I watch this "Jericho March" tomfoolery (dangerous tomfoolery) today and think all over again of these passages in the memoir of Joachim Fest, who grew up in a Catholic household in Berlin as Hitler rose to power. /1

Fest's memoir is Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood, trans. Martin Chalmers (NY: Other Press, 2012). He wrote, /2

“What had come out on top in Germany might occur in darkest Russia or the Balkans, but surely not in their law-abiding country. What had happened? That was the question raised on all sides, but no one had an answer” (p. 100). /3

“[S]he, in the jargon of the time, was an enthusiastic Nazisse. She was capable of maintaining in all seriousness that the Führer had been ‘sent by God’ and that the Lord had great things in store for Germany” (p. 101). /4

“But the ten million or more . . . [enthusiastically supporting Hitler] didn’t want to see the means by which Hitler achieved his successes. They thought he had God on his side; anyone who had retained a bit of sense, however, saw that he was in league with the Devil” (p. 118)./5

Fest notes that his Catholic family hoped Austria would resist Hitler, but when Nazis marched into Austria in 1938, Austrians greeted them waving flags, crowds lining the streets, cheering, throwing flowers, shouting enthusiastic Heils!, singing. Women fainted (pp. 118-9). /6

“ ‘Why do these easy victories of Hitler’s never stop?’ he [Fest’s father] asked one evening after a pensive listing of events. And why, he asked on another occasion, was this mixture of arrogance and hankering for advantage breaking out in Germany, of all places?" /7

"Why did the Nazi swindle not simply collapse in the face of the laughter of the educated? Or of the ordinary people, who usually have more ‘character’?” (p. 120). /8

Fest speaks of a Jewish friend of his family, Dr. Meyer, whose wife gave up the will to live as Hitler rose to power, and who died as a result. After Kristallnacht, Meyer became very reclusive. He told Fest’s family that it had confirmed his worst premonitions. /9

And: “He [said he] would never have believed how much malice dwelt behind the doors of the apartments around him” (pp. 125-6). /10

“In short, conservative, Catholic politics were much closer to and forgiving of Hitler’s policies than of anything that might have aided the godless atheism of the political left” (p. 157, n. 6). /11

“A nation, they said, that had produced Goethe, Schiller and Lessing, Bach, Mozart, and so many others, would simply be incapable of barbarism. Griping at the Jews, prejudice, there had always been that, they thought. But not violent persecution” (p. 181). /12

“On another occasion he [Fest’s father] spoke of the main error that he and his friends had fallen victim to, because they had believed all too unreservedly in reason, in Goethe, Kant, Mozart, and the whole tradition which came from that." /13

"Until 1932 he had always trusted that this tradition was proof enough, that a primitive gangster like Hitler could never achieve power in Germany. But he hadn’t had a clue." /14

"One of the most shocking things for him had been to realize that it was completely unpredictable how a neighbor, colleague, or even a friend might behave when it came to moral decisions” (pp. 359-60). /15