Book Review of Seduced by Hitler
/This book gives some clear and telling examples and lessons of individuals (often seemingly decent until tested) participating in and fundamental to, their own repression as well as the repression of others; along with the building and maintenance of the tyrannical fascist orders and systems repressing them. Where we often look for the sources of evil in the special characteristics of the leader (charisma, ability to deceive and manipulate, psychopathy, etc), no individual, no matter how cunning, can rally millions of blind followers unless those followers also chose to? participate ?in their own blindness for their own narrow and selfish purposes and agenda.
Here we see many stories of various forms of “Faustian Bargains”, as well as stories of courage and resistance in the face of tyrannical repression. The book also illustrates clearly the wisdom of the warning of Benjamin Franklin:
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
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Perhaps Ben Franklin should have added that those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, not only do not deserve, but also cannot, and will never, attain real liberty and safety for themselves either. That lesson comes through over and over with vivid examples and the book spares no one from scrutiny.
The authors are sensitive to the charge of “Judgmentalism” (referring those judging responses of others to situations they have never faced) and that is why their method and approach is to examine and contrast, in various examples and case? studies , the statements of those in essentially the same circumstances and in terms of the ultimate and very different choices–and consequences of those choices–they made. The authors explore various types of Faustian Bargains without fear or favor yet with some sensitivity.
For example, the? inmate ?Sonderkommandos in death camps (“Special commandos who cleaned up after executions and facilitated them by deception of those about to be murdered), who sometimes deceived their own families into going into the gas chambers quietly, knowing what awaited them, in order to trade, for a few more days, weeks or sometimes months (maximum 22 months with special rations for alcohol and brothels), the trust of their family members in exchange for their own lives and some special privileges. They examine the camp inmate Kapos or inmate overseers, who were often more brutal than the Nazis, to show their “bona fides”, in order to stay alive with special privileges.
The book examines the Germans and peoples of Occupied Territories who both turned away, and others who risked their lives not to turn away, those fleeing Nazi terror and intentions to exterminate them. It examines the narrow selfishness and narcissism of groups obsessed with “identity politics”; in which people, so proud of their group (for no other reason than the narcissism that they were born or assimilated into it), caring nothing about the issues and threats faced by others, and yet, in the end, after all their indifference and selfishness, winding up begging of others, of the other groups about which they cared nothing, help to savethemselves when they needed it. Karma comes in many forms. [MORE]
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