Explaining Hitler
by Ron Rosenbaum
List Price: $16.00
Pages: 528
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 006095339X
Publisher: HarperCollins
"These people must not know where I come from," Adolf Hitler once
purportedly said. "Nobody must know who I am." This disquietingly
prophetic imperative has been borne out by half a century of ardent,
contentious and often contradictory inquiry into the origins of Hitler's
singular, unsurpassable evil. In Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum
undertakes an exhaustive study of the myriad scholarship and conjecture of
the many historians, psychologists, and others who have tried to solve the
puzzle of what made Hitler Hitler.
Rosenbaum acknowledges early on that a consensus can never be
reached about why Hitler orchestrated the Holocaust (or even, in the minds
of some scholars, if he did) because key historical evidence is either
missing, was destroyed, or never existed. Nonetheless, he seeks "if not the
truth about Hitler, then some truths about what we talk about when we talk
about Hitler. What it tells us about Hitler, what it tells us about ourselves."
The catalog of Hitler theories leads Rosenbaum to those like Hugh
Trevor-Roper, who feel the Fuehrer was convinced of his own rectitude in
the mission to exterminate the Jews, and to others like Alan Bullock, who
feel he was an accomplished actor and a schemer who responded to and
manipulated European anti-Semitism for political gain.
Rosenbaum wades through long-debated speculations of the origins of
Hitler's anti-Semitism, including the notion that Hitler had a Jewish
grandfather or that he held an irrational, if monumental grudge against all
Jews because of some transgression, real or imagined, in his youth. He
also examines the work of those who seek a psychosexual explanation for
Hitler's evil in an abused childhood, or in shadowy rumors of some sexual
dysfunction or aberration. Rosenbaum looks at theories that view Hitler as a
blackmailing hood, resurrecting the mostly forgotten history of a courageous
band of Munich-based journalists, the "Poison Kitchen," who tried to expose
Hitler's venal intentions and scandalous involvement before he rose to
power in the early 1930s.
In face-to-face interviews he tries to ferret out the true beliefs of controversial
Hitler interpreters, including those of George Steiner, whose fictional The
Portage to San Crisobal of A.H., seems to place the onus of the Final
Solution on the Jews themselves; Daniel Goldhagen, who controversially
views Hitler as merely a midwife in the birth of long gestating German
anti-Semitism; and Holocaust denier David Irving, who refutes everything.
Struck by filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's edict that we must never ask why
because any attempt to explain Hitler, to some degree, exonerates his
actions, Rosenbaum turns to Israeli theologian Emil Fackenheim who has
decreed the 614th commandment: Jews are forbidden to grant posthumous
victories to Hitler.
From Fackenheim, Rosenbaum ultimately extrapolates what he comes to
see as the best mandate we can adopt when trying to explain Hitler: "Not to
resist all or any inquiry, not to resist thought, but to resist...the way
explanation can become evasion or consolation, a way of making Hitler's
choice to do what he did less unbearable, less hateful to contemplate.... To
resist making the kind of explanatory excuses for Hitler that permit him to
escape, that grant him the posthumous victory of the last laugh."
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1.Is Claude Lanzmann, whose film Shoah is considered by many to be the greatest documentation of the Holocaust, correct when he claims that any attempt to explain Hitler is obscene, because it in some way endeavors to absolve Hitler of his monumental guilt?
2. If Hitler's radical evil was an exception--beyond the basic level of human malignancy--is there any hope of making sense of his actions?
3. If we demonize Hitler do we distance him, in a falsely comforting way, from ourselves and the continuum of human good and evil?
4. If interpreters downplay Hitler's personal role in the Holocaust--blaming the entire German population, for example, or a relatively small group of anti-Semitic zealots and bureaucrats--are they granting him "the posthumous victory of the last laugh?"
5. What do the many conflicting interpretations of the historical evidence about Hitler tell us about the inherent nature and reliability of all historical assessment?
6. Although Rosenbaum concedes that we can never reach consensus about Hitler, in what ways does Explaining Hitler succeed in elucidating Hitler's evil?
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"Brilliant. . . . Restlessly probing and deeply intelligent. "
—Time
"A remarkable journey by one of the most original journalists and writers of our time. "
—David Remick, author of Lenin's Tomb
"Fascinating. . . . A provocative work of cultural history that is as compelling as it is thoughtful, as readable as it is smart. . . . Rosenbaum has made an important contribution to our understanding, not just of Hitler, but of the cultural processes by which we try to come to terms with history as well. "
—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"Cultural criticism served up as riveting narrative history . . . with words and ideas that surprise, amuse, and even elevate the reader. "
—Marc Fisher, Washington Post
"A product of exhaustive historical research and meticulous contemporary reporting . . . an intellectual tour de force. "
—George Will
