An inside perspective of Hitler's Germany

The subject continues to come up, which is natural. Hitler's Germany was such a stark and monstrous tragedy for humanity that many people continue to think about it and try to better understand it. That is a good and natural thing to do, except for two cautions that I wish to offer you.

As the generation who lived through it dies out, fewer people remember what life in general was like during that time, and so the younger people of today often make assumptions based on how life is today that are invalid and shade their thoughts about Hitler's Germany. For one, is it nearly impossible for children and young people to imagine a time without phones. The Germany of Hitler's time very rarely had phones, except for government officials, as it was still primarily a rural country. My grandparents lived in Berlin and did not have a phone (nor did they have one into the 1960's!) So when young people today ponder how something like Hitler's Germany could have happened, remember that they are imagining in their minds all the conveniences of communication and other modern values which just was not in place in Germany or indeed in much of the United States or the rest of the world. Having grandparents who lived during that time used to provide "what life was like when we were young" context as young people learn about history. As the World War II vets and the elderly grannies have been dying out, remember that it takes an effort to be a genuine historian and provide a genuine cultural setting that is valid.

The second thing to be cautious about is to remember that "rage and hatred is the gift that keeps on giving." Just look at the level of venom that arises at the discussion of whether the Catholic Church views Pope Pius XII as a potential saint or not. If you want to see otherwise decent and level headed people go feral, just mention that subject among those who keep the fire of what happened in Hitler's Germany stoked within them. That is another lasting tragedy of Hitler's Germany, that people can go from fairly intellectual and good willed to snarling and lashing out in rage when certain buttons are pushed (or perceived to be pushed) regarding certain aspects of Hitler's Germany. It's understandable, especially if one is a Holocaust survivor or a relative of one, and it's even understandable if one is a particularly sensitive soul, prone to feeling great waves of righteous indignation. But there is a selective outrage, almost as if the rage that Hitler left as part of his filthy legacy clumps into dark currents, touching some subjects and leaving others to disappear into history. For example, few people get worked up over the Blitz anymore, feeling the outrage of the incendiary bombs burning large parts of Britain, men, women, children, farm animals, the pounding and destroying that Britain endured for years, particularly 1940-1941. Read this excerpt from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in World War II. The name is a shortening of the German term, "Blitzkrieg", or "Lightning War". While the "Blitz" hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 nights in a row.[1] By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing and more than a million houses destroyed or damaged in London alone.[2][3]

Yet today we are able to read the facts above, which describe only a portion of the horror, and not have our buttons pushed. Yet not that long ago, if you talked to an older Brit from that time, you could see the anger and pain in their faces as they recalled the horror and their loses. So remember when thinking about Hitler's Germany that with this passage of time, two things have happened that render moderns unable to think or rather to perceive that time as fully and accurately as was once possible. The first is that as witnesses have aged and died off, people lack first hand context of what life was really like then, and why certain losses happened as they did. The second is that the outrage tends to gel around the most vivid and painful monstrosities of the time, such as the killing of the Jews in the Holocaust, yet the passing of time smooths away the enormity and personal outrage of other terrible events, such as the Blitz. Thus one cannot grasp the enormity of the experience, in its full context, by focusing on one aspect, such as "how could the Holocaust have happened?" People who lived through World War II were also wondering "how could the Blitz happen" and "how could this madman be working on gaining the atomic bomb" and "could he actually also defeat the Russian army and grasp their oilfields?" A lot of horror was unleashed at the same time in all directions. It is easy to try to reduce that almost incomprehensible time into "well, the Pope should have done more" or "how could the western countries let so many Jews die?" and "how much did the 'average German' 'know?'" But those types of questions, valid as natural as they are, belong to selective armchair ponderers. They do not begin to encompass the entire picture of a world that was truly aflame.

There was a great series that aired for years on PBS called "The World at War." If someone really wants to understand Hitler's Germany, that is one of the best places to start, it is a treasure, since many of the contemporary witnesses and participants of that time appear in rare interviews and of course, most of them are now deceased. THAT is a wonderful educational resource and I think that all families, especially home schooling... no wait, I take that back (suddenly remembering how awful the public schools have become)... ALL families with school age children should get "The World at War" series and watch it with their older children.

Yes, do a search for it on Amazon.com and you will see "The World at War" is an eleven disk DVD collection for $55 and change. Here is the first sentence of the review.

Amazon.com essential video
Sir Jeremy Isaacs highly deserves the numerous awards for documentaries he has earned: the Royal Television Society's Desmond Davis Award, l'Ordre National du Mérit, an Emmy, and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. His epic The World at War remains unsurpassed as the definitive visual history of World War II.

I HIGHLY recommend it and I watched the entire series when it was on television several times through. It will transform all of you who watch it into truly providing a foundational knowledge of this difficult and tragic time, on a personal level and the actual facts of history. When Ken Burns' "The Civil War" came out it reminded me of "The World at War" because both give a genuine perspective of what happened and why, in the voices and with the faces of those who were actually there. I look forward to seeing it again on the DVD.