DailyJim: Berlin, the Topography of Terror, and the multitude of factors that lead to conflict

Hello everyone welcome to another daily gym this is today is monday june 24th 2024 i am recording from a place called the topography of terror there's a museum in berlin germany where many of the gestapo and other nazi party planning operations took place So they've turned it into a museum dedicated to what happened with Nazism and also the precursor to it, what happened with the Weimar Republic and how it got to that point. So, today what I want to talk about is the precursors to war, or maybe a better title is conflict doesn't appear out of nowhere, it comes from somewhere. I'll figure out a better title later. So what I want to talk about is I came here, and obviously throughout the years I've learned more about the Nazi Party and Hitler and Joseph Goebbels and some of these people, if I'm pronouncing that correct.

And what I really appreciated about this museum is that, yes, it talked about that, but it also talked about what happened right after World War II until World War, or sorry, after World War I until World War II. And this is a history I'm not very familiar with, but I imagine many of you aren't either. So did you know that between the period, I think it was like 1918 or so, 1919, I think when the Weimar Republic came in, and in like the mid-1930s when the Nazi Party came in, that there were multiple coup attempts called, I think they called them Putsch, Putsch, like Putsches, and that there were also multiple assassinations of political figures, and not just political figures that were high at the top, but also lower level and other sorts of figures. Did you know Did you know that? I'm guessing not. I'm guessing if you were like me, you thought, oh, all of a sudden the Nazi party just came to power and they just overtook the country and voila. Did you know that at some point the British, was it the British or the French, took over I think a place called the Rhineland because Germany was failing to pay its reparation payments that it agreed to during the Treaty of Versailles?

Did you know that a lot of people in the population were afraid that civil war was going to break out in the Weimar Republic? Did you know that the Weimar Republic had one of the worst economies in Western democracies before the Great Depression happened? It said, I think, around the time after the Great Depression or something. It went hyperinflation. Something like 50 marks were equal to a US dollar when the republic started actually this was before and i think it was like four years later uh like 1923 or something that uh one u.s dollar was 4.2 trillion marks i believe it really shocked me because that reminded me of zimbabwe i think i have a four trillion uh zimbabwean dollar note that because they had absolutely hyperinflation so did you know that there was a strong communist force that was trying to finish the revolution that was starting, like the Russian Revolution? And did you know that there was obviously a force that didn't like that? And did you know that a few of the leaders in the government that were assassinated, I think, had Jewish backgrounds as well? Well, so it's just like, I think so often we think that war and conflict and even fights just come out of nowhere. We think that the kid that goes in and shoots up a school just all of a sudden just decided he's going to shoot up a school. Maybe, just maybe, there was conflict before that. not just with him but with both sides or with a feeling of conflict from both sides.

Actions that lead that build up and escalate the conflict, I think I'm just so tired of this idea that it comes out of nowhere and honestly I'm a bit worried, reading some of these things and talking about the far left and the far right and how groups became more extreme and started calling each other names. And if somebody was fraternizing with the other side, then they automatically became a traitor.

And so much so that I think at one point, I think it was during the war though, but like two women, I think, slept with French prisoners of war or something. And then they marched them out in the streets, shaved their heads and humiliated them publicly for doing so. because they were fraternizing with the enemy, the traitor. And...

I think we prevent wars, we prevent conflict by resolving the conflict before it gets too big, by recognizing that often, more often than not, both sides are contributing to the conflict, and maybe even more than it's just two sides. Maybe there's a lot of things that are coming into the conflict, and to think that it's just one person or one other person that's causing all the conflict, I think is just out of touch with reality. I think it is an emotional projection that most of us do when we feel very angry and we assume that one simple thing, we get very focused on one thing causing the bane of our existence I think I'm using that correctly.

And there's just so many factors that go into it that go into making people feel lonely and paranoid and disconnected and believing that the world is against them and believing that their life doesn't matter. I read something that said that, what did it say? Something like 50,000 Jews were deported at one point, 55,000 Jews or something. And I think it said like something like three or 4,000 went into hiding and 6,000 committed suicide. I was like, 6,000 commit suicide? Holy.

That's a lot. I don't know if it was that number, but it was somewhere around 10% of you know the people who got deported instead of getting deported they committed suicide i was oh my oh my goodness um it's just.

When we get really lonely when we get paranoid when we get helpless we often want somebody to come in who tells us very simple clean answers that they will fix the solution we need to just trust the one individual who is going to resolve all the problems in the world and we feel totally helpless and we say yes he must because everyone else doesn't care about me and the world's out to get me um and then when they direct that that uh helplessness that powerlessness and we direct that towards one specific group and said these are the people who don't care about you they're the ones who have all the power and they don't care about you they're the ones who are destroying your lives it is very very easy to build up a lot of hatred towards those people.

And I worry, I don't think we're there yet in the U.S., but the whole point of this episode is that we're not there. It's not about being there. It's about catching ourselves before we get there. It's about realizing on a simple human level, it's about realizing I'm getting angry before I punch somebody in the face and recognizing and paying attention and asking questions. Why am I feeling so angry? What's going on with me? And not going, I feel angry 100% because of this person, I think that it's just anger making us stupid. We are blinded by the anger. We don't realize that maybe I'm angry because I've lost my job. Maybe I'm angry because I didn't sleep well. Maybe I'm angry because I have some disease that I don't know what's going on. Maybe I'm also angry because I didn't apply for a scholarship or something. Maybe I'm also angry because I didn't have the courage to have a conversation with somebody. Maybe I'm angry at a lot of things in life. Not just the one specific person who is driving all of this misfortune in my life. And as I say this, that one specific person is not somebody else, but neither is it you. You are not causing all of the misfortune in your life. You are not a failure. You are not a bad person. You are trying your best. And I wish more people would tell this to you. And I wish you hear it enough that you start to believe it. Yeah I uh.

I've visited quite a few of these sites around the world in the last couple years.

Just last year I was at Mandela's prison, reading about political prisoners. I mean, Mandela's prison, the prison where he was jailed for a while.

Yeah, it's just...

I hope messages like this, I hope episodes like this help awaken something in you to realize that most human beings are trying their best. We don't know what's going on. And often when we don't know what's going on, we blame somebody, whether that's somebody else, whether that's ourselves. And often it's both, but we often just don't admit how much we blame ourselves. And so I hope this inspires you a bit to realize that conflict doesn't come out of nowhere and neither is conflict a hundred percent caused by one factor it is a, multitude of factors that contribute to the war to the conflict to the anger to the separation to the disconnection which also means there's a multitude of factors that we can work on resolving to bring ourselves closer to ourselves and closer to other people so on that note i hope you could hear well there's some cars going by and some birds but i figured i'd record from the place So talk to y'all soon. Bye.