"THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-45"
by Milton Mayer
The University of Chicago Press
From the chapter, "But then it was too late" pages 169 to 172, 1966 edition.
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for 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."
"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 your 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.'
"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."
"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 going 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 worse 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 Step D."
"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, your 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 responsibilty 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."
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succesion 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 everyday, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany could not 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). You remember those early meetings of your department in the University when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."
.
ping
I agree with the article and would like to add some more disturbing facets. Not only have our children been dumbed down at the public schools. Millions of poorly educated illegal aliens have been purposefully aloud to infiltrate the country. Our youth will have to compete directly with them for menial low paying jobs. These same aliens also still hold allegiance to their old country and send billions of dollars there!
As our high paying manufacturing jobs were sent to turd world countries, we were told not to worry because America was becoming a service industry nation. All the while, the illegals were coming in and taking the service industry jobs.
This appears to be a purposeful effort to destroy the middle class. And to add insult to injury, we were told not to count on Socialist Security, we must invest in a 401K or IRA if we do not want to live our retirement in poverty. Now the value of these investments are in the tank and Obama wants to steal what’s left and roll it into the defunct S.S. system!
The wisdom of the power elite is not broad enough to realize that it is not good to piss off millions of armed baby boomers and give them nothing to loose.
Well written! Thanks.
Odd comments.
bumpo for later
Perfect storm - something’s happening.
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish. Psalms 1:1-6
ping for later
bttt
I came across something in an email and then googled it. It talked about how we start out as a primitive nation, agriculture, into manufacturing, then money becomes too important, depenmdence, the downfall, and we are all back to the beginning of the cyclical happenings.
I may have forgotten some of the elements in that list, but it was so amazing to me.
I did find it on FR, but can’t think of the title right now. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
bookmark
Our freedom is being sold to the lowest bidder. Without a shot being fired. Yet.
The international cabal of socialists is merely bringing us into the united nations. The de industrialization is to give prominence to the artistic class that thinks we will become wealthy by writing poetry and producing pornography. We are indeed doomed.
Comparing Obama to Hitler? That’s just sick. Get a grip.
Dog-eared for later reading
“We have spent two or more decades intentionally deindustrializing our country.”
Thirty-five years ago, big corp CEO’s earned about 40 times the pay of their low level workers. In recent times they have been earning 400 to 1,000 times the pay of their low level workers. Have they been sending jobs overseas to cheap labor to keep themselves very highly paid? Interestingly, upon looking at Forbes Executive Compensation site, I saw that one of the recent Wall St. failures had a CEO earning more than $80 million. Those extreme ratios are similar to what was earned in 1929, just before the Great Depression.