Tolerant moderates’ politeness enabled the rise of Nazism

Evidence

Jaspers later thought he might have erred in treating Heidegger too delicately. When Heidegger sent him a printed version of his rectorial address in 1933, Jaspers’ reply was supremely diplomatic: ‘It was nice to see it in its authentic version after reading about it in the paper.’ Should he have been more critical, he wondered later? Perhaps he had failed ‘this intoxicated and enthused Heidegger’. Heidegger perhaps needed what a later generation would call an ‘intervention’, to save him from himself. It was, Jaspers implied, a failure of engagement on his own part — and he linked this to a more general failure of tolerant, educated Germans to face up to the challenge of the time. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 284

Categorization

• SEED: Possible piece on the moral failure of diplomatic politeness toward extremism — comparing Jaspers’s silence to modern academic handling of controversial colleagues.
• XREF: Echoes what commentators say about Weimar moderate failures generally and connects to inquiries into guilt in Jaspers’s own later thought. — connects to: Cross-party austerity orthodoxy enabled the Nazi electoral rise — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 556; Collective delusions like anti-Semitism persist because they function as tolerated outlets within a culture — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1793; Early anti-integration organizing in Atlanta styled itself openly on Nazi fascism — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 110

Broader Connections

• Cross-party austerity orthodoxy enabled the Nazi electoral rise #qualifies (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 556
• Collective delusions like anti-Semitism persist because they function as tolerated outlets within a culture #corroborates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1793