. Heydrich on the spot sentenced him to 10 days’ arrest and sent Findeisen back to his former posting (Langerbein, 2004, p. 109). This was the larger-than-life personality—the ambitious and vindictive boss who could also turn on the charm—who set the tone for organizational life in the RSHA. The relationship of Rauff with his own subordinate, Pradel, was shaped by the former’s jealousy for rank privileges, proximity to power, and resultant sensitivity to the larger sphere of SS power politics; and the latter’s self-identification as a career police professional, operations manager, and automotive expert. Rauff moved in circles where “Gradually I became aware that there were many intrigues inside the RSHA” (Nizkor, 2002, p. 5). To be successful in his post, he also had to navigate the constant “problem of SD-Police and Wehrmacht [relations]” in which “there were always quarrels” (p. 12) over jurisdiction. Taking the side of his boss, Rauff implicitly accepted Heydrich’s rationale for the gas vans, recalling in his postwar deposition, “Whether at that time I had doubts against the use of gas vans I cannot say. The main issue for me at the time was that the shootings were a considerable burden for the men who were in charge thereof and that this burden was taken off them through the use of the gas vans” (p. 12). Yet in his elevated organizational position, Rauff was only concerned with the big picture and not the details: “Regarding the annihilation of Jews in Russia I know that gas vans were used for this purpose. I cannot say, however, from when on and to what extent this happened” (p. 12). Though no doubt being evasive in his postwar testimony, Rauff implied the Sonderwagen project was for him only a minor function: I used to think that the thing with the gas vans started at the time when I was at the navy. Today I have doubts about this and consider it possible that this matter only got going after I had returned from the navy. At any rate I know that at some time after my return I saw two of these gas vans

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

65

standing in the yard, which Pradel showed to me. Somehow I then also learned that the gas vans were used for the execution of sentences and for the killing of Jews. (Nizkor, 2002, p. 12)

Rauff was more fully and directly occupied with the Einsatzgruppen shooting actions, which occurred on a far vaster scale than the gas van killings. As he explained in 1972 about his considerable administrative responsibilities, fuel required by the [Einsatzgruppen] was provided by the Wehrmacht. That had been agreed upon at the highest level. The required ammunition was supplied directly to us by the Wehrmacht pursuant to negotiations with the Wehrmacht, and we then sent it to the [Einsatzgruppen]. (Nizkor, 2002, p. 9)

For the gas van operations, he had Becker in the field to keep him informed: “It is correct that I received something from Becker about the use of gas vans. I myself had told Becker to send me a corresponding report” (Nizkor, 2002, p. 12). But the Sonderwagen were only an adjunct to the much larger shooting actions. The vans were an improvised stopgap measure, causing the Einsatzgruppen even more psychological strain than shooting. The vans supplemented, but never replaced, the mass shootings, which continued unabated until the tide of war turned against the Germans. Nevertheless, even regarding the gas vans, in his postwar deposition, Rauff was still jealous of his rank: “I consider it impossible that Pradel should have carried out the development of the gas vans on his own initiative. He must have received an order for this either from me or from another superior standing above me” (Nizkor, 2002, p. 12). Pradel dealt with only mid-level nonentities, Rauff suggested: “The major . . . that Pradel mentions [in postwar testimony] is not known to me,” while by contrast, “I always dealt on a higher level, i.e., with General Fellgiebel [Wehrmacht signals chief] in matters of communication material. In matters of motor vehicles I dealt at a similar [top] level with the OKW [Wehrmacht High Command]” (p. 6). As far as Rauff was concerned, Pradel was a nobody: “I personally can thus not imagine that [the RSHA personnel chief] should have told something about ‘Barbarossa’ [the 1941 invasion of Russia] to a subordinate like Pradel for negotiations with the Wehrmacht” or detailed Pradel to negotiate with the National Socialist Motor Corps to obtain drivers (p. 9). Even 30 years later, he bristled at Pradel’s postwar suggestion that Rauff was a latecomer: “It is not correct that, as Pradel states, I only returned to the department from the navy after the commencement of the Russian campaign” (p. 6). From Rauff’s perspective, Pradel was only a subordinate, one of five department heads he supervised. Moreover, as his comments regarding Pradel’s transfer from the regular Order Police to the Security Police confirm, Rauff made clear that he regarded Pradel as a professional technocrat rather than a true SS man.

66 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

The arms-length and strained relationship between Rauff and Pradel provides an important context for understanding the initial development of the Sonderwagen. As described above, in postwar testimony, Pradel claimed he protested the order to construct gas vans and complied only after Rauff threatened to tell Heydrich, while Rauff claimed that no prodding was needed to bring the ambitious Pradel into line. Yet the men agreed on one point. Rauff testified it was “impossible” that Pradel should have built the vans without superior orders, a point also emphasized in Pradel’s own postwar description: Toward the end of 1941, my immediate superior, Rauff, ordered me to check with Wentritt, the head of the motor pool, to find out whether it would be possible to introduce exhaust fumes into the interior of a closed van. I executed this order, and Wentritt confirmed that it was possible. Rauff then gave instructions that suitable vehicles should be found and adapted in this way. (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 53)

Once the order was given and Rauff got the ball rolling, however, Pradel took it from there and asked Wentritt about the technical feasibility of the project. At first Wentritt “asked Pradel if there was a way out, but Pradel told him—‘in a friendly tone’—to think of his wife and children” (Browning, 1991, p. 61). Then he told Pradel that from a technical standpoint the requested alterations would be simple. Wentritt testified at his 1960s trial that he was only a link in the chain of command. When the order to design and construct gas vans came in the fall of 1941, he had been on the job for only a few months and, at the relatively young age of age of 37 or 38, was replacing the respected former chief mechanic who had served 5 years in the post. Thus, according to Wentritt’s interpretation, Pradel did not go into further details . . . He instructed me to fix the vans in such a way that the engine exhaust fumes could be introduced into the van. . . . Pradel then told me that another pipe had to be fitted inside the van to prevent the occupants from interfering with the admission of the gas. Thus the work carried out in our motor pool was essentially determined by Pradel and his superiors. (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 54)

Was Pradel’s admonition “to think of his wife and children” a veiled threat? Just as Pradel later claimed Rauff had warned that any “difficulties” would be reported to Heydrich, was Pradel doing the same to Wentritt? This seems possible, though another interpretation may be conjectured. Both Browning (1992) and Goldhagen (1996) have recounted how police reservists in Poland, when told by their commander of orders to conduct a mass shooting of Jews, bade the men to think of their wives and children in Germany who were being subjected to Allied aerial bombings. The men believed this rationale and the purported link between unarmed civilian Jews in a remote Polish hamlet and an alleged global Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy against Germany. Herf (2006) and

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

67

Fritzsche (2008) have both noted how ordinary Germans, from the frontlines to the home front, increasingly believed this link as the war went on. When confronted with the knowledge of German atrocities in the East, it was easier for Germans to turn the tables and see themselves as victims. In December 1941, as the first gas vans entered service, Becker entered the picture as a chemical expert on loan to the Sipo Technical Matters Group. As he later testified, Himmler wanted to deploy people who had become available as a result of the suspension of the euthanasia program, and who, like me, were specialists in extermination by gassing. The reason for this was that the men in charge of the Einsatzgruppen in the East were increasingly complaining the firing squads could not cope with the psychological and moral stress of the mass shootings indefinitely. (Klee et al., 1991, p. 69)

After his posting to Rauff’s department, Becker testified, “[Rauff] explained the situation to me, saying that the psychological and moral stress on the firing squads was no longer bearable and that therefore the gassing program had started” (Klee et al., 1991, p. 69). Rauff stressed the point that the gas van program was already in motion. Becker stated, “He said the gas vans with drivers were already on their way to, or had indeed reached, the individual Einsatzgruppen.” Thus, Becker was appointed inspector for the gas van program: “My professional brief was to inspect the work” and “ensure that the mass killings carried out in the lorries proceeded properly” with “particular attention to the mechanical functioning of these vans” (p. 69). Becker left Germany in January 1942 and over the next 9 months visited each of the four Einsatzgruppen operating in Soviet territory. He began with Group D in the Crimea and ended with Group A on the Baltic, keeping in frequent contact with Rauff (Beer, 1987; Klee et al., 1991, pp. 68–71). As the surviving gas van documents confirm, operations were centrally administered by Rauff and the Sipo transportation team. Internal clients, primarily the Sipo and SD Regional Offices that oversaw the Einsatzgruppen, requested vans from Rauff. When these requests were granted, the Sipo motor pool provided both vans and drivers. When repairs and spare parts were needed, clients telegrammed their requests for these as well. Handwritten notations on the telegrams show these requests were bucked to Pradel and eventually down to Willi Just for coordination and fulfillment. And when the “special missions” were completed, vans and drivers were returned to Berlin. These operating procedures were a crucial change from the way that the Einsatzgruppen conducted mass shootings, for historians are now learning the extent to which “commando heads were given free rein in terms of how to carry it out. The way the [shooting] massacres took place depended on the circumstances— topography, the presence of partisans—different factors that the Germans had to

68 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

weigh” so that “the perpetrators of genocide used everything—cliffs, grain silos, beaches, irrigation wells, ditches” as mass graves (Desbois, 2008, pp. 81, 98). Still, even when the Sonderwagen project introduced central administration to the genocide, the organizational life experienced by the gas van drivers reflected more of the ad hoc nature of mobile field operations than the bureaucratic routines of Rauff, Pradel, Wentritt, and Just at RSHA headquarters in Berlin. The drivers accompanied the Einsatzgruppen over vast territories, but strove to confine their activities to driving and avoided participating in the loading and unloading of Jewish victims. The odium of their duties need not be recounted here in full, but their postwar testimony features organizational stories of how their own organizational culture clashed with that of the Einsatzgruppen. In the culture of the latter, everyone, drivers included, were expected to participate in shootings so that all might be bloodied and bound together by their shared complicity. Though specialists and technicians permanently assigned to the death squads “had a unique status in their units . . . because their job was crucial for the proper functioning of the Einsatzgruppen” and this “gave the specialists a sense of pride,” they were often viewed by comrades with “jealousy, suspicion, and at times contempt because the specialists’ knowledge was limited to a narrow and ‘secondary’ function” to the “soldierly” mission of killing the enemy (Langerbein, 2004, pp. 103–104). Postwar testimonies of the gas van drivers feature organizational stories of how Einsatzgruppen officers attempted to co-opt them into the squads’ culture by pressuring them into personally killing Jews—and how the Sonderwagen drivers resisted. The units’ regular drivers typically participated in shootings, including Wentritt’s predecessor who, when transferred to field duty, soon became an enthusiastic volunteer (Langerbein, 2004, p. 115). Gevatter testified after the war of his hesitation and distaste for driving the gas van, to the point that he one day deliberately ran his vehicle into the mud to delay the gassing and was forced at gunpoint by an Einsatzgruppen officer to personally conduct the killing on the spot without waiting to extricate the van (Langerbein, 2004, p. 117). Findeisen also felt his orders set him apart: “I was told that the whole operation and the van itself were secret. It was expressly forbidden to photograph the vans and I was not to let anyone near the van” (Klee et al., 1991, p. 71). Even under intense pressure he kept his distance: One evening several officers appeared and ordered certain people to go with them. They went into a private flat where they picked up a professor and his daughter. These people were then taken to a spot close to a piece of open land where a grave was dug. The people, i.e. the officers, then gave orders for these two people to be shot. One of the officers said to me, “Findeisen, shoot these people in the neck.” I refused to do this as did the other men. The girl must have been about eighteen or nineteen. The officer shot the people himself as the others refused. He swore at us and said we were cowards, but apart from that he did not do anything to us. (Klee et al., 1991, pp. 71–72)

THE PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR MOTIVES

/

69

Findeisen’s relief at not having to kill face-to-face, at being able to maintain his specialist façade and distance himself from personal responsibility, was palpable when he testified, My job was simply to drive the van. The van was loaded at headquarters . . . [and] the door was bolted and the [gas] tube connected . . . I drove through the town and then out to the anti-tank ditches where the vehicle was opened. This was done by prisoners. (Klee et al., 1991, p. 72)

Another gas van driver, Erich Gnewuch, similarly testified, “I myself never shot a single Jew; I only gassed them” (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 58). Nevertheless, Findeisen’s self-identification as a specialist spurred him to go the extra mile and “clean the gas chamber of his vehicle at the end of each action” and “always make certain that his vehicle was ready for its sinister purpose, even during the bitter cold of winter, when he carefully nurtured a fire under the engine to prevent it from freezing” (Langerbein, 2004, pp. 117–118). Altogether, a look at the complex of relationships that shaped the organizational life of the Sipo Technical Matters Group reveals it was composed of varied interests and motivations. Browning (1991) cited the professional identities of Pradel, Wentritt, and the automotive experts as a driving force. “The shortcomings of the gas vans were a negative reflection on their workmanship that had to be remedied” or blamed on others, so that “Their greatest concern seemed to be that they might be deemed inadequate to their assigned task” (p. 67). But the full panoply of motives goes even deeper to an individual level: Rauff, the convinced Nazi of upper middle-class origins who made a Faustian bargain with Heydrich to resurrect his career; Pradel, the lower civil servant, mid-level manager, and automotive expert who identified with the professional police forces rather than the SS; Wentritt, the working-class mechanic who was new on the job and did not want to jeopardize his big break; Becker, the SS loyalist who did what was asked of him; Widmann, the young self-made man who, like Albert Speer, saw a chance to exploit the professional opportunities made possible by the National Socialist regime; and Findeisen, the drunkard, relieved that “My job was simply to drive the van.” As individual identities and motivations intertwined in the Sipo Technical Matters Group, conflicts emerged, from the friction between Rauff and Pradel as the respective representatives of SS culture and professional police culture, to the friction between the barbarized Einsatzgruppen and the gas van drivers sent out from Berlin who clung to their identities as specialists. In assessing the organizational life of the gas van program, however, Browning (1991) made a telling point: [As] Pradel and his automotive experts [were] . . . occupied with procuring, dispatching, maintaining, and repairing motor vehicles, their expertise and

70 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

facilities were suddenly pressed into the service of mass murder when they were charged with producing gas vans. In the course of half a year, some twenty vans passed through their shop, requiring only a moderate expenditure of time and energy on their part—a minor episode interrupting their normal routine. (p. 66)

Boundary objects serve, as Wilson and Herndl (2007) demonstrated, to create a “trading zone,” which by definition is a “temporary space of cooperation and exchange between different disciplines or subdisciplines” (p. 132, emphasis added). This study began with the assertion that new insights might be gained by shifting our perspective from a symbolically monolithic view of “The Final Solution” and being willing to see the genocide’s polycratic, entropic, and punctuated aspects. The latter aspect, which sees the Final Solution as a blitzkrieg burst of murderous intensity, accords with the notion that boundary objects by their nature produce only temporary trading zones. Such spaces do not endure unless continually negotiated. Browning’s (1991) observation that the Sonderwagen project endured just half a year affirms that the competing interests within the Sipo Technical Matters Group only needed to produce a temporary cooperative space; and further, that this consensual space quickly unraveled when events superseded the gas van enterprise and members’ integrative exigence was removed. They did not need an ontologically prior entity called an “organization” to provide them a stable “container” of shared values in which to function, but only a temporary interstitial zone in which to cooperate—just barely long enough. Analyzing how their everyday documents served as boundary objects in creating such a zone is the next stage of our inquiry.

CHAPTER 5

Documents for Destruction

SETTING UP THE ANALYSES So far this study has suggested that a shift in perspective—of viewing “The Final Solution” not as a single, symbolically composite crime but as a contingent constellation of locally polycratic, entropic, and punctuated events—might yield new insights into the Nazi genocide. One such insight is in seeing the perpetrators’ need to negotiate their own competing interests long enough to create temporary spaces of cooperation and exchange, an exigence that, as this study argues, could be met by production of organizational texts to serve as boundary objects (Oswick & Robertson, 2009; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Wilson & Herndl, 2007) for bridging their differences. In turn, the suggestion that everyday documents can function in this manner requires the view that organizational communications are not only instruments of message clarification for maximizing productivity but are also means by which members constitute, construct, and continually renegotiate their associations. To analyze texts from this perspective necessitates a research methodology that can account for the larger historical and cultural discourses that bear upon text production; and such a methodology has been proposed by Longo (1998). Following that method, we have to this point explored the historical and cultural contexts of the mobile gas van program administered by the Sipo Technical Matters Group of the SS Reich Security Main Office. In particular, since organizations reflect larger societal discourses, which they shape into local versions, the cultural contexts for their communications must explore the surrounding national culture (in our case, that of Nazi Germany), institutional culture (of the National Socialist mass movement), and relevant organizational culture (of the Nazi SS, its Reich Security Main Office, and the Sipo Technical Matters Group itself). Further, we learned of Martin’s (1992, 2002; Martin et al., 2006) thesis that at any given moment, an organization simultaneously manifests the three dimensions of integration (what members share), differentiation (the various 71

72 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

subcultures that members inhabit), and fragmentation (so that members must continually renegotiate their association amidst organizational ambiguity, change, and confusion). Thus, we have outlined what members of the Group shared (the historical legacies of religious, economic, and racial anti-Semitism; the cultural heritages of the “people’s community” and the “leadership principle”), their differentiated subcultures (convinced Nazis versus career police professionals; the descending levels of the organization), and their fragmentation (the mélange of local and personal interests and motives from which they had to forge temporary and issue-specific consensus). All of this is a prelude, however, for the next phase of research that is called for in our methodology, namely, to analyze the texts of the Sipo Technical Matters Group as an organizational discourse—the better to understand their function as boundary objects. Discourse is “an increasingly significant focus of interest” as researchers seek ways to “theorize the increasingly complex processes and practices that constitute ‘organization’” (Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004b, p. 1). Grant, Keenoy, and Oswick (2001) reported that since the 1990s, “management and organizational theorists have started to show a keen interest in discursively based studies of organizations,” thus establishing “a field of inquiry termed ‘organizational discourse’” and sparking a “proliferation of such research and associated publications” (p. 6). A diverse range of approaches has emerged as researchers wrestle with the fact that “discourse patterns fuse with organizational processes in ways that make language and organizations a unique domain—one that differs from the study of linguistics in general and discourse analysis in other social settings” (Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001, p. 78). With specific regard to technical communication, Berkenkotter (2002) surveyed approaches for analyzing everyday texts in organizational settings and reported that technical writing is chiefly analyzed via the three methods of rhetorical criticism and theory, genre analysis, and discourse analysis “as developed within the context of applied linguistics” (p. 48). These three approaches, when combined with insights garnered from the recent and diverse scholarship in organizational discourse studies, suggest three complementary methods for analyzing the Nazi texts. First, while Katz (1992a) previously raised the possibility of critiquing the killers’ use of the Aristotelian topoi, other avenues of rhetorical critique are also available to the analyst (e.g., see Burgchardt, 2010). Here I choose to employ three such avenues. One is grounded in Miller’s (1994) conception of the rhetorical community, which is held together by marshalling the rhetorical resources of narrative, metaphor, and genre. A look at the Nazi documents from this perspective can yield a socio-rhetorical analysis suited to seeing the organization as a site of both contestation and consensus. Indeed, as illustrated in Figure 5.1, Miller’s theory lines up neatly with Martin’s three-perspective theory of organizational culture when narrative (a field on which, Miller holds, members can converge for a shared project) is seen as manifesting its integrated

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

73

Figure 5.1. Rhetorical Resources for (re)producing organizational culture. Sources: Adapted from Miller (1994), Martin (1992, 2002), and Martin, Frost, and O’Neill (2006).

element, metaphor (which bridges difference and similarity) as mediating its differentiated element, and genre (which pragmatically structures social action by, among other things, providing reproducible speaker/address roles and social typifications of recurrent exigences) as holding off its fragmented element. The next avenue of rhetorical analysis is grounded in Sauer’s (2003, 2006) conception of the Cycle of Technical Documentation in Large Regulated Industries, which explains how embodied local knowledge is rhetorically transformed into actionable engineering knowledge and again into generalizable and scientific standards. The last method is suggested by the growing literature on visual rhetorics (e.g., Hill & Helmers, 2004; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). Katz (1992a) commented briefly on the paragraph structure of the gas van document he analyzed, and this important point can be extended through a detailed look at the visual rhetorics of the 5-page German original. From the filing code at the top to the signature code at the bottom, these visual aspects speak volumes about the origination of the documents (Lozowick, 2000). The documents are replete with visual clues, from the use of official-looking preprinted forms to the copious handwritten marginalia. Second, Berkenkotter (2002) noted that Miller’s landmark 1984 essay on genre as social action has prompted many “scholars and researchers . . . [to] become interested in describing professional, disciplinary, and organizational genres” (p. 49). Miller and Selzer (1985) also proposed a 5-step method for discovering genre-specific and institution-specific special topics in technical communications: (a) compare documents with their accompanying internal directives; (b) compare multiple documents from the same organization, checking for language that recurs on different occasions; (c) examine any written guidelines the organization has issued for its writers; (d) check for internal correspondence

74 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

about a project or any marginalia and notes to writers that may appear on documents; and (e) utilize interviews of the writers. All five of these steps will be pursued to discover recurring genres in the Sonderwagen documents, of which there are many. Eliciting the organizational genres of the Sipo Technical Matters Group can, then, assist in unpacking the culture that informed its discourse. Third, while Berkenkotter (2002) favored linguistically based discourse analyses, the recent literature on organizational discourse suggests that researchers are pursuing a wide range of approaches. This diversity stems from the fact that “organizational discourse is poorly defined” so that “Despite numerous theoretical antecedents, it has few clear parameters and, as a field of study, it incorporates a variety of diverse perspectives and methodologies reflecting its multi-disciplinary origins” (Grant, Keenoy, & Oswick, 1998, p. 1). Thus, Putnam and Fairhurst (2001) offered an open-ended definition whereby “discourse is viewed as a way of knowing” (p. 79), while Grant et al. (2004b) suggested that the term “organizational discourse” refers to the structured collections of texts embodied in the practices of talking and writing (as well as a wide variety of visual representations and cultural artifacts) that bring organizationally related objects into being as these texts are produced, disseminated, and consumed. (p. 3)

By this definition, the present study would explore the document traffic of the Sipo Technical Matters Group and how its members’ subjective experiences of this discourse brought the organizational object of bureaucratic genocide into being. But viewing “discourse . . . as a way of knowing” or “texts . . . that bring organizationally related objects into being” potentially opens the field to many approaches. To make sense out of this diversity, Grant and Iedema (2005) distinguished between linguistically based organizational discourse analysis (ODA) and organizational discourse studies (ODS), whose approaches have “emerged from within organization and management studies [and are] highly varied” (p. 38). Thus, contra Berkenkotter (2002), research into organizational texts can legitimately follow ODS methods, which, Grant and Iedema argued, can be mapped along five dimensions according to whether the focus is on theory versus empirical data; a monomodal versus a multimodal orientation; “what is” (pattern analysis) versus “what could be” (marginalized meanings); cognition versus practice; and critique/emancipation versus pragmatic intervention. These five dimensions, however, do not offer researchers five either/or choices. Rather, each dimension should be seen as a continuum along which researchers can locate methodological combinations appropriate to their projects. Thus, my study adopts the following locations within each dimension:

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

75

1. A theoretical focus that is “oriented toward the philosophy of social organization and representation, using discourse as an abstract explanatory construct” (Grant & Iedema, 2005, p. 44) by introducing interpretive and postmodern perspectives on organizing, while also plumbing the empirical data of the SS gas van documents through linguistic analysis. 2. A multimodal orientation that investigates sense-making not only through language but via such means as visual rhetorics and organizational stories. 3. An attempt to discern patterns by discovering organizational genres in the gas van documents, while also excavating these texts to discern meanings, such as any hesitations about the killing project, that were marginalized. 4. A commitment to “the view that cognition is prediscursive” (Grant & Iedema, 2005, p. 52) so that culturally situated mental models may have influenced SS organizational experience, while also acknowledging that mental schemas do not predetermine behavior; since discourse has both symbolic and material dimensions, communities of practice must negotiate “the tension between human interaction . . . and the tools, technologies, language forms, and artifacts that humans use in interaction” (p. 53). 5. A combination of critique and intervention that offers an account of destructive power/knowledge at work in the Final Solution and also explores the ethical insights this cautionary example affords to communicators today. In particular, my methodological decision not to rely solely on language, but to incorporate a theoretical focus and not view empirical data alone as sufficient explanation for organizational phenomena, can help address an admitted limitation of my study, namely, that I am an English speaker doing research on German documents. If organizational discourse is seen as a way of knowing (Putnam & Fairhust, 2001, p. 79) and of bringing organizationally related objects into being (Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004b, p. 3), then items such as the SS document writers’ word order or sentence structure (in the original German) are not wholly decisive for my analysis of how the killers’ historical and cultural ways of knowing may have enabled them to bring organizationally related boundary objects in being. Other scholars of technical communication, for example, have offered useful analyses by working from English translations of the lengthiest gas van text: Katz (1992a) pointed out how the German technical writers unconsciously employed topics (i.e., a way of knowing) that are common to Western rhetorical policy deliberation (i.e., a bringing into being). Likewise, Dombrowski’s (2000a) review focused on how “this document exemplif[ies] certain values” (i.e., a way of knowing) and then “puts into concrete action a whole set of values [that stem] from its cultural context” (i.e., a bringing into being) (pp. 83–84). Even a linguistics-based approach to analyzing everyday texts, Stillar (1998) convincingly argued, is incomplete without rhetorical and social perspectives.

76 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Language may instantiate textual resources that are dependent on (in our case) German language to structure and organize information. But Stillar observed that language, whether German or English or another tongue, also instantiates ideational resources (a text is “about something” in that it describes who are the participants and their roles and what are the circumstances and time perspective) and interpersonal resources (a text, because it is “to and from somebody,” shapes interaction and constructs social relations as writers assign roles to and express attitudes toward addressees) (pp. 20–21). Thus, according to Stillar’s model, analyses of ideational and interpersonal functions of language are not wholly dependent on the specific tongue of the writers. And because “language is characterized and analyzed in terms of its role in social practice” (p. 92), he noted, its ideational and interpersonal aspects are necessarily elaborated through rhetorical and social theory. To sum up, then, my analyses will proceed in the following manner: First, the remainder of this chapter will be given over to the necessary prequel of introducing the documents themselves by describing the specific circumstances of each text and providing English translations. Chapter 6 will carry the rhetorical and genre analyses by laying the theoretical groundwork and then offering interpretations of the texts. And chapter 7 will offer an organizational discourse analysis through theoretical grounding and then by interpreting the documents to reconstruct the discourse in which the desk-murderers created a temporary space for consensus. Throughout, we will see how the SS documents functioned as boundary objects. INTRODUCING THE DOCUMENTS Before moving to analyses—rhetorical, generic, discursive—of the gas van corpus generated by the Sipo Technical Matters Group, a brief introduction of each document is helpful. Seven surviving texts from the Group are included in this study along with two others that, although not sent or received by the personnel of the Group, are documents in which its clients refer to their usage of the gas vans. Each introduction provides the document type, date, sender, recipient, stated purpose, and historical and organizational settings. In this chapter, English translations for most documents are also provided—translations that will serve as the bases for rhetorical analyses of the texts in chapter 6. The German originals are reproduced in chapter 6 to accompany analyses of their visual rhetorics. The documents of the Group span the spring and early summer of 1942 and were generated between late March and late June of that year. This was the period after the vehicles had already been tested, built, and placed in service, and when the Sonderwagen program was at its most active. Thus, the documents deal with “customer service” to SS clients and with internal Group discussions about meeting the mounting challenges of field operations that stretched from

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

77

Poland and Yugoslavia to the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Russia. Over these 3 months, then, the competing interests of the Sipo Technical Matters Group experienced their greatest integrative exigence for cooperation on the gas van project. They satisfied that exigence and temporarily sustained a consensus, if only for a few months, until mobile gas vans were overtaken by stationary gas chambers developed by other SS competitors, by generating texts to serve as objects with which to negotiate trading zones across their intraorganizational boundaries. The nine documents include the following texts: A letter dated 26 March 1942, sent by Rauff and responding to a request from the Mauthausen concentration camp for the temporary dispatch of a gas van (Figure 5.2). The camp system was run by another SS division, the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) and its Concentration Camp Inspectorate. Presumably the Mauthausen request came up through the WVHA hierarchy and, because concentration camps were officially classed as internal security facilities to detain enemies of the state, the request was routed by the RSHA to the Criminal Technical Institute (KTI) of its Reich Criminal Police Main Office (RKPA) because the KTI was a police lab whose chemical section secured supplies of poison gas. Apparently the KTI inquired with Rauff’s IID about the availability of his department’s gas vans, which killed by exhaust gas rather than using expensive and cumbersome carbon monoxide canisters. Rauff replied that vans were unavailable, and rather than wait, the Mauthausen camp doctor should obtain gas canisters on his own. A report dated 16 May 1942, sent to Rauff by Becker, field inspector for the gas van program (Figure 5.3). A longtime SS officer with a PhD in chemistry and experience in the T4 euthanasia program, Becker was an expert on loan to the Sipo Technical Matters Group and reported directly to Rauff. He left Berlin in January 1942 and over the next 9 months visited each of the four Einsatzgruppen (denoted A, B, C, and D) that were operating the vans in Soviet territory captured by Germany since its June 1941 invasion. As Rauff affirmed in a 1972 deposition, “It is correct that I received something from Becker about the use of gas vans. I myself had told Becker to send me a corresponding report” (Nizkor, 2002). An internal technical document dated 5 June 1942, that proposes for Rauff’s consideration a series of engineering improvements to enhance the killing capacity of the gas vans (Figure 5.4). This is the document that Katz (1992a) set out to analyze. Given what is known about Third Reich bureaucratic protocols and RSHA filing codes (see previous chapter), it is unlikely that the signatory of the document, motor pool dispatcher and welder Willi Just (Noakes & Pridham, 1988, p. 1202), was the author or instigator of the proposal but instead was directed to sign the document. A telegram dated 9 June 1942, and sent to Pradel by Schäfer, chief of the Sipo and SD regional headquarters in occupied Yugoslavia, informing Berlin that two gas vans and their drivers completed their “special mission” and were returning to Germany (Figure 5.5). Partisans were particularly active in

78 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Yugoslavia, so that by early 1942, the Wehrmacht used the pretext of reprisals to have most Jewish males in Belgrade and Serbia executed by shooting. More than 5,000 remaining Jewish women and children were placed in a concentration camp. In April, the military administration chief procured an SS “delousing van” with two drivers to “clean out the camp” by the end of May (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 71). The victims were driven across town, asphyxiated in the vans along the way, and buried in mass graves previously dug at a local shooting range. After this “special mission,” the telegram relates, the drivers and van were ordered home by rail since one van had a broken axle. The document also contains handwritten notes, dated 11 and 16 June and 13 July, attributed to Just, which chart the repairs. A request for more gas vans dated 15 June 1942, from Trühe, chief of the Sipo and SD regional headquarters for the Eastern Territories (Reichskommisariat Ostland), the office that controlled the activities of Einsatzgruppen A in the Baltic States and B in Byelorussia and Smolensk (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 56) (Figure 5.6). The telegram also requested a supply of hose to repair gas leaks in the three vans already in operation. In the summer of 1942, the SS was clearing the Jewish ghettos of the Ostland; from mid-May through the end of July, A and B murdered some 55,000 Jews using gas vans (Rhodes, 2002, pp. 255–256). Thus, the local commandant reports his three vans were “insufficient” to provide “special treatment” for the weekly transports of victims. In a handwritten notation, Pradel (designation “R 16/6”) asked to be kept apprised of the matter. A 22 June 1942 reply to the Ostland request from Rauff’s office that promises delivery of another van by mid-July along with a supply of hose (Figure 5.7). In several notations, Just (“IID3a9”) is active in disseminating follow-up communications and refers back to the Schäfer telegram to suggest the van used in Yugoslavia be refitted for Ostland. The ghetto-clearing murders were observed in September by Becker at his last inspection stop. Even the “gassing expert” who “euthanized” thousands from a distance could not witness killing on this scale and returned to Berlin (Klee et al., 1991, p. 71). Telegrams of 15 June 1942 (Figure 5.4) from Trühe and 9 June 1942 (Figure 5.3) from Schäfer retyped and consolidated onto a single sheet of paper. From the handwritten notation at the top of the sheet, it was either seen by or referred to Pradel, while a notation scrawled next to the Schäfer text makes reference to the “final disposition” (Fertigstellung) of the matter. Since this document contains the same texts as the earlier telegrams, no English translation is presented here. In addition, two other documents, although not sent or received by the personnel of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, shed some light on the Sonderwagen project as the Group’s clients refer to their usage of the gas vans: Sipo and SD situation report for Einsatzgruppe B dated 1 March 1942, and covering the period 16–28 February 1942 (see Holocaust Research Project, 2009). The report described how two gas vans arrived 23 February 1942 in Smolensk and were then dispatched to two of the six subunits that

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

Figure 5.2. English translation of 26 March 1942 Rauff letter. Source: Author’s translation.

79

80 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 5.3. English translation of 16 May 1942 Becker field report. Page 1 of 2. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

Figure 5.3. English translation of 16 May 1942 Becker field report. Page 2 of 2. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

81

82 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 5.4. English translation of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 1 of 3. Source: Kogon E. et al. (1993). Nazi Mass Murder by Poison, Gas, pp. 228-230,Yale University Press, used by permission.

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

Figure 5.4. English translation of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 2 of 3. Source: Kogon et al. (1993). Used by permission.

83

84 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 5.4. English translation of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 3 of 3. Source: Kogon et al. (1993). Used by permission.

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

Figure 5.5. English translation of 9 June 1942 Schäfer telegram. Page 1 of 2. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

85

86 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 5.5. English translation of 9 June 1942 Schäfer telegram. Page 2 of 2. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

Figure 5.6. English translation of 15 June 1942 Trühe telegram. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

87

88 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 5.7. English translation of 22 June 1942 Rauff reply to Trühe. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

DOCUMENTS FOR DESTRUCTION /

89

composed Einsatzgruppe B. Notably, the report complained, “Both vehicles arrived at Smolensk with defects and, after the defects were remedied, were assigned to the Einsatzkommandos” (Beide Fajrzeuge kamen defekt in Smolensk an un wurden nach Behebung der Defekte den Einsatzkommandos zugeteilt). Since this is the key information about the vans, no English translation is presented here. Letter dated 11 April 1942, from SS major general Harald Turner, the German administrative chief for occupied Serbia, to Himmler’s chief of staff Karl Wolff (see Friedlander & Milton, 1992, pp. 284–286). The fifth paragraph (out of six) describes how, with the help of the SD, Turner secured a “delousing van,” which he expected would achieve in 2 to 4 weeks a “definitive clearing out” of a camp for Jewish women and children. The letter is important because Turner put “delousing van” (“Entlausungswagen”) in quotation marks, acknowledging the term to be a euphemism for killing by poison gas. The murders were subsequently carried out in the “special mission” referenced by Schäfer in his 9 June 1942 telegram to Pradel (Figure 5.5). With such documents as those above did the bureaucrats and technicians of the Sipo Technical Matters Group endeavor, as Browning (1991) noted, to hide reality from themselves. But as we will see in succeeding chapters, the documents also served as objects for the creation and legitimation of an alternative reality as those who trafficked in these texts thereby bridged the boundaries between their differing perceptions and constructed a community of killers.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 6

A Community of Killers

CONSTRUCTING THE RHETORICAL COMMUNITY What are we to make of the horrifying documents we have just encountered? A functionalist ontology would tell us that individual mindsets are superfluous, that organizations are driven to optimize results, and thus organizational communications must privilege clarity and accuracy because they are instruments to achieve the collective purpose. But why, then, do all the writers employ recurrent euphemisms about “special vans,” “special missions,” and “special treatment”? (In time, references to “special vans” were simply shortened to “S-vans.”) Why did Rauff couch his letter on the gassing of concentration camp prisoners within the context of a medical “procedure”? Why did Becker refer to Jewish victims as “prisoners” and their mass murder as “executions”? Why did the men of the Sipo motor pool take such obvious pains to avoid mention that the “cargo” and “load” carried by their vehicles was, in fact, human? That the language served to distance these killers from their crimes is obvious and has been long remarked upon by historians. But if the language distanced these bureaucrats away from the import of their actions, did their discourse—through the boundary objects it produced—also draw them toward a common identity and construct for them a shared coherent reality? Or according to Miller’s (1994) conception, the men of the Sipo Technical Matters Group formed a “rhetorical community.” Farrell (1991) similarly suggested that what he called the “rhetorical forum” instantiates “two very different sorts of loci [that] may always intersect there,” namely, “the cumulative weight of customary practice” and “the inevitably uncertain fact of others” (p. 198). Miller (1994) then drew on Farrell’s “inclusion of sameness and difference” and defined the “rhetorical community” to be the community as invoked, represented, presupposed, or developed in rhetorical discourse. It is constituted by attributions of characteristic joint 91

92 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

rhetorical actions, genres of interaction, ways of getting things done, including reproducing itself . . . [by] structuring aspects of all forms of socio-rhetorical action. . . . It operates more generally, however, as a site where centrifugal and centripetal forces must meet. (pp. 73–74)

In this chapter, we will approach the Sonderwagen documents as a rhetorical discourse—for by Longo’s (1998) methodology, analyzing discourse is the next phase of the study—that “invoked, represented, presupposed, and developed” the community of killers that was the Sipo Technical Matters Group. In so doing, we will follow Miller’s (1994) thesis that rhetorical communities marshal the resources of narrative, metaphor, and genre in order to (re)produce themselves and will look for these phenomena in the Group’s corpus. The origins of her conception of the rhetorical community are seen in Miller’s early essay, “Technology as a Form of Consciousness” (1978), in which she argued that interpreting action requires familiarity with “both the personal formation of mental character and the collective development of cultural character” (p. 229). In “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing” (1979), she pointed out that effective writers must grasp “the concepts, values, traditions, and style which permit identification with [their] community and determine the success or failure of communication” (p. 617). And in “Genre as Social Action” (1984), Miller observed that exigence is at the core of rhetorical situation, and this exigence “must be located in the social world . . . [as] a form of social knowledge— a mutual construing of objects, events, interests, and purposes” that functions “neither as a cause of rhetorical action nor as intention, but as social motive . . . [that] provides the rhetor with a sense of rhetorical purpose . . . [and] a socially recognizable way to make his or her intentions known” (pp. 157–158). Thus, genres emerge “as typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (p. 159), so that “as a recurrent, significant action, a genre embodies an aspect of cultural rationality” (p. 165). During the 1990s, Miller developed her interest in culture through her conception of the rhetorical community. In “Rhetoric and Community: The Problem of the One and the Many” (1993a), Miller described the “social grounding” (p. 80) of rhetoric and cited social constructionist insights from a wide range of scholars: Bakhtin, Booth, Burke, Fish, Geertz, Mead, Rorty, Vygotsky. She quoted with approval McKerrow’s (1989) assertion that “rhetoric constitutes doxastic rather than epistemic knowledge,” a view that “allows the focus to shift to how the symbols come to possess power—what they ‘do’ in society” (pp. 103–104) as these opinions or “good reasons” (Fisher, 1978, 1987) attain communal validation. Then in “The Polis as Rhetorical Community” (1993b), she built a case that “Aristotle’s synthesis of sophism and Platonism shows rhetoric to be shaped by community” (p. 235) because the polis “is most centrally a site of contention” (p. 239). Thus, she concluded the polis may be understood “as a discursive projection, a set of assumptions implicit in any argument; it is

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

93

the community invoked, represented, presupposed, or developed in rhetorical discourse” (pp. 239–240). Finally, in “Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre” (1994), Miller tied together her interest in community with her work in genre. The latter are cultural artifacts because, as significantly recurring actions, they become “bearers of culture . . . [that] literally incorporate knowledge— knowledge of the aesthetics, economics, politics, religious beliefs and all the various dimensions of what we know as human culture” (p. 69). Analysts can therefore unpack this knowledge and make inferences about a culture by unpacking its genres. In the end, Miller (1994) arrives at a definition of genre in which Genre . . . [is] that aspect of situated communication that is capable of reproduction, that can be manifested in more than one situation, more than one concrete space-time. The rules and resources of a genre provide reproducible speaker and addressee roles, social typifications of recurrent social needs or exigences, topical structures (or “moves” and “steps”), and ways of indexing an event to material conditions, turning them into constraints or resources. (p. 71)

To connect genre with rhetorical community, Miller (1994) described genre as “a mid-level structurational nexus between mind and society.” Therefore, rhetoric is implied because generic social actions are always “addressed” to others through linguistic resources (p. 71). Next she returned to her earlier description of “a discursive projection . . . [which] is the community invoked, represented, presupposed, or developed in rhetorical discourse” (1993b, pp. 239–240; 1994, p. 73) and ascribed this quality to the rhetorical community, which she went on to describe as constituted by attributions of characteristic joint rhetorical actions, genres of interaction, ways of getting things done, including reproducing itself. Like Giddens’ structures, rhetorical communities “exist” in human memories and in their specific instantiations in words; they are not invented anew but persist in structuring aspects of all forms of socio-rhetorical action. (Miller, 1994, p. 73)

Thus, rhetorical community precedes genre or, as her article title put it, rhetorical community is the cultural basis of genre. But genre also sustains community by reproducing it and by reconciling its “centrifugal and centripetal forces” (Miller, 1994, p. 74). These opposing impulses, of contestation and custom, make a community rhetorical. And to ultimately sustain themselves, rhetorical communities employ narrative to create a field in which differences may be converged into a shared project; metaphor and figuration to bridge the gap between difference and similarity; and genre as “ways of marshalling rhetorical resources” (p. 75) in order to pragmatically structure communal action. Following Miller’s line, we would see the rhetoric of the SS gas van documents

94 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

as socially grounded and constitutive of doxastic knowledge, or communally validated “good reasons.” Tragically, the rhetoric validated “good reasons” for Judeocide. This being so, the genre of Nazi organizational and technical communication is a cultural artifact that incorporates the writers’ knowledge of their national, institutional, and organization cultures. As such, examination of their texts may, by revealing actions that were significant and recurring, allow us to draw inferences about their culture. As will be described below, the gas van documents deployed genres as individual authors employed their shared rules and resources, and thus institutionalized their organizational genres through reproduction. These generic rules and resources were efficacious for community members because they provided “reproducible speaker and addressee roles [e.g., the SS chain of command], social typifications of recurrent social needs or exigences [e.g., the competition among SS bureaus to control policy; the struggle of SS personnel for career advancement], topical structures [e.g., the ‘moral’ justifications for the Final Solution; the duty to carry out the orders of legitimated authority]; and ways of indexing an event to material conditions [e.g., the ‘need’ to eliminate a perceived enemy in wartime], turning them into constraints or resources” (Miller, 1994, p. 71). Structurally, generic action connects individual thinking to social exigence, thus implying rhetoric—because the action is always “addressed” to others—and creating a discourse that projects the community it necessarily invokes. If we concede that the gas van documents deployed organizational genres, then we are likewise conceding they were preceded by a rhetorical community that supplied the genres’ cultural basis. In their generic aspects, the Nazi documents as boundary objects constituted sites where speakers and addressees contested their divisions and yet also practiced their identifications. The killers had their justifying narratives and metaphors, and their genres—such as the technical documentation of their murders—converted those cultural resources into lethally pragmatic social actions.

A “SAFETY” NARRATIVE AND PROTEAN METAPHORS To sustain their community, the desk-murderers would, as depicted previously in Figure 5.1, deploy narrative to create a field that manifests the integrated dimension of their organizational culture so that differences might be converged into a shared project, metaphor to mediate the differentiated dimension of their culture by bridging the gap between difference and similarity, and genre to hold off the fragmented dimension of their culture by marshaling rhetorical resources and thus pragmatically structure communal action. Because narrative and metaphor establish conditions for genre to then structure action, this section will analyze the narratives and metaphors found in the SS documents and then the next section will look more closely at the community’s genres.

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

95

As a rhetorical resource of the community, the narrative field on which the killers’ differences converged was the “need” to “ease the burden” on those SS men in the field who were undertaking “difficult” tasks on behalf of the Reich. Even decades after the war, this narrative was uniformly cited by members of the Sipo Technical Matters group—by Rauff, Pradel, Wentritt, Becker, and Findeisen—in their postwar testimonies. They could have ascribed their actions to careerism, superior orders, peer pressure, duress, or years of being propagandized. Many did cite these factors, which are at least comprehensible if not exonerating, in their actions. Yet at the time of their later trials and testimonies, at a time when claims to be concerned about the psychological stress of the killers would have seemed (and still seem) ludicrous in the extreme, it is striking that they still clung to this narrative. Becker’s field inspection report is the most explicit of the gas van documents in this regard, with its concern for SS men being subjected to toxic gases and scenes of grotesquely contorted corpses. But in its own more technical oeuvre, the Just proposal is also centered on the same narrative. The document refers to safety instructions for preventing explosions and proposed measures to regulate pressure build-up inside the vans, as well as measures to complete the killings more quickly and then streamline the unloading of corpses and subsequent clean-up of the van compartment. Though the Group’s chemical and automotive experts disagreed on solutions, their concurrence on the narrative created a field on which they could converge. Because the Group reconciled its differences around a narrative of occupational safety, another helpful approach for understanding how the gas van participants functioned as a rhetorical community is a return to the larger institutional context and to see the Final Solution as an “industry.” In this regard, a productive framework for rhetorical analysis is Sauer’s (2003) Cycle of Technical Documentation in Large Regulated Industries (p. 76), which identifies critical moments when the “rhetoric of risk” is transformed from one modality to another, so that documents created at different moments may call on different rhetorical strategies. This framework is particularly appropriate because Sauer’s Cycle is meant to describe hazardous industries—and perpetrators of the gas van murders saw themselves as contending with dynamically hazardous work—and because her conception of a “cycle of documentation” lends itself to comparing multiple documents within the same schema. Thus, we can examine the two lengthiest Sonderwagen documents—the Becker field inspection report and the Just technical proposal—as parts of a Cycle of Technical Documentation that dynamically strives, at different critical stages, to regulate risk through the rhetorical transformation of embodied experience into technical writing. Key to Sauer’s (2003) model is the tension between “idealized rhetorical models” and the “capacity of individuals to document the knowledge to assess and manage risk” that they encounter in “real environments [that] are dynamic, uncertain, and complex” (p. 16). Sauer studied coal mining, a large regulated industry in which technical documentation attempts to promulgate generalizable

96 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

safety standards that can somehow cope with dynamic and ever-changing environments whose conditions are highly localized. Repellent as the notion may be, the SS gas van killers saw themselves working in “hazardous” conditions. They operated in remote sites among hostile populations. Each operation occurred in a new and unfamiliar location. The Einsatzgruppen were dealing with a new and uncertain technology that was being stretched beyond the original limits of its design. Their vehicles were ill-suited to local conditions, too cumbersome for off-road use or wet conditions, and subject to dangerous “load” shifts. And the technology tended to degrade over time and leak hazardous gases at increasing rates. The SS men were dealing with toxic fumes that could inflict bodily harm and accumulations of gaseous pressure that could explode. Not all of their Jewish victims went as proverbial sheep to the slaughter; after the war, SS men testified that many victims cried, pleaded, begged, became hysterical, or attempted flight. The vehicle camouflage that was supposed to obviate the problem was completely ineffective. The killers operated under the delusion of what Browning (2004) has called “chimeric anti-Semitism” and saw these Jews as dangerous enemies, allied with partisan guerillas, and carriers of disease and filth. As Herf (2006) has shown, the Germans increasingly believed their propaganda about “Judeo-Bolshevism” as the war went on. And as the SS killers prepared to unload their “cargo,” they had no idea what would be revealed when the doors were opened. But they could expect billows of toxic gas and the psychologically damaging sight of hideously distorted corpses covered in excrement, vomit, and blood. The fact that drivers invariably ignored instructions and instead “floored” the gas pedal, to finish the killings as swiftly as possible, testifies to their anxiety. Sauer’s (2003) thesis holds that “three different types of warrants grounded in embodied sensory experience” can be brought to bear in judging risk: (a) embodied sensory knowledge acquired by workers who physically sense or perceive conditions in specific local environment; (b) engineering experience acquired as engineers develop material histories of each site by observing and recording physical signs and indices; and (c) scientific knowledge, invisible to the physical senses, acquired as scientists interpret inscribed data (p. 182). In turn, embodied sensory experience is rhetorically transformed, by means of technical writing, from one modality to another at six critical moments within the Cycle of Technical Documentation in Large Regulated Industries. According to Sauer, these moments are 1. when oral testimony and embodied experience are captured in writing; 2. when information in accident reports is re-represented in statistical records; 3. when statistical accounts are re-represented as arguments for particular policies; 4. when policies and standards are transformed into procedures;

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

97

5. when procedures are re-represented in training; and 6. when training is re-represented to workers. (pp. 75–76) In its entirety, the cycle is a process whereby stakeholders interact to bring locally dynamic hazardous environments under the control of generalized safety standards. Thus, site-specific experience is in tension with the effort to standardize experience. Then, too, the economic and safety interests of the stakeholders must be balanced. Sauer (2003) uses an instructive analogy to highlight the inherent problem in a “rhetoric of risk” that, she theorized, cannot deliberate policy only in terms of probabilities but must acknowledge an irreducible element of uncertainty. She describes three types of compliance: stopping at stop signs, following doctor’s orders to take pain medication as needed, and adjusting a furnace or air-conditioner to maintain a constant room temperature as the weather changes (pp. 50–51). Stop signs provide a clear rule to follow in all cases. Following a doctor’s orders to take pain medication “as needed” requires us to ascertain when compliance is appropriate. But “In the third case, we may find ourselves technically out of compliance even as we increase our efforts to bring conditions into compliance” (p. 51). In the same way, the constantly changing environment of a coal mine requires constant monitoring and remedial adjustment to control risk levels and avoid disaster. Sauer’s (2003) framework offers an opportunity to reconceive the Final Solution from the Nazi point of view as a “large regulated industry” and grasp how its technical documentation attempted to bring under control an inherently unstable and (from the perpetrators’ perspective) dynamically hazardous enterprise. Indeed, the historical record of the Third Reich offers numerous testimonies, such as those cited at the outset of this study, of camps operated on a “wild” basis until standards were introduced. Historians generally agree that, while anti-Jewish pogroms have occurred for centuries, it took the organizing capacity of a modern bureaucratic state to prosecute the Holocaust. Thus, the Just and Becker documents become, when viewed through Sauer’s model, attempts to rhetorically transform embodied sensory experience at different critical moments in the Cycle of Technical Documentation. This is why examinations of two related documents, rather than single documents in isolation, is a valuable exercise and enables us to grasp an ongoing process. The rhetorics of the two documents are different because they occur at different points in the Cycle. Indeed, Sauer’s model lets us step back even further and view the gas van program within the Nazis’ overall project of experimenting with different killing methods to find the least “risky” and most “productive.” Shooting was the first experiment, gas vans the second, and stationary gas chambers the final “successful” solution of their self-appointed problem. In the Just and Becker documents are seen references to all the critical moments in the Cycle of Technical Documentation. For example, the Just proposal refers to a Sonderwagen explosion at the Chelmno death camp caused by human error

98 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

and reports how “In order to avoid such incidents, special instructions have been addressed to the services concerned. Safety has been increased considerably as a result of these instructions” (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 137). Here we see implied the entire Cycle: local documentation; accident report; statistical report; policy and regulations; practices and procedures; training and instruction. The Becker report also refers to different critical moments in the Cycle and illustrates the tension between different forms of experience. The IID3 inspector gathered local documentation by interviewing van drivers and other personnel; he reported to Rauff on accidents that occurred in the field; and he described how practices and procedures were communicated to field personnel through training and instruction, but that Einsatzgruppen resisted compliance by privileging their local experiences and perceptions of risk. Thus, the SS men opened the throttle to hasten the killings, and unloaded the vans themselves to prevent prisoner escapes. The Becker report is an example of Point 1 in Saurer’s (2003) Cycle of Technical Documentation (“when oral testimony and embodied experience are captured in writing”) as Becker attempted to rhetorically transform embodied sensory experience into engineering knowledge. The Just proposal is an example of Point 3 (“when statistical accounts [and accident data] are re-represented as arguments for particular policies”), as the writer(s) attempted to rhetorically transform engineering knowledge into generalizable standards based on “scientific” knowledge (i.e., how the “cargo” can be “processed” more quickly if void air spaces are reduced, and how the “load” will respond to the stimuli of light or darkness and afford a “natural” weight distribution). Thus, the Becker and Just documents, in their work as boundary objects, manifest different rhetorics because they sought different rhetorical transformations at different critical moments, but always as variations of the same narrative, a narrative of occupational safety that created a field on which their respective interests could converge. As to their use of figuration, it is striking how protean are the metaphors of the SS staff as the rhetorical community negotiated each situation. Rauff’s 26 March 1942 letter (Figure 5.2) metaphorically places the gas vans in the domain of public health (“I refer back to the procedure of the garrison physician”), the domain of the vans’ original usage during the T4 euthanasia program; similarly, Turner’s 11 April 1942 letter (described in chapter 5) refers to the vehicles as “delousing vans.” Yet in his 16 May 1942 field report (Figure 5.3), Becker, after 5 months behind the Eastern Front with Einsatzgruppen A and B, metaphorically places the gas vans in the domain of a military or policing operation by referring to Jewish victims as “prisoners” to be “executed.” The military metaphor is likewise instantiated in the 9 June 1942 telegram (Figure 5.5) from Schäfer, head of the Sipo and SD regional office in Serbia, by a reference to completion of the “special mission.” By contrast, the automotive specialists at the Berlin motor pool metaphorically place the gas vans within the domain of transportation by referring to victims as “load” and “cargo” in their 5 June 1942 proposal for technical improvements (Figure 5.4).

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

99

As it happens, none of the documents authored by members of the Sipo Technical Matters Group employ the word “Jews”; the only instances occur in the correspondences of the Group’s internal clients, as seen in the of the 11 April 1942 Turner letter and 15 June 1942 (Figure 5.6) Trühe telegram. The overall impression corroborates Browning’s (1991) interpretation that the technical experts of the Group “developed the euphemistic code language so typical of the Final Solution [because] it hid reality from [private subcontractors] and at least partially from themselves” (p. 67). Their documents are extraordinary in the rhetorical gymnastics to which they go in avoiding mention of the vans’ true purpose. Their metaphors are protean in that the Group’s members resort to the metaphorical domains closest to hand: Rauff assenting to the medical metaphor when responding to a request from the Mauthausen camp doctor; Becker utilizing the military metaphor fostered by his immediate experience behind the Eastern Front; Just deploying the transportation metaphor, which is the currency of the motor pool. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) noted how metaphors aid cognition of abstract concepts by grafting onto them familiar domains from the experiential world. The documents authored by Group members are rhetorically striking in that the texts borrow from the respective experiential domains of their authors in order to cognize the abstraction of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. Clients such as Turner and Trühe who came face-to-face with killing could refer explicitly to “Jews” in their correspondences, but the managers and technicians who administered van operations from Berlin could not. Even Becker, who for months had become inured to gassings in the field, still could not commit to paper the word “Jews” but wrote only of “prisoners” to be executed—a resistance that recalls the gas van drivers who, in clinging to their self-identities as specialists, kept their vehicles running while at the same time steadfastly refusing to personally shoot any Jews. Thus did the rhetorical community that was the Sipo Technical Matters Group employ metaphors to bridge the gap between similarity and difference, as representatives of the Group’s various interests—the executive, the chemical expert, the automotive experts—agreed in their own ways to hide the reality of mass murder and construct a more comforting shared reality of professional normality. DISCOVERING ORGANIZATIONAL GENRES IN THE TEXTS We have explored, according to Miller’s (1994) scheme, how the rhetorical community of the Sipo Technical Matters Group reconciled its “centrifugal and centripetal forces” (p. 74) by deploying narrative to create a field on which they might converge for a shared project, and deploying metaphor to bridge difference and similarity. Miller also posited genres as a third means of reconciliation by which the community can marshal its rhetorical resources to pragmatically

100 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

structure communal action. Here Miller’s work (1987, 2000; Miller & Selzer, 1985) on special topics (idioi koinoi or eide) is useful in identifying genres in everyday organizational documents. For if genres are viewed not as mere sets of formal requirements but as socio-rhetorical actions, then it necessarily follows that invention according to topics that are special to a given rhetorical community will carry much of a text’s argumentative weight. Miller dealt at length with classical and historical treatments of special topics, a discussion that need not be recapitulated here. Together with Selzer, the two argued in “Special Topics of Argument in Engineering Reports” (1985), that in Aristotle’s Rhetoric special topics are both genre-specific and institution-specific, which then “suggests a third kind of special topic for contemporary theory, a kind based on specialized knowledge of disciplines” (p. 313). Through an analysis of arguments presented by two transit development plans, they illustrated three categories of “specialized” special topics: generic special topics, institutional/organizational special topics, and disciplinary special topics. The category of institutional/organizational special topics is most germane to an analysis of the SS gas van documents. For although the Becker and Just documents were informed by disciplinary knowledge of chemical and automotive engineering, these “objective” conventions were subordinated to the imperative of the Final Solution. Thus, to discover why experts might place their knowledge at the service of genocide is to understand their institutional milieu, for as we learned above, rhetorical community precedes genre and, in fact, provides the cultural basis for genre. Miller and Selzer (1985) began their discussion of institutional/organizational special topics by quoting March and Simon’s (1958) observation that “the world tends to be perceived by . . . organization members in terms of the particular concepts that are reflected in the organization’s vocabulary” (p. 165). Thus, explained Miller and Selzer (1985), “When such concepts and vocabulary are sources of arguments, we call them institutional special topics” (p. 325). The two researchers examined two transit development plans for arguments whose invention was grounded in institutional/ organizational concepts and vocabularies. They discovered that a Nebraska engineering firm, in drafting transmittal letters for two very different Illinois transportation project proposals (an airport expansion and a highway traffic study) employed similar language stressing the company’s “commitment” to Illinois, its recent opening of a “major office” there, and its intention to maintain “close” relations with clients “throughout the duration of the project” (p. 326). Examination of the two transmittal letters demonstrated that “these points thus become company-specific sources of persuasion” (p. 327). What points became “company-specific sources of persuasion” for the men of the Sipo Technical Matters Group? Easily the most recurring language is the adjective “special” (Sonder). The term “special van(s)” or the abbreviation “S-vans” is used three times in the Rauff letter, twice in the Just proposal, twice in the Schäfer telegram, three times in the Trühe telegram, and once in Rauff’s

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

101

reply to Trühe. The term “special mission” appears in the Schäfer telegram, while the Trühe telegram references Jews to be “treated in a special way.” Clearly, then, “special” constituted an organization-specific source of persuasion. An internal directive to this effect is seen in a 20 September 1939 telegram issued by RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich, which stated, “To avoid any misunderstandings, please take note of the following: . . . a distinction must be made between those who may be dealt with in the usual way and those who must be given special treatment.” In fact, because the code word became so widespread, it could no longer camouflage the murders. In March 1943, Himmler ordered his chief statistician to use the term durchgeschleust (“processed”) in official reports of the killings (Hilberg, 2003, p. 1305; Kogon et al., 1993, pp. 5–8). The Eichmann bureau used the term Sonderbehandlung so frequently that it eventually had to distinguish between the term’s legitimate and metaphorical usages by coining the term SB-Fälle (“SB cases”) as “a euphemism for the euphemisim” (Lozowick, 2000, p. 128). Through such recurring everyday language within organizations, observed Oswick, Putnam, and Keenoy (2004), are exposed those metaphors (in the case of the SS, the metaphor of murder as specialized handling or treatment) that resonate with members, become archetypes that “provide rich summaries of the world and function as dominant ways of seeing,” and thereby legitimate actions (pp. 109–116). Another organization-specific source of persuasion that emerges from the recurring language of the documents is that of a military “operation,” “action,” or “mission.” These words recur in these and other documents from the gas van program, such as a 1 May 1942 letter to Himmler from the Nazi governor of annexed Poland, which references “the special treatment operation” to murder 100,000 Jews using gas vans at the Chelmno death camp, a measure characterized by the official as an “operation against the Jews” and a precedent for “taking action against” native Poles (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 6). The Becker field inspection report refers multiple times to “prisoners” and “executions,” in keeping with the overall justification for killing Soviet Jews. At the end of 1941, as the mass shootings in Soviet territory gradually solidified into a general plan for exterminating all European Jews, Himmler emerged from a December 18 meeting with Hitler and noted the dictators’s instruction in his appointment diary: “Jewish question/to be extirpated [auszurotten] as partisans” (Longerich, 2001, p. 155). The punctilious use of titles may also be seen as evidence of a military ethos, as well as the organization’s adherence to the Nazi “leadership principle.” Two more special topics suggested by the documents may be seen in the recurrent titling “Secret Reich Matter” (geheime Reichssache). First, we should not underestimate the persuasive power of partaking in secret knowledge. Second, the application of “Reich” to virtually everything in Nazi Germany had a subtle linguistic purpose for the regime; Fritzsche (2008) noted the “pretentiousness of Nazi vocabulary in which Reich-this and Reich-that puffed up the historical moment of the regime” (p. 133). The word “Reich” does not

102 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

readily translate into English and carries mystic connotations not only of empire but also of German national history and greatness. Thus, the documents are prominently headed, “Secret Reich Matter” and “Reich Security Main Office.” The military-style attention to forms and protocols was prescribed by a 1 June 1940 directive, circulated to all RSHA offices, which provided exacting guidelines for document creation (Lozowick, 2000). As we learned in chapter 3, the directive set forth explicit instructions on filing codes, the bureaucratic implications of letterheads and departmental symbols, as well as who had authority to sign documents in his own name, who had authority to sign for his immediate superior, who did not have such authority, how authority or nonauthority should be indicated, and even how handwritten notations should be made in colored pencils according to rank. (Thus, Rauff is the only signatory who, as Gruppenleiter of II D, is “big enough” to sign documents without specifying his rank; it is also interesting that Rauff’s signature is larger than his junior colleagues.) The directive further implores, “Long, complicated sentences should be avoided, and margins should be left for comments” (Lozowick, 2000, p. 48). Marginal comments also provide clues for discovering organizational special topics. In fact, even handwritten notes scrupulously follow RSHA protocols as writers head their notes with their organizational identification codes—for example, Just’s identification was IID3a(9)—and sign their names with the appropriate “I.A.” (im Auftrag) notation, while frequently enumerating their points 1, 2, and so on. This reinforces the suggestion that bureaucratic procedure and convention was a powerful organization-specific source of persuasion that served to normalize genocide. Rauff’s postwar testimony, as we have seen, expounded at length on the importance of rank and protocol in the organizational culture of the RSHA. Miller’s (1994) conception of rhetorical communities and their genres is echoed in the literature on organizational culture in which “it is common to identify cultural forms” (Alvesson, 2004, p. 320) such as Trice and Beyer’s (1993) oft-cited categories of organizational language, symbols, narratives, and practices. According to the latter scheme, the gas van documents reveal traces of an organizational culture whose forms encompass language (the metaphors deployed to legitimize murder), symbols (the visual rhetorics of the documents), narratives (the saga of “soldierly” and “heroic” comrades whose suffering in “hard” duties on behalf of the “people’s community” must be eased), and practices (observance of bureaucratic conventions and the Nazi leadership principle). But by whatever names, having discovered a number of genres in the gas van documents, what do we learn about the rhetorical community that produced/ reproduced them and how it deployed genres to pragmatically structure social action? Recall Miller’s (1994) demonstration that genres are cultural artifacts. Because the Sipo Technical Matters Group validated these significantly recurring actions, their genres may be seen as having borne their culture and incorporated their knowledge. Genre is “that aspect of situated communication that is capable

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

103

of reproduction, that can be manifested in more than one situation” and thereby “provide[s] reproducible speaker and addressee roles, social typifications of recurrent social needs or exigences, topical structures (or ‘moves’ and ‘steps’), and ways of indexing an event to material conditions, turning them into constraints or resources” (p. 71, emphasis in original). Further, genre connects the individual mind and the larger rhetorical community, sustaining the community by reproducing it and by reconciling its centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus does genre furnish “ways of marshalling rhetorical resources” (Miller, 1994, p. 75) to pragmatically structure communal action. It then follows that the SS bureaucrats’ genres—the significantly recurring references to “special” tasks, to secrecy, to national consciousness, to protocols informed by the leadership principle and a military/bureaucratic ethos—bear their culture and incorporate the exigences of their shared social knowledge. Genres structured group actions by providing • speaker and addressee roles that could be reproduced according to SS rank protocols (Obersturmbannführer, Hauptsturmführer, Untersturmführer) and organizational hierarchies (II ® IID ® IID3 ® IID3a ® IID3a9) that instantiated the leadership principle (and connected members to the broader Nazi theme of “community”); • social typifications of a recurrent social exigence to “partially hide reality from themselves” by references to “special” tasks of a “secret” and “military” nature, while also normalizing these tasks by folding them into bureaucratic routines; • topical structures (or idioi topoi) that furnished a mental topology on which members could ground their arguments and make “moves” or “steps” that others within the community might find persuasive—such that patently absurd arguments (“the procedure of the garrison doctor,” “the gassing is without exception not properly done,” “ninety-seven thousand have been processed,” “Goetz and Meyer have completed their special mission”) became the basis for deliberation and decision; and • ways of indexing genocide (by exchanging correct correspondence; by adhering to speaker/addressee roles in reporting problems, proposing solutions, and making and fulfilling requisitions) to the material conditions of everyday bureaucratic life at the Sipo Technical Matters Group and its Berlin motor pool, and turning those conditions into a structure of resources for and constraints upon pragmatic action. Genres thus served as rhetorical resources to reconcile the centrifugal and centripetal forces of the community. In other words, their presence permitted the everyday documents of the Sipo Technical Matters Group to function as boundary objects, plastic enough to meet the local needs of the organization’s

104 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

respective interests and robust enough to forge, just barely long enough, a temporarily shared identity. RHETORICAL COMMUNITY IN ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS Before moving on, a question emerges from the foregoing analysis that merits attention: If Miller’s theory of the rhetorical community has proven a helpful framework for parsing the texts produced by the Sipo Technical Matters Group, does its application to this case recursively shed any new light on, or possibly suggest an extension of, the theory? Since articulating it most fully in “Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre” (1994), Miller herself has not demonstrated how the theory might be applied to a specific situation. In a genre analysis of weblogs, for example, she and her co-author (Miller & Shepherd, 2004) referenced her earlier work on “Genre as Social Action” (Miller, 1984) but did not take the opportunity to frame these online communities as rhetorical communities within the meaning of her theory. Yet not long after publishing her trilogy of essays (1993a, 1993b, 1994) on community, she was queried by a fellow scholar and his students on the sources of her interest in the concept. “Everybody was talking about it—literary theorists, composition theorists. . . . It was in the air, and I wanted to understand it better,” she responded. As such, her essays on community attempted “to explore all the concepts and opinions that were swirling around and to see if I could use classical rhetoric to resolve or at least explain the conceptual difficulties” (Northern Illinois University, 1996). Importantly for the present discussion, Miller noted, More specifically, I got interested in community . . . through my work in the rhetoric of science. Kuhn foregrounds the “assent of the relevant scientific community” as the basis for scientific change. And in trying to adapt classical concepts to the study of scientific and technical rhetoric . . . I thought that community could be central to justifying and operationalizing this adaptation. A scientific discipline is easier to define and study as a rhetorical community than other areas in which we might be interested, so it seemed a good idea to use science as a place to think about community— but then one always wants to generalize and to test the scope of what one is thinking in other locations. (Northern Illinois University, 1996)

Applying Miller’s (1994) theory of rhetorical community to Nazi deskmurderers, then, offers the challenge of adapting a theory grounded in scientific communication and applying it to organizational communication—or as Miller put it, “to generalize and to test the scope . . . in other locations.” The foregoing analysis of the Sipo Technical Matters Group affirms the validity of this adaptation. But in adapting the theory, what can we learn about it? And can we extend it? The question is relevant not only for organizational communication

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

105

researchers. Among technical communication scholars, “many would acknowledge that organizations are the most frequent social context in which technical communication takes place” and thus “it is crucial to understand what kind of social context organizations are and to understand what aspects of their character need to be considered . . . [and] examine more closely the specialized nature of organizational life” (Harrison & Katz, 2002, p. 18). For their part, organizational communication scholars also recognize that “discourse patterns fuse with organizational processes in ways that make language and organization a unique domain” (Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001, p. 78). To better understand the “specialized nature” and “unique domain” of the organization, consider it in contrast to other situations on which Miller has written: a nuclear waste dump controversy (Katz & Miller, 1996), the blogosphere (Miller & Shepherd, 2004), and the scientific community (Miller, 2005). Each in their own way implicates (though the authors did not frame it thus) a rhetorical community. But the community of engineering experts and North Carolina residents who debated the siting of a nuclear waste dump was temporary and issue-specific; the communities of bloggers and their readers are intended to endure over time, but their memberships are informal and shifting; and the scientific community, while retaining a more formal sense of who is qualified to speak, is in reality a discipline and supra-organizational. In all three cases, the rhetorical communities lack the structure that characterizes organizational life. Thus, if we are to apply Miller’s (1994) theory of rhetorical community to organizations, we must trace how the socio-rhetorical processes she described— how members marshal narrative, metaphor, and genre to negotiate its centrifugal and centripetal forces—may operate through, and in turn contribute toward, organizational structure. Miller’s (1994) articulation of her theory about rhetorical community begins with Giddens’ concept of “structuration,” which, she averred, provides the crucial “explanatory nexus between individuals and collectivities” (p. 71). Of particular importance to Miller is Giddens’s (1984, p. 25) observation that structure is a “duality,” not a dualism, since structure is simultaneously a medium for and an outcome of the social actions that the structure recursively organizes. Thus, “social actors create recurrence in their actions by reproducing the structural aspects of institutions, by using available structures as the medium of their action and thereby producing those structures again as virtual outcomes, available for further memory, interpretation, and use” (Miller, 1994, p. 71). In other words, social actors may create structure but, by working within the enablements and constraints of these same structures, thereby validate and reproduce them. As it happens, organizational communication scholars have also pondered the application of Giddens’ structuration theory to the specific domain of organizational life—making structuration theory a useful point of intersection for exploring organizations as a specific domain of rhetorical community.

106 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

In adapting structuration theory to organizational settings, Poole and McPhee (1983, 2005; McPhee, 1985; Poole, 1985) applied Giddens’s concept of “distanciation” to organizational life. Social actors, Giddens noted, are mostly unaware that their actions are grounded in and impact upon larger structurational processes since action and consequence are separated in space and time. Within organizations, asserted McPhee (1989), distanciation is manifested by three “centers of structuration,” which he called conception, implementation, and reception. Though much overlap and conflict can occur, top management typically dominates conceptual communication, middle management oversees implementation, and employees receive and enact what has been decided. Distanciation thus becomes a feature of organizational life because communication reinforces specialization among members. Later, McPhee and Zaug (2000) classed organizational communication into four “flows,” which are concerned with membership negotiation (internal relations), activity coordination (work processes), self-structuring (codification of processes), and institutional positioning (external relations). Thus, we see how communication is constitutive of the organization itself. Poole and McPhee (1983) also described organizational “climate,” or the “collective attitude, continually produced and reproduced by members’ interactions” (p. 213), as a structurational mechanism. The climate develops from a “concept pool” that furnishes members with terms to describe the organization, culminates in a “kernel climate” as members adopt a commonly shared abstraction to capture their basic understandings of the organization, and finally progresses into “particular climates” as kernel principles are concretely applied to guide members’ attitudes and behaviors in specific organizational situations and settings (McPhee, 1985). Tompkins and Cheney (1983; see also Scott, Corman, & Cheney, 1998) likewise proposed that members’ identification with an organization is a structurational process. They posited an “identity-identification duality” by which organization members, the more they are linked with other members who share the same premises, increasingly cultivate a like identity for themselves and in turn are self-actualized by relationships with likeminded members. (Of particular interest, Tompkins and Cheney cited the rhetorical tradition by ascribing their ideas about identification to Burke’s notion of “consubstantiation” and proposing that organizational structuration fosters enthymemic argument among members.) Were we to match up Miller’s (1994) theory of rhetorical community with theories of organizational structuration, we might explore how narratives, metaphors, and genres are marshaled by distanciated organizational actors in the three centers of structuration (conception, implementation, reception) and four communication flows (membership negotiation, activity coordination, selfstructuring, institutional positioning), which generate the characteristic features of life in a given organization. We might investigate how rhetorical resources contribute to the organization’s concept pool, kernel climate, and particular

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

107

climates, or how members’ consubstantiality cultivates organizational identities. Thus, in the case of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, we might interpret the “occupational safety” narrative as a mechanism that worked across its different centers of structuration, starting with Rauff at the conceptual center, moving to Pradel and Wentritt at the implementation center, and finally enacted at the reception center by the Berlin auto mechanics and the gas van drivers in the field. We might see the “military” metaphor for killing, referenced in the Becker field report and the telegram traffic with the Group’s internal clients, as an important element of the concept pool, which in turn produced the quasi-military ethos or kernel climate of the SS, such that Becker and the Einsatzgruppen death squads could apply their conceptual understanding of the SS to the particular climates of the killing fields. And we might discover in the organizational genres deployed in the Group’s documents—the words “special,” “secret” and “Reich,” the military-style lingo, rank titles and protocols— rhetorical resources by which members pragmatically structured communal actions via membership negotiation, activity coordination, self-structuring, and institutional positioning, Indeed, McPhee and Zaug’s (2000) four organizational communication flows track neatly with Miller’s (1994) assertion that “The rules and resources of a genre provide reproducible speaker and addressee roles, social typifications of recurrent social needs or exigencies, topical structures (or ‘moves’ and ‘steps’), and ways of indexing an event to material conditions, turning them into constraints or resources” (p. 71). Genres that reproduce speaker and addressee roles implicate membership negotiation. Genres that typify recurring needs and exigencies implicate the organization’s mission, which in turn positions it among the larger milieu of other organizations and institutions. Genres that convey topical structures provide organization-specific sources of persuasion, thereby furnishing means to coordinate activity. And genres that index events to conditions facilitate self-structuring discourses that enable control and design. All of this, then, adds another layer to my earlier suggestion, in chapter 5, that Miller’s theory of rhetorical community aligns well with Martin’s (1992, 2002; Martin et al., 2006) three-perspective theory of organizational culture. There I proposed that narrative can be deployed by community members to manifest the integrated dimension of an organization’s culture, metaphor to mediate the differentiated dimension, and genre to hold off the fragmented dimension. Going a step further, we can see how the rhetorical community within an organizational setting must marshal its rhetorical resources to negotiate integration, differentiation, and fragmentation across its three centers of structuration and within its four communication flows. The analyst who would look for these dynamics might begin with the framework set forth in Table 6.1 and the proceed with an analysis as I have done in Table 6.2 by showing findings from the present study. In her 1996 communication (Northern Illinois University) to a fellow scholar, Miller cited her interest in community as originating in her work on how, in the

108 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Table 6.1. Analytical Framework for Organized Rhetorical Communities

Kuhnian sense, the scientific community achieves “scientific change.” Then in responding to a question about why she believed it important to define “community” within the study of rhetoric, she referenced “the early connection between rhetoric and politics within the thinking of the sophists, when there was really no distinction between the two as separate subjects of teaching,” and then stated, “If we understand rhetoric as pragmatic, as active in the world of events and affairs, as fundamentally suasory, then it seems to me that community and politics are necessarily implicated in rhetoric.” However, science and politics

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

109

Table 6.2. Rhetorical Analysis of Technical Matters Group Communication Flows

are far more open-ended projects than providing goods and services. If the aim of rhetoric in science is to produce change and the aim of rhetoric in politics is to produce judgment, the aim of rhetoric in organizations is to produce structures that enable and constrain agency. Communication in organizations tends to constitute, in ways not found in science and politics, a structural division between those who respectively conceive, implement, and receive policy. And this distanciated nature of organizational life drives a culture that manifests elements

110 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

of integration, differentiation, and fragmentation. Thus, in applying Miller’s (1994) theory of rhetorical community to organizational settings, which, as we saw above, is the social context for most technical communication, we therefore must account for how members deploy narrative, metaphor, and genre not only to produce change or judgment but to negotiate who can be members, what they will do, what guides their actions, and how their collectively should be positioned vis-à-vis other organizations and institutions. VISUALITY IN THE RHETORICAL COMMUNITY The notion of rhetorical community would seemingly be broad enough to take within its ambit the visual rhetorics that contribute to the community’s (re)production. Yet the rhetorical properties of visuality have resisted facile categorization. Visual images have “long been suspect as irrational, illogical, and somewhat slippery” to many scholars, so that a “traditional bias for modes of verbal expression and against visual images” is found in much of the literature (Hope, 2006, p. 31). Kostelnick and Roberts (1998), for example, proposed visual equivalents for the five classical canons of rhetoric, a too-neat logocentric solution that seems reductionistic and unsatisfying. Instead, DeLuca (2006) urges researchers to leave behind “Gutenberg’s Galaxy” and recognize that attempts to “approach images with the mindset and methods of print ensures we will misread them; adopting an image orientation is a necessary first step” (pp. 86–87). For as Balter-Reitz and Stewart (2006) averred, “The classical argumentation model of claim, evidence, and inference does not seem to provide much insight into the working of visual artifacts” (p. 116). Thus, I have elsewhere (Ward, 2010a) advanced the proposition that a given arrangement of text and graphics has symbolic potency for a given audience because the author/designer and the user, engaged in a communal conversation that is grounded in the exigence of shared social knowledge, together co-construct its meaning. In so doing, they “satisfy a mutual need to establish a rule of action and ensure the continuance of their common world” (pp. 68–69). In this light, let us consider the visual rhetorics of the original German Sonderwagen documents. To begin, the Rauff letter of 26 March 1942 (Figure 6.1) is seemingly the most nondescript of the gas van documents. If only the written text is considered, then the letter is most noteworthy not for what it says but, rather, what it does not say. The text does not mention the purpose for which a gas van was requested by the Mauthausen camp, except to reference “the procedure of the garrison physician” and thus give tacit assent to the public health metaphor or, as Lifton (1986) proposed, the “medicalization” of killing. The text studiously assumes a passive tone, shifting the locus of action from the author to his superiors, Heydrich (the “Chief of the Security Police and SD” or CSSD) and the General

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

Figure 6.1. German original of 26 March 1942 Rauff letter. Source: Holocaust History Project. (http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420326-rauff-sonderwagen)

/

111

112 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Plenipotentiary for Vehicles (GEK), thereby denying the request but without taking responsibility. Further, as Höhne (1969, p. 267) explained, because the document concerned business that had circulated outside Heydrich’s Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), then the letterhead omitted the word Reichssicherheitshauptamt (which by contrast was featured prominently on internal documents) and referred to Heydrich as CSSD rather than as RSHA chief. Finally, the letter is most interesting to historians because the final paragraph mentions bottled gas as an alternative to the special vans, thus clearly implying, but not actually stating, a connection. Why would bottled gas solve a problem when “special vans” are unavailable? The letter does not say. And the offhand mention of other “agents” (Hilfsmitteln) employs a word used as a reference to poison gas in other SS documents. Visually, however, the document’s rhetoric would be experienced as normal, standard, and business-as-usual. The letterhead mentions no “Reich Security Main Office” but features only a nondescript abbreviation (“II D Rf/Hb” or II D Referat [Bureau] Hauptbüro [Headquarters]) that calls little attention to itself. Though the “Secret” (Geheime) stamp is placed to draw eye traffic, it is less obtrusive than the “Secret State Matter” (Geheime Reichssache) stamp that is found on other documents and in which the type is larger and bolder. The formatting of the letter is impeccable, with the text precisely flush left. Interestingly, the final paragraph, which is denoted as “2,” was apparently added later with a different typewriter because the type is not as heavy, the two lines of text angle slightly upward from left to right, and the last line intersects the “I.A.” of the signature block. This may, then, be a copy of the letter that was routed to Pradel for his information. In any event, Rauff signs his last name by hand with an oversized executive flourish and Pradel countersigns his receipt of Note 2 with a hurried scribble, but the filing codes in the upper left are handwritten with a clerk’s precise and legible script. Finally, the document does not avail itself of a feature found on typewriters made for the SS, namely, a key that types the “lightning-bolt” SS runes (and which may be seen in the German originals of the Becker and Just documents). Indeed, unlike the other documents that are filled with references to SS units and ranks, the 26 March 1942 Rauff letter contains no visible SS identifications at all. Since the letter might circulate outside the RSHA and perhaps outside the SS, its language had to be carefully couched and its visual appearance had to be entirely normal and businesslike. The 16 May 1942 Becker field inspection report (Figure 6.2) is interesting in that, unlike the 26 March 1942 Rauff letter, its visual rhetoric is a collective creation. The text may have been composed by Becker but the visual elements show as many as six participants. Thus, as the document proceeded through the Sipo Technical Matters Group bureaucracy, visual components were added at each step of the process to create a cumulative and collective rhetoric. Among the visual features of the Becker report are the following:

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

Figure 6.2. German original of 16 May 1942 Becker field report. Page 1 of 3. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

/

113

114 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 6.2. German original of 16 May 1942 Becker field report. Page 2 of 3. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

Figure 6.2. German original of 16 May 1942 Becker field report. Page 3 of 3. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

/

115

116 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

• The word “Reichssicherheitshauptamt” is omitted from the letterhead, perhaps because it had to be sent through the military field post (Feldpost). • The three pages of the document appear to have been originally stapled together, with the staple affixed at a 45-degree angle. • The stamped words “Secret State Matter” (Geheime Reichssache) are boxed and in bold type, and thus more prominent than the word “Secret” stamped on the 26 March 1942 Rauff letter. • An SS typewriter with a key for the trademark SS runes was employed, as seen at the top of the first page in Rauff’s SS rank title and on the final page in Becker’s title. • Rauff and Pradel have each countersigned the document toward the upper right of the first page. • A motor pool employee, whose difficult-to-read handwriting appears in other gas van documents, has underlined “(Saurer) stop completely in rainy weather” in the first paragraph and made a marginal notation beside that text. • The second paragraph in which Becker describes how the vans’ camouflage has failed is marked off in the left margin by a double-slash. • An entrance stamp has been placed at right angles in the lower left of the first page. Within it, the written notation “II D 3 a” has been made in Pradel’s hand, while the filing code has been written (here as well as in the top left corner) by the same hand that wrote the code in the 26 March 1942 (Figure 1) Rauff letter. Space is provided in the block to write in a “Procedure” (Vorgang), though the line is left blank. The date within the stamp appears to be 16 June 1942 indicating the document has taken a month to travel through the mails and then down the Sipo Technical Matters Group chain of authority. • The text is flush left. As in the 26 March 1942 Rauff letter, the left margin is generous but at the right margin the text is typed almost to the edge of the sheet. As Lozowick (2000) has noted, RSHA guidelines on document style called for a wide left margin to facilitate marginal notations. • Someone has made handwritten bracket marks around most of the paragraphs. • Beside the text in which Becker described how SS personnel unloaded corpses themselves because they feared that prisoners compelled to do the work might take the opportunity to flee, and where Becker requested that orders be issued to remedy the situation, there is in the left margin a handwritten question mark and what appears to be a capital “R.” This may be Rauff making a note of Becker’s request. • Becker signs the report in his own name since his signature is not denoted as either “I.A.” or “I.V.”

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

117

In this document, we see the rhetorical community, in a very physical and tangible way, literally co-constructing its meaning. It is almost a kind of palimpsest in which an earlier creation is subsequently modified by later creations on the same parchment. Here the theory I articulated (Ward, 2010a) works nicely: confronted by the uncertainty of a new datum—Heydrich’s order to build gas vans—the bureaucrats of the Sipo Technical Matters Group generated documents as boundary objects by which they could triangulate a rule of action that reestablished their belief in “the system” and continued their common world. While Holocaust historians have focused solely on Becker’s written text, that is not the entirety of the document. To address the question “Why,” a vital task is seeing “the community as invoked, represented, presupposed, or developed in rhetorical discourse” (Miller, 1994, p. 73) through the entire document— its codes, numbers, dates, letterhead, logos, stamps, countersignatures, underlining, marginal notations, and more. Through these elements, we can see the rule of action that the community triangulated and discern the belief they established and the meaning they co-constructed. And what was that meaning? Genocide was absorbed into the common world of accepted bureaucratic rules of action, reestablishing belief in professional bureaucracy and giving genocide its meaning (for them) as procedure. Bogost (2007) has observed that procedure itself constitutes a rhetoric “of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions” (p. ix), for procedures can be expressive “in a way that invokes political, social, and cultural values” (p. 5) as rhetors engage in “the practice of authoring arguments through processes” (p. 28). While Bogost’s theory of procedural rhetoric is concerned with computational procedures, it does point up the notion that processes in themselves can make arguments. Black (2001) documented how the Nazis, from their earliest days in power, used the latest punch card technology and strove to employ “massively organized information . . . [as] a means of social control” (p. 7). Historians Aly and Roth (2004), in their review of Nazi census-taking, noted that “the simple abstraction of humans into mere numbers” (p. 6) expresses a fundamental worldview in which “the person becomes a case, an example, an index card” (p. 23) or, as in the Becker document, at first mere “prisoners” for execution and then, ultimately, just a filing code. The visual rhetoric of the preprinted RSHA telegrams (Figures 6.3 thru 6.6) can be interpreted the same way, for their lines and boxes and serial numbers all scream “Procedure!” The letterhead states “Reich Security Main Office News Transmission” (Reichssicherheitshauptamt Nachrichten-Uebermittlung), and immediately below is a “Space for Entrance Stamp” (Raum für Eingangsstempel), with boxes at the upper left and upper right to stamp the transmission and receipt dates by “Hour, Day, Month, Year.” Below the lefthand box, each preprinted telegram form has a sequential “News Transmission Number” (N.-U. Nr.). And below the heading “Telegram – Radio Wire – Writing – Saying,” the sender can paste his message with the aid of preprinted baselines. Finally, along the lefthand

118 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 6.3. German original of 9 June 1942 Schãfer telegram. Page 1 of 2. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

Figure 6.3. German original of 9 June 1942 Schãfer telegram. Page 2 of 2. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

/

119

120 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 6.4. German original of 15 June 1942 Trühe telegram. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

Figure 6.5. German original of 22 June 1942 Rauff reply to Trühe. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

/

121

122 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 6.6. German original of retyped telegrams from 15 and 9 June 1942. Source: Nuremberg Documents PS-501.

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

123

side of the form in type rotated 90 degrees is the word “File Margin” (Heftrand) to allow space for recipients to make notations. Thus, organization members would experience the rhetoric of the telegram form as an argument for normal everyday bureaucratic procedure. Yet, of further interest to the analyst are the handwritten notations on the front and back of the telegrams. These messages, which request vehicles and supplies or report vehicle damage, once received were routed through the Sipo Technical Matters Group chain of authority. Thus, they provide—together with Rauff’s 22 June 1942 (Figure 6.5) reply to one of the requests—clues to how, organizationally, the gas van program was administered on a daily basis. Such visual elements as those described above performed “rhetorical boundary work” (Wilson & Herndl, 2007) between the multiple levels and subcultures within the Sipo Technical Matters Group. The need for such boundary work was considerable, for competing interests within the Group included the executive level represented by Rauff who, in his mid-thirties, identified with the young and ideologically driven RHSA leadership cadre cultivated by Heydrich and Himmler; the middle management level represented by Pradel, who identified with the professional culture of career police officers and saw himself as a transportation expert; the junior level represented by Wentritt, the upwardly mobile technical school graduate who had recently been named chief mechanic of the Sipo motor pool in Berlin; the employee level represented by Just, an older man in his forties who had been a welder in German police service for more than 20 years; the clerical level, whose participation can be seen in the typing, stamping, coding, and filing of the documents; the expert level represented by Becker who, with his PhD in chemistry, was on loan from the T4 euthanasia program and dispatched by Rauff as a field inspector; the field personnel represented by the gas van drivers Findeisen and Gevatter, who clung to their identity as specialists and refused to personally shoot any Jews; the internal clients represented by Schäfer and Trühe who, like Rauff, were dedicated “SS men” and headed the regional offices that oversaw the Einsatzgruppen shooting squads; and finally the suppliers, including the subcontractor Gaubschat that built the truck compartments, the Armed Forces High Command with whom Rauff negotiated allocations of truck chassis and motor fuel, and the General Plenipotentiary for Vehicles that released the trucks. How were such variations in perspective integrated to achieve, as Wilson and Herndl (2007) put it, a “trading zone, a temporary space of cooperation and exchange and exchange between different disciplines or subdisciplines” so as to “make discordant language and knowledge understandable by demonstrating how these ways of thinking and speaking fit within a common project” (p. 132)? In this regard, the visual aspects of the Schäfer and Trühe telegrams are eerily reminiscent of the “knowledge map” (p. 141) by which project team members in the Wilson and Herndl study charted their respective participation in a missile design project. The preprinted RSHA telegram form provided lines and boxes for

124 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

nearly every level of the Sonderwagen administration to map its participation. Spaces are graphically marked off for the client’s messages, the entrance stamp of the Sipo Technical Matters Group, the countersignatures of Rauff and Pradel, and the routing stamp needed to properly file the document, while the back of the telegram provided a handy space where each level—Rauff, Pradel, Wentritt, Just—notated questions, answers, instructions, and procedures, while carefully denoting their individual numerical codes. From this single sheet of paper, one can reconstruct precisely the chain of command and how requests for vehicles, repairs, and supplies progressed through each level. As Wilson and Herndl discovered with their missile team, I believe that the document forms of the Sipo Technical Matters Group helped to create trading zones as “temporary formations in which distinct groups with different orientations, professional commitments, and characteristic forms of argument can cooperate in specific practices” (p. 145). Even as the visual rhetoric of the one-page telegram forms is revealing, so is the visual rhetoric of the lengthiest document in the gas-van corpus. For the 5 June 1942 technical proposal is, visually, the most unique of the documents under study (Figure 6.7). The visual rhetoric that clearly stands out above all else is the formality of the document design. The proposal was meant to impress in its appearance as well as its argument. Those who have never created a document on a typewriter, but who have always enjoyed the convenience of editing their copy on a word processor, cannot understand the painstaking difficulty and repeated attempts required to produce such a document on a typewriter—and, further, on a manual typewriter (with, of course, no self-correcting capability). And to have sustained the precision of the margins and tab sets over five typewritten pages would have required supreme effort. Notice also two very telling differences between the Just proposal and both the Becker field inspection report and even Rauff’s 26 March 1942 routine business letter. In the latter two cases, the lines of type extend almost to the right edge of the sheet, and words are hyphenated haphazardly so as to create a somewhat ragged right margin. The line endings are within acceptable bounds but, clearly, the right margin received only the “usual” attention and no great effort was made to diminish its raggedness. But the Just proposal is notable because it has a generous right margin, as well as the left, so as to present a visually pleasing symmetry on the page; for that matter, the top and bottom margins also allow a visually pleasing amount of white space; and the manual line endings are regulated to keep the text from being too ragged at the right margin. Clearly, this is a serious document, not routine at all, and intended to impress. Considerable effort would have been required not only to compose and phrase the text, but also to produce the document. The seriousness is also suggested by the fact that, at the top of the document, it is marked not only “Reich Secret Matter” in bold type but is also denoted “Only Copy.” The Just proposal is also notable in that no one else has made any marginal notations and stamped any routing instructions upon it. The document apparently received “kid glove” treatment.

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

125

Figure 6.7. German original of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 1 of 5. Source: http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420605-rauff-spezialwagen

126 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 6.7. German original of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 2 of 5. Source: http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420605-rauff-spezialwagen

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

127

Figure 6.7. German original of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 3 of 5. Source: http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420605-rauff-spezialwagen

128 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Figure 6.7. German original of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 4 of 5. Source: http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420605-rauff-spezialwagen

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

129

Figure 6.7. German original of 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal. Page 5 of 5. Source: http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420605-rauff-spezialwagen

130 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

How, then, to interpret the meaning that the rhetorical community co-constructed from this object? Any answer is speculation, of course. But perhaps a better approach to an answer is to rephrase the question: Why were the other documents treated as merely routine and this document was not? The stakes, apparently, were higher. Becker’s stinging report of van operations in the field had forced the hand of the Berlin-based automotive technicians of the Sipo Technical Matters Group. After they had built the Sonderwagens and sent them to the field, the vans were just another set of vehicles among the 4,000 they administered. But now the technicians came face-to-face with the vans’ purpose and were given direct responsibility for using their know-how to devise solutions to keep them going. Confronted with this new datum and its threat to continuance of their common world, they created a document whose highly formal and serious rhetoric (textually and visually) enabled them to absorb the datum into a habitual rule of action—they retreated, that is, behind a genre they knew quite well: technical communication. In this chapter, we have seen how the members of the Sipo Technical Matters Group deployed narrative, metaphor, and genre in their texts to construct a rhetorical community. Besides their texts, where do their visuals fit in? Did the visual rhetorics in their documents furnish narratives that created a field in which their differences could be converged into a shared project? Or did their visual rhetorics supply metaphors to bridge the gaps between their similarities and their differences? Or did their visual rhetorics constitute genres the deskmurderers employed to pragmatically structure social action? In my view, we must heed here Williams’s (2006) warning that any interpretive framework must take into account visual intelligence or the “intuitive and unconscious cognitive nature of visual communication,” a mode of meaning that “eludes traditional semiotic, rhetorical, and other logocentric measurement techniques” (p. 32). As Barry (1997, 2006) pointed out, images are cognized much differently than words. The latter are cognized by the conscious/thoughtful half of the human brain, while images are cognized not only by the conscious/ thoughtful half but also by the unconscious/intuitive half. And this whole-mind cognition occurs instantaneously, so that to “read” images as if they were “texts” may be untrue to the way that images are cognized. The analyst must take care not “to reduce the rhetorical force of images to meaning, domesticating them for our studies” (DeLuca, 2006, p. 82). Or as Messaris (2003) cautioned, “Images can inveigle us into seeing them as real, even though most of us know full well that they are artificial constructions,” a fact that “serves as a clearer demarcation of how images differ from words” (p. 553). The visual rhetorics of the Sonderwagen corpus imparted to the documents a patina of bureaucratic normalcy that, according to the properties of visual intelligence, could be processed cognitively and intuitively at a mere glance. What the visual elements of the documents say to the looker is, to paraphrase Bauman’s (1989) description, “Here is an objective discharge of business

A COMMUNITY OF KILLERS

/

131

according to calculable rules and without regard for persons” (p. 14). This visual rhetorical argument may alternately be seen as narrative, telling a story of business-as-usual in order to create a field on which members’ differences might converge; as metaphor, bridging the gap between the killers’ similarities and differences by explaining the new (mass murder) in terms of the familiar (bureaucratic routine); or as genre, marshaling rhetorical resources to pragmatically structure social action, sometimes as simply as filling in the blanks. Images may, as suggested above, be “somewhat slippery.” But any analysis of a text that excludes the visual element may miss a vital aspect of the meanings being conveyed—and, in our case, of the rhetorical boundary work being done.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 7

Discourse of Death

WHAT DISCOURSE ANALYSIS CAN ADD In the previous chapter, we followed the implications of Miller’s (1994) thesis that rhetorical community is the cultural basis for genre. In so doing, we saw the murderers of the Sipo Technical Matters Group as a community that, through organizational texts that served as boundary objects to negotiate their differences, marshaled the rhetorical resources of narrative, metaphor, and genre to (re)produce itself. Along the way, we employed two of three approaches, rhetorical and genre analysis, that Berkenkotter (2002) cited as methods for research into everyday organizational texts. What, then, could the third approach—discourse analysis—add to what we have already learned? Within the context of organization studies, Alvesson (2004) asked a similar question: Is the “organizational discourse” approach merely a relabeling of the “organizational culture” approach since the two frequently study the same things? Or to rephrase this question for the present study: If we have seen—through rhetorical and genre analyses—that rhetorical community (re)produces the organizational culture that furnishes the basis for genres by which organizations pragmatically structure social action, can discourse analysis bring anything new to the table? Alvesson (2004, p. 328ff) answered this question by proposing four distinctions: (a) Where researchers who accord primacy to organizational culture assume that much organizational meaning is tacit and therefore precedes discourse or is not expressed via discourse, those who privilege organizational discourse see meaning as driven by language use and social reality as locally constructed through such discursive acts as categorizing, identifying, and relating. (b) Where those who see organizational culture as decisive assume language use reveals meaning, those who give primacy to organizational discourse assume language use creates temporary meaning, order, and power distribution. (c) Where those who look first to organizational culture seek connections and syntheses that produce a patterned organizational reality, those who look to 133

134 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

organizational discourse would identify local impacts of discourse that produce organizational fragility and fragmentation as it generates local variations and multiple social realities. (d) Where those who point to organizational culture see members caught in their own webs of meaning, those who interrogate organizational discourse tend to see members caught in webs of classifications their language use brings about; and where organizational culture researchers view subjects as bearers of meaning who create and interpret reality, some discursivists assign those functions to organizational discourse rather than to people. Thus, we can add to the previous analyses of the Sonderwagen documents by shifting our perspective and seeing where discursivist assumptions may lead us. This move, however, need not vitiate the earlier analyses. Stillar (1998) has forcefully argued that the choice is not either/or but both/and, since a discursive approach can work alongside rhetorical and social-theoretical approaches in analyses of everyday texts. “Discourse involves rhetorical action because it constitutes a major means through which we link ourselves to one another,” while “the act of participating in a discourse is also, of course, a social act” (pp. 5–6). Thus, discoursal, rhetorical, and social approaches are a “different, but complementary, perspective on text as practice, as action” (p. 5). Craig likewise observed that because discourse is conceptualized as “language in use, or more broadly, the interactive production of meaning,” then discourse analysis represents a point of convergence between rhetoric and other traditions of communication theory. It brings a rhetorical perspective to our understanding of forms of communication (such as personal interaction) that were not traditionally thought of as rhetoric. And it enriches the rhetorical perspective with insights and techniques from pragmatics, conversation analysis, cultural studies, and other fields. (Craig, 2000)

This chapter adds to the previous analyses by demonstrating from a discursive perspective how documents can do boundary work by drawing on linguistic resources to create zones of consensus. Such a discursive approach (as distinct from a cultural approach) allows us, as Alvesson (2004) suggested, to better see how meaning was driven by language use; how social reality was constructed through discursive acts; how language use created temporary order and power distribution; how this order was fragile and fragmented because discourse creates multiple local variations and realities; and how discourse creates webs of classifications in which organization members become caught. THE KILLERS’ USE OF LINGUISTIC RESOURCES As we saw in chapter 5, Stillar (1998) has argued that language constructs meaning through ideational resources since a text is “about something,” interpersonal

DISCOURSE OF DEATH

/

135

resources since a text is “to and from someone,” and textual resources since a text has structure and organization that permit cohesion and coherence. Stillar’s breakdown of these resources and their constituent parts are summarized in Table 7.1. From a discursivist standpoint, then, what meaning did the gas van program administrators construct through their language use? Discourse analysis of the 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal (Figure 5.4) is instructive because this document has been widely commented upon in the technical communication literature (e.g., Dombrowski, 2000a; Katz, 1992a). Further, according to Sauer’s (2003) scheme, the Just proposal represents a culminating moment in the cycle of documentation when embodied local sensory experience, which the 16 May 1942 Becker field report (Figure 5.3) had captured in writing and turned into engineering knowledge, was finally re-represented for policy deliberation so that it might be transformed into generalizable organizational standards. Then, too, Lozowick’s (2000) observations about accepted bureaucratic protocols in Nazi Germany affirm that the Just document almost certainly was collaboratively authored by midlevel and junior functionaries attuned to the preferences of the top man. A linguistically based discourse analysis of the document and its use of ideational resources, shown below in Table 7.2, demonstrates quite strongly that the desk-murderers constructed for themselves a social reality in which mental processes, that is, in which thinking, are entirely absent, except in the faulty reasoning of those (the manufacturer and the subcontractor) outside the organization. To use Stillar’s (1998) scheme, ideational resources derive from “the type of social activity involved” (p. 53), so that the Just document is clearly embedded in a situation in which the “field of discourse” (p. 54) privileges the social activities of “doing” and “being” and devalues “sensing” (p. 25). In the social reality of the document, there are chiefly actional processes that feature “agent” and “acted upon,” and to a somewhat lesser degree, the activity of making duo-relational identifications and attributions. But of mental processes, which “have two central participants: a processor (the sentient being that does the ‘mentalizing’) and a phenomenon (that which is ‘mentalized’)” (p. 23), there are virtually none, or at least no field for such social activity by members of the Sipo Technical Matters Group. Also noteworthy is the way in which the Just document deploys interpersonal resources, especially the heavy use of modal verbs. Modalities “construct a speaker’s/writer’s attitude toward the ideational content . . . of the text” (Stillar, 1998, p. 35). The Just document is remarkable for the clear connection between modality and ideation in that actional processes are almost entirely modified by modal verbs that modify the main verbs, while relational processes are largely unmodified. Thus, the writers’ position and relation toward action is constantly modified by shifting action from the present to the past (has been, have been, etc.) or the future (will be, could be, etc.), while by contrast the writers’ social activity of identifying and classifying is unmodified and takes place in the

Mental processor and phenomenon Perceptive Reactive Cognitive Verbal Creative Modality (via modal verbs, e.g., can, could, may, might, must, ought to, shall, with, would)

Speech Function Statement Question Command Exclamation

As constructed through:

Relational Indexes authority, politeness, etc. Assigns obligations, etc. to addressee

Conjunction Additive (e.g., and, furthermore, in addition, for instance, likewise) Adversative (e.g., yet, but, however, instead, at any rate) Temporal (e.g., finally, first, meanwhile, secondly, in short) Causal (e.g., therefore, as a result)

Ellipsis (word presupposed for subsequent text)

Reference (antecedent for third-person pronouns)

Cohesion

Theme Unmarked theme Marked theme Multiple theme

Positional Assigns speech roles Constructs speaker orientation Indexes speaker attitude

Process Types and Participant Roles represents events, states, relations, and participants

Actional agent and acted upon Affective (agent + patient) Motion (agent + location) Transfer (agent + item + location) Resultative (agent + item + recipient) Designative (agent + range)

TEXTUAL RESOURCES Constructs coherence from text parts

INTERPERSONAL RESOURCES Whom text is to and from

IDEATIONAL RESOURCES What text is about

Table 7.1. Stillar’s Resources for Discourse Analysis

136 / DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Concept Taxonomies Reiteration Collocation

Perspective Ongoing Completed

Time Before-now Now After-now

Time and Perspective

Circumstantial Roles Time Place Manner Reason Purpose Contingency Role

Homo-relational (one participant) Existential (“there are”) Ambient (“it is”)

Duo-relational (two participants) Identification (identification + identifier) Attribution (carrier + attribute) Classification (classified + attribute) Possession (possessor + possessed) Location (located + locator)

Relational usually realized by a linking verb

Sentence Adjuncts Links (signal cohesion between sentences) Topics (indicate field of reference) Attitudinals (indicate speaker’s assessment) Vocatives (assign addressee for sentence) Question tag (e.g., “doesn’t she?”)

Attitudinal Lexis Qualitative and emphasizing adjectives Manner and degree adverbs Linking verbs Reporting verbs Cognitive verbs Lexical Cohesion Repetition (repeating same word) Synonymy (lexical item similar to previous item) Hyponymy (specific-general relationships between lexical items) Meronymy (part-whole relationship between lexical items) Collocation (lexical items tend to co-occur)

DISCOURSE OF DEATH / 137

IDEATIONAL/INTERPERSONAL RESOURCES Actional-resultative (97,000 have been processed) Modal verb: have been Relational-classification (explosion is an isolated case) Modal verb: to be Relational-attribution (cause is improper operator) Modal verb: can be Actional-transfer (instructions addressed to services) Modal verb: have been Actional-resultative (safety has been increased) Modality: has been Relational-attribution (adjustments are useful) Modality: would be Actional-affective (slots will be bored) Modal verb: will be

Actional-resultative (pressure would be controlled) Modal verb: would be Relational-identification (capacity is 9-10 square meters) Relational-identification (Saurer capacity is not so great)

SENTENCE

01 Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed, using three vans, without any defects showing up in the vehicle.

02 The explosion that we know took place at Kulmhof is to be considered an isolated case.

03 The cause can be attributed to improper operation.

04 In order to avoid such incidents, special instructions have been addressed to the services concerned.

05 Safety has been increased considerably as a result of these instructions.

06 Previous experience has shown that the adjustments would be useful.

07 (1) In order to facilitate the rapid distribution of CO, as well as to avoid a buildup of pressure, two slots, ten by one centimeters, will be bored at the top of the rear wall.

08 The excess pressure would be controlled by an easily adjustable hinged metal valve on the outside of the vents.

09 (2) The normal capacity of the vans is nine to ten per square meters.

10 The capacity of the larger special Saurer vans is not so great.

Table 7.2. Linguistic-Based Discourse Analysis of 5 June 1942 Gas Van Proposal

138 / DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Relational-identification (problem is maneuverability)

Relational-attribution (reduction is necessary) Actional-resultative (This can be achieved) Modal verb: can be Actional-resultative (problem cannot be solved) Modal verb: cannot be Relational-attribution (longer running time is required)

Actional-resultative (operation would take less time) Modal verb: would Mental-verbal (manufacturer pointed out result)

Relational-existential (There would be a risk) Modal verb: would be Relational-ambient (There is a natural compensation) Actional-motion (bad places itself at the rear)

Relational-attribution (axle is not overloaded) Actional-resultative (pipe tends to rust) Modal verb: to

11 The problem is not one of overloading but of off-road maneuverability on all terrains, which is severely diminished in this van.

12 It would appear that a reduction in the cargo area is necessary.

13 This can be achieved by shortening the compartment by about one meter.

14 The problem cannot be solved by merely reducing the number of subjects treated, as has been done so far.

15 For in this case a longer running time is required, as the empty space also needs to be filled with CO.

16 On the contrary, were the cargo area smaller, but fully occupied, the operation would take considerably less time, because there would be no empty space.

17 The manufacturer pointed out during discussions that a reduction in the volume of the cargo compartment would result in an inconvenient displacement of the cargo toward the front.

18 There would then be a risk of overloading the axle.

19 In fact, there is a natural compensation in the distribution of the weight.

20 When (the van is) in operation, the load, in its effort to reach the rear door, places itself for the most part at the rear.

21 For this reason the front axle is not overloaded.

22 (3) The pipe that connects the exhaust to the van tends to rust, because it is eaten away from the inside by the liquids that flow into it.

DISCOURSE OF DEATH / 139

IDEATIONAL/INTERPERSONAL RESOURCES Actional-transfer (nozzle should be arranged downward) Modal verb: should be Actional-motion (liquids will not flow into pipe) Modal verb: will be Actional-affective (opening will be made) Modal verb: will be Actional-resultative (it will be closed) Modal verb: will be

Actional-affective (pipe will be fitted) Modal verb: will be Actional-motion (dirt can be removed through the hole) Modal verb: can be Actional-affective (floor can be tipped) Modal verb: can be Actional-motion (liquids can flow toward the center) Modal verb: can be Actional-affective (windows could be eliminated) Modal verb: could be Actional-resultative (time will be saved) Modal verb: will be

SENTENCE

23 To avoid this the nozzle should be so arranged as to point downward.

24 The liquids will thus be prevented from flowing into [the pipe].

25 (4) To facilitate the cleaning of the vehicle, as opening will be made in the floor to allow for drainage.

26 It will be closed by a watertight cover about twenty to thirty centimeters in diameter, fitted with an elbow siphon that will allow for the draining of thin liquids.

27 The upper part of the elbow pipe will be fitted with a sieve to avoid obstruction.

28 Thicker dirt can be removed through the large drainage hole when the vehicle is cleaned.

29 The floor of the vehicle can be tipped slightly.

30 In this way all the liquids can be made to flow toward the center and be prevented from entering the pipes.

31 (5) The observation windows that have been installed up to now could be eliminated, as they are hardly ever used.

32 Considerable time will be saved in the production of the new vans by avoiding the difficult fitting of the window and its airtight lock.

Table 7.2. (Cont’d.)

140 / DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Relational-attribution (protection is needed) Actional-transfer (grille should be high enough) Modal verb: should Mental-verbal (users suggest elimination) Modal verb: have, could be Actional-motion (load presses against door)

Actional-motion (load rushes toward light)

Actional-affective (this hampers looking) Actional-resultative (noise is linked to fear)

Relational-attribution (It is therefore expedient)

Relational-attribution (Lighting is useful)

Actional-affective (grid is to be placed) Modal verb: to be Actional-resultative (It will slide) Modal verb: will Actional-resultative (It will be removed) Modal verb: will be

33 (6) Greater protection is needed for the lighting system.

34 The grille should cover the lamps high enough up to make it impossible to break the bulbs.

35 It seems that these lamps are hardly ever turned on, so the users have suggested that they could be done away with.

36 Experience shows, however, that when the back door is closed and it gets dark inside, the load presses hard against the door.

37 The reason for this is that when it becomes dark inside the load rushes toward what little light remains.

38 This hampers the locking of the door.

39 It has also been noticed that the noise provided by the locking of the door is linked to the fear aroused by the darkness.

40 It is therefore expedient to keep the lights on before the operation and during the first few minutes of its duration.

41 Lighting is also useful for night work and for the cleaning of the interior of the van.

42 (7) To facilitate the rapid unloading of the vehicles, a removable grid is to be placed on the floor.

43 It will slide on rollers on a U-shaped rail.

44 It will be removed and put in position by means of a small winch placed under the vehicle.

DISCOURSE OF DEATH / 141

IDEATIONAL/INTERPERSONAL RESOURCES Mental-verbal (The firm has slated it is not able)

Actional-affective (Another firm must be found) Modal verb: will have to be Actional-resultative (changes will be carried out) Modal verb: will be

Actional-resultative (alterations will be carried out) Modal verb: will be Mental-verbal (Manufacturer made it clear)

Actional-affective (attempt must be made) Modal verb: must be

Actional-affective (I suggest the firm be charged) Actional-resultative (we must expect later completion) Modal verb: must Actional-affective (It will be kept available) Modal verb: will be Actional-affective (vans will be withdrawn) Modal verb: will be

SENTENCE

45 The firm charged with the alterations has stated that it is not able to continue for the moment, due to a lack of staff and materials.

46 Another firm will have to be found.

47 The technical changes planned for the vehicles already in operation will be carried out when and as major repairs to these vehicles prove necessary.

48 The alterations in the Saurer vehicles already ordered will be carried out as far as possible.

49 The manufacturer made it clear in a meeting that structural alterations, with the exception of minor ones, cannot be carried out for the moment.

50 An attempt must therefore be made to find another firm that can carry out, on at least one of these ten vehicles, the alterations and adjustments that experience has proved to be necessary.

51 I suggest that the firm Hohenmauth be charged with the execution.

52 Due to present circumstances, we shall have to expect a later date of completion for this vehicle.

53 It will then not only be kept available as a model but also be used as a reserve vehicle.

54 Once it has been tested, the other vans will be withdrawn from service and will undergo the same alterations.

Table 7.2. (Cont’d.)

142 / DEADLY DOCUMENTS

DISCOURSE OF DEATH

/

143

present. The analysis here is aided by the fact that modal verbs are characteristic of Germanic language and, in fact, the six English modal verbs derive in their etymologies directly from the six German modal verbs: können/kann = can; sollen/soll = shall; wollen/will = will; müssen/muss = must; mögen/mag = may; dürfen/darf = dare. That the writers socially construct distance from the subjects of their actional processes is reinforced by the fact that, of the document’s 36 sentences that depict actional processes, the writers are the subject in only two sentences (51 and 52), which appear at the end and describe relationships with suppliers rather than actual vehicle operations. Even without exploring the textual resources of the Just document (which would then involve issues of German-to-English translation), and instead examining only those linguistic resources necessarily found in all languages (that is, resources that construct what a text is about and its speaker and addressee), a discourse analysis suggests the bureaucrats of the Sipo Technical Matters Group used language to create a meaning that devalued sensing, although doing was heavily modified to deflect the writers’ and addressee’s position and relation toward actional processes by shifting them out of the present. Returning to Alvesson’s (2004) four distinctives for analyses that privilege organizational discourse before organizational culture, we would see the Just document doing boundary work by locally and temporally constructing organizational meaning, order, and power distribution via such discursive acts as categorizing, identifying, and relating; that the attempt to locally construct meaning, order, and power distribution is born of the need to counteract organizational fragility and reconcile fragmented local variations and multiple social realities; and that organization members become caught in the webs of classifications their discourses bring about. RECONSTRUCTING AN ORGANIZATIONAL DISCOURSE Finally, in following Grant and Iedema’s (2005) dimensional approach to organizational discourse studies, we can also turn to the interplay between communally validated language patterns and the meanings those patterns marginalized. And this can be addressed by attempting to reconstruct/deconstruct the discourse carried on within the Sipo Technical Matters Group by the various participants in the gas van program. The discourse of the 26 March 1942 letter (Figure 5.2) issued by Rauff seems straightforward to interpret: A rival SS bureau had requested a gas van and Rauff was indisposed to grant them such aid, whether because of their rivalry or because design modifications for new gas vans were still being worked out or because RSHA operations were officially secret or because Rauff was preoccupied with supplying the Einsatzgruppen and did not want to be otherwise bothered—or all of the above. Similarly, the telegram traffic between the Sipo

144 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Technical Matters Group in Berlin and the Sipo-and-SD regional headquarters in occupied territories—which occurred in the early and midsummer of 1942 when more gas vans of improved design were available—can be straightforwardly interpreted as a simple administrative discourse regarding vehicle requisition and disposition. By reducing these discourses to “banal” administrative routine, organization members suppressed and marginalized non-Nazi construals of their deeds. The organizational discourse that culminated in the exchange between the 16 May 1942 Becker field inspection report (Figure 5.3) and the 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal (Figure 5.4), however, is highly instructive about organization members’ marginalization of traditional moral meanings. According to my reconstruction, this discourse began in the late winter of 1941–1942, involved all levels of the organizations in deliberations of policy, and extended through the early summer, at which time the discourse is remarkable for the swiftness with which organizational consensus broke down. The early stage of the discourse is suggested by the Sipo and SD situation report for Einsatzgruppen B. Dated 1 May 1942, and covering the period 16–28 February 1942, the report noted that gas vans had arrived February 23 “at Smolensk with defects and, after the defects were remedied, were assigned to the Einsatzkommandos” (Holocaust Research Projet, 2009). Even at this early stage, then, defects were already apparent. Then, too, Becker had embarked the previous month on his field inspection tour and, since he regularly reported to Rauff, news of vehicle defects was presumably reaching the Berlin office. And sometime after the December 1941 opening of the Chelmno death camp, an embarrassing explosion occurred when gas pressure inside one of the vans caused the back doors to blow and ejected its still-living cargo of victims. Thus, in his 26 March 1942 letter (Figure 5.2) to the Criminal Technical Institute, Rauff turned down a vehicle request from the Mauthausen camp on the grounds that all the Sonderwagen ordered by Heydrich were already deployed and any additional gas vans were still under construction. In fact, new vehicles were not only under construction, their very design was still under discussion as complaints from the field mounted. In April, Becker witnessed an Aktion that was launched on Easter Sunday. That day, a militia of local collaborators rounded up Jewish men, women, and children from the town of Stalino until some 200 victims were assembled in the interior courtyard of the local hotel. An SS sergeant had been dispatched from Berlin by the RSHA, driven a gas van to Stalino, and put at the disposal of Einsatzkommando 6 and its commander (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 63). The next day, Easter Monday, operations resumed at 7 a.m., when the local militia forced the captive Jews to remove their usable outer clothing and loaded about 50 or 60 victims into the van. Once the doors were bolted and the gassing began, the SS driver took off for an abandoned mine shaft outside of town. But as a member of the SS commando recalled after the war,

DISCOURSE OF DEATH

/

145

The gas-van could not be driven right up to the shaft and we had to pull the bodies out of the vans and drag them to the shaft which was about eight meters away, and then throw them in. . . . When the doors were opened a cloud of smoke wafted out. After the smoke had cleared we could start our foul work. It was frightful. You could see they had fought terribly for their lives. Some of them were holding their noses. The dead had to be dragged apart. It was while doing this that I first found out how heavy a human being can be. (Klee et al., 1991, pp. 72–73)

Over the course of three-and-a-half hours, the procedure was performed four times, until all 200 Jews had been gassed. “I know for sure it was Easter Monday,” the SS man later testified, “because I clearly remember discovering colored eggs back at the quarters after the execution” (Klee et al., 1991, p. 72). Given the complaints continually reported by Becker, the Berlin office began discussing improvements for its Sonderwagen. In a proposal dated 24 April 1942, Pradel suggested overlaying the van compartment’s metal floor with a sliding wooden grille set on rollers and activated by a winch for easy unloading of victims. Though Rauff approved, the subcontractor Gaubschat replied that winches were unavailable due to wartime equipment shortages, and its own workers had been drafted for military duty (Browning, 1991, p. 64). A memo dated 27 April 1942, discussed how “cargo” might be unloaded more quickly by installing “tip-up equipment for the box-superstructure,” or alternately a “facility to tip-up the bottom-grate” or “a facility to move in and out the bottomgrate.” As the historian Beer (1987) noted, “The proceeding was analogous to the development of the prototype. The matter was debated first internally and then Rauff gave an order for a van with the planned alterations to the Gaubschat factory. This one should be tested practically and only after that a decision should be taken on the vans to be altered further” (p. 412). With such discussions still ongoing, Becker’s detailed and highly critical report of the vans’ design and operational shortcomings arrived in May. How this organizational discourse proceeded next is a matter of some conjecture. That the 5 June 1942 Just technical proposal was a response to the 16 May 1942 Becker field report seems clear enough. But as discussed in chapter 3, it also seems clear that Just was not the author or instigator of the proposal. The men of the Sipo Technical Matters Group adhered to protocols that reflected a strict chain of command—even the extensive handwritten notes on the telegram traffic, for example, demonstrate how the most routine correspondences were efficiently routed down through a numerically designated hierarchy. According to protocol, then, the 5 June 1942 proposal emerged from a thicket of savvy midlevel and junior functionaries who then ordered Just to sign the document. Among these, Pradel emerges (again, according to protocol) as a figure of particular importance since his midlevel status made him the nexus between Rauff on the executive level and the junior managers of the motor pool.

146 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

A clue to Pradel’s role in the Just proposal may be found in the Becker field report. Rauff signed the latter document to acknowledge receipt and placed a question mark in the margin beside Becker’s request that orders be issued requiring gas vans be unloaded by prisoners. That the document was then routed to Pradel is indicated by his own countersignature. The fact that Pradel saw Becker’s report hints strongly that Pradel must also have had a hand in producing the document intended as a response to Becker’s report. This is reinforced by the careful language use and precise graphical appearance of the Just proposal that demonstrate its importance to its authors. Willi Just is alternately described in the historical literature as a welder (Noakes & Pridham, 1988, p. 1202) and dispatcher (Browning, 1991, p. 64), and his employee designation of IID3a(9) affirms that he was subordinate to chief mechanic Wentritt and, at number nine, not high in rank. Yet his extensive handwritten notations on the backs of the Schäfer and Trühe telegrams suggest that Just, who had more than 20 years of experience as a welder, had a significant role in coordinating repairs for the gas vans. Perhaps among the 4,000 vehicles in the Sipo motor pool that Pradel and Wentritt oversaw, Just was the dispatcher and mechanic they assigned to keep track of the gas vans. So while Just may have had a hand in initially formulating the recommendations of the 5 June 1942 technical proposal and was the logical person to be its signatory, he signed the document “I.A.” (im Auftrag) or “by direction.” What seems most likely is that Pradel, Wentritt, and Just collaborated on the proposal, secured a technical writer to draft the language and a skilled typist to produce the draft, and ordered Just to sign. But what was the impetus for producing such a detailed, lengthy, and graphically impressive document? Did Rauff, upon receiving Becker’s report, commission Pradel to draft a response? Did Pradel, perhaps to absolve himself of the vans’ problems and thus protect his organizational turf, take the initiative and instigate a reply to Becker’s report? Did Wentritt and Just, either responding to field complaints or sensing an opportunity to resolve design discussions in their favor, suggest to Pradel that the occasion was ripe for a formal technical proposal? Or did perhaps Becker himself implore Rauff to have his automotive experts suggest possible solutions? My interpretation takes into account a 23 June 1942 memo, written by Pradel, in which he objected for security reasons to using a Czech subcontractor, as was suggested in the Just proposal (Kogon et al., 1993). Why would Pradel take pains to point out a fault in the proposal if he himself had a hand in it? For that reason, I surmise that the organizational discourse proceeded in this manner: An ongoing internal discussion about design modifications for new gas vans was brought to a head by Becker’s report, prompting Rauff to request from Pradel a response. Pradel delegated this task to Wentritt, who together with Just worked up the major points for proposed solutions. Then Pradel approved the points in principle, used his managerial clout to have the proposal professionally written up and typed, and directed Just to sign. (The writer or

DISCOURSE OF DEATH

/

147

typist finished the document June 4 since that date and the initials “wa” are found in marginalia at the end of the memo.) After the proposal was submitted to Rauff for consideration and decision, however, Pradel pointed out the difficulty of employing a Czech subcontractor. The proposed firm, Sodomka at Hohenmauth . . . [is] unsuitable for work of a secret nature. (A Czech firm in an entirely Czech area, with a Czech labor force.) We suggest that Gaubschat should be asked to make the required changes on one cargo compartment only and then test it. Those alterations that Gaubschat cannot make because of their secret character will be done in our own shop. (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 56)

Why did Pradel object to a proposal drafted by his own bureau? Perhaps if the proposal had been commissioned by Rauff, rather than originally instigated by Pradel, the latter felt safe to clarify the proposals of subordinates who, after all, were competent in technical matters only. Perhaps Pradel engaged in the common negotiating tactic of starting with a comprehensive proposal and then suggesting the alternative (i.e., building a single prototype rather than embarking on a full-scale project of dubious prospect) that he felt Rauff would accept or that Pradel wanted all along. Or perhaps something came up after the proposal was submitted and Pradel sensed a need to respond—and indeed, the very day that the ink was drying on Just’s signature, RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich died in a car-bombing by Czech assassins. Little wonder, then, that Czech subcontractors would be deemed security risks. Indeed, in the 3 weeks between the composing of the Just memo and Pradel’s objection to Czech subcontractors, Pradel may have finally come to the conclusion Heydrich had already reached in May, when the latter conceded the vans were “an attempt that failed . . . due to inadequate technology” (Wildt, 2010, p. 326). Pradel testified after the war that on the same day he objected to using Czech subcontractors, his favored German firm had still not delivered the 10 additional truck compartments he had ordered (Kogon et al., 1993, p. 54). If his German source was unresponsive and any Czech source was too risky, perhaps Pradel knew he had reached a dead end. The existing vehicles were experiencing problems and, given wartime exigencies, no realistic prospects for new and improved models were in sight. The organizational discourse that culminated in the 5 June 1942 Just proposal was now swiftly unraveling. About 2 weeks later, Pradel received a communication that pointed up the failure of the Sonderwagen. In a 15 June 1942 telegram (Figure 5.6), Trühe requested more gas vans because the three on hand were insufficient to handle weekly transports of deported Jews arriving in Minsk. At first glance, this request might seem to affirm the vans’ usefulness to the Einsatzgruppen. The squad was clearing the Minsk ghetto and in time “processed” some 55,000 Jews, easily the single largest operation of the gas van program. But these numbers were achieved only because the Sonderwagen

148 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

were utilized in a single location rather than in mobile operations. The ultimate “reason for the rapid eclipse of the gas van,” Browning (1991) noted, is that “if it worked adequately only in the setting of a stationary camp, it was rendered obsolete almost immediately by the far more efficient gas chambers that were being put into operation in the first half of 1942” (p. 65). Thus, by September, after Rauff officially relinquished his position as head of department II D (Nizkor, 2002), Becker returned from his inspection tour and spent an hour debriefing Pradel and pushing him to address the gas vans’ technical problems. But Pradel listened only silently until Becker was finished and then told the inspector to submit a report and settle up his travel expenses at the cashier’s office (Klee et al., 1991, p. 71). For even as Becker was reimbursed for his travel, the Wehrmacht’s second and final offensive against the Soviets was bogging down at Stalingrad, limiting the scope for new Einsatzgruppen operations. The mobile SS death squads were nearing the end of their grisly work. Thus, the Just document, despite the obvious pains of its authors to impress their audience, illustrates how the boundary objects—birthed amid flux and then dropped into a swirling sea of shifting organizational currents—are inherently evanescent and the cooperative spaces they create temporary. For “as organizations become larger, more complex and more geographically extended, so will multiple discursive communities emerge, each with a particular construction of the world, each with a potential distrust or animus towards the others,” leading to the irony that “successful organizing establishes the grounds for disorganization” (Gergen, Gergen, & Barrett, 2004, pp. 51–52). And how does this reconstruction of the gas van program’s organizational discourse suggest ways that participants marginalized traditional moral meanings for their actions? The blindness engendered by bureaucratic and technical routinization, career ambition, job security, professional identity, and euphemistic code language all are part of the answer. But if their discourse privileged Nazified themes—advancing the “people’s community,” observing the “leadership principle,” being “soldierly” and “hard” and a “fighting” pragmatist in the approved SS manner—and therefore marginalized traditional morality, we return once again to three aspects of the Final Solution that were introduced at the outset of this study. First, the gas van program was conceived and executed within a polycracy; though the SS was held together by the centripetal forces of racism and anti-Semitism, it was at the same time constantly riven by the centrifugal force of a social Darwinist culture that prized fighting and struggle for their own sake. Second, the Sonderwagen program was, like the Final Solution itself, entropic; the more that the program extended its operations, the more its contradictions tended to undermine the program. And third, perhaps most all, the gas van program was short; just 6 months after Heydrich’s initial order to construct the Sonderwagen, the consensus of the participants had irretrievably broken down. Heydrich was dead; Rauff was transferred; Pradel turned to black marketeering and after the war resumed his police career; Becker had his fill of mass murder

DISCOURSE OF DEATH

/

149

and went into agriculture; the mechanics and drivers drew a clear distinction between Sonderwagen operations and “normal” duties. The organizational consensus to marginalize their society’s traditional morality and pursue deeds that “they clearly understood . . . were not positive except in the value system of the Third Reich” (Lozowick, 2000, p. 8) was possible because that consensus was, in the end, only required to be short-lived, a transitional stage between Babi Yar and Auschwitz. The trading zones created by the boundary objects of organizational texts produce only “temporary formations in which distinct groups with different orientations, professional commitments, and characteristic forms of argument can cooperate in specific practices” (Wilson & Herndl, 2007, p. 145). Through texts that activated and disseminated shared narratives, metaphors, genres, and discourses, the rhetorical community of the Sipo Technical Matters Group held together a consensus about its “special vans” just long enough to structure lethally pragmatic action. Just long enough, but no longer.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 8

Revisiting “Expediency”

BOUNDARY WORK IN ACTION Having explored the historical and cultural contexts of the Nazi gas van documents and then analyzing these texts as a discourse, our cultural research methodology (Longo, 1998) calls for an interrogation of the orderings imposed on the texts by their analysts and what this may suggest about the relationships of these analysts to the texts. Here it is productive to focus on the lengthiest text among the corpus, the Just proposal of 5 June 1942 (Figure 5.4). For Document II D 3a (9) NI. 214/42 G. RS. has led a curious afterlife that illustrates the necessity for the final two delimiters in Longo’s method and, ironically, allows us to see this heinous document functioning as a boundary object within the discipline of technical communication. Tracing this “rhetorical boundary work” (Wilson & Herndl, 2007) in action and assessing its implications calls for three moves to be set out in this and succeeding chapters. The infamous Just document was introduced into the technical communication literature 20 years ago by Katz (1992a), and yet his own encounter with the text was not in isolation but was transmitted to him through another’s frame of reference. Thus, the antecedents to his influential “ethic of expediency” thesis are worth exploring, that his argument might be revisited in light of previous orderings imposed upon the text he analyzed. The following chapter explores how subsequent technical communication scholars have appropriated Katz’s thesis and imposed their own orderings on the Just text, turning it into a boundary object that, according to Star and Griesemer’s (1989) thesis, has proven plastic enough for adaptation to the local needs of differing disciplinary perspectives and yet robust enough to maintain a consensus between them regarding a key point of technical communication ethics. Yet because rhetorical boundary work is necessarily driven by the local needs of the participants—rather than, say, by historical scholarship about the Holocaust—that opens a space in the final chapter to explore an alternative view of what I believe we might learn 151

152 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

about organizational and technical communication ethics from the shameful example of Sipo Technical Matters Group and its textual artifacts. LANZMANN AND THE “WHY” QUESTION Since it was issued 5 June 1942 under the signature of Willi Just, the technical proposal for boosting the killing efficiency of the SS gas van fleet has surfaced in a 1983 book (Kogon, Langbein, & Rückerl) on the Nazi use of poison gas; a controversial 1985 film and subsequent book (Lanzmann) by a poststructuralist French filmmaker; a 1988 compendium (Noakes & Pridham) of original Nazi documents; several general histories of the Holocaust; the landmark essay by Steven Katz (1992a); and numerous journal articles and books (e.g., Brasseur, 1993; Dombrowski, 2000a; Moore, 2004; Sullivan & Martin, 2001) on technical communication ethics. Each of these iterations has, as Longo (2006) predicted, “imposed an ordering on the object and its contexts, thereby including some ways of understanding the object and excluding others” (p. 126). The implication is that technical communicators have necessarily imposed an ordering on the Nazi text to legitimate certain ways of understanding ethics and exclude others. Interrogating “those silences, absences, and exclusions still held within the dominant knowledge and discourse of [our] field’s practices” requires an “antidisciplinary, situated, and personal” exploration that “add[s] discussions of power, politics, ethics, and cultural tensions to our understandings of what we do when we communicate” (pp. 126–127). Long before the infamous Just document was introduced into the technical communication literature, others had already imposed their own orderings on the text, starting with the document’s appearance in the 1983 original German edition of the book Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas (Kogon et al., 1993). The authors’ stated purpose was “to set down, in a precise and indisputable manner, the historical truth about the massacres perpetrated by means of poison gas during this [Nazi] period” (p. 2) and refute the then-new phenomena of Holocaust denial. As such, the authors’ commentary on the Just proposal places the document in relation to the overall situation in the spring of 1942 when “the killing machinery had to be made more reliable. And its capacity had to be increased, as the German zone of occupation within the Soviet Union was constantly being increased” (p. 55). In their view, this explains the document’s stress on solving problems with the gas vans’ maneuverability, reducing the running time needed to dispatch victims, and shortening the time required to construct new vans. The document is also described as “couched in an extreme form of Nazi double-talk, a monstrously inhuman language” (p. 55). In the appendices to the book, the Just proposal is easily the longest of three original documents reproduced. Yet the authors’ sober record of the gas van program did not stop deniers from construing the relevant documents according to their own lights. David

REVISITING “EXPEDIENCY”

/

153

Irving, perhaps today’s best-known denier, claimed in 1992 that “I accept that this kind of [gas van] experiment was made on a very limited scale, but that it was rapidly abandoned as being a totally inefficient way of killing people” (Evans, 2001, p. 122). This line of “reasoning” was advanced, with the Just and Becker documents explicitly cited in support, during an online discussion that occurred February 25–27, 2003, on the Axis History Forum. In the exchange, a denier allowed that the Just and Becker documents are among “the few cases where the homicidal function is clear from the context,” but contended that since both documents “refer to the deficiencies of those vehicles as a method of killing en masse” then the texts can be interpreted as referring to limited field trials that were soon abandoned. The Just proposal, he argued, only “anticipates the production of further gas-vans.” When other Forum members challenged the denier, he scoffed that the Just and Becker documents are “Just two letters, hardly overwhelming documentary evidence.” Instead, he continued, the Just and Becker documents tended to prove his case since they were written “a few months after the commencement of field trials of the vehicles modified as homicidal gas-vans, deal largely with defects, and make suggestions for improvements; in other words, exactly what one would expect to find in reports on field trials.” He cited the Trühe telegram of 15 June 1942 (Figure 5.6) as more evidence that only three gas vans were built on a trial basis and “their killing capacity proved to be inadequate, even for one transport arriving per week.” Finally, to explain away testimony that gas vans were widely sighted across occupied Soviet territory, the denier argued that the Becker document (Figure 5.3) “proves” the gas vans were largely a legend. The document “refers to attempts to camouflage the gas-vans, to make them look indistinguishable from ordinary vehicles. But all that would have achieved would have been to cause the local population to misidentify ordinary vehicles.” This kind of ordering, imposed on the Just and Becker texts, is what prompted Kogon et al. (1993) to publish Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas. Only 2 years after Kogon et al. (1983) ordered the text of the Just proposal by precisely setting forth the exact document and embedding it within a professionally researched historiography, an altogether different ordering was imposed by the French filmmaker Lanzmann for his 1985 film Shoah. (That the film was being made when the Kogon book was published, and that Lanzmann knows the German language, suggests the possibility he may have seen the once-obscure document so prominently featured in Nazi Mass Murder.) In the film and a 1985 English-language book based on the script, Lanzmann presents an abridged and altered translation of the Just document in which text is freely omitted, elided, rearranged, and, in the subject line of the document, even added—all without ellipses or other indications of any changes. The result is a text that appears entire but is less than half the length of the original document. Why would Lanzmann do this? The question has salience for the present study because it is the 1985 Lanzmann version (rather than the

154 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

original 1942 Nazi document) that was picked up by Katz (1992a) and has subsequently become a standard point of reference for discussions of technical communication ethics. To cite one example of why the choice of a reference point matters, consider: While the Lanzmann translation and two mainstream scholarly translations (Kogon et al., 1993, pp. 228–235; Noakes & Pridham, 1988, pp. 1202–1203) all primarily employ the word “load” to translate the document’s euphemism for the Jewish victims, in two places Lanzmann instead chose “pieces” and “merchandise.” And it is these two words, rather than the more common “load,” that have often drawn notice in the technical communication literature. Lanzmann contributed to an edited volume (Deguy, 1990) of essays about Shoah 5 years after the release of the film and book and reflected at length about his work: “What interests me is the film. One has been able to discuss Nazism for forty years. One doesn’t need the film for that” (p. 282; as cited in LaCapra, 1998, p. 96). Thus, the film is “a fiction of the real” (Lanzmann, 1990, p. 301) and “poetical construction” (Lanzmann, 1985, p. v), which takes place not in the past but the present. Slavishly reliving and recounting the past only hinders the project of working through it in the present. Thus, the film, at nine-and-a-half hours in length, steadfastly refuses to incorporate archival footage and material. As Lyotard (1990) explained in discussing Lanzmann’s film, memory through inscription, or through “word representations (books, interviews) and thing representations (films, photographs) of the extermination,” is no defense against forgetting, which is itself effaced in Western culture (p. 26, passim). Thus, Lyotard (see pp. 26–29) praises Lanzmann’s Shoah precisely because it “rejects representation in images and music.” The film, as Lyotard noted, seeks instead to indicate “the unpresentable of the Holocaust . . . by the alteration in the tone of voice, a knotted throat, sobbing, tears, a witness fleeing off-camera, a disturbance in the tone of the narrative, an uncontrolled gesture” because what is not inscribed, through lack of inscribable surface, of duration and place for the inscription to be situated, what has no place in the space nor in the time of domination, in the geography and the diachrony of the self-assured spirit, because it is not synthesizable—let us say, what is not material for experience because the forms and formations of experience . . . are inapt or inept for it—cannot be forgotten, does not offer a hold to forgetting. (Lyotard, 1990, p. 26)

As Lanzmann himself discussed, the impetus of Shoah is not to historically reconstruct the past but, rather, to act it out in the present and thus deal with the ongoing radical disjunction of the Holocaust. In the film, Lanzmann interviewed Jewish survivors, Polish bystanders, and German perpetrators. He staged scenes that encouraged speakers to act out their memories and work through them; for

REVISITING “EXPEDIENCY”

/

155

example, interviewing a Jewish man, who was forced by the Germans to cut off women’s hair before they were gassed at Treblinka, in a rented barber shop as the man cuts the hair of a hired extra; or bringing a group of elderly Polish peasants together with a survivor of the Chelmno death camp and then interviewing them in front of the village church where the Jews were imprisoned before being gassed. As Lanzmann cajoled, pestered, and even badgered the speakers to work through the past, the results captured on film are often stunning—not least when offhand statements by low-level Nazi functionaries and acquiescent Polish bystanders reveal the degree to which their anti-Semitism still lies just beneath the surface. For Lanzmann, the project of working-through excludes the question of why. As he propounded, “‘Why were the Jews killed?’ The question immediately reveals its obscenity. There is indeed an absolute obscenity in the project of understanding” (Lanzmann, 1990). Understanding leads to historicizing, which leads to normalizing. Instead, he wrote, Blindness should be understood as the purest mode of looking, the only way not to turn away from a reality that is literally blinding: clairvoyance itself. To direct a frontal look at horror requires that one renounce distractions and escape-hatches, first the primary among them, the most falsely central, the question why, with the indefinite retinue of academic frivolities and dirty tricks [canailleries] that it ceaselessly induces. (p. 279)

In an interview with journalist Ron Rosenbaum (1998), Lanzmann reiterated his stance with a more vernacular explanation: When I was making Shoah I was like a horse with [blinders]. I did not look to the side, neither my right side nor my left side. I was trying to look straight into this black sun which is the Holocaust. And this blindness, this voluntary blindness was—is—a necessary requisite, the necessary conditions for the creation. And this blindness was the contrary of blindness, it was like clairvoyance, it was to see, to see absolutely clearly, you know. And the only way to cope with this blinding reality is to blind one’s self to all kinds of explanation. To refuse the explanation. It is the only way. It was a moral attitude, an ethical touchstone. (Rosenbaum, 1998, p. 261)

And why is the Holocaust a black sun? The abyssal nature of the genocide was conveyed to the journalist by Lanzmann in another revealing statement: You can take all the reasons, all the fields of explanation . . . And every field can be true, and all the fields together can be true. But these are conditions. Even if they are necessary, they are not sufficient. A beautiful morning you have to start to kill, to start to kill massively. And I said that there is a gap between all the fields of explanation and the actual killing. You cannot give birth—in French we say engendre—you cannot

156 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

generate such an evil. And if you start to explain and to answer the question of Why you are led, whether you want it or not, to justification. The question as such shows its own obscenity: Why are the Jews being killed? Because there is no answer to the question of why. (Rosenbaum, p. 260, emphasis in original)

Other commentators who are sympathetic (e.g., LaCapra, 1998) to engaging with Lanzmann’s views, and those who are not (e.g., Rosenbaum, 1998), have noted how the filmmaker’s personal biography may have necessarily influenced his outlook. Once private secretary to Jean-Paul Sartre, he stands in a long tradition in French thought that emphasizes tragic, self-rending ecstatic experience—a complex tradition often drawing from Nietzsche and Heidegger and passing through Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot to reach among such recent thinkers as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida. (LaCapra, 1998, p. 98)

But then LaCapra (1998), after pointing to Lanzmann’s admission that “the circularity of the film is linked to the obsessional character of my questions, of my own obsessions” (p. 188, citing Lanzmann, 1990, p. 300), added, “It is perhaps not irrelevant that these obsessions were those of a secular intellectual who was not raised as a practicing Jew but now assumed a certain Jewish identity in significant measure through the making of his trilogy of films (Why Israel, 1983; Shoah, 1985; Tsahal, 1994)” (p. 118). A critic of Lanzmann, the psychoanalyst Sean Wilder, ascribed the filmmaker’s zeal to the “late conversion phenomenon” (Rosenbaum, 1998, p. 254). Thus, contended LaCapra (1998), an important perspective from which to understand Shoah and its “significant, historically dubious omissions” is that the film’s content is “prompted by Lanzmann’s desire to have only characters who relive or act out the past, and who do so in ways that provide him with relatively unproblematic objects of transferential identification” (pp. 127–128). In the 1990 volume of essays about Shoah, Lanzmann himself was straightforward about his personal project of identification: The idea that has always been the most painful for me is that all these people died alone. . . . A meaning for me that is simultaneously the most profound and the most incomprehensible in the film is in a certain way . . . to resuscitate these people, to kill them a second time, with me; by accompanying them. (p. 291)

What then of the gas van document in Shoah? First, it must be noted that Lanzmann saw the book version, which reproduced “the complete text of the film,” as being different in nature than the film. While the subtitles in the film naturally come and go with the onscreen action,

REVISITING “EXPEDIENCY”

/

157

Bringing them together, on the other hand, in this book, engraving on page after page the succession of sheer instances that in the film maintain the rhythm imposed by their sequence, having them pass from the inessential to the essential, suddenly gives them another status, another dignity, as it were a seal of eternity. They have to exist by themselves, to justify themselves without any indication of what is happening, without any image. (Lanzmann, 1985, p. viii)

The challenge for Lanzmann, observed Lyotard (1990), is that, on the one hand, “One must, certainly, inscribe in words, in images. One cannot escape the necessity of representing. It would be sin itself to believe one-self safe and sound.” But on the other hand, it is “one thing to do [representation] in view of saving the memory, and quite another to try to preserve the remainder, the unforgettable forgotten, in writing” (p. 26). Thus, the gas van document occupies a curious place in the book version of Shoah. As the only archival material in the book, it is burdened with the task, as Lyotard would have it, of representation not to save memory but to preserve in writing “the unforgettable forgotten.” Further, the gas van document follows the only instance in which Lanzmann the interviewer asks the “Why” question of his subjects: “Why do they think all this happened to the Jews?” (Lanzmann, 1985, p. 99). This question comes near the end of a lengthy scene in which Polish villagers of Chelmno have been gathered in front of the village church—where Jews had been locked up before gassing—to talk about the past. Lanzmann’s questioning throughout the sequence elicits telling answers about the underlying attitudes of these bystanders toward their former Jewish neighbors. Then the “why” question prompts a Polish man to relate a story that, implicitly rather than explicitly, reaffirms the supposed blood-guilt of the Jews for the death of Christ. In his telling, the Jews’ own rabbi admitted their blood-guilt and instructed the people to comply with the Germans. Immediately after this story, another man describes the working of the gas vans, and then a Jewish survivor of Chelmno relates his observations of the killings. The SS technical proposal for boosting the vans’ killing efficiency—or rather, Lanzmann’s version of the original document—is then reproduced as a coda to the lengthy Chelmno sequence. Though Lanzmann does not cite his sources, he knew the German language, so that it is reasonable to speculate he may have seen the document in the 1983 volume Nazi Mass Murder (Kogon et al.). Not only did Lanzmann’s film and book alter the 1942 Nazi document, but the version printed in the English edition of the book—the version read by Katz (1992a)—is an English translation of a French translation of the original German. But for Lanzmann, the purpose of the gas van text is not documentation: The worst moral and artistic crime that can be committed in producing a work dedicated to the Holocaust is to consider the Holocaust as past. Either the Holocaust is legend or it is present: in no case is it a memory. A

158 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

film devoted to the Holocaust . . . can only be an investigation into the present of the Holocaust or at least into a past whose scars are still so freshly and vividly inscribed . . . that it reveals itself in a hallucinated timelessness. (Lanzmann, 1990, p. 316, emphasis in original)

Felman, whose important commentary (1992) on Shoah was translated into French with the help of Lanzmann himself, has contrasted the film’s artistic purpose with the juridical and documentary purpose of the 1961 Eichmann trial, arguing that “law’s story focuses on ascertaining the totality of facts and events. Art’s story focuses on what is different from, and more than, that totality” (p. 153, emphasis in original). For Lanzmann, “The truth kills the possibility of fiction” (as cited in Felman, 1992, p. 153) so that the Just gas van proposal is appropriated into a “poetical construction” (Lanzmann, 1985, p. v) and “a fiction of the real” intended as a “work of art” and “not at all representational” (LaCapra, 1998, p. 96). Among all the serious works on the Holocaust that “by their exactitude, their severity, are, or should be, best qualified not to let us forget,” Lanzmann’s Shoah thus stands out as “the exception, maybe the only one,” that refuses to “represent what, in order not to be forgotten as that which is the forgotten itself, must remain unrepresentable” (Lyotard, 1990, p. 26). As we will learn below, the ordering imposed by Lanzmann on the Just gas van document is important for understanding the text’s subsequent function as a boundary object for the technical communication discipline. For I contend that, by deleting those portions of the text that show the document as a discourse between organizational actors and instead including only those passages that go straight to the killing, the Lanzmann translation (now so familiar to technical communicators) may have encouraged a simplistic characterization of the text as incomprehensibly foreign to any dynamics of our own organizational lives. IMPLICATIONS OF THE LANZMANN ALTERATIONS Technical communicators first encountered II D 3a (9) NI. 214/42 G. RS. when Katz (1992a) analyzed its rhetoric and discovered what he called an “ethic of expediency.” Yet he was working from a text upon which Lanzmann had already imposed a distinctive ordering. That Katz accepted the Lanzmann version of the document as genuine is clear: “This is a real memo” (p. 256) are the first five words of his essay. Like Katz, I too assumed the text was genuine when I first read it in the book version of Shoah and subsequently wrote about the document (Ward, 2009b, 2010b). Even the journalist Rosenbaum (1998), who spent a dozen years researching the various controversies among Holocaust scholars and became a Lanzmann critic, “thought Shoah an impressive achievement when I saw it” and “was not aware until I began researching the literature . . . how the film had raised him [Lanzmann] to the vatic, prophetic heights” (p. 252).

REVISITING “EXPEDIENCY”

/

159

LaCapra (1998), an admirer of the film, likewise allows that “discussion of Shoah has been marked by an understandable inclination to ritualize the film and to regard its viewing as a ceremonial event with respect to which criticism pales or even seems irreverent” (p. 95). Seemingly, the “sin . . . to believe one-self safe and sound” (Lyotard 1990, p. 26) by accepting a representation as memory, is a widespread temptation. For as Foucault (1977) observed, Western culture ascribes to an author the function “to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of discourses within a society” (p. 124). But does the fact that Katz’s (1992a) “ethic of expediency” thesis is based on a “false” document invalidate his argument? In my view, he raises an important point about the expediency with which technical and organizational communicators must engage. By his analysis, the Just proposal happens to be (if its morality is set aside) a wellconstructed example of persuasive rhetoric whose wording is well-crafted for its organizational ethos. “Indeed,” Katz points out, “in this memo one can find many of the topoi first defined by Aristotle in the Rhetoric (1954) that are used to investigate any situation or problem and provide the material for enthymemic arguments” (p. 257). Within the memo’s first section, the SS writer “uses the common topic of relationship: cause/effect arguments, in conjunction with the topic of comparison (difference) and the topic of circumstance (the impossible), are used to investigate the problem.” Then in the closing section, the writer employs cause/effect and contraries to refute counterarguments. “Thus, in a series of enthymemes that make use of the topoi, [the author] investigates and proves his case for a reduction in load space” that would boost the killing efficiency of the gassing vans (p. 257). Moreover, as I discussed in relation to the visual design of the document, Katz noted that the proposal employs good document design by dividing the text into “numbered sections that are clearly demarcated by white space for easy reading” (p. 257), while the “stuffy” grammatical style—featuring polysyllabic words, modified nouns, a passive voice, and subordinate clauses that separate subject and verb—effectively shifts responsibility from “from the writer (and reader) to the organization they represent” (p. 258). Altogether, then, Katz concluded that Just’s memo to his superior, while an extreme case, is not an anomaly nor a problem in technical writing only, but a [general] problem of [Western] deliberative rhetoric . . . I will suggest that it is the ethic of expediency that enables deliberative rhetoric and gives impulse to most of our actions in technological capitalism as well. (Katz, 1992a, p. 258)

But because his thesis is based on the Lanzmann version, is Katz’s (1992a) argument necessarily colored by Lanzmann’s prior ordering of the text? Did his reliance on Lanzmann predispose his analysis toward the expedient elements of the SS text at the expense of those elements in the 1942 original (which I have

160 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

alternatively chosen to highlight in my own analysis and thereby imposed my own ordering) that would show the document as a dialogue? Without implying that Lanzmann’s (1985) interpretations of the Just document were thereby mirrored by Katz (1992a), let us interrogate the implications of the former’s alterations. The stripped-down 1985 Lanzmann version arguably emphasizes those elements of the original 1942 document that are expedient, giving the impression of a text that is straightforwardly about killing efficiency, to the point of adding words in the subject line that make the document appear as if it were about stationary death camp operations at Chelmno rather than (as was really the case) about mobile operations across the occupied Soviet Union. (And indeed, Katz astutely associated the vans’ deployment with the Einsatzgruppen killings “in the early Nazi program of exterminating the Jews and other ‘undesirables,’ just months before the Final Solution of gas chambers and death camps was fully operationalized” [p. 256].) The Lanzmann version of the Just text is, in fact, presented as the coda to an entire film sequence about Chelmno, so that in Shoah, the document is clearly framed as being associated with the death camp. What is stripped out of the document are those elements of the text that show it as a discourse between competing organizational actors. The Lanzmann version emphasizes the aspect of “Here is how we can kill more Jews” and omits the aspect of “My plan resolves your complaints.” In the document heading that states the subject of the memo, to the phrase “Changes for special vehicles now in service,” Lanzmann (1985) adds, “at Kulmhof (Chelmno),” a qualifier that is not in the original document. By this alteration, the text appears to be specifically focused on death-camp operations at Chelmno when, in fact, the text is not concerned with Chelmno at all. This tends in the Lanzmann version to emphasize a putative desire to expediently kill more Jews at Chelmno (even though the 97,000 Jews murdered had already fulfilled the camp’s “quota” for reducing the population of the nearby Lodz ghetto) and tends to suppress the discursive nature of the Just text, namely, its authors’ intention to respond to Becker’s highly critical report about the fleet of 20 gas vans deployed for mobile operations across Soviet territory. As we have seen, these vans were modified by a private subcontractor from trucks manufactured by Saurer and Diamond (or Opel), whereas the three vans at Chelmno were Renaults (or Dodges) and smaller than the Saurer models operating behind the Eastern Front (Beer, 1987, pp. 402–417; Browning, 2004, pp. 418–419; Greif, 2001, p. 230). Thus, the memo writer is not arguing for intensified killing at Chelmno, as the Lanzmann alteration makes it seem. Rather, the SS technician is arguing, in his first paragraph after the subject heading, that size is not the primary criterion and is citing Chelmno as an example of how smaller vans can achieve “safety” and “efficiency.” In the first paragraph, Lanzmann (1985) makes a key alteration by deleting four sentences that describe a truck explosion at the Chelmno camp. This deletion downplays the aspect, which I discussed in chapter 6, of the document writers

REVISITING “EXPEDIENCY”

/

161

constructing an “occupational safety” narrative. The killers could create a field on which to converge their competing interests and undertake a shared project by constructing a narrative in which they attempt to carry out improved “safety” standards and avoid accidents from pressure buildup, unbalanced “loads,” diminished maneuverability, and corroded pipes. The Lanzmann (1985) translation omits (without use of ellipses to indicate the omission) Point 1 of the original memo, in which the writer establishes the need to enhance “safety” by regulating pressure buildup within the vans and offers a solution. Instead, Lanzmann skips straight to the sensational Point 2, thus giving the appearance of a direct connection between his abridged introductory paragraph and the details of killing. The Lanzmann translation of Point 2 is defensible, but when compared with two other mainstream translations (Kogon et al., 1993, pp. 228–235; Noakes & Pridham, 1988, pp. 1202–1203), some of his word choices might be perceived as more vivid and less neutral than those in the other versions. Where Lanzmann used the word “pieces,” the other translations employed “numbers” and “number of subjects treated.” Where Lanzmann used the word “merchandise,” the other translations rendered the German as “cargo” and “load.” What Lanzmann rendered as “packed solid” is phrased by the other translators as “completely full” and “fully occupied.” And for the penultimate sentence that described how the victims press toward the rear door, the mainstream translations say the human cargo “is always primarily concentrated there” or “places itself for the most part at the rear.” But in the Lanzmann version the victims are “mainly found lying there at the end of the operation.” Individually, these word choices are defensible, especially given the unavoidable issues of translation (e.g., see Johnson, 1985; Steiner, 1983). But, in the aggregate, the word choices made by Lanzmann appear, in my view, discordant because they seem to “mix metaphors.” For example, the word “merchandise” seems out of place because, not only did the Nazis place no exchange value on Jews, but the word invokes a different metaphor—that of a commercial enterprise—than the transportation metaphor that, as I noted in chapter 6, otherwise suffuses the Just document. The word “pieces” also seems to connote an economic calculation versus the transportation terminology of “load” and “cargo” found in the other translations. Of the five remaining points in the original text, Lanzmann deletes three, transposes the order of the remaining two, and then renumbers those points. His translation of Point 2 (Point 6 in the original) is conventional until near the end, when the following sentence is rendered: “Also, because of the alarming nature of the darkness, screaming always occurs when the doors are closed.” The word “screaming” is a considerable liberty when compared to the two mainstream versions: “Furthermore, it has been observed that the noise always begins when the doors are shut presumably because of fear brought on by the darkness” and “It has also been noticed that the noise provoked by the locking of the door is linked to the fear aroused by the darkness.” Lanzmann also deletes the final sentence of this

162 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

section, which refers to using the van compartment’s interior lighting for night operations and general cleaning, thus again removing an aspect of the document’s “safety narrative.” Two of the three points omitted by Lanzmann (Points 3 and 7 of the original) also reinforce this “safety” orientation: one point recommends steps to prevent corrosion of the pipes, and the other proposes a winch-operated movable floor that would allow the killers to “unload” the van without having to enter the compartment and risk exposure to noxious residues in a confined space. In Point 3 of the Lanzmann (1985) version (Point 4 in the original), the writer describes modifications to facilitate cleaning of the vehicles. The filmmaker’s translation shortens the section by about half and proceeds to its conclusion: “During cleaning, the drain can be used to evacuate large pieces of dirt.” The implication, especially when the loaded term “evacuate” is employed, is that “large pieces of dirt” is a euphemism for human feces. This is clearly an important aspect of a correct interpretation. But again, a part of the perpetrators’ putative “safety narrative,” an element of their discourse that both hid its true purpose and simultaneously legitimated intraorganizational cooperation, is downplayed in the Lanzmann translation. The final paragraph of the Lanzmann (1985) translation again shortens the original text by about half. Two sentences from the beginning and end of the section are elided into one. What Lanzmann deletes is an account of a discussion with the SS contractor about the proposed modifications, a recommendation to engage another contractor, an affirmation of unavoidable delay, and a compromise proposal to outfit at least 1 of the 10 new vans as a model for testing, after which the other 9 can be modified over time. One last time, then, the discursive aspect of the document is diminished. (Historians would note that the final paragraph, with its reference to 10 new Saurer vans on order, is further affirmation that the document is concerned with vehicles for mobile use with the Einsatzgruppen rather than stationary use in Chelmno, since the latter used only 3 vehicles, none of them Saurers.) Altogether, among the seven points contained in the original document, Lanzmann (1985) included only the three points that deal most directly with killing, while omitting the other four points (as well as most of the introductory and concluding sections) that carry on the authors’ procedural and “safety” narratives. So, do such alterations in the Lanzmann translation call into question Katz’s (1992a) “ethic of expediency” thesis? Katz initially used the document as a classroom illustration until Carolyn Miller suggested he “consider the memo in relation to Aristotle’s discussion of deliberative rhetoric” (Katz, 2004b, p. 195) and prompted a 90-page conference paper that was condensed and published in 1992 as “The Ethic of Expediency,” which has since become a landmark essay in the discipline, plus a sequel article (Katz, 1993). First, let me emphasize that my critique is not intended to suggest his concerns are unfounded or the subsequent attention given to ethics by technical communicators has not been useful. Katz has rendered the discipline a signal service in bringing ethics to the

REVISITING “EXPEDIENCY”

/

163

forefront. As Katz (2004a) rightfully noted, “When I wrote it [in 1990], discussions of ethics in technical communication were little more than the requisite paragraph or two on accuracy and precision of language, or whistle blowing, stuck in the corners of chapters buried inside textbooks.” At the time, he pointed out, despite the “rhetorical advances [that] were being made in other areas of technical communication, ethics seemed immune” to such critiques. But now “the field has come . . . [to see] ethics as central to and of the same substance as the epistemic nature of technical writing” (pp. 195–196). Nor do I venture here a refutation of Katz’s cogent arguments regarding Western rhetoric. While Katz pursued a much larger point for which the Nazi memo was only a stepping stone, I have set myself the task of illuminating the actual document. Furthermore, I acknowledge it is not entirely fair to expect that Katz would have questioned the Lanzmann (1985) version of the Nazi memo, even as I did not initially question its authenticity. The only other English translation (itself only a partial translation) available at the time was released in 1988 in a massive multivolume series (Noakes & Pridham) known mostly to Holocaust scholars. On the other hand, the 1985 Lanzmann film Shoah was popularly and critically acclaimed; most criticisms of his method were confined to Holocaust scholars. And as Slack, Miller, and Doak (1993) notably observed from Foucault (1977), in our culture we ascribe authorship to books and not technical documents. In a contest between a celebrated filmmaker and a faceless bureaucrat, our presumption inclines (as did mine) toward the former. Nevertheless, if “The Ethic of Expediency” (Katz, 1992a) is a standard “point of reference” on communicators’ ethical compass, and if for 20 years that reference point has been grounded differently than what we believed, then a reconsideration is appropriate. Katz (1992a) began his analysis of what he believed to be the Nazi memo by stating “it is an almost perfect document” (p. 256). But this “perfection” rightly belongs to the 1985 Lanzmann version, which was altered by a cinematic master for dramatic effect, that it might be more “true” than the 1942 original. So it may be fairly asked, What of the actual Nazi document? In this light, several references Katz (1992a) made to the document must at least be qualified. He noted that the text begins with a purpose statement designed to “invoke an assumption or goal shared by the audience” (p. 256). But as we have seen, the purpose statement in the 1985 Lanzmann text substantially alters the meaning and orientation of the introductory paragraph in the actual 1942 document. Next, as Katz pointed out, “In keeping with some of what today are recognized as the rules of good document design, the memo is also divided into three numbered sections that are clearly demarcated by white space for easy reading” (p. 257). In fact, the actual Nazi document has seven numbered sections. Katz attributed a “stuffy” grammatical style to the memo due in part to its heavy use of modified nouns. But the examples he provided—natural tendency, full capacity, sealed drain, fluid liquid, technical changes—appear only

164 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

(except for “technical changes”) in the Lanzmann version and not the mainstream translations. Nevertheless, my analysis does not invalidate (but rather tends to confirm) Katz on these points. The document’s purpose statement does invoke shared assumptions and goals, except that my analysis of the actual 1942 text suggests the authors shared an “occupational safety” narrative. The design of the original document is good and (now that we see its true length) was composed with unusual care, a fact that my analysis of its visual rhetoric expands upon to describe how the design itself constitutes an argument. And the style of the authors is stuffy, although, aside from issues of translation that Katz acknowledged at that point in his article, my analysis of the entire 1942 original text points to use of modified verbs, rather than modified nouns, in shifting responsibility away from the authors. Yet my study would seem to disconfirm Katz’s (1992a) argument that “All the stylistic features I have pointed out communicate and reveal a ‘group think,’ an officially sanctioned ethos grounded in expediency” (p. 258). And this is where the choice of a reference point—that is, the Lanzmann version or the German original—may make a difference. In his translation, with its omissions and alterations, Lanzmann went straight to the heart of the murders and dispensed with the document’s bureaucratic and organizational elements. From Lanzmann’s perspective, this was a defensible resort to representation, not for the sake of inscription but as an evocation of what cannot be represented. Katz then encountered what Lanzmann evoked, took the representation to be inscriptive, and extrapolated from the text an ethic of groupthink and group expediency. This is not to suggest that Katz’s analysis was “determined” by the Lanzmann text, that an underlying ethic of expediency is not a concern in the Western tradition of deliberative rhetoric that animates our technological capitalism, or that the SS gas van killers did not engage in expedient conduct and did not share a certain ethos. Rather, I repeat the truism that different reference points can lead to different destinations. And my study, which begins with the original document and all its organizational complexities, perhaps not surprisingly leads to a different destination. For my analysis points away from groupthink and instead argues that the gas van documents served as boundary objects (Oswick & Robertson, 2009; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Wilson & Herndl, 2007) by which competing organizational actors negotiated their differing interests in order to achieve a temporary and ultimately short-lived consensus. The SS authors and their audience shared coded terminology, but “groupthink” connotes mindlessness, akin to Arendt’s (1963) “banality of evil” thesis. Yet the “solutions” offered by the SS writers (when read in full, rather than in the abridged Lanzmann text) seem instead to impress by their hideous ingenuity and problem-solving ability. As Lozowick (2000) observed, SS mid-level managers were “people of initiative and dexterity who contributed far beyond what was necessary” (p. 9). Such people present a much different (and more challenging) picture than the “banal” bureaucrats of popular imagination.

REVISITING “EXPEDIENCY”

/

165

Nevertheless, the power of popular imagination is enduring and important to reckon with. As we will see in the next chapter, the popular image of the banal Nazi technocrat has played a decisive role over the past generation as technical communicators have grappled with the implications of Katz’s thesis, and especially the realization that skilled technical writing could be practiced in the service of genocide. Thus, the infamous Nazi gas van document emerged once again as a boundary object; this time as an object over which scholars and practitioners could negotiate a trading zone for consensus on a key point of technical communication ethics. And in that consensus, the figure of the banal Nazi technocrat became a prominent feature.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 9

Bridging the Boundaries

AN AHISTORICAL CONSENSUS? Historiography is not “objective.” Since no historian can survey all the primary data—both witnesses and documents are inevitably lost to time—the writing of history requires selectivity and interpretation. Nevertheless, professional historians give allegiance to “the continuing authority of a somewhat outdated, but still in many ways influential, philosophy of science” (Megill, 1989, p. 627), which impels them to practice a certain way of knowing. Their “historical method” examines the empirical evidence of original documents and artifacts, which are then sifted and hypotheses advanced and progressively falsified, until a consensus may emerge about the likeliest interpretations. This is important to understand as, in this chapter, we trace the boundary work performed among technical communicators by the object of the infamous Just document. Why important? Historians would say technical communicators’ consensus about the meaning of the Holocaust (or at least the meaning it holds for their discipline) is ahistorical. This does not suggest historians are right and others wrong. Rather, the question here is why technical communicators, despite their differences, followed a certain way of knowing as they negotiated a consensus on the lessons of the SS gas van document. After all, scholars could have taken up Katz’s (1992a) hypothesis, which he expanded upon in 1993, examined multiple Nazi technical documents for themselves, and followed the historical method to develop their consensus. But they did not. Why not? Elsewhere (Ward, 2009b, 2010b), I have described how the emphases in Holocaust scholarship have shifted over the years: from the “intentionalist” perspective that sees the long-planned intentions of Hitler as the driving force behind the Final Solution (e.g., Fleming, 1984), to the “functionalist” position which contends that increasingly murderous anti-Jewish local initiatives finally reached a critical mass and accelerated into genocide (e.g., Aly & Heim, 2002), to the current emphasis on the role of ideology. In recent years, scholars have 167

168 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

focused on both the negative and “positive” aspects of the Nazi program as the regime strove to foster what Koonz (2003) has termed a “Nazi conscience.” The exclusionary ethos of racism and anti-Semitism was balanced by the “socialist” side of National Socialism, which sought to form “Aryan” Germans into an inclusive and classless people’s community. Much scholarship has emerged since the late 1990s on the broad social consensus that undergirded the Nazi regime (e.g., Aly, 2006; Fritzsche, 1998; Gellately, 2001; Johnson & Reuband, 2005). This racial-ethnic public culture offered not just “its savage hatreds but its lofty ideals” as it “defined good and evil, condemning self-interest as immoral and enshrining altruism as virtuous” (Koonz, 2003, p. 2). The system “relied not only on repression but also an appeal to communal ideals of civic improvement” and built “a vibrant public culture founded on self-denial and collective revival” (Koonz, 2003, p. 3). Burleigh (2007) has described how “the fundamental structure of the Nazi creed was soteriological, a redemptive story of suffering and deliverance, a sentimental journey from misery to glory, from division to mystic unity based on the blood bond that linked souls” (p. 105). Though historians’ views of the genocide and its causes have shifted (and will no doubt shift again in the future), their changing views are based on a way of knowing that strives to expand the evidentiary base so that interpretations may be continually refined. But the tides of Holocaust scholarship have not come near the shores of technical communication research. In other respects, technical communication scholars are exemplary in their continuous investigation of new cases to contribute new knowledge about their practice. Yet the case of Nazi technical writing and the Holocaust is an exception, even though the 1992 Katz article touched off a broad and perhaps even unprecedented disciplinary discussion of ethics. Katz himself moved on in a 1993 sequel article and extended his thesis by reviewing the social-epistemic rhetoric of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1943). But again and again in the literature, subsequent citations of Katz’s thesis reference only the Nazi gas van document, until scholars as diverse as Markel (1997), who rejects postmodern ethics, and Longo (2000), who embraces postmodern thought, have all cited Katz’s thesis in concluding that the case of Nazi technical writing demonstrates the danger of amoral technocracy. One of the key ethical tenets of the discipline is therefore rooted in a historical example, but the example has been interpreted in an ahistorical manner. Thus historians, based on their empirical research into the available sources, reject amoral technocracy as the mainspring of the Final Solution; yet technical communicators, based on their consideration of a single artifact, have adopted the explanation as a conventional wisdom. One way of knowing is not necessarily superior to the other. But why, in the case of technical writing and the Holocaust, did technical communicators follow one way of knowing and not the other? And perhaps more curiously, why is this conventional wisdom arguably the opposite of Katz’s thesis, even though subsequent scholars have all cited Katz in support of their views? Indeed, why is Katz’s (1992a) “Ethic of Expediency”

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

169

so widely cited, but his 1993 sequel, in which he followed up the initial article by detailing the connection between epistemic rhetoric and the construction of morality, so little noticed in comparison? Confronted with the Just gas van document and the realization that a skilled technical writer could draft such a text, I contend that the artifact became more useful to the discipline as a boundary object than a starting point for interrogating how our own epistemic rhetorics socially construct notions of what is prudent and moral. The Nazi document is plastic enough so that scholars of diverse viewpoints can, like looking at a Rohrschach blot, project their own local needs upon it, yet robust enough so that shared condemnation of the text can create a trading zone where scholars may negotiate a common identity as moral beings who may be defined in opposition to the putatively amoral Nazis. “We” have morals (whatever those might be for each of us) while “they” are without morals. Such a binary opposition comfortably distances scholars and practitioners from the disquieting notion that SS technical writers were free moral agents like us, and also permits technical communicators to distance their profession from the taint of the Nazi case. EXPEDIENCY WITHOUT ETHICS Katz’s (1992a) original article, composed by him in 1990, was very much in keeping with the universalizing trend that was evident in much of Holocaust scholarship two decades ago. In fact, his implicit call for a post-Holocaust rhetoric that takes into account the “dark side” of classical Western rhetoric is reminiscent of Bauman’s (1989) call, published at about the same time, for a post-Holocaust sociology. There, Bauman urged his profession to no longer regard the Holocaust as an aberrant detour in the upward progress of Western modernity, but rather as a product of potentialities inherent in the West’s culture of technological and bureaucratic organization. Though Holocaust scholars today place more emphasis on the particularities of the genocide, most would also agree with Bauer (2001), who pointed out that “absolute uniqueness leads to its opposite, total trivialization: if the Holocaust is a one-time, inexplicable occurrence, then it is a waste of time to deal with it” (p. 14). But because Auschwitz does in fact “change everything,” the call to develop a post-Holocaust rhetoric is a summons worth heeding. Moreover, in his initial article and its sequel, Katz (1993) astutely illustrated how, because notions of “prudence” and phronesis are socially constructed, rhetoric may be employed for evil ends. One need not agree that Aristotelian rhetoric is inherently “expedient” to concur that it can be so employed. Thus, even though many Holocaust scholars today would question Katz’s thesis on several important points—his endorsement of Arendt’s (1963) “banality of evil” thesis, his focus on the primacy of Hitler’s will in driving the genocide, his argument that the “moral basis” the Holocaust was spun from an ethos of scientific and technological expediency rather than a

170 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

millenarian ideology—his nuanced analysis spotlights the truly important point that the rationale for mass murder by the Nazis was an ideologized social construction. By contrast, as we will see, technical communicators have since then largely contented themselves with tilting at stick-figure Nazi villains who had no morals or even ideology. Although Katz (2004a, pp. 195–196) expected his thesis to be greeted with outrage, the work was widely acclaimed and soon became a standard point of reference for discussions of ethics in technical communication (Smith, 2000, p. 450). Yet these approving citations have, I contend, imposed new and different orderings on the Just gas van document. The Nazis, argued Katz, reconceived expediency as an ethical value that, in their eyes, gave a “moral basis” to the genocide. But immediately after the initial article was published, commentators began focusing almost entirely on the “expediency” half of the thesis and ignored the “ethic” half. Where Katz portrayed the Nazi document as an extreme perversion of rhetoric, scholars now routinely cited the document as an extreme perversion of “hyperpragmatism” (Scott, Longo, & Wills, 2006, p. 9). Descriptions of the desk-murderers as amoral, indifferent, detached, and neutral— words actually used in the literature—thus misread the lessons of the Nazi gas van document by ignoring “ethic” to focus only on “expediency.” That the Nazis did have an ethical philosophy makes us uncomfortable. It is far easier to dismiss the perpetrators as automatons and thereby comfort ourselves that “we” humanistic scholars are different than “those” amoral technocrats. One can argue, as I have done (Ward, 2009b, 2010b), that current scholarship on the Holocaust views the “Nazi conscience” as a redemptive secular religion. But whether one believes that the Nazi ethic was soteriological or technological, the point is that the Third Reich had an ethic. And what is an “ethic”? Markel (2001) wrote that ethics “concern the individual’s thinking and conduct about matters of right and wrong” and “people’s ethics are derived to a greater or lesser extent from their society’s morality” (p. 29). Thus, if we join Katz in positing that the Nazis had an ethic—whether the technological ethic asserted by Katz or the soteriological ethic that I maintain— then we concede that, for example, the writer of the Nazi memo engaged in “thinking and conduct about matters of right and wrong” and was influenced “to a greater or lesser extent [by his] society’s morality” (p. 29). In turn, then, we now have phronesis: the document writers practiced “thinking,” prudently (for their rhetorical community) pondered “right and wrong,” were sensitive to socially constructed mores around them, and through their conduct enacted their heinous convictions. And so again, we end up with a far different picture than stick-figure automatons. While Katz (1992a) characterized the Nazi text as exhibiting an “ethos of objectivity, logic, and narrow focus” that was “taken to extremes” (p. 257), he did not stop there (as most subsequent scholars have done). Instead, he added, “Here, expediency is an ethical end as well” (p. 257). And though Katz claimed

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

171

his argument corroborates Arendt’s (1963) “banality of evil” thesis, he also claimed to “go beyond” Arendt by finding that the Nazi writer was not “simply doing his duty” but had “adopted the ethos of the Nazi bureaucracy he works for as well” (Katz, 1992a, p. 258). In other words, the SS technical writer was not a man with no ethical concerns but, rather, was enacting convictions about right and wrong that he had adopted as a free moral agent after a volitional process of socialization. Further, noted Katz (1992a), the Nazi document belongs to the “problem of deliberative rhetoric” because it examples “that genre of rhetoric concerned with deliberating future courses of action” (p. 258, emphasis added). There is deliberation occurring in the document and not simply mere amorality, indifference, detachment, and neutrality. Instead, a “morality” is implicated here because expediency “was rhetorically embraced by the Nazi regime and combined with science and technology to form the ‘moral basis’ of the holocaust” (p. 258). Thus, an ethic of expediency is not the absence of morality but, rather, constitutes a certain type of morality. Katz correctly warned, “We have tended to understand the holocaust from a nonrhetorical, Platonic standpoint, which amounts to a refusal to understand it at all” (p. 258). The seemingly caricatured Nazi villains that technical communicators have drawn for themselves amount to idealized antiforms that, I believe, can be seen as amounting to a refusal to understand. Because the gas van document is the product not just of “expediency” but an “ethic of expediency,” the Nazi technical writer manifested a phenomenon described in rhetorical theory: namely, “the role of ethos” as that “moral element in character,” which provides “an essential link between deliberation and action” (p. 259). Put another way, a purely expedient technocrat might seek technical perfection for its own sake; but to say that a desk-murderer was impelled by an ethic of expediency is to recognize that a moral calculus took place that linked deliberation and action. While logos ponders the means, Katz noted, ethos and pathos furnish the impetus. Many technical communication scholars have cited Katz’s (1992a) observation that “All deliberative rhetoric is concerned with decision and action. Technical writing, perhaps even more than other kinds of rhetorical discourse, always leads to action, and thus always impacts on human life,” (p. 259). But neither should we forget his next sentence, which states, “In technical writing, epistemology necessarily leads to ethics” (p. 259). If we take this at face value, then we must concede that the Nazi writers’ epistemology led to “ethical” behavior according to their lights. Only if we suggest the writers had no epistemology, which cannot be true, can we say they had no ethics. The problem in technical communication is not any disconnect between epistemology and ethics, Katz averred, but “how that relationship affects and reveals itself in human behavior” (p. 259). The challenge of the Nazi gas van document is not to explain how the writers separated epistemology and ethics, but how the writers’ epistemology shaped their ethics and how those ethics influenced their actions.

172 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Nazi technical writers enacted a set of ethical principles they believed were moral and provided justification for their actions. “Although the characterization seems hard to swallow, Hitler’s was an ‘ethical’ program in the broadest sense of that term,” for the dictator believed “power must be based on a ‘spiritual idea,’ a philosophy” and “understood—all too well—that his political program for world war and mass extermination would not be accepted without a moral foundation” (p. 263). Though Katz may have analyzed the “wrong” document, he arrived at a “right” conclusion by illuminating how the Nazis enacted a heinous ethic, but an ethic nonetheless. This is why scholars who have cited “The Ethic of Expediency” as a warning against amoral technocracy and mindless hyperpragmatism can perhaps, I would suggest, be said to have drawn an opposite conclusion to what Katz argued. Why have technical communicators negotiated a new ordering of the Nazi gas van document and, along the way, found the Nazi text more useful as a boundary object than a historical artifact? Longo (1998) contended that how analysts order a text says as much about the analysts as about the text. Thus, to begin my interrogation into what the disciplinary deliberation about the Just text may reveal about the discipline itself, I turn first to two published cases (representing two very different poles of response) in which scholars’ responses to the Katz thesis precluded their participation in rhetorical boundary work and, as a result, excluded themselves from the emerging disciplinary consensus. The cases are instructive for two reasons: First, they suggest the limitations of boundary work, a work that apparently is precluded when at least one side advances exclusive claims that erect rigid boundaries no object can bridge. And second, the cases established two outliers of reaction, between which much boundary work could and did occur. PROTECTING RHETORIC AND RHETORICIANS Only two adversarial exchanges have occurred in print over “The Ethic of Expediency” (Katz, 1992a). But these exchanges illustrate three distinct agendas for technical communication that argue, respectively, for the primacy of rhetoric’s social-epistemic function as the key to understanding technical writing (Katz, 1992a, 1993), the primacy of reasoned deliberation based on rationally derived ideals (Rivers, 1992), and the primacy of clear, precise, and accurate use of instrumental language (Moore, 2004). In the same journal and year Katz (1992a) published “Ethic,” Rivers (1992) offered a Response, which contended that the “rhetoric” of Hitler and the Third Reich should not be considered rhetoric at all. Though he did not specifically address the SS gas van proposal, the import of the Rivers refutation is that the document is best understood as a nonrhetorical communication. The Rivers refutation is based on Quintilian’s notion of vir bonus, or that a good orator must by definition be a good man. For example, at the time Katz and Rivers were

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

173

writing in the early 1990s, one-time Klansmen and white supremacist David Duke was making headlines as a populist vote-getter in Louisiana politics. Yet because Duke operated within an American polis composed of competing voices, Rivers pointed out, he was compelled to “give allegiance to virtues he may not possess and to a culturally determined vir bonus that he alone cannot create” (p. 858). Similarly, in the polis of Weimar Germany, Hitler’s rhetoric never won him a free election. (However, by 1932, the National Socialists were the largest of Germany’s seven major parties and tallied 37% of the electorate in a multiparty system in which an absolute majority was not practically attainable.) But once Hitler achieved dictatorship and became “the ultimate vir bonus,” all deliberation ceased, according to Rivers. Thus, he concluded that, because “Rhetoric within the Sophistic tradition does not exist without competing voices,” then “after 1933, rhetoric as understood within the Sophistic tradition ceased to exist.” Nazi public discourse was not thoughtful persuasion but propaganda. And because “apathy, fear, and hatred are the weapons of propaganda and the fuel for mass hysteria, not the topoi of Aristotle or the public and competing voice of the vir bonus” (p. 858) then, according to Rivers (and despite Aristotle’s classification of pathos as a mode of appeal), propaganda is nonrhetorical. On that basis, Rivers “question[ed] the assumption that the key to Hitler’s success can be credited to his rhetorical skill” and denied that such an assumption is “in line with classical rhetorical practice and theorizing” (p. 857). In the end, Rivers contended, “The complicity of millions cannot be attributed to the rhetorical virtue of Hitler or a virtue that is socially constructed. A silenced society constructs nothing.” Free discussion and deliberation were absent in the Third Reich, so that “In Hitler’s Germany, any competing voice that would have tried to talk the Nazis out of their final solution would have simply been shot” (p. 858). In his counter-response, Katz (1992b) rejoined that “I did not wish to examine Hitler’s rhetorical success against notions of ethos found in all of classical rhetoric, but only that of Aristotle,” and that Rivers “shift[ed] the grounds of my argument by collapsing what I see as two more or less distinct traditions—that of Quintilian and that of Aristotle—into one.” Compared to Aristotle, Cicero, and the Sophists, Quintilian reposed more trust in Isocrates’s dictum that rhetorical practice cultivates moral development. “Thus,” Katz argued, “Quintilian’s notion of ethos is perhaps more ‘Platonic’ than any of his predecessors” and “can be seen as an idealistic response to the political corruption and absence of any real deliberative rhetoric in late imperial Rome” (pp. 859–860). The rub here may be that Hitler’s rhetoric (or propaganda) brought him successes but not of the kind that are more familiar to our own democratic polis. Katz (1992b) himself pointed out that Hitler’s achievements cannot be measured by electoral votes alone, for his career was marked by other kinds of rhetorical successes that do not conform to democratic ideals: the construction of Nazi ethos and ideology, the building

174

/

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

of a movement that toppled the Weimar Republic, the rise to political power, the seduction of the German people, the silencing of the opposition, and the carrying out of war and genocide. Hitler used rhetoric, as Foucault might say, to surround sanctioned discourse with silence and so to legitimize and institutionalize both the discourse and the silence. A silenced society does construct something; it constructs silence, which in this case was necessary to carry out the holocaust. And silence is rhetorical too. (p. 859)

Within the social construction that was Nazi Germany, apathy and fear and hatred “can become valid rhetorical strategies” (Katz, 1992b, p. 859). While they may not be formally named among the topoi, these strategies are still amenable to Aristotelian analysis as “logical extensions and perversions of the more legitimate rhetorical uses of emotions and character we find in Aristotle’s Rhetoric” (p. 859; cf. Aristotle’s discussion of emotions in Book II of the Rhetoric). However, Rivers’ (1992) fair question about the rhetoricity of Nazi discourse can be examined from another angle: Given current scholarly understandings of the Third Reich, is it historically true that the Nazi regime had no competing voices and constructed only silence? And though Rivers did not address himself to the SS memo reviewed by Katz in “The Ethic of Expediency” (1992a), what is the implication of his thesis for analyzing Nazi technical communication? Can the problems presented by the SS technical memo be resolved by simply viewing it as nonrhetorical? The assertion made by Rivers (1992), that “any competing voice that would have tried to talk the Nazis out of their final solution would have simply been shot,” is not necessarily sustained by the historical record. Current research confirms that the SS had no need threaten anyone into carrying out the genocide. In 1992, the same year that Rivers was writing (and so he would not have been aware of it), the historian Browning documented in a landmark study that the historical record contains not a single instance of anyone being punished for declining to kill Jews. The postwar claims of perpetrators, that they were forced under duress to pull triggers and drive gassing vans, are attempts at exculpation. The real question is why 80% to 90% of rank-and-file conscripts voluntarily accepted assignments to killing squads (the remainder affirmed the justice of the murders and only pleaded “weakness” rather than moral opposition). In their view of the German home front, scholars have overturned the notion that Nazi Germany constructed only silence. Johnson and Reuband (2005) described how “a new conception of the Nazi dictatorship has been developing in the international scholarly community,” in contrast to the former view that “was heavily influenced by the theorists of the ‘totalitarian school’ that emerged during the early years of the 1950s” and that saw “dictatorial regimes and not the people who lived under them as the problem and construed terror and coercion to be the essential features of Nazi, Soviet, and other dictatorial societies” (p. xv). Emphasis on “the supposed omnipotence of secret police agencies” has receded as

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

175

a fundamentally new view of the Nazi dictatorship is emerging that stresses complicity and consent rather than coercion and compulsion. We are now beginning to understand, for example, that the Gestapo was far more limited in its resources and powers than was once thought, and that to be effective it had to concentrate on policing targeted enemies like Jews and communists, on the whole leaving most of the German population considerable latitude to go about their private lives. They were able to do this because Hitler and his ideology had widespread support from the German population. (p. xv)

Indeed, only 2% of German citizens were ever interrogated by the police on suspicion of illegal acts (Johnson & Reuband, 2005, p. 298), for the Nazi regime realized that attempts at complete totalitarian control of private life would foment discontent and thus become self-defeating. The dictatorship, founded on popularity as much as power, was sensitive to “public mood” and received regular reports (which were remarkably frank) from the SS Security Service. On a number of key issues, Hitler and state authorities backed down in the face of popular unrest: Christian crosses were restored to public school classrooms after protests in Bavaria; the euthanasia program was ended after Catholic clerics preached against the killings; the effort to merge Protestants into a single Reich Church was abandoned, as Hitler decided to put off a reckoning with the churches until after the war; Jewish husbands in “mixed” marriages were released from custody after their gentile wives demonstrated in the streets. A study by Aly (2006) documented how the Nazi government crafted progressive social-welfare policies (often funded through plunder) in response to popular aspirations for social leveling. Historians also confirm that, far from having few competing policy voices, Nazi Germany was, as we learned in chapter 3, an intensely competitive polycracy. Seen in this light, the SS gas van document must be viewed as rhetorical, if rhetoricity is defined as a product of competing voices. The 1942 document must be placed in its rhetorical context of the attempt by the SS to consolidate its still-contested hold over Jewish policy, as well as internal competition within the SS to develop a killing procedure that reduced the psychological stress on the killers. The Just proposal was composed at a heady time when gas vans were “competing” for a place in the Final Solution, all in the midst of history’s largest military invasion. At the time (when the SS had even experimented with dynamiting Jews in situ as an alternative to mass shootings), the “success” of the gassing vans was viewed by their SS advocates as critical to demonstrating that a “final solution of the Jewish question in Europe” was feasible. Otherwise, competing voices might prevail that demanded Jewish labor be utilized for the war effort or coveted the scarce resources devoted to the extermination project or counseled postponement of a Final Solution until after the war was won and a “territorial solution” (deporting the Jews to perish in Siberia) could be implemented.

176 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Perhaps no other SS document illustrates this point—how technical communication can be embedded in organizational politics—more than the infamous Wannsee Protocol, called “perhaps the most shameful document of modern history” when discovered by the Nuremberg prosecutors. The Protocol is the minutes of a 20 January 1942 conference of ministerial secretaries convened by Heydrich to assert his control over the implementation of the Final Solution and secure the cooperation of key state agencies represented. The minutes, composed by Eichmann under the direction of Heydrich, are an exemplary document in their concise language, clear organization, and physical appearance. But the rhetoric of the document goes far beyond its mere words. Detailed analyses of the historic circumstances and hidden SS agenda behind the Wannsee Conference and Protocol were published by Roseman (2002) and Cesarini (2004, pp. 110–116). Their analyses are, for technical communicators, perhaps reminiscent of Mirel’s (1988) study of how one organization’s computer users manual functioned rhetorically as a sop to infighting factions, a preemption of further conflicts, and a depiction of administrative commitment to progress. Though the manual’s authors are in no way equated here to the Nazi SS, the dynamic portrayed by Mirel was writ large (and hideously lethal) by the authors of the Wannsee Protocol and the Sipo Technical Matters Group gas van document. Rivers’s (1992) implication, that the memo is nonrhetorical, is ostensibly based on the assumption that rhetoricity emanates from competing voices, and yet current scholarly understandings do not support the contention that Nazi Germany was a “silent” society and had no “competing” voices, even if those voices competed in a repugnant Social Darwinian milieu. Why then did Rivers appeal to the popular, but historically inaccurate, generalization that the Nazis shot all dissenters out of hand? (Even the most brutal dictatorships, much less those founded on popular support, will attempt to “reeducate” dissenters.) To read Rivers’s critique is to get the clear impression that he is “protecting” rhetoric, or a certain idealized view of rational polity, against what he perceives to be Katz’s (1992a) implication that rhetoric is value-neutral rather than innately good. In our culture, “Hitler” and “Nazi” are the god terms for ultimate evil; for Rivers, to use these two words in connection with rhetoric is to slander the latter and, by extension, to diminish the scholars who study it. “We” teach rhetoric, while “they” practiced propaganda. Rhetorical study is a lofty calling, essential to democratic society, but for Rivers, Katz’s argument unacceptably relativized rhetoric into mere expedience. Thus, even in this early exchange, the only part of Katz’s (1992a) thesis that mattered was the “expedience” and not the “ethic.” But to illustrate the point here about rhetorical boundary work, less than a year later, Brasseur (1993) made the same move—casting off “ethic” and making “expediency” the focus—but as we will see later, successfully appropriated Katz’s thesis in support of her own. What, then, was the difference between Rivers and Brasseur? We will explore Brasseur’s case later on. Yet, as for Rivers (1992), he opposed rather than allied

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

177

his argument to Katz’s. In other words, he precluded any possibility of boundary work. And Rivers did not mention the SS gas van document, thereby removing from the equation what would, with Brasseur and later disciplinary deliberations, become an object for performing boundary work. Instead, Rivers conducted his argument on an entirely abstract plane, leaving no tangible object available to bridge his differences with Katz and create a trading zone between them. As a result, Rivers’s argument quickly dropped from the scene—a result that also reveals something about the self-identity of the technical communication discipline. If scholars lauded Katz and ignored Rivers’s attempt to exclude propaganda and silence from rhetoric, then by the early 1990s, the leading edge of the discipline agreed on the proposition that everything is rhetorical. Generally, this might help explain the outcome to the second adversarial exchange with Katz, one that hinged on a putative separation between rhetoric and instrumentality. SAFEGUARDING SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION While Rivers (1992) argued that Katz (1992a) incorrectly discovered rhetoric in the Nazi technical memo, Moore (2004) argued that Katz incorrectly discovered Aristotle in the SS document. But once again, as with Rivers, the case entirely omits any reference to or engagement with the document itself. Thus, no object is available to work across the boundary between the two competing perspectives and create a trading zone. Instead, Moore patently opposed himself to Katz with personal attacks and a critique grounded in translation issues, culminating with the accusation that an elitist animus against capitalism motivated Katz to selectively (and negatively) construe the Greek sympheron as “expediency” rather than more neutrally as “advantage” or “utility.” Then, after striving to refute “The Ethic of Expediency” (Katz, 1992a) based on translation and quotation issues, Moore concluded with a second line of refutation by asserting that humankind is more driven (through religious and humanitarian impulses, evolutionary advantage, or self-interest) to long-term cooperation than momentary expedience. (Another way to cast and interpret this exchange in terms of boundary work is to note that the Aristotelian text was rendered brittle, rather than made plastic, by Moore’s insistence on staking out an “either/or” opposition to Katz.) Moore (2004), and Katz in response (2006), have both written at length on the translation and quotation issues. Yet there is one question that Moore did not directly address: How might his thesis explain the SS gas van document? Katz (2006) saw this as one of the fundamental flaws in Moore’s argument and suggested, Professor Moore does not address the issue of the Nazi memo, which is the focal point of my College English article, and only touches on the use of expediency in Nazi Germany as a way of accusing me of trying to make deliberative “rhetoric and technical communication look bad.” (p. 5)

178 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

For a possible explanation of the gas van document from Moore’s theoretical perspective, it is necessary to survey his other writings on what he calls “instrumental discourse.” The debate over Moore’s theory is summarized in an article by Warnick (2006), who noted that Moore “did not coin the term instrumental discourse, but over the past ten years he has made it his own by being its chief proponent in the field of technical communication.” At the time of this writing, the latest iteration of Moore’s theory of technical communication as instrumental discourse is found in his 2006 article, “From Monologue to Dialogue to Chorus: The Place of Instrumental Discourse in English Studies and Technical Communication.” Though its final section concluded with an indictment of “The Problems of Totalizing Rhetoric,” the first section on “Defining Instrumental Discourse” may suggest a theoretical framework for interpreting the SS text. According to Moore’s (2006) basic definition, “Instrumental discourse is individually verified discourse that registers social agreements so people can cooperate in order to coordinate and control their activities” (p. 387). Rhetorical and instrumental discourses are different species of communication, as “Rhetoric tries to persuade, but instrumental discourse tries to govern, guide, and control” (p. 388). The former is needful because social agreement requires “a process (sometimes long, sometimes short) of discussion and argumentation” (p. 387). But the latter is equally needful for “If people want to live together peacefully and ethically, and if people want to work together for a common and greater good, then they need such instrumental genres of discourse as laws” and commercial documents that allow “people around the world to engage rapidly, safely, and economically in huge numbers of transactions for their mutual benefit” (pp. 387–388). Humans have evolved these two species of communication as a matter of survival. Sometimes we need communications that help us change our minds (and the minds of others) to adapt our behaviors to new situations, or to newly perceived situations. Since the time of Aristotle, we have called those communications rhetorical or persuasive communications. But once people agree about how to behave in certain situations, then they need other kinds of communications to record their cooperation and to coordinate their activities. (p. 392)

As different species of communication, Moore (2006) contended, rhetorical and instrumental discourses manifest different qualities. “Rhetorical discourse typically has direct or indirect appeals to logos (i.e., logic), ethos (i.e., the author’s character), and pathos (i.e., the audience’s emotions),” while “instrumental discourse is ‘those utterances that are supposed to achieve their purpose directly, as they stand, without the need to produce any additional ‘reasons’ or ‘supporting arguments’” (p. 388). Because rhetorical documents are authored for persuasion rather than application, he continued, these utterances “tend to be more personal”

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

179

as the speaker or writer must establish argumentative credibility; by contrast, instrumental discourse bears the authority of collective agreement and thus “is typically impersonal, and frequently uses imperative mood or passive voice” (p. 391). And because instrumental documents must be applied to real situations, Moore concluded that they may be revised as conditions change, whereas “rhetorical documents do not usually get updated” (p. 391). In other words, instrumental discourse depends on contexts and rhetoric does not. Nevertheless, for Moore (2006), rhetoric is the dialectic counterpart of instrumentality. Moore views rhetorical and instrumental discourses as a continuum in which (a) persuasion leads to social agreement, (b) this agreement is codified in an instrumental document, (c) persuasion then ceases and cooperation begins, and (d) the parties “apply the agreement to intervene successfully in the world in a specific situation” (p. 387). Yet instrumental documents “do not map perfectly onto existing or changing situations” (p. 391) so that reevaluation and adjustment is required from time to time, “at which point persuasion again becomes the dominant purpose of the communication” (p. 387). Thus, rhetoric leads to agreement, which leads to instrumental codification, which leads to intervention in reality, which leads to change, which leads once again to rhetoric. To “achieve its purpose directly,” instrumental discourse manifests the three properties of changeability, mappability, and sovereignty. Thus, “Because contexts change frequently, instrumental communications also change frequently,” unlike literature, which “is not context-dependent” (p. 389). Further, instrumental discourse is mappable because “it has a close correlation with some physical object, task, or situation, so that users readily identify what the object, task, or situation is and what they are supposed to do,” although “the map may or may not resemble what is being mapped” (pp. 389–390). For the purposes of analyzing the SS gas van document, Moore’s conception bears a closer look. Mappability does not involve pure representation, positivism, or correspondence theories of the truth. Social construction, individual experience, and functional use partially create the perception of correspondence in instrumental discourse, but none of these ways of creating meaning involves positivism or pure representation. . . . For people who create instrumental discourse, language is a jumping off point, not pure representation. The crucial question is this: can the user perform the task presented in the document or communication? Instrumental discourse is based on a usability theory of language: language is a contingent social agreement whose validity depends on individuals applying the language to intervene successfully in reality. If the intervention is successful, then the language is useful or mappable. (p. 390)

Finally, for Moore (2006), the sovereignty of instrumental discourse “is established in two ways: by social groups and by individual experience” (p. 391). In the end, therefore, instrumental documents are deficient if they cannot

180 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

accommodate changing needs and circumstances, do not readily correlate with the intended intervention into reality, and lack socially legitimated authority or individually legitimated efficacy. Changeability, mappability, and sovereignty are the ideal conditions of instrumental discourse but may not always be achieved in reality. “Like anything else, certain conditions are more conducive to cooperation,” Moore writes. Ideally, “Cooperation should be democratic” and “freely chosen but with the awareness that people are not always free to do anything they want” due to personal, social, ideological, physical, and economic constraints. For one thing, “To attempt the total involvement of all people in all decisions of any sizable group would be economically impossible” (p. 393). Moore’s (2006) theory of instrumental discourse, then, leads to two possible interpretations of the Nazi SS technical memo: either the document is part of the argumentative process leading to an eventual agreement on the design of the gassing vans, in which case it is rhetorical; or the document instrumentalizes a collective agreement on the killing operation, in which case it is not rhetorical. Clearly, the former would seem the appropriate interpretation according to Moore’s criteria, so that the SS memo is rhetorical. Yet that conclusion, based on the 2006 iteration of his theory, may leave some loose ends when compared to his 2004 critique of Katz and “The Ethic of Expediency” (1992a). For Moore’s 2004 article seems only to leave open two possibilities, that either because the memo does not produce “utility,” then it is nonrhetorical; or because the memo is rhetorical then it must be grounded in an ethic of “utility” (as opposed to an ethic of “expediency”), despite the fact that such utility was in the apparent service of Nazi evil. By comparing Moore’s own theory of instrumental discourse and his later critique of Katz (which we will review below), a fundamental contradiction seems to arise: If the authors of the Nazi gas van memo were arguing for adoption of their design recommendations (rather than codifying an agreement about the vehicle design), then they were engaging in rhetoric. But according to Moore, as we will see below, rhetors argue for utility (rather than expediency) with the object of urging what is good as their main consideration. Yet the SS document was not good unless one allows that concepts of goodness are socially constructed, which Moore does not allow since, by his theory, rhetoric is representational and does not depend on context, and only instrumental discourse engages in social construction. How then, if we follow Moore’s line, can the use of “utility” for terrible ends be accounted for? Moore’s (2004) attack on Katz and his “ethic of expediency” thesis began with a lengthy discussion of translation issues, after which Moore launched into his own views of “utility” and “goodness” by citing the Roberts (1954) translation of The Rhetoric: If Aristotle believes that orators “must not make people believe what is wrong,” then his Rhetoric would reflect an “ethic” that encouraged orators to

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

181

support what was just and right. That is precisely what Aristotle does: he advocates what is just and right, though he is aware that some orators do not practice what he preaches. (Moore, 2004, p. 12)

Thus, for Moore (2004), orators do not operate on expediency. (And neither, in his view, do governments: “I find it hard to believe that ‘expediency outweighs compassion in government’” [p. 23].) Moore believed the best reading of The Rhetoric 1.3.4 is (referring again to the Roberts 1954 translation) that the political orator who “aims at establishing expediency” will, as “the main consideration,” urge acceptance of a proposal “on the ground that it will do good” (p. 15). To Katz’s (1992a) contention that Aristotle “collapses all ethical questions in deliberative rhetoric into a question of expediency,” Moore (2004) steadfastly maintained that “Aristotle does not ‘elide’ goodness and utility” but rather “keep[s] both ideas separate and distinct” (p. 13). In summary, then, for Moore, “Aristotle does not believe that deliberative discourse is based on expediency; he believes that deliberative discourse is based on goodness and utility, and that goodness and utility embrace many other virtues, including happiness, justice, honor, health, moderation, courage, beauty, and so on” (p. 27). Finally, Moore’s concluding section seemed to suggest that the rhetoric of an evolved humanity should instantiate its “instincts for building social cooperation” (p. 21)—a conclusion that seems to accord rhetoric a role in the social construction of good ends, except that his 2006 article claimed that role only for instrumental discourse. Thus, we return to the seemingly fundamental contradiction in Moore’s (2004, 2006) logic: If the SS gas van memo was rhetorical (according to his theory of instrumental discourse) because it argued for policy change, and if rhetors necessarily plead (according to his critique of Katz) for utility and goodness, how can one account for rhetoric that urges evil ends without moving past Moore’s representational theory of rhetoric and instead conceding Katz’s (1992a) point about rhetoric’s social-epistemic dimension? In addition to the conundrum that “utility” was used to bring about evil in Nazi Germany, which raises a basic question about Moore’s views on rhetoric, a second logical inconsistency may be seen (in light of the Nazi document) which has implications for his theory of instrumental discourse. For on the one hand, the Moore of 2004 argued that Aristotelian rhetoric should produce not social constructions but such ideal forms as goodness, utility, happiness, justice, honor, health, moderation, courage, and beauty. Therefore, by this reading, the SS memo is nonrhetorical (or anti-rhetorical?). Yet the Moore of 2006 contended that rhetorical discourse is defined in a continuum against instrumental discourse—the former being persuasion that leads to agreement, the latter codification of that agreement. Therefore, by this reading, the memo is rhetorical (although the instrumental agreement to which it leads is extermination). Then again, in contrast to “ways of meaning” that instantiate “pure representation,

182 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

positivism, or correspondence theories of the truth,” Moore allowed that only instrumental discourse involves social constructions whereby “language is a contingent social agreement whose validity depends on individuals applying the language to intervene successfully in reality” (p. 390). Therefore, by this reading of the Nazi document (which Moore himself does not conduct), the gas van memo would also be instrumental since the validity of its coded and euphemistic language is contingent on the social agreement of the SS desk-murderers. Katz has willingly tested his thesis in the awful crucible of the Holocaust, which is arguably the central and most vexing question of Western modernity. Technical communicators could benefit if Moore and other scholars of the genre were willing to do the same. Katz (2006) responded to Moore by noting their respective interpretations are “based on different epistemologies” and concluded, I do not believe human objectivity is possible, which an instrumental view seems to require, and so cannot believe in a non-ideological instrumentalism—whether it be called utility or expediency. Nor do I share Professor Moore’s unbridled enthusiasm for technology and/or capitalism, or his “optimism” concerning the behavior of corporations and government. (p. 7)

That sentiment was echoed by Browning (1998), a leading Holocaust researcher who has commented on the potential for further genocides that, I fear we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsibility is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. (p. 223)

Disciplines from theology (e.g., Rubinstein, 1966) to sociology (Bauman, 1989) have wrestled with the implications of a post-Holocaust world. Moore (2006) has propounded a thought-provoking theory of rhetorical versus instrumental communication. But this theory of communication—as must all theories of communication and rhetoric—must account for Auschwitz. Thus, I concur with Katz’s (1992a) thesis on many of its crucial points: that the SS gas van document is rhetorical, that it is amenable to Aristotelian rhetorical analysis, that phronesis is a social construction, and that the Holocaust is not an aberrant Platonic antiform that is beyond analysis. Whether or not the SS gas van proposal is an exemplar of technological expediency or social utility, there is surely sufficient evidence to conclude that either can be taken to extremes. The many articles written by scholars of technical communication about, say, the space shuttle Challenger disaster are a testament to this fact (e.g., Dombrowski, 1991, 1992a, 1992b; Herndl, Fennell, & Miller, 1991; Miller, 1993; Moore, 1992; Pace, 1988; Winsor, 1988, 1990). Further, the argument that an ethic of expediency does broadly underlie Western deliberative rhetoric (but with the caveat that

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

183

different expediencies are possible, whether technological or ideological) could be a possible reading of the implications suggested by my own analysis. Elsewhere (Ward, 2009b, 2010b), I have argued for the basic desirability and need to study more cases, engage in more in-depth discussion, learn more of how technical communication can be abused, and encourage more scholars to take up the investigation. Interest in such an investigation was not, however, the impetus for Moore’s (2004) critique of Katz. Where Rivers (1992) desired to protect rhetoric (and by extension, rhetoricians and, even further, the exceptionalism of democratic polity) from being tarred by association with Nazism and the Holocaust, Moore desired to protect technical writing—and thus technical writers, Western capitalism and, by extension, notions of Western progress and the innate goodness of human nature—from that same association. In a subsequent book chapter, Moore (2005) explicitly decried “authors of contemporary academic studies of technical communication [who] frequently attack capitalism as the source of many of the social problems of our time” (p. 53). He put Katz and Carolyn Miller at the head of a list of “critical theorists” within technical communication who fill students “with bias and misinformation” and “ignore the fact that the cultures that have the most freedom, the most social opportunities, the most democracy, the longer life spans, and the highest standards of living are precisely the cultures in which high-tech state capitalism plays a central role in the economy” (p. 54). In the past 500 years, “science, engineering, technology, and capitalism helped bring more and more benefits to humanity,” while capitalism in particular “played a significant role in the rise of political freedom” (p. 73). The influential Frankfurt School of critical theorists were creatures of their time, Moore asserted, who reacted “to the Nazi control of German businesses and sciences, and so they attacked instrumental reason, capitalism, science, and technology” in their “hostility toward the abuses of the Third Reich” (p. 74). Thus, the first generation of critical theorists engaged in the “fallacy of guilt by association” and “invented a philosophy that made Hitler and Nazism appear to be the inevitable outcome of science, technology, and capitalism, and not an aberration” (p. 74). According to Moore, however, technical communicators must move past the critical theories— from the likes of Heidegger and Habermas—that have “biased Western thinking for two generations” and instead recognize that “after a half century of increasing freedoms and standards of living [throughout] the world, it is time to see that Hitler, Nazism, and Fascism were not the inevitable outcomes of science, technology, and capitalism” (p. 74). In the most direct manner possible, the problem of Nazism and the Holocaust are identified by Moore (2005) as the primary challenges to Western science, technology, and capitalism. If critical theorists can succeed in using the Holocaust as a wedge, the entire Western edifice is threatened and therefore must be vigorously defended. To make his argument, Moore, like Rivers (1992), picked up only on the “expediency” portion of the Katz thesis and not the “ethic” portion.

184 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

And just as Rivers saw Nazism and the Holocaust as the crucial wedge issue that jeopardized his own worldview, so too did Moore. Their critiques represent two poles of response to the disquieting notion that skilled technical writers furthered genocide: Rivers sought to protect rhetoric, rhetoricians, and an idealized view of beneficently rational democratic polity; Moore strove to protect technical writing, technical writers, and an idealized view of beneficent progress through Western technology, science, and capitalism. In both cases, the binary and oppositional nature of their claims precluded the possibility of rhetorical boundary work and ultimately excluded both scholars from an emerging disciplinary consensus. CONVERGING ON A COMFORTABLE DISTANCE The consensus that has emerged is, as we will see below, one that accepts the “ethic of expediency” thesis in name but has spun it into a warning against amoral technocracy, thereby suppressing Katz’s (1992a, 1993; cf. Katz & Rhodes, 2010) assertion that a culture can vest expediency with moral, ethical, and spiritual value. Since our cultural methodology (Longo, 1998) calls on us to finally interrogate how orderings have been imposed on a text and what this reveals about analysts’ relationships to it, we come now to those orderings of the Nazi gas van document imposed by analysts who claim agreement with Katz. In line with the analysis presented in chapter 6, it may be said that the technical communication discipline is a rhetorical community whose many and varied interests have generated a shared narrative (about amoral technocracy) to serve as a field onto which their interests may converge, constructed a metaphor (the banal Nazi technocrat against whom all parties can identify themselves), and produced an institutional genre (“ethic of expediency” as a heuristic designation) to pragmatically structure social action. That the many interests within the discipline have created a trading zone— a zone where diverse interests cooperate to heuristically affirm the dangers of amoral technocracy—demonstrates that boundary work has occurred. In the heinous Nazi gas van document, the discipline has found an object plastic enough to permit its varied interests to map their own local needs onto the text, but robust enough to maintain a common identity across these sites. The analysis below does not claim to provide an exhaustive survey of every reference to “the ethic of expediency” in the technical communication literature. But I believe the analysis is nevertheless broadly representative of the disciplinary discourse over the Katz thesis. And here the mechanics of rhetorical boundary work can, I believe, be helpfully likened to Latour’s (1987) description of academic arguments in science and engineering—or “technoscience,” as he put it. Latour posited six principles (p. 259) for technoscientific argument, of which the first three are key for our study: (a) “Facts” are determined by later users and thus are “a consequence, not a cause, of a collective action.” (b) Claimants “speak in the name of new allies that they have shaped and enrolled” in order to

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

185

marshal support and “tip the balance of force in their favor.” (c) Arguments hinge on “a gamut of weaker and stronger associations” so that understanding “facts” amounts to understanding their advocates. As such, arguments proceed as scholars buttress their claims by marshalling impressive arrays of citations but, in so doing, construe the original citations in ways that lend support to their own arguments. A modality is thereby imparted to the citation by which the original claim of a scientist or engineer is modified or qualified to suit and build a new claim. In time, a “fact” can become “blackboxed” or allowed to operate without being questioned; it is simply easier to accept the “fact” than to reopen the box and revisit the complexities of its construction. Only input and output matter; you put something into the box and it then produces the expected result. So too can such dynamics be seen in how “The Ethic of Expediency” (Katz, 1992a) has been shaped and enrolled as an ally in the claims of later users until it has become a useful black box into which technical communication scholars, who wish to make a point about amoral technocracy or hyperpragmatism or technological determinism, need only cite the Nazi gas van document and the desired output of “factual” backing for their claims is the result. In a sense, then, a boundary object can become a Latourian black box. And for such cases, Latour’s first two rules of method for following technoscientific argument are to confront blackboxed facts and “follow the controversies that reopen them,” and to investigate claims “not [by looking] for their intrinsic qualities but at all the transformations they undergo later in the hands of others” (p. 258). That is what we will attempt now to do. Brasseur (1993) first appropriated Katz to make an argument against “the objectivist paradigm.” Where Katz (1992a) had analyzed the SS gas van document to make a claim about Western deliberative rhetoric, Brasseur (2004) lent a new modality to “Expediency” by citing it in support of her own claim that objectivist “language practices can obscure or hide the complexity of the social environment” (p. 476). She initially illustrated this point by citing a study (Paradis, 1991) of a power-tool users’ manual that contributed to injury and death because written instructions reflected the manufacturer’s preoccupation with objective language and ignored the workplace situations in which the tool was employed. Then, Brasseur (2004) asserted that Katz’s analysis of a Nazi document offered “a similar critique” (p. 477), even though Katz had raised the issue of the writer’s rhetorical use of the Aristotelian topoi and demonstrated how the writer skillfully took into account the ethos of his readers—a critique not at all “similar” to that of a users manual written without any regard for how it would be read. Brasseur held up the SS gas van document as an exemplar of an “objectivist paradigm” manifested in “ideals of clarity and conciseness” of language and cited Katz in support of his thesis, even though Katz (1992a) had remarked on “the style of Just’s memo, particularly the euphemisms and metaphors used to denote, objectify, and conceal process and people . . . as well as use of figures of speech” (p. 257). And my own analysis, detailed in chapters 6

186 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

and 7, suggests how the language of the Just proposal served to (re)produce the rhetorical community of the SS gas van bureau by deploying narrative, metaphor, genre, and linguistic resources as means of negotiating their differences. Thus, by imparting a new modality to Katz in support of her own claim, Brasseur (1993) imposed a new ordering on the Nazi document by citing it as an example of objectivity in language use. And by modifying Katz’s critique to become “similar” to her own, Brasseur appropriated the gas van text to suit and build a new claim about “the problems inherent in an epistemology that positions technical communication as a solely expedient venture without any explicitly stated ethical concerns” (p. 115), even though Katz (1992a) argued that in the Nazi document, “Here, expediency is an ethical end as well” (p. 257). Brasseur’s (1993) modal alteration of the “expediency” thesis was then perpetuated by Johnson-Eilola (1996), who continued to pair the Katz study with the same Paradis (1991) study of a power-tool user’s manual. In Johnson-Eilola’s reading, the Paradis study illustrated “instructing users in functional but not conceptual aspects of technologies,” of which the Nazi gas van document thus becomes “a more extreme case” (p. 179), even though the latter was an engineering proposal and not a set of instructions. Then Johnson-Eilola shaped the Katz thesis yet again and enrolled it as an ally for a new argument by claiming Nazi technical writing as an example of “expediency and decontextualization” (p. 179, emphasis added). Thus, where Katz contended that the Just proposal shows the “inherent dangers of the prevailing ethic of expediency as ideology” (p. 269, emphasis added), Johnson-Eilola (1996) appropriated Katz to impose a different ordering by which the SS writers emptied their rhetoric of context such that the gas van text became a “technical communication [that] allowed Nazi administrators and engineers to sidestep ethical issues” (p. 249). For Katz, the SS bureaucrats enacted ethical convictions grounded in ideology; but the new claims of Brasseur and Johnson-Eilola seem to imply the gas van administrators had no ethics or ideology. The Nazi document thereby becomes an “extreme case” of an attitude that emphasizes “relatively mechanical writing skills” (Johnson-Eilola, 1996, p. 178), with Katz cited in support, despite the fact that Katz began with a brief illustration of how the writer’s skillful use of rhetoric was used to argue for what he regarded as an ethical end. “The Ethic of Expediency” appeared to have achieved blackbox status 5 years after its publication. A survey of the literature on technical communication found the Katz (1992a) article to be among the most-cited and a “standard reference point” for the discipline (Smith, 2000, p. 450). Yet the disciplinary consensus hewed to the claims of Brasseur (1993) and Johnson-Eilola (1996) and the settled “fact” that the Nazi gas van document was an extreme example of expediency without any ethic. In a textbook published that year on Foundations for Teaching Technical Communication, Ornatowski (1997) concluded his chapter on rhetoric by mentioning in passing the by-then conventional wisdom that the Nazi bureaucrats were the leading example of being “indifferent” to the

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

187

role of rhetoric in technical, scientific, and commercial discourse, although, once again, Katz had argued that the SS killers were surprisingly attuned to rhetorical nuances. But this is the way, even in scientific and technical argumentation, that scholarship works and the rhetorical community of academics evolves “knowledge.” In the present case, consensus on the ethical import of the Nazi gas van document was not grounded in any empirical analysis of the text itself but, rather, through a communal phronesis in which the text functioned as a boundary object to bridge the interstices of the technical communication discipline. A strikingly creative shaping and enrolling of the Katz thesis occurred that same year when Markel (1997) appropriated it for his argument against “postmodernism and postmodern ethics in particular” (p. 291). In support of his contention that postmodernism “is particularly vulnerable to charges of relativism,” he averred that “Perhaps the most devastating critique of relativism in rhetoric and ethics is Stephen [sic] Katz’s description of what might be called the worst-case scenario: the ethic of expediency demonstrated by Nazi technical communicators” (p. 291; also repeated verbatim in Markel, 2001, p. 108). This modality is strengthened in the following sentence, which urged readers to consult a recent book on literary theory “for a detailed discussion of the problem of relativism in postmodern thought” (p. 291). The implication here is that relativism, which Markel defined as a state of having “no coherent normative theory against which our ideas and actions can be measured” (p. 290), is bad because it can lead in a worst-case scenario to Nazi mass murder. In this way, a new ordering is imposed on the Just gas van proposal by which the writer had “no coherent normative theory against which [his] ideas and actions can be measured.” Was Markel claiming that the SS killers were postmodernists? As noted in chapter 3, Herf (1986) has instead described the Nazis as “reactionary modernists” who saw high technology as an aesthetic expression of the people’s spirit and will to power. Further, and as this study has demonstrated, the Nazi perpetrators of the Final Solution did operate from a coherent normative theory; namely, the Nazi Weltanschauung of racial and national renewal, the “Nazi conscience” that Koonz (2003) has described, against which they measured their ideas and actions. Katz (1992a, 1993), too, argued that the Nazi technical writer acted “prudently” according to his own and his society’s conception of virtue. Nevertheless, the modality imparted to the Katz thesis by Markel reinforced the emerging disciplinary consensus that Nazi technical writers had no ethical values. In a striking demonstration of how boundary objects can potentially bridge even highly divergent perspectives, Longo (2000) came to the same conclusion as Markel, but from a markedly different direction. While Markel appropriated the Katz “ethic of expediency” (1992a) thesis to argue against postmodernism, Longo appropriated it to argue for a postmodern critical approach to technical communication research and pedagogy. One of the backgrounds for her claim is an earlier article in which Longo (1998) dismissed the social constructionist approach to research—an approach

188 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

that seeks to understand how participants construct their organizations through communication—by claiming this approach takes the organization as stable and normative and does not interrogate its position within the wider societal discourse on knowledge and power. (In this article, Longo advocated the cultural research methodology that has guided the present study. Her critique of the social constructionist approach is valid and one I have taken into account by, as explained in chapter 1, utilizing both interpretive and postmodern perspectives on organizations rather than rejecting one for the other. Ultimately, my debt to Longo is in adopting the metastructure of her methodology—researching a text’s historical and cultural contexts, seeing the text as a discourse, interrogating its analysts and their orderings of the text. But I differ from her by believing that social constructionism has its uses and is not necessarily captive to the limitations she cited.) In her book on the history of technical writing in the United States, Longo (2000) again mounted a critique of social constructionist research. Against this approach she held up Katz’s (1992a) article on the ethic of expediency as a paradigm of cultural research. Where social constructionists “do not adequately . . . deal with issues of difference and change within organizations,” the Katz article “illustrated the importance of difference and change by exploring discourse practices within the community of Nazi Germany” through a “study that analyzed culture in an inclusive sense” (Longo, 2000, p. 8). Thus, instead of being a rhetorical analysis with a larger claim about Western deliberative rhetoric, the “ethic of expediency” thesis in Longo’s modality is transformed: “Katz clearly placed current technical writing practices in contests for power and knowledge legitimation, a research outcome that relies on a critical approach to the object of inquiry” (p. 9). In contrast to Markel (1997), who appropriated Katz (1992a) for his claim that Nazi technical writers had “no coherent normative theory against which [their] ideas and actions [could] be measured” (p. 290), Longo (2000) interpreted the Katz study as showing how “Hitler’s rhetoric . . . formed a coherent foundation for his programs and propaganda” (p. 8). Then, to further appropriate “The Ethic of Expediency” for her argument in favor of cultural research and against social constructionism, Longo argued at length on what Katz would have done if had he been a social constructionist. Thus, not only the argument, but its author as well, was given a new modality. (And yet this reshaping of Katz still permitted Longo to participate in the discipline’s boundary work over the Nazi gas van document. By contrast, the explicit and personal nature of Moore’s [2004] attacks on Katz, to the point of “questioning” his motives, placed Moore outside the discussion.) In the end, however, the disciplinary consensus remained intact: the Nazis, Longo asserted, erected a “runaway technocracy” that was “built single-mindedly on scientific knowledge” (p. 9). Also that year, when Dombrowski (2000a) devoted an entire chapter in his textbook on Ethics in Technical Communication to the problem of Nazi technical communication, he returned to Brasseur’s (1993) objectivist paradigm in stating

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

189

that the “Just memorandum presents a real example of technical objectivity taken to an extreme” (p. 103). Although the chapter reproduces the majority of the Kogon (1993, pp. 228–230) translation of the gas van document, rather than the Lanzmann (1985) version, Dombrowki himself reorders the text in several notable respects (at least from the perspective of the present study, which argues the sociocultural significance of such details): the original notation, “Only Copy,” and the document’s filing code are omitted; the salutation to Rauff is moved from the end of the document to the beginning; the reference to the Kulmhof truck explosion is stricken; the paragraphs are renumbered differently than the original; the proposals to reorient the vehicles’ gas nozzles, eliminate the observation windows, and add a winch-operated removable floor grid are deleted; and the final two paragraphs that discuss the difficulties in implementing changes and suggest a single prototype be built are likewise deleted. The net effect of this reordering is to omit portions of the document that place it within a larger organizational conversation and, as this study argued in chapter 6, show how it drew on rhetorical resources (the “safety” narrative, the “transportation” metaphor) and linguistic resources (devaluation of thinking and sensing, modified verbs) to function as a boundary object for negotiating competing organizational interests in the Nazi regime. Indeed, although Dombrowski referenced the Becker field inspection report, he did not connect it with the Just document. In line with the disciplinary consensus on putatively amoral Nazi technocrats, only those portions of the document mattered that most directly described the killing. Dombrowski (2000a) thus imposed an ordering on the text that lent itself to considering the gas van document only in isolation and not as a discourse within an actual rhetorical community. Such a rendering also changed the modality of the Katz thesis such that Dombrowski grafted it onto his own claims about the technological imperative. In Katz’s (1992a) original article, this line of reasoning is mentioned in passing only once, in a single sentence that referenced Ellul’s theory, and that Katz qualified as a factor “that may partly explain what occurred” (p. 266, emphasis added). But in Dombrowski’s reordering, the level of certainty regarding the operation of a technological imperative, “that what we can do, we should do” (p. 103, emphasis in original), is increased and becomes the main point. The rhetorical quality of the document, which was the focus of Katz’s analysis, is lost. Thus, in an article Dombrowski (2000b) published the same year, he surveyed the literature on technical communication ethics and characterized the Katz article as a riff on technological determinism. The word “rhetoric” does not appear in Dombrowski’s two-paragraph review. Instead, the “ethic of expediency” thesis is modified so that its main thrust becomes “the danger of having technical excellence serve as the sole rationale for action” (p. 16). The disciplinary consensus to ignore any Nazi “ethic” and emphasize only the killers’ “expediency” is reaffirmed, for the Nazi technical writers “lack” any ethics, were “profoundly amoral,” and acted with “the technical perfection of a technology [as] the sole rationale” (p. 16).

190 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Like Arendt’s Eichmann, the gas van bureaucrats are not faulted for having wrong ethics but for having no ethics. And just as Dombrowski echoed Brasseur’s (1993) appropriation of “the ethic of expediency” to contest the objectivist paradigm, Monberg (2002) imparted the same modality such that “Steven Katz has forcefully revealed the consequences of . . . a ‘pure’ form of objectivity” (p. 216). Likewise, that same year a book review by Ornatowski (2002) asserted, “The foundation of this ethic [of expediency] is the detachment of technological rationality.” Finally, to culminate a dozen years of disciplinary discussion about the Katz thesis (1992a), the editors (Johnson-Eilola & Selber, 2004) of Central Works in Technical Communication declared that in “Katz’s analysis of the rhetoric of Nazi memoranda during the Holocaust, he illustrates the potential of an ideologically neutral model of technical communication” (p. 193). This summation is breathtaking for, if the historical record of the Final Solution indicates anything, the SS perpetrators were anything but ideologically neutral, and yet this statement, the result of a dozen years of rhetorical boundary work, represents the definitive disciplinary consensus on Nazi technical communication to date. WHAT THE ORDERINGS MAY REVEAL Our cultural research methodology (Longo, 1998) therefore calls the question: What does this consensus, and the ordering of the Nazi text that it requires, reveal about technical communicators’ relationships to that text? One thing stands out: whatever a scholar is against, the Nazis are powerfully cited as being for. In this way, the SS gas van document is completely protean, or as Star and Griesemer’s (1989) original conception of boundary objects put it, is “both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (p. 393). Arguably, Katz’s 1992 article may be said to have attained the same qualities as a boundary object itself. Even the phrase “ethic of expediency” has become a theme in the profession’s institutional narrative by which members of the discipline can pragmatically structure social actions. Use of the phrase no longer even requires explicit reference to the Nazi object or any summation of the Katz thesis. For example, Dragga and Voss (2001) in their influential critique of technical illustration practices described a case that was “insensitive and indifferent to the human condition” and succinctly concluded, “It is a graphic that exhibits ‘the ethic of expediency’” (p. 266). And in a recent volume honored with a National Council of Teachers of English book award in technical and scientific communication, the editors’ (Scott et al., 2006) introduction states, “In its more extreme forms, hyperpragmatism may be driven by an ethic of expediency, to use Katz’s term” (p. 9). No further explanation is needed. The black box works smoothly as the authors input their thesis about hyperpragmatism (“utilitarian efficiency . . . at the expense of . . . ethical action”), the box does its work, and the

BRIDGING THE BOUNDARIES

/

191

output is a “fact” that supports their claim. The boundary objects of the Nazi document, the Katz article, and the heuristic phrase have done their rhetorical boundary work: scholars with diverse, even opposing perspectives, can simply use “the ethic of expediency” to support their claims. In the case of Nazi technical writing, interpretations perhaps reveal as much about the interpreter as about the interpreted. In my view, the disciplinary discourse may reveal a need to distance “us” from “them” and the thought that “they” might in some respects be people like “us.” This study has endeavored to demonstrate that even Nazi desk-murderers inhabited rhetorical communities with dynamics found in many organizations; that they shaped local versions of larger historical and cultural discourses to satisfy the exigences and epistemes of their times; that through their local discourses, they engaged in sense-making by socially constructing coherent realities constitutive of organizational culture and identity; and that they produced boundary objects to temporarily negotiate their competing interests and fragmented interpretations in the face of organizational change and ambiguity. From this perspective—from the “ontological shift” proposed at the outset of this study—comes the suggestion that, rather than be satisfied in ascribing wrongdoing to an absence of ethical action, it may be profitable to consider, as we will do in the concluding chapter, how communal boundary work can make wrong ethical action seem right.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 10

Some Ethical Implications

A BIAS FOR EXPLANATION This study, which began by suggesting than an ontological shift—from a perspective that views “The Final Solution” in monolithic terms as a symbolically composite crime, to a perspective that sees the genocidal program as a contingent event of a polycratic, entropic, and punctuated nature—might open a door to new insights. Since then, we have explored how the gas van administrators of the Nazi SS manifested the three dimensions of integration, by what they shared; differentiation, by the various subcultures they inhabited; and fragmentation, by their need to forge temporary and issue-specific consensus amidst organizational change, confusion, and ambiguity. Through Longo’s (1998) cultural research methodology we then charted the integrative elements of the killers’ shared historical context and national and institutional cultures, the differentiating elements of their organizational culture, and the fragmenting elements of their individual biographies and motivations. The methodology led us next to interrogate how the texts of the Sipo Technical Matters Group constituted a discourse that constructed a rhetorical community, their documents functioning as boundary objects that drew upon narrative, metaphor, genre, and language to bridge their competing interests and create a temporary space for exchange. We then took the final steps called for by the methodology in looking at the ways subsequent analysts have imposed orderings on the Nazi gas van texts for the purposes of their respective studies and discovered that the Just document, the lengthiest of the corpus, has functioned as a boundary object among technical communication scholars, thereby revealing much about the discipline’s relationship to the text. All of this, in laying bare the rhetorical boundary work performed by the Nazi documents, is well and good. We have learned, from a supreme worst case, about dynamics of organizational discourse. But beyond that, what difference 193

194 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

can our understanding of these dynamics make? How might we apply this understanding of organizational discourses to our own organizational lives? To explore the ethical implications of this study for organizational and technical communicators, let me begin with two observations. First of all, as the second and third generations after the Holocaust, we did not experience the genocide directly but have encountered it only through mediation. What, then, is the effect of that mediation on the lessons we draw? Is our impulse for monolithic and universalized lessons driven, at least in part, by what mediates how we view the Holocaust? For most of us, our mediation is the histories we read, histories prepared by historians who, as a discipline, aspire to “scientific” inquiry and the discovery of generalizable laws. As Megill (1989) noted, historians evince a strong “bias for explanation,” or penchant for reasoning from effect to cause, which “is to be found in the theoretical and methodological handbooks” of historiography (p. 629). He described a “relative unanimity in [this] preoccupation” since historians “remain deeply influenced” by a philosophy of science “overwhelmingly concerned with ‘explanation,’ which [is] viewed as answering the ‘why’ question” (p. 628 n4). White (1999) similarly observed among historians the assumption that true historiography must be capable of “extract[ion] from its linguistic form, served up in a condensed paraphrase purged of all figurative and tropological elements, and subjected to tests of logical consistency as an argument and of predictive adequacy as a body of fact” (p. 5). This explanatory bias is manifested in a yearning for universality and “the idea that a field is scientific only if it produces general laws” (Megill, 1989, p. 633). Are we, the generation that has only encountered the Holocaust through such mediation, ourselves therefore biased toward generalizable answers? In my view, our own bias for explanation carries over into discussions of technical communication ethics through a tendency to view them, as Porter (1993) suggested, “as an infrequent moral problem that may arise . . . as [in] a matter of the occasional whistle-blowing decision” (p. 132) so that scholars “treat ethics as a matter of individual decision making . . . separate from and prior to composing” (p. 130). This leads to an emphasis on generalizable ethical systems that prescribe the actions of individuals rather than seeing composition as social action that is by nature processual, so that ethical intuition is inextricably bound up in the action and ethical decision making is shaped by the structural contexts in which it is grounded. Thus, if technical communicators perceive in the monolithic enormity of “the Holocaust” a call for generalizable lessons, the “ethic of expediency” (Katz, 1992a) may be more tractable for the discipline as a universalized warning against amoral technocracy rather than an invitation— which Katz extended more explicitly in an infrequently cited sequel article (1993)—to interrogate the vagaries of how notions of prudence and virtue, including our own, are socially constructed.

SOME ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS

/

195

But are these two perspectives—ethics as a prescription of individual action and ethics as a description of structural contexts—mutually exclusive? I believe not and will suggest below how they might be productively blended. Ethics and action are linked, not separable; for even as ethical decisions are outcomes of social action, ethical intuitions (Faber, 1999) simultaneously form an important ground for social action. The personnel of the Sipo Technical Matters Group acted not without any ethic but, rather, engaged in ethical action of the profoundest moment. When assigned to create and administer a program for gassing human beings, they each decided to accept their tasks in accordance with their ethical lights. But as we have seen, it was not simply a matter for each member of the rhetorical community to articulate a clear-cut ethical philosophy, and on that basis decide, at a given moment in time, that henceforth he would accept the ethical primacy of the “occupational safety” narrative—and of the “war” and “transportation” metaphors and the organizational genre of “special” missions and tasks—over the ethical claims of their society’s conventional morality. Perhaps Lanzmann is helpful here when, as we noted earlier, he declared, “There is a gap between all the fields of explanation and the actual killing. You cannot give birth—in French we say engendre—you cannot generate such an evil” (as quoted in Rosenbaum, 1998, p. 260, emphasis in original). The desk-murderers did not “give birth” to their murderous campaign by one day explaining it to themselves and deciding from that moment to proceed. Instead, their ethical intuitions gave salience to the organizational texts they produced as boundary objects, whereby they negotiated their differences and, for about 6 months, created and sustained a consensus to act. PRESCRIPTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS Disciplinary discussions of professional ethics in technical communication have cited the example of Nazi technical writing as, on the one hand, a prime violation of Kant’s categorical imperative (Dombrowski, 2000a, pp. 53, 113), and on the other as a “devastating” challenge to “relativism in rhetoric and ethics” (Markel, 1997, p. 291; 2001, p. 108). But even though none would doubt that Nazi desk-murderers failed Kant’s (1969) maxim to “act so that you treat humanity . . . always as an end and never as a means only” (p. 54), can we say that the ethical lessons of their atrocities can be framed only in Kantian terms? Are ethical judgments from a “nonfoundational” perspective disqualified because, as Markel (1997, 2001) contended, Nazi technical writing is relativism’s own worst-case scenario? Foucault’s (1984) approach to ethics—or at least his observation that individuals become defined by naturalized institutional authorities—is an important perspective for grasping why the men of the Sipo Technical Matters Group did what they did. As Dragga (1997) discovered, most communicators make ethical choices through intuition, feelings, or conscience (pp. 166–168). And

196 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Faber (1999), who built on Dragga’s work to propose a theory of “intuitive ethics,” noted that intuitions are “a composite of cultural lessons” whose values and ideologies are routinized “until their adoption simply becomes common place” (p. 193). Likewise, as we have seen, the SS gas van murderers intuitively shared common historical and cultural contexts—a history of religious, economic and racial anti-Semitism, a culture steeped in völkisch values of national community and the leadership principle—which permitted them to produce texts with narratives, metaphors, and genres that resonated across otherwise diverse organizational interests. By generating boundary objects to bridge competing subcultures, their documents and discourses created islands of temporary stability—zones to intuitively marshal routinized and ethicized values and ideologies for issue-specific consensuses—amid the constant flux of organizational change, confusion, and ambiguity. (A parallel to this concept is suggested by Katz and Rhodes [2010] in their recent discussion of “ethical frames.”) Yet, in contrast to this picture of individuals making decisions from a constellation of cultural and institutional biases, much of the literature on technical communication ethics focuses on single moments of decision, such as “the” decision to launch the Challenger space shuttle or “the” decision to knowingly publish a misleading user manual. Most of the current literature on technical communication ethics generally places the two perspectives—ethics as a prescription of individual action and ethics as a description of structural contexts—in binary opposition. Markel (1993, 1997) has argued strenuously for modern “foundational” approaches to ethics and against postmodern “nonfoundational” approaches, offering technical communicators an either/or choice. On the other hand, Dombrowski (1995) disdains the “technologizing” of ethics. Faber’s (1999) theory of intuitive ethics draws from Bourdieu, Fairclough, and Foucault. And Sullivan and Martin (2001) have suggested that communicators develop a narrative approach to ethics by making a habit of telling the “universal audience” (a concept borrowed from Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca [1969]) a story of how their actions in a given situation affirm life. Yet I contend that reconciliation between modern and postmodern ethical approaches may be found in the concept, described below, of “prescriptive” and “descriptive” ethics as being complementary approaches for guiding ethical action. And by recognizing that ethics are both an outcome and a ground for the social action of rhetoric, we can move beyond a perhaps somewhat simplistic and ahistorical explanation of Nazi technical writing as amoral technocracy and begin a discussion that can lead us toward a deeper understanding of the social field on which our technical and organizational communications play out. This study has argued that organizations are composed of multiple voices and competing interests, that the boundaries between these interests must be bridged (at least temporarily on an issue-specific basis) for consensual action to occur and that, when prompted by an integrative exigence, organizations can generate discursive objects (such as texts and documents) that are plastic enough for

SOME ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS

/

197

adaptation to each interest’s needs and yet robust enough to bridge their identities and thereby create a temporary trading zone for consensus. Since these social actions generate zones across boundaries in order to enable further social actions, and since ethical intuitions are an important ground for giving boundary objects the salience needed to do rhetorical boundary work, then it is useful to conceive of ethics, as well as actions, playing out across these zones. For this reason, I find it useful to draw from Sturges’s (1992) concept of an Ethical Dilemma Domain and his notion that ethical questions should be conceived not as single points of decision but as positioned within a proverbial gray area. This view is markedly similar to Sherif, Sherif, and Nebergall’s (1965) social judgment theory, which proposes that a belief or opinion held by a person should be conceived not as a point along a line but as a band or “latitude of acceptance.” By seeing the Nazi technical writers as individuals who could tolerate ethical choices within certain thresholds, we change the basic question about their documents. Those who see an opinion as a point on a line will ask, “Why did they make ‘the’ decision to facilitate genocide?” But when we see opinion as a band, then our focus shifts, and we ask, “What cultural and institutional factors shifted the writers’ latitudes of acceptance so that genocide fell within their tolerable ethical thresholds?” With that new question, our analysis moves away from categorical Kantian ethics to the realm of rhetorical communities that govern persuasion and influence. We could ask, then, as Dragga (1996, 1997) and Faber (1999) might do, how racial anti-Semitism may have been routinized to become the intuition that guided the ethical decisions of the desk-murderers. In an organization as massive as the Nazi bureaucracy, such routinization could have been driven by a plethora of reasons: careerism, deference to authority, true belief, and more. But like the practitioners in Dragga’s (1996, 1997) study, at the level of individual ethical decision making, they acted on culturally informed intuition. How, then, can we break through the naturalized intuitions of our own organizational settings and strive toward ethical conduct? On the one hand, Markel (1997) has taken “nonfoundational” (and especially postmodern) ethics to task for not providing technical communicators with actionable guides to behavior (p. 290). On the other hand, because “foundational” ethics are categorical, then by their nature, systems such as Kant’s (1969) are prescriptive rather than descriptive. In general terms, foundational ethics may tell us what to do, but they don’t explain anything; whereas nonfoundational ethics may explain things, but they don’t tell us what to do. Sturges (1992) posited that ethical dilemmas are functions of significance and magnitude. Whether or not you should take a pencil from work, for example, does not present a dilemma because the significance and magnitude of the action are so obviously trivial. And whether or not you should kill someone in a premeditated act does not (for most people) present a dilemma because the significance and magnitude are obviously so high. But whether or not you

198 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

should kill someone in self-defense may pose a dilemma because even though the magnitude of the act is high, the significance, at least legally and morally, is less. Thus, in between the clearly trivial and the clearly unethical is a gray band in which ethical questions present dilemmas. Similarly, Sherif et al.’s (1965) social judgment theory holds, An attitude is not adequately represented by a single point on a continuum . . . [but rather] the ranges or latitudes of rejection, acceptance, and noncommitment are also crucial . . . [so that] the latitude of rejection increases with the extremity of the respondent’s most accepted position and with his involvement in the issue. . . . Assimilation and acceptance occur when the communication falls within or near the range of accepted positions, but when the communication falls far beyond this range, contrast and rejection result. (Saltzstein, 1966, pp. 162–163)

How are individuals’ ethical thresholds or latitudes constructed? Here, Foucault’s (1984) project of describing the regularization of institutionalized authorities comes into play: “Criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search for formal structures with universal value, but rather as a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying” (pp. 45–46). I contend that in such an investigation, the rhetorical boundary work that occurs in institutions and organizations is a productive object for inquiry, for it is by and through this work that we constitute ourselves as subjects for collective action. Foundational approaches to ethics are advantageous because they suggest possible courses of action when organizational and technical communicators are confronted with ethical dilemmas. But why do issues become ethical dilemmas in the first place? How do individuals determine significance and magnitude so that particular questions fall between what they deem clearly trivial and clearly unethical? And what is the influence of cultures and institutions upon those individuals as they place ethical questions within their personal latitudes of acceptance, rejection, or noncommittal? Nonfoundational approaches can illuminate such ethical questions, even the question of Nazi technical communication that, at first glance, seems so obviously amenable to a Kantian framework. As Sullivan and Martin (2001) pointed out, “There are times when we will find ourselves in an ethical dilemma in which moral laws are in conflict,” and “the weakness with [the Kantian] position is that it provides no course of action when there seems to be no morally right or correct choice” (p. 264). Although the practicing professionals whom Dragga (1997) interviewed at length may refer to “the narratives of cases and scenarios” that they heard in their professional training, they “come to the job with a sense of ethics developed chiefly

SOME ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS

/

199

through the influence of their mothers and fathers.” Then at work, they “look to colleagues and supervisors as sources of continuing moral guidance” and ultimately “make their moral choices according to feelings and conscience” (p. 173). Or as we have seen in this study, they generate boundary objects whose communally validated narratives, metaphors, genres, and linguistic forms resonate across the organization’s individual interests and thereby (re)produce the rhetorical community. How are feelings and conscience formed? The literature suggests a number of answers to that question. Faber (1999) has extended Dragga’s (1997) insight—and connected it to Foucault’s (1984) ethical approach—by citing key social theorists who have “documented processes whereby agents unconsciously make ideological, political, and value-based judgments . . . [and perpetuate] certain values, ideologies, and political objectives [that] are unknowingly disseminated and reproduced through specific functions of everyday life” (Faber, 1999, p. 191). Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have shown how figurative language reifies cultural beliefs. Bordieu (1990) coined the term habitus to describe the “systems of durable, transposable dispositions” (p. 53) by which societies structurally inculcate their ideologies. Giddens (1984) cited “the habitual taken-for-granted character of the vast bulk of activities of day-to-day life” (p. 376), a process of routinization by which societies “structurate” common rules for morality, power, and communication. Fairclough (1992) noted how a society’s very discourse naturalizes certain values as language itself becomes invested with favored ideological assumptions. Now this study, which, as we reviewed in chapter 3, understands organizations “as shaping local versions of broader societal [discourses so that] . . . organizational cultures are then best understood not as unitary wholes or as stable sets of subcultures but as mixtures of cultural manifestations of different levels and kinds” (Alvesson, 2002, pp. 190–191), brings these societal processes to the organizational level and suggests how organizational actors unconsciously engage in rhetorical boundary work to disseminate and reproduce their own local manifestations of broader discourses. Thus, the gas van bureaucrats undoubtedly acted, on a personal level, for a variety of everyday reasons. But on a deeper level, their decision to place genocide within their ethically tolerable latitudes of acceptance must be analyzed in terms of their cultural cognition, habitus, routinization, naturalization, vested language, and regularized institutional authority. Such an analysis does not excuse the SS perpetrators as being merely culturally determined products of their society or institution. But a full understanding of their actions is impossible without such analyses. Even Foucault (1984), a postmodernist who rejected a foundational approach to ethics, believed that individuals could cultivate the power to denaturalize and subvert institutionalized influences by asking these four types of questions:

200 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

1. Ethical substance: Which part of my self or my behavior is influenced or concerned with moral conduct? What do I do because I want to be ethical? 2. Mode of subjection: How am I being told to act morally? Who is asking? To whose values am I being subjected? 3. Ethical work: How must I change my self or my actions in order to become ethical in this situation? 4. Ethical goal: Do I agree with this definition of morality? Do I consent to becoming this character in this situation? To what am I aspiring to when I behave ethically? (Foucault, 1984, pp. 352–355, adapted in Faber, 1999, p. 195; Moore, 1987, pp. 82–83) Is Nazi technical communication a “devastating” challenge to postmodern “relativism,” as Markel (1997) contended? I believe not. If we take up the Foucauldian project of analyzing “the kind of collective that is implied by the history of an institution’s beginnings and the regularization of its practices, for it is in the context of the collective’s identity that individual decisions are made” (Moore, 1987, p. 89), then we can find useful insights into the Nazi killers’ ethical decision making. And if we conceive that our inquiry is concerned not simply with “the” single moment of decision but with the individual, organizational, and cultural dynamics, including the rhetorical boundary work, by which human actors shift the latitudes of what they are willing to accept or reject, then we open ourselves to a descriptive approach to ethics rather than taking only a prescriptive approach. Thus, I make a twofold proposal for a synthesis of foundational and nonfoundational approaches to ethics. First, both foundational approaches (which focus on prescription) and nonfoundational approaches (which focus on description) are needed for full understanding. Second, although foundational approaches can help organizational and technical communicators set stable and appropriate thresholds for what is clearly trivial and what is clearly unethical, when questions arise in the latitude between those thresholds and thereby become true ethical dilemmas, then surely a nonfoundational approach, such as Foucault’s (1984) four areas of questioning, can be a useful supplement to foundational approaches. Each of us is, in our own organizational life, engaged in a daily process of sense-making and of negotiating that life in the face of constant organizational ambiguity and change. In that ongoing progress, the boundary objects we encounter and that we communally generate are many—from the kinds of documents described in this study to the diverse arrays of objects described by Star and Griesemer (1989) and by Wilson and Herndl (2007). All three studies, although in highly different contexts, indicate that such boundary objects are intrinsic to organizing; indeed, the organizations under study could not cooperate effectively without these objects, for they bridged competing interests while

SOME ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS

/

201

permitting a common identity. But because organizational conditions are in constant flux, these spaces of consensus are inherently temporary and require constant maintenance and renegotiation. Star and Griesemer and then Wilson and Herndl have shown how boundary objects can be benign, while the present study demonstrates by the example of Nazi genocide how these objects can produce effects of even unprecedented evil. Somewhere between these poles of salutary cooperation and extreme malignity will lie the boundary objects that we encounter each day. Foundational or prescriptive ethical systems can provide beneficial and actionable guides for our responses. But without a framework for describing and denaturalizing the rhetorical boundary work in technical and organizational communication, we may be unable to take ethical action as our own boundary objects continue to both legitimate and hide themselves from our view.

This page intentionally left blank

Afterword: The Reality of Words and Their Aftermaths by Steven B. Katz

“It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task. Yet, you are not free to desist from it.” —Talmud

It almost goes without saying that the best students not only continue but also surpass the work of their teacher. Good students learn what they can and leave. But superior students respond, in class and in conferences, and then in their own publications, to which the teacher may respond in turn, and then other students and teachers respond. And so on. Within Judaism, there is a tradition of this. The epigraph above is from the Perkei Avot (2:2:16). The Perkei Avot (“Ethics of Our Fathers”) is contained in the Mishnah (or Oral Law), a compilation by Rabbi Judah of commentary and responsa to the Torah (the Written Law, also known as the Five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch) by 60 rabbis over four centuries (c. 200 BCE-200 CE). Then, two Gemara (or commentaries on and responses to the Mishnah), one in Jerusalem and one in Babylon, are composed by seven generations of rabbis (c. 200-500 CE). These separate Gemara, together with the Mishnah, constitute the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. Within Judaism from then until this day, the rabbinic responses, analyses, commentary, and applications of the Talmud, especially of the Babylonian Talmud, are analyzed, interpreted, responded to, and studied, and are said to be as sacred and as important as the Pentateuch, which the Talmud frames (Danby, 1933). Combined, all these texts provide the hermeneutic ground for Jewish life— religious theology and practice, ritual and custom, law and ethical behavior. The context of the epigraph above, and indeed most of the Perkei Avot, concerns the ethical nature of teaching and learning as both saying and doing, and therefore persisting in the ongoing tradition and unfinished mission of t’kum olam, repairing the world. This text-based religious, cultural, and material life, along 203

204 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

with specific daily national and local customs and the business of living, is what the Nazi’s almost succeeded in completely destroying in seeking the utter annihilation of “The People of the Book” in Europe. In the much better-known hegemonic rhetorical traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, the relation of teacher and student led to an assumed sophistic strand of relative ethics based on rhetorical “modeling” of teacher, audience, situation, and persuasive language (Katz, 1996, pp. 253-255): from Empedocles, to Gorgias, to Isocrates, to the later Cicero, and then to Quintilian (b. 35 CE), and thus toward the temporal and geographic end of the Roman Empire in Hispania. In the dominant Greek strain of Plato and Aristotle, the study of language or texts is not the foundation of ethics; rather, the study and teaching of ethics evolved into a consideration of praxis (practice) and phronesis (prudence), a consideration of means and ends. The Greco-Roman tradition of teaching led directly to the “power of teaching”: from Socrates, to Plato, to Aristotle, to Alexander the Great, whose conquests set the stage for the even greater Roman Empire. But even in the Greco-Roman tradition, the act of a student responding does not have to be Oedipal, the student(s) (figuratively) “killing” the teacher, then blinding him or herself with anger and angst; responding does not have to produce the “anxiety of influence” (Bloom, 1997) within the student, nor the conflict for student or teacher between “tradition and individual talent” (Eliot, 1932). The response of student to teacher does not have to wait for the verdict of history either, although it someday may become a part of it. In fact, there are other, longstanding traditions in other disciplines and cultures, including German, when a student publicly recognizes a teacher’s scholarship in a field by responding to and commenting on it. For instance, in Germany and beyond, one only has to think of the genre of Festschriften, festschrifts: published collections by students that mark an occasion and celebrate the work of a teacher by building on it. Like all epideictic situations, the rhetoric of festschrifts may not only praise but also criticize, implicitly (as in the sciences) or explicitly (as in politics)—to blame in acclaim, obliquely critique. Several festschrifts of this kind jump to mind, including a book in Jewish studies (Urbach, Werblowsky, & Wirszubski, 1967) in honor of Gershom Scholem, the preeminent twentieth-century scholar of Jewish mysticism, to whom the book is dedicated in the title and with whom it also debates some facts and fundamental historical assumptions that underlie key parts of Scholem’s life-work. Regardless of the nationality or culture, in festschrifts the student not only engages in epideictic rhetoric, but also forensic and deliberative discourse, working a set of issues with which the teacher had grappled in the field, perhaps identifying early errors of “fact” or judgment by bringing new evidence or methods not previously available to bear, revealing different or wholly new dimensions of the original work. But perhaps most importantly, the superior student does all this with respect grounded not only in the teacher-student relationship, but also in reverence for human relations that are all too short and

AFTERWORD

/

205

eternal, for the ambiguity and power of language, for the search for ever-changing knowledge constrained in a time and a discipline. In so doing, the superior student recognizes and pays the highest homage to a most humble teacher—not by the flattery of imitation, but by a tribute that contributes to and moves the field forward—into further exploration, examination, discussion, and debate, knowledge, pedagogy, practice. Deadly Documents: Technical Communication, Organizational Discourse, and the Holocaust—Lessons from the Rhetorical Work of Everyday Texts is not a festschrift, though I regard it as an honor. But in this important and original book, Dr. Mark Ward, Sr., among other things and on several levels, is responding to and commenting on my 1992 College English article, “The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust” (Katz, 1992a). In doing so, he both critiques and extends it. In that early work, I argued that the ethic of expediency, combined with science and technology, provided not only a political but also a moral basis for the Holocaust. Against insistent claims of the supposed neutrality of technology, and the fervent, almost urgent belief that the Holocaust was an anomaly in Western culture, I argued, in accord with George Steiner (1971) that the Holocaust was not an aberration, or something like a Platonic anti-form existing outside Western civilization, but rather that the Holocaust emerged from and was a result of a major ethical force, taken to extremes, in Western civilization itself—at best a byproduct of it, and at worst the limitation of human consciousness. I also argued in both 1992 and especially in my 1993 sequel, “Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Hitler’s Program, and the Ideological Problem of Praxis, Power, and Professional Discourse as a Social Construction of Knowledge” (Katz, 1993), that expediency as a moral code could be located not only in the Holocaust, but also in Aristotle’s definition of deliberative rhetoric, and thus also in technical communication as deliberative rhetoric. In Book I of the Rhetoric, Aristotle (2007) classifies rhetoric into forensic, deliberative, and epideictic genres based on their audience and purposes; in his discussion of ethics in deliberative rhetoric, which argues for future courses of action, Aristotle notes that expediency and goodness provide the moral basis for deliberation, with the former always and by necessity being present or winning out over the latter alone. As an example of expediency in technical communication taken to extremes, I began my article in College English with the example of a Nazi memo for improving the gassing vans used by the Einsatzgruppen in the early extermination program of the Jews in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, in 1993, I argued that no rhetoric, even social-epistemic rhetoric, is ideologically neutral, and that it, like expediency, can be put to “evil” as well as altruistic ends. I also argued that if the orator has to adopt the values of the audience in order to be considered virtuous, as Isocrates (1929) argued, those values, virtue, and thus phronesis itself, or reasoning about what are considered good or bad ends, are culturally defined and thus ethically indeterminate, as demonstrated in Nazi Germany. And I demonstrated how Aristotle’s definition of various values as

206 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

described by him in the Nicomachean Ethics (1947) are seemingly redefined by Hitler in Mein Kampf (1943). One perhaps hears the echo of the response to the title “The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust” in the title of Dr. Ward’s book: Deadly Documents: Technical Communication, Organizational Discourse, and the Holocaust. But as you probably have already seen, the substitutions of the key words of the title are highly significant. The Nazi memo for improving the gassing vans with which my article began becomes central to Dr. Ward’s enterprise of reexamining and recontextualizing a whole set of original Nazi documents, including the original version (published in German in 1983, but only translated into English a decade later; see Kogon, Langbein, & Rückerl, 1993) of the memo I found and used. Deadly Documents engages my article and the now infamous Nazi memo by situating it in ever-widening spheres of different critical contexts and approaches. In this way, the memo becomes a teleological seed and an ostensible backdrop of Dr. Ward’s book. But the exigency of Deadly Documents is much greater than either my article or the memo I used, and Dr. Ward tells a different story, one that I believe is historically much richer and fuller than my articles could be, and one that makes its own argument. When Dr. Ward, then a doctoral student in the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) program at Clemson University, came to me to study the field of technical communication, he was already a published scholar in organizational communication as well Holocaust Studies, one quite equal to the task of synthesizing the scholarship of those two fields with ethics research in technical communication. Dr. Ward’s book is an ambitious rhetorical study of the documents used in the early efforts of the Holocaust to create and coordinate and conduct genocide that was both state-sponsored and industrialized. In particular, Dr. Ward focuses on the documents connected with the gassing program using Sonderwagen (“special” trucks), the death vans driven by the four Einsatzgruppen (A, B, C, and D) that roamed behind the advancing German line of tanks and troops into the Soviet Union and that often with the help of indigenous populations organized local killing squads that, village by village and house by house, rounded up Jews, undesirables, and communists and executed them—first and always by ditches and bullets, then by running hoses of carbon monoxide into the loaded and sealed compartments of the vans. Meanwhile, Jews from the rest of Europe were being “resettled” into small, walled-off, and vastly overcrowded and controlled ghettos in some larger cities, Warsaw being the most famous, as a prelude to the eventual and systematic transport of these culturally rich but physically impoverished and starving populations to slave labor camps or to death camps, the factories of the Final Solution, requisitioned or built primarily in Poland. In addition to exponentially expanding the number of facsimiles of the original German memos and their English translations, Deadly Documents employs rhetorical, ethnographic, historical, textual, and genre analysis, as well as biography,

AFTERWORD

/

207

cognitive psychology, organizational communication, visual communication, and cultural criticism. With these methods, Dr. Ward examines the until now little observed dynamics underlying the organization of genocide in Nazi Germany, and the role that the creation of technical documents themselves played in the production of the Holocaust. In doing so, Dr. Ward has written a highly engrossing and important book that ranges over many fields. Dr. Ward’s examination of the documents associated with the gassing van program is an innovative and even radical approach to this extreme but illustrative example of the role technical writing plays within organizations—or rather, perhaps the way organizations per se are created by technical documents. The basic premise of Dr. Ward’s deep, thoroughgoing, and historically probing work is that the production of technical documents was (and is) essential in holding organizations together—including a highly competitive, surprisingly fragile, and increasingly corrupt organization of the Nazi party and government— long enough to carry out the destruction of six million Jews and eight million other people. (By the end of World War II, a total of 50 million people had lost their lives; the fraction of Jews in this figure is startling not because of the relative size of the one ethnic race, but because the extermination of the Jews was not haphazard like war nor merely tolerated by officials, but rather the specific focus of state policy in Germany and the countries it captured, and a specific purpose for the use of German industry, science, and technology.) As Dr. Ward demonstrates, within the highly fractured bureaucracy and overtly competitive Nazi apparatus these “everyday documents” were not ideologically neutral, and anything but banal. Rather, Dr. Ward argues how these documents acted as “boundary objects” (see Herndl & Wilson, 2007), epistemically and socially constructing spaces for cooperation and indeed, what to many may be a surprise: an “ethical reality” for Nazi personnel to plan, implement necessary preparations, and carry out mass executions with minimal risk or harm to themselves. Deadly Documents thus seeks to critique from a fresh perspective several received notions about rhetoric, technology, and ethics within Nazi organizations, including the “ethic of expediency.” Deadly Documents not only revisits, interrogates, and overturns several historical as well as rhetorical assumptions and approaches to the gassing van memo, but also calls us to examine again still widely accepted notions of how the Holocaust could have happened. Of course, there were the centuries of quite eager and virulent anti-Semitism in Germany and Eastern Europe, as well as in Austria, Russia, France, and elsewhere that was unleashed by “liberating” SS soldiers and police. Beyond voracious and native hatreds of the Jews, which Dr. Ward explores in the first part of Deadly Documents, the Jews also were portrayed and seen by the Nazi regime as well as local populations as less than human, heinous, and/or connected with Bolshevism and thus the political enemy of the German people. Or was it a mob mentality that possessed many in the nation and beyond?

208

/

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Perhaps the first and one of the most prevalent “ethical positions” that Deadly Documents calls into question is the religious view that the Nazis, and Hitler in particular, were the embodiment of Evil. A related position is that they were cruel or sadistic (and having visited and explored in some detail Auschwitz and Birkenau, I can say with some certainty that in more than a few instances this definitely was the case). Other explanations have emerged to try to account for the deliberate plan to create an industry to exterminate an entire race of people. As touched on at the beginning of this Afterword, one widely held position, particularly among many Jewish people and survivors of the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel (2006), is that the enormity of the horror of the Shoah, this unique catastrophic event, could only have occurred outside the bounds of Western culture. Almost countering this position is Hannah Arendt’s (1963) assertion, based on her observations of the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, of the banality of evil—ordinary people simply following orders and doing their job. Philosophical theorists speculate that the psychological trauma of the Holocaust is so enormous as to be not merely inexplicable, but utterly incomprehensible (and thus to be so repressed that we forget to remember that we have forgotten (see Lyotard, 1990; cf. Sartre, 1948), who explores and argues for the influence of an existential dependence on and symbiotic relation of Semite and anti-Semite). Another well known theory that attempts to begin to fathom the Holocaust concerns the perversion of post-Enlightenment rationality and science, and the role that technological determinism may have played as one of if not the driving force of the Nazi regime, and of post-industrial society and culture generally, a theory especially developed and espoused by the Frankfurt School of Cultural Criticism (Horkheimer, 1974; Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002; cf. Herf, 1986). Of course there are many—Jews and non-Jews alike, including Christian evangelicals—who think that the Holocaust was a test of faith or a necessary step in the founding of the state of Israel, both positions supporting the inscrutable and bewildering work of the divine will of a God who would allow or cause so much suffering, Another, perhaps minority, position holds that the Holocaust was a punishment visited upon the community of a continuously sinful or perennially unfaithful Chosen People. And then there is the very small but increasingly vocal minority who claim the Holocaust never happened at all. (There is also a matter of when people believe the Holocaust to have “actually” begun, which we will touch on later in this Afterword.) My own position concerning the ethics of technology was and perhaps to some extent still is informed not only by “the technological imperative” but also by the theory (see Winner, 1999) that technology has both “extrinsic” and “intrinsic” values. The extrinsic values are not merely the external purposes and uses for which the technology was designed, but social and ethical values (social, cultural, and political mores, biases, deep-seated prejudices) that are built into technology by those who design or create its shape, size, structure, function, etc. And the intrinsic values are not merely the inherent worth, monetary

AFTERWORD

/

209

or otherwise, of the technology, but the ideological goals of all technology (speed, efficiency, consistency, homogeneity, productivity, etc.)—universal values that are shared by all technology in all cultures in all times, no matter what the ostensible or local purpose of the technology. Hence my connection (Katz, 1993) of ideology with expediency as an end in itself, particularly when the end is the development of technology. In this, I obviously still agree with William Barrett’s (1979) definition of technology as including not only machines, but art, technique, procedure—techne. I have since supplemented these positions with the early work of Jürgen Habermas (1970; cf. Moses & Katz, 2006) to understand how the ideology of technology and capitalism fuse into a “purposive-rational institutional framework” that subsumes and subjugates the traditional social framework (cf. Stiegler, 1998), and Martin Heidegger’s (1977) multifaceted view of technology as a form of human consciousness that turns nature into a “standing reserve” (cf. Katz & Rhodes, 2010). A critic of my work before Dr. Ward was Professor Moore. In what I consider to be his more interesting and well-written piece, Patrick Moore (2005) analyzes the history of Cultural Criticism in relation to the development of technology and capitalism by identifying Horkheimer and Adorno as the founders and first generation of the Frankfurt School of Cultural Criticism, which they imported to the United States upon their emigration here; Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas as the second generation of cultural critics of technology; and Carolyn Miller and I as a third generation of cultural critics. Moore’s basic argument is that the anti-instrumental view of technology is anti-capitalistic, and that rhetoric’s hyper-vigilance of technology is no longer necessary because the Nazis are (more or less) gone from our society. That is, the “war” (with technology) is over. Of course, I disagree. I do find that my view of technology and therefore expediency is influenced by the tradition of the Frankfurt School of Cultural Criticism insofar as I see the myths of science and technology (as opposed or in addition to their material results) as causative agents of fundamental cultural trends and change. These trends and changes would include the development of post-value systems based on rationality (I prefer the rhetorical term “reason” to the philosophical or positivistic-tinged “rationality”), understood only as quantification, positivistic logic, or data objects that become the basis of the assessment and validation of human (and increasingly, nonhuman) knowledge and values (cf. Feyerabend, 1993; Harman, 2010). These technological myths are the ideological excess of certain modes of inquiry that still need to be checked, observed, and when necessary, criticized. And like Horkheimer (1974), I seek another higher, perhaps transcendental realm of ethics to posit as a new basis for the ethics of scientific and technical communication—but not a Platonic one, like Horkheimer, nor one grounded in rationality or mere means-ends, but rather more like a Jewish one, founded and/or grounded in language itself (see Katz, passim; cf. Penrose & Katz, 2010, esp. pp. 53-88; Mebust & Katz, 2007; Moses & Katz, 2006; Moskow & Katz, 2008).

210

/

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Despite Herf’s (1986) argument that technology did not play a deterministic or ideological role in the inception or shaping of the Holocaust, we at least have proof of the importance of technology in carrying it out in Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust (2008). And now in the many more Nazi memos and documents Dr. Ward brings into the field for scrutiny. (I suppose Professor Moore also might classify Deadly Documents as the fourth generation Cultural Criticism because of Dr. Ward’s advances in combining the newest methods of that school [see Longo, 1998] with other forms of analysis to create a powerful tool for ascertaining the role of documents in the creation and maintenance of organizations. That classification, however, would be incorrect insofar as Dr. Ward does not necessarily agree with the premise that technology is invested with intrinsic values, and therefore even less in a Frankfurt-like philosophical position that technology itself possesses ideological content that can play a solo or significant role in determining history, particularly of the Holocaust. And Moore’s work too falls into one of Dr. Ward’s wider spheres of criticism.) In fact the first, more traditional historical part of Deadly Documents develops the content of Nazi culture in exploring the history of anti-Semitism, and of Nazi policies such as racial science that emerged from it. In another chapter Dr. Ward also introduces the biographies and personal statements of the principle players in the gassing van program, including the author of the “Just memo,” and the psychological, social, political, and individual positions and motivations of those involved in the composition and approval of this memo. Through an archeology of testimony and interviews, Dr. Ward recreates thoughts and memories of scenes in enough vivid detail for the reader to see through the killers’ eyes! In the latter half of Deadly Documents, Dr. Ward exercises more novel approaches to the study of document development and design in Nazi Germany, closely examining the original “Just memo” in the copious context of other memos associated with the vans. The later chapters of Deadly Documents thus expand and extend my perfunctory discussion of the rhetoric of what Dr. Ward shows is incorrectly referred to as the “Just memo.” One of the many original contributions to the fields of technical communication, history, and Holocaust Studies, is Dr. Ward’s analysis of the social structures revealed in these documents—the precision with which the Nazis encoded their bureaucratic hierarchy in the visual and verbal elements of the memo, locating their rank, authorial power (or lack thereof), and other organizational information in the highly regulated structure of the documents, and in the Nazis’ inordinate attention to neatness, format, signatures, initials, and other common elements. Copies of all of these Sonderwagen memos are presented in the original German versions, with full English translations conveniently contained in the text for teachers and scholars to see and use; many of the documents are rhetorically analyzed in Deadly Documents for the first time. As part of a “historical ethnography,” the later chapters of Deadly Documents also track and analyze a sample of the responses to and appropriations of my

AFTERWORD

/

211

1992 article and/or the memo by other scholars in the field. In doing so, Dr. Ward discovers many, different, and even contradictory uses of my thesis and the memo—especially those who cited it to support the position that there was “no ethics” in Nazi Germany, or to argue against an “objectivist” ideology in technical communication, or who offer it as further proof of a “hyperpragmatic” approach to technical communication. I will comment here that from a Latourian perspective, this “(mis)appropriation” of my work, like shifts in modality or modulations of focus, are part of the “natural” cycle of citation and argument in a field, and therefore to be expected (Latour, 1987; Latour & Woolgar, 1986). I think that the results of this analysis, showing hard changes in direction or overlaps or gaps in the consensus of the field, will surprise readers as much as it did me. But in addition to the value of Dr. Ward’s analyses, a major point in Deadly Documents is that the form and content of the memos do not point away from ethics or ideologies, but rather toward the specific ethics and ideologies of the Third Reich, and would do the same in the context of other ethics and ideologies. As I suggested in my original articles (Katz, 1992a, 1993), in this we will recognize, albeit uncomfortably, how documents can function similarly in our own organizations, fields, countries, cultures. “Nazi ethics”? An oxymoron? A paradox? Certainly a conundrum for us. In my 1993 article I explored and demonstrated the way Hitler in Mein Kampf seemed to turn Aristotelian virtues on their head (so that honor becomes the use of brute force, charity becomes merciful extermination, etc.). Dr. Ward does us a service by discussing how Nazi ethics are deeply rooted in quasi-scientific and mystical ideas about the superiority of Aryan blood, race, leadership, land, and other elements of German culture, promoted through bowdlerized history, philosophy, and propaganda. Even more importantly, from Dr. Ward’s study of the role of documents in organizations, we are to infer that ethics were and are not an individual enterprise, but rather emerge in a dynamic and often cantankerous process of competition and tension, often deliberately created within an organization by the leadership in order to promote the best person or solution. In this process, technical documents provide a “safer” and more “effective” channel than mere authority to “negotiate” and decide circumstance through briefer moments of cooperation. Dr. Ward argues through analysis and demonstration that technical documents are thus not mere instruments, nor expedient technologies, nor epistemic creations, but “boundary objects”—written spaces within an organization that serve to provide a place where diverse participants, thrown together, can discuss and mutually consolidate conflicting beliefs, ambitions, and missions. Boundary objects in Nazi Germany permitted organizations to function not only amidst competition and conflict, but also in the face of growing corruption and chaos, and in a few cases, such as with members of the shooting squads in Eastern Europe and one day even Himmler himself, amid growing albeit stultified and temporary consciences we might have wished to recognize and hail. But in Nazi Germany, these forces only served to tear the organization apart from within as

212 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

well as from without. Dr. Ward demonstrates how documents, in all their facets and dimensions, served as a counterforce. In Deadly Documents, we therefore see a new paradigm in which a powerful and charismatic individual who changes the course of history is no longer the primary or even secondary focus of historical study! Both narrative contextualization and social dynamic views of organizational communication, and thus of the gassing van program and the Holocaust, are evident in Deadly Documents. Perhaps “boundary objects,” like rhetoric for Kenneth Burke (1969), really depend on the social conflict for their existence. Yet, in Deadly Documents traditional and more novel methods of historical scholarship also become important if not essential in contextualizing the analysis of boundary objects. But note that the biographies in Dr. Ward’s book are not of Hitler or Himmler or Heydrich or Eichmann, but of lower level personnel like Just and the Sipo transportation gang—a reflection of New Historicism. In fact, one can almost see here how Arendt might have arrived at Eichmann from another Strasse—moving up a socially-dynamic chain to links much lower than a clasp of authority. However, paradigms, historical periods, Holocaust studies, like all fibril human knowledge, are quite complex and always subject to revisionism and change. The complexity of history is reflected not only in the intimate lives of killers, or ordinary citizens and their everyday documents, but also in those of the scholars who study them. To my mind and many others, Hannah Arendt’s lifework is more substantive and not so easily dismissed; the same can be said for her affair with a famous German philosopher, teacher, and Nazi party member before and after the war, as revealed in her love letters (Ludz, 2004) to Martin Heidegger, who never renounced his Nazi party membership! Her scholarship of the Holocaust, and her focus on the mundane and quotidian but still deadly acts of banality, may not be so entirely different, and may be both better informed and perhaps better understood as the beginning of a new view of history quite appropriate to the traumatic times just after World War II—a view of history that wanted to be done with charismatic leaders as “prime movers”—itself a historical period that Dr. Ward’s book suggests we may still be in. Though he is harder on Hannah, Dr. Ward is well aware of these conflicts, and is able to descend even lower on the chain in part because of her work, even if it is only a backdrop to flail against. Toward the end of Deadly Documents, Dr. Ward too briefly speculates on the personal psychology/religion/ethnic culture of the filmmaker, from whose script my version of the “Just memo” comes. Dr. Ward is quite right, of course, in pointing to the underlying assumptions of individualism and universality implicit in traditional historical treatments that focus only on major players as determiners of historical direction and change (be these persons, technologies, or ideologies); this is a criticism of my own 1992 and 1993 articles. But with the Holocaust, because of the Holocaust, I am always brought back to the relativity of ethics, which is quite problematic but a little easier to understand after reading Deadly Documents. For even boundary

AFTERWORD

/

213

objects—both as process and in content—must be grounded in stable if small points of acceptable assumptions, arguments, beliefs, or faiths. Thus it is that in the boundary object that is this book, Dr. Ward can give us both traditional history and a new “historical ethnography” based on interdisciplinary perspectives that allow reconstructions of the original contexts of organizations, individuals, and their documents. Before the rest of us push aside other, older methods of history or analysis, we would do well to remember the complexity of the issues that Deadly Documents captures so well in its interstices. And I believe we can, when we remember that we have forgotten to remember that the attempted extermination of a race was the policy of a modern western European state, a product of culture, from a people of taste. In addition to its final product, the horrific death of millions, the results of this policy include parts of Birkenau that look brand new—long white lines of modern toilets without paper or shelter or sink, or enormous industrial-sized washing machines and clothes dryers in the laundromat toward the rear of the camp, near the new incinerators. The Holocaust, with all of the attention and resources dedicated to it even as Nazi Germany was losing the world war it had started, would not have happened without Adolf Hitler (Ward, 2009d). I am old enough now to see how quickly the Hegelian pendulum of scholarship and history swing. (Dr. Ward has just reminded me that my original article is turning 20 years old as I write this.) In the larger sweep of history, in Deadly Documents, Dr. Ward is wielding a very big broom. Perhaps one of the questions that may remain and that I can focus on in this Afterword is: Why do we need to study Nazi documents as boundary objects? What can this harrowful (sic) period of history teach us, who live in an “enlightened” society? Shall I say more? I have said enough before, which is never enough. Except to say that if anyone believed that the Nazis were “not ethical,” one major purpose of the multifaceted and sustained analysis in Deadly Documents is to make us see the opposite: that there was indeed an ethics at work, even in Nazi society, and that we need even more now to study the documents that made those ethics reality. In 1939, Kenneth Burke (1973) rang the same warning, rendered the same verdict, upon the publication in English of Mein Kampf: that the ethics of Hitler’s rhetoric are real and dangerous. Nazi Germany was not without ethics. And they were not the same as ours. But they are ethics in the same way. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Deadly Documents is that it is able to delineate between the purposes and processes of bureaucracies as organizations in which documents play a critical role, and the different but underlying ethics and ideologies that these organizations through documents created and enacted. In Nazi Germany, memos and other documents alluded to in Deadly Documents provided an ontological basis for action at every level of relations, from co-workers, on up through the echelon of leaders, to the Führer himself. Of course, unlike the role of documents in organizations today, the ethics and ideologies instantiated, embedded, and represented in these Nazi memos do not

214 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

correspond (for the most part) to those of our techno-capitalistic organizations and systems. Just as in 1993 I attempted to explain that social-epistemic rhetoric is not ideologically neutral, and can be used in any society for any purpose, Dr. Ward attempts to show that these Nazi documents, as boundary objects, are not ideologically neutral either, and that documents can be used in any organization for any purpose. But Deadly Documents takes additional steps to illuminate how they become so. In doing so, Dr. Ward extends and redirects and expands the analysis of these memos in ways that might provide teachers and scholars with enough tools and materials to analyze the relation of documents, organizations, and ethics—the Nazis, and our own—for years to come. There is another reason, hinted at earlier in discussing the cultural criticism of technology, why these analyses, from whatever point in the evolution of perspectives, are necessary. The creation of new ideologies and ethics in and through organizations and documents is not over. The post-industrial revolution has not stopped, but rather morphed into more invisible interrelated organizations of humans, machines, and ideological structures—what Giorgio Agamben (2009), citing Michel Foucault (1980b), calls “the apparatus”—have not stopped, nor have the digital “documents” that create and accompany them. For us these documents are not merely forms of knowledge, cybernetic data, or information objects whose greater dissemination and dispersal and transparency requires greater vigilance (see Hayles, 1999). They are the virtual environments in which we work and live (Moses & Katz, 2006). These are not the memos for the Sonderwagen, so heinous (to us). But they do encode some equivalent of rank, organizational hierarchy, social structure, and procedure (cf. Bogost, 2007). An understanding of the role these and other technical documents play in organizations today, the genres we employ and live in, the ethics and ideologies of these boundary objects—how we represent people, each other, ourselves—are vitally important to us now, in these first decades of the twenty-first century and beyond, where media is a way of life for us, and/or our aliases and avatars. In technical and professional communication within organizations as well as classrooms in the United States (and here in this penultimate part of the Afterword I am going to solipsistically cite myself so that any interested readers can see where “I’ve been” for the last 20 years), but also in Europe, almost all “communication acts”—including those that describe the relations and results of scientific research and technological development; governmental and social processes, programs, policies, and procedures; risk management and communication (Katz & Miller, 1996); biotechnology communication with the public (Katz, 2001, 2009a), even genetic counseling (Mebust & Katz, 2007)—all continue to be based on faulty communication models in which neither affect nor values are seen as legitimate forms of knowledge or taken into account. Rather, communication continues to be—no, increasingly is in digital technology— depicted and understood as a (one-way) transmission of information (although the internet is changing and indeed scrambling the direction as well as the

AFTERWORD

/

215

quantity and power of our transactions). In Bruno Latour’s (2005) later work on “social networks,” qua Graham Harman’s (2009, 2010) “Object Oriented Philosophy,” inanimate forms too interact and possess agency without the necessity of human intervention or ethics or will (what Kenneth Burke [1969] might call “causal” or mechanist force, rather than conscious, dramatistically motivated action), and what I believe is the early ontology and ethics of sentient artificial life forms we are creating. Indeed, it seems to me we are still (secretly?) addicted to the “CBS” theory of style (clarity, brevity, sincerity [or simplicity]) that should have been put to rest after the work of Richard Lanham (2003). As Dr. Ward describes them, as “models” of boundary objects if not ethics and ideology in the organizations of the Third Reich, Nazis documents held accuracy, clarity, precision, as a matter of both efficiency and authority, to be essential for the smooth running of its bureaucracies. These are the platforms of communication, culture, and consciousness begun in Plato’s (e.g., 1952) Ideal Forms; continued in the material realm by Sprat’s (1667) anti-rhetorical one-to-one correspondence of word and thing, a “mathematical plainness” in scientific language; and in John Locke’s (1975) “pipeline” of ideas. For us, the transmission is instantaneous, wireless, and worldwide. In addition, our ideal language now includes “transparency,” which like the clear glass windows of the senses and mind are a myth in communication (see Bolter & Gromala, 2003). Transparency may be a good metaphor for procedures, machines, governmental and social agencies, and organizations as a whole. But transparency in language is not necessarily a good thing for “clarity” of intention, agency, motive. Transparency in documents as boundary objects distends language and purpose, renders rhetorical acts ethically thin and stylistically invisible, and leaves images and symbols almost bodiless, rather than what Lanham (2003) calls “opaque,” a more solid state where we can see what the physical medium, the language, the rhetoric of the boundary object, is doing in the documents of specific organizations. Contra Moore (2005), there is a need for the cultural criticism of scientific and technical communication within organizations. Indeed, we need more books like Deadly Documents, which probe the ideology of the obvious, ”denaturalize” the apparently objective, and make opaque seemingly neutral portals. While the particulars of the ideology of technology critiqued by the Frankfurt School or its “descendents” may not be relevant or have changed, Dr. Ward demonstrates that the act of critiquing itself is still quite relevant to peoples around the world who, like the Jews, continue to be besieged, assaulted, or used by historical forces beyond their control (the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2011, and the onslaughts before, during and after, is a manifestation or result of these forces, and reveal the central role communication always plays at the nexus of human interaction). Perhaps one of the unexpected benefits of Deadly Documents is the several critical “windows” it opens. And for Jews, it is never over for the Jews.

216 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

There is also another level, of boundary objects in specific cultures, another dimension of ethics and meaning, which is missing in the Nazi documents Dr. Ward analyzes, but that I would like to touch on here, at the end of my already-too-long in closing Afterword. It is a dimension that perhaps points outward, beyond one set of boundary objects to other sets of boundary objects in other, very different cultural and religious contexts that are naturally not discussed in Deadly Documents, a different “rhetorology,” epistemology, ontology (language, technology, reality), one completely opposite from the Nazis’. Although this discussion may seem to stray from the Dr. Ward’s book, it does not. You will remember that I began this Afterword of Dr. Ward’s landmark book by invoking within a discussion of festschrifts, a Jewish perspective on teaching and learning, a perspective based in reverence of language, knowledge, and human relations. This dimension of boundary objects with which I want to end is informed by research I have been conducting for the past 20 years in ancient Jewish rhetorics as an alternate ancient sophistic tradition (see Katz, 2009b; Metzger & Katz, 2010). I have been slowly moving to connect this area of my research to the problem of ethics in technical communication, as an alternate to expediency, and now, in the context of boundary objects, as another ideological ground. I make these connections here, for the first time in print, in this Afterword, out of reverence, and in honor of this book and respect for my former student, its author. Such is the proper relation between teacher and student, one not based on rivalry nor mere mechanical reference, but in respect born out of reverence—a topic of Jewish ethics and experience that Dr. Ward and I often talked about and shared while he was working on his dissertation with me. It is a reverence for teaching, for students, for learning, for scholarship, for all who labored before, and who are to come. This is the kind of reverence that the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (2000) explored in I and Thou, in which neither party is turned into an “It,” an object to be used. It is more than a two-way relationship, perhaps even more than a Platonic union, or a social-epistemic relationship, or a consubstantial rhetorical communion (to cite Kenneth Burke [1969] again) between beings separate, isolated, leaning out over the abyss. . . . It may be a boundary object for human relationships generally, and even between humans and nature, and humans and machines (Katz & Rhodes, 2010). But we do not use ethical terms like “honor,” “respect,” “reverence” in technical communication, as least not in the West. They sound strange and unfamiliar to us. They belong to an earlier time, another age, perhaps of medieval manuals on letter writing. Yet they have their parallels (e.g., Longo, 2000; Richardson & Liggett, 1993), a time before what (early) Habermas (1970) called the “purposive-rational framework” of communication and culture, when human and social relations were more important than production and profits, and not merely employed for such. We use mechanical or legal terms like “resource,” “plagiarism,” “citation.” So what does all this folderol about Judaism, about the

AFTERWORD

/

217

Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, have to do with Dr. Ward’s book, to which this essay is appended? What does reverence have to do with technical communication? Nothing. And everything. For that is precisely what is missing in “deadly documents”: reverence. Reverence for human relations, for language, for knowledge (mutual relations, not leader and victims; sacred language, not propaganda; wisdom, not racial purity)—reverence, not fanaticism grounded in violence, brutality, and force exhibited by the Führer, the moral exemplar for the Aryan race. It is a reverence for the word/Word, found in Judaism and Christianity and Islam, those religions of language which stand at the nexus of boundary objects rooted in “a physical reality” and ethical beliefs quite contrary to that of the Nazis. The connection to technical communication is not “clear” yet. What does one do with the conflict between personal moral obligations in the JudeoChristian-Islamic religions, and the “relativity” of the Holocaust, which is the basis of this book as “object”? (This is similar to the question: Can a sophist believe in God? [Katz, 1995a, 1995b].) From within Judaism in particular, morality grows out of a reverence for language, and the endless interpretation of it, for the written and spoken word is itself sacred. This rhetorical tradition of reverence for language in Judaism is, as I have discussed elsewhere (Katz, 2003, 2004b), ultimately rooted in a belief in the sacredness of books, and in Torah and Mishnah in particular, of language as holy, of texts, “documents,” and even of letters and names themselves, as holy, as reality. (You may have noticed that in the Jewish tradition, Torah, the Written Law, writing, comes before Mishnah, the Oral Law, speech. Deconstruction starts from the same premise, but empties the sacred out of signification [e.g., see Derrida, 1985, 1998, 2001].) Here, then, we merge on a discussion of a sophistic belief in language as social-epistemic persuasion, which has more or less informed the rhetorical theory and pedagogy of technical communication in the last 25 years, and certainly since the publication of Carolyn Miller’s essay, “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Communication” (1979). But we also verge on the question of the ontological status of language and letters—a set of beliefs akin to the mystical Pythagorean assumption that numbers and formulae not only describe but also constitute physical essences and make up the material world, a belief still held by some mathematicians (e.g., Aczel, 2000; Penrose, 1989). It is difficult to understand a world in which language is the reality, and reality the language (Dan, 1998), or why one would want to do so (see Handelman, 1983). But we don’t have to believe in mysticism to see some possible reasons. In our time, language as ontology can be more easily regarded as the basis of reality, of physical as well as moral and social realities, in the digital media and virtual environs we occupy (see Moses & Katz, 2006; Moskow & Katz, 2008). And although the web-based and the virtual worlds can be seen as extensions of linguistic realities (of documents that we increasingly [and unconsciously] inhabit), we more often don’t see them, but simply live in and become absorbed by them more and more each day (writing and replying to

218 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

email, engaging friends through social media despite time and space). In fact, for this reason, articulated above, I have suggested that critiques of technology are needed now more than ever. In Judaism, analysis is reverence (the purpose of hermeneutics and response through over 5,000 years of writing). Indeed, one might say that it is a lack of reverence that makes any kind of document “deadly”! Or at least one reason. Ironically, deliberately, these were the people and ideals Hitler and the Nazis were trying to kill (see Steiner, 1971). Despite the criticism of the linguistic turn in Object Oriented Philosophy (Harman, 2010), in our society, and especially in our technical communication, we do not grant language any ontological status. We hardly grant it epistemological status. Indeed, we are (again) taking a non-linguistic turn. Whether we hold an enlightened empirical, epistemic, social-constructionist, or mystical view of language, words, especially in virtual realities and simulated worlds, are documents that within certain ethical and ideological contexts do have the power—arrayed on a spectrum—to frame, to influence perception and/or thought, to persuade, to construct, or even to determine realities. Only in the naïve empirical and positivistic views of the world do words have no power except (like the German or local residents) to stand-aside and do nothing while bodies are beaten, and columns of unquestioned facts pass by. Deadly Documents. We are talking about the “People of the Book,” for whom the Torah was a place, a hermeneutic space, the source of a happy life, as it is written. We are talking about congregants who kiss the prayer book if it touches the floor. We are talking about a people who ritually bury worn Bible pages in special plots in cemeteries. We are talking about a people for whom gossip, the killing of someone’s name, is likened to a form of murder, linguistic murder. A people for whom the stripping of sacred documents and prayer books and Torah and Talmud is a death, for whom a name replaced with an IBM Hollerith machine ID number tattooed on the wrist (Black, 2008) is a double death. The shredded and burning books, prayer books, prayer shawls (tallit), Torah, civil documents, right to work/identity papers, the yellow signifying star sewn into front and back of clothes, heads and beards (very symbolic, especially for the orthodox) shaved, glasses taken away and unable to read, the public degradation of work or torture (they are the same on a Jewish holiday), sacred rituals interrupted, ridiculed, forbidden, anything that violated or deprived Jews of their identity—each one another murder, each one a death. It is no wonder, then, that despite changes in historical paradigm and scholarly dating of the Shoah beginning with “the Final Solution,” Jews experienced and still perceive the Holocaust as beginning much earlier, for example, “in 1938, the eve of the Holocaust” (Dershowitz, 2010), as one imperceptible long movement, from smaller violations of civil and human rights to gas chambers and ovens. Deadly Documents helps us understand the Holocaust, especially from the killer’s point of view. Dr. Ward alludes to but does not include the Jewish perspective, as such; no one should expect him to. But if we can see the Shoah

AFTERWORD

/

219

from the killer’s perspective, a fortiori, we should be able to see it from the Jewish victims’ perspective as well. Let me offer, then, another story, a short story inspired by Dr. Ward’s book, an imagined but representative story (for this happened, over and over again). Imagine a world, perhaps equally alien, in which texts are reality, hermeneutics prayer, the eternity of interpretations a paradise. Now see the ascension of the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler. See the firing of Jewish intellectuals and civil servants and businessmen. See the Brownshirts and the SS and ordinary German citizens legally beating you in the street, looting and burning your books, your possessions, your house. (I am still talking about language.) A scrolled sign, Achtung, Juden, a profane sign, skull and bones on it, is hung across your store window or door so no one can get in (there is a guard there too, just to make sure). Then your street, your synagogue, the libraries, the Torah, are plundered, burnt. See the bent and previously learned man of any age, young old, rush into the flames to rescue the heavy scroll from the fire. See the holy scrolls, the letters still burning from creation, awkwardly, dangerously ferried out of German-occupied lands, and hidden like people, like children, the only luggage they have, all they could or would save, carry, possess (like heavy arks of scrolls carried through the desert for 40 years), make their way west, then travel like orphans across the ocean, bereft children, into the arms of distant relatives on the other side of the world, but all speaking the same language, no matter where in Europe or Russia they come, to synagogues in America, and Canada. And only now, after a half-century of loving memory and use, these distant relatives in congregations from all over the Western continent, the Torahs’ new homes, undertake special pilgrimages, back to the old world, looking for what, if anything, is left of the Jewish people, to large cities and tiny villages, or who have dared to begin to spring to life again, to take uncertain root. See the Torah delivered to their rightful owners, or their descendents (compare this to the non-action of Swiss banks). With this Torah they can start to rebuild again, even in cyberspace (Moskow & Katz, 2008). Dr. Ward’s analysis, and mine from 20 years ago, and now, might not be as antithetical or mutually exclusive as they initially may seem. For one can also think about expediency (especially as a means) at every level of the documents that Dr. Ward analyzes, at every level of every organizational Nazi hierarchy that Dr. Ward has revealed by a potent combination of methods. Both examinations are an archeology or hermeneutics of texts, of documents as spaces for cooperation, belief, and ideology, and subsequent ethics and concerted action, which make shared understanding and thus cooperation possible. Although we come at it from different directions, we reach the same conclusion. We both believe that within those words as spaces ethical realities are created, in which belief is enacted and action taken. We both believe in the reality of words, of D/documents, and that these “texts” have aftermaths. And these aftermaths could be dangerous, can mean death.

220 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Thus, we both believe in developing fuller ethical understandings and pedagogies of how technical documents can be used or misused within the organization of the workplace. While we both have some quibbles here and there (but not as many as people might have imagined, or hoped), I had the privilege of watching a true student-scholar further research and develop an analysis and argument I had started long ago. I am glad to see my early work fairly examined, updated, and expanded based on the latest trends in historical and critical scholarship, and to have played some very small part in that process. I am honored that Dr. Ward has requested that I also write this Afterword to his singular book. Out of mutual reverence, it is my honor to now respectfully accept his invitation to do so. Steven B. Katz Pearce Professor of Professional Communication Clemson University January-February 2012—Tishri/Shebat/Adar 5772

References

Aczel, A. D. (2000). The mystery of the Alef: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the search for infinity. New York, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows. Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus? And other essays (D. Kishik & S. Pedatella, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Allen, B. J. (2005). Social constructionism. In S. May & D. K. Mumby (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory and research (pp. 35–54). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Allen, M. T. (2002). The business of genocide: The SS, slave labor, and the concentration camps. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Alvesson, M. (2002). Understanding organizational culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Alvesson, M. (2004). Organizational culture and discourse. In D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick, & L. Putnam (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational discourse (pp. 317–335). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2004). Identity regulation as organizational control producing the appropriate individual. In M. J. Hatch & M. Schultz (Eds.), Organizational identity: A reader (pp. 436–468). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Aly, G. (2000). “Jewish resettlement”: Reflections on the political prehistory of the Holocaust. In U. Herbert (Ed.), National socialist extermination policies: Contemporary German perspectives and controversies (pp. 53–82). New York, NY: Berghahn. Aly, G. (2006). Hitler’s beneficiaries: Plunder, racial war, and the Nazi welfare state (J. Chase, Trans.). New York, NY: Metropolitan. (Original work published 2005) Aly, G., & Heim, S. (2002). Architect of annihilation: Auschwitz and the logic of destruction (A. Blunden, Trans.). London, UK: Phoenix. (Original work published 1991) Aly, G., & Roth, K. H. (2004). The Nazi census: Identification and control in the Third Reich (E. Black, Trans.). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. (Original work published 2000) Arendt, H. (1950). Social science techniques and the study of concentration camps. Jewish Social Studies, 12, 49–64. Arendt, H. (1953). A reply [to Eric Voegelin’s review of Origins of totalitarianism]. Review of Politics, 15, 76–84. Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York, NY: Viking. 221

222 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Arendt, H., & Heidegger, M. (2004). Letters 1925–1975 (A. Shields, Trans.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt. (Original work published 1998) Aristotle. (1947). Nichomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). New York, NY: Modern Library. Aristotle. (1954). Rhetoric and poetics (W. R. Roberts, Trans.). New York, NY: Modern Library. Aristotle. (2007). On rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse (2nd ed.) (G. Kennedy, Trans.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Axis History Forum. (2003). Gas vans? Or “LC-Koffer” Spezial-LKW? [Online chat forum]. Retrieved February 28, 2010, from http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic .php?t=17133#p145484 Balter-Reitz, S. J., & Stewart, K. A. (2006). Looking for Matthew Shepard: A study in visual argument field. In D. S. Hope (Ed.), Visual communication: Perception, rhetoric, and technology (pp. 111–126). Cresskill, NY: Hampton. Barrett, W. (1979). The illusion of technique. Norwell, MA: Anchor. Barry, A. M. (1997). Visual intelligence: Perception, image and manipulation in visual communication. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Barry, A. M. (2006). Perceptual aesthetics: Transcendent emotion, neurological image. Visual Communication Quarterly, 13(3), 134–151. Bauer, Y. (1990). Is the Holocaust explicable? Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 5(2), 145–155. Bauer, Y. (2001). Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Beer, M. (1987). Die Entwicklung der gaswagen beim mord an den Juden. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 35, 403–417. Berkenkotter, C. A. (2002). Analyzing everyday texts in organizational settings. In L. J. Gurak & M. M. Lay (Eds.), Research in technical communication (pp. 47–66). Westport, CT: Praeger. Bjerregarrd, T. (2011). Studying institutional work in organizations: Uses and implications of ethnographic methodologies. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 24(1), 51–64. Black, E. (2001). IBM and the Holocaust: The strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s most powerful corporation. New York, NY: Crown. Black, E. (2003). War against the weak: Eugenics and America’s campaign to create a master race. New York, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows. Black, E. (2008). IBM and the Holocaust: The strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s most powerful corporation. Washington, DC: Dialog Press. (Original work published 2001) Bloom, H. (1997). The anxiety of influence: A theory of poetry. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games: The expressive power of videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Boje, D. (1991). The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. Administration Science Quarterly, 36, 106–126. Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney in “Tamara-Land.” Academy of Management Journal, 38, 997–1035.

REFERENCES

/

223

Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative methods for organizational and communication research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Boje, D. M., Gephardt, R. P., Jr., & Thatchenkery, T. J. (Eds.). (1996). Postmodern management and organization theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bolter, J. D., & Gromala, G. (2003). Windows and mirrors: Interaction design, digital art, and the myth of transparency. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bordieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1980) Brasseur, L. E. (1993). Contesting the objectivist paradigm: Gender issues in the technical and professional communication curriculum. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 36(3), 114–123. Brasseur, L. E. (2004). Contesting the objectivist paradigm: Gender issues in the technical and professional communication curriculum. In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 475-490). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Brecht, A., & Glaser, C. (1940). The art and technique of administration in German ministries. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Breitman, R. (1991). The architect of genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York, NY: Knopf. Britt, E. C. (2006). The rhetorical work of institutions. In J. B. Scott, B. Longo, & K. V. Wills (Eds.), Critical power tools: Technical communication and cultural studies (pp. 133-150). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Browder, G. C. (1990). Foundations of the Nazi police state: The formation of Sipo and SD. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press. Browder, G. C. (1996). Hitler’s enforcers: The Gestapo and the SS Security Service in the Nazi revolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Browning, C. R. (1991). Fateful months: Essays on the emergence of the Final Solution (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: Holmes & Meier. Browning, C. R. (1992). Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Browning, C. R. (1998). Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, with a new afterword. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Browning, C. R. (2004). The origins of the Final Solution: The evolution of Nazi Jewish policy, September 1939–March 1942. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Buber, M. (2000). I and Thou (R. G. Smith, Trans.). New York, NY: Scribner. Buchheim, H. (1968). Command and compliance. (R. Barry, Trans.). In H. Krausnick, H. Buchheim, M. Broszat, & H.-A. Jacobsen, Anatomy of the SS state (pp. 303–396). New York, NY: Walker. (Original work published 1965) Burgchardt, C. R. (Ed.). (2010). Readings in rhetorical criticism (4th ed.). State College, PA: Strata. Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burke, K. (1973). The rhetoric of Hitler’s “Battle.” In The philosophy of literary form (pp. 191-220). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Original work published 1939) Burleigh, M. (2007). Sacred causes: The clash of religion and politics from the Great War to the War on Terror. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

224 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Burleigh, M., & Wippermann, W. (1991). The racial state: Germany 1933–1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Burrell, G. (1988). Modernism, post modernism and organizational analysis 2: The contribution of Michel Foucault. Organization Studies, 9(2), 221–235. Carroll, J. (2001). Constantine’s sword: The church and the Jews, a history. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Cesarini, D. (2004). Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the life, crimes, and trial of a “desk murderer.” New York, NY: Da Capo. Chia, R. (2003). Organization theory as a postmodern science. In H. Tsoukas & C. Knudsen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organization theory (pp. 113–142). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Cohn-Sherbok, D. (2002). Anti-semitism: A history. Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton. Cooper, R. (1989). Modernism, post modernism and organizational analysis 3: The contribution of Jacques Derrida. Organization Studies, 10(4), 479–502. Cooper, R., & Burrell, G. (1988). Modernism, postmodernism and organizational analysis: An introduction. Organization Studies, 9(1), 91–112. Corman, S. R. (2005). Postpositivism. In S. May & D. K. Mumby (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory and research (pp. 15–34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Craig, R. T. (2000). Communication. Encyclopedia of rhetoric. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press [electronic version]. Retrieved February 28, 2010, from http://spot. colorado.edu/~craigr/Communication.htm Crossan, J. D. (1996). Who killed Jesus? Exposing the roots of anti-Semitism in the gospel story of the death of Jesus. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Dan, J. (1998). Jewish mysticism: Late antiquity (Vol. 1). Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Danby, H. (1933). Preface. In H. Danby (Ed.), The Mishnah (pp. v–viii). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Deetz, S. (1995). Transforming communication, transforming business: Building responsive and responsible workplaces. Cresskill, NY: Hampton. Deetz, S. (1998). Discursive formations, strategized subordination and self-surveillance. In A. McKinlay & K. Starkey (Eds.), Foucault, management and organization theory (pp. 151–172). London, UK: Sage. Deguy, M. (1990). Au sujet de Shoah: Le film de Claude Lanzmann. Paris, France: Belin. DeLuca, K. M. (2006). The speed of immanent images: The dangers of reading photographs. In D. S. Hope (Ed.), Visual communication: Perception, rhetoric, and technology (pp. 79–90). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. Derrida, J. (1985). Margins of philosophy (A. Bass, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1972) Derrida, J. (1998). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1974) Derrida, J. (2001). Acts of religion. London, UK: Routledge. Dershowitz, A. (2010). On growing up an American Jew. Retrieved November 17, 2012 from http://video.answers.com/alan-dershowitz-on-growing-up-an-american-jew291036195# Desbois, P. (2008). The Holocaust by bullets: A priest’s journey to uncover the truth behind the murder of 1.5 million Jews. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

REFERENCES

/

225

Dillard, J. P., & Peck, E. (2001). Persuasion and the structure of affect dual systems and discrete emotions as complementary models. Human Communication Research, 27(1), 38–68. Dimont, M. I. (1962). Jews, God and history. New York, NY: New American Library. Doheny-Farina, S., & Odell, L. (1985). Ethnographic research on writing: Assumptions. In L. Odell & D. Goswami (Eds.), Writing in nonacademic settings (pp. 503–555). New York, NY: Guilford. Dombrowski, P. M. (1991). The lessons of the Challenger disaster. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 34(4), 211–216. Dombrowski, P. M. (1992a). Challenger and the social contingency of meaning: Two lessons for the technical communication classroom. Technical Communication Quarterly, 1(3), 73–85. Dombrowski, P. M. (1992b). A comment on the construction of knowledge in organizations: Asking the right questions about the Challenger. Journal of Business and Technical Communications, 6(1), 123–127. Dombrowski, P. M. (1995). Can ethics be technologized? Lessons from Challenger, philosophy, and rhetoric. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 38(3), 146–157. Dombrowski, P. M. (2000a). Ethics in technical communication. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Dombrowksi, P. M. (2000b). Ethics and technical communication: The past quarter century. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 30(1), 3–29. Donaldson, L. (2003). Organization theory as a positive science. In H. Tsoukas & C. Knudsen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organization theory (pp. 39–62). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Dragga, S. (1996). “Is this ethical?” A survey of opinion on principles and practices of document design. Technical Communication, 43, 255–265. Dragga, S. (1997). A question of ethics: Lessons from technical communicators on the job. Technical Communication Quarterly, 6, 161–178. Dragga, S., & Voss, D. (2001). Cruel pies: The inhumanity of technical illustrations. Technical Communication, 48(3), 265–274. Dwork, D., & Van Pelt, R. J. (1996). Auschwitz: 1270 to the present. New York, NY: Norton. Dwork, D., & van Pelt, J. (2002). Holocaust: A history. New York, NY: Norton. Eliot, T. (1932). Tradition and the individual talent. In Selected essays: 1917–1932 (pp. 3–11). New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, and Co. Evans, R. J. (2001). Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving trial. New York, NY: Basic. Evans, R. J. (2003). The coming of the Third Reich. New York, NY: Penguin. Evans, R. J. (2009). The Third Reich at war. New York, NY: Penguin. Faber, B. (1999). Intuitive ethics: Understanding and critiquing the role of intuition in ethical decisions. Technical Communication Quarterly, 8(2), 189–202. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, MA: Polity. Farrell, T. B. (1991). Practicing the arts of rhetoric: Tradition and invention. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 24, 183–212.

226 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Felman, S. (1992). The return of the voice: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. In S. Felman & D. Laud (Eds.), Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history (pp. 204–283). New York, NY: Routledge. Feyerabend, P. (1993). Against method. New York, NY: Verso. Fischer, K. P. (1998). The history of an obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Continuum. Fisher, W. R. (1978). Toward a logic of good reasons. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 64, 376–384. Fisher, W. R. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Fleming, G. (1984). Hitler and the Final Solution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Foucault, M. (1977). What is an author? In D. F. Bouchard (Ed.), Language-countermemory, practice: Selected essays and interviews (pp. 113–138). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault , M. (1979). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage. (Original work published 1975) Foucault, M. (1980a). The history of sexuality (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage. Foucault, M. (1980b). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York, NY: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1984). On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of work in progress. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault reader (pp. 352–355). New York, NY: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self. In L. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self (pp. 16–49). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Freud, S. (1939). Moses and monotheism (K. Jones, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage. (Original work published 1937) Friedlander, H. (1995). The origins of Nazi genocide: From euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Friedlander, H., & Milton, S. (Eds.). (1992). Archives of the Holocaust (Vol. 11, Part 2). New York, NY: Garland. Friedländer, S. (2007). The years of extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Friedman, S. W. (1996). Marc Bloch, sociology, and geography: Encountering changing disciplines. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fritzsche, P. (1998). Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fritzsche, P. (2008). Life and death in the Third Reich. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Galison, P. (1997). The trading zone: Coordinating action and belief. In P. Galison (Ed.), Image and logic: A material culture of microphysics (pp. 168–211). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gellately, R. (2001). Backing Hitler: Consent and coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Gergen, K. J., Gergen, M. M., & Barrett, F. J. (2004). Dialogue: Life and death of the organization. In D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick, & L. Putnam (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational discourse (pp. 39–60). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

REFERENCES

/

227

Gergen, K. J., & Thatchenkery, T. (2006). Organizational science and the promises of postmodernism. In D. M. Hosking & S. McNamee, S. (Eds.), The social construction of organization (pp. 34–53). Malmo, Sweden: Liber. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of a theory of adaptive structuration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gilbert, M. (2001). The Jews in the twentieth century. New York, NY: Schocken. Goldhagen, D. J. (1996). Hitler’s willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Vintage. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C., & Putnam, L. L. (2004a). The SAGE handbook of organizational discourse. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C., & Putnam, L. L. (2004b). Organizational discourse: Exploring the field. In D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick, & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational discourse (pp. 1–36). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Grant, D., & Iedema, R. (2005). Discourse analysis and the study of organizations. Text, 25(1), 37–66. Grant, D., Keenoy, T., & Oswick, C. (Eds.). (1998). Discourse and organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Grant, D., Keenoy, T., & Oswick, C. (2001). Organizational discourse: Key contributions and challenges. International Studies of Management and Organization, 31(3), 5–24. Greif, G. (2001). Gas chambers. In W. Laqueur (Ed.), The Holocaust encyclopedia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Habermas, J. (1970). Technology and science as “ideology.” In Toward a rational society: Student protest, science, and politics (pp. 81–122) (J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Hamann, B. (1999). Hitler’s Vienna: A dictator’s apprenticeship (T. Thornton, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Handelman, S. (1983). Slayers of Moses: The emergence of rabbinic interpretation in modern literary theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress. (n.d.). The great tradition and the nature of totalitarianism (p. 1). Retrieved June 3, 2011, from http://memory.loc.gov/ cgi-bin/query/P?mharendt:1:./temp/~ammem_B05g:: Harman, G. (2009). Prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics. Melbourne, Australia: re.press. Harman, G. (2010). Towards speculative realism: Essays and lectures. Ropley, UK: Zero Books. Hayles, K. N. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Harrison, T. M., & Katz, S. M. (2002). On taking organizations seriously: Organizations as social contexts for technical communication. In L. J. Gurak & M. M. Lay (Eds.), Research in technical communication (pp. 17–29). Westport, CT: Praeger. Hatch, M. J., & Yanow, D. (2003). Organization theory as an interpretive science. In H. Tsoukas & C. Knudsen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organization theory (pp. 63–87). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). New York, NY: Harper.

228 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Heracleous, L. T. (2006). Discourse, interpretation, organization. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Herf, J. (1986). Reactionary modernism: Technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Herf, J. (2006). The Jewish enemy: Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Herndl, C. G., Fennell, B. A., & Miller, C. R. (1991). Understanding failures in organizational communication: The accident at Three Mile Island and the shuttle Challenger disaster. In C. Bazerman & J. Paradis (Eds.), Textual dynamics of the professions: Historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities (pp. 279–305). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Herndl, C. G., & Wilson, G. (2007). Boundary objects as rhetorical exigence: Knowledge mapping and interdisciplinary cooperation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21, 129–154. Hilberg, R. (2003). The destruction of the European Jews. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hill, C. A., & Helmers, M. (Eds.). (2004). Defining visual rhetorics. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Himmelfarb, M. (1984, March). No Hitler, no Holocaust. Commentary, 37–43. Hitler, A. (1943). Mein Kampf (R. Manheim, Trans.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. (Original work published 1925) Hochstadt, S. (Ed.). (2004). Sources of the Holocaust. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Holocaust Research Project. (2009). Walter Rauff: Letters to the gas van expert. Retrieved October 17, 2011, from http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/images/ Einsatz%20Breport%20mentioning%20gasvan%206.jpg Höhne, H. (1969). The order of the Death’s Head: The story of Hitler’s SS. New York, NY: Penguin. Hope, D. S. (2006). Introduction: Identity and visual communication. In D. S. Hope (Ed.), Visual communication: Perception, rhetoric, and technology (pp. 1–27). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. Horkheimer, M. (1974). Eclipse of reason. London, UK: Continuum. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment (E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1944) Isocrates. (1929). Antidosis. In Isocrates II (G. Norton, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jacques, R. (1996). The disciplinary world of l’employe. In R. Jacques (Ed.), Manufacturing the employee: Management knowledge from the 19th to the 21st centuries (pp. 96–145). London, UK: Sage. Johnson, B. (1985). Taking fidelity philosophically. In J. F. Graham (Ed.), Difference in translation (pp. 142–148). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Johnson, E. A., & Reuband, K.-H. (2005). What we knew: Terror, mass murder, and everyday life in Nazi Germany: An oral history. New York, NY: Basic. Johnson, P. (1987). A history of the Jews. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Johnson-Eilola, J. (1996). Relocating the value of work: Technical communication in a post-Industrial age. Technical Communication Quarterly, 5(3), 245–270.

REFERENCES

/

229

Johnson-Eilola, J., & Selber, S. A. (2004). Ethical and power issues. In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 193–194). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kant, I. (1969). Foundations of the metaphysics of morals (L. W. Beck, Trans.). In R. P. Wolf (Ed.), Foundations of the metaphysics of morals, with critical essays. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Katz, S. B. (1992a). The ethic of expediency: Classical rhetoric, technology, and the Holocaust. College English, 54, 255–275. Katz, S. B. (1992b). Steven Katz responds. College English, 54(7), 858–861. Katz, S. B. (1993). Aristotle’s rhetoric, Hitler’s program, and the ideological problem of praxis, power, and professional discourse as a social construction of knowledge. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 7, 37–62. Katz, S. B. (1995a). The epistemology of the Kabbalah: Toward a Jewish philosophy of rhetoric. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 25, 107–122. Katz, S. B. (1995b). The Kabbalah as a theory of rhetoric: Another suppressed epistemology. In J. F. Reynolds (Ed.), Rhetoric, cultural studies, and literacy: Selected papers from the 1994 conference of the Rhetoric Society of America (pp. 109–117). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Katz, S. B. (1996). The epistemic music of rhetoric: Toward the temporal dimension of affect in reader-response and writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Katz, S. B. (2001). Language and persuasion in biotechnology communication with the public: How to not say what you’re not going to not say and not say it. AgBioForum, 4(2), 93–97. Katz, S. B. (2003). Letter as essence: The rhetorical (im)pulse of the Hebrew alefbet. Journal of Communication and Religion, 26, 125–160. Katz, S. B. (2004a). Introduction: The ethic of expediency: Classical rhetoric, technology, and the Holocaust. In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 195–196). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Katz, S. B. (2004b). The alphabet as ethics: A rhetoric (im)pulse of the Hebrew letters. In G. Hauser & A. Grimm (Eds.), Rhetorical democracy: Discursive practices of civic engagement (pp. 195–204). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Katz, S. B. (2006). Guest editorial: A response to Patrick Moore’s “Questioning the motives of technical communication and rhetoric: Steven Katz’s Ethic of Expediency.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 36(1), 1–8. Katz, S. B. (2009a). Biotechnology and global miscommunication with the public: Rhetorical assumptions, stylistic acts, ethical implications. In H. Grady & G. Hayhoe (Eds.), Connecting people with technology: Issues in professional communication (pp. 167–175). Amityville, NY: Baywood. Katz, S. B. (2009b). The Hebrew Bible as another, Jewish sophistic: A genesis of absence and desire in ancient rhetoric. In C. Lipson & R. Binkley (Eds.), Ancient non-Greek rhetorics (pp. 125–150). Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press. Katz, S. B., & Miller, C. R. (1996). The low-level radioactive waste siting controversy in North Carolina: Toward a rhetorical model of risk communication. In C. G. Herndl & S. Brown (Eds.), Green culture: Environmental rhetoric in contemporary America (pp. 111–140). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

230 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Katz, S. B., & Rhodes, V. W. (2010). Beyond ethical frames of technical relations: Digital being in the workplace world. In R. Spilka (Ed.), Digital literacy for technical communication: 21st century theory and practice (pp. 230–256). London, UK: Routledge. Katz, S. M. (2002). Ethnographic research. In In L. J. Gurak & M. M. Lay (Eds.), Research in technical communication (pp. 23–46). Westport, CT: Praeger. Kershaw, I. (1998). Hitler: Hubris, 1889–1936. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kertzer, D. I. (2001). The Popes against the Jews: The Vatican’s role in the rise of modern anti-Semitism. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Keyton, J. (2005). Communication and organizational culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kilduff, M., & Mehra, A. (1997). Postmodernism and organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 22(2), 453–481. Klee, E., Dressen, W., & Riess, V. (1991). “The good old days”: The Holocaust as seen by its perpetrators and bystanders (D. Burnstone, Trans.). Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky. (Original work published 1988) Kogon, E., Langbein, H., & Rückerl, A. (1983). Nationalsozialistische massentötungen durch giftgas. Eine dokumentation. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: S. Fischer Verlag. Kogon, E., Langbein, H., & Rückerl, A. (1993). Nazi mass murder: A documentary history of the use of poison gas (M. Scott & C. Lloyd-Morris, Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Original work published 1983) Konner, M. (2003). Unsettled: An anthropology of the Jews. New York, NY: Penguin. Koonz, C. (2003). The Nazi conscience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kostelnick, C., & Roberts, D. D. (1998). Designing visual language: Strategies for professional communicators. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Krausnick, H., Buchheim, H., Broszat, M., & Jacobsen, H.-A. (1968). Anatomy of the SS state (R. Barry, M. Jackson, & D. Long, Trans.). New York, NY: Walker. (Original work published 1965) Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London, UK: Routledge. Kynell, T., & Seely, B. (2002). Historical methods for technical communication. In L. J. Gurak & M. M. Lay (Eds.), Research in technical communication (pp. 67–92). Westport, CT: Praeger. LaCapra, D. (1998). History and memory after Auschwitz. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Langbein, H. (2004). People in Auschwitz (H. Zohn, Trans.). Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. (Original work published 1995) Langerbein, H. (2004). Hitler’s death squads: The logic of mass murder. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. Lanham, R. (2003). Analyzing prose (2nd ed.). London, UK: Continuum. (Original work published 1983) Lanzmann, C. (1985). Shoah, an oral history of the Holocaust: The complete text of the film (A. Whitelaw & W. Byron, Trans.). New York, NY: Pantheon.

REFERENCES

/

231

Lanzmann, C. (1990). Seminar with Claude Lanzmann, 11 April 1990. Yale French Studies, 79, 82–99. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lifton, R. J. (1986). The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York, NY: Basic. Locke, J. (1975). An essay concerning human understanding. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. Löhr, H. (1966). The physician must come to terms with the irrational (G. Mosse, Trans.). In G. Mosse (Ed.), Nazi culture: A documentary history (pp. 227–234). New York, NY: Schocken. (Original work published 1935) Longerich, P. (2001). The unwritten order: Hitler’s role in the Final Solution. Gloucestershire, UK: Tempus. Longo, B. (1998). An approach for applying cultural study theory to technical writing research. Technical Communication Quarterly, 7(1), 53–74. Longo, B. (2000). Spurious coin: A history of science, management, and technical writing. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Longo, B. (2006). An approach for applying cultural study theory to technical writing research. In J. B. Scott, B. Longo, & K. V. Wills (Eds.), Critical power tools: Technical communication and cultural studies (pp. 111-132). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Lozowick, Y. (2000) Hitler’s bureaucrats: The Nazi security police and the banality of evil (H. Watzman, Trans.). London, UK: Continuum. Ludz, U. (2004). Foreword. In U. Ludz (Ed.), Letters: 1925–1975 (pp. vii–xx). Orlando, FL: Harcourt. (Original work published 1998) Lyotard, J. (1990). Heidegger and the Jews (A. Michel & M. Roberts, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1988) Mallmann, K.-M., & Cüppers, M. (2005). “Elimination of the Jewish national home in Palestine”: The Einsatzcommando of the Panzer Army Africa, 1942. Yad Vashem Studies, 35. Retrieved June 28, 2008, from http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_ holocaust/studies/vol35/Mallmann-Cuppers2.pdf March, J. G., & Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations. New York, NY: Wiley. Markel, M. (1993). An ethical imperative for technical communicators. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 36(2), 81–86. Markel, M. (1997). Ethics and technical communication: A case for foundational approaches. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 40(4), 284–298. Markel, M. (2001). Ethics in technical communication: A critique and synthesis. Westport, CT: Ablex. Martin, J. (1992). Cultures in organizations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Martin, J., Frost, P. J., & O’Neill, O. A. (2006). Organizational culture: Beyond struggles for intellectual dominance. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. B. Lawrence, & W. R. Nord

232 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

(Eds.), The SAGE handbook or organization studies (2nd ed., pp. 725–753). London, UK: Sage. Mazower, M. (2008). Hitler’s empire: How the Nazis ruled Europe. New York, NY: Penguin. McKerrow, R. (1989). Critical rhetoric: Theory and praxis. Communication Monographs, 56, 91–111. McKinlay, A., & Starkey, K. (1998). Foucault, management and organization theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McPhee, R. D. (1985). Formal structure and organizational communication. In R. D. McPhee & P. K. Tompkins (Eds.), Organizational communication: Traditional themes and new directions (pp. 149–178). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. McPhee, R. D. (1989). Organizational communication: A structurational exemplar. In B. Dervin, L. Grossberg, B. J. O’Keefe, & E. Wartella (Eds.), Rethinking communication: Vol. 2, Paradigm exemplars (pp. 199–212). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. McPhee, R. D., & Poole, M. S. (2001). Organizational structures and configurations. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication (pp. 503–543). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McPhee, R. D., & Zaug, P. (2000). The communicative constitution of organizations: A framework for explanation. Electronic Journal of Communication, 10, 1–16. Mebust, M. R., & Katz, S. B. (2007). Rhetorical assumptions, rhetorical risks: Communication models in genetic counseling. In B. Heifferon & S. Brown (Eds.), Rhetoric of healthcare: Essays toward a new disciplinary inquiry (pp. 91–114). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Megill, A. (1989). Recounting the past: “Description,” explanation, and narrative in historiography. American Historical Review, 94(3), 627–653. Messaris, P. (2003). Visual communication: Theory and research. Journal of Communication, 53(3), 551–556. Metzger, D., & Katz, S. B. (2010). The “place” of rhetoric in aggadic midrash. College English, 72, 638–653. Miller, C. M. (1993). Framing arguments in a technical controversy: Assumptions about science and technology in the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 23(2), 99–114. Miller, C. R. (1978). Technology as a form of consciousness: A study of contemporary ethos. Central States Speech Journal, 29(4), 228–236. Miller, C. R. (1979). A humanistic rationale for technical writing. College English, 40, 610–617. Miller, C. R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 151–167. Miller, C. R. (1987). Aristotle’s “special topics” in rhetorical practice and pedagogy. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 17, 61–70. Miller, C. R. (1993a). Rhetoric and community: The problem of the one and the many. In T. Enos & S. C. Brown (Eds.), Defining the new rhetorics (pp. 79–94). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Miller, C. R. (1993b). The polis as rhetorical community. Rhetorica, 40(3), 211–240. Miller, C. R. (1994). Rhetorical community: The cultural basis of genre. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric (pp. 67–78). London, UK: Taylor & Francis.

REFERENCES

/

233

Miller, C. R. (2000). The Aristotelian topos: Hunting for novelty. In A. G. Gross & A. E. Walzer (Eds.), Rereading Aristotle’s rhetoric (pp. 130–146). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Miller, C. R. (2005). Novelty and heresy in the debate on nonthermal effects of electromagnetic fields. In R. A. Harris (Ed.), Rhetoric and incommensurability (pp. 464–505). West Lafayette, IN: Parlor. Miller, C. R., & Selzer, J. (1985). Special topics of argument in engineering reports. In L. Odell & D. Goswami (Eds.), Writing in non-academic settings (pp. 231–249). New York, NY: Guilford. Miller, C. R., & Shepherd, D. (2004). Blogging as social action: A genre analysis of the weblog. In L. Gurak, S. Antonijevic, L. Johnson, C. Ratliff, & J. Reyman (Eds.), Into the blogosphere: Rhetoric, community, and the culture of weblogs [Online publication]. Retrieved September 23, 2011, from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/ blogging_as_social_action.html Mirel, B. (1988). The politics of usability: The organizational functions of an in-house manual. In S. Doheny-Farina (Ed.), Effective documentation: What we have learned from research (pp. 277–297). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Monberg, J. (2002). Science and technology studies as a research model: Toward a practical ethics for technical writing. In L. J. Gurak & M. M. Lay (Eds.), Research in technical communication (pp. 211–228). Westport, CT: Praeger. Moore, M. C. (1987). Ethical discourse and Foucault’s conception of ethics. Human Studies, 10, 81–95. Moore, P. (1992). Intimidation and communication: A case study of the Challenger accident. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 6(4), 403–437. Moore, P. (2004). Questioning the motives of technical communication and rhetoric: Steven Katz’s “ethic of expediency.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 34(1–2), 5–29. Moore, P. (2005). From cultural capitalism to entrepreneurial humanism: Understanding and re-evaluating critical theory. In L. Carter (Ed.), Market matters: Applied rhetoric studies and free market competition (pp. 53–76). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Moore, P. (2006). From monologue to dialogue to chorus: The place of instrumental discourse in English studies and technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 36(4), 383–412. Moses, M., & Katz, S. B. (2006). The phantom machine: The invisible ideology of email (a cultural critique). In J. B. Scott, B. Longo, & K. V. Willis (Eds.), Critical power tools: Technical communication and cultural studies (pp. 71–105). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Moskow, M. A., & Katz, S. B. (2008). Composing identity in cyberspace: A “rhetorical ethnography” of writing on Jewish discussion lists in Germany and the United States. In A. Greenbaum & D. H. Holdstein (Eds.), Judaic perspectives on composition (pp. 85–108). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Mosse, G. L. (Ed.). (1966). Nazi culture: A documentary history. New York, NY: Schocken. Mosse, G. L. (1978). Toward the Final Solution: A history of European racism. New York, NY: Fertig. Mumby, D. K., & Clair, R. (1997). Organizational discourse. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as structure and process (Vol. 2, pp. 181–205). London, UK: Sage.

234 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Murray, C. A. (2003). Human accomplishment: The pursuit of excellence in the arts and sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Nizkor Project. (2002). Shofar FTP archive file: people/r/rauff.walter/Rauff-depositiontranslation. Retrieved June 6, 2008, from http://www2.ca.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/r/ rauff.walter/Rauff-deposition-translation Noakes, J., & Pridham, G. (1988). Nazism 1919–1945, Volume 3: Foreign policy, war, and racial extermination: A documentary reader. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press. Northern Illinois University. (1996, July 15). Email from Carolyn Miller to Dale Sullivan. Retrieved September 23, 2011, from http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/crmillersp.html Nuremberg Documents PS-501. Ornatowski, C. M. (1997). Technical communication and rhetoric. In K. Staples & C. M. Ornatowski (Eds.), Foundations for teaching technical communication: Theory, practice, and program design (pp. 31–51). Westport, CT: Ablex. Ornatowski, C. M. (2002). Examining technology’s wake: A review of Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust: The strategic alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s most powerful corporation. Lore, 2(2). [Online journal] Orth, K. (1998). Die Kommandanten der nationalsozialistischen konzentrationslager. In U. Herbert, K. Orth, & C. Dieckmann (Eds.), Die natinalsozialistischen konzentrationslager (pp. 755–786). Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein Verlag. Oswick, C., Putnam, L. L., & Keenoy, T. (2004). Tropes, discourse, and organizing. In D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick, & L. Putnam (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational discourse (pp. 105–128). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Oswick, C., & Robertson, M. (2009). Boundary objects reconsidered: From bridges and anchors to barricades and mazes. Journal of Change Management, 9(2), 179–193. Overy, R. (1995). Why the Allies won. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Overy, R. (2004). The dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Pacanowsky, M., & O’Donnell-Trujillo, N. (1983). Organizational communication as cultural performance. Communication Monographs, 50, 126–147. Pace, R. (1988). Technical communication, group differentiation, and the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 18(3), 207–220. Paradis, J. (1991). Text and action: The operator’s manual in context and in court. In C. Bazerman & J. Paradis (Eds.), Textual dynamics of the processions: Historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities (pp. 256–278). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Penrose, R. (1989). The emperor’s new mind: Concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Penrose, A., & Katz, S. B. (2010). Writing in the sciences: Exploring conventions in scientific discourse (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Longman. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation (J. Wilkinson & P. Weaver, Trans.). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. (Original work published 1958) Perkei Avot. (1933). In H. Danby (Ed.), The Mishnah (pp. 449–461). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

REFERENCES

/

235

Peukert, D. J. K. (1987). Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, opposition, and racism in everyday life (R. Deveson, Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Original work published 1982) Plato. (1952). Phaedrus (R. Hackforth, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Poole, M. S. (1985). Communication and organizational climates: Review, critique, and a new perspective. In R. D. McPhee & P. K. Tompkins (Eds.), Organizational communication: Traditional themes and new directions (pp. 79–108). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Poole, M. S., & McPhee, R. D. (1983). A structurational analysis of organizational climate. In L. L. Putnam & M. E. Pacanowsky (Eds.), Communication and organizations: An interpretive approach (pp. 195–220). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Poole, M. S., & McPhee, R. D. (2005). Structuration theory. In S. May & D. K. Mumby (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory and research: Multiple perspectives (pp. 171–196). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Porter, J. E. (1993). The role of law, policy, and ethics in corporate composing: Toward a practical ethics for professional writing. In N. R. Blyler & C. Thralls (Eds.), Professional communication: The social perspective (pp. 128–143). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Putnam, L. L., & Fairhurst, G. T. (2001). Discourse analysis in organizations: Issues and concerns. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication (pp. 78–136). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Putnam, L. L., Phillips, N., & Chapman, P. (1996). Metaphors of organization and communication. In S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy, & W. R. Nord (Eds.), Handbook of organization studies (pp. 375–408). London, UK: Sage. Quinn, N., & Holland, D. (1987). Culture and cognition. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 3–40). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Read, A. (2003). The devil’s disciplines: Hitler’s inner circle. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Rhodes, R. (2002). Masters of death: The SS einsatzgruppen and the invention of the Holocaust. New York, NY: Knopf. Richardson, M., & Liggett, S. (1993). Power relations, technical writing theory, and workplace writing. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 7, 112–137. Ringer, F. (1997). Max Weber’s methodology: The unification of the cultural and social sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rivers, T. M. (1992). A comment on “the ethic of expediency.” College English, 54(7), 856–858. Roseman, M. (2002). The Wansee Conference and the Final Solution: A reconsideration. New York, NY: Picador. Rosenbaum, R. (1998). Explaining Hitler: The search for the origins of his evil. New York, NY: Random House. Rossino, A. B. (2003). Hitler strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, ideology, and atrocity. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Rubenstein, R. L. (1966). After Auschwitz: Radical theology and contemporary Judaism. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.

236 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Sachar, H. M. (2005). A history of the Jews in the modern world. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Saltzstein, H. D. (1966). Book reviews. Public Opinion Quarterly, 30(1), 162. Sartre, J.-P. (1948). Anti-Semite and Jew: An exploration of the etiology of hate (G. J. Becker, Trans.). New York, NY: Schocken. Sauer, B. (2003). The rhetoric of risk: Technical documentation in hazardous environments. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Sauer, B. (2006). Living documents: Liability versus the need to archive, or, why (sometimes) history should be expunged. In J. B. Scott, B. Longo, & K. V. Wills (Eds.), Critical power tools: Technical communication and cultural studies (pp. 171–198). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Schein, E. H. (1992). Organizational culture and leadership (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Schoenbaum, D. (1966). Hitler’s social revolution: Class and status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939. New York, NY: Doubleday. Scott, C. R., Corman, S. A., & Cheney, G. (1998). The development of a structurational theory of identification in the organization. Communication Theory, 8, 298–336. Scott, J. B., Longo, B., & Wills, K. V. (2006). Why cultural studies? Expanding technical communication’s critical toolbox. In J. B. Scott, B. Longo, & K. V. Wills (Eds.), Critical power tools: Technical communication and cultural studies (pp. 1–19). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Segev, T. (1987). Soldiers of evil: The commandants of the Nazi concentration camps. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Sereny, G. (1974). Into that darkness: From mercy killing to mass murder. London, UK: Random House. Sherif, C. W., Sherif, M., & Nebergall, R. E. (1965). Attitude and attitude change: The social judgment-involvement approach. Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders. Slack, J. D., Miller, D. J., & Doak, J. (1993). The technical communicator as author: Meaning, power, authority. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 7(1), 12–36. Smith, E. O. (2000). Points of reference in technical communication scholarship. Technical Communication Quarterly, 9(4), 427–453. Snyder, T. (2010). Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York, NY: Basic. Speer, A. (1970). Inside the Third Reich (R. Winston & C. Winston, Trans.). New York, NY: Macmillan. Sprat, T. (1667). The history of the Royal-Society of London, for the improving of natural knowledge. London, UK: Royal Society. Star, S., & Griesemer, J. (1989). Institutional ecology, “translations” and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387–420. Steiner, G. (1971). In Bluebeard’s castle: Some notes toward the redefinition of culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Steiner, G. (1983). After Babel: Aspects of language and translation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and time, I: The fault of Epimetheus (R. Bearsworth & G. Collins, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

REFERENCES

/

237

Stillar, G. F. (1998). Analyzing everyday texts: Discourse, rhetoric, and social perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sturges, D. L. (1992). Overcoming the ethical dilemma: Communication decisions in the ethic ecosystem. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 35(1), 44–50. Sullivan, D. L., & Martin, M. S. (2001). Habit formation and story telling: A theory for guiding ethical action. Technical Communication Quarterly, 10(3), 251–272. Taylor, B. C. (2005). Postmodern theory. In S. May & D. K. Mumby (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory and research (pp. 113–140). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tompkins, P. K., & Cheney, G. (1983). Account analysis of organizations: Decisionmaking and identification. In L. L. Putnam & M. E. Pacanowsky (Eds.), Communication and organizations: An interpretive approach (pp. 123–146). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Tooze, A. (2007). The wages of destruction: The making and breaking of the Nazi economy. New York, NY: Viking. Trice, H. M., & Beyer, J. M. (1993). The culture of work organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Urbach, E. E., Werblowsky, R. J. Z., & Wirszubski, C. (Eds.). (1967). Studies in mysticism and religion: Presented to Gershom G. Scholem on his seventieth birthday by pupils, colleagues, and friends. Jerusalem, Israel: Magnes Press. Van Maanen, J. (2011). Ethnography as work: Some rules of engagement. Journal of Management Studies, 48(1), 218–234. Vaughn, D. (1996). The Challenger launch decision: Risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ward, M., Sr. (2008). “Ordinary communicators”: A demonstration proposal for synthesizing the Browning and Goldhagen theses. Holocaust Studies, 14(2), 41–70. Ward, M., Sr. (2009a). Incommensurability and genocide: Holocaust historiography and the rhetoric of science. Paper presented at the 95th annual convention of the National Communication Association, November 12-15, 2009, Chicago, IL. Ward, M., Sr. (2009b). The banality of rhetoric? Assessing Steven Katz’s “The ethic of expediency” against current scholarship on the Holocaust. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 39(2), 207–222. Ward, M., Sr. (2009c). Squaring the learning circle: Cross-classroom collaborations and the impact of audience on student outcomes in professional writing. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 23(1), 61–82. Ward, M., Sr. (2009d). Revisiting “The ethic of expediency”: New perspectives on technical communication and the Holocaust. Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 11–14, 2009, San Francisco, CA. Ward, M., Sr. (2010a). The ethic of exigence: Information design, postmodern ethics, and the Holocaust. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 24(1), 1–31. Ward, M., Sr. (2010b). The banality of rhetoric? (Part 2) Alternate views of technical communication and the Holocaust. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 40(3), 311–336. Warnick, Q. (2006). Toward a more productive discussion about instrumental discourse. Orange: A Student Journal of Technical Communication, 6(1). [Online journal]

238 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Watson, T. J. (2011). Ethnography, reality, and truth: The vital need for studies of “how things” work in organizations and management. Journal of Management Studies, 48(1), 202–217. Weale, A. (2010). Army of evil: A history of the SS. New York, NY: NAL Caliber. Weber, M. (1949). The methodology of the social sciences (E. Shils & H. Hinch, Trans., Eds.). New York, NY: Free Press. Westermann, E. B. (2005). Hitler’s police battalions: Enforcing racial war in the East. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. White, H. (1999). Figural realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wiesel, E. (1989, June 11). Art and the Holocaust: Trivializing memory. New York Times. Retrieved May 6, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com Wiesel, E. (2006). Night. New York, NY: Hill & Wang. (Original work published 1972) Wildt, M. (2003). Generation des unbedingten: Das fuehrungskorps des reichssicherheitshauptamties. Hamburg, Germany: Hamburger Edition. Wildt, M. (2010). An uncompromising generation: The Nazi leadership of the Reich Security Main Office (T. Lampert, Trans.). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. (Original work published 2003) Williams, R. (2006). Theorizing visual intelligence: Practices, development, and methodologies for visual communication. In D. S. Hope (Ed.), Visual communication: Perception, rhetoric, and technology (pp. 31–56). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. Wilson, G., & Herndl, C. G. (2007). Boundary objects as rhetorical exigence: Knowledge mapping and interdisciplinary cooperation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21(2), 129–154. Winner, L. (1999). Do artifacts have politics? In D. McKenzie & J. Wacjman (Eds.), The social shaping of technology (2nd ed., pp. 28–40). London, UK: Open University Press. Winsor, D. A. (1988). Communications failures contributing to the Challenger accident. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 31(3), 101–107. Winsor, D. A. (1990). The construction of knowledge in organizations: Asking the right questions about the Challenger. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 4(2), 7–20. Ybema, S., Yanow, D., Wels, H., & Kamsteeq, K. H. (2009). Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexity of everyday life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Index

Actional processes, 135, 143 Action and ethics, 195–201 Agamben, Giorgio, 214 Allen, M. T., 40 Alvesson, M., 42, 133–134, 143 Aly, G., 117, 175 Amoral technocracy, 168, 184–185, 189, 194–196 Anti-instrumental view of technology, 209 Anti-Semitism, 1, 155, 196, 207 chimeric, 35, 96 Christian, 20–21 origins in Europe, 19–25 racial, 25–28, 197 Arendt, Hannah, 15, 164, 169, 171, 208, 212 Argumentative process, 180 Aristotle, 72, 92, 100, 159, 173–174, 177–178, 180–181, 205 “Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Hitler’s Program, and the Ideological Problem of Praxis, Power, and Professional Discourse as a Social Construction of Knowledge” (Katz), 205 Art, 24, 158, 209 Aryans, 26–27, 38, 46, 168, 211, 217 Ashkenazic Jewish culture, 21–22 Authorities, regularization of institutional, 195, 198 Authority, 47–51 Authorship, 163–164

Balter-Reitz, S. J., 110 Banality of administrative routine, 48, 144, 184, 207, 212 of evil, 164–165, 169, 171, 208 Barrett, William, 209 Bauer, Y., 2, 17, 169 Bauman, Z., 2, 6, 10, 130–131, 169 Becker, August, 30–32, 58, 67, 77–78, 116, 123, 144–146, 148. See also under Documents from gas van program Beer, M., 145 Belzec, 7 Berkenkotter, C. A., 72–74, 133 Beyer, J. M., 102 Biases, cultural and institutional, 196, 208 Black, E., 117 Blackboxed facts, 185–186 Black market, 57, 148 Blood-guilt, 157 Blood libel, 22 Bogost, I., 117 Books, sacredness of, 24, 203, 217–218 Bordieu, P., 199 Bottled gas, 29, 112 Boundary objects, vii, 35, 53–54, 185, 197, 201, 211 bridging fragmentation of interests, 54 bridging intraorganizational differences, 19 239

240 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

[Boundary objects] common identity and, 4, 35, 91, 169, 184, 190, 201 documents as, 4–5, 10, 71–72, 117 evanescence of, 148 Hitler as, 41 intrinsic to organizing, 200 negotiation of competing interests, 164 original conception of, 190 trading zones created by, 5, 70, 77, 123–124, 149, 165, 169, 177, 184, 197 Boundary work, 184 communal, 191 limitations of, 172 rhetorical, 123, 151, 176, 199, 201 Brasseur, L. E., 176, 185–186 Browder, G. C., 44 Browning, C. R., 3, 8–9, 66, 69, 89, 96, 99, 174, 182 Buber, Martin, 216 Bund (League) of revolutionary Jewish socialists, 24–25 Bureaucracy German document protocols, 49–52, 77, 102–103, 135, 145 normality of, 102–103, 112, 123, 130 of Final Solution, 2–3, 6, 8–10, 16–17 Bureaucratization models of modernization theory, 16 Weberian model of, 8 Burke, Kenneth, 212–213 Burleigh, M., 38, 168

Carbon monoxide, 28–31, 48, 58–59, 77, 206 Carroll, J., 20 Categorical imperative, 195 CBS (clarity, brevity, sincerity), 215 Central Works in Technical Communication (Johnson-Eilola and Selber), 190 Cesarini, D., 176 Chain of command, 48, 66, 94, 124, 145 Challenger (space shuttle), 15, 182, 196 Chamberlain, Houston, 26

Changeability, 179–180 Chelmno, 29, 31, 47, 160 gas van explosion at, 97–98, 144 Polish villagers of, 157 Cheney, G., 106 Christianity, 20–21, 175 Citations, 168, 170, 185, 211, 216 Civil service, German, 8, 42, 47, 54, 59 Clair, R., 11 Classifications, webs of, 134, 143 Code language, 11, 99, 148 Cognition, 74–75, 99, 130, 199 Coherence, 9, 11, 19, 35, 37–38, 91, 135, 187–188, 191 Collective agreement, 179–180 Commercial metaphors, 161 Common identity, 4, 35, 91, 169, 184, 190, 201 Compliance, 97–98 Complicity, 68, 173–175 Concentration camps, 5–9, 77–78 Conception (as center of structuration), 106 Concept pool, 106–107 Concepts, 37–38, 43, 99–100 Conscience, 195, 199 Nazi, 38, 168, 170, 187 Consent, 175, 200 Cooperation, 162, 176–181, 201, 207, 211, 219 temporary, 5, 10, 70–71, 73, 77 Criminal Technical Institute, 28–30 Critical theorists in technical communication, 183 Critique, 74–75 Crossan, J. D., 20 Cultural criticism, 19, 207–210, 214–215 Cultural models, 37–38 Cycle of Technical Documentation in Large Regulated Industries, 73, 95–98

Darwin, Charles, 25–26. See also Social Darwinism Death camps. See Concentration camps Decision making, 2, 51, 194–197, 199–200

INDEX

Decontextualization, 186 Deetz, S., 42 Deliberative discourse, 181, 204 Deliberative rhetoric, 162, 164, 171–173, 181–182, 185, 188, 205 Delousing van as euphemism, 89 DeLuca, K. M., 110 Deniers, Holocaust, 152–153 Desbois, P., 8 Descriptive ethics, 195–201 Diaspora, Jewish, 20–21 Differentiation, 10 Dilemmas, ethical, 197–198 Dimont, M., 20 Discourse deliberative, 181, 204 instrumental, 178–182 rhetorical, 92–93, 117, 171, 178, 181 See also Organizational discourse Discourse analysis, 133–135 linguistic-based, of 5 June 1942 Gas Van Proposal, 138–142 organizational, 143–149 Stillar’s resources for, 136–137 Distance, 91, 143, 169, 184, 191 Distanciation, 106, 109–110 Doak, J., 163 Documentation, historical, 157–158 Documents as boundary objects, 4–5, 10 author codes, 51 boundary work done by, 134 collaborative products, 52 creation of, 50, 102 everyday, 36 filing codes, 52 formality of design, 124 German bureaucratic protocols, 49–52, 77, 102–103, 135, 145 manual typewriters and, 112, 116, 124 rhetorical, 178–179 sampling of, 10–12 signing of, 50–52, 112, 116 Documents from gas van program, 76–89 Becker field report, 16 May 1942, 77, 97–98, 107, 112–117, 135, 146, 153

/

241

[Documents from gas van program] [Becker field report, 16 May 1942] English translation, 80–81 German original, 113–115 safety narrative, 95 Just Gas Van Proposal, 5 June 1942, 77, 97–98, 124–130, 135, 145, 151, 153 appearance in multiple contexts, 152 boundary work, 143 considered in isolation, 189 English translation, 82–84 German original, 125–129 grammatical style, 163 impetus for producing, 146 Lanzmann abridged translation of, 153–164 linguistic-based discourse analysis of, 138–142 meaning constructed from, 130 object for performing boundary work, 177 ordering of, 151–153, 158–160, 170, 172, 184, 186–191 organizational discourse behind, 146–147 projection of scholars’ needs, 169 safety narrative, 95, 160–162 shared assumptions and goals, 164 simplistic characterization of, 158 writers as subjects of sentences, 143 Rauff letter, 26 March 1942, 77, 110–112, 143–144 English translation, 79 German original, 111 Rauff reply to Trühe, 22 June 1942, 78 English translation, 88 German original, 121 Schäfer telegram, 9 June 1942, 77–78 English translation, 85–86 German original, 118–119, 122 visual aspects of, 123–124 Sipo and SD situation report for Einsatzgruppe B, 1 March 1942, 78, 89 Trühe telegram, 15 June 1942, 78 English translation, 87

242 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

[Trühe telegram, 15 June 1942, 78] German original, 120, 122 visual aspects of, 123–124 Turner letter, 11 April 1942, 89 Dombrowski, P. M., 75, 188–189, 196 Dragga, S., 190, 195–199 Duke, David, 173 Dynamite, 29, 59, 175

Efficiency, 2, 4, 9, 17, 33, 152, 157, 159–160, 190, 209, 215 Eichmann, Adolf, 9, 48–49, 54–55, 63, 101, 158, 176, 208, 212 Eide (special topics), 100 Einsatzgruppen, 11, 29, 33, 48, 206 commando heads given free reign, 67–68 cooperation with Wehrmact, 55 organizational culture of, 68 trials of officers, 54 Embodied sensory experience, 96–98, 135 Engineering knowledge, 73, 98, 135 Enlightenment, 23–24 rationality, 39–40, 208 Entrance stamp, 116–117, 124 Epistemology, 15, 171 Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (Gobineau), 26 “Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust, The” (Katz), ix–x, 162–163, 168–169, 172, 174, 177, 180, 185–186, 205 Ethics, 193–201 definition of, 170 descriptive, 195–201 in technical communication, 151, 163, 170, 193–201, 209, 216, 220 intuitive, 196–197 of expediency, 151, 158–159, 162, 169–171, 184–186, 190, 194, 205 postmodern, 187 prescriptive, 195–201 relativity of, 211–213 soteriological, 38, 168, 170

Ethics in Technical Communication (Dombrowski), 188–189 Ethnography, historical, 15–16, 203, 210–211, 213 Ethos, 164, 168, 170–171, 173, 178, 185 organizational, 159 quasi-military, 107 scientific and technological expediency, 169 Eugenics movement, 26–27 Euphemisms, 11, 89, 91, 99, 154, 161–162 Euthanasia program, T4, 28, 58–59 Everyday texts, viii, 72, 103, 134, 207 approach to analyzing, 75–76 Evil banality of, 164–165, 169, 171, 208 rhetoric urging, 181 Exhaust gas, 29–30, 59, 77 Expediency, 177, 181, 186, 219 ethic of, 151, 158–159, 162, 169–171, 184–186, 190, 194, 205

Faber, B., 196–197, 199 Fairclough, N., 199 Fairhurst, G. T., 74 Felman, S., 158 Festschrifts, 204, 216 Figuration, 93, 98 File margin, 123. See also Marginal comments Filing codes, 12, 50, 52, 73, 77, 102, 112, 116–117, 189 Final Solution, vii, 1 as “common sense,” 19 bureaucracy of, 2–3, 6, 8–10, 16–17 destructive dynamism of, 8 feasibility of, 175 gas van program competing for place in, 175 killing centers, 31 large regulated industry, 95–97 negotiation of perpetrators’ competing interests, 71 three phases of, 9 See also Genocide

INDEX

Findeisen, Wilhelm, 59–60, 64, 68–69, 123 Formatting, 112, 116, 124 Foucault, Michel, 159, 163, 195, 198–200 Foundational ethics, 197–198, 200 The Foundation of the Nineteenth Century (Chamberlain), 26 Foundations for Teaching Technical Communication (Ornatowski), 186–187 Fragmentation, 10 Frankfurt School of Cultural Criticism, 183, 208–209 Fritzche, P., 67 “From Monologue to Dialogue to Chorus: The Place of Instrumental Discourse in English Studies and Technical Communication” (Moore), 178 Führerprinzip (leadership principle), 40–43, 72, 101–103, 148, 196 Functionalist ontology, 2–4, 10, 16–17, 91

Galton, Sir Francis, 26 Gas, bottled, 29, 112 Gas, exhaust, 29–30, 59, 77 Gas chambers, stationary, 33, 48, 148 Gas van program, mobile administration, 67–68 chain of command, 66 consensus of participants, 148 development of gas vans, 28–31 documents, 11–12 entropy of, 148 failure of, 147 interactions among key players, 61–70 meaning constructed through language, 135 operational challenges in the field, 31–33 organizational authority, lines of, 47–51 organizational culture of drivers, 68 personnel of, 53–61 subcultures of, 61

/

243

[Gas van program, mobile] See also Documents from gas van program; RSHA (Reich Security Main Office, Reichssicherhietshauptamt) Gas vans adapted from euthanasia program, 56 advantages for RSHA, 48 arrival in Smolensk, 144 bottled gas as alternative to, 112 camouflaged as house trailers, 116 cleaning, 162 complaints from the field, 144–145 context for initial development, 66 deficiencies, 144, 153 development of, 28–31 discussion of design, 144 dismissed as legend, 153 drivers pressured into killing Jews, 68 eclipse of program, 148 Heydrich’s rationale for, 64 ill suited to local conditions, 96 improvements to, 145 interior compartment lighting, 161–162 military metaphors, 98–99, 107 problems with, 31–32 public health metaphors, 98, 110 repairs, 146 secrecy, 68 “success” of, 175 supplement to Einsatzgruppen shootings, 65 testing, 30 transportation metaphors, 98–99, 161, 189, 195 unloading corpses, 116, 145 victims, behavior of, 96 See also Documents from gas van program Gaubschat (Berlin factory), 30–31, 123, 145, 147 Geheimestaatspolizei. See Gestapo General Morphology (Haeckel), 26 Generic action, 93–94 Genocide absorbed into bureaucratic rules of action, 117 dynamics underlying, 207

244 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

[Genocide] polycratic, entropic, and punctuated aspects of, 3–4, 6–7, 71, 193 Roman, of Jews, 20 understanding of, 1–5, 155–156 ways of indexing, 103 within latitudes of acceptance, 199 See also Final Solution Genre, 72–73 connection with rhetorical community, 92–93 organizational, 94, 99–104, 107, 130 structuring group actions, 103 “Genre as Social Action” (Miller), 92 German culture in Third Reich, 37–42. See also National Socialism (Nazism) Gestapo, 44–45, 48–49, 51, 56–60, 63, 174–175 Gevatter, Thomas, 60, 68, 123 Ghettos, Jewish, 22, 24, 30, 41, 47, 58, 78, 147, 160, 206 Giddens, A., 105–106, 199 Globocnik, Odilo, 47-48 Gnewuch, Erich, 69 Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur de, 26 Goldhagen, D. J., 66 Goodness, 180–181, 183, 205 Grant, D., 72–74, 143 Graphics, arrangement of text and, 110, 124, 146 Greiser, Arthur, 47 Griesemer, J., 4, 151, 190, 200–201 Group think, 164

Habermas, Jürgen, 209, 216 Haeckel, Ernst, 26 Handicapped, sterilization of, 27 Handwritten notations, 12, 50, 61, 67, 73, 78, 102, 112, 116, 122–123, 145–146. See also Marginal comments Harman, Graham, 215 Hasidism, 22 Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment), 24

Hazardous working conditions, 96. See also Occupational safety, narrative of Heess, Walter, 29 Heidegger, Martin, 209 Hereditary Genius (Galton), 26 Herf, J., 39–40, 66–67, 96, 210 Hermeneutics of texts, 203, 218–219 Herndl, C. G., 4–5, 70, 123, 200–201 Herzl, Theodor, 24 Heydrich, Reinhard, 29–33, 45, 48, 51, 55–56, 63–64, 101, 147 Wannsee Protocol and, 30–31, 55, 176 Himmler, Heinrich, 8–9, 43–45 Historical documentation, 157–158 Historical ethnography, 15–16, 203, 210–211, 213 Historical research, methodology of, 10–16 Historiography, 15, 153, 167, 194 Hitler, Adolf as embodiment of evil, 208 attempted assassination of, 59–60 cosmology, 27 “ethics” of program, 172 leadership, 40–41 personal hold on Germans, 38 rhetoric of, 173, 188, 213 Höhne, H., 44–45, 112 Holocaust beginning of, 218 bureaucratic definition of, 2, 6, 10, 16–17 by bullets, 8, 47, 54 challenges to Western science, 183 deniers, 152–153 encountered through mediation, 194 focus of state policy, 207 functionalist perspective, 167 God’s will, as, 208 intentionalist perspective, 167 moral basis of, 171 perspectives on, 1, 218–219 post-Holocaust rhetoric, 169 scholarship on, 167–169 studies, 16 technical communicators’ consensus on meaning of, 167 universalizing trend, 169

INDEX

Horkheimer, M., 209 “Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing, A” (Miller), 92, 217 Humans as objects of action, 37 Hyperpragmatism, 170, 172, 185, 190, 211

I and Thou (Buber), 216 IBM and the Holocaust (Black), 210 Ideational resources, 76, 134–135 Identification, 64, 69, 92, 94, 106, 135, 156 Idiographic epistemology, 14–15 Idioi koinoi (special topics), 100 Iedema, R., 74, 143 Images, 110, 130–131 Implementation (as center of structuration), 106 “Individuals are objects” cultural model, 37–38 Information as means of social control, 117 transfer of, 214–215 Inscription, 154, 164 Institutional culture, unifying principles of, 37–42 Instrumental discourse, 178–182 Instrumental language, 172 Integration, 10 Integrative exigencies, 5, 10, 37–38, 53, 70–71, 73, 77, 92–94, 103 Interpersonal resources, 76, 134–135 Interpretive ontology, 4, 10 Intervention, 74–75, 179–180 Intuitions, ethical, 195–197 Irving, David, 152–153 Isocrates, 173, 204–205

Jerusalem, 20–21, 203, 208 Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy against Germany, alleged, 66, 96 Jews ancient rhetoric, 216 assimilation of, 25 coexistence with Christians, 21

/

245

[Jews] contact with Christians in 19th century, 24 diaspora, 20–21 emigration of, 25 euphemisms for victims, 154, 161–162 ghettoization of, 22, 24, 30, 41, 47, 58, 78, 147, 160, 206 hostility toward in Greco-Roman times, 20 impact of emergent democracy on, 23–24 limitation of occupations in Europe, 23 money-lending, 23 Nazi policy on, 11, 32 perspective on Holocaust, 219 punishment for declining to kill, 174 resettlement in Central and Western Europe, 23 supposed blood guilt, 157 supposed economic domination, 25 three genocides, 20 use of the word, 99 Johnson, E. A., 174–175 Johnson, M., 199 Johnson, P., 20 Johnson-Eilola, J., 186 Judaism, rabbinical, 21, 203 Just, Willi, 59, 77, 123, 146. See also under Documents from gas van program

Kant, Immanuel, 195, 197 Katz, Steven B., viii, 15, 72–73, 75, 77, 151–152, 154, 158–160, 164, 167, 170, 173, 176, 181–184, 187–188, 190, 194 “Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust, The,” ix–x, 162–163, 168–169, 172, 174, 177, 180, 185–186, 205 Keenoy, T., 72, 101 Keyton, J., 36 Kogon, E., 189 Koonz, C., 38, 168

246 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Koppe, Wilhelm, 47–48 Kostelnick, C., 110 Kynell, T., 14, 19

LaCapra, D., 156, 159 Lakoff, G., 99, 199 Language, 91, 102, 133, 143 code, 11, 99, 148 instrumental, 172 meaning constructed through, 135 objectivity in, 170, 186, 189–190 ontological status of, 217–218 sacredness of, 24, 203, 217–218 social-epistemic persuasion, 217 usability theory of, 179 Lanham, Richard, 215 Lanzmann, C., 189, 195 abridged and altered translation of Just document, 153–158 implications of altered Just document, 158–164 Latour, Bruno, 184–185, 211, 215 Laws, 3, 14–15, 20, 26–27, 158, 203, 217 Leadership principle, 40–43, 72, 101–103, 148, 196 Learning, ethical nature of, 203 Letterheads, 50, 102, 112, 116–117 Lifton, R. J., 110 Linguistic resources, 134–143 Lived experience, 37 “Load” as euphemism, 154, 161 Locke, John, 215 Lodz ghetto, 30, 47 Logos, 171, 178 Longo, B., vii, 12, 14, 16, 53, 71, 92, 151–152, 168, 172, 187–188, 193 Lozowick, Y., 52, 116, 135, 164 Lyotard, J., 154, 157

Management science, 2 Mappability, 179–180 March, J. G., 100 Marginal comments, 12, 50, 73–74, 102, 116–117, 123–124, 146–147. See also Handwritten notations

Markel, M., 168, 170, 187–188, 195, 197, 200 Marr, Wilhelm, 26 Martin, J., 10, 36, 49, 107, 196, 198 theory of organizational culture, 71–72 three-perspective theory, 36 Mass graves, 7, 68, 78 Mauthausen, 77 McKerrow, R., 92 McPhee, R. D., 106–107 Meanings, marginalization of, 143–144 Medicalization of killing, 110 Megill, A., 15, 194 Mein Kampf (Hitler), 27, 40–41, 213 social-epistemic rhetoric of, 168 Membership negotiations, 106–107 Memory, 1, 63, 154, 157, 159 Mental processes, 135 “Merchandise” as euphemism, 154, 161 Messaris, P., 130 Metaphors, 72–73, 92–102, 130–131, 161, 195–196 commercial, 161 military, 98–99, 101, 107 protean, 94–99 public health, 98, 110 transportation, 98–99, 161, 189, 195 Military metaphors, 98–99, 101, 107 Miller, C. R., viii, 72–73, 99–100, 104–105, 107–108, 133, 162–163, 183, 217 origins of conception of rhetorical community, 92 work on special topics, 100 Minsk, 29, 31, 57–58, 147 Mirel, B., 176 Modal verbs, 135–136, 138–143, 185 Mode of subjection, 200 Modernism, reactionary, 40, 187 Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman), 16 Modernity as ontologically prior entity, 2 Modernizational theory, bureaucratic models of, 16 Monberg, J., 190 Moore, P., 177–183, 209, 215

INDEX

Morality, 168–174, 198–200, 205, 217 amoral technocracy, 168, 184–185, 189, 194–196 marginalization of, 144, 148–149 Motives, individual, 69, 72 Multimodal orientation, 74–75 Mumby, D. K., 11

Narrative, 72–73, 93 approach to ethics, 196 convergence, 98 fields of convergence, 95 occupational safety, 94–99, 107, 161–162, 164, 195 organizational, 102 National Socialism (Nazism) conscience, 38, 168, 170, 187 embodiment of evil, as, 208 ethics of, 170, 187, 211, 213 ethos of bureaucracy, 171 euthanasia program, 28 German citizens’ complicity with, 68, 173–175 German culture in, 37–42 Jewish policy, 11, 32 progressive social-welfare policies, 175 public discourse, 173 rank system, 42 rationale for mass murder, 170 reactionary modernists, as, 40 reform of medical education, 27–28 rhetorical communities, 191 rhetoricity of discourse, 174 runaway technology, 188 sadism, 208 soteriology, 38, 168, 170 technical communication as challenge to relativism, 200 themes, 148 view of technology, 39–40 National Socialist German Workers Party, 27 Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas (Kogon), 152–153, 157

/

247

Nazi SS absorption of police forces into, 42 Allgemeine SS, 47 chain of command for the Final Solution, 48 competition in, 3, 41, 43 cultural conflict with Germany’s regular police forces, 43 “easing burden” on, 95 organizational and technical communication, viii, 9–10 organizational authority, lines of, 47–51 organizational culture of, 8–10, 42–47 police membership in, 45–46 polycratic organizational culture, 43, 148 psychological repercussions of mass executions, 8 rank titles, 42 runes, 112, 116 Waffen-SS, 47 Nebergall, R. E., 197 New Historicism, 212 Nietzche, Friedrich, 40 Nockemann, Hans, 63 Nomothetic knowledge, 14–15 Nonfoundational ethics, 197, 200 Nonrhetorical communication, 171–174, 176, 180–181 Normalcy and normalizing, vii, 99, 155 bureaucratic, 102–103, 112, 123, 130 Normative theory, 187 Nouns, modified, 159, 163–164 Nuremberg Laws, 39

Objectivism, 185, 188, 190, 211 Objectivity in language, 170, 186, 189–190 “Object Oriented Philosophy” (Harman), 215, 218 Occupational safety, narrative of, 94–99, 107, 160–162, 164, 195 ODS (organizational discourse studies), 72, 74, 143

248 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (Darwin), 25–26 Ontologies functionalist or positivist, 2–4, 10, 91 interpretive, 4, 10 postmodern, 4, 10 Operation Sealion, 55 Organizational chart, Technical Matters and Reich Security Main Office, 62 Organizational culture, 36, 68, 102, 107, 133–134 rhetorical resources for (re)producing, 73 technical communication embedded in, 176 Organizational discourse, 133–134, 144 definition of, 72, 74–75 dimensional approach to, 143 reconstruction of, 143–149 Organizational genres, 94, 99–104, 107, 130 Organizational studies, ontologies in, 2–5 Organizations as temporary clusters of consensus, 3 climates, 106–107 communication flows, 106–107 communications, 71, 105, 212 difference and change within, 188 distanciated nature of, 109–110 open systems, as, 35–37 perspectives on, 10 reflection of larger societal discourses, 71 shift of responsibility to, 159 Oswick, C., 5, 72, 101

Pan-German movement, 40 Past, the, 135, 154–158 Pathos, 171, 178 Patterns, discernment of, 75, 143 People of the Book, 204, 218 People’s community, 35, 38–40, 72, 102, 148, 168. See also Volksgemeinschaft

Personality, idea of, 40–41 Persuasion, 100–102, 107, 159, 178–179, 181, 197, 217 Peukert, D. J. K., 42 Phronesis, x, 169–170, 182, 187, 204–205 “Pieces” as euphemism, 154, 161 Plato, 92, 171, 173, 182, 204–205, 209, 215–216 Poland, 22, 31–33, 48, 55, 59, 66, 77, 101, 206 Police forces, 42–46, 174–175. See also Gestapo; SD Polis, 92–93, 173 “Polis as Rhetorical Community, The” (Miller), 92 Political soldier, ideal of, 43, 46 Polycracy, 8, 41, 43, 148, 175 Poole, M. S., 106 Porter, J. E., 194 Posen Speech, 43 Positivist ontology, 2 Postmodernism ethics and, 197 ontology, 4, 10 relativism and, 187, 195, 200 Pradel, Friedrich, 30, 46, 49, 56–57, 123, 145, 147–148 development of gas van program, 65 friction with Rauff, 56, 66 leadership skills, 57 orders to build gas vans, 66 role in Just gas van document, 146 Praxis, 204 Prescriptive ethics, 195–201 Procedural rhetoric, theory of, 117 Propaganda, 96, 173, 176–177, 188, 211, 217 Protestant Reformation, 22 Protocols, 49–52, 77, 102–103, 107, 135, 145 Public health metaphor, 98, 110 Purposive-rational framework, 209, 216 Putnam, L. L., 74, 101

Quintilian, 21, 172–173, 204

INDEX

Rabbinical Judaism, 21, 203 Race, 36, 40, 207–208, 211, 213, 217 consciousness of, 39 immutability of, 25 racial anti-Semitism, 25–28, 197 Rationality, 39–40, 92, 208 Rauff, Walter, 33, 45–46, 48–52, 54–56, 67, 77–78, 116, 145–148 friction with Pradel, 56, 64, 66 involvement with Einsatzgruppen shootings, 65 involvement with gas vans, 64 jealousy of rank, 65 orders to Pradel for gas vans, 57 recollections of Heydrich, 63 relationship to Nockemann, 63 See also under Documents from gas van program Reactionary modernism, 40, 187 Reality. See Social reality, creation of Reasoned deliberation, 172 Reception (as center of structuration), 106 Reich, application of the term, 101–102 Reich Criminal Police Main Office, 29 Reich Security Main Office. See RSHA (Reich Security Main Office, Reichssicherhietshauptamt) Relativism, 187, 195, 200 Relativity of ethics, 212–213 Representation, 157–159, 179 Research methodology, 10–16, 71–72 Resources for Discourse Analysis, 136–137 Reuband, K.-H., 174 Reverence, 204, 216–218 Rhetoric, 172–177 analysis of Technical Matters Group communication flows, 109 ancient Jewish, 216 association with Nazism, 183–184 deliberative, 162, 164, 171–173, 181–182, 185, 188, 205 dialectical counterpart of instrumentality, 179 doxastic knowledge, 92 gas van documents, 93–94 idealized models, 95–96

/

249

[Rhetoric] ideologically neutral, 205 instrumentality and, 177 models, 204 moral value of, 176 organizational settings, 107–109 persuasive, 159 post-Holocaust, 169 purpose, 92 risk, 95, 97 science, 104 shaped by community, 92 social-epistemic function of, 172, 214 social grounding, 92 urging evil, 181 Rhetorical boundary work, 123, 151, 176, 199, 201 Rhetorical communities, vii, 72–73, 104, 149, 191, 197 application of theory to organizations, 105 co-construction of meaning, 117 construction and definition of, 91–94 organizational contexts and, 104–110 organizational settings, 107 visuality in, 110–131 “Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre” (Miller), 104 Rhetorical discourse, 92–93, 117, 171, 178, 181 “Rhetoric and Community: The Problem of the One and the Many” (Miller), 92–93 Rhetoric (Aristotle), 100, 159, 181, 205 Riddle of the World, The (Haeckel), 26 Ringer, F., 14–15 Risk, assessing and managing, 95–96 Rivers, T. M., 172–177 Roberts, D. D., 110 Roberts, W. R., 180 Robertson, M., 5 Roman genocide, 20 Roseman, M., 176 Rosenbaum, Ron, 155 Roth, K. H., 117

250 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

RSHA (Reich Security Main Office, Reichssicherhietshauptamt), 45, 47–53 bureaucratic document protocols, 50–52, 102–103, 107, 145 divisions of, 48 intrigues within, 64 organization chart, 61–62 RuSHA (Race and Settlement Main Office), 46

Sacredness of language, 24, 203, 217–218 Safety narrative. See Occupational safety, narrative of Sauer, B., 73, 95–97, 135 Schäfer, Emanuel, 60–61, 77–78, 123. See also under Documents from gas van program Schein, E. H., 4 Schoenbaum, D., 39 Scholarship on Holocaust, 167–169 Scholem, Gershom, 204 Schwarzecorps (Black Corps), 43 Science challenges to, 183–184 philosophy of, 15, 167 rhetoric and, 104, 108–109 SD, 44–45, 47, 49, 57–58, 60–61, 64, 67, 77–78, 144 “Secret” (Geheime) stamp, 112 “Secret State Matter” (Geheime Reichssache), 116 Secret State Police. See Gestapo Security Service. See SD Seely, B., 14, 19 Selzer, J., 100 Sensing, devaluation of, 135, 143, 189 Sephardic Jewish culture, 21–22 Sherif, C. W., 197–198 Sherif, M., 197 Shoah (Lanzmann), 153–160 Sicherheitsdienst. See SD Signatures, 50–52, 112, 116 Silence, 152, 173–174, 177 Simon, H. A., 100

Sipo (Security Police, Sicherheitspolizei) merger with SD, 44–45. See also Gas van program, mobile Sipo Technical Matters Group, vii, 11–12, 32, 49, 107 anti-Semitism, 35 chain of command, 145 competing interests within, 123 conflicts within, 69 construction of rhetorical community, 130 culture of anti-Semitism, 35 fragmentation within, 53–54 individual motives of members, 69 integrative exigence for cooperation on gas vans, 77 naturalized common sense of, 19 organizational discourse, 72, 74 organizational life of, 69 personnel of, 53–61 rhetorical community of, 149 telegram traffic, 143–144 working relationships, 61–70 See also Documents from gas van program; RSHA (Reich Security Main Office, Reichssicherhietshauptamt) Slack, J. D., 163 Sobibor, 7 Social constructions, 5, 14, 92, 170, 174, 179–182, 187–188, 218 Social Darwinism, 26, 35, 41, 43, 148, 176 Social judgment theory, 198 Social reality, creation of, 9–11, 15, 37, 89, 91, 99, 103, 133–135, 217 Sonderwagen. See Gas van program, mobile Sovereignty, 179–180 Soviet Union, 11, 28, 55, 65, 152, 160, 206 Spanish Inquisition, 22 Speaker and addressee roles, 93–94, 103, 107, 143 Specialists, 68–69, 98–99, 123 “Special” (Sonder), as term, 100–101

INDEX

Special topics categories of, 100 institutional/organizational, 73, 100–102 “Special Topics of Argument in Engineering Reports” (Miller and Selzer), 100 Sprat, T., 215 SS. See Nazi SS Stalingrad, 148 Stangl, Franz, 5–7 Star, S., 4, 151, 190, 200–201 Steiner, George, 205 Sterilization of handicapped, 27 Stewart, K. A., 110 Stillar, G. F., 75–76, 134–137 Structuration theory, 93, 105–107 Sturges, D. L., 197 Sullivan, D. L., 196, 198 Symbols, organizational, 50, 102 Sympheron, 177

Talmud, 21, 203, 217–218 Taylor, Summer Smith, ix Teaching, ethical nature of, 203–204 Technical communication, 9–10, 105, 171 association with Nazism, arguments against, 183–184 authorship, 163 critical theorists in, 183 cultural criticism of, 215 embedded in organizational politics, 176 ethics in, 151, 163, 170, 193–201, 209, 216, 220 ideologically neutral model of, 190 literature on, 12 methods of analysis, 72–74 scholars, 167–169 Technocracy amoral, 168, 184–185, 189, 194–196 runaway, 188 Technological determinism, 185, 189, 208 Technological imperative, 189, 208

/

251

Technology critiques of, 214, 217–218 extrinsic and intrinsic values of, 208–209 Nazi view of, 39–40 re-inscription of meaning, 39–40 “Technology as a Form of Consciousness” (Miller), 92 Technoscience, 184–185 Temporary cooperation, 5, 10, 70–71, 73, 77 Textual resources, 76, 135, 143 Theoretical focus, 75 Thinking, 94, 135, 170, 189 Third Reich German culture in, 37–42 See also National Socialism (Nazism) Threats, 9, 44, 57, 66, 174 Tompkins, P. K., 106 Topical structures, 94, 103, 107 Topoi, 72, 159, 173–174, 185 Totalitarianism, 1, 15, 174–175 Trading zones, 5, 70, 77, 123–124, 149, 165, 169, 177, 184, 197 Translation, 161–164, 177, 180 Transparency, 214–215 Transportation metaphor, 98–99, 161, 189, 195 Treblinka, 5–6 Trice, H. M., 102 Trühe, Heinz, 78, 123, 147. See also

under Documents from gas van program Typewriters, manual, creation of documents on, 112, 116, 124

Uncertainty, 95–97 Usability theory of language, 179 Utility, 177, 180–182

Vaughn, D., 15–16 Verbs modal, 135–136, 138–143, 185 modified, 164, 189 Vernichtunglager, 7

252 /

DEADLY DOCUMENTS

Victory of Judaism Over Germanism, The (Marr), 26 Vir bonus, 172–173 Visual intelligence, 130 Visual rhetorics, 73, 110–131 collective creation, 112 Just document, 159 of Rauff letter, 26 March 1942, 112 of RSHA telegrams, 117–124 Vocabularies, institutional/organizational, 100–101 Volksgemeinschaft, 35–36, 38–39, 42, 53 See also People’s community Voss, D., 190

Wannsee Protocol, 30–31, 55, 176 Warnick, Q., 178 Weber, Max, 2, 14–15 Wehrmacht, 30, 32–33, 39, 45, 48, 54–55, 57, 63–65, 78, 148 cooperation with Einsatzgruppen, 55 Sipo Technical Matters Group’s competition with, 32

Weimar Republic, 41, 44, 173–174 Wentritt, Harry, 30, 49, 57–58, 66, 123, 146 White, H., 194 Widmann, Albert, 29, 58–59 Wiesel, Elie, 208 Wilder, Sean, 156 Wildt, M., 39 Williams, R., 130 Willmott, H., 42 Wilson, G., 4–5, 70, 123, 200–201 Windelband, Wilhelm, 14 WVHA (SS Economic and Administrative Main Office), 48

Yugoslavia, 77–78

Zaug, P., 106–107 Zionist movement, 24–25 Zyklon B, 31

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mark Ward, Sr., PhD (Clemson University), is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Houston-Victoria. His articles on communication have appeared in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Journal of Intercultural Communication, Intercultural Communication Studies, Journal of Communication and Religion, Journal of Media and Religion, Journal of Holocaust Studies, and others. His research plumbs the connection between communication and culture, and his work has studied settings as diverse as Nazi bureaucrats, religious movements, videogame players and college classrooms, and communication situations ranging from technical and organization communication to public and interpersonal persuasion. Deadly Documents: Technical Communication, Organizational Discourse, and the Holocaust—Lessons from the Rhetorical Work of Everyday Texts is his first book for Baywood Publishing.

This page intentionally left blank