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What Happened to the Bad Germans

In "Shut Up...." [ETS! 7--6-06], Jason Miller states:

"From 1933 to 1445 most ordinary Germans complacently and quietly supported their regime. After all, they were not suffering."

This is a dangerous myth.

First of all, all Germans faced a far greater threat than most Americans do today, and for far less: the danger of disappearance into concentration camps, including punishment camps and battalions for military perceived as errant.

Dachau was originally built as a "re-education camp" (correctional facility) for Germans. There was "no resistance" among the Germans because the NSDAP had been keeping track of possibly resistant individuals. The first thing the new government did was to arrest them and put them into these camps. Few remained free; most did not survive the war.

By the end of the war, Heinrich Himmler, head of the private army known as the SS, bragged that he had a member of every single German family in a camp. The Air Force and the SS took power over prisoner-of-war and civilian concentration camps with the understanding that whoever ran the camps would exercise ultimate political and military power.

Germany was under heavy air attack during the war; even today, Germans have a hard time understanding why Americans are so upset by a couple of bombed buildings, when Germany lost hundreds of buildings and thousands of people in terror attacks on civilian centers--including the use of napalm-like flesh-eating thermite--every night.

My German friends e-mail me, asking, "Are you people crazy? Are you stupid? Don't you know our history?"

Americans are under far less threat, and have a greater opportunity in modern communication, to fight what the neo-cons have planned for us.

Let's not base our actions on myths about other populations, under similarly-constructed regimes, especially those which have borrowed so much from our own history--including eugenics, manifest destiny, race politics, slavery and prison guard unions.

--Donna Barr, Clallam Bay WA

Shut Up and Shot

Jason Miller asks "Wouldn't an analysis of the source of their (the 'Miami Seven') hatred be prudent so we could determine what profound changes the United States, its leaders, and its institutions need to make so that they are not creating enemies amongst our citizenry?"

It would arguably be prudent, but it will never happen. That's the approach that some analysts attempted in addressing 9/11, and they were almost immediately and summarily vilified as haters of America for daring to even pose such issues. After all, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were obviously bloodthirsty madmen, and madmen by definition can't have legitimate grievances--it was that simple. And moreover, the US can't possibly do anything wrong--or at least not that wrong.

Therefore, no one with enough clout to otherwise effect change will ever mount such an analysis as Mr. Miller suggests, because they'll be labeled as just one more madman. If they're perceived as powerful enough, they'll be assassinated. And Noam Chomsky is not an exception; he's just a crank with an inside line to a gullible publisher.

--Kerry Canfield, Portland, OR

That Familiar Odor

Steven D. Green, a former Army private charged this month with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi and killing her and her family, was discharged from the Army in mid-May because of an "antisocial personality disorder."

Antisocial personality disorder is defined as chronic behavior that manipulates, exploits, and violates the rights of others.

Does this definition bring anybody else to mind, somebody who, in my opinion, has been manipulating, exploiting, and violating our rights for the past five-and-a-half years?

--Clive Leeman, Ojai CA