Guenter Lewy (22 August 1923 – 24 March 2026) was a German-born American author and political scientist who was a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His works spanned several topics, but he was most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the applicability of the term genocide to various historical events, including the Romani genocide and the Armenian genocide.
In 1939, he migrated from Germany to Palestine. After World War II, he migrated to the United States to reunite with his parents. Lewy earned a BA at City College in New York City and a MA and PhD at Columbia University. He was on the faculties of Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He later lived in Washington, D.C., and was a frequent contributor to Commentary. Lewy died in Bethesda, Maryland on 24 March 2026, at the age of 102.
Early life Lewy was born in Breslau, Germany, (now Wrocław, Poland) on 22 August 1923. At the age of nine, he joined a German-Jewish scouts organization called Die Greifen (lit. "the griffins"), which he has suggested was important in shaping his desire for an academic career.Ascher, Abraham. A Community Under Siege. 2007, pp. 53–4 Described by Lewy as a "quasi-Romantic" group, Die Greifen emphasized music, literature, and song, particularly Landsknechtlieder, encouraging the youths to avoid becoming "Spiessbürger" ("philistines"). By 1938, as persecution of Jews in Germany increased, Lewy began to lobby his family to leave Germany behind.Ascher, Abraham. A Community Under Siege. 2007, p. 190 After Kristallnacht, in November 1938, when his father was interned in Buchenwald for four months and he was beaten, his parents sent him to Mandatory Palestine. Later in the war, when Lewy was of fighting age, he joined the British Army and served in the Jewish Brigade.Glazer, Penina Migdal and Jacobson-Hardy, Michael. The Jews of Paradise. 2004, p. 60
Areas of research
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany
First published in 1964, Lewy's The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany has proven both controversial and influential.Marchione, Margherita. Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace. 2000, p. 213 Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy had appeared only a year earlier, indicting the Vatican for failing to act to save the Jews during the Holocaust; amidst the Vatican's outrage with the play, Lewy's text continued in the same vein, "One is inclined to conclude that the Pope and his advisers—influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles—did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage. For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid."Marchione, Margherita. Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace. 2000, pp. 16–17
The text received much praise, including that of Alfred Grosser, who characterized the text as a "terribly precise volume" which demonstrated that "all the documents show the Catholic Church cooperating with the Nazi regime".Afterword to Saul Friedländer, Pie XII et le IIIe Reich, Paris, Le Seuil, 1964. The Vatican opted to answer the critical allegations by releasing a series of documents aiming to refute the growing perception of the Vatican having been complicit in the Holocaust. One Jesuit priest answering Lewy's text on behalf of the Vatican suggested that Lewy's conclusions were based "not on the record but on a subjective conviction... This ready acceptance of a Nazi-inspired wartime legend is a measure of Lewy's inability to plumb the motives of Pius XII... There is no proof, in this book or anywhere else, that Pius XII thought Nazism was a 'bulwark' in defense of Christianity."
In the context of other historical works examining the legacy of the Vatican in the era of the Holocaust, Lewy's work has been described as "exceedingly harsh".Pawlikowski, John T. "The Holocaust: Failure in Christian Leadership?" in Grobman, Alex; Landes, Daniel; Milton, Sybil (eds.), Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust, Behrman House, 1983, pp. 292–293
America in Vietnam
Lewy had suggested that his America in Vietnam, published in 1978, would "clear away the cobwebs of mythology that inhibit the correct understanding of what went on—and what went wrong—in Vietnam."Campbell, Neil and Kean, Alsdair. American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture p. 255 The text, which argues against traditional or "orthodox" interpretations of the war as an unnecessary, unjust, and/or unwinnable war replete with disastrous mistakes and widespread American atrocities, has proven influential for many western scholars that share similar views of the conflict. It predated and influenced other reinterpretations including those of Norman Podhoretz, Mark Moyar, and Michael Lind. America in Vietnam thus attracted both criticism and support of Lewy for belonging to the "revisionist" school on Vietnam. Lewy argues,
It is the reasoned conclusion of this study... that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam war in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of officially, condoned illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance. Indeed, detailed examination of battlefield practices reveals that the loss civilian life in Vietnam was less great than in World War II and Korea and that concern with minimizing the ravages of the war was strong. To measure and compare the devastation and loss of human life caused by different war will be objectionable to those who repudiate or resort to military force as an instrument of foreign policy and may be construed as callousness. Yet as long as wars do take place at all it remains a moral duty to seek to reduce the agony caused by war, and the fulfillment of this obligation should not be disdained. I hope that this book may help demonstrate that moral convictions are not the exclusive possession of persons in conscience opposed to war, and that those who in certain circumstances accept the necessity and ethical justification of armed conflict also do care about human suffering.Lewy, Guenter, America in Vietnam, p. vii.
Lewy criticizes what he terms the "war crime industry", and what he perceives to be the double standards of the Western media, which, he alleged, neglected to report equally on the crimes of Vietnamese communists, giving the figure of 36,725 political assassinations perpetrated by the VC/NVA between 1957 and 1972.Lewy, Guenter, America in Vietnam, pp. 311–24, 454. About the crimes committed by American soldiers, Lewy asserts that "between January 1965 and March 1973, 201 Army personnel in Vietnam were convicted by court-martial of serious offenses against Vietnamese. During the period of March 1965 to August 1971, 77 Marines were convicted of serious crimes against Vietnamese."Lewy, Guenter, America in Vietnam, p. 324.
In recalling the 1971 congressional testimony of some American veterans who were critical of the war, one of whom compared American action in Vietnam to genocide, Lewy suggests that some "witnesses sounded as if they had memorized North Vietnamese propaganda."Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam. p. 317: "The results of the investigation, carried out by the Naval Investigative Service, are interesting and revealing. Many of the veterans, though assured that they would not be questioned about the atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities. A black marine who agreed to be interviewed was unable to provide details of the outrages he had described at the hearing, but he called the Vietnam war "one huge atrocity" and "a racist plot." He admitted that the question of atrocities had not occurred to him while he was in Vietnam, and that he had been assisted in the preparation of his testimony by a member of the Nation of Islam. But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name." The book is critical of domestic opponents of American participation in the Vietnam War. In using the phrases "peace activists" or "peace demonstrations", Lewy often puts quotation marks around the word "peace", implying alternative motivations for the activism. The author alleges a possible connection between cases of sabotage in the Navy and the anti-war movement: "Between 1965 and 1970, the Navy experienced a growing number of cases of sabotage and arson on its ships, but no evidence could be found that antiwar activists had directly participated in a sabotage attempt on a Navy vessel. Cases of fragging and avoidance of combat may well have been instigated at times by antiwar militants, though no hard evidence of organized subversion was ever discovered."Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam. p. 159
The text was praised by Vietnam veteran and United States Senator Jim Webb, Andrew J. Pierre of Foreign Affairs, and by several newspapers, including The Economist, which described it as "in many ways the best history of the war yet to appear".America in Vietnam, paperback, 1980. Critics included historians of the "orthodox" school as well as polemical critics such as linguist and Vietnam War opponent Noam Chomsky.Noam Chomsky's review of America in Vietnam is titled ""On the aggression of South Vietnamese peasants against the United States" ", collected in his book, Towards a New Cold War, (New York: Pantheon/Random House, 1982), . "every state has its Guenter Lewys who will stretch an elastic legal code to accommodate whatever atrocities 'military necessity' and available military technology find convenient." Chomsky, after being singled out for criticism by Lewy in the book, wrote that "every state has its Guenter Lewys". According to Chomsky, Lewy's "concept of the writing of moral-historical tracts... is misrepresentation of documents, uncritical regurgitation of government claims, and dismissal of annoying facts that contradict them, and [his] concept of morality is such as to legitimate virtually any atrocity against civilians once the state has issued its commands."
Winter Soldier Investigation
America in Vietnam, which appeared seven years after the Winter Soldier Investigation, became controversial in the context of the 2004 United States presidential election. Presidential hopeful John Kerry had been involved with the Winter Soldier Investigation; in the context of the campaign, Lewy's suggestion that the Winter Soldier Investigation was dishonest and politically motivated was frequently cited to impugn John Kerry's reputation. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the group of which Kerry had been a part, alleged that American war policy and conduct in Vietnam was resulting in war crimes being committed. Lewy suggests that the group used "fake witnesses" in the Winter Soldier hearing in Detroit, and that its allegations were formally investigated.