The Christian world has never recognized that Europe was saved by the leaders of Hungary Italy and Germany. Instead they not only turned their backs on them they roasted them with white phosphorus in the most egregious way possible attacking women and children like cowards thanks to Winston Churchill FDR etc. I was very impressed with the book entitled "The Myth of German villainy". I ordered the book and I have put together a book review on it:
The topic of German exceptions is always curious. But the evidence of mass formation psychosis is pretty damning because it functions like hypnosis. And when hypnotized, the "master" cannot get their subject to betray their moral compass. (i.e. have the subject murder someone when that person is fundamentally against murder) It explains the postwar attempts by Germans to try and explain that they "had a spell cast on them." (I reckon hypnosis would feel like that, including that loss of agency seen in crowd psychology) Perhaps they weren't lying and just lacked the proper language? But the fact that at least 95% of Germans supported Hitler and were more than willing to kill for him meant that Germans had, at some point in history, completely lost their moral and ethical foundation as a society and as a people, making Hitler merely the pagan chieftain they awaited. For this reason the lions share of exceptions were religious, both Catholic and Lutheran: the Scholl siblings, Blessed Rupert Mayer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and also Von Stauffenberg, although unfortunately the latter's Catholic morality had no room for his fellow believers in "the Lebensraum" whose hardships he completely supported. I don't know if Canaris was religious, but it's nice to see he had a different point of view.
I don't know how Europe would look if Canaris and the others in the resistance had been successful. Given that Germany was left weaker than it's ever been in its history (and certainly in its modern history) German dominance of postwar Europe appears to be a given: if a temporarily divided and demilitarized Germany managed to seize power over Europe through the EU, why wouldn't a slightly stronger, unified and militarized Germany do the same? It's a pathetic way for the Allies to have rewarded a country for having given Nazis to the world, but perhaps it's unavoidable. One thing's for sure: I doubt Canaris would like the Germany of today if brought back from the dead, especially if he was involved with doing away with Rosa Luxemburg and her Marxist ilk. Germany is as lacking of a moral compass today as it was back then: some might even argue it is more lacking today simply by the numbers, since the East Germans were very successful at completely liquidating religiosity in Thuringen, Brandenburg, Saxony, Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. From a religious point of view this part of the world is a total wasteland. We see with the war that religiosity made a different, even if it was just a tiny, incremental one. Where will the Scholl siblings, Mayers and Bonhoeffers - not to mention their secular equivalents in the military - of our era come from now that the atheistic Bundesrepublik is slowly transforming into a marshmallow version of East Germany? (A country that, unsurprisingly, had nowhere near as many dissidents as its neighbors in Poland and Czechoslovakia)
While I hope more WWII novelists in the West turn their attention to the unfairly marginalized and even defamed Polish resistance, German exceptions are understandably intriguing when it comes to human nature in general. And now that we know about mass formation psychosis, their resistance is in a sense even greater: they not only had to stand by their own convictions if they had them, but resist an unknown, almost esoteric but very real psychological force that risked compromising their agency by exploiting the basic human need to belong. Especially in a uniform society like Prussia/Germany that doesn't have much admiration for nonconformity in any way, shape or form. And that's not even factoring in material concerns.
Hope your novel is going well! Historical novels certainly do have their needs.
Uniquely you are among the few who have read Nicholson Baker's case against US military prrcptn in the war. I tried to follow suit in a sstack and was unable, I proposed the Reich wld not have lasted long but Felix here Mr Pruwat has thought abt it too, is a nonstarter....I have this bad track record, but I propose we consider two options off the cuff for ourselves: plough attn into small vistas, that is contra Neitzche's suggestion. And a thing being done in Rawanda, since you cannot tell by looking, announcing your tribe is illegal, make all political campaigning and red hats and US flags and peace symbols illegal. That will Save our souls from the same old story: that shining city on a hill I wish. SoS!
The Christian world has never recognized that Europe was saved by the leaders of Hungary Italy and Germany. Instead they not only turned their backs on them they roasted them with white phosphorus in the most egregious way possible attacking women and children like cowards thanks to Winston Churchill FDR etc. I was very impressed with the book entitled "The Myth of German villainy". I ordered the book and I have put together a book review on it:
https://open.substack.com/pub/wmfinch/p/the-myth-of-german-villainy?r=3g15p6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
If these are your notes, I can’t wait for the novel
Fascinating! As someone said (it was you!), we're still living in the post WW2 world.
I never knew the story of Canaris. Thanks Sam.
The topic of German exceptions is always curious. But the evidence of mass formation psychosis is pretty damning because it functions like hypnosis. And when hypnotized, the "master" cannot get their subject to betray their moral compass. (i.e. have the subject murder someone when that person is fundamentally against murder) It explains the postwar attempts by Germans to try and explain that they "had a spell cast on them." (I reckon hypnosis would feel like that, including that loss of agency seen in crowd psychology) Perhaps they weren't lying and just lacked the proper language? But the fact that at least 95% of Germans supported Hitler and were more than willing to kill for him meant that Germans had, at some point in history, completely lost their moral and ethical foundation as a society and as a people, making Hitler merely the pagan chieftain they awaited. For this reason the lions share of exceptions were religious, both Catholic and Lutheran: the Scholl siblings, Blessed Rupert Mayer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and also Von Stauffenberg, although unfortunately the latter's Catholic morality had no room for his fellow believers in "the Lebensraum" whose hardships he completely supported. I don't know if Canaris was religious, but it's nice to see he had a different point of view.
I don't know how Europe would look if Canaris and the others in the resistance had been successful. Given that Germany was left weaker than it's ever been in its history (and certainly in its modern history) German dominance of postwar Europe appears to be a given: if a temporarily divided and demilitarized Germany managed to seize power over Europe through the EU, why wouldn't a slightly stronger, unified and militarized Germany do the same? It's a pathetic way for the Allies to have rewarded a country for having given Nazis to the world, but perhaps it's unavoidable. One thing's for sure: I doubt Canaris would like the Germany of today if brought back from the dead, especially if he was involved with doing away with Rosa Luxemburg and her Marxist ilk. Germany is as lacking of a moral compass today as it was back then: some might even argue it is more lacking today simply by the numbers, since the East Germans were very successful at completely liquidating religiosity in Thuringen, Brandenburg, Saxony, Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. From a religious point of view this part of the world is a total wasteland. We see with the war that religiosity made a different, even if it was just a tiny, incremental one. Where will the Scholl siblings, Mayers and Bonhoeffers - not to mention their secular equivalents in the military - of our era come from now that the atheistic Bundesrepublik is slowly transforming into a marshmallow version of East Germany? (A country that, unsurprisingly, had nowhere near as many dissidents as its neighbors in Poland and Czechoslovakia)
While I hope more WWII novelists in the West turn their attention to the unfairly marginalized and even defamed Polish resistance, German exceptions are understandably intriguing when it comes to human nature in general. And now that we know about mass formation psychosis, their resistance is in a sense even greater: they not only had to stand by their own convictions if they had them, but resist an unknown, almost esoteric but very real psychological force that risked compromising their agency by exploiting the basic human need to belong. Especially in a uniform society like Prussia/Germany that doesn't have much admiration for nonconformity in any way, shape or form. And that's not even factoring in material concerns.
Hope your novel is going well! Historical novels certainly do have their needs.
Uniquely you are among the few who have read Nicholson Baker's case against US military prrcptn in the war. I tried to follow suit in a sstack and was unable, I proposed the Reich wld not have lasted long but Felix here Mr Pruwat has thought abt it too, is a nonstarter....I have this bad track record, but I propose we consider two options off the cuff for ourselves: plough attn into small vistas, that is contra Neitzche's suggestion. And a thing being done in Rawanda, since you cannot tell by looking, announcing your tribe is illegal, make all political campaigning and red hats and US flags and peace symbols illegal. That will Save our souls from the same old story: that shining city on a hill I wish. SoS!