American historian
Guenter Lewy (born 22 August 1923) is a German-born American author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, "America in Vietnam", and several controversial works that deal with the applicability of the term "genocide" to various historical events, where Lewy denies both the Romani genocide and the Armenian genocide.
In 1939 he migrated from Germany to Palestine. After World War II, he migrated to the United States to reunite with his parents. Lewy earned a BA at City College in New York City and a MA and PhD at Columbia University. He has been on the faculties of Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., and was a frequent contributor to "Commentary".
Early life.
Lewy was born in Breslau, Germany, (now Wrocław, Poland) in 1923. At the age of nine he joined a German-Jewish scouts organization called "Die Greifen" (lit. "the griffins"), which he has suggested was important in shaping his desire for an academic career. Described by Lewy as a "quasi-Romantic" group, "Die Greifen" emphasized music, literature, and song, particularly "Landsknechtlieder", encouraging the youths to avoid becoming "Spiessbürger" ("philistines"). By 1938, as persecution of Jews in Germany increased, Lewy began to lobby his family to leave Germany behind. After "Kristallnacht", in November 1938, when his father was interned in Buchenwald for four months and he was beaten, his parents sent him to Mandatory Palestine. Later in the war, when Lewy was of fighting age, he voluntarily took up arms against Germany, serving in the Jewish Brigade.
Areas of research.
"The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany".
First published in 1964, Lewy's "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany" has proven both controversial and influential. Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy" had appeared only a year earlier, indicting the Vatican for failing to act to save the Jews during the Holocaust; amidst the Vatican's outrage with the play, Lewy's text continued in the same vein, "One is inclined to conclude that the Pope and his advisers—influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles—did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage. For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid."
The text received much praise, including that of Alfred Grosser, who characterized the text as a "terribly precise volume" which demonstrated that "all the documents show the Catholic Church cooperating with the Nazi regime". The Vatican opted to answer the critical allegations by releasing a series of documents aiming to refute the growing perception of the Vatican having been conniving in the Holocaust. One Jesuit priest answering Lewy's text on behalf of the Vatican suggested that Lewy's conclusions were based "not on the record but on a subjective conviction ... This ready acceptance of a Nazi-inspired wartime legend is a measure of Lewy's inability to plumb the motives of Pius XII ... There is no proof, in this book or anywhere else, that Pius XII thought Nazism was a 'bulwark' in defense of Christianity."
In the context of other historical works examining the legacy of the Vatican in the era of the Holocaust, Lewy's work has been described as "exceedingly harsh".
"America in Vietnam".
Lewy had suggested that his "America in Vietnam", published in 1978, would "clear away the cobwebs of mythology that inhibit the correct understanding of what went on—and what went wrong—in Vietnam." The text, which argues against traditional or "orthodox" interpretations of the war as an unnecessary, unjust, and/or unwinnable war replete with disastrous mistakes and widespread American atrocities, has proven influential for many western scholars that share similar views of the conflict. It predated and influenced other reinterpretations including those of Norman Podhoretz, Mark Moyar, and Michael Lind. "America in Vietnam" thus attracted both criticism and support of Lewy for belonging to the "revisionist" school on Vietnam. Lewy argues,
It is the reasoned conclusion of this study ... that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam war in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of "officially, condoned" illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance. Indeed, detailed examination of battlefield practices reveals that the loss civilian life in Vietnam was less great than in World War II and Korea and that concern with minimizing the ravages of the war was strong. To measure and compare the devastation and loss of human life caused by different war will be objectionable to those who repudiate or resort to military force as an instrument of foreign policy and may be construed as callousness. Yet as long as wars do take place at all it remains a moral duty to seek to reduce the agony caused by war, and the fulfillment of this obligation should not be disdained. I hope that this book may help demonstrate that moral convictions are not the exclusive possession of persons in conscience opposed to war, and that those who in certain circumstances accept the necessity and ethical justification of armed conflict also do care about human suffering.
Lewy criticizes what he terms the "war crime industry", and what he perceives to be the double standards of the Western media, which, he alleged, neglected to report equally on the crimes of Vietnamese communists, giving the figure of 36,725 political assassinations perpetrated by the VC/NVA between 1957 and 1972. About the crimes committed by American soldiers, Lewy asserts that "between January 1965 and March 1973, 201 Army personnel in Vietnam were convicted by court-martial of serious offenses against Vietnamese. During the period of March 1965 to August 1971, 77 Marines were convicted of serious crimes against Vietnamese."
In recalling the 1971 congressional testimony of some American veterans who were critical of the war, one of whom compared American action in Vietnam to genocide, Lewy suggests that some "witnesses sounded as if they had memorized North Vietnamese propaganda." The book is critical of domestic opponents of American participation in the Vietnam War. In using the phrases "peace activists" or "peace demonstrations", Lewy often puts quotation marks around the word "peace", implying alternative motivations for the activism. The author alleges a possible connection between cases of sabotage in the Navy and the anti-war movement: "Between 1965 and 1970, the Navy experienced a growing number of cases of sabotage and arson on its ships, but no evidence could be found that antiwar activists had directly participated in a sabotage attempt on a Navy vessel. Cases of fragging and avoidance of combat may well have been instigated at times by antiwar militants, though no hard evidence of organized subversion was ever discovered."
The text was praised by Vietnam veteran and United States Senator Jim Webb, Andrew J. Pierre of "Foreign Affairs", and by several newspapers, including "The Economist", which described it as "in many ways the best history of the war yet to appear". Critics included historians of the "orthodox" school as well as polemical critics such as linguist and Vietnam War opponent Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, after being singled out for criticism by Lewy in the book, wrote that "every state has its Guenter Lewys". According to Chomsky, Lewy's "concept of the writing of moral-historical tracts ... is misrepresentation of documents, uncritical regurgitation of government claims, and dismissal of annoying facts that contradict them, and [his] concept of morality is such as to legitimate virtually any atrocity against civilians once the state has issued its commands."
Winter Soldier Investigation.
"America in Vietnam", which appeared seven years after the Winter Soldier Investigation, became controversial in the context of the 2004 United States presidential election. Presidential hopeful John Kerry had been involved with the Winter Soldier Investigation; in the context of the campaign, Lewy's suggestion that the Winter Soldier Investigation was dishonest and politically motivated was frequently cited to impugn John Kerry's reputation. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the group of which Kerry had been a part, alleged that American war policy and conduct in Vietnam was resulting in war crimes being committed. Lewy suggests that the group used "fake witnesses" in the Winter Soldier hearing in Detroit, and that its allegations were formally investigated.
Government officials have said they have no record of any such Naval Investigative Service report, but that it is possible it could have been lost or destroyed. Lewy later said that he had actually seen the alleged report. "I don't think Lewy is interested in presenting any of [the Winter Soldier testimony] as truthful", University of Richmond history professor Ernest Bolt told the "Chicago Tribune". "He has an angle on the war as a whole." Bolt said it is impossible to tell whether Lewy fairly characterized the naval investigative report because no other historian had seen it.
"The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies".
Lewy argues in "The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies", published in 2000, that the Gypsies' overall plight does "not constitute genocide within the meaning of the genocide convention". Lewy concludes that in the case of the Nazi persecution of the Gypsies the "use of the term 'genocide' would seem to involve a dilution of the concept", but that the question is not to determine if the Holocaust is the Nazi's worst crime; to refuse the "genocide" label is not, Lewy argues, a way to minimize the sufferings of Gypsies, Poles, Russians and other non-Jewish victims of Nazism. The introduction is devoted to the long history of violence against Gypsies before the Nazis took power, with a special focus on the laws adopted in Bavaria and some other German Länder at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, showing the continuity between the last year of the Weimar Republic and the first years of Nazi regime. In a section entitled "Roots of Hostility", Lewy argues that the main reason of the persecution against Gypsies before 1933 was prejudice. Though Gypsies are not a violent people, he adds that prejudice is not always the single reason; the misbehavior of a minority among nomadic Gypsies contributed also to hostility and prejudices.
The book was praised by Saul Friedländer, who called it "a work of great compassion and exemplary scholarship". According to Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, "Lewy's account of Nazi measures against the powerless Gypsies is unsurpassed in the English language." Henriette Asséo, lecturer at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, specialist of Gypsy history, wrote that Lewy's book "requires humility, giving a new, considerable documentation", adding, however, that the rejection of "genocide" label can be "discussed" Hans Mommsen agreed completely with Lewy, including with the rejection of "genocide" qualification. Peter Black states that "this book is a well-documented history of Nazi persecution of the German and Austrian Gypsies. Yet Lewy wastes considerable intellectual energy in demonstrating that the totality of the disaster that befell the Gypsies cannot be compared to the Jewish Holocaust. This leads him to a few questionable conclusions."
The book was criticized by Norman G. Finkelstein who wrote in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung":
Lewy's argument goes like this: Gypsies were as ruthlessly slaughtered by the Einsatzgruppen as the Jews, but only because they were suspected of spying; Gypsies were deported to Auschwitz like the Jews, but only "to get rid of them, not to kill them;" Gypsies were gassed at Chelmno like the Jews, but only because they had contracted typhus; most of the few remaining Gypsies were sterilized like the Jews, not however to prevent their propagation but only to "prevent contamination of 'German blood.'"
The book has also been singled out for criticism, particularly by Romani scholars, who believe that it blames the Roma people for their own massacre. Lewy's work has been criticized for being "one-sided" and as a text which "overstates" the differences of the persecution of Jews and the persecution of Roma in the Nazi era, in a manner indicative of "the priorities of latter-day scholarship, about the way that the murder of the Jews has been promoted to obscure so much of the rest of the Nazi record of atrocity".
"Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?".
In September 2004, Lewy published an essay in "Commentary" entitled "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?": "[E]ven if some episodes can be considered genocidal—that is, tending toward genocide—they certainly do not justify condemning an entire