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Magda Goebbels, heart of darkness [Part II] — 65 Comments

1. “It can be difficult, from the perspective of years, to understand the draw of men such as Goebbels and Hitler. To us, they seem mad; their speeches so much barking and raving. But for too many Germans they wove a spell which didn’t seem diabolical at the time, although it undoubtedly was, and should have been clearly seen as such.”

   I once felt the same difficulty in understanding but ‘after Obama’, no longer do.

   If the ‘right’ circumstances arose, I can easily see Obama, forcing millions of Americans into re-education camps. Then, either eliminating the irreformable or sending them to American gulags in Antarctica. Does anyone doubt he would do so had he the power?

   For those who still doubt, there’s this and this and to ensure progress toward a compliant military, this…

2. Who goes Nazi?

3. As you point out, Magda wasn’t the only one who bought the program in the beginning. So, while it is possible that her failing was unique, it’s more likely that it was similar to that of so many others. Whatever that was. Here we get into speculation about the German character, which is fruitless. Whatever example of evil of whatever kind is committed by an individual. Mass evil is committed by a lot of individuals. What makes them run parallel? One can assert, but one cannot prove.
   The other interesting part is what a person knew and when they knew it and what they thought about it. And what they did, if anything, differently.
   It’s been overlooked, imo, that the result of objecting to participating in some of the homefront horrors would be a transfer to the Eastern Front. That might keep people showing up at reveille. I believe it was Goebbels in a speech to the party who referred to some executioners who’d eventually gotten the willies; “To those whose nerves are broken, we say, take your pensions, go.” This demonstrates that there were a lot of them around and there was a retirement plan in place for them and the powers-that-be knew how tough this was even for volunteer executioners [by definition not normal people]. That is organization for you.
   How on earth did so many people do so many awful things? Either any nation can do this badly, or there’s something specific about the German character, which is probably a topic forbidden to public discussion. By default, that leaves everybody does it or could do it or did it, which is probably bogus.
   And Magda was just one of millions.
   As to her kids. I think Josef, if not she, were in a wonderful position to know about the SS ratline shipping bad actors out of the Reich in advance of the Allies. If they’d made up their minds, possibly even a month earlier, arrangements could have been made.

4. Richard Aubrey:

   I have come to the conclusion that although Germans have some special characteristics (as do many nationalities), that it could happen almost anywhere. Including the US at present.

   A number of things have led me to my belief that Germans were not all that unusual in their propensity for something like Nazism. One is the fact that only about a third of the German people supported it initially. I’ve noticed that a third of the population of many countries (including the US) tend to be extreme.

   Another was that the German people were lied to and deceived by the Nazis, as well as subjected to a constant level of threats. I wonder at times whether the majority of the people even supported the war by the time it came. Part of the reason I think that has been my reading of Victor Klemperer’s diaries. They are really extraordinary, and indicate a lot of resentment and hatred of ordinary Germans towards Hitler (as well as ignorance of some of his worst offenses), combined with a sense of powerlessness to do anything.

   That doesn’t mean Germans were innocent. Many were guilty, very guilty. But I’m not at all sure it was a higher percentage of the population than would have been found in most countries. It’s a big topic, too big to go into much in this comment, but I have really come to wonder.

5. “One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals – justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission or emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution.

   “Utopias have their value – nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities – but as guides to conduct they can prove literally fatal. […] So I conclude that the very notion of a final solution is not only impracticable but, if I am right, and some values cannot but clash, incoherent also. The possibility of a final solution – even if we forget the terrible sense that these words acquired in Hitler’s day – turns out to be an illusion; and a very dangerous one.”
   – Isaiah Berlin

   The final solution, whether in pursuit of a thousand year Aryan Reich or a liberal utopia always — always – trumps coherency. It all brings to mind — my mind – Hobsbawm’s Law: The essential Leftist/Marxist/Progressive ideology: If it saves but one life it is worth the death of millions.

   One would need know no more than to have read Berlin’s two paragraphs, have a basic understanding as to what ‘millions’ means, and have just a basic human imagination as what it means to have that number applied to human beings sacrificed in the 20th century to the theories of the progressive 19th. He had it all wrong who said “first we kill all the lawyers”, but then, he hadn’t lived in the age of the social theorist.

6. “That doesn’t mean Germans were innocent. Many were guilty, very guilty. But I’m not at all sure it was a higher percentage of the population than would have been found in most countries. It’s a big topic, too big to go into much in this comment, but I have really come to wonder” … Who Goes Nazi?

7. Who Goes Nazi?:
   “I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize,” said Gertrude Stein in 1934.

8. Gertrude found a there there:
   Gertrude Stein and Vichy

   Plus é§a change plus c’est la méªme chose:
   Code Pink Leaders Attend Anti-Semitic Holocaust Denial Conference in Tehran

9. George Pal Says:
   March 11th, 2015 at 4:41 pm
   “One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals – justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission or emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution…
   Hmmm…: Dietrich Eckart

10. neo-neocon,

    I agree with your conclusion.

    Sadly our modern world does not lack political leaders desirous of religious, ethnic, racial or economic genocide, nor does it lack citizens willing to carry out their will.

    They lack only the technical and/or organizational wherewithal to make it happen, not the will and ideology. North Korea, Iran, ISIL, Rwanda, South Africa, Tibet, Kurdistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Israel, Cameroon, Congo, Nigeria, Egypt, Libya… All have been recent sights of genocide and could easily erupt into a holocaust tomorrow.

11. Unfortunately, I don’t think the Nazis were uniquely evil. They were uniquely successful, perhaps, but the passions they appealed to always lie latent in the human heart. And the philosophy–I mean the actual academic philosophies of their time (and ours)–was nihilistic and cynical, to the extent of doubting whether anything can be known at all, robbing people of moral restraint. Will to live–to experience, to conquer–becomes all.

12. g6loq’s refererence to Gertrude Stein reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic. Every society seems to have an artsy/intellectual class that loves to play head games in which the only losers are the poor unenlightened slobs that serve as chess pieces.

13. expat Says:
    March 11th, 2015 at 5:26 pm

    BINGO!
    Vision of the Anointed, T. Sowell

    Elites’ Sacrificial Victims VDH

    All this is going on in our times and, not “unexamined” as a shrink would say … hey! Some of them are shrinks … [insert demented laughter]

14. I believe it was Goebbels in a speech to the party who referred to some executioners who’d eventually gotten the willies; “To those whose nerves are broken, we say, take your pensions, go.”
    ——————–

    Ironically, Himmler was among those who had problems. The initial plan for liquidating the Jews involved firing squads. But when Himmler attended an early “demonstration”, he got the hysterics. As a result, the Nazis looked for another method of slaughtering the Jews, and the solution that they came up with was gassing.

15. Pingback:Maggie's Farm

16. I know that many people get upset and ask how society could let it happen. But, I look at how difficult it is to stand for the right things in today’s society where information and support is at least widely distributed. I look at how the MSM can take people down and I shudder.

    Heck – I look at the elderly Christian baker and admire her commitment, and wonder if I could stand in the same fashion for what I believe in.

    And of course, there was no way for other Germans to know how many felt like them.

    The longer I live, the less I blame the regular citizens.

17. Juli Says:
    March 11th, 2015 at 6:00 pm

    And of course, there was no way for other Germans to know how many felt like them.

    The longer I live, the less I blame the regular citizens….

    I blame the voters ….

    junior Says:
    March 11th, 2015 at 5:42 pm

    Yes, Herr Himmler was a sensitive soul who depended on his masseurs

    I have a number of absolutely inane bookmarks on all the sorry people of that era. Some of them obviously are nowadays reincarnated … or something like that. Burp!

18. Difficult to comment on this w/o breaking Godwin’s Law. Never again … except maybe if we’re bored, ignorant. spineless, and greedy and want to think of ourselves as clever and complex and morally righteous but can’t be bothered to actually put in the work that all that requires.

19. g6loq’s link to Dorothy Thomson’s article “Who Goes Nazi?” caught my attention and after reading it, this seemed most noteworthy;

    “It’s fun–a macabre sort of fun–this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things–asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

    Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes–you’ll never make Nazis out of them.

    But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success–they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

    Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

    Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t-whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”

    Thomson’s insights into ‘Who would go Nazi?’ ties in nicely with a survivor of the Nazi death camps, Victor Frankl’s observation; “The world is divided into two races – the decent and the indecent.”

    Which is in agreement with a common native American insight that within all resides a white (good) and a dark (bad) wolf and which claims us is determined by which we feed. Another tradition is the struggle within all of God and Satan for our soul.

    Not too many today are familiar with Thomson but that is the world’s loss;

    “Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893 — 30 January 1961) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt.[1] She is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934 and as one of the few women news commentators on radio during the 1930s.[2] She is regarded fondly by some as the “First Lady of American Journalism.”

    Thompson’s most significant work abroad took place in Germany in the early 1930s. While working in Munich, Thompson met and interviewed Adolf Hitler for the first time in 1931. This would be the basis for her subsequent book, I Saw Hitler. She wrote about the dangers of Hitler winning power in Germany.[2] Thompson described Hitler in the following terms: “He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure. He is the very prototype of the little man.”[7]

    Later, when the full force of Nazism had crashed over Europe, Thompson was asked to defend her “Little Man” remarks; it seemed she had underestimated Hitler.”

    I suspect it was less a case of underestimation as that in 1931, Hitler had a lot less confidence than he did in 1936. Confidence impresses, timidity creates dismissal.

    I also think that Thomson’s criteria of “Who would go Nazi?’ fits Obama and many others on the left to a ‘T’.

20. In a way, what happened to Magda happened to the German nation as a whole. World War II and the Third Reich are subjects of endless fascination and commentary, but we are far from understanding them.

    the German nation as a whole. World War II and the Third Reich are subjects of endless fascination and commentary only, we need to look further even after the WWII?
    Postwar Rape: Were ………..

21. I wonder how helpful it is to say “nice people don’t go Nazi.” Are we good at figuring out who the “nice people” are? Or are we routinely fooled by people whose niceness is merely conditional–people who, like Hitler himself, can be warm and sympathetic or unspeakably callous, depending on whom they’re dealing with?

22. Stv,

    Certainly there war rape by American GIs of German women. That said, its obvious that the researcher has an axe to grind and thus her conclusions are highly questionable. There should have also been comparable numbers of rapes of Japanese women but where are the reports of such?

    Mead,

    It’s a given that Thomson was speaking of genuinely nice people. Bad people frequently pretend to be nice, nice people do not pretend to be mean.

23. Geoffrey Britain & Mead

    “Nice people” more likely to follow Nazi orders. “Does that mean the Nazis were just nice people trying to follow orders and be polite? You probably wouldn’t want to go that far, but suffice to say, it turns out nice people just want to appease authorities, while rebels stick to their guns.” Stick to, bitterly cling to, whatever. here

    Yawn! By now we know all that stuff, Prisoners Experiment and such …

    In our current system I blame the voters …

    TWICE!

    Also, I don’t like the silence of the Womyn of the land about … Mooooslimes.

24. You don’t have to fool everybody. Not even half. You only have to fool enough people to access the levers of power.

25. Thanks for the link g6loq. A fascinating reading.

    The “frustrated and humiliated intellectual” part resonates with my own experience with people whom I suspected of (well-dissimulated) totalitarian tendencies. I tend to be careful, I try not to give in to my own presumption about this sort of people, but sometimes I am taken aback by a sudden realization that a person next to me, as brilliant as he is, would be among those who would “go Nazi”, given only the right set of circumstances. It is a chilling thought.

    A verse from Milton comes to my mind, “high disdan from sense of injured merit”. This “sense of injured merit” captures, I think, some of the core psychological dynamic that lures intellectuals into betrayal. I saw some of it in banal contexts, at the university, as one gets to meet genuinely intelligent people – and not of _noticeably_ dubious morals at that point – but in whom one could descry a sort of a latent capacity for great evil.

26. I think the argument that the horrors of Naziism were the result of something specific in the German character is actually dangerous. While the specific manifestation of totalitarianism that occurred no doubt was influenced by German culture and history, no country is inherently exempt. (If one had been asked, in the early 1900s, to select the country where extreme anti-Semitic persecution was most likely, a majority of intelligent observers would probably have tended to pick France rather than Germany,)

    I agree with Geoffrey Britain’s point: the reaction of large numbers of Americans to the events of the Obama administration show that there are a lot of potential supporters of totalitarianism in America today.

27. May be of interest: I have a cluster of posts relating to this topic: Germany’s Descent into Naziism

    http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/46723.html

28. Continued …
    Yawn! By now we know all that stuff, Prisoners Experiment and such … Oops, forgot that one:
    The Third Wave

    In our system I blame the voters … TWICE!

    I am G6LOQ bitter clinger ….

29. I have not been to Europe in many many years but I was in both Hamburg and Paris just a few days apart. I noticed the good Germans obeyed the don’t walk signs and the Parisians paid no attention. What does that mean?

    Also, I see no reason that ethnic cleansing won’t continue here (keeping in mind great grand pa was a Little Big Horn survivor). The new invaders will drive out the old invaders.

30. I write only to thank David Foster and Geoffrey Britain for their thoughts. and for Neo’s enabling lead-in.

31. “Nice people” more likely to follow Nazi orders.” g6loq

    People who willingly follow Nazi like orders are by definition NOT actually ‘nice people’, they are people who go along, to get along. They are fine with whatever the prevailing ethos is and invariably, they are not people of principled morality/ethics.

    Perhaps a much better characterization is someone whose character is one of inherent integrity, rather than ‘nice’.

32. Geoffrey Britain
    My bad, I was too brief. Should’ve emphasized to click at link:
    “Nice people” more likely to follow Nazi orders.

33. I read the link. Pop psychology, far too shallow and facile. There are certainly many ‘nice’ people who are agreeable because they are non-confrontational.

    People of character, who do the ‘right thing’, especially when it will cost them to take the ethically correct action and/or to refrain from morally incorrect actions are not merely ‘nice’ people, they are above all ‘decent’ (not socially correct) people and it is their moral decency that will not allow them to comply with harmful orders.

    Milgram’s ‘rebels’ to whom the article refers are anti-authoritarian… until they are the authority figure and then, far more often than not, they are the most ruthless. It’s not accidental that in a land of (relative) freedom, the rebels are on the left and as they gain power, their lust for control of others has less and less self-limitation.

34. Geoffrey Britain
    Totally agree … pop psychology. The fact that we Citizen of the United States of America have to discuss propensity for obedience leaves me speechless. And, that TWICE thingy …

    From comments at link:
    As Aristotle pointed out, “Some men are born slaves, and others know very well how to handle them.”
    As the Russian proverb has it: “When the people are sheep, the government is a wolf.”

    Land of the go along to get along?

35. The Nazis were the upper leadership and enforcement branches. Which would basically be the union leaders and the communist politicians look at it from the US side.

    Everybody else are merely the puppets and tools, they are as good or as evil as their orders tell them to be.

    Germany, as a culture, tends to believe in order and a strict hierarchy. So once the leadership is taken over, most people in the 95% of the pop will obey. Japan is the same way.

    America is also the same way, actually, although there’s a very strong independent faction of patriots. They aren’t the super majority, however. They weren’t even during the American Revolution.

    There were stories about French village chiefs or priests refusing the Vichy’s orders to hand over Jewish refugees. There’s a few methods to disobey Authority.

    1. When your real boss overrides those orders in a hierarchy (like God).

    2. When you have an internal motivation that is stronger than anything that can be brought to make you submit externally.

36. The End of Life is Death. If one wishes for a final solution, that is as final as it can be. The fact that the Leftist alliance is a death cult like their allies in the Islamic Jihad, is a hint.

37. All good comments. I’m also remembering from my reading that people were Shocked that Germans — GERMANS! the most civilized nation in Europe!!! — would do such dreadful things.

    Then when WW II was over, the song changed to “Only the Germans would do such dreadful things!”

    The poet and survivor who wrote the script for Nuit et Brouillard (“Night and Fog”) didn’t think so. Still the most powerful film ever made about the Nazi concentration camps.

    — And this still is on my mind. I think it’s very significant: the Brownshirt tactics (yes, literally) of Obama’s machine against Hillary’s supporters in the Dem. primaries in 2008. If any of you have missed it, you must see the (unfinished) documentary “We Will Not Be Silenced,” here:

    http://wewillnotbesilenced2008.com/

38. Years ago I read Mein Kampf to see if there was anything in the book which would have alerted its readers that Hitler was preparing for a holocaust. The only hint I picked up was that Hitler was obsessed with Jews and their supposed power. That came later. Frankly, after reading the book, HITLER’S TABLE TALK, I doubt Hitler himself imagined at the time that he was capable of the Holocaust. While traveling through a part of Germany in which Germans had burned witches, Hitler remarked about how terrible that was and that he didn’t want to be remembered for crimes like that.

    The Nazis’ original plan was apparently to expel the Jews and let them live elsewhere. The Nazi leaders considered various locations for a future Jewish homeland with Palestine and Madagascar as top potential destinations. Palestine was the natural choice but the Nazis needed the Muslims as allies and the Muslims refused to take them. Scholars like Bernard Lewis believe that the present Jew hatred in Islam is a recently contacted contagion which came from the Nazis. That is probably not how things happened. The Nazis and antisemitic Muslim leaders probably conspired in the decision to commit genocide together. While the Germans seemed to recognize that the Holocaust was a crime against humanity and tried to hide the death camps the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem appeared to glory in the death camps and is reported to have told the Germans to exterminate Jews even faster. While many Europeans still feel guilt and shame for the crimes of the Nazis there is no indication that the Muslims have had any regrets whatsoever. Like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem the present Islamists’ only regret is that the Holocaust was not completed.

    In many ways Magda Goebbels and her suicide/murder is the beginning of a larger suicide which involves all Europe. Western European leaders are so fearful of “racism” that they will not protect themselves or their own. They have assumed a collective guilt which prevents them from defending themselves from a flood of hostile unassimilated invaders. They In other words modern European leaders are committing cultural suicide against themselves and their children through unrestrained immigration. The fact that many of these immigrants are deeply antisemitic themselves and have no guilt about their role in the Holocaust makes the Europeans feel better about themselves.

    Guilt is a good thing since it can produce a moral people who are capable of self governance and generosity. Guilt is necessary for a free people. However, guilt is only good if it is counterbalanced by the ability to forgive oneself. That is where the Christian gospel comes in to play to balance guilt with forgiveness. Europe is now in the post Christian era and the European leaders no longer have the gospel. Hence like Magda they have no way to atone for their sins except through suicide. The Muslims on the other hand have their own genocides but appear to feel no guilt.

39. Dennis Says:
    The Nazis’ original plan was apparently to expel the Jews and let them live elsewhere. The Nazi leaders considered various locations for a future Jewish homeland with Palestine and Madagascar as top potential destinations.

    The original plan was by the zionist leader before the Nazi

    “Shall we choose Palestine or Argentina? We shall take what is given us, and what is selected by Jewish public opinion. The Society will determine both these points….
    Argentine is one of the most fertile countries in the world… The Argentine Republic would derive considerable profit from the cession of a portion of its territory to us…
    Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.” (Herzl, Theodore, chap. 2)

40. Japan said:

    “The original plan was by the zionist leader before the Nazi”

    There is a strange symmetry between the two plans. The difference is that the Zionists were seeking a homeland as a refuge because they loved Jews while the Nazis were seeking a place of exile for Jews because they hated Jews.

41. Dennis,
    That was all a very convenient mouthful. Seriously.
    I’m sure you are a seasoned psychiatrist and are experienced in diagnosing troubled individuals to the degree that transferring these “assessments” to entire cultures and civilizations is seamless in its packaging.
    The part about “guilt”? Good stuff. And very worthwhile.
    However, with respect to the behind-the-curtain “negotiations” and “motivations” and machinations of forming a homeland for the Jews? There is so much more to it. It cannot be packaged-up with a pretty bow as you’ve made it seem.
    Those who do not give attention to the decisions made in and around the San Remo Conference, in April, 1920, remain ignorant to the role played by the leaders and power brokers in that region, well before the Nazis in Germany and the Grand Mufti got involved.
    Israel was already granted sovereignty to the Jews at that time. Some might pooh-pooh the League of Nations. However, they acted within the parameters of International Law in making such decisions. And they had the approval and agreement of the Jordanians in doing so.
    I’ve referred to Dr. Jacques Gauthier (a Christian) in the past on this website. On a related thread devoted to the Jews.
    That it received no response is fine. It does NOT dilute the powerful resolve, nor the strength of the agreement reached in 1920 and shortly thereafter.
    Who has title to the “Old” city of Jerusalem?
    Legal Title? (as recognized by the civilized countries in modern times).
    The answer is clear. And it is accessible:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8cF1HYqN8

42. Correction:
    S/B “Jerusalem was already granted sovereignty to the Jews at that time.”

43. g6loq,
    Thank you for the links. Great stuff.

44. clarityseeker

    “I’m sure you are a seasoned psychiatrist and are experienced in diagnosing troubled individuals…”

    Nice ad hominem attack.

    Perhaps my wording about the Nazis’ discussions about what to do to rid themselves of Jews was not clear. The Nazis were interested in ridding themselves of Jews, they were not concerned about what happened to the Jews once they had dumped them off. That discussion by the Nazis where to leave the Jews obviously has nothing to do with the legal status of the nation of Israel since the Nazis themselves were a rouge regime. I’m not sure what you were referring to as the “pretty bow”. There is no “pretty bow” in the discussion by the Nazis about how to rid themselves of millions of innocent people.

45. In many ways, authorities like Hitler or Alexander the Great, do not recognize any mortal boundaries. So the only thing that can stop them are their own people or the physical failure of their military campaigns.

    When your politician starts labeling himself as a Messiah… you might want to rethink how your country works and what system it is really under.

46. Nice ad hominem attack.

    C did better in the day against some others. Gotten a bit weak on the bark there lately.

47. G Joubert spews,
    “…But it was written and engineered into place by the elite of the day, the haves, the 1%.”-Clarity from back then

    http://neoneocon.com/2015/01/24/being-wrong/#comment-866102

    Social communication, etiquette, and correspondence obviously weren’t taught in public indoctrination for the Cs of the world.

    I replied with, at the time:

    ==Ymarsaker just above this post puts words in my mouth.==-C

    I wasn’t commenting primarily on what Clarity said, since it’s not important. But rather the mistake Clarity made in reacting to G Joubert.

    You’re expecting way too much from me, if you think I need to put words in your mouth. It’s full enough already that it doesn’t require free service on the internet, these days.

48. Ymarsakar Says:

    “C did better in the day against some others. Gotten a bit weak on the bark there lately.”

    What makes that particular attack especially delightful is that if I told him I am a psychiatrist he wouldn’t know whether to believe me or not.

49. One of the ways the Leftist alliance damaged and created the veteran “criminal” problem back during post Vietnam (Leftist victory) was when they used psychological weapons to break down the ability of veterans to deal with guilt, for abandoning lost comrades at the front, for abandoning allies at the front to rapist and death squads of the Left’s communist ISIL counterparts, for not winning the war people promised that would be won with just a bit more sacrifice, for losing a war that had a string of successful battles, so on etc.

    They, the American traitors, called the returning Vietnam vets baby killers and various other names, refusing social support for dealing with guilt or combat stress, producing PTSD. They were part of the Democrat controlled military complex that decided it was politically and militarily more beneficial to split the deployments up individually, so that the normal military camaraderie could no longer heal PTSD before it blew up back at home. Vietnam vets had individual deployments, like Kerry. They didn’t need to carry about the squad, because when they were 60 days from returning home, any new guy coming in is just fodder to keep himself alive. They didn’t need to act like that to feel guilty. Just thinking it once is enough to break them back home after years of remembering and PTSD flash backs.

    Some from the prison CO divisions told me that there was one Vietnam vet that became a rapist or serial killer, of a sort, who recounted various stories of that. The CO wondered how much being told he was a villain contributed to the vet wanting to act like one, since after all, that’s what most of society seemed to expect and demand.

    Atonement, forgiveness? Those were things of positive life products from religion or culture, the Left were not interested in such things. The Left will never forgive humanity for betraying their Satan, their Evil. Neither should we forgive evil until it is dead, either.

50. Dennis,
    What makes that last comment particularly delightful is how it points towards your appetite for parlor games.
    I have no freakin’ clue as to whether you are trained to diagnose illnesses. Frankly, don’t care.
    However, you appear to want to play one on television/stage/film.
    Attack?
    No, I actually complimented your assessment of “guilt”. Regarded it as worthwhile. Your thin skin would not allow recognition. So as to address that, please pardon my glib delivery—-it was not an attack. Perhaps in these one dimensional (text only) forms, it transmitted differently.
    I maintain that the Nazis were irrelevant in their attempts to find a place for the Jews. Whether they hated them or not. Theirs did not eclipse the legal sovereignties of a place established over a decade earlier. Despite their damage, they flamed out relatively quickly.
    Regarding, “guilt”.
    I enjoyed, Shelby Steele’s, “White Guilt”. Powerful.
    Also, William Easterly’s, “The White Man’s Burden”.

51. There is very little question that this was a choice of Magda’s, an act of monstrosity that seems to have come, strangely enough, at least partly from her sense of guilt.

    As I noted in the comments to the first part (using much of the same quote), which I will replicate here:

    She killed her 6 young kids? Putting them out of her misery no doubt. Sick.

    Magda had confided to her trusted friend, her sister-in-law, Ello Quandt, “In the days to come Joseph will be regarded as one of the greatest criminals Germany has ever produced. The children will hear that daily, people would torment them, despise and humiliate them. We will take them with us, they are too good, too lovely for the world which lies ahead”.

    In this, her perception is probably correct. In light of this perception, one can understand, though not condone, her actions.

    She and her husband’s actions had doomed her children to a life of infamy, and sought, as any mother might, to save them from it.

    Her solution was blatantly wrong, but as a solution, it’s an understandably human, not monstrous, one.

    She realized how grave her failure had been, and perceived how painful and filled with regret her children’s lives would be as a result of the “sins of the father”… and chose to save them that.

    I can understand how a caring, loving mother — and she probably was very much that — can come to the wrongful conclusion, and still be a caring and loving mother.

52. I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Leonard Peikoff’s epic book The Ominous Parallels – The End of Freedom in America. In it, he pretty much explained how the most educated, scientifically and artistically advanced Country in the world turned into the nightmare that was National Socialism. The book also serves as a warning to America, but I don’t think anybody is listening.

53. clarityseeker Says:

    “I maintain that the Nazis were irrelevant in their attempts to find a place for the Jews.”

    I agree with you.

    My point is different, that many of the people who were sucked into the Nazi conspiracy to commit genocide had no idea where they would end up when they first supported the Nazis. Magna’s life is a tragic example of the moral predicament which overwhelmed many others.

    The first genocide of the 20th century involving Europe was the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. The fact that Turkey did not pay any price for that crime probably encouraged the Nazis to believe that they also could commit genocide without penalty. There seems to be considerable cross fertilization between the Nazi antisemitism and Islamist antisemitism.

    The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini, was serving in the Turkish military during the Armenian holocaust. While we don’t know whether he actually participated he undoubtedly knew about it. El-Husseini returned from Turkey with a pathological hatred of Jews and the desire to foment his own genocide. Those who are interested in this evil man can find more material about him in an article by Todd Bolen who is an associate professor of The Masters College and who lived in Israel for many years.

    http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/mohammedism/mohammedism21.html

54. Dennis writes:
    “The fact that Turkey did not pay any price for that crime probably encouraged the Nazis to believe that they also could commit genocide without penalty.”
    _______________________________________

    Completely understand. I don’t disagree. Allow me to make this point more relevant. More timely. More significant to where you and I reside in the, here and now.

    Swastikas painted on the buildings at U.C. Davis, California, last month.
    Rhetoric spewed at that same campus which in rational circles would be construed as, ANTI-SEMITIC.
    A woman on the campus at UCLA denied a position on the “J-Board” (Judicial Board), because of her Jewish faith. They removed the videotape of the hearings. Later pressured to put it back online:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/ucla-jewish-student-video_n_6817918.html

    I could go on and on. Examples abound.
    Suffice to say, TODAY, anti-Semitism exists in America and is exhibited regularly. Is it denounced? Not on a national level. Not even on a local level. The president of the United States reserves his collective disdain for WHITES. Anything he deems as, “racism” gets his full-throated attention. Al Sharpton (paid by Obama’s administration) is called in. Eric Holder is mobilized. Anything they determine as bigoted or biased against muslims is broadcast 360 degrees.
    Anti-Semitism? Crickets.
    Same goes for Europe. This from less than a month ago in Paris, France:

    http://www.worldreligionnews.com/issues/this-video-shows-how-bad-the-anti-semitic-situation-is-in-paris

    Obama’s response to terror attack on a Jewish delicatessen, with Jews shopping inside for their holiday dinner?
    “It was a random attack.”
    I could go on. Examples abound.
    SO——-We talk with forbidding countenance, sourness, odiousness about the Germans exterminating the Jews.
    We speak openly, freely, at-arms-length about the Armenians exterminating the Jews.
    SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
    ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
    However, brazen, ugly, reprehensible hate directed at Jews right NOW?
    The very type of behavior which preceded and surrounded Jews, prior to the accelerated actions to exterminate them.
    CRICKETS.
    Not for a moment do I suggest that Americans could elevate their anti-Semitism to extermination. Period.
    Not one individual can adequately explain away the lack of outcry towards those who display their OPEN HATRED onto JEWS.

55. Not one individual can adequately explain away the lack of outcry towards those who display their OPEN HATRED onto JEWS.
    ———————

    I can.

    Because the strongest proponents of anti-semitism, and the ones usually leading the charge these days, are members of the Religion of Peace. They usually couch it in terms of fighting against the occupation of Palestine, or something similar. But the end results are the same, as was blatantly obvious to anyone who cared to look at the UCLA incident.

    Fortunately, the administration promptly intervened in the UCLA incident. But the fact that the group involved in selecting members of the board felt they could get away with a conflict of interest claim simply because she was Jewish is troubling.

56. Dennis and clarityseeker:

    On Hitler and the Turkish precedent.

57. On Hitler and the Turkish precedent…
    Geez… had never heard of that. Amazing!

    The great Norman Stone, surprising to me, doesn’t buy the Armenian genocide:
    Armenian Question by Norman Stone

    It gets to you after a while … The horror! The horror!, The craziness! The craziness!
    [Insert shower scene in Psycho]

58. Of course Turkey denies the Armenian holocaust. Holocaust denial is a win-win for the perpetrators. They get to murder a million people and then escape responsibility by denying that they did it. The Nazis tried to keep the early death camps secret for the same reason.

59. Iran denies the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
    Could it be that they confused it with their denial of the Turkish holocaust?
    It must be just one big misunderstanding.

    “Why is it that they hate us?
    It must be, has to be our fault…

60. Turkey, meaning the Islamic Jihad caliphate, has been exterminating and enslaving non Muslims since the time of Mohammed.

    Sure, they call themselves by a different name, just like they re tooled the Hagia Sophia from a Christian and Roman place of worship to an Islamic one, which coincidentally tends to prohibit Jews and other people from going there ala Jerusalem.

    Islam has been getting away with a lot of things. One last gasp from the Turks and the last Caliphate isn’t so surprising, given the recent resurgence.

61. The Nazi leaders had a point in the Nuremberg trials about how so many other war victories were considered justified by victory. The WWI atrocities helped. The Islamic jihad’s body stacks to the moon, also probably helped.

    That doesn’t mean they should get by without being exterminated for their crimes against humanity, but the Western world has let too many atrocities pass by uncensored or unrestricted, to be talking about war criminals or trials.

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63. “I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Leonard Peikoff’s epic book The Ominous Parallels — The End of Freedom in America. ”

    I read this as a teenager, and it has been many years, but my impression at the time was not favorable. Peikoff seemed to be rejecting most of modern physics as a statist plot. I didn’t know much politics at the time, but I knew a lot of physics.

    I read the book because I had read and enjoyed Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Peikoff’s book was the beginning of weaning me off Objectivism.

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