Books

ndx said:
I've finally managed to get my grubby hands on a copy of Michael Astour's Hellenosemitica: An Ethnic And Cultural Study In West Semitic Impact On Mycenaean Greece which was a revision and monograph publication of his 1963 Ph. D. thesis from Brandeis University.

Unfortunately I'll probably not get to look at it too in depth for now, since only the last part pertains to my own thesis (a discussion of Fremdwörter in Mycenaean Greek), but this book is impressive, and rather infamous as the lesser known precursor to Martin Bernal's highly controversial and heavily ideological multivolume Black Athena project (1987 - 2007, more volumes coming(?)).

The introduction of Astour's work is fairly interesting, since he discusses at length part of his biography as an (Jewish) intellectual and the intellectual climate before the outbreak of World War II, and his imprisonment for several years in Soviet Detention Camps for political prisoners from 1939 - 1950.

I really hope I can get a chance to digest this fully and properly someday when I have less pressing issues at hand. The whole shadow-intellectual history of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the fields of Classics, Assyriology, and Egyptology fascinates me greatly.

That book looks fascinating. I am intrigued all the way.

Thanks for this information.

J.

I agree with Stahlblitz, Ernst Junger and Julius Evolais are great authors. Ura Linda Chronicle is great book too. But sometimes I doubt in it's authenticity. I can also recommend Miguel Serrano's books, but its' more nazionalistic. Also I like Corneliu Codreanu and Karl Haushofer.

My friend M sent me today this message:
"Monday there will be the release of a book by a politician named
Thilo Sarrazin in Germany. The book title is "Deutschland schafft
sich ab - wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen". It could initiate a
turn at least in migration politics in Germany. [...]."
Sounds interesting, I haven't check it out though

Today Sarrazin found it necesarry to tell the world that in his opinion Jewish people share a certain gene. Though there might be a certain amount of truth in it this remark only helps mr. Sarrazin to sell his book. To the debate it adds absolutely nothing, on the contrary...

It's a typical reaction everyone freaks out now due to his Jew-related remark. But what everybody forgets (or lacks knowledge of) is that this theory/claim is discussed broadly in Israel.

I somehow got the impression (I think it was in the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, laying out at work - I don't read that usually) that he did this comparison to point something else out and also made that remark on other ethnical groups.

And there is the ethnicity of the Semites, often made equal to the Jews; from that point of view there's nothing 'bad' in his remark and I think that's what he meant. Maybe it's just PR. Everybody (papers, radio stations) seems to talk about him - but noone ever mentions his book. Neither the Welt am Sonntag nor the EinsLive (a German newsstation) moderators this morning when talking about him. I think that's on purpose...


But what's the best: noone really ever managed to prove him wrong. He's just telling the truths nobody wants to be true. All there was were verbal attacks on him and articles implying his alleged racism but never proving anything.

During our stay in Berlin we came across a flee-market in the vicinity of the "Museum-Insel". Most of the sellers had large amounts of books on offer at really cheap prices.
I found E.M. Remarque's "der Weg zurück" at the ridiculous price of 1 euro but it was my other purchase which made me really happy.
"Deutschlands Hochseeflotte im Weltkrieg" written by its former commander since 1916 Admiral Reinhard Scheer. Printed in 1920.
Other books i bought during my stay were :
- Düsenjäger über dem Walpersberg" (history of an underground plant used for the production of the Me262)
- Die Schiffe der Kaiserlichen Marine 1914-1918 und ihr Verbleib
- Westwall : Bild und Mythos
That last book is fairly new, printed in 2009 at the Michael Imhof Verlag.
It is of particular interest to me being a "Bunker-archeologist" and litterally living between the remains of that Westwall.

Regarding the gene remark (which I didn't read first hand, neither did I read Sarrazin's book), and the relevance of genes, I would propose to read a couple of books. One is Race by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele, the other is On Genetic Interests by Frank Salter. However, I think this belongs to another group's discussions, not to Soldat!

I've just finished The End by Ian Kershaw, which I can highly recommend. If you want to read just one book regarding the last nine months of the Drittem Reich, then probably this is the one to go.

I'm currently reading David Irving's Hitler's War. I don't know about his later opinions, but in this book he is most definitely not a holocaust-denier. (Even though he is clearly sympathetic to his subject.) The book is very well researched, but his theory regarding the holocaust is still not very plausible. On the other hand, the holocaust is just not a very large point in the book - obviously it was not what decided the fate of Hitler and his empire, and neither did he deal with it too much during the war, and since the book is showing Hitler's perspective, and it's based on documents regarding what Hitler did and saw, and there are of course almost no documents linking Hitler to the holocaust, the book just doesn't deal with it too much. I think it's an interesting perspective, although I would recommend that it not be the first book you read on the subject, and that you of course read a number of other authors as well. But I think his implausible view still doesn't contradict the documents directly, so I can't really see why he was immediately ostracized after the publication of this book. (Although, if I were German, I wouldn't like it too much - it's actually not that far from Goldhagen's view.)

If you're interested in the German Eastern Front, I would highly recommend to read David Glantz. He mostly writes from the Soviet perspective, although his book on Rzhev-Sychevka operation ("Zhukov's Greatest Defeat") is mostly based on German sources. (The operation was led by Zhukov, the same time as the Stalingrad operation, and using roughly as large forces, and was an utter failure - thus indirectly proving that it really was the Romanians and Italians fault. If Germans had protected the flanks, the Stalingrad operation might not have succeeded at all...) But most of his books are mostly based on Soviet sources (although his fans claim that he's as much of an expert of the German side, this is obviously not case - he is more familiar with the Soviet side, and of course way more sympathetic to them). I would say if you only want to read one book by him, then When Titans Clashed might be your choice, a general description of the German Eastern Front 1941-45.

If you're more interested in general military history, there is one great book by Israeli historian Azar Gat: War in Human Civilization. It's 800 pages, but highly recommended to everybody interested in a grand picture of military history. I would actually more recommend its first chapter (on warfare before written history) than Richard Keeley's War Before Civilization (on which it's partly based), because it even adds some additional research and perspective.

Another great author is Martin van Creveld (again an Israeli Jew), of the books I read from him Supplying War and Figthing Power are the best, roughly half of the first one deals with WW2 modern logistics, and the second one is a study comparing the German Heer and the US Army performance on the Western Front in 1944-45. (Spoiler: the Germans were better, but outnumbered and outgunned.)

of the Drittem Reich

That's strange. In German it would've been vom Dritten Reich, so of the Dritten Reich might be better. But the English article "the" is not declined, hence I chose to decline the adjective as if there was no article. But it probably sounds strange to both English and German speakers. As well as to me, now. :)

Yes, of course I did read Kershaw. The reason I started reading Irving was because he was quoted at so many places, regardless of his reputation. (Even Kershaw references him.) Which shows that his book must be really good, if in spite of such weaknesses he is still so widely referenced... (And that really is the case.)

However, I think Kershaw's evidence is not totally convincing. (Although stronger than Irving's.) I mean, it is possible to give many interpretation to the documents we have. I would recommend that you read The Origins of The Final Solution by Christopher Browning (he also wrote Ordinary Men - if you're interested in the holocaust, and you haven't read it, you should), where one of the chapters was written by German historian Jürgen Matthäus. Now Matthäus has a different opinion than Browning, which shows (they explain it in the foreword that the reader should choose who is right...), and it's difficult to decide. Browning is close to Kershaw, where Matthäus puts much much bigger emphasis on the upward pressure coming from "successful" local SS and police commanders, and administrators wanting to get rid of their Jewish populations... Matthäus interprets things as simply the higher authorities bending to the demands of their subordinates. Irving thinks the same thing vis-a-vis Hitler and Himmler - Hitler letting Himmler do whatever he pleases. What's implausible is that he states that Hitler was largely left in the dark as to what was happening. I say implausible, I don't say totally impossible. Maybe Hitler also didn't want to know what was going on. (Actually, even mainstream historians say that much: Hitler didn't want to know the details. But maybe he didn't even want to know the big picture..?)

So while I maintain that Irving's view is not quite plausible, I think it's still not totally out of the question. I actually think that a scholar taking a somewhat extreme position is stimulating to academic debate. His later statements vis-a-vis gas chambers etc. are more disturbing.

Irving wrote that there is not strong enough evidence against Adolf to convict someone for one single murder. On the other hand, I think that even if that is correct (and, to be honest, I think that the evidence is really only indirect, although quantitatively overwhelming, and probably to get a conviction from a jury, you would need direct evidence as well), he, as Commander-in-Chief, Führer, Reichskanzler, etc. etc., must have known about it, and if he didn't, than at the very least he should have known about it. But there is overwhelming direct evidence that almost all of his subordinates knew about it already in 1942 - the generals, the government ministers, at least some Gauleiters (but then they probably told the others...) and other Party and government leaders, civilian administrators, and of course the various SS and police leaders. How could he, of all, have avoided the information? And if he had the information, then, well, he knew or should have known that...

And also Irving has condemning evidence that Hitler of course knew of at least a number of atrocities and mass murders - only that he shows that in the individual instances where we have evidence of this, he always wanted avoid the mass murder, and lessen the atrocities. But should this be taken as evidence that these were the only instances he knew of? I would say hardly.