Historian's Toolbox - Sources Excerpts PDF

9 Sources and Evidence History is, among other things, an argument based on sources and evidence that support that argument. Historians are not free to tell a story or make up an argument without supporting evidence. Evidence includes primary and secondary written sources (mainly documents) and non...

9 Sources and Evidence History is, among other things, an argument based on sources and evidence that support that argument. Historians are not free to tell a story or make up an argument without supporting evidence. Evidence includes primary and secondary written sources (mainly documents) and nonwritten sources—maps, artifacts, images, quantitative data, and genetic evidence. The evidence of the sources is the raw material of history and the historian’s most valuable tool. Historians should not argue or narrate beyond what the evidence demonstrates is the truth. History is nonfiction, not fiction. It is imaginative, but not imagined. 9.1 Primary and Secondary Sources Primary and secondary sources are the crucial tools of the historian. A primary source is a document, image, or artifact that provides evidence about the past. It is an original document created contemporaneously with the event under discussion. A direct quote from such a document is classified as a primary source. A secondary source is a book, article, film, or museum that displays primary sources selectively in order to interpret the past. The two passages below related to the Wannsee Protocol provide a good example of the distinction between a primary and a secondary source. The Wannsee Protocol was the account written during World War II by Adolf Eichmann, who was present at a confer- ence held on January 20, 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss the “final solution” of the “Jewish question.” The original document, written in German, is in the Archives of the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, and a translation is reprinted in 56  PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES 57 A. Grobman, D. Landes, and S. Milton, eds., Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust (Los Angeles: Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1983, 442–449). The first passage below is an excerpt from the Wannsee Protocol. It is a primary source. The second passage is an excerpt from Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). It is a secondary source, a book about the history of Holocaust denial. Primary Source: The Wannsee Protocol (1942) Under appropriate direction the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labor) columns, with the sexes separated, Jews capable of work will be moved into these areas as they build roads, during which a large propor- tion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction. The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; be- cause it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection [naturliche Auslese] that could, on its release, become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival. (Witness the experience of history.) Secondary Source: Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (2000) The “evacuation of the Jews” Eichmann describes cannot mean simple deportation to live elsewhere, since the Nazis had already been deporting Jews to the east, and Eichmann indicates this was inadequate. Instead, he outlines a new solution. Shipment to the east will mean, for those who can work, work until death, and (as we know from other sources) for those who cannot work, immediate death. What about those who can work and do not succumb to death? “The remnant that eventually re- mains will require suitable treatment.” Suitable treatment can only mean murder. Why? Eichmann explains that a natural selection (naturliche Auslese) in the Darwinian sense will make these Jews the most resistant (to death by exhaustion), meaning they will be the fittest—the young- est, healthiest, smartest, etc. Should this population of naturally selected Jews survive, they might (Eichmann fears) “become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival.” History, Eichmann points out, supports this theory of social Darwinism. 58 SOURCES AND EVIDENCE Illustration 9.1 Wannsee Protocol, January 20, 1942 L fi n 4 Etth l A. Altfolc Altfolch lji.eo o Altfolc Onmark 43-70 0 OatgwfcioS o 420.00 0 [^oiivirtilgouvi[^oi Altfolc [^oiivirtilgouvi i ivirtilgouvi. 2. 284-000 Bir.Iyatol Altfolcr 400.00 0 pralwfctora l Btli'jnuAltfolc n an d KU.iAltfolc rft n 74.20 0 EstXartt ! - Judenfro i - Lett lan d 3.50 0 Lltaue n 34.00 0 Balglcr. 0.00 0 Kiru