Bertelmann' was Re: scholarship or "conspiracy theories"? WAS re:thoughts

[Spencer Thiel]

At 3:28 PM -0600 1/28/00, Doug Millison wrote:

>By tying U.S. corporations, through multinational cartels and tangled lines of
>ownership and alliances, to Nazi crimes, Pynchon draws our attention to an
>aspect of WWII that many people (U.S. automakers among them) still seek to
>minimize if not deny outright -- drawing our attention to what is, in fact,
>remains a "secret history" of WWII.

Funny doug should mention this.  From today's Holt Uncensored
(http://www.nciba.com/patholt.html)

BERTELMANN'S NEW HISTORY

Recently a group of historians issued a report that appears to settle the
question of what will be the "official" history of the German conglomerate
Bertelsmann, the third largest publisher in the world and owner of American
book publishers Random House and Bantam Doubleday Dell.

This group of four scholars, headed by UCLA historian Saul Friedlander, was
appointed by Bertelsmann in response to an article about "Bertelsmann's Nazi
Past" that appeared in The Nation magazine in December of 1998. There Hersch
Fischler and John Friedman disputed Bertelmann's contention that the company
bravely resisted the Third Reich during World War II and was closed down by
the Nazis.

Instead, "the facts are that Bertelsmann cooperated with the [Nazi] regime,"
Fischler and Friedman wrote,
"publishing a wide range of Hitlerian propaganda." They also portrayed
Bertelsmann leader  Heinrich Mohn as a member of the SS and described
Bertelsmann titles that were "patently anti-Semitic works" supportive of
Brownshirts, Hitler's pro-expansionist attacks on neighboring countries and
Goebbels' propaganda ministry.

Bertelsmann reacted as though stunned by the accusations and appointed the
Friedlander committee, which  it now calls the "Independent Historical
Commission," to investigate the company's history.

The group's first report, issued last week, concludes that Bertelsmann did
not resist the Third Reich but instead thrived during World War II by
producing Nazi propaganda for the military.

Publishing more than a fourth of the 75 million copies of Wehrmacht-edition
books approved by the Propaganda Ministry, Bertelsmann increased its
earnings by a factor of 11 from 1938 to 1941. "No other press so extensively
furnished the German soldiers with reading matter," the report notes.

The report also concludes that Bertelsmann was closed in 1944 not because it
took a political stand against the Third Reich but because it was no longer
considered important for the war effort. As for Heinrich Mohn, the
Friedlander commission states that this fourth-generation Bertelsmann chief
was not technically a member of the SS but rather part of the little-known
"SS sponsors circle" that contributed money to the SS every month.

Fischler and Friedman will undoubtedly respond to these conclusions, but
for now readers are  left with the kind of sticky perception that runs
through the mind whenever a company gets caught in the midst of - well, some
would call it a "fabrication" while Bertelsmann itself appears to see it is
a misunderstanding or innocent inaccuracy.

"We regret that [the commission's finding] was unknown to us before and that
our corporate history has in part been misrepresented as a result," stated
Bertelsmann's current CEO, Thomas Middelhoff.

Perhaps the great sadness here is that Bertelsmann itself has now become too
big to fight or even to change in any
substantial way. Nobody wants this conglomerate to turn into a big meanie,
so we all get to hope that its current reputation - that of allowing
independence among its publishing subsidiaries - holds true. (On the other
hand, does the term "allow independence" sound like a self-cancelling
phrase?)

Either way, there's no doubt in the minds of many observers that
Bertelsmann's motives weren't exactly 100% humanitarian when its foundation
gave $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism.

This contribution seemed like a - well, here again, language is everything.
The word "bribe" wasn't used, but last October the ADL honored Reinhard
Mohn, head of the Bertelsmann Foundation and publisher of contemporary
publications sympathetic to Hitler (again according to Fischler and
Friedman - see #113).

Gee, it used to be that this kind of wheel-spinning took place behind the
scenes, but thanks to modern news coverage, we get to see a giant
conglomerate attempt to bury its past anew, right  in front of everyone.

Such efforts only make it clear that the real power is not going to fall
into the hands of Middelhoff or Mohn or anybody at Bertelsmann. What history
proves time and time again is that when publishers shift from literature to
propaganda, the audience makes its own shift. Instead of buying what
they "should" read, people turn away from the "official" story of this or
that and end up drawing their own conclusions. That's a kind of subversion
no one has been able to suppress.
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