On Tyranny Lesson 5: Remember professional ethics

I write this on the day that prez tRump visited the DOJ and gave a speech that was touted as one about “law and order” but which (once again) became a list of his grievances and vows to target his enemies. Pam Bondi remarked at the event that they are “not going to stop serving him.” Him. Lawyers at the DOJ take an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, but it seems that that allegiance no longer applies among the leadership. For me, this is a clear violation of professional ethics.

During Nazi Germany, it was not only the lawyers who violated their professional ethics, as Snyder points out. Doctors did as well — carrying out mass exterminations, conducting horrific medical experiments, violating the Hippocratic Oath. So too, teachers taught Nazi racial ideology and instructed children to be obedient to the Fuhrer. Industrialists took over Jewish factories and businesses. Many threw out their ethics in favour of achieving power and status. I think ethics and morals can be malleable if people succumb to greed, ambition, and power. But one can also abandon ethics out of fear and in order to protect oneself.

As for those that resisted Nazi requests, I have limited knowledge of what qualities they had, but I would say they were not deluded or persuaded by the “sparkle” of the Nazi ideology and they believed in higher principles than those the Fuhrer dictated.

As to the consequences…I do not think it ended well for those that resisted or stood out as “undesirable.” My Irish grandfather had a very good friend in Germany who was a scholar who studied languages in the 1930s. They exchanged books, research, and letters. When the Nazi Party rose to power, my grandfather’s friend wrote of his concerns and then suddenly fell silent. My grandfather reached out, trying to locate his friend but he never heard from him again. My grandfather’s friend was likely one of the thousands of “undesirable scholars” who were rounded up along with the Jews. As for the Nazi lawyers, many were tried in court. I believe Hans Frank (mentioned in this chapter) was tried in the Nuremberg trials and executed.

Swearing an oath to the Constitution if you are a lawyer or soldier, or taking the Hippocratic Oath if you are a doctor, is a powerful tradition — it tethers your ethics and profession to a higher cause, to a lasting legacy and history of those who have come before you and those who will come after you. Such oaths are directed to serve a higher purpose, to serve humanity, or one’s country. In modern democracies, it’s not to a leader, whose power and influence are temporary.

There may be several reasons that some people didn’t adhere to professional ethics in Nazi Germany. Some may have shared the same beliefs and vision for the world as Hitler, so when they were asked to do the things they did to further the objectives of the regime, they wanted to accomplish the same goals and did as they were asked willingly. Others may not have personally agreed with the objectives and directives, but felt pressured by authority figures and peers to do what was expected of them, ignoring their professional ethics in the process. There may also have been people who were forced to abandon their professional ethics due to threats to themselves or their loved ones. In most cases, it may have been the case that people were just trying to survive and did what they had to do. Professionalism at that point was not the top priority.

People who resisted Nazi requests stayed true to themselves and to the oaths or professional ethics of their professions, understanding what was normal for them, what was most important to them as professionals, and that what was being asked of them was not normal and not ethical. These are the people who do not obey in advance, who do not hate and dehumanize specific groups of people that the regime suddenly singles out from general society. These are the people who recognize the game that’s being played and refuse to join.

Survival of the fittest is the bottom line when threatened. I suspect that many people succumb to their ethics when it becomes a matter of survival. I have often wondered just how many of our Congressmen are threatened to act as the leadership wants. What form might those threats take? For those loyalists, those who swear an oath to greed and power, there is no question that they are as unethical as the leadership is. These are people without compassion or empathy for their fellow humans. They swear an oath to themselves and no one else.

For me the question is how strong am I? How courageous am I? What will I sacrifice to save those I love? I hope I never have to take that test.

Tara, that is an amazing story about your grandfather and his friend. I suspect there were others like him, unknown to most of us but people of deep integrity and conviction. That is probably true of the people who resisted Nazi demands. I agree with Libby, I hope my capacity to resist to the point of the costs some bore never comes to pass.

I suspect that some people don’t really expect themselves to be in a position that challenges their professional ethics or expects them to violate the oath they took. Ethical standards seem easily doable in the abstract. Most people would reject the idea of “just following orders” as an acceptable defense or justification for violating ethical standards or causing harm. Then they find themselves in an extreme situation or faced with paying a price they never imagined.

There are plenty of people who have no ethical standards, who are entirely comfortable with getting what they want at any cost to anyone else. We are discussing this book in this moment for exactly that reason. I am grateful for those who have the resources, power and convictions to oppose them. I am hoping we see enough of our legal system hold the line.

I think that this question is one of the biggest things I’ve pondered when I’ve read the history of WWII. My dad fought in that war, and I think he spent the rest of his life trying to figure out just how things got the way they did. He came to the realization that many of the people he fought against were human beings just like himself, who, in other circumstances, might have gotten along just fine. But they were all indoctrinated to believe certain things about one another; made to think of those other people as something different, as inhuman, as enemies. I think that in Nazi Germany, the same thing was attempted in the entire nation; certain evil, despicable leaders realized that they needed to dehumanize their opponents so that they could more easily be eliminated; and so, they began their campaign of propaganda and indoctrination, preying on people’s fears, pumping up their feelings of injustice and greed, and a desire to feel superior; threatening them if they didn’t go along with it, as well.

How much different it would/could have been, if every professional had stuck to their professional ethics; and yet, how impossible that probably was. Human nature being what it is, there are always going to be people who want all the power and wealth, and don’t care how they get it. There are many people who take professional paths for just that reason, and not at all for the ethical side of that profession. I know people who have chosen their profession simply for the paycheck and status they’ll reap from it; they pay lip service to whatever is asked, but it has never really motivated them. I think many of those who went along with the status quo in Germany did just that as well. Others, I think, were true believers that what they were doing was for the greater good; and some just wanted to be on the winning side, no matter what. But I don’t underestimate or discount the motivation of simply being afraid, of not wanting to die, of not wanting their loved ones to suffer. Open resistors did not last long, and that was just a fact. That was a very real threat, and unless we’ve been in that situation ourselves, I don’t think any of us can say what we would or wouldn’t do. I would hope I would stick to my guns and follow my conscience, but I think it’s human nature to want to survive, so who knows what compromises I would make. What I would much prefer is that we could all be more alert and aware of our world before it ever gets into such dire straits again, doing everything in our power to avert these situations. We do need our professionals to stand up and be ethical, and all our officials, and ourselves as well.