{"id":10517,"date":"2013-06-23T08:59:43","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T15:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=10517"},"modified":"2013-06-23T08:59:43","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T15:59:43","slug":"patriots-traitors-in-nazi-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/patriots-traitors-in-nazi-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Patriots & Traitors In Nazi Germany?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Jacob G. Hornberger<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>June 12, 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ever since I was a kid, I have heard Americans ask, \u201cHow could the German people have allowed the Nazi regime to commit its evil acts?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, here\u2019s the answer to that question: The German people had the same warped and distorted concept of patriotism that American statists have today.<\/p>\n

The overwhelming majority of German citizens believed that it was their moral duty to come to the unconditional support of their government in time of crisis, especially when the nation went to war. The good citizen didn\u2019t question whether his government was right or wrong. The good citizen placed his trust in the judgment and decisions of his government officials, especially during crisis and war.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what patriotism meant to the German people during the 1930s and 1940s. The good citizen \u2014 the one who deferred to authority \u2014 was considered the patriot.<\/p>\n

What about German citizens who refused to defer to authority, those who had an independent mindset \u2014 those who would examine government policies with a critical eye \u2014 those who would question, challenge, and object to wrongful government policies? They were considered bad citizens \u2014 traitors.<\/p>\n

The best example of this phenomenon involves\u00a0the story of the White Rose<\/a>, an organization composed predominantly of German college students. If you haven\u2019t seen the movie\u00a0Sophie Scholl: The Final Days<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0I highly recommend it. Sophie Scholl, along with her brother Hans, were members of the White Rose.<\/p>\n

If you do see the movie, pay particular attention to the trial scene in which the presiding judge, Roland Freisler, comes down hard on the defendants Hans and Sophie Scholl. You\u2019ll notice something apropos to today: Freisler\u2019s mindset is the same as that of American statists today who are condemning Edward Snowden. In Freisler\u2019s mind, the Scholl siblings were bad Germans. They were traitors. Their parents had raised them to be despicable creatures.<\/p>\n

What had the Scholl siblings done? What was their \u201ccrime\u201d? They had taken a critical look at their own government in the midst of World War II. They had concluded that their own government was in the wrong \u2014 that it was engaged in wrongful conduct. Knowing that they were risking their lives or liberty, they violated the law by secretly publishing and distributing a set of pamphlets called \u201cThe White Rose,\u201d in which they exhorted the German people to rise up, stop the wrongdoing, and set Germany on a correct path.<\/p>\n

They were caught, primarily owing to the Nazi regime\u2019s extensive surveillance system over the German people. A college janitor saw them tossing White Rose pamphlets into the school courtyard and, being the good, little citizen he was, locked the doors and called the Gestapo. Hitler and his cohorts considered him a patriot.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Hans and Sophie Scholl were quickly convicted and executed at the guillotine for treason. After all, the law is the law and citizens are expected to obey the law, as American statists never cease to remind us in the case of Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n

By the way, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the Scholl trial did not take place in the regular German courts. After the terrorist attack on the Reichstag, and after some of the accused in that terrorism case had been acquitted, Hitler established a special tribunal called \u201cThe People\u2019s Court\u201d to try terrorism cases and treason cases. Its purpose? To ensure that no more accused terrorists and traitors got acquitted.<\/p>\n

Another interesting World War II movie is\u00a0Downfall<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>which is about Hitler\u2019s last days in his Berlin bunker. The movie revolves around his young secretary Traudl Junge. At the end of the movie, the real Traudl Junge is shown making a statement. She points out that when she accepted the job as Hitler\u2019s secretary, the last thing on her mind was that she was doing anything wrong.<\/p>\n

After all, Junge embraced the same concept of patriotism that most other Germans embraced \u2014 the same type that American statists today embrace. Her job, as a good German citizen, was to come to the support of her government, especially during crises and war.<\/p>\n

But Junge pointed out in\u00a0Downfall<\/em>\u00a0that when she learned about the Scholl siblings after the war, she realized that she should have been asking the same types of questions that Hans and Sophie Scholl had asked. When she learned about Hans and Sophie Scholl, her concept of patriotism changed.<\/p>\n

Today, American statists are condemning Edward Snowden for breaking the law and violating his oath as a government subcontractor to keep secret from the American people the massive surveillance scheme that the national-security state has secretly imposed on Americans and on much of the rest of the world. Statists are saying that Snowden is a bad citizen and a bad person. They\u2019re calling him a traitor. They saying that he needs to be put on trial, perhaps even before the national-security state\u2019s special tribunal system at Guantanamo Bay.<\/p>\n

Where does conscience play into the American statist\u2019s concept of patriotism and treason? For the statist, conscience must be subordinated to the needs of the national-security state. All that matters to the statist is the undying loyalty that national-security state employees, contractors, and subcontractors (and American citizens) owe to the national-security state apparatus and to their oath to protect its secrets.<\/p>\n

For the statist, the national-security state is everything. It is god. It is daddy. It is big brother. Everything else, including conscience, must be subordinated to \u201cnational security\u201d and to the national-security state\u2019s oaths, laws, rules, and regulations.<\/p>\n

The battle lines are forming in the case of Edward Snowden.<\/p>\n

On the one side are the statists, for whom patriotism means an unconditional pledge of allegiance to the national-security state and its deep and dark nefarious secrets involving grave infringements on liberty and privacy.<\/p>\n

On the other side are the libertarians and a few liberals and conservatives, for whom conscience and freedom reign supreme.<\/p>\n

Time will tell which side wins out. Time will tell which direction America heads in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Jacob G. Hornberger\u00a0June 12, 2013 Ever since I was a kid, I have heard Americans ask, \u201cHow could the German people have allowed the Nazi regime to commit its evil acts?\u201d Well, here\u2019s the answer to that question: The German … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10518,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517\/revisions\/10518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}