The atrocities of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s were so overwhelming that we rightly hesitate to compare them to anything that has happened since.
We Americans are notorious for our lack of interest and knowledge of other nations and their customs, but we often asked over the past 80 years, "How did it happen?" or "Why didn't the good people of Germany stop it?"
Lord knows there were some who tried, and many who died trying.
There are famous works of history and analysis, explanations of what happened and why. It remains difficult for us to relate to those lessons, looking into our own mirror, clouded by our pride, propaganda and passions.
The "some who tried" mentioned above often left a record of the efforts they made or the warnings they cried out to their neighbors.
"Nationalism and Culture" (1938), by German writer Rudolph Rocker, contains a few lines we had best consider and remember, as we watch the dismantling of our own culture of freedom and our traditions of welcoming and cooperation.
These are a few of Rocker's words that rocked my comfortable world:
"Freedom which tries to replace a man's responsibility towards his fellow men by the senseless dictum of authority is sheer willfulness and a denial of all justice and humanity."
"In the subconsciousness of men, there are hidden forces which cannot be grasped logically. It is the religious urge which still lives in men today, although the forms of faith have changed. The Crusader's cry 'God wills it!' would hardly raise an echo in Europe today, but there are still millions of men who are ready for anything if the nation wills it."
"The national flag covers every injustice, every inhumanity, every lie, every outrage, every crime. The collective responsibility of the nation kills the sense of justice of the individual and brings man to the point where he overlooks injustice done; where, indeed, it may appear to him a meritorious act if committed in the interest of the nation."
Herr Rocker goes on to quote the Indian poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore from his work, "Nationalism" (1917): "And the idea of the nation is one of the most powerful anesthetics man has ever invented. Under its fumes, the whole people can carry out its systematic program of the most virulent self-seeking without being the least aware of its moral perversion -- in fact, feeling dangerously resentful when it is pointed out."
And Rocker quotes Johann G. Seume who said, "The nation which can only be saved by one man and wants to be saved that way deserves a whipping."
Just as the United States and its allies delivered the whipping that remade Germany, I fear that the restoration of our democratic republic may only be achieved by a whipping from some other nations. I don't think we will ever again hear the question "Why did they not stop it?" We are living the answer.
