Oliver Stone's History Sideshow

This morning I picked up my copy of the Guardian to see Oliver Stone grinning back from the front page. Intrigued by the headline, I delved into the article and learnt of a new 10 hour miniseries from Stone about 20th century history. Now, Stone is used to his fair share of controversy, but for many this appears to have taken the historical biscuit, dropped it and then trampled on it repeatedly, so I figured it would be a shame if I didn't wade into the debate.

What one must do in situations such as these is make the distinction between justifying Hitler (bad) and analysing him in context with a view to the human condition (historically relevant). Seriously, this is GCSE stuff. After two years of reading countless books by Richard Overy, Ian Kershaw and Klaus P Fischer, it seems easy enough to be able to do the latter without a hint of the former. Stone says that he will analyse Hitler as 'the product of a series of actions', which isn't far from the truth, however he qualifies this by saying 'we can't judge people as only "bad" and "good"' and that Hitler 'has been used as a scapegoat'. Now, when it comes to the Nazis and scapegoating, Hitler isn't the man to look to. I'm fairly certain that there are a lot of Jewish families that would wish to take issue with Mr. Stone's comments here. The idea of Hitler and the Nazis coming about because of the impact of the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles, the economic collapse and 'last days of Rome' effect of the Weimar Republic is basic stuff, people, the kind of things I learnt as a 14 year old. By suggesting this, Stone isn't being revolutionary in the slightest. From the sounds of things, this Stone documentary series isn't going to be a patch on the Laurence Rees and Ian Kershaw penned ones that we've had the pleasure of viewing.

One area in which he is approaching sense is by saying that Hitler has been used cheaply throughout history. This is true, Hitler has become some manner of catch-all reference, clutched at by angry people in an argument. Even on this very blog, someone invoked Godwin's Law within two comments (a new record). But the truth of the matter is that there is an extremely good reason for this, Hitler was one man with dangerous right-wing views who was able to harness latent bitterness and hatred and play all manner of rival bureaucracies off against each other, utilising some manner of organised chaos to push forward his despicable individual goals. Naturally there were a handful of other pathological criminals who handed him power along the way, but they don't make his actions any more justifiable, instead it simply serves to make them every bit as contemptible as the man himself. There can be little doubt that he was a terrible man, whether this was as a result of 'a series of actions' as Stone claims is basically irrelevant. We can examine these 'actions' and the elements of the psyche which contributed to him becoming the dangerous megalomaniac that he was, but they still have the same end result. The atrocities that he performed were abstract evil, no bones about it.

Stone justifies his point by claiming- 'I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes, to understand their point of view. You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate.' Now, I took the liberty of strolling a mile or two in Hitler's jackboots and it left a bitter taste in the mouth, I can tell you. The trick is not to empathise with dictators, but to objectively analyse the factors contributing to their actions, something done brilliantly by Kershaw (seriously, read his output, you'll see what I'm getting at). There's a world of difference between empathy/justification and rationalisation and if Stone can stick to the latter of these two, he might just be able to steer himself out of trouble and produce a half-decent history series with something to say (still probably won't trouble World at War and its oil of Olivier for the title of greatest historical series though).

This brings us on to the defense of Stalin by Stone. The claim that he 'fought the German war machine more than any person' is not really in doubt. It's generally accepted that Stalin shook up the Red Army into some semblance of efficiency (though it's lack in the early years of war was his fault anyway) and created a force capable of not only resisting but tearing the heart out of the Wehrmacht. Now, the Russians did a Hell of a lot for the Allies in the war, 3/4 Wehrmacht soldiers were killed on the Eastern Front and the Red Army's losses numbered in the tens of millions, incomparable to the losses endured by the British, Commonwealth and US troops. So again, as far as Stone's claims go, nothing to see here. It's post-war that Stalin's rep begins to suffer with the fall of the iron curtain- details surface about the purges, recent documentaries have shed light on mass murder of Polish generals. Of course the man had to deal with Communism being less popular than Fascism and hampering his political influence in Europe pre-war, it's probably unsurprising that he was tipped over the edge... Here's the nub of the argument: What's more important the end or the means to that end? One for all you philosophers out there (but no Kantian deontological ethics please, I'm strictly utilitarian).

The problem here is that Stone has made a living out of promoting his work through controversy. By portraying Bush in the classic Culshaw/Bremner style in 2008's 'W', he was able to incense every right-wing broadcaster to devote time to the unwitting promotion of the film and lead every sane, intelligent being in the world to think 'finally, a portrayal of the man, matching my opinions of him, from an award-winning American'. Sadly in order to promote this series, he's had to claim that Hitler wasn't really bad, which has done him no favours whatsoever. No doubt it is simply a ploy and the actual series itself will have had the steadying hand of academia to steer it away from being too edgy.

The path of history is fraught with contradiction and unmentionable issues, which creates an atmosphere in which crafting a cogent argument is so impossibly difficult that I marvel that anyone is able to. Philosophy is even more of a bloody minefield and I sense numerous arguments about moral relativity and Socialist vs Nazi vs Communist vs McCarthy nonsense to come. I remember a similar outcry at the release of Der Untergang (Downfall) claiming that humanising Hitler would somehow poison our minds, fooling us into forgetting that he was a monster but you know what, he was human, no matter how little we like to think it. The film managed to portray Hitler as human, while reminding us that there is no justification for what he did and that's the balance required in every analysis of the dictator. It was a great film and at no point did you empathise with Hitler (despite a marvellous performance by Swiss screen-legend Bruno Ganz), it is surely the perfect example for the treatment of such a character, as explained by the marvellous Kershaw in this article from the same newspaper.

So, what have we learned? Well you can get some extra publicity by raising the hackles of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the other Conservative mentalists and you can create a hell of a stir in the 24 hour media (there are well over 300 comments on the article). To be honest, we are all of us clueless until the series actually comes out and then we can judge it for what it is. Likely another all too basic history series with delusions of grandeur that thinks it's far more revelatory and indeed revolutionary than it actually is.

Phew, tomorrow should bring a preview of a new miniseries about controversial Renaissance family, the Borgias (no not the BBC one from the 80s, that was terrible). I know it's a year in advance but it tickled me that it was in the pipeline. Until then, fellow bloggers, journos and angry people, adieu.