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PARTISAN REVIEW
Certainly, people must behave differently in a totalitarian system than
in an open one, and how many among them dare defY its authorities, and
to what extent and under what circumstances, are yet other questions.
Fogelman's and Ostow's studies have shown that individuals' motivations
are infinite, insofar as these depend not only on so-called traits, strengths,
weaknesses, and on other qualities of character, and on habitual response
mechanisms, but on momentary circumstances and perceived opportuni–
ties to act. Neither their books,
Ruth's Journey, The Longest Shadow,
or
Anne Frank's Diary,
have caused the sort of stir as have the indictments in
Ordinary Men,
in
Hitler's Willing Executioners,
and in
Zeugnis.
That some
have read Goldhagen's book as implicating the character of today's Ger–
mans - even though he does not do so - is at the roots of the current
controversies.
Aside from the revelations about the Nazi perpetrators, however, and
the documentation of everyday life in that dictatorship, we assume that
the better we understand these times, the more able will we be to avoid
future genocides. That pacifism and dreams of humanity - whether in a
Marxist or any other kind of garb - will save the world, as we have come
to realize oflate, is an illusion. However, had people paid more attention
to the insidious anti-Semitism Goldhagen posits as a necessary condition
for Hitler's success, they might well have paid it more heed, and might
have avoided sticking their heads into the proverbial sand. And had Eng–
land and France (and America) not been so steeped in their policy of
appeasement, World War II obviously might have been avoided, or at
least have cost fewer lives. So, if we are to learn from that history, it
seems to me, we will have to analyze each volatile political situation in its
own context, and will have to thoroughly take into account ancient, na–
tional and religious hatreds, as well as the internal and external political
elements that may want to shore them up to serve their own ends, or
those of an ideological, ambitious political leader.
These reflections go beyond those of the writers of "Letters to the
Editor" rebutting Goldhagen, whether to remind him that there were
Germans like Schindler who saved Jews, and others who hid them;
whether reiterating psychological and economic arguments rebuking
Weimar Germany, reiterating that today's Germany is democratic in the
best sense, or defending a specific thesis about the Holocaust.
In
fact, the
liberal debates that have taken hold in German society, it seems to me, are
antidotes to the deep-rooted anti-Semitism that occasionally keeps pop–
ping up. For advancing such debates, enlarging them whenever possible,
and doing so in total honesty, appear to be the best weapons against anti–
Semitism - not only in Germany but everywhere else. And if, as some
have argued, it is the inevitable underside of Enlightenment thought, of
