Forty years ago when I first read Milton Mayer’s “They Thought They Were Free – the Germans 1933-45” I wanted to learn the history – how one of the most civilized countries in the world devolved into the most barbaric. What drove me to read it again was an overwhelming sense of dread that what happened there is happening here – now.
Mayer was a journalist, an American Jew of German ancestry, who went to Germany seven years after the War to interview ten common men in a small German town to figure out how Nazism took hold.
“I wanted to see this monstrous man, the Nazi. I wanted to talk to him and to listen to him. I wanted to try to understand him. We were both men, he and I. In rejecting the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority, I had to concede that what he had been I might be; what led him along the course he took might lead me… If I could find out what the Nazi had been and how he got that way, if I could spread his example before some of my fellow-men and command their attention to it, I might be an instrument of their learning (and my own) in the age of the mass revolutionary dictatorship.”
What he found were not monsters, but 10 men he came to regard as friends.
“They were each of them a most marvelous mixture of good and bad impulses, their lives a marvelous mixture of good and bad acts. I liked them. I couldn’t help it.”
And he better understood how it was Nazism took hold of Germany –
“-not by attack from without or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted-or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.”
The 10 men Mayer interviews were mostly working class, not “men of distinction or opinion makers.” Amongst them, only the teacher saw some of the evils of Nazism.
“The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. … They did not see Nazism or themselves as evil in 1933 or in 1951 when they were interviewed. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew it, and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it.”
Parallels – Then and Now
Striking similarities between the rise of Nazism and the rise of the MAGA movement are reported each day. White nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, threats of violence and retribution to those who oppose, whether individuals or cherished institutions, all motivated by an insatiable lust for power and a bottomless sense of grievance and victimhood. Hitler, like Trump, was seen as the anti-politician, a father figure who would “fix things,” a “regular guy” who bullied and boasted, someone relatable.
And the fantastic unending lies repeated over and over. Even after WWII when the horrors of the Jewish extermination were exposed, the ten interviewees still could not believe that what happened, happened, and none felt themselves to be culpable or evil.
Mayer writes, “What difference did the truth, if there were truth, make?”
The incremental loss of liberties experienced in Nazi Germany presents an even more insidious parallel with the current situation in the US, where people didn’t sense what was happening. Mayer quotes a friend of his.
“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.”
When did it begin here? Was it the suppression of the vote in the 2000 election? The ‘weapons of mass destruction” lie? The Patriot Act? The bank bailouts and corporate subsidies? The Rust Belt caused by NAFTA? The Citizens United Supreme Court decision?
And where are we now? Immigrants deported with no due process. Innocent people detained for political speech. Outright defiance of judicial orders. Challenges to fundamental Constitutional rights. Federal programs cut that serve the common good.
In the meantime, there are new outrages daily and head spinning changes. As Mayer’s baker friend said, “One had no time to think. There was so much going on.”
No time to consider truth, justice, and compassion. No time to consider right or wrong. Mayer describes an incident where a Jewish-owned candy store’s window has been broken and children are grabbing what they can while their parents passively look on. A passerby tells them, “You think you are hurting the Jew. You do not know what you are doing. You are teaching your children to steal.” And the parents, shamed, grabbed their children and knocked the candy out of their hands.
Mayer’s friend remembers:
“Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands 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 they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and 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.”
It’s the Same, but it’s Not
What is different is that Hitler really did lift the majority of Germans out of the severe depression that followed the defeat and economic reprisals of WWI. From 1933-1939, the unemployed got jobs, albeit associated with the Nazi Party, no one went hungry or unhoused or uncared for and there were summer camps for the children and enough for holiday trips.
Another salient difference – there was little to no opposition in Germany, a hierarchical society where the Kaiser had ruled until recently and the concept of a sovereign citizen didn’t exist. As Mayer’s policeman said, “When all is said and done, it is cheaper to pay one man, who knows how to rule, twenty million marks than to pay five thousand men ten thousand marks apiece.” Also, there was little to no opposition from abroad, and most Germans had little, if any, contact outside Germany.
How many people did Nazism need to take control? “A few hundred at the top, to plan and direct…a few thousand to supervise and control…and a few score thousand specialists, eager to serve…a million to do the dirty work…” The 69 million others didn’t need to do anything – just to go along.
In the US, we are seeing opposition from the judiciary, from Harvard and other institutions, from state Attorneys General and local governments, from CEO’s, and most importantly, from the grassroots. Will it take environmental catastrophes with no help from a crippled FEMA or the devastating cuts to healthcare and education to awaken the consciousness of our moral habits? How much do we need to suffer?
Are We There Yet?
The one testimony from the book that stayed with me over the last four decades was from a chemical engineer who, in retrospect, said,
“There I was, in 1935, a perfect example of the kind of person who, with all his advantages in birth, in education, and in position, rules (or might easily rule) in any country. If I had refused to take the oath in 1935, it would have meant that thousands and thousands like me, all over Germany, were refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus the regime would have been overthrown, or, indeed, would never have come to power in the first place. The fact that I was not prepared to resist, in 1935, meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, like me in Germany were also unprepared, and each one of these hundreds of thousands was, like me, a man of great influence or of great potential influence, Thus the world was lost.”
Mayer looks in vain for any sense of collective shame or guilt in his friends.
“What I found, among my ten friends, was something like regret, regret that things, which they had not done, had been done or had had to be done.” But what he cannot forgive is that “They did not care enough.”
Do We Care Enough to Resist? – The League of Women Voters does
We do. We have seen resistance in the streets – weekly protests on college campuses, in front of courtrooms, at state capitols, and in Olympia . We have seen lawsuits against illegal executive orders filed by the states and higher educational institutions. And we have seen local resistance – here in Thurston County.
The League of Women Voters, Thurston NAACP and the Thurston Climate Action Team submitted letters to the Thurston Regional Planning Council urging them to reject the recommendation of its policy board to eliminate equity and climate language meant to appease recent federal executive orders, and adopt the Transportation Plan without changes. In their letter, the League writes,
“It would be a sad day if our rightful financial support from the federal government were to be interrupted or diverted due to executive over-reach; however, it would be even worse for our locally elected leaders to abdicate responsibility to their constituents and pursue money over principles. We stand with you on those principles in the face of unfounded ultimatums.”
Mayer states in the Foreward:
“And what was said long ago is true: Nations are made not of oak and rock but of men, and, as the men are, so will the nations be.”
To join with others and find local opportunities to resist, here are links to Olympia Indivisible and Evergreen Resistance. You can also find a list of protests around the country at The Big List of Protests
Esther Kronenberg is co-editor of WIP
Thank you, Esther, for your thoughtful review of history and call to local action. I get that TRPC fears losing transportation funding, but LWV, NAACP, and TCAT are right that Thurston Country should resist on principle. Community support and empathy are our strongest weapons against growing fascism in the US.
Mayer’s “They thought they were free” is on my reading list. After I finish Madeleine Albright’s “Fascism: A Warning.” She started writing it when DT was elected in 2016, and would roll over in her grave to see how much more damage to democracy 47’s administration is already doing.
Insightful, well researched article. Thank you.