While reading the chapter on Race and Culture I was trying to put myself in the shoes of someone during this time. It is said that young people were influenced by Hiltler and the Nazi party. As a young student I wanted to see if any of this writing can be persuasive. Obviously it did motivate so many to become anti Semitic or at least express Jewish hatred more. I tried to see if any of this makes any sense. Would I understand this to be factual?
In the beginning of the reading Hitler talks about enemy propaganda. He says that the army began to “think as the enemy wanted it to.” This really caught my attention. The same way there was enemy propaganda between armies, there was enemy propaganda about the Jews. Why didn’t the people begin to think the way Hitler wanted? The enemies caught on to the propaganda about them. Why is it that people believed what was wrongly being claimed about Jews? Hitler was so manipulative that he was able to negatively speak about one type of propaganda while simultaneously creating his own.
Hitler speaks about race and mating. He says that inter-mating of races creates a physical and intellectual regression. I found this interesting as nowadays Jews are not considered a different race. I wonder would I believe this. What about these words could have possibly got me to believe that this was true? I continuously attempted to see if the “propaganda” would change my opinions. I want to believe that it would not but then how did most people accept these ideologies as there own?
This notion of cultural regression that Hitler traces to outbreeding is pretty interesting from the angle of how convincing this propaganda could’ve been when there seems to be underlying gaps in Hitler’s own rhetoric. Of course, without factoring Hitler’s presentation, audience, and most importantly, the social circumstances for the propaganda, we cannot vest our analysis solely in theory, but nevertheless much of Hitler’s notion on race forces one to contemplate. For one, Hitler claims that the novelty of the Aryan race isn’t simply rooted in its contribution to the arts, science, and technology; those are merely byproducts of the race’s inherent attribute. What’s paramount, rather, is that the Aryan is devoted to a self-preservation that is rooted in the benefit of others, and therein, an idealism “which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conversation of the community” (Hitler 298). But even this idea of goodness, of selflessness isn’t novel. It’s a staple of human interaction, which predates the Aryans. Furthermore, this conjecture is wrapped by the irony that the preservation of flourishing culture is rooted in the egoism of a race, the subjugation of lower classes to ultimately meet this ideal: “the formation of higher cultures [necessitates] the existence of lower human types” (295). To claim that the interests of the individual or an entire race are being sacrificed for the betterment of the collective, when in principle the collective must remain stratified to maintain that level of cultural excellence is in and of itself flawed. And if that culture is only to be reserved for the fittest as Hitler implies, then that basic notion of goodness is reduced to a certain selfishness.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a pretty interesting perspective to try to comprehend, Julia. There are probably a lot of factors that led to people supporting Hitler and his values. We know that Hitler was incredibly effective with propaganda and, as you said, advocating a sort of militaristic perspective of 'Jews as the enemy'. I think another intriguing, but terribly disturbing, argument Hitler makes in Mein Kampf is associating Jews with disease.
ReplyDeleteIn this period there are a lot of particular diseases and afflictions that are incurable and untreatable. Hitler brings up the spread of tuberculosis and the idea that it's better for a man to 'be aware of his sickness' in order to combat it and possibly recover, instead of having a sudden affliction sneak up on him and it being too late to do anything about it. He compares this to the 'problem' of the Jews. If I could come up with a term for it, Hitler is a racial germaphobe, pointing to the Jews as some kind of nasty bacteria that is stealthily infecting Germany, and if the people don't try to combat it the Aryan race will 'die out'.
Though it's hard to believe that an accusation against another race that is this extreme could ever take hold as a popular opinion, it somehow did make a dangerous impression on the German people.
Hitler was also irate at the spreading of syphilis, which stimulated the more metaphorical notion that the mingling of 'uncleanly blood' led to degeneracy in the offspring. So though syphilis was mainly a disease borne of prostitution, Hitler could also point to it as a physical consequence of sexual relations outside of the 'purity' of marriage (specifically between a German man and woman).
It seems disease and physical weakness of any kind was something Hitler could not tolerate and used as a tool to point a finger, not just at Jews, but anything deemed hazardous to the physical and metaphorical health of the German people. Thus, the call for a great purge would come to gain support; because there is certainly a history of hysteria that comes along with the concept of an 'epidemic'. No one wants to feel they could suddenly be overtaken by some nasty incurable disease: physical or social.
Of course, not everyone believed so strongly in racial germaphobia. But still, it's quite unsettling to consider this is the reason people could support such extreme racism and the lengths they allowed the 'purging of disease' to go to.
Honestly, while reading, I keep thinking the same thing, trying to put myself in these people's shoes. It's very difficult. I feel like "wander_mind" hit a lot of the things I was going to say. I really think we can't understand it because we aren't dealing with the same political and social situations as after WWI. I really think a big part of it is that all of what Hitler said wasn't that far-fetched at the time. It's like the existence of races now. There's no science behind them. And maybe in 100 years we'll look back and say, "How did we ever believe that?" I think the 3rd Reich says a lot about where Germany was at the time.
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