Mein Herz Brennt

In history class we cover the first half of the 20th century. If you feel good about yourself in a shiny-happy-jolly way right now, be warned, this is quite a dark piece of commentary. Ignorance is bliss.

I've been reading works of von Treischke (The Greatness of War), Lenin (What is to be done?), Stalin (Liquidation of Kulaks), Mussolini (Fascism Doctrines) and Hitler (Mein Kampf). von Treschke glorifies the purifying battle, that kills the inferior and weak. Yes, what species doesn't befefit from killing itself? Lenin and Stalin seems to have thought that their deeds was for the greater good and that the end justified the means. We want worldwide communism, who cares that the peasants eat their children because we took their grain? I must say, Mussolini seems...lucid. Which is most horrifying since he despises pacifism and democracy and prises warfare and Italian expansion. There are people claiming that Hitler wasn't insane, that any human can turn into such a monster, well, reading Mein Kampf is reassuring. There is no such thing as rationality or reason on those pages. On the contrary, the Jews were both the bloodsucking exploiters of the working class and the Marxists fighting for the proletariat? That makes...sense.

During the last few lectures we've seen photographs of piled corpses and cannibalism in the Soviet Union, carpet bombings, Hiroshima, liberated living skeletons from World War II. And the numbers. Depending on sources they vary greatly. 37 million died in WWI. 9-18 millions in the Russian Civil War. Stalin starved and purged 20 million to death during his two decades in power, that is 12% of the Russian population. In the Lagers about 6 million people were tortured and killed (hey mom, what about visiting Oswiechim for the third time this summer? at least there the campgrounds have showers...). In World War II, the deadliest military conflict in history, 60 million people were killed, whereas 2/3rds civilians. After that one might think that humanity had learned from its mistakes, well, not, say hello to Pol Pot.

We think that other people of other times were different, that we wouldn't let atrocities like that happen in our time. But they do happen, all the time, in different parts of the world. Genocide, slavery, oppression. We close our eyes, we do nothing, say nothing, deny it, don't care. Because if we cared too much we wouldn't bare to live. Like when we joke about Hitler, we have to laugh otherwise we would cry.