The History I Wasn’t Taught

It par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbs me to read what Shir­er writes about Ger­many both before and after the Sec­ond World War. Where I expect­ed to read insights that would deep­en a super­fi­cial under­stand­ing of events gleaned from eighth-grade His­to­ry class­es, I’m pre­sent­ed with an account­ing in direct con­tra­dic­tion to many of the points that were pre­sent­ed as fact when I was in school.

My teach­ers can per­haps be for­giv­en for down­play­ing Cham­ber­lain’s role. His sin being opti­mism and a blind­ness to his faith in human nature it could be almost com­mend­able if not for the mil­lions who like­ly would have been saved by ear­li­er action. Hind­sight of course gives us a spe­cial pul­pit and per­haps his­to­ry should not hold him up to too much disgrace.

Fur­ther, it’s sad but per­haps not rel­e­vant that France had a good chance of being able to defend itself from Ger­many, if only France had the will to resist. His­to­ry records what did hap­pen, not so much what could have happened.

But if Shir­er is to be believed, two key myths I was fed direct­ly con­tra­dict the facts: first that Ger­many’s econ­o­my was so bad­ly crip­pled by the repa­ra­tions indi­cat­ed in Ver­sailles that it was only nat­ur­al that Ger­many would lash out to get out from under the col­lec­tive thumbs of the Great War Allies. Ger­many nev­er even paid those repa­ra­tions, and as Shir­er tells it, the spi­ral­ing infla­tion of the Thir­ties was in good part an inten­tion­al restruc­tur­ing that helped Ger­many to recov­er from the depres­sion that hit Ger­many only as hard as it hit the rest of Europe. The oppres­sion of Ger­many by the Allies was Hitler’s lie: why does it per­sist into today’s his­to­ry texts?

Sec­ond is the myth that at the fall of Ger­many the good peo­ple of Ger­many had imme­di­ate shame for allow­ing their lead­ers to com­mit such atroc­i­ties. Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is that Ade­nauer was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the moral char­ac­ter of a Ger­many that banned the Nazi par­ty after its defeat. Accord­ing to Shir­er, neon­azi groups failed to rise to pow­er most­ly because none of their lead­ers were con­tent to fol­low the oth­er lead­ers. Shir­er paints a por­trait of a Ger­many ashamed not so much of Hitler as of los­ing their bid to take over Europe.

I was already dis­il­lu­sioned by a telling of his­to­ry that failed to men­tion that Stal­in’s sin was the slaugh­ter of twice as many as Hitler’s – why is this? It seems to me that it is because we waged war against Hitler and feel the need to con­grat­u­late our­selves on a moral rather than self-inter­est­ed vic­to­ry, as though self-preser­va­tion were not enough of a virtue. But if we rose up against Hitler because of the death camps and not because of his intent to rob us of our self-deter­mi­na­tion, why did we not rise up against Stalin?

I’m not real­ly cer­tain what to make of all this, except per­haps that I should fol­low the admo­ni­tion not to believe every­thing I read. I am how­ev­er more than a lit­tle dis­traught at the idea that our his­to­ry is so much the result of pro­pa­gan­da rather than research.

There’s a lot of valu­able per­spec­tive here that often seems to get lost in the gap between news and his­to­ry. Shir­er offers opin­ion and analy­sis and through his first-per­son mem­oir-style pre­sen­ta­tion leads the read­er along the log­i­cal pro­ces­sion of ideas. Here, the jour­nal­ist remov­ing him­self from the pic­ture would have been coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. Con­ven­tion­al jour­nal­is­tic wis­dom sug­gests that “real” report­ing hap­pens when the jour­nal­ist pre­tends she or he does not exist, and that allow­ing for per­spec­tive trans­forms any writ­ing into “soft” or per­son­al cre­ative writ­ing. Shir­er very effec­tive­ly shows the lie to this, as of course do many oth­er writ­ers; Orwell comes imme­di­ate­ly to mind.

Among the impor­tant things that exist in our world today of which I had­n’t con­sid­ered the ori­gin are NATO and Britain’s health­care sys­tem. Shir­er told the sto­ries of the pro­gres­sion of each and the con­text in which they were cre­at­ed. It is sur­pris­ing to me that, though more than a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er we hear the cries of the col­lapse of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion should the Unit­ed States adopt a nation­al­ized health insur­ance sys­tem, the Tories were large­ly strong sup­port­ers of the cre­ation of Britain’s sys­tem. “The cost is high. Was ever pub­lic mon­ey bet­ter spent?” asked the staunch­ly anti-Labour Man­ches­ter Guardian rhetorically.

Final­ly one more point that seems rel­e­vant to the Unit­ed States’ role in the world is the rev­e­la­tion (now six­ty years old) from Ger­many’s secret archives that Hitler nev­er con­sid­ered that Amer­i­ca might join the war. He waged war on Europe assum­ing that he’d have a bat­tle against Britain, France, and Rus­sia. It’s almost mat­ter of record (although such things are of course spec­u­la­tive) that if the Unit­ed States had not joined World War II, Nazi Ger­many would have con­quered Europe. It gives me great pause though to think that if in 1938 Roo­sevelt had informed Ger­many that we would ally with Britain, France, and Rus­sia to inter­vene if he rolled into Czecho­slo­va­kia, that the war could have been averted.

Yet per­haps the war need­ed to hap­pen. Even by 1938 the Nazis were com­mit­ting atroc­i­ties and would cer­tain­ly have con­tin­ued to. At that point in his­to­ry it was unthink­able to attack a coun­try for its treat­ment of its own cit­i­zens, no mat­ter how abhor­rent. It was World War II that trans­formed our ideas about the duty of coali­tions of nations to inter­vene on behalf of the vic­tims of gov­ern­ments. Hitler was right when he asked “who today remem­bers the Arme­ni­ans?” Today how­ev­er, the peo­ple of the world are by and large com­mit­ted to the mem­o­ry of the mil­lions killed by Hitler’s atroc­i­ties. There’s even much greater aware­ness of the Armen­ian geno­cide today than there was when Hitler spoke those words.

So while it’s a lit­tle sad to think that our iso­la­tion­ism and inac­tion allowed a Sec­ond Great War to occur, it’s much more chill­ing to think of a world where Hitler had bid­ed his time, bol­stered his mil­i­tary fur­ther, and strate­gized count­ing on Amer­i­ca’s involve­ment. If his­to­ry is writ­ten by the win­ners, would Euro­pean text­books today pro­claim the glo­ry of the Third Reich? Or in what seems like the best-case out­come would we remem­ber Hitler today the way we remem­ber Stal­in, as the mur­der­ous dic­ta­tor we did noth­ing to stop? It is not a cheery best-case sce­nario, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing whether Hitler’s body count would have reached up to or even sur­passed Stalin’s.