History and Sympathy: How Hitler Helped One Man Understand the Puritans
Last Monday, Edmund Morgan, one of the greatest American historians of all time, died at the age of 97 (you can read a very kind and thoughtful obituary here). In an interview, Morgan once said: “I was still an atheist, as I am now, but that day in Breissbach I became a Calvinist atheist.”
What leads an avowed atheist to study the Puritans and eventually become a “Calvinist atheist?”
Morgan developed a great admiration for the depth and elegance of Puritan thought in his early studies. Still, he could never come to grips with some Puritan doctrines, like total depravity – the belief that all humans are depraved deep down and sinful throughout their being. How could these people believe these things?
After these early studies, in the Summer of 1938, Morgan was touring through Europe with a friend. On August 29, they had stopped in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, not far from the French border. The morning paper had announced that Hitler had sent an ultimatum to Czechoslovakia demanding the return of the Sudetenland. German SS soldiers were scrambling around everywhere, preventing people from crossing into France, and blocking foot traffic.
Suddenly, a big open-topped Mercedes car pulled up in front of them. SS soldiers arranged and watched people nearby, and stood guard along the street, hands on their pistols. Then, he passed by: Hitler in his own car, saluting the soldiers and people on the streets. He was there personally to inspect Rhine fortifications in preparation for war.
Morgan recalls:
The point of this story, for me, however, is that I knew I was looking evil in the face…The part those fresh-faced…young men in black [SS] were playing was no secret, either. But they all looked so human and so everyday. Even the Gestapo agent could have been a stodgy change-met tourist…Human beings are capable of great good, but I know that the capacity for fathomless evil is equally human, and it wears a smiling face.”
You can read the full text of Morgan’s story here.
American Slavery, American Freedom – one of the best books in American history, period.
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About The Author
Dr. Brian Franklin
Dr. Brian Franklin is the Associate Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. He holds a Ph.D. in American History from Texas A&M University, and has a special interest in the intersection between religion, politics, and society in 18th- and 19th-century America.