Remembering Germany's Darkest Day

Deutsche Welle ^ | September 1, 2004

[virgil]

Ja, by all accounts the Germs were swinging from the light fixtures on that day.

[Michael81Dus]

Maybe you are right, however not only SS unites committed those crimes.

Right, there were lots of "sheeple" who did horrible things too.

You´re probably right that Germans identify themselves through the state and not the nation. We are proud of our constitution and the state founded on it, but only few take pride in being member of our ethnic group. This is still a result of WW2... we don´t dare to distinguish us from other ethnic groups.

[NZerFromHK]

I think this is a common feature among all modern-era totalitarian regimes. I have read an article by Chen Limin about the how remarkably similar socialism, including Communism, is to fascism: (sorry, it is available in Chinese only)

http://www.huanghuagang.org/issue09/big5/38.htm

In the article Chen has observed that totalitarian ideologies were very often widely implemented due to three types of people:

1) Those who blindly believe and follow authority-type figures, whether they be Adolf Hitler, Josepf Stalin, or Mao Zedong. In particular, young people are prone to believe what they think are "learned opinions", and even more so if the figures who expressed them are "charismatic and electrifying". This encouraged dictators to believe that they were working "for the good of the people" and made them even more confident to go further.

2) Those who were selfish and cowardly, particularly most of the ordinary people. Most poeple's sense of self-protection very often led them to remain silent if speaking out implies jail term, to follow orders if resistance means giving up your life. Dictators were in fact encouraged by such behaviours - hey, if you can get away with what you are doing, why not go further?

3) Scheming opportunitists surrounding the dictators. Ruthless and filled with greed, opportunitists plotted to advance their own interests by working for the dictators with whatever means: devising plots for dictators, producing propaganda, crushing dissents, bullying the populations.

This is defects in human nature, or in Christian terms, some of the most serious symptoms of our unregenerated sinful nature. It is not that people don't know these ideologies are bad, but given these weaknesses the ideologies had produced some of the most horrible bloodbaths in the 20th century (and which continues to unfold now).