Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
First Advisor
Alan Steinweis
Abstract
From 1930 to 1985, reactions to Nazi atrocities in the Saturday Evening Post, Wall Street Journal, and National Review represent a sampling of the American political right’s understanding, memory, and use of the Holocaust. A touchstone for evil in American culture and politics, few scholarly works have explored the origins of the Holocaust’s outsized role in American political discourse, and fewer have seriously considered the American right’s role in this evolution. Nazi atrocities assumed their role in American politics because the novelty of Nazi crimes against Jews and their post-war consequences received persistent media attention. On the American political right, the perception that the Nazi persecution of Jews was a matter of conscience and not identity enabled periodicals on the right to universalize the Holocaust as a violation of liberal and Christian values. This vision of Nazism and Communism as aspects of a modern “totalitarian” threat invited a conservative reaction, conflicting with identity-based understandings of the Holocaust that called for progression beyond a longer history of persecution.
Language
en
Number of Pages
135 p.
Recommended Citation
Farkas, Sandor, "An Ill-Suited Memorial? Nazi Atrocities In Publications On The American Right, 1930-1985" (2023). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 1742.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/1742
Included in
Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons, Political Science Commons, United States History Commons