Preventing Another Nazi Germany Depends On You
After escaping the Soviet Gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn quipped that the line between good and evil does not run along political lines, between races of people, or borders, but rather down the middle of the human soul. If anyone would know this, it would be Solzhenytzin (Sol-zhun-itsin).
A soldier in the Red Army, Solzhenytzin was a good Soviet. After he was accused of being critical of Stalin in his private correspondence, he was sent to the Gulag as a political prisoner. The machine he helped build and defend, had turned on him.
In the brutal work camps, he described seeing the best of humanity, and the worst. Unspeakable cruelty often came from other prisoners who were eager to prove their perverted allegiance to the Party even after it had left them to rot in Siberia. On the contrary, he described the unwavering steadfastness of those who decided they would do as much good as possible, usually paying for this sacrifice with their lives.
Dave Rubin remarked in a youtube clip recently that there is a threshold for everyone that once crossed, mayhem becomes a real possibility. He argued, “There are conditions under which my grandmother would pick up a rock and hurl it through a window.” What he meant was if the mob was frenzied enough, and her friends and family hurled their rocks first, she would give in and shatter the glass. A little old lady can and would, in fact, hurt a fly if pushed.
My public school teachers taught that the Nazis were evil and left it at that. I pictured the Nazi’s as common drug addicts, thieves, and serial killers who grew up in trailer parks. It was much more complicated than that. In fact, this sort of sweeping under the rug I would argue is more dangerous than we can even imagine.
Ripe For The Taking
A proud and sophisticated culture (the home of Beethoven, Wagner, Von Goethe) Germany in the 1920s and ’30s was a desperate place. Unemployment, hyper-inflation, bread lines, and street brawls between competing political factions were commonplace. The culture was being tugged at from both sides, the National Socialists from the extreme right and the Communists from the extreme left. Both believed they had the answer to the people’s plight.
When Hitler arrived on the scene he was an above-average artist, a World War One veteran of the trenches, and ideological fanatic. His ability to captivate people was obvious when he got in front of a crowd. Highly skilled orators know their audience, can feel what the audience feels and speak to the emotions of the audience. Hitler tapped into the angst, anger, pride, envy, resentment, and rage of his audiences. He promised he would punish those who were responsible for their struggle, even if it was scapegoats he was blaming-Jews, globalists, and communists. According to Hitler and the Nazis, these groups were conspiring to oppress the German people and take over the culture. According to him, they were “subhuman”.
People in dire straits like the German people in the 1930’s crave a scapegoat, a villain to blame and take revenge on. Carefully played and strategized this time around compared to the failed Munich coup in the early twenties, Hitler and the Nazi’s legally gained control of the German government and began institutionalizing and legislating their vengeance and hatred.
Group Psychology
The Nazis were the manifestation of the worst of humanity. Vengeance, hatred, and rage governed their motivations and was the driving force behind policy either officially or behind closed doors like at the Wannsee Conference where the Final Solution was drafted. I’ve often heard people say, “Why did Hitler overextend his military resources and fight the Soviets on the eastern front when there was little hope of success?” I’ve wondered the same thing, what if Hitler had shown more restraint? Swastikas would still be flying over the Eiffel Tower and other great European landmarks.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that it was never a possibility from the outset. I don’t believe it was a mere miscalculation on Hitler’s part, although it could have been. Vengeance, fanaticism, and hatred as the driving force behind a movement ensure it’s destruction usually sooner rather than later.
A Painful Look in the Mirror
When renowned Jewish scholar Hannah Arendt covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann, an SS officer who was a high-level administrator overseeing logistics for the Final Solution, she coined the term “the banality of evil” to describe him because according to her he was unremarkable, of average intelligence, and free of psychosis. Perhaps he was predisposed to lacking empathy but his environment was such that he was placed in a position to commit brutal acts of evil, and he did, calmly and professionally.
For this, she was criticized as a Nazi apologist for not denouncing him as a soulless demon, and leaving it at that. But that would be easy, and history isn’t easy or simple because human beings aren’t easy or simple. If they were, we would have no need for fields like psychology.
Like Solzhenytzin with the Soviets, Arendt understood that there was nothing remarkable about Eichmann or the Nazis. They were humans, just like you and me, but instead of aiming at the best for themselves and humanity like we ought to, the fanatics like Hitler and Himmler gave into their darkest, most animalistic instincts. For others who weren’t the murderous ideologues but who lacked the strength of character and boldness to stand up for what was right, they found themselves giving in to the pressures of the mob and the Party putting goodness and decency a distant second.
One At A Time
Carl Jung described this dynamic on an individual level as the shadow-self, or the side of you that is capable of violence, destruction, mayhem, envy, jealousy, really any emotion or action that is seen as “negative” or destructive. He believed that it was imperative that each of us integrates this side of us by first acknowledging that we’re capable of evil and violence and by doing this we “bring ourselves into alignment.” We get a better grip on emotions like anger and resentment and more effectively manage them so that they don’t consume us and guide us towards a larger, more destructive ends.
If we all do our part on an individual level, then the society as a whole is much more secure and protected against the intoxicating words of the politician who has all the answers but who is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
For more reading on this subject, read:
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning,
The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hanna Arendt
12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
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