Loyalty to Evil

So last night I had the chance to see one part of a TV special called "Hitler: The Rise of Evil". It tries to visually give us an idea of Hitler's years of struggle during his youth, to achieve his ambitions for Nazi Germany. From his early days in Austria as a poor aspiring painter, to his participation in the First World War and his imprisonment later on in 1923 for the failed revolt in Munich, the film tries to depict the personification of anti-Semitism and anticommunism in the form of this man.

Regardless of my opinion for the film (which is very positive), I was intrigued by the reality of it...how could all this be true? More importantly, where this mentality came from? Surely I was dragging myself into a need for a deep historical research, but it was the fact that support was given to it what fascinated me even more. How did Hitler came to be who he was isn't the curiosity I was having, but rather what was the mentality of the German society in those circumstances and how did Hitler manage to use their inner desires and exploit it.

As far as I know, the First World War (1914) came as a result of pure antagonism between the powers present in Europe at the time. All sparked when the archduke of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo (Bosnia), which the highest circles of the German Empire in Berlin used as an excuse to incite the Austro-Hungarian emperor to conquer the Kingdom of Serbia, which would obviously be in favor of the Germans since there was rivalry between them and the Russian Empire. Russia was their enemy.

From the seeds of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, society in Europe saw the rise of modern communism, with Germans Marx and Engels. But it was in Russia where its heights reached a peak thanks in part to the initiatives of the Bolsheviks and Lenin. They embraced the ideas that meant to represent the working class with such power that all others who wanted to confront Imperialism looked up to them.

However, although between the abolition of the monarchy and the flourishing of the Nazis Germany was a Republic with communist inclinations, people were deeply affected by the Great Depression during this period (1929), and gradually needed an explanation or "blame" for such circumstances. This probably could explain one of the "many" enigmatic reasons why Germans dared to even support Hitler.

Alongside all of this, there is the question regarding anti-Semitism. Perhaps breaking it down to its discerning roots can get too complex so I'll try to focus the subject matter to the enigma of Germany's mentality at the time.

I believe Anti-Semitism was not only a common feeling in the West, but also a persistent set of prejudicial ideas through history, due to three factors: the "fame" that some members of this ethnic group have acquired in many fields like religion, finances, science, and the arts ("fame" being in this case a widespread popular recognition of the achievements of a person that transcend cultural barriers); their lack of a guaranteed state for many years until the creation of Israel in 1948; and their religious followers being in slight confrontation with Christians, with statements of Jesus where he dared to say he was the son of God, to which till today many Jewish have not agreed, and therefore having paid their differences with punishment knowing that most of the western world has been namely Christian.

These three factors are interrelated with one another. Could people like Calvin Klein, or even Steven Spielberg and Roman Polanski, be victims of such animosity? Maybe not so apparent with them, but when you have firms like Goldman Sachs, the world's biggest investment bank; or Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, whose indirect contributions were used for the creation of the nuclear atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project; or Sigmund Freud, father of psychotherapy and possibly modern psychology... you can start to realize that jealousy and envy could have a possible place here, being all of us of course "human" at the end of the day. Achievements of such heights can become lethal weapons of patriotism and nation identification, and given that they are inherently "non-Christians" and "stateless" a shared anti-Semitic feeling could have ascended gradually till the culmination in times of Nazi Germany.

This could be the reason, and not the mere justification, of why anti-Semitic attitudes prevailed. Jewish being blamed for the prices to pay of the Treaty of Versailles; accused of world domination and conspiracy above all through their illusory Protocols of the Elders of Zion, exhibits of such ideologies through figures like Henry Ford and even Richard Wagner….are a tiny recollection of the many examples out there.

Like my dad tells me all the time, human society is like a huge farm, where one is the shepherd and the rest are sheep. Tyranny still exists, both in the form of single shepherds or as entities who govern behind the scenes. But what is most fascinating is how the sheeps follow so incessantly, when they’re fed and given instruction to where to walk. Is the people who believe in these tyrants like Hitler what really is intriguing; their quest for good being the same as anyone else, but their whole perception of it being totally different.