Compromised Identities? Reflections on perpetration and complicity under Nazism

在纳粹统治下，数百万人被卷入迫害机器。2015年，英国大屠杀委员会指出，虽然大屠杀只能在“广泛的共谋”下进行，但“关于肇事者角色的教育很多，但关于社会和旁观者的角色的教育还不够”(“英国的承诺记住”，第49页)。这一说法既反映了公共教育的性质，也反映了研究的现状。然而，“旁观者”的范畴过于宽泛，无法概括一系列行为的模棱两可，这些行为的动机是信念和事业心、从众和被动、部分热情或自我疏远，以及源于恐惧和无能为力的投降。这个跨学科的项目分析了人们是如何被纳粹的制度和做法纠缠在一起的，以及他们是如何应对后来在不同情况下被视为“被妥协”的过去的。它探讨了国家支持的暴力的实施和共谋，以及事件发生后的正义问题，重点是从第三帝国到现在“犯罪者一方”的人和人的陈述。我们以多方面的方式探索肇事者一方的参与模式，结合情境并解释肇事者的“声音”，并提高人们对陈述的复杂性的认识。该项目考察了参与纳粹罪行的人或纳粹罪行的目击者如何谈论、沉默或以不同方式谈判描述他们的角色，经常对自己仅仅是一个“无辜的旁观者”进行追溯性描述。它分析了当环境和价值体系发生变化时，个人身份如何受到压力，以及自我表征如何随着时间的推移而发展。它探讨了公共话语--政治、文化、新闻和司法--如何解决国家支持的暴力行为，并在个人层面上审问或促进无罪释放策略。公众形象往往有助于妖魔化“过度施暴者”，认为其不同于“普通人”，而其他人则暗示“只是服从命令”的重要性；个人的自我理解和无罪开脱策略都会受到此类形象的影响。我们提出了与集体暴力及其遗留问题有关的“身份受损”的概念。四个相互关联的研究线索考察了随着时间的推移，更广泛的社会、文化和政治背景与人们的自我表征之间的相互作用。第一种分析了“旁观者社会”的出现，即人们在纳粹政权下适应角色的变化。它使用自我文档(信件、日记、回忆录)探索行为变化和社会关系，而人们往往对新需求保持内心的距离。第二部分分析了从20世纪60年代到现在的口述历史访谈，以探索公众形象的变化如何影响那些参与维持制度和协助第三帝国犯罪的人的私人话语和自我陈述。第三部分分析了战后政治和法律制度的重要性，以及专业人士和其他参与审判的人在塑造“肇事者”结构方面的特点；并探讨了在选定的案件中，具体的犯罪情结如何通过媒体和当地环境折射出来。第四条线索探索了机构、身份和道德问题在创作文学和电影中涉及的耐人寻味的曲折，这些作品专门以正义问题为主题。这些线索在更广泛的比较背景下结合在一起。该项目将对关于实施和共谋的学术辩论产生影响。它还将为研究和教育目的制作一套独特的录像访谈集，采访约250名第三帝国犯罪的前肇事者和目击者。网站、公共活动和移动展览将吸引更多的受众。

Under Nazi rule, millions were involved in the machinery of persecution. In 2015, the UK's Holocaust Commission noted that, while the Holocaust could only be carried out 'with widespread complicity', there is 'a great deal of education on perpetrators' roles, but not enough on the role of society and bystanders' ('Britain's Promise to Remember', p.49). This statement reflects both the character of public education and the current state of research. Yet the category of 'bystanders' is too broad to encapsulate the ambiguities of a wide range of behaviours variously motivated by conviction and careerism, conformity and passivity, partial enthusiasm or self-distancing, as well as capitulation rooted in fear and powerlessness. This interdisciplinary project analyses how people became entangled in Nazi systems and practices, and how they responded to what later, under different circumstances, came to be seen as a 'compromised' past. Exploring perpetration and complicity in state-sponsored violence and questions of justice in its aftermath, it focuses on representations by and of people 'on the perpetrator side' from the Third Reich to the present. We explore patterns of involvement on the side of the perpetrators in a multi-facetted manner, contextualising and interpreting the 'voices' of the perpetrators and raising awareness of the complexities of representation.The project examines ways in which people who were involved in or witnesses to Nazi crimes talked about, silenced, or variously negotiated accounts of their roles, often constructing retrospective accounts of having been merely an 'innocent bystander'. It analyses how individual identities come under pressure when circumstances and value systems change, and how self-representations develop over time. It explores how public discourses - political, cultural, journalistic and judicial - address state-sponsored violence and interrogate or contribute to exculpatory strategies at a personal level. Public images often helped to demonise 'excess perpetrators' as unlike 'ordinary people', while others suggested the significance of 'just following orders'; private self-understandings and exculpatory strategies were affected by such images. We develop a concept of 'compromised identities' in relation to collective violence and its legacies. Four interrelated research strands examine the interplay between wider social, cultural and political contexts, and people's self-representations over time. The first analyses the emergence of a 'bystander society', as people accommodated themselves to changing roles under the Nazi regime. Using ego-documents (letters, diaries, memoirs) it explores behavioural shifts and social relations while people often retained an inner distance from new demands. A second strand analyses oral history interviews from the 1960s to the present to explore ways in which changing public images affected private discourses and self-representations among those who had been complicit in sustaining the system and assisting the crimes of the Third Reich. The third strand analyses the significance of postwar political and legal systems, and the character of professionals and others involved in trials, in shaping constructions of 'perpetrators'; and it explores how specific crime complexes are refracted through the media and local settings in selected cases. The fourth strand explores intriguing twists in the ways in which questions of agency, identity and morality have been engaged with in works of creative literature and films that specifically thematise issues of justice. These strands are brought together in a wider comparative context.The project will have an impact on academic debates on perpetration and complicity. It will also develop for research and educational purposes a unique collection of filmed interviews with some 250 former perpetrators and witnesses of Third Reich crimes. A website, public events and a mobile exhibition will engage wider audiences.