aw. RE: aw. RE: aw. RE: Why did Elser plant the bomb?

[Michael Bailey]

Kai Frederik Lorentzen:
> Du redest frivolen, kenntnislosen Unsinn ...
>
> Shame on you! Kai
>

I offered:
>>Now Hitler in 1923...a lot more tempting...but find a way to embarrass
>>him publicly instead of kill him, and I'll sign on...

but Kai, you were still not satisfied, and I feel obligated to go for
the big Kahuna.

I did some thinking about this back in 2004, when Bush was visiting
Georgia, I think it was, and it transpired that somebody had thrown a
live grenade within a few feet of him - but it failed to go off.

For a little bit I bemoaned that failure, but then 2 things occurred to me:
a) how would a President Cheney conduct the business of the country?

(Likewise, it seems to me that by 1939, a lot of equally fanatic and
capable people could've stepped in for Hitler, in fact wasn't Himmler,
for instance, quite a monster, equally race-obsessed or even more so,
with personal loyalties to him throughout the SS, and quite as likely
as Hitler to pursue Vernichtung?  As I mentioned the Reichstag Fire
before, now let me bring up Kristallnacht, in which the authorities
used a successful assassination - of vom Rath - as a pretext to carry
out massive persecution in 1938.  Further, the gentleman who was so
enraged by the deportation as to shoot vom Rath, was incarcerated and
unable to supply the aid his sister had asked for in the letter that
prompted his -- in some ways admirable, but rash and dreadful in its
results - shooting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Grynszpan)

b) But - much more importantly - it would not be wholly satisfactory
to kill Hitler in 1939 - it would not have prevented Kristallnacht,
for example.  It wouldn't even be satisfactory to humiliate him in
1923.  No, at any point it is only wholly satisfactory to act
according to one's best standards, to aid the oppressed, to develop
mutual aid and affection with everyone we meet, and to reduce, rather
than expand, the amount of violence and hatred in the world.  This is
a task worthy of one's whole attention.  It affirms life, the chances
of hurting anyone including oneself are much reduced, and the
unintended consequences (*every* act has them) of giving undeserved
kindness are much easier to live with.  Is this "Unsinn"?  I think
rather earnestly, no, es ist hoechste Sinn!


-- 

>
> "Hitler war der leitende Architekt der jüdischen Katastrophe. Er war es,
> der die fließenden Ideen von 1940 in die harte Realität von 1941
> transformierte. Hitler machte diese letzten Schritt zum unerbittlichen
> Resultat aller antijüdischen Maßnahmen, die man im Laufe der Jahre
> ergriffen hatte, und er schmiedete den dezentralen Verwaltungsapparat
> Deutschlands um in ein Netz von Organisationen, die reibungslos
> zusammenwirkten, so dass die Erschießungen, Deportationen und Vergasungen
> nebeneinander und gleichzeitig durchgeführt werden konnten."
>
> Raul Hilberg: Täter, Opfer, Zuschauer. Die Vernichtung der Juden 1933-1945.
> Frankfurt/M. 1992: S. Fischer, p. 30.
>
>
>
>>
>> let's say it had succeeded. You'd have a dead Hitler and the dude who
>> wrote the Horst Wessel song would write a Hitler song. Whoever in the
>> inner circle got ascendancy would have had a great excuse to tighten
>> security.
>>



-- 
--
"Frenesi's eyes, even on the aging ECO stock, took over the frame, a
defiance of blue unfadable."