Nazis in the woodshed

[calimac]

In honor of the memory of Simon Wiesenthal (alav ha-sholem), who was diligent but discriminating in his pursuit of the perpetrators of the Holocaust (he criticized Kurt Waldheim but refused to call him a war criminal), here are my accounts of strange but true cases of reports of Nazis where no Nazis were. One person was accused of calling things "Nazi" inappropriately; the other was accused of writing Nazi imagery. Neither had done anything of the sort ...

1) C.S. Lewis A.N. Wilson's biography of Lewis is a strange attempt at selective psychoanalysis, and in its original edition (Norton hardcover, 1990) one of the oddest examples appears on p. 161-2. Wilson is quoting Lewis complaining in a letter that none of his pupils have a feeling for nature, and includes this passage:

It frightens me, almost. And so it did the other night, when I heard two undergrads, giving a list of pleasures which were (a) Nazi, (b) leading to homosexuality. They were: feeling the wind in your hair, walking with bare feet on the grass, and bathing in the rain. Think it over: it gets worse the longer you look at it.

Numerous reviewers were thunderstruck by what Wilson writes next:

It is twenty-two years since I read that letter, first published in Warnie's selection of his brother's correspondence, and on and off I have been thinking it over. At no time have I been able to see anything either Nazi or necessarily homosexual in the listed pleasures ... But the pleasures are, of course, those of youth, and Lewis at the age of forty seems to have forgotten what it was like to be young ... Now such stuff seems to him 'Nazi'.

Twenty-two years, and it never occurred to Wilson that Lewis is not reporting his own opinion, but expressing his dismay at the students' opinions?

If it hadn't occurred to him before, it must have occurred to him after he read the reviews, because in the softcover from Fawcett that came out a year later, the whole passage, including quote, is deleted and replaced by a rather more desperate space-filling attempt to indict Lewis for the noxious crime of "pursu[ing] his own tastes." Naturally, there is nothing on the copyright page to indicate that the text has been changed (and in a couple other places as well). You can well imagine that this led to some fruitless arguments about what Wilson had and had not written.

2) Leslie Fish This came to mind after supergee posted Leslie's "Hope Eyrie" which, especially with her noble tune added, makes a stirring tribute to the early space program.

Very long ago, maybe a mere ten years after the first Moon landings, I was at a filking session where the group performed this song with gusto. There was one non-fan present in the room, one who left during the singing and who told me privately afterwards that she'd found the song very disturbing.

Why? Well, it was that repeated phrase, "the Eagle has landed." For, you see, The Eagle Has Landed is the title of an alternate-history thriller novel by Jack Higgins, in which the title is the code phrase used by a group of Nazi commandos who secretly invade England in 1943 on a mission to kidnap Winston Churchill. And - never mind that the book, and its catch-phrase, are fiction anyway - she thought that our song glorified Nazis.

Obviously it was necessary to ignore every other word in the song to reach this conclusion. I had to gently break it to her who had rather famously and non-fictionally used the same phrase on a very different occasion with an entirely different import. "Tell your children when"? Someone needed to tell a few adults too.

Fifteen and nearly thirty years later, I'm still dazzled by the sheer quantity of misunderstanding necessary to produce these two false attributions.

Comments

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

The song was disturbing only because it resonated with the rays Wernher Von Braun was beaming into her head from his orbital mind control satellites. Oh, you thought those were for communication. Yes, but with whom, or what? And you probably think NASA is an acronym.

Seriously, it's sad to hear of Simon Wiesenthal slipping away. He had a good life. My understanding, of things that happened before I was born, was profoundly affected by his diligence.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I would not, even jokingly, accuse this person of anti-space mania, of which there is a lot out there. She was just profoundly ignorant.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it was meant to be silly, but it was overly so, and this is not a good subject for silliness.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Either that, or the oribital mind control sattelites blocked Calimac's head with static so he couldn't get the joke. That's why I always wear headgear made of aluminum foil, myself.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

"I've got my tin foil hat on
Hip hip hip hooray
My tinfoil hat will shield me
From your mind controlling ray..."

http://eclectech.co.uk/mindcontrol.php

[supergee.livejournal.com]

And then there's the Fantasy Review article pointing out that "Ender Wiggin" has the same number of letters as "Adolf Hitler." It is possible to be unfairly nasty to Orson Scott Card.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Why would anyone want to be unfairly nasty to OSC? There are so many ways (and reasons) to be fairly nasty to him. Ummm, nasty in a fair way, I mean.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I read that as more or less supergee's implication!

No Nazis

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

After some grim experience, I have determined to never refer to Nazis any more in debate, or use them as an analogy, because it seems impossible for so many people to think rationally about them, that when they are brought up any reasoned discourse goes out the window. These are other examples of this over-reaction.

Re: No Nazis

[misterniceguy60.livejournal.com]

I forget whose Law this is.

Re: No Nazis

[nwl.livejournal.com]

The swastika used to be a good quilt block, being pretty easy for beginners, until the Nazis used it. The block has several names and has been around since the mid-1800's (making it pretty old in quilting terms), but it probably will never again be used in a quilt.

Re: No Nazis

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

Some of the Nazi's lesser yet enduring offenses are their contamination of otherwise perfectly good aesthetic elements. The "sun-cross" had a long and honorable ancestry in Eastern and Native American art and religion, but now you can't use it anywhere. I happen to think black uniforms look sharp and would be great for either a real or fictional "space patrol" but they are forever tarred with the "storm trooper" label. Try to find a reasonably priced Holblein dagger replica that dosn't have a swastika imbedded in the hilt--. The list goes on and on. Sigh--.

Re: No Nazis

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Which ties into Tolkien's remark about his "burning private grudge against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler [for] ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed that noble northern spirit ..."