A sad anniversary

Today is the 75^th-anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death-factory at Auschwitz, in 1945, as the Third Reich collapsed.

Gas chamber

As someone born just a decade after the end of World War II, and raised among people for whom its turmoils were a vivid personal memory, it can be difficult at times to imagine a world in which a lot of people do not know the story of the death camps. Even so, World War II is receding in popular memory and, as it does, so does memory of Adolf Hitler’s rise in 1930s Germany — and the ability to recognize the many parallels with contemporary events.

Hitler did not create a murderous, totalitarian state overnight and, in fact, he enjoyed vast popular support. Humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, many Germans believed that he was making Germany great again. They turned a blind eye to Kristallnacht, to the systematic disappearances of Hitler’s enemies, gleefully joined in the demonization of Jews, and believed that identification papers and the Gestapo were a small price to pay when set next to the rigorous work of restoring national greatness.

As Hannah Arendt documented in Eichmann in Jerusalem, many Germans were able to rationalize even the death camps as necessary when they were exposed; “the Jews were dirty and wouldn’t follow orders,” they would say. Similarly, a post-War collection of interviews with ordinary German citizens, published as They Thought They Were Free, revealed they thought that the ascent of Hitler and the war years were the best, most forward-looking, most promising years of their lives.

All of which is why this tweet by Donald Trump, just yesterday, ought to make sane people nauseous.

YET?!   There is no understanding that tweet as anything but a threat of violence, as an urging to his supporters to go ‘get’ Schiff. In a sane world, such a bald presidential threat of violence against a Congressman would be the end of a presidency. But now, like 1930s Germany, is not a sane and normal time.