Asakiyume mita

After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I guess I would have been a Nazi.

Yes, I know that opening sentence is inflammatory, click-baity even, but please bear with me, because I think this topic, which is actually more of a hypothetical thought experiment, is really worth discussing, as it reveals something about our personal ethics.

Last night, a friend and I were talking about current events, particularly the ICE situation, and the conversation inevitably landed on Nazi Germany. After some lengthy back and forth, the conclusion we came to was that, yes, back in the 1940s, if I had been a German citizen, I would have likely been a Nazi, maybe not ideologically, but I would have been labeled one.

And yes, again, I know this sounds really evil. And maybe it is, I don’t know. I'm still unsure myself. The question of “good” and “evil” was actually the catalyst for this whole conversation, which is something I’ll get into here shortly.

But first, some background. On March 16, 1935, Adolf Hitler introduced universal conscription, basically a draft: any man between the ages of 18 and 45 was subject to military service. Those who denied the call to serve the Nazi war machine were labeled Wehrdienstverweigerer, or “military service refuser,” arrested by the Gestapo, and prosecuted for Kriegsverrat, or “treason in wartime.” And it wasn’t just the refusers who were labeled as traitors, but also their families, the Nazis called this idea “Sippenhaft,” the idea that if someone defied Hitler, that person’s entire family shared moral guilt. The Nazis used this idea to prosecute the families of traitors, evicting them, imprisoning them, and sometimes even sending them to concentration camps.

So, back to my friend’s and my conversation, which was prompted by the recent murders carried out by ICE agents, which we both agreed were unjust and awful. During that conversation, my friend said something that bothered me. He said, “Anyone who works for ICE is evil.” I didn’t, and still don’t, agree with this assertion. Being pretentiously entrenched in Buddhist ideology, I told him that, first, this idea of “good” and “evil” is a harmful duality, that simply labeling people “evil” leads to bad outcomes, as it dehumanizes people and leaves no room for nuance. Second, I told him that these things are more complicated than they seem, that not everyone has a choice in their occupation. To this, my friend retorted, “Sure they do, everyone has a choice; they either enlist for ICE or they don’t. It’s that simple.” And sure, in our current time, maybe he’s right, maybe it is that simple, after all, there is no ICE draft, so maybe he got me there. But, being stubborn, I thought the point I was trying to make was still valid, though I might have been using a bad example, so I posited a hypothetical to try to illustrate my point further. I said, “Let’s say there’s a draft, and all people between this and that age are subject to serve ICE. Would you dodge this draft, labeling yourself a traitor and potentially landing yourself in prison, or would you enlist?” And he said, “Of course I would dodge the draft. What kind of question is that? That’s the only right thing to do.” And I said, “What if, in dodging the draft, your family would also be labeled traitors, and they too would be thrown in prison?” I was trying to illustrate my original point: that these things are more complicated than they seem. And still he said, “I would do the right thing and dodge the draft.” To which I said, “But is that truly the right thing to do here? Isn’t there now more at stake than just yourself?” And he said, “Maybe, but you should always act in accordance with your values and the greater good of society.” So I said, “Even if it gets your family killed?” And it was at this point that my friend assumed, I guess, that I was defending ICE, so he brought Nazis into the mix to illustrate his own point, as evoking Nazis is often the most extreme rhetorical move one can make in these types of debates, so he said, “You’re pretty much saying that if you lived in Nazi Germany, you would be a Nazi.” And me, having a wife and two children, I said, “Yes, maybe I would.” And he said, “Wouldn’t that compromise your values, make you feel terrible?” And I said, “Maybe, but I think I would feel worse if my wife and children died in a concentration camp.” And that’s kind of where we left it.

The whole point I was trying to make was that I have a hard time labeling someone as “evil” without understanding the full systems at play or the person’s entire decision-making process. Like the example above, if there were a draft and your family could be punished if you refused this draft, are you comfortable refusing the draft? At that point, you would not only be making a choice for yourself but also for your entire family, and this choice comes with heavy consequences for everyone involved. Is it fair to force such a choice, such a consequence, on your entire family? In refusing the draft, you may feel good about having stood up for your ideals, but will your son feel good when he’s dying in a concentration camp? “I may be starving, but at least my dad stood up for what he believed.” Sure, you could take your family and try to flee the country, but this also carries a huge risk. And sure, you could say that, in refusing the draft, you’re not the one actually sending your family to the concentration camp, the Nazi state is, and that’s true, you didn’t create the diabolical systems at play here, and those who did create it are more likely the “evil” ones in this scenario, but it’s also true that you’re aware of the consequences in this situation, you’re aware of the fact that if you refused to enlist then your family might be killed, and given you have that awareness of the consequences, your choice now carries a certain responsibility, specifically a responsibility for the wellbeing of your family. So, knowing the consequences, would you still choose to risk your family’s lives, for your own personal ideals? Ideals that, in the grand scheme of things, won’t make any difference? If you refuse the draft, what happens? You die, your family potentially dies, and then the Nazis just recruit some other dude to fight for them, and thus the war machine rages on. Is this individual act of defiance truly worth it?

The potential responses to the draft may be simple in principle, either “yes” or “no,” but the decision tree for those responses is not so simple. You could deny the draft and potentially get your family killed, maybe run away, take your family with you, or you could compromise your values, enlist, and fight for the Nazis, at which point maybe you could do a bad job on purpose, avoid killing people on the battlefield or whatever, sneakily clinging to your idealism while working within the confines of the diabolical system. But which choice is the right one here? It seems morally abhorrent to join the Nazi army, but it also seems morally abhorrent to knowingly risk the lives of your family by not joining the Nazi army.

At some point in the conversation with my friend, I got the impression that he was just not getting it, that maybe my hypothetical was too complicated. So I crafted a new one, a distilled version. I said, “let’s say the Nazis gather you and your family up, put you in a room, hold a gun to your head, then tell you, ‘join the Nazi army right now or I kill you and your entire family.’ What would you do in that situation?” But my friend refused to engage in this new hypothetical; he didn’t even bother to answer the question, instead he said, “That’s ridiculous, that would never happen.”

Oh, but it did happen, my friend. It happened all the time. In Nazi Germany, there may have been a few levels of abstraction between the guns and the heads of your loved ones, but the guns were still squarely pointed there. This happened to millions of people back then. So, knowing this, can we truly call a man “evil” if he’s simply doing what’s best for his family?

I would love to say that if I had been a citizen in Nazi Germany, I would have rebelled against the fascist government and died for my ideals, and maybe I would have done this if I were a single guy with no dependents. But are things ever that simple?

Like the concepts of “good” and “evil,” we often approach these situations from a black-and-white perspective, which leaves no room for nuance, and I believe this kind of thinking leads us down a dark path, a path in which we view those who don’t always make the “morally righteous” choices as vile monsters deserving of nothing more than death.

And is this not the same path as the Nazi ideology, a path totally devoid of empathy?