Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder (Bodley Head, £25)
Timothy Snyder boldly rejects traditional explanations for the destruction of Europe’s Jewish communities. Non-Germans, he notes, killed as many Jews as did the Germans, even though their anti-semitism was quite different from Adolf Hitler’s. Hitler believed the Jews invented law and the state to constrain the forces of nature. He wanted to restore the natural order so that the superior Aryan species would predominate and save the planet. The Nazi Party, the Volk, the German state and sundry collaborators were just means to this end.
Snyder derides the notion that Jews were victims of science in the service of the modern state. Hitler ordained the conquest of eastern Europe precisely because he could not envisage a scientific solution to scarcity. Not all the Jews who were subsequently murdered died in “death factories.” Over a million were shot and Auschwitz was atypical.
Crucially, Snyder relates the vulnerability of Jews to their citizenship and the persistence of state structures. Most perished in lawless zones or because they were rendered stateless. He depicts the destruction of states and peoples as the culmination of colonialism and anti-colonialism. Jews were first slaughtered to clear the eastern lands and, later, murdered across Europe to end Jewish “domination.” When the Nazis offered east Europeans liberation from “Judeo-Bolshevism,” local communists seized the myth and turned against their neighbours to demonstrate their fealty. Politics explains their homicidal choices.
In his hectoring style, Snyder sometimes resembles Daniel Goldhagen, the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, but his writing is better and studded with aphorisms. He concludes with an admonition that panicky responses to climate change could recreate the conditions that plunged Europe into mayhem.
Timothy Snyder boldly rejects traditional explanations for the destruction of Europe’s Jewish communities. Non-Germans, he notes, killed as many Jews as did the Germans, even though their anti-semitism was quite different from Adolf Hitler’s. Hitler believed the Jews invented law and the state to constrain the forces of nature. He wanted to restore the natural order so that the superior Aryan species would predominate and save the planet. The Nazi Party, the Volk, the German state and sundry collaborators were just means to this end.
Snyder derides the notion that Jews were victims of science in the service of the modern state. Hitler ordained the conquest of eastern Europe precisely because he could not envisage a scientific solution to scarcity. Not all the Jews who were subsequently murdered died in “death factories.” Over a million were shot and Auschwitz was atypical.
Crucially, Snyder relates the vulnerability of Jews to their citizenship and the persistence of state structures. Most perished in lawless zones or because they were rendered stateless. He depicts the destruction of states and peoples as the culmination of colonialism and anti-colonialism. Jews were first slaughtered to clear the eastern lands and, later, murdered across Europe to end Jewish “domination.” When the Nazis offered east Europeans liberation from “Judeo-Bolshevism,” local communists seized the myth and turned against their neighbours to demonstrate their fealty. Politics explains their homicidal choices.
In his hectoring style, Snyder sometimes resembles Daniel Goldhagen, the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, but his writing is better and studded with aphorisms. He concludes with an admonition that panicky responses to climate change could recreate the conditions that plunged Europe into mayhem.
