MarkL
Canberra

As far as I’m concerned we don’t learn very much by portraying the Nazis (or others)as inhuman monsters but we do gain a lot by understanding how basically normal people (Hess and other germans at the time) know without knowing and give tacit support to monstrous and inhuman actions.

While I’ve never thought it fair to engage in the sort of ‘immoral equivalence’

Take II on that line - I actually read through Laura’s link. What a swell example. I’m afraid, paceHeather Mellick, that nothing at My Lai or in Abu Ghraib causes me any sort of reaction compared to that evoked by the Holocaust. Indeed surely re-reading her own article should suffice to establish that.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Prof R J Rummel’s work on democide, but he’s gone to some trouble to assess the link between wealth, democracy, capitalism and lack of genocidal killing empirically. Very interesting stuff.

While I’ve never thought it fair to engage in the sort of ‘immoral equivalence’

I should clarify that I did not mean to engage in any such ‘crap’ (the phrase is mine). I was referring to Churchill and Eisenhower’s alcohol habits (and eg Grant’s, etc throughout time).

Dresden and Hiroshima problematized aerial bombardment for all time.

Not perceptibly.

I hope Auschwitz taught us a deeper lesson.

My other point above was that I suspect it didn’t. I can find very little evidence that a) Auschwitz taught ‘us’ a lesson, or that b) extraordinarily horrific human suffering teaches ‘people’ a lesson. Otherwise, for example, surely the last few centuries up until WWII would not have been a crescendo of violence. And I see little sign that appalling suffering in, eg, Africa, encourages pacificism in Africans. The Soviets were ‘exposed’ to Auschwitz but not perceptibly affected by it (unless perhaps inspired).

As I said above, the only reliable correlation I can with increased compassion/’humanity’/what have you is to broad wealth. Which only seems to happen in capitalist democracies.

NB: from today’s ML, via Will Wilkinson:

The brute fact of patriotism is made brute by the inveterate inclination in men to associate virility with the exertion involved in killing and risking death. No theory can ever defeat or discredit this inclination, which helps to engender the fantasy that the competition of political units is the highest kind of team sports.

I don’t necessarily mean individually - the guy who took the photos Nick’s highlighted above went back to being a bank johnny in his hometown and died in his bed at 88 (follow Laura’s link). It’s the collective impact on a country’s culture that never goes away. Dresden and Hiroshima problematized aerial bombardment for all time. I hope Auschwitz taught us a deeper lesson.

Actually I for one find it reassuring to think that they needed a stiffener or two to get them along with it.

Alcohol can vitiate intent at common law. Like Patrick, I find it oddly reassuring that large numbers of these people needed to pickle themselves daily in order to keep doing this shit. The thought of people doing it stone cold sober is utterly terrifying.

That said, the Nazi high command spread the booze around as part of a deliberate policy, especially in cultures where booze was strongly associated with ‘good times’ and where access had been controlled by communist authorities previously. A ‘fifth of vodka’ (as in the Eminem song) was the standard measure doled out to members of the Einsatzgruppen before a shooting. They were expected to scull it after collecting their ammunition.

pissups, picnics and so forth are mixed in with killings

Actually I for one find it reassuring to think that they needed a stiffener or two to get them along with it.

My wife’s name ends in ‘y’, phonetically at least

Also I wonder to what extent things have changed so much that we can never more identify with such events. After all I understand that we, with our delicate mores and sense of compassion, are the exceptions. Even today I think ‘we’ remain a minority.

It would be nice to think that we owe this change to the inutterable horror of the holocaust. But that is plainly false - such horrors have existed throughout history and continue to exist, if rarely on such a scale.

For my part I think we have money to thank. Somehow the combination of democracy and capitalism (to demur from Nab’s statement of principle) appears to bring compassion.

Um, down with feminism, up with - being feministy?

A bit like taking your new iPhone to the Lep Zep reunion gig at O2 and capturing and sending on highlights to your brother in the country.

Well not really. But yes also. And that’s the true horror. It was a community/family event thing.