wehrwirtschaft
I just became acquainted with the fine German word Wehrwirtschaft while simultaneously reading a book article on Sebald that kaiserin is writing and a blog post titled Iraq: Deaths Rise, Pretense We Care Fades (which brought the word into stark relief for me). I looked it up to try and get a fuller sense of its resonance in the original German, and happened upon an article from TIME Magazine published in May, 1939. Three things struck me as I started to read it:
1. TIME was so much more well-written then. Jesus.
2. No mention of the Nazis’ racism. I’m not one to argue that the United States shouldn’t have gotten involved in WWII, but the perception that “We fought Germany to save the Jews” always struck me as specious (a little bit like the Bush administration telling us that we were going into Afghanistan in part to “free the Afghani women”). Obviously, Jewish Americans as well as European expatriates took the racism very seriously—50% of American Jewish men between ages 18 and 44 served in the Armed Forces despite encountering racial prejudice there—but that wasn’t a major concern for Americans; Japan was considered the major threat with Hitler almost an afterthought, and America was fairly anti-Semitic then.
3. It’s stunning to read the last page and realize that the reporter doesn’t necessarily see war with the Third Reich as a foregone conclusion. I leave comparisons with current events as an exercise for the reader.