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Nazi-Deutsch/Nazi German: An English Lexicon of the Language of the Third Reich. Robert Michael and Karin Doerr. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. xx + 480 pp.
This is an interesting and valuable lexicon, which means that clarifications of words appear, not translations-for example, volkhaft, volkisch, or volklich-and distinctions are not always apparent. Nazi-Deutsch/Nazi German includes 3 forewords, a preface, two introductory articles by the authors, more than 7,000 entries, a 16-page appendix, and 4 pages of bibliography.
The forewords establish the focus of the book. Paul Rose, Leslie Morris, and Wolfgang Mieder make it clear that their focus is the anti-Semitic language of Nazism. Rose speaks of a "constant fluctuation in German anti-Semitic language between the metaphorical and the physical meaning of the words" (p. viii); Morris refers to the "language of genocide" (p. xi); and Mieder speaks of the "missing link [in Holocaust studies, and] the use and misuse of . . . language" (p. xv). The lead article by Robert Michael is an excellent historical summary entitled "The Tradition of Anti-Jewish Language." His study is a well-documented compendium of anti-Semitism emphasizing commonalities between Nazi-Deutsch and Luther-Deutsch, with detailed examples taken from Luther's own writings, particularly his Van den Juden und ihren Lugen (The Jews and Their lies). Michael points out that Germany did not hold a monopoly on anti-Semitism, and he establishes a long history of the bias from Old Testament times through numerous Christian saints (Augustine, Isidore, Thomas Aquinas, and others) to the Crusades, and particularly to 15th- and 16th-century Spain. He suggests that just as there is an "umbilical relationship" (p. 12) between the Old and New Testaments, a similar relationship between Christian and Nazi anti-Semitism can be documented.
Karin Doerr continues Michael's approach in her article "Nazi-Deutsch: An Ideological Language of Exclusion, Domination, and Annihilation." Echoing Daniel Goldhagen (Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996) she says, "One can only conclude that virtually all citizens had to be...