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. Dammit!…Cats food’s not cheap, you know!…costs more than a box of weetbix!…(can’t say it tastes better though).

  3. I’ve explained before how Abbott can keep his promise not to cut pension. He can cut back by making sure pensions don’t increase in the way they currently do. It’s all to do with amending legislation that governs how the regular twice a year increases are calculated. Labor changed it so increases were greater, Abbott will more than likely quietly amend it to put the measures back as Howard had them. Pensioners – well, some of us – won’t even notice, they will just go back to getting an increase of a dollar or two a fortnight, as they did under Howard, instead of around $20 as they have under Rudd and Gillard.

  7. “Big Mango tourist attraction stolen from Bowen in north Queensland”…
    Breaking news!!…Giant Fruit Bat tourist attraction of Gladstone flies away with huge mango…last seen perched on giant Gumboot of Tully……good folk of Bundagerg dreading the possible consequences of the creatures digested diet!

  9. jaycee,

    Abbott was asked to confirm that as a result of the Commission of Audit there would be no changes to the Aged pension as promised during the election campaign. He refused to do so.

  10. There was a fire at the Big Banana a few weeks ago, mercifully (or should that be ‘sadly’) the Banana itself was not damaged. Now someone has nicked the Big Mango. Someone/something has it in for our big things. What next? Will the Big Pineapple be turned into a giant smoothie? Will the Big Prawn end up in a giant prawn cocktail?

  11. The Poodle is rolling around in the pond slime now re Thomson.

    Leaving wriggle room in case this backfires which it probably and hopfully will!

  12. Broomhilda has referred Craig Thomson, no longer a member of parliament, to the Privileges Committee. What about Ms Nash? What about Bookshelves Brandis? What about Abbott and all those rorts?

  15. What a complete disgrace Broomhilda is as Speaker. She attempts to find fault with nearly every question the Opposition asks. It’s about time for Labor to start dissenting from her rulings. Yes, they will lose every vote on motions of dissent, but it will highlight the extreme bias she displays.

  16. http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5449-morgan-poll-february-24-2014-201402240425

    ALP (50.5%, down 1.5%) lead down again over L-NP (49.5%, up 1.5%) as Western Australia set to face a new half-Senate Election in April
    February 24 2014 Finding No. 5449 Topic: Federal Poll Public Opinion

    Finding No. 5449 – This multi-mode Morgan Poll on Federal voting intention was conducted via SMS and face-to-face interviewing on the weekends of February 15/16 & 22/23, 2014 with an Australia-wide cross-section of 3,000 Australian electors aged 18+, of all electors surveyed 1.5% (down 0.5%) did not name a party.

    On a two-party preferred basis the ALP is 50.5% (down 1.5% since the Morgan Poll of February 1/2 & 8/9, 2014). L-NP support is 49.5%, up 1.5%. If an election were held now the result would be too close to call according to the Morgan Poll. This multi-mode Morgan Poll on voting intention was conducted over the last two weekends (February 15/16 & 22/23, 2014) with an Australia-wide cross-section of 3,000 Australian electors aged 18+.

    The L-NP primary vote is 41% (up 0.5%) clearly ahead of the ALP primary vote at 35.5% (down 1.5%).

    Among the minor parties Greens support is 10.5% (unchanged), support for the Palmer United Party (PUP) is 4.5% (unchanged) and support for Independents/Others is 8.5% (up 1%). Support for PUP is clearly highest in Queensland (9.5%).

    Click to access 5449-Fed-Vote-February-25-2014.pdf

    Preferences distributed by how electors voted at the 2013 election are exactly the same…
    TPP L/NP 49.5 – ALP 50.5

  17. Your Government at work:

    Companies with fewer than 1,000 employees could be exempt from reporting on gender balance in their workplace under changes reportedly being considered by the Coalition government.

    Businesses with more than 100 employees currently have to report on the gender makeup of the workplace to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

    The government is preparing to increase the number of employees needed for gender reporting to 1,000 to save money on “red tape”, the Australian Financial Review reports.

    Employment minister Eric Abetz is currently considering a range of changes and is expected to make a final decision in April.

    A spokesman for the minister would not confirm or deny if Abetz was specifically considering changes to gender reporting.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/24/companies-with-fewer-than-1000-staff-may-escape-gender-reporting

  21. The Lemming really is appalling:

    Andrew Laming, to you first, it now seems highly likely that the Iranian asylum seeker died within the detention centre on Manus Island. Doesn’t that make his death wholly the responsibility of the Australian Government?

    ANDREW LAMING: If that information’s correct it’s extremely alarming. Everyone would regret this occurrence from last week. Look, Scott Morrison’s a star minister. He’s provided information as soon as he reliably could. They’ll try and work out why he was potentially given incorrect information. Everyone will want absolute safety for those that are detained on Manus. I’m confident that that centre can achieve that and continue to be an important part of our border protection.

    HAMMER: So, you’d concede that it is the Australian Government’s responsibility, the death in a sense –

    LAMING: We’ll be a key player in getting to the bottom of that matter. And we are obviously responsible because we hire the contractors who run that camp.

    HAMMER: And the matter that the Minister was misinformed initially, that’s also the responsibility of the Australian Government, isn’t it, because it sets up he mechanisms and management of the detention centre?

    LAMING: I’m sure the ministry will be getting to the bottom of those, what actually happened.

    HAMMER: Andrew Leigh, Labor cannot be too critical because it was the Labor Government that set up this arrangement with Papua New Guinea, reopened the Manus camp, hired the contractors etc.

    ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Manus Island is fundamental to the Refugee Resettlement Agreement, which saw asylum seeker boat inflows drop 90 per cent prior to the election. But I’m concerned that the Australian people in Scott Morrison aren’t getting a minister who’s willing to front up. We’ve gone through his Sergeant Schultz routines of being unwilling to speak about on-water matters, to now this kind of Get Smart routine, where he’s bumbled over the extent to which his policy has caused incursions into Indonesian waters and gotten fundamental facts wrong over this asylum seeker tragedy.

    http://www.andrewleigh.com/blog/?p=5767

  28. This government is rotten to the core. It is scaring the hell out of me to even think about what this country will look like by the time the next election rolls around.

  29. Tanya Plibersek’s question to Tony Abbott today, on pensions, and Abbott’s non-answer. This is also an illustration of Madam Speaker’s bias.

    Pensions and Benefits
    Ms PLIBERSEK
    (Sydney – Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:16): My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Treasurer’s comments on budget cuts, ‘All options are on the table.’ Considering the Prime Minister’s election promise that there would be ‘no changes to pensions under an Abbott government’, will the Prime Minister rule out any changes to the pension as a result of the Commission of Audit?
    Mr ABBOTT
    (Warringah – Prime Minister) (14:16): I thank the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Development for her question. I do remind her and the House of the scale of the fiscal challenge that members opposite have left us. Under the policies of the former government, we would get $123 billion in cumulative deficits over the forward estimates period; and, under the policies of members opposite, debt was skyrocketing towards $667 billion with $123 billion in accumulated deficit. So there is a big challenge, and we will address it in ways consistent with our pre-election commitments.
    Mr Burke:
    Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In order to be directly relevant, the Prime Minister needs to make some relevant mention to the commitment that he made to pensioners. The was a commitment to pensioners, and he is not touching it at all.
    The SPEAKER:
    Has the Prime Minister finished his answer?
    Mr ABBOTT:
    Yes.
    The SPEAKER:
    The Prime Minister has finished his answer.

  30. Youth unemployment at crisis point, according to Brotherhood of St Laurence analysis

    Youth unemployment has reached crisis point in Australia, the Brotherhood of St Laurence says, as it releases an analysis of the latest official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

    The organisation says the figures show an average of 12.4 per cent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were out of work in the year to January.

    It says that figure has topped 20 per cent in some parts of the country, including Cairns in far north Queensland, west and north-west Tasmania, and northern Adelaide.

    http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-24/youth-unemployment-at-crisis-point/5278436

  31. A 110-year-old woman believed to be the oldest survivor of the Holocaust and who endured the ordeal partly through her passion for music, has died in London, her family has said.

    Alice Herz-Sommer, who is said to have counted writer Franz Kafka among her family friends and is the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, was a Jewish pianist and musician from Prague in what is today the Czech Republic.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-24/oldest-holocaust-survivor-alice-herz-sommer-dies-in-uk/5278994

  36. leone
    Bishop B is an appalling excuse for an impartial speaker. Her incompetence also is at high levels as she continually messes up members’ seats and titles.

  37. Mesdames Coonan and Cato (The Drum) doing their best to excuse the behaviour of their party in power. They keep saying “I think” but neither of them are capable of anything but shallow and partisan thought.

    On HoJo Cato thinks the G20 was a ‘triumph’ – All he is, is the Sheik of Nth Sydney who is good at saying what people like to hear but knows bugger all about anything. Coonan ‘thinks’ it was absolutely extraordinary to get the so-called agreement to look at everything (and then go away and do nothing).

  39. foreverjanice

    You should have seen Graeme Morris on Sky describe what a triumph HoJo was at the G20 meeting. apparently people in the streets , in board rooms and at the swimming baths were giving him the thumbs up and saying “Wow . How well did Joe Hockey go ?” . It was so bad it was funny.

  40. BK,
    Very true – sometimes it is worse than than others and I object strongly to the ABC giving Coonan a pulpit. They bloody well pay her as well! ,,,,,By the look of the hairstyle, someone scared the daylights out of Cato.

  41. BK
    Broomhilda turned 71 last October and her age shows. I think she looks much older despute the careful thick makeup and the blonded helmet hair. I believe she is showing signs of senility. We are supposed to believe this mentally shrivelled husk of an old woman is up to the most important job in the parliament but she is so clearly out of her depth it’s beyond a joke. The forgetfulness, the befuddlement, the very slow and careful speech as she struggles to remember what she is supposed to do and say are all signs of a problem.

    Broomhilda has been in the house forever, she has had that damned Standing Orders book welded to her hand for years, you would think she would, by now, know the rules and the names of electorates and, after six months, the names of the new members. But no, she struggles. I’d like to see Labor challenge her very biased rulings every day, I don’t think it would take much to make her crack up.

  43. Kaffee,
    Since the conservatives are generally a racist lot, it amazes me that HoJo is admired so much, especially after he yelled the words “I am an ARAB” when campaigning in West Sydney for one of those Barbie dolls.

  45. Leone,
    Holy cow, I thought Broomhilda was at least a decade older than me so I’m stunned to find the old bag is much younger….just goes to show that blonded hair and plaster make-up doesn’t necessarily make one look young!

  46. The govt’ has built a house of cards..they no longer have to rely on the opinion of the public for approval, they have the Murdoch Press giving them the boost, the promos and the accolades…they then follow through with mutual backslapping and the circle is complete.
    But it is a house of cards….a paper tiger. The first authentic challenge to it’s legitimacy that comes along will send it tumbling to the ground. What we need is to have those figures of high authority, like the judicary, the elder statesmen, and ethical business people to come out and say ‘enough is enough!”…but one has to ask..with the exception of Malcolm Fraser and perhaps (perhaps) a couple of others, all I am hearing is crickets!….is this the kind of democracy they want for Aust’?..What foundation will the law of the land stand upon when the parliament is destroyed of it’s democracy?

  47. As a bloke I feel a bit timid about commenting on women’s make up but WTF ( W = What ,Why. Who) re Helen Coonan’s make up ? She has had the same style for years , to me the ‘look’ screams trashy and a really bad version of an extreme male comb over.

  48. Do people actually understand what the G20 agreed on? I doubt it. Have a look at what they have ‘demanded’ of Australia. They can go and get fracked if they think we will sit back and cop a 10 per cent cut in employment protection legislation and a further 10 per cent cut in the regulations governing service industries
    A cut-back in access to the pension? Maybe, if it does away with all those wealthy oldies who get part pensions because they have clever accountants.
    Increased spending on childcare is a good thing so Abbott probably won’t be interested unless it’s to subsidise nanies for the wealthy. .
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/g20-pushes-for-cuts-to-employment-protections-20140222-3391f.html

  50. Which reminds me… I had a birthday a few weeks ago and because I wasn’t feeling too hail and hearty, and having to have Paddy inside all the time because of the heat, I was struggling to keep on cleaning up after him I gave myself a pressie. I bought a Robomaid vacuum cleaner with some of my ‘rainy day’ money. What a brilliant little robot she is too! Strangely enough, the two cats and Witchety didn’t turn a hair to find this little piece of machinery running around my space.

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