Many thanks to Don Coffin for posting the link to Donald Kuehn's very  
enlightening blog post regarding Keynes's preface to the German  
edition of the General Therory. Kuehn's excellent discussion would  
seem to absolve Keynes of any sympathy with Nazi or other totalitarian  
political regimes.
On Nov 21, 2011, at 8:08 PM, Coffin, Donald A wrote:

> Or this: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2010/07/keyness-foreword-to-german-edition-of.html
>
> Don Coffin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]  
> On Behalf Of Womack, John
> Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 5:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [SHOE] FW: [SHOE] Backhouse and Bateman, "Wanted: Worldly  
> Philosophers"
>
> If any contestant in this discussion has not yet read it, would he  
> or she please read B. Schefold, "The 'General Theory' for a  
> Totalitarian State? A Note on Keynes's Preface to the German Edition  
> of 1936," Cambridge Journal of Economics, IV, 2 (June 1980),  
> 175-176, reprinted in John Cunningham Wood, ed., John Maynard  
> Keynes, Critical Assessments, second series, 8 vols. (London,  
> 1983-94), V, 52-54?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]  
> On Behalf Of James C.W. Ahiakpor
> Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 3:50 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [SHOE] Backhouse and Bateman, "Wanted: Worldly  
> Philosophers"
>
> E. Roy Weintraub wrote:
>> In my soon to appear "Keynesian Historiography and the Anti-Semitism
>> Question" (History of Political Economy, vol. 44 no. 1 (2012), pp.
>> 41-67), I quote from a letter from Patinkin to Skidelsky in which he
>> referred to Keynes' unpublished note on Einstein as "even worse than
>> the morally insensitive Preface to the German edition". Skidelsky has
>> a discussion of the German Preface of course. Put another way, and to
>> reconnect to the Subject line, this is well-known "old stuff" for
>> Keynes scholars like Bateman and Backhouse.
> A logical and important question then is, Did Keynes write the  
> preface in German himself or was that a translator's rendition or  
> embelishment?
> In the concluding paragraph (p. xxvii), Keynes acknowledges his  
> "indebtedness  to the excellent work of [his] translator Herr  
> Waeger ..."  Are the significant differences between the English and  
> German versions due to Herr Waeger?  After all, I've also heard some  
> Keynes defenders (or scholars) argue that his theory is supposed to  
> be relevant to a "depressed economy," not a "general theory" as he  
> himself claims in the book.
>
> James Ahiakpor
>
> --
> James C.W. Ahiakpor, Ph.D.
> Professor
> Department of Economics
> California State University, East Bay
> Hayward, CA 94542
>
> (510) 885-3137 Work
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