586
PARTISAN REVIEW
be forgotten .)
It was also more difficult to idealize Nazi Germany because it was
geographically, culturally, and historically accessible, a part of the West.
Unlike many Communist countries it was not distant or seemingly ex–
otic, and thus it could not be mistaken for a country populated by
modern-day equivalents of noble savages, whom many W estern visitors
discovered inhabiting the former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and
other third-world Communist countries. Germany was highly industrial–
ized and urban - it did not offer imaginary refuge from the frustrations
and deprivations of modernity, as did several Communist systems.
At the same time the very fact that Germany was a part of the West,
in the heart of Europe, the country of Bach, Beethoven, Durer, Goethe
and Mann, of great universities and well-educated people, made the
policies and practices of Nazism all the more abhorrent and shocking.
Indeed, over time the idea developed that there was something in the
German national character, its authoritarian tendencies, submissiveness to
authority, and rigidity that explained the unique evils of Nazism. If so,
Nazism came to be associated with some essential, deeply-rooted evil in
human nature, in some ways easier to grasp and personalize than evils
which arise out of the efforts to implement attractive ideals.
Possibly, it was the difference between the character and procedures
(if not the quantitative dimensions) of the Nazi and Communist mass
murders which provide a key to the different moral responses to these
two types of political systems and the historically unparalleled slaughters
they carried out. The Soviet and other Communist mass killings were in
many significant ways different from the Nazi ones. There had been no
extermination camps using modern technology and machinery, such as
gas chambers and crematoria; no reports (or hardly any) oflethal medical
experiments on human beings. Most victims of Communist systems were
killed in relatively simple, old-fashioned ways, either shot or more often
allowed to die of starvation, cold, and various diseases in what the
Communist authorities used to call "corrective labor or reeducation
camps," or beaten to death (as in Cambodia). Millions also died as a re–
sult of politically-induced famine without being detained, especially in
the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and China.
On the other hand the total number of the Communist victims was
far greater than those of the Nazis. However, a large portion of the So–
viet, Chinese and other victims - some might argue - were not actually
killed; they just could not survive harsh living conditions prevailing in the
camps, many of which were not subject to human control. These living
conditions, some might further contend, resulted less from ill will, or de–
liberate policy than from overall backwardness, indifference, disorganiza-
