HOW CAN WE "RECONCILE" COMMUNIST AND NAZI LEGACIES?
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indignation about the Nazi regime and Communism, it may be based on
the fact that the murder of the
kulaks
was a class genocide, and not the
kind that we associate with the murder of the Jews. Also, the
kulaks
didn't come to America afterwards and tell the world what had hap–
pened to them. It seems to me that the lack of publicity has something
to do with that. And finally, not unrelated to the last point is asymmetry
of power. The Soviet Union continued to exist.
It
had nuclear weapons.
The United States had to deal with that country, whereas Nazi Germany
didn't exist anymore. American historians also participated in the debate
about whether Nazism is properly described as totalitarianism.
Paul Hollander:
Well, in that case there is a gap in my scholarship . My
general impression was that there was very little debate about it among
American historians. The questions always arose, and more frequently
only after the death of Stalin.
Is
it really a useful comparison or concept?
I was not aware of comparable sources regarding the Nazis. I didn't
think about the murder of the
kulaks.
But I made basically the same
point when I said that Nazi Germany expected to get rid of an entire
category of people, whereas the Communist, or the Chinese, campaigns
of extermination were based more on class and politics. After all, people
were mistreated for all kinds of reasons, not just for their social origins,
or for being
kulaks.
I also touched on your last point when I asked whether the attitudes
would have been similar to those we found in regard to the Soviet
Union, if Nazi Germany had had nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union
had to be dealt with. Many people in the peace movement criticizing it
perceived it as a new threat to peace. So I agree with all your points,
except the first one .
Mitchell Ash:
To Jeffrey Her£ If we were to specifically look at East
Germany's de-Nazification, and not the Jewish question, the conflict
would be between de-Nazification and reconstruction. Then one could
compare the way members of the Nazi Party were dealt with in Eastern
Germany and the way they were dealt with in West Germany. Recent
research has indicated that a rather larger number of former members of
the Nazi Party were integrated into East German society than the official
legends would lead us to believe. So I think one way of understanding
that phenomenon is that de-Nazification occurred only for a short pe–
riod of time, and after that, for relatively concrete, cynical reasons, the
old functionaries had to be integrated into the GDR - it was a choice
between either de-Nazification or reconstruction.
