Initial Response: Our Secret

I don't usually like it when they title essays, books, movies, or stories about one thing they talk about or one little part of the whole, but I like the title of this one. To take some from what we talked about in class, she uses a lot of obvious comtrasts when going back and forth between the italicized parts and the "story." The isolated quotes by I think Schreber? The pedagogue, I believe a doctor, who had the fucked up views about raising children. Those quotes anyway, do a really good job of villainizing the character, who probably was just a horrible guy, I didn't really get a chance to look into it.
This piece shows how slowly and steadily the country, at least the German nationalists, went insane and led the country to insanity, one of the worst atrocities of man, certainly the most clearly remembered and recorded one of our time.
I like this quote, also, "...the nature of the material world frustrates our efforst to remain free of the suffereing of other." A lot of parts of this are truly disturbing. I like that she recognizes that their childhoods were probably a part of their insanity, there are a number of things that led to the Nazi party's interest in genocide, so there's no one answer to the question "What could make a person conceive the plan of gassing millions of human beings to death?"
The first World War and its horrors, the Germans seem almost like they're looking for their old sense of pride...they're paranoid, thinking Jews control all of these secret police organizations and economies. The linguistic aspects of relating Judas to Judaism.
I like how she sweeps into the comparison of her own father the racist, pictures him as lonely, in a dark room, with complex emotions he can't articulate or himself understand. Then his blind rage and retiring into an expent "fog," maybe symbolizing that he himself is "spent."
The essay dulls down a bit as she talks about photographs, as she herself said Himmler isn't a very solid, defined person, but sort of a collage of opinions with little relation to each other, I don't get the feeling while reading the piece that I'm getting to know Himmler any better.
I really pity these poor repressed people of this time and country, their childhood sounds horrible, their careers disgusting, and their deaths seem like the only brightspot (I've read some other stuff about Nazi leaders).
The missile metaphor is a bit of a stretch, but she does do a good job of keeping these various stories and metaphors tied together, even tying it into her own lie and the similar conditions of 1950's America, possibly relating McCarthy to Himmler on 332 (not a far off comparison).
I think she's pretty on target when she asks if the Doctor was actually afraid of children. I think the Nazis were just terribly afraid, pathetic people beaten into this condition by repression of themselves, denying themselves. They hated themselves because they feared themselves, hence Himmler's dismissal of all the physical qualities he himself had, and the (creepy) admiration of the physical aspects of people he probably envied as a child, being something of a "runt."
The bitterness of their parents at the humiliation, loss of life, social status, economic power, and culture from the outcome of World War I plays a part, also. Germany was made to feel isolated, as though no one was on their side, and Europe certainly wasn't. Europe had a clear anti-German agenda from 1918 to World War II, a poor political move that resulted in an unstable country.
The story from the woman who survived the holocaust, about way before when the little boy gets surrounded and made fun of for being Jewish, this is a good example of the neglect the situation received. There were a lot of signs that Germany was going insane at the time, hindsight is 20/20, but still it would seem obvious that their sense of nationalism was beginning to go overboard, their racism and eugenecist theories were gaining popularity, they were re-militarizing, and a major political party change occurs so there's a crazy, passionate, angry new leader. It seems like it was kind of obvious they were setting up a psychotic regime/war machine.
The middle is disturbing and dry, the most interestingpart, I think is when Himmler lacks the courage to escape, breaking down and telling the guards who he is. Maybe it was some part of a conscience in him coming out, maybe he wanted to die, to kill himself, an excuse to drive himself to swallow that pill. Maybe I'm incredibly bitter, I'm only of half-Jewish descent, and it's through my father's side, not my mother's, so technically by birth a gentile, this doesn't slant my opinion whatsoever...it would seem only fitting if it were a black homosexual who was the one who stripped him and saw his exposed scrawny body that he was so ashamed of before he swallowed that pill. He almost had to have known it would go down that way.
I wonder if it was pride or shame that caused them to commit suicide. With the Japanese, I'd say pride, but the Germans I think shame.