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A German university professor’s account of what it was like to live during the rise of Hitler. Note the similarity to aspects of the contemporary political landscape.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret, to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand because of nationality security, so dangerous that even if the people the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him may have incidentally have reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. Their trust in him made it easier to reassure others who might have worried about it. ‘’This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real crises and reforms too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of the Government growing remoter and remoter .”
“ ‘The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was, above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?” (Ibid.; pp. 167-168.)
“ ‘To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.’” (Ibid.; p. 168.)
“ ‘How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated extraordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn’t, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.’” (Idem.)
“ ‘Your Little Men, your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke too modestly of himself) and said that when the Nazis attacked the communists he was a little uneasy but, after all he was not a communist, and so he did nothing and then the schools, the press, the Jews , and so on, and he was always uneasier but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something, but then it was too late. “Yes I said” (Ibid.; pp.168-169.)
“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me this is true. Each act, each shocking occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for that one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?--Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.” (Ibid.; p. 169.)
“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy one hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences in Germany, outside the great cities perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in you own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or you’re an alarmist.” (Idem.)
“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end and how do you know or even surmise the end? On the one hand your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally people who have always thought as you have.” (Ibid.; p. 169-170.)
“But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are dong to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.” “But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in’43 had come immediately after the ‘German firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at step C. And so on to D.” (Ibid.; p.170-171.)
“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them all rush in upon you the burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation hour people –is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed, because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility, even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” (Ibid.; p.171.)
“You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things that your father, even in Germany, could have imagined.
“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing).” (Ibid.; pp. 171-172) This account is presented so that listeners may compare their own subjective reactions to the 2000 “electoral coup” with the professor’s reaction to the rise of Hitler.
www.spitfirelist.com/f268.html
(TheyThought they Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945; by Milton Mayer; copyright 1955 ; University of Chicago Press; ISBN 0-226-51190-1; pp. 166-167.)
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