I recently received an email with an attached picture of a boy with a badly deformed body, suffering from a rare disease called elephantisis or something. The email suggests that every person who sends this will increase the funding situation for the child.
It's important to be compassionate, and a child with a deformity is sad, but it is also important to use one's faculties in the face of emotion. To have discerning, critical thinking. It worries me, when I see the extent to which things like this circulate, that people, intelligent people many of them, lack discernment.
I also wonder why people invent these hoaxes in the first place. Is it an experiment to see how much they can manipulate the internet? It's bizarre, but it provides an interesting departure point.
In the above example lies an interesting seed for a further debate. I went onto a website that focuses on dictators, and today I read about Hitler. I was interested in this old story because last night I watched a movie called CONSPIRACY, which is about how the Germans decided on a methodology, how they came up with The Final Solution. There are a lot of movies and documentaries on Discovery, and I wonder who writes and produces them. I wonder what nationality they are? Who, for example, directed and produced CONSPIRACY? It is a well made movie, but it is also meant to be an indictment, of anti-semitism, and indirectly of the Germans and unsupportive attitudes (towards Jews).
Having read about Hitler, it is interesting to note that his life began with the death of four of his siblings. He is also rumored to have been involved in the death of his niece (found dead in his apartment). She may have committed suicide in response to abuse she'd suffered in his house.
His mother developed terminal breast cancer and was treated by Dr. Edward Bloch, a Jewish doctor who served the poor. After an operation and excruciatingly painful and expensive treatments with a dangerous drug, she died on December 21, 1907.
And there is a possibility, a remote possibility that Hitler's grandfather was Jewish. Hitler's father, Alois, was registered as an illegitimate child with no father. Alois' mother worked in the home of a wealthy Jew and there is some chance a son in that household got the woman (i.e., Hitler's grandmother) pregnant. Whether he is not is not as important, as whether people feel he is or not. That says a lot more. And it is also revealing that Hitler's grandmother worked as a maid in the house of wealthy Jews, and when he came to power, he tried to eviscerate the Jewish race. Did Hitler see the deaths of his siblings as stemming from poverty, and that the Jews, holders of wealth, had also withheld, in a way, Lives that were owed to him? He has a chapter in Mein Kampf (My Struggle) called Payback. And, interestingly, this worst of the world's criminals against humanity, was caught, was jailed, but was later set free to run amuck.
The point of all this conjecture is to simple ask: What was Hitler thinking? What motivated him to behave in the way that he did? Why did he do what he did to the Jews?
Hitler was the son of a 52 year old customs official and his third wife. Hitler was not his real name, his real surname was Schickelgruber. He took the name of his mother, rather than that of his father. Hitler tried to keep the murky history of his family quite secret because there was a high incidence of insanity and feeble-mindedness in his ancestors. There is considerable evidence that this family, the Schickelgruber's, produced abnormal progeny. One of Hitler's relatives through his mother's side committed suicide in 1920, another, Aloisha had been placed in an insane asylum, another was "feeble-minded," and yet another was retarded.
He was resentful, moody and discontented as a child. He was also prone to laziness, and deep hostility towards his strict, authoritarian father and strongly attached to his mother. She was hardworking, but indulgent. She died of cancer in December 1908 when Hitler was an adolescent.
There are some some insights into his unhappiness. There are imbalances, strictness, indulgences, loss of attachment at an early age, cold control from his father. This was within the confines of a middle working class family. Hitler left school at the age of sixteen, dreaming of becoming a painter. He lived in Vienna between 1907 and 1913. A woeful, bohemian existence, running between odd jobs, trying to hawk sketches, living hand to mouth and developing a dislike for poverty, and it was here that the hatred for the Jews, in Vienna, intensified.
Hitler studied Karl Lueger, and learned about 'pure blood', ideas which stayed with him for the rest of his life. His hatred for the Jews was rooted, to some degree, in his is own Christianity.
In May 1913, Hitler, seeking to avoid military service, left Vienna for Munich, the capital of Bavaria, following a windfall received from an aunt who was dying. In January, the police came to his door bearing a draft notice from the Austrian government. The document threatened a year in prison and a fine if he was found guilty of leaving his native land with the intent of evading conscription. Hitler was arrested on the spot and taken to the Austrian Consulate. Upon reporting to Salzburg for duty, he was found "unfit...too weak...and unable to bear arms."
When World War I was touched off by the assassination by a Serb of the heir to the Austrian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Hitler's passions against foreigners, particularly Slavs, were inflamed. He was caught up in the patriotism of the time, and submitted a petition to enlist in the Bavarian army.
Hitler fought in World War 1. He proved an able, courageous soldier, receiving the Iron Cross (First Class) for bravery. He was badly gassed just four weeks before the end of the war. He took three months to recuperate in a hospital in Pomerania. Blinded and enraged by the abortive November 1918 revolution in Germany as well as the military defeat, Hitler, once restored, was convinced that fate had chosen him to rescue a humiliated nation.
Hitler chose the symbol for his Party, the Swastika. Swastikas are associated with ancient Troy, and have otherwise, throughout history, represented life, sun, power, strength and good luck. In the early 20th century, it was still considered a positive symbol. In China it is turned counterclockwise, and is used by Buddhists to refer to their holy shrines. Describing the new flag in Mein Kampf, Hitler said the swastika symbolized the victory of the Aryan man. Today the symbol that once represented life, sun and good luck is most commonly associated with the Holocaust and hate groups.
Hitler is not often remembered for making sweeping economic and infrastructural changes to Germany. Once in power, unemployment fell (women were sent home to be homemakers, men took their places at work), military spending increased, the Economy expanded, although it became seriously lopsided.
The World, in the 1930's, was in a state of profound Economic Depression. Germany felt this more than most. Money. No money. This always seems to be the prime cause for war, or any form of criminality. And Jews were blamed for the woes of the world.
Hitler said he intended to increase the living space for Germans, and Germans responded to him because Germany lost land in World War 1, and were both blamed for that war and given a huge debt ($6.6million) for the war to repay. German voters initially did not respond to his anti-semitic speeches. They didn't buy his lines that Germany's woes were the fault of the Jews.
Instead of honoring their debt, accepting the outcome of the last war, Germany pursued wealth and ambition, and attacked again. Interestingly, after unifying with Austria, and taking German speaking territory in Czechoslovakia, there was no reaction, no objection from France or England. Hitler even made the cover of Time magazine in 1939.
Then Hitler made a secret pact with Stalin, basically a deal in how they would carve up and share Eastern Europe. And with this scrap of paper in his pocket, Germany attacked Poland. Two days later, the West declared war on Germany. This caught Hitler by surprise. That's interesting, that he expected to get away with it. He started a pattern, and he'd learned he could get away with it, so he continued with it.
Hitler made astonishing progress at first, and expected a short war. He stopped short of invading Britain, but bombed it for good measure. He made a bold move into France, going through the central part of the Ardennes, territory believed impossible for tanks to cross, and humiliated the French. Stalin expected, hoped, for a long and erosive battle in France. He hoped to see the West beaten down in France. Poland was overrun in less than one month, Denmark and Norway in two months, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg and France in six weeks. France fell in June 1940. But n ow Great Britain stood firm. The Battle of Britain, in which the Royal Air Force prevented the Luftwaffe from securing aerial control over the English Channel, was Hitler's first setback. It caused the planned invasion of the British Isles to be postponed.
And the Allies waited. So Hitler turned to what he wanted most, Eastern Europe.
He attacked Stalin before Stalin had a chance to attack him. This was the most crucial decision of his career, this invasion of Soviet Russia. The invasion took plave on June 22, 1941. Hitler rationalized the war on Russia with the idea that its destruction would prevent Great Britain from continuing the war with any prospect of success. German troops made it to within sight of Moscow and then the Russian Winter, one of the worst in history, hit. It was then that Hitler realised it would be a long war.
It is interesting to read that Hitler's strategies were often sound, were often more logical than those of his generals. What many forget is that hundreds of thousands of German troops waited for years on the Normandy beaches, while fierce fights had to be conducted in Russia. In the end, Germany overextended itself. Too many fronts, flagging supply lines, exhaustion. Although Stalingrad was a defeat, Germany would have lost its entire army in Russia if German troops had not contained, had not absorbed enormous attacks from the Russian war machine.
It was strategically sound not to surrender, in Russia, earlier than they did. While many view Hitler as mentally unstable, his military judgment was sound in many respects. Once Stalingrad was lost, Hitler began to blame the German people for failing him, and after surviving an assassination attempt, surrounded himself with lackeys who didn't dare disagree with him. Hitler now assumed personal control of all military operations, refusing to listen to advice, disregarding unpalatable facts and rejecting everything that did not fit into his preconceived picture of reality. This was a return, to the victimised Austrian boy whose mother had died, leaving him discontented, lazy, and unhappy.
As disaster came closer, Hitler buried himself in the unreal world of the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, clutching at fantastic hopes that his "secret weapons," the V-1 and V-2 rockets, would yet turn the tide of war. He gestured wildly over maps, planned and directed attacks with non-existent armies and indulged in endless, night-long monologues which reflected his growing senility, misanthropy and contempt for the "cowardly failure" of the German people.
Many of the failures in Russia were as a result of procrastination, and failures at being decisive. Now Hitler went into a kind of dementia where he believed he was suffering from some or other imagined ailment. An acute hypochondria came over him.
As the Red Army approached Berlin and the Anglo-Americans reached the Elbe, on 19 March 1945 Hitler ordered the destruction of what remained of German industry, communications and transport systems. He was resolved that, if he did not survive, Germany too should be destroyed. The same ruthless nihilism and passion for destruction which had led to the extermination of six million Jews in death camps, to the biological "cleansing" of the sub-human Slavs and other subject peoples in the New Order, was finally turned on his own people.
While Berlin was burning, Hitler married his girlfriend. This is an interesting contrast, an aside, to the war. That not only did he have a girlfriend, but he obviously had a deep desire for a family. He poisoned his wife and himself, and shot himself through the mouth with a pistol before the Russians found his burnt remains. It is interesting that he shot himself through the mouth - the same dark, twittering hollow that spat out his speeches, that contaminated a nation, and the source of such profound annihilation.
It is interesting though to see how a life begins, runs its course and ends, and how gradually things become topheavy, become untenable, and then how power is lost, how confidence is seen for what it really is, *malevolence, reality is exposed, the light comes out and life turns. Hitler is remembered for his dark side, but the Holocaust is improperly seen as a slaughter of only the Jewish people. 5.25 - 6 million Jews were exterminated, but at least as many, yes at least 6 million non Jews, classed as undesirables, homosexuals, Poles, etc, were also gassed. That is a total of about 12 million civilians, Jew and Gentile.
It is also interesting that the West only decisively attacked in June 1944. That's very late. By that time, the Germans had fought for Stalingrad and lost, and Germany was already losing the war. It was obvious that Germany would lose the war by mid 1942. The Russians turned the German tide, and the Americans and British finished them off. But World War 2 was really about Russia and Germany, and Germany lost.
I believe it becomes important to ask why it is so important to have racism, why was it important for Hitler personally, to destroy the Jewish people. Was it a personal dislike, rooted in a family experience, embarrassment about his own genealogy, was it years of conditioning by an Economically deprived, and materialistic society?
These questions are important to ask. It is important to see beyond the obvious, because in the subtlety is all the magic or terror that we knowingly or unknowingly inflict on the world and ourselves.
I am conscious of racism now, as every application I make for a job, I have to state my nationality. Officially, there are 6 English speaking countries in the world, and all six can officially apply for work in South Korea. Unofficially, you must either be American or Canadian. South Africans, in many applications must fill in the ETC. box for nationality.
I realise, when you are refused work, based on nationality, that it disempowers, distorts and potentially demonises employer to the employee and vice versa. In reality, many employers know and respect the abilities of foreigners applying for work, and are more liberal. But they must respect their own target market, the parents. In peacetime this racism is uncomfortable and unpleasant, but if there was ever a war, one wonders where the East and West would stand, and what alliances would be held between the nations. It worries me that people, intelligent people many of them, lack discernment.
*malevolence
n 1: wishing evil to others [syn: malignity] [ant: benevolence] 2: the quality of threatening evil [syn: malevolency, malice]
Note: Some text has been copied here from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitler.html
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