Post-WWII Germans: if only Hitler knew
I’m reading the fascinating book They thought they were free: the Germans 1933-1945 by Milton Mayer (it’s also one of my book recommendations on the right sidebar).
The author was an American journalist and educator who lived for a time in Germany during the immediate post-WWII period, and interviewed ten “typical” Germans about their attitudes towards the Nazi era. These talks formed the bulk of the material Mayer used for his book, which was published in 1955.
Mayer was at least nominally Jewish, although he hid that fact from his interviewees in order to encourage them to talk more freely. He was also an unrepentant and committed Leftist (as well as a pacifist who opposed World War II), and this agenda is readily apparent in his book.
Why, then, am I recommending it? Because, despite its flaws and those of its author, it remains a work of close observation of a time and a generation that is now either gone or nearly gone, and is a still-relevant study of how ordinary people accommodate themselves to the encroachment of tyranny, both as victims and perpetrators.
A post on a blog cannot possibly do justice to the richness of the information contained therein. Although Germany in the 30s had characteristics that were particular and unique to its own history, culture, time, and place, there remain commonalities that leap out at the present-day reader (at least this present-day reader) in a cautionary and even chilling manner.
My first exposure to Mayer’s work was in this comment by “Artfldgr,” and the excerpts he provided there were so compelling that I got the book from the library and began to read. I haven’t plowed through more than a quarter of it yet (too busy), but the following excerpt grabbed my attention today [emphasis mine]:
None of my ten friends [the interviewees], even today [1955], ascribes moral evil to Hitler, although most of them think (after the fact) that he made fatal strategical mistakes which even they themselves might have made at the time. His worst mistake was his selection of advisers—a backhanded tribute to the Leader’s virtues of trustfulness and loyalty, to his very innocence of the knowledge of evil…
Having fixed our faith in a father-figure…we must keep it fixed until inexcusable fault…crushes it at once and completely. This figure represents our own best selves; it is what we ourselves want to be and, through identification, are. To abandon it for anything less than crushing evidence of inexcusable fault is self-incrimination, and of one’s best, unrealized self. Thus Hitler was betrayed by his subordinates, and the little Nazis with him….
“You see,” said Tailor Schwenke,…”there was always a secret war against Hitler in the regime. They fought him with unfair means. Himmler I detested, and Goebbels, too. If Hitler had been told the truth, things would have been different.” For “Hitler,” read “I.”
The book then veers off (as it often does) into Mayer’s own agenda, and I disagree with much of what he says. But the bulk of Mayer’s work—the interviews with the ten small-town Germans—holds up as a glimpse into a time and a mindset now gone, and yet universal as well.
People remain eternally vulnerable to the forces of tyranny disguised as demagoguery and charisma. In the service of hope and/or self-interest, they make excuses for its excesses and even its crimes. People also tend to cling to their previous beliefs even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because to challenge them would be to challenge the self—its judgments and its actions on behalf of those judgments—and to find oneself guilty of complicity in evil.
That is why a mind is a difficult thing to change.
[NOTE: Please read this related post entitled “Advising Obama: if only Stalin knew.”]
I noticed you did not have any Eric Hoffer’s books on the recommended list. I suspect most of the visitors to your blog have already read it but in case any did not allow me to to recommend The True Believer. That volume should required reading for anyone going out in the real world. It also would supplement anything Mayer recorded.
A couple of other tomes relevant to today’s world that I cannot keep quiet about are Now They Call Me Infidel and Cruel and Usual Punishment both by Nonie Darwish and The Haj by Leon Uris. These help explain how the war on terror is a war against the political culture of the Middle East. Also along those lines are Barry Rubin’s The Truth about Syria, Hating America and The Long War for Freedom. I also recommend his blog.
Sure. To admit that Obama is what he is, those in the general populace who voted for, agree with, and follow the man, would have to admit they themselves, are flawed. Even though much of what is going on flies in the face of what our country is all about. The same applies to Bush. He did many good things, but you’d never know it.
The word Evangelist seems appropriate for how some political leaders gain and maintain followers. We’re witnessing it right now.
I was not aware of this book Neo but will surely seek it out after your post. I want to add that i very recently re-read The Rise and Fall of the Thrid Reich….and particularly the early chapters there delaing with the rise and consolidation of power were chilling to this reader. The take over of the banking, education and manufacturing sectors can not help but seem eeriely familiar nowadays. It is most assuredly NOT an easy read, but for those that read it many years ago and more so for those that have never done so…..in todays world I feel it will open many eyes to the power of a government/administration. Thanks for the post, I will find, and read the book you suggest.
People remain eternally vulnerable to the forces of tyranny disguised as demagoguery and charisma. In the service of hope and/or self-interest, they make excuses for its excesses and even its crimes. People also tend to cling to their previous beliefs even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because to challenge them would be to challenge the self–its judgments and its actions on behalf of those judgments–and to find oneself guilty of complicity in evil.
This is why I’ve resigned myself to 2 terms for Obama. The McArdles, the Noonans and the Althouses will never admit that they were wrong to drink the Obama Kool-Aid. They will rationalize him into a second term and blame Obama advisors, Bush/Cheney and Congress for whatever ills befall our unfortunate nation.
What’s most galling is the depressing realization that history will be written by the Progressives. Future generations will have no idea what has actually happened since the 60s. Lately I find myself tired of it all, especially when Obama’s natural opposition continually shoots itself in its collective foot.
I looked at the Amazon page and this passage from one of the reviews fairly leapt off the screen:
Does that not sound like our own Artfldgr?
grackle: I understand what you are saying, and to a certain extent I share your pessimism. But I think it is something against which we must fight energetically within ourselves, so that we can fight energetically against external tyrannies.
We do not know how history will go. There are indications that the tide may be turning in time to avert some of the worse excesses of this administration, but for that to happen it is necessary that we be optimistic enough to not give up. Yes, human nature remains vulnerable to tyranny and lies, but Americans are not Germans in the 30s. We have a strong tradition of individualism and love of liberty. That alone will not save us, but it will help, if we remain strong and do everything in our power to combat the forces against it.
I don’t see Progressives writing any history. Their power is driving them like a moth to a flame and they will crumble in quick fashion once it starts.
Then the people in the progressive trance now will swear they weren’t “really” part of it all.
Neo, if you’re interested in how Germany became a Nazi country, an indispensable book is “Defying Hitler,” by Sebastian Haffner, which describes his life in Germany between the wars.
I had an interesting experience in the late 60’s when I spent three years living right outside of Nuremburg station at an Army Intelligence post. I lived among the Germans, commuting to work every day and I read ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ during my first year.
As time went on I was able to visit with various German and I was especially interested in listening to the veteran’s tell their war stories. Given enough time and a bottle or two of wine the old photo albums would come out and one reccurring theme was how the Nazi’s had restored Germany in the thirties and how great that time period was until the fortunes of war turned and then it became a national disaster.
I was too young and perhaps dumb to ask the right questions but I can still remember that the Germans I met, who were very nice people, all seemed to feel they were victims of circumstances beyond their control and at no time did I detect any feelings of personal remorse.
I kind of think that this a human trait hard wired into all of us and that scares me at times. Based upon my experience in those years long ago, I am sure it never occurred to any Germans that their cities would be reduced to rubble and they would be left destitute and hungry within just a few years of setting out to right the wrongs of the world as they saw them.
This kind of stuff of unexpected consequences scares me when people set out to do good and take care of the needs of other folk, I see a lot of similarities in circumstances then and now and may God help us as we, as a nation, start to reap what we sow.
There is also The Good Old Days, which documents the letters, news reports, and reminiscences of ordinary Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Czechs, and Germans about the execution of Jews and the punishing of entire villages for disobeying the Reich. Chilling. Regular people, not very different from ourselves.
“If Hitler had been told the truth, things would have been different”
A very typical attitude towards the worst dictators. “The good father Czar” is what the peasants thought about their ruler until that fantasy was shattered in 1905 outside the winter palace. A few dozen years later they said the same thing about Stalin, and I suppose do to this day. It’s disturbing though perhaps not surprising to read Germans saying this about Hitler.
grackle Says:
“What’s most galling is the depressing realization that history will be written by the Progressives. Future generations will have no idea what has actually happened since the 60s.”
Nothing new. Hardly anyone knows what’s happened since the 20s for the same reasons. We all were taught how great the new deal was… and even conservatives here use the term social darwinist as a negative… on and on.. we were all raised on their revisionist history.
Another anecdote.
My sister’s friend Pierre, a blond Alsatian and of course fluent in German, was on a skiing vacation in Bavaria in the 1970s. He ate supper at the town pub, was speaking only German. Some tourists of other nationalities were there, but finally left; only the Germans and Pierre remained.
They sang a couple of drinking songs and Pierre joined in. He reported to my sister that there came a moment when the Germans looked around and apparently decided “it’s just us chickens in here.” Slowly one older man arose — and started to sing the “Horst Wessel” song. The SS anthem.
The hair on Pierre’s neck rose as he watched all the men in the room rise to their feet and complete the song, with utmost seriousness.
He said, “I couldn’t wait to get out of there: I was scared to death they’d realize I wasn’t one of them.”
The lyrics to “Horst Wessel”:
The flag high! The ranks tightly closed!
SA marches with a calm, firm pace.
Comrades whom the Red Front and reactionaries shot dead
March in spirit within our ranks.
Clear the streets for the brown battalions,
Clear the streets for the stormtroopers!
Already millions look with hope to the swastika
The day of freedom and bread is dawning!
Roll-call has sounded for the last time
We are all prepared for the fight!
Soon Hitler’s flag will fly over the barricades.
Our servitude will not last much longer now!
The flag high! The ranks tightly closed!
SA marches with a calm, firm pace.
Comrades whom the Red Front and reactionaries shot dead
March in spirit within our ranks.
Not that it matters, but what I meant was the left’s attitude as it applies to Bush. He is hated by them. And although he did many good things, you’d never know it. I do hope to live long enough to read what is written in school books about him.
beverly,
such happens all over in such circles. in latvian name day, the old drunk men would sing… but do note, they are not singing about herr hitler, who your friend didnt get. they were singing the only songs of their youth they had. the latvians did not align with hitlers ideology, but still sang many songs.
the reason is simple… not since then did they have good times like america had in its times. look at the words to the song you put up, know the history.
the SA was in the begining… the very begining. before the killing of the 12 million (6 who were jews). the sa and rohm were murdered the night of the long knives. they were not singing the later song, when they would be called in masse to death.
they were singing about how they defeated the socialists, and how they kept out the others (reactionaries, those who respond to any great cahnge by opposing it).
I said this period is muhc more complicated for the individuals at the bottom…
just as russians today reminisce about stalin… they dont reminisce about the camps, they reminisc about when they had products to buy, and when the streets were clean, perversion and thuggary was kept minimal.
when stalin was in power they said when would it be like when the czars were in control.
we look to the times when we were something.
this is not the same as loving the ideology.
if they discovered your friend, they would have been embarrased… and found i almost impossible to explain to someone who has such odd notions of reality and the past. like growing up just before hitler when your dad was gone and the men gone from the first world war, and a bunch of young people who had not yet been born, now birthed and living in a bad way due to retributive policies of europe..
your lifes greatest moments and times were your lifes greatest moements in time… even vietnam vets talk about the good times they had despite the war..
the communists were debased thugs compared to the germans…. so everyone hated the communists, and many even more than anything else. when they ended up in all that, they didnt know that it was a different form of the same thing…
its why i said… the pain of after, of being a part of something that until reality crashes down, seems good (like feminism, or any number of communist type groups masquerading as someting else), is so incredible that a kind of malaise sets in.
another song that is russian in origin is the same thing.
those where the days my freinds
we thought they never end
we would sing and dance, forever and a day
we would pick the sides we choose
we would fight and never loose
those were the days, oh yes those were the days.
they also had a different view of reality.
that your young days of glory were what they were
and life is what it was, and so it is.
may hopkins made it famous in the west
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyaTIXdN5fI
you have to remember, we listen to the parts of songs we like and ignore the parts that dont resonate.
which is why women love joels just like a woman to me, until they actually listen to the words and then ask… would i want to live with someone like that… which is joels joke…
here are the lyrics, it explains why they were singing.
Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours,
And dreamed of all the great things we would do
Those were the days my friend
We thought theyd never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we chose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
Then the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If by chance Id see you in the tavern
Wed smile at one another and wed say
Those were the days…
Just tonight I stood before the tavern
Nothing seemed the way it used to be
In the glass I saw a strange reflection
Was that lonely woman really me?
Those were the days…
Through the door there came familiar laughter
I saw your face and heard you call my name
Oh my friend we’re older but no wiser
For in our hearts the dreams are still the same
and that last line is the point..
their dreams are stll the same, and their dreams werent bad… it was the people that take those dreams and then use them to move material to others ends, that then leave a bunch of young men and women made old… to wonder how they wasted their youth, and realizing that they had no choice but to waste it… for at the time, they would think doing otherwise was wasting it.
trapped in a circumstance that is not of their creation, they sing about the only good times in their life… when they were young… and they were dating pretty women who though they were heroes… that the world seemed to move out of their way. and it was full of heroism, and potential.
now all they have left are songs and their history and memory.
what else could they sing?
as child that was the only childhood they had…
br549 Says:
“Not that it matters, but what I meant was the left’s attitude as it applies to Bush.”
Sure, and while an uphill fight, we can get the word out about other points of view. Just as we had them imparted to us (depite the left’s control over our own education, the media while we grew up, et cet).
Another story of postwar Germany, similar to Beverly’s friend Pierre, this time in the 1980s. I was there on reserve duty, and my German was still fluent. A hobby of my youth was to collect toy soldiers, the fancy painted lead ones, and I was in a shop (the city shall remain nameless) that sold them. The proprietor, a man in his 60s or so, had Prussians and Brunswickers and Bavarians and Hessians from the 18th and 19th Centuries, the Kaiser’s WW1 army, as well as modern Bundeswehr types. It was a good collection, but I commented that there seemed to be about a 12-year gap in the toy soldiery. He looked at me closely, seemed to decide that I was also a fellow “chicken”, then gave a furtive look outside, closed the curtains, turned the sign from “é¶ffnen” to “geschlossen”, and locked the door. He then took me into a back room where he had laid out in great detail the Third Reich Diorama. Illegal as hell in Germany, but there it was. Flags, vehicles, an entire SS tank company, figures of the main leaders, the Fé¼hrer, Himmler, Gé¶bbels, Gé¶ring, von Rundstedt, the lot, all in miniature. Out of curiosity, I asked how much for one of the Nazi figures. His quote was very reasonable, and I said so. He said, “Of course. What do you think I am, a Jew or something?” I suddenly remembered a pressing engagement across town that required my immediate attendance, or so I said, made a couple of small, innocuous purchases, and said “Auf Wiedersehen”. But it was one of the more chilling experiences I’ve had. Some Germans did know what was going on, and had no problem with it.
a lot did… a lot more were just swept along..
What is alarming German visitors is the realisation that, in many cases, they have been brought up with a variation of the Third Reich Christmas. Not the swastika baking trays or baubles shaped like Iron Crosses, but the revised lyrics of carols and the traditions that had been altered subtly. “I always thought that Unto Us a Time Has Come was a song about wandering through winter snow,” said Heidi Bertelson, 42, a lawyer, after studying the exhibits at the National Socialism Documentation Centre in Cologne. “I didn’t realise that Christ had been excised.”
The Nazi version – removing lines about Christ and inserting a paean to snowy fields – remained in some songbooks and, outside churchgoing families, is the version sung by many Germans today. The same goes for carols referring to Virgin Birth and lullabies that invoke the Baby Jesus. The rewriting was supervised by the chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, who had the brief of changing the German calendar. Christmas was to be merged into a Julfest, a celebration of the winter solstice of light and of oneness with nature. It drew on pagan traditions and tried to squeeze religion out.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article6919302.ece