Compare the Intentionalist and Functionalist Approaches to the Holocaust

Politics of Mass Murder

Compare And Contrast The Functionalist And Intentionalist Approaches To Two Cases Of Genocide:

The Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide

Introduction

The issue of mass-murder – particularly the politics or hate-based variants known as genocide or ‘ethnic cleansing’ – has provided bases for continual critical discussions amongst analysts as regards the possible motives and justifications for, or catalysts of such grievous acts. There have been several documented instances of genocide in history, but the most debated is the Holocaust during the reign of the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Regime in Germany. Arising from this particular instance of genocide – in which it is said that millions of Jews were specifically targeted for annihilation – were academic debates about its origins and catalysts. At the heart of debates about the Holocaust is the matter known as the ‘Final Solution’ – a term which refers to the implementation of a systematic genocide of European Jews during the period of the Second World War.

Forming two divides of the debate are the functionalist and intentionalist approaches which hold opposing views on two central questions: Was there a premeditated master-plan by Hitler to implement the genocide? From where did the initiative for the genocide originate – Hitler (above) or the ranks of the Nazi-German bureaucracy and ordinary Germans (below)? These questions provide continuing grounds for controversy and this paper would attempt to explore the main arguments put forward by functionalists and intentionalists in order to identify contrasts and nuanced similarities in perspective. Furthermore, regardless of the fact that the functionalist – intentionalist contention emerged principally as a historiographical debate focusing on the Holocaust (Serving History, 2010), this paper would also attempt to apply the underlying ideas behind these two approaches to the Armenian Genocide of 1915 - 1917 in order to...