Himmler's Ethics of Duty: A Moral Approach to the Holocaust and to Germany's Impending Defeat

• Published in: The European legacy, toward new paradigms Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 55 - 73
• Main Author: Mineau, André
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01.02.2007
• Subjects: Area studies; Cultural history; Duty; Ethics; European studies; Genocide; Germany; Himmler, Heinrich; Holocaust; Political morality; Political philosophy; Political sociology; World War Two
• DOI: 10.1080/10848770601081105
• ISSN: 1084-8770

Heinrich Himmler is mostly seen as the all-powerful organizer who coordinated the police apparatus that reigned over occupied Europe and who supervised personally the concentration camp system. But Himmler was also a thinker or, at least, he perceived himself as such, and he was especially concerned with moral issues. This article examines the role of ethics in Himmler's thinking. More specifically, it considers what sort of ethics it was and how the Reichsführer SS could rely on moral notions to legitimize his endeavors and to make sense of extreme events in which he participated. From a normative viewpoint any claim to philosophical validity for this type of approach may be called into question, for the nihilism and denial of otherness were paramount in the instrumentalization of humans that led to genocide.