[Dempsey]

Quote:
Eric Hobsbawm is one of these German Jewish Marxist refugees. His view is no more a non-partisan reliable than Meinecke's.

So why do you endorse Meinecke over Hobsbawm? You originally listed Meinecke stating

Becuase it doesn't sound to base our understanding to one side of the divide. Until recently I've only read the "good history" of the Hobsbawm school. We should read also how the pro-nazis Germans (like Meinecke) viewed their state. Not to sympathise with them but to get full picture.

I didn't mean to say Hobsbawm is anti semite just to point he's partisan for his side as Meinecke's.

[Smilin' Dave]

Becuase it doesn't sound to base our understanding to one side of the divide. Until recently I've only read the "good history" of the Hobsbawm school.

It's never really been a two sided story. Consider the debates surrounding the sonderweg for example (which from your view was a debate contained to one 'side'). Or the more Marxist/Soviet view of Nazism as capitalism in crisis. Even the psycho-sexual interpretations of Nazism. It's not so much a divide as a multi-faceted prism.

We should read also how the pro-nazis Germans (like Meinecke) viewed their state. Not to sympathise with them but to get full picture.

Okay, so you have read the other side. Now you have to decide whether that view alone is valid, or achieve some kind of synthesis with the other works you have read. In my opinion, you arn't going to get the full picture by focusing on any single point of view to the exclusion of others.

I didn't mean to say Hobsbawm is anti semite just to point he's partisan for his side as Meinecke's.

But as I pointed out, Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes is hardly a classic Marxist approach to the rise of Nazism. If Hobsbawm is partisan, it's because he's representing his own views rather than some vaguely defined side. I still think it is fair to note that Meinecke's writings in 1946 about Jewish intellectuals in the Weimar period have to be viewed in context of his support for anti-semetic policies in the mid 1930s.

So, just to be absolutely clear, where do you actually stand on this topic? Are you really saying that radical intellectuals are primarily responsible for the rise of Nazism? Or was this all just for discussion? I don't think this thread can go much further until we are clear on that.

[albionfagan]

So what exactly do you find so improbable in the idea that the broader situation of German politics paved the Nazi path to power? Eric Hobsbawm identified the time period as a general crisis of democracy in Europe, yet only in Germany was democracy destroyed. England and France had no shortage of radical intellectuals challenging the establishment. Many could have been defined as crossing a line set by their general political culture (as you suggest in the case of Germany). Like Germany, it came from left and right, although you would seem to have it that in Germany it was only the left.

Democracy was destroyed throughout europe in fact.

There were 17 dictatorships

[Rojik of the Arctic]

So what if the intellectuals supported Nazism? Intellectuals also thought Stalin was the best thing to happen to the world while he was drawing up his death lists. Hitler never made any secret of his plans for the Jews, Communists or indeed the world, and all this proves is that intellectuals are a bunch of turncoats that wholeheartedly support an ideology while it is on top and wash their hands when it fails. In any sensible revolution they should be the first against the wall.

[Dempsey]

The op doesn't say the intellectuals supported Nazism rather their ridicule criticism of all scared to German created the backlash which is Nazism

Joachim C Fest the best author on the Third Reich lays the blame where few liberals dare to do, he quotes the Jewish novelist, playwright, and poet Franz Werfel, who also went into exile, who unambiguously acknowledges the responsibility which he and his his own generation of artists and extremist, he even castigated himself for his arrogance: "Applauded by the laughter of a few philistines, we stoked the inferno in which mankind is now frying" (Between Heaven and Earth‎ - Page 250 by Franz Werfel)

Franz Werfel, once a member of the Expressionist avant-garde, wrote shortly before his death in Hollywood in August 1945, one of the most succinct characterizations of the age to which Hitler finaly took power

Postwar comments of another liberal in the Weimar Republic, Otto Gessler, he too wrote "If after all antisemitism was able to strike deep roots in Germany, then it was above all because of the mentioned literary circles. With cold cynicism they tore down everything which was dear to German national feeling ... It was a failure of their racial comrades (Rassegenossen) not to deem it necessary to draw a clear line between the literary circles and themselves."

[Smilin' Dave]

That's a good restatement of your argument Dempsey, but it addresses none of the criticisms levelled at it. So much for your attempts to view the period from all angles.

The op doesn't say the intellectuals supported Nazism rather their ridicule criticism of all scared to German created the backlash which is Nazism

As opposed to the Nazi attacks on all things sacred to Germans like the Church and the old aristocracy? You also appear to endorse your claim that all "left wing" intellectuals were responsible with the following quote:

"Applauded by the laughter of a few philistines, we stoked the inferno in which mankind is now frying" (Between Heaven and Earth‎ - Page 250 by Franz Werfel)

Werfel clearly states this was the actions of a few, not a whole identifiable group.