Discovering the Third Reich Through Mephisto :: Essays Papers

Discovering the trey Reich Through MephistoMike, a garbled coworker asked me, why do you want to take a course on the Nazis? Finding myself unprepared to account for a lure that, to me, was intrinsic to the melodic theme matter, I struggled with a hasty explanation about studying heap dementia for the sake of ensureing how it works and preventing it from happening again. A strong bunch of Jews went willingly to their deaths, I elaborated. A nation of people stood by and watched it happen. You strike to wonder, why didnt somebody stop that? Yeah, replied my friend, the Germans said Come here and well drink down you, and the Jews went anyway. I guess they were all stupid.I discovered that I had no immediate answer to this facetious dismissal of unrivalled of historys most expectant tragedies. It was a sweeping and indiscriminate assertion, to be sure, but not one entirely without merit. If general stupidity were not to blame, then why had cardinal million Jews endured such t orture? Were none of them in a congeal to unite in any sort of cohesive resistance? What of the Catholics who were hit in the concentration camps as well? The blacks? Political dissidents? Members of the press? In fact it seems that the Nazis, over the course of their reign, discriminated against so many professions, creeds, philosophies, and classes that for a soul not to belong to at least one must have been a remarkable feat of chance. I could not begin to understand how the National Socialist Party had, with such a miserable and foul political platform, managed to gain power in Germany, nor how, with such cruel and tyrannous practices, they managed to keep it.Klaus Manns Mephisto answered a number of these questions for me. Though it did not trace the Nazis overdress to power outside of mentioning a few highlights, it did portray in a frighteningly matter-of-fact manner the social and cultural climate of that pivotal time period the dying days of the Weimar Republic, and the early years of the Third Reich. Specifically, it reassured me that the whole of Germany had not welcomed the Nazi takeover with open arms, nor enjoyed the years spent living under the Reich.Was it possible? Manns character Hendrik wondered upon receiving the news of Hitlers interlocking as chancellor. (Mephisto, 156) The blustering lout whom his brilliant and progressive friends had so frequently ridiculed had now suddenly become the most powerful man in the country This is horrible, thought the actor Hendrik Hfgen.