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The editorial board emphasises three issues. The first issue is the one treated by Angelo Baracca: nuclear risk in the present–day and its major source – the “Imperial” USA discussed by two internationally known editorialists. Both the text and the appendix to the text indicate that the Bush–Putin “historic agreement” is not “the end of the cold war” and the “beginning of a new era” of peace and security, but an outrageous example of US deception carried out at the expense of all mankind. A trap which the Russians – who are anything but pacifist – must accept and put up with in the light of their ambition to be accepted as a bi–continental power. “Giano” makes it clear that the hands of the “B.A.S.” clocks are again pointing to about five minutes to midnight.
The second issue is our point of view aboutThe Holocausts, 1933–1945, which is presented in the Introduction to a number of papers which make up that part of the journal. Here we only wish to show our continued interest in a chapter of history which is symbolically rich, but whose scope is often limited and made to coincide with the Jewish Shoah. And here, too, we wish to re–affirm our critical autonomy.
And finally, on the relationship between historiography and ecology – that is more specifically between the problems of globalisation and the destiny of mankind – there is a special Supplement by Luigi Cortesi, which should be read in the context of our positions, and specifically in connection with Michele Nobile’s essay on capitalism in the twentieth century. Suggesting the validity and necessity of the ecological paradigm in historiography as well as in other contexts, this essay calls for a discussion which is not only open to professional historians and “analysts” and their respective fields of study, but goes well beyond these borders.
Angelo Baracca, The US Military Model and Nuclear Risk
Following the same lines as his previous studies and writings published by Giano, Baracca calls attention again to the relationships established by the unchallenged world super–power between politics, economics and the arms race. He refers in particular to nuclear arms and the global geopolitics of US imperialism, taking as his exemplification the Star Wars project. The result, Baracca observes, is "a dangerous revival of a military vocation that has been in place since the Cold War." Two updated appendices follow up the article, covering the latest missile defence programmes and the Bush–Putin treaty, which is considered by the author no more than a bluff ultimately damaging the real interests of humanity.
Angelo d’Orsi, War and catastrophe. Conclusion of a seminar on "Historia Magistra"
This is the title which the author – who organised the Seminar at the University of Turin – concluded the session with. The main problems of the wars subsequent to the fall of the Soviet Union are synthetically illustrated, while pretexts for "humane" wars are refuted, in a comprehensive survey of war and law, war and democracy, war and the State, war and ethnic groups. The world, d’Orsi concludes, is again up against a number of impending catastrophes, "the challenge to truth" standing foremost among them.
The Modernity of the Machete (l.c.)
This brief pamphlet addresses several tòpoithat have become common in the international lexicon. Examples include the definitions of "new wars", or "informal" wars, most of which have become "civilised"; the certain obsolescence of the State; the dominant and justificatory concept of "Empire"; and the diminishing reputation of the UN. These ideas are placed in opposition to the important presence of the State inside and outside war zones, and the unwillingness to renounce the concept of "imperialism" as a directional canon of contemporary historiography, owing to its economic and political implications. Over and above matters of terminology, it is time that the tasks of peace–keeping and war prevention be rigorously defined and expressed.
Argentina /1, Argentina /2
Angelo Baracca, Foreign Debt
Norberto O. Ferraris, Political and Social Crisis
These two profiles deal with the situation in Argentina from the point of view of the crisis underway. The IMF and US policy, Baracca argues, are suffocating not only Argentina but the whole Latin American economy, creating a vicious circle in its foreign debt exposure. From another point of view, Ferraris writes that political parties have been unable, if only in part, to understand and orient popular discontent. The ups and downs of the middle classes, he claims, have isolated the unemployed and their organisations on the sidelines.
THE HOLOCAUSTS 1933–1945
The characteristic aspect of each issue is published under this caption. The present (n.40) issue of "Giano" is dedicated to "The Holocausts, 1933–1945". It was edited by the anthropologist Claudio Marta and the historian Francesco Soverina. An editorial note explains the criteria adopted by the editors and the editorial Board of the journal. These are a) a new approach to the problem of extermination as practised by the Nazis in its entirety, in order to highlight what was specific in the persecution of the Jews, which caused the greatest number of victims, and what it had in common with the elimination of other political and social groups; b) rebuttal of the two different pressures faced by the student of the world of German concentration camps: Negationist revisionism and reactionary Zionist fundamentalism. On such an important but oft–exploited topic, "Giano" maintains its strictly independent critical point of view.
Francesco Soverina, Unity and plurality of Holocausts: the Jews and the other victims
This work is an overall introduction to the problem of Nazi policy with regard to the extermination of people in the light of the most recent historiography. First of all the theses of "civilised barbarism", the "uniqueness" of the Jewish Holocaust and the denial of these holocausts are dealt with. The author’s view against these theses as well as against Israeli exploitation of WWII butchery is quite unambiguous. Equally clear is Soverina’s view regarding collusion and covert support by the outside world, particularly in the Democratic Powers and in the Catholic Church. The author suggests two main conclusions: a) the various forms of genocide are in essence alike; b) this likeness is rooted in the extremist biological and eugenic basal view of the Third Reich.
Gustavo Corni, Jewish Ghettoes in Eastern Europe
The author runs through the main theses presented in his recent volume on Hitler’s ghettoes and evaluates recent research. The enclosure of Polish Jews in ghettoes took place in the year after Nazi occupation and followed different patterns. In many smaller centres, hunger and massacres decimated the Jewish population. The Nazis established the institution of the Judenrate, made up of important local figures, faithful to the cause and firmly under Nazi control, who benefited from various privileges and exploited a corrupt and collaborationist Jewish police force. The wider populace were the ones to suffer the most. They were abandoned to an increasingly insecure fight for survival, flagellated by epidemics and often prey to a paradoxical apathy. During 1942, labour activities gave way to the deportation strategy, already underway in the ghettoes of the occupied Soviet territory.
Marco Tomasone, The Holocaust of the Rom
The Holocaust is generally considered to be an exclusive experience of the Jewish community. In fact the Zigennerfrage, as the Gypsy Question, has for a long time been left under wraps. Accused, as the Jews were, of invading the Lebensraum, or vital living space of the Germans, the Rom were labelled as the non plus ultraof human regression. This belief was dictated by hatred and animosity towards a controversial minority whose origins were uncertain and mystifying. And a motivation of sorts for this terrible massacre can be found in the origins of the Rom themselves. Due to their geographic origins, the Gypsies had a measure of Indo–European identity akin to the perfect race as theorised by the Nazis. In order to be liquidated, the Rom had first to be turned into "degenerate Arians". This was how over five hundred thousand people were subjected to mass murder in concentration camps and in the laboratories of the Third Reich’s pseudo–scientists.
Barbara Stelzl–Marx, The slaughter of Soviet prisoners of war
The Nazis planned and carried out the war along the line of Weltanschauungkriegand Rassenkrieg. The "Barbarossa–Erlass" and the "Kommisarbefehl" were merciless tools against communist political commissars who, upon capture, were immediately executed, and against the Jews of the Soviet Union. Even the rules and the measures taken against plain soldiers were inhuman. "The Soviet prisoners of war along with the Jews made up the groups of victims which were to suffer the most" with 3.300.000 victims in captivity, the majority in the first part of the war in the East and at the time of the German victories. Later on the prisoners able to work were given the chance of surviving by means of better food and better living conditions. This essay, based on a deep knowledge of the relevant literary and archival sources, follows the repatriation of the soldiers who survived in the Soviet Union where they were initially treated very harshly, as people who had allowed themselves to be captured by the Germans. In some of the most serious cases only the amnesty of 1957 freed these former prisoners from their status of "victims of the dictatorships".
Brunello Mantelli, The political opponent as "foreigner and enemy of the race"
The earliest object of nazi repression was the political opposition made up of militant communists, social democrats, intermediate groups of the socialdemocratic left and of the right wing of the communist party and also of the labour unions. Between 1933 and 1936 they were the only ones to be sent to concentration camps created by the SA and SS immediately after Hitler’s seizure of power. Only after 1936 did the Third Reich deal with other groups of the population, from the handicapped to the Gypsies, from the chronically unemployed to the Jews. And yet there is a clear underlying theme which links together – beyond undoubted qualitative differences – persecution for behaviour and persecution for "racial" reasons: for German fascism, political and social non–conformism was a symptom and an indication of racial degeneration. Political confrontation is seen as social confrontation where superior races are opposed to degenerate and inferior races.
Emilia Taglialatela, "Lebensunwerte Leben". Bio–politics and eugenic massacres in the Third Reich<
This article analyses the euthanasia program that the Nazi regime, from the beginning, carried out against lebensunwerte Leben("lives not worthy to be lived"). The theories of racial anthropology and eugenics, developed in Europe and the United States by the end of the nineteenth century and taken to their extreme consequences by Hitler’s ideology based on an extreme form of biological racism, are here examined. The author analyses, quoting studies by Foucault and Agamben, several key passages in the field of bio–politics, aiming at the domination of the bodies and "the very life" of individuals and social groups those endowed with political power, with special reference to the practice of sterilisation at first, and later on the elimination of babies and adults judged to be inferior only because they were mentally deficient, of the handicapped, epileptics, cripples or just people with impaired eyesight or hearing. These practices are studied also in regard to the mechanism of their bureaucratic organisation, which, according to some scholars, acted as a "laboratory test" for the genocide of the Jews.
Claudio Marta, The science of Nazi extermination: anthropology, racial hygiene and psychiatry
The author’s thesis is that there is an element which links the extermination programs of the Nazis: the main role is carried out by German science and, particularly, by anthropology, racial hygiene and psychiatry. By the end of the 1930’s, ideology and procedure in the National–socialist regime are characterised by the meeting of two different forms of racism: "genetic racism", where the main elements attacked were individuals belonging to particular groups considered genetically inferior or incapable of conforming to norms (homosexuals, the handicapped, the mentally ill and the antisocial) and "anthropological racism" whose main targets were minorities and national groups viewed as a threat to the purity of the "Nordic race" (Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and "Negroes")
This essay analyses the so–called "scientific" work of anthropologists (such as Eugen Fisher and Otmar von Verschuer), racial hygienists (like Alfred Ploetz and Fritz Lenz) and psychiatrists (like Ernst Rüdin e Robert Ritter), who by promulgating racial theories helped inspire and organize the Nazi program of extermination.
Sara Valentina Di Palma,Rosa Winkel, The Persecution of Homosexuals.
Paolo Piccioli, Jehova’s Witnesses under Nazism
Linked under the heading "Memento", these two short essays fill in details of the "Holocausts" experience, remembering the fate of two social groups both considered, for different reasons, enemies of the Nazi order. Those accused of homosexuality, as well as Bibelforscher, underwent persecutions and mass deportations to the lagers.
Michele Nobile, The World Economics of Capitalism: Economic Development and Social Catastrophes
Outlining the transformations of the world economy between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, Nobile illustrates the link between the development and territorial expansion of capitalism and the explosion of its internal contradictions into catastrophic crises and barbarianism. The paradoxical nature of capitalistic modernity, he claims, consists precisely in this contradiction between processes of liberalisation and processes of regression, in their geographical and temporal shifts, in their reproduction on a larger scale and with increasing risks. There is no real globalisation of scientific and technological progress, Nobile argues, nor is there any homogeneity in hopes of quality of life. Capitalistic development is based, in his view, on the reproduction of inequalities among socio–economic areas, among productive sectors and among the salaried classes. The unequal combined development of the world economy is also, Nobile concludes, one of the roots of the explosion of barbarianism during the two world wars, as well as in many other "lesser" wars, of the depredation of natural resources, the destruction of environmental balances and of world hunger.
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