Today is National Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is also the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Many of the lessons have been lost to most of us, covered over in an attempt to make things more black and white, with the villains of the story being clearly evil. The truth is more chilling and nuanced. Here are some lessons we should be taking from history, but have largely set aside because some do not like how close they hit to the mark of what they support and do.
Lesson #1- The Nazis had a very positive purpose and view of the future.
The popular portrayal of the National Socialist Party of Germany is of men promoting a vision of hate. That is not the way to get votes, and they did come to power through the democratic process. In reality, the nazis sold the people a future that was a paradise. Their posters were filled with images of healthy people living in a utopia. The themes are the same as images you see in Mao or Stalin’s posters for the future.
In German, ‘people’ is ‘volk’, and the nazis were all about doing things for the people. They used ‘volk’ on everything from their armies (Volksturm, etc) to the car they made for the people, (Volkswagen.) They were all about the people and promised to make life better for humanity, if only they were given the absolute power needed to make that dream a reality.
And we know what they they did with that power.
As part of this grand vision of the future, the populace had to be molded to see the world as the government thought best. Schools could not be just places where things like arithmetic and science were taught, they had to have social lessons. The kids were let out of class to march for the vision those in power had for the people.
Kids were indoctrinated in the vision of the future. All non-jewish children were forced to join youth organizations and wear armbands showing their support for the cause. You will not find any posters for these organizations that had any but the most positive message for its members.
The nazis loved to use kids to promote their message. For some reason, they especially loved teenage girls on the cusp of womanhood, but who still had childish pigtails. Who could doubt the purity of their desires? Who could criticize their stance? Who could fail to line up under the government to protect them from the threats to all humanity in the form of bolshevism, capitalism and the jewish threat? To stand against the nazis was to stand against the future of the children. How dare you!
This is why I say I fear an honest rouge less than I do someone committed to saving the world from itself. The junky might do horrible things to people to feed his fix, but once he gets what he wants there is little motivation to continue the violence. But when you are convinced you are on the side of angels, bringing a heaven on earth to humanity, then anyone standing against you and your vision has to be a demon and deserves your holy punishment.
Lesson #2- The Nazis convinced the German people they were the victims.
This is almost completely forgotten by the current generation of about college age. The nazis did not invent hatred of jews and an image that they were oppressing everyone else, but they tapped into it.
Jews were blamed for the economic collapse, the loss of what was called at the time, “The War to End All Wars,” and damn near anything else. The nazis ran with this and turned all of Germany into one large victim culture. And victims more often than not want revenge on those they see as their oppressors. This was how they justified shoving kids into gas chambers, because the jews were a threat to them and had already done them great harm.
This isn’t an isolated case. Look at most of the massacres in history, such as the Tutsis and Hutu in Rwanda, Chinese merchants in Indonesia, Korean store keepers in South Central LA, etc and you will find that before they were killed, they were portrayed as the people doing the victimizing.
Now, look around and see how many people live under the belief that everything wrong in their lives is the fault of another group or class of people and you can understand why I don’t laugh at the “victim olympics” where various groups try to outdo each other on who is the most worthy of pity over their oppression.
Lesson #3- The Nazis wanted to control everything for the good of everyone.
Mussolini gave a short definition of fascism as, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” In other words, the state was all and nothing was outside its control and nothing could stand against it. Fascists hated capitalism, preferring instead a happy medium between state ownership and the vision of Adam Smith. Yes people could own their own factories, but the control was ultimately in the hands of the government who told the owners who they could hire, at what wages, what they could build, who they could sell it to, etc. This was part of a larger drive to control even how people were allowed to think, all for the good of everyone.
As such, people could not have differing opinions, nor be left alone. Everyone had to think and act in the proper manner. There was no support for the idea of, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” All other ways of doing things and thinking about things had to be stamped out, or all of humanity would suffer as the justification went. Shutting down political rallies, political parties, non- approved forms of entertainment, etc were all justified under the drive to make a paradise on earth. Because other ways of thinking diverted people from the true path towards paradise the nazis were leading them towards.
Lesson #4- The Nazis tapped into envy and other dark emotions of the people.
Jews weren’t just depicted as evil. They were frequently portrayed as rich. Of course, they were rich at the expense of others. There were rich jews and poor jews, but the rich ones were the only ones talked about. And of course, they were rich not due to their efforts or taking risks no one else would, but because they somehow stole it from other people. When they extended loans to people, making them pay it back was exploiting them. When they sold something rare and hard to get, charging a price more than that which is common was wicked.
Germany was in the midst of the world- wide depression and many were doing poorly. Government policy after the last war meant that inflation was so bad at one point that people had to use wheelbarrows of cash to buy almost anything. Anyone doing well was envied. And it was very easy to convince people that their lust for the riches of others was justified because those people couldn’t possibly have gotten their wealth through honest means. It wasn’t just the jews. The nazis were able to convince the people to give them control over factories and everything else with the message that those who had more than them were using that power for their own selfish ends to keep others down. So they could not be trusted with that sort of freedom and the government, working for the good of the people, had to take control of everything to distribute it to all the wonderful people that supported them.
This wasn’t a reason to take power, just an excuse. The people gave them the power because they wanted to see those that did better than them brought down and their wealth distributed among the people, i.e. them. The people didn’t look too deeply in the mirror or think about their real motivations. They had their own excuses to justify what they wanted, and went with the nazis because they were the party that validated their darker desires and emotions and wrapped it up in a noble sounding cause.
Lesson #5- Being morally right was more important than being correct with their facts.
To promote their vision that the jews were evil, the nazis were quick to use lies and saw no moral problem with it. They made up offenses and/or attacks and used discredited sources such as the Protocols of Zion. Their reasoning that while the incident they faked was false, the jews really did do evil things and they needed to fake stuff to bring attention to the problem of the international jewish conspiracy. Yes, the fiction they were working on was false, but the larger problem justified making false claims of attacks and such on them.
Lesson #6- The Nazis needed a devil.
Most religions are comprised of both a source for good and a source for evil. Doing good is a great thing, but when people concentrate more on fighting evil is when you start to see genocides happen. History is full of cases where people stacked up mountains of bodies fighting evil in the name of their god. The nazis are proof that you don’t need to pray to anything to be something close to a religion in this regard.
Working for a greater goal isn’t really enough, there has to be a deadly threat that threatens all of humanity to justify blowing up airliners full of people, or sending children to camps where they enter through the gates and leave through the chimney.
This sets up a situation where there can be no discussion, no reasoned debate or sitting back to gather more facts. There is a threat, and those that aren’t part of your effort to save the children from certain death deserve anything that happens to them. If you aren’t on the side of the angels, then you must be a demon.
This is why the situation in Germany was such that wearing the wrong type of hat was considered justification for you being attacked. Wearing the yarmulke, the traditional jewish skull cap, was actually considered a challenge and any violence done against someone that showed support for the threat to the German people was not a crime in the minds of many.
These are not the only lessons we should be looking at, but they are something that should cause the reader to look around and fear what society is becoming. History might not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. There is a dark side to humanity, with many incidents in history of societies going collectively batshit crazy. To prevent this, cultures and governments set up restrictions on what people can do to other people, no matter the justification. But such restrictions often are the biggest barriers in the way of those that want to bring paradise to humanity. Or they stand in the way of fighting something that is claimed will destroy the world. So the restrictions are chipped away and the horrors come back. Do you see this happening around you?
Why am I a cynic and distrust my fellow man? Because I read a lot of history. Right now, I see inconvenient parts of history being ignored and it scares me.