Guenter Lewy: Difference between revisions

Guenter Lewy (born 1923, Germany) is an author and historian, and a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his book on the Vietnam War and various works which promote the singularity of the genocide of Jews in the Holocaust.

In 1939, he immigrated to British Palestine and then to the United States. He has been on the faculties of Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts. He currently lives in Washington, D.C. and is a frequent contributor to Commentary.

Lewy had suggested that his America in Vietnam, published in 1978, would "clear away the cobwebs of mythology that inhibit the correct understanding of what went on -- and what went wrong -- in Vietnam."^[1] The text, which argues against traditional or "orthodox" interpretations of the Second Indochina War as an unnecessary, unjust, and/or unwinnable war replete with disastrous mistakes and widespread American atrocities, has proven influential for many western scholars that share similar views of the conflict. It predated and influenced other reinterpretations including those of Norman Podhoretz^[2] Mark Moyar, and Michael Lind. America in Vietnam thus attracted both criticism and support of Lewy for belonging to the "revisionist" school on Vietnam.^[3][4][5] It was praised by current US Senator Jim Webb (then of the House Committee on Veteran's Affairs staff). Critics included historians of the "orthodox" school as well as polemical critics such as linguist and famous Vietnam War opponent Noam Chomsky.^[6] Chomsky was criticized in Lewy's book for his role in proliferating charges of widespread American war crimes through the aegis of the Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars, characterized as being part of a "veritable industry" of war crimes allegations.^[7]

Lewy contends that the Vietnam War was "legal and not immoral."^[4] In recalling the 1971 congressional testimony of some US veterans who were critical of the war, one of whom compared US action in Vietnam to genocide, Lewy suggests that some "witnesses sounded as if they had memorized North Vietnamese propaganda."^[8] The focus of criticism centers largely on his "detailed defense of American behavior in Vietnam".^[5]

The book is broadly critical of domestic opponents of American participation in the Vietnam War. In using the phrases "peace activists" or "peace demonstrations", Lewy often puts derisive quotation marks around the word "peace", implying alternative motivations for their activism. The author suggests that there may be some connection between "antiwar activists" (or "antiwar militants") and the sabotage of Navy property:

Between 1965 and 1970, the Navy experienced a growing number of cases of sabotage and arson on its ships, but no evidence could be found that antiwar activists had directly participated in a sabotage attempt on a Navy vessel. Cases of fragging and avoidance of combat may well have been instigated at times by antiwar militants, though no hard evidence of organized subversion was ever discovered.^[9]

America in Vietnam, which appeared seven years after the Winter Soldier Investigation, became controversial in the context of the 2004 US Presidential Election. Presidential hopeful John Kerry had been involved with the Winter Soldier Investigation; in the context of the campaign, Lewy's suggestion that the Winter Soldier Investigation was dishonest and politically motivated was frequently cited to impugn John Kerry's reputation.^[10]

Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the group of which Kerry had been a part, alleged that American troops had committed atrocities in Vietnam. Lewy suggests that the group used "fake witnesses" in the Winter Soldier hearing in Detroit, and that its allegations were formally investigated:

The results of the investigation, carried out by the Naval Investigative Service, are interesting and revealing. Many of the veterans, though assured that they would not be questioned about the atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities. A black marine who agreed to be interviewed was unable to provide details of the outrages he had described at the hearing, but he called the Vietnam war "one huge atrocity" and "a racist plot." He admitted that the question of atrocities had not occurred to him while he was in Vietnam, and that he had been assisted in the preparation of his testimony by a member of the Nation of Islam. But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name.^[11]

Government officials today have no record of any such Naval Investigative Service report, although they suggest that it could have been lost or destroyed.^[12] Lewy later said that he could not recall if he had actually seen the alleged report or simply been told of its contents.^[13][14]

Lewy argues in The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies that the Gypsies' overall plight does "not constitute genocide within the meaning of the genocide convention."^[15] In a section of the book entitled The Persecution of Gypsies and Jews Compared, Lewy suggests that prejudice alone does not explain the persecution of the gypsies; rather, their "negative behavioral traits" may have contributed to their persecution.^[16]

The involuntary sterilizations of Gypsies carried out pursuant to the Auschwitz decree, on the other hand, can be considered acts of genocide within the meaning of the convention. Not all Gypsies were made subject to what has justifiably been called "biological death," and the aim was as much to prevent the contamination of "German blood" as to halt the propagation of the Zigeunermischlinge. Still, these actions do fulfill the letter of the convention, which forbids "measures intended to prevent births" within a targeted group... [to claim] the brutal persecution of the Gypsies [was] a genocide... would seem to involve a dilution of the concept.^[17]

In November 2004, Lewy published an essay entitled Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? According to Lewy,

[E]ven if some episodes can be considered genocidal—that is, tending toward genocide—they certainly do not justify condemning an entire society. Guilt is personal, and for good reason the Genocide Convention provides that only "persons" can be charged with the crime, probably even ruling out legal proceedings against governments.

Lewy suggests that to use the term "genocide" to describe the American Indian experience is to invite comparison to the fate of the Jews under the Nazi regime:

No matter how difficult the conditions under which the Indians labored—obligatory work, often inadequate food and medical care, corporal punishment—their experience bore no comparison with the fate of the Jews in the ghettos.[1]

The paper is highly critical of Ward Churchill, particularly in regards to his attributing the word "genocide" to the destruction of American Indian civilization. Lewy says Churchill's assertion that the U.S. Army intentionally spread smallpox among American Indians by distributing infected blankets in 1837 is false. Lewy calls Churchill's claim of 100,000 deaths from the incident "obviously absurd".^[18][19]

In The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, Lewy argues that there is insufficient evidence of the Young Turk regime organizing the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.^[20] While Lewy asserts "a figure of 642,000 Armenians killed" in the years 1915-6 alone, he believes that the killings are not genocide, because they have not been proven to have been governmentally organized.^[21]

Lewy's research on this topic has been criticized by University of California, Davis professor Keith David Watenpaugh:

[Lewy's] recent writings on mass violence including those on Native Americans, the Roma, and now the Armenians indicate a belief that the Shoah was the unique genocide of the 20th century, a position generally rejected by scholars of the Holocaust... the larger purpose of Lewy's intellectual output ...[is] to construct a conceptual lattice for Holocaust exceptionalism and defend political claims that might be derived thereby.^[22]

Lewy has accused Vahakn Dadrian, an Armenian scholar, of being "guilty of willful mistranslations, selective quotations, and other serious violations of scholarly ethics."^[23]

Lewy—who does not read Turkish—has had his own ethical behavior in the preparation of this volume called into question. By his own admission translation from Turkish sources was done by unnamed Turkish speakers and his analysis of Dadrian’s work relies heavily on his second-hand understanding of Turkish primary source material.^{[citation needed]}

Moreover, according to Joe Kechichian, writing in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, for his work:

….Lewy has been amply rewarded by Turkish authorities in Ankara and abroad through the launching of a massive campaign to distribute his book free of charge to libraries and to select groups of diplomats. Equally noteworthy, Lewy has been decorated at a special ceremony in Ankara with, ironically, the Insanliga Karss i Islenen Suçlar Yüksek Ödülü (High Award for Fighting in Opposition to Crimes Against Humanity) by the Avrasya Stratejik Arasstirmalar Merkezi (ASAM or, in English, the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies). It may be worth noting that ASAM is a well-known organization whose mission includes the systematic denial of the Armenian genocide through propagandistic and partisan research and publications; the organization is sponsored and underwritten by the Turkish government.^[22]

• Lewy, Guenter (1978). America in Vietnam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-502732-9.
• Lewy, Guenter (1988). Peace and Revolution: The Moral Crisis of American Pacifism. ISBN 0-8028-3640-2.
• Lewy, Guenter (1990). The Cause That Failed: Communism in American Political Life. ISBN 0-19-505748-1.
• Lewy, Guenter (1996). Why America Needs Religion: Secular Modernity and Its Discontents. ISBN 0-8028-4162-7.
• Lewy, Guenter (2000). The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80931-1.
• Lewy, Guenter (2001). The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. 0195142403. ISBN 0-19-514240-3.
• Lewy, Guenter (2005). The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide. University of Utah Press. ISBN 0-87480-849-9.

• Winter Soldier Investigation

• "Revisiting the Armenian Genocide" The Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2005.
• Letters on Lewy's article and Lewy's response
• An interview with Lewy