WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO AMERICA?
Douglas M. Kelley
Source: https://archive.org/details/douglas-m.-kelley-22-cells-in-nuremberg-1947/page/n1/mode/1up
In my study of the Nuremberg Nazis, it became apparent that their personalities and their reign of terror in Germany yielded information which could well be adapted and applied to our own problems. In Germany we found a businesslike machine set up to control 80 million persons and to assure unlimited personal power for those in charge. This political machine had been developed legally—even democratically. Once in power, however, it rolled like a juggernaut over the rights of the people.
Here in America we are very apt to say to ourselves, “We are much too civilized for such a situation to develop. We could not possibly regress to a point where a small group could seize total power. We Americans could not ever permit any few men so to control our lives that the life or death of the population was completely in their hands.”
Are we, then, so very different from those people on whom totalitarianism has been painfully and brutally imposed? The answer is that, so far as I can determine, there is no real difference between the individual German and the individual American except for the German’s more ardent belief in his ideologies. It is true that the German nation has a more homogeneous culture. It has had a common speech, a common philosophy, perhaps, for a much longer period than we have been a nation. Consequently, Germany would be more easily swayed by skillful propaganda. But, aside from our lack of homogeneity, and all that it implies in varying origins, a two-party system, and legal “paper” guarantees of minority rights, I am convinced that there is little in America today which could prevent the establishment of a Nazi-like state.
Such a statement may sound extravagant. It might be answered, “We do not have the leaders and neither do we have the basic ideologies and concepts which these would-be leaders could use.”
Let us examine the facts.
As far as the leaders go, the Hitlers and the Goerings, the Goebbels’ and all the rest of them were not special types. Their personality patterns indicate that, while they are not socially desirable individuals, their like could very easily be found in America. Neurotic individuals like Adolf Hitler, suffering from hysterical disorders and obsessive complaints, can be found in any psychiatric clinic. And there are countless hundreds of similar ones, thwarted, discouraged, deter. mined to do great deeds, roaming the streets of any American city at this very moment.
Strong, dominant, aggressive, egocentric personalities like Goering, differing from the normal chiefly in their lack of conscience, are not rare. They can be found anywhere in the country—behind big desks deciding big affairs as businessmen, politicians, and racketeers.
Shrewd, smooth, conscienceless speakers and writers like Goebbels, slick, big-time salesmen like Ribbentrop, and all I the financial and legalistic hangers-on can be counted among 1 the men whose faces we know by sight.
Political rabble rousers, the Streicher and Ley types can ‘be encountered at any political meeting; and I am sure in ‘our armed forces we could locate smooth, political generals or colonels who would be willing to string along with a party able to assure them rapid promotion to the top.
No, the Nazi leaders were not spectacular types, not personalities such as appear only once in a century. They simply had three quite unremarkable characteristics in common —and the opportunity to seize power. These three characteristics were: overweening ambition, low ethical standards, a strongly developed nationalism which justified anything done in the name of Germandom.
Let us look about us. Have we no ultranationalists among us who would approve any policy, however evil, so long as t could be said to be of advantage to America? Have we no men so ruthlessly eager to achieve power that they /would not quite willingly climb over the corpses of our minorities, if by so doing they could gain totalitarian control ewer the rest of us?
So much for the leaders of a potential American Nazism. What of the followers? Shocking as it may seem to some of we as a people greatly resemble the Germans of two decades ago. We have a very similar background of ideological concepts, and we are similarly inclined to base our thinking on emotional rather than on intellectual evaluations. And no one can deny that the basic appeals that Hitler used—demanding minority persecution, demanding development of a stronger nation, demanding that veterans take over the government, demanding government control of private business—all are present in the United States today.
It is a deeply disturbing experience to return from Nuremberg to America and find the same racial prejudices that the Nazis preached being roused here in the same words that rang through the corridors of Nuremberg Jail.
As has been pointed out, Rosenberg and Hitler did not originate Germany’s racial prejudices. These have existed in all countries and, in one form or another, for all recorded time. They persist, with special variation, in America today. Let me quote:
“America has a two-fold problem in that it not only has an intellectual Jewish minority, but it also possesses a large mass of human strength among its Negroes. If these two minorities get together, a revolution will take place, which may result in the Nordic group being completely overwhelmed.”
Does that sound utterly ridiculous? It should, because its source is that font of so much frantic nonsense, Alfred Rosenberg. But we who would be intelligently aware of our problems dare not lightly dismiss such pronouncements; the attitude which inspired them did not breathe its last when Rosenberg and his ten companions died. We can find the same ideas thinly veiled in our public press today.
Even worse, we find some of our top political men, members of our highest governing bodies, making statements which would do credit to Rosenberg, Hitler or Goebels. And we must not forget what happened to millions when the ludicrous Rosenberg had an opportunity to put into action the racial theories with which he had long been poisoning himself.
Many people will say that this is a country of free press and of free speech. After all, the American racists are just talking or writing, and anyone in America has a right to talk or write as he pleases. That is quite true. But, at the start, Hitler and Streicher and Ley and Rosenberg were just talking also. [Sanjeev: THIS – THE FIRST AMENDMENT – IS THE ONLY REASON WHY AMERICAN WON’T BECOME NAZI GERMANY]
Interestingly enough, von Schirach, Frick, Speer, and others of the less ardent Nazis all said: “It does not seem possible that this could have really happened. Back when the Party was being formed, we used to listen to these speeches. Just speeches. Not one of us expected anything more from them than simple stimulation of the crowds. No one of us felt that any human being would ever lose his life because of these speeches. We thought we were listening to political propaganda. We, ourselves, made the same speeches. We never dreamed it would go so far.”
The power of the spoken word has been emphasized over and over. As a matter of fact, human beings in their present state of development are more moved by words than by reason. [Sanjeev: This is an acknowledge of INNATE HUMAN IRRATIONALITY. I agree.] We allow ourselves to be overcome by emotional assault and battery and in turn use it to try to destroy the concepts and ideals of others.
F. Ashley Montague in his recent book Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: the fallacy of race, discusses the racial problem in a most intelligent and entertaining fashion. His chapter on race and blood should be studied in every school and read by every American. Montague points out how widely accepted is the fallacy of blood differences, and he emphasizes the use of this myth for political purposes.
Just one year after the end of the war, in one of our populous states, a cheap and dangerous politician utilized racism and the concept of white supremacy as the major features of his congressional campaign; another employed them in his successful effort to recapture a governorship. In both cases it was a coldly calculated technique for political gain. There is absolutely no difference between the methods of these men and those of Streicher or Hitler. [Sanjeev: The reason why racism won’t succeed in the USA is because of free speech. Until that remains, it will be readily overturned by rational debate]
Again, in other states, returning war veterans of Japanese origin, American military heroes who had been deprived of their homes early in the war as a defense measure, were held up to ridicule, were discriminated against, even shot at. The mobs which attacked them were incited by a few unscrupulous individuals who had benefited by forced removal of the Japanese. [Sanjeev: This is true, and sporadic events of this kind can’t be ruled out in the USA]
Any analysis of the motives for the political use of racial myths anywhere invariably reveals that those who employ them do it in the same fashion as did Hitler and his cohorts. They use racism as a method of obtaining personal power, political aggrandizement, or individual wealth. We are allowing racism to be used here for those ends. I am convinced that the continued use of these myths in this country will lead us to join the Nazi criminals in the sewer of civilization. [Sanjeev: It is true that eugenics did not die easily – it lingered for a long time in the USA]
Despite the lesson of history, in the United States today the ideologies of the Nazis pass from parent to child, from teacher to student, from author to reader. By so much as we nurture racism and similar indigenous racial attitudes, A we risk development here of a totalitarian state.
This danger is obviously not immediate. We are a vast country, made up of so many different types of populations, with so many different specific attitudes and interests. This heterogeneity of structure is our present salvation, but smaller areas can be, and already have been, developed into typical Nazi-Fascist centers. The power politics of Huey Long, who enforced his opinions by police control, were identical with those of Hitler. Hitler’s success in seizing first a small area and making it firmly totalitarian must not be forgotten. From a center of strength in Bavaria, he extended his control over all Germany. From a similar center of strength in any single state of this country a similar extension could be predicted.
Observe an extension technique which Hitler employed in January, 1933, which was decisive in his rise to power:
At that time, there were local elections in one of the smallest German states, Lippe-Detmold. Ordinarily, nobody outside Lippe-Detmold would have been vitally interested in this election. But Hitler decided to make it a test case. All the most brilliant and tireless speakers and agitators of the Party invaded that tiny state. Hitler spoke three or four times a day, even in the smallest villages and to audiences of not more than fifty. So did the others. The susceptible population of Lippe-Detmold was swept away by all the attention, the freely given promises, the emotional appeals. As a result, National Socialism scored a landslide victory.
Then Goebbels went to work. In arguments reminiscent of “As Maine goes—” the Party press heralded the election as symptomatic of the will of the entire German nation. The government was impressed; von Papen brought pressure in high places; he talked with Schleicher who resigned the Chancellorship, and Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich on January 30, 1933.
But, you may argue, “This is a democracy and in a democracy every individual should be able to vote. In a democracy it should be easy to spot the budding dictator and defeat him at the polls, legally and democratically, before he gains power.”
Theoretically, this is true. But we must never forget that Hitler was elected by democratic methods in a democratic system, which we ourselves helped to set up. He was elected in a democratic way because of the failure of German democratic forces to prevent his election, because of the fundamental apathy and lack of interest of those forces. Such apathy and disinterest is not unknown in the United States. It has been made painfully obvious in many elections that a small minority, functioning as an active unit, can and does win elections that determine the fate of an apathetic, lethargic, nonvoting majority.
Here, then, lies the method for the prevention of a totalitarian state. Our primary duty is to vote and, if we are to insure ourselves against totalitarianism, we must first of all remove all voting restrictions from all our citizens. It is time to make the ballot really free, to eradicate the poll tax and other restrictions on voting.
Second, at every election every individual citizen eligible to vote must cast his ballot. The larger the vote, the more difficult it is for a machine-guided minority to control elections.
Third, we must refuse to vote for anyone who makes political capital out of such emotion-laden terms as Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic, White or Negro. And we must undertake to free ourselves from the traditional, emotional use of those terms and others in the same category: Oriental and blood and race and so on.
Finally, we must reform our system of education to teach students to think. We may even have to rebuild our langauge habits, eliminating those generalities which actually mean nothing, but which produce in unthinking persons strong emotional reactions.
If we carry out these four steps—simple to outline but extremely difficult to effect—we shall have established a functional political democracy by giving every citizen the right inherent in such a democracy. The United States will never reach its full stature until we do.
We shall, of course, never reach that goal until we, as a people, individually develop beyond our present emotional adolescence. We cannot have a mature nation of infantile citizens. As a psychiatrist in the Army, I became convinced that the country which had produced so many thousands of infantile young men was itself emotionally immature. Far too few of our soldiers, or their officers, were mature; a frighteningly high percentage had an emotional-intellectual age of about ten years. One can say, with reason, that the Germans behaved like children under the rule of Adolf Hitler. We are not yet reduced to such a state but we are—like Hess—teetering on the curbstone.
We can achieve national maturity only through the development of each individual to a true adult status. When such maturity is reached, each individual will then be competent within himself to evaluate properly the mouthings of our propagandists. Until then, total voting and an attempt to guard ourselves against the tyranny of words and to evaluate properly each candidate for public office is the only answer. This answer depends on the citizens of the United States—every single one of us.
It is up to us to determine whether to foster racial hatreds and prejudices. It is up to us whether we learn from the holocaust of Europe and apply what we learn to our own lives. It is up to us to develop a truly democratic nation where we and our children can live without bickering, without hatreds, emotionally secure because we are an emotionally mature nation.