Christopher Browning vs. the Nazi Opera Conspiracy Literature

Today, we are going to continue our piecemeal study of my detailed critique of Joachim Köhler's notorious Nazi opera conspiracy book, Wagner's Hitler. The problem with my full length critical study is that there is almost too much information crammed into it, so a look at smaller and more readily digestible bite sized portions of it is something many readers feeling overwhelmed by the full version might find helpful and illuminating.

One of the seminal studies on the origin of the Holocaust is Christopher Browning's book The Origins of the Final Solution.

This is a landmark text by an academic historian that is highly regarded by the mainstream of those in the profession. For anyone who wants to read a reasonably up-to-date and modern view on the subject, this book is an excellent place to start. This is the sort of literature those who have an interest in this area should be reading in place of the non-academic populist speculative literature that deals with grand conspiracies to "transform the world into a Wagnerian drama", werewolves, satanism, UFOs and all manner of nonsense.

Browning goes through what is known as the "cumulative radicalisation" of National Socialist official policy towards the Jews within the context of what is known as a moderate structuralist framework. No evidence is uncovered of a decisive "Hitler Order"—a clear command issued by the Leader to institute mass genocide. The reviewer for The Guardian certainly summarised Browning, along with the current mainstream academic consensus, well in writing:

Few historians now think Hitler ... planned the gas chambers before he even came to power. But neither do they think that struggles inside the Nazi structure led to Auschwitz almost without conscious human agency. Browning shows how the decision for total extermination was crystallised by changing circumstances, but against the background of a driving impetus to radicalise racial policy which derived ultimately from Hitler. The centre almost never issued direct orders. But local commanders, whether SS officers or administrators in occupied territory, always sensed that more extreme action on the ground would find approval above them.

If the consensus is that there existed no precisely preformed plan for genocide from before Hitler came to power, imagine how mainstream historians are going to react to a view that claims that at age seventeen the young Adolf set out on a lifelong mission to become the "executioner" obeying a orders from his "Prophet"—a nineteenth century opera composer who issued Hitler the decisive preformed command to exterminate Jews on mass as part of a secret operatic grand plan for Jewish genocide? Obviously, historians are going to merely scoff at this.

I would implore readers with little background knowledge on the current academic consensus on the origins of the Holocaust who were convinced that Köhler's wild speculations could only be incontestable truths to compare Köhler's theories to those of a recognised specialist in the field like Browning. For example, Anne Midgette reviewing Köhler's book for the New York Times, wrote:

Joachim Köhler’s chilling and exhaustively researched book “Wagner’s Hitler:  The Prophet and His Disciple”, ... makes a persuasive case for its thesis that Hitler based his entire philosophy and the whole Nazi apparatus on ideas explicitly drawn from Wagner’s writings and operas.  

Midgette: New York Times, 14th October 2001

However, Midgette is a music journalist who clearly lacks an educated background in Holocaust studies. She can hardly be considered a credible historian in any position to write on the subject. I have collected as many qualified opinions on Köhler's book in my critical review as I could find, and readers are asked to compare Midgette's review with theirs.

I have also read through Browning's immensely authoritative book and have done an eBook based electronic search of the whole book looking for the name "Wagner". Nowhere in the book does Browning ever bother to mention Richard Wagner's name even a single time, let alone point the finger of blame for the origin of the Final Solution at either him or any other opera composer. The yawning gulf between mainstream academic historiography and the Nazi opera conspiracy literature is simply vast. It is almost mind boggling to think how you can get from a state where Richard Wagner is not so much as mentioned once to Wagner being single handedly made responsible in toto for the entire origin of the Final Solution. The Final Solution is not only turned into a preformed grand plan originating from Hitler well before his rise to power, but one that originated fully formed almost a century prior to the Holocaust in the writings of a nineteenth century opera composer.

For those interested in the details of whether such a perfectly preformed grand conspiracy to "transform the world into a Wagnerian drama" ever existed, I suggest that they read through my full critical analysis of Köhler's Nazi opera conspiracy book. Readers will find that Browning is hardly an exception, as I cite a whole legion of leading academic authorities who similarly discredit the Nazi opera conspiracy thesis. As for Köhler, even he could no longer maintain the farce and has retracted his claims, yet "countless exaggerated articles on WagnerHitler" (to quote Peter Viereck) continue to be published in which similar ideas are virtually taken for granted by ignorant non-historians for being an incontestable fact. It is high time that this changed.

In the end, my lengthy critique of the Nazi opera conspiracy theory should be read as a heartfelt plea to stick to reading the peer reviewed academic literature from recognised specialists in the field. There are those who claim that debunking Nazi opera conspiracy theories is unethical because it would insult the memory of the victims of the National Socialist regime. Far from it, if there is anything gravely insulting to the memory of the victims of fascism it is using the Holocaust to peddle frightfully misleading fairy tales that fly in the face of our current academic peer reviewed understanding of the origins of the Final Solution, as meticulously pieced together after decades of intensive research.