"Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Stanley Hoffmann defined a totalitarian
> government as one that rules through the application of terror
across
> an entire population, and we generally came to the conclusion that
> Hitler's government was totalitarian only for a relatively short
> period of time in 1944 after the assasination attempt against him.
But the thing is, how do you define application of terror? Open
threat? Implied threat? There's a great article in this book I read
called _The China Reader: The Reform Era_ that discussed how, even
when overt massive threat was removed in China at points, such as
since Tianenmen, self-censorship was internalized by most people, and
made essential to Chinese identity ("Am I really a good Chinese, if I
question?"). Of course, I haven't experienced the culture or the
period, so I could be wrong in believing it, but it certainly has
analogues to the way people behaved in Europe in the Middle
Ages . . . even in some of the biggest outbursts, there were elements
of strong self-censorship and self-restraint to be observed. This can
certainly go some way to producing the image of popular support for a
regime, when, if you look at other places in which people sometimes express
dissent covertly (say, the arts, or
the way people discuss religion or technology or other things besides
government, while also cryptically criticising the
government) you see the picture isn't really that simple.
> The average German citizen had little to fear from the SS as long as
> he or she was not Jewish and did not engage in active resistance to
> the government...
Which sounds a lot like what I said above. As long as you have no reason to
fear being labeled "Troublesome", you have nothing to fear. But who can safely
say that they have no fear that? I'd imagine there's probably room for
ambiguity there.
But I am curious about how we came to see Nazi Germany as so secret-
police-ridden that, when I was a little kid in the seventies and
early 80s, KGB and Gestapo were interchangeable words, and that even
now, most depictions of Germany that I've seen play that card of
paranoia, using everything from all out Gestapo to things like Hitler
Youth informing on their parents. Any source that covers the
possibility that a lot of this "gestapo" stuff is actually a
reflection of the KGB via popular assumptions would be really
appreciated. Thanks!
Gord
