Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.11.11
Dear friends,
I wish I had a banquet of hope to put before you, eleven links of uplifting joy, ways to channel any rage or hurt or despair into thoughtful action. This is not that.
A really good diary, someone’s thoughts on paper—not churned and milled into capital-H history, or polished and buffed into a novel—has always been a consolation to me (ditto books of letters). Reading them brings home the essential human condition: we live, and we experience, and we make a mark to show we were here. For a long time I’ve also been interested in WWII resistance narratives (have I told you about Story of a Secret State or They Shall Not Have Me yet?) so my rabbit-hole this week involved dipping into the thoughts of people who were also made heartsick and distressed by fascist politics. Diary-scrolling instead of doomscrolling, I guess?
“That joy, that enthusiasm of feeling truly close to one another in a crowd of many, that sense of fraternity acquired through common hope and common suffering, was it possible that such strength had been an illusion? Yet every time I lowered my eyes again to the leaflets that I had in my hand, the printed words ("resistance," "desire for revolution," "liberty." "justice") appeared to me to be more and more futile, pitiful, and unreal.” Partisan Diary: A Woman's Life in the Italian Resistance
“A month ago, when it was written in bold letters in the newspapers, it meant an undefined horror, a tension affecting the entire person without knowing where it was heading. It was confusing, yet replete. Now, there is a vague scattering of nuisances and minor fears; it's no longer anywhere or anything. I am relaxed and vague, waiting for I don't know what. It seems that everyone is waiting, as if pure time had any efficacy.” Wartime Diary
“What had Hitler provided which seemed to satisfy so many and persuaded them so easily to relinquish their freedom and to turn aside from the still small voice of their conscience? I was ignorant at the time, but later I felt I could venture a guess. Hitler understood his Germans well, or maybe he had just chanced his luck with human nature. There was a titbit for all in his political stew pot. Work for the unemployed, an army for the generals, a phoney religion for the gullible, a loud, insistent and not unheeded voice in international affairs for those who still smarted under the indignity of a lost war: there were also detention camps and carefully broadcast hints of what might be in store for anyone who had temerity enough to enquire into his methods too closely, let alone openly disapprove of them … he was shrewd enough to know that the spirit of his revolution came from the disgruntled, disenchanted, dispossessed middle classes.” When I Was a German
“We expected that our husbands would return home and that they wouldn't be sent to the camps. We acted from the heart, and look what happened. If you had to calculate whether you would do any good by protesting, you wouldn't have gone. But we acted from the heart. We wanted to show that we weren't willing to let them go. What one is capable of doing when there is danger can never be repeated … Everyone was simply there. Exactly like me. That's what is so wonderful about it.” Rosenstrasse protest
“Then, as now, people turned to their own little petty tasks & fears & worries, ignoring what was going on in the world. Today the world is in an even greater turmoil. And we are still being hoodwinked by the politicians who seem to want to ignore our part in the world. These same politicians are shouting loudly against Russia, while they, undercover, are grafting. Americans haven't been taught to see things as they are. We haven't been shown how to examine a situation & really look under to find what is what.” Diaries of Girls and Women
“Mass-man, who buys the products of technology in complete mindlessness, without involving himself, or even taking an interest in the intellectual work that made these things possible - mass-man is blood brother in this to the Roman of Caracalla's time, who was aware of the Limes romanus as a comforting guarantee for his comfortable way of life - but unable to rouse himself from his indolence to keep it from falling to pieces.” Diary of a Man in Despair [Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen was sent to a concentration camp for complaining about inflation.]
“Every fanatic and every brutal egoist was accepted into its ranks with open arms: charmers, con men, convicted criminals, and murderers. Everyone against the government then, whether in words or with deeds, was called a revolutionary and held up as a "hero." The worst sort of criminals, fools, and position seekers became known in time as the "Old Fighters," whose self-glorification brought them into the highest government positions - or into important Party positions - with a virtuoso's ease. Here they could be let loose on the unfortunate people.” My Opposition [Of his diary, Friedrich Kellner wrote: “I could not fight the Nazis in the present, as they had the power to still my voice, so I decided to fight them in the future. I would give the coming generations a weapon against any resurgence of such evil.”]
Stay well!
Your friend,
Erin