Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, & Culture - On the Ideology of the Incomprehensibility of Nazism

Seventy-five years after the taking of power by the National Socialists in Germany the phenomena of the party led by Hitler and the enormous destruction wrought by his movement in the space of just over a decade still remain a source of mystery for many commentators.

In its special edition to mark the anniversary of the Nazi takeover (14 January 2008), the prominent German news magazine Der Spiegel headlined its main article “The Triumph of Madness.”

Writing in the January 24 edition of the London Book Review the veteran Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm struck a similar note: “The fact is that no one, right, left or centre, got the true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism, a movement of a kind that had not been seen before and whose aims were rationally unimaginable ...”

There can be no doubt that Hitler fascism was responsible for a degree of human depravation and brutality which quite rightly continues to shock and horrify today, but that does not mean his movement was incomprehensible. In fact, there has been a great deal of scholarship in recent years that has thrown important new light on the emergence and rise to prominence of National Socialism.

Utilising new sources, including important archives opened up by the fall of Stalinism in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, the British historians Ian Kershaw and Richard Evans have both published multi-volume works which considerably broaden our understanding of the social and political background to Hitler’s own rise to power—Kershaw’s two-volume biography of the dictator (Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris, and Hitler: 1936-1945: Nemesis) and the three volumes by Richard J. Evans on the Third Reich (the third volume of the series is still to be completed).

A third very valuable contribution to the current wave of research into National Socialism is the volume by a British historian based at Cambridge University, Adam Tooze—The Wages Of Destruction, which is now available in German translation. In his book Tooze sets out to identify and examine the economic driving forces behind the National Socialist project and in so doing presents the first extensive investigation of this type for many decades. (From : Hitler’s “intelligible response” to the contradictions of global capitalism The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze a Review by Stefan Steinberg.)

There are ideological reasons to insist on the incomprehensibility of the rise of Nazism. But first let me state some of my assumptions about the intelligibility of history.

I assume, that as much as human actions are comprehensible to everyday reason, so are the actions of the Nazis and their minions. I also assume that as much as human history is comsprehensible, if not knowable in every detail, that the historical period of the rise of fasicsm and its consequences is also comprehensible. I do not assume that there can be scientific theories of human choice or of human history. Intelligibility does not necessarily imply a high level of certainty. But the limit of scientific theories, and the declining scale of certitude, does not imply some mystical "unknowability" about human actions. Human historical actions are comprehensible in "everyday ways" through rational thought, empathy, collective historical work, and hard work. I will not argue these assumptions here, but simply move on to what interests me, the ideological reasons for arguing that Nazism and its consequenses are "incomprehensible" and "exceptional."

There are many non-historians, "philosophers," and even a few historians who basically propound the idea that the rise of Nazism, and the atrocities committed by the Naziis, are in essence exceptional and fundamentally unknowable. The ideological point of such notions is that fundamentally unknowable and essentially exceptional phenomena cannot be compared with what is happening in the world made by our actions. Thus we can distance great atrocities from ourselves.

Another effect of such notions is that the very act of comparison between the rise of Nazism, along with the atrocities committed in its name, and current events becomes "empty" and without significance. The act of comparison between Nazisim and anything else becomes something either "unserious," "disgusting", or an indication that you are referring to the irresolveable "problem of evil." Such comparisons then end up denoting nothing, only connoting anger. A comparison with Nazi atrocities becomes like yelling curse words at the top of your lungs. Such yelling will have the connotation of anger but will have little, if any, denotation that you can relate to others

The so-called "problem of evil" is a problem mostly because we refuse to look at ourselves (our own actions and responsibilities) in analogous situations. If we make "evil" something mystical and supernatural it is much easier to avoid responsibility for how we, as citizens, contribute to situations where atrocities occur. I don't mean in this case atrocities committed by "them" or be "bad apples," I mean the atrocities that we commit in the world simply by doing what our nation-state does. There are direct atrocities, such as those that have occurred in Central America where the U.S. and its clients murdered hundreds of thousands, many simply dumped in mass graves. These atrocities, which were committed through our government in our name we have never attempted to rectify.

There are also more "indirect" atrocities that are consequences of the actions of the business institutions that mostly rule our foreign policy. I am not here writing about the obvious fact of wars and invasions that by any interpretation of international law should be prosecuted as war crimes. I have in mind everyday consequences of economic decisions. For instance, it is the policy of the U.S. that small countries in South and Central America should focus on export of commodities to the U.S. In practice this often means the shift of population from subsistence farming, where most resources are directed to feeding the family and neighborhood, to farming for export. (An unintended consequence of this policy is that the best export crops are often those that are refined into legal or illegal drugs, cocoa for cocaine, poppies for opium, grapes for wine, coffee beans for coffee, etc.) This also leads to a greater consolidation of land into the hands of the few who are often connected to foreign corporations. Another consequence is a loss of open access to local resources such as water for drinking. But the biggest consequence is the fluctuation of the availability of food. With subsistence farming, the farming family is usually guaranteed a bare minimum of food for survival. With the switch to export commodities the small farmer must have money to obtain food and this means he is at the mercy of the price of commodities. Decisions made in the markets in Chicago can cause the deprivation of food for thousands across the world. A corporation that does not make as great of a profit off of coffee this year can wait to next year to improve its situation. But a farmer cannot tell his or her children; "The price of coffee has fallen at the town market therefore we can't eat this winter."

My point here is not to make a one-to-one comparison between Nazism and this kind of economic imperialism. But it is to point out that one of the consequences of making "evil" an unsolvable "problem," and then pointing to areas of human history where evil reached "incomprehensible" proportions, is to allow ourselves not to see the consequences of our own decisions in the here and now as "evil". The reasoning goes something like this: "Our" decisions, whether good or bad, are comprehensible and normal, and since "evil" is incomprehensible and abnormal, our decisions cannot be "evil" by definition. Such reasoning allows us not to judge the decisions made in our system of society by their consequences, but only by their subjective "normality". We allow ourselves not to see the system of decisions that leads to atrocities. We don't have to see and we don't have to know about the atrocious consequences of the decisions made here as long as such atrocious things are not happening to us or do not come back to hurt us.

Jerry Monaco