|
View the h-german Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-german's March 1999 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-german's March 1999 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-german home page.
(There are 3 messages below. - ed.) 1. Submitted by: Irving Hexham hexham@acs.ucalgary.ca Laura Graham wrote: > What fascinated me the most about the first volume of Victor Klemperer's > diaries was his references to the "Americanisms" in Hitler's speeches > (p. 237 of the Random House transl.: "The Americanism of the language > has increased even further) and his ongoing study of the language of the > Third Reich. Since, of course, Klemperer made no effort to trace > American cultural influences on Hitler himself, which hardly seems > plausible ... This is an interesting idea, but it is quite plausible that Hitler was influenced by America and American ideas. For example there is clearly an American influence on Nazi thinking when one looks at the history of the eugenics and the euthanasia program where American ideas did have an influence. Hitler read widely, if superficially, other Nazis clearly found some American ideas very appealing while at the same time rejecting American capitalism. After all one of the defenses used a Nuernberg was "We were only doing things we learnt from Americans ..." ---------------------- Irving Hexham, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Religious Studies University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4, Canada Home tel. 01-403-241-1059 Work tel. 01-403-220-5886 Home fax. 01-403-547-2933 Web Sites: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb 2. Submitted by: Henry Friedlander hfriedlander@erols.com In answer to Laura Graham's submission: Unless you have already done so, I would recommend that you read Klemperer"s LTI, which, unfortunately, has not yet been translated (I once proposed to do an annotated translation, but NEH rejected that twice during the late 1970s). In LTI, Klemperer spells out his view that the constant use of superlatives by the Nazi movement is an adaptation of the (American) advertisement to the political arena (I think we can now appreciate such adaptation, because we have lived long enough to see the transformation of political campaigns in the TV age). In general, Klemperer showed in LTI that, while ideologically opposed, the Nazi leaders were fascinated by many aspects of modern society as, for example, Goebbels about auto racing and boxing. And this applied to many of the Nazi technocrats like Speer. Henry Friedlander 3. Submitted by: Alan Buel Kennady Ehrlich606@aol.com On the subject of Victor Klemperer's Diaries I would make two comments. First, Klemperer's comments comparing Hitler to American politicians is probably an allusion to the populist strain in National Socialism, which I would think that we would all admit, regardless of where we stand on the populist appeal of the antisemitic component of Nazi ideology (aka Goldhagen Thesis). Associations of Nazism with American populism, especially when personified by charismatic Southern politicians (Tom Watson, Huey Long, usw.) is an obvious point of comparison, so too is the association with extra-lega American Gangsterism, imagery that pops up in Weill/Brecht's Mahagonny as well as Fritz Lang's "M". I am not sure to what extent American populism was racist or antisemitic but the idea that victimizing classes of opponents as a component of populism has probably already been extensively argued. The theme of "gigantism" or worship of same, has probably been commented on by many, but what sticks in my mind is Leszek Kolakowski's lampooning of what he called the "parvenu mentality" of the "bigger is better" mentality of Stalinist Russia, consult volume II, "Main Currents of Marxism." The implication would be that both Stalinism and Nazism had certain psychological features that are supposed to be characteristic of broad social strata that are being politically empowered for the first time. The point of comparison, at least with respect to US history, would be the "conspicuous consumption" of our own late 19th Century economic _nouveau riche_ that culminated in Veblen's analysis. My second comment has to do with more Klemperer. There is already out -- probably in response to the previous -- memoirs from 1881-1918, a smallish memoir "Und so ist alles schwankend" covering the return of Klemperer and his wife to Dresden and the rest of the year 1945 (200 p.) and later this year there will be issued "So sitze ich denn zwischen all Stuehlen" (1800 p.) to cover the period 1946-1959.
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|