Sunday, July 24, 2011

Who really orders these DVDs?

I could be totally wrong about this and bringing too much of myself to this post, but I am very suspicious of these Time/Life videos. It seems highly disingenuous of the makers to suggest that these are fascinating chronicles for those many many scholars interested in the rise of the Nazi machine. I am sure they are just as frequently ordered by weirdos who, if not actual Nazi sympathizers, get some kind of charge out of the horror of these videos. I can't imagine spending money so that I can settle down for an evening and watch the horrors of concentration camps, the paranoiac fear that pervaded Berlin in the early days, and seeing how easily an entire society could suddenly start turning on its neighbors and turning in its friends. There is no question this was a fascinating, if horrendous, chapter in history. And, while we certainly shouldn't forget what happened it seems morbid to me to want to relive it through actual videos. I suspect the Time/Life series, "The Nazis, A Warning from History" profits from sickos as well as scholars. And I don't think this would come as any surprise to the marketing department, who couldn't care less.

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