Last Thoughts

Coming into this course, I really had little frame of reference regarding the Third Reich and Hitler as a dictator. At the outset, I thought this course would provide clear, concrete reasons, behind the illogical mass murder that took place at the hands of the Regime, which admittedly was naïve on my part. I think what struck me the most and even scared me from this course was how I always imagined that in this instance, the line between good and evil was stark and distinct, and that the Nazis were an awful, inhuman, brute force whose irrational drive was driven and dedicated. But it seems that most of the Reich’s men weren’t the cookie-cutter monsters that Hitler and other top officials could unquestionably be described as.

It’s just that you expect things to be clear-cut. It’s as if I came into the course wanting answers, at least some sense of reason I could relate to or understand, and though we heard plenty of reasonable arguments to try and help us comprehend the Third Reich, its dynamics, and its brutal reign, it all just seems so bleak and incomprehensible.

It’s just dumbfounding how a population was able to turn a blind eye to genocide and even help Hitler gain power. In Kershaw we saw Hitler’s progression parallel to Germany’s despair and the failure of democracy, in Allen how a seemingly normal town was turned towards the Nazis, and in Browning, how everyday citizens came to be participants in unspeakable violence. I found Browning’s work to be both the most troubling and enlightening text we studied this semester. Again, I expected this divide between good and evil to be clear, but in this book we see how muddled it became with the onslaught of the war and the Regime’s grip over everything.

When thinking in terms of Hitler, I was reminded again and again of Plato’s Republic and how his description of the tyrannical man seems to perfectly describe him. He describes the tyrannical man as the one “that wakes when we are asleep, whenever the rest of the soul-the rational, gentle and ruling element-sleeps”, a man who will commit any crime and does hold back from doing anything no matter how wrong or shameful. A man whose passions are so strong he cannot control them, leading to someone who is mad enough to not only attempt and expect to rule human beings, but even Gods themselves. He seeks to seize things by force, under the tyranny of passion. If in the city where the tyrant lives there are only a few people who act like tyrants and are driven by passion, they will only cause “lots of little evils”. But if you get a lot of these people and their followers in one city and they becomes aware of their numbers, they will create a tyrant out of the one in their group whose soul is the greatest and strongest tyrant. If the people don’t submit, he will enslave them. He continues, adding that a tyrannical man lives out his life without any friends and never truly tastes freedom or friendship, making him unjust and untrustworthy.

I enjoyed this course because of how interesting and informative it was, into the dynamics of a society at the mercy of a devastating and unfortunate situation, but it provided no comfort, no resolution because I don’t think there can be any to be found in this part of history. Me personally, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully comprehend all of this because the situation is so horridly unimaginable to try sometimes seems futile to me, but I’m glad I tried in this course with the guidance of Professor Ertman and Jeremy.