This is going to be long, rambling and probably completely pointless. But I’m feeling emotional, epic and historical, and I’ve been thinking about some things for a while and now I’m going to write them down. So there. Also, I bought V for Vendetta today, the ending of which neatly illustrates some of the following.
In general terms, I believe that the broad strokes of history are shaped by huge, unfathomable socio-political, socio-economic, socio-prettymuchanything events that are far beyond the control of any individual human. The Soviet Union would have arisen in some form without Lenin or Stalin or Trotsky. Nazi Germany would have existed without Hitler. If George Washington had died as an infant, the US would still have been born.
That’s in general terms.
In specific cases, sometimes important and sometimes not, history comes down to particular people at particular times. Sometimes even one person at one special moment in time, and that person can do one thing (and be a hero) or do another (and be forgotten forever, or hated).
Everyone knows about the Berlin Wall, but how many people know the actual story of how it came to fall? I consider myself fairly well-read and educated, and I only found out a few months ago. Let me tell you the short version.
In November of 1989, in an uncharacteristic yield to reality, the East German government was going to let certain refugees cross the border between East and West Berlin. Günter Schabowski, the Minister of Propaganda, went on air on November 9th in part to announce the new rules. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on viewpoint) he had just come back from a holiday and had been inadequately briefed. As it happened, he simply said that East Germans would be allowed to cross the border to West Berlin. When would these new rules take effect? “Right now”. The result was that thousands upon thousands of East Germans flooded the checkpoints demanding the right to cross.
So we have a few East German armed guards facing down a huge crowd of their neighbours and countrymen. The guards phone frantically but receive no orders. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe no-one high enough in the hierarchy could be reached. Maybe no-one wanted to take the responsibility. Fact remains: orders weren’t issued. The guards were standing alone.
What did they do? Eventually, as it happened, they let the East Germans through. West Germans awaited on the other side, and a party started that lasted all night. The Wall was still physically present, but in practice it had fallen.
The guards could have chosen another path. They could have attempted to hold the crowds back. They could have attempted to block entry. This would probably have caused violence. Someone would have died. Maybe many people. The guards could have chosen to use deadly force. If they had, November 9th wouldn’t be the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I’m getting perilously close to my point. If the guards had started shooting that fateful night, the Wall wouldn’t have fallen that day. I don’t believe it would have fallen that month, that year, or even the year after. November 9th would rate a paragraph in the history book, describing the failed East German revolution of 1989, when masses of people converged on border crossings and were driven back to the thunder of automatic weapons.
So there and then, it came down to relatively few people making personal decisions. In the end, these guys chose not to shoot, not to risk the lives of their countrymen. Celebration ensued. The other way - tragedy. Then and there it didn’t ultimately come down to socio-anything, it came down to a small number of people making choices.
And in the end, isn’t that how everything happens? Dictatorships don’t survive because of the dictator, but because of the people who obey the dictator. Everyone who shoots or rapes or tortures can choose not to, and if enough do the dictatorship comes crashing down. In the end, every government does live in fear of its people, because the government is its people. When people rise up, it’s other people - people in uniforms, usually, but still people - who are supposed to stop them. They can always choose not to.
Therein somewhere lies my point, well hidden though it may be. Even though history as a whole seems beyond the control of individual humans, we can always be put into a situation where everything hinges on us, and we can choose what to do. As Christopher Browning said, ultimately the Holocaust happened because many people killed many other people during a long period of time.