Somewhat NP Argentinians bound for Germany

[jbor]

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millison:

(snip gratuitous slander of which there is, as usual, much)
> 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.

Is there any textual basis for this interpretation? Or is it just a hunch?
Once they arrive in G5 (and this is where they are headed, the Zone, and not
"Nazi Germany" at all as such, so the "neat reversal" idea is baloney too),
the Argentine anarchists set up a film set/commune:

     It isn't the strangest village in the Zone. Squalidozzi has come in out
   of his wanderings with tales of Palestinian units strayed all the way
   from Italy, who've settled down farther east and started up Hasidic
   communes, on the pattern of a century and a half ago. There are onetime
   company towns come under the fleet and jittery rule of Mercury, dedicated
   now to a single industry, mail delivery, eastward and back, in among the
   Soviets and out, 100 marks a letter. One village in Mecklenburg has been
   taken over by army dogs. ... (613-4)

No mention of those "ratlines" here either.

> Martin Lee's book, _The Beast Reawakens_ is
> meticulously documented.

Perhaps it is. The excerpt from it you cited does not reflect this
meticulous documentation at all. It is rife with exaggeration, unsupported
narrativisation, and citation of testimony which is dubious at the very
least. Perhaps you could quote something a little more reliable from it next
time.

> the long chain of
> journalistic and historical work that has traced the Nazi exodus and
> the U.S. role in same.

I thought we were discussing Argentine anarchists, and *GR*. I am not
contesting what is or isn't presented in other texts. What I am contesting
is the significance of this Nazi exodus to *GR*, in terms of plot,
character, theme etc.

> 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

Not quite how it's presented, is it. A Tarot reading is hardly a "ratline".

> I've
> focused on the Holocaust in GR during GRGR

And how!

> 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

Pokler's story is not a story about the Jewish genocide at all. Where are
the depictions of this slave labour in the text? Where are the Jewish
characters, Jewish plotlines, Jewish perspectives, as compared, say, to
Argentine, Japanese, Herero, Dutch, let alone German, Russian, British,
American? Where is there an examination of Judaism, or anti-Semitism, as
there is of Puritanism, Gnosticism, colonialism. Using the Holocaust to "tie
together so many threads in the novel" is something a reader might do. But,
as you continually prove, it is necessary to seek outside the text to do so,
or to turn the text into something other than what it is by a process of
fanciful reinterpretation.

> it's another German
> genocide, that of the Hereros, that ranks next after the Holocaust in
> terms of importance in the novel.

"Ranks"?! Pynchon is concerned with 'ranking' genocides?! That's news to me.
What is the measure of these "terms of importance"? Amount of ink devoted to
specific descriptions? Number of characters? Plot threads? Body count? This
is baloney.

> 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.

Where are the Nazis? Who does Pynchon condemn in the novel? I've cited the
whole passage so as not to be accused of taking words out of context, but
your simple point is that Pynchon condemns the Nazis in *GR*. My question
is: who is condemned, and where in the text? Katje? Gottfried? Blicero?
Pokler? Achtfaden? Narrisch? Not condemning "the Nazis" does not
automatically make one a Holocaust-denier.

> 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.

Yes, *we* know this about the Dora inmates, but we know it from beyond this
text. There are no "specific Jews" in *GR*: Ilse is the only Dora inmate the
reader encounters as a character in the novel.