Turning factoids into facts: Mars, Hitler and history

Let’s All Go to Mars!

So many MAGAts, including the MAGAt King, have been heralding our imminent landing and community-building on Mars, presumably via one of Elon Musk’s rockets. Another presumption: it is one which isn’t prone to shattering mid-air over Texas.

There’s another wee Martian problem, though. I’m sure Musk isn’t aware of it, although the facts are available, but he’s so busy bulling around in our government fine china shop, he’s not had time to pay attention to outer space.

Thing is, the two-year space voyage to get to Mars would expose astronauts to Galactic Cosmic Radiation, which would badly affect their kidneys. In short, GCR would cause kidney failure. (And erectile dysfunction but I think if their kidneys go while they’re up in space, well, hey, erections would shrivel in importance.)

I’m posting this as a public service announcement for astronauts who might consider being employed for the Mars trip, since it doesn’t look like Elon will be available to discuss kidney failure with them before take-off.

BTW, given this information, do you have a list of people you’d like to see on that Mars space trip? Along with Elon?

Hitler Was Not Elected

There’s a commonly accepted but factually inaccurate idea that Hitler was elected by the German people. He wasn’t. Here’s what actually happened:

In 1932 there was a succession of elections in Germany, due to a mind-boggling number of political parties who were running for seats in the Reichstag. In the penultimate election of that year, the Nazi Party won slightly more than a third of the seats; the Communist Party won slightly less than a third. Obviously, neither had a majority.

Under the circumstances, it was an irrational hope that the Nazis and the Communists would form a governing coalition because, without one, nothing was going to get done. Surprise! The Nazis and the Communists did not form a governing coalition.

So there was another election in November, 1932 (which turned out to be the last election in Germany until after World War II). The Nazis actually lost some seats, a serious disappointment, while the Communists gained some.

The presidency of Germany was an elected position, and a powerful one. Paul von Hindenburg (the man, who died in 1934, not the blimp which died in 1937) had been president on and off for quite a while. During the penultimate election, he had beaten Adolph Hitler.

The political situation was unstable (seventeen+ political parties who ran for and won seats in the Reichstag will do that to a state). Hindenburg was old, cranky and under a lot of pressure. Since the chancellorship was an appointed, not an elected, position, Hindenberg was tasked with naming someone.

The chancellorship was a fairly weak office. Hindenburg was a moderate. His cabinet (with nary a Nazi) was moderate. Along with a lot of other groups, he did not like Hitler. But he named him as chancellor.

Hitler did not win an election, nor did his party ever win a majority.

Does History Repeat Itself?

I have never fully understood the warning about history repeating itself, whether in the omnipresent George Santayana quote — “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it” — or any other Big Statement of Great Profundity. But I’m not a fan of philosophers or the product of their thinking.

I am, however, a fan of history and the people who write about it. I’ve been having a life-altering experience reading a book I found in my bookshelves. Naturally, I thought it was from a college course in world history but have discovered it must have been someone else’s book, that I’d never read it before, and had no idea why it was in my bookshelves.

It is A History Of The Modern World, Third Edition (it’s currently up to twelve editions). Published in 1965, it was written by R.R. Palmer, from Washington U. in St. Louis, and Joel Colton, of Duke University.

Reading it feels like floating in space (not in a Musk rocket) above the blue planet Earth, and as the world revolves, the entire history of humankind and the changing shapes of the continents and oceans appear to me. I can zoom in and back out, like Google Earth, but not static. (I think I’m living in a tesseract.)

I’ve seen small and large wars — by far, the most repeated events in history — and borders that expand and contract, usually as a result of those wars. (That was a fairly boring, very long period of history.)

Things picked up as individuals with endless curiosity emerged to use their brains to explore the nature of life, to develop and test theories, and to create bodies of knowledge. A great relief from wars, and the perpetual shifting borders of states (especially Poland, for which I’ve developed some sympathy).

Over the millennia of human history, I began to recognize the vast capabilities of human beings: creation and destruction and re-creation. Visions of a future ideal, especially that. I began to see how voiceless human mass separated into individual voices, and began to hear what they were asking and then demanding.

Advances and retreats. And advances.

It’s not that what we’re living through now is a repeat of the past, although it has that superficial coloration. But on the infinite scale of human history, it’s the sort of disorder that has appeared before — and has returned to order quite rapidly.

Human beings crave order. The few chaotic sorts who mess around with our order are short-lived. The only semi-permanent structure they create is the bunker into which they will disappear when we become angry enough and don’t want to see them any more.

Gee, I didn’t mean to write all that. What I did mean to tell you is my reading of this masterful history has elevated me and given me a certain calm. And the occasional bursts of lyricism throughout it have been infectious.

Perhaps the losses [of life caused by World War II] came to thirty-five or forty million, but at such figures the human mind retreats and human sensitivities are dulled. It is enough to say that peace had come.

Took my breath away…”at such figures the human mind retreats and human sensitivities are dulled. It is enough to say that peace had come.”

Oh, and about history repeating itself, this, from an assessment of the state of the world in 1940:

History seemed to repeat itself, in the distant and unreal way which is the only way in which it ever repeats.

 

 

 

 

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