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even as Americans would be derided for their naIvete and uncouth man–
ners.
Under the circumstances, survivors of death camps and death
marches were housed in refugee camps until they found relatives, or
induced the Red Cross and other helping agencies to relocate them.
Most Nazi perpetrators hardened their already thick skins and grew
new hides; and bystanders protested their innocence and denied that
they had seen what they saw. All around, Europeans in one way or
another were concentrating on the future : victims didn't talk much
about the brutalities and fears they wanted to forget; perpetrators did
not admit their collaboration and culpability. Thus the "unspeakable"
was silenced. But it continued to weigh on people's minds, especially on
those of relatives who had escaped, and who would have nightmares
about their dead to the end of their lives.
Already before
1945,
the American government had wondered about
how to deal with Germany after the war, and had consulted psychoan–
alysts and psychologists to explain what might have induced Germans
to so submissively follow Hitler.
It
took until the early
1970S
for moti–
vational explanations to lose some of their hold. By then, Stanley Mil–
gram had shown that Germans were not the only ones to blindly follow
orders; the leading Frankfurt scholars, Horckheimer and Adorno, who
had investigated the roots of anti-Semitism, had moved back to Frank–
furt, and Germany was flourishing.
In
the early seventies, as a number
of archives were being opened, historians, journalists and sociologists
began to delve into the grim details of the Nazi years. Had Hitler fore–
seen the eradication of the Jews when he outlined the creation of a mas–
ter race? Or, as Saul Friedlander held, didn't
Mein Kampf
(1922)
just
serve as a part of the Germans' "volkish" ideology and provide the
backdrop for the genocide of Jews and Gypsies? Friedlander maintained
that the Holocaust was unique and could not be properly understood.
Raymond Aron, on the other hand, contended that if Hitler's pri–
mary aim had been the liquidation of the Jews then it was not irra–
tional, for instance, to divert trains needed for the armed forces in
order to transport Jews to Auschwitz. Arno Mayer, an outspoken
Marxist, in
Why Did the Heavens Not Darken: The "FinaL SoLution"
in History
(1988),
argued that Hitler's anti-communism was as viru–
lent as his anti-Semitism, especially toward the end of the war. Other
historians, then, compared the Nazis' anti-Semitism to Italian fascists'
treatment of Africans and Slavs. Elie Wiesel, probably the most
famous survivor of Auschwitz, has argued that the Holocaust was a
unique occurrence, but nevertheless must be invoked against whatever
