Tuesday, April 5, 2011
It Should Have Come As No Surprise
I'm reading Hitler's Mein Kampf right now. What strikes me most about it is that he hid nothing of what he planned to do. It's all laid out there. The extreme nationalism, the right of the strong to squeeze out the weak, the fixation on Jews as the source of all evil. I can only ask, why was the world so surprised?
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Because it wasn't surprising. Antisemitism was fairly widespread, Sweden had already legalized forced sterilization of those considered unfit to reproduce, democracy in Europe was seen as a failure in the midst of depression, many governments were still working things out after the first WW toppled a number of Europe's oldest monarchies, and authoritarianism had not only been disproved as a just form of government, it was seen by many as bringing about a potential utopia, particularly to a country which had been humiliated, and was now seeing itself flourish under a dictator while the democracies around it floundered. At least, this is the argument being put forth by the book I am currently reading.
The world was surprised by the brutality of Hitler's concentration camps and his neglect of prisoners of war, as well as disgusted by his resolve to use mere children to fight than admit defeat. I've read many accounts of the astonishment, the utter speechless horror, the dumbfounded disbelief at the atrocities. Yes, perhaps the rest was not surprising, but this degradation certainly was a stunner.
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