Helpless
Defenseless
Definition: Ohnmacht (in the Langenscheidt dictionary)
-1. unconsciousness caused by fainting;
-2. helplessness;
-3. powerless;
"Ohnmacht" is a scary word in any language. In a military context—like that of the Süddeutsche Zeitung article by that name—Ohnmacht means that the leaders of a city or country look through binoculars at the front positions of the enemy, at the columns of troops arrayed against them, and at the rows of artillery pieces and rocketry, ready to pound away at the loyal troops. The leaders' stomachs turn cold, their scrotums shrink, and they whimper in despair, "We're done! We have to give up."
Consider the wars of the past. During World War II, many nations felt the heartbreak of helplessness in the face of attack—Poland, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. Adolf Hitler wasted an entire generation of young men in his effort to conquer the World. As he faced defeat on all sides, he conscripted old men and boys as young as 13 the prolong the lost cause. Holed up in his underground bunker and unable to accept imminent defeat, Hitler fantasized about non-existent armies all set to bail him out.
Ordinary Germans had no such luck. My old German teacher's son-in-law grew up in Hamburg and experienced the bombing of the city by armadas of American and British bombers. Fires spread and burned for days, sucking the oxygen from the air into a fiery whirlwind, called a "fire-storm," and asphyxiating thousands of Hamburgers in the basements and shelters of their homes. Perhaps 40,000 Hamburgers died in a single night of bombing. The military commanders and city leaders could only watch with almost unbearable dread as their beautiful city burned.
That could never happen to America, of course! Of course, it couldn't! We have always thought of our nation as invincible; but many now have second thoughts on this point, given the level of disunity and paranoia that grips our nation. Other nations and entities have caused grievous loss to our nation, but we have always dished out commensurate payback to give other nations second thoughts about attacking us.
Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The Allies executed over 600 German officers and political leaders for war-crimes. The Allies also executed Japanese military leader Hideki Tojo and a thousand other Japanese, military personnel and civilian administrators, for war-crimes. American Special Forces assassinated Osama Bin Laden. A drone-hit took out his deputy Ayman al-Azwahiri, and much of the other Islamic entities. So far, we have prevailed against our enemies. I wonder how long that will last?
America, we have a problem! Our problem is similar to the problem of France before World War II. Many historians have expressed open disgust with France's behavior during the War. Confronted with the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the French responded with a Sitzkrieg. Their soldiers just sat it out. Why did this debacle happen? Tony Judt provides one answer in his book Reappraisals, published in 2008. Writing about France before World War II, Judt reports "For much of the 1930s, it had proved imposssible to form a stable government." The Conservative Right and the Socialist Left could not agree enough to hold power for more than a few months. The deep divisions in the nation greatly hampered its ability to defend itself. The German Wehrmacht just rolled over the lackluster French defenders. The lack of a unified leadership made defeat inevitable.
Americans are foolish to deny the level of defeatism in the nation today. Can we actually defeat our enemies in battle? Can we muster enough patriotism and unity to rally after inevitable attacks from our foes in Russia and China? Like Dostoyevsky once said, if we cannot decide the question in the positive, we will nevertheless never decide it in the negative. Only a division of the nation will save us at this critical juncture.
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