Steven Katz's “The Ethic of Expediency” has become a reference point for discussions of ethics since its 1992 publication. Previously, this author assessed Katz's rhetorical analysis of Nazi technical communication against current research on the Holocaust and noted that scholarship suggests ideology rather than technological expediency as its motivating force. Yet implicit in the author's critique are two remaining questions, namely: What other rhetorical interpretations may be possible of the SS technical memo analyzed by Katz? And is Katz, who makes broad generalizations about Western rhetoric based on a single document, supported by examples of other Nazi technical communications? This article explores alternate interpretations of the SS memo suggested by the arguments of Rivers and Moore; presents the author's view that the Katz thesis decontextualizes the memo and that historical context argues for a primarily ideological ethos; and reviews sources for English translations of other Nazi documents.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
KatzS. B., The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust, College English, 54: 3, pp. 255–275, 1992.
2.
ConnellyF. M. and ClandinninD. J., Teachers as Curriculum Planners, Teachers College Press, New York, 1988.
3.
LaCapraD., History and Memory After Auschwitz, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1998.
4.
WardM. L.Sr., The Banality of Rhetoric? Assessing Steven Katz's “The Ethic of Expediency” against Current Scholarship on the Holocaust, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 39: 2, pp. 207–222, 2009.
5.
ArendtH., Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Viking, New York, 1963.
6.
LozowickY., Hitler's Bureaucrats: The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil, WatzmanH. (trans.), Continuum, London, 2002.
7.
WildtM., Generation des Unbedingten: Das Fuehrungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes, Hamburger Edition, Hamburg, Germany, 2003.
8.
RiversT. M., A Comment on “The Ethic of Expediency,”College English, 54: 7, pp. 856–858, 1992.
9.
MooreP., Questioning the Motives of Technical Communication and Rhetoric: Steven Katz's “Ethic of Expediency,”Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 34: 1–2, pp. 5–29, 2004.
10.
OrnatowskiC., Examining Technology's Wake: A Review of Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, Lore, 2: 2, 2002 [online journal].
11.
BullockA., Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Odhams, London, 1952.
12.
RosenbaumR.Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, Random House, New York, 1988.
13.
RauschningH., Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West, DickesE. W. (trans.), Alliance Book Corporation, New York, 1939.
14.
KoonzC., The Nazi Conscience, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003.
15.
AlyG., Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, ChaseJ. (trans.), Metropolitan Books, New York, 2006.
16.
KatzS. B., Steven Katz Responds, College English, 54: 7, pp. 858–861, 1992.
17.
GoldhagenD. J., Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Vintage, New York, 1996.
18.
BrowningC. R., Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, HarperCollins, New York, 1992.
19.
JohnsonE. A. and ReubandK.-H., What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany, Basic Books, New York, 2005.
20.
PeukertD. J. K., Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life, DevesonR. (trans.), Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1987.
21.
SchleunesK. A., The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward the Jews, 1933–1939, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 1970.
22.
ToozeA., The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, Viking, New York, 2007.
23.
PhilipsenG., A theory of speech codes, in Developing Communication Theories, AlbrechtT. L. and PhilipsenG. (eds.), State University of New York Press, Albany, 1997.
24.
LiftonR. J., The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Basic Books, New York, 1986.
25.
RosemanM., The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration, Picador, New York, 2002.
26.
CesariniD., Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Murderer,”Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2004.
27.
MirelB., The Politics of Usability: The Organizational Functions of an In-house Manual, in Effective Documentation: What We Have Learned from Research, Doheny-FarinaS. (ed.), MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, pp. 277–297.
28.
KatzS. B., Guest Editorial: A Response to Patrick Moore's “Questioning the Motives of Technical Communication and Rhetoric: Steven Katz's ‘Ethic of Expediency,’”Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 36: 1, pp. 1–8, 2006.
29.
BaumanZ., Modernity and the Holocaust, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1989.
30.
WarnickQ., Toward a More Productive Discussion about Instrumental Discourse, Orange: A Student Journal of Technical Communication, 6: 1 [online journal], 2006.
31.
MooreP., From Monologue to Dialogue to Chorus: The Place of Instrumental Discourse in English Studies and Technical Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 36: 4, pp. 383–412, 2006.
32.
Aristotle, Rhetoric and Poetics, RobertsRhys W. (trans.), Modern Library, New York, 1954.
33.
BrowningC. R., Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, with a New Afterword, HarperCollins, New York, 1998.
34.
RubinsteinR. L., After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1966.
35.
KrausnickH. (ed.), Anatomy of the SS State, BarryR.JacksonM., and LongD. (trans.), Walker, New York, 1968.
36.
OveryR., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2004.
37.
GrunbergerR., The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933–1945, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1971.
38.
HamannB., Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship, ThorntonT. (trans.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1999.
39.
KershawI., Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1998.
40.
WestermannE. B., Review of Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: Das Fuehrungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes, H-German, H-Net Reviews, September, 2004. Retrieved November 26, 2007, from http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=82461096634736.
41.
JaeckelE., Hitler's World View: A Blueprint for Power, ArnoldH. (trans.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972.
42.
HitlerA., Mein Kampf, ManheimR. (trans.), Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1943.
43.
FriedländerS., The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, HarperCollins, New York, 2007.
44.
ReitlingerG., The SS, Alibi of a Nation: 1922–1945, Viking, New York, 1957.
45.
BauerY., Rethinking the Holocaust, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2001.
46.
MegargeeG. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2009.
47.
HilbergR., The Destruction of the European Jews (3rd Edition), Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2003.
48.
NoakesJ. and PridhamG. (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader, Vols. 1–4, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, England, 1983–1988.
49.
Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1946.
50.
HilbergR. (ed.), Documents of Destruction, Franklin Watts, London, 1971.
51.
AradY.GutmanY., and MargaliotA. (eds.), Documents on the Holocaust: Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union (10th Edition) (DorL. B., trans.), Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1981.
52.
HochstadtS., Sources of the Holocaust, MacMillan, New York, 2004.
53.
AradY.KrakowskiS., and SpectorS. (eds.), The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews, July 1941-January 1943, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 1989.
54.
KleeE.DressenW., and RiessV., “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, Konecky & Konecky, Old Saybrook, Connecticut, 1991.
55.
KogonE., Zyklon B: Nazi Mass Murder by Poison Gas, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, 1992.
DomarusM., Hitler Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship, Vols. 1–4, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Wauconda, Illinois, 1990–2004.
65.
DworkD. and van PeltR. J., Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996.
WardMarkSr., Independents' Day: Rhetoric, Culture, and the History of Gasoline Marketing in the United States, 1958–2008, Oil-Industry History, 9, 121–142, 2008.
73.
WardMarkSr., The Banality of Culture? Reassessing the Social Science of the Goldhagen Thesis on its Own Terms, Holocaust Studies, 14: 1, 1–34, 2008.
74.
WardMarkSr., “Ordinary Communicators”: A Demonstration Proposal to Synthesize the Browning and Goldhagen Theses, Holocaust Studies, 14: 2, 41–70, 2008.
75.
WardMarkSr., Squaring the Learning Circle: Cross-Classroom Collaborations and the Impact of Audience on Student Outcomes in Professional Writing, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 23: 1, 61–82, 2009.
76.
WardMarkSr., The Banality of Rhetoric? Assessing Steven Katz's “The Ethic of Expediency” against Current Scholarship on the Holocaust, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 39: 1, 207–222, 2009.
77.
WardMarkSr., Fundamentalist Differences: Using Ethnography of Rhetoric (EOR) to Analyze a Community of Practice, Intercultural Communication Studies, 18: 1, 1–20, 2009.
78.
WardMarkSr., Dark Preachers: The Impact of Radio Consolidation on Independent Religious Syndicators, Journal of Media and Religion, 8: 2, 79–96, 2009.
79.
WardMarkSr., The Ethic of Exigence: Information Design, Postmodern Ethics, and the Holocaust, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 24: 1, 60–90, 2010.
80.
WardMarkSr., Avatars and Sojourners: Explaining the Acculturation of Newcomers to Multiplayer Online Games as Cross-Cultural Adaptations, Journal of Intercultural Communication, forthcoming.
81.
WardMarkSr., “I Was Saved at an Early Age”: An Ethnography of Fundamentalist Speech and Cultural Performance, Journal of Communication and Religion, forthcoming.
