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BS ‘n’ About…
Adolf Hitler
Our world is being built downwind of Adolf Hitler’s garbage dump, the stench of his atrocities permeating our every thought and action. It was a ‘Thousand Year Reich’ that may have lasted only twelve years, yet it re-awakened a savage side of human nature we thought we had buried in Antiquity. With science and technology run amok and our basest aggressions still unchecked, we embark on a 21st century holding more peril than promise.
At the dawn of the 20th century things were much different. Europe was at the tail end of the most peaceful period in its history. Science was re-inventing the world and new frontiers were being conquered daily. The future seemingly held no limits. Even when things fell apart into what we call World War I, they labeled it ‘The War to End All Wars’ and demobilized when it was over.
Then along came Adolf Hitler, founding father of these Dark Times we now share. 20/20 hindsight paints him as a ranting, evil, crazy man surrounded by the rubble of Europe. But he didn’t come to power by promising the German people a burnt out hulk of a nation with its manhood buried in unmarked graves from Stalingrad to Kasserine Pass. No. He came to power by tapping into something that was already there, playing on the fears, angers, and dreams of the German people. Adolf Hitler was much more than a ranting, evil, crazy man. He was shrewd, calculating, single-minded, and arguably the best politician of the 20th century.
Adolf Hitler was selling a utopia, not a nightmare. If, God forbid, the Third Reich had succeeded, the last 900 years were supposed to have been spent wearing lederhosen, working hard, dancing around the maypole, looking the same, acting the same, thinking the same, and living happily ever after.
History has deservedly put Adolf Hitler on his pedestal of evil among the pantheon of all-time villains. But doing so has done a great disservice to understanding the millions of other wills that were so savagely unleashed during that crazy time. By doing so we can cast our own savageries in a heroic light. By doing so we can turn a blind eye to the things we learned about ourselves. …the things we learned about humanity.
From the nation building and economic sanctions after WWI, to the American greed which led to the market crashes, to the craziness going on in Russia at the time, we all played our part in creating the conditions which could bring about such a charismatic monster. Once he took power we sat idly by, or even helped, while he turned into our worst nightmare right before our eyes. Once the savageries commenced, all sides were all too willing to dive in wholeheartedly.
Our side, (The Good Guys), firebombed German cities filled mostly with women, children, and old people. We nuked Japanese cities filled mostly with women, children, and old people. We filled concentration camps with our Japanese citizens, again, mostly women, children, and old people. After all the killing ended, we still had the stomach to interdict God’s will and sit in judgment on ‘The Bad Guys’. Then we hung them.
Genocide is the most heinous of crimes against humanity. But while our own ‘Manifest Destiny-ing’ of the ‘Red Man’ was in many ways just as tragic, it was the Germans’ systemization, industrialization, and de-personalization of the process, (on film!), that has badly twisted the human psyche ever since.
We have changed much as a species, as nations, and as individuals in the little more than half century since the Swastika held sway over Europe. The world is in a constant state of warfare. No one ever demobilizes. Wars are nasty little genocidal things. …no quarter given. …civilians not spared. …torture condoned. We live in a world without chivalry.
Historically, humanity has evolved by alternating between periods of barbarity and enlightenment. Adolf Hitler took us to dark places we have yet to find our way out of, unleashing primal passions and scorched earth values that would have appalled most of our ancestors. Technology, and the blindness that comes from being part of the process may delude us into thinking better of ourselves and our times, but we live in a world with no real chivalry, charity, or compassion. We live in a selfish world, driven by greed, power, and ideology. We live in Adolf Hitler’s world. He changed the rules. He raised the stakes. We still play by his rules. We live in Dark Times.
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