Faeelin
Banned
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/02/22/120.htmlGlobal Eye
History Lessons
By Chris Floyd
Published: February 22, 2006
BERLIN, May 12, 2153 -- Within the ivy-covered walls of Farben University, a great battle is now raging. But although the Reich's ancient capital has seen its share of warfare down through the centuries, today's combatants have no swords, no guns, no bio-disrupters -- just words and pictures, marshaled on either side of a fierce debate that has split the academic world in two, and is beginning to spill over into politics. It all revolves around a simple question: Was the German Empire a good thing or a bad thing?
At one time, the answer would have seemed clear. In the three decades since the last "Reich Protectorate" gained its independence (Ukraine, 2122), the liberal consensus among German historians has been that the Empire founded more than 200 years ago by Adolf Hitler was largely a malign development: "a system, born in aggression and atrocity, that inflicted terrible suffering on the conquered lands for generations, and warped German society itself with its arrogance, brutality and corruption," as Germany's leading historian, Yury Vinogradov, put it in his landmark 2128 work, "Reich and Reality." That book set the tone for a flood of hard-hitting probes into Reich history that left almost no nationalist myth intact.
But in recent years, a group of conservative historians dubbed the "Revisionists" has sternly challenged this view. Led by the young Danzig firebrand Gregor Metzger, the Revisionists argue that the achievements of the Empire -- and the "Leader-State system" that was replaced by parliamentary democracy in 2120 -- have been denigrated by, in Metzger's words, "liberal apologists picking at old scabs."
"Everyone knows there were blots on the empire's record," Metzger says. "No one today would countenance, say, the early Reich's treatment of the Jews or the excesses in putting down the Muslim Rebellions in the Caucasus. But neither should we impose our modern values on the people of those times. Rather, we should try to understand them in their own context -- and appreciate their many accomplishments."
These accomplishments, say the Revisionists, include the eradication of communism in Europe; the establishment of a continent-wide free market for goods, labor and capital; the creation of a common legal system and government institutions now used by most of the old colonies; and the planting of large settler communities throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia that have evolved into thriving cities and "carried the values of Western civilization deep into benighted and lawless lands," as Metzger writes in his best-selling new book, "The End of Shame: German Power in Perspective."
The Revisionists' work has been taken up by conservative politicians seeking to roll back many of the democratic reforms and cultural freedoms instituted by what they scornfully call "the new Weimar Republic." Citing Metzger and others, they are advancing a "national greatness agenda" to foster pride in the homeland, restore "traditional moral values" to society and reassert German dominance in world affairs. The centrist government, put on the defensive by these attacks, has increasingly adopted more nationalist rhetoric, and last month canceled a long-planned exhibition at the National Museum on "Hitler's Tainted Legacy," calling it "too biased."
Much of the academic debate turns on interpretations of the Speer Era (1947-81). After Hitler's death from cancer in 1946, Armaments Minister Albert Speer took power with the backing of intelligence chief Wilhelm Canaris in a coup against the Nazi old guard. He immediately signed an armistice, and the battle lines of the deadlocked armies became the boundaries of the new world order, leaving Germany in control of Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals.
To the Revisionists, Speer and Canaris are heroes -- pragmatic moderates who curbed the regime's ugliest aspects while preserving its territorial gains and firmly establishing its power. "Although Hitler's dream of a civilizing German empire in the East was skewed by his unfortunate adherence to the American pseudo-science of eugenics, it was still a noble vision," Metzger says. "Speer purged this vision of its dross and made it the foundation of our modern world."
For Vinogradov, that is precisely the problem. "After the coup, Speer could have restored democracy and confronted the nation's guilt. Instead he chose to assume Hitler's mantle, the semi-divine aura of the 'Leader,' exalting power above the law. Centuries of crime and tyranny flowed from that fatal choice. Yes, he closed the death camps -- but prosecuted no one for these atrocities. He accelerated the land-theft of the settlements, and drafted millions into forced labor to make up for the loss of native Germans to the colonies. Why pretend this was somehow noble or glorious? We should simply tell the truth about it." Vinogradov is himself a product of these policies; his ancestors were shipped from the ruins of Moscow to work in German factories.
The Revisionists say such "scab-picking" is irrelevant in the modern world. "However regrettable, what's done is done," Metzger says. "What matters are the long-term benefits to civilization. One wonders if Herr Professor Vinogradov would enjoy the same kind of prosperity -- and freedom to criticize -- he possesses today if the communist evil had not been destroyed, at great sacrifice, by German power?"
Vinogradov dismisses these arguments. "The point of historical research is not to dispossess the present, but to disillusion it: to strip away self-serving myth and fatal ignorance in order to see more clearly how we got here, what it cost and how that shapes and distorts our responses to reality. Otherwise, we are blind -- easy prey for the abusers of power and their murderous deceptions."
Thoughts?
History Lessons
By Chris Floyd
Published: February 22, 2006
BERLIN, May 12, 2153 -- Within the ivy-covered walls of Farben University, a great battle is now raging. But although the Reich's ancient capital has seen its share of warfare down through the centuries, today's combatants have no swords, no guns, no bio-disrupters -- just words and pictures, marshaled on either side of a fierce debate that has split the academic world in two, and is beginning to spill over into politics. It all revolves around a simple question: Was the German Empire a good thing or a bad thing?
At one time, the answer would have seemed clear. In the three decades since the last "Reich Protectorate" gained its independence (Ukraine, 2122), the liberal consensus among German historians has been that the Empire founded more than 200 years ago by Adolf Hitler was largely a malign development: "a system, born in aggression and atrocity, that inflicted terrible suffering on the conquered lands for generations, and warped German society itself with its arrogance, brutality and corruption," as Germany's leading historian, Yury Vinogradov, put it in his landmark 2128 work, "Reich and Reality." That book set the tone for a flood of hard-hitting probes into Reich history that left almost no nationalist myth intact.
But in recent years, a group of conservative historians dubbed the "Revisionists" has sternly challenged this view. Led by the young Danzig firebrand Gregor Metzger, the Revisionists argue that the achievements of the Empire -- and the "Leader-State system" that was replaced by parliamentary democracy in 2120 -- have been denigrated by, in Metzger's words, "liberal apologists picking at old scabs."
"Everyone knows there were blots on the empire's record," Metzger says. "No one today would countenance, say, the early Reich's treatment of the Jews or the excesses in putting down the Muslim Rebellions in the Caucasus. But neither should we impose our modern values on the people of those times. Rather, we should try to understand them in their own context -- and appreciate their many accomplishments."
These accomplishments, say the Revisionists, include the eradication of communism in Europe; the establishment of a continent-wide free market for goods, labor and capital; the creation of a common legal system and government institutions now used by most of the old colonies; and the planting of large settler communities throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia that have evolved into thriving cities and "carried the values of Western civilization deep into benighted and lawless lands," as Metzger writes in his best-selling new book, "The End of Shame: German Power in Perspective."
The Revisionists' work has been taken up by conservative politicians seeking to roll back many of the democratic reforms and cultural freedoms instituted by what they scornfully call "the new Weimar Republic." Citing Metzger and others, they are advancing a "national greatness agenda" to foster pride in the homeland, restore "traditional moral values" to society and reassert German dominance in world affairs. The centrist government, put on the defensive by these attacks, has increasingly adopted more nationalist rhetoric, and last month canceled a long-planned exhibition at the National Museum on "Hitler's Tainted Legacy," calling it "too biased."
Much of the academic debate turns on interpretations of the Speer Era (1947-81). After Hitler's death from cancer in 1946, Armaments Minister Albert Speer took power with the backing of intelligence chief Wilhelm Canaris in a coup against the Nazi old guard. He immediately signed an armistice, and the battle lines of the deadlocked armies became the boundaries of the new world order, leaving Germany in control of Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals.
To the Revisionists, Speer and Canaris are heroes -- pragmatic moderates who curbed the regime's ugliest aspects while preserving its territorial gains and firmly establishing its power. "Although Hitler's dream of a civilizing German empire in the East was skewed by his unfortunate adherence to the American pseudo-science of eugenics, it was still a noble vision," Metzger says. "Speer purged this vision of its dross and made it the foundation of our modern world."
For Vinogradov, that is precisely the problem. "After the coup, Speer could have restored democracy and confronted the nation's guilt. Instead he chose to assume Hitler's mantle, the semi-divine aura of the 'Leader,' exalting power above the law. Centuries of crime and tyranny flowed from that fatal choice. Yes, he closed the death camps -- but prosecuted no one for these atrocities. He accelerated the land-theft of the settlements, and drafted millions into forced labor to make up for the loss of native Germans to the colonies. Why pretend this was somehow noble or glorious? We should simply tell the truth about it." Vinogradov is himself a product of these policies; his ancestors were shipped from the ruins of Moscow to work in German factories.
The Revisionists say such "scab-picking" is irrelevant in the modern world. "However regrettable, what's done is done," Metzger says. "What matters are the long-term benefits to civilization. One wonders if Herr Professor Vinogradov would enjoy the same kind of prosperity -- and freedom to criticize -- he possesses today if the communist evil had not been destroyed, at great sacrifice, by German power?"
Vinogradov dismisses these arguments. "The point of historical research is not to dispossess the present, but to disillusion it: to strip away self-serving myth and fatal ignorance in order to see more clearly how we got here, what it cost and how that shapes and distorts our responses to reality. Otherwise, we are blind -- easy prey for the abusers of power and their murderous deceptions."
Thoughts?