Ukraine is the new Spain?
We are out of reach of the Internet for a few days and just recently arrived at an Army Corps park where these is thin Internet service. Text only! So I am reading books which is a good pastime. I read The Secret History of Wonder Woman, which was more interesting than it sounds. The guy behind that comic (or one of the people, anyway) was one of the inventors of the lie detector and quite a character. He and his wife and his girlfriend lived together and practiced "free love" - which seems very sixties, but this was back in the 30's. Truth is stranger than fiction.
I also have been reading The Nazi Officer's Wife which I was reluctant to read as I know how these stories end - in tragedy. Reading Holocaust books is a sure way to get depressed. I saw the movie a while ago but the book goes into more detail. In fact, the first half of the book describes the slow descent into hell that occurred in Europe as freedoms were taken away, little by little.
And that is the fascinating part of it. We tend to think of the rise of Nazism as a sudden thing, and in some aspects it was. Certain events moved the dial quite a bit - Kristalnacht, for example. But other things happened more gradually - small outrages that occurred over time, such that people didn't realize what was happening to them until it was too late. And these small outrages were by design - to get the victims and their perpetrators used to these ideas. Perpetrators were sometimes victims as well - being "nice" to Jews or trying to help them out could get you sent to the concentration camps.
What was interesting to me was how certain things were "normal" when other things were clearly abnormal. The protagonist, Edith Beer, a young Jewish girl from Vienna, is sent off to Germany as a slave laborer on a farm. She is starved and worked nearly to death, but at the same time is allowed to write letters to her family and friends - and receive mail as well as care packages. She is paid trifling sums for her labor and for a time even allowed to buy things with that money (or send it home to her Mother). Normalcy in abnormal circumstances.
But there was a method to this madness. By offering a token pay and small liberties, the Nazis could claim that these were merely "foreign workers" and not slaves - who were traded among farmers like old tractors. They were told to work, or their relatives back home would be sent to concentration camps (which they were, in any event) so their "freedom" to labor was illusory.
And, over time, these small liberties were, one by one, eliminated, such that all pretense was lost and they were no longer de facto slaves, but literal ones. And then, well, off to the camps. But it didn't happen all at once, but bit-by-bit.
"I understand now that everything was done so that the Germans would never see us, or if they saw us, would not have to admit it; or, if they had to admit it, would be able to say that we looked fine and that would never be irritated by a sense of guilt or pricked by a moment of compassion." -- Edith Beers
The small liberties granted to the slave laborers were not for the welfare of the slave laborers, but to assuage the conscience of the average German. You see, it wasn't the Jews they were trying to persuade, but the ordinary citizen. It explains why many Germans denied the Holocaust or try to argue it wasn't as bad as it is made out to be. Plausible deniability rears its ugly head.
There are books galore about the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, but few about the events leading up to it. Herman Waulk's Winds of War documents how things were leading up to the actual war - when little by little, life changed for those in Europe. The Gathering Storm by Norma Waln (sp?) is another good book that documents how things slowly went insane in Germany in the 1930's. It was the classic "boiling a frog in water" metaphor in real life - and don't give me some bullshit about how the frogs would jump out - millions stayed in that slowly heating pot, until they were boiled alive. People are not as smart as frogs, apparently.
It begins with demonizing. You have to have an outgroup to victimize and blame for all the ingroup's woes (first convincing them they have woes, of course!). And here is where the trouble begins. Members of the outgroup don't listen to the broadcasts or read the newspapers that spew hatred. If they do, they turn away in disgust. So the members of the outgroup fail to realize exactly what horrible things are being said about them - or how much of the ingroup actually believes these lies.
In the book, The Nazi Officer's Wife, Edith is blissfully unaware of much of what is going on in terms of propaganda or how many of the people she knows who are not Jews, are starting to believe it, or at least go along with it. It is only after the Anschluss that her former friends and neighbors turn on her. Ordinary people turn evil, and Jewish homes and businesses are looted. Jews are beaten in the streets.
Again, the change seems sudden, but the process was in place for some time before it exploded all at once. Once everyone became "accustomed" to this new reality, the slow incremental changes continued. The cycle of misery went on.
Today, I think we are seeing the same pattern. The new Nazis are perhaps not as pervasive or organized as in Germany in the 1930s. Then again, how much do we know about this? The demonizing of outgroups is in full swing. Republicans can't afford to alienate Jews, but at the same time, make overtures to antisemites. It is a lot more complicated to be a fascist these days!
A large part of The Secret History of Wonder Woman revolves around the woman's suffrage movement, which was more that just about the right to vote, but also the right of women to control their own bodies. In the early 1900s, the best a woman could hope for was to marry a man who didn't beat her too much. Women were largely property back then - but often could not own property themselves. Ironically - or not so much - many of the new far-right talk of going back to those "good old days" and even repeal the 19th Amendment. It is an interesting and scary time to be alive to be sure. People want to "go back" in time - and some are even apologists for slavery - claiming that it "wasn't so bad" and that slaves learned "job skills" - as is taught in Florida textbooks today. Too bad those Mexicans are taking away those coveted Black Jobs!
Today, we have people high in the Republican party who want to outlaw even contraception and make it illegal for a woman to travel to another State for an abortion. The whole gay marriage thing is on the chopping block as well. They want to "go back" to the old days, convinced they were somehow better than today and that our imagined woes are all the result of too much liberty. It is, like I said, a scary time to be alive.
Another book I am reading is The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer, which concerns some young, fairly well-off students at Harvard (except the author, who is on scholarship) who share an enormous, emerald-green prewar Packard Convertible that belongs to one of their wealthy classmates. The time period is just before World War II, and although they party and carry on as any other Harvard students would do, the prospect of war hangs over them all. And some of them live in denial - Germans, after all, will come to their senses, sooner or later - right?
What all these stories have in common is that everyone had an idea what was going on - saw what was happening - but no one felt they could do anything about it. It would work out OK without their intervention. But it didn't. It reminds me of the real estate bubble of 2008. Back in 2006 we lived near Ft. Lauderdale and all our friends were in the real estate business - agents, brokers, bankers, appraisers, home inspectors, mortgage brokers, investors, home builders, etc. At cocktail parties the topic of conversation was not whether there was a bubble, but when it would burst and would it be a soft or hard landing (it was hard). Everyone was too invested - often literally - to do anything to change things. So everyone held on tight and hoped for the best.
This election season - as bizarre as it is - feels the same way. People know something bad is going to happen no matter who wins or loses the electoral college. But people - ordinary people - feel there is nothing they can do about it. The world is going crazy and we all just have to hang on and go along for the ride, no matter who gets hurt.
Or do we have other choices?
