So another day in the news, sipping on an afternoon cuppa while waiting for a job interview later on. Reading the Deutsche Welle (don't we all?) I come across an article (this article) about a new memorial being built in Berlin, honoring Georg Elser.
In 1939 Herr Elser attempted to assassinate Hitler with a homemade bomb; that he failed was tragic enough. He was afterwards tortured and kept in solitary confinement until the waning days of the Reich, when Hitler (a man indefinitely renowned for harboring grudges) personally ordered his execution. He was shot in Dachau, 9 April of 1945.
Actually, I remember the story of Elser from John Toland’s wonderful book, The Last Hundred Days, a collection of accounts from folk (und volk) large and small woven into a tale of the last hundred days of European conflict. It’s an enormous read, a must for any historiphiles out there. But I had to do a bit of a refresh on the story of this man, turning to the ever-available Wikipedia to clue me in.
Because, much as I feel the Nazi regime was one of humanity’s many travesties against itself (every century, it seems, has an unsettling number of these; read Leopold’s Ghost for an account of a genocide that rivals the Holocaust in scale, fuelled by the ivory trade and Big Rubber) I find myself questioning whether Elser deserves such high public honors. Actually, it would be another of many such honors; streets are named after him, and there are already several monuments to his actions around Germany.
Firstly, I think the attack itself is less-than commendable. A rudimentary bomb in a public gathering, eight people killed and many injured, Hitler not among them. I couldn’t say with any certainty if those assembled were members of the NDSAP, well-wishers, members of the press, soldiers, voters, or other sorts of civilians. In contrast, Stauffenberg’s 20 July plot found Hitler in the midst of purely military men. I’m not sure how I feel about that either (I’m sort of anti-bomb, if that makes sense; collateral damage irks me) but somehow it feels less a shade of grey. Couple this with wiki-rumor that Elser may have been another Van Der Lubbe style patsy, which Nazi officials had already proven they were comfortable employing/discarding, and you’ve got yourself a tricky dilemma.
How different is it than any number of bombings currently vilified by our press (likewise, by society in general)? Once you remove Hitler from the equation, it simply isn’t. Actually, as an element in any right-or-wrong question, I’d say the presence of Hitler rivals the efficacy of saving children. He’s the end-all justification, the apropos metaphor for anybody one does not care for philosophically. So I think Elser is more a product of Hitler hype than a noteworthy individual on the path for peaceful coexistence. He’s another Oswald, another (whoever the bomber that killed Bhutto was), essentially. Need we glorify lone-wolf devil-may-care extremism?
Simply because it was directed at Hitler does not further the cause of peace, nor I feel does it further the memory of those who perished and suffered during the Holocaust. Simply put, it adds nothing to the human tapestry.
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