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Author Topic: "Hitler's Willing Executioners" and Holocaust studies
Michelle
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posted 24 April 2005 07:38 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I didn't want to cause too much thread drift in the Anti-semitism in Britain thread, so I thought I'd move this here.

So, as I mentioned in that thread, I'm reading "Hitler's Willing Executioners" by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, on recommendation from a friend, who has also mentioned that the book has not gone without criticism by other Holocaust scholars.

The book, from what I can tell (and I haven't read anywhere near the whole thing yet) refutes the claim that ordinary Germans just went along to get along when it came to the Third Reich and the Holocaust. The underlying thesis of the book seems to be that the widespread brutality and zeal of the Germans who carried out, or supported the carrying out of, the torture and inhumane execution of Jews - and many, many ordinary Germans from all walks of life participated as killers, informers, and supporters, not just as go-along-to-get-alongs - shows that the way we have previously conceptualized the Holocaust is faulty. The previous conceptualization being that the brutality was from a specialized group of elites, that most ordinary Germans were coerced into their roles, that most people didn't know what was happening, etc. The author makes the claim that the reason there wasn't much resistance (comparatively speaking) to the sheer brutality of the torture and killings in the Holocaust isn't because people were afraid or coerced or didn't know, but because the anti-semitism in Germany was so deeply ingrained that ordinary Germans DID see Jews as expendable and subhuman, and shared the vision of a Jew-free Germany. And the fact that tens of thousands of Germans (as well as many helpers from other European countries) were directly involved in the slaughter, carried out in the most inhuman, torturous ways possible, shows a zeal that could not have been merely going along with something they found distasteful.

I have to admit, I've spent a couple of sleepless nights since starting this book. Not only has it changed some of my perceptions of the Holocaust (which were bad enough as they were!), but it has also really raised some uncomfortable questions in my mind about what I have learned from first-hand accounts, and just how many questions I HAVEN'T asked. I don't think I've been lied to, but I also don't think I have heard the whole story, at least not the way I think I have.

Growing up as a little kid and learning about the Holocaust from reading books (which I had a special interest in learning about since my grandparents lived through it at the time, as Germans), I was sure that my grandparents were never one of THOSE Germans - you know, the bad ones. And my parents told me, truthfully, I think, that my grandfather was not involved in the Holocaust operations, but on the front lines. So of course, as a little kid, I grew up with the idea that my grandparents, and all of their German-Canadian friends, were people who hated Hitler (and they certainly did when I knew them, years afterwards), who didn't know what he did but hated him afterwards when they found out, etc. I developed more nuance than that as a teenager, and realized that they might have been influenced by propaganda, but that they couldn't possibly have known what was happening.

And then as I got older, I realized, well, they probably knew what was happening at some point, and they might even have bought into the prejudice of the time (although I still maintain that I have never seen then display such prejudice, at least not in front of me, and they raised children who certainly didn't hold that prejudice), but they would never have condoned acting upon that prejudice the way Hitler did, had they known. And that once they did know, it was too late to resist or they would've been on the next train.

So you can see why reading this book is unsettling for me. I have read descriptions of brutality before, and I think part of me kind of knew that I was perhaps compartmentalizing by not fully associating the horror of that time with the family and friends of the family who were there at the time. But I didn't realize the degree to which I had conceptualized the "few bad Germans and majority innocent people who didn't know" idea until I started reading this book. Intellectually, I knew that anti-semitism was pervasive there at the time. But emotionally, I had a hard time conceptualizing that, or dealing with the implications of that (that most Germans at the time were probably anti-semitic!) until I started reading this book. I actually had to put it down for a day or two and read something else as a break in between.

Anyhow, it's a very interesting, sobering book so far, one that really challenges how the Holocaust has been explained and perceived by scholars and the general public since it happened.

I have to admit, I'm a little unsettled at his constant use of "Germans" throughout the book, as a generalized guilty group, when there WERE some Germans who resisted. He explains at the beginning why he does that, and because I can understand his explanation, I can live with it throughout the book. It's because anti-semitism was a defining feature of German nationalism for decades before as well as during the war. He claims that anti-semitism was pretty much an unquestioned axiom of German society at the time, which I can definitely believe. But it still jars me somewhat to constantly read "the Germans did such and such" even though I understand why he is doing it. It's a rhetorical way of drumming home that it was a German national project, that anti-semitism was a defining feature of German nationalism, and that those who identified as Germans first and foremost generally bought into the anti-semitism that was an axiom of German society.

I'll be interested in hearing lagatta's (and other people's) thoughts on the subject.


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the bard
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posted 24 April 2005 08:13 PM      Profile for the bard     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A leading critic of Goldhagen is the very controversial political scientist Norman Finkelstein, who is critical of the moral uniqueness of the Nazi holocaust (i.e. The Holocaust - nothing compares to the suffering of Jews, period). He's the author of The Holocaust Industry (where he charges Jewish elites exploiting the Holocaust for their own ends, to the detriment of the survivors themselves) and with Ruth Bettina Birn, wrote a critique of Goldhagen's findings. Birn, who is German-born and spent her life dealing with the horrors of Germany's Nazi past, was roasted by the CJC for her collaboration with "Holocaust denier" (not true) Finkelstein.

Finkelstein has a lot of criticism of Goldhagen on his website, www.normanfinkelstein.com


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the bard
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posted 24 April 2005 08:17 PM      Profile for the bard     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There's also a critic named Traverso (?), who writes in Historical Materialism I think. He's critical of Finkelstein for not being theoretically rich enough, I think. I haven't read it, but despite being a graduate student in political science, I find historical materialist literature kind of dense and hard to read. But it may be worth checking out if you prefer that to Finkelstein-style bluntness.

[ 24 April 2005: Message edited by: the bard ]


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Cougyr
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posted 24 April 2005 08:43 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I agree that it would have been impossible for most Germans to bury their heads in the sand. There was just too much going on.

The puzzle for me has to do with why human societies go off the rails and engage in mass slaughter. The phenomenon is not just a German one, witness Cambodia. The Americans are dangerously close to the edge and may not be able to pull back. As with the Germans, large numbers of present day Americans are more than complicit; they are actively encouraging the nastiness.


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lagatta
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posted 24 April 2005 09:09 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Enzo Traverso, a student of Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Michael Löwy (among others). He certainly doesn't just write for Historical Materialism (he is on the editorial staff of La Quinzaine littéraire, entre autres) but some of his writings are translated into English there.

Enzo Traverso is critical both of Norman Finkelstein, whom he thinks is rather a mechanical materialist and a bit too given to conspiracy theories, and to Goldhagen for singling out the Germans for something that was pernicious throughout European culture - including its developments in the New World.


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AppleSeed
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posted 24 April 2005 09:24 PM      Profile for AppleSeed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I agree that most German adults knew that something very nasty indeed was going on. Guards told their wives, wives told neighbors, friends confided in friends. Word got around.

There's nothing uniquely bad about Germans, it's human nature I think. Just as we can deflect our focus when we think about what's behind that display in the meat section of the supermarket, they could turn on, or off, their mental scenarios. Theirs was a desperate time.

Most of us, I think, can recall some situation in our lives where we looked away, did or said nothing, and afterwards had to deal with our unease.

We can say never again, and mean it. Nobody said it's easy; when the time comes we just have to do what's right. And live with the consequences.


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lagatta
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posted 24 April 2005 09:41 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
One can also recall the North American saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian". Not that it excuses either genocide.
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jeff house
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posted 24 April 2005 09:50 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I have read Goldhagen, but I think his thesis is exaggerated.

Most Holocaust scholars do, too. (I exclude Finkelstein, who hasn't seriously studied the Holocaust).

It is important to remember that most of the Holocaust occurred outside Germany. People were simply picked up and transported elsewhere. Every attempt was made to keep the fiction alive that Jews were being relocated to the East. Indeed, this fiction was so often adhered to that Holocaust deniers even today purport to believe that the "solution to the Jewish question" was deportation, not destruction.

During the period of the Holocaust, Germany was a totalitarian state. There were no independent sources of information, and listening to an Allied radio broadcast was an offence which carried the death penalty. (Even so, the Allies did not raise the Holocaust as an issue.)

Hannah Arendt has talked about the "onion theory" of totalitarianism. She meant that society is layered, with the outer layers being insulated from the information which the inner layers had. And selection for the Einsatzgruppen, the killers of Jews in Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia/Ukraine, was extremely carefully done. A candidate had to rise through ever-more-extreme racist groupings before being considered for killing of Jews.

As a general rule, it is quite easy to hide atrocities from the general public, at least for a while. I have been in numerous countries engaged in pretty reprehensible activities. But for the most part, they look like anywhere else.

Maybe they ought to have known. Maybe they should have sought out more information once the basic abuses came known. But as a matter of pure historical fact, I don't think they did.


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the bard
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posted 24 April 2005 10:37 PM      Profile for the bard     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:
(I exclude Finkelstein, who hasn't seriously studied the Holocaust).

Though interestingly, Finkelstein's work on reparations has been supported by Raul Hilberg, who most would agree is one of the leading scholars on the Nazi holocaust


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Fidel
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posted 24 April 2005 10:48 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes, Einsatzgruppen were particularly cruel, by what I've read. Books and accounts describe them as nothing short of being psychopaths and cold blooded killers. Operation barbarossa in Ukraine was the beginning of Hitler's "Lebensraum", or colonization of Russia and Ukraine. Stalin thought that Hitler would conquer France and Britain before any attack on Russia would take place, and especially not during a Russian winter.

As the Russian's marched toward Berlin and Warsaw, ordinary soldiers of the German Wehrmacht did their best not to appear as Shutz Staffel? or Hitler's Praetorian Guard soldiers. Wehrmacht soldiers threw away their death head lapel pins which were also worn by the dreaded Waffen SS. Red Army soldiers took no notice and shot them anyway.

[ 24 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


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DrConway
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posted 24 April 2005 10:59 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
One also has to wonder how many Soviets turned their heads and looked the other way as people were kicked all over the USSR by Stalin because he decided, for example, that the Checheno-Inguish were counter-revolutionary and needed to be relocated.
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Mr. Magoo
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posted 24 April 2005 11:05 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I knew this sounded familiar. I saw a good documentary series on this and mentioned it here.
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Fidel
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posted 25 April 2005 12:21 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by DrConway:
One also has to wonder how many Soviets turned their heads and looked the other way as people were kicked all over the USSR by Stalin because he decided, for example, that the Checheno-Inguish were counter-revolutionary and needed to be relocated.

If he were around today, I wonder how Stalin would have dealt with the Chechen war lords, Albanian mafia, KLA and now al Qaeda setting bombs off from Belgrade and Bishkek to Moscow ?.


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Coyote
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posted 25 April 2005 12:27 AM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Why don't you tell us, Fidel.
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Fidel
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posted 25 April 2005 12:36 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

[ 25 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


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mayakovsky
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posted 25 April 2005 03:23 AM      Profile for mayakovsky     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I read 'Dreamland' by Howard M. Sachar and he puts forth the idea that between the wars Germany was comparatively less anti-Semitic than the Central European countries. The progressive movements were led by prominent Jews in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. People such as Rosa Luxemberg in Germany and Bela Kun in Hungary. And they had popular support. Many of the innovative and progressive movements in the arts and politics of the time were led by those of Jewish background. Sachar details how this flowering was destroyed by the Nazis and their sympathizers in other countries through their exploitation of anti-semitism.
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Fidel
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posted 25 April 2005 04:04 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:
Maybe they ought to have known. Maybe they should have sought out more information once the basic abuses came known. But as a matter of pure historical fact, I don't think they did.

It's known that American and other businessmen were there in various German cities leading up to and during WWII. One piece I read said American's were tripping over one another in Berlin.

The documentary The Corporation interviews an IBM spokeseman and who tries to dispel allegations that IBM knew anything of the holocaust with something along these lines,

quote:
~ "Any corporation would hope that their products were used only for benevolent purposes."

But as another commentator said about IBM and their machines used to account for slave labour and extermination of Jews, other ethnics and political opposition, IBM didn't sell the punch card computers to the Nazis. It wasn't a one time shipment by way of Fedex or UPS. The punch-key computers were leased to the Nazis and required maintenance contracts to keep them in working order. The punch cards were proprietary and were special deliveries on a regular basis by IBM representatives.

And as it turns out, the allies flew reconnaissance missions directly over Auschwitz and snapped aerial photos of billowing smoke from chimneys and expanding network of railways, all converging at Auschwitz from across Europe. Strange that the allies didn't mistake it for a munitions factory either, said one commentator on the recently discovered air photos. One survivor said they prayed for the allies to bomb Auschwitz as a show of support.

[ 25 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 25 April 2005 04:18 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yeah, unless of course you were a Russian soldier, in which case you were trying to get rid of your accent.
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mayakovsky
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posted 25 April 2005 05:09 AM      Profile for mayakovsky     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fidel, Its best to make your assertions with specific references rather than "and then something I read". Edwin Black in 'IBM and the Holocaust' does detail how IBM technology was used by the Nazis. When you refer to 'The Corporation' would that be the highly acclaimed cutting edge anti-corporate documentary that everyone worshipped? The one that did its in store DVD launch at HMV with giveaways?
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Fidel
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posted 25 April 2005 05:32 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes, "The Corporation" I was referring to was on commercial TV recently and in three parts. Naomi Klein, Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky were three of the commentators I can remember.

Is this the same, The Corporation, you are meaning?. It was very good, imo.

[ 25 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Hephaestion
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posted 25 April 2005 07:32 AM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This thread provokes two thoughts...

Did you know that there were a number of NA corporations that lined up for reparation payments following WWII, to recompense them for money lost when the Allies bombed their factories that were producing goods for the Nazi war machine?!

I believe General Motors was one such company, IIRC. Maybe someone else can add to this? (Sorry, but I can't provide a source; lost all my files in a house fire a couple years ago...)

As well, Michelle, your comments about German relatives, etc. reminded me of a CBC news report I watched a couple years ago about a documentary-maker who travelled "home" to Poland to do a story on Poland during WWII and, in part, the Polish resistance. What she found upon digging into the story, however, was layer upon layer of collusion, up to and including outright willing assistance in the rounding up and murdering of Polish Jews.

As the people in the town* realized which direction her research was taking her, their co-operation with her efforts dried up, and she even became the subject of death threats. When the CBC reporter (Carol Off, I think it was?) went to Poland to do a story on the film-maker, she was greeted with beligerant questions about "Why does she need to dig up all that 'old stuff'? It's ancient history" and so on. (Funny how it wasn't "ancient history" when they thought the focus of the documentary was going to be the "heroic and patriotic Polish resistance"...)

* This story largely all took place in the one town where the documentarist's family had originally come from.

Again, sorry I cannot be more specific, but maybe someone else recalls this report? It certainly had an impact on me, anyway...


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Fidel
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posted 25 April 2005 08:07 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The World Socialist web site says both GM and Ford were compensated for losses during the bombing and were there, operating, right up until the party was crashed. Standard oil shipped fuel and supplies etc.

quote:
In his book Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi American Money Plot, former New York Times reporter Charles Higham noted that the US government sought to cover up the role played by Prescott Bush and many other leading US financiers and industrialists in supporting Hitler.

Hope you're A-Ok after the fire there, comrade.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 25 April 2005 08:07 AM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Hephaestion:

As well, Michelle, your comments about German relatives, etc. reminded me of a CBC news report I watched a couple years ago about a documentary-maker who travelled "home" to Poland to do a story on Poland during WWII and, in part, the Polish resistance. What she found upon digging into the story, however, was layer upon layer of collusion, up to and including outright willing assistance in the rounding up and murdering of Polish Jews.


Sounds like a real-life version of Das Schreckliche Mädchen (The Nasty Girl). That movie is about a German schoolgirl who does a project on the "heroic resistance" of her town against the Nazis, and is ostracized when she learns and reveals the truth. Worth seeing.

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Michelle
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posted 25 April 2005 08:24 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I just want to say that I haven't abandoned this thread. Hephaestion, that sounds like a really interesting documentary you saw! I just want to make it clear, though, that I am not saying I think my family lied to me - I'm just saying that now that I think about it, I am not sure how much of my conceptualization of that time comes from what I've directly heard from relatives, and how much comes from my own mind, maybe what I WANTED to believe, or from how I've sort of started with the basic assumption that their society was just like ours before Hitler came along and compelled them, either through coercion or propaganda, to support him or at least not resist him.

On that note, one point that Goldhagen makes, which makes sense to me, is that a lot of us assume that German society leading up to the war was like our society now, and that people were basically fair-minded and egalitarian - and that therefore, it is necessary to try to come up with an explanation for what would have changed these ordinary, fair-minded people into killers and colluders. But what he asserts is that, in fact, assuming a society with values like ours in pre-Holocaust Germany is a faulty beginning assumption because the whole society was actually infested with anti-semitic values. That anti-semitism was, as I mention above (in his words, not mine) an axiom, an unquestioned truth, in German society.

I find that a compelling argument. But I also appreciate reading other points of view about it as I'm reading the book.


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Fidel
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posted 25 April 2005 08:42 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Read about Ernst von Weizacker and the coup plot against Hitler. They certainly weren't encouraged by the British who could have aided the plotters in stopping Hitler in the beginning. They knew the consequences of their being caught, and they were. Many average German's thought Hitler was a joke and that other European leaders wouldn't take him seriously. Hitler didn't win the election in Germany because his thugs menaced people at voting stations in 1933 And he didn't have the resources to get where he did without help.

[ 25 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 25 April 2005 10:47 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
That anti-semitism was, as I mention above (in his words, not mine) an axiom, an unquestioned truth, in German society.

That's true. But historical antiSemitism differed from Nazi antisemitism in important ways. The most obvious is that historically, Christians in Germany were told that "the Jew" was objectionable as long as he did not convert to Christianity.

Nazism introduced biological antiSemitism. Their idea was that Jews were a cancer which could only be eradicated by being cut away from the body politic. Publicly, this was to be done by deportation to the "east".

Of course, the actual policy eventually became mass murder. The Nazis went to great lengths to hide the real policy. Everything was couched in euphemisms. That suggests to me they knew it would not be accepted by the population.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 25 April 2005 11:08 AM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In context of the realization about our parents , about how we see when we are young? Life seems to hide these things until our age of discrimmnation allows us to see things as they are.

I just wanted to add one note of encouragement to say that there was a resistance even if it was a small one against Hitler.

The White Rose


The White Rose consisted of five students, all in their early twenties, at Munich University. Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie led the rest of the group, including Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf. They were joined by a professor, Kurt Huber, who drafted the final two leaflets.

To help you cope

But more importantly how was society encourage to particpate in this ethic cleansing. That had gone in our own current day and age with Serbian atrocities? You don't get to this point without out some encouragement in society?

Kristallnacht


On the "Night of Broken Glass," rampaging mobs attacked Jews, burned 1,000 synagogues, destroyed close to 8,000 businesses owned by Jews and rounded up 30,000 Jews who were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.

What is Kristallnacht?

The term "Kristallnacht" ('Night of Broken Glass") refers to the organized anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria, November 9 10, 1938. These riots marked a major transition in Nazi policy, and were, in-many ways, a harbinger of the "Final Solution."

[ 25 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
swallow
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posted 25 April 2005 12:29 PM      Profile for swallow     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
On that note, one point that Goldhagen makes, which makes sense to me, is that a lot of us assume that German society leading up to the war was like our society now, and that people were basically fair-minded and egalitarian - and that therefore, it is necessary to try to come up with an explanation for what would have changed these ordinary, fair-minded people into killers and colluders. But what he asserts is that, in fact, assuming a society with values like ours in pre-Holocaust Germany is a faulty beginning assumption because the whole society was actually infested with anti-semitic values. That anti-semitism was, as I mention above (in his words, not mine) an axiom, an unquestioned truth, in German society.

See, this is where i think Goldhagen goes wrong. In making the point of societal complicity, he's putting forward an important corrective thesis, certainly. Along the same lines, any Canadian reading Goldhagen ought to read None is Too Many by Abella and Troper, on Canadian anti-semitism which refused to admit German Jews despite what the Nazis were doing.

But Goldhagen seems to suggest that there was something uniquely German about the Holocaust, and i think he's off the rails there, in a slightly dangerous way. The Weimar Republic was an intensely humanistic society, and it fell so quickly into anti-semitic miurderous dictatorship. Nazi anti-semitism drew on the German anti-semitic tradition, yes, but it was also something new. It showed how fast the most liberal societies can fall into madness and hatred. But this was not uniquely German -- look at the fast shify from liberal Belgrade and Sarajevo to street wars and mass murders. Not that this is ont the same scale, but we saw "the black madness of the witch hunt" in McCarthyism and we're starting to see it again (Bush's Willign Executioners, anyone?). It can happen anywhere, if we're not on guard. Golhagen's thesis, in this sense, encourages complacency and makes it all too easy to blame "the Germans" and not the scapegoating of minorities present around the world. Them, and not us: we could never be like that. But i'm afraid that we could.


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Cougyr
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posted 25 April 2005 01:03 PM      Profile for Cougyr     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I put racism into five categories: definition, descrimination, segregation, incarceration, and extermination. Once the definition is made, it is a very short psychological trip to Auschwitz. The only way to avoid genocide is to not make the definition in the first place.

Liberal society is fragile. It takes very little threat to make people descend into barbarism. It could happen here.


From: over the mountain | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
John_D
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posted 25 April 2005 01:21 PM      Profile for John_D     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Michelle - I'm reading the same book at the moment, and have been for a couple of months. (I find it very slow reading - I usually can't do more than 10 pages a day, at most, before I get to worked up).

It seems to me the point Goldhagen really misses is the uniqueness of the situation in camps, not the uniqueness of the society. Camp guards, the order police, et al were given absolute power over the lives of their Jewish prisoners, and this absolute power would have corrupted them as much or more than their inherent anti-Semitism. He makes a very convincing case that the treatment meted out to Jewish prisoners was far worse than that non-Jews received, and that almost all Germans involved were crueller to Jews than non Jews. But I don't think you can extrapolate "Germans placed in this unusual situation were bad, and were similar in class and age to German society as a whole, so all Germans were bad." Seems to me more like an extreme example of the Stanford prison experiment. I think there is a big difference between an objectively evil person and a person who gives into their evil side, and I think most of the Germans Goldhagen talks about are the latter.


From: Workin' 9 to 2 in the 902. | Registered: May 2004  |  IP: Logged
Bacchus
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posted 25 April 2005 01:45 PM      Profile for Bacchus     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Not to mention John_D that only a minority of the camp guards were actually German. The rest were from elsewhere in europe and thats where Goldhagen falls down. There was anti-semetism endemic in European society as a whole, not just German and the speed in which other nations citizens embraced it to varying degrees is alarming.

edited to add
Michelle, I have some books on the children of nazis as well as a few on the ordinary german in that time period if you want to borrow them.

[ 25 April 2005: Message edited by: Bacchus ]


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skdadl
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posted 25 April 2005 02:15 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In terms of how we conceptualized what had happened to ordinary Germans during the war:

I can't speak with any authority to the issue of how much most Germans actually knew of the Holocaust, or how they thought about it.

But I do remember clearly the sudden shift in North American popular culture that occurred in the mid-1950s, as stories about what had gone on in Europe entered the popular culture through films and books, eg. And a number of those dramatizations/fictionalizations at least raised your questions, Michelle.

The best example I can think of is the Stanley Kramer film Judgement at Nuremberg, which I see dates from 1961. Two of the most powerful subplots in that film track the American judge's relations with, first, a German couple who keep house for him while he is working through one of the trials, and, second, his attraction to the widow of a German officer (executed, I believe, for war crimes) -- the Marlene Dietrich character, whose house the judge now occupies, and who attempts to sway his judgement of the accused Nazi judge.

The treatment of all three "ordinary" Germans was very subtle, I thought, and yet Kramer clearly wanted people to see their evasions. The movie ends that way, by underlining a moral irreconcilability.

I haven't read Goldhagen, but when I first read reviews of his work, I wondered at his claims of originality, which then led me to suspect some oversimplification and egotism in his work. It is simply not true that no one had conceptualized his perspective before -- it had in fact entered the popular culture for many of us an entire generation before he published.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Contrarian
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posted 25 April 2005 02:36 PM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I wonder about the position of Jews in Germany and Europe in general before Hitler came to power. I have a vague impression that German Jews felt they were a part of German society and were fairly secure. There seem to be more stories of Jews emigrating to the US from Russia than from Europe.
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Fidel
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posted 26 April 2005 07:18 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think the fact that Michelle is bothered by this says something about her. Myself, I take some comfort in knowing that there were German citizens who represented strong opposition to Nazism from the beginning. Very few people I know have any idea about what happened to those German citizens who represented the greatest opposition to the Nazi agenda. As long as we are living, breathing, "red"-hot blooded socialists, we will never forget those German citizens, Michelle.

C'mon now, you know the poem ...


quote:
They came for the Communists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Jew;
Then they came for me - And there was no one left to object.


- Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984


holocaust-history.org


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 26 April 2005 07:58 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
I think the fact that Michelle is bothered by this says something about her.

What does it say about me? I'm not sure whether you meant this in a good way or a bad way.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 26 April 2005 08:00 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think that was meant as a compliment, Michelle.
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Michelle
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posted 26 April 2005 08:05 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh good. I think I've gotten so used to the "look inside yourself" digs on babble, that you can never be sure unless someone is explicit.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 26 April 2005 09:05 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes, it was meant as a compliment. As for placing blame for the holocaust squarely on the shoulders of the average German citizen in general, I don't buy it. Working class are the usual, convenient scapegoats and a ploy to deflect blame from those who propped-up Hitler from the beginning. Hitler was a capitalist tool in the war of annihilation against communist Russia.

I think that everyday people have had to bear a massive guilt trip for what were carefully laid plans to kill an idea at all costs. They interpret freedom to mean free markets in death and destruction as whole nations foot their bills. German citizens and the rest of the world were cannon fodder. Diabolical?. Yes. The super-rich stood to lose more than anyone with the spread of communism. They had their ears to the ground all along.

The banking and industrial elite catapulted Hitler to power just like they forged ties with Osama bin Laden and worse throughout the last century. Capitalists profit by arming them, and then profit a second time when taxpayers have to declare war on their "mistakes." It's what they do.

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Hephaestion
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posted 26 April 2005 01:11 PM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Not to hijack this thread (which is quite good, and very interesting), but it has provoked some thoughts for me, particularly a couple of posts by John_D and Bacchus...

quote:
Originally posted by John_D:
[Goldhagen] makes a very convincing case that the treatment meted out to Jewish prisoners was far worse than that non-Jews received, and that almost all Germans involved were crueller to Jews than non Jews.

Now, not to take anything away from those who suffered, but I have read in several sources about how "the lowest of the low" in the camps were those forced to wear the pink triangle. I have read about exceptions to the rule, but in general the prisoners convicted of "sex crimes" (which included, but was not limited to, gays and lesbians) received shameful treatment even from their fellow prisoners. In the eyes of most, gays and lesbians were lumped in with child-molesters and those convicted of bestiality and incest, and were treated as the absolute dregs of society. Yes, even worse than Jews.

But it wasn't the Nazis who started the ball rolling...

quote:
1871: Germany Adopts Paragraph 175
When the disparate German Kingdoms were unified into the country we call Germany today, King William I imposed the legal code of his native Prussia on all the German states. Many of the German Kingdoms had liberal laws based on the French legal traditions before unification, but William forced them to accept Prussia's conservative code including Paragraph 175, a law that forbade sex between men.

But the Nazis certainly ran with the ball, once they had it...

quote:
When the Nazi's came to power in 1933, they put a halt to efforts seeking reform of this law. In 1935, after the murder of Ernst Roem, the NSDAP amended the Paragraph 175 to close what were seen as loopholes in the current law.

[...]

The Nazi's passed other laws that targeted sex offenders. In 1933, they enacted the Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and Measures for Protection and Recovery. This law gave German judges the power to order compulsory castrations [...] The Amendment to the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases dated June 26, 1935 allowed castration indicated by reason of crime for men convicted under paragraph 175 if the men consented. A May 20, 1939 memo from Himmler allows concentration camp prisoners to be blackmailed into castration.


But Paragraph 175 was finally repealed... in 1994.

quote:
Paragraph 175 (known formally as §175 StGB; also known as Section 175 in English) was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality.

[...]

East Germany reverted to the old [pre-Nazi] version of the law in 1950, limited its scope to sex with youths under 18 in 1968, and abolished it entirely in 1988. West Germany retained the Nazi-era statute until 1969, when it was limited to "qualified cases"; it was further attenuated in 1973 and finally revoked entirely in 1994 after German reunification.


It is a little-known fact that for a number of inmates in the camps, the arrival of the Allies did not mean freedom. Some "pink triangle prisoners" were simply transferred to civilian prisons, often merely for the "crime" of being gay. People wanting an eye-opening first-hand account should look up the excellent documentary Paragraph 175, which features interviews with a handful of pink triangle survivors from the camps.

quote:
Originally posted by Bacchus:
There was anti-semetism endemic in European society as a whole, not just German and the speed in which other nations citizens embraced it to varying degrees is alarming.

Hmmmmm... now who does that remind me of....?

And now, back to your regularly-scheduled thread (which really is an excellent and thought-provoking read).


From: goodbye... :-( | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 26 April 2005 02:43 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fidel:Very few people I know have any idea about what happened to those German citizens who represented the greatest opposition to the Nazi agenda.

I think some important points have been made about the silent group, who struggle against the rise of such racism and brutallity of thinking, that the quiet places that sit against the larger backdrop, are usually not heard.

Left/right issues of negativity seem to rise here again and again, and in the view of the larger population, such silent groups might have been seen as problems to the current rule?

Consensus would have said, "if you do not tow the line, then you are against us." Might makes right? Where would such imaginatives views have found these voices and rhetoric, that rose to lead a country into war on anothers soil?

To think our parents could have subscribed to a such a larger view might seem a sad thing when society of the time was saying how proud we are of this and that, amidst the decline of society, and out rageous inflation. That a corporal could have brought the whole of ths Germanic society to a standing ovation?

They were in trouble and needed nationalism. They needed something, or someone to hang onto?

While the Serbian ethnic cleansing was going on, Croats were sending ou real time pictures of the slaughter of village of men after the Serbians had visited the day before.

What was the history of these Croatians and what and who did they support in World War 2. That doesn't matter in this day and age. To see where such views could overtake the public common sense and where good men could become the harbringers of a total distain for life.

So what is the better roads in society that we would ask, "what proof do we have for such positions," that our senses of our history could have evolved such men and nations to say the Germanic one was evil, while this issues goes on from day to day without comprehension of the whole in respect of today's world?

There is a deeper psychological insurgency that took over societies rules, that they cast aside all the democratics freedoms for this ruling caste of perception. It is everywhere. It is sleeping in sensible societies?

The environment of the camps would have been uncomprehensible to us if we did not have those who spoke about these things to us. What was the state of mind of those who shared these things with us?

I think that I always had the same attitude. It only changed me from being a skeptik to being ready to open my mind and start investigating what it was all about. The worst part of my life was being in the camps. It was a lot worse than they show in the movies. e.g. Coming back from hard labouring, a man falls down from exhaustion. In the movie the others pick him up and carry him. My experience is that the guards have to use the butt of their riffle to force some 'volunteers'. Some the guards were terrible, as were a lot of the prisoners. I have seen prisoners helping the tired soldiers, beating up fellow prisoners
Sometimes after work, I was so hungry that I drank a lot of water to feel it less. We all had a soupbowl hanging over the bunkbed. Mine was far from the door, so I took one close to the door. I found in it two slices of bread, a whole days ration. Without thinking I went where most men were around a fire, and asked who's bed it was. I thought the man was going to kill me. I said it is not wise to leave it hidden that way, someone might steel it. I had a lot of warm things stolen from me. What I am trying to say, is that people act according their intrinsic value, when they react spontaneous.
Don Q(alias)

Rest easy Michelle.

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 26 April 2005 02:52 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fidel:

At the risk of hi-jacking the thread (which is not my intent), and in light of your current interest in the subject, there is the little matter of the comment you made here (Ken Livingstone thread).

You said:

quote:
Counter-revolutionary to Bolshevism, the holocaust was about wealth redistribution among the rich in Europe. Just another case of appalling greed.

I characterized your statement thusly:

quote:
To reduce the holocaust to "appalling greed" is to have missed the entire point: It is not necessary to incinerate 6 million members of a given race - and countless others - to confisticate their property, be they rich or poor.

quote:
[h]e's reducing the Judeocide to greed. As if their deaths were incidental, not integral, to the Holocaust.

You have yet to either a) apologize for an incredibly obtuse and offensive statement or b)clarify said statement in such a manner as to alleviate its obtuse offensiveness. Clearly, you are obligated to do no such thing; but if such is your position I know that I and many others (as is shown by the reactions on that thread which you chose not to respond to) find it difficult to take you seriously on this issue.

From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
forum observer
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posted 26 April 2005 04:11 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."

I read this book many years ago, and help to put into perspective some of what was going on and how Victor Frankl was able to cope?

Earlier, I drew the quote from someone who went through it as well, but not as a Jewish prisoner. He said, "What I am trying to say, is that people act according their intrinsic value, when they react spontaneous."

AS the environment changed, so did the people?Did we understand the positions they would take when they were hungry? When all life had been drained from their bodies?

How well does culture flourish when it's society is well and happy? How well it's arts and litertures, when the roof over our heads? That we had lost some of the dependance that is required for us to survive? Make sure our little ones are fed.

Germanic society under the struggle of a rising doctrine to replace the disenchanted, showed Jewish success as a evil, and nurtured hatred in the masses.

Pol Pot might have seen the corrupion pointing to a way of life as education, so he rule with evil intentions to wipe out the educated?

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 26 April 2005 04:46 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Pol Pot might have seen the corrupion pointing to a way of life as education, so he rule with evil intentions to wipe out the educated?

I think Pol Pot was not opposed to education, per se, but the wrong kind of education. Most 'educated' Khmer were educated by Europeans, in the European manner. Europeans were, as he saw it, the enemies of the Khmer people and so he sought to extinguish European thinking from the Khmer people by exterminating the educated Khmer as a class, and a lot of other Urban people at the same time. They were irrevocably tainted by bourgiose European attitutdes, in his mind.

This mode of thinking, directly came from the kind of revolutionary communist thought that inspired the Cultural revolution in China. Interestingly, there was a movement within the Communist Party of Vietnam to put into play the same kind of ideas in the late 50' and early 60's, as part of the peasant land reform program in the North Vietnam.

There was a lot of resistance from many sectors both in and outside of the party. It seems that Ho Chi Minh was ambivalent about the influence of Vietnam's powerful northern neighbours and the advisors they sent, and Ho Chi Minh publically appologized for the early excesses of the land reform program, and there was no serious attempt to tie 'cultural poltics' into economic or nationalist politics by the Vietnamese communists.

Traditionally, the Vietnamese are about as concerned about the influence of their powerful Asian neighbors, China and Japan as they are about the influence of France and the European powers.

But no one really cares about that stuff anymore.

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
AppleSeed
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posted 26 April 2005 04:57 PM      Profile for AppleSeed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Wasn't Saloth Sar (Pol Pot), himself educated in Europe?

I read that he became a member of the French Communist Party.


From: In Dreams | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 26 April 2005 05:18 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes. Ironic isn't it.

Anyway there was this strain of communist thought that combined what I see as a Nietzchian vision with Marxism that culminates in Pol Pot. To put is simply.

Most Asian nationalist reovlutionaires were drawn to the communist secotors of the the Social Democratic movements, largely because most of the soft-socialists continued to believe in the 'civilizing' force of colonialism. Lenin, on the other hand, was one of the few who made an anti-imperialist stance central to his world view. The attraction of Asian nationalist to the Bolsheviks was a natural political trajectory, given that they were the only European political force that explicitly opposed colonialism.

Other nationalist tended toward throwing their lot in with Pan-Asian resistance to colonialism centered around Japan, up until the end of the war that is.

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 26 April 2005 06:45 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Coyote:
Fidel:

At the risk of hi-jacking the thread (which is not my intent), and in light of your current interest in the subject, there is the little matter of the comment you made:

You said:
You have yet to either a) apologize for an incredibly obtuse and offensive statement or b)clarify said statement in such a manner as to alleviate its obtuse offensiveness. Clearly, you are obligated to do no such thing; but if such is your position I know that I and many others (as is shown by the reactions on that thread which you chose not to respond to) find it difficult to take you seriously on this issue.


I didn't realize someone was kgbing my comments, so I'll be brief. I apologize for the way my opinion on the holocaust was reduced to a couple of sentences, yes. But yes, I still believe that a vast transfer of wealth took place leading uo to and during the holocaust. Jewish wealth sits unclaimed in Swiss banks even today. The private railroads that carried Jewish and other riches across Europe then are the same ones that sold blocks of seat reservations on their trains, "tourist class." The railroads are still owned by the same families today, Coyote.

What about my comments are you wanting me to apologize for ?. Are you trying to say that appalling greed had nothing to do with it ?.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
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posted 26 April 2005 07:13 PM      Profile for forum observer   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
But no one really cares about that stuff anymore

Thanks for update on Pol pot. I think in context of the orignation of this thread, one would look at examples, to point out how these doctrines could have been support by fathers and mother, while and sons and daughters, came out of these relations. We would not want all children having to suffer the burden of their parents? Right?

Just place them in perspective, that such things in the future, like children who become adults, learn to change, and learn by our parents mistakes and accomplishements. Allow ourselves to not be decieved by such evil intention, by destroying life?

In these things today, we should care.

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]


From: It is appropriate that plectics refers to entanglement or the lack thereof, | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 26 April 2005 07:25 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sorry, Fidel. But this just doesn't cut it.
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:


I didn't realize someone was kgbing my comments, so I'll be brief.


The hell? I'm quoting your stated opinion on the penultament human tragedy of the 20th Century.
quote:
I apologize for the way my opinion on the holocaust was reduced to a couple of sentences, yes.
What's with the passive voice? No one "reduced" your opinion but you. I quoted you
en toto.
quote:
But yes, I still believe that a vast transfer of wealth took place leading uo to and during the holocaust. Jewish wealth sits unclaimed in Swiss banks even today. The private railroads that carried Jewish and other riches across Europe then are the same ones that sold blocks of seat reservations on their trains, "tourist class." The railroads are still owned by the same families today, Coyote.
No one denies this. The problem is that you described this quite clearly as the cause, rather than a result, of the Holocaust.

quote:
What about my comments are you wanting me to apologize for ?. Are you trying to say that appalling greed had nothing to do with it ?.
I am saying that attributing the Holocaust to "appalling" greed is a reductionist and vulgarly materialist interpretation of the Holocaust.

Let's look at that quote again, shall we?

quote:
Counter-revolutionary to Bolshevism, the holocaust was about wealth redistribution among the rich in Europe. Just another case of appalling greed.
This is patent absurdity. Polish and Russian Jews of the peasant variety had no material possessions worth the effort of incineration. Nor does "greed" account for the despicable experiments performed on countless victims of the Holocaust.

To be blunt: Your quote, one you offered up without nuance or qualification, amounts to a dismissal of the Judeocide and the racist under-pinnings of the Third Reich. "Just another case of appalling greed"? No, Fidel. It was much more than that, and any leftist worth his or her stripes should know that intuitively.

It is not for me that I think you should rethink your words, but for you. And I mean that is the most fraternal sense possible.


From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
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posted 26 April 2005 07:36 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fidel's comments don't suprise me in the least. He does have a fundamentalist economic reductionist aproach to life. He just can't see the individual molecular dynamics of life.

Also Hitler as well as fascism in general combined both socialism and capitalism. Be honest about that.

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: Vigilante ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 26 April 2005 08:20 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Vigilante? This isn't about your beef, and nor is it about scoring points. I have no intention, and nor does anyone else, of getting involved in your running feud.
From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Macabee
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posted 26 April 2005 08:37 PM      Profile for Macabee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by the bard:
A leading critic of Goldhagen is the very controversial political scientist Norman Finkelstein, who is critical of the moral uniqueness of the Nazi holocaust (i.e. The Holocaust - nothing compares to the suffering of Jews, period). He's the author of The Holocaust Industry (where he charges Jewish elites exploiting the Holocaust for their own ends, to the detriment of the survivors themselves) and with Ruth Bettina Birn, wrote a critique of Goldhagen's findings. Birn, who is German-born and spent her life dealing with the horrors of Germany's Nazi past, was roasted by the CJC for her collaboration with "Holocaust denier" (not true) Finkelstein.

Finkelstein has a lot of criticism of Goldhagen on his website, www.normanfinkelstein.com


Ihave searched the web to see if I could find anyone from the CJC who called Finkelstein a "Holocaust denier". I couldnt find any such reference. Could you please point out where any CJC leader suggests he is a denier. Thanks.

From: Vaughan | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Macabee
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posted 26 April 2005 08:47 PM      Profile for Macabee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Michelle,besides Frankl"s excellent book "Man's Search for Meaning", I would also urge you to read Primo Levi's "Man's Survival in Auschwitz" and Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men" to get other historical views that both compliment and contradict Goldhagen.
From: Vaughan | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 26 April 2005 09:04 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've read those, and came away very impressed. Primo Levi is very, very good.

To me, the best account (purely subjective, of course) that I've read is still Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. I don't think I've ever read a book that so shaped my thinking.


From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Macabee
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posted 26 April 2005 10:07 PM      Profile for Macabee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Coyote, I couldnt agree more. Arendt's view has helped us put the real face to evil. I would argue to some extent that the banality of evil put forward by Arendt can feed into Goldahgen's position as well.
From: Vaughan | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 26 April 2005 10:08 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Coyote, Primo Levi was about your age when he wrote "Sé questo č un uomo" - If this is a man - which alas often bears the much more prosaic title in English translation - "Survival in Auschwitz". The original title is a meditation on humanity and the Nazi's attempt to destroy it. When Levi attempted to find a publisher for his book in 1948, prominent publishing house Einaudi (very linked to the Resistance) initially turned him down. According to the author of Prisoners of Hope: The Silver Age of the Italian Jews, H. Stuart Hughes, the editor who turned Levi's manuscript down was none other than Natalia Ginzburg, another prominent Turinese Jewish author (also née Levi). Ginzburg's husband Leone Ginzburg was a partisan leader - he had been an antifascist intellectual for many years - and was tortured to death by the Gestapo for the dual crime of being a resistance fighter and a Jew.

Arendt's book is indeed a stunning study. I don't think she would have agreed with some exceptional German capacity for antisemitism, and not only because she was German. She is holding a glass up to a negative Everyman.

And no, the Nazis were in no way socialist.

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: lagatta ]


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 26 April 2005 10:09 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sorry, Doppelgatta...

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: lagatta ]


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 26 April 2005 11:01 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Macabee:
Coyote, I couldnt agree more. Arendt's view has helped us put the real face to evil. I would argue to some extent that the banality of evil put forward by Arendt can feed into Goldahgen's position as well.
I agree that it can; but the difference in my view (caveat: I have only read excerpts and reviews of Goldhagen's work) is the difference between a blunt instrument and a subtle one. Lagatta has the right of it, I think: she does not apply to the fact of being "German" the capacity for this kind of evil; it is a universal weakness that found its purest expression in Nazi Germany.

From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 26 April 2005 11:51 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Also Hitler as well as fascism in general combined both socialism and capitalism. Be honest about that.


But Hitler killed off Rohm. It was one of the first things he did. And with Rohm went any pretension to 'socialist' politics in the SA. That is a fact. Then he got cosy with big business.

And though I wont to get into the nuts and bolts of this arguement, as there was a lot of stuff going on, but exproriations of Jewish businessess were very profitable for certain Aryan capitalists. Was it central to the cause? Yes and no, but Nazi propganda focussed a lot of attention of percieved wealth of Jewish capitlaists.

If you were really interested in how Hitler conceived of the German state you would research Erich Ludendorff, who was the Kaiser's war minister at the end of WW1, and a big big influence and supporter of the Nazis. Capitalism, yes, but the capitalists would be at the service of a fully mobilized war machine. He was the military theorist who eschewed Clauzowitz, in favour of a theory of war as outlined in his book, "Der Totale Krieg," but I doubt you will be interested in that since are more interested prosecuting your own idoelogical totale krieg against Fidel by conflating communism and socialism with fascism.

Der Totale Kreig: War is not the pursuit of policy by other means, but war is the policy, in a life and death struggle for national survival with every institution of the nation at the disposal of the fully mobalized war machine.

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 27 April 2005 12:01 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
I agree that it can; but the difference in my view (caveat: I have only read excerpts and reviews of Goldhagen's work) is the difference between a blunt instrument and a subtle one. Lagatta has the right of it, I think: she does not apply to the fact of being "German" the capacity for this kind of evil; it is a universal weakness that found its purest expression in Nazi Germany.

This is fundamental, and it is odd to see many Zionists shooting themselves in the foot by promoting a view that the Holocaust had something do with a specifically German mindset. If this is the case then it is a historical phenomena that can not be repeated, or something that could only happen in Germany. In this light the call "never again," which is used as founding justification for the existence of the state of Israel, logically falls flat, simply because the Holocaust could not happen again, except in Germany at a specifc historical crossroad.

I have never been able to establish whether or no Goldhagen is also a Zionist.

Read: Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman rejects quite convincingly the idea that the Holcocaust is uniquely German.

It is very dangerous, and whatever is going on between Finklestien and Goldhagen is irrelvant to the basic flaw in Goldhagen's thesis.

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 27 April 2005 07:02 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Coyote:

To be blunt: Your quote, one you offered up without nuance or qualification, amounts to a dismissal of the Judeocide and the racist under-pinnings of the Third Reich. "Just another case of appalling greed"? No, Fidel. It was much more than that, and any leftist worth his or her stripes should know that intuitively.

Well perhaps my own understanding of the holocaust is an ongoing lesson for myself then.
I believe that the defeat of communism and eventual global slavery was the ultimate goal of Hitler's Nazism. I can't imagine industrialists objecting to free labour.

From my limited point of view, racism makes no sense whatsoever until a significant motivating factor is introduced. Hitler's prejudice of Jews was shared by none other than Henry Ford who lumped Bolshevism and Jewishness together. For Ford, it was Hess, Marx, Engels and Jews in general who were to blame for workers discovering that a living wage and basic human rights could be had at the expense of concentration of wealth and power. In their profiteering, power-mongering minds, it was Jews who bore the responsibility for spreading this new workers disease. There was only one solution, really.

Years after reading Ford's book, The International Jew, while in a German prison on charges of treason, Hitler and his cause would benefit financially and strategically by his capitalist backers in the west and at home. Defenders of the massive financial backing of Hitler from inside Europe and America will often sweep it under the carpet as being down to single-minded profit motive, and, "Who knew?" excuses. But it's deflection and avoidance of the fact that capitalists chose political flash point Germany over every other western nation where experiments in laissez-faire capitalism produced rot and decay.

As Cueball points out, once finished with them, Hitler ordered the SA dispensed with. But what to do with capitalist backers to the right and socialists on the left ?. Easy, have the socialist wing of the party murdered in their sleep. A friend of my family's whose father worked for the Nazis says that Hitler spoke at swanky get-togethers with Germany's elite in attendance. The open air speeches were for the benefit of the working class with usual political diatribes about jobs and better living conditions.

But Hitler's speeches gradually filled with rage against the socialists, and the communists and the Jews who were ruining his beloved Germany. The socialist wing of the party would have to be murdered during the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler would declare himself dictator; all leftist parties would be banned and books were burned.

Hitler was a political conservative, and nationalism is inherently a political conservative ideology, not socialist. Hitler desired the to return to a Kaiser-led past. The fascination with a simpler past is identified with political conservatism. The socialists and communists in Germany were debating how much of the past would survive radical change. What did Hitler, the bankers and industrialists think of the left's proposals for change?. They were absolutely terrified.

Hitler's racism wasn't confined to just the object of his disaffection, European Jewry. The immediate agenda was the war of annihilation against communism in Russia. Hitler's pre-emptive attack on Russia was a battle of ideologies: common interests and socialism versus individualism and the right to private wealth. The motivation for capitalists to fund Hitler and the Nazis was to prevent wide-spread nationalisation of wealth and assets ie. factories which were either idle or under-utilized amid growing poverty. Corporate welfare statism, and the current economic model in America, would be the answer to failed laissez-faire capitalism around the world. Capitalists would abandon Smithian-capitalism for upside-down socialism.

The murder of an idea was justifiable, which in their frightened little minds, was down to Jewry. Nazis knew the basic requirements for a society based on slavery, brutality and fear mongering. Roman's used crucifiction as a constant reminder that Roman law was supreme. What was Roman society dependant on ? - Slavery. How can slavery be justified to half the population? - Racism.

German and Jewish survivors of the war have stated that fear was a central theme to Nazism. A few Jews could be banished from government employment and have the working class squabble over scraps while vast amounts of gold, cash, assets and rare artwork were confiscated from upper class Jews and scattered around the world after the plan took a wrong turn. (btw, How many Canadian's have protested language requirements for living wage civil service employment but never once complain about a lack of opportunities in the private sector?. Which group of Chilean's banged pots and pans together on que leading up to a military coup in the 1970's and happily turned over leftist neighbors and relatives to the secret police there?) The working class are easily divided when it comes to economic security based on self-interest. Self-interest unleashed as raw greed was not something that lower class Germans knew intuitively, nor any other grossly under-achieving ethnics. Perhaps rabid self-interest and loyalty to the cause would have to be proven by actions. A rewards based system was implemented with degrees of savagery awarded higher ranking in Nazi society. Only the strongest in Nazi society could prove worthy. For Gays, Gypsies, the lame and the soft-hearted, their fates would be determined by Nazural selection.

I apologize for the eyesore of a length. Go ahead, rip it apart, you jackals.

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 27 April 2005 10:52 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here is a documentary on young Jewish German refugees who returned to their homeland in US army uniforms as intelligence officers. http://www.goethe.de/ins/ca/mon/ver/en539925.htm Sadly, their German accents and manner made them unwelcome in US veterans groups after the war.

Fidel, I agree with you about capitalism and fascism, and the whole question of "socialism or barbarism", but I think you underestimate irrational and atavistic factors in human behaviour.

As the famous quote by Marx in the 18th Brumaire goes:

Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand.  The tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living. 

Marx speaks of revolutions taking on the guises of the past, but can't the same also apply to reaction?

By the way, the sexist "Man" is the translators' fault: Marx wrote "Mensch" (human being).

Your statement on nationalism is far too categorical. At times, nationalist movements among oppressed nationalities can have a progressive content (Basque and Catalonian movements against Franco are but one example).

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: lagatta ]


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 27 April 2005 11:52 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by lagatta:
... but I think you underestimate irrational and atavistic factors in human behaviour.

Absolutely agree with you there. Capitalists say that a person makes their life what they will, which I think is tantamount to saying, the salmon will swim up-stream in order to spawn. Or this equivalent: I'm a midnight golfer. I have no idea what that means either.

I think Marx described it more accurately as "life chances", and in a capitalist society, they're not the same for everyone. I do understand that this isn't describing behaviour, but rather opportunity and outcomes.

Back to your comment about atavistic and irrational human behaviour, I'm not sure what to make of it. I know that I can be irrational at times during the day. I've observed other people being irrational. I've concluded that it's part of being human. lagatta, how do we fix this, this irrational part of us that capitalists would rather we indulge in less of in order to become more productive?. And why should we be more productive?.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
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posted 27 April 2005 03:28 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Fidel:
From my limited point of view, racism makes no sense whatsoever until a significant motivating factor is introduced.

You're downplaying the role of positivism in the 19th century. This was basically the birth of racism as we know it today or white supremecy. It was assumed that white developed europeans were superior to indigenous "savages". A French dude(can't remember his name) took this thinking to it's conclusion and talked about white purity. It was social darwinism at it's ugliest.

Classical Marxism also dwelved into this thinking as well to a point. Why do you think the transition that Mussolini was so easy.

It's not all economics. We all have internalized modes of domination that must be kept in check.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
sillygoil
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posted 27 April 2005 03:46 PM      Profile for sillygoil     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Another remarkable book is Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Very disturbing expose on how anyone can be recruited to conduct genocide.

Also, ANY Primo Levi book will move you to tears.

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: sillygoil ]


From: Little house on the prairie | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 27 April 2005 03:48 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Macabee
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posted 27 April 2005 04:17 PM      Profile for Macabee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by sillygoil:
Another remarkable book is Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Very disturbing expose on how anyone can be recruited to conduct genocide.

Also, ANY Primo Levi book will move you to tears.

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: sillygoil ]


Both these books were already mentioned ...yes I agree


From: Vaughan | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 27 April 2005 08:22 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh my gosh, so many posts...where to start.

I will preface with the disclaimer that I'm not even completely through the first three chapters yet. It's slow-going - I'm reading it on the way to and from work, and occasionally at night, but I've stopped reading it before bed, and I've got a couple of other books on the go too. I've been getting through about 10-20 pages a day this way, although I'll have a couple of long bus trips this weekend to get through some of it. Also, I have read other chapters and sections in the middle of the book here and there, such as the section on Police Battalion 101, which is what has kept me awake at night. But the first two parts of the book (which are 5 chapters altogether, I think, are where you really get the "meat" of his argument, as well as part 6. So I'm about halfway through those sections.

Regarding the idea that Goldhagen is saying that Germans had a special capacity for evil...I haven't had that impression at all, the more I read, although maybe I just haven't gotten to it yet. The impression I have is that he is FOCUSING on Germans because, after all, if it weren't for Germany, there wouldn't have been a Holocaust. Anti-semitism was rampant throughout Europe, obviously, but it was Hitler, and Germany, that actually set the wheels in motion for the genocide, and while there were lots of willing, antisemitic collaborators throughout Europe, without Germany's masterminding of the genocide, it wouldn't have happened.

And then he focuses on how thoroughly antisemitic German society was for a century or two before the Holocaust, but I don't see him saying that Germany was uniquely anti-semitic. So far, I hear him saying that he's focusing on Germany because Germany was responsible for bringing it to the genocide it became. I don't see him saying that Germans have/had a unique capacity to kill Jews. I see him saying that the culture of antisemitic nationalism, combined with favourable political conditions in Germany, was a combination of conditions that turned feelings of anti-semitic hatred and prejudice into outright eliminationist policy, supported politically and culturally.

And I can't help but think he has a point, really. There's a difference between saying that conditions were ripe in Germany for this kind of genocide due to a unique combination of cultural, political, and nationalistic anti-semitic thought in that country at that point in time, and saying that Germans just have a natural and unique capacity to hate and kill Jews. My impression is that he is asserting the former, not the latter.

Of course, as I say, I'm only about halfway through his argument, though, so there you go.

Macabee, it's interesting that you should mention Arendt's "banality of evil" in conjunction with Goldhagen. He has mentioned Arendt, but disagrees with her. "According to her, totalitarian domination destroys not just the public realm. It 'destroys private life as well. It bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.' Contrary to Arendt's assertions, the perpetrators were not such atomized, lonely beings. The decidedly belonged to their world and had plenty of opportunities, which they obvious used, to discuss and reflect upon their exploits."

I also have a hard time buying the idea that everyone was just doing their small part in a very fragmented operation, for the reasons Goldhagen puts forth. If everyone did their part half-heartedly, or even just coldly and efficiently, then I could see where that would be a supportable idea. But, as Goldhagen describes in excruciating detail, the tens of thousands of people who carried this shit out didn't just do it mechanically. They did it with zeal, and as sadistically as humanly (or, inhumanly) possible. That doesn't seem all that "banal" to me.

[ 27 April 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 28 April 2005 07:56 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I've thought the same things; a nation of unthinking drones who all nurtured an innate desire for blood and gore. But I think that the Nazis are credited with being masters of persuasion through use of pamphlets, slogans, posters, radio etc. They may have been the first criminal regime to develop a movie industry as a propaganda tool.

And I agree with Michelle's comment about the Nazis needing outside help to have killed as many Jews as they did. Some nations began pogroms of their own before the Nazis even arrived, according to Canada's David Mattas, author of Justice Denied. In his book, Matas described the Croatian Ustasi's voluntary actions against Serbian Jews, political prisoners and Gipsies as so cruel that they shocked even the highest level SS officers. About 90 percent of Serbia's Jews were murdered during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

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