“The Holocaust would have been unimaginable without the Nazi Party; the Nazi Party would have been unimaginable without Hitler; and Hitler’s rise to power would have been unimaginable without the unique circumstances that brought the Weimar Republic to ruin. To hear Goldhagen tell it, mass murder was all set to go: a century-long build-up of eliminationist anti-Semitism simply had to express itself. But the moment when a historian says that something had to happen is the moment when he stops writing history and starts predicting the past.”

Ibid.
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Clive James151

Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator an… 1939–2019

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Clive James151

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