Henry L. Mason

Imponderables of the Holocaust

Recent literature, particularly in Germany and the Netherlands, has provided insights into some of the most perplexing imponderables of the Nazi annihilation of the Jews. These are, first, the development of consensus among the various German elites for the purposes of the Final Solution; second, an incremental kind of German decision making which led to the efficiently implemented mass annihilation of the Jews; and third, the passive mood toward the disasters befalling the Jews on the part of the entire universe of bystanders. (In the case of the Netherlands, this resulted, in spite of an unusually low degree of anti-Semitism, in an unusually high degree of Jewish victimization—in contrast to the so-called Danish reversal.) Fourth, because of the unimaginable predicament experienced by the victims and their “governments,” the Jewish Councils (such as the Amsterdam Joodsche Raad ), they never had a chance to develop workable responses to such a catastrophe.

Reviews and Critiques : The process of integration: a critique of four recent books on European unification

least by footing the bill. Organizations such as the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), the Council of Europe, the Western European Union, and NATO have demonstrated the possibilities as well as the limits of intergovernmental, i.e., &dquo;inter-national&dquo; organization. Beyond these attempts, six European countries have begun to experiment with institutions which for the first time since the rise of modern nationalism involve the making of important, quasi-governmental decisions at a level above the na-

Operations 1952–54

Have the actual operations of CSC institutions lived up to the supranational expectations raised by the stipulations of the Treaty? By the end of 1954, after about two years of the common market, it was too early to reach even tentative conclusions on this point. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the following account may contribute some first impressions toward an understanding of the political and constitutional reality of the Community.