#antifascism #resistance
I posted this in a reply to someone and, considering the times many of us are in, I think it's worthwhile to share more broadly. From, They Thought They Were Free, a book where Milton Mayer interviews ten German men after WWII:
“I tried not to think of myself or my family. We might have got out of the country, in any case, and I could have got a job in industry or education somewhere else.
“What I tried to think of was the people to whom I might be of some help later on, if things got worse (as I believed they would). I had a wide friendship in scientific and academic circles, including many Jews, and ‘Aryans,’ too, who might be in trouble. If I took the oath and held my job, I might be of help, somehow, as things went on. If I refused to take the oath, I would certainly be useless to my friends, even if I remained in the country. I myself would be in their situation.
“The next day, after ‘thinking it over,’ I said I would take the oath with the mental reservation that, by the words with which the oath began, ‘Ich schwöre bei Gott, I swear by God,’ I understood that no human being and no government had the right to override my conscience. My mental reservations did not interest the official who administered the oath. He said, ‘Do you take the oath?’ and I took it. That day the world was lost, and it was I who lost it”
“Do I understand,” I said, “that you think that you should not have taken the oath?”
“Yes.”
“But,” I said, “you did save many lives later on. You were of greater use to your friends than you ever dreamed you might be.” (My friend’s apartment was, until his arrest and imprisonment in 1943, a hideout for fugitives.)
“For the sake of the argument,” he said, “I will agree that I saved many lives later on. Yes.”
...
“And how many innocent lives would you like to say I saved?”
“You would know better than I,” I said.
“Well,” said he, “perhaps five, or ten, one doesn’t know. But shall we say a hundred, or a thousand, just to be safe?”
I nodded.
“And it would be better to have saved all three million [my note: the actual number was unknown to this man at the time], instead of only a hundred, or a thousand?”
“Of course.”
“There, then, is my point. If I had refused to take the oath of fidelity, I would have saved all three million.”
“You are joking,” I said.
“No.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that your refusal would have overthrown the regime in 1935?”
“No.”
“Or that others would have followed your example?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are an American,” he said again, smiling. “I will explain. There I was, in 1935, a perfect example of the kind of person who, with all his advantages in birth, in education, and in position, rules (or might easily rule) in any country. If I had refused to take the oath in 1935, it would have meant that thousands and thousands like me, all over Germany, were refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus the regime would have been overthrown, or, indeed, would never have come to power in the first place. The fact that I was not prepared to resist, in 1935, meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, like me in Germany were also unprepared, and each one of these hundreds of thousands was, like me, a man of great influence or of great potential influence. Thus the world was lost.”
