The First rule of Highly Successful People: Seek FIRST to understand, THEN to be understood.
"The “democratic,” that is, argumentative, bill-collector, Herr Simon, was greatly interested in the mass deportation of Americans of Japanese ancestry from our West Coast in 1942.
He had not heard of it before, and , when I told him of the West Cost Army Commander’s statement that “a Jap is a Jap,” he hit the table with his fist and said,
“Right you are. A Jap is a Jap, a Jew is a Jew.”
“A German a German,” I said.
“Of course,” said the German, proudly. “It’s a matter of blood.”
He asked me whether I had known anybody connected with the West Coast deportation. When I said “No,” he asked me what I had done about it.
When I said “Nothing,” he said, triumphantly, “There. You learned about all these things openly, through your government and your press.
We did not learn through ours. As is your case, nothing was required of us – in our case, not even knowledge. You knew about things you thought were wrong – you did think it was wrong, didn’t you, Herr Professor?”
“Yes.”
“So. You did nothing. We heard, or guessed, and we did nothing. So it is everywhere.”
When I protested that the Japanese-descended Americans had not been treated like the Jews, he said,
“And if they had been what then? Do you not see that the idea of doing something or doing nothing is in either case the same?”"
6 fascinating talks on better understanding Islam
“And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before.
It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do.
You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.
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?
How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men?
Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - ‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’
But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men?
Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn’t, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.
People you have known for year will tell you "don't make waves" and "oh, you're just and alarmist".
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end?
On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.
You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you.
Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things.
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 ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.
The world you life 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
Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.
The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."
A Philologist colleague of Book's author
They Thought They Were Free, the Germans 1933-45 by Milton Mayer;
"Sixty days before the end of the war, Teacher Hildebrandt, as a first lieutenant in command of a disintegrating Army subpost, was informed by the post doctor that an SS man attached to the post was going crazy because of his memories of shooting down Jews “in the east”;
this was the closet any of my friends came to knowing of the systematic butchery of National Socialism."
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