pynchon-l-digest V2 #1840

[Otto]

> Taylor boldly suggested that
> Hitler's "ideology" was nothing more than the sort
> of nationalist raving "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.

Was my nazi grandfather (whom I've never met) really more responsible for
the war than Chamberlain, Daladier and Stalin?

I'm definitely no Holocaust denier and don't want to question German
guilt, but let's not forget that the Second World War began on September 1,
1939, and that Russia took the other half of Poland within two or three
weeks. WW-II was still a war between imperialist nations who were
mistreating their minorities and/or colonies/neighbours.

So something like "sole Nazi guilt" is a history of the victors (and of the
postwar German governments too for obvious reasons), a "club" that included
Russia under Stalin, a political criminal like Hitler.

Of course Russia, Great Britain and France (I mean the politicial
establishment 'cause none of these three countries really can be called
democratic in those days) have their part of the responsibility that Hitler
could become so powerful because they did not stop him, something that
couldn't be expected from the simple Germans.

The war maybe did not come "because" of the dithering between "appeasement
and resistance" -- of course it came because Hitler wanted it -- but there
was this dithering and there was this war, so it seems logical to me that
this war wouldn't have taken place the way it has if those other imperialist
countries had reacted like they had said they would in case of Germany
attacking Poland, prefereably even earlier in the cases of Austria and
Czechoslawakia. Don't underestimate "Munich" in its psychological effects on
the German masses who were exposed to the nazi propaganda machine.

I have not read Taylor (did you, Doug?), but William L. Shirer devotes many
pages to the "responsibility" of France and Britain for *not* doing what
they had promised at a time when Hitler still could have been stopped. Many
Germans
back then would have appreciated that.

> that's what can happen when people forget where
> such "ravings" can lead, I suppose, helped along by
> misleading histories such as Taylor's own.

Contrary to this I have to say that this one-sided war-guilt question helps
those baldheads from today to deny the Holocaust. They say: "You see, the
victors are lying about the war-guilt, about the necessity of bombing German
cities, they are lying about the Holocaust too."

It's not that simple that such "ravings" can lead to gas chambers and
genocide but how these beer-hall opinions have, can, could and are being
used by politicians for their purposes.

Taylor's view may be questionable (like the one I'm offering here) but you
shouldn't throw him into the same pit as Irving.

You can bet that if I had met "Otto I"  I would have had some very serious
questions.

I definitely think you should stop things like these:

""jbor's" need to deconstruct the Holocaust in mind"

Robert is no Holocaust-denier and Terrance no defender of capitalism if he
insists that Pynchon goes deeper than any simple political plus-minus
binary.

Otto