[Two messages follow.]


1.
From: M.E. Menninger [mailto:mm48@swt.edu]

I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one taken aback by the first ad run
during the Hitler mini-series.  The mouthwash/germs/Wagner ad ran in Texas
as well.

As it happens, I'm teaching Germany under National Socialism right now (a
so-called mini-mester) and I let my students loose on the mini-series.
Their assessment was encouragingly critical--they saw the first half as
relatively accurate, but disliked the second because it left out so much of
Weimar politics (i.e. "where was Himmler and where are the Communists?").

My sense of the series (the first half particularly) was that accuracy was
treated a bit like a sliced loaf of bread, that is to say each individual
slice might be essentially accurate (with the exceptions mentioned earlier
in the postings) but that the connective elements somehow misaligned the
slices.

I'm pleased that H-German chose to cover this TV film, and look forward to
the observations of my colleagues.

Margaret Menninger


2.
From:   Clare Spark [mailto:cspark@ix.netcom.com]

Charles Maier, in his very interesting discussion of the film, wrote the
following:

"Still, while no doubt my objectivity is limited, I do not think the result
was really so flawed as our critics have said.  Viewers who knew little of
this period would come away with some sense of the nationalist resentments,
the role of a private army, some of the dynamic within the NSDAP, some of
the institutional stalemates in Weimar, the process of imposing
authoritarianism, etc.  They saw how a radically authoritarian and
antisemitic movement could come to power without ascribing militarism,
antisemitism, authoritarianism as socially culturally impregnated national
characteristics--indeed, no doubt, some historians would say that too little
preexisting German susceptibility for Nazism was allowed for."

I would appreciate some comment on this point, since it takes a position in
a great controversy among historians: though he mentions several historical
factors, is not Charles Maier finally leaving us with the notion that Nazism
was a radical departure from the mainstream of German history, and could
only have been imposed through propaganda as wielded through the mesmerizing
force of Hitler's gaze? And why would it be impossible for the writers of
the film to describe the failure of liberalism to take hold in Germany? Did
the film portray resistance to Nazism as a protest against a usurping mass
movement, resistant to aristocratic control?

What exactly was the antisemitism about as delineated in the film? In the
part I saw (the last 90 minutes), it functioned solely as
scapegoating--blame everything on the Jews, whereas in Hitler's biography we
see the Jew consistently portrayed as the world-class enemy of Gemeinschaft.
Did this ever come out in the film, or was it ever contemplated? Perhaps
Charles Maier can tell us.

As a student of antidemocratic propaganda and competing narratives
attempting to account for the Nazi victory (especially those directed to
popular audiences), I am finding these discussions to be hugely informative,
and I hope that the editor will allow it to continue and that others will
participate.

Clare Spark

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS