Amy Elizabeth Davis April 29, 2009 Political Science Department University of New England

1. Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Genocide in Europe and Africa Amy Elizabeth Davis April 29, 2009 Political Science Department University of New England

2. Main Question What are the personal and structural factors that provide linkages between the Congo and the Holocaust and that would give merit to Hannah Arendt’s claim? Thesis Statement The Holocaust and the Congo are examples of how far individuals will go to achieve power and without careful analysis of not only human characteristics, but structural factors that cultivate personal motivation, more genocide is not only feasible, but probable.

3. Hannah Arendt’s Argument • By exploiting and controlling people, a new mass of people gained power: the bourgeoisie. By having control over people in another country, it made them more influential and important at home. • 2. The desire for power is more dangerous than the desire for profit. This new development was dangerous because “power is tempting, and in a sense, no power is greater than the ability to take someone’s life.” • 3. Man has a price. Man is a function of society and judged therefore by his value or worth. Therefore, a man’s worth is determined by his power, which is derived from controlling the fate of other men, so imperialism seems the logical way to increase individual value.

4. Personal Motivations • King Leopold II: Monetary wealth • Adolf Hitler: German Nationalism • Henry Morton Stanley: Fame • Adolf Eichmann: Career gains

5. Structural Factors Congo Conference of Berlin Technology Racism Germany World War I Medicine & Eugenics Anti-Semitism Congo Photo: http://img2.moonbuggy.org/imgstore/nazi-super-science.jpg Nazi Photo: http://img2.moonbuggy.org/imgstore/nazi-super-science.jpg

6. Direct & Indirect Impact Death tolls Creation of Israel Congo Civil War/Africa’s World War Remembrance Human Rights Movements

7. Conclusions • Hitler and Leopold managed to achieve power through other’s deaths. • Eichmann and Stanley, likewise, achieved the successful careers and fame they always wanted, but at the cost of other’s lives. • Advances in technology and medicine made it possible for Hitler and Leopold to be successful. • Racism and anti-Semitism inherent in Germany and Belgium caused the populace not to speak out against the genocide.

8. Conclusions (Continued) It is difficult to assess whether or not the Congo genocide or the Holocaust would have happened without one of these factors, or if it took all of them to make it possible. Today, we have powerful leaders with the best technology in world history, but first-world countries are not involved in brutal genocides, but third-world countries with 18th-century technology and no leadership are susceptible to genocide. What we must look to in the future are those who are looking to gain power. Of course, not all will murder to get power, but those desperate enough for it will. If the states who have the means can stop genocides either before they begin or at the very first stages, then not only will we prevent a genocide, but it will show the international community that genocide is a no longer tolerated means of obtaining power.

9. Bibliography: Ahmida, Ali. Forgotten Voices. New York: Taylor and Francis Group, 2005. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Group, 1992. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Florida: Harcourt Inc, 1968. Berger, Stefan. Inventing the Nation Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Bessel, Richard. Life in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Bessel, Richard. “The Nazi Capture of Power.” Journal of Contemporary History 39 no.2 (2004): 169-188. Brown, William O. and Richard C.K. Burdekin, “German Debt Traded in London During the Second World War: A British Perspective on Hitler.” Economica 69 no. 276 (November 2002): 655-669. Christopher, A.J. “Patterns of British Overseas Investment in Land, 1885-1913.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 10 no. 4 (1985): 452-466. Clark, John, ed. The African Stakes of the Congo War. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Delaware: Prestwick House, 2005. David, Henry P, Jochen Fleischhacker and Charlotte Hohn. “Abortion and Eugenics in Nazi Germany.” Population and Development Review 14 no.1 (March 1988): 81-112. Dossa, Shiraz. “Human Status and Politics: Hannah Arendt on the Holocaust.” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 13, no.2 (June 1980): 309-323. Gambino, Anthony. “Congo Securing Peace, Sustaining Progress.” Council on Foreign Relations no. 40 (October 2008): vii-57. Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. New York: Picador, 1998. Harff, Barbara. “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955.” The American Political Science Review 97, no.1 (February 2003): 57-73. Headrick, Daniel R. “The Tools of Imperialism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial Empires in the Nineteenth Century.” The Journal of Modern History 51 no.2 (June 1979): 231-263. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost. New York: First Mariner Books, 1998. Kershaw, Ian. “Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism.” Journal of Contemporary History 39 no.2 (April 2004): 239-254. Kraus, Rene. Europe in Revolt. New York: Macmillan Company, 1942. Lynn, Martin. “Technology, Trade and ‘a Race of Native Capitalists’: the Krio Diaspora of West Africa and the Steamship, 1852-95.” The Journal of African History 33 no.3 (1992): 421-440. Mamdani, Mahmood. “A Brief History of Genocide.” Transition 10, no.3 (2001): 26-47. Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001. May, Ernest. Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. Newbury, David. “Understanding Genocide.” African Studies Review 41 no.1 (April 1998): 73-97. Prunier, Gerard. Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Reich, Bernard. A Brief History of Israel. Washington DC: Facts on File, Inc, 2005. Tindall, George Brown and David Emory Shi, America: A Narrative History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Turner, Henry. “Big Business and the Ride of Hitler.” The American Historical Review 75 no.1 (October 1969): 56-70. Turner, Thomas. The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality. New York: Zed Books, 2007. Van Den Braembussche, Antoon. “The Silence of Belgium: Taboo and Trauma in Belgian Memory.” Yale French Studies no. 102 (2002): 35-52. Wistrich, Robert S. Hitler and the Holocaust. New York: Random House, 2003. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.