I wonder if I had lived in Nazi Germany during WW II - not being

[texpatriot2004]

Jewish - if I would have been on the right side of history? Would I have helped and/or hidden Jews, doing whatever I could to protect the persecuted under threat of death? I wonder if I had lived during slavery if I would have been on the right side of history? Would I have been brave enough to help African Americans in any way I could again under threat of death or under threat of harm? Would I have had the moral character, the strength, the will, the Spirit and soul to stand up to the evil so pervasive at that time? Would I have been selfish and self-serving seeking only to preserve my own body and my own life? Would I have avoided confrontation and accepted "the way things were"?

I found myself thinking these things in the last few days. With the hatred and racism and fear coming from the McSame campaign I began to wonder why had I evolved to think that character is more important than skin color? Why do I think the "religious right" is so "UnChristian"? By the Grace of God I have grown beyond the bigotry of my ancestors...and I am very grateful for that. I am honored to support the first African American for President. I am filled with awe when I see photos of him with other Americans. The idea that he could be our next President fills me with pride and hope. That the history of our country with regard to skin color could finally be overcome, for many at least though not all I am sure. It is such an amazing thing to consider that history could be made in this election, on many levels I think. I have to say that I am a Gen-X, working class, Caucasian who recognizes and embraces this long overdue positive change.

I have a confession to make also, in the beginning of this campaign, I did not support Barack Obama - I was for Edwards. Still, I was intrigued by Obama's message of HOPE which enticed me...slowly. I didn't know much about Barack Obama and I wasn't convinced he was ready to be President of the United States, maybe he wasn't experienced enough? I admit I was wrong. I am grateful so many people supported him from the start so that I now have the opportunity to vote for him. I have watched him and listened to his plans, his vision, observed his leadership skills, how he carries himself and I have noticed what an extraordinary person he is. I think he has good judgment and he is stable. So many wonderful qualities that America desperately needs now - that I desperately need now.

I hope for the change we can believe in. I hope that Barack Obama will be President soon and Joe Biden will be his very capable VP.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I supported Edwards back then also...but am now a very enthusiastic Obama supporter.

As for your first point, I think it is always very difficult to imagine how we would act under circumstances that we have not experienced. I believe that most of us would be surprised at our own courage and determination to do the right thing.
But, we never really know...even a pastor who eventually came to oppose Hitler, named Martin Niemoller was compelled to admit that he had disappointed himself.

First they came for the Communists,
- but I was not a communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,
- but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews,
- but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

[texpatriot2004]

6. That is interesting about the Pastor. I love that quote about

there was no one left when they came for me.

[The Shadow]

9. As Martin Niemoller So Eloquently Put It

I think that many of us (myself included) would like to believe that we would not go along. But you have to understand that it was easy for the Germans to believe that they were on the right side of history then. As time passed the reality of it all set in for most Germans, but it was too late as Martin Niemoller said.

If you want to get some idea of what it may have been like ask yourself how you initially felt (I mean at first, in all honesty) after the attacks on 911 and how you felt about the actions of the government as far as being asked to give up some of our personal freedoms for the sake of the war on terror. Because this is exactly what happened, for example, when the Reich stag was supposedly burned down by the jews (the nazis staged the whole thing). Hitler called it a terrorist act and soon asked the German populace to give up some of their freedoms in order to defeat Germany's enemies. Most Germans were more than willing to do this because after all, it wouldn't affect them being law abiding citizens and all. Of course we all know what happens when any government is given these kinds of authority, just look at the abuses by this current administration. This is a true, although simplified, version of the events as they happened in Germany.

[BrklynLiberal]

26. Excellent synopsis. There is a great book called "They thought they were free" by Milton Mayer

that explains it well too.

How and why "decent men" became Nazis. Written by an American journalist of German\Jewish descent. Mr. Mayer provides a fascinating window into the lives, thoughts and emotions of a people caught up in the rush of the Nazi movement. It is a book that should make people pause and think -- not only about the Germans, but also about themselves.

much more at...
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

[MannyGoldstein]

2. The Very Fact That You're Posting On This Site

and asking this question demonstrates that you'd be a "good guy/gal"

[texpatriot2004]

3. Thanks for the vote of confidence. I hope that I would. You do

have a point about this site. It is pretty wonderful and there are lots of good guys and gals here.

[petronius]

4. I think everybody should wonder about those things

And anybody who thinks they know the answer - without solid proof through action - hasn't thought deeply enough...

[TahitiNut]

43. Absolutely. I can't agree more.

It's such introspection that should give any person of conscience pause. It was long, long ago that I confronted the conundrum of the Holocaust ... and whether I'd choose rightly IF I had the chance. The FACT that I cannot be certain, no matter how much I'd like (in retrospect) to claim some high ground, is something that continues to humble me.

As I contemplate the array of 'liberals' who are apparently practicing 'identity politics' (the politics of direct self-interest) and are seemingly ignorant of the principles of liberalism (as best articulated by John Rawls), it becomes even more of a conundrum to me.

[WCGreen]

5. I too wanted Edwards...

I refused to be seduced by one speech given at a convention. I also looked at the fact that Obama had never faced a hard electoral challenge. He seemed, to me at least, like the product of a big city political machine. Living here in Cleveland, I have seen the result of the favorite sons and daughters of political machines rise quickly in the ranks and then live up to really really low expectations.

When I first heard him speak outside of the convention hall I realized he was some one special. He was articulate and comfortable in front of people.

Still, I thought Edwards was the more populist candidate and I really wanted a populist candidate to fight the corporate greed.

When he flamed out, I gravitated toward Clinton since I felt I owed her at least my vote in the democratic primary. By that time I knew she wasn't going to be the nominee but felt, for what ever reason, that she had won my vote.

I was happy with either one.

Since I voted Absentee, I didn't get the full force of the campaign before I voted. I wish I would have. Obama impressed me even more by the way he ran his campaign here in Ohio.

I knew then we had a candidate that would tower over John McCain.

I too have thought about how I would have performed in the run up to Nazi control of Germany. I wondered if I would have the courage and the fortitude it would take to stand alone.

But then I thought back to my youth and all the times I stood up when no one else would and said, yea, I probably would have been a partisan and not a collaborator.

I love the fact that in a few days I will be voting for Obama.

It makes me still believe that American can be a very speical place if only we let it....

[obiwan]

7. In WWII , there was no "right side" in Nazi Germany.

A lot of my relatives lived in Poland and Czechoslovakia during WWII and the Nazis saw to it that they didn't make it through the war.

[texpatriot2004]

15. I didn't mean side in the sense of the War but in the sense of

being strong enough to stand up for my fellow human beings against abusive power and evil. I hope that was clear?

[juno jones]

8. I'd be dead.

I have gypsy forebears within the prescribed amount of sanguinity.

That is why I just have to laugh about my racist skinhead sister.

[Sinti]

28. please tell me you're kidding

if not, she does know that they'd kill her just as quickly as look at her. We're the only people basically on the planet that everyone can agree to hate, if they're hater types. I've literally had people of all races express their prejudice against gypsies to me strongly, I've had the don't talk to, don't deal with, I won't serve...yadda, yadda, yadda... ironically little did they know they were speaking to one! Go figure ><;

[coalition_unwilling]

39. Jehovah's Witnesses also suffered

horribly under the Nazis (for refusing to swear the Oath of Loyalty to the Fuehrer).

Although JW are almost universally mocked and derided in the US, I always spend a few minutes with their "ambassadors," as my way of saying "thank you" for their courage and bravery in resisting totalitarianism.

[juno jones]

44. Nope.

But she's so clueless and I don't even think she knows, she just fixates on the Scottish and German bits....I got the news from my grandmother when we had a talk about ancestry and the families that came over from Ireland, etc. It was very eyeopening having these discussions in the last few years my grandmother and father were alive. From time to time these little titbits of geneology would pop up. Like the Choctaw great-grandmother who helped off my great-grandfather so she could run off with a banker, or the family of Irish travelers who came here and passed for, well, Irish. Y'know, all the *skeletons*.

I haven't talked to her in years so I don't really know where she's at now. We never got along to begin with and her politics really drove me away. From time to time, the family guilts me about not contacting her. But until she changes, I'm not going to put myself thru the pain. BTW, like all types like that, she loves to blame others for her messed-up life situations.

I used to work for a Irish gypsy vendor on Telegraph ave in Berkeley, CA. Years before I knew about my ancestry, he called me his sister and would tell me bits of cultural minutae that I still feel priveleged to have received. I don't understand predjudice.

PS: Most of my family is not at all like her. In fact some of them are pretty progressive. I don't know why she turned out the way she did.

[cynatnite]

10. Well, the anti-Semitism was widely accepted in German society in those days n/t

[The Shadow]

13. Yes Even Here In America At That Time

But, understand, the Jews were only one of many groups openly and lawfully persecuted in nazi Germany, Gypsies, Slovakian, Poles, Russians, etc. etc. etc. Many peoples were considered to be subhuman in the eyes of the nazis and Germans and unfortunately paid with their lives.

[cynatnite]

18. It was with far more prominence with Jews than any other group...

Even with the heavy intergration in society, Jews still faced both latent and outright anti-Semitism that no other group had to deal with. Even gays didn't face the same kind of persecution until after the Nazis took over. Gays were more widely accepted than Jews. In 1928 there were over a million openly gay men. That's not counting lesbians.

In the end, all three groups were targeted by the Nazis.

[The Shadow]

20. Yes, They Were Easy Marks For Hitler

The German economy was in shambles and it was easy for the nazis to blame the Jews, many of them who were store owners and merchants and such. Hitler told the German people that they were the cause of all of their hardships. Scary for sure huh?


Added Note: I remember reading years ago that they estimated somewhere around 9 million Russians lost their lives in the opening days of Operation Barbarossa (Russian front) .

[Omnibus]

29. The Jews were more populous, too

There were certainly more of them murdered than there were of other persecuted groups; around 6 million Jews, 3-5 million of everyone else.

[4lbs]

11. Remember, under Nazi Germany, the "Special Aryans" were those with nice white skin, blond hair,

and blue eyes. Those are the ones that got all the good privileges.

Any other non-Jewish Germans would have been part of the lower-class working masses.

[JackRiddler]

31. No. Not at all.

You're confusing the regime's reality with the imagery and its choice of idols and heroes for propaganda purposes. Look at Hitler himself, for a start, or Goebbels. They don't fit this ideal.

Blonde Jews - blond communists - blonde Slavs - blonde Social Democrats - none of that made a difference for these groups.

If you weren't identified as a racial inferior (which had nothing to do with looks, contrary to the imagery), and if you weren't a member (and had no history) of the outcast political and social groups, and if you followed orders and labored as told, then you were defined as a good German and called better than all other nationalities. The primary determinants of where you ended up in Nazi hierarchies, locally or in the regime, were your loyalty, your fanaticism, your connections, and your usefulness to the regime.

The guys who got the posts in the state at the outset were all party members from its early years, long before it looked like the Nazis would come to power. Didn't matter if they weren't blonde. Others rose and fell through a hundred simultaneous bureaucratic power struggles, by way of personal favor, and by being useful. Usefulness is why the industrialists ended up taking over the war economy, regardless of whether they had been Nazis, to the chagrine of many party old-timers.

[Fumesucker]

12. I'm an older boomer..

And kind of a history buff..

I've wondered the same things for many decades now.

[texpatriot2004]

16. Nice to know. What did you come up with in your pondering

these things?

[Fumesucker]

27. I would say that the odds are about 60/40 that I would have been active

In the Resistance/Underground Railroad or whatever.

I'm basically a born contrarian, if everyone else is doing A, B and C I'm likely to do Q, M and R.. :)

Are you familiar with the White Rose Society? They paid a high price for not going with the program.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/rose.html

[texpatriot2004]

34. Interesting...odds look pretty good. I am fascinated by the

underground railroad but I have not heard about the White Rose Society. What did they do?

[Fumesucker]

35. They were students who resisted the Nazi machine

In Germany, not violently but with flyers and that sort of thing.

They were executed for their activities.

[Captiosus]

14. Going further back, I can say that in the Civil War, I would have

been on the decidedly wrong side of history.

My entire lineage is Virginian, and my great-great-grandfather and great-great-uncle both served in the Confederate Army. My grandfather had letters that had been passed down and, for them, they didn't join to promote slavery or anything sinister like that. They joined because they were Virginians, damn it, and Virginia asked them to serve.

Folks like my great-great-grandfather didn't really know squat about the inner workings of Washington D.C. or the oppression of slaves (hell, no one in my family had slaves, most of them barely earned a living working for other people). It was all about the state pride.

Sad to say, I would have been right there with them. Had I lived then, without the constant flood of news media of all types, I probably would have joined up as well.

[The Shadow]

19. The Civil War Was More Territorial Than Political

Most confederates fought for the south due to the fact that their states had seceded from the union and that the war would be fought in their homeland. Robert E. Lee decided to fight for the Confederacy (he had been asked to lead the Army of the Potomac against the secessionists) because he knew the guns in Washington D. C. were trained on his homeland of Arlington, Virginia. He could not wage war against his home. Nor could the honorable men that fought for the south.




Note: I am a northerner so don't think I am glorifying the south here. I am merely stating historical facts and also remembering that it is always the poor folks that fight the rich men's wars of ideals, and that was certainly the case of the Civil War.

[Captiosus]

21. Poor fighting for the rich: Perfectly describes my gr-gr-uncle

According to the family letters, my great-great-uncle signed up simply because the Confederacy offered a better wage than what he was getting working as a carpenter's assistant.

It's easy for me to look back and say "I'd fight for the Union", but if I was there, and only knew what everyone else knew, I would have been in my Richmond grays.

You're correct on Robert E. Lee, and there's still a lot of Virginia pride in him even though he fought for the Confederacy. Though, I will conclude by saying that I'm not fond of the fact that Virginia attached Lee and Jackson to Martin Luther King, Jr day and was eternally grateful to Republican Governor Gilmore for separating the "holidays" back in 2000.

[The Shadow]

24. I Hate How It Somehow Isn't Politically Correct To Honor Those That Fought For The South

Both sides in the Civil War fought with great honor and should be given our respect always. The Civil War in my opinion is the single most important event in our nation's history. This is when we truly became the "United States of America" that we know today. After the Revolutionary War, while we became "independent" we were still merely a group of states that more or less were still very much independent of one another.

[raccoon]

37. Thank you! nt

[melonkali]

17. I, too, wonder if I'd take "right action" in a very wrong society. Sadly . . .

History teaches us that most average decent citizens, out of fear not just for themselves but for their families, rarely do.

I still beat myself up for not doing more after the 2000 selection, not doing more about Gitmo, Iraq, etc. I rationalized that I, one low-to-average person, could not do anything that would have any real effect. I wonder, even if I had thought of some "realistic but risky plan", would I have chanced the lives and wellbeing of myself and my family to execute it? Probably not.

Now I lay awake at night wondering what I could do, what I might do, if the repubs steal this election -- which is the only way they can possibly win (IMO). So far, no ideas. Guess I'd probably continue enjoying whatever quality of life our republican rulers allowed me, just as I have been doing for the last 8 years -- while more prisoners rot in Gitmo, more people die in Iraq, more fellow citizens fall into abject poverty and despair, etc.

[Ichingcarpenter]

22. My Kids granddad and great granddad fought the NAZIS in Denmark in WWII

The Grandfather was a hero of the Resistance who risked his life
destroying Nazi power from bombings and distributions.

He was awarded by the Danish Government after the war many awards for his efforts.


His father died in an Concentration Camp in Denmark
for his socialistic/Marxist beliefs and labor union presidency.

The Fascist, now, have just moved out of Europe.

[frankowen7]

23. K & R

[tech3149]

25. I've been interested in the White Rose Society since I first heard

of them. I've also had a strong interest in the resistance movements in Italy and France. I can't say for sure what I would do, but the only limiting factor for me would family responsibilities. I wouldn't want to put anyone I know and care for at risk by my actions unless they agreed it was a good thing to do. I hope we never have to make that choice, but I'm pretty sure those that rely on me will understand and agree if we have to take the fight to the streets.

I'm an old fart and my parents had to live through the last shit storms of the Republican Depression and WW II. I think that's given me a pretty good perspective on the world we are facing. The kids today might not have the same experience, but I think they have the intellect and world view to turn things around.

For me, the world doesn't belong to my generation anymore. What I don't want to do is hand the next generation a bag of shit. They deserve better.

[Omnibus]

30. Depends on when in my lifetime it happened.

The younger me, up to the mid-20's, would have probably gone with the flow initially. Once I found out what the regime was up to, and realized that I was partially culpable, I'd have probably killed myself to escape the guilt. If I didn't, I'd certainly live a life dedicated to atonement. I beat myself up over the piddling wrongs I've committed in this life; in that one, I'd make my own life hell and worse.

The older me would have voiced his anti-Nazi opinion too many times to the wrong people, and would join the resistance, get sent to a camp, leave the country, or get shot, in reverse order of likelihood.

[JackRiddler]

32. It's not the most self-flattering answer...

but I'm sure I would have been among the many, not only Jews, who sought to get the fuck out of Germany before or immediately after the Nazis took power. Along with Brecht and Stefan Heym and the Manns and Einstein and the Frankfurter School. Many thousands emigrated while they had the chance, some legally and with their money, many illegally, some lucky enough to get out with their families intact. Most of them then lived in poverty and at the mercy of whatever hosts they were lucky enough to have abroad. The most lucky ones made it to England or the US. Most, however, were trapped in the occupied territories as the war started. A good number of them joined with partisan fighters or served with the Allied armies. They were invaluable in winning the war.

[FatDave]

33. Which is precisely why I'm planning on getting the fuck out of dodge if McCain should somehow "win".

[JackRiddler]

42. I don't think that's comparable.

McCain isn't Hitler, he is only one expression of a tide within American life and capitalist civilization around the globe. It has Hitlerian echoes, but it is also something new. And this time it's obvious there is nowhere to escape to.

Or do you have your plan ready?

[Deep13]

36. There was a plenty of room in the concentration camps for non-Jews too.

Jews were the largest group in the concentration camps at about 50%. The other half consisted of dissidents of all descriptions including Catholic priests who declined to accept the official church collaboration with the Nazis, homosexuals, Gypsies, common criminals, POWs, union people, those with physical or mental disabilities--basically anyone that irked the Fuhrer.

The point is, being a non-Jew would not have saved you.

[King Coal]

38. Great Post!!!!

[tavalon]

40. Back in 2001 and into 2002, I watched our country become rabidly nationalistic

and that's when I had my wondering about the Nazi time. I recognized the underlying tone on rabid nationalism in each time and knew I would refuse it this time but wondered whether my life in a different era might have led to a different conclusion.

I was raised by my grandparents who were staunch Southern Baptists and my grandfather had earlier been a member of the KKK. I grew up questioning much of what they never did and I'm not sure why. I've always been the questioning sort and again, I'm not sure why. But, I'm glad I'm that way.

[LeftCoast]

41. Have you given to the NO on 8 campaign?

Right now people are working to amend our state Constitution so that only heterosexuals can marry. Civil rights are being fought over today in a very real way. You can help.

No on 8