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 L I S T O F M A PS

Genocidal Violence, 1900 to the Present xiv

The Spanish Conquest of the Americas to 1550 15
Colonial Africa, 1914 23
Contraction of the Ottoman Empire 45
Armenian Massacres of 1894–96 47
The Holocaust: Death Camps, Concentration Camps, and Ghettos 95
European Roma Population. ca. 1939 104
Southeast Asia, 1945–1975 125
Contemporary Central Africa 153
The Congo Wars 179
World Hunger, 2013 193

vii

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 L I S T O F FI GU R ES

Hendrik Witbooi 3
Raphael Lemkin 5
Indian massacre of settlers 10
The Battle of Ascalon 13
Statue of Leopold II 19
Mutilated Congolese 21
Uncle Sam and the “White Man’s Burden” 25
Mayan women call for justice 27
Darfur refugee camp, 2009 31
Abdul Hamid II 49
Enver Pasha 51
Armenians driven into the Syrian desert 54
Starvation claims two Armenian boys 57
Armed resistance in Van 59
Headline announcing acquittal of Talât’s assassin 62
Funeral march and protest for Hrant Dink 64
“Protocols of the Elders of Zion” 81
Hitler at a Munich pro-war rally 86
Nazi racism 89
Racist eugenics 96
Antisemitism in Vichy France 99
Soviet POW 102
Yugoslav partisan 107
Europe in ruins 111
Angkor Wat 123
Pol Pot 128
Norodom Sihanouk 130
S-21 140
Cambodian refugees, 1979 143

ix

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 x ■ LIST OF FIGURES

Racial identification card 155

President Juvénal Habyarimana 159
Anti-Tutsi propaganda 161
Roméo Dallaire 169
Genocide memorial in church 175
Gacaca hearing 177
Memorial ceremony marking the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan
genocide 182
Survivors of a Nazi concentration camp cheer their liberators 200
Otto Dix “War” etchings 206
Indonesian dictator Suharto with President Richard M. Nixon 209
Serbian nationalist propaganda 213

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 ACK N OW L EDG M EN T S

I’ll start in an unusual fashion: by apologizing to the many colleagues, friends, and
students I am surely forgetting. Any decent book is to some degree a collective
effort, and I am fortunate to have profited from the selfless assistance of many,
many people. I am deeply grateful for the generous support and feedback of several
of the world’s top genocide experts. Drs. Uğur Ümit Üngör and Ronald Grigor Suny
took the time to read the Armenian chapter and spare me some embarrassment;
Christopher Browning and Ed Westermann helped me sharpen my analysis, and
detected a handful of errors, in the Holocaust chapter; Craig Etcheson as well as
Ben Kiernan performed similar services for the chapter on Cambodia; and my col-
league Beth Whitaker shared her considerable expertise on Rwanda and east
Africa. Adam Jones somehow found the time, between writing his twentieth or
thirtieth book, to carefully read the entire manuscript and was also gracious in
offering some of his masterful photographs. Thomas Pegelow-Kaplan helped like-
wise, sans photos, as did David Crowe. For any factual or interpretative errors that
slipped through, please blame me alone.
I appreciate the generosity and professionalism of the research staffs at the
­Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam; Kigali’s
genocide center; the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in
London; and especially the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced
Holocaust Studies at the Holocaust museum (USHMM) in Washington. This book
also benefitted enormously from fellowships and symposia at the USHMM in the
summers of 2012 and 2013, and from feedback I received at conferences of the In-
ternational Network of Genocide Scholars, the Holocaust Educational Foundation
of Northwestern, the World History Association, and the University of Zaragoza.
I have also found inspiration as well as valuable ideas each summer at the annual
Holocaust symposia at Appalachian State University. And thanks again, Rennie
Brantz—the founder of ASU’s Holocaust Studies Center—for setting me on this
path lo’ those many years ago.

xi

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 xii ■ AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S

Nicola Foote provided some astute insights to help refine my passages on Latin
America, as well as helping me reconsider a fundamental topic: the relationships
of various atrocities to one another. And, once again, Nicola: I’m sorry! (Inside
joke.) My longtime friends and compañeros Will Cox and Tim Austin, as well as my
UNC Charlotte colleagues Ritika Prasad, Jill Massino, and Oscar de la Torre, also
deserve big “shout-outs” and abrazos for sharing their thoughts and for their
support.
Charles Cavaliere, my editor at Oxford University Press, helped refine my prose
and has been a great friend and ally for several years. I will be fortunate indeed to
work with such an outstanding editor in the future. The other members of OUP’s
staff, as well as project manager Lori Bradshaw and copyeditor Leslie Anglin, also
deserve the highest praise, as well as large pay raises. A few typos and errors always
survive countless edits; some will perhaps survive, alongside the cockroaches, the
destruction of the earth in a few years. This book followed a circuitous path to
publication, and from the start Alfred Andrea has been immensely helpful and
supportive, as well as wise and skillful in his editorial assistance. Your generous
spirit and infectious joie de vivre, Al, sustained me through difficult times!
“Every historical question is a moral question,” Yehuda Bauer remarked at a lec-
ture in Chapel Hill many years ago. A work like this should be infused with this
understanding, and with humanism as well as moral indignation. My father and
mother, Richard Cox and Mary Alicia Cox, are largely responsible for imbuing me
with a desire to contribute to a better world and for alerting me, from a very early
age, to the evils of racism and bigotry. Not a small feat, in the southern United
States during that time. Thanks also to the many wonderful students I have
taught—and learned from—at Florida Gulf Coast University and at the University
of North Carolina Charlotte while composing this book. Finally, let me express my
eternal gratitude to my partner and soulmate, Louise Clark: A sustained study of
humankind’s follies and crimes can bring one low, but you always help me see the
many beautiful and noble things in this world.

John Cox
Charlotte, North Carolina
January 2016

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 A BOU T T H E AU T H O R

John Cox is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte,

where he directs the university’s Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights
Studies. He previously founded and directed a genocide studies center at Florida
Gulf Coast University. Dr. Cox earned his PhD in history at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005. His first book, Circles of Resistance: Jewish, Leftist,
and Youth Dissidence in Nazi Germany, was published in 2009. Dr. Cox serves on the
steering committee of Historians Against the War and has written and lectured
extensively on genocide, war crimes, resistance, and human rights. His current
projects examine resistance inside Buchenwald concentration camp; the role of
Jewish fighters in the Spanish Civil War; and resistance to genocidal and other
authoritarian (regimes, period).

xiii

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 00-Cox-FM.indd 14
GENOCIDAL VIOLENCE, 1900 TO PRESENT Nazi persecution Soviet political repression,
and genocide terror, expulsions
Jews, Russians, Poles, “kulaks,” other political
Romanies, others groups; ethnic minorities
1939-1945 ca. 1930-ca. 1950
14 –17 million 4 – 6 million

Bosnia Soviet famines

Bosnian Muslims China’s “Great Leap
Ukrainians, Kazakhs, others
1992-1995 Forward”
1930-1933
50,000 Peasantry, others
5 – 7 million Ottoman Empire Iraqi Kurdistan
Kurds 1959-1961
Armenians, Greeks,
1987-1989 30 – 45 million
Assyrian Christians
1915-1923 100,000
Croatian Ustaša regime 1.5 million
Serbs, Jews, Romanies
1941-1945
350,000 – 400,000 East Pakistan (Bangladesh)
Hindus, Bengalis
French war in Algeria 1971
Turkey Cambodia
Algerians 1 – 3 million
Dersim Kurds Ethnic minorities,
1954-1962
1937-1938 political and social groups
400,000 – 700,000 civilians
1975-1979
Sudan, Darfur region Soviet war in Afghanistan
1.7 – 2.2 million
Fur, Masalit, other Afghan civilians
indigenous peoples 1979 – 1989
Guatemala Sudan, South Kordofan 2003- 1.5 – 2.0 million India/Pakistan Partition;
Maya Indians and Blue Nile regions 300,000 – 400,000 primarily in Punjab, Bengal
1981-1983 Nuba peoples Muslim, Hindu civilians
100,000 – 200,000 Putumayo region, Andes 2011- 1946-1948 Japanese war, occupation
(Peru-Ecuador-Colombia) Hundreds of thousands forcibly 250,000 – 500,000;

xiv
Chinese, Indochinese,
Indigenous peoples displaced; casualties are 10 – 14 million displaced Koreans, Malays, Filipinos,
ca. 1900-1914 extremely difficult to estimate
other Asian peoples
100,000
1937-1945
U.S. war in Vietnam 10 – 20 million
South and North Vietnamese
1964-1973
Nigeria 2 – 2.5 million civilians
Burundi
Ibos Hutus
1966-1969 Rwanda 1972
1 – 2 million Tutsi 200,000
1994
500,000 – 800,000
Indonesia
Leftists, other political
enemies; ethnic minorities
1965-1966
500,000
Indonesian occupation
German South-West Africa of East Timor
Herero and Nama East Timorese
1904-1908 1976-1999
65,000 – 75,000 150,000 – 180,000

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 Introduction
G EN OC I D E AS A PR AC T IC E
A N D A CO NC EP T

ON OCTOBER 2, 1904, General Lothar von Trotha issued this proclamation

to the Herero people of German South-West Africa:

I, the great General of the German soldiers, address this letter to the Herero
people. . . . The Herero are no longer German subjects. . . .You Herero people must
now leave this land, it belongs to the German. If the populace does not do this I
will force them with the cannon. Within the German borders every Herero, with or
without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women
and children, I will drive them back to their people or I will let them be shot at.
These are my words to the Herero people.1

With those words, General von Trotha announced a policy of the murder and
destruction of an entire people: in other words, genocide, to use a term that was
later coined. At the end of his speech von Trotha turned his gaze toward thirty-five
recently captured Herero, write the authors of an important study of this geno-
cide. “On the general’s orders, two of their number were dragged toward a make-
shift gallows where they became victims” of what another officer “described in his
diary as a ‘theatrical hanging.’”2 The following April, von Trotha reiterated this
threat, declaring that rebellious Hereros suspected of killing whites “have by law
forfeited their lives.” Women and children uninvolved in any fighting should be
treated likewise, von Trotha affirmed in a letter to the chief of the General staff in

1
“Proklamation General von Trothas an das Volk der Herero,” in Jürgen Zimmerer, Von
Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust (Münster:
LIT Verlag, 2011), 51–52. Translation by John Cox.
2
David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide
(London: Faber and Faber, 2010), 150.

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Berlin: “I deem it wiser for the entire nation to perish” than to attempt to hold any
sick civilians or prisoners.3
A latecomer to the “scramble for Africa,” which was ruthlessly pursued by Western
European powers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Germany had
secured colonies in scattered regions of the continent. The Germans had gained con-
trol of South-West Africa—present-day Namibia—in 1884. As elsewhere, European
rule provoked resistance, and in 1904 the Herero people revolted against the colonial
authorities. The German administration and army responded with detentions in
concentration camps, hangings, and shootings; and finally, by driving the remnants
of the Herero into the parched Kalahari Desert, where most of the survivors then
perished. By 1910, about 80 percent of the Herero people had been killed, while an-
other 5 to 10 percent were driven into exile. The death toll was approximately 65,000
Herero plus roughly half the pre-genocide Nama population of 20,000.4 This geno-
cide marked the first use by the Germans of the term Konzentrationslager (concentra-
tion camp) and included the first “death camp”—designed specifically for mass
killing; the concepts of “living space” (Lebensraum) and “war of annihilation,” which
guided the Holocaust, were introduced; and some individuals who orchestrated the
murder of the Herero and Nama were later involved in the Nazi genocide.
This was not the first time European colonizers had unleashed indiscriminate
violence upon their colonial subjects. Today, the concentration camp is linked in
the public imagination solely to the Nazis. By the end of the first decade of the
twentieth century, however, Western powers had already introduced the concen-
tration camp for dissident elements opposing colonial rule in such places as Cuba
(the Spaniards), South Africa (British authorities), the Philippines (US forces), and
Germany’s colony of South-West Africa. British and French airplanes also rained
bombs upon “rebellious tribes” and helpless civilians in North Africa and the
Middle East. But the German assault on the Herero and Nama heralded a more
merciless response to colonial unrest and brought into the twentieth century an
age-old ambition: to destroy an entire people. This ambition, coupled with modern
technology and organization, created the “century of genocide” that this book
chronicles.
A few short years later, the decaying Ottoman Empire attempted to destroy its
Armenian population, the topic of Chapter 1. The architects of history’s most no-
torious genocide—the Nazi Holocaust—borrowed tactics and strategies from the
Herero and Armenian genocides. Post–World War II revelations of the extent and

3
Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 32. In a November 1904 letter, von Trotha declared his intention to
unleash “extreme terror and cruelty” in order to destroy “the rebellious tribes in rivers
of blood.” Quoted in Horst Dreschler, Südwestafrika unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft:
Der Kampf der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus (1884–1915) (Berlin:
­A kademie-Verlag, 1984), 156. In 1933 Nazi authorities named a street in Munich, birthplace
of their party, in Von Trotha’s honor. It kept that name until 2006, when Munich’s city gov-
ernment changed the name to “Herero Street.”
4
Olusoga and Erichsen, 228–230.

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 Genocide as a Practice and a Concept ■ 3

Hendrik Witbooi
Hendrik Witbooi (1830–1905) was a masterful political and military leader of the Nama people
in German South-West Africa. After initially siding with the Germans, who employed a classic
“divide and rule” policy in hopes of preventing Herero-Nama unity, Witbooi responded to an
appeal from the Herero to rise against the colonizers. He organized a Nama uprising that began
the day after General Von Trotha’s infamous “annihilation order.” Witbooi was killed in battle
in October 1905.

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barbarity of the Nazi regime’s crimes provoked universal outrage and sincere but
ineffectual calls for vigilance against the repetition of such horrors. This has not
prevented genocidal outbreaks since World War II from South and Central America
to Africa and the Middle East and to South and Southeast Asia. Genocide was not
invented at the dawn of the “century of genocide,” though: The genocidal impulse
can be traced back to antiquity. The Nazi Holocaust shocked the world with its
cruelty, scope, and zealous organization, but we have come to understand that this
was merely the most notorious—and by no means the final—chapter in a long,
dismal history.
To Kill a People does not presume to offer a thorough overview of twentieth-cen-
tury genocide and mass killing. The following chapters explore four case studies—
the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the genocides in Cambodia and
Rwanda—that provide some chronological and geographic breadth but that also
allow us to find similarities and differences that have wider applicability. In selecting
the ­genocides for this book, there were unfortunately far too many to choose from.
As Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer once noted, “The horror of the Holocaust is not
that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t.”5

DEFINING GENOCIDE

In a 1944 book, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist, introduced the term

“genocide”—combining the Greek genos (and Latin gens) for “race” or “family” and
the suffix “-cide” for “killing.” But for Lemkin—who himself could well have fallen
victim to the Nazi genocide had he not fled Poland shortly after the German inva-
sion of 1939—genocide was not simply physical extermination, but rather the cal-
culated destruction of a group’s ability to maintain its identity and its collective
existence: “A coordinated plan,” he wrote, “aiming at the destruction of essential
foundations of the life of national groups.”6 In contrast to the more restrictive
approaches adopted by others in later years, he recognized and warned against
efforts to destroy the cultural fabric and continuity of particular groups. Lemkin
singled out, for example, the Nazis’ burning of a Talmudic library in Lublin in 1941
as “indication of an intent to obliterate” the Jews’ culture and thereby undermine
their ability to survive as a people.7
Since the early 1930s, Lemkin had appealed to international opinion to recog-
nize and take action against “barbarity” and cultural “vandalism,” terms he used
before coining “genocide.” In the 1930s he had raised his concerns at law confer-
ences throughout Europe, most notably a 1933 international law conference

5
Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 42.
6
Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2008), i.
The first edition of his book was published by the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace in November 1944. Lemkin coined the term while writing the book’s preface one year
earlier.
7
Ibid., 85.

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 Genocide as a Practice and a Concept ■ 5

Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin (L) with Ricardo Alfaro, chairman of the legal committee of the U.N. General
Assembly (and former Panamanian president) on December 9, 1948—the day that the UN adopted
the genocide resolution for which Lemkin campaigned so vigorously. Lemkin’s work would continue:
He consumed the remaining eleven years of his life trying to convince individual governments to ratify
the genocide treaty. (Technically, the process of ratification ended in 1951, and since then individual
countries may sign or “accede” to it.)

organized by the League of Nations in Madrid. After the end of the war in 1945,
Lemkin continued his restless campaign to criminalize and prevent genocide. His
new term was widely adopted within a few years and was cited in the Nuremberg
indictments of Nazi war criminals. Largely at Lemkin’s instigation, in 1948 the
United Nations (UN) held the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, which formulated the most widely cited and influential
definition to date:

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of
the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c)
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to

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prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group.8

Borrowing from Lemkin, this definition is very carefully phrased, each compo-
nent significant. But while the UN definition is the only definition that carries the
force of international law, it is imperfect, as its own framers acknowledged at the
time. The exclusion of political, social, sexual, or economic groups from the list of
categories is a glaring weakness, made even more troubling by the knowledge that
Soviet diplomats, whose government had targeted people for presumably belong-
ing to ill-defined political and social groups, were instrumental in preventing those
categories from being included.9 The Soviets were not alone in shunting aside some
of Lemkin’s more universal, inclusive concepts. South Africa, Brazil, and other un-
democratic states were also opposed to Lemkin’s warnings against attacks on cul-
tural traditions and institutions, which implied the protection of minorities.10
Even after his apparent success at the UN Convention in 1948, Lemkin contin-
ued his lonesome struggle, now focused on convincing individual countries to adopt
the Genocide Convention. The refusal of the US Congress to adopt the Convention
was one of his bitterest disappointments. In August 1959 Lemkin collapsed and
died from a heart attack in the Manhattan office building of a public relations firm,
“his blazer leaking papers at the seams. His one-room apartment . . . was left over-
flowing with memos prepared for foreign ministers” and piles of other documents
and books related to his work. The New York Times eulogized him by noting that
“diplomats of this and other nations” who dreaded the sight of “the slightly stooped
figure” of Dr. Lemkin—knowing he would corner them and beseech them to join his
campaign—“need not be uneasy anymore. They will not have to think up explana-
tions for their failure to ratify the genocide convention for which Dr. Lemkin
worked so patiently and unselfishly for a decade and a half.”11
In recent years—especially since the advent of genocide studies in the 1980s and
1990s—numerous scholars, human rights activists, and legal experts have criticized

8
Article II of United Nations Resolution 260, adopted December 9, 1948; the full text, in the
original French and English, is available here: http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/3/
ares3.htm (accessed May 3, 2013).
9
Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010),
20–23. “Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Iran, and South Africa,” reported
Naimark, “were worried that they could be accused of genocide if they fought against domes-
tic political insurgencies by revolutionary groups. Thus the Soviets and their right-wing polit-
ical opponents joined forces in the United Nations on the genocide issue.” Naimark, 22.
10
Mark Levene, The Meaning of Genocide, Vol. 1, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State (London:
I.B. Taurus, 2008), 44. A Brazilian delegate, whose government repressed numerous indige-
nous groups, stated his concern that minorities could use such language as “an excuse for
opposing perfectly normal assimilation.” William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 184, quoted in Levene, 45.
11
Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper
­Perennial, 2003), 78. See Power, 17–78, for a fuller description of Lemkin’s single-minded,
quarter-century-long campaign. Also see Raphael Lemkin, Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography
of Raphael Lemkin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), edited by Donna-Lee Frieze.

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 Genocide as a Practice and a Concept ■ 7

or, in other cases, enhanced this definition, but so far no adequate alternative has
won wide acceptance. Dutch scholar Pieter Drost offered a simple but clear definition
in 1959: “Genocide is the deliberate destruction of [the] physical life of individual
human beings by reason of their membership of any human collectivity as such.” This
is closer to Lemkin’s spirit as well as to a 1946 UN draft, which defined genocide as
“the denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.”12 “Human groups” is, in
my view, preferable to the excessive concern with categorization that often attends
these debates. (And most humans, after all, have multiple, overlapping, complex
identities and would resist having their self-identity reduced to a single element,
such as their religion or nationality.)
Many definitions formulated by scholars since Drost have enhanced our under-
standing and pointed toward other avenues of research, but none has been fully
satisfactory. In 1982, Jack Nusan Porter, a Ukrainian-born US sociologist, defined
genocide as “the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, by a government or its
agents, of a racial, sexual, religious, tribal or political minority. It can involve not
only mass murder, but also starvation, forced deportation, and political, economic
and biological subjugation.” Insisting that a victimized group must be a “minority,”
though, is problematic: In Burundi in 1972, for example, the majority Hutu popu-
lation was targeted by a Tutsi-led government for genocidal massacres that killed
200,000 people. In Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, the principal victims of
genocidal campaigns were the Bosnian Muslims (also termed “Bosniaks”), who
constituted roughly three-sevenths of the population, a larger proportion than
either of the other two major demographic groups.
Other definitions have stressed “innocence” and “vulnerability.” In an important
1976 book, for example, American sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz wrote,
­“[Genocide is] a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state
bureaucratic apparatus. . . . Genocide represents a systematic effort over time to
liquidate a national population, usually a minority . . . [and] functions as a funda-
mental political policy to assure conformity and participation of the citizenry.”
Israel Charny, an Israeli pioneer of genocide studies, stressed that genocide e­ ntailed
the “mass killing” of peoples “under conditions of the essential defencelessness of
the victim.” The 1994 Rwandan genocide (Chapter 4) highlights the problem with
this emphasis. An invasion organized by a Tutsi-led army from abroad was among
the factors that precipitated the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan
Tutsi, and a closer examination of other genocides—such as those of the Herero and
the Armenians—also finds that the exterminations often occurred in the context of
rebellion or insurgency. This in no way mitigates the guilt of the perpetrators, and
students of history should not shy away from these sorts of moral complexities.
Steven Katz, a philosopher known principally for his writing on Jewish intellec-
tual traditions, as well as on the Holocaust, sees genocide as “the actualization

December 1946, Resolution 96(I): http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/

12

NR0/033/47/IMG/NR003347.pdf?OpenElement (accessed June 30, 2012).

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[emphasis added] of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in its to-
tality any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic
group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means.”13 Katz has
been justly criticized for arguing that the Jewish catastrophe was utterly unique, and
his emphasis on the “actualization,” as well as the “totality” of the attempt, makes his
definition overly exclusive. Even the architects of the Rwandan genocide—one of his-
tory’s most brutal and thorough—did not aim to murder all Tutsi, which would re-
quire going well beyond the nation’s borders. The Nazis’ p ­ ursuit of small, unarmed,
utterly harmless Jewish populations in all corners of Germany and German-occupied
territory is indeed among the Holocaust’s distinctive features; it could also be said,
though, that the high proportion of civilian murderers—higher than in others—
marks the Rwandan genocide as “uniquely horrible.” Katz, among others, attempts to
use the Nazi Holocaust as a yardstick or standard by which to measure other mass
atrocities, and by doing so to deny them the status of “genocide.”
Helen Fein and Adam Jones have offered two conceptions of “genocide” that are
closest to my own. In a 1990 book, Fein saw genocide as “a series of purposeful
actions by a perpetrator(s) to destroy a collectivity.” She added some clarifications
(see footnote), but this first phrase is particularly effective and clear, and con-
fronts the “intent” issue through her more subtle understanding of “purposeful
actions.”14 More recently, Jones expanded upon earlier definitions by Katz and
others, and crafted this inclusive but concise phrasing: “the actualization of the
intent,” by whatever means and “however successfully carried out, to murder in
whole or in substantial part [emphasis in the original] any national, ethnic, racial,
religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined
by the perpetrator.”15 Jones’s “in substantial part” is a significant improvement
upon definitions that would exclude any cases that did not end in near-total anni-
hilation, which is a rare occurrence (see footnote 36).

OTHER DISPUTES OVER TERMINOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS

The UN Convention’s inclusion of “intent” has come under special scrutiny by

scholars and others. The emphasis on “intent” suggests an excessively legalistic
approach—and, in reality, it is often very difficult to ascertain the intentions of
regimes or armies that commit mass atrocities. Even in the most extreme case

13
Charny, Drost, Horowitz, Katz, and Porter definitions from Adam Jones, Genocide: A Com-
prehensive Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2010), 15–18.
14
Helen Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (London: Sage Publications, 1990). Fein con-
tinued that this series of actions included “mass or selective murders of group members and
suppressing the biological and social reproduction of the collectivity. This can be accom-
plished through the imposed proscription or restriction of reproduction of group members,
increasing infant mortality, and breaking the linkage between reproduction and socialization
of children in the family or group of origin. The perpetrator may represent the state of the
victim, another state, or another collectivity.” Quoted in Jones, Genocide, 18.
15
Adam Jones, “Gendercide and Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 2 (June 2000), 199.

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 Genocide as a Practice and a Concept ■ 9

examined in this book—the Nazi Holocaust—the architects of that atrocity cam-

ouflaged their actions and goals, precisely to obscure their intentions. Too much
emphasis on “intent”—rather than outcomes—can make it easier for criminal
states to sidestep the legal and moral price attached to responsibility for genocide.
The International Law Commission (established by the UN in 1948 at the time of
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide)
holds that “a general awareness of the probable consequences” of destructive acts
“is not sufficient” to assign guilt for genocide.16
Today many genocide scholars and others challenge this overly legalistic ap-
proach. Further, the very concept of “intention” is more complex than it appears on
the surface. In US law, for example, criminal intent can be ascribed if an individual
“contemplates any result, as likely to follow from a deliberate act of his own.”17 It can
be argued that when mass suffering and death result from criminal indifference, or
are nearly inevitable and should have been anticipated by a conquering or occupying
power, then that power is no less guilty of genocide, if other elements of the stan-
dard definitions are met. Genocide scholar Dirk Moses pointed out that in nine-
teenth-century English law, a person was assumed to have intended the “‘natural
consequences’ of his or her actions” if the result was “reasonably foreseeable.”18 “Too
great a focus on what was or what might have been going on in the minds of the
perpetrators,” astutely argues sociologist Christopher Powell, “distracts us from the
tangible consequences, and the preventable causes, of atrocity.”19
Another oft-criticized weakness of the 1948 UN definition, as mentioned earlier,
is its failure to include social, economic, or political groups in its list of potential vic-
tims. (It includes only “national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group[s].”) “In the
contemporary world, political differences are at the very least as significant a basis
for massacre and annihilation as racial, national, ethnic or religious differences”
argued Leo Kuper, a South African–born sociologist who helped pioneered genocide
studies.20 It is also entirely possible that, in the near future, groups could be targeted
for genocide based on their gender identity or sexual orientation—or that a group
could be singled out for some other characteristic that we cannot yet imagine.21

16
Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to
Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 17.
17
Norbert Finzsch, “If it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck,”
Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (March 2008), 120.
18
Dirk A. Moses, “Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History,” in Moses, ed., Genocide
and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History (New
York: Berghahn, 2005), 28.
19
Christopher Powell, Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide (Kingston, Ontario:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 64.
20
Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1981), 39.
21
In the early twenty-first century, homosexuals suffer harsh, government-sanctioned perse-
cution in Iran, Uganda, Mauritania, and elsewhere—far short of genocide, but an indication
that under certain conditions it is conceivable that a government could attempt a systematic
extermination of homosexuals, in particular gay men.

01-Cox-Introduction.indd 9 24/12/15 4:52 PM

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 These conditions are as unfavorable as possible for all flying
expeditions towards the Pole. The good weather during the winter—
October to March—cannot be taken advantage of on account of the
darkness, and it is necessary to be satisfied with the much more
unfavorable weather during the lighter period of the year.
Luckily there is, however, an intermediate condition of weather,
when the light is still there, but the summer’s gray weather has not yet
set in properly. April with its eight clear weather days, seventeen days
without downpours, and only one foggy day ought to offer the best
conditions for flying. Only one has to remember that when flying over a
longer distance the chances of getting into ugly weather are much
greater than one would imagine from the impression given by the
figures. In a distance of an extent equaling that from Spitzbergen to the
Pole, during a good month such as April, one will in most cases have
to pass through a bad and good weather-zone. In April, too, one has to
reckon with severe cold. “Fram” had a temperature as low as -38° 4 c.
in the month of April and even at the end of that month it can go down
to -29° c. If it is, therefore, one’s intention to fly on a day of good
weather, it is necessary to be well protected against the severe cold.
In 1925 the polar flight could not be undertaken as early as April.
Notwithstanding the fact that the journey from Norway was undertaken
before the real opening of the shipping season, and that the
preparations in King’s Bay proceeded quickly and according to
program, our machines were not ready to start until the beginning of
May. An earlier start might well have been possible if the previous
winter had been spent in Spitzbergen.
It was the business of the meteorologists to determine which was
the best day in the month of May for the start. With “Fram’s”
experiences before us the prospects of finding a good starting day
were not very rosy. In May, 1896, when “Fram” was about halfway
between Spitzbergen and the Pole, there were twenty-five days with
rainfall, and only three days at the beginning of the month had clear
weather. Should May, 1925, turn out just as bad as May, 1896, the
polar flight would take place under very risky meteorological
conditions.
 What resources were now at our disposal to determine what kind
of weather was expected? First were the telegrams from the stations in
the neighborhood, indicating the kind of weather which was
approaching. This system is commonly used by all meteorological
institutions which have something to do with weather reports, and it
was therefore only natural that this should be made use of for the polar
flight. One can, however, know beforehand that to make weather
forecasts at Spitzbergen is much more difficult than at other places
where it has been tried before. For instance, Southern Europe is
covered by a network of telegraph stations which can report the
approaching weather. But in Spitzbergen it is not so easy. The network
of European stations certainly give reports of every condition
approaching from the south, but no telegraphic weather reports can be
obtained from the west, north, or east. There are, therefore, many
situations where the meteorologists, notwithstanding all the aid, can
give no reply to the question: “What will the weather be like to-
morrow?”
And that is the case in Spitzbergen. But the polar flight had to be
undertaken from there, and had to extend more than 1,000 kilometers
above unknown regions in unknown weather conditions! How could
any one guarantee good weather for the whole distance?
I know that many meteorologists would reply to such a question
that this is beyond science. To prophesy what the weather will be like
near the Pole is pure guesswork. As now and again stress has been
put upon this view in the press, may I be permitted to defend the
foolhardiness I showed by venturing to tackle this problem? I admit
that it is very often quite impossible to say what the weather will be like
on the way from Spitzbergen to the Pole, and still less possible to
predict how it is likely to turn out in a day or two’s time. But
meteorology allows us to determine by indirect conclusions whether
the prospects of good weather are bright or whether the situation is too
risky. That these weather forecasts are based on very weak
foundations, and therefore can easily turn out wrong, was known by
the airmen from the first hour. Still they preferred to follow the advice
science could give, even if it was often vaguely formulated and given
with all sorts of provisos.
 The plan was not to risk a flight in any case through fog and thick
snow, where the aeroplanes would certainly lose sight of each other,
but to turn back if the weather should begin to look too threatening. It
would then be the meteorologists’ problem to find another occasion
when it would be again worth while to try and see whether in a
renewed attempt the way to the Pole would be clear.
For several years the exchange of meteorological weather reports
had been broadcast by wireless so that everybody who had a receiving
apparatus could make free use of the same. “Fram’s” receiving
apparatus was of the latest type and worked very well, even receiving
meteorological messages from countries very far distant. Mr. Devoid
attended to the receiving of nearly all the weather reports—a job he
was well acquainted with, through his position as assistant at the
Geophysical Institute at Tromsö. It can safely be said that we could not
have got a better man for the handling of all the radio weather news
which came to hand. He was untiring in trying to pick up and read
communications which were very weak, coming from far distant
stations, and it was, thanks to him, that the weather forecasting station
at King’s Bay was able to work with nearly the same full range of
meteorological observations as any southern weather forecasting
station.
The meteorological despatches are broadcast by international
agreement and, with one single apparatus, one can receive accounts
of observations from the whole of Europe, North America and North
Asia. That has been made possible by the various countries all having
come to an agreement, in which they have arranged to send
despatches following each other closely according to a prearranged
time-table. On the “Fram” we regularly received the following
despatches:

Observations from eight o’clock in the morning

a.m.
4:30Stavanger (repetition of Annapolis U.S.A.)
7:00London (English observations at 2 A.M.)
 8:12Tromsö (+ polar station Jan Mayen, Björnöya)
8:20Königswusterhausen (Germany)
8:25Haapsalu (Estland)
8:35Lyngby (Denmark)
8:40Karlsborg (Sweden)
8:50Oslo (Norway)
9:00London (England and Faroe Islands)
9:15Grudziadz (Poland)
9:20Paris (France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland)
9:30Sandhamn (Finland)
9:35Budapest (Hungary)
9:40London (ships’ observations)
9:50London (collected messages)
10:00Tromsö (collected messages)
10:15Dietskoje Selo (Russia)
10:30Vardo (North Russia)
10:40Paris (collected messages)
11:45 Oslo (Norwegian observations 11 o’clock)
11:50 London (English observations 11 o’clock)
12:00Dietskoje Selo (Russia and Siberia)

Observations from two o’clock in the afternoon

p.m.
2:12Tromsö (+ polar station Jan Mayen, Björnöya)
2:20Königswusterhausen (Germany)
2:35Lyngby (Denmark)
2:40Karlsborg (Sweden)
2:50Oslo (Norway)
3:00London (England and Faroe Islands)
3:15Grudziadz (Poland)
3:20Paris (France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland)
3:30Sandhamn (Finland)
 3:50London (collected messages)
4:00Tromsö (collected messages)
5:00Paris (collected messages)
5:45Oslo (Norwegian observations 5 o’clock)
5:50London (English observations 5 o’clock)
6:30Stavanger (repetition of Annapolis, U.S.A.)

Observations from seven o’clock

p.m.
7:12Tromsö (+ polar station Jan Mayen, Björnöya)
7:20Königswusterhausen (Germany)
7:35Lyngby (Denmark)
7:40Karlsborg (Sweden)
7:50Oslo (Norway)
8:00London (England and Faroe Islands)
8:15Grudziadz (Poland)
8:20Paris (France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland)
8:30Sandhamn (Finland)
8:40London (ships’ observations)
8:50Tromsö (collected messages)
9:15Haapsalu (Estland)
10:00Paris (collected messages)

As will be observed Mr. Devold had a lengthy time-table each day

—Sunday as well as week day. The despatches which arrived during
the night and the early morning were received by the ship’s own
operators, who besides had, as part of their duty, to attend to the
expedition’s very large press correspondence when not attending to
the meteorological telegrams.
Nearly all the north, west and middle European states are
represented in the list. Observations from those countries, the
despatch stations of which one could not hear direct (for instance
certain south and east European), were received indirectly through the
“collected messages” from London and Paris, which give extracts of all
the observations from the whole of Europe.
Special mention should be given to the despatches which were
sent out specially for the expedition. First come the extra observations
which the U. S. A. started broadcasting from Alaska, Canada, and the
United States. These formed a very important addition to the general
meteorological observations which America usually sent out for
European use. It was especially important for us to get the complete
observations from Alaska—the nearest inhabited land—on the other
side of the Pole. The whole of this extensive observation material was
supplied gratis by the United States of America Weather Bureau, and
telegraphed free of charge by the U. S. A. Naval Station, Annapolis. It
gives me great pleasure to mention the tremendous assistance which
the United States gave us in this connection, and I herewith offer them
the expedition’s grateful thanks.
Despatches from Annapolis were received by the Stavanger
station, which repeated them to the “Fram.” This was also done free of
charge. The Norwegian telegraph authorities also showed their
goodwill to the expedition by instructing Vardeo Radio Station to
receive despatches from North Russian and North Siberian stations
and repeat same to the “Fram,” which hardly could have got them
direct. I must also mention the help the radio station in Green Harbour
gave us by assisting in receiving messages and forecasts during the
critical days just before the start.
The Geophysical Institute at Tromsö, which is the central station
for the weather-forecastings for North Norway, sent from its radio
station, three times daily, the Norwegian observation material.
The institute in Tromsö also deserves thanks for all the assistance
it has given to the expedition by sending out weather forecasts from
the moment the trip was planned, and whilst we made our preparations
in the winter 1924–5. It was a great help to be able to sometimes
consult the nearest meteorological neighbors in the south, who had
many years’ experience in the Arctic Sea’s meteorological readings. I
will specially mention a telegram we received from Director Krogness a
few days before the start which informed us that his analysis
suggested that a period of stable weather conditions was now
approaching. This was of great assistance when the starting day had
to be fixed.
When the whole apparatus was in working order we could receive
meteorological despatches from nearly all the stations. The network of
stations is closest in Europe, so close that we often saved work by
making a choice of stations. Asia and America have not such a close
net, but even here it is possible to draw a weather chart which is
largely correct.

THE COURSE OF THE SHIPS ON WATCH, “FRAM” AND “HOBBY,” DURING THE
COURSE OF THE EXPEDITION
The dotted area indicates the pack ice.
Furthermore, in the English, French and Norwegian despatches
there were a certain number of observations from ships in the Atlantic,
which in themselves formed a bridge between the American and
European stations. The whole station system therefore formed an
almost complete circle round the polar regions, with the exception of
Northeast Siberia, where telegraphic communications are still bad, and
this of course makes a wide gap.

THE DOTTED AREA, ABOUT 12,000 SQUARE MILES,

SHOWS THE TERRITORY EXPLORED BY THE FLIGHT
EXPEDITION
The point now was (with the assistance of this net of stations round
the Arctic regions) to control an account of conditions moving inside
the polar area, and thereby draw conclusions as to what the weather
might be like along the flight route. With this in view the weather chart
for the whole region was drawn twice a day. Besides this, two charts
were prepared daily showing the reports of the European net of
stations, so that the weather conditions were being calculated every
six hours.
The drawing up of the weather charts took place in one of “Fram’s”
afterholds, which (with this end in view) had been prepared as a
“weather forecast salon.” There was not overmuch room for all the
charts, instruments and other apparatus which had to be kept there,
especially as the hold also served the purpose of an office for Dr.
Matheson, the expedition’s doctor. But with goodwill from both sides it
worked smoothly the whole time, combining the weather forecasting
with the doctor’s practice in the same room.
After the weather forecasting was properly established I often had
the pleasure of receiving visits from the members of the expedition
who were housed on land. During the quiet periods when nothing
special was being accomplished, our two journalists were frequent
visitors. In lieu of something better to do, they wrote about the weather,
simply because it is always possible to say something regarding this
subject. As the time for starting approached, Captain Amundsen and
the other polar flyers often visited me in order to see what the
prospects were. During the times that “Fram” was not lying in safe
harborage Captain Hagerup was constantly in communication with the
weather-forecasting station in order to ascertain in good time whether
wind was approaching which might drive the drift-ice towards us. On
the whole I could not complain about the amount of faith that was
placed in the weather forecasts, but it was often necessary to reduce
this trust by reminding every one how little we really knew.
All the outside observations were made by the meteorologist,
Calwagen, Manager of the Meteorological Observatory in Bergen. His
duties were so numerous that they deserve a whole chapter in this
report, but as it has so far been impossible to make any preparation of
the observations, Mr. Calwagen’s calculations must be reserved for
later publication in scientific journals. With Mr. Calwagen’s permission I
shall only mention here that part of his activity which was of direct use
in the weather forecasts.
In order that nothing which happened concerning the weather
conditions should pass us unnoticed, Mr. Calwagen made
observations as far as possible each hour of the day, continuing until
late at night. These observations included wind, sky, cloud
movements, cloud structure, cloud altitude, rainfall, atmospheric
visibility, atmospheric temperature and dampness, the readings of the
barometer, etc. Further we had brought with us a case of self-
registering instruments for measuring the atmospheric temperature
and the dampness. Inside were two barographs—one in the ship’s
instruments’ compartment, and one in the weather-forecast
compartment, which both gave information about the changes in the
air pressure.
As often as we got rid of the low clouds, Mr. Calwagen sent up the
pilot balloons for observing the wind’s direction and strength. These
observations were of the greatest value for judging the weather
conditions, and I will therefore mention them in a few words here. The
observations took place as follows: A colored rubber balloon is filled
with water gas until it is one-half meter in diameter. One weighs its
buoyancy and thereby knows the speed with which it will rise into the
air. After the balloon has been sent up it is observed through glasses
which have graduated scales for calculating necessary horizontal and
vertical adjustments—this is called a theodolite. The theodolite’s
indications are read and noted each half minute whilst the balloon
rises. Afterwards it is possible to reconstruct the course which the
balloon has followed, and to ascertain hereby the course of the wind at
the different heights.
It was not always easy to find a suitable place to set up the
theodolite. On board the “Fram” it very often happened that the balloon
after some minutes got behind the ship’s masts or funnel, and thereby
was lost from view. On the ice in the fjord it was generally possible to
find a good spot with the exception of the days when there was a
heavy swell on the water outside, which also set the fjord ice making
slight undulating movements, and which were disturbing enough when
it was a question of reading one-tenth of a degree on the theodolite.
Near Danskeöen, where there was no useful fjord ice, Mr. Calwagen
had to be rowed ashore for each pilot observation in order to have firm
ground below the theodolite. Generally he chose the little islet
“Likholmen,” where he could sit and have an uninterrupted view on all
sides. When the “Fram” went out to get fresh water-ice from an iceberg
which had got aground, Mr. Calwagen was there immediately and set
his apparatus up on the iceberg. This is probably the first time that pilot
balloon observations have been made from an iceberg.
With the execution of all these pilot balloon observations, under
conditions which were continually changing and often difficult,* Mr.
Calwagen had to use all his care and all his skill. It can certainly be
said that he made use of every possibility imaginable in order to collect
data which might be helpful in supplementing the expedition’s weather
forecasts.

* After having sent in this report, the sad news

had just been received that Mr. Calwagen has
been killed in a flying accident at Kjeller, near
Oslo, on the 10th of August, 1925. Immediately
after arriving home from Spitzbergen he
commenced to work on that branch which he was
the first to start in Norway, namely, the reading of
the atmospheric conditions by self-registering
instruments installed in aeroplanes. In the course
of the last year he has personally taken part in
many flights in order to complete the registering-
dials of the instruments from his own observations.
The accident happened during such a flight, just
when he was engaged in collecting observations
for determining the atmospheric belts.
All who were with the expedition will no doubt
remember Mr. Calwagen as a practical man,
helpful, impulsive, bubbling over with merriment,
capable but at the same time possessed of a
modesty which was the natural result of his noble
altruistic nature. We all feel very grieved at such a
man’s death.

When it was necessary to have two men for the pilot balloon
ascents, Mr. Calwagen got excellent assistance from ice-pilot Ness,
who, according to what he himself said, was only too glad to be
employed a little on such an occupation during the long hours in which
“Fram” lay idle, not giving him enough to do.
Altogether sixty-two pilot balloons were sent up between the 15th
of April and the 29th of May. It was possible to follow one of them
through glasses to a height of 10,500 meters. This, however, was only
possible because there was very little wind all the way up. Generally
the wind was so strong that the balloon was lost sight of at a much
lower height.
It will lead us too far into scientific spheres to describe all the
methods used in determining the weather conditions from weather-
charts and from observations which were made. I shall have to content
myself by just mentioning the main principles which must be taken into
consideration when choosing the starting day.
It is the general experience that the regions which have low air
pressure mostly have cloudy weather and rainfall, whilst places with
high air pressure have fine weather with a clear sky. The point was
therefore to avoid conditions where a depression was moving towards
the Pole.
In order to be pretty safe from bad weather it was necessary to
choose a high pressure condition. Further, the high pressure would
have to lie north of Spitzbergen so that the aeroplanes should not fly
out of good weather directly into bad on the way north. A high pressure
condition over the Pole would necessarily bring with it northeasterly
winds and cold weather in Spitzbergen. This northeasterly wind would
(at West Spitzbergen) be an off-shore wind and therefore would signify
clear weather. Along the north coast of Spitzbergen the weather would
be more doubtful, with a northeast wind which would cause the air to
rise up against the hills and form clouds. But these cloud-masses on
the north coast would very often only stretch out over a limited area
which the flyers could pass in a short time, preferably by flying over the
clouds.
One has the best guarantee for stable weather conditions when
the pilot balloons show that northeast winds are not only to be found
on the ground but also higher up. One knows then that the high
pressure condition around the Pole will reach high up in the
atmosphere and is not just a low formation which could be swept away
by the first attack of a storm center from elsewhere.
The first high pressure condition in May occurred on the 4th, just
when the aeroplanes were finished mounting. This favorable condition
did not last long. The low pressure over North Norway increased and
passed northeast (along the dotted line on the chart) by pushing the
polar high pressure aside towards Greenland. Before the final
preparations were finished on the 8th of May the low pressure had got
so near the Pole that it was not advisable to start.
A period of drizzly weather followed now when it was impossible to
do anything else but wait. The wind was mostly between west and
south, and the sky was overcast and we often had snow showers. Only
now and again it cleared for half a day, but never long enough that
there could be a question of starting. This state of affairs lasted until
the 18th of May, when a change took place. A heavy storm center,
which passed Björnöya, turned the wind easterly at Spitzbergen, and
behind the bad weather a high pressure region appeared which moved
from Labrador via Greenland towards the Pole. The wind was still too
strong, and it was not quite clear at Spitzbergen, but there were good
prospects that the next few days would bring good weather conditions
for the flight. The planes were therefore made ready to start at short
notice.
We had still to wait three days before the weather was as it ought
to be. The high pressure region had spread itself long ago over the
Arctic Sea, and the bad weather which passed Björnöya had moved to
North Siberia, but right up to the morning of the 21st we had dull
weather with snow now and again in King’s Bay. The reason was a
slight local depression which had remained persistently over the warm
current which the Gulf Stream sends along the west coast of
Spitzbergen. On the 21st there was, for the first time, sufficient easterly
wind to drive the snowy weather out to sea, so that from midday on we
had radiant sunshine and a cloudless sky.
At last the condition had arrived for which we had waited so long,
the first useful condition since the planes had been ready to start. It
had to be used, especially as the season was getting on towards the
end of May and the danger of fog was increasing each day.
So far we had not seen any fog at Spitzbergen and if one had not
had the knowledge about polar fogs which “Fram’s” observations,
1893–6, had given us, it would have been tempting enough to wait
longer. It was still pretty cold, -9° c. in King’s Bay on the 21st of May
and at the Pole one might risk calculating that the temperature would
be down to -15° c. Both for the planes and the crews it would have
been better and more comfortable to have had a more summery
temperature. But of two evils choose the lesser. As soon as the
summer arrives in North Europe, North Siberia, Alaska and North
Canada, fog starts to reign over the polar sea. Each air current above
the Arctic, no matter from which direction it comes, will bring with it
warm air, which is exposed to a lowering of the temperature on contact
with the polar ice. This cooling of the warm air which contains a great
deal of dampness causes fog. This formation takes place quite
independently regardless of whether there is high or low pressure.
Even the best high pressure condition in the summer, might therefore
be useless for flying. During the high pressure one will certainly be free
from the clouds which produce snow and rain, and the flight can take
place in radiant sunshine, but fog, even if it only reaches twenty meters
up from the ground, will make a landing impossible.
Fog of that kind was very unlikely on the 21st, in fact, one might
say the possibility of its existence was quite excluded. The northeast
wind on that day was so cold (-9° c.) that it must have come from the
very central regions of the polar ice, and it is hardly probable that on its
way to Spitzbergen it should have been exposed to the further
lowering of temperature, which would have been necessary to produce
fog.
All these observations led to the following result: “Conditions to-
day are as favorable as can be expected so late in the summer. It was
not without nervousness that I advised the airmen of this result on the
morning of the 21st—never have I given a weather forecast with such
a heavy sense of responsibility. It was almost weighing me down with
its fateful importance, but on the other hand it was bracing to note how
the airmen arrived at their much more responsible decision: “We start
to-day.”
And it was so! The last reports which were received at midday did
not show any change for the worse, so there was not the slightest
reason for calling off the start. The sky grew clearer continually; Mr.
Calwagen had the opportunity of following the ascension of a pilot
balloon with binoculars to a height of 4,000 meters. It showed a
northeasterly wind, apart from the lowest belt, where the wind blew
southeast from King’s Bay. The northeast wind high up had a speed of
between eighteen to twenty kilometers per hour. Therefore if this
strength should continue throughout the eight hours of the flight
towards the Pole, it would give the planes a deviation of 130–160
kilometers. So much petrol was to be kept in reserve that the last
stretch could also be flown, especially if one could reckon on the wind
being with the planes throughout the flight homeward. Mr. Calwagen
wrote down the results of the pilot’s calculations and handed them over
to Captain Amundsen to assist him in the work of navigation.
Herewith the task of the meteorologists was ended, and in the last
unforgettable minutes we all stood as spectators, filled with admiration
for the six brave men who smilingly said good-by as if they were just
going on an everyday flying-trip. Not long afterwards both machines
were out of sight in the bright blue sky flying in the direction of Cape
Mitra.

* * * * *
Forty-five days later the polar flyers are home in Oslo again and
Captain Amundsen and Ellsworth’s meteorological notes are handed
over to us. We read them through with excitement. They contain news
from that part of the world which otherwise is out of the meteorologists
reach. They give him something to think about—especially after he has
dared to predict what kind of weather the polar flyers were likely to
meet in the unknown.
We start with the reports referring to the very beginning of the flight
from King’s Bay and see what the meteorological notes tell us.
After flying along the coast and passing the seven glaciers, the
flyers find Danskeöen’s and Amsterdamöen’s hills enveloped in fog
which continues northwards as far as the eye can see. What can this
have been caused by?
I cannot judge by personal examination because when twelve
hours later we ourselves arrived up at Danskeöen on board the “Fram”
there was not a sign of fog to be seen. But I am inclined to believe that
the fog has been composed of a layer of certain low-lying clouds,
which had often been seen by us at the beginning of May while we
were lying in Syd Gat waiting for suitable weather for the expedition’s
start. These clouds will often just form suddenly when a cold wind
blows from the polar ice towards the open sea. The moment the air
arrives over the first water-lanes or open sea it gets heated from
below. The heated layer rises above and whilst ascending forms
clouds. Other colder parts of the air then come into contact with the
water, get heated and rise also forming clouds, etc. According to the
observations which we had occasion to make at Danskeöen in the
beginning of May, the lower surface of these clouds is about 200
meters from the ground. Below this there is generally a thick mist of
fine snow which reduces atmospheric visibility and will certainly be
very disturbing for flying. Luckily these clouds do not reach to any
great height, seldom over 1,000 meters, so that one can easily fly
above them. Besides, one can count on their not forming further north
than where one finds open water channels of fairly large dimensions. It
is therefore not too risky to undertake a flight above the cloud-belt
towards clearer weather farther north.
The polar flyers took this risk, and quite rightly too. After two hours’
flight from Danskeöen going northwards there were no clouds, and on
the remainder of the flight there was nothing that obscured the view
over the polar ice.
The expedition has here made a meteorological reconnaissance of
great importance to all later flying explorations in the Arctic.
If a cold wind blows from the Pole one must reckon with the
formation of a low cloud belt over the wider water channels, even if it is
cloudless nearer the Pole. These clouds will form at all seasons of the
year, but perhaps mostly in the colder periods, when the difference in
temperature between ice and sea is greatest.
The landing took place in a light wind, therefore probably near to
the center of the high pressure region, which covers the Arctic Sea. On
the way into the high pressure region the wind, however, must have
been considerably stronger as is shown by the very considerable
deviation of 250 kilometers on an eight hours’ flight. In the middle
period of the flight it must therefore have been thirty kilometers per
hour, which is considerably more than the pilot observations over
King’s Bay had shown, namely, twenty kilometers per hour. The
aeroplanes must have flown, therefore, through a zone with strong
northeasterly winds blowing north of Spitzbergen, and then later come
into calmer wind conditions nearer the Pole.
 This raises the question: Could one not have found a day with a
gentler wind blowing, when the deviation would have been less and
the Pole might have been reached? Probably the next day, 22nd of
May, would have been better as far as wind was concerned. Mr.
Calwagen measured the speed that day at Danskeöen, finding an east
wind blowing three kilometers per hour at a height of 500 meters. This
wind would only have brought a deviation of about 100 kilometers. But
according to Amundsen’s observation reports there was, on the same
day, a little northerly breeze at the landing place at 87° 43′, which
means that a contrary wind was also blowing on that day over the
district nearest to the Pole. And what was worse, on the 22nd May
there was no longer clear weather near the Pole.
The observations were as follows: During the last two hours of the
flight slight high clouds had begun to appear, but not so dense that
they could prevent the taking of solar observations immediately after
landing. The next day the clear weather was gone and solid gray cloud
layers covered the whole sky. It was the polar summer weather which
had started, just as we calculated it would from the “Fram” expedition’s
observations. And it did not improve during the following days; the
23rd, 24th and 25th were all gray-weather days, certainly without
rainfall, but also without sunshine. A northerly breeze was blowing on
the 22nd, 23rd and 24th, but it got calmer on the 25th.
The big high-pressure region which we had over the Arctic Sea on
the starting day continued, and the polar flyers must have been very
near the high pressure center as they now had calm weather. As far as
could be seen everything looked favorable, and whilst we were lying
and waiting at Danskeöen in radiant sunshine, the whole day long, I
personally thought that this good weather would certainly stretch right
up to the Pole. But here the expedition’s observations have taught us
something else, that in the best of weather conditions there is gray
weather at the Pole when the year is so far advanced as the end of
May. This is also one of the new meteorological results which this
expedition has brought to light—in regard to the “Fram’s” expedition it
happened that they did not meet any high pressure regions at the end
of May.
There were a few occasions when the clouds broke up at 87° 42′;
for instance, the 29th of May “dawned with sunshine from an almost
quite clear sky.” But this was only a sign that worse weather was
approaching. In the night, between the 28th and 29th, snow had
passed Spitzbergen on the way north. It reached the polar flyers on the
30th in their camp 87° 43′. The clearing on the 29th was therefore just
a passing phenomenon, and if the aeroplanes had started that day
southwards they would after a few hours’ flight have got right into a
heavy snowfall. These clearings, before the large wandering snow-
masses, are well known in lower latitudes. It is, however, interesting for
meteorologists to find that the same rules also apply to the weather
conditions at the Pole.
Now follows a period of prevailing southerly and southeasterly
winds which cause the temperature to rise quickly. On the coldest day,
the 24th of May, there had been -12.5° c., but at the end of the month
we already had +7° c. and on the 7th of June the temperature was up
to 0°. This enormously quick change from winter to “summer
temperature” is typical of the polar conditions.
“Spring” does not last “month’s,” as in the lower latitudes—it is
finished in a few weeks’ time.
From the 7th of June onwards the temperature did not rise much; it
remained about 0°. Sometimes a little over, sometimes a little under.
One can say that 0° is the characteristic summer temperature of the
Arctic region. Warmer air than 0° is very often carried there from lower
latitudes, but this gets cooled down immediately through contact with
the ice, and gets a temperature of about 0°. As mentioned before, it is
this cooling down which is responsible for the fog because it causes
the air’s moisture to condense. The first fog, which extended right
down to the ground, was observed on the 2nd of June; the next was on
the 8th of June, and thereafter happened fairly often, so in the end
whole days free of fog were exceptions.
Luckily on the 15th of June, when the starting place was ready,
there was sufficient visibility for them to start and to find their way out
of their “Foggy” home.
THE END
 Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made
consistent when a predominant preference was found in the
original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was
obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between
paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook
that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of
Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.
The table on page 175 was printed in a way that was
difficult to understand, so its appearance in this eBook may be
incorrect.
Page 249: “we reached the N 24” was printed that way,
but the narrative suggests that it should be “N 25”.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR POLAR
FLIGHT ***

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