As Evans points out "conspiracy theory" can be
used in a highly selective way. His new book concentrates on five conspiracy
theories connected to the Nazi's Third Reich. Evans attempts to demolish once
and for all time a series of the myths like Hitler's postwar life in South
America, Rudolf Hess's trip to Britain and three other Nazi theories.
In his introduction, Evans states that the purpose of his
book is to demolishes not only past false history but to oppose the growth of
current conspiracies which predominantly surround the outbreak of COVID 19. There
is indeed a serious problem as the growth of paranoia and pseudoscience as
dangerous as the virus itself. Also dangerous is the "fake news" surrounding
the US presidential campaign. As Evans writes "The puzzling complexities
of politics and society are reduced to a simple formula that everyone can
understand. In the internet age, "anyone can put out their views into the
public sphere, no matter how bizarre they might be".
The fact that the myths and conspiracy theories associated
with the Nazi's are still going strong and need a historian of Evans calibre to
demolish them after more than 70 years is still a shock to the system. As one
writer put it "at times, it is possible to sense the exasperation felt by
this eminent historian that he is having to bother devoting energy to
dismantling the claims of those whose methods are so much less rigorous than
his own".
Did Hitler Escape the
Bunker
One myth or lie associated with the Third Reich is the
baseless theory that Adolf Hitler did not commit suicide in Berlin in 1945 but somehow
made his escape to South America. "Despite all the evidence to the
contrary, more book-length arguments for the survival of Hitler in Argentina
have appeared in the 21st century than in the whole of the 55 previous years,"
writes Evans.
Perhaps even more strange is the fact that the Stalinists in
the former USSR were the first to promulgate this lie after the Second World
War.
As a Wikipedia article points out "The myth that Hitler
did not commit suicide, but instead escaped with his wife, was first presented
to the public by Marshal Georgy Zhukov at a press conference on 9 June 1945, on
orders from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. When asked at the Potsdam Conference
in July 1945 how Hitler had died, Stalin said he was either living "in
Spain or Argentina." In July 1945, British newspapers repeated comments
from a Soviet officer that a charred body discovered by the Soviets was "a
very poor double." American newspapers also repeated dubious quotes, such
as that of the Russian garrison commandant of Berlin, who claimed that Hitler
had "gone into hiding somewhere in Europe."This disinformation,
propagated by Stalin's government, has been a springboard for various
conspiracy theories, despite the official conclusion by Western powers and the
consensus of historians that Hitler killed himself on 30 April 1945. It even
caused a minor resurgence in Nazism during the Allied occupation of Germany".[2]
It is not just books that lied about Hitler's death. As
Evans points out between 2015 to 2018,
the History Channel showed a three-season television series, Hunting Hitler.[3]
From a historical standpoint, the programme was a tissue of
lies from start to finish. No attempt was made to address the irrefutable
evidence of Hitler's death put together by investigators. Their evidence was
backed up in a West German court in the 1950s and made available to historians.
The series was full of "innuendo, suggestion and invention". Even
more staggering is that this piece of television trash had on average 3m
viewers.
As Evans states in the book "The tissue of coincidences
and connections they spin is no substitute for facts and a was a "conspiracy
without conspirators" .
Why Did Rudolf
Hess Fly To Britain
The fact that there is still uncertainty surrounding Rudolf
Hess's flight to Britain in 1941 is still hard to believe. Hess had a few
psychological problems but then what Nazi did not. As David Shariatmadari points
out "it quickly became clear that here was no great supply of military
intelligence but a man beset by delusions and hypochondria, one whose political
significance had, in any case, been on the wane for some time. His falling into
Allied hands did offer, at a time when to talk of the "madness" of Nazism
had become a cliché, the chance to explore the psychological underpinnings of
the movement. Perhaps Hess, rather final, self-destructive step and were next
seen in the dock at Nuremburg".[4]
From a political or more precisely geopolitical standpoint, Hess
was seeking an alliance with Britain against the threat of Bolshevism. Whether
or not he went on his own volition or was sent by Hitler is not important. Hess
would have been aware that sections of the British ruling elite had very deep political
sympathies with the Hitler regime and shared its deep-seated anti-Semitism and
anti-communism.
Protocols of the
Elders of Zion
The first conspiracy Evans deals with is the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion. The 'Protocols' were an early-20th-century forgery alleging
a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Evans has tremendous knowledge of this
particular conspiracy theory. Evans is a former Regius professor of history at
the University of Cambridge and author of numerous works on Germany, including
a three-volume history of the Third Reich.
Evans believes that the Protocols played only a small part
in Nazi anti-semitism and states that forgery was "rambling, chaotic and
unstructured". Evans is also correct to point out that anti-semitism was
not just confined to Germany, other capitalist governments took advantage of
the Protocols to espouse antisemitic prejudices.
What Evans fails to mention in the book that there was
massive opposition to the rise of anti-Semitism and Fascism in general. It has
been down to the Marxist movement to oppose the rise of anti-semitism where
ever it has manifested itself. It is not for nothing that the 19th-century
German socialist leader August Bebel called anti-semitism "the socialism
of fools". Babel believed like all Marxist's that economic and social
inequality was the product not of a Jewish conspiracy but the capitalist system.
The principled struggle of the Marxist movement against anti
Semitism largely passes Evans by. He is not interested in it. Perhaps, more
importantly, is his steadfast refusal to take the field against the modern-day
Nazi's in Germany. Seventy-five years after the collapse of the Third Reich, a
party led by apologists for Hitler and out-and-out Nazis is accepted by the
ruling elite as a legitimate political development. Evans has written next to
nothing on the phenomena.
To ignore this development in his latest book is a mistake
at best and a crime at worst. As David North and Johannes Stern point out "the
use of the word "conspiracy" in explaining the rise of the AfD is
entirely appropriate. The major difference between the AfD and the Nazis of the
1920s and 1930s is that this modern-day fascistic organization is not based on
a mass movement. Arising out of a split with the CDU and FDP at the beginning
of 2013, a large proportion of AfD members have been recruited directly from
the state apparatus—above all from the military, judiciary and police. Most of
their personnel were previously members of another establishment party".[5]
Who Burned Down
the Reichstag
Evans position on the fire is pretty clear. He believes the
Nazi's were taken by surprised by the fire and to blame them is a commie plot.
He states "For Münzenberg and later Calic and the Luxembourg Committee,
conspiracy theories came naturally in a Communist movement that had seen Stalin
launch trials of plotters and saboteurs, just as he would soon stage the show
trials that portrayed many leading Old Bolsheviks as part of a vast conspiracy
to overthrow the Soviet Union. This tradition has long since come to an end,
but it has been replaced with a new form of conspiracy theory in the internet
age. Hett's book is permeated by it: the Nazis conspired to burn down the
Reichstag, Tobias conspired with ex-SS men to deny it, Krausnick and Mommsen
conspired to deny the Nazis' involvement".[6]
Evans dismisses the work of Alexander Bahar and Wilfried
Kugel who sought to expose the Nazi's complicity in the fire. The Nazi's had
been in power for less than a month when the fire conveniently broke out. The
Reichstag fire was the excuse for persecution of Communist and Social
Democratic workers, intellectuals and party leaders that had no parallel.
Krugel and Bahar's book The Reichstag Fire - How History is
Created was the product of meticulous research. Their research had them make
the first comprehensive evaluation of the 50,000 pages of the original court,
state attorney office and secret police (Gestapo) files that had been locked
away in Moscow and East Berlin until 1990. The result is an extraordinary piece
of research containing an 800-page document. The authors argue that even the
most circumstantial evidence points to the Nazi's guilt in starting the fire.
According to the review of the book carried out by the World
Socialist Website, "The authors have thus succeeded in disproving a
hypothesis that even today is still fairly widespread: that the Dutchman
Marinus van der Lubbe was the sole perpetrator. They "base their evidence
largely on original documents that are stored in public archives, but have not
been evaluated up to now... The book contradicts in many ways all of the
research reports that have been published so far on the Reichstag fire, based
on what the authors say is the first thorough evaluation of all presently
available relevant sources. In summary, the authors have succeeded after years
of work in presenting a comprehensive chain of circumstantial evidence—albeit
one that will only have a conclusive character for those readers who are
prepared to take on the intellectual challenge presented by the often highly
complex and convoluted aspects of this case of political crime."[7]
Bahar and Kugel do not believe that the fire was the result
of a deranged loner they write: "As incontestable as it is that the Nazis
benefited from the Reichstag fire and made skilful use of it in establishing
their dictatorship, opinion remains divided as to who committed the deed. The
communists accused by the Nazi authorities at the Reichstag Fire Trial in
Leipzig were already ruled out in 1933 for obvious reasons: quite apart from
the lack of evidence, the suicidal and thus nonsensical nature of such a deed
was self-evident, despite Nazi propaganda to the contrary. So did Marinus van
der Lubbe, the 75% vision-impaired Dutch radical left-wing communist arrested
in the burning Reichstag set the fire on his own? Or were the culprits to be
found among the Nazis?".
As Evans points out, responsibility for the Reichstag Fire is
was a constant source of argument between German historians after the Second
World War. Evans, in his new book sides with several prominent German
historians who deny the guilt of the Nazis.
To conclude, as was said at the beginning of this review,
Evans new book is a solid piece of historiography. The lies surrounding the
Nazis is a legitimate field of study, and so is for that matter ithe
promulgation of fake news and modern-day pseudo myths on social media. It is
nonetheless disturbing that Evans has said next to nothing on the rise of
modern-day Fascism and its supporters. Maybe the kind people at the World
Socialist Website could send him a review copy of Why Are They Back, Historical
Falsification, Political Conspiracy, and the Return of Fascism in Germany by
Christoph Vandreier. I doubt somehow he will take up the challenge.
[1] See http://www.conspiracyanddemocracy.org/
[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_about_Adolf_Hitler%27s_death
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_Hitler
[4] https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2012/08/rudolf-hess-and-comic-absurdity-fascism
[5] Sound the alarm! Political conspiracy and the resurgence of fascism in Germany -David North, Johannes Stern-14 February 2020
[6] The Conspiracists-Richard
J. Evans-
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n09/richard-j.-evans/the-conspiracists
[7] Alexander Bahar, Wilfried
Kugel: Der Reichstagbrand - Wie Geschichte gemacht wird (The Reichstag Fire -
How History is Created), edition q, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-86124-523-2, 864 pages,
price: 68.00 DM
