Mass-graves, World War I & the Holocaust World War I (left) & the Holocaust (right) What was the difference between the slaughter that occurred during the First World War and that which occurred during the Holocaust? Some might say the killing in the Holocaust was intentional, whereas the killing of the First World War was "unintentional." Is this a valid argument?

In Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, & Representation, Omer Bartov hypothesizes a relationship between the First World War and the Holocaust, suggesting that the “very concept of mass-killing of human beings by states”—the genocide of the Jews—was “lifted directly from the Great war”—the realities of 1914-1918.

The death camps, Bartov says, were architecturally and organizationally modeled on the experience of the Great War, “incorporating all the attributes of a military environment,” such as uniforms and barbed wire, watch towers and roll calls, hierarchy and order, drill and commands. The Holocaust was therefore a “militarized genocide.” What was present during the First World War was also present at the death camps: the barbed wire, machine guns, charred bodies, the gas, the uniforms, and the military discipline.

The Holocaust was “almost the perfect reenactment of the Great War,” with the important correction that “all the perpetrators were on one side and all the victims on the other.” This reenactment was “totally lethal for the inmates and totally safe for the guards.

Bartov concludes by observing that there is much reluctance to “associate the imagery of the Great War with the Holocaust.” This has to do both with the discomfort of “perceiving national wars as instances of industrial killing,” and with the general tendency to insist on the “difference between genocide and war.”

What was the difference between the slaughter that occurred during the First World War and the slaughter that occurred during the Holocaust? Some might say that the killing that occurred in the Holocaust was intentional, whereas the killing that occurred in the First World War was unintentional.