Free A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power Page B

nobody in the United States could say he was exaggerating or propagandizing.
    A few scholars still rejected atrocity reports and tried to relativize German responsibility. The harshest review of Axis Rule appeared in the American Journal of Sociology in 1946. The reviewer, Melchior Palyi, blamed Lemkin for his failure to explore the "extenuating circumstances" for Nazi behavior. According to Palyi, Lemkin had written a "prosecutor's brief" rather than an "impartial" inquiry. The reviewer claimed that almost every one of the nine charges Lemkin made against the Nazis could be made against the Allies. "Of course," the reviewer wrote, "there is this substantial difference: that the Nazis shamelessly displayed their intentionally planned misdeeds, while the western Allies stumble into illegal practices and cover them with humanitarian or other formulas""'
    But most reviews were favorable and did not dabble in such false equiva- lency.The American Journal of International Law described Lemkin's collection of Nazi legislation as a "tour de force."" Another reviewer wrote, "The terrorism of the German police is well enough known, but to see matters described in cold legal terminology creates in one perhaps an even greater sense of indignation."" At this time Lemkin was somewhat conflicted about the roots of responsibility and the relative role of individual and collective guilt, theories of accountability that continue to compete today. On the one hand, Lemkin urged the punishment of those individuals responsible for Nazi horrors. On the other, he espoused an early version of the theory, put forth again recently by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners, that ascribed guilt not only to the perpetrators of the crimes but to their fellow citizens who failed to stop them and often appeared actively supportive." In Axis Rule Lemkin wrote, "The present destruction of Europe would not be complete and thorough had the German people not accepted freely [the Nazi] plan, participated voluntarily in its execution, and up to this point profited greatly therefrom." He refused to accept the line that all but the most senior German authorities were just "obeying orders," insisting that "all important classes and groups of the population have voluntarily assisted Hitler in the scheme of world domination""
    In January 1945 the New York Times Book Review devoted its cover to Axis Rule. "Out of its dry legalism," the reviewer wrote, "there emerge the contours of the monster that now bestrides the earth" This monster "gorges itself on blood, bestializes its servants and perverts some of the noblest human emotions to base ends, all with the semblance of authority and spurious legality which leave the individual helpless."The reviewer credited Lemkin with capturing "what Axis rule in occupied Europe means and what it would have meant to us had it ever spread to our shores." But he faulted Lemkin's sweeping ascription of blame. By finding "innate viciousness" in the German people, Lemkin was feeding "nazismin-reverse." "Surely," the reviewer wrote, "just because he is a Pole Dr. Lemkin would not want to be held personally responsible for all the acts of the Pilsudski regime"35
    A Word Is a Word Is a Word
    Axis Rule is not remembered for stirring this once and fixture debate about the nature of individual and collective guilt. Instead, it is known because it was in this rather arcane, legalistic tome that Lemkin followed through on his pledge to himself and to his imagined co-conspirator, Winston Churchill. Ever since Lemkin had heard Churchill's 1941 radio address, he had been determined to find a new word to replace "barbarity" and "vandalism," which had failed him at the 1933 Madrid conference. Lemkin had hunted for a term that would describe assaults on all aspects of nationhood-physical, biological, political, social, cultural, economic, and religious. He wanted to connote not only full-scale extermination but also Hitler's