We should all be reading histories of the 1930s right now.
Such as:
William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”
Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”
Otto Friedrich, “Before the Deluge”
History teachers and buffs, send your suggestions.
In the meanwhile, dystopian novels are seeing a surge in sales. A reader sent this comment:
“According to this past Wednesday’s story in Time, these dystopian classics are enjoying a “Trump bump.” They are:
1984
Animal Farm
It Can’t Happen Here
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
Where are the histories?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here is my personal list for understanding the psychosocial dynamics of the Unholy Alliance between fundamentalist religious sects and corporate totalitarianism —
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Knowing what has happened in the past is crucial, but histories don’t always give us sufficient insight into why things happened the way they did — into how demagogues and dictators achieved their dominion over the minds of the masses. Max Weber gives us the best clue I know to that dynamics.
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Love Thom Hartmann. Maybe I’ll grab that one.
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Ibsen’s Brand
Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot
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Ibsen’s Brand: Brilliant recommendation! If I may, add, Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.
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The Children’s Story by James Clavell
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May I also suggest Nesta Webster’s ‘World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilization’ (1921) and ‘The French Revolution’ (1919).
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I suggest Marx’s “The 18th Brumiere of Louis Na[poleon.”
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Not a book, but an interview with Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector. Published in February 2013, quite relevant now. This clip is 13 minutes long; the entire interview is available as well.
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Trump: Adventures in Gonzo Presidency
To be collectively written through social media platforms and displayed as performance art.
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May I suggest some alternate options, ones that are specifically applicable to the current situation and thus more likely to be useful for something other than intellectual armchair quarterbacking?
Dark Money by Jane Mayer is a must-read because it’s a basic course in the Republican agenda as written by the Kochs and their network.
What’s the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank explores the way the extremists took over the GOP as it unfolded in his native Kansas. His newest, Listen, Liberal, is also highly recommended.
One Nation Under God: How Corporate Media Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right by Claire Conner, which is her personal history growing up in the Birch Society.
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot, if for no other reason that it reveals just how long the neoliberal agenda has been undermining the republic.
Wrong and Dangerous: Ten Right-Wing Myths about Our Constitution by Garrett Epps. Think of it as a tutorial in countering the myths the right uses to manipulate voters.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodward. Controversial, and I need to finish it, but what I read rang true more often than not.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. Klein has already suggested we’re looking at seeing this applied to the entire country the way it was to New Orleans after Katrina in her article in The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/24/get-ready-for-the-first-shocks-of-trumps-disaster-capitalism/
I understand the impulse of those with academic backgrounds to gravitate to “the classics” and historical sources. Unfortunately, far too many people lack a grasp of how we came to HERE rather than how some hypothetical reprise of Nazi Germany might happen. And we don’t have time to waste if we’re going to do damage control on anything like a useful level. Having awakened late to the dangers, I’ve been cramming on everything I can manage to prepare to meet the enemy—and I do consider them my enemies. The above have served to update me quickly to battle-readiness.
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Thanks for mentioning Listen, Liberal, by Thomas Frank. That book does more to explain the chaotic Dem primary and Clinton’s loss to Trump than anything else out there. To be clear the topic is not recent political events, but how the Democratic party has betrayed workers and the rest of their base for the last 25 years.
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Nothing I like more than pontificating about books and reading:
Fiction:
Every Man Dies Alone — Hans Fallada
Flotsam — Erich Maria Remarque
The Plot Against America — Philip Roth
The Moon is Down — John Steinbeck
Elmer Gantry and Kingsblood Royal — Sinclair Lewis
The Spider’s Web — Joseph Roth
The Hunger Angel — Herta Müller
Nonfiction:
LTI: Lingua Tertii Imprerii: The Language of the Third Reich — Victor Klemperer
Victor Klemperer’s two volume I Will Bear Witness: Diaries of the Nazi Years 1933-45
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy — Eric Metaxas
A Good German: A Biography of Adam von Trott du Solz — Giles McDonough
The White Rose — Inge Scholl
When Truth Was Treason: German Youth Against Hitler: The Story of the Helmuth Hübener Group — Blair Holmes
Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra — Shareen Blair Brysac
Reminders about the promise of America:
The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour — Andrei Cherny
Self Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy — Robert Wiebe
Who We Are: A History of Popular Nationalism — Robert Wiebe
My Song: A Memoir — Harry Belafonte
YA:
Courage & Defiance: Stories of Spies, Saboteurs, and Survivors in World War II Denmark — Deborah Hopkinson
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Philip Roth The Plot against America: excellent choice!
Herta Müller The Hunger Angel thanks for reminding me, on my want2read list for a year.
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Press every Congressman and Congresswoman to opine on every issue, rant, exaggeration, and lie. Get them to verbalize their support or not on all issues – not just education. Publish a report card. Throw out the gauntlet for 2018.
Why?
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
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He doesn’t read. He watches TV.
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Cheryl,
The reading list is not for Trump. It is for everyone else.
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To see what it’s like to live in a country where “the big lie” has already got hold of things, see Aleksandre Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.1918-1956.” It gives a hair-raising description of what “upside-down” politics really feels like.
And what about movies? There are several excellent treatments of the Nuremberg trials..
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Who Needs Waterboarding When an Active Twitter Account is so Effective?
Defer but Openly Disagree: A Guide to Managing Generals
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Richard Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”
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The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans taught me a lot.
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (a novel) branded my mind with a deep impression of the horrors to which totalitarianism can descend.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being and other Milan Kundera novels show the moral corruption of life under dictatorship (Communist)
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ponderosa A reminder too: Such “branding” of minds as you speak of from reading is why, in totalitarian states, they put books in piles and burnt them. I guess taking down the internet is going to be a little easier? I remember in the movie (and book) “Farenheit 451” the woman who was “caught” in her house full of books standing there in the middle of flames as they burnt her house down with her in it.
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The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot
The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the attack on U.S. Democracy by Peter Dale Scott
The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Mike Lofgren
Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World by Tom Engelhardt and Glenn Greenwald
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
The New Media Monopoly: A Completely Revised and Updated Edition With Seven New Chapters by Ben H. Bagdikian
They Rule: The 1% VS. Democracy by Paul Street
NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (Contemporary Security Studies) by Daniele Ganser
An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (Updated Edition) by William F. Pepper
The True Story of the Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass
9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed by David Ray Griffin (2011)
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by Fletcher L. Prouty (2011)
The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World by Fletcher L. Prouty (2011)
Mounting Evidence: Why We Need A New Investigation Into 9/11 by Paul W. Rea (2011)
The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War by Peter Dale Scott (2013)
JFK-9/11: 50 Years of Deep State by Laurent Guyenot (2014)
All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power by Nomi Prins (2014)
The Orwellian Empire by Gilbert Mercier (2015)
The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War
by Marc Pilisuk (2015)
Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (American Empire Project) by David Vine (2015)
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (2016)
The End of the Republic and the Delusion of Empire by James Petras (2016)
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The Day We Closed Our Borders and Lost Our Identity
The Alternative Facts About Our Universe
Alternative Intelligence
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… and also histories about organizing and protracted struggles. Two suggestions:
The Long Haul, by Myles Horton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Horton
Walking with the Wind, by John Lewis
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The Boy at the Top of the Mountain Nightingale Echo
Jackdaws
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These are some of my favorite books!
Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
Neil Postman’s Technopoly and Amusing Ourselves to Death
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers and The Age of American Unreason
Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level
Chris Hedges’ Death of the Liberal Class
Richard Tarnas’ The Passion of the Western Mind
Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States
Martha Nussbaum’s Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities
And for your spirit…
Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth and THe Hero with a Thousand Faces
Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak
Vicktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and A New Earth
SIster Joan Chittister’s Essential Writings
And so many others!!!! Happy reading!
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Among your list are these favorite all-time reads of mine:
DeToqueville’s Democracy in America
Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, The Hero w/1000 Faces
Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
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Actually 1830 — Jackson
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My list: 1. I was an undergraduate when I read this.
Art Under a Dictatorship, Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt Digital (version of 1954 book. Textbook Publishers, 2003). Treats visual art in Germany between 1933 and 1944, interviews with some artists whose work was shown in the Nazi curated “Degenerate Exhibition” in 1937.
Here is a report on a 2014 exhibition of some of the works in the Nazi “Degenerate Art” exhibition. http://www.npr.org/2014/05/29/317034126/degenerate-exhibit-recalls-nazi-war-on-modern-art
Here is a scholar’s look at how other scholars have treated the arts created under the Nazi regime. Art of suppression : Confronting the Nazi past in Histories of the Visual and Performing arts Pamela Maxine Potter 2016, Oakland, California University of California Press.
Most of what is now known as “mid-century” architecture and design was inspired by artists and architects who emigrated to the US from Europe, including students and teachers in the Bauhaus. Jack Waldheim, one of these, was co-designer of the Barwa chair, and my teacher of “basic design.” I was introduced to exercises exactly like those taught to students at the Bauhaus. A brief about the Bauhaus is here http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm
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Trump’s rise, and the mess we’re in, can, in part, be blamed on the governors who gave us Common Core. History and civic education given a backseat in America’s schools. How many social study teachers have lost their jobs since Coleman’s Common Core arrived?
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Multiple close readings of excerpted texts are no substitute for intellectual exploration.
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Orwell’s 1984.
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I think it is safe to say that most if not all of the pep ole reading these books are voters who already voted against Trump because most of his supporters don’t read books. They let someone else tell them how to think. That way they won’t miss the next engagement of the (scripted, revised, edited) reality TV show of their choice.
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So reach them in ways that they do hear. However true it might be of some Trump voters, I don’t think they are quite so stereotypical. I never ceased to be surprised to hear that a student I would not have guessed had found something I did or said inspirational. Besides, Trump himself may cause some of his supporters to rethink their support. We have been pretty rough on each other on occasion; are we going to be able to “allow” late comers to join our ranks? We haven’t identified one pure path to becoming educated. Should we really expect to find “the one true way” to combat the less than democratic path down which we are traveling? To use that way overused term in teaching…Differentiate! Deliver the message in ways that will resonate with people. I know I sound incredibly pompous. I am gagging myself, but denigrating or demonizing people who don’t agree with “us” kind of defeats any attempts at coalition building and collaboration. Please don’t take this personally, Lloyd. It is not aimed at you. Your comment just happened to be the one that open the floodgates.
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Pew or Gallup asked Trump voters why they were voting for him. Most of them said they weren’t voting for Trump; they were voting against Hillary Clinton. At best, Trump’s hardcore is about 16-million voters. I base this on his Twitter followers before the election.
From what I’ve read, the Democrats have a slim chance to take back the Senate in 2018 and no chance to take back the House. That means the odds are that the country is stuck with Trump and a GOP-dominated Congress for 4 years and the House may be lost forever due to extreme gerrymandering in GOP-dominated states.
In 2020, the Democrats, if they can get their act together and select the right candidates, have a good chance to take back the Senate and the White House.
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There are some great suggestions! One that I don’t see listed above is Milton Mayer’s They Thought They were Free: The Germans 1933-45. Here’s an excerpt: “Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany–not by attack from without or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted–or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it. I came back home a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusion.”
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debneill: I think you are right. Totalitarian “takeovers” hide within the truth; which requires of us (1) that we are able to recognize that the truth is being USED as a means to the end: falsity; but more, (2) that we need to understand how to peel away the falsity and keep the truth–but that truth as a means to its own end: TRUTH for all of us.
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I second, and third, and fourth Milton Mayer’s book. It is excellent.
I also would suggest something a big more modern. While we can look to history for clues of what Trump is going to do, I think today’s dictators are a different breed than Hitler or Stalin. To get an inkling of what’s going in Putin’s Russia, I’d highly recommend Nothing is True and Everything is Possible.
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Thucydides work “The Melian Dialogues” gives the arguments for and against “might makes right.” Any of Elie Weisel’s works are good.
Also, if you cannot read all (who can?), check out the net–C-SPAN archives of http://www.bookTV.org. just type in words like “holocaust” or “totalitarianism” or any author’s name and you can watch discussions and writer-talks about related books, history, whatever you want. When my eyes threaten to fall out, I watch these committed authors talk about their fascinating works on BookTV.
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Jack London’s The Iron Heel
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Eric Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny.
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.
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Teaching As A Subversive Activity
Postman and Weingartner
Chapter 1 – Crap Detecting
citing Hemingway: “To be a great writer, every person must have a built-in shock proof crap detector.”
And, they continue to transfer that to an essential skill that must be taught in schools.
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“seven days in may” about an attempted military takeover of the US Government. Trump was never a general officer, but the parallels are spooky.
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I am in the midst of reading “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America” by Nancy Isenberg. Gives historical depth & context to persistent attitudes — perplexing to liberals– held by a large swath of the US, who cling to them in the face of evidence to the contrary.
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The author who can provide us the best insight into the way The Donald President’s mind works is Vonnegut. His characters are completely disconnected from reality. They are mad. Lewis Carroll’s come to mind as well.
The author who best understood how Heavens to Betsy DeVos thinks was Don Quixote. Also, Helen Keller wrote about what it was like to be deaf-blind. And many a courtroom drama have included characters which became befuddled under legal examination.
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Sorry for the inappropriate tense. I keep forgetting — or being unable to accept? — that Kurt Vonnegut is no longer living.
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LCT, as long as these authors are still being read, they are still “alive,” in so many important ways.
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And if you know people who don’t like to read (difficult as that is to understand) suggest that they watch the 1976 film, “Voyage of the Damned,” about the ocean liner MS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, first to Cuba, where they were refused entry, and then to the United States, where they were also turned away.
The ship went back to Europe, some of the refugees were accepted by other European countries, but hundreds of them died in German concentration camps.
And think of them when Trump wants to refuse entry to other refugees.
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Zorba, I’ve not seen this movie, but I’m guessing it is based on “The Abandonment of the Jews: American and the Holocaust: 1941-1945” by Douglas Wyman.
Two other books this reminded me of are the classic “The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experiences of a Single German Town: 1930-1935” by William Sheridan Allen and Bernt Engelmann’s “In Hitler’s Germany: Everyday Life in the Third Reich” with an introduction from Studs Terkel (anyone interested in this should read his book “The Good War”).
If I may get on my soapbox and risk losing the respect of many of our readers, there is a misconception that 6 million Jewish persons were murdered in the Holocaust. According to most estimates, there were anywhere from 11-15 million people, if not more, murdered and countless more tragedies among those who survived. The term Holocaust and the number 6 million are politicized terms. This was probably best explained in Peter Novick’s “The Holocaust in American Life.” A perusal of the net will show you that many will only apply the term to the 6 million to Jewish victims, although I have to credit the Holocaust museum with trying to expand the definition: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008193
My point is this: the politicization of the term demeans all Holocaust victims. According to those who cling to the “Holocaust is 6 million Jewish murders” argument, anyone who was not Jewish would not fit into the definition of a “Holocaust” murder. Nor would any of the non-Jewish members listed by the Holocaust museum link above. If people associate the number 6 million to the Holocaust, I believe it needlessly denigrates all the other people who lost their lives.
Therefore, I’d prefer a sentence like, “At least 11-15 million people died in the Holocaust. Of those, the most victimized and targeted were 6 million Jewish people throughout Europe. This number also includes other Nazi opponents with political (Communists, Social Democrats, and other non-Nazi Party members) and religious (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, and evangelical Protestants) convictions. Like Jewish people, who became enemies of the State because of who they were, this included groups like Roma (also known as gypsies), homosexuals, people with developmental disabilities, and many others who have remained anonymous.” The Holocaust was a human tragedy that should not be used for any political agenda except to oppose and highlight discrimination and genocide. Jewish people weren’t the only victims, but they were the most systematically targeted. That should always be cited.
I write this because of my personal, amateur, historical interest is the German resistance. As the link above accurately states, the number of German opponents of the Nazi regime who perished is unknown. In my opinion, they are also victims of the Holocaust. For example, one good starting point to refute the narrow definition would be the Ploetzensee Prison historical site, where many political opponents were executed by guillotine and hanging by piano wire (http://www.gedenkstaette-ploetzensee.de/01_e.html). Another, to understand the social geography of the victims of the Holocaust, is the German project Stolpersteine (http://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/).
I hope this makes sense and doesn’t put me in the category of a conspiratorial kook.
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Wyman book “Americans…”
…misconception that only 6 million Jews…
May the proofreading gods take mercy on me.
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Yes, Greg, I am aware of the many, many others who were killed by the Nazis, the Jehovahs Witnesses, the Mormona, the Roma, the dissidents, the homosexuals, etc, etc, etc.
Not to mention the medical experiments carried out on the unwilling, and the forced sterilizations of those deemed “defective.”
And, if we have an International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it should also include the many Armenians (as well as Assyrians and Pontic Greeks) deliberately killed by the Turks in 1915-1917.
At least the present-day Germans acknowledge the Holocaust they created. The present-day Turkish government refuses to acknowledge theirs.
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Greg,
As a Jew, I find your definition of the Holocaust commendable. I visite Aushwitz, a gruesome place, where many people were gassed and burned in addition to Jews, simply because of their ethnicity, religion, disability, or political views.
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Greg,
As a student of the resistance to Hitler and Nazism, which histories do you recommend (I may have missed your response)? Is there one you recommend about the White Rose Society? They are my personal heroes. They knew they had no chance of success but they were not deterred.
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Diane: There is (was) a film about the White Rose Society I used to use in my ethics classes. I left it in the library at Longwood College VA when I left. It was a dramatization–chilling but excellently done.
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CBK,
I saw a German-language film called “Sophie,” which may be the one you saw too.
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Diane: “Sophie” doesn’t ring a bell, but it’s been awhile. It was a very effective source of discussion, however, especially for students who had little or no understanding of WWII Germany. It took the study of ethics out of a merely-psychological frame.
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Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
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Great post.
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By the way, none of the countries on Trump’s list of nations whose immigrants he is banning have Trump properties. Left off his list were Saudi Arabia and Egypt. None of the 9/11 terrorists came from today’S banned nations. Most were Saudis.
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Diane, a very dangerous question to ask of me, I can pontificate for hours. With respect to the White Rose, Inge Scholl’s “The White Rose” is a great place to start. I would very much recommend a viewing of “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl_–_The_Final_Days). I sob uncontrollably every time I watch it, so I can’t watch it too much.
There are, unfortunately, few books translated in English that provide a comprehensive view of German resistance. A good college library should have the Wolfgang Benz and Walter Pehle (eds.) translated edition of the “Encyclopedia or German Resistance to the Nazi Movement” which will provide an incredible overview of resistance movements and glossary of individuals as well as bibliographies for further research. Like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, many more will remain unknown to history.
Some names people interested in the resistance should know include—this is by no means comprehensive—Helmuth James von Moltke (who was a distant descendant of John Jay and would likely have been a leading political figure in post-war Germany and the E.U., married to prominent journalist, Freya von Moltke), Adam von Trott du Solz (who would have been foreign minister if the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt been successful), Carl von Ossietzky (recipient of 1935 Nobel Peace Prize and editor of the most prominent anti-Nazi publication in the Weimar years), Ernst Thaelmann (who was the communist presidential candidate in the last Weimar election and died in a concentration camp—a lesson for those who would chant “Lock Her Up”), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Two names that few Americans, or Germans, for that matter, know are Georg Elser and Harald Poelchau. Elser was, in my opinion, the German John Brown. Acting alone, he hid out in a Munich brewery restaurant for many nights while installing a bomb in a column near where Hitler was scheduled to give an annual Nazi party speech in 1939, shortly after the invasion of Poland. Hitler left earlier than anticipated and the bomb went off, destroying the hall and killing many where Hitler had stood. He was captured, made a personal prisoner of Hitler’s, and executed in early 1945 on Hitler’s personal orders.
Harald Poelchau was a young Protestant minister who chose to become a prison chaplain in Berlin in 1933 to avoid the restraints and compromises of Gleichschaltung. He was a student of Paul Tillich, whose writings strongly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a friend of Bonhoeffer and belonged to Moltke’s Kreisauer Kreis. He accompanied more than 1000 prisoners to their executions and acted as a go-between with their families, often relaying last words to them. Because of his proximity to the prison, he was able to avoid detection and arranged protection for countless Jews and political refugees, often arranging meetings within the prison compound. He cared for the families of many executed resistors, including the Trott family, at great personal risk. After the war, he engaged in “social ministry,” a pastor without a parish who ministered one-on-one, mostly with laborers and union members. Shortly before his death in 1972, he and his wife Dorothee were honored at Yad Vashem. He is the one person in history I would have liked to known more than anyone else.
Germany produced some of the most reprehensible people in human history from 1918-1945. Those who engaged in resistance were arguably among the best that humanity has ever witnessed.
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Thank you, Greg. What a wonderful, thoughtful response.
I saw the movie “Sophie Scholl” and I too cried.
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Catherine, might you be thinking of Michael Verhoeven’s “The White Rose” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Weiße_Rose_(film) ?
I used this film for a high school class in the 80s and think it is more appropriate for students than “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.” Verhoeven’s film is great in showing how difficult it was to resist. The scenes on how difficult it was to buy paper, stamps, and materials for printing made a deep impression on my students.
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GregB: The film I used in the ethics class for first-year college students was black and white; and it did show how difficult it was to get paper and stamps, and to print and distribute. The students and, if I remember correctly, the professor who helped them, were all executed in the end–beheaded. What courage they had.
When I heard that Bannon said to the press: “shut up and listen” I thought of that group of students. How many times do such movements go forward just because we just cannot think such things can take a turn to the horrible in the hands of lawless hateful people who have great power. I think I became a liberal when, in a movie for children–I must have been around 7 or 8– they showed a war clip of a shivering unattended baby on a a bench, a man being frozen to death, and some other horrible film clips from Nazi Germany–it was in the early-50’s, not long after the war. I remember how shocked I was, and I never forgot it.
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Went to a Union conference on Racism today. A friend mentioned trying to get Allen Singer who teaches locally at Hofstra , to talk at one of our Union Organizations. I just out of curiosity went to see his latest posts. A bit shorter than a novel. And the owner of this blog plays a significant role.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/coup-detat-american-style_b_14412978.html
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Great link Joel!
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Too many secondary students can’t read. We need to be providing secondary developmental reading/math teachers. Respectfully, Paul Paul J. Smith, Ed.D. pjsmith44@yahoo.com
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I told my FB friends I was compiling a list of books to read…and I’m now trying to manage NINE page of titles…Obviously the task has gotten away from me. I will post on my blog soon.
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claudiaswisher: Don’t forget movies, and then there’s C-SPAN’s http://www.bookTV.org. If we cannot read everything, then we CAN listen to authors talk and answer questions about their books.
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http://fourthgenerationteacher.blogspot.com/2017/01/books-to-read-as-we-survive-trying-times.html
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Looking at your list, “Watership Down” seems like a good one for older children in these times. Will have to dust that one off soon.
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Adding Daniel Guerin: Fascism and Big Business.
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William Shirer’s “Berlin Diary” (1934-41) is a chilling reminder of how the contagion of intolerance can proceed step by step to eventually encompass the commonplace,
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The current series on TV called “The Man in the High Castle” is a scary portrayal of life in the USA after losing WW2. How easily people learn to salute the Fuehrer and say “Sig Heil.”
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