waswaerewenn schrieb am 29. November 2002 4:56
> ...als kind habe ich meinen grossvater immer gefragt warum er damals
> nichts getan hat und wie es zu so etwas kommen konnte...
>
> ..er versuchte es mit zu erklaeren aber ich verstand es nicht...
>
> ...lagsam kann ich es verstehen.....
Geht mir genauso. Das hier habe ich irgendwo mal gefunden:
Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about...
and kept us so busy with continuous changes and crises and so
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... Each step was so
small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion,
regretted, that... unless one understood what the whole thing was in
principle, what all these little measures... must someday lead to,
one no more saw it developing than a farmer in his field sees corn
growing...
Each act... is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait
for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion,
thinking that others, when such shock comes, will join you in
resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you
don't want to go out of your way to make trouble.... And it is not
just fear... that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty...
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this,
and you can't prove it...
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or
thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty...
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 it themselves; when everyone is
transformed, no one is transformed... You have accepted things you
would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your
father... could never have imagined.
-- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free; The Germans, 1938-45
(University of Chicago Press, 1955)
> ...als kind habe ich meinen grossvater immer gefragt warum er damals
> nichts getan hat und wie es zu so etwas kommen konnte...
>
> ..er versuchte es mit zu erklaeren aber ich verstand es nicht...
>
> ...lagsam kann ich es verstehen.....
Geht mir genauso. Das hier habe ich irgendwo mal gefunden:
Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about...
and kept us so busy with continuous changes and crises and so
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... Each step was so
small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion,
regretted, that... unless one understood what the whole thing was in
principle, what all these little measures... must someday lead to,
one no more saw it developing than a farmer in his field sees corn
growing...
Each act... is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait
for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion,
thinking that others, when such shock comes, will join you in
resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you
don't want to go out of your way to make trouble.... And it is not
just fear... that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty...
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this,
and you can't prove it...
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or
thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty...
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 it themselves; when everyone is
transformed, no one is transformed... You have accepted things you
would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your
father... could never have imagined.
-- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free; The Germans, 1938-45
(University of Chicago Press, 1955)