By Siegfried Wagner, 31/12/95
I'm delighted to promote Peter's treatise - he's so cool and objective; I'm too emotional for that, possibly because of the conditions under which I grew up. When you know that that banging isn't fireworks or a computer game enticing you for some make believe destruction, but the board cannon of a twin hull Lightning strafing the street you're in, you don't stop to contemplate the situation (there's time for that later in the air raid shelter if you survive) - you get off your bike without stopping it, and dive behind the nearest tree; even a steel helmet wouldn't have helped much: it didn't save my father's life. He was drafted into the police in 1940. One night he told us: a chap in prisoner's uniform was mending the tiles in front of the police station; dad said, "Well done, now we don't get wet feet any more when it rains." Then, when the old man looked up: "Mein Gott, Herr Hofrat Oppenheimer!" The old dignitary's "crime" had been to have been born a Jew. Later, dad came home from a tour of duty with tears in his eyes: he'd had to help escort a transport of jews to the railhead (they travelled in box cars, like cattle), many of them his personal friends. No space here for the details; but the reason why he couldn't simply refuse is that it would have cost our lives as well as his own: a law called "Sippen-Haft", one of the laws of the land he was forced to uphold, said that the (extended) family of one considered a traitor to the State had to share his punishment - concentration camp or straight out execution - because they had connived with him by not dissuading him or denouncing him to the authorities for his subversion. Slave masters at least made no bones about disregarding the dignity of some of their fellow humans, especially the slave's right to run his /her own life. But the Nazis mostly kept the whip out of sight, maintaining an image of a bright and healthy society (partly true at first, which makes it more insidious; & excelled at that by some Communist regimes).
It wasn't that bad at first. They made some slightly harsh laws, but the people said, "we don't like it, but we can live with it". Harsher laws followed; "It's getting uncomfortable, but we must let the Government govern." At the next stage, it was too late: Germans had, by their acquiescence, encouraged the rulers into absolutism, with forced sterilisations and euthanasia of "life unworthy of living" (God, wouldn't that brake the population explosion!), "Sippen-Haft" etc. It ended in 1945 with some 100 000 000 lives lost or shattered (including some Australian ones).
Then the Allies took control of the shambles. Mum's father, as a local founding member of The Party, was put through "Denazification"-court like millions of others. The French were mainly after revenge and the Soviets of course had their own agenda; but the British, including Canadian & ANZAC contingents, and especially the US Americans saw themselves as bringers of "Democracy in Khaki", as they termed it. Grandad's case was one of the first; he told us that the Allied judges and lawyers kept asking: "Why did you comply? Why didn't you refuse to obey unjust laws and anti-social orders?" They gave it away later when the full measure of Suppression emerged. (When told to leave the (Lutheran) Church, Grandad had said, "I'll leave the Party before I leave the Church!" That was more rebellious than most dared to be.)
In "The Stars and Stripes" and other US Army publications, as well as some presentations at the Amerika-Haus (later renamed "German-American Institute"), the problem of how to teach prince- and dictator-ridden Germans the principles of democracy was discussed; the bit that jumped at me, maybe because it had become family lore since grandad's denazification, was the tenet that one of a citizen's duties in a democracy worthy of that name (are there any??) is to RESIST, DISOBEY and COUNTERVAIL any unjust laws made by those who had acquired the seats of Power. This was my first and hence most fundamental lesson in democracy; the State is the sum of individuals living in its borders, that's what the State IS, and nothing is senior to that. In recent years, I have twice seen the German public force their elected government to rescind decisions made in parliament - they were heeding a lesson learnt from very bitter experience. Will Australia have to go through a similar disaster before they wake up? We have turned onto a road leading in that direction; if we miss too many exits, there won't be a way back.
In more religious times, the hoodwink went like, "God has put the King/ Kaiser/Grand-Duke/Sultan above you to guide your life in His wisdom, so you just obey". So my Hessian forebears were ordered into the army, sold to the British and forced to fight American settlers they had no quarrel with (because north Hesse was a poor area, their gamashes were made of hemp-mesh, i.e. "Hessian leather" - hence "hessian" sacks etc). You can make a list of similar abuses of power, "divine" or more honestly criminal. In the Hitler Youth, as in the Wehrmacht, "I think ..." drew the glib retort "Don't! Leave the thinking to the horses, they have bigger heads, thus it doesn't hurt them so much. You OBEY!" That's how the power hungry want it. They are no more entitled to that power over us than a burglar is to our property. We keep watchdogs and install sophisticated security systems to safeguard a few chattels. But our dignity, the choice over our actions and control of our lives we throw at anybody who contrives to survive preselection procedures of the party of the day.
Sure, "Sippen-Haft" or the like in Australia may be 20 or 50 years away, and you or I may not live to feel its impact, so why should we care? For the same reasons we care about the environment or for any other creature, human or otherwise, we ought to care about generations to come and in what social and physical condition we pass on to them the world entrusted to us for a time - now. And NOW the ground is being prepared for their and our misery if we let it go on like the Germans of the 1930s did.
A sizable community needs an ADMINISTRATION (from Latin ministrare = to serve, attend to) to help smoothe situations where more than one person is involved, i. e. to protect us FROM EACH OTHER. You heard the maxim "My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins"; a cute but apt definition of freedom and its necessary limits. But our freedom is being limited UNnecessarily, i. e. arbitrarily, to suit the hidden agendas of those in power (and abusing it). I keep hearing "The law is the law"; that is a pseudo-statement, a "rose", which doesn't provide any information - but we have been conditioned to respond to that symbol by remembering that we are expected by our "superiors" (how come??) to be good little boys and girls, do as we are told and not ask any embarrassing questions. In my youth, "Befehl ist Befehl!" drew an even more fatalistic response - whether you were ordered to suffer, harm, kill or die, you dutifully and unquestioningly complied (read Gerhard Hauptmann's "The Captain of Koepenick", a true story of blind German obedience even to an impostor). A fellow Hitler Youth wanted to become a leader. Our headquarters were in the "Old Palais", the reception desk in a longish room on the first storey (not ground level, which some mean by "1st floor"). He clicked his heels military style ("zackig" we called it) and did his Heil Hitler; the bloke with the gold braid on his brown shirt pointed to the open window and said, "Dive roll through there!" The kid took a running dive, not knowing that a gang were ready with a firemen's cloth downstairs. He got promoted of course.
Come to think of it, in British lore there is "Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die"; - I hope that's meant to be ironical, but many in the English speaking world take it at face value! To whom do they defer, and why? In the Hitler youth, we had a song about Florian Geyer's peasant rebellion (singing about freedom seemed to slake the thirst for the real thing), one stanza of which said, "When Adam dug and Eve span, just where was then the nobleman?" We could have added: or the Fuehrer, the Gau-Leiter, the Sturmbann-Fuehrer or the Faehnlein-Fuehrer; or the General, the Admiral, the politician, the police or the judge. Whence their "superiority" over their equals? But I mustn't reason, must I?
In a healthy society (have there ever been any?)(listen to me - the guy who used to despise cynicism until fairly recently), laws shouldn't need enforcing; theoretically, they are agreements the citizens make so as to avoid unpleasant results from unwise interactions. Once heedlessness of others' welfare or even criminal intention appear, sanctions are of course necessary to protect the victims. And crime is increasing with the population density. But the enforcers as well as the law makers tend to be infiltrated by those who manage to hide their desire to dominate behind "law-and-order" rhetoric and false but nearly plausible reasons for their efforts. The demand for unquestioning respect for "The Law" is part of their scheme. Respect cannot be ordered, it has to be earned. Otherwise, respectful behaviour is a sham, born of fear or cynicism. A law earns respect by being just, fair and reasonable, and in accordance with the overriding principles according to which the society it applies to is choosing to live.
There is no justice unless these principles are applied CONSISTENTLY. How come 40 cyclists dying from head injuries in one year warrants forcing all cyclists to wear a helmet whenever they are in charge of a bicycle, but 20 000 Australians a year dying from smoking elicits no more than "SMOKING KILLS" printed on cigarette packs? Do we have the right to risk our own lives or do we not? How can one respect an assemblage of laws that is at loggerheads with itself, with resulting discrimination and victimisation?
Can't get Sippen-Haft off my mind. The second time (that I am certain of) my brother and I, mum and possibly other relatives were directly threatened by it was when dad tried to refuse an order. He had been stationed in Kras-nodar for as long as the Germans held it, had become fluent in Russian and wanted to emigrate there. During his last furlough, he told us that during the retreat, his unit had dug in to hold off the advancing Russians; the CO said, "Wagner, why aren't you shooting?" - "How can I shoot at the people I was making music with last month?" - "Then we'll shoot you!" - "Go ahead." "What about your family?" Dad said he took his rifle and aimed over the Russians' heads. I assumed of course that what the CO had meant was, how will your family get on without you?; our parents knew better, but didn't let on. A few weeks later we had to get on without him, anyway; but we were alive.
Munich student Hans Scholl was nabbed handing out leaflets for the anti-nazi "White Rose" group in 1943. His sister Sophie was executed along with him. My friend and fellow founder of the Canberra Old Boys' Cycling Club was 18 when he had to guard a corner of a PoW camp in Poland; his fellow Hitler youth had been issued a rifle. When a PoW tried to escape, my friend's mate pointed the gun at him and called "Go back or I'll shoot!" The Russian kept climbing. A German officer ordered the Hitler youth to shoot, but he found he couldn't get himself to pull that trigger. The officer drew his "08" and shot the kid and the PoW. After the war, Siegmund went to Vienna to tell his friend's parents how their son had died; he found that they had been hanged "for raising a coward".
"It can't happen in Australia!"
File this one under "Famous last words etc."!
I recall a conversation between our mother and several neighbours in the middle of the street (there was little traffic in Darmstadt then, & next to none on "Forstweg", a fairly new street with 20 houses on one side and mainly bush all around) on whether there is going to be a war. After contemplating as much of the international situation as we were allowed to know then, the upshot was, "No, impossible; our Government isn't THAT stupid!" ("Ei, ich bitt Sie, Frau Wagner, es gibt doch kein'n Krieg!"). A few weeks later, World War II had begun.
25 years earlier, the Kaiser had decided to make good his word to aid his Austrian counterpart when the latter's crown prince was assassinated; "just a little skirmish". It ended 4 years later with the end of both Empires & massive death and misery in most of the "civilised" world (& the end of the Russian empire as well, the Tsar's position having been weakened so as to make a successful revolution possible); studying the history of the ANZACs will give you an impression of the nature of that "skirmish".
In 1939, again it was expected to be a walkover, a "skirmish" to gain Hitler a corridor to East Prussia, which had become an exclave as a consequence of the Versailles Treaties. Some of you may remember this one. It ended after 5 1/2 years with the end of the "Third Empire", as the Nazis loved to call their transmogrification of the Weimar Republic. Hitler had made the same mistake in attacking Russia as Napoleon had made more than a century before him, and suffered the same fate. They just don't learn, do they?
They? We? Are WE going to learn what power hunger does to people?
We were taught that Germans are a Master race; other Germanic nations could be educated to share some of the power if they played their cards right (they didn't, except Quisling and his likes in Skandinavia and Holland). But the rest of the world was populated by inferior races that needed to be shepherded and put to use like beasts of burden. All except the Japanese, of course; I recall much glorification of those warlike Japs in the Nazi press, like when Singapore fell. So when Jesse Owens won a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, Hitler refused to congratulate him; too much like admitting that Germanic prowess isn't in fact paramount. I have met and heard of highly intelligent people of all races, and sensible, more civilised than the central European bringers of culture. The upshot of this:
There is no discernible difference in the basic capabilities of different races and hence nations. Anything we can do, they can do, perhaps better. And anything they are capable of, we can do, perhaps more effectively (including the things they did in Peru, Africa, Turkey, China, Iraq, Yugosl. etc). Hence the differences between nations and communities are purely cultural, i.e. the result of the customs, traditions and ideas about how to live "right" which are promoted in a particular community and instilled especially in the young. Most of us absorb them uncritically and accept them as "normal". And when other nationals, not indoctrinated in the same way as we, ask us how we can be so barbaric or stupid, we tell them to butt out, or declare war on them.
But cultures and traditions change; formerly by dint of invasions or other catastrophes, occasionally even as a result of discoveries or intellectual progress, but nowadays mainly by psychological manipulation via the public "media". I recall Australians coming out with a joyous "It's a free country!" on not too infrequent occasions. Haven't heard that for a long time. It isn't true any more, and who wants to make themselves look more ridiculous than they have to? I'm referring to the fifties, even sixties Australia pre-Whitlam, almost pre-TV. I could pay cash for doctors's and dental bills, hospitalisation, operations etc., and just take it off the tax. Or I could spend my money on alternative medicine, without tax refunds. When I decided to get health insurance, I got excellent service from the "Postoffice Mutual". Freedom!
Then came Medibank mark I & II, later Hawkified into Medicare. My beautiful person-to-person little Health fund went to the wall, and I was forced to pay for services I didn't want or need. My doctors know full well they don't need to offer me any pain killers, and in most of my visits that was all they could suggest for my complaints. The practitioners I prefer are not covered by the contributions I am compelled to make, and my dental bills don't even come off the tax now. The old time doctors assured me that nobody ever had to go without medical attention if they needed it and couldn't pay -part of professional ethics. Now one reads of Medicare scams and litigation for abuse of a system that is said to benefit the community. Sure, the "Legal community", the bureaucracy, the crafty grafters etc. Simply taking by force money for a purpose I am not particularly interested in is akin to the "insurance" demanded by the Mafia of Italian business people: don't quibble, just pay up or something unpleasant will happen to you. And now this loss of freedom is used as an excuse to take away more of our freedom: We are compelled to wear a helmet while cycling, so as to reduce cost to Medicare should we fall on our heads. But why can't I carry my own risk? I have saved hard all my life - so now that saves them paying me a pension, but it doesn't buy me the freedom to run my own life. Helmet wearers are observed to take more risks out of a sense of increased security, some say invulnerability; and motorists are less worried about a brush with a cyclist, for the same reason. Knowing that ANY accident will cost my own money, rather than Medicare's, is far more conducive to safety conscious travelling and therefore cheaper to the community as well as myself - head injuries or not! Add to that a psychological minus: insured people tend to get sick / have accidents more frequently in a subconscious effort to get the services they feel they are entitled to.
Helmets are not effective the way you've been led to believe - we have been robbed of more of our freedom simply to give the plastics industry a shot in the arm. ...
Siegfried Wagner, 31/12/95
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