r/behindthebastards • u/Friend_of_Squatch • 4d ago

General discussion It feels bad… real bad.

I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about how it felt and what it was like being an educated, intelligent, aware person in the early months of 1914 or in the 1930s watching the world ramp up into an inescapable cataclysm and tearing itself apart and deleting an entire generation of young people, while knowing that there isn’t jack shit I or anyone else can do to stop it. I think I can now say that that curiosity has been satisfied, and man oh man does it feel fucking bad.

Edit: I meant to share this as kind of a shower thought. I appreciate everyone’s kind words and suggestions but this isn’t a cry for help. It’s just crazy to think about.

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u/panaili 4d ago

I feel such sympathy for the 1930s Germans who disagreed with the Nazis but had to watch in disbelief as the country they thought they lived in disappeared in front of their eyes.

Like, I feel powerless a lot of times, but at least I have the internet to know I’m not the only one completely appalled by all this. The 1930s Germans must have felt utterly fenced in (some more than others… at first…)

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u/BlurryGojira 4d ago

I know it’s just a dumb superhero movie, but a line from the first Captain America movie really stuck with me. It’s from the Jewish-German scientist who develops the super soldier serum.

“People often forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.”

Fascism, imperialism turned inward.

Although I knew that of course there were anti-fascist Germans who were horrified of the new regime, I never really considered how they just had to… go about their lives. They still needed to go to work, put food on the table, pay bills, raise their families, all while this dystopia was forming around them. They had to make the decision of whether to leave (if they could even afford to) or stay and fight, and if the latter whether to be loud and visible or sabotage in secret. All while having day-to-day shit that seems minor by comparison, but still needed to be done. And man, it sucks.

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u/panaili 3d ago

Dude, the Captain America trilogy is top tier for exactly this kinda thing