Why Ken Burns is a National Treasure… but He Won’t Improve Us
“The U.S. and the Holocaust” is a Masterful Work of Living History That Ultimately Blames Human Nature for the Failures of Democracy
Midway through watching the new three-part PBS series from Ken Burns about America’s response to the Holocaust, I turned to my wife and remarked, “Americans on the political extremes don’t respond well to this kind of history.” She nodded and we briefly talked about what I meant, then went back to watching the episode. Her quick assent was comforting to me for two reasons. One, because she agreed with me. And two, because she knows me so well, in all my cranky, centrist glory.
Before I explain what I meant by my comment, let me first say this: I am, like many Americans, a huge fan of Ken Burns and his team at Florentine Films (including Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein and Geoffrey C. Ward). In addition to revolutionizing documentary filmmaking with works such as Brooklyn Bridge (1981) and The Civil War (1990), Burns has added immeasurably to the canon of American history. But we didn’t need another movie about the Holocaust to tell us about the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews and others. We might benefit from a movie about America’s less-than-sterling response to German antisemitism prior to and during the Second World War. But I suspect Burns and his colleagues were mostly motivated by Donald Trump and his more racist, xenophobic followers. And the filmmakers won’t change any hearts and minds there.
“We are living through America’s Fourth Great Crisis.”
— Ken Burns
Extreme right-wing Americans (on the social freedom political spectrum, not the economic freedom one) don’t respond well to this kind of history because they find it inconvenient for their beliefs. So their natural response is to either diminish or gloss over the underlying facts as outliers or to simply ignore the history altogether. In extreme cases this actually manifests itself in outright denial, but really — what’s the difference between a paleoconservative like Pat Buchanan, who has denied the severity of methods used in German concentration camps, and Alex Jones, who has denied the murder of schoolchildren in Sandy Hook? I doubt many MAGA Republicans will be willing to make the connection between the role the United States played in the Holocaust — especially the shameful aspects of the (original) America First movement and our country not welcoming in enough European refugees — and those zealots who stormed the Capital on January 6, 2021, and similar folks who promote “replacement theory.”
“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”
— Stanley Milgram
Watching this kind of history on television means internalizing that we are all human and therefore are all capable of acts of inhumanity against our fellow humans. Yes, some more than others, but as Stanley Milgram famously demonstrated, ordinary, middle-class Americans in New Haven are equally capable of horrific acts of brutality in the guise of “just following orders.” The correct response therefore ought to be one of empathy, not dismissal. How can I be a little more humble, a little more open-minded, in understanding another person’s plight? And a little more skeptical in assessing a rabble-rouser’s call to action? In any case, it certainly shouldn’t be one of obfuscating or avoiding facts.
“If he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”
— Liz Cheney, referring to twice-impeached, former President Trump
One key fact — about human nature itself — is that sacrificing personal gain for principle takes more bravery than most politicians are able to muster. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney might view themselves as moderate, reasonable Republicans. But they enabled Trump from the get-go and, in one manner or another, continue to do so. I may strongly disagree with Liz Cheney’s conservatism, which is certainly more extreme from a public policy standpoint than that of the GOP senators I just mentioned. But I’ll take her country-before-party courage over their cowardly compliance six times a week and twice on Sunday. In his film, Ken Burns lays out the dots for us to easily connect: Hitler’s election to the Reichstag in 1933 and the subsequent fall of the Weimar Republic. So many democratic Germans were shocked that such a thing was possible. Really? Occupied France between 1940 and 1944 has always been such a fertile setting for stories not because of the moral clarity of choosing to collaborate with the enemy or not but because of the murky moral nuances in between.
“Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
— Rick, in “Casablanca”
Those on the extreme political left don’t typically have a problem with learning about shameful historical events, especially events with any element of American complicity. But they often err in their response: one of righteous indignation and historical cancelling. The capacity of people to perpetrate evil on others is not limited by political ideology; there are plenty of examples of atrocities done in the name of advancing social equality. So what’s not needed is outrage at Nazi atrocities and American culpability, which leads inexorably to liberal overreach.
“If this keeps up, pretty soon we’ll have to cancel God.”
— Bill Maher, noting that the Bible condones slavery
What kind of overreach? Like: slavery and Jim Crow were wrong, so we should instill in present-day white Americans a sense of personal shame, cancel slave-owning founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and demand cash reparations be paid to African-Americans. And: Native Americans were brutally deprived of their territory and their liberty, so we should erase from our geography words now deemed offensive like “squaw” and make ritualized public acknowledgements for the present uses of the land.
Yes, those historical events absolutely were terrible blights on America’s constitutional ideals of democracy, freedom and justice. And they should be rigorously taught and discussed in our schools. Just as civil rights legislation that appropriately improves the lot of historically disadvantaged Americans should be debated and enacted in Congress. But what’s called for is historical perspective, not woke anger and overreaction. Black lives surely do matter, but we need meaningful police reform, not the defunding of police departments. If the Soviet Union could kill millions of innocent civilians in order to achieve a more economically just society, then socialists, democratic or otherwise, are as capable of immorality as any other ideology. One person’s righteousness is another’s grievance.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
— George Orwell, in “Animal Farm”
It’s a deeply depressing thought but we humans are more motivated negatively by fear than positively by fellow-feeling. That doesn’t mean we should be pessimistic about the prospects of humanity. That would be giving in to our darker impulses, in a sense throwing in the towel on the capacity of our better angels to prevail. But we also can’t kid ourselves into believing a single documentary — no matter how wonderful — will somehow transform us into paragons of virtue. Or even move the needle. That would be overly optimistic.
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
― William Arthur Ward
Rather, let’s be realistic. War, hatred, bigotry, brutality, lying, passivity, hypocrisy, rationalization: these have been with us from the dawn of mankind. And they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Just read the news. Russian atrocities against Ukrainians. Burmese killing of Rohingya. The dismal list goes on, in China, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, South Sudan. Meanwhile, back home we seem to fumble every crisis and blame the other side, rather than finding common ground to improve the commonweal.
As the great humanitarian and scientist Jacob Bronowski once noted, in another landmark public television documentary series, the only antidote to genocide is to question the certainty of belief or dogma, and to seek unbiased, objective knowledge. In other words, follow the scientific method. The humanist part of the equation is this: the more of ourselves we can see in our neighbors — both good and bad — the less inclined we’ll be to do bad things to them. Or to let them do bad things to us.
