Search results for ""Author Yehuda Cohen""

President of Israel Shimon Peres, in a speech to the German Bundestag on 27 January 2010, convened to mark Holocaust Day, voiced an often-repeated enigma that continues to trouble humanity over a half a century after the Holocaust: "The question still remains today why did the Nazis see in the existence of Jews a great and immediate danger? What induced them to invest in the killing machine such extensive resources? What motivated the Nazis to continue operating with such determination to the very end, even though their defeat had already appeared on the horizon? . . . The Nazi rabid hatred cannot be solely defined as 'anti-Semitic' . . . It does not fully explain the burning, murderous, beastly drive that motivated the Nazi regime, and their obsessive resolve to annihilate the Jews." A possible answer to this enigma is provided by Yehuda Cohen. Why were the Germans of all people the perpetrators of the Holocaust? This examination of in-group identity issues and the essence and unique development of Germans' national identity has direct relevance for those who seek an answer to this question. The answer lies in a 'triangle' of the fateful encounter of Germans and their problematic historical development, Nazi race theory, and the success of German Jewry. The author focuses on weaknesses in German identity which led to the attraction of a blood-based race theory as a national ethos - a narrative of German racial superiority which was invalidated by the very presence and prominence of Jews in German culture and society. Eliminating this 'affront' was an existential issue for Germans that impelled a Judenrein Europe - whether by expulsion or extermination. Such a linkage has been overlooked because scholars have concentrated on the Holocaust as a Jewish experience, with anti-Semitism being deemed primarily responsible. But as this new interpretation of the historical circumstances forcefully indicates, it was the German national experience that was the prime mover in the Holocaust enterprise. ... In elucidating fundamental differences between anti-Semitism and race-theory, ethnicity and nationhood, and Nazi race theory and other manifestations of European racism, Yehuda Cohen brings to the surface underlying reasons for the phenomenal attraction of Germans to race theory. Covering new ground, comparison of the pattern of German development with the path taken by other nationalities reveals German-specific motifs that weakened German national development - first and foremost the lack of an ancient national all-German heritage. This and other under-researched facets of the German experience prevented German-speaking people from forming a shared national identity. With the exception of the Nazi period, Germans have never been a nation, only an ethnicity. Only a German (Nazi) race theory provided Germans with an assumed history and vision of Oneness around which an Aryan national ethos very briefly coalesced into a genuine shared national identity. ... In conclusion, the author sets out how the European Union's vision of an overarching 'European nationality' provides a constructive solution for Germans' identity conflicts: it is a framework that also, ironically, supports an innate German drive to dominate the European sphere, albeit now through economic clout - a dominance never achieved by Bismarck or Hitler.

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The Swedes did not have a real feudal system, since their lands were not fertile enough for the peasants to spare more than a small portion of their crops in order to maintain the wellbeing of the nobility. Swedish peasants were mostly free and, in 1434, gained real political status. In 1471 a dispute occurred in Sweden and peasants and citizens, led by a nobleman from Stockholm named Sten Sture, who desired a separate Swedish state. Sture and his comrades won the battle. Sture became a hero in the Swedish collective memory, ruled Sweden, and fought successfully against the Russians. In 1520 King Christian II of Denmark defeated and killed the Swedish King Sten Sture den Yngre (the Younger) and became king of Sweden, but the Swedish army, led by a nobleman named Gustav Vasa, drove Christian II from Sweden in 1523. At the time, the vast majority of Swedish lands were owned by peasants. Vasa and his descendants, who ruled the country and waged war on the Baltic shores and into European soil, gave the Swedish nobility and wealthy individuals a political status. These kings relied on the multiple wars' outcomes to further their national enterprise and develop a Swedish national identity among strata of the wider population. That spirit of nationality, together with the cherished Swedish values of freedom and enterprise, enabled a successful campaign by King Gustavus Adolphus and his prime minister between 1626 and 1648. Yet after that war, when Sweden was accepted as a major European power, the Swedes understood that their resources would not allow them to play a central role in any future conflict, and they began to pursue a course of neutrality that continued throughout the two World Wars. During the years of Europe's consolidation, the historical lessons learned by the Swedes culminated in a realization that they could not maintain an independent role in European "jungle politics" and that their attempts at neutrality could even prove dangerous. After much hesitation, they jumped into the European "swimming pool" and have remained floating there quite comfortably. The Swedes feel comfortable within the EU and would prefer to stay there in the future, adapting to the notion of a European nationality.

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The purpose of this series is to find the true level of national identity within the European Union, probing whether a given state nationality will prevail, whether that nationality is sufficiently stable, and, if not, whether a consolidation process, forming a single pan-European nationality, exists and can replace the state nationality system. This series clarifies the role that each European group might play within the EU, if at all. This series about five European groups in the eastern and northern regions of Europe -- the Dutch, the Poles, the Hungarians, the Bulgarians, and the Swedish -- provides the reader with a fresh outlook on each of these groups. Consequently, it may shed light on the European Union and its future political and sociological prospects as it deals with typical behavioural patterns within each group, how those patterns have been created, and in what way and to what extent history has shaped that group to be unique. Each of these groups experienced foundational events that have affected its members' motives -- motives that may influence the future of the European Union. This series ties those groups' specific histories with the overall course of European history. It specifies which motives the members of the various groups have engendered in the course of their histories and explains how those motives can be expected to affect the future of the European Union. One of the arguments put forward by this series is that the two "World Wars" were, in reality, one European civil war, albeit in conjunction with relatively marginal events outside of Europe. Thus, like other civil wars, it served as an economic catalyst for Europe and helped to shape a new pan-European national identity.

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