Americans, What Would You Have Done in 1930s Germany? You're Finding Out Now.

It’s easy to be brave in the past, when it doesn’t cost you anything.At some point in our journeys, we all found ourselves sitting in a classroom in middle school or high school and learning for the first time about pivot points in human history; days that precisely altered our collective story in beautiful or terrible ways. Like wide-eyed archeologists, we excavated past moments of great consequence, unearthing those times when ordinary people found themselves in the crucible of surrounding chaos and were faced with a choice: condemn inhumanity or partner with it. Back then, reading what felt like ancient textbook parchment stories of unthinkable carnage, gazing at blurry, stomach-turning photos of open genocides, watching jittery newsreel footage of a barbarism that defied words, and witnessing the very depths of human cruelty, we all invariably asked ourselves the question: What would I have done?Would I have been willing to harbor my Jewish neighbors in my home or given them up to certain death for fear of drawing the wrath of the monsters hunting them?Would I have taken up sides against my own flesh-and-blood, in order to defend the inherent worth and freedom of strangers?Would I have had the courage to stand between terrified black school children and the dogs and water cannons, or would I have turned away, pretending I didn’t see anything and retreating into the protective bunker of my privilege?Would I have defied unjust laws and risked beatings and imprisonment in order to affirm the higher laws of love and justice?Would I have stood alone in the path of a tank, selflessly leveraging my very body for my countrymen? Would I have been willing to confront a weaponized military, braving the bruises and bullets of a corrupt fascist regime, or would self-preservation have kept me home or rendered me silent?Would I have been strong enough to stand in the streets and put my very life on the line for people I’d never met? Who would I have been when everything went to hell?And regardless of how we may have answered those questions back then, that was all theoretical; just an interesting, yet ultimately hollow intellectual exercise. The conclusions we came to there, nestled in comfort, were, at best, a declaration of the people we aspired to be. They were bold, overconfident promises made while sitting in the safety of the future and with the benefit of hindsight.This is different.Today, we no longer need to ask what we’d have done in the face of evil’s ascension, of Democracy’s destruction, and humanity’s peril; we only need to ask what we’re doing right now. There is no mystery anymore, no imagination required, no detached speculation about how we’d have responded when courage was called upon. These dark and horrifying days are revealing the naked, inarguable truth in real-time; they are showing us who we really are. There’s a story we all tell ourselves about the kind of people we show up as every day, the things that matter to us, and the impact of our lives. In those carefully curated narratives, our cause is always just, our motives always pure, our convictions always in stone. There in those stories, we are invariably the human rights warriors, the unflinching revolutionaries, the ordinary heroes. And most of us are watching our convenient fictions burning up in the blazing light of our actual current decisions. Many of us are finding we may not be as brave as we’d have told ourselves we have been back in those classrooms.Friends, these days, as heartbreaking and terrifying as they might be, are revelatory. There is no more wondering who you and I are. Who we are right now, in these chaotic moments, facing these present tribulations, that is who we are. Think about the story you’ve always told yourself about who you hope you’d be and what you hoped you'd do when it all hit the fan, and decide if your choices align with that story. Is the person you hoped you’d have been in Germany one hundred years ago, the person you are as you encounter these words?Because one day, decades from now, hundreds of millions of children will gather to read about these very days, about this precise version of America we are living inside, about you and about me. They will learn of monstrous men, of malevolent regimes, of perversions of justice. They’ll read stories and watch videos of fascism’s violent rise, of an authoritarian’s sociopathic sadism, of hatred’s prolific Renaissance in a past that seems forever ago. And those children will learn of the choices ordinary people made when faced with evil, whether to collaborate with or confront it all, and they’ll think about you and me, and they’ll ask themselves:What would I’d have done?The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe