radical reeducation.rnA large segment of the left intelligentsia made no bones of itsrnsympathy for the “German Democratic Republic,” which atrnleast did not enslave its subjects to consumerism and thern”elbow society” prevalent in the West. Naturally, there wererncertain excesses, but these could be explained by the pressuresrnissuing from Bonn and Washington. For these intellectuals, thernGDR dictatorship—kept in existence by Soviet tanks andrnforced to resort to building a wall to keep its subjects in—was arn”normal state”; they denounced any attempts to “destabilize”rnit, even by the forthright expression of anticommunist opinionrn(“primitive anticommunism,” it was called). They spokernwarmly of communism’s “humanistic values” and “positiverncore,” which sharply distinguished it from National Socialismrn(in this way, they exhibited a characteristic failing of intellectuals:rnpreferring to look to theory rather than reality).rnThe German left’s “march through the institutions” afterrn1968 was spectacularly successful in the media, schools andrnuniversities, churches, and more and more in politics. Its controlrnof the cultural infrastructure produced a situation wherernthe public declaration of any pro-German attitude was view edrnas evidence of Rechtsradikalismus. Some 30 years ago, when IsraelirnPrime Minister Levi Eshkol, at a dinner in Jerusalem, expressedrnto Konrad Adenauer his conBdence that “under yourrnleadership the German people will return to the community ofrncivilized peoples,” the old Chancellor retorted: “Mr. PrimernMinister, what you think is of no concern to me…. I representrnthe German people. You have insulted them, and so tomorrowrnmorning I shall depart.” It is impossible to imagine any recentrnGerman leader, in particular, the lickspittle former FederalrnPresident Richard von Weizsacker, responding with such unabashedrnpatriotism, especially to an Israeli.rnThen came 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and signs thatrnthe Germans might still harbor some sense of national pride.rnThe conservative historian and publicist Rainer Zitelmannrnwrites that “the left experienced the reunification [of Germany]rnand the collapse of socialism as a defeat,” a grave setbackrnthat had somehow to be made good, lest a “turn” occur and thernleft lose its power to control political debate. The perfect opportunityrnpresented itself when a few half-wits started firebombingrnthe homes and asylums of foreign residents. (Thesernincidents were strategically exploited in the same way as thernOklahoma City bombing has been exploited in the UnitedrnStates.) Now came an all-out campaign against allegedly deepseatedrnGerman “racism” and “hostility to foreigners,” accompanied,rnnaturally, by hysterical warnings of a “Nazi resurgence”rnand endless allusions to the affinities between Nazism andrnbourgeois Germany. Thus, the normal human desire to live inrnone’s own country among one’s own kind was equated with thernwill to annihilate other peoples manifested by Hitler and hisrnbutchers.rnThe latest spasm of German abuse and German self-hatredrnoccurred with the publication of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’srnHitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and thernHolocaust. Launched with a remarkable publicity barrage byrnKnopf, absurdly acclaimed by the author’s Harvard friends, itrnwas touted by Abe Rosenthal in the New York Times for packingrnthe emotional equivalent of a first visit to Auschwitz. The thesisrnof this work, which won an award from the American PoliticalrnScience Association, is that the Judeocide is easily explained:rnfor centuries the Germans had been “eliminationist”rnanti-Semites, and under the Nazis, they became openly and enthusiasticallyrn”exterminationist.” Suffice it to say that in publicrndebates recognized holocaust scholars demolished the crookedrnmethodology and preposterous claims of this academic hustler.rnThe best review appeared in the Frankfurter AllgemeinernZeitung and the excellent German conservative magazine,rnCriticon, by Alfred de Zayas, an American historian and juristrnand respected authority on international law. Whenever anti-rnSemitic attitudes or acts are mentioned, de Zayas observes,rnGoldhagen speaks of “the Germans”—not “the Nazis,” or evenrn”many Germans”—offering no justification at all; it is simply arnpolemical trick. He neglects to mention well-known facts, e.g.,rnthat everyone connected with the killing of the Jews was boundrnby Fiihrer Order No. 1, as well as by special orders from Himmler,rnmandating the strictest silence, under penalty of death. Sornit should not be surprising that, for example, the former ChancellorrnHelmut Schmidt, who was a Luftwaffe officer during thernwar, testified that he had never heard or known anything of thernannihilation of the Jews; or that Countess Donhoff, publisherrnof the liberal paper Die Zeit, should state that, despite her connectionsrnto many key people during the war, she knew nothingrnof the mass-killings in the camps, and that “I heard the namern’Auschwitz’ for the first time after the war.” Goldhagen simplyrndisregards major standard works that contradict his thesis. Hernclaims, for example, that the German people approved of andrnjoined in the Kristallnacht in a kind of nationwide Volksfest.rnYet Sarah Gordon, in her authoritative Hitler, Germans, and thern”Jewish Question” wrote: “There was a torrent of reports indicatingrnpublic disapproval of Kristallnacht… [whatever the motivation]rnwhat is not in doubt, however, is the fact that the majorityrndid disapprove . . . after Kristallnacht, the Nazisrndeliberately tried to conceal their measures against the Jews.”rnNone of the scholarly critics made much of an impression onrnaudiences that witnessed the debates in the United States orrnduring Goldhagen’s tour of Germany late last summer, andrncertainly not on sales of the book. In any case, most of the critics,rnexcept de Zayas, overlooked the function performed by arnwork such as Goldhagen’s. While he indicts the Germans asrnuniquely, pathologically anti-Semitic and while some of hisrncritics retort that, no, all of Christendom, indeed, Christianityrnitself, is implicated in the Jewish genocide, attention is keptrnfixed on the supposed single great crime of the recent past, ifrnnot of all of human history, to the virtual exclusion of all others.rnIn particular, the misdeeds of communist regimes are undulyrnneglected.rnA decade ago Ernst Nolte, then of the Free University ofrnBedin, ignited the Historikerstreit, or dispute of historians, andrnbecame the target of a campaign of defamation led by JiirgenrnHabermas, by asking: “Didn’t the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ comernbefore Auschwitz? Wasn’t the ‘class-murder’ of the Bolsheviksrnthe logical and factual presupposition of the ‘race-murder’ ofrnthe National Socialists?” These are still good questions. Inrnfact, Stalinist—and Maoist—offenses, while acknowledged, arerngenerally downplayed and have achieved nothing remotely approachingrnthe publicity of the Nazi massacre of the Jews. In thernUnited States, it is likely that a person who keeps abreast of thernnews media will encounter references to the holocaust literallyrnevery day of his life. Yet who has heard of Kolyma, where morernpeople were done to death than the present official count forrnAuschwitz? The figures for the victims of Maoist rule that arernstarting to come out of China suggest a total in the range of 30rnor 40 million, or more. Do these facts even make a dent in pub-rn16/CHRONICLESrnrnrn