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I'm not sure one can distinguish where this "crystal" begins or ends. All Nazis and many like-mined subscribed to the social darwinistic model of inferior races becoming extinct as superior races expanded. Hitler clearly "intended" for Germany to expand, and visualized the massive "dying off" of populations that got in their way. Until expansion actually began, however, this remained largely abstract in the minds of all involved. The Jews were worse than inferior, they were a domestic threat to the strength of Germany, but even after 1933 extermination was out of the question. It wasn't realistic either politically or logistically until Himmler had built the SS and police state as the necessary machinery and until total war created the necessary psychological environment. Himmler and the people in his "crystal" _intentionally_ pursued and unlimited police state that could execute any order the Fuehrer gave.. Being able to execute orders means being able to anticipate them - contingency planning. The absolute police state had to have monopolistic authority over all "enemies of society," and sole responsibility for controlling or eliminating them. Once such missins accrued to the members of the Gestapo, the SD, or even the Kriminalpolizei, they had to propose increasingly radical or "effective" solutions to preempt competiton and they had to build the machinery for carrying out whichever of these solutions the leader adopted. As Himmler, Heydrich, and those below them, even those who did not originally taken the "Jewish Problem" that seriously, created mechanisms and proposed solutions, the abstract goals that Hitler forsaw and always talked about to these subordiantes could crystalize into true "intentions." Abstract intentions created functional pressures that, in turn, created realistic opportunities to conceive and execute concretet intentions. The "intentionalist" actors have to be seen as evolving their "intentions." The "functional" actors have to be seen as participants in a symbiotic process the encouraged that evolution, leading them to eventually embrace the final intentions. Each was _responsible_ in his own way. The "obeying orders" rationalization (which was only given after the fact, in trial defense) has to be interpreted in the three different ways that Herbert Kellman has described so well. Each depended on one's _perception_ of his responsibility for his society's actions, as opposed to his actual responsibility or contribution. George Browder
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