UBC: Hitler and the Holocaust
Feb. 5th, 2009 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyWistrich, Robert S. Hitler and the Holocaust: How and Why the Holocaust Happened. London: Phoenix Press, 2002.
This was not the book I was hoping for from the title; instead, it's an overview of the Holocaust, including a discussion of collaboration and resistance in the various occupied and Nazi-allied countries (that part was helpful to me, especially with regard to Italy). As such, it's probably a good introduction to the subject and to the scholarship on same, since Wistrich discusses the various historians (Broszat, Goldhagen, etc.) and seems to have a rational and balanced assessment, insofar as I myself have done enough reading to tell.
I had a problem with the book (aside from it not being the book I had hoped for), so I'm uncertain about recommending it. My problem is that its style is polemical, value-judgments being made overtly and the reader openly asked to feel pity and outrage.
Now, my problem is not that I disagree with Wistrich's polemics. Because, in fact, I believe that it may be completely impossible to overstate the evil of the Nazi leaders (Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich, Bormann), who did not merely do evil in the full knowledge that it was evil, but who lied and bullied to ensure that evil was done, and who forced not merely their allies, but also their victims to participate in the doing of evil.
So I was actually kind of thrown when I realized I was mentally pulling back from statements I agreed with. But I thought about it, and I know why I'm uneasy.
The first reason is the general one: emotional language can be, and frequently is, used to manipulate. Hitler himself is a really stunning example of this. I find that kind of manipulation ethically questionable, regardless of how good the cause is. And whereas in spoken communication, the expression of emotion may be, in fact, spontaneous--not manipulation, but passion, and passion is valuable and necessary and I am not in the slightest denigrating or rejecting it--in written communication, the writer always has the chance to think about what she has written. The moment before you hit Send or Post or stick a stamp on the envelope and drop it in the mailbox. In many cases, since the world we live in is not a rationalist Utopia (and, in fact, I'm grateful it isn't, because OMG what a way to live), people don't stop and think. But a published book is different. Believe me, you see those words over and over and over again. You have more time than you could ever want to think about the words and the choices you made with them and the message they send. And it is also true that an author can convey his passion without using language that demands an emotional response from the reader. So an appeal to the emotions in a published book is there as a result of a deliberate choice, and that's a manipulative choice. That's the author trying to tell me what to feel. And even when I agree with that author, the manipulative intent makes me uneasy. It makes me worry about what other things I may be persuaded into.
Which leads me to my second reason for concern, which is a personal one. I am deeply wary of emotional rhetoric because I know, from painful personal experience, that when I lead with my emotions, I get things wrong. I do stupid, embarrassing things. I behave badly. I say stupid things, indefensible things, things I don't even believe. Because when I am emotional, I don't think clearly. As a side effect, if my emotions are doing my thinking for me, I am very easily led and can be persuaded of just about anything. Because my critical faculties have completely jumped out the window. (They'll come back later, sheepishly, but by then it may be too late to prevent the stupidity from manifesting itself.) And thus I am, and need to be, very cautious and alert about my emotional responses to what I read.
Thus, Wistrich's polemics make me uneasy; I wonder if what seems like a factual historical account with polemical comments is in fact a historical account with an agenda--if what he presents as fact is merely interpretation. And so I don't know if this overview of the Holocaust is entirely trustworthy. Certainly, in the places where I have enough knowledge to judge, I can see over-simplifications and a tendency toward Manichean morality. So I am left unsettled and dissatisfied and uncertain.
This was not the book I was hoping for from the title; instead, it's an overview of the Holocaust, including a discussion of collaboration and resistance in the various occupied and Nazi-allied countries (that part was helpful to me, especially with regard to Italy). As such, it's probably a good introduction to the subject and to the scholarship on same, since Wistrich discusses the various historians (Broszat, Goldhagen, etc.) and seems to have a rational and balanced assessment, insofar as I myself have done enough reading to tell.
I had a problem with the book (aside from it not being the book I had hoped for), so I'm uncertain about recommending it. My problem is that its style is polemical, value-judgments being made overtly and the reader openly asked to feel pity and outrage.
Now, my problem is not that I disagree with Wistrich's polemics. Because, in fact, I believe that it may be completely impossible to overstate the evil of the Nazi leaders (Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich, Bormann), who did not merely do evil in the full knowledge that it was evil, but who lied and bullied to ensure that evil was done, and who forced not merely their allies, but also their victims to participate in the doing of evil.
So I was actually kind of thrown when I realized I was mentally pulling back from statements I agreed with. But I thought about it, and I know why I'm uneasy.
The first reason is the general one: emotional language can be, and frequently is, used to manipulate. Hitler himself is a really stunning example of this. I find that kind of manipulation ethically questionable, regardless of how good the cause is. And whereas in spoken communication, the expression of emotion may be, in fact, spontaneous--not manipulation, but passion, and passion is valuable and necessary and I am not in the slightest denigrating or rejecting it--in written communication, the writer always has the chance to think about what she has written. The moment before you hit Send or Post or stick a stamp on the envelope and drop it in the mailbox. In many cases, since the world we live in is not a rationalist Utopia (and, in fact, I'm grateful it isn't, because OMG what a way to live), people don't stop and think. But a published book is different. Believe me, you see those words over and over and over again. You have more time than you could ever want to think about the words and the choices you made with them and the message they send. And it is also true that an author can convey his passion without using language that demands an emotional response from the reader. So an appeal to the emotions in a published book is there as a result of a deliberate choice, and that's a manipulative choice. That's the author trying to tell me what to feel. And even when I agree with that author, the manipulative intent makes me uneasy. It makes me worry about what other things I may be persuaded into.
Which leads me to my second reason for concern, which is a personal one. I am deeply wary of emotional rhetoric because I know, from painful personal experience, that when I lead with my emotions, I get things wrong. I do stupid, embarrassing things. I behave badly. I say stupid things, indefensible things, things I don't even believe. Because when I am emotional, I don't think clearly. As a side effect, if my emotions are doing my thinking for me, I am very easily led and can be persuaded of just about anything. Because my critical faculties have completely jumped out the window. (They'll come back later, sheepishly, but by then it may be too late to prevent the stupidity from manifesting itself.) And thus I am, and need to be, very cautious and alert about my emotional responses to what I read.
Thus, Wistrich's polemics make me uneasy; I wonder if what seems like a factual historical account with polemical comments is in fact a historical account with an agenda--if what he presents as fact is merely interpretation. And so I don't know if this overview of the Holocaust is entirely trustworthy. Certainly, in the places where I have enough knowledge to judge, I can see over-simplifications and a tendency toward Manichean morality. So I am left unsettled and dissatisfied and uncertain.
