Talk:Arno J. Mayer

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!941 seems a busy period - isn't this about the same time Hitler tried to negotiate a conditional surrender?159.105.80.141 12:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

article exhibiting undue weight problems

This article is extremely pregnant with criticism of Mayer, overly so. WP:DUE and WP:BLP are fairly clear on problems of this kind. The problem is made worse by the fact that large chunks of material appear here which are repeated in other articles.

Take for example this paragraph on Goldhagen's crticism in the Mayer article:

Another one of Mayer's leading critics, the American historian Daniel Goldhagen in a 1989 review entitled "False Witness" was to write of "Mayer's enormous intellectual error" in ascribing the Holocaust as due to anti-Communism rather than anti-Semitism Goldhagen mocked Mayer by arguing that the Nuremberg Laws could hardly be explained as a result of anti-communism Goldhagen excoriated Mayer for saying that most of the massacres of the Soviet Jews during the first weeks of Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 were committed by local people with little German involvement Goldhagen used as an example of the massacres of 7, 000 Jews at Lviv on July 2-3rd, 1941, which he charged been committed by Einsatzgruppe C , and not just by local Ukrainians Goldhagen went to accuse Mayer of factual distortion in writing of the Wannsee Conference of 1942, which Goldhagen noted was meant to plot the genocide of European Jews, and not as Mayer claimed merely resettling Jews Goldhagen ended his review by accusing Mayer of attempting to suppress history, and of being an apologist for Nazi Germany like Ernst Nolte in attempting to "dedemonize" National Socialism

Compare with the paragraph from the Goldhagen page:

Goldhagen first rose to fame through a 1989 review entitled "False Witness" of Arno J. Mayer's 1988 book Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? in the New Republic. Goldhagen was to write of "Mayer's enormous intellectual error" in ascribing the Holocaust as due to anti-Communism rather then anti-Semitism Goldhagen excoriated Mayer for saying that most of the massacres of the Soviet Jews during the first weeks of Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 were committed by local people with little German involvement Goldhagen used as an example of the massacres of 7, 000 Jews at Lviv on July 2-3rd, 1941, which he charged been committed by Einsatzgruppe C, and not just by local Ukrainians Goldhagen went to accuse Mayer of factual distortion in writing of the Wannsee Conference of 1942, which Goldhagen noted was meant to plot the genocide of European Jews, and not as Mayer claimed merely resettling Jews Goldhagen ended his review by accusing Mayer of attempting to suppress history, and of being an apologist for Nazi Germany like Ernst Nolte in attempting to "dedemonize" National Socialism

Take for example this paragraph on Dawidowicz in the Mayer article:

One of Mayer's more prominent critics, the American historian Lucy Dawidowicz entitled her review of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? in the October 1989 edition of Commentary as the "Perversions of the Holocaust". Others have argued that the historical evidence shows that Hitler was not convinced that the war was lost as early as December 1941, and that Mayer's theory is anachronistic. Dawidowicz commented that the Einsatzgruppen had been massacring Jews since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, and that Mayer's claim that the Jews were only surrogate victims due to Germany's inability to defeat the Soviet Union was in her opinion rubbish. Dawidowicz attacked Mayer for saying that most Jews died at Auschwitz from diseases than from mass gassing, and for writing that Holocaust survivor testimony was highly unreliable as a historical source as supporting Holocaust denial. Dawidowicz questioned Mayer's motives in listing the works of Arthur Butz and Paul Rassinier in his bibliography. Dawidowicz suggested that through there were some differences of opinion, Mayer's view of the Nazi regime as primarily motivated by anti-communism was not that different from the views expressed by Ernst Nolte. Dawidowicz ended her review of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? by accusing Mayer of excusing German racism, rationalizing the Nazi dictatorship, of portraying Soviet Jews as better off then what then were under the Soviet dictatorship, and by presenting the Holocaust as due to reasonable political goals instead of the ideological decision fuelled by fanatical anti-Semitism that Dawidowicz saw as it as.

and compare with material from the Dawidowicz entry:

Dawidowicz was a leading critic of the American historian Arno J. Mayer's account of the Holocaust in his 1988 book Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? arguing that Mayer played up anti-communism at the expense of antisemitism as an explanation for the Holocaust Dawidowicz entitled her review of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? in the October 1989 edition of Commentary as the "Perversions of the Holocaust". Dawidowicz argued against Mayer that the historical evidence shows that Hitler was not convinced that the war was lost as early as December 1941, and that Mayer's theory is anachronistic. Dawidowicz commented that the Einsatzgruppen had been massacring Jews since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, and that Mayer's claim that the Jews were only surrogate victims due to Germany's inability to defeat the Soviet Union was in her opinion rubbish.Dawidowicz attacked Mayer for saying that more Jews died at Auschwitz from diseases than from mass gassing, and for writing that Holocaust survivor testimony was highly unreliable as a historical source as supporting Holocaust denial. Dawidowicz questioned Mayer's motives in listing the works of Arthur Butz and Paul Rassinier in his bibliography. Dawidowicz ended her review of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? by accusing Mayer of excusing German racism, rationalizing the Nazi dictatorship, of portraying Soviet Jews as better off than they were under the Soviet dictatorship, and by presenting the Holocaust as due to reasonable political goals instead of the ideological decision fueled by fanatical antisemitism that Dawidowicz saw as it as.

Almost word for word the same material.

My proposal is this material should be removed from the Mayer article and a sentence describing each author's critique in general terms included (with name links obviously). I'd also suggest the names be included in a "see also" section at the end of the article.--Goldsztajn (talk) 12:22, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Removing text as discussed above. --Goldsztajn (talk) 00:42, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

References

Sources

What bothers me about Mayer is his frequent lack of sources. Historians have an obligation to provide sources for their assertions and not as a courtesy. Providing any new interpretation of historical fact/occurrence can be valuable, giving proof to bluster argument is an absolute. If you choose not to give proof then any historian will be accused, justifiably, of creating "fact" where it doesn't exist. Hesweeney (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:17, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Do you have a reliable source that makes this same criticism? I have some for Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, and the same criticism can be made for The Persistence of the Old Regime, but Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking is surely OK on this front? LudicrousTripe (talk) 07:07, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I do and find it and post soon.

Hesweeney (talk) 04:09, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Accusations of Holocaust denial

Where is the evidence that Mayer denies any of the essential three pillars of the Holocaust (use of gas chambers; deliberate plot to kill Jews; and 5-6 million deaths)? If there is no conclusive evidence of this, calling him a denier is libelous. Steeletrap (talk) 19:38, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Critical responses to Mayer

There have also been positive (if reserved) critical responses from major scholars, such as Ian Kershaw, Jacob Neusner (link), Nechama Tec (link), Gordon A. Craig and Saul Friedländer - as far as I can tell from the quotes on the 1990 Pantheon Books edition cover, though the exact reviews are hard to chase down. It also received positive critical attention from the New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Presently the article makes it appear as if Mayer's book was universally lambasted as a fringe publication. Maskettaman (talk) 05:38, 26 September 2018 (UTC)