11/29/2025
Last week my husband and I took our two teenagers to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. We've been looking forward to when they were old enough. It was a very sobering exhibit, of course. I really appreciated being able to lean more about the resilience of the Jewish people.
What really struck me was the additional things I learned about how the Holocaust was even able to take place. From this visit and reading H!tler's Final Rise to Power, a few things stood out from his actions that have eerie connections to the present.
• He was extremely unpopular to many, but was doggedly persistent in reaching the public.
• He appealed to Germans' patriotism. Loyalty to country was everything.
• Anyone that did not fit the ideal German was considered "other": Jews, Roma, homosexuals, political activists, anyone who went against the regime. These people were forced out, removed and "disappeared".
• He called for an ideal elite while not fitting that ideal himself.
• Once in power, he surrounded himself and filled the government with N@zi loyalists.
• He spread a lot of fake news and when negative things were published about him in newspapers, he cried "fake news!"
• He built his own, loyal military force that eventually outnumbered the German military.
• The worst atrocities were hidden from the German public and the world and were so extreme, no one believed they were true.
• His ideas of eugenics and treatment of "undesirables" were partly inspired by the United States' treatment of African Americans. 💔
These actions took place over a decade and more. It wasn't overnight. Death by a thousand cuts.
