The Danger of Dehumanizing

In the coming weeks, I’m going to be talking a lot about the themes in The Collector of Burned Books. That’s gonna cover the obvious (book bans and burnings), but we’re going to go deeper than just that. And I wanted to start today with a question I received in a blog interview I answered a couple weeks ago, and which came up again in a video podcast interview I recorded with Tricia Goyer. A question that, in fact, is what led to this book being published by Tyndale House after I was with Bethany House for a decade.

Why did you humanize Nazis?

“We just can’t have a hero in Nazi uniform. It would be best if he isn’t German at all. Can he be French?” That’s what the team at BHP said, and I absolutely understood their stance. We don’t ever, ever want to justify or condone what the Nazi Party did in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. From their stance, it didn’t matter that my hero wasn’t really a Nazi. Didn’t matter that he’d been calling them his enemy long before the rest of the world knew to fear them. All that mattered was that he was in uniform.

It’s a dangerous line. A risky line. I get that.

But it was also 100% necessary to the story, so I refused to budge.

But you know what? It’s more than that. I didn’t just humanize (some) Nazis (and have others be complete villains) because I needed someone inside the library that was Nazi-controlled, though that was the plot reason. I humanized Nazis for one very simple reason: because they were humans. And if we ever forget that, we run a horrible, horrible risk of repeating their mistakes.

In The Collector of Burned Books, I point out first a sad truth. For many people in Germany during that era, if you didn’t join the Party, you risked losing your job, your security, or being outright arrested. My hero, Christian, eventually joined to try to protect someone he loved. It backfired–as it so often did. And he wasn’t silent about it. He spoke out, condemning the Party line on certain subjects…and he was reported to the Gestapo. He’s still not sure why he wasn’t arrested, why he was sent to Paris as the “library protector”…but he suspects it’s because he has an old friend much like him. A friend who had joined the police force before the Nazis came to power, who wanted to protect and serve. But the police became the Gestapo. Because this friend dragged his feet about joining the Party as well, he was relegated to a desk job in the filing department…where he fought back quietly by altering files. Christian’s, to start. But not just his. Whenever he could get away with it, he erased condemning information from the files that passed his desk, so he could continue to protect and serve the people of his city.

People really did this, guys. I’ll tell you one of the historical stories later in the month.

But these people are examples of a lot of people in Germany who were technically members of the Party. They were people who never really believed in it. Who wanted to keep fighting. And who chose to fight from the dubious safety within that Party.

Those, though, are the easy cases. There are more, and they’re represented in this book too. For instance, we have Kraus. He’s nineteen, and he enlisted for his slice of glory…only to be assigned as aid to a librarian. Boring, he thinks. He grew up in the Hitler Youth. He was indoctrinated from a young age into the Nazi ideals.

He’s never been taught otherwise. Never taught to think for himself. Never taught to question and learn and see the other as something deserving of freedom. Does that mean he’s beyond redemption? Not human? Does that mean he can’t learn, can’t come to realize that his “enemies”–people of different races, creeds, or politics–are people too, people who deserve life and freedom and respect?

There were many in Germany living in constant fear, who had to go along or they’d be sent to a concentration camp. There were many who couldn’t fathom that horrors were being committed, because they were unfathomable. Impossible. Couldn’t possibly be. There were plenty more who were bitter and defeated and desperate for a chance to reclaim what Germany had once been. Have you ever read the terms of surrender from the Great War? The German people were stripped of so much. Of course they were bitter. Of course they felt oppressed. Of course they wanted to restore Germany to its former glory. Who wouldn’t? They were people. They were humans. They were a lot like you and me.

But there were the monsters too. The true believers. The people who not only couldn’t believe atrocities were happening or were trying to quietly fight them, people who not only had been educated into the Nazi mindset, but who craved it. Who helped form it. Who were the first to sign up for it. Who really, truly thought this was the way Germany would claim the future it deserved. Who really believed they needed to purify their society (that’s what they called it) and get rid of anything “disgusting.” It included Jews, yes, and other races that were “degenerate,” like Slavs, Romani, and Blacks. It also included homosexuals. People born with deformities. Those with mental illness.

Like you, I look at people who euthanized–MURDERED–children or handicapped or those with illnesses beyond their control, and I am HORRIFIED. My first, gut reaction is to call them what we probably all think they are. “Monsters!”

And by the definition we have in mind, they were. There were people who had embraced evil. Who were letting it cavort through their streets, their schools, their homes, and certainly their government agencies.

But friends, here’s the thing. They were not demons. They, themselves, were not evil. They were people. Human. People who embraced evil, thinking it was good. They were monsters who were also men. They weren’t born without souls. They weren’t something Other, something Else, something we could never be.

They were just…like…us.

And that is why I will humanize Nazis. That is why I will write a book with many examples of Germans, some “good” and heroic, some “bad” and villainous. Because WE, you and I, are the same. We have the potential to be heroes or villains. Good or bad.  And we need to be careful, friends. Always, in every generation, every country, every church, every political party. We need to be careful that our pursuit of what we think is best doesn’t lead us into drawing lines that dehumanize.

Because when we say someone is no longer human, that they’re just a monster…that means it doesn’t matter what we do to them. It doesn’t matter if they live or die. That they are beyond redemption. That God does not love them.

Whose lie does that sound like?

The Nazis used that very tactic, and it’s what we hate them for. So…how can we do the same to them and not fall into the same trap?

So yes. I have Nazis in my book. Some are villains…and one is my hero. Many others are somewhere in between. True believers but who will still protect someone they like. Indoctrinated youths who can still learn there’s another way. All of them, even the nasty ones, are people. They are humans.

And I will show that. Because the moment we stop seeing them that way is the moment we become more like them than any of us want to be.