More from Sebastian Haffner on the Nazi transition
Here’s another excerpt (you can find an earlier one here) from Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler, his 1930s description of what it was like to watch the Nazi takeover of Germany:
Many journals and newspapers disappeared from the kiosks – but what happened to those that continued to circulate was much more disturbing. You could not quite recognize them anymore…Old-established broadsheets such as the Berliner Tageblatt or the Vossische Zeitung changed into Nazi organs from one day to the next. In their customary, measured, educated style they said exactly the same things that were spewed out by the Angriff or the Volkischer Beobachter, newspapers that had always supported the Nazis. Later, one became accustomed to this and picked up occasional hints by reading between the lines…
To some extent, the editorial staff had been replaced but frequently this straightforward explanation was not accurate. For instance, there was an intellectual journal called Die Tat (Action), whose content lived up to its name. In the final years before 1933 it had been widely read. It was edited by a group of intelligent, radical young people. With a certain elegance they indulged in the long historical view of the changing times. It was, of course, far too distinguished, cultured, and profound to support any particular political party – least of all the Nazis…[After the Nazis came to power everyone on staff but the editor] remained in post, but as a matter of course became Nazis without the least detriment to their elegant style and historical perspective – they had always been Nazis, naturally; indeed, better, more genuinely and more profoundly so than the Nazis themselves. It was wonderful to behold: the paper had the same typography, the same name – but without batting an eyelid it had become a thoroughgoing, smart Nazi organ. Was it a sudden conversion or just cynicism? Or had [the editors and writers] always been Nazis at heart? Probably they did not know themselves.
As with so many of Haffner’s descriptions of that time, this resonates. The details are different, of course, but the sense of relatively sudden and extreme change for the worse remains, as well as the phenomenon of shifting sands and editorial – as well as political – hypocrisy. This hypocrisy has occurred on both left and right, and I’m not just saying this in the name of some sort of vague even-handedness. I see it more on the left, among what used to be liberals or even some self-styled moderates, who have voted unhesitatingly with the most radical elements of their party. But I see it on the right in those such as George Will who for decades called themselves conservative – in fact, champions of conservatism – who took up with the left without seeming to miss a single beat because they were offended by the style of Donald Trump.
In 1930s Germany, at least we can say that the threats against people in that country by the Nazis were more severe than what we see today in this country. But the specter of Twitter mob cancellation or job loss seems to be powerful enough to effect change, as well as abject groveling. Then again, it’s getting worse, because dawn raids and prosecution (a la Rudy Giuliani) or investigation of witnesses who would dare to speak on the side of an unpopular defendant (a la Dr. Fowler, the Chauvin expert witness who is now being investigated by the state of Maryland) have a certain chilling effect.
It’s been sobering, to say the least, to learn how few people are actually dedicated to things they used to claim allegiance to such a freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or liberty in general. The response to COVID has brought that out as well. The number of supposedly moderate Democrats who watch Biden speak and read about his policies and say something like, “Finally the country is in good hands and I can relax!” is astonishing.
Back in 1941, journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote a provocative piece in Harper’s entitled, “Who Will Go Nazi?” It bears reading today, and when doing so one isn’t limited to speculating on who would follow along if Nazis took power. The larger question is: who will go tyrannical? The answer now, as then, is: a surprising number. We see today that some will do it for protection, some will do it for advancement, some will do it to virtue-signal, some will do it out of ignorance, and some will do it for revenge, or for fun, or for spite, or just to be trendy.
Peter Drucker, who left Germany in 1933, wrote about three men he knew who became at various levels Nazis or Nazi enablers..
–Reinhold Hensch, who came from a working-class family, became an SS officer. His motivations were simple: “Now I have a party membership card with a very low number and *I am going to be somebody*.”
–Paul Schaeffer became editor of a major newspaper, believing he could influence the regime toward moderation. He disappeared when the front that he provided was no longer needed.
–An un-named professor, a distinguished biochemist and a “great liberal,” was expected by many to raise objections at the faculty’s first meeting with their newly-appointed Nazi watchdog. His main concern was about maintaining the level of research funding.
Knowing these people led Drucker to object to the Hannah Arendt “banality of evil” formulation:
“Evil works through the Hensches and the Schaeffers precisely because evil is monstrous and men are trivial…Man becomes the instrument of evil when, like the Hensches, he thinks to harness evil to his ambitions; and he becomes the instrument of evil when, like the Schaeffers, he joins with evil to prevent worse…I have often wondered which of these two did, in the end, more harm–the Monster or the Lamb; and which is worse, Hensch’s sin of the lust for power or Schaeffer’s hubris and sin of pride? But maybe the greatest sin is neither of these two ancient ones; the greatest sin may be the new twentieth-century sin of indifference, the sin of the distinguished biochemist who neither kills nor lies but refuses to bear witness when, in the words of the old gospel hymn, “They crucify my Lord.””
David Foster:
I think it was your writing that first introduced me to Haffner’s book.
But I see it on the right in those such as George Will who for decades called themselves conservative – in fact, champions of conservatism – who took up with the left without seeming to miss a single beat because they were offended by the style of Donald Trump.
Trump was adept at tearing off masks, so we got to see what the priorities of starboard opinion journalists actually were. In Will’s specific case, he’s always been one to look down on people; he also long ago lost interest in the issues of concern to the GOP’s vernacular constituencies (which was evident from reading his column; for years his most salient concern was campaign finance regulation, which is his lunch pals talking). In the case of Mona Charen, we learned that she is Margaret Wade from Dennis the Menace grown old and cheerless; it’s a reasonable wager that’s who she always was.
Those who enable and/or embrace tyranny have simply revealed who they really are in their heart of hearts. It matters not whether their motivation is fear or a hunger for power over others. As, in either case, they are willing to see harm befall others.
Collaborating with tyranny carries the cost of complicity in it.
The driver of the getaway car is as guilty as the bank robber who kills the bank guard. To suggest otherwise is to deny that individual’s responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Which acts as a societal acid, eating away at a society’s cultural foundations and its justice system’s infrastructure .
I like the Drucker quote!
It’s fair to say that the South China Morning Post of 2021 doesn’t read much like the South China Morning Post of 1991… or even 2011 – the pace is picking up.
What’s been surprising in Hong Kong is how many of the old elites, moneyed, legal, and technocratic flipped and how quickly and shamelessly they did it.
Also, one day the police are marching in academy graduation parades they way they always did… the next they’re goose-stepping.
But still, this is condensing 30 years into a few impressions. In reality the frog was boiled slowly.
Worth realising that even Jewish and Kulak frogs were boiled slowly at first. Armenians experienced a more sudden change of state.
In the West, the boiling has been even slower — but all the more relentless — and the slowness (at least until recently when things have accelerated noticeably) has allowed more people to fool themselves – both victims and Vicars of Bray.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-vicar-of-bray/
People who act like sheep in a pandemic will act like sheep in a ghetto
The Neocons — and they’re mostly of the Central Casting Ilk with some token Shabbos Goys — were never social conservatives — the only ‘conservatism’ they were interested in was a strong posture against the USSR and for Israel. Everything else was fungible and negotiable. There was much lip service about free enterprise, but these guys mostly never held a real day job in their lives — think tankers are court poets — and the oligarchs who paid the pipers were making money hand over fist strip mining the social capital of the USA and exporting factories to China.
So why wouldn’t they change their tunes when the political landscape changed after 1990? To expect them to suddenly stick up for the small town values they know nothing of, or the people who live in them who they have never interacted with? Before they had two prime directives, now they have one. The great irony is that many of their expensively educated children will have gone off and joined J-Street. That must rankle.
Trump was worth it just so we could get to know guys like Max Boot better…
But let’s go back to the election of Bush II. That’s when we got to know a whole lot of otherwise normal pundits and public figures. Wasn’t that interesting? Things quietened down during the later Reagan years and Bush I because the USA was so obviously on a roll… then their guy Clinton had 8 years… So for a long time there was only low-level vituperation. It was a huge revelation for me when the Bush II victory tore off all the masks and there were these mobs of baying Lizard People of all stripes.
Well, we haven’t had our Great Unmasking yet… just some small previews.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWIbCtz_Xwk
The neocons were Scoop Jackson Democrats. And Cheney Bush types
This is interesting. I’ve read Suvorov’s book. I just don’t know — plenty of lies and betrayals on all sides of the conflict, and it’s unsafe to be unorthodox.
https://www.unz.com/article/barbarossa-suvorovs-revisionism-goes-mainstream/
Always much head-scratching about why so many Germans supported the Nazis or went along to get along. No need to list the usual litany, obviously waving an opposing placard could be bad for the health. But we never hear much about the visceral reaction to Weimar Degeneracy — people don’t react well to having their world turned upside-down. Transvaluation of Values tends not to be a one-way trip: the Wheel turns and turns.
On a totally unrelated topic, here is another Blast from the Past:
Alessandra Mussolini:
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/073/636/188/original/7c510e559f9d19f2.png
In the prior post we talked about the books that described this period. All I can think is The Who’s song “Wouldn’t get fooled again” with the refrain. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
Then you read about the paper Die Tat and how they seamlessly moved to embrace the new boss.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/31/its-important-to-be-honest-about-what-todays-media-actually-are/
“You could not quite recognize them [many journals and newspapers] anymore . . . .
Old-established broadsheets such as the Berliner Tageblatt or the Vossische Zeitung changed into Nazi organs from one day to the next. In their customary, measured, educated style they said exactly the same things that were spewed out by the Angriff or the Volkischer Beobachter, newspapers that had always supported the Nazis.”
The Drudge Report.
Why wouldn’t hominid Great Apes want a strong tyrannical leader?…a leader who is vicious against strangers?
Why would they begin adhering to the strange Enlightenment values?
Why would they love their enemies and worship Jesus of Nazareth?
One of the saddest things in my life has been the degradation of the Omaha World-Herald. It has totally collapsed in 20 years.
@dnaxy:
“Why wouldn’t hominid Great Apes want a strong tyrannical leader?…a leader who is vicious against strangers?
Why would they begin adhering to the strange Enlightenment values?
Why would they love their enemies and worship Jesus of Nazareth?”
Rehab Therapists love to say things like “We work with what we (still) have.” And they are correct. Glass Half Full.
Would be nice if humans could be honest about where they come from and what they can and cannot escape in their natures. Ideally this would result in Harm Mitigation on the scale of populations. Probably not what we’re going to get though because looking in mirrors and seeing what’s really there is not a common thing.
Perhaps “Biden”‘s forthcoming (exquisitely manufactured) massive inflation rate (and its ramifications) might turn a few heads.
On the other hand, once “Biden” carefully and patiently explains how it’s all TRUMP’s fault, they may just go back to self-satisfied sleep again.
(…and Paul Krugman will finally—after all these years—feel uplifted, vindicated as he spews a heart-felt “I told ya’ so. I knew it already in 2016 that this was gonna happen. That Nobel Prize was no mistake, nossir…”.)
Cornhead has seen a lot of collapsing from his Nebraska perch.
The Drudge Report.
Never a Drudge reader myself. Students of The Drudge Report maintain the following (1) Drudge was someone who got off on gossip; he was never knowledgeable about ideology or policy; he was a news junkie as a youth for the inside dope. (2) The Drudge Report was a compendium of links. Drudge was willing to link to all kinds of sources. (3) He didn’t have a conception of ‘news’ congruent with that of the usual sort editing media content, which regarded liberal outlets as kosher and non-liberal outlets as trayf. He linked to everything.
The scuttlebut on Drudge is that he was bought out but part of the deal was to not publicly acknowledge that ownership had changed hands. My wager would be that Pierre Omidyar or some other generator of astroturf bought it using someone else as a cut-out. There’s a nexus of businessmen associated with Drudge’s father who might be the cut-out. I’ve seen a profile of them, but I’ve forgotten everything salient about them.
Has been bad times for starboard media.
The Neocons — and they’re mostly of the Central Casting Ilk with some token Shabbos Goys — were never social conservatives —
The obsession with this modest corps of publicists, academics, and quondam officials is pathological, especially since not a one of them was born after 1962 and most of those who were prominent during their salad years are dead or quite elderly.
The “token shabbos goys” would include Richard John Neuhaus, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Paul Nitze, Kenneth Lynn, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James Q Wilson, Lawrence Mead, and Peter Berger. In the addled heads of Joo-obsessives, these people are less influential than Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol.
And, no, that corps of people was never hostile to social conservatism. It was just that their focus was elsewhere (Leon Kass, Fr. Neuhaus, and Midge Decter notable exceptions).
It has totally collapsed in 20 years.
I’ll wager they’re not getting the ad revenue to hire the people to actually report on anything and there’s also this feedback loop generated by declining economic prospects and cultural shifts. The worse they get the less competent and honorable people want to work for them.
I recently had a look at the Linkedin profile of a young man who has a passably agreeable perch at The New York Times. (IIRC, I was motivated to look him up because his name had appeared in some minor scandal in re media misreporting). He’d had a modest run of years working for other outlets and degrees from meh institutions (I’ve forgotten which; might have been state colleges in New Jersey).
If you’re business is hiring writers and chatterers who get paid to lie for the Democratic Party, you get garbage people or you get fanatics.
How significant was the vaunted Weimar degeneracy, really, in the lives of ordinary Germans? It doesn’t appear at all in the classic novel of late Weimar times, ‘Little Man, What Now?’ In Haffner’s book, the only mention of a cabaret involves a very brave performer who made fun of the Nazis. Neither is it referenced in Billy’s Wilder’s 1930 pseudo-documentary, ‘People on Sunday.’
Nor, interestingly, does it appear in this 1929 Nazi propaganda piece:
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm
Moscow Victory Parade 2021:
https://youtu.be/DvD_fZr-6hw
How significant was the vaunted Weimar degeneracy, really, in the lives of ordinary Germans?
You might posit similar to that of the United States, which, unlike Germany, experienced a general prosperity after 1921 (outside the agricultural sector). In the U.S., you had some changes in tastes and mores which included innovations in popular music, a radical reduction in the amount of fabric employed in women’s dress and attendant changes in the understanding of apposite personal modesty, and some increase (around 20% IIRC) in the attrition rate of marriages. I think there was also more investment in secondary and tertiary schooling, so adolescence grew longer. I think there was also greater willingness among the older generation to allow the adolescent and young adult population to spend time together unchaperoned.
An interesting passage from Haffner:
“Despite everything, one could find a fresh atmosphere in Germany at this time…The barriers between the classes had become thin and permeable…There were many students who were labourers, and many young labourers who were students Class prejudice and the starched-collar mentality were simply out of fashion. The relations between the sexes were freer and franker than ever–perhaps a fortunate by-product of the lack of discipline of the past years…we felt a bewildered sympathy for previous generations who had, in their youth, had the choice between unapproachable virgins for adoration and harlots for relaxation. Finally, a new hope even began to dawn in international relations; there was less prejudice and more understanding of the other side, and an unmistakable pleasure in the vivid variety that the world derives from its many peoples.”
…this maps to a considerable degree on to the US in the 1920s and in the 1960s.
Or you could refer to Christopher Isherwood et al.
In the 1978 tv miniseries, “Holocaust,” an ordinary, nondescript, unimportant, unemployed German man, Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty,) is interviewing for a job with SS leader Reinhard Heydrich (David Warner.) Heydrich asks Dorf why he is seeking employment with the SS. Dorf replies, “I need a job.”
One of my “nice” but annoying liberal Facebook friends shared this:
“Apparently 70% of the GOP believes there was massive fraud in the 2020 election. They believe this despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. This fact alone is why it is so critical that those responsible for inciting the failed coup attempt of January 6 be held accountable for their treasonous deeds. In 1928 Hitler staged a failed coup attempt and suffered little, if any real consequences. In 1932 he took over the government with a minority in the Reichstag. The parallels between the political and social events in Germany, especially from 1928 through 1938, and those in the US are stunningly similar.”
It’s funny (ironic, peculiar, humorous in a sad way) how the left seem to unironicly cite the Nazi rise to power in the 30’s as justification for what they want to do. They’re kind of (kind of? Massively!) ignoring who is “cancelling” whom.
They REALLY believe that January 6 was a “failed coup attempt,” that Trump exhorted people to violence, that Trump was working for the Russians, that those who support Trump are no better than the Nazi collaborators of WWII. (One lefty Facebook friends feels that Trump supporters should be treated the same way — summarily shot. Not surprisingly, Facebook did not feel that violated their community standards.)
It’s a CONSTANT bombardment of disinformation, misinformation, and outright lies that have swayed normally reasonably intelligent people to this.
Hell, even an intelligent, well read, CONSERVATIVE person I know, who is not afraid of reading “Legal Insurrection,” who does realize that Chauvin trial was not fair, still believes Chauvin was indeed guilty as sin. (I did, until I followed the trial on “Legal Insurrection.”)
I’m not sure there is any hope for the future. I am not sure what the future holds, but I think it will be bad. Very bad.
Art+Deco (8:11 am) said: “Never a Drudge reader myself. Students of The Drudge Report maintain the following (1) . . . (2) . . . (3) . . . ”
Agreed all-around. But Drudge very often linked to items that were decidedly right-friendly, something that practically all non-right websites studiously refuse to do, either out of the usual ideological bigotry or out of a quasi-religious conviction that such items are simply non-“kosher” and so must be shunned.
The Drudge Report now is unrecognizable, compared to what it had been.
“But we never hear much about the visceral reaction to Weimar Degeneracy — people don’t react well to having their world turned upside-down. Transvaluation of Values tends not to be a one-way trip: the Wheel turns and turns.”
Well said, sir.
As to the same trends in the US 1920s, never ever forget the terrible loss of German young men in WWI and the absurd, onerous provisions of the Versailles Treaty and its economic effects on Weimar Germany, which never surrendered. It was an Armistice, a mere cessation of combat, formerly celebrated here as a national holiday.
So things were rather different in the USA.
Putin’s Speech the other day at the annual Moscow Victory Day Parade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAF34236HRU
Not necessarily your best buddy, but yet, a serious man. Not a gibbering clown or a nasty inscrutable virus-spreading Fu Manchu of a Yellow Emperor.
So naturally a good chunk of the foreign policy establishment of the US is hard at work trying to find common ground with him against Russia’s rising existential enemy on the Asian land mass… for mutual benefit. Oh, wait… that’s now how they roll in the Big Top at the Swamp.
*not how they roll.
As to the same trends in the US 1920s, never ever forget the terrible loss of German young men in WWI and the absurd, onerous provisions of the Versailles Treaty and its economic effects on Weimar Germany, which never surrendered.
They stiffed everyone on the reparations. Their economic woes during the post-war period were a consequence of horribly bad monetary policy.
Those poor German soldiers of WWI who died defending positions they had occupied in France and Belgium (sarc). How many French, British (and Commonwealth), and Americans had to die to get the German soldiers to go home to Germany? And in just another 21 years the Germans were at it again, but this time starting in Poland.
Those poor Germans (sarc).
Ancient History.
The real problem with Germans is that you have to get up very early in the morning to beat them to reserving the best deckchairs at the resort pool.
@Zaphod – “The Vicar of Bray” is one of the many poems I know by name but have never read, so I remedied that omission tonight.
It sounds like something lifted from Gilbert and Sullivan, and indeed was a song, a comic opera, and a film (starring Stanley Holloway as the Vicar, an interesting thought for those who only know him as Eliza Doolittle’s Father).
The critical point (Wikipedia)
“…a serious man…”
Well, there are happy clowns and sad clowns and thin clowns and fat clowns.
Altruistic clowns and murderous clowns.
And serious—if audaciously ahistorical—clowns (though, granted, things are complicated…which means, I suppose, that there are also complex clowns…or, perhaps, clowns with a complex):
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Putin-accusing-Poland-of-colluding-with-Hitler-in-the-Second-World-War?share=1
https://www.dw.com/en/poland-versus-putin-dispute-over-history/a-51847283
Oh, and one mustn’t forget the ironic clowns who, lacking the least iota of irony, don’t even realize they’re clowns—who will continue to reassure the world that the “Biden” administration will go that extra mile to promote, protect and stand up for Democracy while—-ROTFL—-guaranteeing freedom of expression and the press…. (No, you can’t make this up…):
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/antony-blinken-continues-lecture-world-values-his-administration-aggressively-violates
(And then there are the three ring circuses at the UN, the Internal Court of Justice and the WHO but that’s another specialized type of “entertainment” entirely.)
“…beat them…”
S&M nation indeed…
(Which calls to mind Thatcher’s post-World Cup pleasantry to her rather graceless German counterpart, and erstwhile ally,…quite astonishingly, since who knew she ever had a sense of humour?
Gave Churchill a run for his money, did Maggie….)
Speedbird 206: “Top of the morning Frankfurt. Speed bird 206, clear of the active runway.”
Ground: “Guten morgen! You will taxi to your gate!”
The big British Airways 747 pulled onto the main taxi way and slowed to a stop.
Ground: “Speed bird, do you not know where you are going?”
Speed bird 206: “Stand by a moment ground. I’m looking up our gate location now.”
Ground: With some arrogant impatience, “Speed bird 206, have you never flown to Frankfurt before?!”
Speed bird 206 (cooly): “Yes, I have, in 1944… But in another type of Boeing… I didn’t stop.”
source: http://jokes4us.com/ethnicarchive/germanaircontroljoke.html