Genocide, Variations on a Theme #I
Part Four
“The doctrine of total war” Victor Klemperer once wrote “turned horribly against its originators: everything was a theatre of war. Heroism was experienced in every factory, in every cellar. Children, women and old men all died exactly the same heroic death...”[1]
“During twelve years the term and the vocabulary of the heroic was increasingly and ever more strictly applied to martial courage, to daring death-defying attitudes in combat. Not coincidentally did the language of Nazism put the new and rare adjective of new romantic aesthetes: ‘combative’ (kaempferisch) in general circulation and made it one of their favorite words. Warlike was too narrow, it only let one think of war. It was too openhearted, betrayed belligerence and a desire for conquest. In contrast, combative! It refers in a more general way to the tense attitude of the mind, of the will, which in every situation of life is directed toward self-assertion through defense and attack, and which has little time for renunciation.”[2]
The fact that the Nazis brainwashed children and teenagers from an early age meant that an entire generation was poisoned with foul, romantic nonsense. This had, obviously enough, repercussions after the war. Few were able or willing to deprogram themselves.
“We talked about the meaning of culture, of humanity, of democracy, and I had the impression that there was light at the end of the tunnel, that things were being sorted out in their good-natured minds – and then…someone spoke of some heroic behavior or heroic resistance or heroism. When this concept came into play all clarity disappeared. We were, once more, lost deep in the mists of Nazism. And not only the young men, who’d just returned from the field and captivity, and who hadn't received the slightest bit of acknowledgement, let alone been celebrated. No, even girls, who hadn’t done any service in the army, were completely prejudiced when it came to this highly questionable concept of heroism.”[3]
Klemperer gave the matter much thought and concluded that: “...Nazism slipped into the flesh and blood of the masses through single words, phrases, sentence constructions, which it imposed on them in millions of repetitions and which were taken over mechanically and unconsciously... Speech composes and thinks not only for me, it also directs my feeling that guides my whole mental process...And what if language has been formed from poisonous elements or made into a carrier of toxins? Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, they seem to have no effect, yet, after some time, the poisonous effect is evident. If one equates, long enough, the heroic and virtuous with the fanatical, one finally truly believes that a fanatic is a virtuous hero, and that without fanaticism one cannot possibly be a hero.”[4]
On 27th of March 1933 Klemperer noted in his diary: “The government is in a difficult situation. ‘Atrocity propaganda’ is coming from abroad due to its fight against the Jews. It constantly denies pogroms yet simultaneously revokes the rights of Jewish associations. If the ‘hate speech’ of the ‘World Jews’ continues unabated it threatens to take action against the German Jews. In the meantime: no bloodshed, just oppression, oppression, oppression. No one breathes freely. No word is free; neither spoken nor printed.”[5]
A few days later he wrote: “It feels like we’re on the eve of a pogrom in the deepest Middle Ages or in innermost Tsarist Russia.”[6]
And: “One murders coldly or ‘slowly’. They don’t ‘lay a finger on anybody’ – they just let them starve to death.”[7]
At the beginning of April, he stated: “I feel more pressure on me now than during the war, and for the first time in my life I have a hatred of the collective...”[8]
One of the main problems was the lies and nonsense being propagated by the politicians. “No European people has ever suffered such shame as we suffer. Every speech by the chancellor, the ministers, commissioners; and they talk endlessly; is a concoction of the most open, clumsiest lies, hypocrisies, phrases, and nonsense. And always the threat, the triumph and the empty promises.”[9]
Another of the most pressing problems was the concentration of power. “Power, a tremendous power, is in the hands of the National Socialists. Half-a-million armed men, all state offices and agencies, press and radio, and the mood of drunken millions.”[10]
His comment, on Hitler’s birthday, was: “Is it the suggestion of the enormous propaganda – film, radio, newspapers, flags, ever new festivals (today the people’s holiday, Adolf the Fuehrer’s birthday)? Or is it the trembling fear of the slaves all around?”[11]
In May he told of the first families heading for Palestine in the wake of the Haavara Agreement. One of the jokes of the day was: “Are you coming here out of conviction or from Germany?”[12]
More and more Jewish families left Germany. His comment was: “We now hear a lot about Palestine; it doesn’t suit us at all. Those who go there, exchange one form of nationalism and narrowness for another. It’s a country for capitalists. It’s about the size of the province of East Prussia with 200,000 Jews and 800,000 Arabs.”[13]
Much to his annoyance many Jews became passionate Nazis. In October he wrote: “Particularly disgusting is the behavior of some Jews. They begin to inwardly submit and to view the new ghetto state as a legal state to be accepted.” He had little time for Jews who spoke of the “genius of Hitler”.[14]
One of the problems was that the Zionists became the sole representative of the German Jews. Klemperer was no friend of the Zionists. “The Zionists, with their attachment to the Jewish state of anno 70 A.D. (Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus), are just as disgusting as the Nazis. They are no different in their blood sniffing, their ‘old culture’, and their hypocritical, narrow-minded winding back of history. The joke that a memorial has been erected to Hitler in Haifa bearing the inscription ‘The one who led us here’ has a profound and unwitting justification. In spirit, he is their leader.”[15]
At the time the Nazis attained power Klemperer was Professor of Romance Languages at the Technical University of Dresden. Soon a law was passed “cleansing” the civil services of Jews. Klemperer, a veteran of the First World War, was exempt but he was no longer allowed to use the university library and was gradually forced into retirement.
He and his wife lost their housekeeper, their car, their house, and even their cat due to the new, restrictive laws. That Klemperer survived the war at all borders on a miracle.
[1] pp.13-14 LTI, Victor Klemperer
[2] p. 14 LTI, Victor Klemperer
[3] pp.10-11 LTI, Victor Klemperer
[4] pp.26-27 LTI, Victor Klemperer
[5] p.15 Victor Klemperer, Tagebuecher 1933-1941
[6] Ibid
[7] p. 16 Victor Klemperer, Tagebuecher 1933-1941
[8] p.19 Ibid
[9] p.20 Ibid
[10] p.22 Ibid
[11] P.23 Ibid
[12] p.29 Ibid
[13] p.39 Ibid
[14] p.58 Ibid
[15] pp.111-112