The German Question Again

The Consequences of Fear
The German Question Again

For those who have read “Wasn’t That a Time” I am sure you will recall my childhood growing up in the world of German Socialists. With the emergence of the Nazi fascist movement in the twenties and thirties my “Papa’ became an active anti fascist who was predicting the eventual catastrophe that would befall Germany. What made it so painful for Papa was his powerful belief in the Germany of Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Mozart et al. And so I grew up watching my dear father’s most precious world turn into the darkest era in the history of western civilization.

All my life I have struggled to understand how the Germans could become the inventors of the Holocaust? I never really forget what happened in the Nazis years, but periodically there will come along another book or movie that causes me to start all over again trying to untie this knot of horrors by understanding how this could have happened? I am also in pursuit of any lessons to be learned that can be applied to our own politics here at home.

Rudolph Adorno did a study of the Authoritarian Personality following WWII that tried to identify the personality that totally accepts authority. This typology strongly fit the average German. “I was ordered to do it.” “I just go along.” etc. Remember the sixties and the bumper sticker, “Question Authority” That was a derivation from the Adorno study. (You can test yourself on the F scale. Go to Google and put in Adorno. The F stands for fascism.)

Two recent movies, “The Lives of Others” and “The Black Book” reminded me again of my dear Papa’s nightmare. In the latter the victim is added to the blacklist, thrown out of his job and is unable to find another. Everyone is in a state of extreme fear. “The Black Book” is particularly troubling as it explores the complexity of how people living under a Nazis occupation in Holland respond. This is a little closer to what happened here in the US in the fifties.

I have a personal history that demonstrates how fear creates conformity. In my FBI file there is a memo from J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI pinning a number on my name saying that “in case of a National Emergency Robert Schrank is to be incarcerated in a detention camp.” The summoning of citizens like the Hollywood Ten before the House Un-American Activities Committee was all part of the fear campaign. And boy did it work. It was part of the fear that McCarthy had unleashed and supported by a powerful part of the press that caused ordinary people to withdraw from any possibility that they might be tagged as “subversive”. Some went off to live in Mexico, Canada or Paris; others became apolitical, withdrew, or just “went along.” The latter is the objective of the fear.
It became clear that the first element of a fascist takeover is fear. The fear needed to be directed to a target. For a variety of historical reasons the Jews were chosen as the ideal target for releasing pent up energy of fear. What the Nazis added to the phenomena of fear was a unique kind of terror, as exemplified by Krystalnacht when the Nazi’s went on a rampage of destruction of every Jewish owned business in the country. That was the terror. For the average German that simply meant CONFORM to our anti semitism OR ELSE.

In the movie “The Black Book” the hated Nazi occupiers are clearly the “bad guys”, but even they are shown with some human qualities, like falling in love with a Jewish woman who is working for the underground resistance. And I am reminded how very ordinary Germans could tend the ovens.

The terror against those who did not conform brought the fear to levels of turning friend against friend, Christians against Jews, all against homosexuals, communists, and Gypsy’s. A whole nation living in terror and fear.

As I wander in this nightmare I am reminded of the McCarthy era and how a cloud of fear and foreboding seemed to cover the land. I knew at least some of the victims of that era. What comes back to me is the all-pervasive fear of “who would be the next.”

The present situation here at home has at least one of the symptoms of the fascist disease. That is the use of fear as a way to control the electorate. Having said that, I hasten to add that in contrast to Germany there is something in our anti authoritarian democratic tradition that permits the emergence of enough people willing to speak out in spite of fear. This gives me hope for the future. Yet, I believe the present wave of fear has had a profound underneath influence on the countries collective psyche.

So it is good to constantly be on guard against those in power who sow fear by accusing anyone who doesn’t go along as being unpatriotic or not supporting the troops or subversive. Just keep questioning authority, especially when they start lying and repeat the lies over and over until the average soul ends up believing it, like “the weapons of mass destruction.”