Date of Award
8-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in History
Department
History
First Reader/Committee Chair
JEREMY MURRAY
Abstract
The thesis provides a contribution to the field of history how nationalism
often transforms individuals during wartime to become dehumanizing
ultranationalists through patriotism and its connection to genocide. Also, it gives
insight into the many ways that genocide orchestrators during World War II,
relied on propaganda of racism, religion, and “othering” in order to justify their
incentives to expand territories and dehumanize victims through medical
experimentations and sexual violence. While research materials in the context of
Nazi Germany were ample, one challenge in my research was finding
documentations on Stalin’s People Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD)
police unit which carried out many of Stalin’s brutal orders to dehumanize and
victimize millions of people. However, through relying on speeches from
genocide orchestrators and telegrams that were sent during that era, the political
decisions and actions outlined within the Nazi Party and Soviet Union become
obviously linked to their own subjective evaluations of national policy through
both their use of ambiguous discourse and through privileges of rank within
their armed forces.
I engage with leading scholars of nationalism such as Benedict Anderson,
David H. Kaplan, and scholars of the Soviet and Nazi context such as Daniel
Goldhagen, Christopher Browning, Raul Hilberg, and Jeffrey Herf, as well we
examining primary sources of firsthand witnesses to the atrocities of
ultranationalism during World War II. My thesis allowed me to immerse myself
into the complex, “perpetrator vs. victim” situationism within World War II and
how that had a major role into one of history’s greatest lessons of humanity. My
focus is on the rhetoric of nationalism and how it gradually increased in scale
during this time in history from patriotism to dehumanization and genocide. By
examining the actions of the despicable genocide orchestrators of World War II,
the haunting phenomenon of genocide as a patriotic duty becomes distinctly
linked to nationalism.
Recommended Citation
Blais, Corie R., "GENOCIDE AS PATRIOTIC DUTY: THE OUTCOMES OF ULTRANATIONALISM AND DEHUMANIZATION FROM WORLD WAR II GENOCIDE ORCHESTRATORS" (2026). Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations. 2528.
https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/2528