General Discussion

Hitler's Luftwaffe chief (and close confidant) Hermann Göring was captured after the end of the war, and was interviewed in his cell. He was remarkably open and frank about how Hitler and his cabal got the people to do their bidding:

Göring: Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert [the interviewer]: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
----------------------------------------------------------

Göring: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?"

My wife's father was that "poor slob on a farm." He was drafted off his farm at age 17, sent to Stalingrad, and did not return in one piece. He left a leg at Stalingrad, blown off by a Russian artillery shell. He returned at age 19, a cripple obviously no longer to do farm work, and extremely resentful of the regime that was responsible. He was fortunate enough to find a woman who was willing to overlook his grave wounds, and marry him. That was my wife's mom, who lost three brothers in the war, the last of whom was killed trying to retreat to his home, dying five kilometers before making back. My father-in-law later became a loan officer at a rural bank that helped out farmers. There were four hundred people at his funeral, most of them people whose existences he had saved by helping them out at the bank. He rarely talked about his war experiences, saying they were too painful to bring up. He would only say that if he had grandchildren, that he hoped that they would all be girls, so that they could never be drafted into the military. Fate was to grant him that wish. Much later, Germany abolished compulsory military service altogether.

After the war ended, my wife's grandfather on her mother's side was asked by a (newly former) Nazi neighbor not to denounce him to the Allies after the war, which he agreed to. The Nazi neighbor had heard him listening to the British radio broadcasts during the war, which carried the death penalty. He told my wife's grandfather that due to their former friendship, he would not turn him in, though warned him to be discreet about it. After the war, my wife's grandfather returned the favor. My wife's mom said that everybody in their little village knew the Jews were rounded up and disappeared, but only rumors circulated about what had happened to them. The fact that none of them returned was rather indicative, of course.

In the town we now live in, our girls went to the Anne Frank Elementary School. The Geschwister Scholl School is down the road. These schools don't just carry the names. They also teach the children about who the school was named after, and why. ("Geschwister" is a German word meaning siblings)

The one vestige of the "old" Germany, meaning Kaiser Wilhelm II, that lingers, and weighs down the whole country, is the "Beamtentum." Beamten are the "civil (sometimes) servants" who cannot be fired, and whose arbitrary decisions are almost impossible to contest. The status encompasses ten times as many people as are necessary. The old "authority is everything" mentality has not been eradicated. Beamten encompass city hall workers, police, customs officials, teachers, administrators, tax office workers, judges, government document overseers--in short, everyone who has control over any aspect of your life. They are untouchable, and are never wrong. They are the real life version of the person who can shoot some down on Fifth Avenue in cold blood and never be touched for it. It is the one aspect of German life that so many Germans hate, and no one dares attack. About 30 years ago, one guy in Düsseldorf established an "office for the pursuing of misbehaving by Beamten." It started out sort of tongue-in-cheek, but the guy was soon inundated with requests of help from of frustrated Germans who got doors slammed in their faces by uncaring Beamten, and didn't know where else to turn. The guy got so popular that the government finally shut him down (dubious grounds, but they are the government), claiming that there were "proper channels" for citizens to register complaints against overly eager (or overly uncaring) Beamten.

In 1949, the Allies formed two German states. Stalin formed the socialist "German Democratic Republic." They got one out of three right--it was German. The USA/GB/F trio formed the Federal Republic of Germany. The Federal Republic (i.e. West Germany), under the Allies, decided to have the country confront its Nazi past, and have it as part of the school curriculum. East Germany, under the Soviets, decided to adopt the attitude that it had rid itself completely of Nazis (no one here but good socialists!), and that an examination of the Nazi past was therefore not necessary. Indeed, the East German military adopted the Nazi uniform and the goose-stepping march of the Nazi Wehrmacht. The only thing was different was the oddball helmet. The West Germans also had a military, and kept the old helmets, but retained nothing else of the old Nazi Regime. The train system of the west became the "Bundesbahn," or Federal Railway. The socialists in the east kept the name Reichsbahn for their railway system, unchanged from the Kaiser, the Weimarer Republik, and then the Third Reich. When the Wall came down, all the latent rightist extremist sentiment, suppressed for 40 years in the East, suddenly was allowed to resurface in all its ugly splendor, and the current far right extremist party, the "Alternative for Germany," or AfD, enjoys a scary 35% popularity in the East, where there used to be "nobody here but us socialists."

I visited East Berlin several times. Same language, but one freaky place. Got my newspaper confiscated at the border, and "congregations" of more than four people at restaurants and cafés were forbidden (someone might be spreading ideas, after all). Twice, upon returning to West Berlin, the East Germans pulled me aside and interrogated me for an hour in a windowless room. "Why were you here?" (never seen it before/showing my friend from Holland who had never seen it before) "Whom did you visit?" (I don't know anybody here) "Empty your pockets!" (I did, had to explain who each business card I had belonged to) "Why do you speak German?" (I took it in college). I think if I had let on that I spoke Russian, I would have been there an extra week. I was the only one in the room who didn't have a gun, an East German uniform or the right to stand up without permission. They finally let me go. Heil Honecker!

On the other hand, as the line from "Fiddler on the Roof" goes.........We have some solid friends here for whom we would do anything, and who would do anything for us. When pregnant with our first daughter, we attended a "baby group" led by an obstetrician, telling us about what to expect, right up to the moment of birth. We were maybe 8 or 9 couples, and all but one form the core of our closest friends in our small town outside Düsseldorf, now 40 years later. There is the same mix of efficiency and incompetence in service, both public and private, that one might expect in any first world society. As opposed to the USA, the police are reluctant to get involved in pursuing theft or organized crime, as they don't like opponents who shoot back. Organized crime has a pretty easy time of it here as long as they don't get violent. Some of the younger generation of cops and officials are slowly being allowed to have a sense of humor. I was stopped in the train back from Switzerland to Germany two days ago by a troop of three German customs officers. They asked if I lived in Switzerland (no, I live in Germany). Was I in Switzerland for a visit or for work (for work). Did I buy anything (yes, Ramseier apple juice and Sprüngli pastry). They looked around and asked if the suitcase behind me was mine. Not knowing that there was one, I turned around to see what they were talking about. I said, no, that one lay "outside my jurisdiction." That made them laugh. Not realizing that I wasn't German, they didn't ask for any ID, and left me alone, saying "pleasant journey." They have their problems, for sure. But as long as there is a willingness to recognize that and, however latent, a will to do something about it, I'm content for the moment to stay here (it'd be nice if they stopped trying to tax me at 73%). Having a dream wife who is most comfortable living in her home country can't be underestimated as a deciding factor. Those few DUers who have met her know what I am talking about.

Finally, I remember at our wedding, where my dad, who was a US Army grunt in World War II, and my wife's dad, who, however reluctantly (the poor slob on the farm, remember), was in the German army in the same war, got along just fine, despite their language difficulty.