Spotlight on Volkmer Ullrich's Hitler: Downfall 1939-1945

Peter Fritzsche reviewed Volkmer Ullrich’s book, Hitler: Downfall 1939-1945 in a New York Times review titled No Hitler, No Holocaust. A few quotes from the outstanding review, and book, especially stood out, see them here in bold:

“NEVER AGAIN,” Adolf Hitler repeated that slogan over and over.… “Never Again“ identified specifically domestic enemies, so-called “November criminals,“ Marxists, Jews and others, would never be allowed to sabotage Germany as they allegedly had at the end of World War I or to reroute German history into white Hitler regarded as parliamentary chaos and moral degeneration. The recovery of German fortunes depended on crushing left-wing forces as soon as he had seized power, Hitler promised heads “rolling in the sand.”

“Never Again” also embellish the fantasy that the Allies, act in concert with the “November criminals,“ and very nearly succeeded in eradicating the German nation in 1918-19. Figures of Germans rounded up, deported or exterminated and reduced to ashes littered Nazi propaganda. With this embattled worldview, Hitler led the revitalized Third Reich with a clear aim to preemptively and repeatedly strike at declared enemies in what he considered to be a remorseless struggle for existence. As he explained to the Nazi elite in April 1944, “Exterminate, so that you yourself will not be exterminated!“ “Never Again“ prepared the horrific scale of German violence in the years 1939-45.

Hitler‘s commitment to expand Germany’s living space and his resolve to destroy rather than defeat Germany’s enemies so that they “will never again rise up“ show how his ideas about 1918 directly influence the conduct of World War II.

Ullrich concludes this accomplished biography with lessons about “how quickly democracy can be prised from its hinges when political institutions fail“ and “how thin the mantle separating civilization and barbarism actually is.“ The history of the Third Reich teaches us about “what human beings are capable of when the rule of law and ethical norms are suspended.“ The inhumane enlarged the idea of the human. To these lessons we can add that it is precisely the allure of national and racial uplift and the temptation to constitute “us” by excluding “them” that diminish law and morality. Readers and writers persistently return to the rise and fall of Hitler – Ullrich’s biography is the latest on a long shelf. There is the force of Hitler’s personality and the consequence of the will of a single individual, of course. But we also return because the Third Reich reveals the power of public fantasies. The liberal mindset is not the default.            

See the full review in the New York Times

Mischlinge Exposé Bibliography: Constantine's Sword

How can we deal with existential doubt in a more productive creative way? It doesn’t leave us, might as well put it to good use! For me, the arts provide a tool for coping with it. We live in the gray, not the black and white, it’s unsustainable. And someone always gets hurt.

James Carroll goes to extraordinary lengths, writing of truths that he unearthed in his extraordinary research.

“The ultimate example of this image would emerge in Germany, but the fear that led Nazis to regard Jews as bloodsuckers to be excised was anticipated by the Iberian suspicion that Jews were more to be feared as assimilated insiders then as dissenting outsiders. Thus hatred of the other became a society’s scare-driven urge to eradicate an alien part of itself.”

“And once again, many Christians, and most of their leaders, moved against doubt in the traditional way - by repressing existential anxiety, defining it as evil, and projecting it especially onto Jews.”

“Universalist absolutism,” a Catholic veteran of the Jewish-Christian dialogue, Patrick O’Hare, has said, “thrives on the diminishment of the other. The more the Church shores up the reach of its claim, the greater the danger that again - here is the lesson of the Inquisition - we will have “religion as a source of brutality.”

“In academia, the history of antisemitism is taught in Jewish studies departments, if at all, when it should be taught as a core component of the history of Western civilization. When the narrative of Jew hatred is recounted within the relatively narrow scope of Jewish studies, the structure of Jewish accusation and Christian guilt is reified, and antisemitism is defined as the Jews’ problem, instead of that of Western civilization, the culture that came into being with a Jew defined as a religious, economic, social, and, ultimately, racial outsider. But when antisemitism is treated mainly as a Jewish problem, the Jew is condemned to play the role of either self-flagellant or denouncer, with obvious dangers attached to each. That is why this history must be recounted not as the history of Jews but primarily as a history of the Church.”

“Difference is to be respected, not condemned.”

“We understand one another, if at all, only through analogies. Each recognizes that any attempt to reduce the authentic otherness of another’s focus to one’s own with our common habits of domination only seems to destroy us all, only increases the leveling power of the all-too-common denominators making no one at home. Conflict is our actuality. Conversation is our hope.”

“Conversation is our hope. In that simple statement lies the kernel of democracy. There is a special tragedy in the fact that, for contingent historical reasons, the Catholic Church set itself so ferociously against the coming of democracy - tragic because Christianity began its life as a small gathering of Jews who were devoted to conversation. This was, of course, characteristically Jewish, since Judaism is a religion of the book. Indeed, that was what made Judaism unique. That the book was at the center of this groups identity meant that the group was never more itself than when reading and responding to texts, and while the rabbinical schools may have presided over such a process, all Jews participated in it, especially after the liturgical cult of sacrifice was lost when the Temple was destroyed. Gatherings around the book became everything. Conversation became everything the assumption among the followers of Jesus was that they were all endowed with the wisdom, insight, maturity, and holiness necessary to contribute to the pursuit of the truth of who Jesus had been to them.”

Reflections on Constantine's Sword

I recently finished James Carroll’s book, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, and it seems to unfortunately relate as much to our times today as the times focused on in The Mischlinge Exposé in regards to a polarized, fundamentalist society. Here are some quotes that stood out while reading:

“Hatred of the other became society’s scare-driven urge to eradicate an alien part of itself.”

“...moved against doubt in the traditional way - by repressing existential anxiety, defining it as evil, and projecting it...”

“Universalist absolutism thrives on the diminishment of the other.”

— Padriac O'Hare

“Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.”

— Joyce Carol Oates

“The nature of truth required modesty toward oneself and respect toward all others.”

“Difference is to be respected, not condemned.”

“We understand one another, if at all, only through analogies. Each recognizes that any attempt to reduce the authentic otherness of another’s focus to one’s own with our common habits of domination only seems to destroy us all, only increases the leveling power of the all-too-common denominators making no one at home. Conflict is our actuality. Conversation is our hope.”

— David Tracy

“When the problem is defined as belonging to the victim group, the “solution“ becomes that groups removal.”

The Invention of Human Races

Dresden's Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (a medical museum) is currently presenting an exhibit on racism, titled, “Racism. The Invention of Human Races”. The exhibit was recently profiled in Jewish Voice from Germany and I was struck by the image of the skin color chart from 1900. I hope to contribute the Mischlinge Exposé to this important exhibit.

A new bibliography addition from Robert Proctor

I recently finished Robert N. Proctor's book, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. What was so disturbing is how the finest minds in science and medicine paved the way for barbarity, and that the Germans were inspired by the Americans for their “leadership in racial hygiene”.

A review quote from Harvard University Press:

“Robert Proctor demonstrates that the common picture of a passive scientific community coerced into cooperation with the Nazis fails to grasp the reality of what actually happened—namely, that many of the political initiatives of the Nazis arose from within the scientific community, and that medical scientists actively designed and administered key elements of National Socialist policy.”

And another poignant review quote from the Journal of Public Health Policy:

“It is easy to be simplistic about the Nazi period, to think of the German people as somehow different and capable of enormities that others would never be capable of committing. Not only is this facile, but Proctor's book, in adding complexity and subtlety to our understanding of the Nazi phenomenon, also clarifies our vision of what the opposition within Germany was, what was thought, what was attempted, and how it failed.”