Post-WWII Germans: if only Hitler knew

The New Neo Posted on by

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.”]

Oba Mao: China has Obama’s number

The New Neo Posted on by

Some entrepreneur in China has designed a hot little item just in time for Obama’s Asian tour. Feast your eyes:

oba-mao.jpg

In case you can’t quite tell, let me explain that the T-shirt shows President Obama in the uniform of the Red Guard. I would say that this shows remarkable insight into personality (including “the cult of…”) on the part of whatever Chinese genius thought of this marketing ploy. But the T-shirt has caused trouble because authorities are clamping down on sellers, fearing it will embarrass the visiting President.

In general, though, the Chinese seem somewhat underawed by the prospect of the visit:

A survey by China’s leading Web portal Sohu.com and the English newspaper China Daily asked, “What’s your viewpoint on Obama’s visit to China?” Almost 40 percent of respondents said “I don’t care” or “I have no expectations.”

When asked “On what issues do you think China and America will reach more agreements after Obama’s trip?” 56 percent answered, “I don’t think the two countries will reach any more agreements.”

And when our NBC News team went to Wangfujing, one of Beijing’s most popular shopping areas, to speak with people about Obama’s visit, more than half of the people we approached were unaware he was coming.

The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: a 9/10 approach to 9/11 justice

The New Neo Posted on by

The Obama justice department has made a very poor decision: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 planners are to be tried by the civilian criminal justice system in New York. They will be detained in federal prison in New York starting in a few weeks.

Speaking from Japan, Obama says Mohammed “will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice.” But that’s exactly the problem.

President Obama is referring to the criminal justice system in this country, which affords defendants all the protections that US civilian citizens enjoy. But if we’ve learned one thing from the errors of the pre-9/11 mindset, it is that the criminal justice system in the US is wholly inadequate to try conspiratorial terrorists of the Islamicist variety, and that’s exactly who the current crop being transferred to NY are.

If anyone is an illegal enemy combatant, it would be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and he should not be afforded the benefit of liberal rules of discovery designed to protect civilian defendants but which allow other al Qaeda terrorists to obtain valuable information about our methods of intelligence gathering: what we know, how we learned it, and about whom we know it. This decision also puts the entire city of New York at risk again by forcing it to house these terrorists and making their trial the proverbial three-ring circus, as well as giving them a bully pulpit for more attention.

I can hardly imagine a worse decision by the Obama Justice Department on these issues, except to let the terrorists go free and set them up in penthouses on the upper East Side.

This is not about protecting us. Nor is it about protecting the city of New York. This is about pleasing Obama’s Leftist base, and fulfilling his campaign promises to them. It is one of the worst decisions of his presidency, and that’s saying quite a bit.

[NOTE: The article also mentions that, “Five other detainees held at the prison, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to have planned the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried in revamped military commissions, the Justice Department announced.” It didn’t say why these five were considered suitable for military commissions whereas the 9/11 planners’ trials were not (nor does the NY Times article on the subject go into it). But I will speculate for now that the difference may be due to whether the attacks occurred on American soil or not, although this should be irrelevant. It also may be due to the fact that Mohammed is the main Guantanamo detainee who was subjected to waterboarding, so that trying him in civilian courts will afford Obama (and defense attorneys) the opportunity to rake the Bush administration over the coals, always a tremendous temptation and an opportunity not to be missed.]

[ADDENDUM: Andy McCarthy—prosecutor in the 1993 WTC bombing trial—agrees that this is an attempt to get Bush and put his administration on trial:

We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and ”” depending on what judge catches the case ”” they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see ”” in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Obama and Holder are despicable. There is no possible rationale for this move other than these destructive impulses. And believe me, they know precisely what they’re doing—they are both lawyers.]

How’s that 3-D chess in the Middle East going for you, Obama?

The New Neo Posted on by

Even Time magazine thinks Obama’s Palestine/Israel policy isn’t going well:

Obama had prioritized resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But his demands ”” of a complete settlement freeze by Israel and reciprocal gestures toward normalizing ties with Israel by Arab governments ”” has been rejected on both sides. And while no recent Administration has had much success in this realm, veterans of the peace process concur that the President’s initial approach was flawed. It may have even done more harm than good, they argue, by raising expectations that could not be met, leaving both sides mistrustful of Washington’s intentions and creating a situation where either Netanyahu or Abbas would be painted into a corner.

Maybe it’s even 4-D chess Obama’s playing, it’s so complex.

Hamlet-in-Chief: Obama loses the name of action

The New Neo Posted on by

Now comes the news that President Obama has rejected all “of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team.” Instead, he wants to clarify the exit strategy first, and turn over responsibility to an Afghan government that he simultaneously criticizes for being corrupt.

Let’s review: during the 2008 campaign, one of the linchpins of Obama’s foreign policy plan was the commitment to winning in Afghanistan. Obama spoke of defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as transforming the Afghan economy from poppy-growing to more acceptable pursuits.

In other words, he had huge plans for Afghanistan, while simultaneously criticizing the Bush administration’s involvement in nation-building in Iraq. It is clear in retrospect (and even was clear at the time) that Obama’s main interest in Afghanistan was his desire to pump up his commander-in-chief bona fides, and elevate it as the “good war” to Bush’s bad one in Iraq.

Now both of those motivations are gone. Democrats no longer support the war in Afghanistan because they don’t have Bush to kick around anymore, just the increasingly insubstantial memory of him. What’s Obama to do? Go against his base, and fulfill his campaign promises? Or break those promises, as he’s done with so many others, assuming no one will remember and/or care, as well as citing changed circumstances (although nothing has really changed except the political climate here)?

Well, if you’re Obama, you can always dither. Or, rather, launch another study. And then another—and claim all the while that you’re merely being reflective and thoughtful, smarter than your predecessors, and smarter than your generals. After all, what do they know? Were they ever community organizers?

There is probably even more going on than this, because if that’s all it was, my guess is that Obama would have made some decision by now. Either Obama is (a) constitutionally incapable of making a decision (or perhaps even understanding that this is what presidents have to do); or he is (b) incapable of making a decision that will offend a large group of people either way it goes. In the meantime, he is causing the demoralization of our troops in Afghanistan by showing an abysmal lack of leadership on the war there, after cynically and disingenuously making it one of the centerpieces of his campaign.

This indecision has gone on way too long, which brings us once again to the Hamlet comparison, although indecision is by no means Obama’s only tragic flaw. Let’s take another look at the problem with Hamlet:

The whole [of the play] is intended to show that a too close consideration, which exhausts all the relations and possible consequences of a deed, must cripple the power of action…

The mystery which surrounds the play centres in the character of Hamlet himself. He is of a highly cultivated mind, a prince of royal manners, endowed with the finest sense of propriety, susceptible of noble ambition…

But in the resolutions which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, his weakness is too apparent; he is not solely impelled by necessity to artifice and dissimulation, he has a natural inclination for crooked ways; he is a hypocrite toward himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of determination–thoughts, as he says, which have

—-but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward…

On the other hand, we evidently perceive in him a malicious joy, when he has succeeded in getting rid of his enemies, more through necessity and accident, which alone are able to impel him to quick and decisive measures, than by the merit of his own courage, as he himself confesses after the slaying of Polonius. Hamlet has no firm belief either in himself or in anything else. From expressions of religious confidence he passes over to skeptical doubts; he believes in the ghost of his father as long as he sees it, but as soon as it has disappeared, it appears to him almost in the light of a deception. He has even gone so far as to say “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so;”…

The shoe does seem to fit, doesn’t it? Shakespeare wasn’t just a superlative poet, he was an extraordinary observer of human character.

One of the things Obama seems to either be unaware of, or to not care about, is the psychological effect his stalling has on the troops and on our enemies. It demoralizes the former and cheers the latter.

Wars, as well as nation-building and economic development, are not just a matter of tactics. They involve perceptions about will and commitment. The enemy (be it the members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, or the poppy-dealers of Afghanistan) size up the opposition. If the US is thought to be weak or indecisive, it appears to them to be extremely worthwhile to continue on the present course against the US in hopes of prevailing in the end, whatever might happen in the short run after Obama finally makes his much-awaited decision.

That was a huge part of the calculation by the enemy in Vietnam, and it worked very well for them. Vietam was a war of attrition; the enemies there calculated that they had more tenacity than we did, and they were correct. Obama is sending a similar message to enemies in Afghanistan—and around the world.

[NOTE: In related matters, here and here are some previous articles on Obama’s failure to understand the concept of victory.]

Not so fast, Representative Owens

The New Neo Posted on by

Could it be that Hoffman won after all in NY 23? A voting snafu in a vital county, and absentee ballots yet untallied, might end up putting him in the House of Representatives after all

Too late for the historic health are bill, of course, for which Owens cast one of the deciding votes. But no matter; if Owens hadn’t been around, Pelosi would almost certainly have twisted an additional Blue Dog arm to get her magic number.

Health care reform: as Maine goes…

The New Neo Posted on by

…so goes the nation?

Maine and Massachusetts are two of the most liberal states in New England—indeed, in the case of Massachusetts, in the nation. I’ve written before about the difficulties Massachusetts has faced (and been unable to solve) in its efforts at health care reform, and Maine is another case in point.

Maine has been trying its hand at health care reform for quite some time, and so far its attempts have culminated largely in failure. That doesn’t stop both sides of the political spectrum from attempting to use Maine’s experience as an argument for the implementation of their own policies on the national level:

Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage. Many on Capitol Hill have criticized national reform legislation for similarly doing little to tame costs.

To [Senator Olympia] Snowe, Maine’s past shows that change, while needed, should be incremental because mistakes are common. This is among the reasons she opposes an immediate public insurance option. “I mentioned to the president that people can’t digest everything at once,” she said in an interview.

To conservatives, Maine proves that government efforts to strictly regulate the nation’s health insurance market are doomed. Many of the reform proposals circulating on Capitol Hill have already been tried in Maine.

“These reforms are very well-intentioned, but in reality they have yet to produce the promised results or even be financially sustainable,” said Tarren R. Bragdon, chief executive of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative research organization in Portland.

To others, Maine’s failures show why some reforms can be tackled only on a national level. Maine has the nation’s oldest population, its poor are among the sickest, and its median income ranks low.

Read the whole article to get the details. But the gist of it is that Maine lacks the money to accomplish its goals, and liberals are looking to shift the state’s problems to the federal level in hopes that they can be solved, despite the fact that nothing indicates that this is fiscally possible in our straitened times.

Mainers see their state as poor, and it is. But the article leaves out the main reason why the state is so poor and the population so old: high taxes that discourage industry and force young people to leave if they want to make a decent living. The Obama administration and the 2008 Congress seem determined to repeat the first problem on the national level, as well as adding a few more besides.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s some common sense from Senate Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Seems as though trouble might be brewing for Reid in the Senate.]

Paglia on Pelosi’s triumph

The New Neo Posted on by

Once again Camille Paglia displays her inability to connect contradictory thoughts and come to some obvious conclusions about them.

In the past, I’ve written about her tendency to criticize nearly everything Obama does while simultaneously excusing his errors and fawning over him. Now she’s done the same for Nancy Pelosi, which may be an even more astounding demonstration of convoluted mental gymnastics.

In Paglia’s most recent Salon column, she praises Pelosi’s ferocious ruthlessness while at the same time offering a cogent (and nearly Republican!) analysis of why the bill Pelosi has just strong-armed through the House is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever.

In her article, Paglia shows us the trap to which doctrinaire feminism can lead, if taken to its illogical extreme. The title and subtitle of the piece say it all: “Pelosi’s victory for women: sure, her healthcare bill is a mess, but her gritty maneuvering shows her mettle.”

Earth to Paglia: there’s more to life—and feminism—than mettle. Extremism in the cause of tyranny is no virtue. Showing you are just as rough, tough, cold-blooded, self-serving, partisan, power-mad, and statist as men can be in ramming through an agenda that is destructive of personal liberty as well as having immense negative consequences for the country as a whole is hardly a victory for either women or feminists.

In the end, it may be only a temporary one, even for Nancy Pelosi herself. Let us hope.