Sowell on Germans
Thomas Sowell’s amazing book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, includes an essay entitled "Germans and History," which I found to be particularly eye-opening. The essay set out to answer this question: Was there something about German history, about German culture, that predisposed them towards Nazism?
In the introduction to the essay Sowell wrote:
“Germans are an old people—their language is centuries older than English, French, Spanish, or Italian—but the history of a dozen years has cast a long shadow over thousands of years of their existence as a people. The rule of Hitler and the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 not only sealed the fate of the Germans of that generation, it has colored the way Germans have been seen since then, as well as the way previous history of Germans has been seen. German intellectual figures, social traditions, and political movements in centuries past that were once seen in the context of their own times are now often seen as precursors of Nazi totalitarianism or of the Holocaust. Was all German history leading up to Hitler? Or were the Nazi years simply a tragic aberration on a monumental scale?”
The essay is long and chock-full of interesting facts. Since I’m waiting for a piece of fish to defrost, I’ll transcribe the summary of the essay:
“The role of the Germans as bearers of more advanced skills to other countries in Europe and the Western Hemisphere has by no means endeared them to all these peoples. Farmers in Honduras complained about having to compete with German farmers there who worked too hard. Latvians and Czechs complained that to become educated, they had to learn the German language—this at a time when there was little serious literature in their own native languages. Russian farmers resented the greater success of German farmers there and the rise of Communism, with its theories of ‘exploitation,’ enabled them to unleash an orgy of violence and destruction on German farm communities. In short, productivity does not imply popularity, whether for Germans or any other race or class. The history of middleman minorities around the world underscores that point as well. Moreover, it is not usually the masses of the people who most resent the more productive people in their midst. More commonly, it is the intelligentsia, who may with sufficiently sustained effort spread their own resentments to others.
When considering the questions of the extent to which the Nazi era in Germany reflected the culture or history of Germans as a people, two very different questions must be distinguished from one another: (1) the culpability of that generation of Germans who enabled, abetted, or promoted the cause of the Nazis and its catastrophic human consequences, and (2) the extent to which the prior cultural, political, or social history of Germans as a people made Hitler and the Nazis inevitable, likely, or an aberration. The first question is harder to understand but the second question has wider and more enduring implications.
The issue is not whether there have been anti-Jewish individuals, institutions, writings, movements, or political parties in Germany—there were in fact all of these for centuries before the rise of the Nazis—but the ultimate question is: What was the net effect on the actual behavior of Germans toward Jews, not compared to an ideal, but compared to the behavior of others toward Jews or toward other minority groups around the world? Here the pre-Hitler behavior of Germans toward Jews compares favorably with that of most other peoples in most other places, not only in behavior toward Jews but toward minorities in general. This is no exoneration of anti-Semites, either before or after Hitler. Each generation and each individual bears the heavy burden of guilt for what they did—but not for what others did in other places and other times.
Hitler’s accession to power, followed by his coup of converting the constitutional power of a chancellor into the totalitarian dictatorship of a fuhrer, was of course made possible by the German voters who gave him a plurality in a democratic election in 1933, setting in motion this whole tragic chain of events. Yet the dictatorship, war, and Holocaust that we associate with the Nazis regime in retrospect was not on the ballot, or even on the horizon, of those who voted for Hitler in 1933. They were seeking a political savior in a chaotic and economically depressed time. The relative political apathy of Germans and their historic law-abiding habits enabled Hitler to seize far more power than he was elected to, with perhaps less resistance than such an action might have provoked in some other societies, and the German military tradition and military prowess made him more dangerous than he might have been as the leader of some other nations.
Looking back through German history, one can find examples of anti-Jewish words and actions by both elites and masses. Tragically, that does not distinguish Germans from Europeans in general—or from human beings in general, when it comes to vile or vicious things being said or done to any number of ethnic or other minorities in countries around the world. But the Holocaust was unique. The question then is whether there was anything correspondingly unique in the breadth or depth of German antipathies toward minorities in general, or Jews in particular, in their pre-Hitler history. No such uniqueness stands out prior to the era of Nazi rule, either in Germany itself or among German communities around the world.
The racial fanaticism of Hitler and the Nazi movement, which spread to the German generations of their day and led ultimately to the Holocaust, were not historically distinct characteristics of Germans as people. On the contrary, the rise of such a man as the leader of a people should serve as a permanent warning to all people everywhere who are charmed by charisma or aroused by rhetoric.”
The fish is not completely defrosted yet. To pass the time, I’ll include some interesting facts about Germans that I did not know until reading Sowell’s essay:
*Germans were the predominant population in many Eastern European cities during the Middle Ages. Slavs were dominant in the countryside.
*Ethnic Germans founded universities in Eastern Europe, and often dominated Eastern European learning institutions.
*Although Germans were only one percent of the population of the Russian Empire, in the 1880’s more than half of the Russian foreign ministry were German.
*Nearly all of the members of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences were German.
*Wherever Germans went, they were renowned as skilled craftsmen.
*Germans set up breweries as far away as Australia and China. Tsingtao beer of China was created by Germans living there.
*Germans pioneered and excelled in map-making, optical technology (Bausch and Lomb), and piano building.
One last fascinating quote:
“German American immigrant communities welcomed German Jewish immigrants as members of their Turnvereine, singing groups, and other cultural organizations. Nineteenth-century German Jews living in Chile and Czechoslovakia likewise took part in the general cultural life of German communities in those countries. Jewish views of pre-Hitler Germany were very favorable, not only in Germany itself but overseas. During the First World War, American Jewish publications were so favorably disposed toward Germany that they were investigated and prosecuted for favoring an enemy nation in wartime, leading to the famous ‘clear and present danger’ doctrine in favor of free speech by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in cases involving Jewish writers, Abrams v. United States and Schenk v. United States. Even some Zionists in Palestine returned to Germany during the first World War to fight for the Fatherland.”
More factoids:
*In many parts of the Western Hemisphere Germans spear-headed anti-slavery meetings.
*German research-oriented and doctorate-granting universities became the model for modern American universities.
*German farmers and craftsmen were often literate, even in places where the surrounding populations were not.
*In nineteenth-century America, one-third of all the physicians in New York were of German ancestry.
It cannot be denied—the Germans are a remarkable people. Read Sowell’s tirelessly footnoted book because the other essays are as equally eye-opening.
Ja!
In the introduction to the essay Sowell wrote:
“Germans are an old people—their language is centuries older than English, French, Spanish, or Italian—but the history of a dozen years has cast a long shadow over thousands of years of their existence as a people. The rule of Hitler and the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 not only sealed the fate of the Germans of that generation, it has colored the way Germans have been seen since then, as well as the way previous history of Germans has been seen. German intellectual figures, social traditions, and political movements in centuries past that were once seen in the context of their own times are now often seen as precursors of Nazi totalitarianism or of the Holocaust. Was all German history leading up to Hitler? Or were the Nazi years simply a tragic aberration on a monumental scale?”
The essay is long and chock-full of interesting facts. Since I’m waiting for a piece of fish to defrost, I’ll transcribe the summary of the essay:
“The role of the Germans as bearers of more advanced skills to other countries in Europe and the Western Hemisphere has by no means endeared them to all these peoples. Farmers in Honduras complained about having to compete with German farmers there who worked too hard. Latvians and Czechs complained that to become educated, they had to learn the German language—this at a time when there was little serious literature in their own native languages. Russian farmers resented the greater success of German farmers there and the rise of Communism, with its theories of ‘exploitation,’ enabled them to unleash an orgy of violence and destruction on German farm communities. In short, productivity does not imply popularity, whether for Germans or any other race or class. The history of middleman minorities around the world underscores that point as well. Moreover, it is not usually the masses of the people who most resent the more productive people in their midst. More commonly, it is the intelligentsia, who may with sufficiently sustained effort spread their own resentments to others.
When considering the questions of the extent to which the Nazi era in Germany reflected the culture or history of Germans as a people, two very different questions must be distinguished from one another: (1) the culpability of that generation of Germans who enabled, abetted, or promoted the cause of the Nazis and its catastrophic human consequences, and (2) the extent to which the prior cultural, political, or social history of Germans as a people made Hitler and the Nazis inevitable, likely, or an aberration. The first question is harder to understand but the second question has wider and more enduring implications.
The issue is not whether there have been anti-Jewish individuals, institutions, writings, movements, or political parties in Germany—there were in fact all of these for centuries before the rise of the Nazis—but the ultimate question is: What was the net effect on the actual behavior of Germans toward Jews, not compared to an ideal, but compared to the behavior of others toward Jews or toward other minority groups around the world? Here the pre-Hitler behavior of Germans toward Jews compares favorably with that of most other peoples in most other places, not only in behavior toward Jews but toward minorities in general. This is no exoneration of anti-Semites, either before or after Hitler. Each generation and each individual bears the heavy burden of guilt for what they did—but not for what others did in other places and other times.
Hitler’s accession to power, followed by his coup of converting the constitutional power of a chancellor into the totalitarian dictatorship of a fuhrer, was of course made possible by the German voters who gave him a plurality in a democratic election in 1933, setting in motion this whole tragic chain of events. Yet the dictatorship, war, and Holocaust that we associate with the Nazis regime in retrospect was not on the ballot, or even on the horizon, of those who voted for Hitler in 1933. They were seeking a political savior in a chaotic and economically depressed time. The relative political apathy of Germans and their historic law-abiding habits enabled Hitler to seize far more power than he was elected to, with perhaps less resistance than such an action might have provoked in some other societies, and the German military tradition and military prowess made him more dangerous than he might have been as the leader of some other nations.
Looking back through German history, one can find examples of anti-Jewish words and actions by both elites and masses. Tragically, that does not distinguish Germans from Europeans in general—or from human beings in general, when it comes to vile or vicious things being said or done to any number of ethnic or other minorities in countries around the world. But the Holocaust was unique. The question then is whether there was anything correspondingly unique in the breadth or depth of German antipathies toward minorities in general, or Jews in particular, in their pre-Hitler history. No such uniqueness stands out prior to the era of Nazi rule, either in Germany itself or among German communities around the world.
The racial fanaticism of Hitler and the Nazi movement, which spread to the German generations of their day and led ultimately to the Holocaust, were not historically distinct characteristics of Germans as people. On the contrary, the rise of such a man as the leader of a people should serve as a permanent warning to all people everywhere who are charmed by charisma or aroused by rhetoric.”
The fish is not completely defrosted yet. To pass the time, I’ll include some interesting facts about Germans that I did not know until reading Sowell’s essay:
*Germans were the predominant population in many Eastern European cities during the Middle Ages. Slavs were dominant in the countryside.
*Ethnic Germans founded universities in Eastern Europe, and often dominated Eastern European learning institutions.
*Although Germans were only one percent of the population of the Russian Empire, in the 1880’s more than half of the Russian foreign ministry were German.
*Nearly all of the members of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences were German.
*Wherever Germans went, they were renowned as skilled craftsmen.
*Germans set up breweries as far away as Australia and China. Tsingtao beer of China was created by Germans living there.
*Germans pioneered and excelled in map-making, optical technology (Bausch and Lomb), and piano building.
One last fascinating quote:
“German American immigrant communities welcomed German Jewish immigrants as members of their Turnvereine, singing groups, and other cultural organizations. Nineteenth-century German Jews living in Chile and Czechoslovakia likewise took part in the general cultural life of German communities in those countries. Jewish views of pre-Hitler Germany were very favorable, not only in Germany itself but overseas. During the First World War, American Jewish publications were so favorably disposed toward Germany that they were investigated and prosecuted for favoring an enemy nation in wartime, leading to the famous ‘clear and present danger’ doctrine in favor of free speech by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in cases involving Jewish writers, Abrams v. United States and Schenk v. United States. Even some Zionists in Palestine returned to Germany during the first World War to fight for the Fatherland.”
More factoids:
*In many parts of the Western Hemisphere Germans spear-headed anti-slavery meetings.
*German research-oriented and doctorate-granting universities became the model for modern American universities.
*German farmers and craftsmen were often literate, even in places where the surrounding populations were not.
*In nineteenth-century America, one-third of all the physicians in New York were of German ancestry.
It cannot be denied—the Germans are a remarkable people. Read Sowell’s tirelessly footnoted book because the other essays are as equally eye-opening.
Ja!
posted by semite1973 at 11:49 AM
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