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”

  1. And the Abbott government has made clear that Qantas has to “‘get its own house in order” to get government assistance, which is code for taking on the aviation unions and cost-cutting.

  2. The latest update of a report that assessed 66 countries on their climate change mitigation strategies has singled out Australia as being the only country to wind back national climate legislation.

  6. A Week Later, Confidential Asylum Seeker Details Are Still Available, Cached Online

    The personal details of more than 10,000 asylum seekers are still publicly available online, more than a week after Immigration Minister Scott Morrison assured the Australian public the leak by the the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) had been shut down

    And,once again showing this government’s total lack of understanding of all things IT –

    Mr Morrison last week said he’d been “advised” that “all possible channels to access this information are closed, including Google and other search engines”

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/a-week-later-confidential-asylum-seeker-details-are-still-available-cached-online-2014-2

  9. “She then became the first and only supposed credible economics writer i have heard to laud Abbotts PPL scheme.
    Clearly Jess believes she is a woman of calibre who deserves 75k for her baby but fuck the cleaners, process workers or even stay at home mums who have a baby”

    I heard her say , the trouble with the present scheme, that it does not give enough to higher income earners.,

    This is not true. Higher income earners are covered by employer schemes, whxcih in themselves are generous. Yes, under the present scheme, they can collect both.

    Under the gold plated model, it will be lower income earners that miss out.

    Under Abbott’sa scheme, the employers’ schemes will be dismantled, Yes, the taxpayer will eventually pick up the tab. Abbott did say the levy would only be short term, until the economy picked up.

    Labor put in place, the model that was suggested by the Productivity Commission.

  11. PS. All mothers and the economy would be better served by putting any available money into ongoing childcare.

  12. This little black duck

    [ Australia as being the only country to wind back national climate legislation. ]

    Going by this comment about Prissy’s speech last night it will not be the only thing being wound back.. Back to the good old days when only the right chaps got in.

    Education minister tells sector to embrace a ‘new freedom’ in speech extolling legacy of Robert Menzies

    The education minister, Christopher Pyne, has given the university sector a history lesson about the record of the late former Liberal prime minister Robert Menzies in a speech calling on higher education providers to embrace a “new freedom”

    Pyne mentioned Menzies 35 times in his 44-minute address to Universities Australia

  13. “Education minister tells sector to embrace a ‘new freedom’ in speech extolling legacy of Robert Menzies”

    Robert Mugabe?

  17. This is what I wanted to post hours ago!

    What has it come to that a nation, a land so fair and plentiful has to witness it’s harvest bounty wasted by such intemperate leadership?
    How can the wringing of hands and the shedding of tears subdue the lascivious hunger for plunder and revenge from such a band of robbers?…..It would appear we are to stand unarmed and unprotected from the authority of these pusillanimous poltroons as they banquet on the “food of the people”…their front-bench line-up a “Last Supper” mockery… the difference being the citizen body going to crucifixion…while they, with their drooling gluttony, unfettered and unsatiated, unleash a saturnalia of anarchy on the population.
    Where are the higher authorities that ought, should, must stand watch over the civilised security of our society?..Are they asleep at their watch?…They were “wide-eyed” when they attacked Whitlam, “…where art thou now, fair Prince?”..where the GG. and the High-Court advisers…are your stocks and shares too demanding of your attention?….or are you, too, indulged in the feeding frenzy, gourging drunkenly with money-mesmerised eyes and lolling tounges too drugged by promised riches to worry on the miserly fortunes of the peons?
    ” Will not someone rid us all of this meddlesome priest” ?

  19. This little black duck

    It’s getting a bit 1984 isn’t it ? What with Abbott saying the thousands of workers turfed out of work have in fact been “liberated”

  24. I think Abbott was trying to say, once again, losing your job is a good thing. I heard that sacked workers need not worry, as there are supports in place.

    Can Abbott tell us, who Qantas pays their carbon tax to. Is it in Europe and NZ, or is it here.?

    Abbott is gutless, not coming out and facing the media. The Truss is the only one with the balls to show up. FM Bishop for a few seconds.

    One needs to keep in mind, that Abbott said he would only front the media when he has something worthwhile to say.It is obvious at this time, he has not answered and nothing worthwhile to say.

  29. I suspect this government might be regretting their outburst over GMH and SPC. They have left themselves nowhere to go. The smart talk is coming home to roost.

    They cannot help anyone now, even if they want to.,

    That is ominous for their ability to manage the economy.

  31. jaycee

    Been wondering for months, where are the supposedly heavy hitters in business that should be able to see the enormous damage being done to Australia in every aspect. Seems like they are all happy having their snouts in the trough and bugger tomorrow, next week, next month or next year when everything will go pear shaped for everyone, and the little people will be the ones that suffer the most.

  32. Peter Cosgrove was on the Qantas board, he resigned a month ago, when his GG appointment was made.

  35. Let’s guess, universities will be given ‘a new freedom’ to: raise all the funds for research activities themselves by going begging to the private sector; to put all staff on AWAs (*non-negotiable freedom); and to float on the stock exchange?

  39. Goodness! I never noticed before, but ‘Caesar’ looks a lot like to a certain Lieutenant General.

  40. CTar1

    As a Kiwi I have never recovered from the Derby Town Council XV vs. New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Match.

  41. I’ve decided to do what Qantas does. if a ‘smart clean’ is good enough for them it should be good enough for me. I’ve started tonight by doing half the washing-up. Tomorrow I’ll do half the washing, mop half the kitchen floor, vacuum half the carpets, clean half the bathroom and take out half the garbage. I’ll get everything done in half the time. What could possibly go wrong with a plan like that?

  44. Leone,
    The major flaw in your plan is that you will have to live with the unsavoury consequences.

    Otherwise, as you say, what could possibly go wrong?

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