But Then It Was Too Late

Guest Author Uncategorized

This is from the always worth reading Kaye Lee at The Australian Independent Media – I hope she will forgive me for reblogging without her express permission (and I note that several Pubkateers have commented already).

(Image Credit: Daily Fumes)

An excerpt from They Thought They Were Free – The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer:

What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. 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.

How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men 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.

You see, one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

Note: Thanks to mars08 for this chilling reminder

958 thoughts on “But Then It Was Too Late”

  2. Bronnie Botch!

    Bishop is throwing the kitchen sink at this motion.

    Of Conroy, the foreign minister says: “Having unleashed this dog of war, it’s time you put him back on the leash.” She makes an aside about Labor fronbencher Kate Ellis – “the princess of Adelaide.” Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek wants that sexist remark withdrawn. Speaker Bronwyn Bishop suggests Plibersek shouldn’t be cute.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/26/drought-assistance-worth-300m-to-be-unveiled-politics-live

    Mesma botch!

  5. Bet you the news tonight will be full of “ALP under pressure over Conroy accusation” – nothing about how dysfunctional parliament is under Bishop, nothing about the glaring inconsistencies in Nash and Abbott’s statements.

  9. There will be a dissent motion by the Opposition in the not too distant future. Then they can quote chapter and verse.

    If Poodle tries to stop it he’ll be flouting convention. Not that will stop him.

  11. The toy soldier’s smug demeanour when deflecting and obuscating is a sure indication of his politicisation and how he relishes it.

  12. From Andrew Leigh:

    “Hi This Little Black Duck,

    Tony Abbott wants to put a tax on visits to the GP, meaning nearly 340,000 visits to the doctor by north Canberrans will no longer be free.

    Will you stand up for Medicare bulk billing?

    The GP tax will costs residents of Fraser over $4.3 million more to go to the doctor each year.

    This new tax will hit low-income earners the hardest.

    Sign the petition to tell Tony Abbott to stop the unfair GP tax.

    Thanks

    Andrew

    P.S. Like my Facebook page and stay up to date with my efforts to hold Tony Abbott to account.”

    http://signup.andrewleigh.com/medicare/

  13. You could see it coming, though. In opposition she used the manual to disrupt the flow of Parliament, to score cheap political points and to help the Coalition force QT into chaos. It’s exactly the way she’s using it now, with the small exception that she has a lot more power to wield. She didn’t show a proper understanding of the standing orders in opposition and a lot of her ‘literal’ applications of them didn’t stand up. Now when her understanding deserts her she just makes it up on the spot.

    She’s symptomatic of the attitude of the entire party. With everything they do all they care about is, “How can we use this to get what we want?” Fairness, obligations, responsibilities don’t enter into it. They’re incapable of appreciating that actions have consequences, or of the concept of gaining a complete understanding. It’s mostly about “How do we get out of this mess?”

  17. A government debt guarantee to Qantas would give the airline a “leg-up” worth at least $100m a year and would clearly amount to “picking winners”, its rival carrier Virgin is arguing as it mounts a fierce last-minute lobbying effort against the plan.

    Federal cabinet has been seriously considering the emergency debt guarantee since last December and such a guarantee could be announced imminently as the national carrier prepares to reveal thousands of job losses and cost cutting with its semi-annual results on Thursday morning.

    http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/26/virgin-qantas-debt-guarantee-worth-100m

    Thousands of Australian jobs will go whichever way. Why should I go guarantor for Alan Joyce?!

  21. Barry J

    Yep, prepare for lots of verdicts of suicide and multiple cases of self inflicted gunshot and machete wounds .

  22. There is no problem showing that Broomhilda does not know the Standing Orders and that she abuses them.

  23. The PNG report has found Mr Berati died of multiple head injuries that were most likely caused by a heavy object.

    If that is far as they can go then their forensic pathology must be subject to interference deficient. Or, there wasn’t any … . Or, it was ignored …

    Then, of course, there are the witness reports …

  25. BK,

    What a shocking indictment of the society of the time!
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/inmates-at-parramatta-girls-home-subjected-to-statesanctioned-rape-20140225-33fou.html

    Sickening. For some reason – perhaps because my own childhood and adolescence fall within that period 1950 (well, 1955) to 1974, I have always regarded Parramatta and Hay and the equivalent institutions for boys with utter horror.

    Don’t get me started on the steam laundries run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd …

  26. This little black duck

    Mad Bob Ellis implied a few days ago that the “heavy object” was a stomping boot applied several times.

  27. Asylum seeker protest: five artists pull out of Sydney Biennale

    Five artists have pulled out of the Biennale of Sydney over the event’s links to offshore detention centres following the death of an Iranian asylum seeker at Manus Island.

    The move strikes a blow to the event, the biggest on the nation’s visual arts calendar, which begins on March 21. It follows concern by another Biennale sponsor, the City of Sydney, over asylum-seeker policy.

    The artists object to the Biennale’s sponsorship deal with Transfield Holdings. The company has a stake in Transfield Services, which was this week granted a 20-month contract to operate a centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Clashes with security forces on the island this month led to the death of asylum seeker Reza Berati and left scores more injured.

    Transfield Services also holds contracts with the Immigration Department to provide services at detention facilities at Nauru, including management, maintenance and perimeter security.

    http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/asylum-seeker-protest-five-artists-pull-out-of-sydney-biennale-20140226-33hbd.html

  31. Can one suggest to Abbott that, Gillard, Rudd, Garrett, and Thomson have all left parliament. Yes, the public has dealt with them.

    The senator is still in the senate, and her problems are current. It is time for this PM put aside his hatred and vendetta against Labor and get on with governing.

  33. BK,
    Moi has been busy:

    1. Ruthlessly culled my mum’s collection of bathtowels from 30 to 12 (brand new or nearly new).

    2. Triaged the 18 towels I had removed into

    – 6 usable by humans (they will go to a network that distributes things of this sort on the poor side of the Mornington Peninsula and in West Gippsland, along with some blankets and kitchen things),

    – 12 usable by the RSPCA (took them, plus several from my own towel collection and a couple of blankets to RSPCA headquarters this afternoon).

    3. Went shopping for a watch that shows both the day of the week and the date because mum asks what day/date it is at least half a dozen times a day … and found and bought a very smart one.

    4. Collected a disc that has been engraved with her name and our telephone numbers – now firmly attached to her key ring.

    And in half an hour we will be disappearing to dine with a close friend at one of the local eateries.

    Am I forgiven for my tardiness?

  37. I’m with the 88year old person that was linked to above.

    Hoping someone puts a link to Shorten in QT, sounds like he did a good job.

    Spacey

    Good to see you here again. And I see a couple of new/ish commentors today, you have all been busy today.

  39. And from the ‘I told youse so’ section, I knew before Xmas that Pell was going. Diplomatically moved upstairs [BS]. Please don’t let ‘boy George’ get the gig.

  41. Aguirre,

    Thanks for that!

    That was brilliant! Wild Bill it is.

    Stood them on their ears for ten minutes.

    Mesma really did Bitch. She copped it, Bananaby copped it and The Idiot sat there with his smirk not knowing which way to turn.

  44. Truffles turnbull made a complete bloody arse of himself in QT – what a juvenile display of comedy he inflicted on the Parliament.

    Both bishops displayed their snarling nastiness and it is easy to see why FM bishop is morphing into her real self now that she is confident that msm will forgive her incompetent stuff-ups….her mean and vile character is now showing through her heavy foundation making her look the despicable hag she really is.

    Our Bill did a very good job of hitting back at the holier-than-thou government troops, and he did it without getting down in the gutter with them. It is exactly the right way to slap them down without getting dirty in the process.

  45. Their AFP is at it, yet again:

    Seven Network’s chief executive, Tim Worner, has written to the federal police commissioner, Tony Negus, rejecting key aspects of his testimony to senators this week justifying last week’s raid on the company’s offices.

    In the letter on Wednesday, Worner said Negus had failed to “accurately represent or convey” the media company’s communications with the federal police in the lead up to the dramatic raid.

    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/26/seven-federal-police-misrepresentation-raid

  47. Another rich up-itself club (Man U) looks likely to “not progree further”

    Olympiakos 2-0 Man Utd

  50. duck
    It will be the banks and sundry creditors and the government. In two of these cases the debt will devolve back to bank shareholders (many super funds) and the taxpayer.

Comments are closed.