Destroy Them Gradually

Perpetrators of mass atrocities have used displacement to transport victims to killing sites or extermination camps to transfer victims to sites of forced labor and attrition, to ethnically homogenize regions by moving victims out of their homes and lands, and to destroy populations by depriving them of vital daily needs. Displacement has been treated as a corollary practice to crimes committed, not a central aspect of their perpetration. Destroying Them Gradually examines four cases that illuminate why perpetrators have destroyed populations using displacement policies: Germany’s genocide of the Herero (1904–1908); Ottoman genocides of Christian minorities (1914–1925); expulsions of Germans from East/Central Europe (1943–1952); and climate violence (twenty-first century). Because displacement has been typically framed as a secondary aspect of mass atrocities, existing scholarship overlooks how perpetrators use it as a means of executing destruction rather than a vehicle for moving people to a specific location to commit atrocities.
 

Destroy Them Gradually reframes forced displacement as an annihilatory process, rather than as an event that precedes an atrocity. Displacement crimes are defined as the unique fusion of forced displacement with systemic deprivations of vital daily needs to destroy populations.
 

Andrew R. Basso is affiliated with the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy and Wilfrid Laurier University. He is the coauthor of From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home (Rutgers University Press, 2022).

Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: Displacement Atrocity Crimes
Chapter 1 Extirpation: Understanding Annihilatory Forced Displacement
Chapter 2 Exposure: A Theory of Displacement Atrocity Crimes
Part II: German South-West Africa
Chapter 3 Trepidation: Colonized Namibia and Violent Horizons (1652-1904)
Chapter 4 Extermination: Germany’s Genocide of the Herero (1904-1908)
Chapter 5 Inescapability: The Nama Genocide (1905-1908)
Part III: The Ottoman Empire and Turkey
Chapter 6 Collapse: The Nadir of the Ottoman Empire (1839-1915)
Chapter 7 Excision: The Ottoman Genocide of Christian Minorities (1914-1925)
Chapter 8 Neurosis: The Hamidian Massacres (1894-1897)
Part IV: Central and East Europe
Chapter 9 Metamorphosis: A World Made New (9th Century-1945)
Chapter 10 Catharsis: The Expulsion of the Germans (1944-1950)
Chapter 11 Desolation: The Holocaust (1933-1945)
Part V: Climate Violence and Conclusions
Chapter 12 Tragedy: Logics of Displacement in the 21st Century
Chapter 13 Farce: To Destroy Them Gradually?
Chapter 14 Praxis: Seeking Justice and Disrupting Pathways
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index