A World Without Jews

A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide is a 2014 book by Alon Confino published by Yale University Press, which seeks to explain Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust by looking into the imaginations and fantasies of Nazis. It received mixed reviews in scholarly and popular publications. Some reviewers praised Confino's analysis for its originality, while others criticize it for making assertions that are not sufficiently backed by evidence.

For the translation of Marx's On the Jewish Question, see A World Without Jews (1959 book).
Book cover

Contents

Confino rejects some of the explanations for Nazism that were popular, especially the explanations that are heavy on racism.[1][2] He focuses on the period 1933–1939 and on public actions and statements.[3] His answer to the question of why the Nazis committed genocide against the Jews is that "Jews represented time, symbolizing evil historical origins that had to be eradicated for Nazi civilization to arise."[4] This opens up a new area to analyze, imagination and fantasy as well as ideology.[4]

Instead of emphasising racism, he proposes that Nazi antisemitism was transcended racism and was based on much more than scientific racism. Instead, ideas about science and race were twisted to accommodate the extreme antisemitism which derived in part from Christian antisemitism. What was more important than scientific racism was telling a story about national origins. Confino rejects the idea, promoted by some historians and Christian apologists, that the Nazis sought to eradicate Christianity: "Their aim was not to eradicate Christianity but to eradicate Christianity’s Jewish roots,"[1] based on an extreme version of supersessionism which would end the conflict between the contradictory truth claims of Judaism and Christianity.[5] Hitler used the anti-Jewish struggle to justify World War II "Jews gave the overall meaning to the Nazi fight between good and evil: the messianic struggle to create a Nazi civilization depended on the extermination of the Jews."[1] When the Nazis burned Torah scrolls during Kristallnacht in November 1938, he contends, they severed a key link with the past and made it possible for both Germans and Jews to imagine "a world without Jews."[6]

Rather than focus on concrete anti-Jewish policies, Confino focuses on exploring the "sensibilities and emotions" that lay behind him.[1] In so doing, he verges into a psychoanalytic analysis of Nazi leaders, although avoiding "blatantly Freudian terminology."[5] Confino tries to steer a middle path between approaches which present Nazi antisemitism as a rupture with the past and those who view it as an extension of previous phenomena. He writes that "The Holocaust was the first experiment in a new humanity achieved by extermination, a humanity liberated from the shackles of its own past."[5] But according to Confino, the Nazis' actions were rooted in centuries of Christian tradition.[5] Controversially, he argues that the rupture carries over into Holocaust memory, where "extermination as a sort of genesis" was continued: "The Holocaust has haunted the postwar imagination because the European-wide extermination provided for Jews, Germans, and Europeans a story of origins and new beginning" (p. 245).[2]

Reception

David Cesarani praised the book, although he found it to gloss over some detail of anti-Jewish persecution which would have complicated Confino's argument. He praised Confino's "thought-provoking" analysis of speeches by Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels from 1941–1945. Cesarani writes that Confino's book will appeal to those who believe that the Holocaust was unique.[1] Israeli historian Amos Goldberg stated that "A World Without Jews is to my mind one of the most important books on the Holocaust to be published in recent years; it constitutes both a methodological and a historical breakthrough".[7]

In a positive review, Ferenc Laczó describes the book as "a path-breaking cultural historical analysis of Nazi sensibilities, fantasies, and agendas" and praises its "innovative and insightful interpretation." However, he has "minor reservations" about the book's tendency to generalize and overlook heterogeneity in German society and states that the book lacks a "thorough grounding in social history".[2]

Richard Steigmann-Gall writes that the book is an outgrowth of Confino's earlier book, Foundational Pasts, which defended a culturalist understanding of the Nazi era and the Holocaust. He writes that "There is much to commend in Confino’s book" but that it suffers from lack of attention to detail in some areas, due to being composed as an extended essay rather than a monograph.[5]

Susannah Heschel is more critical of the book, arguing that Confino does not justify his conclusions with sufficient evidence, often makes unhelpful generalizations, and fails to place developments in their historical context. She wrote that Confino often fails to credit others who did more in-depth research than he did, and came to the same conclusions first. She argues that Confino never answers the question raised in the subtitle, of how Nazism went "from persecution to genocide".[4]

According to Jeffrey Herf Confino's book "displays repeated gaps between assertion and evidence." His method "impute[s] motivations and emotions to actors based on what they did, how they looked when they did it, and what they kept silent about"—which Herf argues is "dubious." Herf argues that Confino needs to do more research in archives to find evidence that would corroborate his conclusions.[3]

There were several other reviews.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

References
  1. Cesarani, David. "Book Review | A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide". Fathom. Winter 2015.
  2. Laczó, Ferenc (19 October 2015). "A world without Jews: the Nazi imagination from persecution to genocide". Holocaust Studies. 21 (4): 292–294. doi:10.1080/17504902.2015.1082796.
  3. Herf, Jeffrey (June 2016). ". By Alon Confino.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Pp. xviii+284. $30.00". The Journal of Modern History. 88 (2): 484–485. doi:10.1086/686134.
  4. Heschel, Susannah (16 May 2017). "A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide by Alon Confino (review)". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 31 (1): 123–126. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcx004. ISSN 1476-7937.
  5. Steigmann-Gall, Richard (December 2016). "A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. By Alon Confino . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Pp. xv + 284. Paper $20.00. ISBN 978-0300212518". Central European History. 49 (3–4): 511–513. doi:10.1017/S0008938916000790. ISSN 0008-9389.
  6. Ostovich, Steve (1 September 2015). "A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide, written y Alon Confino". Kronoscope. 15 (2): 247–250. doi:10.1163/15685241-12341338.
  7. Goldberg, Amos; Smith, Helmut Walser; Gigliotti, Simone; Buggeln, Marc; Confino, Alon (2016). "Alon Confino, Foundational pasts: the Holocaust as historical understanding (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and A world without Jews: the Nazi imagination from persecution to genocide (Yale University Press, 2014)". Journal of Genocide Research. 18 (1): 101–131. doi:10.1080/14623528.2016.1120470.
  8. Mikics, David (13 August 2014). "A World Without Jews: Hitler's Dream Still Makes Us Uneasy". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  9. Stoetzler, Marcel (January 2017). "Stoetzler on Confino, 'A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide'". H-Net.
  10. Goldberg, Amos (January 2015). "Goldberg on Confino, 'A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide'". H-Net. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  11. Biale, David. "Varieties of Hatred". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  12. Fishzon, Anna (2 March 2015). "Alon Confino, "A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide" (Yale UP, 2014)". New Books Network. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  13. Weber, Thomas (2015). "The Creation of a World Freed from Jews". Contemporanea (2/2015). doi:10.1409/79772. ISSN 1127-3070.
  14. Richards, Arnold D. (27 August 2015). "Book Essay on A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide". Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 63 (4): 787–793. doi:10.1177/0003065115602197.
  15. Dobkowski, Michael N. (2014). "A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination From Persecution to Genocide". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  16. Morgan, Roger (14 August 2014). "A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide, by Alon Confino". Times Higher Education (THE). Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  17. Meyer, Karl E. (5 May 2015). "Book Review – A World Without Jews". Moment Magazine – The Next 5,000 Years of Conversation Begin Here. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
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