WWI, Modernism, and the Holocaust

What produced the Holocaust?

This question has haunted the West since the first death camps were liberated by Allied soldiers in 1945. Of course, a myriad of answers have been proposed that lay the blame on, variously, anti-Semitism, Hitler's evil/mad genius, the psyche of 'ordinary Germans', European Christianity/Lutheranism, the Treaty of Versailles, modernity, etc. (I assume the Christian doctrine of sin to be a necessary component of any theory of explanation - not that such horrors can be 'explained'). There's obvious truth to all of these answers, especially when taken together in some combination. But, in my reading on this subject there's always been something missing from all the attempts to get at what could have prepared the most advanced society of its day to carry out the slaughter of millions of people.

For the past few years, this gap has started to be filled by two sources: studies of WWI and of turn-of-the-century German culture. Recently, to my great joy, I discovered a book that brings these two topics together: Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins.

The first part of Rites of Spring is a study of how the turn-of-the-century cultures of France, England, and Germany enabled them to enter into and fight the truly mad and frivolous Great War. In chapter two, Eksteins turns his focus on Germany. He examines European modernism as it took root in the German soil of romanticism, idealism, nationalism. The fruit of this combination was a culture trapped in its own delusions of aesthetic grandeur and cultural superiority, primed for war. Eksteins produces evidence for this war-lust in Germany. In the month after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the German population gathered by the thousands in town and city squares across the land, demanding retribution. The author also shows that frenzied support for military action was nearly unanimous among all classes of society, especially among intellectuals, artists, and those on the political Left. Eksteins quotes one observer who recalled that in those days in Germany "The incomparable storm unleashed in the people has swept before it all doubting, halfhearted, and fearful minds" (63).

One would think that the components of German culture that led the nation to war in 1914 would be critiqued and rejected after its devastating defeat; certainly, many did exactly this (Barth, Rosenstock-Huessy and the Patmos Circle, et al). But for many more in Germany, those same cultural forces remained solidly in place, fueling a bitter reaction to the catastrophe and setting the stage for the rise of National Socialism and the even greater tragedies that followed.

There's far more to Eksteins' book than what I've discussed here: he spends several chapters on the war itself. The last section of the book examines in detail National Socialism, Hitler's triumph and Germany's ultimate downfall in WWII as (partly) an outcome of the cultural forces examined in part one.

Not only is Rites of Spring worth reading on its own terms; it also nicely complements a few other books on these subjects that I recommend as highly as this one:

1). Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust, a study of how the German embrace of modernity (rationalization, industrialization, the embrace of 'technique,' efficiency, managerial bureaucracy, etc.) was essential to the mentality and methods of the architects of the Holocaust.

2). Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Out of Revolution written during the 1930's in Germany by a WWI survivor who classifies WWI itself as the fruit of a European-wide revolution that continued to gain power in Germany after WWI. ERH's analysis of 19th-20th century German thought, politics, culture, as well as his contemporary reaction to Hitler and the National Socialism is spread throughout the book.

3). The correspondence of Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, Judaism Despite Christianity, carried out while each was deployed with the German army in the early days of WWI. While the letters focus on religious and philosophical questions, the backdrop to the discussion is the war, and each man's awareness that their country was in the grip of deadly fantasies that could lead to national disaster. This book was out of print for many years, but has recently been republished in a new edition that includes several helpful essays about the correspondence and its historical context.