Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 13:10:59 -0400
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: re: Hitler's Willing Executioners (fwd)


Jim Heartfield mentioned a couple of books on the topic of the genocide
that I thought were excellent recommendations.

1) Avram Leon: "The Jewish Question"

I remember back in 1967 just after I had joined the YSA, I asked Les Evans
(a really smart guy who has since become a pro-capitalist ideologue, if
you'll recall his views from something I cross-posted a couple of months
ago) why the Nazis carried out a genocide. It would seem that it defied a
Marxist analysis since live Jews are more exploitable than dead Jews. He
then proceeded to give me an impromptu 30 minute lecture on Leon's "The
Jewish Question." Les was really good at lecturing.

Leon defines the Jews as a people-class, that is an ethnic grouping that is
defined by having a singular relationship to the means of production. In
the case of the Jews, it was as commercial traders and shopkeepers. The
unity of national and economic characteristics explains their longevity as
a distinct people.

This identity goes back to the period of the Babylonian exile when Jewish
traders played an important role in facilitating east-west trade.
Eventually Jews migrated to Western Europe where they played an
increasingly important role as bankers and traders in the feudal system.
When capitalism took hold in Western Europe, the Christian financial
bourgeoisie regarded the Jews as rivals and found reasons to get rid of
them. Hence the Inquisition.

After the Inquisition began, the Jews took flight to Eastern Europe where
feudal property relations persisted well into the modern era. The Kingdom
of Poland, Ukraine and Byelorussia proved fertile soil for the Jewish
tradesman, tax-collector and financier who functioned in much the same way
that they did in 12th century France or Spain.

Eventually Eastern Europe began to undergo capitalist transformation and
once again the Jews were a fifth wheel. Starting in the late 1800s,
migration headed westward, particularly into Germany. The influx of Jews
came to a climax just as the time when Germany was being convulsed by the
post-WWI economic crisis. They became a scapegoat and the rest is history.


2) Arno Mayer: "Why the Heavens Did not Darken"

Mayer is a first-rate historian. An earlier book titled "The Persistence of
the Ancient Regime" tries to explain fascism as an outgrowth of lingering
feudal relations that were not expunged in the partial bourgeois
revolutions of Germany and Central Europe.

The point of "Why the Heavens Did not Darken" is to establish the
difference between the genocide and the type of antisemitism that preceded
it. He makes a convincing case that the reversals on the Eastern Front in
the ill-fated Barbarossa Campaign caused the German ruling class and the
Nazi top echelons to embark on an irrational self-destructive course. The
shock of losing important battles to the Russians and the recognition that
the Third Reich was doomed threw the state apparatus into a frenzy. In this
period, from 1943 on, a decision was made to exterminate the Jews. Mayer
argues that there was no signs of such a plan beforehand.

(I recommend the movie "Wannsee Conference" on this, by the way. It is
practically a stenographic recreation of the high-level meeting that
launched the genocide. It is basically the German high-command at a
mountaintop retreat, sitting around a big oak table discussing the
technical minutiae of organizing death camps. While this chit-chat goes on,
they eat sandwiches and pet their dogs underneath the table.  I also
strongly recommend "White Rose", a movie about the student resistance to
Hitler.)

Louis Proyect



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