Website review: They Thought They Were Free: The Ge...
starspirit discovered this in History
•69 reviews since Dec 20, 2005
history, germany, politics
•press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
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Reviews of this website
drofnats rated 5 months ago- Powerful stuff. Looks like a must-read. From the page: ""Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "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? "
- wilbau rated 5 months ago
- From the page: "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. "
- indiglo rated 6 months ago
- "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."
- SeekExcellence rated 6 months ago
- From the page: "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?"
- RuudHein rated 6 months ago
- Because "the" WWII Germans were just human, this write-up of how gradually things become to be from the point of view of a citizen not only is understandable -- it is uncomfortably recognizable. Of course, as he says, one doesn't want to be an alarmist -- but if you can't proof that "this" leads to "that"... you're an alarmist. Excellent read.
- DGSadi rated 6 months ago
- From the page: "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."
- tapyourheels rated 6 months ago
- From the page: "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." Thx to ex-cretin
- ex-cretin rated 6 months ago
As I follow the news these days, it's as if the Verizon guy is quoting this article again & again, and asking the general public,
"Can you hear me now?" http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html From the page: 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. Hat Tip: Mumba
- chrisfreer rated 6 months ago
- "What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "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. "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."
