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TechnoratiA ‘Nazi moment’ for Eva
A blunder by German motherhood campaigner Eva Herman will be hard to live down. It's a pity, because her message deserves to be heard.
Eva Herman, German media personality and motherhood campaigner, has put her foot in it. Launching her latest book in defence of the family and women's domestic role, the television talk show host happened to mention that family values were one thing the Nazis got right.
"It was a gruesome time with a totally crazy and highly dangerous leader who led the Germans into ruin as we all know. But there was at the time also something good, and that is the values, that is the families, that is a togetherness," she said, adding that it was all later "abolished" by "the 1968 generation".
Predictably, Ms Herman and her book -- The Noah's Ark Principle: Why We Must Save the Family -- were nearly buried by an avalanche of fury and indignation. For 60 years, the Third Reich has been the epitome of evil, all its policies and activities contaminated by the racial theory that led to the Holocaust.
Clearly, drawing inspiration from the Hitler era is not the way to win converts to family values. Actually, it is hard to think of a worse way. Be that as it may, somewhere under the rubble of this incident is a message that Germany and much of the world needs to hear.
That includes the Lebensborn programme, instituted in 1935, under which women were encouraged and given every assistance to have children -- the more the better. Married or unmarried, it didn't matter. What did matter was that a woman and her mate had the correct racial and genetic characteristics. This was all in aid of building up the master race, the "Aryans", which in Germany had taken such a beating after World War I.
For Ms Herman to find "something good" in this sounds, to some ears, tantamount to Holocaust denial. She might just as well have said that at least medical science was advanced in the death camps. The wounds of the Nazi era are far from healed in Germany and people are hypersensitive both to any signs of regression into Nazi ideology (like neo-Nazi skinheads kicking migrants to death) and to how this looks to the international community.
So, try as she might to clarify her intention ("This isn't about Hitler's values but about basic human values, which were abused in the Third Reich and later abolished"), and insist as she did that she rejects both far-left and far-right political parties, the damage was done. Applause from the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) did not help. Her bosses on the public television network ARD sacked her on the spot. They said guests had been cancelling their appearances on her show.
Clearly, drawing inspiration from the Hitler era is not the way to win converts to family values. Actually, it is hard to think of a worse way. Be that as it may, somewhere under the rubble of this incident is a message that Germany and much of the world needs to hear.
Although in many respects the leading nation of Europe and one of the leading nations of the world, Germany has an abysmal birth rate (1.39 children per woman) and the outlook is grim. Its population of 82 million has been maintained by large-scale immigration -- notably from Turkey -- but even if that continues, the birth dearth will see the population shrink over the next four decades by 8 to 13 million.
Eva Herman is not the only one to be sounding the alarm about this trend. With the possible exception of the Greens, everyone from the government's Minister for Family Affairs to those in the resurgent nationalist movement is concerned about a Germany in decline, dependent on immigrants -- with all the cultural issues that involves -- to maintain its workforce and pay its escalating pension bill. It is three years since Frankfurt newspaper editor Frank Schirrmacher wrote his best-selling doomsday tract, The Methuselah Conspiracy.
Disagreement arises over what and how much to do to encourage baby-shy Germans to produce more than one or two children. The government, following the global trend, is encouraging women to combine motherhood and a career in the workforce. This not only satisfies the dominant feminist school of thought; it is also an economic necessity, given the shortage of younger workers looming. Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen, herself the mother of seven children, has pushed through policies to rapidly increase day care places and new parental leave laws designed to involve fathers and to get mothers back into the workforce more quickly.
The originality of Eva Herman lies in her surprising rejection of this dual-track womanhood. In her own best-selling 2006 manifesto, The Eva Principle, subtitled Towards a New Femininity, she tackles feminist assumptions head-on, calling for women to embrace motherhood again and find their primary source of identity and happiness in the domestic sphere. "Let's just say it loud," she writes. "We women have overburdened ourselves -- we allowed ourselves to be too easily seduced by career opportunities." Women can't simultaneously raise children and pursue a career and do both jobs properly, she avers. Germans will die out if women do not change their ways.
Ms Herman is far from being a textbook champion of domestic bliss and motherhood. She certainly hasn't followed the conventional career path for one. At 48, she is four times married, has only one child -- a son, now 10 -- has always worked in a jetset career, and has enough free time to write a book every year or two.
Her "Nazi moment" also raises questions about her intellectual powers, if not her politics. But when you think about it, what other model of family oriented policy could she draw upon in Germany's recent history? She is at least right about the "1968 generation", whose radicalism lives on in the entrenched feminist prejudice against women having a distinct role to play in society. This was the generation that welcomed the contraceptive pill and saw the birth rate in Germany drop from 2.5 children per women in 1967 to 1.5 a mere five years later. It is the generation that still, largely, runs the country.
And the Nazis weren't the only ones who used an ideology to clobber their opponents. Sure, Nazi manipulation of the population for political ends merits outrage. But what about the state-sponsored birth control which has prevailed in the West for the past 40 years? Isn't that also a form of social engineering? Social engineering, one might add, that has its eugenic elements, as seen in the practice of abortion for fetal abnormality, and in the current desire of some Western governments to encourage births among professional middle-class women without giving new incentives to women who are already economically "unproductive".
In her enthusiasm for a good idea (and motherhood is a good idea) Ms Herman has overstated the case against combining motherhood with another career. There are women -- Ursula von der Leyen is a dramatic example -- who can do it very well. The majority of women, however, may be less interested in a dual "career" than in "work" that can bring in a second income for the family as well as develop their talents. How this can be done is very much a work in progress today, with the role of husbands in the home a significant part of the picture.
Where Ms Herman's strictures against working mothers count is in the first few years of a child's life. Evidence is mounting against the benefits of day care for children under four, even as governments, including Germany's, opt to expand this sector.
Eva Herman, like other pop-sociologists, sends a muddled message. What is important is not its detail but the direction in which she frantically points. In a country where 30 per cent of women have not had children, it may take more than a year's paid maternity leave plus two months' "papa leave" to prevent the slow decline of the German people. Carolyn Moynihan is Deputy Editor of MercatorNet.
Wow...Cherry, well said. The only thing I would add is that War is a punishment for sin...so until we figure it out..and stop breaking those Commandments that are written on our hearts, not just on tablets of stone.. then we are destined to have war and more war until the consequences change us.
Again, I find myself agreeing with both Richard and Francis.
Contraception, abortion and sexual license has done what Hitler tried to do… reduce the population. as pointed out by Richard. Population control seems to target non-white races more than white..probably because of the racist underpinnings of such groups as Planned Parenthood and other eugenics groups which is what I think Francis is saying… As the family goes so goes the Nation… so wherever the family is breaking down so to the Nation will collapse.
Richard-I am concerned about your either/or approach to the nation or culture of Germany-either Fascist style solutions or rampant individualism or rampant Islamo-Fascism. I am also concerned with your tendency to apparently conflate ideological positions to core racial characteristics. Of course, both the German Fascists and the Stalinists were equally guilty of this mentality and both targeted Jewish people. The Bolsheviks and especially Stalin and his cronies did engineer a monstrous system that continued much longer than the Reich and targeted as well whole “classes” and “ethnicities”. But do we rank evil purely on the basis to toting up the tally? Is one human murder really anymore evil than two or ten? Cambodia’s, the Nazi’s, or Mao’s or Stalin’s? Or the sterilisations and abortions coerced on the brown and black poor by Western Eugenicist Totalitarians? What can we quantify other than the number of grieving people left or the rising fear tide? There are no clear answers except that civilised societies ought to keep the history of totalitarian death culture in mind. These “groups” are an abstract construct engineered into existence by anti human propagandists for expenditure in the service of the State or the Reich. Totalitarians refuse to see reality- living, loving individual human beings. Totalitarianism will not see that each individual is equal in dignity to any other, that they are beloved by their maker and their procreators, their children, siblings, neighbours etc. It will not allow the State to recognise the primacy of family and human rights. Of course, wars would be much harder to get going if people were able to keep the reality of their fellow human beings before their eyes. And fascisms of any flavour would be silenced.
Richard: I understand your definition of ‘civilization’ - but as a Christian I cannot agree with it. You seem to make ‘technological advance’ the highest good - yet it was their advanced technology that made the National Socialists so chillingly efficient.
Western civilization owes an enormous debt to Christianity - and Christianity recognises the intrinsic worth of everyone: black, Jewish, ‘less technologically advanced’ - you name it. ‘Blessed are the meek’ and so on. We do not divide the world into Caucasions and Others. Indeed, despite the huge problems of African countries, they have a more profound understanding of familial obligation than we Westerners, with our emphasis on selfish individualism. We allow our orphans and elderly people to be bundled into institutions, so that we can conveniently forget them; such behaviour is incomprehensible to Africans - a so-called ‘primitive’ peoples.
I have had a creeping sense that we are profoundly at cross purposes in our interpretation of recent history, progress, etc. This has nothing to do with censorship. Time to sign off.
And so, cherry, do you prefer the current ideology that has reduced Germany to the status of having the lowest birthrate in all the western world, portending the eventual extinction of the German race and culture, as it becomes ever more overwhelmed by its more fecund African and Turkish Islamic immigrant conquerors, invited in to guarantee the comfortable retirement of one of its final aging generations?
Hitler’s blunders resulted in a temporary reduction of the German population (as did untold thousands of years of preceding such wars.) Whose agenda is it that now holds forth the prospect of the permanent and total extinction of its people and their civilization?
Well said, Cherry… reading your posts...made me think of the MANDATORY HPV VACCINES for 9yr.old schoolgirls...and other MANDATORY… Govt. programs that undermine parental rights...in the U.S. and U.K
Just a couple more comments on the Nazi’s anti family ideology-
The universal operation and reach of the Hitler Youth made very sure that parental influence would not interfere with the Reich’s interests.
The elite of the SS were taken to special facilities to impregnate young girls with the required racial features as part of ruthless and ongoing eugenics programs.
Of course another aspect of these eugenics programs was the systematic isolation and then destruction of many because of “mental defectiveness” (downs, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, manic depression etc)
Both Nazi Fascism and Bolshevik and Stalinist Socialsim took very similar ideological positions on the family. Both saw children as the proerty of the state and parents as deriving their limited parental authority from the state. In both, marriage was devalued or promoted according to the fluctuating utilitarian or ideological positions being taken by the elites over time.
Well there are some very worrying misconceptions being aired here about the nature of Hitler’s Fascist National Socialism. I feel in particular that Richard Brodie has radically misunderstood the history of the Nazis and the Third Reich and also the nature of their rabid anti-Christian, anti-God, and anti-family ideology. Of course, I am assuming that most posters or readers are not Holocaust deniers because there is clear and very substantial evidence for the murderous intent and effect of the Final Solution. I will also assume that most will be aware on good grounds that large numbers of German citizens, who had contributed positively to German culture and society, including large numbers of children, mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, sisters and brothers were deliberately exterminated through starvation, neglect, violence or the gas chamber because they were Jewish. (Of course many met the same fate simply because they were Polish, Gypsy, German dissidents, priests, communists etc)
Which brings me to my main concern to highlight to general, non Nazi apologists, that the Nazis were indeed anti family and anti the specific ethical and cultural Judaeo-Christian heritage, especially the culture and ethics of family as the foundational natural unit and ongoing source of life and renewal of society.
Nazism saw all children as property of the state and parents as instrumental means to expand population, workforce and army for the purposes of the Reich and the Fuhrer. Mothers were in some streams of propaganda, apparently glamourised or applauded but the underlying purpose was ruthlessly utilitarian.
If I lived down your street, I’m sure we’d be friends. I have many years under my belt.. and my Granny ways have brought me close to many women (and men) with much pain in their lives.
Trauma from childhood and loss of control over things that are integral to who we are sometimes cause us to seek safety with those who are in a similar situation. We all have brokeness just different ways of being broken and so homophobe or hetrophobe are just distractions from the pain that we each need to face and recognize in each other. I see you as a woman ... a sister ... and I’m sure our maternal instincts would “click” if we got to meet.
Francis,
I did not think that you had omitted the Poles on purpose but, since you’d mentioned Polish Catholic priests, I believed this comment was in order. In fact, Polish losses include a significant number of death camps inmates - after all, Auschwitz was originally established for the Poles.
Poland indeed was one of the very few countries in which helping a Jew was punishable by death (often of an entire family), and the only one in which this law was almost always applied. I appreciate your mentioning this fact.
Francis,
Last night I wasted some more of my time writing a response to your most recent questions. It was nothing more than an elaboration on what I said in the last post of mine that was not censored, and yet it appears to have been flushed. My views are obviously not wanted here by someone who has the power to prevent them from being aired, and so it is really quite pointless for me to continue attempting to communicate.
My list was not trying to be comprehensive; merely an attempt to limit the definition of ‘Holocaust’ into what is generally meant. I was also looking at the death camps’ inhabitants, rather than the terrible slaughter in particular countries. I recall reading that Poland was the only country where non-Jews would be immediately shot if they were found harbouring Jews. Thus it required exceptional bravery to do so.
Francis,
In the context of the utility of natural population control mechanisms “advanced civilization” can be defined by enumeration. There is and always has been only one. We call it “Western Civilization.” The salient characteristic here is that it has developed the technology to be able to sustain very high population densities at a very high average standard of living never before seen on this planet. It could just as well be called “White Civilization” because Caucasoids are race that achieved it.
“Primitive populations” are those which require that a very large proportion of their total number be engaged in food production. They have very low standards of living. If there should be a long period of natural conditions conducive to food overproduction - good weather, an absence of plant diseases, locust attacks, etc. - Such a population will grow to a size that could not ordinarily be maintained. When the fortunate conditions that allowed such an expansion are inevitably reversed, famines, plagues, and war will reduce their numbers back down to a sustainable level.
But now there is the potential for unnatural interventions to stimulate phenomenal levels of dangerously high population. Misguided philanthropic programs emanating from an advanced civilization will substitute for the above described role of natural conditions, to produced enormous unsustainable population increases. In addition to outright gifts of food, medicines, etc., sometimes there are also gifts of farming machinery and even attempts at education - as if a people lacking the genetically ingrained qualities of ambition, industriousness, and yes even intelligence, problem solving creativity, etc. could suddenly give birth to a modern industrial economy. In reality, what they are being given is the means with which to magnify a thousandfold the scale of that suffering which they had heretofore periodically experienced.
Took me long enough^^;; Sorry about that…
Francis^^
Eh, you make a good point, I s’pose. Well, if I wouldn’t want to be addressed by my sexual orientation, I might’ve chosen a different screenname, right? But… “That Lesbian Down The Street” -is- a mouthful, and I can’t control what you think, so… Okay^^;; No sense in getting too upset. Friend request accepted^^ You seem very intelligent^-^
And don’t worry, I don’t perceive your behavior as homophobic^^
But, next in line…
Granny^^
Thank you for your thanks^^
Now… I’m going to assume you’re a -real- granny?
...maybe I’m just not old-fashioned like you, but… it seems just a -mite- backhanded to thank someone for being supportive, and then tell them they’re denying reality and making their children’s world fall apart^^;; I dunno, could just be me.
Anyway, if you don’t like me or what I am, you can just say so^^;; Blatantly homophobic people are much less annoying than the people who throw it all into subtext and pretend to be nice ~_^
(Which is not to say I’m accusing you of being homophobic. I guess I’m just asking you to make up your mind.)
Anyways, have a nice day, everybody^^
Francis Phillips said:
“‘The Holocaust’ is generally used to describe the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Of course, others groups suffered hugely, but not in such great numbers: gypsies, Catholics (especially Polish priests), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Communists.”
Francis, you forgot to mention ethnic Poles in general whose total wartime loss was three million people (not counting another three millions of Jewish-Polish individuals.) The Poles happened to be the only national group publicly selected by Hitler for gradual extermination, in a speech in August 1939.
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