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I don't think this guy is doing a great job of trying to understand Hitler by using his own "intuition" and then searching back through Mein Kampf to find thing

by hugh4 11y ago

I don't think this guy is doing a great job of trying to understand Hitler by using his own "intuition" and then searching back through Mein Kampf to find things that support it. The guy is acting like Hitler invented anti-Semitism. But really, it was an extremely common piece of the cultural furniture in early 20th century Germany. This being the case, is it really likely that Hitler's antisemitism was somehow original and philosophically distinct from everyone else's? I doubt it, I think it originated in the same place that it did for a lot of other people, and like most anti-semites (or anti-various-other-things) he tried to justify it in a number of different ways at different times. It's not that hard to understand where German anti-semitism came from (of course understanding something is not the same as excusing it), it's a drearily common pattern that we see all over the world, any place and time that we have two poorly-integrated groups living together and one is statistically more successful than the other. The less successful group (which may be smaller or larger than the more successful) inevitably grows to resent the more successful group and blame their own lack of success on them. Crises tend to exacerbate the resentment. It's a pattern we've seen all over the world, all through history, and Nazi Germany is unusual only in that it all happened to end particularly badly.

dasil003 11y ago
> The guy is acting like Hitler invented anti-Semitism. No he's not, he's saying Hitler used anti-Semitism as the basis for a crackpot philosophical theory about the nature of humanity. I'm not sure whether I agree with that, but it's certainly an interesting idea.
dang 11y ago
On HN we try to avoid generic dismissals of new work. I'm afraid this comment counts as one. Yes, the burden of proof is on Snyder (not "this guy") to make an argument. But he just wrote a book about it and you haven't engaged with anything specific in the argument he did make. Nor have you offered a counter-argument; that anti-Semitism was common doesn't imply that Hitler's was garden-variety. To say it was unusual "only" in how it ended is weak—that is more than unusual enough. And to criticize Synder for starting with an intuition is unfair. Much scholarly work starts that way.
danieltillett 11y ago
I do like that he is being honest about how historians think and reason. Start with the conclusion and then work backwards.
- pron 11y ago
  > Start with the conclusion and then work backwards. That's just not true (I studied history in graduate school). It is true, however, that sometimes you look at the facts and a certain pattern emerges, and you then go back to find further evidence for that pattern. But you full-well realize that you're by no means providing an absolute and complete model of reality -- just an aspect of it. The reason is that in a complex system, it's very hard to build models that are both "predictive" and descriptive. So you settle for an approximation, with the assumption that your readers understand it as such. Few historians claim that their model is complete.

by hugh4 11y ago

dasil003 11y ago

> The guy is acting like Hitler invented anti-Semitism. No he's not, he's saying Hitler used anti-Semitism as the basis for a crackpot philosophical theory about the nature of humanity. I'm not sure whether I agree with that, but it's certainly an interesting idea.

dang 11y ago

On HN we try to avoid generic dismissals of new work. I'm afraid this comment counts as one. Yes, the burden of proof is on Snyder (not "this guy") to make an argument. But he just wrote a book about it and you haven't engaged with anything specific in the argument he did make. Nor have you offered a counter-argument; that anti-Semitism was common doesn't imply that Hitler's was garden-variety. To say it was unusual "only" in how it ended is weak—that is more than unusual enough. And to criticize Synder for starting with an intuition is unfair. Much scholarly work starts that way.

danieltillett 11y ago

I do like that he is being honest about how historians think and reason. Start with the conclusion and then work backwards.

pron 11y ago
> Start with the conclusion and then work backwards. That's just not true (I studied history in graduate school). It is true, however, that sometimes you look at the facts and a certain pattern emerges, and you then go back to find further evidence for that pattern. But you full-well realize that you're by no means providing an absolute and complete model of reality -- just an aspect of it. The reason is that in a complex system, it's very hard to build models that are both "predictive" and descriptive. So you settle for an approximation, with the assumption that your readers understand it as such. Few historians claim that their model is complete.