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THE DIALOGUE IN HELL BETWEEN MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU -- COMMENTARY

Part V:  The Dialogue and History

Chapter Ten:  Solving the Enigma of Louis Napoleon

The historical controversy over Napoleon III remains strong even to this day. A good example of the more prominent views of the Emperor and his times is documented by Samuel M. Osgood in an edition of works entitled Napoleon III, part of a series of publications on "Problems in European Civilization." Professor Osgood presents a most useful compendium of the thought of historians and thinkers of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who are justly recognized for their analyses of Napoleon III and his regime. It illustrates well the nature of the ongoing controversy and the major lines of interpretation, each of which are  strikingly different and claim many eminent partisans. [1]

Given this controversy, Joly's Dialogue has great value. As a close observer of Napoleon III and his times, he gives us useful insight as one who had actually observed and painfully experienced his rule. However, our claim for Joly is much greater than one that would treat the Dialogue merely as a contribution to historical studies by a contemporary of Louis Napoleon. In the breadth of his  analysis, Joly can account for the many views of Napoleon III and, to a great extent, harmonize many of the most disparate interpretations. It may be that Joly's portrait of Louis Napoleon is simply the best and truest likeness to the  historic character of the French Emperor.

Because of certain historicist notions he holds, Osgood would deny any claim that would present itself as constituting a more or less definitive understanding of an historical era. His position in this respect represents by now the long-standing thinking of the history profession as a whole. It also shares presumptions with the more radical post-moderns. It might be said of this latter  group that they provided "metaphysical grounding" for the profession's historical intimations. [2l

Because such views increasingly reflect the prevailing orthodoxy among contemporary historical thinkers, they are perhaps accepted all too easily and  unthinkingly. They will be critically examined here in some detail at the outset.  After, we will turn to specific historical interpretations that would compete with Joly's understanding of the Emperor and his regime.

For Professor Osgood, the historical controversy concerning Napoleon III is to be expected, being rooted in the very nature of historical studies.

History is no more the mere enumeration of facts than science is the sole gatherer of data. Any historian worthy of the name must approach his subject from a definite frame of reference, develop a thesis, and reach certain conclusions on the basis of available evidence. Unfortunately, Clio is the most fickle of muses. While she is at the historian's side to suggest the type  of questions, she is nowhere to be found when it comes to  formulating the answers. Left to his own devices the historian  labors under severe handicaps. The unearthed evidence is of-  ten fragmentary, the established facts are open to a variety of interpretations and, most damaging, he can never rerun the experiment to test his hypothesis. [3]

Scientific exactitude would seem to be the yardstick by which Osgood measures historical studies. At first view, history seems very much like modern  natural science, properly understood. Like the scientific method, the historical method cannot be understood as a passive process and the mere collection of  data. Like modem science, we might expect history to advance beyond primitive hypotheses to infinitely more refined explications of historical phenomena.  Again, like modern science, historical understanding may be open-ended. It may tolerate numerous hypotheses until research confirms one or the other or points to a new and more conclusive theory-a "paradigm shift" in the historical understanding of things, if you will. [4]

However, history is necessarily more inexact than modern science, according to Osgood, because of the nature of its subject matter, which deals with human  beings in a political context. The "facts" of history are past events beyond present observation. They cannot be re-tested and the "experiment" rerun. It follows that controversy is endemic to historical study. It is subject to inevitable  disputes on a theoretical level among the many hypotheses that are offered to explain phenomena, and, "most damaging" of all, its "facts" can never be wholly adequate or "controlled" to yield the evidence necessary to confirm one  interpretation or another.

In this light, it is perhaps more accurate to liken history to poetry rather than to science, and Osgood intimates as much when he says that it is subject to "Clio." Because its subject matter involves human beings, its proper realm belongs more to the muse than to the laboratory.

Following Osgood, a clear image of the status of history eludes us. The character of history seems to lie somewhere between that of science and poetry.  While it wants to attain the rigor of science in its study of human phenomena, it is forced to draw upon the poet's peculiar powers to fathom the human soul and  plumb the depths of human character in his reconstruction of the past. However,  in distinction to poetry, the role of inspiration in its field seems to be constrained  by its function to explain past events. The historian is not free to enter the realm  of fantasy. The ambiguity of history and the powers it calls forth leaves scope to  the intuition of the historian but not so broad as to do serious injustice to given  facts, however controversial or fragmentary. [5]

Osgood's reference to an "historian worthy of his name," a name that he obviously prizes as one of honor, sheds some needed light on his conception of the  historian's enterprise. According to Osgood, the historian develops a thesis based on available evidence from a "definite frame of reference." The key to the  nature of history as irretrievably ambiguous and "fickle" perhaps lies here. The historian who is called to interpret past events does so from a certain point of view or frame of reference. This frame of reference itself would change with the movement of history, so historians continually stand, so to speak, on new  grounds from which they observe the past. The differing views of past events are  inevitably a part of the historical process itself. Subsequent views are not necessarily superior to less recent ones but are rather indicative of a change of perspective that can not, given the open-ended nature of the historical process, mount to a view of the whole.

The manner in which Osgood introduces and presents the conflicting historical accounts of Napoleon III confirms this as his deepest view of the historian's enterprise. By and large, the main lines of interpretation are shown to change  dramatically over time, establishing new perspectives. It is the capriciousness of  the historical process itself that ultimately explains the frame of reference and  the character of the "fickle" muse who presides over the historian's enterprise.  In the realm of history, there are only eternal questions, we are told, with no definitive answers.

The Changing Views of Napoleon

Osgood's volume begins with the scathing portrait of Louis Napoleon by Victor Hugo, the literary giant of the nineteenth century who suffered exile under Napoleon's rule. [6] Hugo accuses his nemesis of "buffoonery" and of being  "grotesque," dubbing him "Napoleon Le Petit," a man whose meager talents and  lofty pretensions reveal him as totally unfit to have usurped the stage of history.

A similar thought is present in the analysis of Karl Marx, another contemporary of the Emperor. [7] Citing Hegel, Marx claims that all great events and personages reappear in one fashion or another on the great stage of history. Looking to the coup of Napoleon Bonaparte and his world-historic revolutionary  achievement, Marx sees the achievement of his nephew as perhaps vindicating  this thought of Hegel, but with a caveat. On the first occasion they appear in  tragedy, in the second, in farce.

It was the searing prose of Hugo and the weighty authority of Marx that long colored perceptions of Napoleon III and finally, perhaps, prompted later scholars from a new "frame of reference" to struggle out from their influence. Marx, who  observed the Napoleonic regime firsthand, and Hugo, who also suffered under it,  were, in the minds of some, too close to the phenomenon to appreciate it properly. To Osgood, or at least some of the historians in his volume, such a "frame of reference" might rightfully yield to another that has available a greater store  of historical data and is freer from the distortion born of personal experience.

The change in perspective on Napoleon III proceeded slowly. It was long understood that his election to the Presidency of the Second Republic owed  much to the "magic of his name." [8] This view continued to denigrate Napoleon, as the key to his political success is found more in an accident of birth than any  intrinsic merit. It was challenged by F. A. Simpson who saw in Louis Napoleon  the considerable talent to seize and mold what fate had to offer.

The revision of Napoleonic historiography reaches the high-water mark in 1943 with Albert Guerard's Napoleon III. In the Emperor's foreign policy, Guerard sees Napoleon in the role of a "prophet" and as a forerunner of Woodrow Wilson. His desire was to convene a Congress of European powers like the  Congress of Vienna, which would reorganize the continent, not on the basis of  monarchic legitimacy, but as the .future League of Nations, on the basis of the principle of the right to self-determination. Napoleon III may be indicted at the  bar of history for being a failure, but he cannot be condemned, for he worked  toward a future that is "still our hope today." [9]

Similarly, in domestic policy, Guerard credits 'Napoleon with espousing a democratic ideal toward which the future would inevitably move. Guerard believes that technological progress, widespread literacy, and the spread of cheap  newspapers have removed the obstacles to direct democracy. [10] Indeed, "if we do  not believe in direct democracy now, it is because we don't believe in democracy at all."

Guerard's critique of Marx and Hugo is implicit and is meant to speak to the Napoleonic historiography influenced by it. In opposition to Hugo, and a line of  interpretation perhaps proceeding from him, Guerard claims that Napoleon's failure should not brand him as a fool or a knave any more than it would Napoleon I, Saint Louis, Lafayette, or Wilson. In opposition to Marx, he claims that  Louis Napoleon's regime is "not a feeble caricature of the First Empire, but  something altogether different and, in our opinion, of far more vital interest." [11]

In his Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, J. Salwyn Schapiro sees in the regime of Napoleon III the precursor of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Schapiro writes from a frame of reference acutely sensitized by the events  of the Second World War and what it portends for the future of liberalism and a  free world. According to Schapiro, the organization and policies of the Second  Empire bear a striking resemblance to the fascist dictatorships of his time. He  would take strong exception to Guerard and the rest of the revisionists who find  "vitality" in Napoleonic policies and the "future hopes" for Europe. Schapiro sees in the plebiscitory democracies extolled by Guerard the possibilities of a frightening form of tyranny backed by popular support. It's the actual experience of Hitler's Germany that would illustrate the full range of such a regime's  horrors. [12]

Given Osgood's historicist presumptions, the subtitle of his edition Napoleon III-BujJoon, Modern Dictator, or Sphinx? is patently disingenuous. The  historical figure of Louis Napoleon is necessarily enigmatic and sphinx-like, and this editor of "The Problems in European Civilization" says as much. The historical problem of Napoleon III can not be definitively resolved if, as Osgood implies, each view makes a claim to a certain "validity" from its own particular  perspective.

The "problem" of Napoleon III is even more complicated than Osgood might have it. Not only is the historian himself historically conditioned in his view of  the French Emperor, but so is the student whose access to Napoleon III is through works that are, in a certain sense, already fundamentally dated from his  point of view. It is as if the real phenomenon of Napoleon III retreats with every  effort to understand it. It is not merely a fickle muse who presides over the historian's enterprise but a perverse "evil genius." Apparently, we cannot avoid the subtle subjectivism of the historian or even the student who is conditioned by a historical horizon that interposes itself between the phenomenon of Napoleon III and its scholarship.

The Problems of Contemporary Historiography

At this point, certain problems with Osgood's position manifest themselves. If forced at the outset to grant that historical truth is irretrievable, we might expect the slackening of scholarly effort or the trivializing of the historian's task.  Serious scholarly effort can be undertaken only in the belief that the past is open  to human understanding and that it crucially affects our understanding of things important.

Within Osgood's Napoleon III, we have evidence of the trivializing of historic themes and a scholarship marked by frivolousness on the one hand and  pedantry on the other. As students of Joly, we might be surprised to see Napoleon's efforts to control the minds of his subjects through the manipulation of  public opinion as nothing too disconcerting. Rather, he is understood as employing methods which might "evoke the admiration of such modems as George  Gallup and Elmo Roper." [13] We may also wonder if the strained literary analogies of calling Napoleon a "Chekovian romantic" or the "Hamlet of history" illuminates anything beyond its pretentiousness. [14] To say the least, such scholarship contrasts with the seriousness of Joly. In 1864, the year the Dialogue was  published, Joly thought he discerned a project that would crucially affect the fate  of free men. In the depth of his analysis, he exposed some of the currents of  modem political life that were, most ominously, to determine subsequent history.

Osgood would have us understand that history, as it unfolds, changes the perspective of the historian and that this crucially influences the interpretations  of the past. It follows that the Schapiro view of Napoleon III, sensitized by the  phenomenon of Hitlerism, differs from that of contemporaries of the Emperor,  who were cut off from such a perspective and were perhaps too close to events  to perceive them dispassionately. It is curious then that of all the works in the Osgood collection, it is Schapiro, writing in the aftermath of Hitler, who stands  closest to Joly, a contemporary of Napoleon III. Writing from "different frames of reference," the two thinkers assess things in remarkably similar ways. According to them, Napoleon's regime is best understood as an unprecedented at-  tempt at founding a new form of despotism.

Moreover, of all the essays in Osgood's collection, the most disparate interpretations are those of Guerard and Schapiro. We find that the former work was published in 1943 and the latter in 1949, that is to say, both from a perspective  that was familiar enough with the phenomenon of Mussolini and Hitler. We may begin to wonder if indeed the historian's thought is so time-bound that it cannot rise to a detached view of the past and that scholarly effort, even beyond centuries, cannot attain similar views in independent approaches to historical reality.

Osgood implied that all historical perspectives, even the most serious, are inherently limited. Alternatively stated in a more positive way, the views of historians can make similar claims to being valid. It is at this point that the bankruptcy of Osgood's position shows itself. The theses of Guerard and Schapiro are diametrically opposed in crucial respects. If they are both to claim a share of  validity, then the real phenomenon of Napoleon III may be said to disappear for  all intents and purposes. We cannot claim that the policies of Napoleon III "present the hope for us today" and the prototype for Hitlerism, unless we assume  that the proponents of these views are fascists, which, most certainly, they are not.

If we were to simultaneously defend the views of both Schapiro and Guerard, then the reality of Napoleon III becomes so vacuous that we might be discouraged from any effort at understanding him in the first place. Thought  through, Osgood's position would lead to the trivializing of history. It turns history into a certain kind of historiography that places the emphasis not so much  on understanding history as the historian. This is the undeniable bent of Osgood's Introduction and his preoccupation in the individual precis that introduces each historical piece. It is a narcissistic view of the historian that forgets  his more humble task of explication. In the end, the "historian worthy of his  name," in Osgood's sense, is not.

Furthermore, Osgood's conception of history and the historian's enterprise would also blunt our moral sense, the development of which, in the ancients'  view-one thinks of Plutarch, in particular-was one of the chief benefits of  historical study. The proper study of history was seen to lend sublimity to our lives by presenting us with situations and personalities beyond the reach of our  daily occupations. In such situations, we are called to exercise our moral judgment in affairs of state that critically serves our civic education. [15] The ethical  relativism that is the upshot of Osgood's position destroys the important critical  functions of the study of history. We cannot simply leave the phenomenon of  Napoleon III at "Buffoon," "Modem Dictator," "Hope for the Future," "Elmo Roper"-whatever. If we are to believe Joly, the view espoused by Osgood would also lead us to our peril. The germ of future history lies in the policies of  Napoleon III. To Joly and more traditional historians, Osgood's approach would render inscrutable what needs greatest light, what speaks to the knowledge and  well-being of future generations.

In denying that historical understanding can be definitively reached, or, alternatively, in maintaining that history is necessarily enigmatic, we are presented with an unexamined dogmatism that masquerades as openness to all historical  views. For some of the reasons indicated, we cannot rest satisfied with such a  position and would do well to approach our subject matter in a different, less  dogmatic, and more modest manner.

The Freshness of the Old Historical Approach

From Osgood's remarks on the nature of history, we might be tempted to see historical studies as flawed because they cannot attain the exactitude of science.  In the thought of Aristotle, we can find the proper corrective to the prevailing view of history and historical studies, insofar as Osgood may be deemed a representative spokesman. 

In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes: "Our discussion will be adequate if it achieves clarity within the limits of the subject matter. For precision  cannot be expected in the treatment of all subjects alike." With evident common sense, Aristotle might accuse Osgood and others of a kind of foolishness for  wanting to hold history to strictures it can not meet. Because it fails in this regard, we are not justified in deeming it fundamentally enigmatic. Clarity can be had, but within the limits of the subject matter.

For a well educated man is one who searches for that degree of precision in each kind of study which the nature of the subject matter at hand admits. It is obviously just as foolish to accept arguments of probability from a mathematician as to demand strict demonstrations from orators. [16]

On the one hand, we should expect conflict among historians. This is be- cause the subject matter of history is controversial, dealing with the great political questions, sometimes, indeed, "eternal questions," whose answers determine  the lives and happiness of human beings. A historian "worthy of the name" is  not, as Osgood insists, a mere codifier of facts or events but must assess the thoughts and actions of men with regard to important matters. For us to come to  a reasonable understanding of the past through the use of history, we are forced  at some point to deal with the various deeds of historical actors and the opinions of historians themselves. On the other hand, we would be surprised if considerable light were not shed on historical problems through these same opinions.  Intelligent men motivated by questions that passionately interest them, men of  outstanding heart and intellect, like Hugo and Marx, are bound to understand  something of what lies under investigation. Indeed, dealing with the eminent  historians in Osgood's edition, "the presumption is that they are right in at least  one or perhaps even in most respects," as Aristotle intimates. In consciously  choosing provocatively different views of Napoleon III for his edition, Osgood  has perhaps obscured vast areas of similarity .Following Aristotle, we might indeed find controversy beyond shared views, but we would be loath to endow it  with too much significance, in the manner of Osgood. [17]

Osgood grants too much importance to conflicting historical opinion. The various perspectives of historians confirm a view of history that was Osgood's from the outset-that is to say, the irremediable enigma of history. Yet, this original view is not without controversy. Indeed, the questions it raises are more  controversial than the views of the historians in his edition, whose more limited  and modest theses do not presume to rise to a view at such philosophic heights.  Rather, they endeavor to understand a concrete historical personage, Napoleon III, and can be judged independently by the ability of their interpretations to explain in a plausible and coherent manner the events and problems of his reign, brought to light in many revealing ways by the efforts of other historians.

Before we would "resolve" the controversy regarding Louis Napoleon in the manner of Osgood, it would be better and certainly less presumptuous to seek a  different course. We want an interpretation that can account for the regime of  Napoleon III in a way that will also allow us to comprehend some of the reasons  why it has been the subject of so much historical attention and dispute. We rest  dissatisfied with Osgood, who presents the absurd spectacle of wanting to deal  with the Napoleon III controversy by a position that is at once dogmatically accepted and inherently more controversial.

Toward a Better Understanding of Napoleon III

Moreover, contrary to Osgood, the conflicting interpretations of Napoleon III might point the way to a more adequate understanding. Two opinions  that obviously conflict, as in the case of Schapiro and Guerard, might shed light  on areas of one another's interpretation that would otherwise remain poorly illuminated. The conflict would be a spur to a more adequate interpretation, either  by resolving the differences in their views by a third more inclusive and superior  interpretation, or when the two are totally irreconcilable, by exercising our best judgment as to the adequacy of one or the other. In effect, in leaving the controversies in his Napoleon III inconclusive and "enigmatic," Osgood abandons the historian's task where it might well begin in seriousness.

In fact, a line of interpretation developed from Joly may lead "within the limits of the subject matter" to the best and truest appreciation of Napoleon III.  Beyond all the works in Osgood's edition, it represents the most comprehensive  view of the Emperor and his regime and can account for the others' views in doing justice to their particular insights. Its analysis of the political, intellectual, and material forces of the Second Empire can serve as a basis from which to  judge the adequacies of competing and less comprehensive positions. Of  particular importance to the Joly analysis of Napoleonism is the role that Saint-Simonian thought plays. The reader is asked patience, for we must turn again to  it to resolve the ambiguities of his rule.

A Return to Saint-Simonian Thought

The Saint-Simonians perceived the core of the contemporary crisis to be an intellectual one, manifesting itself in the apparently irreconcilable conflict between two traditions of thought. These traditions were characterized as "liberal-humanitarian" and "conservative-authoritarian." [18] The first tradition of thought finds expression in Enlightenment politics and a view of legitimate state authority as derived from individual rights. According to the secular strain of the second tradition of thought, the principles of the Enlightenment misrepresent the  nature of the state and would tear apart the fabric of society. 

There are no universal rights of man as man predating civil society. There are only rights of men within particular societies, guaranteed by specific institutions. These are informed by age-old historical forces and not by abstract reasoning about man in his "natural state." Far from being an artificial creation,  civil society is coeval with human existence and is its condition. History demonstrates that the doctrine of natural rights leads to a revolutionary politics. The regime it would erect, by recurring to consent as the source of legitimacy, tends  to disturb the salutary prejudices and habits of the citizen. These are the matrix  of civil society and serve to put the necessary authority of the state beyond question. The root of legitimacy in the "conservative-authoritarian" tradition of  thought is thus found not in consent but in prescription and the duties to a sovereign that are owed, not conditionally, but as part of a sacred heritage.

The Saint-Simonians saw revolutionary thought as serving a "critical" function that dissolved the ancient authority and prepared the way for the reintegration of society and a state whose authority rested on new principles. Their project was an attempt to harmonize the two traditions of thought and much of its  ambiguity lies therein.

The Saint-Simonians lay emphasis on the "humanitarian" aspects of the first tradition of thought in elevating the practical teaching of Christianity to the  status of a new religion. Society is to be oriented by the progressive amelioration  of the material, moral, and intellectual conditions of the poor. They intend  thereby to affect a synthesis of Christianity and the scientific revolution, which  was originally heralded by Bacon (following Machiavelli) in a call away from  an orientation by "heavenly principalities" and toward "the relief of man's estate." In jettisoning the transcendent elements of Christianity, the Saint-Simonians wanted to retain their moral code, which would then be practically  implemented by a scientific society. Science, which is morally neutral, insofar as  it increases human power over nature but does not determine the ends for its use,  would then serve moral objectives.

Politically, the Saint-Simonian revolution calls for the supplanting of liberal institutions by an authoritarian state. Political power culminates in a leader whose legitimacy is based on an appeal to "genius" in the name of a revolutionary historical project. The liberal system of government was seen as defective in  institutionalizing conflict among groups of men and by cutting off from citizens a horizon of higher shared purposes and the leaders who can give effective voice  to them. In the Joly analysis, the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which emanates from consent theories of liberalism, finds its proper ground, not in individual voices, but in the all-powerful despot who practically fulfills the historic interests of the people.

Some of the radically democratic features of the first tradition of thought are retained in the policies of Napoleon III. The role of the plebiscite, for example, is to forge direct identification of the masses with the leader, in whose person  they are to find  he representation of their higher moral and collective selves. As Joly indicates, Napoleon leaves liberal institutions intact, but gutted, and finally  replaced by an authoritarian and hierarchical politics. Positions of power were to  be filled, not as in conservative regimes, by an aristocracy of birth, but by an aristocracy of "merit." The leader will fill its ranks with those distinguished by dedication and service to the new society. 

What emerges in the Joly analysis is a regime that would graft the "humanitarian" aspects of the one tradition of thought to the "authoritarian" and hierarchical politics of the other tradition. Authoritarian politics replaces liberal institutions but is severed from a conservative social order and is oriented toward  material progress. The Saint-Simonians accept the standards of what constitutes  a healthy "organic" society from the "conservative-authoritarian" tradition of  thought but want to reintegrate society on a moral basis that takes for its objective goals that derive from the "liberal-humanitarian" tradition. It is no longer  the prescriptive elements of a social order that endow it with legitimacy but its  orientation to the future and the fulfillment of the emergent demands of history. 

The Napoleonic regime, as presented by Joly, displays a discrete but subtle combination of strains of thought that are fundamental to post-Revolutionary  modernity and formerly thought irreconcilable. Rather than demonstrating the validity of historicist premises, the controversy over Napoleon III can be traced  to this fact and the peculiar Saint-Simonian synthesis.

A Return to the Controversy

It is from this source that light is shed on both Guerard and Schapiro and the discrepancies in their thought. Guerard identifies with the "humanitarian" aspects of Napoleon III's regime. This distinguishes his empire from that of Napoleon I, whose revolution advanced by the sword and unthroned kings, finally to  enfranchise property owners and their narrow class interests. For Guerard, it is the social goals of Napoleon III that render his regime "more vital," democratic,  and humane.

In emphasizing the humanitarian aspects of Louis Napoleon 's regime, Guerard reveals himself to be remarkably unperturbed in the face of the authoritarian-  ism that is its political counterpart. The Saint-Simonian view shares with the  ideologies of the twentieth century a call for the universal transformation of society as a mandate of history. Authoritarianism and violence are perhaps inherent in such a call and are required in doses proportionate to the radicalism of  their visions. So strong is the hold of a "humanitarian" future on the mind of  Guerard that he seems willing to exonerate the violence and authoritarianism of  Louis Napoleon even in the face of failure.

Unlike other historians, Guerard does not misconceive the anti-liberal bias of the Napoleon regime. He praises the attempt to inaugurate direct democracy in a  modern industrial society as the litmus test of our sincerity for democratic principles. Such a regime is taken for granted to be desirable. The spread of cheap  newspapers, among other things, makes it feasible. What is astonishing is that Guerard can make such a claim in the face of Hitler, who was indeed "educated"  on cheap newspapers.

Up to now, we accused Guerard of being perhaps too complacent in the face of violence and the authoritarian aspects of Napoleonic rule. He is merely perhaps too sanguine about the hold of morality, in the absence of liberal institutions and a restraining system of checks and balances, over the minds of the citizenry. Given unscrupulous rulers and their access to modem communications, it  is doubtful whether the better motives of citizens can be relied upon to guarantee  a moral politics. In the end, it is Guerard's moral convictions that exonerate Napoleon's crimes in the name of "humanity" and it is his faith in the power of  these convictions that leads him to a culpable political naivete.

Still other historians fail altogether to perceive the anti-liberal bias of Napoleonic government. This is the case of Theodore Zeldin, who sees Napoleon as trying to establish in France the liberal and parliamentary government of nineteenth-century England. [19] Zeldin's interpretation hinges on a proper understanding of the last years of Napoleon's reign which, according to certain historians, intended to transform the Authoritarian Empire into the Liberal Empire.

A reading of Joly makes us suspicious of any interpretation of Napoleon that would make of the Emperor a sincere partisan of liberalism. Liberal ideas of liberty-limited government and individual freedom-do not represent the expressed Napoleonic idea of the liberty that was to "crown the edifice" of his  government. Deference on Napoleon's part to liberal institutions was, at first, a  matter of lip-service to effect a transition to a regime of a wholly different character, where liberty is reflected in a "return to loving obedience" to a ruler and to  laws that issue from an historic mandate.

The "liberalization" of the regime was a response to a series of setbacks that were "to transform the resolute conqueror of power into a wavering, fumbling  Emperor." [20] Joly, writing at the height of Napoleon's power, did not face the  ignominious conclusion of the Napoleonic regime. Nevertheless, a line of interpretation that accepts the Joly analysis would see the liberalization of the Empire  in the manner of A.F. Thomson, as illuminating the problems of autocracy in  attempting to modify itself and placate its critics, without losing control. [21]

The interpretation of J. Salwyn Schapiro would correct any view that mis- perceives the autocratic intentions of Napoleon and, contrary to Guerard and  others, its more ominous implications. To Schapiro, Guerard's politics represents not the rightful extension of democratic principles, but some of the key  elements of modem tyranny. Schapiro cites Nazi apologists themselves who claim that the regime of Napoleon is in fact the only relevant historical parallel  to the rise of National Socialism. [22]

Schapiro implies that Napoleon shared the same political goals as the National Socialists, which were rooted in a common recognition of the inadequacies of liberal institutions to solve the social problems of the day and mend the  cleavages that threatened society. The solution lay in authoritarian and plebiscitory leadership and in re-channeling revolutionary socialism, through certain social policies, toward a virulent form of nationalism.

According to Schapiro, the Second Empire did not differ in kind from Hitlerism but was merely a weaker version of that phenomenon. He lays particular  emphasis on the fact or observation that "the weakness of the fascist pattern of Napoleon lay  in that it did not include totalitarianism." [23] By this, Schapiro means that Napoleon never attempted to "coordinate" the political, social, and  economic life of France into a uniform and unified system run by a dictatorial  machine. 

Moreover, Schapiro continues, such coordination would have been impossible due to certain external factors. Among these he lists the fact that France was  primarily an agricultural nation with no large combination of basic industries or  a large organized class of workers. In addition, there was not yet in existence the  easy and rapid means of communication and transportation-radio, motion pictures, automobiles, and airplanes, which can be readily used by the dictator for  propaganda and other purposes. For these reasons, totalitarian control was beyond the reach of the nineteenth-century dictator who only anticipates his twentieth-century counterpart.

It is interesting in light of the many similarities between them that this reading of Napoleon's intention clashes with that of Joly. Though unfamiliar with  twentieth-century totalitarianism, of course, Joly sees an attempt at similar politics by the nineteenth-century Saint-Simonian despot. The Saint-Simonians understood both the present limitation and future opportunities for such social coordination. Such control would be progressively augmented with the advance of  scientific society as the principles of material "progress" and authoritarian "order" came to be increasingly reconciled.

For all of Schapiro's contribution in drawing attention to the parallels between Napoleonism and modem tyrannies, he fails to make explicit what distinguishes the former from the latter. Napoleon intended a social revolution different in kind from the National Socialists. The light of Joly and the Saint-Simonians reveals a profound difference between the goals of Napoleonism and  Hitlerism. The former can in no way be represented as the latter "in a diluted  form." Napoleon may be said to accept certain "humanitarian" aspects of the "liberal-humanitarian" tradition in adopting the relief of man 's estate as the social goal of his authoritarian politics. In fact, it is this element of that tradition  which has risen to the status of a practical religion, having the amelioration of  the lot of the poor as its central tenet.

In alluding to Napoleonism as merely the herald of Hitlerism and its weaker nineteenth-century version, Schapiro fails to appreciate the truly radical nature of National Socialism and is guilty of confusing the proper understanding of the two phenomena. National Socialism may be said to reject the whole "Iiberal-humanitarian" tradition of which Napoleon accepts and elevates a part. According to the Nazis, "1932" effectively "repeals 1789," that is to say, a revolutionary tradition that was advanced in certain elements of the thought of the Saint-Simonians. [24]

The National Socialists would reject what we have described as the "humanitarian" aspects of Napoleon's policy as a perversion of the natural  order, which has the strong serve the weak. For the Nazis, this would represent  the extreme of Western decadence by instituting a rule marked by hedonism and  animated by a form of "pity" that is elevated to the status of a new religion.  Certain historical interpretations, (Guerard's, among others), have insisted upon  the "weak" but "well- intentioned" motives of Napoleon. Indeed, he wasn't made of the stuff of Julius Caesar, or his uncle, Napoleon I, not to mention Hitler and  the stuff of Julius Caesar, or his uncle, Napoleon I, not to mention Hitler and the  Nazis. [25]

An interpretation that simply sees in Napoleon III the premonitions of Hitler fails to grasp what made the latter unique. In rejecting Western tradition, it was  not a conservative reaction that was intended but something revolutionary in its  own right. The Nazi revolution wanted to go beyond even nationalism and the  nation state in erecting a new form of hierarchical rule, universal in scope,  which contemplated the reinstitution of slavery in the service of "higher culture"  and the racially pure.

In the end, Guerard's and Schapiro's interpretations grasp certain aspects of the phenomenon of Napoleon III but fail to appreciate others that would make their analyses more accurate and complete. Guerard may be criticized for failing  to grasp and appreciate the implicit tyranny in the autocratic principles of the  emperor because he passionately shares his social goals. Schapiro may be criticized for failing to appreciate those goals, which crucially distinguish Napoleonism from Hitlerism and make it perhaps an early prototype of modem despotism  but one that is less radical and "softer." The valid parts of their theses point to  their mutual deficiencies and a more comprehensive interpretation that Joly would admirably serve. The Saint- Simonian elements in the Second Empire begin to resolve the ambiguities in the person and policies of Napoleon III.  Through such a line of interpretation, the sphinx's riddle begins to be solved, as the two most disparate interpretations are reconciled from its point of view.

Marxian Class Analysis

Beyond Guerard and Schapiro, Karl Marx explains Napoleon's election and consolidation of power in terms of the structure of French society at the time, with particular emphasis on his relation to the peasantry. Such is the authority and influence of Marx that Marxian class analysis has dominated much of subsequent scholarship. Though they would insist that the key to Napoleonism lay not in relation to the peasantry but to other classes, subsequent scholars are perhaps not aware of their deeper indebtedness to Man. Their scholarship shares a  view of history as materially determined and dependent on the alignment of  certain social forces, however differently interpreted.

According to Marx, an understanding of the underlying social forces can re- solve the sphinx-like character of the Second Empire and the apparent contradictions in the rule of Napoleon III.

The conditions of peasant life in France are the solution to the riddle of the general elections of December 20th and the 21st which carried the second Bonaparte to the top of Mount Sinai-not to receive laws but to give them. [26]

The Eighteenth Brumaire traces the changes in the condition of peasant life between the Empires and its critical political effect. By the revolution of Napoleon I, serfdom was abolished and the peasant, formerly tied to a manor and  lord, became a freeholder. The roots of this system of small landholding struck deep and "cut off the supply of nutriment upon which feudalism depended."  Peasant landholding bred a staunch sense of individualistic proprietorship. This  development represented a social advance over the feudal system. It served as a  buffer for the bourgeoisie in guaranteeing against a reactionary coup de main of  the old overlords.

By the time of the Second Empire, a system that had first enfranchised and enriched the French country folk now served their exploitation. The Revolution  had put in place a system that encouraged free competition and enterprise in the  rural districts where agriculture was practiced. It was productive enough to permit the initial growth of industry in the cities. However, the inevitable result,  over two generations, was the pauperization of the former peasantry and their exploitation, not by feudal lords, but by the urban usurer. Real modernization in  the countryside was effectively blocked by the hidebound conservatism of the  peasant who resisted the application of new techniques of cultivation and husbandry .The patchwork nature of the countryside and the small scale of the farming enterprise proved resistant to market forces that would break the hold of that  tradition. 

The inefficiencies of petty landholding became markedly apparent in its in- capacity to support the needs of the burgeoning towns. The local proprietor  found it increasingly difficult to support himself and his extended family. His  sons were drawn to the ranks of vagabondage or absorbed into the lumpenprolelariat of the city .The local proprietor found himself bilked by the creditor and  increasingly pressed by taxation resulting from the revenue needs of an increasingly sophisticated society.

In trying to maintain the capitalist order, the bourgeoisie became the natural ally of the priest and the prefect against the schoolmaster and the mayor. The  former impresses upon the peasant the fatality of its lot and preserves it from the  influence of more enlightened educators and popular representatives. The credulous masses could be made to see the cause of their ruin not in the social system but in "higher" causes, the chastening hand of God that brings to bear a fateful  drought or a bad harvest.

Prior to 1848, there were fewer than 250,000 voters in France. In the 1848 elections to the Constituent Assembly, the franchise reached over 9,000,000, which included the peasant as the vast majority. Such a constituency was pre-  pared for the appearance of a Moses who would lead them from the wilderness,  which was, in actuality, the social condition of modem society that resulted in bondage to the bourgeoisie. The sudden leap to universal manhood suffrage created a political void that was filled by Louis Napoleon and "the magic of his  name."

Napoleon III ended the political confusion by authoritarian leadership. His "commandments" had for their object the defense of the status quo and the values of traditional French society. The first two "idees napoleonnes" called for  the defense of private property, in deference to the interests of the petty land-  owner, and in defense of the interests of the bourgeoisie. In occupying such  ground, the second Bonaparte wanted to extend the principles of the first Bonaparte. Yet, subterranean forces of society had changed so as to render the politics of Louis into a feeble caricature of his uncle, a farcical parody that stood,  not for revolutionary advance, but for the more retrograde elements of society.

In Marx 's analysis, the peasantry constitutes a kind of "class" with distinct interests that distinguish it from other classes in society. Their farms are of a size to support only extended families and allow for no division of labor or scientific principles of agriculture. A score of such plots, like individual atoms, form a larger entity, the village. These combine in turn and form aggregates  called departments, through which a strong central authority, inherited from the  feudal past and modernized to suit the times, exerts its control. To accede to this  power is the prize of all revolutions and has a compelling allure for conspirators  and romantic adventurers like Louis Napoleon. 

Although the peasants share certain interests, they find no organized expression. The poor quality of communications and social intercourse that marks life  in the countryside requires that their interests be represented. They cannot assert  those interests in their own name. Napoleon III appears as that representative but also as a "lord and master" whose authoritarian rule will protect the peasant against other classes.

Nurtured in superstition, the peasants accept the second Bonaparte as the Messiah and the savior of the old order established by the first Napoleon, whom, by this date, they have come to deify. According to Marx, the political influence  of the peasantry find its "last expression" in the autocratic regime of Louis Napoleon. It is through an appeal to the peasant that Napoleon not only comes to  power but rules, always dependent on satisfying such a constituency for the continued popularity that is required in his plebiscitory rule.

In the cities, the threat from revolutionary elements likewise drives the bourgeoisie to the strong government of Louis. In a view unclouded by sentiment or  superstition, the bourgeoisie sees in Napoleon the savior of the same order that supports their interests and an instrument that could be wielded to serve their will. In thus coming to the defense of property in the city and countryside, Napoleon seemingly stands for a harmony of interests that coalesced behind him in  the landslide ejection of president in December 1848.

Yet, what served for purposes of election is the cause of the contradictions of his rule. In fact, the interest of the peasants no longer coincides with the interests of capital and the bourgeoisie, as during the reign of Napoleon I. The election of  Napoleon only masks the profound conflict of interest that marks the relation of  the bourgeois to the peasant and which rends society at large. It is a conflict characterized by the exploitation of the city over the countryside, and, within the city, of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat.

The peasants would find their natural allies in the more progressive elements of the urban proletariat. The coalescence of such forces promises to end the contradictions that rend society by the radical overthrowing of the capitalist order that exploits them both. To forestall this, Louis wants to keep the interests of the  different classes distinct and increase their separate dependency on the central  power of the state. "That is why his government alternatively seeks to win and  then humiliate this  lass or that." It is a policy that can give to one class only by robbing another. While Louis wants to be the benefactor of all  lasses, his policy ends up arraying them all against himself.

The contradictions inherent in such a rule reflect the contradictions inherent in society and create the pressure that leads to the enormous expansion of the state's power. The dictatorial coup d'etat of 1851, which ended the Second Republic, is an event that proceeds logically from what is required to maintain the  social order. The after-effects of this event are constantly felt as Louis is forced to a "miniature coup" every day against the forces that would gather strength  and align themselves against him. He attempts to resolve the contradictions of  society through. continual conspiracy. [27]

The expansion of state power finds expression in a huge bureaucracy, "well fed and well dressed," which creates an "artificial caste" alongside the other classes of society. For them, the survival of the regime is a "bread and butter question." Their goal is to draw "Califomian prizes out of the state treasury."  This caste attempts to regulate the pressures of class conflict that plays itself out  within the constraints of autocratic rule. The culminating point of the "idees napoleonnes" is the preponderance of the army, whose ranks will be filled with members of the proletariat. The most incendiary elements of modem society are  co-opted and enlisted to the established order and framework of traditional  French society. At the same time, the material interests of the working class are  appeased through certain social policies.

Under the First Empire, the army was filled with "the flower of peasant youth" who defended the glory of the nation and a revolution through which  they came to own their land. The narrow lives of the peasant were sublimated to  a nationalism that appealed to their collective selves as it advanced their private interests. The army of the Second Empire was less sublime in seeking to expand  the coercive powers of the state. Its "heroic" feats consisted of police raids to  bring the peasantry to heel.

A huge bureaucracy and army, supported by a burdensome taxation, puts further internal pressure on the regime. This is relieved by an imperialistic policy that risks defeat in foreign wars and only delays the dissolution of society .In  any event, the state finally exhausts itself and falls along with the social structure that supports its heavy weight. Before it collapses, the opposition of the state to the true interests of society is displayed "in all its nudity." This robs the state of all dignity and renders it loathsome and ridiculous.

Marx sees a revolution forthcoming. In fact, the regime of Napoleon III prepares the way for revolution that alone can resolve the profound contradictions in his empire. Put in place by Louis is a centralized structure of government that is indispensable to modern society. The industry and commerce that temporarily  thrive under this strong government augment the ranks of the working class in  whose interest the revolution will come and under whose direction it will fall. 

By revolution, this class will inherit the machinery of government that will construct a new society based on common property and a rule in the common social interest-what came to be called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." It is  his class alone that as a true social mission. Its consciousness is formed by common productive enterprise in the increasingly interdependent network of industrial society. Its self-interest serves the common interest in a revolution that unleashes the unlimited productive capacities of society with a view to benefits  shared by all productive members according to their needs.

The intellectual vanguard of the working class is already present in France and is articulating the growing consciousness of the working class and the future demands of history. Napoleon's string of decrees can only forestall the day of the "true socialists." They have correctly perceived the material nature of history that demands the social revolution that Napoleon III attempts to thwart.

In this light, history proves itself to be quite cunning. Napoleon has served the future in spite of himself. He has augmented the ranks of the working class and helped create the government machinery that their leaders will employ after  the revolution. Moreover, his parody of Napoleon Bonaparte has freed the nation from the yoke of tradition in robbing imperial rule of all sublimity. The future will rise upon the ruins of the militarist and bureaucratic government "which was created as a counterblast to feudalism," the "last expression" of  which was the regime of Louis. Napoleon III displays the bankruptcy of state  authority nakedly revealed to be a conspiracy against society itself. In the absence of a tenable tradition, France will be open to the future, which proceeds according to principles of scientific history, articulated by Marx himself.

While a Marxist revolution will end the contradictions of society, it may also be seen to reconcile the elements of "tragedy" and "comedy" in the human condition that Marx sees reflected in the respective politics of the two Napoleons.  The "absolute moment" in the historical process that Marx occupies comprehends the necessity of both Empires in the construction of the future. The "tragic" failure of the first Napoleon is mimicked in the "comic" failure of the  second. But from the most comprehensive view, the ultimate triumph of history  robs the human condition of its tragic dimension, while it makes less ludicrous  what serves a higher purpose.

The Marxian Historians

Prominent later historians followed the lines of class analysis so richly articulated by Marx but found the essential character of the Second Empire revealed, contrary to Marx, not in relation to the peasantry, but in relation to other  classes. Alfred Cobban, for example, sees the Second Empire as basically a bourgeois regime! [8] It is significant that his analysis places due emphasis on the  Saint-Simonians in whose economic programs are found the elements that inspire and give coherency to Napoleon's policies. Yet, Cobban fails to elaborate  adequately on this connection and is as guilty of distorting Saint-Simonian  thought as he is the Second Empire. Cobban shares with Marx a conception of  history as materially determined. According to Cobban, the "only real and worthy" achievement of the second Empire was in economic affairs and this justifies  his preoccupation with these matters. He is mistaken when he attributes a similar frame of reference to the Saint-Simonians.

Cobban states that Saint-Simon 's "best title to fame" may be found in a little parable. Suppose France were to suddenly lose leading scientist of all kinds, artists, architects, doctors, bankers, merchants, iron-makers, industrialists in every  branch, masons, carpenters, and workers in every craft. The country would obviously "sink in the scale of civilization." But, on the other hand, suppose it kept  such men but lost the whole royal family, all the ministers and councilors of  state, prefects, judges, archbishops, bishops and other ecclesiastics, and, in addition, ten thousand of the wealthiest landlords. A humanitarian country like  France would grieve such a loss, we are told, but it would not be materially affected. "In other words," Cobban sums up, "Saint-Simon was asserting the primacy of the productive classes of society, of economic over political ends." [29]

Cobban's "summing up" gives a misleading impression of Saint-Simon and is a bland misreading of the radical implications of the parable. Saint-Simon was not merely asserting the primacy of economic over political ends. Far-reaching political implications are suggested by the parable, even as outlined by Cobban.  The expendable personages represent whole classes and institutions that formed  the bulwark of traditional French society. The "simple" parable perhaps hides a  most revolutionary politics. This would see in the elimination of the traditional elements of French society an advance of civilization, if replaced by a regime  that institutes the rule of the few based on talent and their capacity to contribute  to society as a whole, morally, intellectually and, of course, economically. 

Cobban has interpreted Saint-Simon as asserting the primacy of the productive classes of society that includes "artists" as a constitutive element. Of all groups in society, they are the least apt to being defended on such grounds. In such an anomaly, we are alerted to Cobban's distortion of Saint-Simon, despite what the "simple" parable intends to show.

According to Saint-Simon and his disciples, a more rational and integrated mode of production was a key to the attenuation of the class struggle in the present and to material progress in the future. However, they were not asserting the  primacy of the economic or material to other modes of human activities that  embrace the sentiments and intellect of man. In fact, material and scientific progress, if not subordinated to moral ends, would lead to social conflict. The artist, albeit "unproductive" in the "material" sense, was to serve the reintegration of  the individual to society by giving "spiritual" expression to the religious ideas that bind society and give it moral direction. In giving preeminence to the material aspects of Saint-Simonianism, Cobban is guilty of neglecting the more important elements and objectives of that philosophy that guide economic policy.

Cobban's narrow focus aligns the Saint-Simonian movement with the class interests of the bourgeoisie which, indisputably, but not exclusively, gained by a number of Napoleon 's policies. According to Cobban, bourgeois financiers did not promote the Second Empire, it was the Second Empire that promoted the  bourgeois financier. As Joly indicates, in the third part of his work, the advance  of commerce and industry was essentially dependent on the availability of credit  and capital. During the Empire, there was founded the Compteur d 'Escompte,  the Credit Fonyier, the Credit Agricole, the Credit Mobilier-a virtual financial  revolution, whose institutions are still in existence today. This helped furnish the commercial and mortgage finance to promote, among other things, the system of  railways, roads, steamships, the reconstruction of cities and towns, and the  launching of various industrial and agricultural enterprises.

A wave of economic expansion followed with impressive gains in the production of steel, coal, and iron that were to help  build the modern infrastructure of France. Inspired by a Saint-Simonian plan of 1832 and put into effect by  Baron Haussman, an ambitious public works project sanitized, modemized, and redesigned the city of Paris. This included the renovation of the Bois de Boulogne and the widening of avenues such as the Champs Elysees. As mentioned  before, its architectural achievements were crowned by Charles Gautier in the  construction of the Paris Opera. Saint-Simonian universalism was later to inspire  the construction of the Suez canal and an end to a world conventionally conceived as divided by an East and a West.

Joly's Dialogue shows a greater comprehension of the Saint-Simonian elements that, Cobban insists, stand behind Napoleori's policies. He is blind to the  despotic elements in Napoleon's regime, the immense ambition of the Emperor, and the historic dimensions of his project. These cause us to question a "bourgeois" interpretation of the Second Empire as far too limited. As he has over-simplified the Saint-Simonian parable by neglecting its revolutionary implications, he has done the same with the phenomenon of the Second Empire itself.  Cobban downplays certain policies that served social interests beyond those of  the bourgeoisie and included the mass of workers in particular. The presence of  these elements too would cause us to question an interpretation that conceived of  Napoleon as exclusively serving the bourgeoisie and as the historic representative of their material interests.

For Henrick Nicolaas Boon and others, Napoleon inaugurated social legislation that rendered him as much an innovator in such fields as "Bismarck and Cavour were in politics."3o Among other things, Boon cites the development of credit unions, the improvement of housing, the founding of retirement funds,  and aid to cooperative movements as evidence of his enlightened stance. He also  reads into such policies certain political motives. Napoleon was attempting to lead and channel the aspirations of "the growing multitude" in order "to satisfy  their legitimate material and social demands, thus rallying them to the Empire  and turning their minds away from politics." [31]

For all of Boon's fine appreciation for the innovations of Napoleon, whom he likens to a "Columbus," he is perhaps not appreciative enough of the real nature of his founding which lies in visionary policies, beyond counterrevolutionary objectives. For Boon, Napoleon was perhaps following England's example  in these innovations but was "ahead of his times" in France in seeing the need  for new policies and institutions which did not materialize until a later age.  However, the opposition of Napoleon to the English system, both politically and  socially, is made abundantly clear in Machiavelli's articulation of the policies of  the Emperor in the Dialogue in Hell. There, Napoleonic politics is revealed as  the very antithesis of Montesquieuan or English liberalism.

Full Circle?

Marx's deprecatory view of Napoleonic politics as essentially reactionary and in the service of traditional French society is perhaps not too far distant from that of Zeldin and others who credit the Emperor with no political vision at all.  He was commonly perceived, from the escapades of his youth, as having a romantic temperament bent on adventurism. For Zeldin, success was his goal and  this depended on knowing which way the wind was blowing. In sum, he was probably a determined believer in the merits of neither liberalism nor despotism  but "an opportunist above all else." [32]

Through seemingly contradictory analyses, we might also arrive at Zeldin's rather disparaging conclusions. This would mark a return to the beginnings of  Napoleonic historiography, which has none too high an opinion of Louis, but as a summary of the reflections of the most eminent commentators on the times. [33]  The Emperor's actions would, by turns, have for their motives policies that are  at once reactionary, economically progressive, and counterrevolutionary, as respectively revealed, for example, in the essays of Marx, Cobban, and Boon. We  would perhaps distill from such policies the incoherence of the romantic adventurer with no grander vision than what inspiration and intuition prompted in  changing circumstances. To say the least, this asserted lack of coherent policy  would contrast most sharply with the view of Napoleonism in the Dialogue in  Hell, which integrates economic, political and social realms into a world-historic  project.

That Napoleon III was an opportunist, as charged by Zeldin, can not be denied. However, such an accusation is not very revealing as it legitimately can be  leveled against any and all political men. That he was a mere opportunist would  be denied by Joly, not as his defender, but as part of a more serious charge. He is  accused of harboring Caesarian ambitions and of seeing the time ripe for launching a project to satisfy them. He is a worthy object of study, even in his ultimate failure, as reminding of the eternal possibilities of the Caesarian threat, when towering ambition is engaged in the founding of new modes and orders and  given opportunity in the critical moments that history will always offer.

In this light, Louis is certainly not a determined believer in the merits of either liberalism or despotism, as commonly understood. Those like Zeldin end up accusing Napoleon of rank opportunism because the real nature of his enigmatic  policies escapes them. They may in their own right be accused of the same culpable naivete that infects the Montesquieu of the Dialogue when he addresses  the politics described by Machiavelli from the perspective of certain doctrinaire  notions of liberalism and with certain limited notions of despotism. It is precisely this limited perspective that Joly wants to educate in his description of the  modem Caesar.

In the final analysis, Napoleon is an opportunist and perhaps a romantic, but these qualities are nourished in the element of Saint-Simonian philosophy. The  deepest insight into his romanticism might likewise come from a Saint-Simonian  source. His founding recurs to certain elements of the ancient city and the life of  the Middle Ages as necessary to a new world order-the reestablishment of the  "organic" conditions of politics in modem times.

The Saint-Simonian thought that Joly offers as the most fundamental and revealing phenomenon of Napoleonic politics meets the charge of mere opportunism. In it we find an appeal to the principles of progress and order and a politics  that would want to resolve their disparate claims. The failure to appreciate this  politics, by Zeldin and others, would have it understood as mere dalliance, indicating an on-again / off-again love affair with liberalism and despotism, when its real goal, at least in the mind of the convinced ideologue, is an historic solution  to the human problem consonant with the highest of ambition, which neither liberalism nor mere despotism can serve.

The analyses of Cobban and Boon help to correct the ultimately disparaging conclusion of Zeldin. In the economic policies that supposedly served the class  interest of the bourgeoisie and the social policies that benefited the working class, they respectively point to Napoleonic policies that attest to a broader vision. Such analyses would also help to correct Marx's view that Napoleon's  policies are reactionary and promote the interests of the most retrograde elements of French society, especially the peasantry.

Such scholars emphasize unique aspects of Napoleon 's policies and present partial aspects of his rule that may be harmonized in the Saint-Simonian perspective of Joly. Thus, we find in Joly, as in Marx, that the root strength of Napoleon's plebiscitory rule lay initially in the peasantry. The Emperor does not  want to disturb the prejudices of such types, nor their gullible natures, in order to impress upon them the tenets of a new religion with himself as a secular kind of  Pope, a new "Moses," as Marx called him. Interestingly enough, for Marx too,  the perpetuation of the regime depends upon preserving the vitality of the religious impulse but to mask and exculpate the "sins" of an exploitative and reactionary society, not to introduce the conditions of a new "organic" and final order.

Through his banking revolution, the Emperor intended to lay down the basis of a sound infrastructure, the precondition for an enormous burst of productive  activity. But this was not, as Cobban suggests, to serve the class interests of the  bourgeoisie. The Emperor was not intent upon expanding the parameters of private enterprise but to begin a move toward centralizing the economy and exerting social control. Indeed, the social policies to which Boon points show that the  regime was not narrowly partisan and bourgeois in Cobban's sense.

In emphasizing the different policies of the Emperor from the point of view of classes other than the peasantry, Cobban and Boon point away from Marx's  interpretation. Marx legitimately stands criticized for placing too much weight  on the relations of the Emperor to the peasantry to explain the whole of the regime. Moreover, they also point away from the deeper influence of Marx in an  interpretation of history that is obliged to see politics in terms of material class  interests. Such a class analysis shows itself incapable of grasping the elements  of the Saint-Simonian revolution which the Emperor, according to Joly's analysis, tried to effect. It requires taking the "idealist" view of history seriously and  shows that the historian's task to understand the past in its own terms is perhaps ill-served and distorted by Marxian reductionism, as powerful a mode of analysis as it is, particularly in the thought of Marx himself. [34]

At first view, Joly's portrait of Napoleon III is most distant from the portrait  of Victor Hugo. Parenthetically, the editor of Napoleon III-Buffoon, Dictator, or Sphinx? is probably least sympathetic to Hugo who appears too splenetic and ready to dismiss the Emperor. However, a close look at Hugo in the light of Joly reveals striking similarities and a common intention in their respective publications.

Both perceive the despotic character of the Emperor and its novel elements. Moreover, both endeavor to galvanize republican opposition to his rule, though  they take different routes. Hugo puts emphasis on the petty qualities of the despot which are set in relief by a comparison to ancient despots who showed a  grandeur of soul even in the depth and extent of their criminality.

The focus of Joly's work also brings to consideration the differences between ancient and modern despotism. As we have shown, Napoleon recurs to  certain ancient or medieval elements in his rule in order to advance upon the  Enlightenment project and erect a new and final historic order. Put another way,  the distinguishing characteristic of the despotism of the future lies in the role  that ideology plays in investing modern despotism with a revolutionary project of millenarian objectives. Joly's Dialogue, between the two giants of modem  thought, Machiavelli and Montesquieu, reintroduces us to the themes of political  philosophy and, through the doctrines of the Saint-Simonians, to newer currents  of thought that open the way to modem totalitarianism. It is in such terms that  we are perhaps provided the best access to the study of such a phenomenon.

Notes

1. Samuel M. Osgood, ed., Napoleon III-Buffoon, Modern Dictator, or Sphinx? (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1966). The text includes an Introduction that presents the editor's view of the problem of Napoleonic historiography.

2. I realize that I open myself to ridicule by associating the post-modems with the search for "metaphysical foundations" of anything. They are almost by  definition opposed to all "metaphysics" and any "foundational" mode of thinking. We are forced to oxymoron to characterize them (and this would probably  not bother them either since they believe that "binary oppositions," embedded  Western categories of thought, are radically suspect anyway). In this light, it may be better to speak not of their search for "metaphysical foundations" but of  their search for "anti-foundational foundations." If it is still impossible to speak  of them in such a way, we might prefer to see their thinking, not as "foundational" at all, but as "strategies" to "destabilize" "logocentric" thinking per se.  At end, one wonders why they do not apply their thinking to themselves. Why is  their thought not a mere "will 'o the wisp" like all other thought, i.e., radically questionable?

In any case, the post-moderns see history as radically illusive. The traditional historian in his attempt to recover the past ''as it was" is therefore horribly  (or comically) deluded. For Derrida, for example, "difference" and an inevitable  "slippage" in language make effective "communication" between generations  impossible. He speaks of the "aporia" of discourse and the disassociation of  words from any "reality." For Foucault, changes in "power relations" make different eras fundamentally incomprehensible to one another. We can not come to  know what is "true" about the past or to independent judgments of what each era  holds as "true." Language and ideas privilege certain hegemonic groups and are  themselves instruments of power. "Knowledge" is not liberating; it is, rather,  "authoritarian," or "phallocentric." They are among the now many thinkers who  have forced the adjective "totalitarian" from its political context. It is the quintessential description of Western "logocentric" thinking, we are told. The upshot  of all this is to disestablish all prevailing notions of "truth." One may naively  ask where this leaves us, and the West? There is irony in the fact that such  thinkers assume the heroic pose in purging political life of all possibility of  heroism. Are they not, in spite of themselves, leading a generation by the hand  to the land of the "Last Man"? See Gertude Himmelfarb, "Postmodernist History" in On Looking into the Abyss (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 131-163.  To my mind, there is no greater defender and practitioner of "the traditional approach" (she would call it the "modern" approach) to historical studies than Ms.  Himmelfarb. In case it is not clear, this is what I argue for in this chapter. She  made even clearer to me the importance of the issue.

It is interesting that she sees Theodore Zeldin as a transitional figure from "traditional narrative" history to post-modern historical thought. Among other things, he is regarded as one of the most authoritative historians of the Second  Empire. She writes the following:

Theodore Zeldin was one of the first historians (as distinct from philosophers of history) to launch a serious, sustained  assault upon modernist history. That history, he claimed- traditional narrative history-is dependent upon such 'tyrannical' concepts as causality, chronology, and collectivity (the  latter including class as well as nationality), To liberate history from these constraints, he proposed a new history on the model of pointillist  painting, composed entirely of unconnected dots. This would have the double advantage of emancipating the historian from the tyrannies of the discipline, and  emancipating the reader from the tyranny of the historian,  since the reader would be free to make what lines he thinks  fit for himself. (138.)

It is perhaps no coincidence that we will come to know Zeldin as the interpreter of Napoleon III that saw no core to his personality or programs.

Osgood's case is interesting in light of all this. He comes before the post- moderns took hold and falls somewhere between the traditionalist approach and the more radical brand of historicism. His thinking, typical enough, shows how the profession could easily be seduced by the latter mode of thought.

3. See Samuel M. Osgood's Introduction to his Napoleon III, xi.

4. This mode of thinking originates with Thomas Kuhn. I do not know if Osgood had him in mind. Perhaps. Kuhn's idea of a "paradigm shift," originally referring to the process of scientific discovery, has been embraced by many post-moderns as indicative of the process of Western thinking tout court, historical thinking included. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific  Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

5. Contemporary "historians" are not as loath as Osgood to enter the realm of fiction. I mention in this regard Edmund Moms and Rigoberta Menchu. In his "biography" of Ronald Reagan, the former forthrightly blended a fictional account of the President with the massive facts of his life. "Wholesale history; retail poetry," we might say. The dangers of this should be obvious. In a very real  sense we are our past. To understand ourselves and guide our future, we must  come to understand it honestly. The traditional historian endeavors to do this, fully conscious of the important role he or she plays in service to the truth and  civilized life. The traditional disciplines of the craft, which favor objectivity, are what makes his enterprise so difficult (and rewarding). Himmelfarb deserves extensive quotation here. See On Looking into the Abyss, 136, where she writes  the following:

Critical history puts a premium on archival research and primary sources, the authenticity of documents and reliability of witnesses, the need to obtain substantiating and countervailing evidence; and at a more mundane level, the accuracy of  quotations and citations, prescribed forms of documentation  in footnotes and bibliography, and all the rest of 'methodology' that goes into the 'canon of evidence.' The purpose of  this methodology is twofold: to bring to the surface the infrastructure, as it were, of the historical work, thus making it accessible to the reader and exposing it to criticism; and to encourage the historian to a maximum exertion of objectivity in spite of all the temptations to the contrary.

The Morris approach leaves history open to all those with interests apart from history as traditionally conceived. These interests might be ideological or  monetary, to provide grist for Hollywood's entertainment mill, for example. In  the case of Rigoberta Menchu, who went into denial about her fictional distortions of what happened in Guatemala, it may be fame and notoriety. Who  knows? The point is that we risk losing contact with the noble civilizing functions of the historian's true enterprise.

I was much moved by an anecdote about Richard Nixon that Henry Kissinger related. (Most university people I know can see nothing poignant to anything relating to Richard Nixon. ) During the crisis .that saw him leave the presidency, he forced Kissinger to get on his knees with him. The God he was praying to was really the God of History. He would correct the wrongs he  thought he had suffered in life. (Does this remind us of certain parts of the Dialogue? Well, it's in there.) His contributions to his country would eventually be  seen in a correct light. This God of historic judgment, ruthlessly honest, is the  best we have until the appearance of the real God and the Last Judgment. It  chastens even the most hardened of historic actors. Contemporary historians  don't know what they are doing when they fool with it. See Edmund Morris,  Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999);  Rigoberta Menchu, I Rigoberta Menchu An Indian Woman in Guatemala ed.  Elizabeth Burgos-Debray; trans. Ann Wright (London: Verso, 1984). and David  Stoll, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999). Stoll was prompted by injustices to history to  write his expose.

Parenthetically, isn't what these authors do similar to what Hitler did wi th the Protocols? What the Protocols reveal is "historically" true even if the "Wise  Men of Zion" never really historically met. In other words, it doesn't matter if  what someone vouchsafes is factually a fraud.

Richard Crosby put things very well when he said to me that once upon a time we found the implications of the factlvalue distinction disturbing. "Now not only are values the realm of fantasy, so are facts."

6. Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 1-5. The Osgood excerpts are taken from Victor Hugo, "Napoleon the Little," in The Works of Victor Hugo (New York: Nottingham Society, circa 1907), VIII, 15-20; 192-195.

7. Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 23-33. The Osgood excerpts are taken from Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Bromaire of Louis Napoleon, tr. Eden and Cedar  Paul (New York: International, 1926),23-24; 128-144.

8. See the selection from Charles Seignobos, "The Magic of a Name," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 14-16. Osgood's translation is excerpted from Seignobos's essay in Histoire de France Contemporaire, ed. Ernest Lavisse  (Paris: Hachette, 1921), VI, 124-127.

9. To make light of Louis's "failures" in such a way begs the facts -- massive facts -- of his reign. Many other scholars join Guerard and see the Emperor even in failure as basically "well meaning" (as if this were enough to exonerate him). It was Louis who wanted to end the order of Vienna that was imposed on Europe after the defeat of his uncle. This order was designed to  prevent the emergence of another Napoleon. And Louis was, well, another Napoleon. His ambitions brought military defeat to France and Europe was cast  loose from Richelieu's moorings. From being divided and weak, Germany became united and strong. French dominance on the continent ended. 

Both he and Bismarck were playing with fire. Bismarck played better. Conflagration came only after he departed the scene. Louis played with it less well.  Destruction came immediately to France. His failures were not trivial, nor can we sympathize with the most egregious of them. Joly wrote in 1864, when Louis  dominated France and was extremely influential in Europe. He did not contemplate the end in his book. In the spirit of Joly, we would be tempted to say that  the failure of great ambition (as with Lenin and Hitler) has great consequences.  Meanwhile, with the end of "Vienna, " new monsters were slouching their way  into Europe. See "Two Revolutionaries: Napoleon III and Bismarck," in chapter 5 of Henry A. Kissinger's magisterial work, Diplomacy (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 103-136.

As ruler of the "superpower" on the continent, "Le Petit" thought he "stood taller than the rest" and that his way would lead the way for the rest of the world. The quick reversal of his fortunes might serve as a cautionary tale for us today.

10. Who is not familiar with the same arguments today regarding the inter- net and the "new" technologies. We are told that they herald the promised land of universal democracy to which everyone aspires.

11. See the selection from Albert Guerard, "A Forerunner of Woodrow Wilson," in Osgood, Napoleon III, 57-65. This is excerpted from Albert Guerard,  Napoleon III (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943), 176-192;  221-222.

12. See J. Salwyn Schapiro, "Heralds of Fascism: Louis Napoleon Bonaparte," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 81-87. This is excerpted from J. Salwyn  Schapiro, Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism (New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), 320-331.

13. See Lynn M. Case, "A Voice in the Wilderness," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 65 70. This is excerpted from Lynn M. Case, French Opinion on War  and Diplomacy During the Second Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), 270-277. Some post-moderns, unlike Case, may be said to consciously engage in the "trivialization" of history. If history is ineluctably a  matter of "interpretation," everything can be turned to material for the irony and  wit of the "interpreter." Up until now, they seem to have stopped short at the  Holocaust, although I believe it is only a matter of time until some "transgressive" hero of thought really cashes in on the Holocaust's potentialities. 

14. The "Chekovian romantic" label belongs to A. F. Thompson. See his "From Restoration to Republic" in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 99-102. This is  excerpted from an essay with the same title in France: Government and Society,  J. M. Wallace-Handrill and J. McManners, ed., (London: Methuen 1957), 212-  217.

15. Plutarch wrote about heroes and has us experience some of the most exalted times that humans ever knew. Tacitus, on the other hand, wrote about  "dark times." In The Annals he wrote that history's "highest function" was to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of  posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds." The commemorative task fell  largely to Plutarch. Tacitus's task was emphatically the more melancholy one.  See The Annals, tr. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (Chicago: Great Books, 1952), XV, 60.

Anything this author knows about Tacitus is thanks to the late James Leake, to whom he gives belated thanks. The moments when the human spirit finds a hospitable field to display all its rich potentiality are rare, he once said to me.  For the most part, human beings must operate in "dark times" (a phrase he used  often in his thesis). They are forced to carve out a niche in the world where, unmolested, they find what dignity and fulfillment they can. The grandeur of Tacitus, according to him, was to reveal the actions of virtuous men against a somber  background. What they could do was limited, but it shone, nevertheless-  perhaps, all the more. Seneca is the model.

I remember the enthusiasm when Jim discovered the works of a Tacitus scholar who lived behind the Iron Curtain. In a deft use of Latin quotes and footnotes, he esoterically conveyed the moral truths about the squalid regime he lived under. What could a man do in such "dark times"? As a functionary, soften  an inane or brutal directive? Or, as this man -- a scholar -- let the light of the truth shine wherever possible? He had put his "message in a bottle" and cast it forth.  No better person in the whole world could have picked it up.

For scholars like these, the truth was something sacred, I feel compelled to say, not a toy to be "deconstructed" and played with.

16. Nichomachean Ethics, 1094b10-25 and 1098b25-30.

17. Aristotle's comments in his Poetics are very pertinent to our discussion of Osgood and contemporary historiography. They may help "educated men" to  better understand that "degree of precision" which the study of history admits.

In this regard, it is interesting that, for Aristotle, Homer's muse is superior to Clio. That is, poetry is more philosophic than history. This seems counterintuitive. After all, history deals with what really happened and poetry belongs to  fiction. But being true to the facts of the past forces us to acknowledge a large element of chance in human affairs. And what belongs to chance can never be  fully intelligible. The best poetry excludes chance and can be more "meaningful" than history, not to mention the kinds of lives we all lead today. 

These remarks have benefited from Laurence Berns's fine essay "Aristotle's Poetics" in Ancients and Moderns, Joseph Cropsey ed., (New York: Basic  Books: 1964),70-87, esp. 80ff.

18. This is Iggers's characterization in his Introduction to The Doctrine of Saint-Simon, xiii.

19. See Theodore Zeldin, "The Myth of Napoleon III," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 88-94. This is excerpted from an article of the same title as it appeared in History Today, (February 1959), vii, 103 I 10.

20. See Adrien Dansette, "Louis Napoleon: A Vignette," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 13. Osgood's translation is excerpted from Adrien Dansette,  "Louis Napoleon a la conquet du pouvoir " in Histoire du Second Empire (Paris:  Hachette, 1961), I, 384-386.

21. See A. F. Thompson "From Restoration to Republic," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 102.

22. See Schapiro, "Heralds of Fascism," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 86. Among others, Schapiro cites the Nazi Franz Kemper in this regard.

23. Schapiro, "Heralds of Fascism," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 86. (Schapiro's emphasis).

24. Among other things, such statements indicate the millenarian aspects of Nazi thought. The democratic thrust of history since 1789 was not inevitable or definitive.

25. Unlike Xenophon's "humane" hero, Cyrus the Great, who manically gloated over the sight of battlefield cadavers, it is interesting that Louis Napoleon reportedly wept when he contemplated his casualties. He was not like his  uncle in this regard, or like Caesar. Joly would probably interpret such tears as of the "crocodile" variety. I'm not so sure. Napoleon I was said to have said: "I have an income of two hundred thousand men a year." And "what does a man  like me care about a hundred thousand lives?" See Guerard, Napoleon III, 172  and Xenophon, Cyropaedia I. iv. 24.

26. Marx, "Eighteenth Brumaire," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 31.

27. Francois Mitterand wrote a rather splenetic book criticizing DeGaulle and the Fifth Republic called The Permanent Coup d'Elat. The title is obviously inspired by  Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire. As President, however, he sounded more like Goldilocks.  When he then spoke of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, he said "this one is just  right." 

28. Alfred Cobban, "A Bourgeois Empire," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 75-80. This is excerpted from Alfred Cobban, A History of Modern France  (Middlesex, G.B.: Penguin Books, 1961), II, 160-169.

29. Cobban, "A Bourgeois Empire," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III,76.

30. Hendrik Nicholas Boon, "The Social and Economic Policies of Napoleon III," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III 41-50. Osgood's translation is excerpted  from Hendrik Nicholas Boon, Reve and realite dans I 'a'uvre economique et sociale de Napoleon III (The Hague, the Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1936), 65-70; 146-156; 167-168.

31. Boon, "The Social and Economic Policies," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 44.

32. Zeldin, "The Myth of Napoleon III," in Osgood, ed., Napoleon III, 90.

33. One would hesitate to say that Napoleonic historiography has returned to a disparaging and dismissive view of Louis Napoleon, given the publication of  Philippe Seguin's book, Louis Napoleon le Grand (Paris: Grasset, 1990). In his  polemic with Victor Hugo, it is curious that the head (in a double sense) of the  RPR would want to burnish the memory of the Emperor. Certain "elective affinities" exist, perhaps, between them. General De Gaulle sheared France from  its imperial holdings. But he designed the Fifth Republic so that France could  act in the world with "imperial weight." He carried himself, at least in official  duties, in a regal manner. A certain predilection for the grandeur of a powerful,  if not imperial, France perhaps finds its way into the thinking of the man who carries on the General's legacy. This predilection is far from foreign to the con-  temporary French political class.

Moreover, the RPR today sees France as going through an "industrial revolution" as profound and consequential as that over which Louis presided. Such  revolutionary change will "come from above" and remain solidaire with "the  most numerous and poorest classes." At first view, the orientation of the RPR appears to be not too distant from that of the nineteenth-century sovereign, benignly interpreted. Such a view fails, I think, to take the more controversial elements of Napoleonism into account, or fails to understand them. To my knowledge, as Seguin has pointed out, there is still no public building, no street sign, and no metro stop named after Louis Napoleon in Paris. (I once had an undistinguished meal at a bistro near the Butte Chaumont appropriately named Napoleon Ill. It was the Emperor who had changed this former garbage dump into an  urban park that could be characterized as, well, "proto-Disney," a Maxwell Parish fantasy come to life in concrete and papier mache. His "imaginative" reconstruction of the castle ruins at Pierrefond clearly anticipates "fantasyland." Saint-Simon has a charming street named after him in the twentieth arrondissement studded with pavilions that would have housed the "poorest and most numerous classes" in the nineteenth century but would now cost a fortune. And  metro stops are festooned with the names of prominent nineteenth-century Saint-Simonians.) Historical amnesia seems to surround the Emperor. I find it curious  and interesting that someone like Seguin takes pains to end the anathema.

34. One of the burdens of this work is to show that "ideas," contrary to materialist historiography, do indeed have consequences, as do historic personalities and political phenomena, in addition to classes and social phenomena. Raymond Aron, among others, had a deep appreciation for the Eighteenth Brumaire.  Of Marx's works, it strayed most from the strict materialism that guided his historical view. See Daniel Mahoney and his interesting comments thereupon in The Liberal Science of Raymond Aron (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield,  1992), 35. Marx once boasted that he had "stood Hegel on his head." The great sweep of history that he had understood "idealistically" had to be understood "materialistically." Recently, we have seen Hegel get back on his feet, as he now  strides once again in intellectual circles around the world. For all this, Marx has  not been "stood on his head," in turn. For the moment he has been pushed aside, if not toppled. See Gertrude Hilrunelfaro's essay "From Marx to Hegel," in On Looking into the Abyss, 50-73. Could it be that the long dominance of Marxian class analysis in our historical studies has received a devastating blow?

By now it should come as no surprise that I would recommend Montesquieu to fill the place in our academies that has been occupied far too long by Marx and Marxians. His capacious view of human things would release us from the  straitjacket of historical determinism and economic reductionism. What is  needed at the very least is a revival of the Montesquieuan spirit, a sense for the  full panoply of human things, its richness, and subtle interconnections.

Chapter Eleven:  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The Discovery of the Protocols

In 1921, a British correspondent to the London Times, Phillip Graves, happened upon one of the original copies of the Dialogue in Hell while stationed in Istanbul. It is highly possible that this rare find had been transported to Turkey by a  Russian emigre after the Revolution of 1917. [1] Graves was the first to make the connection between the Dialogue and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which,  by the time of the discovery, had been widely published throughout the world.  His own newspaper in fact had published the Protocols and had editorialized on  the Jewish peril, basing itself on its "revelations."

Scholars have traced the Protocols forgery mainly to two literary works. By far, however, the Dialogue in Hell was the most prominent and substantive  source. The forger's plagiarism was extensive as whole passages were copied  directly from the Dialogue. "In all, over 160 passages in the Protocols, totaling  two fifths of the entire text, are clearly based on Joly. In some of the chapters,  the borrowings amount to more than one-half of the text, in one, (Protocol VII)  to almost the entire text." [2] 

The other source for the Protocols was found in a novel written four years after the Dialogue entitled To Sedan (1868). That work contains a chapter describing a secret congregation of world rabbis in Prague, a centennial event in  that city's cemetery. The novel was written under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe, actually a Prussian clerk and rabid anti-Semite named Herman Godsche,  who had developed a penchant for writing sensationalist literature. At the  cemetery and in the presence of Satan, the rabbis, representing the twelve tribes  of Israel, relate their successes since their last meeting in furthering their secret  plan for world domination.

In concocting the Protocols, the fabricator combines the arguments of Machiavelli in Joly's Dialogue with some of the more lurid elements of Godsche's  tale. He borrows from Joly his considerable political acumen for identifying the  opportunities for modem despotism in the vulnerabilities of contemporary society but has Machiavelli's despotic cause pronounced by world Jewry who, as in  To Sedan, are revealed to be in sinister pursuit of a long-standing goal of universal rule.

Konrad Heiden, who gives a leading role to the Protocols in his study of Hitler, writes of the powerful blend of elements contained therein.

Godsche's feat was childish and none too convincing. But suppose you take these rabbis conspiring in their cemetery and give them the  worldly wisdom, the contempt for humanity, the seductive power of  Joly's tyrant. Don't just make them avaricious braggarts, make them  subtle and crafty: make them speak the accursed satirical wisdom of  Machiavelli, in deadly earnest. Finally, confound the fabulous nocturnal conspiracy with an international Jewish Congress which actually did convene to discuss such sober matters as the problem of immigration. Then, we have before us, in all its bloody romantic horror,  the demons of Jewish world domination gathered in a Congress and  fixed in a protocol. [3]

Despite the airing of Graves's discovery, the Jewish myth did not die off. It likewise survived the 1934-35 "Bern Trials" where it was charged by Swiss  Jews that the former Fuehrer of the Swiss National Socialists had been guilty of  violating the law against "improper literature" (schundliteratur) by circulating  the Protocols. The Court concluded upon testimony of Graves, noted international scholars, and former Russian officials:

I hope that one day there will come a time when no one will any longer comprehend how in the year !935 almost a dozen fully sensible and reasonable men could for fourteen days torment their brains before a court of Bern over the authenticity of these so-called "protocols," that, for all the harm they have already caused and may yet cause, are nothing but ridiculous nonsense. [4]

This is in fact the reaction of any reasonable person in reading the fantastic ac- count of the Protocols. The Court was at pains to document its fraudulence,  however, given the political use to which the Protocols was being put.

Yet, like a virus, the myth proved to be extraordinarily resilient. It did not respond to the application of sensible men in 1935 because, for all its "nonsense,"  it was allied to strains much stronger than reason. Efforts were subsequently made to prove the Semitic ancestry of the obscure Joly and to trace his peculiar insights to "diabolical Jewishness." [5] But for Hitler and others, the findings of the  Bern Court were not telling, even in the face of a documented forgery.

The "inner truth" of the Protocols was proof against those who sought to discredit the document's authenticity. This was Hitler's already stated position in Mein Kampf and was offered in response to Graves' s original discovery. It redeemed the Protocols from such levels of attack, however reasonable, and  aligned the document with esoteric truths that only Hitler's demonstrable genius  and claimed affinity for such matters could sufficiently plumb. [6]

The Fabrication of the Protocols

With the Dialogue identified as the source of the forgery, the events behind its fabrication were pieced together over the years in a collective effort of scholars and other interested parties. By most accounts, Ilya Tsion, a Russian expatriate and an avowed enemy of Count Sergei Witte, the liberal finance minister under Nicholas II, had come into contact with Joly's work in his Swiss exile. He adapted Joly's critique of Louis Napoleon to the figure of Witte and this version  fell into the hands of Peter Ratchkovsky, who was ordered by Witte to burglarize Tsion's home to obtain the manuscript. [7]

Ratchkovsky was in Witte's service as head of the French bureau of the Ochrana, the Russian secret police, and had become a master of intrigue and  forgeries. Russian witnesses at the Bern Trial corroborated testimony that  pointed to Ratchkovsky as the fabricator of the Protocols. In all probability, it  was under the direction of the unscrupulous Ratchkovsky that the Joly text was again gleaned and woven with the conspiratorial elements of Godsche's tale into the first version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The version that comes down to us was sponsored by the Ochrana and published in 1905. It was an appendix to a tract entitled Small Signs Betoken Great  Events, The Antichrist Is Near at Hand, written by Sergei Nilus, who was personally acquainted with Ratchkovsky. This mystic's ambition was to pierce the  Tsar's entourage and replace a healer of French origin as the Tsar's favorite.

Such machinations and intrigues raise the question as to Ratchkovsky's motives in all this. With the Protocols as the set- iece, no less was sought than a national counterrevolution against the inroads of liberalism countenanced by Witte. The aroused passions of the people wedded to the power of the most  autocratic state in Europe were to help serve the reactionary reconstruction of  Russian society .It was in the atmosphere immediately following the debacle of  the 1905 war with Japan that the Protocols were enlisted to enflame the masses  and, through Nilus, to subvert the thinking of the Tsar.

Walter Laqueur, who became convinced of the crucial importance of the Protocols on the Nazi revolution during his research for Russia and Germany,  noted Western scholarship's failure to appreciate the strong strains of Russian  influence on the formative period of Hitler's Germany. This was not the fault of  Konrad Heiden who writes in Der Fuehrer that, through the Ochrana conspiracy, Russia had become the "spiritual mother country of modem fascism, as it  later became the world center of Communism." [8]

The Crisis Atmosphere of Postwar Europe

Heiden reconstructs the situation in the aftermath of the Revolution and the White Russian army's retreat from the East. The sense of catastrophe contributed to the strong impression the Nilus text was to have on such men as Alfred  Rosenberg. According to L. Poliakov, Rosenberg was to give form to Hitler's inchoate race hatred as one of the main ideologues of Nazism and the author of  the Myth of the Twentieth Century, a work which "leads in a straight line from  the Protocols." [9]

Rosenberg fled Russia during its revolution and met Hitler in Munich, itself in the throes of revolutionary unrest. He was steeped in the anti-Semitism and  the anti-Bolshevism of the White Russians, many of whom later fled to that  troubled city. In Nazi ideology, anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism were enmeshed. The Kremlin was dominated by Jews and conspired for world revolution in the name of Communism. Did this not lend credence to the myth of the  Protocols? It seems it was Rosenberg who introduced the Protocols to Hitler, who immediately came to share the enthusiasm for its "esoteric truths." Though  the Protocols myth struck deepest roots in Germany, it was widely disseminated  throughout the world. Copies circulated in Boston and New York after the war.  In 1920, Henry Ford's newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, printed the  document in full. Since then, it has been translated in all major languages. It  may astonish us to hear that Herman Cohn conjectures that the Protocols, after  the Bible, was the century's most widely-read text. [10]

The universal appeal of the Protocols testifies to the prevalence of a now perhaps forgotten mood of pessimism, despair, and confusion that belonged to  the subterranean level of thought in the nineteenth century only to emerge full-blown after the collective experience of the horrors of the First World War. In the traumatic aftermath of that war, moderate political regimes came under increasing strain. The fate of liberalism was sorely tested, particularly in Germany,  bearing the onus of having been imposed on that country as a consequence of a  defeat that was portrayed by its domestic enemies as a betrayal. A regime that struggled for the support of citizens whose allegiance was toward other forms of  government was ill-equipped to handle the punitive aspects of the Versailles Treaty and to face the difficulties of the Depression. To revolutionaries of both  the right and the left, the global impact of the deepening economic crisis signaled the general bankruptcy of the old order and the prelude to world revolution, the course of which found Germany in a truly pivotal position in Europe, geographically and otherwise.

The Protocols Myth as the Explanation of Crisis

The myth of the Protocols provided an explanation for the impasse of liberalism while elevating the Jew to the central role in the denouement of the world's drama. According to the Nazis, liberalism's relation to the Jew was the most revealing phenomenon of that regime. The extension of rights to the Jew  was the acid test of its universalistic principles. However, the extension of such rights, according to them, actually served the Jew's ultimate plans by allowing them to work within society and under its protection to effect its undermining.

The Nazis maintained that in the person of the Jew liberal society had accepted into its fold a most intransigent enemy. Liberal tolerance is inwardly spurned and exploited by the Jew to further his secret goal of racial domination, which the crisis of liberalism and the Great Depression prepare. The rights accorded to the individual prove serviceable to the Jew, who shows that the real  forces of history ultimately lie not in abstract and universal principles, but along racial lines and according to a conscious project.

The imminent collapse of the liberal order brings world domination, always the secret motive of the Jew, closer to realization. The "truth" of the Protocols  offers spectacular evidence of the existence of an age-old plot. In further linking  the Jew to Communism, which makes conspiracy and violence legitimate means to their political end, that plot becomes at once more real, explicit, and immediate. This enabled the Nazis to enter the contest for world domination with the  Jew on distinct ideological and racial lines.

For the Communist, the class contradictions of capitalism are inherent and  tied to the material conditions of society that define the workings of history.  For Hitler, however, there is another reality behind the movements and conflicts of history. The existence of a Jewish masterplan, revealed in the Protocols, demonstrates the essentially conspiratorial causes of the movements of history in the  light of which the momentous events of the day can be comprehended-indeed, "small signs betoken great events."

As the active agent of history, the Jew assumes the central role of history that Communism understood to be played by cold and impersonal forces. The complexities and contingencies of history are reduced and explained by the person of the Jew who gives "meaning" to such distraught times. The "inner truth"  of the Protocols opens the way to hatred and fear where we find the most potent  source of energy for Hitler's historic movement.

According to Hitler, the class struggle between capitalist and Communist, which now occupied the center stage of history, was  actually manipulated by the  Jews. From time to time, as in the Protocols revelation, the curtain that hid them  parted and gave glimpses of what Hitler in fact said existed. Wasn't the Russian  Revolution in large part brought to success by Jewish Bolsheviks? And wasn't the Rothschild fortune the pillar of moneyed capitalism? Hitler's privileged perspective allowed him to illuminate for others the hidden truths that put an end to the great deception.

According to Hitler, the class struggle was orchestrated by the Jews for their own profit and eventual domination. The Red Menace strengthened the hands of  capitalism led by Jewish financiers who consorted with the sovereigns of the nation states of Europe as equals. Their indifference to the plight of the working classes played into the hands of the Bolsheviks, also led by the Jews, who violently conspired against these same nation states. Society, so riddled and exhausted, would ultimately fall to Jewish direction in any case. [11]

The continued success of the Nazi movement confirmed the faith in Hitler as having apprehended the esoteric truths of history, while any reverses would also show the "reality" of the Jewish threat. Thus, the "truth" of the Protocols, if not  the document itself, became an irrefutable article of faith and the linchpin of  Nazi ideology.

The Protocols held a deep fascination for Hitler and his cohorts. The historic success of the Jews to survive and prosper in alien and hostile surroundings was  impressive. For them, the perseverance of a recognizable "Jewish" identity throughout the history of their dispersion attested to the fundamental importance  of race and "blood" inheritance. In the absence of the Nazis, Hitler thought that the future lay with the Jews as depicted in the Protocols. They represented the  first historically conscious group whose plans for world domination involved the  maintenance of racial purity.

Beyond their use in mobilizing a mass movement, the Protocols reflect even more fundamental levels of Nazism which touch the core of its supposed "inner  truths." Hitler shares with the Jews of the Protocols a racial view of history as well as their plans for world domination. For this reason, the Protocols have  been noted not only as a rationale for the Nazi movement but as a perverse  source of inspiration. The delusion of universal Jewish domination became the  basis of the illusion of the future dominion of the Nazis. Himmler is reported to have said that "we owe the art of government to the Jews, namely to the Proto-  cols which the Fuehrer has learned by heart." [12]

The Deeper Connection between the Protocols and Nazism

Despite their '.crackpot manner," framed in terms of mysticism and superstition, Hannah Arendt saw the Protocols as noteworthy for "touching upon every  important political issue of the day." [13] The Protocols are anti-national in principle. "The wise men of Zion" share Hitler's belief that the nation state is fundamentally unsound and that world empire will replace the present forms of political arrangements. Not content with a revolutionary seizure of power in one  country, they see world conquest as possible through organization alone, regardless of the superiority of numbers, territory, and state power they face.

According to Nazism, history is not a rationally determined process. Reasonable and "moral" motives are not what move those individuals who act in history and determine the course of whole epochs. History bears the stamp of the  "genius" of these individuals who share strong affinities with the "artist-creator" in their profound and mysterious inspirations and their capacity to move others.  Hitler saw him.'elf in such a romantic mold even as the painter of postcards in  pre-war Vienna. lf history is not predetermined in any way, it can be made. For  the Nazis, the future is a project and struggle. It can be fashioned in the full consciousness of the power that man holds over it and thus offers possibilities, beyond the present debilitating moralities of the moment, that animate the strong to reassert their superiority and reclaim their right to the earth, usurped by Jewish deceit.

The struggle for the future takes shape in the light of the "inner truth" of the Protocols. Present in the world is a materially determined instinct. This is racially embodied in the Jew in its most thoroughgoing form, as a product of the exigencies of survival caused by their dispersion and unique history as a people.  The Nazis see themselves as redeeming the world from a Jewish fate that is gaining through their hidden efforts, coordinated in the various key centers of  the world where events have scattered them.

They want to awake the slumbering Hun and set him rampaging in a Europe once again grown soft. In the person of the Jew and what he represents, they are brought to the hatred and cruelty proper to their historic task of reanimating a "decadent" West, counter to the reigning dogmas and ethics, and toward the  Nazi ideal. For Hitler in Mein Kampf, the most extreme contrast to the Aryan is  the Jew.

Jewish "deceit" is more than a casual association but is rather a racial characteristic, historically conditioned. It is reflected in the Protocols in their centuries-old conspiracy that is brought to imminent success in the context of present  political degeneration and international revolution. Borrowing from thought that can be traced to Nietzsche, such deceit is seen as present at the source of the common heritage of the West, the Judeo-Christian faith which, in its origins, is  no more than a pious fraud, inspired by the Jews.

Through the remarkable transformation of values, implicit in the decadent Christian world view, the Jew has perpetrated the greatest of revolutions and his ultimate vengeance on the world by elevating a slave morality in the place of the master ethic,  the element of his oppression. The National Socialists will bring a  counterrevolution against Semitic culture that has wrongfully gained the West and subjected the strong, not by force of arms, but by false doctrine. The world  will once again be restored to health and vigor as the master is called again to  rule in good conscience and to inherit the earth that is rightfully his.

The Christian core of Western culture reflects those Semitic influences identified as alien, Eastern, and slavish. Herein lies the key to the history of the West  that then saw in the triumphs of Communism the secular advance of Semitic culture, culminating in a universal, materialistic, and democratic ethos. This represents, not the proclaimed liberation of humanity through history, but disguised  Jewish dominance and the end of higher culture, always the preserve of a spiritual elite and the exclusive legacy of the Aryan race.

The future will see the mystic bond to the Aryan and Nordic past reestablished in a counterrevolution against Jewish heritage that has dominated modem  history. In the words of Rosenberg, the struggle is to "revitalize the cells of Nordic conditioned peoples; it contains the reinstatement to ruling authority of those  ideas and values for which everything that signifies culture for us stems." On the  deepest level, the present struggle is a kulturkampf which restores the Aryan to  the proper source of his strength and identity. [14]

A "new-yet-old" type of German is called who proclaims and embodies  "new-yet-old" values, the warrior ethic of the blond beast and "Nordic honor," essentially the inverse of Judeo-Christian values, identified disparagingly as  humility, submissiveness, and watery compassion. The truly radical character of  the Nazis is revealed in opposition to such values while engaging convictions  that call for loyalty to the living ruler and the earth, redeemed for the strong.

Through world conquest, the future is to be prepared for the introduction of pure Aryan culture. While such "forward-  looking" men of culture, aided by eugenicists, are already busy forming the new man, others are busy eradicating the Jew, his nemesis, from the world. The ovens at Auschwitz are the necessary upshot of their racial policies. They also mark the distance from the hold of Judeo-Christian doctrine and are the clearest manifestation of the ultimate principles of where Nazi doctrine leads.

It is in the thought of Rosenberg that we see reflected the deeper levels of the "truth" of the Protocols. Through his learnedness, the view of the Protocols takes on dimensions beyond those of a common racist tract. The Manichean, obsessive world of Hitler's anti-Semitism is redeemed in the element of kultur and  the systematic exposition of racism that could contemplate the "final solution."  This anchors the document in a greater reality whose mystic appeals are untouched by the revelations of Graves or evidence from a court of law that reflects perhaps liberal (and ultimately Jewish) justice but not history's "greater  truths."

The Protocols Continued Legacy

Hitler was not the last to be influenced by the Protocols, or to use its teaching politically. It suffices to mention one of the spiritual fathers of contemporary  pan-Arabism, Abdel Nasser, who came out publicly in support of the Protocols,  claiming in a 1958 interview that it contained all that is needed to know about  the Jews. Stalin used the conspiracy myth, with Jews as the agents of imperialism, to secure the execution of Jewish members of the Czech Central Committee. The myth was to serve as the pretext for a renewed terror in the so-called  doctor's plot, preempted only by Stalin's death. 

The myth has thus shown itself adaptable to the most diverse politics and ideologies. It has found most ready application against the state of Israel, where  it emerged from the context of the Palestinian problem to take on growing influence throughout the world. In the 1967 war, translations of the Protocols were  found in the backpacks of captured Egyptian soldiers. Kadhafi has sponsored its  translation and distribution to the developing world. The Saudi government has  handed out copies to visitors and at its embassies. Pro-Khomeni Iranians distributed it on college campuses in the United States during the summer of Israel's invasion into Lebanon.

Daniel Pipes again draws our attention to the Protocols, claiming that Arab politics have given it a new lease on life. [15] Pipes lists some of the advantages of  the myth for the Arab struggle. Among other things, it makes Israel's very existence sinister. It explains away the defeats of Arabs at the hands of Israel by  linking them to a movement of international force and significance. In putting  Zionism in the vanguard of international imperialism, the Arab cause takes on  world historic importance. This serves to keep destructive passions stimulated  while it reaches beyond the region to win broader sympathies in the former colonies of the developing world. [16]

In the years following the war, relatively little notice was taken of Muslim anti-Semitism, though it appears blatantly in the charter document of the PLO.  In a classic example of Orwellian inversion, Zionism is there declared to be a  political movement "organically associated with international imperialism that is  racist and fanatic in nature and fascist in its methods." Western attitudes  changed in the 1970s with OPEC and the astounding leverage it lent to the Arab  world in projecting their cause against Israel beyond the region. The world has  been witness since to a progressively wider assimilation of this PLO view that  gained a certain "respectability" in light of the forums where it was pronounced  and applauded. In 1975, a resolution equating Zionism with racism was approved in the U.N. Assembly. In 1979, the Havana Conference of the Non-  Aligned linked Zionism to hegemonism and condemned it as not only racist but  as a "crime against humanity." 

The Israeli people, many of whom are the real and tragic victims of racist politics, are now seen as its perpetrators. In such a remarkable perversion of  thought and history, the enormity associated with Hitlerism is associated with Jewish Israel.  Its conspiratorial agenda in league with the imperialist powers stifles the developing world and is matter enough to exonerate Hitler's crimes.  Such thinking gives color to the PLO effort as the vanguard of an anti-fascist movement and engaged in a liberation struggle that allows them to pursue violent methods without moral taint. It is for these reasons that the revocation of the  offensive clauses in the PLO charter, mandated by the Oslo Agreement, were so  protracted and controversial. 

These are not beliefs to be trifled with. Nor can such thinking be turned on and off, like a light switch. The tragedy is that the justice of the cause for Palestinian statehood does not need such support. Such thinking is perhaps the greatest impediment to rational dealings with Israel and the outside world upon which  a secure peace hinges. [17] It infects the man in the street as well as elite opinion, as any reader of Al Ahram can attest. It forces the most enlightened leaders of  the Arab world to capitulate to it and deprives these people of a future worthy of  themselves, their magnificent past, and hopes for the future.

A danger in all this is to so blur and misconstrue the Hitler phenomenon as to deprive it of its horrible reality for a generation of young people who have no  firsthand experience of anti-Semitism and its murderous possibilities. This has  helped pave the way to a renewed and wider application of anti-Semitism promoted by both the extreme left and right as fitting in with the goals of their respective revolutionary agendas. Pipes underscores his real concern about Muslim anti-semitism as it affects Jews in the Middle East but also as it affects Jews  outside the region. The Arab obsession with Israel has been fed by a fund of  anti-Semitic ideas imported from Europe and is being given back to its Christian  homelands, where political conditions again favor its spread. [18]

The End of the Taboo

The 1970s proved that Hitlerism and the world of the Protocols were not exorcised with Hitler's death. It was the mindset of a group vying for control in  Argentina that came eerily close to gaining power. A tortured victim and chief witness to what took place there ended his days in Israel, whose relevance as a sanctuary for victimized Jews is reconfirmed by his experience as it was in the '80s and '90s to millions of Jews from the ex-USSR. [19]

France in the '80s was rocked by the rise of anti-Semitism. Public discourse, not to mention outright criminal attacks, prompted Bernard-Henri Levy to declare that "again the [anti-Semitic] taboo has been lifted: Leftists sympathetic to Third World causes worked at legitimizing anti-Semitism by linking the cause  of Israel with American hegemony and imperialism. These years also saw the rise of "revisionism"-which diminished the significance of the Holocaust or  denied it altogether." "Genocide" has become the common coin of political discourse in the post-Communist world. It is heard to characterize a breathtaking variety of humanity's current and past crimes while the case of the Jews, incredibly enough, is coming to be made light of. Concurrent with all this, France saw the rise of a far-right party that winked at such things and transformed the  political equation in that country for a generation.

Its success has been duplicated most recently in Switzerland and Austria, where a "Le Pen with a human face" and shorn of his clownishness became  leader of the party of opposition. The party ignited political controversy  throughout the EU by entering the Austrian government. This is in a country that is prosperous and secure and where historic memories alone would seem enough  to inoculate against such politics. Inroads have been made elsewhere by like-  minded parties in Belgium and Norway. Italy has had an established Fascist  party since the beginning of the last decade. Anti-Semitism is rife in all countries of the ex-USSR and breeds in the atmosphere of dislocation and confusion  that grips these unfortunate peoples. Nowhere is the mix of post-Soviet politics  and anti-Semitism more potentially lethal than in Russia itself. And nowhere, outside the Middle East, does the phantasmagoria of the world of the Protocols  have more palpable hold. It seems that the "new" Europe is spawning the old  virulence, long thought dead, but apparently only latent.

Nor is North America immune to such currents. Violent far-right groups have proliferated there in the recent past. Some of the more unsavory aspects of the Buchanan phenomenon flirt with an anti-Semitism that appeals to such groups. The taboo has indeed been lifted in the West. Its politics will remain destabilized by such forces for a long time to come, it is safe to say.

Our situation is made even more precarious by the breakdown of the "peace process" in the Middle East.  [21] No one knows the long-term geopolitical consequences of events there and how they will play out in the politics of Israel and the Arab world. A different reaction to these events can be discerned in America  and Europe. Simmering violence could cause erstwhile allies to choose different sides in the conflict. Access to oil complicates matters and could prove persuasive in settling dispositions. A wider war in the Middle East is no longer inconceivable and it could occasion a truly destructive rift between the countries of  the Atlantic Alliance. Given weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the sworn enemies of Israel, is even another Holocaust inconceivable? There are those who say that Israel's "obsessive" concern with security is at the core of  problems which threaten it and destabilize the world. Given the history of this century and the alignment of political forces in the world today, it is difficult to  withhold sympathy for this concern.

Notes

1. Graves explained that he met a certain Mr. X (for some reason he wanted to remain anonymous), who said he was a Russian landowner with English connections. He described himself as a Constitutional Monarchist and Orthodox, who emigrated from Southern Russia after the Red takeover. He said he had  bought some old books from a former officer in the Ochrana (secret police), among which was the Joly book. See Exhibit B in Bernstein The Troth About the  Protocols, 259. The Ochrana had sharpened its skills in the revolutionary break-  down of Russian society that occurred after 1905 and the war in the East. It was therein that Ratchkovsky, the likely fabricator of the Protocols, operated. The  Bolsheviks inherited its machinery and put it to good use for their purposes.  Contemporary Russia, in turn, has inherited the machinery of the Communist  secret police and is, like its predecessors, putting it to "good use." It should not  be forgotten that the current President of Russia was schooled in practices now  of long date.

2. Cohn, Warrantfor Genocide, 74-75.

3. Heiden, Der Fuehrer, 9.

4. See John S. Curtiss, An Appraisal of the Protocols of Zion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), 93. A good account of the Bern trial can be found in Exhibit B in Bernstein, The Troth About the Protocols. Excerpts from  the Times articles of June 16-18, 1921, exposing the Protocols forgery, can also  be found there.

The Bern judge's sentiments are apropos of Holocaust denial. It is regrettable that sensible men are forced to address themselves to this issue. Denying the  deniers gives the perverse and the malevolent a status they do not deserve.

5. Some said his real name was Molse Joel.

6. See Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Hough ton Mifflin, 1946), 307-308. There Hitler writes:

To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of  the Elders of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are  based on a forgery, the Frankfurt Zeitung moans and screams  every week: the best proof that they are authentic. What  many Jews do unconsciously is here consciously exposed.  And that is what matters. It is completely indifferent from  what Jewish brain these disclosures originate. The important thing is with positively terrifying certainty, they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people, and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims. Anyone who  examines the historical development of the last hundred years  from the standpoint of this book will at once understand the  screaming of the Jewish press. For once this book becomes the common property of a people, the Jewish menace may be considered as broken.

Before his research on Russia and Germany, Walter Laqueur confessed that he was more skeptical about the significance of the Protocols, evidence for  which he subsequently found "overwhelming." According to Laqueur, much of what Hitler says in his ..magnum opus" is based on the Protocols. See Russia  and Germany, 12 and 103.

7. This has led some to surmise that the Protocols of Zion are really the Protocols of Tsion, an insider's joke which Ratchkovsky, apparently, would  have reveled in.

8. Heiden, Der Fuehrur, 10.

9. Poliakov's remark is quoted in Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, 180. Rosenberg wrote numerous articles touting the deep truths of the Protocols. Heiden singles  Rosenberg out as the key figure in transmitting the Protocols from Russia to Germany  and for introducing them to Hitler. See Der Fuehrer, 16-21. In Russia and Germany, 24,  Laqueur speaks of a "strange twist" of history which saw German anti-Semitism exported  to Russia in the eighteenth century and then reimported into Germany after the First World War.

10. See chapter VII of Cohn's Warrant for Genocide, "The Protocols Circle the World" for another description of exactly how the work came to be so  widely read and disseminated.

It is interesting to note that Hitler had a portrait of Henrich Ford hanging in his office and liked to point it out to visitors. He also shared with Ford a vision  of a yolk's wagon. This could be achieved by first reducing automobiles to simple, basic components and then taking advantage of economies of scale in Taylor-like production facilities to produce a vehicle that common "folk"-the workers themselves-could afford. The idea has had a breathtaking impact on  the world. In late modernity, the auto is blamed for polluting our air, heating our  climate, congesting our cities, and laying waste to our countrysides. In the twentieth century, Ford's idea was also at the source of what made democracies take  such deep root. This helped them to withstand the onslaught from regimes such  as Hitler's. It is rare, especially in politics, to enjoy an unalloyed good.

Hitler and Ford also had a similar view of "history." Each, in his OWB way, thought it was all just "bunk."

1 I. See in particular a Hitler speech quoted at length in Heiden, Der Fuehrer, 118-123.The speech can also be found in The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, tr. and ed. Norman H. Baynes (New York: Howard Fertig, 1958), I, 21-41.

12. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 360. Arendt earlier states (308) that the Protocols were "a model  for the future organization of the German masses for 'world empire'." She refers  o Alexander Stein, Adolph Hiller, Schuler der Weisen Die Zion (Karlsbad:  1936), as the first scholarly effort to analyze by philological comparison the  ideological identity of the teaching of the Nazis. with that of the "Elders of  Zion."

13. See Arendt, Totalitarianism, 358. Konrad Heiden also speaks of "their deeper, genuine content" in this regard. See Der Fuehrer, 13. According to Norman Cohn,-the prominent part played by Joly's text in the Protocols forgery  is the reason why it often seems to forecast twentieth century authoritarianism.  See Warrant for Genocide, 74.

14. Alfred Rosenberg, Race and Race History and Other Essays, trans. and ed. Robert Pois (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 86.

15. Daniel Pipes, "The Politics of Muslim Anti-Semitism," Commentary (Aug. 1981): 42. His more recent book, The Hidden Hand, (New York: Saint  Martin's Griffin, 1996) provides fuller elaboration and documentation of themes  discussed in the essay. The subtitle of his work is "Middle East Fears of Conspiracy." Pipes is not very popular in circles I have recently had contact with. I  think of him as the Kenneth Starr of Middle East scholars. In the face of intolerable conduct and denial from those in responsibility, he lays out in considerable  detail the twisted and loopy thinking they engage in. Partisans of those he targets  therefore do not like him. America, of course, is not free from the grips of "conspiracy thinking." Deep trauma for a people is the breeding ground. The assassination of John Kennedy was an episode in American history, yet it continues to  spawn a staggering amount of "theories," not to mention movies that could  genuinely be called "loopy." The trauma in the Arab world has been longstanding, not episodic, and there are very real reasons that explain such feelings.  I would like to draw attention to Chapter 3 of The Hidden Hand, "Greater Israel," as particularly pertinent to what is said here. Among other things, it would have alerted us to the tenuousness of the Arab / Israeli "peace process," given the  thinking that is prevalent in the area, among "front line" peoples and the region's "core states" alike.

16. Taguieff, drawing upon the scholarship of Bernard Lewis, among eminent others, makes the same points in Chapter VII of the first volume of his  work Les Protocoles. See that chapter -- "Avatars du Myth Dans le Monde Arabe: La Nouvelle Carriere des Protocoles" -- and a chapter in the second volume by Yehoshafat Harkabi, "Les Protocoles Dans L 'Antisemitisme Arabe," for detailed discussions of the spread of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. 

17. Hear the Ayotollah Sayid Ali Khamanei:

There is evidence which shows that Zionists had close relations with German Nazis and exaggerated statistics on Jewish killing. ... [Zionists did this] as a means to attract the sympathy of public opinion ... paving the way for the occupation of  Palestine and justification for Zionist crimes.

Sadly, such thinking is not confined to the leader of Iran. The Khamanei quote was reported by Reuters 25 April 2001.

18. Pipes, "The Politics of Muslim Anti-Semitism," 42.

19. The interview with Levy was conducted and reported by Steven McBride, Christian Science Monitor, 12 January 1983, B3.

20. See Jacobo Tirnmennan, Prisoner Without a Name/Cell Without a Number, tr. Toby Talbot (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), 74ff.

21. Oslo was supposed to bring peace within the time frame of a decade. It is ominous now that Jewish leaders and intellectuals speak of the necessity to return to the mindset of 1948 and also speak of the possibility of a repeated destruction of the Temple  in Jerusalem. When Arab leaders and intellectuals now speak of the political task before  them, they reach back to the crusades and a centuries-long struggle as the most appropriate analogy for their situation. 

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