Review Essay

THE NAZIS AND THE HOLOCAUST: IS CULTURETO BLAME ?

STEVEN COHEN Tufts University

Aschheim, Steven E. Culture and Catastrophe: German and Jewish Confrontations with National Socialism and Other Crises. New Y ork: New York University Press, 1996. Pp. x + 210. $40.00 cloth.

Hamann, Brigitte. Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship. Trans. Thomas Thornton. Oxford England: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. viii + 482 + illustrations. $35.00 cloth.

Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle With T ruth. New Y ork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Pp. xii + 757 + illustrations. $35.00 cloth. *

ne of the highlights for me of walking through a fair or on the board- Owalk of a seaside resort or through the new Times Square is to see the people who draw sketches and caricatures of my fellow wanderers. In a few brief seconds and with an economy of strokes, these artists can capture an aspect of their subject. They are exciting to watch work, and the likenesses are immensely satisfying - at least in the short run. What the caricaturists can’t do, however, is give a full portrait. It is not their job, because that takes a long time and demands more than a quick sitting. The artist needs time to unravel the subject; the subject, in turn, will only be understood after repeated viewings from different angles. Only then will the ambiguities and complexities of the subject be revealed, and full portraits emerge. The caricature is an hors d’oeuvre ; the portrait, on the other hand, is a feast. As the twentieth century hurried toward its conclusion last year, lists of pivotal events, notable people, and influential movements multiplied. Magazines, newspapers, and scholars have provided them, and nearly every- one discussed them. The Nazis have made every list. Over sixty years after

the beginning of their war, every aspect of that political party, the move- ment it emerged from, and those who led it have continued to be the focus of popular interest - and scholarly attention. The lists are, by necessity, a caricature of the history. They show the highlights but can’t start to explain their meanings. The familiar questions continue to haunt us and still demand serious attention. How did the Nazis take over a country? Did they bend a people to their will or did they express the innermost feelings of a nation? W as it Hitler who was responsible for everything? W as it “ The Party” that caused all the trouble? Was it the result of “The War?” Or was it German “Kultur” that provided the impetus behind Nazism? *

ulture is easier to caricature than to define. Raymond Williams, a Cwell-known explainer of culture, has conceded that it “is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (Williams 76). As if to illustrate this point, The American Heritage Dictionary offers this all- encompassing definition: “ The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or population” ( American Heritage Dictionary 418). Culture, therefore, would appear to be everything in a society. But if it is everything, then is it saying anything to argue that a culture caused a certain event to happen? What does Niall Ferguson mean, for instance, when he begins the first chapter of his popular and controversial new analysis of the First World War by saying that “it is often asserted that the First World War was caused by culture: to be precise, the culture of militarism, which is said to have prepared men so well for war that they yearned for it” (Ferguson 1)? The works treated in this review have looked at culture in complex and serious ways. Steven Aschheim’s Culture and Catastrophe is a fitting place to begin. In the title essay in this collection, Aschheim recognizes the ambivalent nature of the term. He points out that Jean Amery, a Holocaust survivor who wrote At The Mind’s Limits , complained that German culture belonged to the S.S., not to Jews. Yet Primo Levi, another Holocaust survivor (in fact, an Auschwitz survivor who was in that camp at the same time as Amery), argued that it was actually culture that kept him alive there. Was culture, therefore, part of the problem or part of the solution? Did it mean different things to different people? Was it complicit in mass murder or does it have the means of saving us from the repetition of that deed?

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