. . . "Perhaps, after Saddam's defeat, we might hope for an exorcism of this spirit from the war's detractors. That plainly was Mumford's wish in 1941. "A human society in which men will not help their neighbors to resist evil and struggle for justice will presently cease to exist as a society," he warned, "since it will lack even the animal loyalties that are necessary for survival.". . ."This criticism persisted even after the German war machine had overrun half a dozen European states, captured Paris and bombed London -- after the pathologies of Nazi rule became widely known. How could some of America's most prominent religious thinkers have so badly misjudged Hitler's gathering storm?"
The comparison with the 1930s is inevitable because we see the same mindset in the democracies; the refusal to see evil and the hope that it will not in the end be evil, but peaceful.
The peace movement of the 1930s made the Holocaust inevitable --- by accident
. . . "It was not quite thus in the 1930s. Like today, the very nicest people, the most thoughtful people, the most progressive people, the people with the highest degree of social and moral conscience, people, in short, like you and me - all aligned themselves with Hitler's interests and brought about the totally unnecessary second World War - which was very nearly lost, even after the death of 50 million people. Even though it was won in the end, it was not won soon enough to prevent making the unthinkable - the Holocaust - inevitable.
"And among those categories of people - the very nicest, the most thoughtful, the most progressive, those with the highest degree of social and moral conscience - it is not self-regard to count not only the cream of American Jewry, but probably the majority." . . .
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