Sometimes the most obvious answer isn't the right one. Sometimes questions are too complex for simple responses. Some questions go for generations with the wrong answer. How can we ever be certain we have the right one?For instance, how much longer are we going to preach and shout and scream against the Nazis and their final solution, and yet not condemn the murder, rape, and pillage carried out against American Tribal peoples in the name of capitalism and progress?
I'm not trying to defend Nazism or the horrors perpetrated under the swastika. Kidnapping, torture, and murder should never be condoned or covered up. What I'm trying to do is understand people. Specifically, the German people. More specifically, the German people in the 1930's and 40's. The reason I'm thinking about them is because they could have been any of us. Any of us could have been them.
We've all heard the assessments and excuses. The end of World War One saw the complete demolition of German society. The Nazis promised renewed greatness. The economic predicament was staggering. The Nazis promised renewed fortune. Who wouldn't have raised the salute when promised a crust of bread in the new order to come?
Too often analysis focuses on the monsters and forgets about the average person. One of the strengths of The Book Thief is that it deals with a small girl living in Germany at the time of the rise of the Nazi party. One of its weaknesses is that it deals with the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.
A problem occurs when we examine a section of history so closely that we lose sight of its context in the broader picture. The horror of the Nazi experiment stains not just one or two generations of Germans, but the whole of the human race. Each and every one of us is culpable. Even a llama farmer in the Andes mountains five hundred years before Cristoforo Colombo. Just as all human beings can rejoice in the creation of the Mona Lisa, we all bear the guilt of the concentration camps.
