Re: SV: Saving Germany and liberating Estonia, Finland, Latvia, andLithuania 1918-23

[John King <john.king@st-johns.oxford.ac.uk>]

> > Walter Laqueur -a zionist militant-- should be a very dubious source
> > in anything related to the Free Korps, indeed.

I should like to point out that my criticism of Laqueur was based on his
tendancy to pass overly homogenous judgements with insufficient
differentiation. The suggestion that his work might be of dubious quality
because he is Jewish is one that I explicitly reject.

Furthermore, I believe that *all* historical research and discourse
emerges from an interaction between the historian's present and the
recoverable artefacts and documents (and whatever else) he or she is
working on. What makes the arts and humanities so interesting is the
debate between scholars who bring new perspectives which constantly
evolve. Thus, to reject someone's work because they have their own
position is to misunderstand what the arts and humanities are about. (That
said, we often have to pretend we have reached oracular certainty in our
research because that's what the rhetorical rules say, but that's a
completely different point).

BTW, let's also not forget that the Freikorps were extremely brutal in
their indiscriminate political violence suppressing left-wing
insurrection. Following the Baltic expedition they were also involved in
politically motivated murder and terrorism.

JK
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John King
St. John's College	
GB - Oxford OX1 3JP
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