Theme 2: Modernization Enables Genocide

The genocides of the twentieth century could not have happened in earlier eras. Modern bureaucratic states, transportation networks, military technology, mass communication, and racial or ideological theories combined to make systematic mass murder possible at unprecedented scale. The Holocaust required trains, gas chambers, bureaucratic record-keeping, and racial pseudo-science. The Rwandan Genocide required radio broadcasts, organized militias, and machetes imported in industrial quantities. Modern tools have made traditional hatreds far more lethal.