Hitler as the Supreme Wagner Authority?

When assessing the quality of someone's interpretation of art, whether that be of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe or Wagner, it is important that this be done in a factual manner. Particularly important is whether the use of cited material and references supports the interpretation adequately. This academic rigour should be equally applicable to anyone without exception. Of particular note is that arguments from "authority" have always been regarded as specious and unacceptable. In the field of Wagner interpretation a number of authors have taken as their unwritten and unquestioned assumption that Hitler is the ultimate and supreme authority on Wagner, before whom all others must pale and quiver with awe. Anyone who questions this Supreme Authority comes under immediate attack. Today I thought I would examine the academic credibility of Hitler's authority as the supposed supreme Wagner interpreter of all time.

I searched through the whole of Mein Kampf in the original German and all I could really find were a couple of reference to Wagner. The first of these was this:

In my younger years I became a political "revolutionary", and at no less a young age also an artistic one.

In those days, the Austrian country town had a theatre that was relatively good. As a twelve-year old, I saw William Tell for the first time and a few months later, as the first opera of my life, "Lohengrin". With one stroke I was captivated. The youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth master knew no bounds. I was drawn back ever again to his works, and I consider it today as particularly fortunate that through the unassuming provincial performance, opened up the possibility of a later escalation.

P15 of Mein Kampf. Eher Verlag, Munich. My own translation. 

War ich so frühzeitig zum politischen „Revolutionär“ geworden, so nicht minder früh auch zum künstlerischen.  

Die österreichische Landeshauptstadt besaß damals ein verhältnismäßig nicht schlechtes Theater. Gespielt wurde so ziemlich alles. Mit zwölf Jahren sah ich da zum ersten Male „Wilhelm Tell“, wenige Monate darauf als erste Oper meines Lebens „Lohengrin“. Mit einem Schlage war ich gefesselt. Die jugendliche Begeisterung für den Bayreuther Meister kannte keine Grenzen. Immer wieder zog es mich zu seinen Werken, und ich empfinde es heute als besonderes Glück, daß mir durch die Bescheidenheit der provinzialen Aufführung die Möglichkeit einer späteren Steigerung erhalten blieb. 

So if you read this literally, his enthusiasm for Wagner is a nostalgic legacy of his childhood, where he gained a musical education as a choirboy. From this grew his youthful and idealist time as a struggling artist and socialist revolutionary — before his mutation into the fascist crusader in the name of God that history remembers him for.

Here is another reference to Wagner:

To these belong also the great fighters of this world, who, though not understood at present, nonetheless have carried out the fight for their ideas and ideals. They are those who some day will stand close to the heart of the people.  To these belong not only the great statesmen but also the great reformers. Alongside Frederick the Great stands also Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.

Zu ihnen aber sind zu rechnen die großen Kämpfer auf dieser Welt, die, von der Gegenwart nicht verstanden, dennoch den Streit um ihre Idee und Ideale durchzufechten bereit sind. Sie sind diejenigen, die einst am meisten dem Herzen des Volkes nahestehen werden . . . Hierzu gehören aber nicht nur die wirklich großen Staatsmänner, sondern auch alle sonstigen großen Reformatoren. Neben Friedrich dem Großen stehen hier Martin Luther sowie Richard Wagner. 

P232 of Mein Kampf. My translation. 

There are no other references to Wagner in Mein Kampf. Notice that he mentions Richard Wagner side by side with Martin Luther, but naturally most authors find it convenient to protect Luther and thereby the whole of Christianity, by deflecting the blame exclusively on Wagner. This naturally means that most people regard Wagner as being more dispensable than Christianity. Even Friedrich the Great, the third figure named, was known for his religious tolerance, his friendship with Voltaire, and for progressing the liberal cause of Jewish assimilation.

Most importantly, there are no primary source quotations or a bibliography to back up what the author of Mein Kampf claims. Certainly, he does not mention that Richard Wagner supported the idea of a "jerusalemische Reich" or a "Jerusalemic realm" ie a Zionist state. Nor does he quote the statement that Jews and gentiles "will become united and without difference" ("so sind wir einig und ununterschieden") through "assimilation".  Both are quotations from das Judentum in der Musik, where in the 1869 version the word assimilation is unambiguously used (see my previous discussions of the final paragraph of the essay as well as my overview):

An image of the word assimilation in Old German script from Wagner's 1869 version of das Judentum in der Musik

I have argued that Wagner's influence on Theodor Herzl may have given him the idea for the foundation of the Zionist state in die Judenstaat, and that Herzl, a lawyer, was in a better position to have read Wagner with greater understanding. On the other hand I strongly question whether Hitler, an art school reject*, had either the requisite degree of intelligence or education to allow him to read Wagner with any degree of meaningful comprehension.

I also looked through Hitler unpublished Second Book (Zweites Buch) from 1928 and in that book there were no references to Wagner at all. Elsewhere Hitler is often quoted to say that "whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner". I cannot find the source and context for this, but I will keep trying.

I have also tracked down the following quote, but again cannot find the original textual source or context:

the works of Wagner contain everything in them, that National Socialism strives for 

die werke wagners schließen alles in sich, was der Nationalsozialismus erstrebt

Quoted by Klaus Beekmann who cites Köhler citing Karbaum, 1976

Again, neither of these two above quotations have any primary textual citations in Wagner to back the interpretation up. It comes as little surprise that even Joachim Köhler is able to make little use of these quotes as weapons in his polemics. What Hitler really meant in these rants is truly only known to him. However, it does not stop the likes of Köhler from acting as Hitler's latter-day spokesman.

Despite suggestions by the like of Köhler that the whole of the political apparatus of the National Socialist regime functioned entirely on the writings of a nineteenth century opera composer, Hitler never quoted Wagner's prose works in his public speeches or writings. Nor does a single volume of Wagner's prose works feature in Hitler's library (see Hitler's Private Library, by Timothy Ryback, 2008). Saul Friedländer says that not a single leading figure in the Nationalist Socialist party ever quoted from Das Judenthum in der Musik, and they seem mostly oblivious of its existence. Nothing by Wagner appears on the Nazi party recommended reading list:

The Nazi party recommended reading list included Henry Ford – but absolutely nothing by Wagner

So much for the idea about the whole Dritte Reich functioning entirely on the theoretical writings or politico-operatic script written out for them to follow to the last letter by a nineteenth century opera composer.

Now I would like to return to the question as to whether Wagner was even able to read Wagner's prose works. Hitler's defenders will, of course, tell us that although he left school at 16, he was an extremely widely read autodidact with an excellent memory that could quote at will from a wide range of literature. I beg to differ with Hitler's hagiographers.

Of all the authors that mention titles of works that Hitler may have read, only August Kubizek names two texts that Hitler might have attempted to read: Das Kunstwerk und Zukunft (Artwork and the Future, 1850), and Die Kunst und die Revolution (Art and Revolution, 1849). Wagner wrote both texts in the immediate wake of his participation in the Dresden uprisings of 1849. Die Kunst und die Revolution is used by George Bernard Shaw in The Perfect Wagnerite to justify his socialist interpretation of The Ring. Das Kunstwerk und Zukunft is dedicated to the early socialist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who was also an influence on Karl Marx.

Artwork and the Future (1849) bears a dedication to Ludwig Feuerbach "in grateful reverence".
Image from original publication by Otto Wigland, Leipzig, 1850

It is quite telling that August Kubizek thought it was rather "exaggerated" when the seventeen year old Hitler's response to these writings and other quotations from letters, was always the same: "so you see, even Wagner went through it like I did". The seventeen year old Hitler had never taken up arms in a revolutionary uprising like Wagner had. Yet somehow, Hitler, always prone to autohagiography, found a way of twisting things so he could always find some sort of perverse justification of himself in them – one comprehensible only to himself.

Later, Hitler was given the perfect opportunity to follow in Wagner's footsteps when revolution broke out in the German 1918-19 November Revolution. Bizarrely enough, this is exactly what he did. On returning to Munich at the end of the war, Hitler offered his services as an ex-military man in support of the self-declared Bavarian Soviet Republic. The leader of this communist movement was the Jewish Kurt Eisner. According to Thomas Weber film footage following his assassination, Hitler can be seen wearing a black armband of mourning on one arm and a red communist armband on another.

Hitler at the funeral of the Jewish Kurt Eisner – leader of the radical left. His assassination lead to the declaration of the Bavarian Soviet Republic

In addition to this, Thomas Weber also tells us in his book Hitler's First World War that Eisner was eulogised at his funeral:

‘Kurt Eisner, the Jew, was a prophet who fought relentlessly against the fainthearted and wretched, because he not only loved mankind, but believed in it and wanted it.' While Hitler could easily have joined, for instance, the Thule Society, which had inspired Eisner's assassination and which was full of future National Socialist leaders, such as Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, or Hans Frank, Hitler chose publicly to show his support for Eisner.

Weber, p 269 

Only later did Hitler make a complete about turn to lead the counter revolutionary movement against the political left, which he pitilessly attacked as "Jewish Bolshevism". This suggests that even if Hitler did comprehend the socialist underpinnings of Wagner's theoretical writings, he later turned on them. This explains the absence of Wagner's theoretical works in Hitler's library collection as well as the total lack of quotations in his writings and speeches. However, his childhood fondness for Wagner's music remained along with the vegetarianism that he adopted from Wagner. Gone, however, was Wagner's pacifism and staunch opposition to the killing of any sentient creature that went part and parcel with the vegetarianism. Indeed, the Hitler who wrote Mein Kampf regards pacifists with the same contempt he reserves for Jews and Bolsheviks.

The main reason I question Hitler's degree of comprehension of Wagner's writing is that I would probably say that Wagner's theoretical writing are about the hardest thing I have ever read in German. In his book on Wagner's prose legacy, Josef Lehmkuhl mentions that Thomas Mann suffered greatly in trying to read him. The full irony of this will really only be appreciated by those who have ever read Thomas Mann in German. I was warned by a lecturer years decades ago that Mann was extremely difficult, but I can assure you that after having read Mann's prose writings on Wagner in German, Wagner is several times harder. Typically, Mann dismisses Wagner's prose works as "ewig rotomontierend". Ironically, I had to look up the verb "rotomontieren" in a dictionary myself. It means "showing off"!

Lehmkuhl mentions that this dense, academic style of writing was probably a "right of passage" in those days. Lehmkuhl then quotes a chunk of Hegel's Phenomenology side by side with some Wagner to demonstrate their stylistic similarities. Here was the Hegel:

Die lebendige Substanz ist ferner das Sein, welches in Wahrheit Subjekt oder, was dasselbe heißt, welches in Wahrheit wirklich ist, nur insofern sie die Bewegung des Sichselbstsetzens oder die Vermittlung des Sichanderswerdens mit sich selbst ist. Sie ist als Subjekt die reineeinfache Negativität, eben dadurch die Entzweiung des Einfachen; oder die entgegensetzende Verdopplung, welche wieder die Negation dieser gleichgültigen Verschiedenheit und ihres Gegensatzes ist: nur diese sich wiederherstellende Gleichheit oder die Reflexion im Anderssein in sich selbst - nicht eine ursprüngliche Einheit als solche oder unmittelbare als solche - ist das Wahre. Es ist das Werden seiner selbst, der Kreis, der sein Ende als seinen Zweck voraussetzt und zum Anfange hat und nur durch die Ausführung und sein Ende wirklich ist.

That was meant to be difficult? That was a walk in the park compared to Wagner. Once you understand the ground theme upon which everything else is a variation of in Hegel, he is really a surprisingly clear and easy thinker to read. Lehmkuhl then quotes the following sentence from Wagner's Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft:

Wir sehen die Zukunft immer nur mit dem Auge der Gegenwart, mit dem Auge, das alle Menschen der Zukunft immer nur nach dem Maße messen kann, das es, als Maße der gegenwärtigen Menschen, zum allgemein menschlichen Maß überhaupt macht.

I've read that sentence many times over and I still can only make partial sense of it. I would have to struggle with it for a couple of hours to fully decipher it. I know I can do it, but it takes me hours. In the time it takes me to read one essay by Wagner, I could read a book by Hegel. Nor do I usually ever have to translate text into English to make it comprensible, but I do with Wagner. I have to look up even seemingly basic words in more than a couple of dictionaries to see if he isn't using it in an obscure literary or archaic sense. I agonise over every word, every phrase, and eventually the fragments come together like a jigsaw puzzle. You would probably never know it from the English translations I present here, which I suspect some Germans would find easier to read than Wagnerese.

Now, you have seen a couple of my translations from Mein Kampf, and I can tell you that the level of complexity of prose is just kindergarten material compared to Hegel or Wagner. It takes me hardly much longer to translate as it does to type out. The plainness and bluntness of the one dimensional language reminds me a lot of George Bush II actually. I guess, politicians need to be clear and unambiguous (although admittedly overall Hitler rambles, even if individual sentences appear clear). It raises enormous doubts in my mind whether Hitler would have been able to read Wagner's formal prose works. Even a famous linguist such as Noam Chomsky has said that the writings in this tradition started by Hegel, such as the writings of Heidegger, are close to totally incomprehensible to him. Nobody who finds Hegel or Heidegger impenetrable would have a snowball's chance in hell of reading Wagner. If neither Mann nor Chomsky could manage Wagner, what chance would Hitler have had? I would say very little chance at all.

Kubizek said that Hitler would quote from Wagner's letters, but these are often written in simpler language, and nor am I aware of any precise textual citations we could examine. One letter he seems to have overlooked was this one to Angelo Neumann:

I distance myself completely from the modern "anti-Semitic" movement [of German political parties]. In an upcoming issue of der Bayreuther Blätter, a passage will appear by me ardently announces how it is quite impossible for me to be brought into association with that movement...

Der gegenwärtigen "antisemitischen" Bewegung stehe ich vollständig fern; ein nächstens in den Bayreuther Blättern erscheinender Aufsatz von mir wird dies in einer Weise bekunden, daß Geistvollen es sogar unmöglich werden dürfte, mich mit jener Bewegung in Beziehung zu bringen...

The main reason for the fact that few commentators on Wagner bother to pull out primary source material is because, like Hitler, they simply cannot read him. If Thomas Mann could hardly make head or tail out of Wagner's prose writings, I am little surprised. I suspect Adorno also gave up, because he demonstrates poor familiarity with Wagner's theoretical writings. If Adorno had properly read Wagner, he would have picked up on the fact that they belonged to the same Young Hegelian school of thought — Wagner's adoption of Schopenhauer not withstanding. Bryan Magee, who has probably studied and taught Hegel and Marx, admits in his book that he gave up completely on trying to decipher Wagner**. I suspect that George Bernard Shaw read him in German, which is why his Perfect Wagnerite is, for all its limitations, still unsurpassed as a commentary on The Ring in the English language.

The trouble is that Hitler has set a precedent for a gutter level academic standard for commentary on Wagner — a level at which the vast majority of the published Wagner literature operates. No primary source citations needed, and if you do, just quote a single phrase, or a short sentence totally out of context — Hitler doesn't even provide that. If you cannot read Wagner, then it is fine to read and attack Mein Kampf as a perfect easy-reading substitute. Compare this with the long citations of entire paragraphs of Urtext that you find in this blog, sometimes with extensive commentary justifying the English translations. These primary source citations are longer than what you find anywhere in the entire published English language literature on Wagner: longer than Shaw, Magee, Tanner etc. I can assure you I would gladly defend the accuracy of these translations down to the letter under the most vigorous cross examination in court.

Admittedly, the level of misunderstanding of Wagner is more than a little his own fault for writing in such an obscure style. However, with patience he is comprehensible and even in texts assumed by simpletons to be malicious such as das Judentum in der Musik, there is an intelligent analysis buried in there arguing the need for a dialectic overcoming of the difficulties presented by the sort of ethnic tensions that continue to burden humanity today. Just because you find that the text looks "all Greek" to you does not mean that you can then substitute the full text of Mein Kampf as a fool's alternative. Here is a bit of Plato for you:

ὄντα καὶ ὀνόματα

ΣΩ. Ὀνομάτων οὖν στασιασάντων͵ καὶ τῶν μὲν φασκόντων ἑαυτὰ εἶναι τὰ ὅμοια τῇ ἀληθείᾳ͵ τῶν δ΄ ἑαυτά͵ τίνι ἔτι διακρινοῦμεν͵ ἢ ἐπὶ τί ἐλθόντες; οὐ γάρ που ἐπὶ ὀνόματά γε ἕτερα ἄλλα τούτων· οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν͵ ἀλλὰ δῆλον ὅτι ἄλλ΄ ἄττα ζητητέα πλὴν ὀνομάτων͵ ἃ ἡμῖν ἐμφανιεῖ ἄνευ ὀνομάτων ὁπότερα τούτων ἐστὶ τἀληθῆ͵ δείξαντα δῆλον ὅτι τὴν ἀλήθειαν τῶν ὄντων. ΚΡ. Δοκεῖ μοι οὕτω. ΣΩ. Ἔστιν ἄρα͵ ὡς ἔοικεν͵ ὦ Κρατύλε͵ δυνατὸν μαθεῖν ἄνευ ὀνομάτων τὰ ὄντα͵ εἴπερ ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχει. ΚΡ. Φαίνεται. ΣΩ. Διὰ τίνος ἄλλου οὖν ἔτι προσδοκᾷς ἂν ταῦτα μαθεῖν; ἆρα δι΄ ἄλλου του ἢ οὗπερ εἰκός τε καὶ δικαιότατον͵ δι΄ ἀλλήλων γε͵ εἴ πῃ συγγενῆ ἐστιν͵ καὶ αὐτὰ δι΄ αὑτῶν; τὸ γάρ που ἕτερον ἐκείνων καὶ ἀλλοῖον ἕτερον ἄν τι καὶ ἀλλοῖον σημαίνοι ἀλλ΄ οὐκ ἐκεῖνα. ΚΡ. Ἀληθῆ μοι φαίνῃ λέγειν. ΣΩ. Ἔχε δὴ πρὸς Διός· τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα οὐ πολλάκις μέντοι ὡμολογήσαμεν τὰ καλῶς κείμενα ἐοικότα εἶναι ἐκείνοις ὧν ὀνόματα κεῖται͵ καὶ εἶναι εἰκόνας τῶν πραγμάτων; ΚΡ. Ναί. ΣΩ. Εἰ οὖν ἔστι μὲν ὅτι μάλιστα δι΄ ὀνομάτων τὰ πράγματα μανθάνειν͵ ἔστι δὲ καὶ δι΄ αὐτῶν͵ ποτέρα ἂν εἴη καλλίων καὶ σαφεστέρα ἡ μάθησις; ἐκ τῆς εἰκόνος μανθάνειν αὐτήν τε αὐτὴν εἰ καλῶς εἴκασται͵ καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἧς ἦν εἰκών͵ ἢ ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας αὐτήν τε αὐτὴν καὶ τὴν εἰκόνα αὐτῆς εἰ πρεπόντως εἴργασται; ΚΡ. Ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας μοι δοκεῖ ἀνάγκη εἶναι. ΣΩ. Ὅντινα μὲν τοίνυν τρόπον δεῖ μανθάνειν ἢ εὑρίσκειν τὰ ὄντα͵ μεῖζον ἴσως ἐστὶν ἐγνωκέναι ἢ κατ΄ ἐμὲ καὶ σέ· ἀγαπητὸν δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὁμολογήσασθαι͵ ὅτι οὐκ ἐξ ὀνομάτων ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον αὐτὰ ἐξ αὑτῶν καὶ μαθητέον καὶ ζητητέον ἢ ἐκ τῶν ὀνομάτων. ΚΡ. Φαίνεται͵ ὦ Σώκρατες.

Can't read classical Greek? Why not read Mein Kampf in English instead? Then you can attack Plato for being the original Nazi who wrote Mein Kampf. Mind you, some do just that especially when Hitler's beloved Catholic Church is based on St Peter's City of God, heavily influenced as it is by Plato's Republic. Even Pope Benedict XVI is a former member of the Hitler Youth.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Hitler's credentials as a Wagner interpreter fail to meet anywhere near anything approaching minimal academic standards. If Hitler had been nothing more than an obscure politician who attempted a failed Beer-hall Putsch and who wrote a malicious little book, we would certainly not be discussing his Wagner interpretation today. The only credential on his curriculum vitae to lend him even the slightest bit of authority as the allegedly Supreme Wagner Interpreter of All Time is therefore his murder of countless millions, which in the minds of most commentators is allowed to pass as a substitute for the missing bibliography section of Mein Kampf. What a shame that this is even allowed to be used to give even the slightest shred of credibility to his ideas. And if writers like Joachim Köhler wish to suggest that Hitler was the guardian of some sort of Satanically procured occult knowledge about Wagner, that we ordinary mortals are neither privy to nor which is open to academic scrutiny, then it really does place Köhler in the same waste basket as the populist conspiracy writers on the Occult Reich, Nazi survivalism, or those who claim that UFOs are Nazi secret weapons for their impending world-domination.

I further conclude that, when Hitler listed Wagner along with Luther in Mein Kampf as the spiritual fathers of an exterminationist anti-Semitism, he did so fully in error and in complete ignorance of the true meaning of das Judentum in der Musik, an essay fully supportive of both assimilation and Zionism (see previous posts — especially the post entitled Is Wagner the Spiritual Father of Israel?). 

The words jerusalemischen Reiches (Jersusalemic realm) taken from a scan of the 1869 version of das Judentum in der Musik

The reason this error is being deliberately and maliciously perpetuated is due to a desire to deflect the blame for the Holocaust off Luther and the Roman Catholic Church to which Hitler belonged (and on whose behalf he felt he was on a God sent mission to exterminate the Jews) and back onto the socialist and humanist Richard Wagner.

In the case of Köhler, he may also be trying to deflect blame from his and Alfred Rosenberg's beloved Nietzsche, from whom Hitler got his obsession about the Power of the Will (die Macht des Willens) – a notion that Hitler constantly ranted on about in his hectoring lectures to his generals, as the Wehrmacht suffered defeat after defeat on the Eastern front. The only reason for the losses according to Hitler was that his troops lacked the Will to Power – not because of his own inadequate military leadership.


As we explored in the last post, it is a total myth that the Holocaust was caused by atheism, humanism, or socialism, but rather it was driven by a hatred in the name of God towards atheism, humanism, and socialism, which Hitler saw as being synonymous with the Jew such as Kurt Eisner, and Rosa Luxemburg who had lead the 1918-19 German Revolution that created the Weimar Republic.

A Soviet stamp commemorating Rosa Luxemburg, Spartacist martyr of the 1918-19 revolution

Israel is highly reliant on Christian America for political support. The last thing Jews around the world would want is to wage war against both the Christian and Muslim worlds. This means that Jews are politically hemmed from launching into an attack denouncing Luther, Protestantism, or even Hitler's Roman Catholic Church, so they pick on Wagner instead as the politically softer target on whom they can vomit hatred without adverse repercussions***. Accusations of Nazism also conveniently function to suppress the socialist-anarchist dimension to the whole of Wagner's oeuvre, and act as a highly effective form of modern censorship.

Richard Wagner is the victim of a much larger political propaganda machine than that of the Nazis. The case of Wagner remains of interest precisely because the more you examine it, the more all sorts of wider issues and political intrigues come to light.






Postscript:

The most important post of this entire blog, discussing the issues raised in this post has now been released: Joachim Köhler's book Wagner's Hitler - the Prophet and his Disciple. The issues about the use of problematic primary sources when it comes to scholarly discussion of Dritte Reich era historiography is taken much further in this post. There is also discussion of problem source text not found in this post. Older posts such as this one essential do little more than function as background reading and footnotes to the main post in this blog.


Notes:

* Sir Ian Kershaw: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris. Hitler was rejected from the Vienna Art Academy.
Paperback: 912 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1ST edition (April 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393320359
ISBN-13: 978-0393320350

** As you know, I have been pretty damning of the only English translation available from Ellis (see previous posts on this). That means, if you are to read Wagner, you have to read him in German.

*** I should probably clarify this by mentioning that the rather dubious Daniel Goldhagen has written a polemical book accusing the Catholic Church of complicity with the National Socialist regime. He ends with a demand for financial restitution. The reality is that in the beginning the National Socialist tried hard to appeal to the Catholic base in Munich, where the party began. Later, as they expanded to a nation-wide movement they tried to appeal more to the Protestant majority in Germany. You can read about this in this book, which is much better balanced. I suspect that Goldhagen is targeting the Catholic Church because he lacks the courage to offend Protestant America by accusing Protestants of complicity. The Catholic Church overall has more money than the scattered Protestant denominations, and this makes the Roman church a better target to try to wringe money out of. It is unlikely that we will ever see a Goldhagen "Prophet and Disciple" book about Wagner. Not even Goldhagen is foolish enough to undermine his already tenuous academic credentials with such a reductionistic approach. He knows his academic reputation would be in tatters if he suggested that the apparatus of the National Socialist regime operated entirely on the theoretical writings of a nineteenth century opera composer. Nor is it likely that prosecuting Wagner would ever produce much in the way of money for Jewish organisations. Interestingly, Goldhagen himself is vegetarian. He rightly argues that just because Hitler was a vegetarian, it does not follow that this invalidates vegetarianism or concern for animal welfare.