The Jewish Ensemble &entre presents...

gain force.
Scholars of modern Germany also
say that the spin-off field of Holocaust
studies has distorted the picture of
what Nazism stood for. A large part of
the Nazis' original appeal, which was
limited to begin with, was the empow-
erment that their ideology afforded
a disillusioned public. Moreover, the
anti-Semitic strain in Nazi ideology,
which was evident from the start, did
not make the wholesale annihilation
of Jews an obvious conclusion.
The Final Solution, the plan hatched
in 1941 that called for the extermina-
tion of Jews, only evolved as the nation
descended into an all-encompassing
war and the Nazi leadership reasoned
that they offered no material benefit to
the war effort.
Many Germans were not particu-
larly enthusiastic about the genocide
but went along with it because it was
couched as part of the greater effort
of national regeneration, said Peter
Fritzsche, a historian at the University
of Illinois and author of Germans into
Nazis. "You can't have a line item veto
on the national project:' he said. He did
not discount the idea that Nazi propa-
ganda against Jews and the promotion
of racial hygiene made their removal
more palatable, but it placed it within
the context of a larger mission.
As Mary Nolan, another German
historian at New York University, put
it: "One has to look at anti-Semitism,
but given how prevalent it was
throughout Europe, why did [the
Holocaust] not happen elsewhere?"
But popular films like The White
Ribbon feed into suggestions that
brutality and violence were the main
appeal of Nazism, while downplay-
ing the attraction of their ideology of
empowerment. In addition, scholars say
many popular understandings of Nazi
Germany incorporate largely discred-
ited ideas about Germany's supposed
long history of virulent anti-Semitism.
"In some circles" of Germans who
supported the Nazis, said Fritzsche,
"it would have been more radical for a
Protestant boy to marry a Catholic girl
than a converted Jew."
Fritzsche also emphasized the revo-
lutionary program of the Nazis, which
seems at odds with any theory that
connects their appeal to maintaining
the established order.
Haneke's film does so by its very
nature, as it focuses on an emblematic

baron-run estate on the eve of the
First World War. But Fritzsche argued
that anyone trying to understand the
Nazis' success must contend with their
radical, forward-looking ideology.
"The Nazis were trying to get people
to move in a different direction. They
saw themselves as revolutionary and
not connected to the old and the
authoritarian" structures, he said.
Haneke is "explaining sameness; he
has to explain difference'
Still, historians know well that their
own theories are often in flux and can
point to some of their colleagues' work
that might support Haneke's film.
For one, leading postwar British
historians like A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh
Trevor-Roper argued that Nazism was
the logical conclusion of centuries of
German history, which they argued
resisted democracy in favor of nation-
al unity and strong leaders.
In the 1970s, other fashionable the-
ories employed Freudian ideas about
sexual repression into their theses.
And even as late as the 1990s,
scholars like Daniel Goldhagen gained
best-seller status by tying the Nazis'
racist ideology to centuries of German
anti-Semitism in Hitler's Willing
Executioners.
But historians today say that
Goldhagen's theory, to take the most
recent case, is mostly frowned upon.
"Historians don't take Goldhagen seri-
ously," Atina Grossmann, a historian at
Cooper Union said. "But that doesn't
mean there isn't both continuity and
rupture" in explaining the Nazis' rise.
Other scholars also pointed out that
the people focused on in Haneke's film
— German children in a small north-
ern village, in 1914 — would have
likely voted for the Nazis in the early-
1930s. But the reasons would not have
been those suggested by Haneke's film.
Tooze emphasized that Nazi ideas
that called for a return to the soil,
connected to the idea of lebensraum,
or living space, might be especially
appealing to rural Germans. But rural
Germans made up just a third of the
population, and the older generations
among them were not likely to sup-
port Nazis anyway.
"It's representative of only one sec-
tion of German society," Tooze said
about looking at any one segment of
society. "You can't generalize from
that particular experience Germany
as a whole." ❑

The White Ribbon, in German with English subtitles, is scheduled to open
Friday, Feb.19, at the Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak. (248) 263-2111.

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