Eloi Revisited

May 27, 2008
6:00 AM CST

Some time ago, I mentioned elsewhere how Germans were becoming like the Wellsian Eloi:

There was a time when German militarism was A Bad Thing. Now they’ve gone so far in the opposite direction, they’re no better than the Eloi—and I wouldn’t be surprised if they suffer the same fate, at the hands of Muslim radicals who want them destroyed.

Longtime German Reader Heiko D. took some exception to the allusion, and, using English which is exponentially better than my German, offered this rebuttal:

No excuse but there are reasons.

I was a boy when my father told me of the time when WW2 came to an end and American troops occupied the region around Detmold, my home. As war was still going on, fighter planes shot people working in the fields. Grounded airmen were killed when people got them. Many of those people later were executed for murder. War was over, American troops all around, clearing the region of arms, checked homes for weapons. A boy in my street had kept his air rifle—and was shot on the spot.

German people were trained to shun violence of any kind and never to force anyone physically. Application of physical force was delegated to police. Meant as a divison of powers and to keep Germany democratic.

Worked. Seems to me. Forget democratic—the market rules.

To German people (west, I do not know enough about east) violence became a no no, ownership of weapons of any kind, the idea of self-defense, knowledge about warfare (continue list ad lib) became banned.

I learned this in my daily life, at school, at work, from my friends. The number of friends went down when I booked a course the Bundeswehr had offerd for reservists to become a Ranger corporal. 1984. Cold war was at its best. The Bundeswehr was an army designed for defense against Warschauer Pakt, Russians and their ill-led buddies.

I argued my engagement in the army was an important social task but many would not agree.

“Why do you have your door locked? What if it is broken, maybe things missing? Call the cops. OK. I am the cops if it’s the Russians that broke in.”

No understanding. Even then, the idea of defense was not a current one.

Then the job changed and the Bundeswehr was sent outward. This is not allowed by German law, no matter what our politicans say/vote/decide unless the Grundgesetz [constitution] is changed.

Blame the troops? - No, they were raised to defend, not to kill an enemy in his hideout. If you address Germany as a nation of peaceniks, I will not protest.

We were trained so. The Nazis gave a good reason for it.

I am a different kind and still have some friends around me. But please don’t blame the others.

Heiko D.
Leutnant der Reserve
Deutsche Bundeswehr

Interestingly enough, when we were in Germany last December, our host (a U.S. Army major) told us the same thing. After WWII, we had indeed “pacified” the German people—subdued the militaristic spirit—but, in his opinion, we’d done too good a job. As he said, and as Heiko has attested, the Germans had and have become too, well, wimpy. Examples like Heike are, by his own admission, few and far between.

Here’s what I think, and I’m pretty sure that Heiko (and his like-minded friends) would agree.

Sir Winston Churchill, in the non-politically-correct words of his era, once stated: ”The Hun is either at your feet or at your throat.” And as much as it pains me to agree, I think there’s considerable truth in that bald statement.

Here’s the problem, and I have to say, it’s a problem not confined to the Germans, but to pretty much all of continental Europe. (The Germans just do it better than everyone else.)

There is a happy medium between Spartanism and Eloism.

Possession of military might need not always lead to Verdun or Moscow—note that the latter applies as much to Napoleon as it does to Hitler—and such military might can also be used for good—indeed, only for good. An example of that is the powerful U.S. military, which in recent times has been used several times not for aggressive invasion or conquest, but for liberation.

It’s easy to see how Europeans, and Germans in particular, can only see the invasion of Iraq as militaristic adventurism/rapine conquest rather than liberation, because in their entire experience, their own armies have never been employed for such a reason—and, as we saw above, they’ve been taught to suppress any kind of militarism as being simply evil, per se. So of course the invasion of Iraq would be a bad thing—there must be some pretense, some ulterior motive for deposing even so evil a dictator as Saddam Hussein—because that would have been the sum of their experience.

Well, it’s time for everyone Over There to start growing up. Gun ownership doesn’t mean that you should go around and shoot your neighbor just because you want to set up your kids’ playset in his backyard, and having a strong, powerful army doesn’t mean that you should invade Poland or Alsace every couple of decades or so either.

It’s called responsibility, and it applies as much to nation-states as it does to individuals.

Americans are often accused by Europeans of being childlike and naïve—and yet, Americans seem to have a much better idea of this oh-so adult concept than the Europeans do.

Armies, like guns, can be used for noble purposes and for nefarious ones. The fact that the German experience has only encompassed the latter and not the former should not absolve them of the opportunity to learn from the example of the United States, and to harness their military in the service of altruism as much as for self-defense.

It’s a massive educational task I’m talking about: one which sets out perforce to unlearn a recent lesson, to avoid the previous ethos, and to find the happy medium between the two. It’s a task that would be beyond the ability of many nations to rationalize, create, instill and put into practice.

But somehow, I think that a nation which gave the world Schiller, Kant, Weber, Leibniz, Jellinek and, yes, even Nietzsche and Heidegger should be up to the intellectual task. Just go easy on Engels and Marcuse, meine Freunde—they’ve had too much influence on you already.

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