A Dog's Obeyed In Office

[poliphilo]

Germany was playing Poland last night. It was pretty dull so I took a book about the Third Reich off the shelves and browsed through it while the match played itself out in the background.

Germany won.

Both times.

How easy it is to get people to do really horrible things! The Third Reich wasn't just Hitler and a few of his mates, it was tens of millions of people doing as they were told- even when the things they were told to do were bad and stupid. Hitler was a twit (just look at him!) Goebbels was a twit (and a squit) Himmler (with his weak eyes and receding chin) was the creepiest thing on two legs- and yet the German people (with very little resistance) happily went along with them and got onto the swing of it  by thinking up vile things to do to Jews, Commies and other undesirables entirely off their own bat.

All the men in a Russian village are rounded up. They stand in the village square in the pouring rain. The Germans hand out newspapers and ask the men to read aloud. If you're literate you get a clerical job, if you're not you get to dig ditches. After the men are sorted into two groups the ones who can read are marched off and shot. Hehehe; we've just neutralised the fucking intellectuals!

I'm not particularly getting at the Germans here. The Third Reich is just the gaudiest example of the herd instinct in the human animal. Dress a retard in tat and have it make  a speech and most of us will salute it. For other examples just glance round the contemporary world.

Comments

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

I never could quite figure out how they were supposedly a master race and into breeding more master race types and such, because when you looked at them (Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Mengele, for god's sake) would you REALLY want to be passing along those physical types? I rather think NOT. Didn't they have mirrors?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was wondering the other day why Hitler went with that moustache of his. He knew it had been all but patented by Charlie Chaplin. What was he thinking of?

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

That and that terrible haircut of his and the obvious fact he had very oily hair. How can you lead a master race when you can't even find a good barber, I ask you?

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

So true. I'm finding it a bit perplexing when the football commentators remind the audience at home that the last time we played in this or that stadium the English team had to perform the Nazi salute under duress. I can't tell if it's German-baiting or actual historical recapping. The Nazis were just a perfectly horrible reminder of the capacity the human race has to think up hideous new devices of hurting each other.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

On a German late-night chat show the night before the match, the host made the "hilarious" quip that, as all the Poles in Germany would be inside watching the match, for once it would be safe to leave your cars unlocked. Ahahahbloodyha. The World Cup just seems to be a heaven-sent opportunity for populist media to stir up stupid nationalist stereotypes again.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We're British; the Second World War is an obsession with us; it's unreasonable to expect us not to mention it...

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'm not sure that I approve of your automatic link between watching the German football team and reading about the Third Reich. Though I agree with your analysis of the culpability of the entire German population, yes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It wasn't malice aforethought. The Hitler book was actually the nearest book on the shelf. It was only after I'd made the half-conscious choice (reaching out from my armchair) that I realised there were connections to be made...

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Jung would probably seize on that as an example of ancestral memory. But I ain't a Jungian, thank goodness.

[hardrada.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the German Resistance really was as insignificant as you suggest. Attempts on Hitler's life were commonplace, and they would have been the tip of the iceberg.

It is convenient for us to forget the German Resistance. If we had given them more support -- if, say, we had managed to save Rommel and even assist the coup he was planning, that would have pitched the Allies and the Germans into a bloody war against the invading Soviet forces. Betraying the German Resistance may well have been the only feasible choice in the circumstances. It would have been an awful, heartbreaking decision, especially for Churchill, who had no illusions about Stalin. But it's something we still aren't really prepared to face up to.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I know very little about the German resistance. I was taught in theological college to revere the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and I'm aware of Von Stauffenberg, but that's about it.

The Brits had the option of backing a coup headed by Rommel? I didn't know that.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

It's been quite an eyeopener looking at the history of the Baltic states and how here during the war the Germans/Nazis were welcomed as liberators such was their terror of the Soviets.