* Lew’s review (ongoing) of “Backing Hitler” by Robert Gellately … It is getting harder for me to reconcile the horrors of the totalitarian state graphically described by Gellately with his contention that “a huge majority of Germans supported Hitler’s pol
In his introduction, Gellately sets the premise that Hitler was well received in 1933 by most Germans who applauded his goals of “restoring the grandeur of the Reich” and “cleaning out undesirable aliens.” He argues that this widespread support for Hitler did not waver substantially until more than a decade later when it was obvious [...]
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Jan
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Oct 23, 2012 01:29PM
I have not read a lot in this area, in fact, maybe not as much as most other people, for example, my husband read In the Garden of the Beast but I didn't. But I got a glimmer of feeling in a recent novel Elegy for Eddie (one of a series by Jacqueline Winspear), about the attraction of Nazism for some of the upper classes in England in 1933, and even more so in Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series set in Sweden. He had a character be in Germany in those early days. He made it seem as though the atmosphere was heady and uplifting, and was infectious. Maybe what some Americans (but not me, really) nostalgically remember as "morning in America," multiplied to the nth degree. Maybe as though one had been depressed, and in fact the whole community was depressed, but now the home team is winning the division and the World Series and the other team is winning the Super Bowl, all rolled into one. If, as you say, those (in my case) fictional descriptions can be relied on. That, at least, is how I can imagine it. Sort of a feeling of vindication. Inflated and grandiose, but those who got sucked in or let themselves be sucked in didn't know it.
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JAN ... You have hit on many of the issues I hope to deal with in my new novel. To which I would add ... what did they feel like when they realized what Hitler was really going to do? what did they do? what choices did they then have? ... LEW
I think it's hard for us to imagine the degree of anti-Semitism lurking beneath the surface in Europe and England. It was probably worse in America than it is now but not so deeply ingrained. A physical therapist from Belorus and I became good friends. He mentioned Minsk at one point, and I said that it had been a Jewish cultural center before WWII. He absolutely denied this could be possible, that there were no Jews in Minsk. Of course that's true now because of the holocaust. But his adamance told me that he was offended by the suggestion that Jews wold be tolerated. Online I found a tour of the great synagogues of Minsk but can't remember if I sent it to him or not.Also The Finkler Question and an interview with the author make me think that at least stereotyping of Jews is strong in England and the idea that they are different from everybody else.
Almost two thousand years of relentless denigration and persecution of Jews by the Christian churches led Catholic and Protestant Germans to view Jews as barely human. It took until 1965 for the Catholic Church to change its official position that all Jews for all time were guilty of the murder of Christ. As Hitler said in the early thirties to a Catholic bishop ... I am only saying what you have said for centuries. The ground had been well prepared for what followed.
I have begun reading a nonfiction book called The Price of Whiteness. It centers on Jews in America--where the predominant experience of what it meant to be civilized and part of society was defined over-and-against African-Americans. It is very complex, and after several chapters, I lent the book to somebody else (for a breather). It seems that whiteness is an ideology, not just a color, and is malleable as to who is included at various points. But black/white was not the predominant issue in Europe. There it was Christian (or Caucasian, or Aryan) vs. Jew. And now I'm reading Capitalism and the Jews, by Jerry Z. Muller. It is not boring at all; in fact it is electrifying at points. (Although I have to see how I will feel when I finish and the spell wears off.) He brings into focus a lot that was not clear, like 'what is capitalism,' and why the 'usury' charge casts such a long shadow, and how it is that Jews do particularly well at capitalism, and the positive side of that vs. the conspiracy theories it leads to. I feel like a veil is being lifted from my eyes. It is a history, albeit about economics, so in one sense I'm easily edified, since I never read a book about economics before, but really I think the content of this book is not ordinary or typical. I am glad somebody has figured some of this stuff out! (Ha--this is my book review. When I finish I'm coming back to this site to get it. Thanks, Lewis.)
You have identified some particularly important and complex threads in the history of anti-Judaism. I look forward to reading more of your observations.
