Many lives were lost unnecessarily for a despicable war that has had a lasting negative postwar impact postwar in the areas of hatred, racism, and fascism.
Some past lives never stop their karmic toll on the body and mind, stuck between redemption, resolution, self-forgiveness, and self-loathing. This is my story and the past life I am trying to reconcile, living in a house full of soldier ghosts who've decided to join me to help me write my story and to confront my once-upon-a-time life in Germany. They share their stories of bloodshed, and of the horrors they’ve committed. But some of them like Hermann, or Ernst, as he asked me to call him, also share about the lives they left behind when the war began. Like many depicted here, Ernst included, their lives ended in battle. Many lives were lost unnecessarily for a despicable war that has had a lasting negative postwar impact in the areas of hatred, racism, and fascism.
Semantics & Propaganda: A Synergistic Blend of Hate
To understand this better, we have to examine certain areas, including semantics. The term semantics refers to how words can have various meanings and implications. For instance, prior to the rise of the Third Reich, and barring synonyms, words such as hatred, racism, and fascisms were not known by any other names.
Since World War II, these words are often synonymously used with the term Nazism, which is perhaps a testament to the Nazi propaganda machine orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis had applied such a ubiquitous kind of branding to their political ideology that to this day, most people in the world, when confronted with a swastika immediately think Nazis, instead of its previously associated meanings and symbols adopted by various past cultures and religions.
Like Nazism, the image of swastika is unwaveringly associated with words like hatred, racism, and fascism. In this way, Hitler is getting what he always wanted---a thousand-year reign. World War II may be over and the Nazi killing machine may have been stopped, but the fallout of the fascist regime reverberates to this day.
1990s Goth Culture & the Fascist Haircut
I won't lie, I'm a fan of the undercut hairstyle. Unfortunately, it has recently been rebranded as the the "Hitler Youth" haircut or fascist haircut, thanks in part to to the alt-right. Nevertheless, the clean-cut hairstyle, particularly worn by flaxen-haired young men, had also been previously usurped by the Nazis and brazenly displayed in their propaganda posters to symbolize the look and feel of an ideal Aryan man. But the hairstyle became popular long before the Nazis. Iterations of the hairstyle began to reappear in Western culture the1920s (this hairstyle had been popular in other time periods before the 1920s) and by the time Hitler came to power, the style came to associated with the Aryan race. The original photos I've posted here give you a sense of just how ubiquitous this style was.
Growing up in the 1990s and being a part of the Goth subculture, the undercut hairstyle was ubiquitous in the subculture. For a time in my youth, I too wore this haircut (albeit with a longer top, dyed jet black). During that time period, and particularly for young women like myself, the hair cut symbolized irreverence and nonconformity. Furthermore, I found the style on guys exceedingly sexy, and admittedly, my attraction for the hairstyle hasn't wavered over the years. So when the neo-Nazis and white supremacists dominated the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville in 2017, the press was quick to pinpoint some interesting observations in the footage of the rally, including the fascist haircut that was previously adored by hipsters in the 2010s, now adopted by "nipsters" (neo-Nazi hipsters).
Taboo Ephemera: My Photo Collection & Why
I collect these items not because I believe in demented ideologies. I collect these things because they are directly tethered to an unspeakable past, and this helps me to psychically understand the history, feeling the consequences of fascism...
I've written about how this dark photo collection began in a previous post that you can read here. World War II photos, particularly those from Germany were not a category of interest. When Hans first appeared in 2010, after being with me primarily under the radar for 17 years and seldom orchestrating paranormal activity, his presence inspired my interest in collecting antique photos. I started my obsession by collecting Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, carte de visites, and cabinet cards of young blond men.
"Normandy": The Luftwaffe Ghost & the Portal
“Normandy,” said the Luftwaffe paratrooper to me in the middle of the night, two summers ago, kickstarting this a whole new level of paranormal events I was unprepared for. “Normandy,” he said again. “Start there and work your way back.”
So I did, and the more I delved into the history and into their pasts, the more the ghosts took a cosmic detour into my house. Some of them have stayed on or swing by as soon as I think of them. Visiting spirits that come whenever they feel like it. Soldiers in uniforms and civilian clothes. The more they visit, the more my obsession for collecting these photos grows.
History teaches us nothing. We shelf the lessons from the past again and again. Or maybe we’re just doomed to repeat it...
I collect these items not because I believe in demented ideologies. I collect these things because they are directly tethered to an unspeakable past, and this helps me to psychically understand the history, feeling the consequences of fascism whenever I graze my fingers over an energetically charged photo or object.
What both fascinates and disturbs me about Nazi military portraits are the untarnished faces of youth that had no idea of what was in store for them and what brutality they’d unleash. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that many soldiers in the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe got a thrill from killing. The transcripts of bomber pilots “mowing down”soldiers and civilians alike, the indiscriminate bombing that “was great fun.” The word “Fun” is repeatedly seen in the transcripts.
Back to the topic of portraits. For me, it’s about looking at the faces to get a sense of the young men in uniforms. Were their portraits taken before they entered battle? Some of the faces seem to indicate this. Most don’t appear gaunt–the consequence of hunger and crystal meth (AKA Pervitin, Pilot’s Salt, Panzerschokolade). A lot of times, their innocent-looking faces contradict their uniforms–headshots of boys merely auditioning for the roles of bad guys in a film. But some of them look the part of killers with forced a composure on their faces that are nearly compromised by the look in their eyes or the subtle smirks on their faces.
Through these photographs, I try to understand the soldiers’ perspectives, as well as my own whenever I dare to regress into this past life, trying to uncover clues about myself, the person I had been back then, so long ago and still so haunted and ashamed by it all.
Today, reluctantly keeping up with the president-elect’s disgusting undoing of the small steps the US has made in the right direction–the president-elect whose name sickens me to even say it, I can’t help but think that this has all the making to become 1933... and I want no part of this hatred, of this homophobic, white supremacist mentality–not after having lived through it in a previous life in a country that detonated itself into near extinction.
History teaches us nothing. We shelf the lessons from the past again and again. Or maybe we’re just doomed to repeat it, too hardwired in our reptilian brains to change the course of our cyclical history.
For me, confronting the past and directly accessing the stories from the dead is not only a cathartic experience, but it helps me to understand how civilization can spiral into death and destruction so rapidly. History, as it unfolds in the present, is difficult to evaluate. Accounts of civilians and soldiers alike who lived in Nazi Germany were that of denial or an inability to believe that something so horrifying would be committed by their country. And yet it happened. And it can happen again.
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