|
Sympathy for the Devil? By Bob Oswald It may surprise some of you to find out that when I was in high school, I was kind of a nerd. I didn't have many friends so all I had to do in my free time was make prank phone calls and play computer games. The prank phone calls were probably more funny, but it's one of the computer games I want to talk about today. The computer game I have in mind is "Wolfenstein 3D." Third in a long line of classic Wolfenstein games, it was also a history maker because it was the first "first person 3D shooter," effectively paving the way for epic college kid time-wasters such as Doom, Quake, etc. The premise of Wolfenstein was that you took on the role of an American POW trying to escape from a German concentration camp, killing as many Nazis as you could in the process. When you shot the nazis, they'd yell funny things in German, and at the end of the game, Hitler would come out in a giant robot-suit, and when you killed him, he'd yell "Schiest!" and his face would melt all over the floor. Never mind what Hitler was doing in a POW camp, much less in a giant robot suit; it was the early 90s and that was just as cool as it could get. One of the most important things I learned from the Wolfenstein series was that it was OK to kill people, as long as they were Nazis. After all, there are no "badder" bad guys than Nazis, right? I guess I would have to qualify that, though. It was OK to kill people, as long as they were Nazis, and especially if they were Hitler. And there's nothing I've found that's more true than that. No matter where you go, everyone hates Hitler. Minorities, intellectuals, religious groups, everyone. Even some neo-Nazis hate Hitler now, everyone hates him so much. And for good reason, too. Before I go any further, I'd like to make my own personal views on Hitler clear: He was bad. Baddy bad bad. And I know I'm not alone. I didn't pick up a copy of People Magazine's "100 Most Evil People of the Millennium," but I'm sure Hitler ranked at least in the top ten. What troubles me, though, is how much people hate Hitler. As a writer, I attend a lot of parties, and I've found that the many indiscretions of Hitler are the topic of conversation very often at these events. But I'm not talking about the mass genocide or the brainwashing of an entire people. I'm talking about the really juicy stuff. Did you ever, for example, hear that Hitler practiced black magic? How about the one where Hitler only had one testicle? I've heard that one, and then later at the same party, had someone pull me aside to tell me very gravely that it wasn't true; Hitler actually had three testicles. Ever have someone tell you Hitler was into that fetish where you have people shit on your face? The point is that when you get to a certain age, you realize that you can't just get drunk and start a rumor about whoever you want to. But you can start one about Hitler; hell, no one likes him anyway. I've seen people get going on the subject, each one coming up with a Hitler story that tops the last, and swearing up and down that it was true; they read it somewhere, or saw it on the History Channel. The best of these I've ever seen was a girl who quietly refused to be swayed in her knowledge that Hitler was secretly gay. I guess any of these things could be argued, but that's not the point. There is no evidence for any of it, and what does it matter? It's almost as if we have to reassure ourselves that Hitler was the most evil person whoever existed by heaping all of the things that make us fearful and angry onto him. That's what all of the "Hitler urban legends" are about. When God died, so did the devil, and guess which one we missed the most? Hitler is no longer a dangerous tyrant, or even a symbol for what happens when we invest our hopes blindly in the politics of hate. He has become the modern Satan, evil incarnate. Wouldn't it be a lot more mature to be against Hitler because of his politics than because of some vague emotional association we need to attach to "the enemy?" After all, isn't that what happened in Germany, 1939? What's really troubling is that Hitler's new image as a pervert and/or genetic freak has taken precedence over the truth of what he really was--a disturbed and angry man who, backed up by a nation of people who should have known better, (and with the tacit permission of other nations of people who should have known better), orchestrated the most massive violation of human rights of the century. The devil had nothing to do with the Holocaust; it was an event entirely planned and made possible by humans. By making those who were responsible into cartoon characters with horns and forked tails, by assuring ourselves that they are "inhuman," aren't we saying that the bad guys are easy to recognize, that vigilance is unnecessary, that it "could never happen again?" Hate however you like; I just wanted to raise the point. And, don't worry-- if any fascists do threaten us with their robot-suits, I'll be on the front line again, mini-gun blazing. Bob Oswald is a senior writing major at Ithaca College. |
