The German Question, Part One Hundred Fifty-Nine

"Final Thoughts & Bibliography"

NOTES: 1) In the previous article, I did not mention Albert Einstein, who was a very prominent German-Jewish scientist and thinker. Einstein was out of the country when Hitler took power at the end of January 1933, and he never returned. He came to the United States and became an American citizen.

2) No one really knows for sure when Hitler believed the war to be lost, and there have been several "theories" offered up by historians, but certainly the duel defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad made many Germans, including military personnel, begin to think the war could not be won, and I tend to think the same of Hitler. In his speech to the Reichstag on September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, Hitler made it clear that if the war was lost, he would still never surrender, and that he would not survive the war's end. So even when he felt the war was lost, the war went on, with the sacrifice of millions of lives. His whole aim seemed to simply be, rather than victory, to keep the war going in order to postpone his inevitable death. Even in the final days in Berlin, as children helped in the street by street fight against Soviet troops, the point was still to keep the war going to save his worthless ass. Absolute insanity ("Wahnsinn").

3) Back in the 1990s, columnist George Will wrote about the possibility of "Anschluss;" that is, unification of Austria with Germany. That certainly does not seem possible at this point in time, and as time has passed, Austrians have distanced themselves (not without reason) from a child of Austria...Hitler.

Why German history? We can learn from history, even from the history of other peoples and we should never be afraid to learn something from someone else. Learning from others doesn't make you weak, it makes you stronger. Certainly one of the things we should see in German history is, you can't have a true country with so many elements pulling in different directions. The Old German Empire is a case in point, with individual states having so much power, they eventually became like separate countries, albeit under the "vague" umbrella of the German Empire, which really had no central government. In fact, as I've shown in these articles, several regions indeed became truly separate countries outside of Germany:  Austria, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. In America in the last few years, we've heard comments from certain state leaders about seceding from the Union, something many Americans probably thought was settled by our Civil War of about 150 years ago. While the debate over how much power the national government should have versus the individual state governments is a valid one, the "hate the government movement" and the appeal to personal gain over what's in the best interest of the nation and its citizens is deeply disturbing. Of course, when disaster strikes, the same preachers of "hate the government" want help from "Uncle Sam." If all of this gets carried further, will we need to ask "the American question;" that is, "who is an American?"

As to "who is a German," the question seems to be answered for now, and perhaps forever. There are a couple of answers. There are "national Germans;" that is, Germans who are citizens of Germany. There are also  "Germans" who are German in culture/custom and language, but who are not "national Germans," and who do not want to be "national Germans." During the Nazi era, Hitler stirred emotions among many German communities throughout Europe, indeed, throughout the world, and many wanted to become "national Germans," or "Reichsdeutsche," as the term was back then. By the end of the war, many of these Germans, especially in eastern Europe, got their wish, but the hard way; they had to flee for their very lives from the other countries where they had been living. When all was said and done, Germans were much more "united" within the then borders of Germany, more so "West Germany," than "East Germany," and Germans remaining in eastern European countries are today far less in numbers and percentage of the population of their respective countries than before World War Two.

Many Germans realize the tremendous flaws of their past and laws have been in place banning the display of Nazi paraphernalia, and there have been restrictions on the use of German military units outside of Germany. Some may say this limits democracy, and I suppose it does, but democracy can't be pure either, and these restrictions didn't end German democracy, I would say they strengthened it. Do you allow "total" freedom to go to a point that it destroys a nation or the world? We are still in the midst of a deregulation and greed driven recession (when this article was first written). Did we learn any lessons?

Much of the information in these articles has been very basic, and I did it from memory, but I did need a chronology as well as some checking on certain facts and figures, especially dates.

Bukey, Evan Burr, "Hitler's Austria," University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000

Domarus, Max, "Hitler-Reden und Proklamationen" (Three volumes: 1932-1934; 1935-1938; 1939-1945), Süddeutscher Verlag, München, 1965

Gurney, Gene, "Kingdoms of Europe," Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, 1982

Herz, John H., "The Government of Germany," Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. New York, 1967 Edition

Lumans, Valdis O., "Himmler's Auxiliaries," University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1993

Mosley, Leonard, "On Borrowed Time," Random House, New York, 1969

A.J.P. Taylor, "The Origins of the Second World War," Atheneum, New York, 1985 (Second Printing), copyright 1961

Wikipedia-This is a great source for quick basic info checks online.

I'll end this series with the words to a German folksong, "Die Gedanken Sind Frei" ("Thoughts Are Free"), written back in the early 1800s, but by whom, no one seems to know. The Germans have not really been free until relatively recently, but even back then, they thought about freedom. There are various versions, but this is what I know, so here it is:

Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten? Sie fliegen vorbei, wie nächtliche Schatten. Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschiessen, mit Pulver und Blei; die Gedanken sind frei. (Thoughts are free, who can guess them? They fly by as night-like shadows. No person can know them, no hunter can shoot them, with powder and lead; thoughts are free.)

Ich denke was ich will und was mich beglückt, doch alles in der Still', und wie es sich schicket. Mein Wunsch und Begehren kann niemand verwehren, es bleibet dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei! (I think what I want and what makes me happy, certainly in the stillness and as it suits me. My wish and desire can be denied by no one, it therefore remains: thoughts are free.)

Und sperrt man mich ein, im finsteren Kerker, das alles sind rein vergebliche Werke. Denn meine Gedanken zerreissen die Schranken und Mauern entzwei, die Gedanken sind frei! (And if they lock me away in the dark prison, that is all work done purely in vain. Because my thoughts tear away the barriers and walls, thoughts are free.)

WORD HISTORY:
Free-This common word traces back to Indo European "pri," which meant "to love," and the derived "prijos," which meant "beloved, dear." The assumption is, a part of our ancient ancestors used the term for family members who were not slaves or servants; thus they were "free" people, and that is how the term shifted in meaning. By the time of its Old Germanic offspring, "frijaz," it meant "not beholden to, not in bondage to" (the "p" became "f" in Old Germanic). This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "freo," with similar meaning. Gradually the meaning expanded to "under no obligation," to "under no obligation to pay for, unrestrained." The spelling became "fre," before the modern version. The verb form, as in "to free someone, to set free," developed in Old English as "freon," then became "freen," before the modern form. "Free" is very common in the other Germanic languages: German has "frei" (initially in Old High German "fri"), Low German Saxon has "free," Dutch has "vrij," West Frisian has "frij," Norwegian, Swedish & Danish have "fri," and Icelandic has "frjáls." There are also verb forms, like German "befreien," meaning "to set free."