Friday, August 22, 2008

Last post

Today I am deciding to post my last post on this book. I haven't read it for a while and there are so many other things I am trying to do, not to mention the total lack of readers other than the two faithful.

Life in the Reich:

Pg. 231

"The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, taht so much of their culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation."

"The Blood Purge of June 30, 1934, was a warning of how ruthless the new leaders could be. Yet the Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous and brutal dictatorship. On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm."

Pg. 232

"The Germans heard vaguely in their censored press and broadcasts of the revulsion abroad but they noticed that it did not prevent foreigners from flocking to the Third Reich and seemingly enjoying its hospitality. For Nazi Germany, much more than Soviet Russia, was open for all the world to see. The tourist business thrived and brought in vast sums of badly needed foreign currency."

Pg. 241

"On the evening of May 10, 1933, some four and a half months after Hitler became Chancellor, there occured in Belin a scene which had not been witnessed in the Western world since the late Middle Ages. At about midnight a torchlit parade of thousands of students ended at a square on Unter den Linden opposite the University of Berlin. Torches were put to a huge pile of books that had been gathered there, and as the flames enveloped them more books were thrown on the fire until some twenty thousand had been consumed. Similar scenes took place in several other cities. The book burning had begun."

Pg 244

"Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbles or by one of his aides what news to print and surpress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day."

Pg 247

"The radio and the motion pictures were also quickly harnessed to serve the propaganda of the Nazi State. Goebbles had always seen the radio (television had not yet come in) the chief instrument of propoganda in modern society and through the Radio Department of his ministry and the Chamber of Radio he gained complete control of broadcasting and shaped it to his own ends."

Pg. 248

"No one who had not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread concequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda."

Maybe I will follow up with more later.

Dan

Post your thought on how this is like our current situation.