p. 369. “I think he was a true believer.” Browning, interview with author.
p. 370. “the recent article by Peter Witte . . .” Witte, “Two Decisions.”
p. 373. “In her important . . . study.” Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews.
p. 373. “She finds Hitler using ‘esoteric language.’” Ibid., p. 151ff.
p. 374. “an English major who read Wordsworth . . .” Diane Cole, interview with Lucy Dawidowicz, Present Tense, autumn 1983, pp. 22–25.
p. 376. “The Final Solution had its origins . . .” Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p. 150.
p. 376. “How does one advocate publicly . . .” Ibid., p. 151.
p. 378. “the comment Hitler made to one Josef Hell.” Cited in Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 116n, from notes by Hell in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, ZS 640, folio 6. Hell’s description of Hitler’s vision of his plans is worth quoting at length as a counterweight to those who argue that Jew-hatred was a secondary or tactical matter for Hitler: “If I am ever really in power,” he told Hell, “the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. . . . I shall have gallows after gallows erected. . . . the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. . . . As soon as they are untied the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew . . . is exterminated.”
p. 379. “Hitler’s oratorical talents and anti-Semitic presentations . . .” Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p. 151.
p. 379. “the code words he used for Jews . . .” Ibid., p. 152.
p. 380. “her friend and colleague . . . Ruth Wisse, pointed out.” Ruth Wisse, interview with author.
p. 380. “She begins her analysis.” Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, pp. 152ff.
p. 380. “1919 letter to a Munich man.” Ibid., pp. 16–17.
p. 381. “In August 1920 . . . Hitler told an audience.” Hitler, “Why Are We Anti-Semites,” cited and discussed in ibid., pp. 17–20.
p. 381. “she cites an April 1922 speech.” Ibid., p. 154.
p. 381. “She understood, as a historian.” Ruth Wisse, letter to author.
p. 381. “Consider a fascinating address Hitler made.” Ibid., p. 93.
p. 382. “her literary executor Neal Kozodoy.” Neal Kozodoy, telephone conversation with author.
p. 383. “Dawidowicz puts Kristallnacht in the context.” Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p. 93.
p. 383. “A seventeen-year-old Polish Jewish student.” For an important sympathetic reconsideration of Herschel Grynszpan’s role, see Michael Marrus, “The Strange Story of Herschel Grynszpan,” American Scholar 57.1 (Winter 1988): 69–79.
p. 384. “a little-known private declaration.” Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p. 106, citing Hans Bucheim in Helmut Krausnick et al., Anatomy of the SS State, p. 44.
p. 384. “A.J.P. Taylor’s book.” A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War [1961] (New York: Macmillan, 1982).
p. 385. “his ‘declaration of war against the Jews.’” Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p. 106.
p. 386. “an absolutely . . . fascinating . . . footnote.” Ibid., pp. 110–11n.
p. 386. “on January 30, 1941, Hitler told an audience.” The following Hitler speech extracts are all from ibid.
p. 391. “in Himmelfarb’s colorful phrase.” Milton Himmelfarb, interview with author.
p. 392. “Robert Conquest’s . . . account of Stalin’s crimes.” Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
p. 392. “just feels worse.” Robert Conquest, telephone conversation with author, citing a remark he originally made to a French newspaper.
p. 392. “The reason people refused to see Stalin.” Himmelfarb, interview with author.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My father died in 1990, before this book took its final form, but it was something he disclosed to me several years earlier that might have, as much as anything else, set me on the path I’ve taken. His parents were Hungarian Jews who came to America before the First World War. The Holocaust was something he rarely if ever spoke of. Few did in the fifties and sixties when I was growing up in suburbia. But at a family gathering late in 1982, not long before a stroke incapacitated him, he told me something that surprised and puzzled me: a cousin from a French branch of his family had died in the Nazi genocide. This puzzled me in two ways: why hadn’t he mentioned it before; and why did he mention it then? A mystery I never really resolved. Not that the tenuous family connection should have made a difference, but I think it did mark a moment when I came to feel that all Hitler’s victims were, in a sense, part of my (very) extended family. And at a time in my life when I felt somewhat adrift both as a person and a writer, in retrospect my father’s words surely played a role in my decision to begin investigating the man who murdered them. But even if it hadn’t, I’d want to pay tribute to that gentle man Henry Rosenbaum with his unique sense of humor, of melancholy and absurdity, for all he’s meant to my life. And I’d like to thank as well my mother, Evelyn, indefatigable spark plug and beloved teacher, for putting up with both of us with grace and tolerance. I owe an immense, immeasurable debt of gratitude and love to my sister, Ruth, without whose moral support, wisdom, and advice I could not have survived the crises that plagued me while working on this book.
I began discussing writing something about this question more than a dozen years ago with Kathy Robbins. Through every week of every month of that time, through every permutation in the evolution of the eventual book, through every other writing project I’ve engaged in, she has been a rock and a jewel. An absolutely invaluable presence of matchless clarity, intelligence, and fierce integrity: thoughtful, tough minded, and tender hearted. I can never thank her enough. I’d also like to thank the many bright and talented people who have worked for her and on my behalf over the years, including the current sterling crew of Bill Clegg, David Halpern, Elizabeth Oldroyd, Rick Pappas, Chlöe Sladden, Robert Simpson, and Cory Wickwire.
Ever since my first conversation with Harry Evans about this book, I’ve felt I’ve been in good hands. I’m grateful to Harry for his infectious enthusiasm and his critical intelligence and to his impressive successor, Ann Godoff, for the support she’s shown for the book throughout the process of bringing it to publication.
I owe a special debt to my editor, Jonathan Karp, without whose intelligence and discernment I could not have seen my way through the unique challenges a subject like this presents. He’s the kind of editor every writer hopes to find, one who really cares about writing and one whose dedication was both inspiring and calming. Thanks as well to his assistant, Monica Gomez, for all her help.
I feel much gratitude as well for the care with which Benjamin Dreyer, Random House production editor, shepherded the manuscript through the system, and I was especially fortunate to have in Timothy Mennel a copy editor who went beyond the call of duty in his attentiveness, acuity, and erudition. Thanks as well to managing editor Amy Edelman for her enthusiasm.
I also want to thank my English editor, Clare Alexander, at Macmillan; her early enthusiasm for my manuscript made a world of difference to me.
Another important point in the process for me was the publication of a fifteen-thousand-word excerpt from my work in progress in The New Yorker in 1995, and I’d like to thank the people there, beginning with Tina Brown, who took the time to carefully read the twenty-thousand-word chunk of manuscript from which the excerpt was carved. Robert Vare, my editor there, was both insightful and relentless in raising the draft to another level. Thanks also to some of the others there who made a difference, including the famous Miss Gould (whose copyediting proof I still treasure), to Virginia Cannon and Rick Hertzberg, to Peter Canby, Emily Eakin, and Liesel Schillinger.
In Vienna and Munich, I was blessed by finding two young scholars, Waltraud Kolb and Alexander Stengel, respectively, whose research and translation efforts made an extraordinary contribution to my book and
who compensated for my less-than-successful struggle with the German language.
I’d like to mention as well a number of people who were particularly important in the evolution of the book from its early stages. Robert Silvers’s critical comments about an early draft of an essay on the ancestry question was an important catalyst in shifting my focus from the perhaps irretrievable Ultimate Explanation to the agendas and obsessions of the explainers. Nan Graham’s belief in the idea for this book, when she was my editor at Viking, was important, even though we both ended up elsewhere. Tom Powers’s encouragement of the kind of investigation into the meanings projected upon uncertainty and ambiguity in historiography was vital in giving me the confidence to take on the uncertainties embedded in the Hitler question. The encouragement I got from Jack Rosenthal and his colleagues at The New York Times Magazine to spend nearly a year exploring the question of what we mean when we use the word evil was of crucial importance. I’m grateful as well to three people—Alfred Kazin, Cynthia Ozick, and Frederick Crews—to whom I sent an earlier version of the manuscript and whose challenging comments and criticisms were helpful in clarifying and improving it (although they should in no way be held responsible for the ultimate result).
For research and fact checking, I have benefited from the hard work and persistence of a number of people over the years, including Elise Ackerman, Peter Wells, Bonnie Pfister, Anne Gilbert, Jill Tolan, and, in supervising the final stages of the fact checking, Mervyn Keizer. Any errors that may have slipped through their nets are my responsibility.
Now comes what is both the most pleasurable and the most terrifying section of any acknowledgments. Pleasurable because it gives me a chance to express some slight measure of the gratitude due to a wide array of friends and colleagues and others who have helped me in all sorts of ways in the course of writing this book. Terrifying because I’ve been working on this book so long, and I’ve benefited from so many, I fear I might foolishly neglect to name some people, and so I preemptively ask the forgiveness of those unintentionally slighted.
But to begin with, Betsy Carter and Gary Hoenig, and proceeding in random order, Helen Rogan and Alfred Gingold, Stanley Mieses, Anne and Michael Mandelbaum, Richard Ben Cramer and Carolyn White, Liz Hecht, Michael Berger, Kathy Rich, Errol Morris, Dan Kornstein, Larissa MacFarquhar, Craig and Allison Karpel, Susan Kamil, the late Duncan Stalker, my godmother, Hortense Greenberg, Sheldon Piekny, Boris Piekny, Katie Karlovitz, Peter Kaplan, Noah Kimerling, George Dolger, David Livingstone, Linda Healy, Ed Fancher, the late Dan Wolf, Clio Morgan, John Roche, Dr. Reinhard Weber at the Bavarian State Archives, Gail Ganz of the Anti-Defamation League, Louise Jones at the Yale Club library, Sarah Kernochan, Michael Caruso, Deirdre Dolan, Nancy Donahoe, Steven Weisman, Caroline Marshall, Virginia Heffernan, the late Veronica Geng, Arthur Carter, Steven Varni and Jeannette Watson of the late great Books and Company, my childhood pals Richard Spivak and Richard Molyneux, my college buddies Richard Burling and Richard Bell, Amy Gutmann, Judi Hoffman, Glenn and Georgia Greenberg, Steve and Myrna Greenberg, Deb Friedman, Jay Matlick, Faye Beckerman for taking care of Smooch and Stumpy, Cynthia Cotts, Abbie Ehrlich, the guys in my once-regular poker game (David Hirshey, Gil Schwartz, Peter Herbst, David Blum, Michael Hirschorn, Bob Asahina, Gene Stone), Jesse Sheidlower and Elizabeth Bogner, Adrienne Miller, David Granger, Cheryl Tanenbaum, Virginia Wing, Lauren Thierry, Jim Watkins, Carole Ann Smith, Mike Drosnin, Liz Ferris, Richard Horowitz, and Dora Steinberg.
Extra special thanks to Marianne Macy.
Finally, I want to express my appreciation to all those I interviewed and consulted for the time they spent talking to me on this difficult subject, and I want to express my admiration for those writers and thinkers, even those I’ve been critical of, for their courage and dedication in taking up the impossible challenge of explaining Hitler.
Acknowledgements for the Updated Edition
I’d like to thank Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld who suggested the need for a new edition, David Halpern for acting upon it with speed and dexterity, Robert Pigeon, my editor at Da Capo Press, for his valuable suggestions on the new material, Amber Morris for her production skills, Christine Arden for her deft copyediting touch, and Justin Lovell, a part of the team. And—I don’t care if I’m repeating here—the great Harry Evans for commissioning the book in the first place.
INDEX
Abend, Der, 109
Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Lang), 208–9
Acta Psychiatrica, xxxiii
Action Report, 234
“Adolf Hitler” (Alois Hitler, Jr.), 183
“Adolf Hitler, Traitor” (Nazi Party), 39
Adorno, Theodor, 253
After Babel (Steiner), 304
Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (Sereny), 222
American Imago, 258–59
American Jewry and the Holocaust (Bauer), 280
American Monthly, 168
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, The (Fromm), xxxii
Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 240
Anna (Raubal’s niece), 123–26
Anti-Defamation League, 177
anti-Semitism, xiii, xiv, 172, 304, 353
Austrian, 302, 347–48
blackmail culture and, 51
blood-libel and, 325, 328
borderland effect and, 347
Christian, 339–41, 352
Christian doctrine and, 322–23
eliminationist, see eliminationist anti-Semitism
French, 302, 334, 345
hatred and, 187–89, 190, 198, 316
Judaic standards and, 333–34
in literature, 323–24
post-Christian, 328
Protocols of the Elders of Zion and, 55–57
as racial vs. religious, 315–16
“redemptive,” 352
sexual pathology and, 137–39, 151
see also Hitler, Adolf, anti-Semitism of
Architect of Genocide, The (Breitman), 174, 353
Architecture of Doom, The (film), 217
Arendt, Hannah, 216, 287, 291, 339, 340, 395
Aretin, Erwin von, xliii, xliii–xliv, 162
Aretin, Karl-Ottmar Freiherr von, xliii
Argentina, 223–24
argumentum ad Hitlerum, xxii
Aristotle, 83
Association for Applied Psychoanalysis, 258
atomic bomb, 180
Auer, Erhard, 42
Aufbau, 157–58
Augustine, Saint, 329
Auschwitz, 38, 75, 215, 217, 218, 232, 234, 262, 268, 291, 314–15
“bearers of secrets” in, 270
fictive “work battalions” at, 285–86
God’s presence and, 284
Levi’s “no why here” experience at, 252, 265–66, 275–76
see also Final Solution; Holocaust
Austria, 147
Anschluss of, 50
anti-Semitism of, 302, 347–48
Baeck, Leo, 334–35
Bainbridge, Beryl, 317
Barbie, Klaus, 262
Bauer, Yehuda, vii, xv, xxi, xxiv, xl, 85, 94, 259, 261, 263–64, 279–85, 298, 352, 356, 359, 364, 367, 393
God-is-Satan-or-nebbish syllogism of, 283–85, 295–96
Goldhagen criticized by, 344–36
mystifiers opposed by, 281–82, 284
theodicy problem and, 283–85
work of, 280–81
Baumann, Emil, 182–83
Beauvoir, Simone de, 254
Belloc, Hilaire, 323
Berlin, Isaiah, 7, 347
Bernadotte, Folke, 63
Bernstein, Michael André, xvii, xli, 240–41
Bezymenski, Lev, 80
Binion, Rudolph, xliv, 131, 146, 147, 239, 260, 264–65
background of, 239–42
iodoform gauze research of, 246, 248–49
on Jewish doctor episode, 242–48
John Kafka and, 245–46, 247–50
Lanzmann’s criticism of, 242, 255–57, 264
&n
bsp; Black Front, 133
Blake, William, 68, 311
Bloch, Eduard, xxxv, 146–49
Klara Hitler as treated by, 243–49
Bloch, Gertrude, 146, 249
Blomberg, Werner von, 50
Blondi (Hitler’s dog), 203, 206
Blood Purge of 1934, xxvi, 198
Blos, Peter, 142
Bohr, Niels, 135
Bormann, Frau, 74
Bormann, Martin, 72, 74, 202, 205, 206
Brauchitsch, Walther von, 50
Braun, Eva, 110, 127, 137, 192–93, 203, 206, 207
death of, 79–80
Hitler’s marriage to, 290
Braun sisters, 122
Breitman, Richard, 174–76, 352–53, 364
Broder, Henryk, 355–56
Bromberg, Norbert, 29, 137–40, 142–43, 150
Browning, Christopher, xii, xiv, 94, 366, 374, 377, 389
Goldhagen criticized by, 346, 362–64
“Hamlet Hitler” view of, 369–73
Buber, Martin, 291
Buchanan, Pat, 326
Buchenwald, 235
Buddhism, 333
Bulger, James, 86
Bullock, Alan, vii, xii, xv, xxi, xxiv, xxxiii, xlii, 5, 11, 17, 45, 64, 68, 71, 77, 78–96, 126, 130, 141, 145, 151, 188, 198, 212, 230, 289, 308, 354, 363, 369, 374
on concept of evil, 86–87
dialectic view of, 87–89, 92–93
father of, 92
on Hitler-Holocaust relationship, 94–96
on Hitler’s anti-Semitism, 83–84
on Hitler’s genital incompleteness, 78–79, 80
on Hitler’s sexuality, 83–85
Hitler’s thought-world as viewed by, 87–88
on Hitler’s wartime failure, 90–91
Holocaust deniers opposed by, 94–95, 221
Incompleteness concept of, 78, 83, 85, 93–94
Irving as seen by, 222–23
“moral cretinism” phrase of, 87–88
suicide dispute and, 79–80
Bundy, Ted, xxix
Burgess, Guy, 141
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (film), 32
Case of Therese Neumann, The (Graef), 163
“Cell G,” 40, 42, 48
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 170, 333
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