>Robert K makes these interesting remarks about Hitler
>forcing people to take extreme positions on what up to
>Nazism might have been just their run-of-the-mill,
>"banal" antisemitism.  Either they regarded Hitler as
>the evil guy, or the Jews as evil.
>
>But, Robert, you leave out alternative reaction #3, the
>most common: complete apathy.
>
>==Dan P
 
Um, this was actually my speculation rather than Robert's.  Except
for the first few lines, Robert's whole letter was simply a quote
of mine.
 
Perhaps I made the remarks you're responding to overly general.
I should probably have restricted myself to comments on Pound
rather than speaking of society as a whole.  I certainly make
no claim to be a social historian.  But what I meant is that
my impression is that before the War, anti-semitism was pretty
much taken for granted and not a matter of any great controversy
among a large part of the (non-Jewish) population in Europe and
the United States. This was what I meant by the word "banal."
If I'm incorrect in this impression, I'd certainly like to be
corrected by those who are more expert than myself.
 
Before the War, Pound was apparently only mildly anti-semitic.
As someone has already mentioned, in the blacked-out lines in
Canto 52 he said that it was unreasonable to hold the average
Jew responsible for the crimes (as he saw it) of the Rothschilds
and other Jewish major bankers and financiers.
 
However as word of Hitler's treatment of the Jews become widespread
in the late Thirties and early Forties (which Pound would certainly
have known about via broadcasts over the BBC), my speculation is
that Pound would have found a casual anti-semitism less and less
defensible.  One choice would have been for him to have backed off
from his anti-semitism, which I think is what most people
confronted with this conflict in feelings did.  Or he could
resolve the cognitive dissonance by developing even stronger
justifications for his anti-semitism, thus intensifying it.
 
I have no special knowledge to justify my speculation here.
But it's the only hypothesis I can come up with which seems
consistent with the known facts.