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Summary: Is Jonah Goldhagen justified to label all Germans as beasts?
Review: Victor Klemperer's book is an account of an academic, a rapturous child of the Englightenment beliefs who,alas,sees the ideals of his beloved Kant and Hegel ground to ashes as Hitlerism gradually casts a bloody pall across the German landscape; a diary written as darkness descends on at noon. Klemperer's book dismisses what Goldhagen posited: that the Germans were inherently bestial. Klemperer talks of ordinary Germans cowed into fear in a society that was rabidly obsessed with Germanism: its pre-European ancestors:Aryans,Wagner,anti-Slavism,Tristan,and other glories of the Germanic ancestors. His diary is also an agonising account of life as he documents slights and insults that gradually wounds his soul. But I believe that it was the herd mentality that led to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau not inherent German anti-Semitism. What of the herd mentality? Can American condemn the Germans and still bat a blind eye to its racism a la its ghettoes,Dialou,King etc.? Can the English preen themselves while making the lives of its non-English inhabitants gloriously wretched? Can the Indians excoriate the English while maintaining their odious caste structures? Finally, was not anti-Semitism rife among the Allies? (International Herald Tribune Feb. 4, 2000)Why blame the Germans alone? Finally, why did the American government refuse to raise immigration quotas when they clearly knew what was happening in Germany? Could this be attributed to American anti-Semitism? Unlike what Goldhagen claimed, there were many acts of instances that made Klemperer's life tolerable, albeit barely. His diary also recounts the lives of peoples in the grip of an proto-Orwellian nightmare. But it was the kindness of people around him that puts to rest what Goldhagen proposed so audaciously.What of the fact that Klemperer's wife, a full blooded German, refused to submit to the purient anti-Semitism that swept Germany,indeed all of Europe? Why does American academia adopt such a "holier than thou" attitude?
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Summary: surviving with klemperer
Review: victor klemperer's diaries bring you to live with him and his wife eva in the days leading up to the second world war. his account of the need to contend with the trivia of daily life along with his intellectual's insightful understanding of the bigger picture add to the stark realism. his honesty in frequently depicting himself as less than heroic and his wry humor, most noticeable in his accounts of learning to drive make the diary believable. i look forward eagerly to the next volume
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Summary: How Germany descended into madness one step at a time
Review: You probably remember the old folk wisdom that a frog plunged into boiling water will hop out immediately, while a frog placed in cold water that is slowly heated will stay put even as it's boiled to death. The latter method was applied to Germany's Jews beginning in 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor and effectively ended the Weimar Republic overnight. Victor Klemperer, the irascible philologist who kept a diary for most of his adult life, is a most discerning frog. This volume of his diaries stretches from Hitler's ascent to power to the outbreak of World War II. During that time, Klemperer and his fellow Jews in Dresden saw their civil liberties slowly stripped away from them, along with their property and money. What makes this such a fascinating read is Klemperer himself. By turns depressed, anxious and furious, this gentle, learned man discovers that his pride in being a true German is misplaced. Although Klemperer has converted to Christianity out of sincere solidarity with what he perceives as his true culture, this does nothing to make him anything but a Jew in the eyes of National Socialism. His shock at this discovery is soon matched by a determination to outlast his tormentors or, at least, avoid a terrible fate at their hands for as long as possible. Why Germany fell prey to such atypical thuggery will remain a bone of contention for historians for centuries to come. But Victor Klemperer's diaries make it clear that, from the start, the Nazis intended to live down to their reputation. It is equally clear that, for Jew and Gentile alike, many Germans found themselves unable to fathom the evil of Hitler's regime until it was much too late. Getting to know Klemperer through his diary is an enjoyable experience. He can be short-tempered and moody, yet also sardonic and brilliantly prescient. He's human and World War II at this late remove doesn't give us too many mere humans thanks to the pain of remembrance, which too often demands heroes. Klemperer's day-to-day existence is a testament to the will to outlast and outwit evil. It is not heroic in scale, but it is honest.
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