We have another new book on Hitler and the Holocaust, already hailed as a major contribution to our understanding of the root causes of the 20th century horrors which almost certainly have no parallel in civilized human history.
Prominent Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s new book – Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning – indeed breaks new ground with regard to many aspects of Holocaust study. Particularly fascinating to us should be his insight concerning Hitler’s determination to rid the world of Jews. As Snyder expressed it in an interview just published in The Atlantic “There is in fact no way of thinking about the world, says Hitler, which allows us to see human beings as human beings. Any idea which allows us to see each other as human beings … come[s] from Jews.” As Snyder sees it, Hitler believed the only way for the world to revert to its natural order – that of brutal racial competition – was to eradicate the Jews.
I will leave to others a full review of the book as well as its many positive additions to our comprehension of an era so filled with warning lessons for global survival. What I do want to address is one particular aspect of Snyder’s approach which bears special relevance to the present age in which Jews are once again threatened with genocide by contemporary Hitlers, this time made more horrendous by the addition of nuclear capability.
In his treatment of the Holocaust, Snyder disagrees with the verdict of Emil Fackenheim that “There will never be an adequate explanation… The closer one gets to explicability the more one realizes nothing can make Hitler explicable,” and reveals what he considers a breakthrough of understanding about the man and the era famously called by Yehuda Bauer as “an eruption of demonism into history.”
Sadly, I believe Snyder falls victim to what Ron Rosenbaum some years ago strongly cautioned historians to avoid: Beware of explanations which project our own preconceptions and agendas. Indeed, the attempts to explain Hitler most often tell us more about ourselves our own self-images and our cultural predispositions than some indisputable truth about Hitler. The shapes we project onto the inky Rorschach of Hitler’s psyche are often cultural self-portraits in the negative.
What made Hitler the unparalleled satanic villain?
It is fascinating to note how “the explanation” varies in accord with cultural trends and pop psychology fashions. When low self-esteem was the focus of psychological scorn and educators kept harping on the need to praise children whatever their actions, it didn’t seem strange to have the popular reality TV series Unsolved Mysteries, in a highly praised episode, conclude that “The real explanation for Hitler turns out to be that terrifying contemporary plague of low self-esteem. He subjugated and killed millions because he could not overcome his feelings of inferiority.”
Not to be outdone, when dysfunctional families became pop culture’s enemy of the month, a spate of new books concluded that Hitler was the victim of a dysfunctional family with an overly stern father and an inability to establish a healthy relationship with his mother. Renowned Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller, in her book For Your Own Good, in seeking to advance her crusade against the evil of corporal punishment of children, strained to prove that adult Hitler’s evil can be traced to precisely this kind of punishment by his father.
Those more attuned to Freudian explanations for all of life’s choices preferred to focus on various sexual stories of Hitler’s youth to “explain” his demonic nature. Of the various possible reasons suggested, one that gained many adherents was the “Billy goat” theory – a genital deformity Hitler suffered as a result of an unfortunate encounter with a Billy goat which rendered him sexually incompetent and hence psychologically traumatized. Perhaps for the first time in history a Billy goat became a scapegoat – an explanation, like the others above, which share a profoundly disturbing conclusion: Hitler too must be understood as a victim, a victim of Freudian drives beyond his control, a victim of family relationships for which he was not responsible.
And here lies the most terrible sin of all in these varied attempts to define Hitler’s evil. To explain is to begin to excuse – to exculpate. To displace guilt from Hitler to the seemingly rational cause. To offer reason for the unreasonable. A step down the path to Spinoza’s famous maxim that “To understand all is to forgive all.”
So let us come now to Snyder’s explanation. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that when global warming has become the contemporary mantra and ecology a major concern of our times, a historian’s hindsight finds it reasonable to attribute the Holocaust to “ecological anti-Semitism.” Hitler was concerned with the very same problem that now engages us. He was motivated by the necessity for lebensraum, or “living space”, for the German race. The Ukraine and Eastern Europe presented the only solution for an intractable problem: The crisis of insufficient land for a growing population which ecologically could not be fed required conquest of its neighbors and genocide of a specific segment of the population whose values stood in the way of his goals.
It is a 21st century explanation for a 20th century crime beyond parallel. It may well have a measure of truth – no better or worse than the theories of Hitler as a victim of bad parenting or casualty of a mental disease, dysfunction, or syndrome, Hitler as madman, psychopath, demented, terminally insane – all of which tend to exculpate if not excuse the crimes he perpetrated. What it ignores is the simple reality of pure and unadulterated evil.
Milton Himmelfarb was right. In his famous essay, No Hitler, No Holocaust, he wrote: “Hitler murdered the Jews not because he had to, not because he was impelled by abstract historical forces toward an inevitable end, but because of his own personal will and desire, because he wanted to.” Evil exists in this world. Evil people commit despicable acts. Evil trumps reason. Evil is not deterred by reason. To put it bluntly, evil by definition is irrational.
Hitler was not rational; he was evil. And so too are contemporary Hamans who openly proclaim genocide as their goal.
It is a truth we desperately need to grasp for the present-day Hitlers as well. In defending the nuclear deal with Iran, President Obama told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, “I think Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s ideology is steeped with anti-Semitism, and if he could, without catastrophic costs, inflict great harm on Israel, I am confident that he would. But it is possible for leaders or regimes to be cruel, bigoted, twisted in their worldviews and still make rational calculations with respect to their limits and their self-preservation.”
It is possible. But Hitler didn’t – and that needs to be remembered. Hitler was not rational; he was evil. And so too are contemporary Hamans who openly proclaim genocide as their goal.
Instead of rationalizing evil we must remember that evil is far more powerfully attracted to greater evil than it is to reason.
(21) Eion Isaac Israel, October 7, 2015 4:53 AM
One Leader Theory of History
There has always been a historical debate :Was it the Frenzied Leader or the Frenzied Hysterical SeigHeil masses the killer mobs that caused the Shoah . To me it is both the Leaders and the vast majority of German people . On the eastern front the vast majority of Wermacht knew about the mass shooting few refusals . Rommel in Africa refused to kill Jewish POWs and was disgusted by the Holocaust but did not move against the Nazi Fuehrer to later after millions of Jews and Gentiles had been starved shot and gassed . I would conclude that nearly all peoples have a mass murder gene the Nazis Hitler the most demonic to now . Other genocides and megamassmurders have been perpertrated the Armenian Genocide the Peasant mass famines under Stalin the Kheumer Rouge class genocide the Rwandan genocide . There is a very worthy genocide prevention awareness and movement the Jews are morally obligated to defend .
(20) Anonymous, October 7, 2015 4:31 AM
Iran is not the same as Nazi Germany
To hate Israel and vow to destroy Israel is not the same as hating all Jews and seeking to kill all Jews. Both are evil but there is a difference in character and style, in politics and ideology, that we ignore at our peril. Iran contains, officially, 8,756 Jews as of earlier this year -- the third largest number in the Middle East after Israel and Turkey. Their situation is fraught, to be sure, but a world apart from that of the Jews in Nazi Germany even one year after Hitler rose to power -- and it has been more than 35 years since the mullahs deposed the shah. There is even a Jewish community representative, Siamak Moreh Sedgh, in the Majlis, Iran's parliament. Ask yourself, would you rather be a Jew in Iran today or a Jew in Germany in 1934?
(19) Anonymous, October 7, 2015 4:15 AM
Why use such a strange painting to accompany this article?
What fool decided to use that painting of the monster to accompany this fine article. He looks almost Semitic in that painting and eyes that do not convey the demonic. There are so many photos of him that show the evil, why use this strange painting?
(18) Anonymous, October 6, 2015 2:28 AM
Nazis murdered millions of NonJews
The Nazis considering the Slavs and Gypsies as subHuman murdered millions of these people -Poles Ukranians Gypsies Russians and their Henchmen in the Balkans killed at least a million in horrific ways .
(17) Anonymous, October 6, 2015 12:37 AM
Hitler many Willing Genocidalists
The Nazis with the Feuhrer Hitler as leader had many men and women educated many medical doctors lawyers and so called clergy that weee enthusiastic re the Genocide of the Jews and others focussing on one is blantantly inaccurate . The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin El Husseini and his many followers were greatly in favour of genocide of Jews despite the Prophet Mohammed ruling The People of the Book were to be protected . The Powers allied to the Nazis the UkranianNazis Croation Nazis Rumanian Nazis and Hungarian Nazis as a mass perpertrated Genocide and Torture. It's inaccurate to analyse Hitler Alone it's a mass satanism .
(16) Patrick Rooney, October 5, 2015 7:23 PM
Hitler's Motives
I think Hitler feared or knew his paternal grandfathe was Jewish
Thus he would see his father and himself as polluted and
Corrupted 'Aryans' victimized by the rival Jewish race
He truly believed Madame Blavatsky's nonsense about 'Aryans'
He lost the war in Dec 1941 It was obvious to all in Spring 1943
yet his first priority was murdering Jews until he shot himself
(15) sahara, October 5, 2015 6:33 PM
could we please remove the evil one's picture
I find it extremely disturbing to see pictures of evil people and I know that according to jewish law one should not look in the face of an evil person. Please find a different picture to convey the message.
Rafael, October 6, 2015 9:06 PM
Not to look in the face of an evil person sounds like and old truth that has fallen to metaphor . What is gonna happen if you look ?
Obviously you already have or else you would not know its Hitler
(14) Dr Billy Levin, October 5, 2015 5:04 AM
Hitler's genetic inherited neurological problem.
It would appear that Hitler had inherited ADHD from the various descriptions of his father, himself and what he did and did not do in his youth. One of the complications of neglected ADHD in adults is depression. A combination of depression and ADHD has a strong tendency to suicide. Hitler committed suicide.
(13) Sean Anderson, October 5, 2015 12:22 AM
Explaining not always the same as wxcusing
I teach Political Science at the university level. I make the point to my students that social science seeks to explain social and political phenomena but trying to "explain" is not supposed to mean to "excuse." Someone here said "Hitler is evil" is true but explains nothing. But "Hitler is evil" is a normative conclusion that may follow from explanation. When one studies the Nazi program and realize that this doctrine mandated the extermination of "non-Aryans" as a proof of the superiority of the supposed "Aryan race" then one has an explanation for the program of the Holocaust and the entire aggressive expansion of the Third Reich. Given that this program required the murder of innocent men, women and children one can then conclude that the program of Nazism was evil - but saying this is an inference following from the explanation of the Third Reich's program. Of course by itself it is not the explanation. What is more troubling to me is when people glibly state "Well Hitler was obviously insane!" Taken at face value this would mean the Holicaust has no more moral meaning than the death of an innocent due to being bitten by a rabid dog. At the end of his life Hitler no doubt could be diagnosed as psychotic or at least severely neurotic. But this glib statement begs the question: Was Hitler's "evil" the result of a pre-existing mental condition? - or was his madness the inevitable result of his almost unlimited ability to commit evil? The Classical Greek theme of tragedy is that the pride (hybris) of an otherwise heroic person would offend "the gods" who would send "ate," or madness, upon the arrogant mortal who would then commit acts leading to his own punishment or destruction. From a Jewish perspective we can say that the man who believes he can, and should, commit unlimited murder is really the position of the fool who says in his heart "there is no g-d." So Hitler decided, freely of his own choice, to perpetrate mass murder. His reward was madness and defeat.
(12) Bobby5000, October 4, 2015 10:26 PM
dehumanization and inferior people
You have to distinguish two parts of Nazism, the dehumanism of Jews hierarchry of Aryans and inferiors and the holocaust.
The idea that there are people and inferiors is not just German. The U.S. had slavery for 200 years and one could freely beat and abuse a slave without any fear. Indeed when a slave fortunately escaped, the Supreme Court said since he is not a person the law can return him to his master for presumably regular beatings and abuse. The Dred Scott Case. A master in America could freely take a female slave or sell someone's wife or son because they were non-people. Hitler supposedly modeled many of the Nuremberg laws upon the Jim Crow laws of the south.
Fortunately there was never a large scale murder of slaves or blacks. However, that part of Nazism that involved the dehumanization of people, restricting them to certain areas, eliminating legal rights, prohibiting them from certain professions, cannot be condemned as the work of a madman because we had the same things in the U.S.
It was only the mass murder that characterized him as an evil madman and that is not subject to rational discussion and must only be condemned.
(11) Yehoshua Sharon, October 4, 2015 5:31 PM
To search for a rational explanation for Hitler’s Germany does not confer rationality on the Third Reich. Nor does it any way excuse or exculpate the perpetrators. What it does do is demonstrate that a people that produced Beethoven, Goethe and Schiller is also capable of genocide, and that no nation is immune from falling into the same abyss. Yaron London, a liberal native born Israeli commented that the lesson of the holocaust is a warning that Israel, now a militarily strong nation, should beware of making the same errors. Attributing the holocaust to evil is witchcraft.
(10) Aurel Littmann, October 4, 2015 5:23 PM
why only Hitler?
I am a child of an Auschwitz survivor who lost many of her family in the war from Hungary. Whatever theories come up for Hitler - do they apply to his willing executioners? In Hungary it was the Catholic priests and the Hungarian police that carried out the orders of the Germans. Identifying the Jews and and gathering them up for the deportations to the death camps. So do the "Billy the Goat", bad parenting, ecological etc apply to them as well?
(9) Anonymous, October 4, 2015 5:20 PM
No Excuse
When it comes down to it, Hitler with all his evil, as well as Stalin, and all the other monsters of history, were in fact just individuals. How did they get the masses to listen to them, and then agree to their sick ideas? Hitler did not run the gas chambers himself, nor fight the wars, he had hundreds of thousands of people who did it for him, and enjoyed it! How? Through the power of speech! Hitler was gifted in this one area, and he listened carefully to orators before him in his native Austria. He learned how to harness power to an idea, that millions could agree with. He hypnotized and dramatized and in this way, he could carry out his plan. People are still mesmerized by the power of speech on social media, which is why so many youths join gangs or terrorist groups, or they just take an AK47 and some guns, and go into a movie theatre, mall, school, and carry out their own evil. They are no different than Hitler. They don't mind the short term fame, as long as they get it. Evil has to be caught early. Children should be tested at early ages for emotional disturbances, just like they get regular checkups. Is a child bullied or a bullier, depressed, lonely, sad, abused, is a loner, living in a very dysfuntional family? The results of all those things eventually manifests itself as mental illness later in life, and in many cases turn into evil. This is not an excuse by any means, it is a fact..
(8) Diane, October 4, 2015 3:06 PM
Hitler
no one with a soul or a heart could do what Hitler did.
There for he was ot human, he was the devil!
(7) Jacob Kahane, October 4, 2015 2:21 PM
The Austrian El Vagabonde
Was a psychopath,because his mother was his sister,his mother, was his father's adopted daughter,the monster couldn't decide about the woman who took care of him,is she his mother or his older sister ?.his mentality was similar to the mentality of the Germans,as Winston Churchill described the Germans : They are either at your throat,or at your knee.
(6) Diogenes, October 4, 2015 10:44 AM
They are STILL out there
Please look at this article on American Thinker, and look particularly at the 500 comments:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/no_room_for_indifference_on_antisemitism_comments.html#disqus_thread
A dozen or so neo-Nazis escaped from their own putrid websites and placed comments on this article about European anti-Semitism. The comments are exactly what you might expect, but still bone-chilling in the intensity of the hatred they express. We Jews are, in their minds, the source of all evil in the world. We are the sponsors in particular, of Obama's massive immigration policy, and we are trying to harm Western Civilization and the White Race.
Clearly, these are life's losers, small in number, who blame Jews for their own shortcomings. But with the Internet, they have a much louder voice than they would otherwise. Hitler and his henchmen nearly destroyed the world without the internet. Does history HAVE to repeat itself????
(5) Avi Keslinger, October 4, 2015 6:04 AM
There Holocaust had several levels.
The Holocaust had several severals. There was the individual free choice of those who participated. However, it was the culmination of over 2,000 years of Western anti-Semitism and several "dress rehearsals": the Crusades, the Chmielnitzki massacres, the pogroms. It was also part of Hashem's plan for reasons we cannot fathom. How else could a homeless, failed postcard painter who would up in a psychiatric hospital after being gassed in WW1 have risen to be the unquestioned leader of one of the most cultured nations in the world?
(4) Anonymous, October 2, 2015 10:41 PM
Heal yourself
What measures has the Jewish community taken to heal this trauma that is re-living, passed on at the cellular level, tobeach generation? Why not come up with a new strategy to heal these deep wounds, forgive, (yet never forget), stop playing the same record, its creating mental health issues and other emotional issues, stop re-living the trauma, stop making money off it, stop playing the victim, just stop! Release the attachment to the trauman, send it to the Light to heal. That collective soul is crying to be set free. Listen! Listen to every Jewish soul tell us to heal ourselves. Establishing Israel is a divine retribution, a recompense. We are strong, we can be stronger if we stop manipulating the world, quit blaming Germany, As Jews lets take take 100% responsibility for the injustices, we will heal so fast, we wont need to live landless, homeless, in poverty feeling powerless every blessing due us will find us. We will progress and prosper. Open our hearts to love.
Pascale, October 4, 2015 7:05 AM
It is not up to us to forgive
Please wake up and grow up.
It is not for us to forgive Hitler or his accomplices, as we were not the ones hurt. I believe if we are reading this article we are alive, and therefore not his victims. Maybe survivors of the Shoa can forgive what was done to them personally, but I am not in a position to forgive what others suffered.
In any case, as observant Jews we know that everything that happens happens because the Almighty wishes it to happen, and it is not for us to justify the reasons for the happenings. However, one thing is certain,Hitler was hired to play this role because he fitted the part. He did it full heartedly and is facing the consequences of his job as we speak.
So please leave us alone to deal with our pain, and do not ask us to do things we are not in a position to do.
The only thing for us to do is to connect to our Creator and serve him wholeheartedly.
(3) Anna, October 1, 2015 5:50 AM
An old German woman told me that before 'Mr Hitler' came along, there was no anti-Jewish feeling in Germany. Everyone lived happily together, side by side.
There's no answer to that. How anyone can convince themselves of that is a mystery.
."Achtung ! Achtung ! Achtung ! You are all now Jew haters !'
Robert, October 1, 2015 8:06 PM
Mein Kamfp
Hitler did an amazing job of taking tiny grains of half truth and turning it step by step into full blown hatred of Jews! Hitler was a skilled man, a painter, writer and planner, an intellectual by many measures... His ideology regarding Jews was evil. Unfortunately many share his ideology of hate today, If they were all madmen they would be easy to see. Hitler also hated the disabled and mentally weak and anyone who supported Jews. HATE is a cancer that grows too easily.
Anna, October 4, 2015 6:55 AM
I have always believed that if he wasn't telling people what they already believed, he would never have come to power.
I can't agree that he was an intellectual-I have read little of Mein Kampf, but the bits I read were badly written, repetitive, contradictory and surprisingly dull. I tried to read it without prejudice, but like everyone I know who has tried to read it found it unreadable from the literary viewpoint alone. His paintings aren't bad, but they show little originality and his sense of perspective was very weak when he tried to paint and draw buildings,
Nothing will convince me that the Germans who were not Jewish were completely free of antiSemitism until he came along. If a person now tried to convince his country that paedophila was good and right, they wouldn't have many takers for this philosophy except among the paedophiles.
(2) Anonymous, September 30, 2015 8:17 PM
Good vs Evil. Thought process
Like peeling back the onion - each layer defining a reason why at the core is HATE!! It upsets me when in the past have seen positive attributes connected to Hitler. What he did was and is wrong @ so many levels. unfortunately for me I know people who surely in their after life WILL one day share time with Hitler in HELL!!! Knowing God is the final judge brings me peace. I want to think positive thoughts but I unfortunately believe in 2015 - if offering a small amount of money to a complete stranger to do an unkind dead to another - ones offer would be snatched up immediately - without knowing rhyme or reason why - a small sum would buy evil projected on a complete stranger. One has to know GREED and JEALOUSY is undoubtedly @ the core of ALL misdeeds toward another. Peel the onion back - be it want of another's land - want of another's job, wife, car, what ever causes one to want to process what another has - my take on this is - fine - but you have to accept all of what that person has - example - say his job - you get his or her job but you also get their brain - flaws - debt Ect Most would think twice then - so evil is specific - you just want what you assume is positive - good, but it would bring baggage if you did assume ownership of the hearts desired item - seems like a strange thought process - be satisfied with bettering oneself makes much more sense. to thine own self be true! Plus, you definitely would going this route increase rather decrease your chances of having an after- life worth while -working and trying to do toward others what you would want done to you - thus spend eternity with those who also followed the golden rule. Bottom line Hitler was HATE personified!! If there are levels of hell - he most certainly occupies the center core of Hell & surrounded by his kind - evil over flowing - individuals inflicting pain and heart ache on others - BUT for God's loving individuals - God's promise of a paradise earned! Where's the choice?!
Anonymous, October 4, 2015 6:58 AM
Blanket hate of an entire race of people is incredibly unintelligent ! How can one hate or dislike people one has never met ? I have met unlikeable people of many races, but I don't dislike everyone else from these as a result-any more than I 'like' all Indians, Chinese or Scottish people because I know a lot of really nice Indians, Chinese and Scots !!!
(1) Dvirah, September 29, 2015 3:41 PM
Understanding is not Forgiveness
When my gradeschool "best friend" betrayed me I understood, even then, exactly why she did it - but still held her accountable for her choice of action.
Anna, October 1, 2015 5:52 AM
Hitler's background doesn't excuse him. Many people have far worse ones and don't become genocidal.Or even homicidal.