But then it was too late

They thought they were free
Milton Mayer
Chapter 13, But then it was too late, pp. 166-173

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"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine,
a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933,
between the government and the people. Just think how
very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And
it became always wider. You know, it doesn't make people
close to their government to be told that this is a people's
government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian
defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to
do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the
people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to
receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that
the situation was so complicated that the government had to
act on information which the people could not understand,
or so dangerous that, even if the people could not
understand it, it could not be released because of national
security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their
trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured
those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this
widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so
insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even
intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or
associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social
purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too)
so occupied the people that they did not see the slow
motion underneath, of the whole process of government
growing remoter and remoter.
"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High
German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a
scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all

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the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new
situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies,
and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports,
bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were
the demands in the community, the things in which one had
to, was `expected to' participate that had not been there or
had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of
course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of
the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it
was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had
no time."
"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker.
`One had no time to think. There was so much going on.'"
"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The
dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into
being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to
think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not
speak of your `little men,' your baker and so on; I speak of
my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of
us did not want to think about fundamental things and never
had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful,
fundamental things to think about--we were decent people
--and kept us so busy with continuous changes and `crises'
and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of
the `national enemies,' without and within, that we had no
time to think about these dreadful things that were growing,
little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we
were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to
notice it--please try to believe me--unless one has a much
greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of

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us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so
small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on
occasion, `regretted,' that, unless one were detached from
the whole process from the beginning, unless one
understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all
these `little measures' that no `patriotic German' could
resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it
developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees
the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even
highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do
not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I
have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta
and Finem respice--`Resist the beginnings' and `Consider
the end.' But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or
even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly
and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or
even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And
everyone counts on that might.
"Your `little men,' your Nazi friends, were not against
National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were,
are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that
would be too much to say) but because we sensed better.
Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of
men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and
said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was
a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and
so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and
he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and
he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews,
and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did

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nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a
Churchman, and he did something--but then it was too
late."
"Yes," I said.
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly
where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act,
each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse.
You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great
shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock
comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't
want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to `go out of
your way to make trouble.' Why not?--Well, you are not in
the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing
alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of
decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets,
in the general community, `everyone' is happy. One hears
no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or
Italy there would be slogans against the government painted
on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities,
perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community,
in your own community, you speak privately to your
colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but
what do they say? They say, `It's not so bad' or `You're
seeing things' or `You're an alarmist.'
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must
lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the
beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you
don't know the end, and how do you know, or even
surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law,
the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your

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colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.
You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally,
people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off
somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no
longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings.
Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in
little organizations, and the organizations themselves
wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you
feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated
from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence
still further and serves as a further deterrent to--to what? It
is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything,
you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are
obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or
hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.
That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole
regime had come immediately after the first and smallest,
thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently
shocked--if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had
come immediately after the `German Firm' stickers on the
windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this
isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds
of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them
preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not
so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a
stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to
Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever
sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-

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deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in
my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying
`Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that
everything, everything, has changed and changed
completely under your nose. The world you live in--your
nation, your people--is not the world you were born in at
all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the
houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the
concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you
never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of
identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a
world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do
not even know it themselves; when everyone is
transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a
system which rules without responsibility even to God. The
system itself could not have intended this in the beginning,
but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the
way.
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a
continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and
events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with
it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you
live, you have been living more comfortably every day,
with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things
you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago,
things that your father, even in Germany, could not have
imagined.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what
you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you
haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of
us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings

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of your department in the university when, if one had stood,
others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small
matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired
this one rather than that. You remember everything now,
and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised
beyond repair.
"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or
`adjust' your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose,
succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your
life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under
the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans
became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the
world knows or cares to know."
I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.
"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in
Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but
he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He was just--a judge. In
'42 or '43, early '43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before
him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with
an `Aryan' woman. This was `race injury,' something the
Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar,
however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a
`nonracial' offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a
very long term, thus saving him from Party `processing'
which would have meant concentration camp or, more
probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent
of the `nonracial' charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as
an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party
seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."
"And the judge?"
"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his

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conscience--a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an
innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted
him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have
convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more
and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family,
then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I
heard about it.) After the '44 Putsch they arrested him.
After that, I don't know."
I said nothing.
"Once the war began," my colleague continued,
"resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with
them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment.
Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was
`defeatism.' You assumed that there were lists of those who
would be `dealt with' later, after the victory. Goebbels was
very clever here, too. He continually promised a `victory
orgy' to `take care of' those who thought that their
`treasonable attitude' had escaped notice. And he meant it;
that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put
an end to all uncertainty.
"Once the war began, the government could do anything
`necessary' to win it; so it was with the `final solution of the
Jewish problem,' which the Nazis always talked about but
never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its
`necessities' gave them the knowledge that they could get
away with it. The people abroad who thought that war
against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the
people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still
thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting
on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many
made it."

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