Talk:John Lukacs

Judaism?
I've gone ahead and removed the Judaism tag. Lukacs was ethnically half-Jewish but had no more to do with Judaism as a religion than any other Roman Catholic. I suspect that the inaccurate tag may have been the result of an Irving-like attempt to dismiss Lukacs' scholarship related to Hitler as the work of a "Jewish historian," as A.S. Brown notes below. Biasedbulldog (talk) 02:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Lukacs was half-Jewish, but he was a Roman Catholic by religion. It seems quite odd to have him be part of WikiProject Judaism... Biasedbulldog (talk) 22:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would agree with the above comment. As someone with some familiarity with his writings, I think Catholic historian might a better descriptive term for Lukacs. Since his mother converted to Catholicism before his birth, and Lukacs was raised as, and still is a Roman Catholic, and and as far as I am aware, he has never sought to maintain any sort of Jewish identity, I think it is much better to classify him as a Catholic. Moreover, and perhaps this is just me, but the determination to classify Lukacs as a Jewish historian because of his mother's original faith has unpleasant connotations. In the Nazi view of the world, Judaism was not a religion, but a “race”. Thus for the Nazis, those had Jewish “blood” were Jews regardless of what their religion was, which is why Lukacs during his youth was first forced to serve in a Hungarian labor battalion, and then second was scheduled for deportation to the death camps in 1944-45. Moreover, by classifying Lukacs as a Jewish historian, this page inadvertently aids the likes of David Irving, whom obsessively goes about how the “Jewish historian” Lukacs is supposedly waging some sort of vendetta against him. It is true that Lukacs has been a very high profile critic of Irving since the 1970s, but I think that has more to do with Lukacs’s concerns about Irving’s scholarship or lack thereof.--A.S. Brown (talk) 04:06, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Catholic Church
from John Lukacs: Visionary, Critic, Historian: "In the United States, even though I have been categorized among them, I have become more impatient with the conservatives when they are not truly conservatives. I’m a traditionalist. I’m not a defender of the Catholic Church. I don’t think the church is reactionary at all. I do believe the church was created by Christ, that the teachings of Christ are the pure gold, its people are not or rarely so, and gold without alloy is unusable. So the church and the people and priests may be—often are—fallible." NotPatBuchanan (talk) 00:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Paragraph re Newman
I removed the following paragraph:

"In the 1970s, Lukacs served as one of the advisors for the British historian Simon Newman’s book March 1939 concerning the reasons for the British “guarantee” of Poland in March 1939” . Newman’s book provoked much debate as Newman argued the “guarantee” was meant by Neville Chamberlain to start a war with Germany. Newman wrote that World War Two was not “Hitler’s unique responsibility…” and rather contended that “Instead of a German war of aggrandizement, the war become one of Anglo-German rivalry for power and influence, the culmination of the struggle for the right to determine the future configuration of Europe” "

The paragraph is misleading. The only reason to insert the paragraph is to imply that Lukacs in some way concurs with Newman's thesis, which he clearly does not (reading Five Days in London, The Duel, or The Last European War makes that entirely clear). The paragraph serves no explanatory purpose re Lukacs, because contributing research does not mean that he agrees with the author's thesis. If we included all the works that he contributed to in any way, the article would be absurdly long. Biasedbulldog (talk) 00:14, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Commentary on Goldhagen?
I wonder if Mr. Lukacs has ever commented publicly on Daniel Goldhagen and/or the latter's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners"? He seems like he would have a very interesting and critical response. Historian932 (talk) 00:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

A Thread of Years ≠ Novel
I changed "only novel" to "most experimental work." You could potentially call it a novel in the widest possible sense, but it's misleading. It is much closer to a short story collection than a novel, but then there are not really plots in the vignettes anyway. Biasedbulldog (talk) 06:08, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:16, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I've seen an Anti-Jewish quote from Lukacs, should it be included?
I read in a letter Lukacs' wrote that he thought the Jewish community had 'undue influence' in American political and intellectual life. That would suggest that, although Lukacs is racially Jewish, he holds moderately Anti-Jewish views, and would be evidence against Irving's denigration of Lukacs as a 'pro-Jewish historian'. Should that be included in the article? The book is Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George Kennan and John Lukacs. The quote is on page 247,. Should the quote be included to show Irving's description of Lukacs' is mistaken, or no?RandomScholar30 (talk) 10:32, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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