[Two posts follow.]


1.
From:   Peter Utgaard [mailto:Peter.Utgaard@gcccd.net]

Dear H-German Colleagues,

I missed the series, but I would like to add two comments. First, disturbing
as the public fascination with Nazism may be, I think it is a positive sign
that there is a genuine hunger for history "out there." An interesting
question is what can academic historians do to better tap in the public's
genuine interest in history?  Second, I hope I may be forgiven for injecting
some summer levity into this serious and important discussion, but given the
current state of television, perhaps "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" is the
lesser of "evils." After all, I would not be surprised if we were soon to
see "Survivor: The Dictators," featuring Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and, of
course, Hitler.

Best regards,
Peter Utgaard


2.
From:   Robert Whealey [mailto:whealey@ohio.edu]

Merel Boers' questions [below] assume that historians are going to reach
consensus.  That goal is a utopian dream.  _ Schindler's List_ answers some
questions for x number of people.  It will raise y number of questions for a
new generation of students who might be inspired to write a thesis.  Every
account, historical or dramatic, is going to over simplify some issues and
place too much emphasis on others.

> From: Merel Boers [mailto:blackbird@bollywoodmail.com]
>
> In light of some of the less critical responses to this series, I have one
> question that keeps gnawing at my mind since _Schindler's List_, that I
> would like to put to you. It has been asked many times, but deserves
> discussion again: have we come to a point where dramatizing (and not only
> of history) means oversimplifying to an extent that even the best
> intentions become a knee fall to commercialism? Have we given up on
> people to be able to understand a not so clear, maybe even conflicting
> message? In other words: have we given up on the idea of people thinking
> for themselves (or even teaching them to do so)?

Clare Spark is demanding too much [below].  No historian, Bullock, Fest,
Weinberg, or Kershaw can manipulate his readers toward some specific "moral"
result that Spark seems to want.

The historian can select the facts to paint Hitler in dark light, but not
totally evil.  The objective historian also must explain why so many
Germans, Soviets, French, British, Americans, Italians and Japanese were
taken in by him for so long.  Historians must deal with a multiplicity of
causes to explain World War II and the Holocaust.

The multi-causal thesis was presented by AJP Taylor in 1962 much to the
dismay of the "Great Man" biographers who wanted to blame the Nazi problem
on one man, one party or one nation.

In this sense the CBS film was only the first chapter to a new generation of
students and citizen voters.  To the curious, that chapter could lead to the
discovery of a very complex story.

Biography, as a form, is not "impossible," "bad," or "dangerous.  No
biography should be considered the last word.  A biography will open the
right door for some and the wrong door for others.

Robert Whealey

> From:   Clare Spark [mailto:cspark@ix.netcom.com]
>
> Although the discussion so far of the CBS film treatment of the Hitlerian
> "rise of evil" has been interesting, there are some questions I would like
> to put to those scholars and students of nazism who have posted and to
> those who have not.
>
> There is a certain air of helplessness in some of the postings, as if
> professional historians were unable to affect the content of mass media.
> And even if they were, there is so much disagreement in the field that a
> film treatment of the culture and politics of the interwar period in
> Germany would be impossible, or, as Dan Macfarlane also asserts, the
> nature of the film medium is itself hostile to such an effort.
>
> I find such comments startling and disturbing. There are millions of
> persons who revere Hitler and Nazism; there are neo-Nazi websites in the
> English language that are not only numerous but terrifying.  And who
> knows what viewers of the History Channel are thinking and feeling as
> they appear not to tire of the subject. During the last year the swastika
> has been plastered on buildings here and in Europe as part of a confident
> and resurgent antisemitism.
>
> I know that the historians who have thrown up their hands with respect to
> the CBS fiasco, finding some saving grace in the film's existence, are not
> immoral or unconcerned about the continued prestige of Nazism around the
> world.
>
> I have a suspicion that there is something about structuralist social
> theory (embraced by many on the Left, including Marxist-Leninists, social
> democrats, and New Leftists alike) that excuses scholars from intervening
> in the media, or from imagining forms and formats that could present a
> biographical treatment of Hitler that would go beyond portrayals of the
> man as an emblem of mass politics (the effluent of modernity) and its
> catastrophic consequences. For instance, in the first pages of his Hitler
> biography, Ian Kershaw calls Hitler an "empty vessel", a man "without
> substance", unlike the world leaders who have emerged from traditional
> elites. So Kershaw explains (in the lingo of Talcott Parsons's structural
> functionalism) to look at Hitler's power as determined by his roles. He
> will treat him as a charismatic leader whose effectiveness is dependent
> on the adoring (and incompetent?) masses who filled him up.
>
> No wonder that a biography of Hitler is impossible in the eyes of some. He
> is a man without qualities, without "personality" as a Freudian or
> neo-Freudian would understand the term. And no wonder that we cannot help
> the deplorable situation of bad Hitler biographies, for the masses are in
> control, or they are debased by controlling commercial interests that are
> resistant to good history.
>
> So I am suggesting that there is nothing "natural" in the film form or in
> a conflicted historiography that militates against intervention and better
> public education through the media, but rather a lethargy that may be the
> product of a particular antimodern narrative of dubious (i.e.
> aristocratic) origins, and that we are witnessing a widespread cultural
> despair, shared apparently, by some historians, that seems to me to be
> increasingly inappropriate and dangerous.
>
> Clare Spark

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