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- Feb 21, 2009
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I recently read where a gay activist wants the publisher of William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to change the wording when Shirer discusses SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm and his homosexual cohorts and in some other instances. The book was published in 1960 and when I first read it some years later, but before the gay rights movement was up to anywhere near full steam, I didn’t think much of it, which goes to show how times have so radically changed in a relative eyeblink of time. Now, of course, I can see the activist’s point.
Shirer, who was a great liberal who hated the Nazis, wrote so matter-of-factly (i.e., in a manner then that never would have occurred to him would later be controversial) regarding homosexuality in language like: “...jealousies and rivalries among only men of such unnatural tendencies."; and describing the early Nazis as: “...a collection of criminals, murderers, crackpots and perverts.” (Note: this is from memory as I don’t have the book in front of me, but this is close to what and how he wrote.)
I can see what a raw nerve this touches in gays today precisely because Shirer had not been some aberrant “homophobe,” but rather a pillar of society with quite conventional and even enlightened views for the times. I was wondering how people feel about the request (demand?) to change the text now, long after the book’s author has died. Is this unwarranted censorship or an understandable appeal to sensitivity?.
By the way, I have been an voracious reader since childhood. I think I read this book around 1968 at age 13 or 14. I recall while doing so that I asked my father in all innocence what a “pimp” is. His face turned red and he just told me to “never mind!” For younger folks here, I don’t think you can ever really appreciate how very much times have changed in the last fifty years, no matter how many reruns of fifties and sixties TV shows you might have watched! You had to have been there.
Shirer, who was a great liberal who hated the Nazis, wrote so matter-of-factly (i.e., in a manner then that never would have occurred to him would later be controversial) regarding homosexuality in language like: “...jealousies and rivalries among only men of such unnatural tendencies."; and describing the early Nazis as: “...a collection of criminals, murderers, crackpots and perverts.” (Note: this is from memory as I don’t have the book in front of me, but this is close to what and how he wrote.)
I can see what a raw nerve this touches in gays today precisely because Shirer had not been some aberrant “homophobe,” but rather a pillar of society with quite conventional and even enlightened views for the times. I was wondering how people feel about the request (demand?) to change the text now, long after the book’s author has died. Is this unwarranted censorship or an understandable appeal to sensitivity?.
By the way, I have been an voracious reader since childhood. I think I read this book around 1968 at age 13 or 14. I recall while doing so that I asked my father in all innocence what a “pimp” is. His face turned red and he just told me to “never mind!” For younger folks here, I don’t think you can ever really appreciate how very much times have changed in the last fifty years, no matter how many reruns of fifties and sixties TV shows you might have watched! You had to have been there.
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