hollander for the mass, part 6

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 follows the most bizarre element of hollander's teaching:

 "pynchon is highlighting the curious reality that somehow the germans whose 
 population was decimated, whose industrial capacity was crippled, recovered to 
 become the strongest economic force in postwar europe. conversely, the 
 rothschilds, presumably on the winning side of the war, never regained their 
 former preeminence in european finance, as the morgans never regained theirs in 
 the us. how did this happen? in gravity's rainbow pynchon tries to answer, or  
 hint at answers to, the questions implied in lot 49. he vaguely identified the 
 'ultimate plot which has no name... the big one, the century's master cabal' in 
 v (210). he pointedly led us to the rothschilds and the morgans in lot 49. in 
 gravity's rainbow he will repeatedly suggest secret industrial and economic 
 liaisons, interlocking conspiracies, paranoia ..." (pynchon's inferno, 1978)

 & in his the skrying of jfk article from 1997 hollander takes up the issue 
 again. on page 90 we read (nearly) the same sentences like in the former text, 
 & on page 97 there's this answer: "germany recovered with the help of john 
 foster dulles, allen welsh dulles, james v. forrestal, james jesus angleton, 
 and the cia (and its predecessor, the oss), and with the help of gold recycled 
 through argentina by way of the vatican. conversely, at the end of the first 
 world war, the rothschilds, the morgans and the pynchons of pynchon & co. were 
 among the world's richest people. they survived the second world war with 
 much-reduced status, money and power, while many ex-nazi german industrialists 
 became some of the world's biggest power-players, some of the world's richest 
 men. what might pynchon's fiction be like if his family had bee on the other 
 side --- ..."

 what interests me here is this thesis about the reasons for germany's 
 economic recovery. i've read this a couple of times, but i really can't help 
 it: hollander, in fact, suggests that it was some gold and a conspiracy that 
 helped the german industry up again! he also suggests that this is the way  
 pynchon sees it. that's why, so hollander, there are so many german refs in 
 pynchon's work. oh well, where to start?! a general problem with hollander's 
 approach is that he, in his creative paranoia, overrates the significance of 
 family-dynasties for modern economy and for the overall world-system. actually, 
 not all events are directly connected with each other, not at all ... the oss- 
 & vatican-connections, relatively well known, can certainly not explain the  
 german "wirtschaftswunder" (economy wonder) in the 1950s. let's see: the main 
 reason why there was, unlike formerly planed, no real dismantling 
 or "socialization" of the germany's industrial force, is, as everybody knows,  
 the rise of the cold war which made the usa reconsider their europe- and  
 germany-politics. in this context, germany was re-integrated into the 
 community of western states, and this was both, a political and an economic 
 thing (outlets!). if you want to call this process, which was completed by the 
 mid 50s, a "conspiracy", i can't help it. & west-germany's "crippled economic  
 capacity" caused by the bombings and minor dismantlings must, of course, also  
 be seen in terms of "capital extinction"; this was, actually, rather a helpful 
 factor to make the wirtschaftswunder happen. all the old stuff was already  
 gone. oh, & then there was that corea-conflict which caused large parts of the 
 us-industry into war-production, & this made way on the world-market for the  
 german (and, i guess, also the japanese) economy to move in again ... thomas  
 pynchon knows about these things, i'm sure ... sometimes hollander sounds like 
 the "x-files" ...


kfl