Concentration-camp violence in the prism of cruelty (1933-1945): The case of Otto Moll

Les violences subies par les deportes dans les camps de concentration et d'extermination ont le plus souvent, a juste titre, ete rapportees a une industrie impersonnelle et bureaucratique, voire a des logiques institutionnelles mettant l'accent sur les logiques propres a un camp ou les ideologies corporatistes, dont celle des nazis ou des SS. Dans cet article, nous proposons une perspective complementaire, sans doute marginale, mais qui a tout de meme sa pertinence : en postulant l'existence de marges de manoeuvre des acteurs socio-historiques, nous developpons le concept d'acte d'initiative par lequel il devient possible de sociologiser les pratiques de cruaute. En suivant de pres la trajectoire d'un officier SS, Otto Moll, il s'agit d'articuler les cadres structurels evolutifs (passage de l'etat de paix a l'etat de guerre, du Reich allemand au Reich europeen) et d'explorer les specificites institutionnelles des camps etudies (des camps de concentration aux camps d'extermination). Enfin le parcours professionnel et social du bourreau sera etudie non seulement par sa logique de carriere, mais aussi par ses propres et notammment ses actes de cruaute inedites.//The violence suffered by deportees in the concentration and extermination camps has rightly been attributed most frequently to an impersonal and bureaucratic industry, even to institutional logic, with an emphasis on the particular logic of a camp or of corporatist ideologies, such as those of the Nazi Party or the SS. In this article, we propose a complementary perspective, undoubtedly marginal, but which nonetheless has relevance: in postulating the existence of margins of maneuver for socio-historical actors, we develop the concept of the act of initiative through which it becomes possible to understand the practices of cruelty in a sociological framework. In closely following the trajectory of an SS officer, Otto Moll, we articulate the evolving structural frameworks (passage from peace to war, from the German Reich to the European Reich), the institutional specificities of the camps studied (from concentration camps to extermination camps), and finally the professional and social path of the executioner understood not only through the logic of his career, but also in terms of his individual agency and even creativity that spurred his particular acts of cruelty. http://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-politique-2015-2-page-4 7.htm] Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po