McGentrix wrote:Seems like a good source. You guys should write to him and explain to him that he wrong. (That statement is a reference to "The History Place," a site maintained by Mr. Philip Gavin.)
I agree, someone should point out his errors to him. First i would note that this site is primarily a site about American history, a subject about which it would not be unreasonable to assert that Mr. Gavin has assembled materials from reputable authors. However, Mr. Gavin does not himself have credentials as an historian, nor as a student of history--unless he were to allege that his Bachelor of Arts from Northeastern University was in history, something which he does not allege, and a significant omission, if true, for someone maintaining a site while alleging historical expertise.
To repeat, there is no reason not to trust this site with regard to American history, because Mr. Gavin has relied upon reputable scholars in that field for his articles.
However, the Reichstag fire is not a subject in American history. Therefore, mystified at this site being presented as a source for any historical topic other than American history, and mystified because it serves primarily as a resource for high school students and undergraduates interested in
American history, i did a little looking around.
This is from Intute, a site which provides and rates internet source materials for the Arts and the Humanities, and which is based in the United Kingdom:
Quote:"The History Place" is an award-winning site focusing mainly on the history of the United States of America. Compiled and owned by author Philip Gavin, the site features guest essays in the points of view section from Barbara Ehrenreich, Lynne Cheney, and Philip Gourevitch. There are features on what events took place in this month in history, homework help, photo and speech of the week.This site is of use to those who wish to gain a basic knowledge of US history, from the Revolution to World War II. Although there is also a section entitled World history, it contained at the time of cataloguing, the author's own eight-part history of the Irish potato famine, and an anthology "Genocide". The site has some interesting accounts, but should be used, as all Internet sources, with caution. Events covered include: The Vietnam War; The American Civil War and World War Two. The site features advertising.
I have highlighted that portion of this review which points out the extent to which the site is less reliable on the subject of history outside the United States. As Mr. Gavin does not have (or has not stated that he has) academic credentials in history, essays on his part on world history will necessarily be far less reliable than essays posted there on American history by people who have credentials in that subject.
I have read several other reviews on the site, more than ten, although i stopped keeping count, all of which praise the site as a teacher's resource for secondary education, specifically on subjects in
American history. None which i found mentioned world history, other than the UK site's review which i have posted, and it urges caution with regard to Mr. Gavin's essays. Similarly, several of the sites i visited mentioned that unless otherwise attributed, the articles are written by Mr. Gavin. Tediously, i must point out again that Mr. Gavin provides no reason to believe that he has any more credentials on the subject of world history than does any other well-read individual.
Below is precisely what is written at Mr. Gavin's site about the Reichstag fire:
Quote:By a weird coincidence, there was also in Berlin a deranged Communist conducting a one-man uprising. An arsonist named Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, from Holland, had been wandering around Berlin for a week attempting to burn government buildings to protest capitalism and start a revolt. On February 27, he decided to burn the Reichstag building.
Carrying incendiary devices, he spent all day lurking around the building, before breaking in around 9 p.m. He took off his shirt, lit it on fire, then went to work using it as his torch.
The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Göring were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Göring's residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries, then hurried back through the tunnel.
I find it rather amusing that he writes:
The exact sequence of events will never be known . . . --and yet he immediately after states that "Nazi storm troopers" (one assumes that he refers to the SA, the Sturmabteilung, which means "storm battalion" or "storm troop"--storm in the sense of a military assault). However, in a subsequent article, Mr. Gavin writes about "the night of the Long Knives," an event during which the SS (Schutzstaffel, meaning protective squadron) rounded up the SA leadership, who were either murdered out of hand, or put in prison to be tried
in camera, after which almost all of them were executed, including Röhm, who was executed in July, 1934. The reference to "long knives" comes from the ceremonial dagger which all members of the SS wore on their belts.
This is the introduction to Mr. Gavin's account of the night of the long knives:
Quote:The greatest challenge to Hitler's survival during the early years of the Third Reich came from his own brown-shirted storm troopers, the SA (Sturmabteilung) led by Chief of Staff, Ernst Röhm.
The battle-scarred Röhm was a decorated World War I combat officer and a post-war street-brawler who had been with Hitler from the start. Röhm's jack-booted storm troopers were largely responsible for putting Hitler in power. On the front lines of the Nazi political revolution, they had risked their necks battling Communists for control of the streets and squashed anyone who stood in Hitler's way.
So, on the one hand, Gavin describes the SA as largely responsible for putting Hitler in power, immediately after describing them as the greatest challenge to his survival in the early years of the Third Reich. Mr. Gavin needs to make up his mind. Most of the objections i have to Mr. Gavin's comments are matters of detail, but matters of detail are the bread and meat of an historians work, and dispute about matters of detail are crucial to the reputation of any historian. A critical omission in Mr. Gavin's account of the SA is the homosexuality of Röhm, and his promotion to positions of responsibility in the SA of well-known homosexuals. (Karl Ernst, mentioned by Mr. Gavin in his Reichstag fire article, had long been a bouncer in a gay nightclub, which is where he met Röhm, and is inferentially why Röhm gave him an important position of responsibility in the SA.) This was not only offensive to many Germans, it was in direct contravention to the NSDAP's anti-homosexual agenda--gay men were the first victims of Nazi concentration camps. Yet Mr. Gavin only mentions the disgust which the "gangster" tactics of the SA engendered in the German "man on the street," and either doesn't know about the important homosexual overtone of the SA, or is trying to suppress it.
These would still be minor objections,
were it not for the fact that Mr. Gavin does not cite a single source for his statement from authority about the Reichstag fire and the place of the SA in that event..
So, if Mr. Gavin does indeed have expert testimony for his claim that "Nazi storm troopers," whom he later refers to as members of the SA lead by Karl Ernst, he has not provided it. From the point of view of the historiographer, that makes his evidence at least suspect until either Mr. Gavin provides his sources, or someone else tracks down reliable sources.
So far, in this thread, the only sources we have been presented, by Herr Flaja, are sources which he quotes and which point out that allegations about SA complicity in the Reichstag fire are rumors.
Yes, indeed, someone should contact Mr. Gavin about the quality of the information he is peddling with regard to the rise of Hitler, for however reliable the essays on American history at his site may be. That won't be me, though, because i long ago developed a habit of relying on the information provided by those who cite their sources, and, if necessary, argue persuasively for any controversial point of view which they allege. I'm happy to leave Mr. Gavin to his own devices, and otherwise ignore him.
