Vaclav Havel and the Power of the Powerless

There are at least two types of tyrannical political order. The first is one that is implemented by brute force with soldiers or police patrolling everywhere looking to enforce the ruler’s will on a frightened population. The second type of tyranny is one enforces by the people on the people. There is always a coercive force, but it does not require constant patrols by soldiers, because people (whether they believe in the tyrannical policies or not) enforce them or call in the authorities to do so.

Of the two types of tyranny, the second is the more awful. There will always be some toadies in an oppressed culture that will jump over to the other side and work with the oppressors in the first type of tyranny, but the vast majority of people will outwardly comply, but inwardly hope for and be prepared to assist a rebellion. Resistance is cheered, even in small things. This is a totalitarian system of government.

In the second form of tyranny, internal cultural forces demand absolute compliance and offer little hope of freedom. It requires the deletion of civil society—those groups that exist for non-political purposes and which hold societies together—and their replacement with government authorized programs. The second form of tyranny induces citizens, even those who do not explicitly favor the government’s policies, to enforce them through social pressure and, sometimes, by calling in the government’s enforcers. There is little room for people to live in dissent. Vaclav Havel calls this second form a post-totalitarian system.

In Vaclav Havel’s essay, “The Power of the Powerless” he describes what it means to live in a society in which dissent is impossible. He is speaking of his experience in Czechoslovakia, where he was a significant member of the resistance that eventually contributed to that nation being freed from communism.

Havel describes a simple act by a greengrocer, who one day refuses to put the approved Party sign in his windows. He does not believe that “Workers Unite” has any particular significance in a political system designed to entrap everyone in a miasma of misery. He may have already declared his allegiance in various public and semi-public ways through participation in Party activities, without ever believing the concepts. But one must go along to get along.

And yet, though many of the customers will not particularly care about the sentiment “Workers Unite,” because it has no real meaning, the minor resistance of the greengrocer in no affirming the approved common sentiment will be deemed a rebellion. In a post-totalitarian society, social auto-totality will lead to conformity, as word will spread and reach the authorities who will by force ensure compliance, often by removing the right to work. It may not be physical force that is brought to bear, but commercial and social pressure.

The crime of the greengrocer was simply to stop living the lie. He had never truly believed the slogans, like most of the population, but had simply done what was needed to get by. In that moment when he chose to stop putting up slogans, stop voting in farcical elections, and, perhaps, even positively voice an opinion at a political meeting, the greengrocer will have begun to live in the truth, but society will not allow it.

Havel writes as one who has experienced a post-totalitarian system under Communist rule. He worked against the system, though the system did not acknowledge him, and eventually became the prime minister of Czechoslovakia after the end of the Communist oppression ended.

We, however, are seeing the beginning of a very different regime of oppression that is being brought to bear on society more gradually and yet no less insidiously. At present, there is still room to live in the truth, but there are an increasing number of voices looking to make the lie the only possible way of life.

Consider, for example, the rush to ignore differences in sexual expression and the demand to support various forms of LGBTQ lifestyles. One may think those good or not, but participation in much of society is now becoming dependent on active, public affirmation of those lifestyles. There is no room for neutrality or even quietly thinking, along with many of the voices in human history, that this is an unhealthy lifestyle. Instead, employers require affirmation of “diversity” along arbitrarily invented lines, which necessarily exclude diversity of thought, or, really, any thought at all. To refuse to wear a rainbow ribbon on the culturally approved day or affirm the latest evolution in sexual ethics is a form of open rebellion, much as the green grocer’s refusal to post the sign, “Workers Unite.”

At times there is force of law behind these edicts, as with the states that are attacking bakers and florists that decline to participate in same-sex wedding celebrations, but much of the punishment for violating societal norms is meted out by regular people. This is an auto-totality. In Western culture, it is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Havel’s concerns are certainly different than those we face in the auto-totality, but the methods used by the contemporary culture to gain and maintain control are similar to those used by the Soviets in oppressing the people of Eastern Europe. Havel’s essay, “Power to the Powerless,” is informative because it provides a roadmap for those who disagree with the consensus that is being hammered over society to maintain their integrity and not live the lie.

The hope of the resistance should be to create an existential revolution, so that people see and pursue a radically different way of thinking and knowing. That is, the resistance needs to demonstrate that an alternate, moral reality exists and live in a way that points people toward it.

As Havel writes,

“Above all, any existential revolution should provide hope of a moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of human beings to what I have called the ‘human order’, which no political order can replace. A new experience of being, a renewed rootedness in the universe, a newly grasped sense of ‘higher responsibility’, a new-found inner relationship to other people and to the human community – these factor clearly indicate the direction in which we go.”

Havel wrote his ideas on living in truth to fuel an existential revolution leading to moral reconstitution when the fall of communism still seemed unlikely. As the storm clouds of our present auto-totality continue to deepen, we may find it necessary to tighten the boundaries of our contrast communities, rebuild the moral structures within them, and live with greater integrity to demonstrate the plausibility of our moral vision for the world.

The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe

By Havel, Vaclav

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A Connection Between Higher Taxes and Freedom of Thought

Is economic freedom important?

There is a slice of American society, many of whom are on the political right, for whom economic freedom—usually characterized by a desire for a libertarian or near anarcho-capitalist society—is an ultimate good that is good in and of itself.

In response, some on the left, especially young people who have lived in the extreme prosperity of the modern West, see economic freedom as an evil to be curbed through “more effective” redistribution of wealth through violence (think the Bezos guillotine protests) or, at the very least, expansive government programs fueled by high taxes.

For some, high taxes are a comparatively small threat when the “major threat of the far right” is concentration camps and a rather pointless, though exceedingly bloody battle in World War I.

One certified blue-checked media personality recently commented: “Seems poignant that the major threat of the far left is higher taxes, while the major threat of the far right is, well, Dachau or Verdun.”

This is, no doubt, a flippant comment in a larger conversation (albeit one that occurred in public), but it is illustrative of a tendency of some to minimize the powerful effect of growing concentrations of power, whether in government or in corporations.

There is no question that there is more than an undercurrent of hostility toward civilization on the far right. However, it remains an open question whether the “major threat of the far left” is something a bit more significant than higher taxes. The violence of Antifa and some of the riots from the summer of 2020 caused by agitators from the far-left indicate that on both poles there is cause for concern.

The Value of Economic Freedom

But the question remains whether higher taxes are really an insignificant threat.

I think it is entirely possible to believe that higher taxes are not “the major threat of the far left” while still believing them to be a significant threat to a healthy society. Of course, that belief would depend on recognizing the value of economic freedom.

Economic freedom is necessary for human flourishing, but it is not sufficient for human flourishing.

An entirely free market (which the U.S. is very far from) would not make people holy and happy. In fact, as we’ve seen through the rise of modernity, economic freedom can leave people nearly as miserable (and sometimes more so) than certain forms of totalitarianism.

In the end, economic freedom does not produce happiness. However, economic freedom does enable, for those who are virtuous and especially in a (basically) virtuous society, the ability to thrive and fulfill the unique calling of being human.

The qualified value of economic freedom can be seen by the effects of its absence.

Alternatives to Economic Freedom

If, as some versions of socialism propose, the government regulates the amount of money a person can earn, then the government fundamentally has the power to police much of human activity.

All human activity is not economic. However, a great deal of human activity is economically engaged. Even “free” activities like worship depend on the economic ability to (a) afford leisure time (i.e., time not directed toward economic productivity) to gather for worship, (b) the ability for a community of like-minded individuals to cooperate and pool resources to fund a house of worship, a vocational pastor, and to support ministries that serve the common good. The economic support for these non-economic goods is enabled by some degree of economic freedom. One must have disposable income to support ideas and communities that one prefers.

Consider further that if the government holds the keys to all wealth, even through well-intentioned redistribution programs funded by confiscatory taxes, then they hold the keys to all ideologies. If disagreeing with the powers that be (especially if those powers are in favor of increased economic control of citizens) can lead to having funding choked off through job loss or increased taxation (which might be in the form of taxation of despised charitable groups, like churches, or preferential treatment of certain charities through access to grants, etc.), then freedom of thought and speech are greatly restricted.

To be clear, the political right has often made mountains out of molehills here. Bad policies like the Affordable Care Act and the Green New Deal are not usually going to lead directly to the forms of economic control that full-on communism has. They will, thus, be unlikely to immediately exert totalitarian control over human thought.

But such soft-totalitarianism isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Though the Affordable Care Act, for example, does not necessarily entail totalitarianism, the seeds for it have been made evident by the coercive power that has been used in the name of the ACA.

Although the law itself does not actually require funding birth-control or abortifacients, the overriding concern of the regulators responsible for administration of the Affordable Care Act has been coercing, through economic and legal means, groups that object to those medical technologies to fund them. It’s not enough to ensure that workers are medically shielded from significant emergencies; many on the left are insistent that conscientious objectors be forced to fund certain ideologically preferred treatments. For example, there has been a near-pathological focus by the Left on attacking the Little Sisters for the Poor by every means available to demand they fund abortion and abortifacients in strong opposition to their conscience.

For those watching the message is clear: “Fund the ‘medical’ services we prefer or stop existing in the public square. We are willing to use the force of law to force you to comply.”

The same voices that are attempting to claw back economic freedom from people are the ones that seem to be also bent on enforcing ideological homogeneity around their preferred theories. “Cancel culture” is a real thing. Now imagine if the thought leaders that have the power to enact “cancel culture” also have the ability to cut non-preferred individuals out from government benefits.

There may be no edict that declares that one must voice allegiance to ideologies like “white fragility,” but if only meager subsistence is possible apart from government support and if support from the government requires public support for particular ideologies, then the connection between economic freedom and the more basic freedom of conscience (or thought; or speech) becomes apparent.

This seems unthinkable in contemporary America, but dramatic shifts toward public tolerance of contrary ideas has happened rapidly within the history of the past century.

Economic Freedom and Free Thinking

Economic freedom is not sufficient for free thought or the flourishing of society, but it is necessary.

In an essay for a series entitled, “Is Progress Possible?,” C. S. Lewis notes this correlation between flourishing and economic freedom:

“I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has ‘the free-born mind’. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society [the rising democratic socialism in the U.K.] is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of the Government who can criticize its acts and snap its fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer? Admittedly, when man was untamed, such liberty belonged only to the few. I know. Hence the horrible suspicion that our only choice is between the societies with few freemen and societies with none.”

Or, consider Vaclav Havel’s lengthy essay “The Power of the Powerless,” in which he recounts the soft-totalitarianism of the Soviet ruled Czechoslovakia, where a rebellious act by the green-grocer could be merely not putting up the most recent socialist propaganda in the midst of his produce. The government that controls the economy controls the ability to think and speak.

Threat of Higher Taxes

So the threat of higher taxes is not, perhaps, the major threat from the far-left. Their recently demonstrated willingness to storm cafes to demand people make hand gestures to support their cause, to throw their food on the ground, and to harass them for daring to have quiet conversation with a friend or family member that doesn’t specifically advocate some twisted idea of “justice” are a much deeper threat. Along with that threat is the increasing violence of Antifa, whose methods look more and more like the sort of jackbooted thuggery that they claim to be resisting.

But the threat of an unending expansion of government along the lines proposed by some on the far left, including the outlines explicitly found in proponents of the Green New Deal, are real. It’s more than just higher taxes, but the ability to control the economy to stifle differing opinions.

It seems like hyperbole or slippery slope argumentation to some, but based on the words and behavior of the far left, the less unlikely such attempts to grasp power appear. The most virulent elements on the right and left are still marginal, though they tend to get disproportionate amounts of attention due to the nature of clicks and social networks.

The deeper question for those concerned about the negative effects of the polarized left and right is how to find common cause, create space for cooperation toward mutual concerns, and carve out appropriate space for conscience among increasingly divided understanding of good. That will require a more careful navigation of the significant dangers of the far left and right than simply labeling every disfavored policy on the left “socialism” or denying any concerns about freedom from the right as “selfish individualism” or “fear mongering.”

Animal Farm, Economic Freedom, and Human Flourishing

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an important piece of literature for our age.

Though the main target of the satire no longer exists, this is a book that should find its way back into the curricula of upper elementary, middle, and high schools. There are a whole lot of young adults that are living in a fairy tale, hoping for communism, that would benefit from reading it seriously, too.

Based on history, however, I think that the importance of Animal Farm is greater than when Orwell wrote it and that it is useful in understanding human nature and why we should be very careful how we view each other and the role of the government.

There are several reasons why Animal Farm deserves a more prominent place in American curricula.

Why is it Important?

First, it is simply a good story, written well, and entertaining. The book is satire, but the characters are sufficiently plausible that most readers will acknowledge they’ve met that person before. It helps that the story is about animals. One of the reasons Animal Farm should be more broadly read is because it is a masterpiece.

Second, it is a brilliant example of how imaginative fiction is much more effective at carrying ideas than essays. Those meager writers who mainly write in the world of non-fiction should be blown away at how powerful Orwell’s depiction of communism captures the absurdities of that political and economic system. I have read some of Orwell’s non-fiction essays (he is an excellent essayist, too), but his 1984 and Animal Farm are much more compelling.

Third, Animal Farm provides a gateway for children to understand totalitarianism. As a child toward the end of the Cold War, I sometimes wondered how it was that the Communists could get and maintain control, if they made people so miserable. Orwell shows the way in a manner that even a child can understand.

It is interesting, however, that Orwell’s satire seems to have implications beyond his original intention.

Broadening Applicability

One of the more interesting facts about Orwell is that he was a socialist. The man lived in voluntary poverty in France for a time, had a deep sympathy for working class people in the U.K. (who were largely getting a raw economic deal), and as a result viewed socialism as the economic program most likely to help people out.

The intentions were good, but Orwell failed to account for the fact that whether socialism comes in through revolution (as with Animal Farm) or by popular vote, as he preferred, it tends to end in the same place: human misery.

One of the central tenets of socialism, perhaps the very core of it, is that the collective controls the means of production. There are, as proponents of socialism argue, multiple ways that this could happen. In the Soviet bloc, ownership was by the government. As the U.K. flirted with socialism, it was public ownership of certain industries while private ownership remained for others, under government scrutiny.

Although there are some Jacobin types on the far left who lobby for full on communism, most of the advocates for contemporary socialism view themselves as arguing for some sort of economic control by the people, funneled through a centralized planning system, but always being governed democratically.

Again, the intentions are (nearly) always to make life better. People that want socialism don’t want Venezuela, and they typically don’t believe they will get it.

Animal Farm, I think, helps show what the process of centralized control will always tend toward the abuses of the animals on Animal Farm and by the government in Venezuela.

Orwell wrote Animal Farm to mock the Soviet Union and, perhaps, to show that real socialism wouldn’t end up there, but there is little empirical evidence of a nation implementing broad economic socialism while maintaining both economic viability and a reasonable amount of personal freedom.

Those arguing that “real socialism” won’t end up like Animal Farm, are really just unthinkingly chanting, “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

Just like the sheep chanting against two legged humans, most of the advocates for socialism (or raw capitalism, for that matter) haven’t given enough thought to the system to deserve to comment. Additionally, they mistakenly believe that it is the number of legs that determines the goodness, rather than the way that power is structured. Their end goal is wrong.

Economic Freedom as a Goal

Economic freedom is important, but it should never be an end to itself. This is why so many of the arguments between contemporary socialists and capitalists is unhelpful. Economic freedom is always relative, always situated within a particular context and community, and should always remain a means to an end.

The end of economic freedom should be to enhance human flourishing.

As I understand it, human flourishing is the ability for individuals to flourish within the web of families and communities as we live out our calling to be the image of God. Others may want a more naturalistic description of that, but I’ll stick with my own worldview.

True human flourishing isn’t found in a universally level distribution of GDP across the community or in absolute personal autonomy. It must have the individual and community as complementary elements, with both playing a function.

Oddly, many of the contemporary conceptions of socialism in the United States believe they can get both absolute personal autonomy and total collective cooperation at the same time. One of the privileges of being a fringe idealist group with (so far) very little control of policy is that you can propose preposterous solutions without having to ask whether it is even possible for them to achieve the stated ends.

The trouble with popular forms of capitalism that put personal autonomy as the golden calf at the center of the platform is that capitalism requires a cooperative community to function, so the very end they pursue promises to undermine the ends they want to achieve. The trouble with socialistic proposals that see the collective as the solution is that the collective always concentrates power to a few who will use it undemocratically “for the common good” and that abuse of power inevitably demotivates the hard workers who are being deprived from the fruit of their labor for someone else’s vision of good. This is the inevitable end of socialism.

Animal Farm may have started with a revolution, but it shows the likely end of all collectivist economic systems. By using anthropomorphic animals, Orwell enables the reader to look beyond the caricatures and have sympathy or antipathy toward parties that would be impossible were they humans. The book enables important conversations as we consider the likely end of socialism, which makes it an important resource for having real discussions with a generation that seems to be lurching toward a false belief in the innocence of the collectivization of power.

Animal Farm

By George Orwell

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The Art of the Impossible - Speeches by Vaclav Havel

Looking back, the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe came suddenly and, in many cases, was completed with relatively little bloodshed. One example of this is the so-called Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, which led to playwright and dissident, Vaclav Havel, being elected president in a bloodless rebellion.

In a 1997 book, The Art of the Impossible, we are provided the texts—translated into English—of a number of Havel’s speeches from his time as president of Czechoslovakia and, a few years later, the Czech Republic. As historical artifacts, these speeches are somewhat interesting. However, as expressions of a political philosophy, the speeches are engaging and thought provoking.

After decades of resisting Soviet occupation and communist rule, Havel had the responsibility to help his country peacefully transition to a democratic, free-market political economy. The risk of this transition leading to political violence against the former oppressors is always real. Simultaneously, the temptation for the new ruling class to become just like the old ruling class was strong.

The speeches in this volume are arranged chronologically, so they have a variety of topics. There is a clear trajectory in them that shows the ways Havel’s nation was changing and the landscape of Europe was shifting to accept the former Soviet-bloc countries. Each of the chapters, however, seems surprisingly frank and open.

For example, the first speech was given on New Year’s Day in 1990, shortly after communism had been overthrown and Havel named president. He notes early in his speech, “Our country is not flourishing.” But this was not simply due to the political turmoil, but a profound misdirection of society, because,

“The enormous creative and spiritual potential of our nations is not being used sensibly. Entire branches of industry are producing goods that are of no interest to anyone, while we are lacking the things we need. A state that calls itself a workers’ state humiliates and exploits its workers. . . . We have contaminated the soil, rivers, and forests bequeathed to us by our ancestors, and today we have the most polluted environment in Europe.”

Havel could say this, of course, because he was looking at the abusive legacy of four decades of communist tyranny. However, the quick pivot toward arguing that he is going to make everything great again doesn’t come. Instead Havel emphasizes the difficulty that lies ahead and how much it was going to take to become a healthy nation.

One of the major themes in this work is responsibility. In contrast to contemporary political discourse in the United States, which typically focuses on rights. On the left, the concern is positive rights: the right to have other people work to provide something for me. On the right, the concern is typically negative rights: the right to own weapons, live faithfully, and keep a larger percentage of wealth. In a state of precarious need, Havel draws people’s attention to their duties to each other and to society in a powerful way.

Among the more interesting speeches is his speech on “The Anatomy of Hate,” given in 1990, only a few months after the fall of communism. As a man who had suffered so greatly in prison, it must have been difficult not to hate his oppressors, but Havel explains the pieces of hate in a way that makes it clear why its pull is so strong and why he resisted it. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

Collections of thought like this are helpful for those in generations who have not witnessed the destructive power of communism, because Havel provides examples and testimonies of how oppressive that form of socialism is and, after having experienced the “benefits” of full socialism for decades, how eager the population was to get a market economy. There is a moral difference between socialism and a market economy, and the second is preferred by people who have experienced the first.

At the same time, Havel is clear that freedom cannot exist without responsibility. This responsibility, Havel argues, is rooted in the human understanding of the existence of a transcendent power beyond our immediate understanding. Though Havel explicitly denies being aligned with any particular religion, he recognizes the common recognition within humanity that there is something that made all things, holds all things together, and is moving history toward something. In a manner similar to Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Commencement Address, Havel calls for respiritualizing politics and daily life; the acknowledgement of something greater helps reduce the absolutizing abuses of ideology.

These speeches are surprisingly fresh and insightful, given some of them are three decades old. The landscape of world politics, particularly politics in Europe, have changed significantly, but many of the challenges Havel recognized are still evident and, indeed, still need to be dealt with.

The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice

By Vaclav Havel

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They Thought They Were Free - A Review

Godwin’s law is that the longer an online debate gets, the more likely it is that someone will make an analogy to Hitler. One corollary to the law is that the person who makes the comparison loses the argument.

A reductio ad Hitlerum is a rhetorical device altogether too common in internet dialogue used to show someone how they are evil just like Hitler. Adolf Hitler is, of course, one of the few human beings that people can nearly universally agree is the embodiment of pure evil.

But if Hitler was the embodiment of pure evil and the German people put him into power, how did he either trick them or force them to make him the supreme ruler of their nature? Or, more sinisterly, was it that the German people were somehow an evil people themselves who saw Hitler as the embodiment of their nation.

The third option is helpful wartime propaganda, but unlikely to be convincing in the presence of real, live Germans who may think differently, but who are pretty clearly not the embodiment of evil. This leaves the first two as possible options.

In the late 50’s, journalist Milton Mayer set out to figure out how Germany was led to elect Hitler—even to cheer him on—despite the evil that he embodied. Mayer, an American of German descent and a Jew, went to Germany to spend time with common men in a small town in Germany to figure out how they were duped.

The result of Mayer’s journalistic efforts is contained in the book, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45. The book was originally published in 1955 but was republished in 2017 by the University of Chicago Press. The volume’s republication is timely as Europe and the U.S. wrestle with the rise of populism in the face of economic difficulty and political destabilization. In some ways, we are living in a period very similar, which means that if we are to avoid (or overcome) the great evil of our age, we must be prepared to learn the lessons from history.

The book is a collection of interviews. They have obviously been edited to focus the reader on what Mayer himself saw, but the portraits he paints of the ten Nazi men that he befriended and interview do not bear the marks of caricature. Though he had every reason to be repulsed by these people who had supported the regime whose crimes are now the most readily useful hyperbole, Mayer presents his subjects sympathetically and, we may presume, fairly. If what he depicts is really true, then we have good cause for concern.

It becomes clear throughout the book that none of the people being interviewed consider themselves bad people—their loss in World War II was an unfortunate reality they were coping with, but even the public discovery of the mass murders in the concentration camps did not convince these men they were culpable for such great evil. Though the world may have viewed Germany broadly as somehow complicit in the extermination of the Jews, homosexuals, and other “unfit” populations, these men clearly do not believe they are criminals.

As the interviews explore the mindset of these Germans leading up to and during WWII, it becomes clear that these people—not to say all Germans—actively supported Hitler’s social program. Hitler solved unemployment, bringing relatively prosperity to a large portion of the population. He helped bring them out of the depths of depression and give them a sense of national pride, even after the stinging defeat and economic reprisals of the Great War. A rising stock market, so to speak, was a bigger concern than the dispossession of a small minority of the population.

The Nazis were unquestionably anti-Semitic. That was in the DNA of the National Socialist party, very clearly written in Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf. At first, when the vitriol in Hitler’s book might have been more striking, it was apparently not commonly read. To be fair, how many Americans have really read The Art of the Deal or The Audacity of Hope? Even if those books had alarming theories in them, it would be altogether easy to minimize their implications or ignore their severity, trusting the sluggishness of bureaucratic government to minimize the impact of any excesses of thought.

As it turns out, the people Mayer interviewed were largely indifferent to anti-Semitism or actually anti-Semitic. The culture shaped them to be so, with frequent political rhetoric designed to show them how unjust the economic systems were and how the Jews had taken advantage of the rest of the population. Eventually people started to believe that, so that when the synagogue was torched it did not seem to great a travesty and when the local policeman was given the order to collect his neighbor for relocation and forfeit of his property, it seemed simply logical given. The program of anti-Semitic action was introduced slowly and incrementally so the German people had little sense of outrage at the next “little” encroachment on the lives of their Jewish neighbors, though all the while the kettle was getting hotter.

One of the key elements of the Nazi program was about distracting people from thinking about fundamental concepts like truth, justice, and holiness. As this conversation between a German academic and Mayer illustrate, distraction was part of the program of social change:

“You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.

‘Those,’ I said, ‘are the words of my friend the baker. “One had no time to think. There was so much going on.”’

‘Your friend the baker was right,’ said my colleague. ‘The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your “little men,” your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism have us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and “crises” and so fascinated, yes, 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. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?’ (167-168)”

Though the Third Reich replaced Christian belief with a pagan-infused religion with Christian trappings, the religiously devout were led to abandon their faith for German unity. Though their neighbors were displaced and abused, they assented or failed to resist. The intelligentsia and the common man were played by Hitler and his administration—made ineffective—and they allowed it to happen.

This book is powerful. Not primarily because I believe the present administration to be equivalent to Hitler’s, but the social climate seems to be laying the groundwork for a similar horrible power in the U.S. or even in Europe.

We are not to the stage of Germany in the 1920’s, but it is as if we are being groomed for that condition. Our call should be to resist. Not merely to resist the politics of the “other side,” whichever side that might be, but to resist the moral formation that will enable us to countenance the grave, overt, and unforgivable injustices that the Nazis were able to perpetuate. This may require us to put down our phones, read fewer blogs, and contemplate more fundamental things, like hope, love, truth, and faith.

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

By Milton Mayer

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.