POST~NAZI GERMAN LAMENT

I came across the following "quote" a few years ago. It is the writings from some unnamed German fellow after WW2. He wrote how Nazism seemed to creep up on his people and before they knew it, they were enslaved by the Third Reich. It is understated but sincere and descriptive.

I took his piece from a slightly disjointed ramble and made it comprehensible, also adding pertinent links throughout the whole piece. The links usually lead to a corresponding situation going on in the world today.

What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap

between the government and the people.

And it became always wider,

the whole process of its coming into being

was above all diverting.

It provided an excuse not to think

and entertained people who did not want to think anyway.

It gave us dreadful, fundamental things to think about

and divided us with

artificially manufactured philosophical differences.

They kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises',

and ever so many were oh! so fascinated!

by the machinations of the 'national enemies,

~ without and within,

all of them against us, the "good guy",

that we had no time to think

about these dreadful things

that were growing, little by little, all around us.

These walls hedging us in, walls separating us,

walls of fear, walls of poverty,

walls of anger and hatred, walls of despair;

every day, a new wall.

Most steps were so small, so inconsequential, so well explained

or, on occasion, even 'regretted,' that,

unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle,

what all these 'little measures' must some day lead to.

However, one no more saw it developing from day to day

than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.

Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse.

You wait for the next and the next...and the next...

always wondering if THIS is the last one.

You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking and praying

that others, when such a shock comes, will join you

resisting the vileness.

Even when the big shocks come,

no one speaks for fear of reprisal.

No one.

You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.

You don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.

But that one great shocking occasion,

when tens or hundreds or thousands join with you, never comes!

Or when it does, they are too blinded to react.

That's the difficulty.

The forms are all there, untouched, all reassuring,

the houses, the shops, the jobs,

the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts,

the entertainments such as television and

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,

and your forefathers could never have imagined.

What will our descendants have to say of us?