Somewhat NP Argentinians bound for Germany

[Doug Millison]

At 10:20 PM +1000 8/5/00, jbor wrote:
>millison accuses people of being Holocaust-deniers on the
>basis that they read a section in the novel which contains no overt
>reference to Nazis, Jews, death camps whatever -- apart from 1 *"hijacked"*
>U-boat -- as not having any overt reference to Nazis, Jews, death camps et.
>al.


I've done no such thing.  I've said, generally, that there's a long 
history of academic doubletalk used as a tool by Nazi apologists. 
This is true. I've observed that rj echoes the kind of rhetoric and 
doubletalk that some Holocaust deniers use. Others may or may not 
agree with this observation. I've noted that, each time the question 
of the Holocaust has come up in the discussion of GR,  rj has spoken 
out to minimize or deny the presence of, or importance of, this 
material in GR. Hardly a startling observation, given the way that rj 
has repeated these comments.  I've also said that I can imagine how 
such a reading of Pynchon could serve the neo-Nazi project -- that's 
not the same thing as saying that rj is part of the neo-Nazi project, 
although I do find it curious that he echoes that kind of rhetoric.

As far as this particular element of GR is concerned -- the sub full 
of Argentinians headed for Germany -- I've suggested that, among the 
other things that this passage does in GR,  it might be Pynchon's way 
of playing with the historical fact that subs full of Germans were 
heading for Argentina at the same time, and that fascism went with 
them. Hardly an earthshaking observation.   But I do wonder why he 
chose to put them in a U-boat, instead of some other vehicle, why 
Argentina instead of some other South American country.

rj:
>"Tens of thousands" of Nazis is a pretty hyperbolic claim
>on the scant evidence ("several confirmed reports", one spy, one
>"informant", and unspecified and uncorroborated US secret intelligence
>"documents") provided in the passage cited. Hardly historical empiricism, is
>it.


I noted in a post awhile back that despite his fluency in literary 
criticism, rj seems to be particularly unprepared to read journalism; 
I'll add here that he seems to have been shortchanged in his history 
studies, too.  Martin Lee's book, _The Beast Reawakens_ is 
meticulously documented. Not only has Lee documented and corroborated 
everything he reports in this book, but Lee's work has been 
corroborated by others. rj must be unaware of the long chain of 
journalistic and historical work that has traced the Nazi exodus and 
the U.S. role in same.  Fact is, Pynchon is not making this stuff up 
-- when he talks about Blicero escaping Germany and showing up on as 
a corporate director after the war, to name a fictional GR example of 
the historical ratline that Lee documents his book -- he's working 
with documented historical fact. Dave Monroe points to several books 
that could help rj amend his deficiencies in this regard. In 
particular, I highly recommend _Whiteout_, co-authored by Pynchon-L 
veteran Jeffrey St. Clair.

rj:
>The Holocaust is depicted by Pynchon as but one sign or symptom
>-- amongst many -- of a much larger and less comfortable-to-acknowledge
>Western malaise. millison views the Holocaust as the be-all and 
>end-all of the >entire novel.

Actually, over the years here on Pynchon-L, I've discussed all kinds 
of elements in GR and Pynchon's other novels -- there are so many, 
after all, Pynchon being the encyclopedic writer that he is.  I've 
focused on the Holocaust in GR during GRGR, because I've been amazed 
at the way rj has tried to erase the Holocaust from this novel.  It 
takes real  persistence and tunnel vision to ignore something as 
clear as Pynchon's tying together  the factory system, the German 
rocket program, the Nazi death camps, the Manhattan Project, the 
nuclear attack on Hiroshima; and, if we somehow missed it in GR, he 
makes it explicit in his Luddite essay, in the passage that rj quoted 
yesterday.  Obviously, Pynchon brings  other genocides into GR, but 
it's the Holocaust that he places at the center, both in physical 
terms (Pokler's story is in the middle of the novel) and in the way 
he uses the rocket program (and its reliance on slave labor)  to tie 
together so many threads in the novel; and, it's another German 
genocide, that of the Hereros, that ranks next after the Holocaust in 
terms of importance in the novel.  I guess you can deny that. But why 
would you want to?

>  But millison had said that there were
>"subs full of Nazis headed for Argentina and other South American
>countries". This is a rather gratuitous over-simplification, if not
>thoroughly false.


Actually, it's not false at all, nor is it over-simplified; read Lee, 
his sources, his corroborators.  Holocaust deniers argue against an 
overwhelming mass of historical evidence and eyewitness accounts, 
too.  That's what lets the rest of us know that they are misguided, 
if not insane.


>  I pointed out that von Braun had gone to America. But,
>even so, I'm not sure that it's possible to say that *GR* offers an outright
>condemnation of either von Braun or the fictional "Nazi scientists" in its
>cast, such as Pokler, Achtfaden et. al.


I suppose if you could say that even an observer as astute as Thomas 
Pynchon, perennially short-listed for Nobel Prize in Literature, was 
able to write a novel about WWII, the Nazi rocket program, the death 
camps and avoid condemning what the Nazis did -- well, that would be 
a nice intellectual feather in a Holocaust denier's cap.  Indeed, the 
language of deconstruction has been used in this fashion -- to 
justify an academic's collaboration with the Nazis in one famous 
case, or to otherwise exculpate those who are in fact guilty of Nazi 
crimes. Whether that's rj's project, only he knows.

Pokler's story. Yes,  Pynchon puts Nazi crimes in a larger context, 
links them to corporations that profit from those crimes; and, yes, 
Pynchon shows enormous sympathy for Pokler, caught up in a long chain 
of exploitation and compromise. At the same time, Pynchon brings into 
his novel  these specific Nazi crimes, (using the kind of imagery and 
language that is common in the historical documentation of same -- 
imagery and language that elicits a deep emotional response and which 
brings into clear focus the evil that has been perpetrated), the use 
of these specific Jews and other prisioners as slaves at Dora to 
build the rockets, the suffering and death that resulted from using 
these particular  human beings (we know that the Dora inmates had 
names, numbers, families, etc.) as expendable factory machines. And, 
it's important enough to Pynchon that he revisits the same material, 
and underscores the point he was trying to make, in his Luddite essay 
11 years later.

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