recursion

In The Middle Kingdoms Martyn Rady writes about the development of state capacity in Central Europe in the nineteenth century. In France, Britain, and the United States the presumption of the law favored the citizen: what is not forbidden is allowed. In Central Europe, it was the opposite. Governments and bureaucracies could govern by decree where the law was silent through “administrative discretion” (freie Verwaltung). This created a very powerful administrative state.

In the twentieth century that administrative state was used for mass murder. Rady writes about one of the most messed up things I’ve ever read about the Holocaust:

The administration of the railways is illustrative of the bureaucratic ethos that made murder possible. Some two thousand trains belonging to German Reich Railways (Deutsche Reichsbahn) conveyed about three million Jews to their deaths. Each train had to be separately commissioned and paid for by Himmler’s staff according to passenger numbers. The rate was based on second-class fares (even though the passengers were crammed into wagons) and worked out according to kilometre distance. The railway administration charged Himmler’s office half fare for children under ten, and those under four went for free. Trains with more than four hundred people qualified as holiday excursions and were eligible for further reductions. Only the guards were counted as return fares.