Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on manuscript sources
- Introduction
- PART I PRIVATE INTELLECTUAL 1900–1945
- 1 Brontë country
- 2 Peterhouse and Princeton
- 3 Love, marriage and the ‘Sex Question’
- 4 Thinking man's historian
- 5 European civilization and the Third Reich
- 6 Wartime ambiguities
- PART II CONTOURS OF AN ORIGINAL MIND
- PART III PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL 1945–1979
- Further reading
- Index
5 - European civilization and the Third Reich
from PART I - PRIVATE INTELLECTUAL 1900–1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on manuscript sources
- Introduction
- PART I PRIVATE INTELLECTUAL 1900–1945
- 1 Brontë country
- 2 Peterhouse and Princeton
- 3 Love, marriage and the ‘Sex Question’
- 4 Thinking man's historian
- 5 European civilization and the Third Reich
- 6 Wartime ambiguities
- PART II CONTOURS OF AN ORIGINAL MIND
- PART III PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL 1945–1979
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
Perhaps no element of Butterfield's life and thought has provoked so much hostile response as his attitude to the Third Reich. He appears in jaundiced retrospect as a Nazi fellow traveller who admired Hitler and who regarded the British decision to fight Germany as a mistake. And, as always within blanket criticism of this kind, sufficient ‘evidence’ can be extracted from under the blanket to make the contention plausible. Butterfield did indeed make misjudgements about the nature and direction of the Nazi regime before 1939; he did indeed lend support to German historians, some of whom had Nazi sympathies; he did indeed – famously and disastrously for his later reputation – accept an invitation to lecture in Germany at the end of 1938, by which time all ‘decent’ people are supposed to have understood all too well the real character of Hitler's government; he did indeed make a number of risqué remarks before and during the war to some very risky people. Wanting always to act mischievously, subversively and amusingly, Butterfield sometimes acted in ways that went beyond mischief, subverted the wrong enemies and struck liberal contemporaries as far from funny. He doubtless deserves all the blame heaped on him by an outraged posterity for ‘getting Hitler wrong’ and nothing in this chapter will dent the moral superiority of a world that finds grey a boring colour and 20/20 vision a requirement in its heroes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Life and Thought of Herbert ButterfieldHistory, Science and God, pp. 119 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011