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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsExcerpt from "They Thought They Were Free" -- The Germans, 1933-45 Milton Mayer
We need to stay focused on the gradualism of the danger to this country.
Please read this historical reminder.
My take on our national events is this: I'd much rather be a wrong pessimist than a wrong optimist.
You know, it doesnt make people close to their government to be told that this is a peoples government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing...
...it consumed all ones energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.
...it consumed all ones energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.
"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. One had no time to think. There was so much going on."
"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway.
"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway.
I do not speak of your little men, your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to.
Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think aboutwe were decent peopleand kept us so busy with continuous changes and crises and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the national enemies, without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think aboutwe were decent peopleand kept us so busy with continuous changes and crises and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the national enemies, without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice itplease try to believe meunless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop.
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted, that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these little measures that no patriotic German could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted, that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these little measures that no patriotic German could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
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Excerpt from "They Thought They Were Free" -- The Germans, 1933-45 Milton Mayer (Original Post)
ancianita
Apr 2019
OP
msongs
(67,420 posts)1. oddly enough after the war hardly any germans would admit they liked hitler nt
triron
(22,007 posts)2. We are clearly heading there.
I don't see anything changing that.
Demonaut
(8,919 posts)3. who wants to think?
I hope we thinkers will prevail
ancianita
(36,092 posts)5. One point from the essay is how thinkers are isolated, shut down, then forced to go along because
they really did nothing all along, as systems, one by one, disappeared their voices and actions.
I'll post that sequence. It's deep.
Demonaut
(8,919 posts)6. I understand, I like it
after WWII we all asked why?, but we decided they were monsters..all of them..but they weren't, they were your neighbors, your teachers, your common laborers. the nurses and Doctors, the police.
ancianita
(36,092 posts)7. They were "undecideds," "moderates," nice church people, too.
world wide wally
(21,744 posts)4. They couldn't see the forest through the trees
ancianita
(36,092 posts)8. "...the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves"
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.
You dont want to act, or even talk, alone; you dont want to go out of your way to make trouble. Why not?Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
...but how do you know for sure when you dont know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
You dont want to act, or even talk, alone; you dont want to go out of your way to make trouble. Why not?Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
...but how do you know for sure when you dont know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things.
This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent toto what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent toto what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. Thats the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shockedif, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in 43 had come immediately after the German Firm stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in 33.
But of course this isnt the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
But of course this isnt the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you ... you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live inyour nation, your peopleis not the world you were born in at all.
The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.
Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed.
Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
triron
(22,007 posts)9. Prophetic or sociological explanation, it ends up being the same path.
ancianita
(36,092 posts)10. Agreed. And now, without the Big Shocking Official Revelation, there must be
no falling away with comforting distractions.