pynchon-l-digest V2 #1838

[jbor]

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>From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
>

> If anyone can tell me what Millison is talking about please tell me.

Hi Paul

I think he was and still is trying to imply, using selectively-snipped
passages from Bradford DeLong's review of the book on the libel trial and a
selectively-snipped and idiosyncratically-glossed passage from an
Encyclopedia article, that A.J.P. Taylor's history of WWII equates with the
Holocaust-denial of David Irving. In fact, far from debunking Taylor's
history the Brittanica article is actually framed as a discussion of some of
the more prominent and influential historical interpretations of WWII, and
critical responses to these.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=108375&tocid=32898#32898.toc

    The British historian A.J.P. Taylor challenged the thesis of sole Nazi
    guilt in 1961, coincidently the same year in which Fritz Fischer revived
    the notion of German guilt for World War I. Taylor boldly suggested that
    Hitler's "ideology" was nothing more than the sort of nationalist
    ravings "which echo the conversation of any Austrian cafe or German
    beer-house"; that Hitler's ends and means resembled those of any
    "traditional German statesman"; and that the war came because Britain
    and France dithered between appeasement and resistance, leading Hitler
    to miscalculate and bring on the accident of September 1939. Needless to
    say, revisionism on a figure so odious as Hitler sparked vigorous
    rebuttal and debate. If Hitler had been a traditional statesman, then
    appeasement would have worked, said some. If the British had been
    consistent in appeasement -- or resisted earlier --the war would not
    have happened, said others.

    Fischer's theses on World War I were also significant, for, if Germany
    at that earlier time was bent on European hegemony and world power, then
    one could argue a continuity in German foreign policy from at least 1890
    to 1945. Devotees of the "primacy of domestic policy" even made
    comparisons between Hitler's use of foreign policy to crush domestic
    dissent and similar practices under the Kaiser and Bismarck. But how,
    critics retorted, could one argue for continuity between the traditional
    imperialism of Wilhelmine Germany and the fanatical racial extermination
    of Nazi Germany after 1941? At bottom, Hitler was not trying to preserve
    traditional elites but to destroy the domestic and international order
    alike.

The way Millison snipped it, and his comments, imply that Taylor's
interpretation has been discredited. In fact, Taylor's _Origins of the
Second World War_ is still held in high regard in history faculties at
universities (more so than Fritz Fischer's book in fact, despite the
reappropriation of his general train of thought in the much-publicised
_Hitler's Willing Executioners_), and is regarded by many as the standard
work on the subject. But it's pretty obvious that Millison hasn't read
Taylor's book and is only mudslinging again, as you noted previously.

best