Don Phillipson
2016-08-20 14:09:52 UTC
David Cesarani's (posthumous) "The fate of the Jews 1933-1949" (Macmillan
2016) is discussed in the Times Literary Supplement by Mark Roseman at
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-last-word/
The problem (Roseman says) is classic, "the one and the many," or how to
combine in a single idea, "the Holocaust," the whole variety of actual
events -- just as difficult perhaps as combining in a single concept "Jew"
both Michael Millken's financial inventions and Tevye worrying about how to
marry off his daughters. Roseman points out the contrast over time: "In the
1930s the goal was to uproot German Jews and dispatch them to whichever part
of the globe they would go, beyond German reach. In the 1940s, it was to
contain, concentrate and eliminate European Jewry."
" . . . Both intentionalists and functionalists shared the belief that the
regime's goals were too irrational to have been embraced by thinking elites,
since neither genocide nor destructive war was in their interest. Therefore,
a special kind of force was needed to push them over the edge into the
abyss, as it were despite themselves. The argument was about what this
special force was - a charismatic Hitler with a plan, or an unbalanced
political structure that impelled competition and radicalization. "
" . . . In Hamburg in 1943 and in Hungary in 1944 significant sections of
the population believed that Allied bombing was retribution for the
persecution of the Jews. This was utterly fantastical, as Cesarani shows
repeatedly that Jews barely figured on the Allied agenda. Contrary to Nazi
myth-making, there was no coherent Jewish voice at the national level in
either London or Washington, let alone a Jewish world power."
2016) is discussed in the Times Literary Supplement by Mark Roseman at
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-last-word/
The problem (Roseman says) is classic, "the one and the many," or how to
combine in a single idea, "the Holocaust," the whole variety of actual
events -- just as difficult perhaps as combining in a single concept "Jew"
both Michael Millken's financial inventions and Tevye worrying about how to
marry off his daughters. Roseman points out the contrast over time: "In the
1930s the goal was to uproot German Jews and dispatch them to whichever part
of the globe they would go, beyond German reach. In the 1940s, it was to
contain, concentrate and eliminate European Jewry."
" . . . Both intentionalists and functionalists shared the belief that the
regime's goals were too irrational to have been embraced by thinking elites,
since neither genocide nor destructive war was in their interest. Therefore,
a special kind of force was needed to push them over the edge into the
abyss, as it were despite themselves. The argument was about what this
special force was - a charismatic Hitler with a plan, or an unbalanced
political structure that impelled competition and radicalization. "
" . . . In Hamburg in 1943 and in Hungary in 1944 significant sections of
the population believed that Allied bombing was retribution for the
persecution of the Jews. This was utterly fantastical, as Cesarani shows
repeatedly that Jews barely figured on the Allied agenda. Contrary to Nazi
myth-making, there was no coherent Jewish voice at the national level in
either London or Washington, let alone a Jewish world power."
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
?
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
?