Understanding Nazi history requires first understanding Nazi language

Evidence

Writing in the first issue of Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem, 1957), Nahman Blumenthal attends to the words of the Holocaust. He attends to the Holocaust as a linguistic event and argues that an inquiry into the “language of the Nazis” is “far from being a matter unto itself, nor is it a question of linguistic inquiry.” Rather, Blumenthal continues, “a historical understanding of the period is contingent upon an understanding of the language of the Nazis.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 564

Categorization

• DEFINE: Blumenthal advances a strong thesis: language study is a precondition to historical inquiry about Nazism, not a narrow sub-discipline.