Depressing History

Just a quick update. I have had to give up researching and writing for my book up for a while. I just found it too depressing reading about the WWII era and the Shoah. Just go to the descriptions of Treblinka concentration camp in Cesarani's Final Solution or in The Third Reich at War by Richard J Evans. It gave me nightmares.

But things like this teach us things. The reason why I am writing my book is to ask the question of whether there is a link between German intellectual and artistic culture prior to the early twentieth century and the rise of the Dritte Reich. WWII war Allied war propagandists all concluded that 'em bloody Krauts are all the same—they're all Nazis—always 'ave been always will be. For non-historians, the only way to commemorate the two World Wars of the twentieth century is to repeat such sentiments ad infinitum, because history can only be written from the perspective of Nazi war propaganda or Allied war propaganda. Given how horrifying the events of the National Socialist era were it is perhaps understandable that there should be lingering anger towards all Germans past, present, and future. Germans love to take the side of Allied war propaganda because it is an exculpatory experience to do so as a means of proving they are no longer "one of the Hun". The emotions at play here are crude and primitive.

It may seem that some will insist on pointing to Wagner or Luther as definitive evidence that 'em bloody Krauts are all the same—they're all Nazis—always 'ave been always will be: just look at Wagner/Luther but that assumes a German exceptionalism that had eternally been written in blood and soil long before the twentieth century. They were all born that way, all born Nazis. That is the very nonsense that lay at the core of both National Socialist and Allied war propaganda. Trying to reason with this sort of brutal belligerence is very tiring. I need a break.