In a post I made Friday, I wrote:
If Bormann or anyone else made significant alterations to Hitler's words, it should be possible to demonstrate this by showing places where one of these published versions is significantly different than the other...
Does nobeliefs.com offer specific examples of such alterations? If so, I would be interested in seeing them.
In the editing of that post, I did a quick Google to fact-check whether Martin Bormann was an atheist or simply an anti-Catholic. By coincidence, Googling
Bormann atheist turned up this article from the November 2002 issue of
Freethought Today,
"On the Trail of Bogus Quotes" by Richard Carrier, which makes a start toward answering my question about discrepancies between the two versions.
Carrier has done what I wish other critics of the table talks would do:
looked at the different published editions and
compared the version made from Dr. Picker's copies of the transcripts (published in German in 1951 as
Hitlers Tischgesprach) with the versions made from Bormann's copy (published in French translation, in 1952 as
Adolf Hitler: Libres Propos sur la Guerre et la Paix; published in English translation in 1953 (and expanded slightly in 1973) as
Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944 and
Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941-1944; and published in German in 1980 as
Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941-1944: die Aufzeichnungen Heinrich Heims herausgegeben von Werner Jochmann). Carrier has not made a thorough comparison -- at least not as of this 2002 article -- but he has spot-checked some key passages, which is a beginning.
Since I do not read German, it is the 1973 English version I have been using (as have most people arguing about this topic, it appears). And one of the most interesting points Carrier makes is that, despite the claim that the English version is a translation of the German transcripts, it appears instead to be a translation of the 1952
French version. This would make it a translation of a translation. If true (and I see no reason to doubt Carrier on this) this makes it even more important not to rely too heavily on the exact wording in the English edition and to try to focus on the gist of what is being said.
Also of concern is that the additional layer of translation means another set of hands touching the text, which creates an additional chance that error -- or tampering -- could have occurred. While there is no particular reason to suspect the French-to-English translators of deliberately altering the text, the same cannot be said for the German-to-French translator, Francois Genoud. Hence Carrier's research is valuable as it provides a check on whether such tampering has occurred.
Some posters in this thread have been arguing that we should dismiss the table talks entirely as an unreliable source. Carrier's research, however, does not support that. He compared Picker's collection of the transcripts (as published in Picker's book) with Bormann's collection (as published in Jochmann's book) and found that the two versions are in agreement
"to such a detailed extent that we can be assured the two texts have a common ancestor, which must be the actual bunker notes themselves. The Jochmann text contains some entries lacking from Picker, but otherwise there are only trivial variations in wording here and there."
Carrier has harsher words, however, for the English-language translation.
"The immediate and most important conclusion is that the Trevor-Roper edition, the only English version in print, is worthless."
While I admire Carrier for the approach he has taken (making an actual comparison of the two versions to see if there are discrepancies), and while I respect the work he has done in compiling this data, I regretfully have a much dimmer view of Carrier when it comes to his ability to analyze data and draw valid conclusions. It appears to me, from his argumentation in the
Freethought Today article, that Carrier's feelings about religion and atheism are too strong to permit him to look at facts objectively or to draw reasonable conclusions.
In arguing that Hitler could not possibly have been an atheist, for example, he offers Hitler's public professions of religous piety as proof positive that Hitler was religious, and completely dismisses the possibility Hitler could have been lying. Here's the passage I'm referring to:
It is claimed that the quotations and evidence of Hitler's belief were a ruse, propaganda for the benefit of his Nazi followers. This is hardly plausible. After all, if Hitler had to pretend to be a god-fearing Christian to sway his Nazi supporters, that means Nazis had to have been god-fearing Christians.
No, it does not have to mean that. There is a simple, mundane explanation for why Hitler might have "had to pretend to be a god-fearing Christian": because the majority of the German population were Christians whom Hitler could not afford to alienate.
I do not find it difficult at all to believe that politicians sometimes put up public facades which differ considerably from what they actually believe, especially on touchy subjects such religion. Just as it is poor skepticism to accept a possibility as definitely true without adequate reason to do so, so it is poor skepticism to dismiss a possibility as definitely false without adequate reason. Carrier's confident dismissal of the possibility that Hitler lied in his public statements seems to me a prime example of the latter.
Another example of dubious reasoning is Carrier's analysis of the 1933
Concordat with the Catholic Church . Carrier quotes article 21 of the Concordat, which provides for Catholic religious instruction to be taught in the public schools, and concludes from this:
So there can be no doubt that the Nazis were thoroughly and devotedly Christian, eager to inculcate Christian theism for future generations.
What?! There can be
no doubt that, because Hitler signed an agreement
promising that he would support Catholic education in schools, therefore the Nazis were devout Christians? That seems like a considerable overstatement.
Hitler made many agreements, with many parties, which were political contrivances that he abandoned as soon as he had gotten what he wanted. His 1933 deal with the Catholics appears to me an obvious example of such a thing. Yet Carrier concludes it is proof positive that Hitler and the Nazis were sincere Christians.
A better test of what Hitler believed than what he
promised is what he
delivered. Concluding Hitler was pro-Catholic or pro-Christian from his signing of the Concordat is akin to concluding Hitler was pro-peace and would respect other nations' boundaries because of the agreement he signed with Chamberlain. Here is a link to
"The Vatican Concordat With Hitler's Reich" by Robert Krieg, from the September 1, 2003 issue of
America, which gives a good explanation of the politics behind the Concordat.
Those are two examples of why I distrust Carrier's ability to draw fair conclusions from the data. I am willing to trust his translation skills, and I am willing to trust that he is attempting to give an honest description of the discrepancies he perceives. I am not willing to trust his judgment as to the significance of these discrepancies. I want to see and evaluate the discrepancies, in context, for myself. And, unfortunately, Carrier does not provide enough information for me to do so.
Carrier presents only three examples of discrepancies between the English translation of the table talks and the original German. It might seem like it would be a simple matter to take the text from one version and compare it to text from another, but such was not the case here. Comparing Picker's notes (as published in his 1951 book) to Bormann's notes (as published in Jochmann's 1980 book) was probably not too difficult, since both are in German. But comparing the German notes to the published English translation obviously presented greater difficulties, since he needed to translate the German into English in order to do an English-to-English comparison. Translating the entire book, in order to do a passage-by-passage comparison, apparently would have been too time-consuming, so Carrier simply spot-checked key items and drew conclusions from those. He gives a mere 3 examples, but says in the article that "
There are many other suspect quotations. I checked over a dozen, in four separate entries."
The incompleteness is regrettable. I hope Carrier (or someone) is continuing the research.
But regrettable as the incompleteness is, there is a larger problem, at least for me, which is that I find Carrier's writing hard to follow. I do not know why, but even after several readings I found his explanations of the three discrepancies he points out unsatisfying and un-illuminating. Either his writing or my reading is not as clear as it should be.
For example, the first discrepancy Carrier points out is a line in the English translation from February 27, 1942 in which Hitler is alleged to have said:
"Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity." The sentence (as Carrier translates it) reads:
"The time in which we live has the appearance of the collapse of this idea."
I believe Carrier when he says the line is mistranslated, and I am willing to accept Carrier's translation as the correct one. That means the phrase "
disease of Christianity" does not actually appear in the notes of what Hitler said that night. But I already knew this was a translation, and that translations are never fully faithful. So the question which concerns me is not whether the translation is completely literal but whether the translation is
true to, or in
contradiction to, the gist of the passage. And the answer to that remains cloudy to me, despite repeated readings of what Carrier has written about it, because Carrier fails to provide enough information for me to be able to understand what the passage is talking about.
Both translations seem to be saying something similar, which is that some day humanity will see the collapse of "
this idea". In order to judge whether the questioned translation if fair or foul, I need to know what
"this idea" refers to.
Carrier quotes the three sentences preceding the one in question, as well as two that follow it. Here is the text which Carrier quotes:
I have never found pleasure in maltreating others, even if I know it isn't possible to maintain oneself in the world without force. Life is granted only to those who fight the hardest. It is the law of life: Defend yourself!
The time in which we live has the appearance of the collapse of this idea. It can still take 100 or 200 years. I am sorry that, like Moses, I can only see the Promised Land from a distance.
Carrier says the idea Hitler is denouncing is "survival of the fittest", the idea we must use force to triumph over others. If that is indeed what the full text says, then referring to it as "the disease of Christianity" is certainly amiss.
But when Hitler says
"Life is granted only to those who fight the hardest. It is the law of life: Defend yourself!", is he quoting this
disapprovingly (as Carrier says) or
approvingly (as I would have guessed if I'd been given this passage without any other context or comments)? If Hitler is indeed denouncing the idea of survival of the fittest, it is a surprising reversal of opinion from a man who favored sterilizing the retarded and weeding out "useless eaters". It seems possible to me that it is
pacifism -- the idea that we
don't need to forcefully impose our will on others -- which Hitler is condemning. If that is the case -- and if Hitler connects that to Christian teachings -- then the questioned translation would not be unreasonable.
Carrier may very well be right in his explanation, but he hasn't quoted a sufficient amount of the passage to make that clear. I need to be able to read a bit more of the passage if I am to see that for myself rather than having to take Carrier's word for it.
The second example Carrier gives of a discrepancy is also from the February 27, 1942, transcript.
"I shall never come to terms with the Christian lie." Here is how Carrier says the line should be translated:
"To do something false against one's own knowledge, that is out of the question! One should never personally fall in line with such a lie"
And here is Carrier's explanation of why the commonly-used translation is wrong
Though the context still happens to be a criticism of the Church -- Hitler implying he followed the "true" Christianity that the Church somehow betrayed -- he does not call Christianity a lie. And here it is even more clearly a distortion, since the sentence "I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie" does not seem to fit here, and is thus more evidently an interpolation, whereas its counterpart, "One should never personally fall in line with such a lie," fits perfectly, carrying over and completing the thought of the previous sentence, which is about hypocrisy in general.
In other words, if I'm reading Carrier correctly, he is criticizing the translation because that particular sentence translates literally to
such a lie rather than
Christian lie. (He's also upset because the passage is translated as
I shall never personally... rather than as
One should never personally....)
In order to know if "Christian lie" is actually different
in meaning from "such a lie", we need to know what the lie in question is. On the one hand, Carrier claims the lie Hitler is criticizing is "hypocrisy in general". On the other hand, Carrier tells us that the passage is "a criticism of the Church".
Carrier fails to specify what, specifically, Hitler is criticizing about the Church in this passage, nor does he include enough of the text for us to glean that for ourselves. Just what is meaning of the "something false against one's own knowledge" which Hitler rails against? If the passage refers to some particular aspect of Christianity which Hitler disagrees with and thinks is a lie (as Carrier seems to be admitting it does), then characterizing that as a "Christian lie" would not seem an unreasonable translation.
Although Carrier quotes several sentences in addition to the line in question, what he quotes still leaves me in the dark as to what Hitler was talking about in the passage. Some key antecedents seem to be missing, and I need to see a few more sentences before I can make sense of the passage. As with the first example, Carrier has not provided enough information for readers to be able to judge for themselves the seriousness of the discrepancy he points out.
Carrier's third example come from the December 13, 1941, transcript. First, the questioned translation:
But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.
And here is Carrier's translation:
Christianity teaches 'transubstantiation,' which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly.
And here is Carrier's commentary on the discrepancy between the two versions:
The difference in meaning here is radical, and again shows how ... [the English translation of the Table Talks] ... has distorted Hitler's criticism of one form of Christianity (which implies he believed there was a true Christianity) into a thoroughly anti-Christian sentiment.
Carrier's analysis of Hitler's remark seems way off the mark here. The gist of Hitler's remark in the questioned translation is that Christianity is an invention of sick brains. The gist of Hitlers remark in Carrier's translation is that the doctrine of transubstantiation an insane idea concocted by deluded minds. What should be our concern here is whether calling Christianity "an invention of sick brains" is substantially similar to or substantially different from saying that a Christian doctrine is "the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions."
It is interesting that Hitler uses the word "Christianity" (both in the questioned translation and Carrier's translation). It is my understanding that transubstantiation -- the idea that the communion wafer and wine are transformed into Jesus'
actual flesh and blood when ingested by the faithful during communion -- is not so much a Christian doctrine as it is a key Catholic doctrine. So Hitler is not simply criticizing "one form of Christianity" as Carrier puts it -- he appears to be harshly denouncing
Catholicism!
Carrier seems far too eager to seize upon evidence that Hitler must have been a Christian. I do not see how Hitler's harsh criticism of Catholic doctrine shows he believed in "true Christianity". The phrase "a mockery of all that is godly" might seem to imply a belief in god (though not necessarily a Christian one), but the word
godly has far too many different meanings and connotations for me to put any confidence in such a reading without seeing much stronger supporting evidence.
Carrier also calls attention to the transcript for October 19, 1941, but this is for a different reason than the other examples. The English-language version has an entry for this date, in which Hitler says that Christianity is
"a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society." According to Carrier, this is an accurate translation of the notes for that date. The reason Carrier lists this entry as a discrepancy is that it is one of the few cases where Bormann's collection of notes has an entry which Picker's set lacks. This does not seem to be cause for alarm, however, since Hitler is recorded as having said very similar things in his table talk of December 13, 1941. (Carrier speculates the entry for October 19 may have been a case or Bormann attempting to reconstruct a table talk from memory, and somehow recording the date incorrectly.)
While I am reserving judgment on whether the discrepancies Carriage has pointed out between the English translation and original German are significant enough to make the English translation worthless, I think the project he has undertaken is a good one and that the
Freethought article, while severely flawed, is still worth reading and considering.
If Carrier is correct that Genoud significantly distorted Hitler's ideas when he translated Bormann's set of notes into French, and that these errors were perpetuated when the English translation was done from Genoud's French rather than the original German, then Carrier might be right that the English translation is worthless. In that case, the table talks would still be worth looking at (more than ever, now that it is largely confirmed the German notes were not been tampered with) but it would be necessary to find a German edition (and, for some of us at least, find someone to translate the passages into English).
On the other hand, Carrier has provided only 3 examples (out of more than 700 pages of text) and none of those 3 examples seemed very clear or convincing to me. And that was more than 3 years ago; if those 3 examples were simply the tip of the iceberg, 3 years seems to be more than enough time to expose more of what's hidden in the water.
Does anyone know what has happened with Carriage's research project in the 3 years since the article was published in
Freethought Today? An introductory note to Carrier's article says:
"This essay excerpts research currently under review for publication by the journal German Studies Review., but I couldn't find any mention of the research being published there, nor could I find any mention of any continuation or follow-up. Has the research every been published in full? If so, what did other scholars have to say about it? (If not, why not?)
