>
> Emotive language used by both sides is remarkably similar. Bill Clinton, US
> president, drew parallels between the "ethnic cleansing" committed by Serbs
> and the mass killings by Germany's Nazis in the second world war. George
> Robertson, British defence secretary, has accused the Serbian regime of
> waging "genocide", although as one US commentator has claimed, the death
> toll from a year of war in Kosovo - around 2,000 or so from a population of
> 2m - amounted to less than the murder rate in Washington DC in 1994.
>
> For the Serbs, whose families were exterminated in their hundreds of
> thousands (the real figure is still hotly disputed by historians) in Nazi
> and Croatian death camps, allegations of "genocide" touch a raw nerve. In
> return, RTS routinely compares Mr Clinton with Hitler and the most common
> graffiti daubed on western embassies in Belgrade are swastikas.
The words "Hitler" and "Nazis" have been bandied about quite freely just about everywhere the past few weeks. Here is what real Nazis, in this case Heinrich Himmler, sound like:
"What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations of the world can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves to our Kultur; otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall dead from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished." Quoted in William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich p937-8.
The philosopher Jonathan Bennett in his paper "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn" in Philosophy 49, draws a distinction between sympathy and morality. It is better to act in accordance with the former rather than the latter because sympathy is more or less constant while morality may be atrocious. Himmler is an example of sympathy with bad morality. Huck Finn also has sympathy and bad morality. Himmler acts out of his bad morality against his sympathy while Huck Finn acts out of sympathy against his bad morality when he saves Jim. Himmler saw his policies as being hard to implement while still retaining one's sympathies. More from the same speech:
"I also want to talk to you quite frankly about on a very grave matter...I mean...the extermination of the Jewish race...Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side or 500 or 1,000. To have stuck it out at the same time--apart from exceptions caused y human weakness--to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written."
According to Himmler, the weak take the easy way out and just eliminate their human sympathies. Himmler praises the stronger and more glorious course of action which is to retain one's sympathies while acting in direct violation of them.
"We have exterminated the Jews without our leaders and their men suffering any damage in their minds and souls. The danger was considerable, for there was only a narrow path between the Scylla of their becoming a heartless ruffians unable any longer to treasure life and the Charybdis of their becoming soft and suffering nervous breakdowns."
So, one can remain a "decent fellow" and not become a "heartless ruffian" by retaining one's sympathies even if one does not act in accordance it them. By contrast, Huck Finn is a character who acts from sympathy in helping Jim escape. According to Huck's morality which is that of the antebellum South, it is wrong to help Jim to escape and right to turn him in. In our morality, it is right to help Jim escape and wrong to turn him in. Huck's sympathies win out and he helps Jim escape which is what we would think is the morally correct thing to do. The comparison of Huck Finn and Himmler shows that one should act with one's sympathies and not with the morality one has been taught.
Sam Pawlett