Humans did this

Auschwitz through the lens of the SS: Photos of Nazi leadership at the camp

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has posted a number of photos from an album which shows not the horrors of the life of the prisoners at Auschwitz, but the life of relative ease and civility enjoyed by the SS staff of the camp.

If I can accept a divine Commandment, it’s this one: ‘Thou shalt preserve the species.’ The life of an individual must not be set at too high a price. If the individual were important in the eyes of nature, nature would take care to preserve him.”

- Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941-1945 (New York: Tarred, Straus, and Young, 1953) 116.

Preservation is tied to the iron law of necessity and the right of victory of the best and the strongest…Whoever wants to live, must struggle, and whoever will not fight in this world of eternal struggle does not deserve to live…Even if this is harsh – it is simply the way it is.”

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Munich: NSDAP, 1943) 316-317.

[An evolutionist] can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or seem to him the best one.”

- Charles Darwin, Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1969) 94.

With dictators, nothing succeeds like success.

- Adolf Hitler

Mutually Assured Destruction

I think it well…for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through…The only defence is offence, which means that you will have to kill women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.”

- Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of England, 1935n

The Political Dr. Seuss

Because of the fame of his children’s books (and because we often misunderstand these books) and because his political cartoons have remained largely unknown, we do not think of Dr. Seuss as a political cartoonist. But for two years, 1941-1943, he was the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM (1940-1948), and for that journal he drew over 400 editorial cartoons.

- Richard H. Minear

All Holds Barred

This from the “Here’s How” Handbook for American Troops in China:

Philosophy of Entertainment

The Chinese don’t necessarily demand excitement in their entertainment (although they eat it up when it does occur). They can be perfectly happy playing for hours on end with their children. It’s a pretty deep point in philosophy: which is the more sophisticated and satisfying pleasure – playing with the baby or watching the Cotton Bowl epic.

Street Brawls

The contrast between American and Chinese street brawls is instructive. A dispute at home that leads to blows usually proceeds with little interference from the sidelines and with the less bloody gentleman having proved he was in the right, or both of the combatants in the clink.

A Chinese brawl ordinarily begins, as do ours, with abusive language. One of the disputants having called the other a turtle egg, the second responds in kind for reasons of “face” if for no other. At this stage the role of the middleman begins. He may be almost anyone who has witnessed the beginning of the quarrel. He represents the public conscience which in China quite sensibly abhors violence. The middleman quickly sizes up the situation and steps in to restrain with calming hands and admonitions the more aggressive disputant.

A crowd soon gathers and rings in the drama. The two disputants then interrupt their abuse with impassioned statements of their respective cases. For the crowd is the public conscience itself. Unless he is so enraged as to be blind to all reason and caution, neither disputant will seriously attempt to hit the other. To do so would be to put himself in the eyes of the crowd completely in the wrong.

The brawl usually proceeds with abuse, accusation, counter-accusation, intermittent lunges and round house swings (which the soothing middleman is expected to check), remonstrances from the middleman and occasional coaching from the sidelines. The fight usually cools off when both parties feel that they have maintained or regained “face” as the case may be and a compromise is reached.

Sometimes a policeman is brought in. He usually takes the place of the middleman, listens to the arguments and then delivers his opinion – more to the crowd than to the disputants. The crowd nods its head and murmurs approval of a reasonable compromise, everyone goes home feeling that a sensible solution has been reached and the policeman returns to his post.

An average brawl like this (some of course get out of hand) reveals certain important Chinese attitudes. One is that there is no such thing as a private fight where two guys slug it out. Every man is a member of a community and the community has an interest in seeing that there is a minimum of disturbance in its midst. Another is that if you use abusive language toward someone, you make him lose “face” and he must somehow regain “face” or get back at you. Still another is that if you hit someone you are placed in the wrong and public feeling turns against you. A fourth attitude is that the best solution to a difference is usually a compromise which satisfies both parties. A genius for compromise id one of the outstanding Chinese characteristics. This is a natural development of the Chinese belief in reasonableness in human relations. Differences can usually be bridged if both parties are willing to argue it out.

Remember these attitudes when you’re in China and want to put your dukes up.

Political Correctness

Don’t say “Chinaman.” The proper word is “Chinese.” Although we say “Englishman” and “Frenchman,” somehow the word “Chinaman” has come to have a derogatory flavor.

No Man’s Land

During the lulls the wounded called and groaned in No Man’s Land, lingered for as much as a week, and usually died there, and sometimes screamed in their incoherent agony; while above them sounded the joyous songs of birds. The thrushes, especially, twittered wildly each morning, for they were used to the guns.

– Leon Woolf

Bragging Rights

American WWI Recruitment Poster

The Culture War

Nazi propaganda poster, Belgium, 1944

For Heidi

woodcut print of “A Dance of Death”
from the Liber Chronicarum, 1493.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Water Torture – a woodcut in Damhoudere’s (1556)
Praxis Rerum Criminalium. Antwerp, Flanders.