The Explorer's Roadmap to National-Socialism by Sarah K. Danielsson

Author:Sarah K. Danielsson [Danielsson, Sarah K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 19th Century
ISBN: 9781317032328
Google: HwbACwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-03-16T16:13:37+00:00

The Dispute over Publication

The book was finished and Hedin was exceedingly proud of the result. He had mildly criticized the new Nazi policies on science and the Nobel prize – he had agreed with the regime’s criticism of the Norwegian part of the Nobel prize. These mild disagreements were evidence that he had reached conclusions on his own and had not discussed the product with any representatives of the regime.

Hedin submitted the manuscript for publication, thereby submitting it to the mandatory scrutiny of the censors. No one on either side thought that any problems would present themselves. But, on April 10, 1937, Hedin received notice that changes needed to be made to the manuscript, or else the book could not be published in Germany.49 The greatest part of these changes was red-penned stylistic editing of the text, which, despite his long-standing experience with editors, Hedin had rarely encountered. The truly contested points were, however, a few passages that the censors insisted must be changed. The passages identified by the censors were the parts with mild criticism of the regime: criticism of decreased funding for science, criticism of the position on the Nobel prize, and, significantly for what would follow, certain opinions on the treatment of Jews he had considered but discarded. The requirement arrived as a demand from the censors, a demand they evidently believed was going to be complied with without any problems. But to Hedin, who long had been used to having his writing accepted without ceremony, the demand was a punch to his ego. Despite the fact that the changes required were indeed minor, Hedin wrote that he categorically refused to change anything he had written: “Ziegler came at 4:30 pm. Brought a letter from Funk with an ultimatum: Either the points he marked in red are changed in the German manuscript, or the book will be forbidden in Germany. There was no room for compromise; categorical. [Ziegler said that] ‘A critique of the National Socialist government cannot be tolerated’.”50 Despite the fact that Hedin himself had written that no critique of National-Socialism should be tolerated, he had a hard time complying with this himself.

So why the rejection? It seems that Hedin had run into a bureaucratic maze. A zealous member of the censors had taken the remarks to be impermissible, no matter how weak they were. Hedin had made sure, however, that copies of the manuscript had been sent to leading National-Socialists, who later claimed that they favored publication in Germany and saw no fault with the manuscript. Close scrutiny of the text suggests that both sides had valid points in the dispute. The criticism were indeed mild, and even when he disagreed, Hedin pointed out that he understood the National-Socialist position. Criticism of Nazi Jewish policy was not Hedin’s own views, but constituted opposing views that he wished to counter (the academic straw-man). On the other hand Hedin could have relented precisely because the sentences he was asked to strike were not important to his overall argument.

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