Abstract
This slender volume promises an ambitious new interpretation of Nazism based on a new view of the role of sacrifice in modern society. Nazism and the Holocaust, Pan argues, have undermined earlier ethnographic studies that saw sacrifice as a transient manifestation of primitive society. They proved that it was present in modern society as well and Pan suggests that ‘present-day examples of self-sacrifice, martyrdom, and victimization continue to oblige us to reflect on the continuing importance of sacrifice as a human phenomenon’ (p. 3).
Most theorists view Nazism and the Holocaust as instances of sacrifice in general, disagreeing only on their view of the future. Pessimists believe that sacrifice reflects the continual repetition of aggression and violence in human existence; optimists claim that sacrifice is a manifestation of an ideology that can be overcome. Pan believes that both schools of thought have failed to understand that sacrifice is not ‘an invariant structure or process’ but something that is integral to all societies, though manifest in different forms in each. It should be regarded, he argues, neither as permanent nor as something that might one day be overcome but as ‘an essential element of a particular culture’s ethical system’ (p. 4). According to Pan, the key to understanding the true nature of sacrifice lies in the recognition that it is the manifestation of an aesthetic principle, or rather that it represents a kind of aesthetic truth, the outcome of a negotiation of values and ideals that is not determined by purely logical or rational considerations.
Much of Pan’s book is devoted to a discussion of the relationship between violence and culture and of various twentieth-century theories of sacrifice. The former serves to reinforce his idea that violence was a constant theme in German thought from Kant to Adorno and that, like works of art, ‘sacrificial narratives and rituals are established and endure based on their ability to appeal to the subjects who make up their audience’ (p. 13). The latter serve to underline the particular character of Nazi myth and sacrifice narratives. These are represented here by analysis of the ideas of the National Socialist philosopher Alfred Baeumler, who invoked Nietzsche’s ideas to justify Nazism.
The climax of the book, the ‘proof’ of its argument, so to speak, comes in a final chapter on the ‘genealogy of Nazi morality’. Here Pan shows how traditional notions of community, Bildung (education) and nation were invoked to exclude the Jews as materialists who were incapable of idealist action, and hence also incapable of the kinds of noble sacrifice that Nazism venerated above all else. These ideals were then invoked again to guide citizens from their pursuit of (state-directed) Bildung to soldierly sacrifice in the service of the Reich.
The Nazi claim to represent the ‘universal progress of humanity’ – served by the sacrifice of the faithful – was, however, undermined by the sacrifice made by the resistance. Nazi Germany itself exemplifies the point that sacrifice has no universal manifestation or meaning, even within a given society, but that particular groups or communities may decide to structure sacrifice in certain ways.
There is much that is of interest in this volume. Its theoretical bent will not be to everyone’s taste and it is easy to be irritated by the constant recapitulations and by the somewhat meandering nature of many parts of the text. Historians will be particularly interested in the second and fourth chapters which contain thought-provoking insights into the culture of Nazism.