Why Remember Hitler?

The NYTimes ran a couple of op-eds today reflecting on the 75th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power in Germany. They are, to varying degrees, less reflections on the past than the present. While each make important points, they nonetheless put on display a kind of humanitarian sentimentalism that disturbs me, mainly for its political implications. The first, by Susan Neiman, assesses whether Holocaust memorials should remember the Holocaust's victims or its heroes. Since memorials are for the living as much as the dead, she proposes "we restrain our attention to the suffering of the victims of those crimes and turn to the courage of those who worked to stop the criminals." The reason being that she thinks the emphasis on the victims is socially and politically enervating. It does not, in fact, inspire to resist new evils as they arise. Focusing the heroes shifts emphasis "on what you’ve done to the world, not what the world did to you."

This seems to me a perfectly sound argument - why emphasize hopelessness and loss in the face of evil, rather than put forward the possibility of resistance? What bothers me, though, is that it is far too vague and bland in its generality, to the point of being apolitical. The problem, after all, in using the Holocaust as a source of inspiration is that it is not really the victim-consciousness that stands in the way of action. The aggressive humanitarianism of our time has not really been paralyzed by a sense of hopelessness. The problem, rather, has to do with the way we think of evil as self-evident, while the great powers compete to tramp around saving others to whom they have attributed victim-status. In this, the general formula of bravery and action over passivity and victimization fails. Neiman ends her op-ed "After all these years, isn’t it time to send a message to Germany’s children — and everyone else’s — that will help them to stand up against present evils as well as mourning past ones?" But this was never the issue. The real political issue s have been, which evil, and whose responsibility? These are questions that cannot be answered if a situation is reduced to a confrontation between Good and Evil, in which the evil-doer is self-evident, and in which the only question is, who has the will and the power to act. If the lesson of the Holocaust is that it was a great evil, which should inspire us to present similar ones, we lose any sense of the political texture of the present, and how this intense moralization of politics can be counterproductive and its own cover for sheer violent domination. Indeed, one would think the Iraq War would have sucked some of the confidence out of this highly stylized way of thinking.

Ian Kershaw, one of the most famous historians of Hitler and the Nazis, also wrote an op-ed, which initially promises to present us with a more politically nuanced comparison of 1933 Germany and the present day. He lists a whole host of present day leaders who have been compared to Hitler - Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, Pervez Musharraf, European neo-fascists - and notes that "None of these examples, however, poses a close parallel to what happened in Germany in 1933." Kershaw specifies "neither in their acquisition of power nor in their use of it do modern authoritarian rulers much resemble Hitler." The value of reflecting upon and remembering the Holocaust is to emphasize the difference, the tremendous political gap between now and then. Thinking politically and carefully about the two periods, rather than through the flimsy dichotomies of good and evil, reveals the 20th century to be a complex series of political struggles and conflicts, rather than a timeless struggle against 'fascism.' The thrust, it seems, of Kershaw's point is not just to clarify that the present requires real thinking about the present, but also that the past, too, was more complex. Although he doesn't mention it, one thinks of the fact that the 'good v. evil' narrative of the Holocaust has led many to believe that from the very beginning it was about exterminating the Jews, when in fact the first groups to be targeted for political repression and assassination were union leaders, left-wing political activists, and leading figures in the Communist and Socialist parties. This is the kind of knowledge about the past that disappears when it is filtered through humanitarian sentimentalism.

But Kershaw, too, can't resist closing the gap between the past and present in a flim-flam way. Despite the fact that "what happened in Germany in 1933, and its aftermath, will remain a uniquely terrible episode in history" it nonetheless "reminds us — if such a reminder is necessary — of the need for international cooperation to restrain potential “mad dogs” in world politics before they are dangerous enough to bite." Here again, a free-floating, highly impressionistic view of the world based on a superficial comparison with the past - 'mad dogs' running wild on the global stage - is the lesson derived. One doubts that Kershaw supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, but one struggles to find the difference in their relation to world politics. Even if Kershaw's practical judgment about Iraq, or Bosnia, or whichever recent conflict, was different, it is precisely this view of the globe, as populated with 'mad dogs', vaguely-Hitler like in their potentiality, that creates the climate within which such ill-advised adventures like the Iraq War take place. It is never good when an opponent has been turned either into the incarnation of the Devil, or into a crazed mad man. This is simply preparation for the exercise of power, not an assessment of the other side's political and social circumstances. If anything, once we turn others into these symbols of Evils past reincarnated, it is we who go mad.

NATO's Humanitarian Hegemony

Key NATO leaders released a manifesto yesterday claiming, among other things, that the West should reserve a pre-emptive nuclear strike option in the current security environment. What is this security environment? The main security threats are "political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism, the 'dark side' of globalization, meaning international terrorism, organized crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, the weakening of nation states as well as of organizations such as the UN, NATO and the EU." What is the connection between pre-emptive nuclear strike and these threats? It can't be the threats they pose. After all, threats one and two are more or less the same thing, and neither can be nuked. What good is the phenomenally blunt weapon of a nuclear weapon against small networks of frankly not very dangerous criminals and terrorists? As for climate change, does NATO propose to induce a nuclear winter to counteract the fossil fuel summer? The strangest, but most indicative, is the weakening of NATO itself. In a wondrously self-evident line of argument, it appears that the solution to the weakening of institutions like NATO is to...strengthen them. Here, oddly enough, is where the link with pre-emptive nuclear strike, not as an actual military option, but as a political posture, makes 'sense.'

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has struggled to justify its existence, let alone define its mission. As a Western military alliance in which the US was first among equals, only the threat of communism gave credence to the idea that NATO really was a collective security umbrella. In the early 1990s, it just looked like one amongst many international institutions that had outlived its usefulness. The only thing it could think to do was expand, replacing any long-term purpose with the short term goal of extending its reach. The first time it appeared to possess any virtues relevant to post Cold War international affairs was with the illegal bombing of ex-Yugoslavia in 1998-9. Unable to get UN authorization for the intervention, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair looked to an institution easier to control, yet possessing a modicum of international legitimacy. After the bombing, the UN extended ex-post legitimacy to the illegal intervention; the might makes right lesson was not lost on the world, especially NATO. The sudden uptick of American self-assertion under Bush appeared to eclipse even NATO, as Bush received neither UN authorization nor NATO approval for the invasion of Iraq. However, the lack of legitimacy for the Iraq War has made it clear that some degree of multilateral cooperation is even in the US' interest. In the 1990s the moral imperatives of 'humanitarianism' and other seemingly pressing crises made the creaky instruments of international law and UN procedures seem worse than useless, and in the 2000s, it became clear to world leaders that some degree of cooperation was in a common interest, if for no other reason than to remind any future great power aspirants who currently ruled the globe. Enter NATO: cooperative, yet firmly in control of the great powers, and not so bound by arduous UN procedures.

In the power vacuum that only grows with the delegitimation of American power under Bush, NATO sees an opportunity. What unites humanitarian crises, terrorism, global warming, and failed states is that they all seem like problems that can't be resolved within the existing architecture of international law and institutions. An institution that projects power, emotes pure strength, gives the impression it can bring order to the political chaos. Enter the nuclear posture - strategically useless, politically useful. In fact, NATO is no more able to bring order than the US or UN because the disorder is more the product of international political confusion than serious threats. Major wars are down, so is the violence from civil wars, and terrorism just does not kill very many people. What threats that do exist are more appropriately handled by low-level police efforts and reasonable international laws than NATO nukes. A sheer show of strength is no substitute for political purpose, nor does it even bring minimal security. To justify its posture, NATO will no doubt wish to prove its strength - which means an inappropriate show of force somewhere, an intervention that will increase the very chaos it wishes to suppress.