The Book Thief 1

This particular book will serve as inspiration for many musings, I'm sure. Each line, the way that it is type set, could readily be stopped on and considered. But I'll begin with this one:

"A pair of train guards.

A pair of grave diggers.

When it came down to it, one of them called the shots.

The other did what he was told.

The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?"

For a book about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, it seems that this question is addressing one of the central concerns of that period in history. That question has to do with how it is possible that hundreds of thousands of Germans, arguably the most educated and advanced people of their time, could fall into step behind one man who called the shots. Wouldn't they be independently minded? free thinkers? Couldn't they see that the shots thus called were wicked? Didn't they have a sense of the abomination of genocide? Could they really be convinced that they were superior and somehow this justified acts of evil?

Or was it even that? Did it maybe have to do with fear of what would happen to them if they didn't comply? Did they intentionally ignore conscience?

What if the other includes you and me?