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Istv?n De?k is one of the world's most knowledgeable and clearheaded authorities on the Second World War, and for decades his commentary has been among the most illuminating and influential contributions to the vast discourse on the politics, history, and scholarship of the period. Writing chiefly for the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, De?k has crafted review essays that cover the breadth and depth of the huge literature on this ominous moment in European history when the survival of democracy and human decency were at stake. Collected here for the first time, these articles chart changing reactions and analyses by the regimes and populations of Europe and reveal how postwar governments, historians, and ordinary citizens attempt to come to terms with—or to evade—the realities of the Holocaust, war, fascism, and resistance movements. They track the acts of scoundrels and the collusion of ordinary citizens in the so-called Final Solution but also show how others in authority and on the street heroically opposed the evil of the day. With its depth, conciseness, and interpretive power, this collection allows readers to consider more clearly and completely than ever before what has been said, how thought has shifted, and what we have learned about these momentous, world-changing events.
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E S S AY S ON H I T L E R’S EUROPE I S T V A´ N E S S AY S ON UNIVERSITY OF Lincoln & London H I T L E R’S NEBRASKA D E A´ K EUROPE PRESS © 2001 by the University of Nebraska Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Deák, István. Essays on Hitler’s Europe / István Deák. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8032-1716-1 (cl.: alk. paper)—isbn 0-8032-6630-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Jews—Persecutions—Europe. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Europe. 3. National socialism—Europe. 4. Fascism—Europe. I. Title. ds135.e83 d43 2001 940.53 ' 18—dc21 2001017103 For Gloria, Kiséva, Nagyéva, Fruzsa, and Panka CONTENTS Preliminary Notes ix Introduction xi 1 ger mans Who Were the National Socialists? 3 Who Were the Fascists? 16 Perpetrators 23 The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys 35 2 jews among “aryans” In Disguise 47 Cold Brave Heart 51 3 victims The Incomprehensible Holocaust 67 A Mosaic of Victims 89 Memories of Hell 94 The Goldhagen Controversy in Retrospect 100 4 the holo caust in other l ands A Ghetto in Lithuania 113 Romania: Killing Fields and Refuge 129 The Europeans and the Holocaust 137 A Hungarian Admiral on Horseback 148 The Holocaust in Hungary 159 Poles and Jews 163 5 on l o okers The Pope, the Nazis, and the Jews 169 The British and the Americans 185 Notes 195 vii Index 207 PRELIMINARY NOTES Writing reviews for the New York Review of Books and the New Republic means writing about books that the editors have assigned to you. Bunched together more or less to fit the reviewer’s fields of interest, these works have some common themes; still, this is a rather haphazard process, dictated by what is new and what attracts the editor’s attention in the mountains of books that rise in every nook and corner of his office. From time to time I was assigned only a single book to review; in the most demanding assignment, I had to review sixteen volumes within a single essay and in addition was asked to refer, either in the text or in the footnotes, to several other new works. An unexpected offer recently came my way when the director of the University of Nebraska Press presented me with the opportunity of publishing a selection of my essa