Adolph Eichmann worked closely with the notorious S.S. General Rienhard Heydrich, and helped formulate and institute the plans for the Final Solution.  He escaped eventually to Argentina, but was kidnapped by the Mossad and taken back to Israel for trial.

Eichmann Interrogated is comprised almost entirely of edited transcripts of conversations between Israeli Captain Avner Less and Eichmann himself.

The book starts and continues on a tedious note.  Eichmann takes pains to clarify the minutiae of who he knew, when he joined the S.S. and why, what his rank meant, and exactly what he did.  Painstakingly he gets us to the point where he asserts that the scope of his powers extended to Section IV B4.  That’s all.  He even expresses horror at the fact that Nazi’s murdered Less’ father in a concentration camp.

But around page 90 or so Less’ questions come more to the point, and Eichmann’s responses have to match.  Eichmann claims responsibility only for the fact that he transported people to the camps, and not for any of the deaths.  He talks of the need to obey orders, that he did nothing illegal as far as German law was concerned.  When pressed on the death of civilians at the hands of Germany, he admits it but points out that the Allies killed hundreds of thousands of civilians with their bombings as well.  He is deferential, but fights nonetheless.  He desperately tries to get distance between himself and the victims by claiming that he did not know necessarily that any of them would be killed for sure, otherwise why did so many Jews survive the war?  Bizarrely, he almost argued that his conscience could be clean because any of those he did ship to camps might hypothetically not be killed, thus, he can say he helped kill no one at all. He is very clear on this point.  Eichmann does not come to terms with his actions.

Many things make the last 150 pages or so of the book so memorable.  Did he truly believe the legal fictions he spun for himself?  Did he divorce himself so much from reality that he could not connect his transportation of people and their deaths?  Surely too, he lied about the extent of his involvement.  But again, did he believe his lies?

Hannah Arendt’s work helps complete the picture.  I thought Arendt’s Imperialism fantastic, but Eichmann in Jerusalem lacked the focus of that previous work.  Still the subtitle itself (A Report on the Banality of Evil) is a great insight into the whole Nazi regime.  Arendt does also draw one key conclusion about Eichmann himself.  She did not see him as a simpleton or a mere patsy.  He had a kind of intelligence.  But she argued that Eichmann had no ability or training to see anything beyond the moment.

One example might be that within minutes of each other he first disavowed any believe in the afterlife and then proclaimed that, “Germany will live in my heart forever.” Eichmann was perhaps literally incapable of seeing the contradiction. The same insight applies to him expressing horror over Avner Less’ father in a death camp.  Perhaps that too was not an act.  Perhaps he did not see the connection between himself and that event, however absurd that notion is.  Truly, he was never trained or encouraged to think or view things outside of himself.  He accepted his death sentence passively, but with little real sense of the reasons why he deserved it.*  For him the verdict seemed like victors justice and not Justice proper, a mere extension of the war 17 years later.

If she is right in this about Eichmann, then we can reasonably assume that he may not have only tried to concoct a desperate defense with his, “I only shipped them to the camps, I never killed anyone,” line.  He might have actually believed it. In this way Arendt makes us see that Eichmann is part of the tragedy of the Holocaust, all the more so because it seemed he couldn’t see that about himself.

*Unlike, say, Burt Lancaster’s character in the great ‘Judgment at Nuremburg.’

People throw the word “courage” around too glibly, and the word should rarely apply to historians.  Yet we might possibly call the German historian Fritz Fischer and the work he did in the early-mid 1960’s courageous.  In the aftermath of W.W. II and the collapse of Nazism, Germany found itself divided and at the center of the Cold War.  The trauma of the 20th century played out in their backyard.  They had to comes to terms with their past and their place in the world.  Understandably, most everyone said something like:

• Nazism was horrible and we have much to answer for.  But, it was a 12 year “blip on the radar.”
• We caused W.W. II . . . and that was wrong.  But . . . we must understand that W.W. II was a byproduct of the unjust Treaty of Versailles.
• What made that treaty so unjust was that Germany wanted peace in 1914.  But instead, we found ourselves encircled by England, France, and Russia.  Some may say we started W.W. I, but if we did, we did so out of self-defense.  We were just minding our own business, but other countries sought to “snuff us out.”
• Thus, when we talk about helping to shape a new peaceful order of nations, we can draw on the vast majority of our history to do so.

Fischer argued instead that in fact, Germany pursued an aggressive policy leading up to both conflicts.  If they faced “encirclement” from other nations in 1914 that had everything to do with Germany’s own drive to dominate Europe themselves.  Certainly Hitler and the Nazi’s had racial aims that had almost nothing to do with the Germany of 1914.  But . . . their territorial and economic aims remained remarkably similar.  In these policy areas the Nazi regime simply picked up where Germany left off decades prior.

In making such arguments Fischer obviously made himself extremely unpopular.  He directly challenged Germany’s sense of history and sense of identity.  Provided that his arguments came from a genuine seeking of truth and not from a masochistic, cynical self-loathing, the term “courageous” might apply.

I find Fischer’s arguments persuasive.  He cites many instances of Germany planning for a long time to expand its influence, an influence it “deserved” because of its economic and military power.  Even the academic elite of Germany joined in, as Johannes Haller wrote,

Let the German nation arise, strong and invincible, only in the greatest danger conscious of all her strength.  Let her reclaim the place in the world that is hers, the place that she once had that was taken from her in the ignoble times of her weakness.  Let her begin again what she was in the long gone–mistress of the north and east, champion of German culture, and safeguard of western civilization against the tyranny of Asiatic barbarism.

As early as 1903 the scholar Erich Marcks wrote that, “the old liberalism is dead,” and that

the idea of increased state autonomy, the idea of power, has replaced it.  It is this idea that inspires and guides leading men everywhere.

It is amusing to see how the “Germany as playing defense” school of thought deals with certain comments of high-ranking German officials just before W.W. I.  Germany’s plan, for example, to fight a general European war involved willfully violating Belgian neutrality–a neutrality guaranteed by international treaty.  Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg called this guarantee a “scrap of paper.”  German apologist Egmont Zechlin called this statement, a mere  “figure of speech,” an expression of “mood.”  It is not likely that the Belgians themselves thought much of this “mood” in August 1914 when Germany invaded unprovoked and invented a blatant lie to justify the invasion.  This reminds me of the ingenious response Marty Dibirgy received to his question some time ago:

What struck me about Fischer’s book World Power or Decline, was not so much his main argument, which I already agreed with.  What I found surprising was the philosophy that lay behind Germany’s aggressive actions.  While I disagree with Germany’s apologists, I concur with them on one point.  The belief that one must continually advance, expand, “seize the day,” and so on, was hardly limited to Germany.  Most European intellectuals said likewise.  Darwinism, among other intellectual fads, filled the mind’s of men with the idea that one must continually grow or perish.  The idea may have been first expressed by Alcibiades.  When advocating for an expedition to Sicily, Thucydides has him say to the Athenian Assembly,

What reason can we give ourselves for hesitating? What excuse can we give our allies for denying them aid? We have given them our word under oath to protect them and now we are saying they never helped us? Our treaty with them was not for them to come to Athens and help us but to harass our enemies in Sicily and prevent them from attacking us. This they did. Like all great imperial powers we have acquired our dominion by our readiness to stand by anyone, barbarian or Greek, who asked for our help. If we sit by and do nothing or make distinctions on the basis of nationality when people ask our help, we will not only add little to our empire but we will probably run the risk of losing it altogether. Wise men are not content to repel the attack of a superior power, they anticipate it. We cannot regulate at our pleasure the extent of our empire. Given our position, we must neither relax our hold on our subjects nor give up our plans to attack and rule over others. For if we do not rule over them, we will be ruled over by them! We cannot afford the luxury of inaction like those who are our subjects unless we wish to exchange places with them and become subjected to them.

The debates surrounding the origins of W.W. I and who one should primarily blame can engage and fascinate, but most miss that the real cause of the war lay in Europe’s spiritual restlessness.  The Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment initially spurred on some notable cultural and intellectual innovation.  By the end of the 19th century, however, all we had left was a pointless, restless, unease.  We must move so we do not die.  But in what direction should we move?  Where should we go?

In his book Nihilism, Father Seraphim Rose (then just Eugene Rose) called this malaise “Vitalism.”

The chief intellectual impetus for Vitalism has been a rejection of the realist/scientific view of the world, which simplifies things and “dries them out” of any emotional life.  Unfortunately, however much the Vitalist might yearn for the ‘spiritual’ or the ‘mystical,’ he will never look to Christian truth to fulfill this need, for Christianity for them is as ‘outdated’ for him as the most dedicated rationalist.

The Christian truth which the Enlightenment undermined and rationalism attacked is no mere philosophy, but the Source, the Truth of life and salvation, and once there begins among the multitude a conviction that Christianity no longer remains credible, the result will be not an urbane skepticism imagined by the Enlightenment, but a spiritual catastrophe of enormous dimensions, one whose effect will make itself felt in every area of life and thought.

Towards the end of the 19th century, a restlessness and desperation had begun to steal into the hearts of a select few of Europe’s intellectual elite.  This restlessness has been the chief psychological impetus for Vitalism; it forms the raw material that demagogues and craftsmen of human hearts may play upon.

Fascist and National Socialist regimes show us what happens when such craftsmen utilize this restlessness for their own purposes.   It may seem strange to some that such restlessness would manifest itself in places that had reached the seeming pinnacle of human cultural and political achievement, but such manifestations should not surprise us . . . .

In such phenomena “activity” serves as an escape–an escape from boredom, meaninglessness, and most profoundly from the emptiness that takes possession of the heart that has abandoned God and refuses to know their own selves.

In politics, the most successful forms of this impulse have Mussolini’s cult of action and violence, and Hitler’s darker cult of “blood and soil.”   Vitalism, in its quest for life, smells of Death.

I love Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog.  Like so many others I find him broadminded, engaging, and properly provocative.  His most recent tome, The Complacent Class, makes some timely arguments about the state of the union.  He asserts that Americans have grown lazy.  We prefer being comfortable to a challenge.  We spend time with people just like us, and modern technology allows us to pick only the music, food, movies, etc. that we know we will like.  More than ever, we live in self-contained loops, and this has grave implications of for our culture.

I usually agree with Cowen and most of what I read about the book seems persuasive.  But one of the key supports to his arguments is the apparent fact that Americans move around and change jobs much less than they used to.  Perhaps this is a byproduct of some of the other changes in society.  Cowen calls this a serious negative, but I’m not so sure.  Putting down roots will not help build local communities if we decide to stay inside on our screens.  But the wandering psychological restlessness prevalent from 1850-1930 helped contribute to two devastating world wars.  For all of his movement and desperation to seek a challenge, how much did Alexander the Great grow as a person?  A cursory examination of his life hints more at degeneration than growth.

Cowen apparently thinks of growth in terms of seeking a challenge, conquering it, and then moving on to a new challenge.  He’s onto something.  But a tree continually transplanted will never flourish.  The unseen growth of roots in a plant are what really count.  Cowen equates movement with embracing risk, which certainly applies at times.  On some occasions, however, movement can be about avoiding risk, avoiding problems, avoiding the challenge of real growth by going somewhere else.  The desert monks of centuries ago recorded this anecdote, which all of us do well to heed:

A brother said to a hermit, “My thoughts wander, and I am troubled.”  He answered, “Go on sitting in your cell, and thoughts will come back from your wanderings.  If a donkey is tethered, her foal skips about but always comes back to her.  It is like that for anyone who for God’s sake sits patiently in his cell.  Though his thoughts wander, they will come back to God again.”

Some years ago I read A Perfect Mess, a delightful book that sought to demonstrate the blessings of individuality in business and life.  The book centers on the basic idea that creating uniformity in how people work, process, and store information, though it looks efficient, will in fact harm the bottom line for 2 main reasons:

• Acquiring the time and means to store information takes more time and money than we might think, and
• It forces everyone into a mold few people (except the fussy bureaucrat) work well within.

The authors cited the real-life example of two newsstands on the same New York street.  One store had all the modern accoutrements, such as computer reordering systems, a large selection, beautiful decor, and a helpful staff.  The other was a father-son operation that had less of everything.  But only the father-son store stayed in business.  All that selection, decor, staff, and computer systems came with a steep price tag.  Somehow the poorly-lit, somewhat ramshackle father-son operation worked just fine.

I thought of A Perfect Mess reading the similarly entertaining Mr. Kipling’s Army by the pre-eminent military historian of the Victorian era, Byron Farwell.  Certain things about the British army of this period seem almost impossible to believe.

For one, no one commanded the army.  By this, I don’t mean that no one person commanded the army, I mean that no agreement existed as to whether or not the Crown or Parliament commanded the army.  No “Joint Chiefs of Staff” existed.  Different people commanded different sections of the army, but at root the army had no unity of command.

The practice of purchasing army commissions continued long into the 19th century, which allowed anyone with enough cash and enough desire to immediately assume the rank of Lt. Colonel.  True, some disagreed with this practice. But it had numerous supporters, among them, the Duke of Wellington, who argued that the purchase of commissions gave the upper echelon of officers a direct stake in the well-being of the army/country.

Furthermore, various physical handicaps had no bearing on one’s ability to serve.  Some generals could not hear.  Some could not walk.  Some could not even see, being legally blind.  No one seemed to mind.

The army never grew even close to the size of armies in other European countries such as Prussia and France.  But this same “pint-sized” army was also spread out further over the globe than the military of any other country at that time.

Despite all this, none can doubt that the British army of this period did more with less than anyone else.  Quite simply, they were an enormously effective force, and between 1815-1914, more effective than anyone else.*

Farrwell offers no direct answers to this seeming paradox, but he packs the book with so many choice nuggets that one can begin to answer the question for themselves.  A key feature of the British army in this period would surely be regimental pride and identity, though not, as we might expect, army pride and identity.

The numerous regiments had their own uniforms, customs, mascots . . . a unending list of distinctives.  Sometimes these distinctives included actual violent rivalries with other regiments, but no matter.  If the British had one sacred guiding principle in this era it amounted to this: Do not mess with regimental traditions.  They tolerated almost anything not to violate this sacrosanct dictum, including actual criminal behavior by some soldiers, i.e., “Smashed shop windows at Blenheim Square?  And today is the third Saturday of March?  Pay no mind, that’s just the boys of the 10th Essex.”

The British may have gone too far with their one sacred principle, but they chose well.  Various testimonials abound at how the accretion of tradition and custom built a very strong sense of unity and identity within each fighting line.  The Romans (another effective army!) did something similar for much of its history, grouping soldiers as much as they could by village.  You fought next to those you lived with.  Almost every officer hated getting pulled from regimental ranks into a staff job.  Parting with the regiment meant parting with family.

Armies get their modus operandi, hence their effectiveness, from the societies that create them.  When a natural meshing occurs between army and society, the armies will have much more power because they will have more confidence, consciously or not.  Military action has a greater chance of meshing with society at large, which again adds to the effectiveness of military action.

The British did this brilliantly, whether they realized it or not.  The 19th century in England saw a curious blend of aristocracy and democracy.  The power of the monarch and the House of Lords all underwent a steady transformation towards more democracy, but a strong aristocratic flavor remained.**  Even the “defensive” dress (as brilliantly put by Lord Clark in his Civilization series) of the middle and upper-middle class showed an aristocratic motive to distinguish themselves from the masses.  Chesterton’s early 20th century work  The Club of Queer Trades delightfully pays homage to the British mania for clubs at the turn of the 20th century.

The British saw to it that each regiment was its own club, its own mini-aristocracy with its own traditions, dress, and way of life.  Anyone in a regiment would immediately become part of a mini-society that would give them a holistic identity apart from the rest of society.  As even our modern political scene teaches us, people will fight hard to maintain their sense of identity.

All of this should make us ponder our current situation.  I remember reading an article some time ago that mentioned that over the last 10 years the military has seen a huge spike in those hoping to become snipers.  Maybe this is the result of video games, but maybe not.  Military movies for decades focused on the heroism of the average Joe.  Now our movies and many of our military operations focus on our special forces, a kind of aristocracy within the military at-large.  And yet, our country may be moving in a more populist direction.  If so, this would put some tension between our military and our society which in theory could damage its effectiveness.

Or, possibly what we think is populism is in fact an extension of a kind of hyper identity awareness.  We do see a rise in the role of personal identity with issues surrounding sexuality and gender, and perhaps race as well.  If this is correct, then our military and society may be moving in a more feudal/aristocratic direction, not in the sense of having a defined upper class by birth, but by the segmenting of “Society” into multiple different smaller societies and interest groups.

Or perhaps its instead some weird combination of things, as may often be the case with American history.

Dave

*For now we will leave aside the moral aspects of their military adventures.

**Barbara Tuchman discusses this aspect of English life at this time vividly in The Proud Tower.

Aristocratic Age

Spit and Polish v. Drill

Link to sp. forces

I confess to having a strong antipathy to smart phones.  I know that they have their good uses.  But I am bewildered as I see people bring them out at various times and places.  I wonder what has become of us.

Now, I also realize a large amount of hypocrisy on my part.  I should also ask what has become of me.  I don’t have a smartphone . . . but I love my iPod, and I check my email too much.  In my mind, if technology had stopped advancing after Apple came out with its 160 GB iPod classic, I would be content.  But even if I am right that our prolific use of smartphones do us harm, what can be done?  After all, retreating from them seems impossible, and time marches on.  To stop advancing technologically would condemn us to economic stagnation.  To actually prevent technology from further advancing would probably require a government more powerful than would be good for us.

So it appears that we’re stuck.

But, maybe not.  The premise of Noel Perrin’s Giving up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 is that a people can halt a certain kind of technology without radically changing their society.  While certain particular features of Japanese society allowed for this, Perrin states rightly that this example disproves certain well-entrenched ideas about technology and progress, among them:

• That one must “keep up with the Jones'” to have a successful society
• That technological progress comes as a whole and not in parts.  In other words, many falsely assume that to halt “progress” in one area will prevent advances in other areas.
• That halting progress will put a society irrevocably behind other societies.  Instead, when Japan did decide to adopt modern weapons in the late 19th century, they very quickly caught up to others and soon posed a significant military threat.

So first we can examine why Japan could nearly eliminate guns from their society, and then secondarily, we can consider its possible application for us.

I initially assumed that Japan’s restrictive trade practices limited their contact with firearms from the start.  Not so — in fact they made significant use of firearms well into the 1560’s, and European traders remarked quite favorably on their quality.  We might also assume that Japan had a low-level of technology in general, but again — not the case.  To quote Perrin,

Japan had already reached a high level of technology.  Her copper and steel were probably better, and certainly cheaper, than any produced in Europe.  Despite enormous shipping costs, the Dutch found it profitable to send Japanese copper 10,000 miles from Amsterdam.

. . . In iron and steel Japan could undersell England, the recognized leader of European producers.  [Japan also] led the world in paper products.  For 200 years they were the leading manufacturer of weapons.  These were top quality weapons, too, especially the swords.  It is designed to cut through tempered steel, and it can . . .

In a country often experiencing some kind of conflict at some point, they well understood the value of rifles.  But by the end of the 16th century Japan decided against all forms of military mechanization so successfully that they generally disappeared for 250 years.

Of course others in Europe saw the problems with firearms.  Martin Luther said that, “Cannon and firearms are cruel and damnable machines.  I believe them to be the direct invention of the Devil.”  But Germany went on to become the pre-eminent arms manufacturer.  Many French aristocrats inveighed vociferously against the impersonal nature of such weapons, as well as the fact that their introduction would broaden war beyond the aristocracy.  But they too followed the general trend.

Certain factors within Japan made it more likely that they would have success while Europeans failed.  Being an island did not hurt.  Their demographics also played a role.  In France, for example, the warrior aristocracy represented about .1-.2% of the population.  In Japan that number reached close to 10%, which gave them that much more influence.   Japanese swords also had such a high quality that the difference in effectiveness between a sword and a 16th century gun was less than in Europe.

But Perrin argues that the main factor lies in the role of the sword in Japan.  In Europe some swords had religious and symbolic significance, i.e. King Arthur’s “Excalibur,” or Roland’s “Durendal.”  But in Japan, the sword almost literally represented the soul of warrior for every samurai.  Swords were an extension of the self.  Making them obsolete would in effect, make themselves obsolete.  They would have no purpose as they would have no identity.

Perrin relates an interesting story along these lines.  One group of samurai besieged the castle of another warrior.  Eventually it became obvious that the besiegers would win, whereby the besieged asked for a conference.  He explained to his attackers that he had several swords inside that he wished to preserve from destruction.  Would the attackers agree to receive the swords and preserve them?  And so, the defenders, with solemn ceremony, transferred the swords to the attacking army and then retreated back into the castle.  After which, the attackers set fire to the estate and all those inside perished.

Many aristocratic warriors in Europe and Japan detested firearms because it made combat itself impersonal and unredeemable.   We see many examples of dialog during combat in the Arthurian tales, but it seems the Japanese took this to another level.  Perrin gives us one such example, as Warrior ‘X’ tried to behead Warrior ‘Y’ unsuccessfully, who was wounded and exhausted.

Y: Are you fluttered, sir?  You see you have no success.  Look, I wear a nagowa (an iron neck collar).  Remove it, and you can cut off my head.

X: (Bows to “Y”) Thank you sir!  You die an honorable death.  You have my admiration!

One could even argue that Japanese warriors sought not so much victory, but an honorable death.  Firearms dramatically increased the chance that you would die without an honorable end, without a chance to “fly the flag” at the last moment — however much it increased your chances of victory.

Early Japanese firearm manuals acknowledged this and more.  To fire guns well, such manuals stated, one even had to put the body in “demeaning,” inelegant postures.  For the Japanese, the gun represented not just another weapon, but another view of humanity.

Firearms returned late in the 19th century.  Ironically, Admiral Perry told them that if they wanted to keep others like him away, they would need more modern weapons.  Japan then turned on a dime and within a generation had a respectable military force.  Within two generations they posed a grave threat to the most modern of militaries and nearly conquered all of Asia.  The absence of mechanized weapons for three centuries put them at no real disadvantage once they determined to catch up.

One of the oldest tropes in the history of History is historians wishing for bygone days of yore.  But I think our worries about technology go far beyond nostalgia.  Advancement is now so rapid that we have no time to contemplate or evaluate the role of technology in our lives.  We have to ability to develop “social antibodies” to the problems with technology.  As such, we have within the last 10 years become utterly dependent and quite possibly addicted to the internet.  Paul Graham, the innovator behind Reddit, Dropbox, and a variety of other programs, writes,

. . . And unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we’ll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us. Unless we want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose sad example becomes a lesson to future generations—we’ll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how. It will actually become a reasonable strategy (or a more reasonable strategy) to suspect everything new.

In fact, even that won’t be enough. We’ll have to worry not just about new things, but also about existing things becoming more addictive. That’s what bit me. I’ve avoided most addictions, but the Internet got me because it became addictive while I was using it.

Do we have any hope of emulating the Japanese and pausing our technological growth?

A few other random examples of at least halting technology exist (such as Elizabeth I preventing indoor plumbing), but I can’t think of another example of a society moving “forwards,”* then “backwards” with the adoption of certain technologies.  Japan’s insular geographic position helped them, as did their demographics, governance, and culture — and I find these last two most significant.

Americans rarely acknowledge the fact that aristocracies come with some benefits, or at least, alternative possibilities.  Japan’s warrior elite had the political and social status to make the ban stick.  Add to that the pull of a unique and deeply distinctive Japanese culture, one that perhaps approximated that of ancient Egypt in its power to unify a large mass of people in a particular way of life (another geographically insulated civilization).

We have no geographic isolation.  Nor does our culture have anything close to Japan’s gravitational pull, i.e. — our capital exports little more than bureaucracy to the rest of the country.  And finally, our democratic system has something close to a zero-percent chance of desiring, or certainly enforcing, such a return to earlier ways.  Self-denial simply has very little place in democratic cultures.

Now I think it’s time for me to check my email . . .

Dave

Matt Zoller of RogerEbert.com writes,

We’ve become a one-handed species. We keep one hand in reserve for taking out a wallet, digging in a purse, swiping a Metrocard, helping up a person who’s fallen on the sidewalk, whatever. The other hand is for Making Sure We Got This.

I know, I know. This has been going on for a few years. It’s not a news flash; it’s who we are as a species. I’m Grandpa Abe Simpson yammering about onion belts. I should climb onto the ice floe and shove off. Or say, “Oh yeah, things change, technology changes, it’s no big deal” and quit complaining.

But I think it deserves ongoing consideration and argument, because it’s everywhere.

Is it merely different from, but in no way inferior to, older forms of participation, as people who are addicted to doing it tend to claim when they read pieces like this one? I have no idea. Only a cognitive researcher could say with any authority. But it’s a major and visible change. It’s species-wide.

And I’ve personally not heard any convincing arguments against the idea that it means we have become, in some basic way, detached from our own existence; that life itself is becoming a supplier of material for Instagram, Flicker, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the like, rather than a thing that happens to us, and that we absorb with our bodies and minds, not with our phones.

*I think it would be a nearly impossible to construct a good argument that mechanized weaponry represented an advance for civilization.

The book “Blood and Iron Origin of the German Empire As Revealed by the Character of Its Founder, Bismarck,” by John Hubert Greusel is not so much a biography of Bismarck as it is a pean to an idea, an homage to a theory of History.

Historiography has its fashions just like other disciplines.  In the late 19th century the “History is Made by Great Men” theory gained prominence among a certain set.

To best of my knowledge, the theory runs something like this:

• Existence, political or otherwise, is about struggle for survival and little else.
• Civilizations have moral codes to help check our naturally competitive instincts, and these serve a good purpose — most of the time.  But times arise that call for a transcending of such codes.  We don’t like to admit it to ourselves, but the vast majority of us lack the strength of will and purpose needed to accomplish what needs done.  Society craves champions.
• “Great Men” arise to meet such a challenge.   Such men have vast intellects and plentiful energy.  They can mold the minds of men and make Lady Fortune their mistress.  Their grand vision naturally requires sacrifice, but they sacrifice themselves most of all to their ideals.  They sacrifice the prevailing mores of the time to this ideal as well.  Their “greatness of soul” excuse all their crimes and vices, some of which are only mere convention anyway.
• Such “Great Men” are beloved by some, hated and reviled by most others.  Inevitably, “lesser” men gang up on them and bring them down, but the “Great Men” manage to have the last laugh.  They gain immortality by their deeds and the impact they leave behind.

Colonel Jessup believed in this theory. . . (warning: language)

Historians typically use a few different people to expound this philosophy.  Julius Caesar fits the bill, as does Napoleon, who said, “The world begged me to govern it.”  Some write about Alexander the Great this way, a man with a vision of the brotherhood of man, only to face betrayal from his own army.  Hannibal gets this treatment too, as his own government first would not give him reinforcements and then after the war betrayed him to of all people, the Romans.  At least Hannibal, unlike Napoleon, Caesar, and Alexander, got a noble death by his own hands.  He remained “unconquered.”

Bismarck most definitely could be written about this way, and that is how Greusel treats him.

Fashions change of course, and historiography changed.  By the mid-20th century historians had stopped focusing on the great men and swung the pendulum to examine culture, environment, and the everyday (think Fernand Braudel).  Interestingly, the “Great Man” approach coincided with the advent of Nietzche’s philosophy of the “over-man” and the heyday of imperialism. Historians’ focus switched as empires collapsed and the civil rights movement began.

First, a word about Greusel specifically.

His writing has an endearing quality, because he cannot contain himself.  He gets carried away with his subject, with both Bismarck and the Idea.  Each page has multiple exclamation points to accompany the exalted language.  A typical paragraph might look like . . .

And here is Bismarck, striding over the plain of Sedan.  Look at his steps, like a Colossus!  His face — o his face! — triumphant in his glory.  But look close.  Is that a tear in his eye?  A tear for the slain, the cost of victory?  Weep, o weep Bismarck, if you must, but not here, not now. Watch him suppress his anguish, for what is the cost?  This is Germany’s hour!  Watch Bismarck complete the triumph.  For he will drink champagne — yes champagne! — right in Versailles where Louis XIV looked with eagle eye over his foppish band.  Bismarck guzzles the liquid, as he guzzles glory!  For here we have a man who loves and hates like no other!

Entertaining in doses, but not entirely informative.

Greusel does not entirely gloss over Bismarck’s faults, but he keeps returning to the idea that, “You need Bismarck on that wall, you want Bismarck on that wall!”  Germany needed united, after all, and it took a force of nature to overrule a pathetic Parliament and outmoded provincial princes.  Thus Bismarck fulfilled, “the secret yearning of the Teutonic Heart,” (his words, not mine) and the immensity of the task meant that immense deeds needed done, and lesser men must give way to The Deed.

I’ll give Greusel credit for this: he does not hide his thoughts in flowery prose.  He has no qualms with making his views obvious, such as his intolerance for weakness or the “pettiness” of democracies.  His heroes are the Great Men, who serve the god Will, embodied in the German national consciousness.

I have profound antipathy for the “Great Men” theory of History for many reasons, but we must first understand its appeal.  We admire strength because we do need it at times.  Part of us can’t help but agree with Colonel Jessup.  Certain times call for clarity of vision and courage to make difficult decisions when all others see a foggy grey landscape.  The question is, what kind of strength do we need?

With that in mind, problems with the theory abound:

• The theory absolves one of responsibility.  Bismarck’s individuality gets merged into something resembling Fate.  For all of Greusel’s croonings about how Bismarck was a “man” his treatment of him abstracts Bismarck to the point where he no longer is an individual, but a Type.  As a colleague of mine rightly pointed out, a great gulf exists between the Great Men and Biographical approach to History.  The biographical approach values their subjects as men/women, rather than seeing them through the lens of imagined archetypes.
• This absolving of responsibility allows the characters of this treatment (Napoleon, Alexander, etc.) to indulge via proxy in childish shifting of blame.  “It’s not my fault!  He did it!”  Again, not particularly manly.
• The theory has no appreciation for anything like moral strength, or the power in humility.  The growth of the Church within the Roman Empire, or the Civil Rights movement stand as clear examples of the power of humility.  Selfishness and pride get pride of place with “Great Men.”
• Great Men adherents tend to think that force is always the correct solution.  Napoleon may have been right that Europe needed unity, and that every war between European nations had the character of a civil war.  But his conquests provoked far more war than existed previously.  Bismarck wanted to Germany to unite, and I suppose that Germany had a right to unity if they mutually desired it.  But Bismarck did not want unity through a democratic process.  He wanted to create Germany through the forge of blood and iron.  Only in that way could he serve his god.
• The theory predicates itself on the unremitting “struggle of life.”  But if History means looking at actual people in time, we should ask if “struggle” defines human existence.  Obviously struggle is part of life, but it also seems like most of the time people watch tv, hang out with friends, read books, visit relatives, etc.
• Not so much on the theory but on Greusel specifically — why exactly did Germany need united, and why did it need to get that unification at the expense of a patient democratic process?  Greusel never addresses this question directly.

Historian Herbert Butterfield commented,

It is easy to make plans of quasi-political salvation of the world. . . .  And when such plans go wrong, it is easy to find a culprit–easy for the idealist to bring out from under his sleeve that doctrine of human sinfulness which would have been much better to face squarely and fairly in the first instance.  At a later stage in the argument the disillusioned idealist trounces the people who opposed him, brings human wickedness into the question as a deux ex machina.  . . . And now he discovers human wickedness with a vengeance, for on this system the sinners are fewer in number, and thus must be diabolically wicked to make up for it.  Nothing more completely locks humanity in some of its bewildering predicaments and dilemmas than to range history as a fight between the righteous and the wicked, rather than seeing initially that human nature–including oneself–is imperfect generally.

Greusel wrote in 1915, when Germany looked like it might “fulfill its destiny on the world stage.”  The sad irony of this book is that Germany’s worship of force led them to near annihilation over the next 30 years.  Beware of calling forces to your aid you call you cannot control.  Their gods Will and Force turned out to be demons.  St. Augustine commented in The City of God, referring to the Romans folly of adopting the gods that could not save Troy,

For who does not see, when he thinks of it, what assumption it is that they could not be vanquished under vanquished defenders, and that they only perished because they had lost their guardian gods, when, indeed, the only cause of their perishing was they chose for themselves protectors condemned to perish.

Finally Greusel’s abstraction of Bismarck has him overlook aspects of the man that don’t fit his theory.  I’m no great fan of Bismarck, but after 1871 he showed a measure of restraint in foreign policy.   He thought imperialistic ventures foolish and self-defeating, for example.  Germany only embarked on extensive colonialism as he lost power in the government.  Was this a “conversion experience” that Greusel overlooked, or is Bismarck just more complicated that he lets on?  I suspect the latter.