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A review by marc129
Bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell
2.0
There is so much I could say about this book. First of all, it is simply impressive how much information Littell has collected on World War II and especially on the internal kitchen of Hitler Germany; I recognized a lot of what I had read in Ian Kershaw’s books (especially his Hitler biography): the ongoing internal competition between the various power centers of the Reich, the increasing anarchy, and especially the mechanism of "Dem Führer entgegen arbeiten". Of course, I cannot judge whether Littell's fictional exposition on Nazism is completely correct, but he certainly succeeded in illustrating what the internal coherence of Nazism was and how the war horrors “logically” derived from that coherence. Of course I know that this is a very controversial proposition, because many war criminals used it to try to diminish their personal responsibility.
And that's exactly what the main character and narrator, Dr. Max Aue, a prominent member of the SS, is doing in this book. Regularly Aue states that all the main players of Nazi-Germany in fact were ordinary people like you and me, people that just wanted to play their role in a "Weltanschauung" that for them was logical and natural, and thus that they were not the sadistic demons they were represented to be after the war. Of course, since Hannah Arendt we are already aware of this, but Littell makes Aue also state quite another view: after his frequent contacts with Adolf Eichman, for example, he stresses that Eichman certainly wasn't an ordinary, banal man, but rather a top professional who only wanted to achieve the goal he had been ordered to achieve. This book is full of this kind of perverse ambiguities, constantly putting the reader on the wrong leg. All the time we have to be aware that Aue brings us an apology and thus his story is full of revisionist elements. Handsomely done, surely, but very difficult for the reader.
Many reviews emphasize that the big weakness of this book is the lack of focus. And that's right, because Littell does not seem to be able to choose between an epic-wide evocation of a crucial era (such as Tolstoi in “War and Peace”), a philosophical-ethical reflection on the horrors of a totalitarian state (such as Vasily Grossman in “Life and Fate”), and a psychological portrait of an apparently normal but actually very sick mind (in this case, Dr. Aue). Sometimes Littell/Aue gives 100 pages of detailed information about troop movements or discussions between Nazi bosses, then suddenly a flashback from Aue on his incestuous relationship with his sister, followed by another long-eyed violent horror scene, and so on. Of course, this introspective part (because we obviously have to do with the version that Aue itself gives us) is very interesting, and Littell also explicitly connects it with the theme of the mental health of Nazism. This seems to me a key passage to understand this novel:
"Since my childhood, I was haunted by the passion for the absolute and the transcending of limits; now this passion had led me to the edge of the mass graves of Ukraine. My thought had always been radical; now the State and the Nation also have chosen the radical and the absolute [...]. And if this radicalness was the radicalness of the abyss, and the absolute revealed itself as the absolute evil, then one ought, I firmly thought, to follow them all the way down, with the eyes wide open. “
But, as noted, Littell does not really manage to balance this personal story of psychological perversion with the wider story of the horrors of Nazism. Instead, we get a sequence of sometimes boring, descriptive passages about the war operations, detailed descriptions of war crimes (especially the Babi Yar Massacre near Kiev, Stalingrad's Hell, the terror of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the deadly marches at the end of the war), vivid and sometimes highly philosophical conversations and occasionally also the perversions of Aue himself.
In the last 100 pages of this book the Aue character completely derails: his acts not only become outright shocking (with some pretty graphic scenes), but sometimes also ridiculously hilarious (his encounter with Hitler for example). Perhaps Littell wanted to indicate that we should not take his story too seriously.
No, this novel, although at times very impressive, certainly is not an overall success. Personally, I think that 1400 pages (in my edition) really is too much. If you really want to read an extended book about war and dictatorship, I would certainly recommend the 1.000 pages of Vasily Grossman's "Life and Fate". (2.5 stars)
And that's exactly what the main character and narrator, Dr. Max Aue, a prominent member of the SS, is doing in this book. Regularly Aue states that all the main players of Nazi-Germany in fact were ordinary people like you and me, people that just wanted to play their role in a "Weltanschauung" that for them was logical and natural, and thus that they were not the sadistic demons they were represented to be after the war. Of course, since Hannah Arendt we are already aware of this, but Littell makes Aue also state quite another view: after his frequent contacts with Adolf Eichman, for example, he stresses that Eichman certainly wasn't an ordinary, banal man, but rather a top professional who only wanted to achieve the goal he had been ordered to achieve. This book is full of this kind of perverse ambiguities, constantly putting the reader on the wrong leg. All the time we have to be aware that Aue brings us an apology and thus his story is full of revisionist elements. Handsomely done, surely, but very difficult for the reader.
Many reviews emphasize that the big weakness of this book is the lack of focus. And that's right, because Littell does not seem to be able to choose between an epic-wide evocation of a crucial era (such as Tolstoi in “War and Peace”), a philosophical-ethical reflection on the horrors of a totalitarian state (such as Vasily Grossman in “Life and Fate”), and a psychological portrait of an apparently normal but actually very sick mind (in this case, Dr. Aue). Sometimes Littell/Aue gives 100 pages of detailed information about troop movements or discussions between Nazi bosses, then suddenly a flashback from Aue on his incestuous relationship with his sister, followed by another long-eyed violent horror scene, and so on. Of course, this introspective part (because we obviously have to do with the version that Aue itself gives us) is very interesting, and Littell also explicitly connects it with the theme of the mental health of Nazism. This seems to me a key passage to understand this novel:
"Since my childhood, I was haunted by the passion for the absolute and the transcending of limits; now this passion had led me to the edge of the mass graves of Ukraine. My thought had always been radical; now the State and the Nation also have chosen the radical and the absolute [...]. And if this radicalness was the radicalness of the abyss, and the absolute revealed itself as the absolute evil, then one ought, I firmly thought, to follow them all the way down, with the eyes wide open. “
But, as noted, Littell does not really manage to balance this personal story of psychological perversion with the wider story of the horrors of Nazism. Instead, we get a sequence of sometimes boring, descriptive passages about the war operations, detailed descriptions of war crimes (especially the Babi Yar Massacre near Kiev, Stalingrad's Hell, the terror of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the deadly marches at the end of the war), vivid and sometimes highly philosophical conversations and occasionally also the perversions of Aue himself.
In the last 100 pages of this book the Aue character completely derails: his acts not only become outright shocking (with some pretty graphic scenes), but sometimes also ridiculously hilarious (his encounter with Hitler for example). Perhaps Littell wanted to indicate that we should not take his story too seriously.
No, this novel, although at times very impressive, certainly is not an overall success. Personally, I think that 1400 pages (in my edition) really is too much. If you really want to read an extended book about war and dictatorship, I would certainly recommend the 1.000 pages of Vasily Grossman's "Life and Fate". (2.5 stars)