It's time to write something. It's a bit of recent commentary on an old post prompted by a new comment made on Goodreads about my review of Sherratt's Hitler's Philosophers from around 2013.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/982871515
The word limit is very restrictive on that site and the blog review is reduced down to the briefest of summaries, with links to the review by Sir Richard J Evans and my original (overly lengthy) review on this blog:
https://thinkclassical.blogspot.com/2014/07/book-review-of-hitlers-philosophers-by.html
Another problem with that review is that it only tells you what not to read without making it explicit what you should be reading instead. So, I quickly put together a compilation of alternative texts. In putting the list together, I noticed that all of them were by respected authors in their field. All professors of history at major universities, with the only exception being Timothy W Ryback who is director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. The point is that one should be very wary of things dressed up as an account of German history written by philosophers, poets, and postmodernist literary critics. Even material written by journalists, sociologists, and political scientists needs to be approached with critical caution.
I should have mentioned that the rocky relationship between the National Socialist regime and the German arts faculties (including figures like Heidegger) is well covered by the great Cambridge Professor, Sir Richard J Evans in "The Third in Power" (vol 2 of the Third Reich series). Professor Geoff Eley wrote a couple of years ago that the Evans "Third Reich" series is still the go-to introductory text to begin reading about this era. Evans is always readable, though lengthy and in-depth.
For the most up-to-date study on the background of how Hitler became the political figure he is known for, please see Professor Thomas Weber's "Becoming Hitler" (the sequel to his "Hitler's First World War"). Extremely readable and probably the best academically credible alternative to Sherratt, written by a recognised authority.
For a more academic and neutral study of the long-arch (longue durée) of German imperialism from the Bismarckian-Wilhemine Germany to the Dritte Reich also see Professor Shelley Baranowski's "Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler". It is devoid of the reductivistic sensationalism found in Sherratt. This makes her study very academic but also a dry read. You have been warned! But it remains a highly acclaimed and immensely authoritative overview. If you manage to finish this book in one sweep, you instantly win my fullest respect.
For another critical account (by a brilliant post-Marxist historian) dismissive of memes like those of Sherratt that see too much of a straight-line of simplistic continuity between pre-20th German thought and the events of the early 20th century, see Professor Geoff Eley's "Nazism as Fascism". Readable if you know Eley's previous works but perhaps a bit specialised.
Lastly, the commentary by Ryback in "Hitler's Private Library" is very good, readable, and gives glimpses into what might be traces of the direct influences on Hitler. But Thomas Weber now says that his library is full of books gifted to him by the predictable crowd of petty little wannabees who were wishing to win Hitler's blessing of approval or to win influence.
I still have misgivings about including the Baranowski, as it is such a dry academic read, however authoritative it might be, but I couldn't put a list of books together written only by male authors! The Baranowski shows the academic limits of how far back you can extend the long arch of history from imperialism in the Bismarckian era to the imperialism of the Hitlerian era. Even then she acknowledges the profound discontinuities which are not effaced by an examination of the so-called longue durée of German imperialist history. While this book doesn't focus on the background to what intellectual influences helped shape Hitler's world-view (as Becoming Hitler by Thomas Weber does), the point is that trying to extend the longue durée of the origins of NS ideology further back to the Napoleonic era of Fichte or the Enlightenment of Kant, as Sherratt does, is really pushing it too far. Some lay historians (like William Shirer) have attempted to create simple causal links between something Martin Luther said or did in the Reformation to events in the Dritte Reich, but the historical distance means it really doesn't work at all, and such accounts have never been taken seriously by professional historians.
Talking about female historians, maybe I should have also included Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction by Susanne Heim and Götz Aly. But that book is worthy only of mention in the negative in that it downplays historical ideological antecedents or even period political philosophy in general as a prime driver of the Shoah. It is still a good overview of how such a monstrosity came to be "rationalised". Again you can see that no historian of the Shoah of any note believes that this happened because Kant or Heidegger said so.
There is also a new book out of the German Second Empire ("Zweite Reich" or Kaiserreich) entitled Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918, by Katja Hoyer. Andrew Roberts in his review of Katja Hoyer's book has said that:
She cogently argues that what started in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors need not have ended in the disaster of the Great War, and rightly rescues Bismarck from the ignominy of being a forerunner of Hitler.
In other words, it is problematic to state that the outcomes of German history in the 20th century were metaphysically predestined as a result of events in the 19th century (which is often considered only to have really ended in 1914 or 1918), and that no other outcome was conceivable right from the outset. Least of all were the events of the 20th century German history grandly predestined by a sentence or two written by some German writer like Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Wagner or Nietzsche in the 18th or 19th century, though that has not stopped some retrospective prosecutors from making sensationalist proclamations to the effect that it was "obvious" that this was the case.
The above reading list is written for both historians and non-historians, but is meant especially for those in arts departments outside the history department wanting to write about things related to the Dritte Reich (Third Empire) era and its relationship to pre-20th century German philosophical thought. Too many authors assume that knowledge gleamed about the "Nazis" from pop culture suffices as the basis of their understanding, but it is an understatement to say how problematic that is. It is incredibly dubious to draw a simple straight line from something that Kant said in the Enlightenment to events involving hundreds of millions of people, and vast amounts of industrial and military infrastructure in the early 20th century. What Kant said in the Enlightenment is only understandable on the background of the historical backdrop of the Enlightenment. It is a touch anachronistic to assume that the historical background that best illuminates the writings of Kant is the post-WWI era from 1918-1945. Genuine historians know better than to try, but that won't stop non-historians blundering their way into the field writing a polemical rant trying to conjure such straight lines out of thin air.
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