Book: In the Garden of Beasts

I read the book In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson a couple of months ago and noted some phrases or paragraphs that struck me as important. This is an historical book written in the style of fiction which makes it a very compelling read. It’s about a history professor who was sent to Germany as ambassador during 1933 and maybe 1934, just at the time of Hitler’s rise. It provides a great feel for what society was like and how people acted and thought during that time. I’ve always been interested in World War II and more specifically what the culture was like, what the people were like, what their belief systems were in the lead up to the atrocities of the war. Basically, I wanted to know what propelled supposedly normal people to act in such horrendous ways toward “others”? How does an entire nation fall down the rabbit hole of evil? This question is even more urgent today.

I’m just going to write the quotes that struck me or chilled me and maybe add a comment. This post will not be organized in any fashion.

“Nice days were still nice. ‘The sun shines,’ wrote Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin Stories, ‘and Hitler is the master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my friends…are in prison, possibly dead.’ The prevailing normalcy was seductive. ‘I catch sight of my face in the mirror of a shop, and am shocked to see that I am smiling,’ Isherwood wrote. ‘You can’t help smiling, in such beautiful weather.’ The trams moved as usual, as did the pedestrians passing on the street; everything around him had ‘an air of curious familiarity, of striking resemblance to something one remembers as normal and pleasant in the past – like a very good photograph.’ ”

“Beneath the surface, however, Germany had undergone a rapid and sweeping revolution that reached deep into the fabric of daily life. It had occurred quietly and largely out of easy view. At its core was a government campaign called Gleichschaltung – meaning “coordination” – to bring citizens, government ministries, universities, and cultural and social institutions in line with National Socialist beliefs and attitudes.”

““Coordination” occurred with astonishing speed, even in the sectors of life not directly targeted by specific laws, as Germans willingly placed themselves under the sway of Nazi rule, a phenomenon that became known as Selbstgleichschaltung, or “self-coordination”. Change came to Germany so quickly and across such a wide front that German citizens who left the country for business or travel returned to find everything around them altered, as if they were characters in a horror movie who came back to find that people who once were their friends, clients, patients, and customers have become different in ways hard to discern. Gerda Laufer, a socialist, wrote that she felt ‘deeply shaken that people whom one regarded as friends, who were known for a long time, from one hour to the next transformed themselves.’ ”

In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson, 2011, p.56 (hardcover).

Out of the entire book, this series of paragraphs is probably what chilled me the most: the speed at which people fell in line with the Nazi philosophy. I call this “socialization” because people learn to move in step with others around them, probably as a evolutionary trait humans have to survive and it starts in childhood, thus the 1930s Germans learned to recognize that there was danger to be out of step with the Nazi party in power. I don’t think the Germans had democracy long enough to be able to resist, but I wonder if even with a long history of democracy, would Americans be able to resist this strong socialization pull? Two hundred years versus evolutionary timescale? I fear not; I’m looking at now and am amazed at how many Americans are willing to support the lies, cruelty, corruption, and criminality. You just look at them and wonder “what are they thinking?”

“Lillian [Mowrer] recalled her great sorrow at having to leave Berlin. ‘Nowhere have I had such lovely friends as in Germany,’ she wrote. ‘Looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad – and do horrible things.’ ”

Ibid., p.107.

Normal people, suddenly and inexplicably, start doing or believing things you would never think they would do. Kind of like the sentiments of those who lost families and friends to the QAnon conspiracy theories. It is staggering that more and more people are falling for those “theories”.

“Another newly proposed law caught Dodd’s particular attention – a law ‘to permit killing incurables,’ as he described it in a memorandum to the State Department date October 26, 1933. Seriously ill patients could ask to be euthanized, but if unable to make the request, their families could do so for them. This proposal, ‘together with legislation already enacted governing the sterilization of persons affected by hereditary imbecility and other similar defects, is in line with Hitler’s aim to raise the physical standard of the German people,’ Dodd wrote. ‘According to Nazi philosophy only Germans who are physically fit belong in the Third Reich, and they are the ones who are expected to raise large families.’ ”

Ibid., p.164.

Here I had a note about Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick saying to open up the economy and let the old folks die to make way for the young ones. That there is more to life than living. But I wonder if there is more to it, like getting rid of ACA and prior condition protections so that those with diseases can die sooner and everyone else can “save” money. Just kind of wondering – there is some similarities there.

“The German people, he [Papen] said, would follow Hitler with absolute loyalty ‘provided they are allowed to have a share in the making and carrying out of decisions, provided every word of criticism is not immediately interpreted as malicious, and provided that despairing patriots are not branded as traitors.’ ”

“The time had come, he proclaimed, ‘to silence doctrinaire fanatics.’ ”

“The audience reacted as if its members had been waiting a very long time to hear such remarks. As Papen concluded his speech, the crowd leapt to its feet. ‘The thunder of applause,’ Papen noted, drowned out ‘the furious protests’ of the uniformed Nazis in the crowd. Historian John Wheeler-Bennett, at the time a Berlin resident, wrote, ‘It is difficult to describe the joy with which it was received in Germany. It was as if a load had suddenly been lifted from the German soul. The sense of relief could almost be felt in the air. Papen had put into words what thousands upon thousands of his countrymen had locked up in their hearts for fear of the awful penalties of speech.’ ”

Ibid., p.285.

So, these paragraphs indicate that there were a lot of Germans who were not enamored of the Nazi philosophy, back in 1933. In the early years, people recognized the danger but felt they could not speak out.

I recently viewed a YouTube video discussing policemen in 1942 and how they acted during the war: some were opposed to the violence and could not stomach the act and others just dove right in. This YouTube video tried to answer the question “how did ordinary citizens become murderers?” The most immediate impression I got was that there were 3 categories of people: 1) those who reveled in the cruelty and violence; 2) those who were functionaries of some sort but were removed from direct interaction that could lead to such cruelty and violence – in other words, they weren’t in concentration camps or trains or wherever the prisoners were – and thus just performed their duties; and 3) those who actively resisted. There are two books that I have to read, Ordinary Men and Hitler’s Furies, and then I want to re-watch the video again to see if I pick up more materials that I missed the first time around.

This video is an hour and thirty minutes long.

“Throughout that first year in Germany, Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and of the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest. It was as if he had entered the dark forest of a fairy tale where all the rules of right and wrong were upended. He wrote to his friend Roper, ‘I could not have imagined the outbreak against the Jews when everybody was suffering, one way or another, from declining commerce. Nor could one have imagined that such a terroristic performance as that of June 30 would have been permitted in modern times.’ ”

“Dodd continued to hope that the murders would do outrage the German public that the regime would fall, but as the days passed, he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger. Even the army had stood by, despite the murder of two of its generals.”

Ibid., p.328.

Hmm, yes, we are suffering from a similar sense of shock today – 40-45 % of the American populace are fine with what is going on today. The children in cages? Not a problem. The 200K+ dead? Not a problem. The lying and corruption? Not a problem.

“In this appraisal he (Phipps) came closest to grasping the true message of the Rohm purge, which continued to elide the world. The killings demonstrated in what should have been unignorable terms how far Hitler was willing to go to preserve power, yet outsiders chose to misinterpret the violence as merely an internal settling of scores – ‘a type of gangland bloodbath redolent of Al Capone’s St. Valentine’s Day massacre,’ as historian Ian Kershaw put it. ‘They still thought that in the business of diplomacy they could deal with Hitler as a responsible stateman.’ ”

Ibid., p.334.

This is a warning. I wish the 40-45% of Americans would heed this. The telling of the Rohm purge was gripping and should be read by all students.

“The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behavior, and among the public his popularity soared. So weary had Germans become of the Storm Troopers’ intrusions in their lives that the purge seemed like a godsend. An intelligence report from the exiled Social Democrats found that many Germans were ‘extolling Hitler for his ruthless determination’ and that many in the working class ‘have also become enslaved to the uncritical deification of Hitler.’ ”

Ibid., p.334-335.

Here’s that desire for strength and decisiveness that regular people seem to admire – that macho man thing.

“He [Dodd} saw Hitler’s stature within Germany grow to that of a god. Women cried as he passed near; souvenir hunters dug up parcels of earth from the ground on which he stepped.”

Ibid., p.341.

OMG.

The last thing I want to post is add a link to a video that I recently saw. It is terrifying. It is horrifying. It is unspeakable. I had to watch it in piece; I couldn’t do it all in one sitting. This is one lady’s recollection of her time in the concentration camp.

This one is two hours and thirty minutes.