Heil, Professor!

Frontpagemag ^ | July 14, 2006 | Phil Orenstein

[sergey1973]

Far too little attention has been paid to addressing the fundamental role that ideological indoctrination in classrooms and lecture halls has played in delivering the atrocities of Nazism to the world. The German university was the ideological originator of Nazism, turning romantic racial myths and superstitions about Germany and the Jews into a systematic “scientific” body of knowledge that gave rise to Nazi racial policy and justified the horrors of the Nazi atrocities. Professors and academics with multiple Ph.D.s eagerly collaborated with the Nazi leadership and selected who was to be sterilized and who lived or died for the glory of the Volk, advocated which races were to be exterminated and which nations were to be invaded and conquered for lebensraum.

Lately, many notable historians and political commentators have been comparing our own time to the ominous prelude to World War II. Herbert London, renowned historian and President of Hudson Institute declared, “we are back in 1940” (4) as global terrorist attacks, proclamations of Jihad, the threat of a nuclear Iran, fatwas against the West and the annihilation of Israel are broadcast from the Middle East on a daily basis. Other historians compare these times to Germany in 1938, when Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler while Nazi tanks thundered across Europe. Charles Krauthammer, concluding from the current alarming trends that the lessons of the Holocaust are still unlearned, he recounted the apprehension of Bernard Lewis, the world’s preeminent Middle East scholar saying he “confessed that for the first time he feels it is 1938 again….in 1938, in the face of the gathering storm -- a fanatical, aggressive, openly declared enemy of the West, and most determinedly of the Jews -- the world did nothing”. (5)

[sergey1973]

PING ! Excellent research on the academics and ideologues who gave the rise of the Nazi Ideology in Germany and the Holocaust.

[frankiep]

The German university was the ideological originator of Nazism

I think that this statement should have been more clearly written. While German universities may have helped spread the ideals of Nazism, it is wrong to say that it was the "originator" of Nazism. Hitler, in response to the Versailles Treaty, was the originator of Nazism. I don't recall ever hearing about Hitler studying at a university and then deciding to form the Nazi party. I don't recall ever even hearing about Hitler even attending a school of higher learning. He was refused by an art school though.

I don't mean to nit pick, but I disagree with this premise. The Nazi movement began, and grew powerful, thanks to uneducated street thugs and disaffected military veterans.

[tcrlaf]

bump

[gaspar]

Geographer Hans Haushofer and his theories of "living space" were widely debated even before Hitler came to power. In fact Hitler was influenced by Haushofer, and not vice versa. The German interest in "geopolitics" was so pervasive that following WWII the term was practically erased from the geographic lexcon and from an academic's vocabulary.

[FreeRep]

The nihilist German philosopher of the late nineteenth century Fredrick Nietzsche was biggest influencer of Nazi ideology. His philosophy is increase again, especially among the sick intellectual Left.

[Grut]

Have you no respect for the sanctity of a research grant?

[jn25b]

The Nazis were created at Versailles, and everyone there knew at the time that there would be another war. The text of Maynard Keyne's book "The Economic Consequences of the Peace." is posted on the web in a number of places. After Versailles it was in British bookstores by Christmas. It is the most politically influential book ever published, and is still in print.

[Atlantic Bridge]

If then:

"Sieg Heil, Professor!" or "Heil Hitler, Professor!". Nobody would say soley "Heil" in Germany. The word alone is not linked with the nazi ideology.

BTW - the American word creations in German are sometimes quite funny. I once had a fierce discussion with a former US-Marine who insisted on the completely ridicolous word construction "Teufelshunden" (BuHuHaHa!) for his unit. He even showed me a old US propaganda poster where "Teufelshunden" was written upon. "Teufelshunde" (devil dogs) or "Hunde des Teufels" would be okay, but the official expression of the Marines is just funny BS for everybody who is able to speak German. I do not doubt that the Wehmacht called their oponents Devil Dogs, but I doubt that it happend in the way the Marines are telling it today.