I spent two years and
three months living in Germany. To be fair, it was technically two years and five
months but I did take leave time.
I arrived in Germany in
1985. Forty years after the end of WWII.
Once I became
comfortable with my new surroundings, and the closeness of living with my
company of MP’s got to be too much for me, I would take a day here and there to
go out in the two different towns I lived in (Kitzingen and Bad Kissingen). Sometimes
it was in the day time, sometimes it was at night. Just me. Walking around.
Some of the places were
okay but didn’t feel like ‘me’, so I’d move on. Some places I liked and I would
go back again and again. It’s amazing to make new friends after they see you a
few times. Especially the older Germans. The younger Germans didn’t seem to
like American soldiers much. I understood it back then, I still understand it.
The older Germans, at
least in my experience, as I didn’t walk around like I owned the place, didn’t
walk around like I was the one who won WWII, and most importantly didn’t judge
them, would actually talk to you, get to know you. And even though I was
curious I didn’t ask too many questions.
Funny thing that. When
you don’t demand answers with questions sometimes you get answers any way.
One woman in Kitzingen
at my favorite café/bakery (I don’t recall the name but it was in the
Marketplatz) served serious ass expresso, mean brochen ham and Swiss sandwiches
and was the daughter of a Nazi party official. She was fifteen when Hitler came
into power. She once told me “we listened because he said what we wanted to
hear, what we thought we saw after Versailles”. I asked her why she thought
that.
“He said things that
were in our hearts and we admired him for it. We did not know, did not want to
know after a long time, that he truly meant to do what he did. He promised to
make Germans and Germany great, like we once were”. I wrote her words down in
my journal after I got back to my barracks.
I remember having to
think about her words. I had no idea what she meant by that.
I made friends with the
old guy in the toy store. Wooden toys. I did a double take. Little shop about
two blocks from the Chinese restaurant and to the left I think if you were
facing the restaurant. I used to buy wood Christmas ornaments and send them
home. He also made Prussian soldiers for a nice profit, hand painted. He used
to talk to them. He was pretty blunt about Hitler. Again from my journal.
“He was not much to look
at. You would see him, slight, that ridiculous mustache, but then he would
speak. We Germans, we like a man who can speak plainly. He did. He promised us
things we wanted. We were angry, we were poor and hungry. Did you know that
your soul can get hungry”?
I had no clue what he
meant by that last sentence. I was nineteen and twenty when I was in Kitzingen.
I was doing good to sort of understand Shakespeare.
When I got to Bad
Kissingen I again became a barracks rat until I got comfortable. Sometime after
I got comfortable I would take a book and go walking around, or my note book
journal. I found a bar (go figure, me finding a bar) that seemed a little higher
class than where I normally hung out. I was thirsty and a beer or five sounded
good. So I went in.
I found a frosty
reception. I was dressed like an American. Older gentlemen (I was twenty and a
smidge everyone was older to me) eyeballed me. The conversations stopped or
dropped in to low tones. I sat at the bar. The bar maid was thirty fiveish,
blonde hair, tired eyes. I remember her telling me that they (said older German
men) didn’t like me. I asked why. She said “old Nazi bastards”. Okay, that was
an eye opener. She also said something to the effect of “they wear suits now,
but not back then”. Even with that reception I went back time and time again.
Yes, sometimes I’m an asshole.
The most interesting man
I met was a taxi driver. He said (depending on the day/night) that he was fifty-six
or fifty-eight. His left hand was missing fingers. And when he moved the little
note pad he had fixed to his dash board you could see his runes. He’d driven
them into his dashboard. Illegal as hell as I understand it. Waffen SS. Eastern
Front. He used to say he was a lucky one. He got frostbite bad enough to lose
fingers and get his ass out of Russia.
He was also blunt as
hell. I once told him that his runes were illegal. He laughed and asked me “what
can they do to me?” Okay, he had me on that one. I mean hell, if he was telling
the truth then cops wouldn’t scare a man who survived the Eastern Front.
When he drove during the
day I would sometimes find him taking his dinner at the train station. I wasn’t
going anywhere but they served Guinness and I was really liking it at that
point in my life. He’d drink a few German beers and we’d talk. It must have
taken four or five months before he really talked to me. Again my habit of not asking
obvious pain in the ass questions allowed him to make his decision to talk to
me.
I did ask him one early
evening why he joined the Waffen SS. I was expecting a lot of answers but not
the one I got. “My brother was one of Rohm’s boys. I had to erase that stain
from my family”.
He used to look up to
his brother, loved hearing the stories of him beating up “those stupid
communists, those unionists, those Jews”.
I rarely asked the hard
questions, I wasn’t sure he would answer. Once I did. I asked why did you
follow Hitler?
Again a blunt answer. “The
bastard said what I wanted to hear. Did I hate Jews? Yes. Did I hate
communists? Yes. He made it so that you could say you hated someone. You could
go to a rally and say you hated someone. He could stir the hate in you, you let
it and when the party came to power you could do what you wanted to someone you
hated”.
For a long time after I
came back from Germany I wanted to put away what I’d heard from some of these
people. It sounds odd, but the people I remember the most aren’t the ones who
said ‘we didn’t know’ or ‘we were told what to think’; the one’s I remember the
most are these people. Because they were as honest as they allowed themselves.
They didn’t really apologize for it and I didn’t ask them too. It wasn’t and
still isn’t my place. I wasn’t there.
I am however here. Now.
Watching a man who
claims to be presidential material. And I see the same thing in his crowd of
supporters that I saw glimpses of 31 years ago.
I see people standing up
to this man and his supporters this time. Not enough. But more this time than
did in the 1930s and 1940s.
A man who uses the First
Amendment to say what he has to say, a man who incites violence on protestors
who are also using the First Amendment (even if it’s just a sign or t shirts or
silence), a man who professes to make a country “great again”, a man who can
wrap a crowd into a frenzy using nationalism, a man who scapegoats anyone he
doesn’t like or who questions him. A man who asks those in the crowd to take an
oath to him with a raised right hand. A man who makes statements then says he
does not recall the statement (even though it’s on video).
A man who says what a
segment of the population wants to hear.
During basic training
back in 1985 we had a class on brainwashing. It began with my training company
entering our class room. We were told that a female Soviet soldier was going to
be giving us a class. There was the usual “you will show her respect”
statement. Then we were told we were better than Soviet soldiers and when she
entered we were to stand up and chant USA. She entered. We chanted.
She spoke. We chanted
USA.
She spoke again. In a Midwestern
accent and said “It’s that easy”. She then introduced herself as an officer in
the US Army.
Think totalitarianism, fascism,
a dictatorship can’t happen here? Think again.
I’ve heard for the last
8 years’ people call the President a “socialist dictator”. If he was, y’all
would be in jail. Oddly you people are not.
Oddly, for the last 8
years, people have protested the current President without being escorted out,
pushed, spit upon, and beaten by the crowd.
One man currently
running for President has used his 1st Amendment right to incite and
invite his “followers” to use violence against protesters. Going so far as say
he’d like to punch a protester in the face.
Okay, call off your
security, call off your Secret Service detail and go ahead and try. Just you
and a protester.
I’m sure he appears to
be the type of man who “speaks his mind” and that “he says what I’m thinking”.
Yeah, people in 1930’s
and 1940’s Germany thought the same thing.
