John Lukacs | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Adalbert Lukacs (1924-01-31)January 31, 1924 Budapest, Hungary |
| Died | May 6, 2019(2019-05-06) (aged 95) |
| Education | University of Budapest (PhD) |
| Occupation | Historian |
John Adalbert Lukacs (/ˈluːkəs/;[1]Hungarian:Lukács János Albert; January 31, 1924 – May 6, 2019) was a Hungarian-born American historian and author of more than thirty books. Lukacs described himself as areactionary.[2]
Lukacs was born inBudapest,Hungary, the son of Magdaléna Glück and Pál Lukács (born Löwinger), a physician.[3] His parents,Jewish converts toRoman Catholicism,[4][5] were divorced beforeWorld War II. Lukacs attended a classicalgymnasium, had an English language tutor, and spent two summers at a private school in England. He studied history at theUniversity of Budapest.[6]
During the Second World War, when German troops occupied Hungary (Operation Margarethe) in 1944, Lukacs was forced to serve in aHungarian labour battalion for Jews. By the end of 1944, he had deserted from the battalion and was hiding in a cellar until the end of the war, evading deportation to death camps and surviving thesiege of Budapest. According to his son, Lukacs never saw his parents again.[7] After the war, Lukacs worked as the Secretary of the Hungarian-American Society.[8][9] In 1946, he received his doctorate from the University of Budapest.[7][10]
On 22 July 1946, as it was becoming clear that Hungary would become aCommunist state, Lukacs fled to the United States. He found employment as a part-time assistant lecturer atColumbia University in New York City. He then relocated to Philadelphia, where in 1947 he began work as a history professor atChestnut Hill College, a women's college at the time.[7] Lukacs was a professor of history there until 1994 and chaired the history department from 1947 to 1974. He served as a visiting professor atJohns Hopkins University,Columbia University,Princeton University,La Salle University,Regent College in British Columbia, the University of Budapest, andHanover College. He was a president of theAmerican Catholic Historical Association and a member of both theRoyal Historical Society and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[11]
Being an ardentanti-Communist, Lukacs nevertheless wrote in the early 1950s several articles inCommonweal criticizing the approach taken by SenatorJoseph McCarthy, whom he described as a vulgardemagogue.[2] Lukacs sawpopulism as the primary threat to modern civilization. By his own description, he considered himself a reactionary.[7] He identified populism as the essence of bothNazism andCommunism, denying the existence of genericfascism and asserted that the differences between the political regimes ofNazi Germany andFascist Italy were greater than their similarities.[12]
A major theme in Lukacs's writing is his agreement with the French historianAlexis de Tocqueville that aristocraticelites have been replaced by democratic elites, which obtain power via an appeal to the masses. In his 2002 book,At the End of an Age, Lukacs argued that the modern/bourgeois age, which began around the time of theRenaissance, is coming to an end.[13] The rise of populism and the decline of elitism is the theme of his experimental work,A Thread of Years (1998), a series of vignettes set in each year of the 20th century from 1900 to 1998, tracing the abandonment of gentlemanly conduct and the rise of vulgarity in American culture. Lukacs defends traditional Western civilization against what he sees as the leveling and debasing effects of mass culture.
AnAnglophile, Lukacs gives the highest historical importance toWinston Churchill. He considered Churchill to be the greatest statesman of the 20th century, the savior not only of Great Britain but also ofWestern civilization itself. A recurring theme in his writing is the duel between Churchill andAdolf Hitler for mastery of the world. Their moral struggle, which Lukacs sees as a conflict between the archetypical reactionary and the archetypical revolutionary, is the major theme ofThe Last European War (1976),The Duel (1991),Five Days in London (1999) and 2008'sBlood, Toil, Tears and Sweat, a book which features Churchill's first major speech as Prime Minister. Lukacs argues that Great Britain and by extension the British Empire could not defeat Germany by itself, and that winning required the entry of the United States and theSoviet Union. He observes that by inspiring the British people to resist German air attacks and to "never surrender" during the Battle of Britain in 1940, Churchill laid the groundwork for the subsequent victory of the Allies.
Lukacs had strongisolationist beliefs and unusually for an anti-Communist émigré also had "surprisingly critical views of theCold War from a unique conservative perspective",[14] being described as one of "anti-anticommunists among conservatives and their fellow travelers".[15] Lukacs argued that the Soviet Union was a feeble power on the verge of collapse and thus contended that the Cold War was an unnecessary waste of American treasure and life. Likewise, Lukacs was critical of American intervention abroad,[16] and also condemned the2003 invasion of Iraq.
In his bookGeorge F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 1944-1946 (1997), a collection of letters exchanged between Lukacs and his close friendGeorge F. Kennan during 1994–1995, Lukacs and Kennan criticized the claim of theNew Left that the Cold War was caused by the United States; however, Lukacs argued that whileJoseph Stalin was largely responsible for the beginning of the Cold War, the administration ofDwight D. Eisenhower missed a chance for ending the Cold War in 1953 after Stalin's death, which kept it on for many more decades.
From around 1977 onwards, Lukacs became one of the leading critics of the British authorDavid Irving, whom Lukacs accused of engaging in unscholarly practices and havingneo-Nazi sympathies. In a review of Irving'sHitler's War in 1977, Lukacs commented that as a "right-wing revisionist" who had admired some of Irving's early works, he initially had high hopes forHitler's War, but he found the book to be "appalling".[17] Lukacs commented that Irving had uncritically used personal remembrances by those who knewAdolf Hitler to present him in the most favorable light possible.[18] In his review, Lukacs argued that although World War II ended with Eastern Europe being left under Soviet domination, a victory that left only half of Europe to Stalin was much better than a defeat that left all of Europe to Hitler.[19]
| External videos | |
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 Booknotes interview with Lukacs onThe Hitler of History, February 28, 1998,C-SPAN |
Lukacs's bookThe Hitler of History (1997), aprosopography of the historians who have written biographies of Hitler, is in part a critique of Irving's work. Lukacs considered Irving to be sympathetic to the Nazis.[7] In turn, Irving has engaged in what many consider to beantisemitic andracist attacks against Lukacs. Because Lukacs' mother was Jewish, Irving disparagingly refers to him as "a Jewish historian". In letters of 25 October and 28 October 1997, Irving threatened to sue Lukacs for libel if he published his book (The Hitler of History) without removing certain passages which were highly critical of Irving's work.[20] The American edition ofThe Hitler of History was published in 1997 with the passages included, but because of Irving's legal threats no British edition ofThe Hitler of History was published until 2001.[20] As a result of Irving's threat of legal action under British libel laws, when the British edition was finally published the passages containing the criticism of Irving's historical methods were expunged by the publisher.[21][22]
InThe Hitler of History, inspired by the example ofPieter Geyl's book,Napoleon For and Against, Lukacs examines the state of Hitler scholarship and offers his own observations about Hitler. In Lukacs's view, Hitler was a racist, nationalist, revolutionary, and populist.[23] Lukacs criticizesMarxist and liberal historians who argue that the German working class were strongly anti-Nazi, and instead he argues that the exact opposite was the case. Each chapter ofThe Hitler of History is devoted to a particular topic, such as whether Hitler was a reactionary or revolutionary; a nationalist or a racist; and he examines the roots of Hitler's ideology. Lukacs denies that Hitler developed a belief inracial purity during his time inVienna (1907–1913) under theHabsburg monarchy. Instead, Lukacs dates Hitler's turn to antisemitism to 1919 in post-World War IMunich, in particular to the events surrounding theBavarian Soviet Republic and its defeat by the right-wingFreikorps. Much influenced byRainer Zitelmann's work, Lukacs describes Hitler as a self-conscious, modernizing revolutionary. Citing the critique of National Socialism developed by German conservative historians such asHans Rothfels andGerhard Ritter, Lukacs describes the Nazi movement as the culmination of the dark forces which lurk within modern civilization.
In Lukacs's view,Operation Barbarossa was not inspired by anti-Communism or any long-term plan to conquer the Soviet Union as suggested by historians such asAndreas Hillgruber, who claims that Hitler had aStufenplan ('stepped plan', more loosely 'step-by-step plan'), but it was rather anad hoc reaction forced on Hitler in 1940–1941 by Britain's refusal to surrender.[24] Lukacs argues that the reason Hitler gave for the invasion of Russia was the real one. He stated that Britain would not surrender becauseWinston Churchill held out the hope that the Soviet Union might enter the war on the Allied side and so Germany had to eliminate that hope; however, other historians have argued that the reason was just a pretext.[25] For Lukacs, Operation Barbarossa was as much anti-British as it was anti-Soviet. He argues that Hitler's statement in August 1939 to theLeague of Nations High Commissioner for Danzig, the Swiss diplomatCarl Jacob Burckhardt ("Everything I undertake is directed against Russia"), which Hillgruber cited as evidence of Hitler's anti-Soviet intentions, was part of an effort to intimidate Britain and France into abandoning Poland.[26] Lukacs takes issue with Hillgruber's claim that the war against Britain was of "secondary" importance to Hitler compared to the war against the Soviet Union.[27] Lukacs has also been one of the critics ofViktor Suvorov, who has argued that Barbarossa was a "preventative war" forced upon Germany by Stalin, who according to Suvorov was planning to attack Germany later in the summer of 1941.
In his bookDemocracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred (2005), Lukacs writes about the current state ofAmerican democracy. He warns that the populism he perceives as ascendant in the United States renders it vulnerable to demagoguery. He claims that a transformation from liberal democracy to populism can be seen in the replacement of knowledge and history withpropaganda andinfotainment. In the same book, Lukacs criticizes legalizedabortion,pornography,cloning, and sexual permissiveness as marking what he sees as the increasing decadence, depravity, corruption, and amorality of modern American society.[2]
June 1941: Hitler and Stalin (2006) is a book-length study of the two leaders with a focus on the events leading up to Operation Barbarossa.George Kennan: A Study of Character (2007) is a biography of Lukacs' friendGeorge F. Kennan, based on privileged access to Kennan's private papers.Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat (2008) is a continuation of his work on what Lukacs considered the greatness of Churchill.Last Rites (2009) continues the "auto-history" he published inConfessions of an Original Sinner (1990).The Future of History was published on 26 April 2011.
InA Short History of the Twentieth Century (2013), Lukacs attempts to challenge the idea (common to both professional historians and experts ininternational relations) that the Cold War presented abipolar system or a major strategic rivalry or conflict, instead arguing that the 20th century was one of American dominance. Citing the biographical example of Hitler, as well asleft- andright-wing populism in the United States, Lukacs also argues in the book that populism was the most destructive force of the 20th century and attempts to disentangle the concept of populism from its frequent (although Lukacs argues it is inaccurate) conflation with the inherent stances ofleft-wing politics.
In 1953, Lukacs married Helen Elizabeth Schofield, the daughter of a Philadelphia lawyer; the couple had two children. His wife died in 1971.[7] He married his second wife, Stephanie Harvey, in 1974.[28] From this marriage, Lukacs had step-children; his second wife died in 2003. He married for a third time but his marriage to Pamela Hall ended in divorce.[7]
After his retirement in 1994, Lukacs concentrated on writing. He resided inSchuylkill Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania and retained nearly 18,000 books in his home library.[6] Lukacs died from congestive heart failure on May 6, 2019, at his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.[7]
The full answer to that question is complex. It is true, as has been often stated, that from 1945 to 1991 conservatism, as a political movement, was held together primarily by the glue of anticommunism. But then there are also were [sic] many staunch liberal anticommunists (e.g., Lionel Trilling) and even some staunch radical anticommunists (e.g., George Orwell). Furthermore, there were even anti-anticommunists among conservatives and their fellow travelers (e.g., John Lukacs).
| External videos | |
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| John Lukacs "Popular Tides and the Ship of State" | |
| "WHAT WOULD CHURCHILL DO?" A Symposium with John Lukacs at Chartwell Booksellers (2008) |
