More thoughts on Diary of a Man in Despair

Writing is coming along well, and there should be a couple shorts and more coming out soon. I will, hopefully, have parts of a short out here soon.

I wanted to further discuss the book I read recently, Diary of a Man in Despair (New York Review Books Classics). The book has found itself as the basis for a lot of my thoughts recently and I wanted to delve into why this is (btw any book that sinks its teeth into my mind like this is, no matter its flaws, definitely a candidate for the title "classic").


As I've mentioned, this book isn't without its flaws. There is a reactionary streak in our author who thinks the reason that things have gone so wrong is his nation's move away from aristocracy and towards nationalism (and I can't fault him too much, after all nationalism would seem to be a cause for many issues), and this puts him in a distinct minority as one of the few who were against the Nazis since the beginning rather than since Germany started to lose its wars. He believes, however, that Nazism is a result of what Bismarck started in the 19th century. So perhaps his diagnosis for what ailed his country was slightly off (and given what we know of his aristocratic background this is somewhat problematic), but that doesn't mean that all of his analysis was wrong. Nor is this what brought me to think over and over about this book.
What I wanted to focus on was the ability of this man to see that society was heading in the wrong direction (early on, as I mentioned, it was easy to go against Hitler when the going got rough), and by picking on a handful of actions or memes that developed around him, he was able to simply know this. This isn't as easy as it seems. Though we can look back at the Nazis and know that they were wrong, it's much harder to go against the grain when an entire nation is chanting the same hymn, and to go against that hymn will result in penury (or later, possible death) as well as being labeled as an outcast (after all, Hitler helped improve their economy; a reason that so many of the master of industries tended to support him) or a person who did not care for his country. Don't tell me that these currents (of the latter two) aren't strong in our nation.
But this man was able to, with laser like focus, see what was wrong, and see the actions which were bad, and never let go of the fact that they would always be bad, no matter how much material gain there was to be had (and his neighbors and distant friends all had some sense to at least make hay while the sun shined and cash in on this improved economy... can anyone fault them?) or how much the Jews were being picked on. And from his writing I can take at least that: that if one keeps their faculties to think independently about them, then they can weather such storms with their dignity intact.
And from there is the second question: about whether or not this man did the right thing. After all, all he did was write a diary and keep it hidden. Couldn't he have done more? Fought with pamphlets, or perhaps waged an insurrection? It's hard to say (also, it's hard to say how much some of these things would have helped). There are definitely layers to something like this, where direct action might be a step above (while not falling for the siren call of Nazism would be better than nothing, wouldn't it?), and still if everyone had acted like him, Germany would not have fallen as far as it did during this period.
All these come to the final thought: what would I (you) have done in this time period? Again I'm speaking about when the Nazis had just come into power. What does one do? What checks and balances exist in the legal route and in the other routes? Obviously everyone who rails against his society cannot take the latter route (especially if we are to take into account the Internet comments we see). Even today there are some people who are certain that the current administration (incorrectly, I believe) is taking the country down a wrong path. Surely some of those people believe this. But do we want them taking any steps? Are there only specific actions a government can take for there to be a reaction from the concerned citizens of a nation?

Tough questions, and I'm not sure I have the answers. I would say when a nation moves against a few within its borders, then its citizens will be more likely to react (for some reason it still seems that doing things outside the border does not evoke the same, though I'm not sure if this is a morally sound stance).

What you have done in such a time in Germany? Before outright atrocities were committed? What would you have done before civil war in the States (assuming you were against slavery)? Do you shrug? Do you keep counsel with close ones that it's wrong? Do you join a rebel outfit to force the issue? Surely in any given human population there are all these groups, and each will play an important role (the latter pulling more from the "less serious" levels into their ranks, or helping them to influence those in power and so forth), but where do you stand, and do you automatically assume a moral superiority for assuming such a position?
Please, let's discuss.

And on a similar note, this article, gives a very good bit on German culpability in general (for WWI & WWII), as well as some historians' squabbles. (Are National Master Narratives good for any country? I'm not sure, though I naturally lean towards saying that they are indeed troublesome and don't require a look into the national self that would be productive. Also any move away from looking into finding out the truth about a nation's weaknesses and strengths tends to be something I think will only hurt in the long run... this, of course, is another discussion in of itself)