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Yes and one of them was the worthy David Dellinger who went to prison. And yes, these historians have served to demythologize World War 2 even for those who might not accept their ultimate conclusions. Below is the text of a letter I sent to the New York Times regarding a recent review of the latest book on Hitler in the World War 2 "allied propaganda" hack genre which in essence asks the question, how was a loser like Hitler able to rise to such power and wreak such havoc (what Lincoln Rockwell in his 1967 Playboy interview with Alex Haley referred to as "all that hooey about Hitler")? Hey, how did a functional illiterate and second rate failure of a Hollywood actor like Reagan get to be US President? Dagmar Herzog’s review of A.N. Wilson’s “Hitler” is well taken, but her critique does not go far enough in deconstructing what is in essence another example of superficial World War 2 hack work. While surely Hitler may not be a person deserving of any fair treatment and while certainly the exigencies of World War 2 made cartoonish attacks on the enemy Leader fair game, that historic contest ended 70 years ago, calling now for a more objective and professional approach to this subject, particularly by those who claim to be academic historians. Moreover, that approach trivializes fascism and the Second World War by reducing it to a question of the character and quirks of a single individual. Thus, that during the First World War Hitler fought in 49 different battles and was blinded by poison gas and ultimately was awarded Germany's highest military honor, the Iron Cross, gets ignored, either out of intellectual dishonesty on the part of the author, or because of a lazy cherry picking of facts by someone who really doesn't command his subject matter. Moreover, that such a supposedly lazy and inconsequential person as Hitler, whose commanders ostensibly had no confidence in, could be appointed a political officer by the general staff in 1919 during the suppression of the Spartacist uprising and then be involved in an attempted coup in 1924 with Field Marshal Luddendorf, a German figure comparable to Pershing or MacArthur, is beyond me. Thus, the question comes to mind, in what sense was Hitler a mediocrity? as a political gangster? Perhaps if he had had the patrician bona fides of the likes of Neville Chamberlain-or George W. Bush-he would have been less of one? As Hitler biographer John Toland once asked, how can a person who led a nation in conquering a third of the Earth, causing the death of 50 million people be viewed as a mediocrity, "run of the mill" or a pathetic loser? Egregious yes, mediocre no. Adolf Hitler was no mere seasoned thug, but a world class political gangster and counter-revolutionary imperialist of the first rank. On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> wrote: > > That might have been true from 1940 to 1960 but not afterwards. A whole > generation of historians who studied with William Appleman Williams and > others from the Progressivist tradition going back to Charles Beard rejected > the "Good War" hypothesis. Among them were Gar Alperovitz and Gabriel Kolko. > > Furthermore, beyond the Trotskyists and the rightwing isolationists, there > were pacifists like Lew Hill who went to form Pacifica radio in 1946. > > It's true that most on the left backed FDR but so did it back the internment > of Japanese-Americans, a no-strike pledge and all the rest of the shit that > went along with it. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
