(photo by Walter Frentz)
The carnage of the twentieth century, unprecedented in scale and graphic availability to the civilian, has taught my generation much about the ubiquity of evil. My generation, I say, because we haven't been heavily involved in any major wars, and even the photos and footage we've been shown of 9/11 were heavy on the spectacle of falling buildings and light on actual carnage and casualties. Not having been able to follow the rise to power of those who we now recognize as evil, it's been easier for our history books to paint figures like Hitler into vicious little caricatures of themselves, less human and more nightmarish than he realistically could have been.
This is important because when people my age look for evil today, we seem to have stopped looking at people who seem ordinary-ish, and search for the "bad guy" caricature that we've been supplied with. Conversely, when one has been given the label of 'evil,' we stop thinking of them as rational people, stop listening to what they have been saying, and discount them as bad or mad entirely. (Bin Laden is a good example of how this has worked)
So, in the interest of full disclosure, I think it's important for you to know, dear readers, that Hitler loved puppies. Capable of such callous carnage in his public life, and such empathy for animals, dogs in particular, in private. He found a mutt in the trenches during World War I, named it Fuchsl, and was distraught when he was stolen. Later, he received Blondi, an Alsatian, as a gift. In the 1930s, he instituted animal protection laws that afforded animals more rights than anywhere else at the time--this included a ban on using dogs to hunt, as Hitler considered it "unsporting." In political life, good treatment of animals became tied to good citizenship; for example, Goering once said, "Whoever tortures animals violates the instincts of the German people." Regardless of how the reforms were sold to the people, this concern with the ethics of treatment of animals surpasses that of our own time and place. The hunting laws instituted in Nazi Germany--which, I believe, remain in place--aim to combat unnecessary suffering in the hunted. We, stuck in the second-amendment-issues of such regulation, afford our critters much less compassion. That bears repeating: regarding animal cruelty, our society is notably less compassionate than Nazi Germany was...in this one respect, Hitler has the moral high ground. It boggles the mind.
(Fuchsl next to Hitler)
I'm convinced that there's more to learn from this, but I'm not sure what it is. As one who spends a lot of time with dogs and dog owners, I've concluded that one can learn a lot of a person based on the kind of pet they choose, and what breeds they're drawn to. Personally, I find that the more compassionate of us opt for pound mutts. But it can't be just a coincidence that Bob Dole is drawn to miniature schnauzers while the Clintons had a lab. Napoleon's wife had a pug, Marie Antoinette had cats. Lenin had a cat, too, and I think Stalin had a pet tarantula. This all seems appropriate, but I can't put my finger on why, exactly. Back to Hitler, and his beloved mutt. Perhaps it's just another drop in the bucket of examples of the banality of evil, but the image is hard to get past.
(photo by Walter Frentz)
