"One death is a tragedy, a million [deaths] is a statistic." - Josef Stalin
To say that I have always loved that quote is not the right way to put, more like it has always intrigued me. I'm at the point in the school year where I am teaching World War II in my AP U.S. History class, which is one of the easiest topics to keep their attention. They are always interested in WWII, and it is one of the few topics that they come into it already knowing a great deal. I understand where my students are coming from, when I was their age (and younger) I couldn't get enough WWII. I read books, watched movies, ate it up. Is it the ultimate epic struggle? Is it because it is one of the few times in history where it seems the lines are so clear? Nothing in history is more obviously evil as Nazi Germany, right? At least on the surface, it does seem just like in the movies. Good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. The villains even conveniently wear bad guy-looking uniforms and call themselves "stormtroopers" and things like that. Of course I am simplifying, you can look at the Allied firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the Japanese-American internment camps in this country, etc. and it is not quite so easy to paint us with a broad brush as "the good guys," but still, the Nazis were obviously the baddest of the bad guys (even though Stalin's death count ended up being much higher than Hitler's, he at least had a "reason" for it besides pure hatred and eugenics theories, that being the largely successful rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union. And funny enough, Stalin is still held in high regard by many Russians).
But every year I run across an interesting and somewhat disturbing phenomenon. I get a decent number of students who seem to express admiration for Hitler and the Nazi war machine. It is predictable that I will hear the word "genius" attributed to him each year in many of my classes. I don't know why this is. Perhaps it is a fascination with villains and outlaws that we have always had in our society, and Hitler is the ultimate historical outlaw. Enough time has passed to where the Holocaust and related events have become historical abstractions, as distant for these kids as Roman legions or the Trojan War.
I have always struggled with how to handle that. On the one hand, I try to have a classroom open to many points of views, a place where students are safe to express opinions and ideas, or more accurately, struggle with them and form them. A place where even controversial topics and views can at least be discussed in a civilized manner. I feel that is one of the most basic characteristics of a good classroom, especially a History one. Yet, I cannot let such statements regarding Hitler go unchallenged. I just can't. But I've always struggled with finding a way to address it without simply lecturing them or berating them for ignorance (Barbarosa) and youthful callousness. As a historian, too, I also need to grapple with and explain to my students why a whole nation of seemingly reasonable people could also fall under the sway of something so evil as Nazism (answer: desperate times during a worldwide Depression and crushing debt from Versailles had brought Germany to a state of chaos and along came a strong and charismatic figure who promised to end the suffering and blame the suffering on outsiders, and he did deliver on those promises, initially).
It helps to go back to my own history with the subject. I recall reading and studying WWII as a youth, and there is a basic attraction to power and strength, especially for young males (although, I hear the "genius" tag attributed to Hitler more from female students than male ones, and I have absolutely no explanation for that.) The Nazi propaganda machine remains to this day one of the most effective the world has ever seen...the pageantry and the spectacle of the Nuremberg rallies, the demonstration of unity and purpose and sheer strength. Power still attracts, and everything about what Hitler and Goebbels and his minions displayed to the masses was the messaging of power, confidence and strength, something that attracts people today just as it appealed to a defeated German people in the 1930's. And on pure military grounds, the German military in WWII was indeed an awesome thing. I still do admire someone like Field Marshall Erwin Rommel for his brilliant and daring tactical mind (and a man who never did embrace Nazi ideology and who was forced to commit suicide by Hitler after his name got wrapped up in the failed assassination plot). I think teenagers can get wrapped up in the excitement and daring of war and forget the human toll.
Which brings me back to Stalin's quote. My teaching of WWII changed three years ago when I had my daughter. It was strange, because I could not explain it at first. But in her first year when I taught WWII and started discussing Nazism and the Holocaust, I got incredibly emotional. But now I understand it. I couldn't grasp the horror of the human cost until I had someone in my life so innocent, so trusting, so in need of and open to care and love...and then visualizing her, in my mind, in that place. World War II had always really been an abstract historical subject until my daughter could humanize it for me. That was it. That was the hook which I could use with my students to bring home the human toll without simply telling them "it was bad."
I started class last week with Stalin's quote on the board and just asked them what he meant by that, setting aside that Stalin was a sociopath and psychopath. It did please me that some students were a bit disturbed by the quote even before we started to discuss it. And the students got where I was going with it. If we know an individual and they meet a gruesome end, it really is a human tragedy, it hits us emotionally. But if we are dealing in millions, our minds cannot even grasp it. It does become just a number. I can roll off 12 million killed in the Holocaust, or 40-60 million killed in Stalin's USSR, in my lectures and it is an abstract historical fact for them. But I told the kids that they have to always humanize those numbers. I talk about my daughter a lot in class throughout the year, I've got two very cute pictures of her on my desk, so my students always ask about her and even bring little presents for me to give to her from time to time. I grabbed her sweet smiling photo from my desk and held it up, and I told them that whenever they think of Hitler's deeds dispassionately, imagine her in the ovens of Auschwitz or on the operating table of Dr. Mengele. (Or imagine anyone that they are close to, be it their own little brother or sister, best friend, mother). That is the real human element and madness of it all. It's not just Panzers and Blitzkrieg and battlefield daring. Anyway, for the first time in my many years of teaching WWII, I think that I finally got that across the way that I wanted to, you could just see it registering on their faces, especially after I gave them a little detail of Dr. Mengele's experiments on children. It was uncomfortable for them, and it should be. But I think that I had to really understand it and feel it first, before I could then make them grasp it too.
ABOVE: If you want to explore the depths of human depravity, study the experiments conducted by the "Angel of Death," the Auschwitz camp doctor Josef Mengele who conducted unspeakable experiments on the children of Auschwitz
8 comments:
Interesting stuff, Dez. Unlike you, I'm not a full-time history teacher (obviously), but I do a fair bit of History tutoring, and I have also found a certain amount of Hitler-fascination. (I've never had anyone call him a genius, but that's probably because I'm generally teaching people who don't know much about a subject, and thus do most of the talking/explaining myself. Perhaps wrongly).
One thing I do always like to point out to students, however, is--as you allude to--that Hitler didn't seize the reins of power; he was elected. He was what the people wanted. I also try to find comments or perspectives by ordinary Germans during the 30s on the Jewish population; inevitably I can find dozens of quotes of regular German citizens expressing almost exactly the same attitudes towards Jews that Hitler did when he campaigned (they're vile; they're the reason we lost the war; they're not fully human, etc). Point is, as you know, that Hitler was not an aberration; he was horrifying in part BECAUSE he represented so much that was common in Germany at that time. Although, of course Hitler, as was said about another egmaniacal semi-madman, 'took it all too far.'
Not sure what my point is here, but that was an interesting post on you. Good job!
I myself have always been fascinated by Weimar Germany (and yes, it was through Bowie that I acquired said fascination). If you haven't read C. Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" let me recommend it strongly. It's fiction, yes, but it's strongly autobiographical, and since Isherwood lived in Berlin in the 30s, it makes for great great reading. Doomed societies spiraling into madness and depravity--those are the societies we want to read about it! (Though not, perhaps, inhabit).
A book I highly recoomend
Post got cut off there. Ignore the last bit.
Thanks. You are right, I also stress that Hitler came to power through democracy, and then dismantled that democracy in favor of a fascist state with the approval of the people. What do you think of Lou Reed's album BERLIN? I've always really liked that one. I'll check that book out.
Speaking of Bowie, what do you think of the album? I just downloaded it from iTunes and am listening now. I like "The Stars."
Just to clarify, I didn't mean to suggest that Hitler's election was a purely German phenomenon--that it reflects some deep depravity of the German psyche, e.g. I think what's disturbing about Hitler is that any nation, given similar historical circumstances, might very well have done the same thing. (Indeed, the rise to power of Franco and Mussolini, among others, suggest that many other nations did). Point is: Hitler's election should be laid at the foot of the human species, a species that has often responded to politicians who promise easy solutions, scapegoat powerless minorities, and vow to restore a (mostly non-existent) lost glory.
On the new Bowie: I'm waiting till it's sunk in to comment more. So far, I'm feeling pretty good about it. Of course, the reviews of it have mostly ALL said what the Bowie reviews always say: "A return to form. The best since Scary Monsters." It's maybe not that, but I already like it more than Reality (his penultimate).
I liked this post, too.
I'd recommend a book called STASILAND by Anna Funder. It's about Berlin Wall-era Germany, and it's a great read: http://www.amazon.com/Stasiland-Stories-Behind-Berlin-Wall/dp/0062077325
If "the Nazi propaganda machine remains to this day one of the most effective the world has ever seen," couldn't the architect of said machine be considered a genius, or do you consider evil and genius to be mutually exclusive? (NOTE: I am not suggesting that Hitler was the architect or that he acted alone, but he is certainly the figurehead recognized by your students.)
On a slightly unrelated note, wouldn't you agree that history is shaped by time, perspective, bias and agenda? You often mention Cortez the Killer in your posts. How do you think he (or someone like Saladin) was perceived after 60-70 years as opposed to the present, and wouldn't said perception be based on geography? My point is that Hitler is the embodiment of evil to Americans like us. In a different time and place, who knows? After all, America's history isn't immune from slaughter and genocide.
I like the way you attempted to humanize the numbers for your students. It's very easy to turn the individuals into a statistic. In fact, I did it myself when we were discussing gun control. ONLY 30 average deaths per year involving "assault weapons" was insignificant to me. I guess that depends on whether you know or love one of the 30.
IM
No, evil and genius are not mutually exclusive. Hitler was no doubt a brilliant politician and propagandist. And while some of his military decisions were quite smart, his blunders outweigh his victories in that arena.
Yes, history is shaped by bias, perspective and all of that. But there is a danger in becoming too relativist. Hitler is about as objectively evil a figure that history will give you. Aside from Ahmadinejad and White Supremist groups, Hitler is pretty universally reviled.
I do often refer to "Cortez the Killer," but because it is a great song. But it is historically inaccurate. Cortez was indeed a cold killer, but the Aztecs were not the flower children with "the secrets of the world" as Neil paints them in the song. Cortez beat them in part because the surrounding tribes were all to eager to help the Spanish vanquish the brutal Aztecs. Of course, they didn't realize at the time they were trading bad for worse.
I'll give you a better example than Cortez. Although I obviously wasn't there, I suspect that Genghis Khan was universally reviled 60-70 years after his death, b/c the aftermath of his conquests was still fresh. 800 years later, many look upon his military prowess with admiration. Some might even call him a genius.
IM
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