Dr Goebbels and Us
When I lived in Germany I saw many documentaries about Nazi Germany, particularly concerning the war. One thing that always struck me is how it was possible that most Germans actually believed that they would win, even after the situation had become clearly untenable. Say, it’s Autumn 1944, your army is retreating on all front, and you know with the retreat will come the loss of factories, coal mines, and oil fields, whilst your own soldiers will, as they get out of combat due to death, wounds or prison, not be replaced by soldiers of the same combat capability. It really does not take a genius. At the latest when that pitiful, sadistic joke called Volkssturm was invented (October 1944), every German with a brain should have known that the game was up.
Apparently, it wasn’t so, and it is baffling. I would myself, in the past, struggle to believe that most Germans actually believed in victory until very late. I thought that, to a certain extent, it must have been all a pretence, because the uttering of any doubt would lead to incrimination for Wehrkraftzersetzung (“undermining of the army”), with a death sentence very likely. But no: apparently, it was real belief.
The cognitive dissonance must have been huge: on the one side, Goebbels in the newsreel every week or so, telling you how you are unavoidably going to win; on the other side, the map of the Reich shrinking every other week. It must have required a conscious effort of self-deception, I thought.
Well, not so fast.
I could, in my lifetime, live inside several mass phenomena of cognitive dissonance, and I am now reading about an additional one, though luckily I am not living in the middle of it myself.
Entire Continents believe in utterly senseless urban legends, notwithstanding the reality screaming in their face how false these legends are. Sixteen years after “an inconvenient truth”, very few want to see the real inconvenient truth: they have believed a colossal lie for sixteen years, and their man made religion of climate change is a fraud. People who, actually, have attained an education – or so says their university diploma – believe that keeping a piece of cotton in front of your mouth is decisive in stopping a virus from spreading. In fact, the same people are able to believe something even more astonishing: that those who are not vaccinated are those who make those who are vaccinated contract the same disease against which they took the vaccine; vaccine which, they believe, actually works, but is hampered by those who don’t take it. It beggars belief, but it is reality of countless millions of voters around us. Without even a Goebbels threatening you with death for daring to speak.
The situation in the Ukraine must – though I don’t live there – be something similar. Whilst I am sure that the people who have opened their big blue eyes are, in the meantime, in the millions, there can be no doubt that the Ukrainian propaganda works. Pro-Russian sites are full of comments of people whose Ukrainian friends are utterly convinced that the Ukraine will prevail. I think their number is decreasing by the day, but that they have come to this point before opening their eyes is quite astonishing.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine Army is between a big crisis and the onset of decomposition. The Caesar self-propelled howitzers that the Russians have managed to buy (no, really) are truly an indication of where things are. Those two (I think) howitzers are now being closely examined beyond the Urals, to see what can be learned from them. Yesterday, the savage rumour spread (which is, as I write this, unconfirmed), that even one of those all-destroying, all-capable, all-singing and all-dancing HIMARS would have been, again, not captured, but sold. If this proves true and not a propaganda stunt, well I hope that in Washington there is still someone who has an IQ above 70 and has got his job for a reason different from being a lesbian. But hey, there is a glorious counter-offensive in the making for August, so it’s all fine…
The map, again, speaks a very clear language. Just a short time after the fall of Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, the next line of defence (Severn, Soledar, Bakhmut) already sees combat in the first two of these cities, meaning that most of the fortified villages between these cities and the Russians have fallen or have been encircled or made useless. This, as 30 or 40 thousand Russian soldiers are apparently resting in Russia after the end of the battles for Severodonetsk and Lisichansk. Basically, the Russians are advancing quite rapidly without even trying hard. If this does not tell the tale, I don’t know what does.
The moral of all this?
Humans are extremely credulous. They can be manipulated to believe pretty much anything. Given enough time and effort, they will believe that there are 32 “genders”, that a sodomite is “gay”, and that perverts need to be “affirmed”.
What is needed is a strong Christian matrix, that keeps the natural credulity of man in check and gives a solid foundation not only for salvation after death, but for sensible thinking and living before it.
Thank you, Lord, for Vladimir Vladimirovic Putin. Please guide him in his and his team’s decision, and help us, through his influence, to protect the Christian thinking and living that we cherish.
Share this:
Posted on July 14, 2022, in Catholicism, Conservative Catholicism, Traditional Catholicism and tagged Dr Goebbels, Ukraine. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Mundabor's Blog 
As you say, these colossal lies serve as substitutes for the one true faith, which is not held by many of the highly educated. The legal profession, for example, chock-a-block with liberals and atheists and ruthless, tin-pot tyrants, is very much in the tank for The Bug narrative. Many of them, without any sense of irony, cling to their face diapers as to lucky rabbits’ feet, despite having taken multiple doses of the jab. Also without any sense of irony, these same people think my Catholic faith is nothing but a bunch of backward, medieval superstitions. Clearly, to believe in nothing is really to believe in anything.
I can’t say I am an expert on the Ukraine situation, but it seems to me that part of the basis for the myth that Ukraine will prevail is that it is taking the Russians longer than half an hour to wrap up the campaign. I’m inclined to think the Russians are taking this long because they are actually at pains to minimize collateral damage. I’m sure there is also the hope that the U.S. or NATO will ride in on a white horse and save the day. There are probably evil people behind the scenes cruelly stoking this hope, but this surely would have happened a long time ago if it were going to happen at all; plus, the American people are not whipped up into war fever over Ukraine.
We need to cling to our “backward, medieval superstitions,” stick with the Sacraments as long as we possibly can and continue to “mumble over our beads” every single day if we are to survive this, and pray the time is not far off when God decides enough is enough.
Amen! God bless Putin:+)