More from Klemperer
Every now and then I’ve offered excerpts from the fascinating WWII-era memoirs of Victor Klemperer (see this for one of them, as well as an explanation of who Klemperer was). The following quotes are from his I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941.
March 20, 1938:
The last few weeks have been the most wretched of our life so far.
The immense act of violence of the annexation of Austria, the immense increase in power both internally and externally, the defenseless trembling fear of England, France, etc. We shall not live to see the end of the Third Reich. The flags have been waving for eight days, since yesterday a broad yellow handbill with the Star of David has been stuck to every post of our fence: Jew. Warning against the unflagged plague barracks. Der Sturmer has dug up its usual ritual murder I would truly not be surprised if next I were to find the body of a child in the garden.
June 19, 1942
In Shaw’s Saint Joan there is a wild hunter of heretics, who breaks down in despair when he sees Joan burning. “I did not know…!” He was unable to imagine the horror. Until now I had found our situation just as literally unimaginable: I had always been told about being beaten and spat upon, of trembling at the sound of a car, at every ring of the door, of disappearing and not coming back again—I had not known it. Now I know it, now the dread is always inside me, deadened for a couple of hours or become habitual or paralyzed by, “So far things have always turned out well in the end!” and then alive and at one’s throat again. It’s a point of difference between Eva and myself. She says to her it was nothing new or surprising; she had heard it all a hundred times before. I: but only now am I experiencing it; my imagination or my altruism were not strong enough to experience it only through others.—I compare this dread of death with that in the field [Klemperer had served in WWI]. This here is a thousand times more horrible. There it was at worst “the field of honor,” there I was certain of every assistance were I to be wounded. Now—these horrible disappearances. What became of Friedheim? What happened to him, when he was dragged out of here? What happened in prison? How did he die? Snuffed out; drowned in the dirt after agonies. It is a thousand, a thousand times more horrible than all my fear in 1915.—And always being afraid, always running to the window, in case a car…
I have Klemperer’s book, but never have gotten around to reading it. I have to think things might have been different in Germany had not the Jews been disarmed.
I am in middle of reading “The Last Lion” trilogy, (finished Volume I) and now am reading Volume II — The Wilderness Years, the exact same book that is shown in your photo above.
The inordinate trembling fear on the part of the British Government during the 1930’s is unfathomable to believe. Not just the policy of appeasement or naive Nazi sympathizers, but the outright admiration of the Nazi regime and aggressive conquests is astounding. They truly were “The Guilty Men.”
The Churchillian strength of will was an anomaly, then and now, as they are currently in the process of appeasement to the Muslim barbaric hordes.
Loretta, I found the will to appease Hitler puzzling as well, until I visited England and drove around a lot. There is no town so tiny that it does not have at least a plaque honoring the men of the village that died in WW I. I understood then how deeply that war touched everyone in the country, and the overwhelming urge to avoid another like it, even at the cost of appeasement.
Even when I was young, I was fascinated with this period of time. Right now I’m in the middle of “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” by Eric Metaxas. It is just at this point that Hitler determines to court England. What a sobering thing to read of the lead up to such devastation. At Mass yesterday, the Gospel reading was John 20:19-31. For the first time in my life, the fact that the scriptures record that “the doors were locked…” because of fear and upon further reflection Jesus’ parables that refer to locked doors hit me. I was born in 1960, Chicago. We never locked our doors, until I would say 1971 or 72. My children have never lived in a time when you could leave your things unlocked. I find myself wondering if western culture created a small space in time, when by and large the 10 commandments were followed and fear in your immediate neighborhood/city was negated. Was this an American thing or have these conditions come and gone over time?
At the risk of triggering Godwin’s law, this brings to mind comments by Ben Shapiro on his radio show today about multiple anti-Semitic slurs and threats by Trumpers because of his vociferous opposition to their hero. Interestingly, one of Shapiro’s co-hosts, Elisha Krause (spelling?), who is an evangelical Christian and is also critical, has also received the same treatment.
Trump plays to these people as is shown by his handling of the David Duke endorsement.
Sharon W:
I also wonder whether the time of my youth was a small oasis of relative peace and trust in this country, highly unusual perhaps.
“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.” R. A. Heinlein
I was born in 1950, and people in East Texas did not lock doors. My mother b. 1928, said that people in her youth would have called anyone who locked doors paranoid, but nobody used that word in those days.So, I’d have to conclude that people did not need to lock doors before about 1960 or later, for about a century before then. So, it was brief, in the total span of history, but longer than one average lifetime.
American demographics were markedly different in the 1950-1960s: The population was 50% of todays, so spaces were open. It was a primarly religious society, not secular. People went to church on Sundays; the Sabbath was observed. Stores were closed, you couldn’t buy liquor. There were few decent restaurants (they all depend on liquor for their profits). It sounds kind of Rockwellian, because it was Rockwellian.
Then came the 1960s, rock n’ roll, rebellious moneyed young folks, the Pill. The takeover of society by the young. No-fault divorce.
Some good things at least to start. Civil rights, “I have a dream,” which were taken over by the Leftist opportunists. Government exploded: D of Energy, D of education, EPA, HUD; Medicare begun in ’65. Dems and GOPers equally responsible. The Democratic refusal to honor the committment to support Vietnam with $ not soldiers was reneged upon.
Hell, I’m not saying anything y’all don’t know.
American demographics were markedly different in the 1950-1960s: The population was 50% of todays, so spaces were open. It was a primarly religious society, not secular. People went to church on Sundays; the Sabbath was observed. Stores were closed, you couldn’t buy liquor. There were few decent restaurants (they all depend on liquor for their profits). It sounds kind of Rockwellian, because it was Rockwellian.
Then came the 1960s, rock n’ roll, rebellious moneyed young folks, the Pill. The takeover of society by the young. No-fault divorce.
Some good things at least to start. Civil rights, “I have a dream,” which were taken over by the Leftist opportunists. Government exploded: D of Energy, D of education, EPA, HUD; Medicare begun in ’65. Dems and GOPers equally responsible. The Democratic refusal to honor the committment to support Vietnam with $ not soldiers was reneged upon.
Hell, I’m not saying anything y’all don’t know.
It paled in comparison to Germany but our own internment camps for the Japanese are a disgraceful thing to remember. At the beginning of the round up in the early 40’s my mother worked in a Jewish owned department store in a small town in California. A Japanese family came in to buy winter type clothes for the internment, probably at Manzanar or Tule Lake. No one would wait on them until my mother took over and helped them through the various departments, shoes, overcoats, etc. When they left the other sales clerks called her a Jap lover.
The Other Chuck Says at 11:41 pm
“It paled in comparison to Germany but our own internment camps for the Japanese are a disgraceful thing to remember.”
I’m afraid I don’t see the analogy. The Japanese attacked us and were a genuine danger to Americans. It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback from the safety of 50 years in their future.
Rene Girard talks about how the scapegoat mechanism is foundational to all societies to channel mimetic stress within the society. He says that the Judeo-Christian religion has exposed and condemned this societal trait. Unfortunately, to a large extent, Germany was no longer led by Christian morality by the time Hitler barged into power and the scapegoat mechanism was allowed to operate unimpeded. The Jews were an easy target to function as Germany’s scapegoats.
Once you recognize the scapegoat mechanism in society they are everywhere. For the Communists their scapegoats were the wealthy. Destroy the wealthy and all would be well. In the deep south of the USA the negro was their scapegoat. The modern left has several scapegoats depending upon their needs at the moment including the top 1% of wage earners, Jews,and especially White Christian males. The Palestinians are a miserable lot who blame all their misery on Israel.
The church I grew up in used to talk incessantly against the Catholic church as if it were the repository of all danger. One thing I have come to admire about the Catholic church is that since Vatican II the Catholic church seems to have overcome that tendency to scapegoat others and rarely criticizes other groups.
Unfortunately, in trying to squelch the unfair hostility to others caused by scapegoating, it is possible to blind oneself to real danger. That seems to be the case in Western Europe and the USA in regards to the Muslim invasion of those countries. There is a saying that even paranoid people can have real enemies. Just because the Jews were not dangerous to the German people and were unfairly scapegoated does not mean that there are not real enemies who want to destroy us. That’s the danger of making bad analogies between situations which are entirely different.
Dennis, I couldn’t disagree with you more about the forced internment of Japanese Americans during WW2. It was a disgraceful and totally unwarranted event as the thousands of Japanese volunteers, including almost a thousand who were killed defending their country, proved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_service_in_World_War_II
Yes, it is a difficult thing to sort out. On the one hand you have Murphy and Black waxing eloquent and indignant in their Korematsu dissents and making sound legal comments regarding citizenship. And we have various conclusions purportedly reached by authorities that the Japanese posed no actual security threat.
Then, on the other hand, we have information from Japanese wartime sources referring to the loyal (to Japan) Japanese Americans who have been providing information on industrial and military infrastructure to the “homeland”. Pearl Harbor was of course a prime example of an enemy who gained information gained in part through the use of treasonous spies; though I don’t claim that the Americans “knew” it at the time.
American “liberals” seem to have a curious way of thinking about government and social affiliation: they stand on principle until it gets in the way of their notion of human solidarity (spit) , and then no legal standards, contract or agreement means squat to them.
So family loyalty is usually bad; and loyalty to the state is good; unless loyalty to the state conflicts with their sense of “community”.
If you read enough left-wing literature wherein they are self-describing their moral sensibilities, they often describe the situation in the following way – our loyalty is to humanity – our circle of identification and inclusion, is expansive and expanding: that is our morality.
It almost makes sense until you realize that their nominalism entails that there is no objective humanity as conceived of by virtue ethicists or thinkers in the classical Western and Christian tradition; (and probably in Isaiah , Ezekiel and Jeremiah, as well if I recall correctly) where there is believed, or presumed to be an actual “humankind”.
But the fact is the whether there is a humankind in objective terms or not, individual people clearly want different, incompatible, and often enough antithetical returns out of their associative lives; and some of them will do a great deal, including coercing and killing others in order to get these others to yield up certain services and sacrifices on their behalf.
I think it is these last distinctions, and not the size of the circle of concern, that makes the critical difference.
My wife likes locking our doors. The youngest son and I don’t. There has never been the least problem. We definitely lockied our doors when I was young, and I would again if I lived in that neighborhood. I suspect there is a trend toward more locking because of increased population movement, but there may be some selection bias for blog commenters having not lived in somewhat better neighborhoods.
DNW – There is a tendency for liberals, both secular and religious, to regard citizenship in all of humanity as holier than membership in any smaller group. That is similar to a type of transnational Christian teaching (which one can find also in the prophets), but there is an important distinction that I believe renders the humankind teaching heretical. It arose in the church at the same time that secular religions like the French Revolution(s), Marxism, and utopianism became Intellectual faves. So it is understandable but misguided in theology.
As a practical matter, it is worse. Human beings do divide into groups and do not love everyone equally. If they do not prefer by family, tribe, nation, religion, or the other traditional method, they will choose something else. That something else may be largely invisible to them and even hotly denied, but divide they will. Hence liberal “tolerance,” which is only division by another pattern. Note that the Democratic Party is largely a coalition, not a unity.
My sense of things is that nation or religion is about the largest group of loyalty that human beings can accomplish, and even that may be beyond the bulk of humanity. In fact, it is largely in the Angloshere and NW Europe that such is ever accomplished. A few other places have some unity, but it is mostly empire, not nation once you scratch beneath the surface.
Correction: “…blog commenters having
notlived in somewhat better neighborhoods.”Demoralization (15 years minimum, US is way over this)
Destabilization (2-4 years minimum. Management, economy, military defense)
Crisis (6 weeks minimum)
With violent change in economy, you have “Normalization”, which will happen until it’s done
Eliminate competition, put benevolent dictator in office who will promise people all kinds of financial goodies, etc…
United States has been in a total war in which avoiding guns and classical items, the people do not realize it, and is put upon by more than one system, and is defenseless and does not want to see it or is not allowed to it.
US is/was the last country of freedom.
when that is gone, then there is nothing to stop certain political entities from acting in ways that would be inconvenient with a free america in judgment.
the people who have done this, and think they are fighting for gender freedom, feminist freedom, racialist freedom, will, upon the final point of this, wake up to zero freedom… mostly cause they think freedom is slavery, and they will find soon that slavery is slavery… and they had never experienced it.
DNW Says:at 8:47 am
Dennis Says:
April 5th, 2016 at 2:47 am
… The Japanese attacked us and were a genuine danger to Americans. It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback from the safety of 50 years in their future.”
Yes, it is a difficult thing to sort out….
Thank-you. To compare our actions during WWII when Japan attacked us and we were fighting for our survival to the holocaust is a bad analogy. In a violent World nations must sometimes do things which are morally questionable to survive. So far as I know the Japanese were not tortured or killed by our country. After the danger is past then the survivors have the opportunity to examine the events at their leisure.
Things people do in self defense has nothing to do with the agenda of the Nazis. They killed Jewish civilians among many others who were not a threat to them even though murdering them diverted needed resources away from their war effort. In other words for the Nazis the murder of Jews was an end in itself which was almost as important to them as winning the war.
Sharon: “I find myself wondering if western culture created a small space in time, when by and large the 10 commandments were followed and fear in your immediate neighborhood/city was negated. Was this an American thing or have these conditions come and gone over time?”
Two points come to mind:
I remember a tape by Fulton Sheen talking about how the Church changes every 500 yrs or so (not a topic for now). He went on to talk about how in WWII, it was easier to be a Christian as the very institutions were grounded in this view (This doesn’t negate that there were indeed problems). But everyone was reading from the same sheet of music. We were good and the Axis was bad. Sometime if you run across a magazine of that era just look at the ads with regards to Japs and Krauts. Not very PC back then.
And I remember reading about how the White House was open to visitors at Christmas. And Look or Life had a picture essay about how a “Negro” maid stopped for a visit and how she sat her 2 grocery bags down on the sidewalk and went on the tour. And after the tour she went back, collected her 2 bags and went on her way home. It wasn’t a big deal, but common place as was leaving your doors unlocked.
Despite what everyone says about our depth and character as a nation, both these stories reflect an America that is no longer there. I’m sure we can’t go back to that time. I’m just not sure how dry rotted the bearing structures of the country have become. 🙁
Dennis:
I understand the distinction, which is real.
However, the Nazis used that sort of rhetoric with the public to justify their discrimination against the Jews, and they used it with their own military/police to justify the genocide against the Jews (which they tried to keep secret from their own people). In other words, the Nazis framed the Jews as public enemies polluting the German people and trying to destroy it, and doing the same worldwide (they caused the war, they spread disease, they are almost literally vermin, they rape women, they are responsible for just about all the evil in the world and without them the world would be a much better place). If you read Hitler’s last will and testament he is still singing that song right before he kills himself.
The problem with arguments for doing bad things to people as a racial or ethnic group is that those things are always “justified” by rhetoric about that group. Sometimes the rhetoric is based on truth, and sometimes it is just hateful propaganda. Telling the difference is what is key, and it’s not always that easy.
neo-neocon Says at 2:22 pm
“Telling the difference is what is key, and it’s not always that easy.”
Exactly. That type of decision is morally fraught and is rarely justified. My problem with going back and judging the actions of our ancestors based on what we know now is that we will probably learn the wrong lessons from history which could result in tragedy in the future.
“I also wonder whether the time of my youth was a small oasis of relative peace and trust in this country, highly unusual perhaps.”
Doesn’t have to be all that unusual. Progressivism kills. It goes way back past Wilson, the Civil War, Whiggism in it’s various manifestions, the Philosophes, to the Anabaptists. I’ll be charitable and leave out Hypatia.
I believe that one day humanity will look back on this last Century in wonder that men could have been so foolish to have extended the franchise to women and propertyless males.
Dennis, I will judge our ancestors and damn them for the internment camps. There was no reason to put 100,000 mostly American citizens in camps, war hysteria or no. The one camp that did in fact have a small segment of loyalist Japanese Issei was Tule Lake. Some were actually repatriated to Japan. Those in Hawaii were not sent to camps, but were accepted as loyal citizens in a Territory inhabited by many different ethic groups. It was mostly the inherent and long standing racism (and yes I use that word with full knowledge of the current misuse of the term) on the West Coast. The Exclusion Act of 1924 codified it in law.
http://immigrationtous.net/223-oriental-exclusion-act-united-states-1924.html
Neo, I didn’t mean to compare our “humane” internment camps with the horrors of Nazi Germany. Nothing short of the killing fields or the Soviet gulags compare with that. Still, I don’t believe it should be excused, especially since it was done by Executive Order. Can’t you imagine a President Trump doing something similar to certain ethnic groups under the right circumstances?
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5154
Context. my dear fellow, context.
(It seems to be the first thing that gets thrown out the window. And not only by the usual suspects….)
File under: Inconvenient context….