Dr Hayward and Issues, A

Statements on Relevant Issues

In 1991, the very year that I wrote my supposedly "Holocaust denial" thesis, I strongly condemned anti-Semites' attempts to blame the Gulf War on "the Jews":

"The obvious nonsense of anti-Semitic arguments … confirms my belief that anti-Semitism is as irrational as, say, arachnophobia, the obsessive fear of spiders, and has little to do with a person's intelligence or education. In our technological, sophisticated and cosmopolitan world, how else can we explain the persistence of a two-thousand-year-old prejudice — a prejudice which drives intelligent men and women to possess and expound such hateful, unbalanced and illogical views?"

-- The New Zealand Jewish Chronicle,

Vol. 48, No. 8 June 1991, p. 17.

My 1993 public condemnation of Adolf Hitler (from an article by me on my hero, the black American athlete — Jesse Owens):

"Hitler was undeniably a racist … [His] terrible crimes will always render unsuccessful any attempts to cast him in a positive light."

-- The Press, 25 October 1993, p. 13

A 199>8 public condemnation of Adolf Hitler (from an interview with me about my books on World War II history):

"I think the reason for the German people's [1930s] fascination for Hitler is that he seemed to offer a way out of their difficulties. Instead, he led them to destruction and barbarism."

--The Weekend Herald, 8-9 August 1998, p. 11.

Another 1998 public condemnation of Adolf Hitler (from an interview with me about my expertise and books on World War II history):

"I don't have any respect for Hitler, not even a grudging respect. I acknowledge that he was a remarkably gifted man but one who wasted everything those gifts provided for him. He was a very cruel and murderous man. … he made some absurd and cruel decisions. The world rightly sees him as a brute".

--The Dominion, 29 December 1998, p. 11.

My 1999 criticism of the claim that Serbs were conducting not only the ethnic cleansing [a true assessment], but also the "genocide "of Kosovars:

"The consequence of this [media] misrepresentation is to diminish the horror and uniqueness of true genocides, particularly that experienced by Europe's Jews under the Nazis. … Neither Serbs nor Croats nor Bosnian Muslims had anything resembling the Nazis' 'racial hygiene' policy. In short, they [the Balkans states] had no policy or practice of extermination".

--The Evening Standard, 5 April 1999.

"[Heinz] Magenheimer's book also seems to give new life to the old myths that most of Hitler's senior generals and marshals … were unwilling passengers on the German war machine and that few participated in aggressive war planning or knew about the barbarous crimes committed against Jews and others.

"[Omar] Bartov and others have shattered these myths, showing that the German Army (including most of its leadership) was not an apolitical, "professional" fighting force that lacked sympathy with Hitler's world view and military ambitions. …

"[Norman] Rich, [Gerhard] Weinberg and other scholars who focus on the relationship between Nazi ideology, foreign policy and military strategy have demonstrated convincingly that Hitler really did steer Germany into world war, even though he may have planned a different timetable. Except for a few deviations, Hitler's policies and actions followed his constantly evolving but ever-present 'blueprint' for expansion, which was based primarily on a long-held racist worldview (eventually bearing hideous fruit in the form of the Holocaust)."

-- Dr Joel Hayward, "Adolf Hitler as War Leader,"

in C. Messenger, ed., Reader's Guide to Military History, p. 232.

I wrote this entry in late 1999, more than a year before this huge and highly praised reference-work’s 2001 publication.

Posted by me on the Nizkor internet site on Sunday 9 Jan 2000 [that is, well before Canterbury University’s "trial"]

Source: http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/h/hayward.joel/ftp.py?people/h/hayward.joel//email-statement.000108

To: webmaster@nizkor.org
From: Dr Joel Hayward

I have NO connection to racist organisations or individuals

Their efforts to present me as somehow being supportive of their activities really annoy me!

A statement by Dr Joel Hayward

In response to several ill-considered e-mails received since posting my homepage to the web I would like to state something that, as a scholar with no political or ideological axes to grind, I had considered obvious (and therefore unnecessary of mention):

My academic interest in Wehrmacht operational history and my decision to write a book on Adolf Hitler's effectiveness as a military commander do not stem from admiration for Hitler or from a desire to rehabilitate his reputation, much less to deny his cruelty to Jews and others. I am certainly pleased that the Allies soundly defeated his Third Reich.

I also wish to state that I am NOT affiliated or involved with individuals or organisations that seek to rehabilitate the Nazis and/or attack Jews and others. I deplore the views of those people.

I am aware that several of those people have used my name or reprinted articles from my homepage — or quoted from a thesis I once wrote on Holocaust historiography when I was a young Master's student with relatively little experience of the historian's craft — in a pathetic attempt to add academic credibility to their anti-Semitic campaigns.

So let me say, once and for all, I do not deny the Holocaust! I do not
adhere to conspiratorial views that Jews somehow "invented" the Holocaust in order to gain reparations and to finance the State of Israel. I consider those claims baseless and anti-Semitic.

To be more specific, I state emphatically my rock-solid belief, based on extensive archival research and a thorough reading of published sources, that European Jewry did indeed suffer a ghastly Holocaust. They suffered dreadfully during the 1930s and especially during WWII, when Germans and others maltreated, enslaved and murdered (including by gassing) great numbers (and I have no doubt that MILLIONS died). Hitler and his regime caused those deaths and therefore deserve our condemnation.

My own opinion about race and culture, for those who may be interested, is easy to express: I do not believe that race or culture determines moral attributes. I do not believe that ANY race or culture is better or worse than another. Moreover, I believe that we should treat racism like pornography. That is, we should take a zero tolerance stance and demonstrate that we will NOT accept it in our communities.

Dr Joel Hayward,
Senior Lecturer in Defence and Strategic Studies,
Massey University

9 Jan 2000