"Friday, April 20, was Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday. The radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had 'volunteered' for the 'honor' to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Fuhrer in the defense of Berlin. What a cruel lie! These boys did not volunteer, but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, 'he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.'
When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics. It appeared that the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, by their rationale, was obviously the fault of all of us. We had not sacrificed enough and therefore, we had forfeited our right to live, as only the government was without guilt."
Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel, A Personal Journey Through Germany's World Wars and Postwar Years, 1999
"This is an almost perfect illustration of the credibility trap. One cannot allow the illusion to falter, even a little, to the bitter end. And as the fraud fades, the force intensifies, becoming almost rabid in its deflection of guilt. Because that illusion has become the center of a hollowed people's being, their raison d'être, a mythological justification for their existence.
If the ideology had been a lie, then they are not heroes and gods on earth, but monsters and criminals, and their life has been self-serving and meaningless, without significance and honor. And that is the credibility trap. It is the impulse for the leaders to keep doubling down in the hope of a win, until exhaustion and collapse. The madness serves none but itself."
Jesse, Empires of Illusion: First They Come For the Weak, 31 December 2012,
"The ultimate purpose of crime is to establish an endless empire. It seeks a state of complete insecurity and anarchy, founded upon the tainted ideals of a world thought doomed to annihilation. When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."
Friedrich Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933
Stocks did a grand 'pop and flop' today.
Sometimes known as a 'wash and rinse.'
US tariffs are scheduled to go into effect tomorrow.
Although extensions, like the one granted to Mexico, are always at hand.
Gold and silver rallied back a bit.
Tomorrow will be another Non-Farm Payrolls report.
Traudl Junge's memoir, Until the Final Hour, is often interpreted as a metaphor for how people can become disconnected from reality and rationalize their actions, even when those actions lead to catastrophic consequences.
I always found it strikingly odd that the backstabbing and jockeying for power amongst the Nazi elites continued, with increasing viciousness, even until the very end when they abandoned the Bunker and Berlin was burning.
And true believers went around like gangs of fanatical beasts, hanging their own people, with the enemy at their gates.
Greed and hate are bottomless pits, that feed on in furious misery, even as they die.
We are going to be seeing that same behaviour playing out, in more than one place, in the days to come.
First they come for the weak, the stranger, the other.
Nations can truly fall into a kind of fatalistic madness, driven by a lust for possessions and power, pride and greed, myths and tainted dreams.
Whether you choose to believe it or not, you will bear witness to this with your own eyes, in one place or another.
Even if you do not believe in plagues.
What a man sows, so shall he reap.
Have a pleasant evening.
