The Lesson We Didn't Learn From Hitler

The lesson we didn't learn from Hitler is this: that Hitler was harmless on his own. The millions of people that listened to him, that put him in power, followed him and carried out his orders -- they're just as much to blame, if not more. Without them, Hitler would have been just another harmless crank ranting about the Jews. We all know one, some crank ranting about Jews -- a drunken uncle, the creepy old guy down the block, whatever. Harmless cranks on their own are, well, harmless. It takes the entire mechanism of society, government and military to turn a harmless crank into a Holocaust. If they had all just laughed at him and his ridiculous notions of racial purity -- for when you subtract the atrocities and the genocide, what's left really is quite laughable -- he would have been powerless. Maybe he could have become a serial killer or something and still personally taken out a few dozen Jews / gypsies / homosexuals / non-Aryans but a few dozen against a few million is a staggering difference and, dare I say, acceptable loss. Instead, the people gave into their worst instincts, allowed themselves to be led by fear and swayed by nationalist fervor, and a black mark on human history followed.

Because we do not want to admit that the people were responsible for allowing Hitler to be Hitler and not just another crank, we demonize the man. Hitler is the closest thing to the personification of evil in my society, and yet again I stress that he was virtually harmless on his own. There will always be people like Hitler. Rather like how single celled organisms come together cooperatively to form more complex lifeforms such as ourselves, and yet we cannot stop rogue cells from going cancerous and destroying that which they are a part of -- so too will we always have people like Hitler. Rogue elements even in paradise. What we won't always have is the sheep-like drive to be led by these rogues, these predators, to do their bidding and elevate them above us. The reason we won't always have this characteristic is because either we will eventually grow up and stop doing it, or because we will follow the wrong cancerous leader straight to complete annihilation.

Just something to consider during a quiet moment of reflection.