Thank, Mike, for your very comprehensive response to my queries regarding Joan's posting. The only book on Hitler on the shelves of my local library is *The Hidden Hitler* (2001), by the German historian Lothar Machtan. It is not actually a biography, and he only deals with Hitler's story after the death of his father. For Hitler's childhood he references four books, three of which are in German. I've ordered on Abebooks the only one in English, by Bradley F. Smith, which the subheading indicates is specifically on Hitler's "Family, Childhood, and Youth".
Mike writes: >Kershaw's biography paints a bleak life for the young Hitler, for >example, quote Hitler's sister and saying that his bad relationship >with his father resulted in a "sound thrashing every day"; see: http://books.google.com/books?id=nV-N10gyoFwC&lpg=PA13&dq=kershaw%20hitler%20thrashing%20harshness&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false >(bottom of page 12-13). Thanks (again) for that, Mike. I've ordered Kershaw's book, but in the meantime, could you give me the reference citation for the above quote from Hitler's sister. Mike writes in relation to Alice Miller's books: >I'll leave it to one of the clinical psychologists to point >out the problems with Miller's approach to psychotherapy. One doesn't have to be a clinical psychologist to comment on Miller's approach to psychotherapy. I'm fairly familiar with her writings, having sought out the passages on Freud's seduction theory in several of her books in the preparation for my article "The Myth of Freud's Ostracism by the Medical Community in 1896-1905: Jeffrey Masson's Assault on Truth", in which she gets a passing mention: http://www.esterson.org/Myth_of_Freuds_ostracism.htm I can't comment generally on her historical research, but on the seduction theory episode she gets just about everything wrong. In regard to her therapeutic approach, her contention is that virtually all the evils that beset humankind, outside of events in the natural world (for want of a better expression), are the result of the experiencing of physical and emotional abuse in childhood. Her methodology is such that she always, apparently without exception, finds this to be the case, both with individual patients and in the case of historical figures. To cite just one example, in *Banished Knowledge* she writes that one specific case "confirmed something I have long suspected: A child's autism is a response to his environment, the last possible response open to a child." Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London allenester...@compuserve.com http://www.esterson.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Re:[tips] Raising Hitler to be "a nice person" Mike Palij Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:54:53 -0700 On Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:46:50 -0700, Allen Esterson wrote: >On 27 August 2010 Joan Warmbold wrote: >>As a relevant tangent, do any of you recall that a production >>of Hitler's life was planned for HBO or PBS but was canceled >>as it provided some objective information about his abusive >>childhood. > >That's a strong allegation to make without citation, Joan. Please >supply chapter and verse – in particular that the production was >cancelled for the reason you give. Since Joan originally said "... do any of you recall that a production of Hitler's life was planned for HBO or PBS but was canceled as it provided some objective information about his abusive childhood." it is clear to me anyway that she could not recall the specifics of the event when she wrote her reply. Perhaps she will recall it, perhaps it is a false memory. Allen is correct is asking for a specific reference but it is possible that the actual event that Joan is referring to may differ in some significant details from her memory of the event. Such things happen. An event that Joan might have been thinking about was the 2002 CBS television network miniseries on Hitler based on Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler (which is available on books.google.com). One problem that some people appeared to have at the time was the miniseries focused on Hitler's early life and Kershaw's biography paints a bleak life for the young Hitler, for example, quote Hitler's sister and saying that his bad relationship with his father resulted in a "sound thrashing every day"; see: http://books.google.com/books?id=nV-N10gyoFwC&lpg=PA13&dq=kershaw%20hitler%20thrashing%20harshness&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false (bottom of page 12-13). Of course, focusing on the early years of Hitler's life raises the problem of making Hitler a sympathetic "victim" of his environment. This concern was expressed in an August 10, 2002 article in the Toronto Star newspaper (page h.09 -- available through ProQuest newspaper database); quoting the article: |There is no suggestion of any humour whatsoever in a much more |controversial CBS four-hour miniseries based on a biography of |Hitler by respected historian Ian Kershaw, now in production. |The series will concentrate on the young Hitler as he stews in his |juices and begins his rise to power. | |Naturally, people are nervous about this miniseries. Abraham |Foxman, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, |said, "We find it very distressing that people would spend talent, |time and money to make this man human." Well, actually he was |human. He was not an android or Lucifer incarnate. | |People at CBS are trying to reassure potential critics. This series will |be good for viewers, they suggest. It will remind them that Hitler's rise |could happen again. It will be a good history lesson for the entire |continent. "The benefit of dramatizing Hitler is that 25 million people |will probably be exposed to our film on CBS alone," the series' |executive producer Peter Sussman has stated. "That's a fantastic |opportunity to get out there and educate." | |.... |Educating people about Hitler, in particular, is very dangerous, |disturbing business because it's so easy to get it wrong. As the |American journalist Ron Rosenbaum reports in his 1998 book |Explaining Hitler: The Search For The Origins Of His Evil, some |of the best historians, philosophers, artists and political scientists |of our time have obsessed about the why of Hitler and the Holocaust, |and they have never come up with satisfactory answers. The NY Times also had an article, prior to the airing of the mini-series, on the topic of doing such a series on Hitler; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/25/weekinreview/ideas-trends-trivializing-hitler-the-new-refrain-adolf-we-hardly-knew-ye.html?scp=11&sq=%22richard+bernstein%22+hitler&st=cse&pagewanted=all or http://tinyurl.com/36wq649 The article by Richard Bernstein starts with the following: |IN his 1998 book ''Explaining Hitler,'' the journalist and essayist |Ron Rosenbaum wrote that the long quest by historians, |philosophers and others to understand Hitler has involved ''a trek |into the trackless realm of Hitler's inwardness.'' It is a realm |''camouflaged by thickets of conflicting evidence,'' he continued, |''a tangled undergrowth of unreliable memory and testimony.'' | |Mr. Rosenbaum's point is a good one to keep in mind now that |CBS Entertainment has announced plans to broadcast a four-hour |mini-series covering Hitler's youth and rise to power. |... |A program that shows Hitler becoming a demonical dictator because |his father beat him would either have to trivialize history or be a satire |worthy of Mel Brooks. CBS would have to produce an almost |amazingly bad melodrama for Hitler to come across as somehow |sympathetic, or at least kind of cool -- sort of like Hannibal Lecter |in ''Silence of the Lambs.'' Another quote: |'It's an extraordinarily complicated subject,'' said Fritz Stern, the |renowned historian and professor emeritus at Columbia University. ' |'I wonder if it can be done so as to take account of the indispensable |context or even to approximate even distantly its historical complexity. |And I have my doubts.'' | |PERHAPS CBS can pull it off, and until the program is ready for |viewing, it's impossible to render judgment. For Mr. Stern and others, |the most hopeful indication is that the program will be based on the |historian Ian Kershaw's book ''Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris,'' widely |viewed as one of the best Hitler biographies. A British newspaper article briefly acknowledged the CBS mini-seies; see; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/news-analysis-how-a-modern-fascination-with-nazi-evil-fuels-a-thriving-hitler-industry-598041.html |Running alongside the book sales is a renewed interest from the |broadcasting world. The American network CBS announced |plans last year for a mini-series on Hitler's early years, based |on the first volume of Sir Ian's biography. | |Filming for the drama, which stars the British actor Robert Carlyle |as Hitler and Stockard Channing as his mother, is to begin this spring. | |The BBC had a similar £10m project with Rupert Murdoch's Fox |Studios but dropped the idea after protests from anti-Nazi groups |in America. One has to be amazed at the last sentence given how Murdoch's newspaper NY Post and the Fox New channel helped to create the controversy over the 45 Park Place Moslem community center (though earlier in the year his outlets had supported it). "Sensitivity" is not a word most people would associate with Rupert Murdoch. Regards to Dennis Potter. For those curious about the CBS mini-series, see: http://www.cbs.com/specials/rise_of_evil/ Incidentally, here is the ADL's statement about the mini-series: http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/4258_52.htm Then again, this may not be the show that Joan is referring to at all. There was also a kerfuffle about the HBO documentary (but shown on Cinemax) "The Hidden Fuhrer" which was about Hitler's alleged homosexuality. It is easy to confuse these things. >Joan writes: >>As some of you might be aware, Hitler was beaten on >>a regular basis by his father , and some sources claim >>on a daily basis, sources below. > >I don't doubt that Hitler was beaten by his father, as I imagine many >children were in those days. It may well be that in Hitler's case the >beatings were more severe and more regular, but I would need more than >the references cited by Joan to be convinced. The first one is the >Wikipedia Hitler page: "Hitler's father frequently beat his wife and >children with a whip." The reference for this statement is this >documentary: > http://www.history.com/topics/adolf-hitler/videos#adolf-hitler > >According to the commentator David Einsenbach, "Hitler's father >frequently beat his wife and children with a whip." There is no way of >knowing how reliable this information is. (Eisenbach teaches media and >politics Columbia University, but doesn't seem to have any particular >expertise regarding Hitler.) I imagine that one would have to look at or dig up Eisenbach's sources to see what they are. As noted above, Kershaw quotes Hilter's sister Paula on his "daily thrashing". >I have no idea how badly Hitler was beaten in childhood by his father. >In his book *Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his >Evil*, Ron Rosenbaum writes that "We have only Hitler's self-pitying >word for it that he was the victim of savage paternal beatings, an >account contradicted by some who remembered his father as a far milder >sort" Well, Rosenbaum isn't a historian and it is unclear what his sources are. Who exactly remembered Hitler's father as a "far milder sort"? What was the basis for this memory? Kershaw has this to say: | Family life was, however, less than harmonious and happy[49]. |Alois was an archetypal provinical civil servant -- pompous, statust-proud, |strict, humourless, frugal, predantically punctual, and devoted to duty. |He was regarded with respect by the community. But both at work |and at home, he had a bad temper which could flare up unpredicatably. |...He took little interest in bringing up his family, and was happier outside |rather than inside the family home[50]. ... At home, Alois was an |authoritarian, overbearing, domineering husband and a stern, distant, |masterful, and often irritable father. (pages 11-12) That being said, some people might not consider such characteristics as all that bad. >Does anyone have any information on this, preferably more reliable >than from the commentator on a "popular" documentary and the >website "Famous People". See Kershaw's biography. Let me make some additional points: (1) There is a larger problem with "effects of early experience" which Rosenbaum had been addressing. In some respects, whether Hitler was beaten as a child or not is only important if one has a theoretical framework in which such experience is expected to have lifelong consequences. Rosenbaum has been critical of Alice Miller's use of Hitler's childhood experience as a the basis for explaining adult psycholopathology in general. For those unfamiliar with Alice Miller, here is one source, a promotional piece: http://www.thisisawar.com/AuthorsAlice.htm Her Wikipedia entry (yada-yada) is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_%28psychologist%29 And Amazon has a bunch of her books for sale: http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Miller/e/B000APM0AI/ref=sr_tc_img_2_0?qid=1283007865&sr=1-2-ent I'll leave it to one of the clinical psychologists to point out the problems with Miller's approach to psychotherapy. I'll leave it to the historians to point out how Miller has overinterpreted Hitler's childhood to form the basis of her psychotherapeutic approach. (2) Various sources have pointed out that there is a tremendous literature on Hitler, ranging from the truly useless to enlightening. It would take a professional historian to make sense of all of it. As it turns out, there is one doing this: Harold Marcuse, a associate professor of history at UC-Santa Barbara -- here's a link to his homepage: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/index.html The philosopher Herbert Marcuse was his grandfather. Here's a link to Marcue's "Portrayal of Hilter Project", an extensive listing of sources that is "perennially under construction": http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/hitler/hitler.htm#top One of my favorite sources is a series of articles that was published in 1939 in the magazine "The New Republic". Their titles were "I was Hitler's Buddy I/II/III": http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/hitler/sources/30s/394newrep/394NewRepHanischHitlersBuddy.htm For Marcuse's explanation of Hitler's life, see: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33d05/33d05L03Hitler.htm#h2 -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. 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