> > Walter Laqueur -a zionist militant-- should be a very dubious source > > in anything related to the Free Korps, indeed.
I should like to point out that my criticism of Laqueur was based on his tendancy to pass overly homogenous judgements with insufficient differentiation. The suggestion that his work might be of dubious quality because he is Jewish is one that I explicitly reject. Furthermore, I believe that *all* historical research and discourse emerges from an interaction between the historian's present and the recoverable artefacts and documents (and whatever else) he or she is working on. What makes the arts and humanities so interesting is the debate between scholars who bring new perspectives which constantly evolve. Thus, to reject someone's work because they have their own position is to misunderstand what the arts and humanities are about. (That said, we often have to pretend we have reached oracular certainty in our research because that's what the rhetorical rules say, but that's a completely different point). BTW, let's also not forget that the Freikorps were extremely brutal in their indiscriminate political violence suppressing left-wing insurrection. Following the Baltic expedition they were also involved in politically motivated murder and terrorism. JK ============================================================================== John King St. John's College GB - Oxford OX1 3JP ==============================================================================
