That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
-Aldous Huxley
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– George Santayana
Reading online, I came across something that was very disturbing. The strange twist to this is that some people might superficially glance at the item involved and agree that it is disturbing, not realizing that they are not agreeing with me; that is, what I found disturbing was not what they might presume.
This came up in the social media world, on Facebook, pointing to an article from the Detroit Free Press on the web:
Grand Valley State football assistant coach: Hitler a ‘great’ leader
That came about after a different article, which then itself became the story:
Inside the mind of GVSU’s newest offensive coordinator – Grand Valley Lanthorn
Contained in there was this portion of an interview with someone recently hired as a football coach at some university I had never heard of, which went like so (KV is the interviewer, the coach who was the subject is MB):
KV: So you graduated from Drury with a degree in History, you’re a history guy. If you could have dinner with three historical figures, living or dead, who would they be? And I’m ruling out football figures.
MB: This is probably not going to get a good review, but I’m going to say Adolf Hitler. It was obviously very sad and he had bad motives, but the way he was able to lead was second-to-none. How he rallied a group and a following, I want to know how he did that. Bad intentions of course, but you can’t deny he wasn’t a great leader.
KV: The way he was able to get people to rally around him was crazy.
MB: Yeah, that’s definitely one. You have to go JFK, his experience with the country and being that he was a good president and everything. And this might sound crazy, but Christopher Columbus, the ability to go on the journey he was on and his emotion into the unknown. Think about putting yourself in the setting of that unknown, and then to take it all in as you arrive is crazy.
The next thing you know, you read a newspaper headline as shown, depending on what you look at, either the story headline, or a web link, “Grand Valley State football assistant coach: Hitler a ‘great’ leader“, or “coach suspended after calling Hitler a ‘great leader’ “, or “Grand Valley State football assistant coach suspended after saying he’d have dinner with Hitler“.
It’s sadly predictable, not hard to imagine what could follow, from people in the “social media” world of crippled communication and thought. It would not be any surprise to see a wave of people banging out reflex reactions something like “oh my god did you hear about some school hiring a Nazi football coach!“, or something very similar.
The first thing that should be noticed, but, I suspect, could quickly be lost, or never noticed, is right there before your eyes, raised by the interviewer, that this football coach graduated from a university with a degree in history. You know, somebody who has made quite an effort to be a student of history. It is a good thing to be a student of history. There are good reasons to study history. See the quotes above, at the top of this page.
This point seems increasingly lost.
I am not a historian, or really what I would call a serious student of history. However, as it happened, I studied at a high school, a good public high school, that provided a quality education, that also had a large student body. The size of the school led to a setting where a large variety of classes were offered. One consequence of this was that to fulfill my “social studies” course credit requirements, I took a pair of one-semester history classes that were both focused on European history over roughly the second quarter of the 20th century. The two classes were called “Europe of The Dictators” and “The World Wars”. I have forgotten much, but I would like to think that I have a much better understanding of that time and place of human history than the average random American you might pull off the street.
This is a good thing. The history of the second quarter or so of the 20th century in Europe was rather grim. It should be understood. But, then, we get back to the statement of Huxley I quoted at the start here, and it seems as if a primary sad fact is that too many people are not particularly interested in learning from history.
One Facebook comment I saw read “This guy is a lunatic. Does he realize Hitler was a dictator??”. That struck me as especially stupid. I do think it should be pretty obviously apparent that the coach in the interview certainly does realize that Hitler was a dictator. The assertion that the sports coach with the history degree is a lunatic seemed a bit odd. How, exactly, does he qualify himself as a lunatic? Because he might be interested in actually getting some insight into what exactly was going on with Adolf Hitler?
The events of the period of roughly 1930 or so to 1945 made it painfully obvious in retrospect that Adolph Hitler was a psychopath, a deeply deranged human being and arguably the most evil human in history, basing judgment on the consequences of what they did, at least, and considering that, there is an obvious question that should concern people. How, exactly, did it come to be that he took control of the entire nation of Germany and led most of Europe into an almost impossible to comprehend hell for a solid half decade?
It seems that many people apparently think that to simply puff themselves up into a righteous pose and offer some one-liner to declare “Hitler was a very bad man” is all anyone needs to do. In the current “social media” world, some simplistic one-liner is all some people care about. Understanding and communication and though, not so important.
There is actually a small note that makes this even more absurd. Notice the quote from sports coach: “you can’t deny he wasn’t a great leader”. Read the actual words.
Rephrase the wording slightly, just to make this clear- he said, that Hitler was not a great leader is something you cannot deny. The words literally say, Hitler was NOT a great leader. Now, in the context, it is clear that he was meaning to say the opposite, but neither the sports coach being interviewed nor the interviewer/reporter managed to quite notice this, and even the people taking this and running with it failed to notice the actual meaning of the words said.
Moving on from that stupidity, it might be a worthwhile matter to understand what was going on. How could such a deranged madman have taken control of Germany and brought the rise of Nazi Germany, the deaths of millions of people, the eventual near total destruction of Germany as a result in the end?
Was it because the entire nation of German people were just evil, and wanted an evil madman to take control and rule them? That might be an interesting little conundrum for people who might suggest such an idea, but then would turn around and denounce the evil of racism and xenophobia and prejudice… but all Germans were evil warmongers. Would they carry around that cognitive dissonance, of, on the one hand, declaring people to be some list of bad characteristics by virtue of being part of a certain group is terrible and wrong, but, on the other hand, people in a certain group were all a certain batch of characteristics?
One ugly chunk of truth that played out after the end of World War II and the final fall of Nazi Germany was that it seemed that Germany was full of people who said Hitler was awful, he was an evil madman who crushed them into submission, there was nothing they could do, they didn’t know what awful things Hitler would do, they didn’t even know when he did do them (e.g., they had no knowledge of the concentration camps), and so on. So how did he get into that position? Part of the ugly truth is that masses of Germans actually loved Adolph Hitler, or at least for a while. Understanding that full horror show requires looking at the condition of Germany following World War I (when the world had no idea that it was going to be known as “World War I” in the future because there was another one coming that would be even worse, just over 20 years later). It was dismal, to be short and simple. If you set aside the awful things that the Nazis were doing, in practical terms, for the average German, things were looking substantially better over the course of the thirties, and the fact is, a lot of Germans in that time probably did think Hitler was just wonderful, a good lesson, right there, in how people can willfully turn a blind eye of ignorance to terrible things happening right under their noses, if they think it’s good for them.
There are all kinds of things that could be learned, and, the main thing here, lost on some people, is that many of the lessons of history are not learned by examining the good parts, it’s about learning from the bad parts. But, apparently, to some people, that’s no good. In the simplistic noise that flails around in the social media world on the World Wide Web, people seem more interested in simplistic one-liners, especially in the whole dysfunctional world of people stuck in the throes of bipolar political disorder and what has become known as “virtue signalling”, where all that matters is tossing out some easy simplistic platitudes and cliches and dogma to demonstrate your loyal membership in the proper club.
So, I expect that the sports coach with the history degree who make the unfortunate faux pas of wanting to learn something from history will have an angry mob howling for his dismissal and general banishment from society, because people who find thought and understanding too complex and inconvenient will find it easier, and make them somehow feel righteous, by declaring that some guy who would have dinner with Hitler, after being asked about historical figures he might want to meet, must be declaring his admiration and approval of Hitler, and clearly is a Nazi.
Noise 