Hi Hitler!: How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld

"Hi Hitler" offers a fascinating look at contemporary culture and the various forms the memory of the Holocaust and Hitler have taken in today's society. The text features six chapters with the most interesting (for this reader) being the first three, which highlighted how our memory of the Second World War as the 'Good War' has continued to be challenged by various authors, discussions revolving around the 'uniqueness' of the Holocaust, and how counterfactual history is applied to the Holocaust.

In the first chapter the author traces the numerous volumes that have recently appeared challenging the well-entrenched narrative of the Second World War as being something unrepresentative of the facts. Rosenfeld himself never really comes out with his own opinion on whether the Second World War was a 'Good War' but allows the reader to view the intricacies of the debate(s) that have raged around the question, the authors who've written on the topic, the reviews their books have received, and the validity of the information presented in respective publications. Some are easy to critique and show for the shallow efforts that they are, while others raise important questions about the nature of war and how war remembrance is embraced within societies and then helps to shape their views and ideas up to the present (more than once is the connection made to our post 9-11 rhetoric). Similar themes are explored in regards to Europe (both western and eastern) in how they've treated the Second World War, especially the numerous attempts by various organizations and governments to equate the Nazi regime with that of Stalin's Soviet Union.

The second chapter was quite fascinating in that the author presents how we are constantly walking a fine line in how we view the Holocaust and its history. Should we consider it a unique event or can we normalize it? How will they change our treatment of the Holocaust and its legacy? The same somewhat applies to Hitler and the history of the Third Reich in general. Keeping these events in a cocoon limits how we view their history and memory but allowing for normalization could mean creating a discourse that's both difficult to control and justify. Some have argued that allowing for a 'globalization' of the Holocaust, creating comparisons to numerous other events in our recent history, has resulted in an awareness of how devastating some situations really are, but the Holocaust then begins to lose its uniqueness. These ideas come into play in later chapters which discuss how movies and literature discuss Hitler and how the internet has become a democratic forum for Hitler-izations of everything in the form of memes. If we treat Hitler as any other human being, how does that help us understand what took place in the Second World War and Germany? If we treat him as the embodiment of evil, do we then close ourselves off from questioning if in the future others might emulate and possibly achieve even greater heights of destruction and death?

Personally, I think the Holocaust was unique to Germany for many reasons.  But that's not to say that mass murder/genocide is limited solely to Germany.  Many, if not the majority, of the nation-states that exist today have acts of mass murder as part of their histories.  Be it the treatment of Native Americans and African Americans in the colonies and the United States, the Belgians in the Congo, the British in India and Africa, the Soviets under Stalin, China under Mao, the Spanish and Portuguese in the 'New World' and their role in the Slave Trade, and the French during the French Revolution and the Crusades against the Cathars (in some ways the Crusades in general), these are just some examples (many others include Darfur, Cambodia, etc.) of when mass murder, wanton destruction and mayhem are a part of a nation's past but each is unique to the people they occurred to and environment they occurred in.

The third chapter takes a look at how alternate histories that have dealt with the Second World have impacted how we view the Holocaust, Hitler, and the Third Reich. While I'm somewhat resistant to 'what if' scenarios, there are times when they are quite helpful in understand the numerous strands that go into making an event possible. Thus allowing for limited questioning of how changing one or two events could impact others creates an environment where discussions can become fruitful if limited to historians or experts in the field. For instance, if someone is interested in questioning the ability of the allies to bomb concentration camps (like Auschwitz), they'd have to explore how much the allies knew, how much they believed, what their capabilities were, what possible outcomes would have resulted, etc. This allows for a greater understanding of not just the allied bombing campaign but their intelligence, beliefs, and abilities during the war. Overall, this is a fascinating look at memory and remembrance of the Holocaust and Hitler and the impact the Second World War continues to generate on our society today.