Who is Responsible for the Evil a Nation Does?
June 29th, 2008 at 09:31am Mark Noonan
Interesting discussion of the Holocaust and how much the average German was complicit in it over at First Things - here’s the bit I’d like to discuss:
The Holocaust may be the only universally agreed upon icon of absolute evil, but we deceive ourselves if we insist upon its utter singularity. Kershaw concludes on the sobering note: “So far, with great effort, the combination [that produced the Holocaust], which would be truly dangerous if marshaled by a powerful state entity, has been held in check. Will it continue to be?” Neither divine promise nor our knowledge of the human capacity for good and evil warrants a certain answer in the affirmative.
During the Third Reich, ordinary Germans “had many more things on their minds.” That’s a chilling phrase. We might easily say, and many do all too easily say, that during the era of slavery or during current horrors such as the genocide in Sudan or the daily killing of thousands of unborn children in the abortuaries around the country, most ordinary Americans “had many more things on their minds.” That’s a moralistic cheap shot. The truth is that we all have many more things on our minds, and necessarily so. Such as families, jobs, dealing with sickness, and warding off despair. Not to mention, for many, the distinctly unnecessary hours every day spent surfing and chatting on the blogosphere.
The Third Reich is rightly viewed as an icon of evil. This does not mean, as Ian Kershaw reminds us, that the ordinary Germans of the time are the icon of moral indifference or complicity in great evil. Then it was the Jews, the Slavs, and the gypsies. At other times, it is another class of human beings. Given the requisite mix of circumstances, which is not beyond imagination, it is an idle conceit to think that ordinary Americans would behave more nobly than did the Germans of Hitler’s day. Among any people of any time, moral courage is the exception and not the rule. There are heroes and heroines who contend against the great evils of their time, but even they must be selective. You may be devoting your life to helping the people of Sudan, but what are you doing to help prisoners of conscience in China, or to stop international sex trafficking, or to feed the hungry of Zimbabwe, or to relieve the loneliness of old people in the nursing home within an easy drive from your home? The list goes on and on.
“They had many more things on their minds.” And so do we all. Contemplating monstrous evils, such as the Third Reich, is not an occasion for preening in our supposed moral superiority but for humility, for self-examination, for renewed discernment of our duty, and for more earnest prayer for the coming of the promised Kingdom.
If you read Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp, you’ll find that average Germans slipped easily into the role of slave-master over the Slavs and Jews imported into Germany for drudge labor. While many acts of kindness were done by individual Germans for the captives, the plain fact of the matter is that most Germans didn’t act upon any sense of moral obligation towards their fellow human beings, and a very large number took extreme pleasure in their ability to dominate and harm. The question really boils down to this: do the people, on average, just follow along with their government, or does the government always tend to respond to the basic desires of the people? Did, that is, the Nazis convince the Germans to be evil (or at least turn a blind eye to it) or was the evil done by the Nazis latent in the German people from the start? My view is the latter - the evil was built in, and the Nazis just exploited it.
We all have it in us, you see? Only a routine adherence to first principles prevents any of us from slipping into varied forms of evil - and evil, of course, doesn’t require a death camp. Just to have a cold heart towards another human being is evil - and only by continuing to remind ourselves that the other person is due all the love and respect that we feel is our due prevents us from becoming cold hearted. For far too many people, this necessity of keeping on the proper track is forgotten, or left aside as inconvenient. It is much easier to separate one’s self from the evil than to stand up and be counted against it - faced with someone doing something horrible (like, say, gangsters terrorising a neighborhood) it is much easier to just close one’s eyes and walk past, pretending that it is someone else’s problem and, at any rate, why should I risk my neck for people I don’t know personally? In this attitude, of course, is the forgetfullness that if any one of us were terrorised by gangsters, we’d want the entire community to rise up as one to defend us.
There is also the second part of evil - that human desire to be on the winning side. When someone is despised, it is much easier to join those doing the despising than to join the despised. From large to small, it works the same - the Nazis despised the Jews and as the Nazis seemed to be the winners, many Germans simply wanted to be on the winning team; down at the smaller level, it could be merely joining in on some malicious gossip about someone disliked at the office. The actual effects are different, but the evil is the same.
In the end, the people are responsible for what is done in their name - there can be excuses for being under duress, but at the end of the day a government can only do what it convinces people to accept, at least in the sense of a tacit acceptance based upon silence. This does not argue in favor of the collective punishment of a nation if its leadership does wrong, but it does educate us on the need to be ever vigilant - an unguarded moment can be the ruin of a person, or of a nation. And so when someone does suggest even the slightest evil is ok because it is more convenient, that is the moment to stand firm against it - when the snake is just out of its shell, that is the easiest time to kill it…wait until it is full grown, and it becomes a much larger problem and a much larger threat.
Entry Filed under: General Government, Popular Culture, Religion, Social Issues
12 Comments
1. extramedium | June 29th, 2008 at 10:52 am
“There is also the second part of evil - that human desire to be on the winning side. When someone is despised, it is much easier to join those doing the despising than to join the despised. From large to small, it works the same - the Nazis despised the Jews and as the Nazis seemed to be the winners, many Germans simply wanted to be on the winning team”
The thing is, when it came to despising Jews, most Germans were already on the the team- and it didn’t take the Nazis to put them there. Blatant anti-semitism and murderous pogroms had been taking place in Germany and Eastern Europe for centuries prior to the holocaust. Who and how much people knew about the “final solution” at the time it was happing is a subject of debate, but the 1930’s German people were definitely aware of the segregation and persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. I think they did little to stop it because they considered the Jews to be an inferior race (though I’d like to think no more than a small minority would have stood for the genocide, had they known).
I think the lesson for mankind is that any time we begin to think of another group of people as any less human than we are, we put ourselves on a slippery slope that could ultimately make us a party to absolute evil. We’re all just men - nothing more, nothing less.
2. neocon | June 29th, 2008 at 10:58 am
The challenge that is faced here is the distorted definition of evil that too many people have and the lack of courage others have to confront it, because of their selfish ambitions.
Too many people find it easier to acquiesce to evil in the hopes that appeasement will calm the storm and that they will not be directly affected, allowing them to live their lives irrespective of the misery others are being subjected to.
Too often when evil is confronted, the complacent people are quick to accuse the confronters of evil and violence, completely ignoring the initial, egregious acts of the confronted. This only serves to encourage the confronted to continue to battle knowing that an apathetic society are their best defenders.
Peace and freedom are neither free nor without confrontation.
have a splendid day
peace, neocon
3. The New Conservative | June 29th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. I forget who said that first.
http://www.thenewconservatives.blogspot.com/
4. Mark Noonan | June 29th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Extra,
I’ll dispute that notion a bit - the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany was a fairly recent development…from about the last quarter of the 19th century. To be sure, anti-Semitic thought and actions were long prevalent throughout Europe, but outside Russia of the Black Hundreds actual acts of violence were rare from about the mid 17th century on. The success of Albert Ballin and other German Jews under the Second Reich showed that anti-Semitism was no bar to advancement.
Just as Hitler rose out of Austria to rule the Germans, so did the virulent, modern strain of anti-Semitism rise out of Austria…in direct contravention of Austrian imperial policy but, then again, it was partially the manner which which Jews flourished in the latter part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which helped incite the hatred (the despised minority getting on too far and too fast, as it were). But even from that “beer hall” anti-Semitism is was quite a step to Hitler’s genocide.
What was latent in the German people was the capacity for evil - all human beings have it. Hitler turned it on the Jews, but Lenin turned it on the Russian middle class…in each case, large numbers of people, confronted with evil, joined right in while the overwhelming majority of the remainder hardened their hearts to the sufferings of others.
The lesson, from my understanding, is to never lose sight of the fact that our fellow human beings are, indeed, our fellow human beings - from conception to natural death, each and every one of them is due the love and respect inherent in their dignity as men created by God.
5. Eric T | June 29th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
http://www.christianaction.org.za/firearmnews/2004-04_thegreatestkiller.htm
http://fr-d-serfes.org/orthodox/memoryof.htm
The 20th Century has been the bloodiest century in all of history. And humanism has proven to be the most destructive religion of all time. Far more people have been killed in the name of atheism than by all other religions combined.
Darwinian evolutionism with its ”survival of the fittest” ideology has devalued human life. If man is not created in the image of God, and if there is no God in heaven Who will judge the living and the dead, if there are no objective standards of right and wrong - then life becomes cheap. When you devalue God, you devalue life.
6. extramedium | June 29th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Mark,
I’ll have to dispute you back a bit. You are leaving out 19th century German pogroms including the Hep-Hep riots of 1819. That demonstrated some pretty strong hatred and violence toward Jews in Germany long before Hitler, but after the 17th century milestone of peace you claim. Two years prior, an angry mob in Heidelberg freed a German Christian convicted of raping a Jewish girl. That’s hardly “beer hall” anti-semitism.
Other than that, I think we’re basically saying the same thing.
By the way - I love that term, “beer hall anti-semitism”! That sure makes it sound like some good-old boys having a little fun. Is that like “country-club racism”, because I know first-hand what that’s all about. You hear some colorful jokes in those locker rooms that you wouldn’t expect to hear outside of the 1950’s. I guess it’s just people longing for the good old days, before everyone got so uptight about saying hateful things about [insert minority here]…
7. Casper | June 29th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
So, here is the question. Is it right to commit an evil to prevent an evil.
8. Ricorun | June 29th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
7. Casper | June 29th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
So, here is the question. Is it right to commit an evil to prevent an evil.
I’d say that’s a necessary assumption to square not only Mark’s current argument, but many others dating back to when I first started commenting on this site. He has stated many times, often requiring significant logical convolutions, that it’s appropriate to compromise means in the pursuit of ends. I vehemently disagree and always have. IMO, to the extent that the means are compromised, the ends are as well.
As an aside Casper, I think you would benefit from some of the conversations some of us have privately. I’ve provided my email address several times in the past, and I’m willing to provide it again. Do you want it?
9. Casper | June 29th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Ricorun
Yes I do.
10. Mark Noonan | June 30th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Ricorun,
I’d like a direct quote of where I justified evil means to achieve a good end.
11. Mark Noonan | June 30th, 2008 at 12:58 am
extra,
I’m not able to immediately locate my copy of War Through the Ages, so I’m going off memory here - I believe that sort of anti-Semitism was inspired by the “beer hall” early 19th century German patriot “Father” Jahn - who started a youth movement designed to cleanse Germany of the evil elements which had led to the crushing defeat of Prussia by the French in 1806 - Jews included in the “evil elements”. He had a good run, for a while, but eventually he was suppressed - and has slipped so far down the memory hole that he’s only really remembered as the father of modern gymnastics.
That aside, I did say “rare” and not “non-existent” - it is also good to keep in mind that until the Holocaust made anti-Semitism temporarily unfashionable (its coming back strong these days, ya know?), being a Jew wasn’t actually a social recommendation in any western society. Jews were excluded from a lot of things and had to claw their way into higher society…but by the late 19th century Jewish people had become so acceptable that they were taking care of the finances of such august personalities as Prince Bismarck and the Prince of Wales…and the aforementioned Albert Ballin was one of Germany’s first rank business leaders and a close friend of Wilhelm II.
12. Absolute » Blog Arc&hellip | July 3rd, 2008 at 9:56 am
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