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February 15, 2025
The Gaggle Book Club: Arno J. Mayer's "Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The Final Solution in History" (1988)

Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection is Arno J. Mayer's "Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The Final Solution in History." Published in 1988, Mayer's work challenged mainstream interpretations of the Holocaust.

Mayer, a historian specializing in modern European history, rejected the conventional view that the Holocaust was from the outset a long-planned, ideologically driven extermination program. Instead, he argued that the genocide of European Jews was not predetermined but rather emerged as a contingent response to the failure of Nazi Germany’s war against the Soviet Union.

Mayer sought to place the Holocaust in the broader context of World War II, Nazi war aims and, given his Marxism, class struggle. Mayer argued that historians were overly overly obsessed with Hitler’s antisemitism thus arrived at their preordained conclusion that the Holocaust was its inevitable outcome.

Mayer was also influenced by earlier structuralist historians of Nazi Germany, such as Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen, who had argued that Nazi policies evolved in response to wartime conditions and were not preordained. However, Mayer took this argument further, suggesting that the Holocaust was not originally central to Nazi goals and only emerged in response to the collapsing war effort.

Mayer argues correctly that Nazi antisemitism was deeply intertwined with its anti-Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks were identified as Jews, and Hitler and the Nazis set out to destroy the Soviet Union and to liquidate en masse the its Jewish-Bolshevik elites. The expansion of this program into the much larger genocidal project of extermination of the Jews as a whole took place in response to the failure of Operation Barbarossa in late 1941. As Germany’s Blitzkrieg strategy failed, and the Wehrmacht faced severe resistance from the Soviet Red Army, the Nazis redirected their frustrations toward Jews as scapegoats.

Among Mayer's claims are that the ghettoization of Jews in Poland was initially meant as a temporary measure, not as part of an extermination policy. Mayer downplays the significance of Auschwitz as an extermination camp, portraying it instead as primarily a labor camp--at least until the later stages of the war. Mayer also argues that the shift to industrialized killing (gas chambers) came gradually and without a clear master plan.

Mayer places the Holocaust within the larger context of 20th-century political violence, comparing it to Stalinist purges and other state-led mass killings. He suggests that antisemitism was not the sole or even primary driving force behind the Holocaust—rather, it was a reaction to war, ideological struggles and economic crises.

Whether you accept Mayer's arguments or you don't, the book is a fascinating read, and a useful correction to the oversimplified accounts of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

arno_mayer_(Verso_World_History_Series)_Arno_J._Mayer_-_Why_Did_the_Heavens_Not_Darken___The_Final_Solution_in_History-Verso_(1998).pdf
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Monday Night At The Movies: "Come And See" (1985)

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02:22:49
TG 1934: U.K. (Half-Heartedly) Threatens To Recognize Palestinian State

George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle discuss U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's threat to recognize a Palestinian state --but only under certain conditions--and wonder what, if any, difference a British recognition would make.

01:32:40
The Gaggle Music Club: Ottorino Respighi’s "Ancient Airs and Dances"

This week's selection of The Gaggle Music Club is Ottorino Respighi’s "Ancient Airs and Dances." The composition consists of a set of three orchestral suites composed between 1917 and 1932, based on lute pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) was an Italian composer, musicologist, conductor and orchestrator. He studied composition in Bologna and later trained in orchestration under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia. The Russian master-orchestrator strongly influenced Respighi's approach to tone color. Respighi went on to become one of the most important figures in Italian music in the early 20th century. A significant part of Respighi’s output was devoted to reviving and reinterpreting early music. He created orchestral versions of lute pieces, Gregorian chant and harpsichord works. Unlike his contemporaries in Italy, he had little time for atonality and serialism.

For "Ancient Airs and Dances," Respighi, a skilled musicologist, drew on transcriptions of...

00:44:59

BREAKING: President Trump delays Tariffs until Aug 7.
(except Canada Aug 1)

Canada: 35%
EU: 15%
China: 55% with prior tariffs
Vietnam: 20% baseline
Indonesia: 19%
Philippines: 19%
Japan: 15%
South Korea: 15%
India: 25%
Brazil: 50%
Cambodia: 36%
Bangladesh: 35%
Laos, Myanmar: 40%

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/responses/what-kind-great-power-will-india-be

17 hours ago

Disclose.tv:
NEW - Trump said to warn Jewish donor that MAGA is "starting to hate Israel."

Read more: https://www.disclose.tv/id/s90cg7cb5m/

@disclosetv

JUST IN - U.S. imposes sanctions on Palestinian Authority and PLO officials, including denying visas, for failing to meet commitments.

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/07/sanctioning-officials-of-the-palestinian-authority-and-members-of-the-palestine-liberation-organization

@disclosetv

NEW - Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says, "Germany is returning to support Nazism" after Germany's Foreign Minister met with Netanyahu today amid speculation that Berlin may recognize the State of Palestine.

@disclosetv

JUST IN - Trump grants Mexico 90-day extension to reach trade deal, temporary tariffs remain in place.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/114948452793702817

@disclosetv

2 minutes ago

Fuck NO! I will never comply nor participate in this crap. I own my data and you have no rights to my personal property. Everyone should refuse this. Keep your own medical records, on paper, and only share with trusted health providers if strictly necessary.
Citat
Disclose.tv
@disclosetv
·
31 iul.
NOW - Trump launches "Digital Health Tech Ecosystem" to "bring healthcare into the digital age," with trusted partners like OpenAI, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Microsoft AI, and Google. https://x.com/sasha_latypova/status/1950977183280930860

My friend is in the business of buying wholesale steel rebar, steel beams, steel sheets, etc. from inexpensive overseas producers and then selling it downstream to American homebuilders who build budget homes.

He got an email from his customs broker this afternoon that their order from Hanoi, Vietnam will be subject to either 50%, 70%, 110%, or 135% tariff tomorrow.

50% penalty for foreign steel.

Another 20% penalty for Vietnam.

Another 40% transshipment ...

January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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