That Silent Shift Under The Loud Noise

In much of the world, when people think of the Nazis in Germany, they picture men in grey uniforms yelling Heil Hitler and separating Jewish families, forcing them onto deportation trains. Those were the Nazis—because that’s how it’s been shown in films, from war epics to Indiana Jones.

What they cannot fathom is how an entire nation became Nazis.

When I was a child at school, everyone in my class struggled to imagine how normal, innocent people would want to be part of it. Everyone agreed: if it ever came to that, they wouldn’t participate. They simply wouldn’t be part of it.

In truth, everyone in Germany became a Nazi. Because those who didn’t leave, who didn’t resist, like the “White Rose”, who weren’t directly affected, like Anne Frank and her family—those who simply kept their heads down and tried to get by—everyone became a part of it.

It wasn’t just those who reported their neighbours or work colleagues with the enthusiasm of the teacher’s favourite schoolboy. It weren’t just the factory directors, who took contracts from anyone because “business is business”—and who were they to get involved into politics. And it certainly wasn’t only the military, navy or airforce. It was the police, the administrators and bureaucrats, the universities, newspapers, commerce, the churches. It was everyone who found it inconvenient not to comply. Everyone who dismissed the moral weight of their actions with the thought that refusing might bring repercussions—who justified the firing of an employee, not because of their actions, but because of their values.

There comes a point when these small acts—terminating a contract, silencing a voice, punishing someone for their conscience—cease to be just violations of labour rights.

That first time this happens is the moment when a society has shifted.

Not just the billionaires brazenly gesturing Sieg Heil at an American rally. Not just the parvenus and former TV anchors executing a president’s unlawful orders. Not just the ICE officers storming schools, churches, hospitals, and homes, and dragging migrants from their beds, loading them onto military planes, flying them to Panama to be held in empty hotels, with no notice to their families, no hope of justice, no chance of appeal. And the world watches it unfold on the news, right before the weather forecast.

That is the point of no return. The silent shift under the loud noise. When everyone becomes a Nazi.

Everyone.

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