The article states that the author, Justin Reynolds, is a "designer and writer". He clearly has a literary background, but with precious little knowledge about the history of the Dritte Reich era or the Holocaust. That results in him actually taking antiquated novelistic treatments of the era from Thomas Mann seriously while ignoring the vast modern academic literature on this period. This literature is growing so large, and so quickly, that even historians specialising in this field complain that it is difficult to keep up. The flood of new works is just overwhelming. But that is no excuse to ignore it while regressing to a perspective of the field dating from the 1940s.
I am just going to focus on a single problem phrase in the Reynolds article:
The Nazis used Wagner’s word for annihilation – Vernichtung – to refer to the removal of the Jews.
This is an extraordinarily daring claim indeed, one, which if true, would totally and utterly overturn the entire field of Holocaust studies as it stands today. It is so astonishing an assertion that it demands a bibliographic citation—which, it unsurprisingly lacks. The complete Urtext of Wagner's essay on the "Jewish Question" can be found here. I suggest using your word finder to look for the word Vernichtung in German. You will not find it in there. You will instead find the term Selbstvernichtung meaning self-annihilation. It means something entirely different. However, the word Vernichtung can be found in the essay on the "Jewish Question" by Karl Marx, the full text of which can be found here. Use the word finder to locate the word in the essay and run it through Google translator. In both cases, whether Marx or Wagner's, the word Vernichtung is not used to denote anything like a call for genocide. However, an electronic word-based search through a German edition of the complete Shakespeare (much celebrated in the Dritte Reich as the creator of Shylock) also turned up 27 hits to the word Vernichtung. A digital search through the Schlater 2000 German translation of the Bible turned up 8 hits to the world Vernichtung. There are three occurrences of the word Vernichtung in the Complete Works of Martin Luther as well as over 60 hits to the word Ausrottung (also used in place of Vernichtung by Hitler in other speeches) e.g. this speech on the 8th of November, 1942:
If Judaism imagines that it can bring about an international world war to eradicate the European races, then the result will not be the extermination [Ausrottung] of the European races, but the extermination [Ausrottung] of Judaism in Europe. They always laughed at me as prophets. Of those who laughed at the time, countless people no longer laugh today. Those who are still laughing will perhaps soon no longer laugh. This wave will spread beyond Europe across the world. International Jewery will be recognized in all its demonic danger.
Wenn das Judentum sich etwa einbildet, einen internationalen Weltkrieg zur Ausrottung der europäischen Rassen herbeiführen zu können, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die Ausrottung der europäischen Rassen, sondern die Ausrottung des Judentums in Europa sein. Sie haben mich immer als Propheten ausgelacht. Von denen, die damals lachten, lachen heute unzählige nicht mehr. Die jetzt noch lachen, werden in einiger Zeit vielleicht auch nicht mehr lachen. Diese Welle wird sich über Europa hinaus über die ganze Welt verbreiten. Das internationale Judentum wird in seiner ganzen dämonischen Gefahr erkannt werden.
Hitler, Adolf. ADOLF HITLER REDEN: 1925 - 1945 (German Edition) (Kindle Locations 19395-19400). Kindle Edition.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that Hitler's speech given in the Reichstag on either the 30th of January of 1939 or 8th of November 1942 contained a reference to the Bible, Shakespeare, Marx, Luther, or Wagner. Nor does merely saying so make this true. It needs proof if such a speculative connection is not to be laughed out of court. Here is the original 30th of January 1939 version of the quote:
If international finance Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in once again plunging the nations into a world war, then the result will not be the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation [Vernichtung] of the Jewish race in Europe!
Wenn es dem internationalen Finanzjudentum in und außerhalb Europas gelingen sollte, die Völker noch einmal in einen Weltkrieg zu stürzen, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht der Sieg des Judentums sein, sondern die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa!
Hitler: Reichstag speech, 30th of January, 1939
What Reynolds seems blissfully unaware of is that this passage has been picked over and analysed to death by innumerable historians since 1945. I would point readers in particular to a book by Sir Ian Kershaw Hitler's Prophecy and the Final Solution that deals almost exclusively with this quote, its meaning and its ramifications to the origins of the Final Solution. Different interpretations of this quote proposed over the years by different historians are all analysed in detail. And—no!—nobody has ever suggested it contains a quote from a nineteenth-century opera composer. I would also point to two other key recent monographs on the Final Solution that help to illuminate the quote. The first is Holocaust by Peter Longerich. The second is Final Solution by David Cesarani.
Another source that is easy for the reader to pick through is Raul Hilberg's monumental three-volume study, The Destruction of the European Jews:
The Destruction of the European Jews: Volume I
The Destruction of the European Jews: Volume II
The Destruction of the European Jews: Volume III
Using the links provided, you can conduct your own word-based search through each volume. Look up the word annihilation (or synonyms) and you will simply find nothing in there about Wagner. In fact, Wagner's name is not mentioned a single time in any of the three volumes. Neither does the above-cited work by Kershaw mention Wagner's name—and nor does the Cesarani or the Longerich. While Hilberg's study, the longest single-author monograph on the Holocaust to have been published to date, is now over a decade old in its final edition, and although, like any other work on the subject, it is not considered definitive, the very fact that the doyen of Holocaust Studies himself treats the claims to there being an operatic link with dismissive disdain should at least make the reader think twice about making such surprising proclamations. It seems a fairly drastic leap to go from a stance where Wagner's name isn't even worth even a single mention in the course of a 1388 page study of the Holocaust to which Hilberg devoted his entire lifetime, to one where Wagner becomes the singular cause of an event that happened over a half-century after his death.
It is not just about cherry-picking a couple of supposedly "trivial" studies by what are actually key studies from major authorities such as Hilberg, Kershaw, Cesarani, and Longerich. I could give the reader a list of more than fifty major historiographic studies of the Holocaust and Dritte Reich era which further fail to corroborate the claim that the Final Solution had anything to do with a nineteenth-century opera composer who died a half-century before the rise to power of the National Socialist regime in 1933. Has Justin Reynolds read even a single one of these studies? One suspects not. It is always easy to make sweeping claims writing in a vacuum about a subject one has never properly researched. The less the knowledge, the greater the certitude. Nor can nuance be dismissed as a form of obscurantism, because events involving many millions of people are invariably complex and endlessly nuanced. Such events are not caused by a single word written by an opera composer in the 1840s, and who was long dead when the crime was committed in the 1930-40s. That is why to make the astonishingly audacious claim that Hitler's 1939 speech contained a reference to a dead opera composer to whom he was blindly beholden is to declare war on the entire modern academic literature on the Shoah.
Some allege that a bellicose trumpeting of an operatic link to the Shoah is important because millions were murdered. However, the fact that it was such a shockingly large-scale crime means that showing respect to the victims makes it even more important to approach it in an evidence-based manner that is academically and forensically credible rather than perpetuating emotionally-charged hearsay and rumour in the manner of tabloid journalism. If it is true that the reputation of a single opera composer in the face of history means absolutely nothing compared to such events, respect for the six million murdered in the Shoah, however, does remain of tantamount importance. For spreading emotively charged misinformation on the Shoah is the last thing that one could call respect for its victims.
I appreciate that the trolls will soon be out in force insisting that denying that a nineteenth-century opera composer ordered Hitler to commit genocide is "Holocaust denialism". That would make the most respected Holocaust scholars including the Jewish scholars, Professors Raul Hilberg and Saul Friedländer, "Holocaust deniers" who oddly write large multi-volume monographs on the systematic murder of six million Jews. Once again, readers are asked to read credible studies of the Shoah by respected scholars rather than sensationalised nonsense blaming Martin Luther or Richard Wagner. Readers are strongly encouraged to go to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Institute website, which offers excellent online educational courses on the history and origins of the Final Solution.
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| The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial |
And, no, for the sake of those trolls who still insist on accusing me of Holocaust denialism, Yad Vashem is not an institute promoting Holocaust denialism, but on the contrary, it is the most sacred of all of the Holocaust memorial sites. Please show some respect and decency.
Post-script: For a more in-depth discussion please read my very long article analysing Joachim Köhler's book.
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