Murray State University
The Evil that Men Do: Comparative Genocide in the Twentieth Century
Institution
Murray State University
Faculty Advisor/ Mentor
David Pizzo
Abstract
In the past one hundred years, there has been an ongoing mission of the civilized world to prevent the atrocities of genocide from happening. While admirable in thought, the policies taken to prevent the measures have failed. With early warning signs in situations of genocide being different in each case it is hard to determine when genocide is imminent. The lack of knowledge about the situation proves to be a serious problem to global actors that are required to work within the information available to them. By using three different case studies of genocide with each occurring within different contexts; the Herero genocide as German retaliation against the Herero and Nama people of South-West Africa revolting against the colonial regime, the Armenian genocide as a regime seeking to create a more homogeneous nation and remove Christian minority in the crumbling Ottoman empire, and the Bosnian Genocide of the ethnic Muslims by Bosnian Serbs in their attempt to join with Serbia to create a greater Serb-nation during the Yugoslavian civil war. These genocides occurred under ideas of racial and religious superiority along with perceived threats to the general populations way of life by those persecuted. By examining these ideas of racial and religious disparities, the perceived threat posed by the victim and how these factors contributed to the respective genocidal environments a predictor of genocidal behavior can be determined.
The Evil that Men Do: Comparative Genocide in the Twentieth Century
In the past one hundred years, there has been an ongoing mission of the civilized world to prevent the atrocities of genocide from happening. While admirable in thought, the policies taken to prevent the measures have failed. With early warning signs in situations of genocide being different in each case it is hard to determine when genocide is imminent. The lack of knowledge about the situation proves to be a serious problem to global actors that are required to work within the information available to them. By using three different case studies of genocide with each occurring within different contexts; the Herero genocide as German retaliation against the Herero and Nama people of South-West Africa revolting against the colonial regime, the Armenian genocide as a regime seeking to create a more homogeneous nation and remove Christian minority in the crumbling Ottoman empire, and the Bosnian Genocide of the ethnic Muslims by Bosnian Serbs in their attempt to join with Serbia to create a greater Serb-nation during the Yugoslavian civil war. These genocides occurred under ideas of racial and religious superiority along with perceived threats to the general populations way of life by those persecuted. By examining these ideas of racial and religious disparities, the perceived threat posed by the victim and how these factors contributed to the respective genocidal environments a predictor of genocidal behavior can be determined.