Will Smith, Hitler and the Holocaust's Unanswerable Question

Will Smith found himself in hot water last week after making a statement to a Scottish newspaper that Adolph Hitler "didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was good."

Smith's quote was preceded by the interviewer's gratuitous observation, "Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good." So websites pounced on Smith for allegedly believing that Hitler was "a good person," even though Smith said no such thing.

The Jewish Defense League said Smith's words "spit on the memory of every person murdered by the Nazis" and called on theaters to boycott Smith's new movie. It looked like another Mel Gibson moment in the making.

But what was lost in the controversy is that Smith's actual statement -- not that Hitler was a good person, but that Hitler thought he was a good person -- lies at the heart of one of the most baffling questions about Hitler that historians and philosophers have grappled with since the Holocaust.

The most cogent discussion of that question is laid out in Ron Rosenbaum's brilliant book Explaining Hitler, which ought to be required reading for anyone interested in deciphering the worst villainy in modern history.

Rosenbaum examines various attempts by historians and philosophers to explain "what made Hitler Hitler." And one of Rosenbaum's most interesting discussions centers on the very issue Will Smith addressed:

Did Hitler, Rosenbaun asks, "believe in some deeply deluded way that he was doing good?" In other words, was he "convinced of his own rectitude," as Hitler biographer Hugh Trevor-Roper and many other scholars have argued? Or was Hitler "deeply aware of his own criminality," as philosophers such as Berel Lang and others maintain?

To frame this discussion, Rosenbaum points to a tradition in Western philosophy going back to Plato that draws a distinction between two concepts: "evil" and "wicked."

In this tradition, "evil" can describe people who do terrible things but who think, in their own deluded way, that they are actually doing good. "Wickedness," on the other hand, is reserved for people who do terrible things "knowing they are doing wrong."

In the case of Hitler, the question of whether he knew he was doing wrong and just did it anyway, or whether he actually thought he was doing good despite his horrific acts, bedevil all attempts to understand the worst crime of the twentieth century.

And interestingly, lots of scholars come down on the side of Will Smith, arguing that Hitler was "convinced of his own rectitude."

Not all of these people are philosophical hairsplitters, either. Rosenbaum finds, for example, an "unexpected echo of this rectitude argument" in Israel's chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wisenthal Center.

"When I asked Zuroff....whether Hitler was conscious of doing wrong, he was even more emphatic than Trevor-Roper. 'Of course not!' he practically yelled at me. 'Hitler thought he was a doctor! Killing germs!...He believed he was doing good, not evil.'"

Rosenbaum himself is not convinced. Later in his book he writes that he is "more inclined to see Hitler as a vicious, cold-blooded hater who fabricated, counterfeited a mask of rectitude for the sake of history and expediency."

But while many agree with Rosenbaum, many principled scholars, biographers, philosophers -- even Nazi hunters -- do not.

In fact, when you look at Will Smith's actual quote, he describes the "rectitude" argument rather concisely. Hitler, he said, did not use logic but rather "a twisted, backwards logic" to do not good but "what he thought was good." Zuroff could hardly have put it more succinctly.

As soon as the controversy erupted, Will Smith issued a statement clarifying his belief that Hitler was "a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet."

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League accepted the clarification. "We welcome and accept Will Smith's statement that Hitler was a 'vicious killer,'" Foxman said, "and that he did not mean for his remarks about the Nazi leader to be mistaken as praise."

Foxman pointed out that words "can be twisted by those with hate and bigotry in their hearts. This is why all celebrities bear a special responsibility to weigh their words carefully, and an obligation to speak out against racism and bigotry whenever even a whiff of it appears, as Will Smith has done in this instance."

Well said. But journalists, bloggers and anti-hate groups also have a responsibility to weigh their words carefully, and not to stifle or demonize attempts to understand the nature of Nazi evil.

That evil stands at the center of modern history -- and modern life. Did Hitler represent, as Emil Fackenheim has said, a unique "eruption of demonism into history" -- in which case he stands at a comfortable remove from the rest of us? Or was Hitler simply a more extreme version of something much more familiar -- a person who thought he was doing good, even if it had to be accomplished by terrible means? In which case his misdeeds are much more troubling, because they are at least somewhat recognizable.

Will Smith may not be a scholar, historian or philosopher, but he was expressing a widely-held and respected side of that question. It's a question that can never be answered. But merely asking it, merely pondering it, represents a small step in humanity's struggle to assure that what Hitler did, for whatever reasons he did it, is less likely to happen again.

Comments

[RogerHWerner]

The only way to truly understand someone like Hitler is to understand his motivations and these are fairly well laid out in Mein Kampf. And when we examine the ideas in Mein Kampf, understand that most did not originate with Hitler but had late 19th century antecedents, it becomes clear that all Hitler did was coalesce widely held beliefs into a single doctrine we know as National Socialism. National Socialism was not just politics; perhaps its most important element was religion. Hitler saw himself as the father of a new human order. Sure his ideas were warped and twisted but that doesn't negate the fact that he saw himself as a leader and savior of his people. When we look at the sycophants who surrounded Hitler we see men who were truly wicked (as defined by Rotello). Men like F.M. Goering and General Jodel knew better and while they believed in National Socialism their beliefs were self serving. Martin Borman, Rudolf Hess, and Heinrich Himmler we fanatical Nazis and the bought into both the religious, philosophical, and political aspects of this most warped of ideologies. There is at least one reason we should give thanks to the Nazis: They gave a bad name to fascism but this was hardly worth the price.

[Looplinker]

I never knew that Will Smith was a scholar of Hitler and Nazism...Go figure!!!!!

[ESerafina42]

The danger (as we've seen with torture in this country) is when you begin believing that since YOU are "good," whatever you do MUST be good by definition. Most people will make the claim, and even sometimes convince themselves, that THEY are doing something because "it's necessary," when other people do it because they're "evil." Waterboarding was wrong when the Spanish Inquisition did it, wrong when the Japanese did it to our guys, and is still wrong when we do it.

I've said what Will Smith said myself, and I'm Jewish, so I can't imagine why anyone would think he was praising or defending Hitler, especially when as far as I know he has no history of antisemitism. (Of course, the opening sentence, written by the interviewer, was misleading, whether deliberately or not.)

[Tankan]

Hitler was a one thousand year dreamer, a sadistic callous piece of work, murdering not only Jews but German nationals as well, bringing death and destruction to the wider world on a grand scale, but reality jabbed him in both eyes, and the only good thing he ever did for mankind was shooting himself in the head! His mother and father would be proud of him!

[shag11]

Whether scholars agree with him or not, one has to be careful when one touches on something theat caused a people pain. Being black, I am sensitive about anyone's reference to slavery. Context is very important.
I heard a rightwing Republican talk about how good slavery was for this country and I was fuming. He was speaking economics and I couldn't go there with him.

[lisakaz]

Thanks for your comments. I looked past the reporter to what Smith said and I too thought it wasn't all that bad. Essentially, I agree with the position that Hitler was deluded enough to believe in his rhetoric, as in the "killing germs" comment. He was a severe eugenicist who had a view of people worthy and unworthy of living. As such, he believed exterminating the unworthy was somehow godly.

No one has this to agree with Hitler; it is to explain the pathology.

[Mr.Fitz]

I'm of the opinion that evil is something that is not understandable. Part of what makes some action evil is that it does not make any sense and that it causes, in this case, massive loss of life and great human suffering. To me it does not matter what Hitler thought, but that he did the things that he did, and the consequences of those actions were so grotesque and tragic that his actions can be justly labeled 'evil'.

[Bushwhacked]

Can not the same question be posed of Bush? That is - is he just so certain of his own righteousness? Isn't that why he smirks so much when questioned about his policies in Iraq. It is as though he is so certain that over the long term he is doing the right thing and we underlings just don't understand.

[StephenSmoliar]

This is a topic that has not only academic but also literary interest. My favorite example in the latter category is the play by the late C. P. Taylor entitled (ironically enough) GOOD. Without being overly reductive, the play is basically a narrative about a German in the late Thirties who descends a slippery slope, at the bottom of which he accepts an invitation to serve as an officer in the SS. As he makes each "slip of descent," he rationalizes it with the same remark, "After all, we ARE basically good people."

Taylor, of course, was not an academic. He never pretended to be one. Nevertheless, GOOD provides a nice example of how literature can reveal truths more vividly than even the most compellingly argued treatises.

[Nommo]

Hey, look around. It is happening again, and it never really stopped did it? Are you suggesting that this matter was moot prior to the recent holocaust in Europe?
King Leopold murdered some 10 to 12 million Congolese. How many millions of indigenous people disappeared from this hemisphere even as survivors were isolated in reservations?
Wounded Knee, for crying out loud. Smallpox blankets. It took the holocaust in Europe before the thinkers caught on?