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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker describes administrative responsibility for forced displacement and ethnic cleansing operations.
In plain terms
I was responsible for sending people out of their homes based on ethnicity.
What can you take from it?
Understanding who held administrative power clarifies historical accountability.

Where it applies

  • historical research
  • accountability reviews
  • policy analysis

Putting it to work

  • investigating historical records
  • assigning blame
  • understanding chains of command

Questions to consider

  • How do roles and responsibilities relate to personal guilt?
  • What does bureaucratic language hide?

Another view

Administrative titles can obscure individual moral agency.

More from Ernst Kaltenbrunner

  1. I'm sure that Kaltenbrunner would not misuse the SD or Gestapo as Himmler and Heydrich did. Kaltenbrunner loves women and wine. He does not like police activit…

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  2. In the courtroom, the defendants were at their best. They had to be, because the whole world was watching this trial. When they came back to the cells, then th…

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  3. SS Obergruppenfuhrer Dr. Kaltenbrunner attended personally conferences with SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, Chief of the SS Wirtschaft and Verwaltungshauptamt and …

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