38: Navigating Societal Resilience. Lessons from the Holocaust with Dan McMillan

We had a fabulous conversation about resiliency and human rights , and I think you're really going to enjoy this episode . Find Notes on Resilience on Apple Podcasts . Please subscribe and , if you like the show , we'd love for you to leave a review . I'm also looking for feedback what's working , what's not working and I've got a Google form for you to fill out .

I'm busy planning episodes for 2024 and I want to make sure I'm giving you the content that you really want . Thanks so much and enjoy this episode . Hey Dan , I'm so excited you and I are talking today . Thanks for being here . It's really great to be with you , manja . Thank you very much .

Before we get into the details about who you are and what you do , I would love to know if you could have any superpower . What would that be ?

I feel that I now work in politics and my goal is getting big money out of politics because , together with our presidents lying to us about wars , those two things across the last 60 years have robbed us of so much of our say in how we are governed and the people who run this country no longer have the faith in the American people's capacity for idealism , no

longer have the faith in the greatness of the American people . I think we should , because , having studied our history , most people who teach American history study only American history .

I study German history and when you can lay our history alongside that of other countries although we're not perfect in fact , I don't even say we're better than anyone , because we're flawed human beings just like everyone else , but we have , thanks to the way our history is developed , I think , a unique capacity for idealism .

That has come through again and again in our history . But right now I feel that my fellow Americans are beaten down , particularly when it comes to politics . People in politics are utterly cynical about the people .

A lot of people feel hopeless and discouraged and I guess , if I could it's one of the things I try to do when I go out there is to try to just remind us that this is a special country , that we stand for ideals . Part of our conversation today will be about how that's been more true in some periods of our history and others .

And in some ways , the crisis of the Second World War and the horrors that it brought on in Europe and Asia kind of helped clarify for us the kind of people we want to be and the kind of people we're capable of being . That's part of our resilience and the resilience of human civilization . To kind of close the circle Wow .

Then , in 2014 , I've written three books , but this is the only one that's been published , and it's how could this happen ? Explaining the Holocaust as a really the only essay out there for the general public on the causes of the Holocaust that pulls all the different factors together in an overview .

And then , already at the time that I was writing that , began researching and writing a book about money and politics , because it's really the biggest , I think , reason that the American people have been shut out of an inflow , I would say , in their own government is that campaigns are so expensive and candidates listen to the people who donate money for these

campaigns . I started working on that 2020 .

I decided that writing a book was not going to have enough of an impact and I started Save Democracy in America , my nonpartisan , not-for-profit organization , and I promote voter owned elections , which is a particular approach to fixing this problem where , basically , the government would give every registered voter an allotment of cash to donate to campaigns , and if

candidates get their money from us rather than from Big Pharma , big Oil , they serve us . And you know how does this all come together in the way of resilience . I think that the Holocaust was the most shocking , the most thorough assault on the principle that an individual human life has value .

It was , in some ways , the moral and the dear , the moral lowest point of human history , and it's so Impressive to me the way that our civilization has recovered from it has to .

Not that there isn't plenty of horrors today and there will be genocide in future , but when I talk about our civilization , and talking especially about the world's most advanced societies Germany was one of our most advanced societies Did this horrifying thing ?

Yeah , and in response to that , both those of us who conquered Germany and the Germans themselves gained a moral clarity that left us all determined to Improve , to rise to a higher moral plane , to not let ourselves do anything like this again .

And this has made all of our societies that is what you think of as the first world societies , I think , morally more decent and superior that to any human society before , and so this is a wonderful example of how recovering from a trauma , whether individual or civilizational , can leave you stronger .

I would be if I had not had to bounce back to overcome those experiences . No , bouncing back and overcoming is not a foregone conclusion . You have to rise to it , as you know yourself , as you yourself have learned through your experiences and . I guess it's . I've always been a firm believer in gaining strength through adversity .

You know , two role models for me have been Franklin and owner Roosevelt . Franklin , without having to fight his way back from the loss of his legs a lot of people think he might not have had the strength to lead us Through the Great Depression and World War two oh , wow , okay .

And in Eleanor , and also the compassion that she , that he had for , for Americans of all social classes , a kind of compassion that wasn't necessarily typical for people at his privileged background , because he really was aristocracy .

And Eleanor , remarkably you'd never think it from her career grew up as a very fearful person and she just decided I don't know , when it was age 16 or 18 she said I'm just gonna find whatever scares me and go out and do it . So I'll biography , and that Is kind of a lot of the jetty of my life , because I was a very fearful teenager .

So I set out to become a rock climber and you know , when I was 19 , for the , I mean I climbed . I climbed El Capitan three times , which is the biggest rock ball in North America , is 3,000 feet high , took us four days , we had to spend the nights on ledges and that's kind of been a lot of my life has been about

seeking out fear to grow stronger by overcoming it , and you know , writing a book about Holocaust was part of that , because that's , for me , the most terrifying event in history , because it's a direct assault on the value of all our lives . Yes , you often about 19 different directions , monty , and I apologize , that's what happens .

I warn you this could happen .

And you know how have we as a people , as a country , as a world , demonstrated resilience in the aftermath of that horrible , horrible event ?

And although we were ourselves in some ways , although we were ourselves horrifyingly racist in the treatment of black people in our southern states , led by President Roosevelt , we came in the way that he and others , the government , explained World War II to the American people to say we're actually fighting a war against racism and racial prejudice is not the American

way and being an American has nothing to do with race or creed or language or anything else . It's about our democratic ideals . And so , as a description of American society in the reality of Jim Crow , it may not have been all accurate , or you could say that in many ways it was inaccurate .

Grossly , in that horrifying way , that challenge , the need to inspire Americans to fight against these ultimately , ultimately evil regimes led us to clarify a sense of national purpose .

It also clarified for us something that had been very much part of our identity in many points of our history , but not all , certainly in the Civil War , I think in World War I II , that they were defined by ideals , that one of these ideals is quality of opportunity , individual freedom , government by the people , and that it's part of who we are to beat the

champions of these ideals , that we have a duty to do so . And so , when the war was over , we and the other Allied Powers that conquered Germany , we articulated , you know , in the Nuremberg trials we articulated an entirely new crime , crimes Against Humanity , that had not existed before .

There had been genocide throughout history , but genocide became named and described in the UN Convention Against Genocide . It was really only in the Nuremberg trials that a war of aggression became a crime .

It was a capital crime in Nuremberg , and also in the trials that we carried out in Tokyo , where it was up to that point , if a greater , a larger power , a great power decided to invade a smaller power , for whatever reason , it was sort of like well , that is international law , is the law of the jungle , the notion that that was immoral and must be illegal ,

you know . So we sort of in reaction to these horrors , we said no , we've got to lay down new rules , we have to become better . And also because we articulated , because our government and the whole country said look , we're Americans , we fight for freedom , we stand for freedom , we stand for democracy .

That subtle well , not so subtly delegitimized the racism of our society . And black Americans took the opportunity . You would see not large numbers , but marches in front of the White House and DC with signs that say segregation is not the American way , it is Hitler's way . And there's no answer to that argument , because they were right and the NAACP went .

Besides the data , the Congress of Racial Equality but I'm pretty sure it was the NAACP during World War II , went from 50,000 members to a half a million members , wow , yes .

And then of course also those American , all the black soldiers , although they were for the most part denied the opportunity to prove themselves in combat , except in the Battle of the Bulge and if you had the cases . Nonetheless , they contributed mightily to the war effort you know , as troops , absolutely .

And they came home thinking well , listen , I fought for freedom overseas , why can't I have this freedom here at home ?

Right , and so you know , we date the Civil Rights Movement off into the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 54-55 , and a lot of ways the groundwork was laid during the war , right , and then the years in which the Civil Rights Movement achieved its greatest victories the two laws you know , the Civil Rights Act of 64 , the Voting Rights Act of 65 , so much of the to get

those two bills passed . The Southern filibuster in the Senate , which was very difficult because back then you needed 67 votes for cloture to end the filibuster rather than 60 today . Johnson needed massive white support outside the south .

Yes , and white support did not come from any affection that white Northerners or Westerners felt for their black neighbors , because the fact is the prejudice was intense against black people north and south . But both Dr King and also Kennedy and Johnson said to Americans look , appealing to national pride .

You know that we stand for these ideals and segregation is un-American , which it was and it is , you know , for me , and that argument was incredibly powerful .

So I guess that is kind of the pathway , or one of the pathways , by which I see the trauma of the Second World War leading to resilience and to our country becoming stronger and really the whole world becoming stronger , because we became the world's model democracy , the leader of the free world . People looked up to us around the world for inspiration .

So much of that was made possible in reaction to Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan and the horrible things they did .

How is it possible that , on this large scale , the government in the country is fighting for human rights overseas and standing for the good I'll say yeah and then not bringing those values back down here on the streets to the individuals living in this country ? How is that possible ?

No , I mean which is a really good point I think that the thing that you have to remember about about slavery and how long it took to over that , go overcome that and you needed a civil war and then the battle for civil rights is that the subordination of black Americans in our country wasn't just a prejudice .

I mean , a prejudice was developed and and articulated and given a lot more sort of intellectual window dressing from people in academe and the people in the eugenics movement and so on , then kind of any of the prejudice we had . But it was also a complete social and political and economic system .

Yes , and one of the things that's really impressive about the triumphs of the civil rights movement is those two laws really were . They completed a chief revolution in the south . They overturned an entire social , political , economic system .

They they essentially destroyed what had been white Americans and black Americans in the south , entire understanding of who they were and where they belonged in the world and their place in the world . It obviously didn't end the oppression of black people . It didn't raise the amount of poverty . It didn't put a quick , immediate end to discrimination .

But I mean , I guess you know . Getting back to the answer your question of why it's possible , you know it's amazing . People are able to sustain contradictions in their heads .

They're able to believe two things that are utterly contradictory at once if it suits their best interest , and in the case of southern white people , they were so used to one of the things psychologically having the psychological benefit of always feeling there's a huge category of humanity that they're automatically superior to , no matter how low they are in white

society . That alone is this massive benefit to them . Yeah , so in some ways , the fact that it was that those two laws were able to overturn it and that there wasn't a lot more bloodshed in the south in the 60s is to me in some ways impressive . I mean , there were probably about 50 civil rights workers who were murdered in the 50s and 60s .

That's the biggest thing that's happened . 60s , that's . That's a figure that I've often been told . I don't know an exact tally .

Nonetheless , when you consider how drastic the change was , I guess for me as an historian looking at other revolutions in history , this strikes me as relatively bloodless and I guess I could say testimony to our country's capacity for resilience .

I'm curious you know the role of our government or institutions or our systems quote unquote in supporting us as Americans , as individuals , in recovering from traumas and in building our resilience . Do you feel like that is actually happening and you know why , or why not ?

I guess the question of the proper role of government in society and how much government should be spending on that would be qualify social welfare spending . So if I see something one way or another on that , that kind of gets across purposes with my current project Absolutely and I really have to be careful .

Okay , because it might be so polarized and getting money out of politics is something that we can all get on board with . I stick to that . I said in another interview actually I won't take a stand for motherhood and it's just about that extreme , okay .

That is just the the enormous value of believing in human goodness , capacity for goodness , in believing in yourself , in Believing in the better angels of your nature . I think that is a general proposition .

When you appeal to the good and people , when you show them that you expect them to do the right thing as Opposed to expecting to well , if you show people that you expect them to behave badly , that's what you're gonna get , and we all have good potential . But it's amazing when you , when you show people that you expect the good in them ,

then it comes out . I think what is also , I guess , in personal terms , one of things that that that saddens me so much is I . I feel like Most people I meet don't feel as good about themselves as they deserve to , mm-hmm . And when I look so much at political commentary and also when I hear people talk about the Holocaust .

There's , the Holocaust is so horrifying . People take it as an opportunity to justify pessimism about the human future . Yeah , and I understand that because it is horrifying , but on the other hand , it's not the only thing we've ever done in history . We've done a lot of other things to succeed better .

And , and I guess here's something that that I guess that I think is useful for resilience , that both for personal and for For a society , because our capacity for resilience , I think it's going to be tested rather mightily in the coming decades For all kinds of reasons the environmental problems , the world being so overpopulated , and and for other reasons as well .

I think that you know people talk about the lessons of history . Yes , and the more confidently someone starts talking about the lessons of history , often the less history they seem to have studied , because there's not , they're not generally applicable lessons .

But I'll tell you there's two that , after four decades of studying history Both inside and outside the academy , that strike me as is indisputable mania .

One is that it is an ineradicable element of human nature to desire freedom , to determine your own fate , to not live by the arbitrary will of others , to not be pushed around , to not be dominated , to want to develop your own potential as you see fit , to make your own choices , and For that reason , I feel very strongly that every autocratic form of government

in history is going to fail . I mean , I feel , frankly , that Capitalism works . Nothing else does people want ?

I mean , you can talk about there all kinds of arguments about how best to regulate a capitalist economy , or how many you know , how high should taxes be , or how low and how much the government do , or how little , but fundamentally , the idea of not having the government plan the economy and having business be in private hands .

There are a lot of reasons why that's the only way to go , and one of them is just this , this human desire for freedom . Likewise , you know the rulers of China right now , xi Jinping . They seem to think that their way of government , their former government , is the wave of the future and they are going to be sorely disappointed .

I'm not saying that they're not dangerous or that we can't , must not be vigilant because we must Against military aggression and all kinds of other kinds of aggression politically from them .

But on the other hand , when I hear people in our country , leaders , talking about oh my gosh , we're in this struggle between autocracy and democracy , I feel like sometimes I think it's it's very essential to be on our guard . We've actually underrated the the threat from China Substantially in recent years . Now we're kind of coming to see it more clearly .

On the other hand , let's approach this contest with with confidence . Let's not overreact at this or that minor setback , because Long run there is no contest . Mm-hmm democracy is the only thing that works .

Nothing else does , for all kinds of reasons , but one reason is this essential human desire for freedom and the other thing I feel I've seen from human history it is essential to our nature to want to improve , and that's why we're resilient , because we want to become stronger and better and Higher , and not just materially , not just .

We don't just want what nicer clothes or housing or material wealth , although we do aspire to progress and we aspire to getting better at our jobs and so on .

We're learning things in science , but we have always aspired to be better human beings , to be morally better and higher , and the belief in human perfect ability , moral perfect ability is that the root of to at least to some degree , I think , in all the world's great religious traditions and and just over the last three centuries of human history .

When I look at our country , or All of our friends and cousins in Europe , or allies in Europe and Asia , the moral progress We've made , how much more , even just in the last 60 years in this country and when you think about 60 years ago , like a woman wanting to have the kind of career you're having now mm-hmm .

And if a woman coming out of high school in 1960 , the year I was born who went around saying that she expected to run for president , it would have gotten her a warmly ticket to a psych ward , just to get one example . Or do I think that black Americans have a level playing field today ? I don't .

I think the engine , I think the injustice is still enormous . On the other hand , 60 years ago , wide-owned businesses in our country had one of two policies about hiring black people . One is just we don't hire black people . The other is , well , hire black people as janitors or eminial roles . You know .

So in our founding fathers a lot of them thought that owning slaves was morally acceptable . And those were . Those were great men and good men by the standards of any time . But all by , I'm saying I think this desire for progress is just a constant . Often progress is two steps forward , one step back . Sometimes it's one step forward and 30 steps back .

Yes , but that's those are , I guess , my thoughts about human resilience , about that .

But since then and I think it's been said and there was some writing done on this recently there was some good work actually about their first prime minister , conrad Adonauer , and this was delivered on his part . It was kind of the country has just undergone such trauma . We really just can't deal with this now . We got to rebuild .

We'll deal with this later but eventually they did and they really , when it comes to a people squarely and bravely facing the dark side of their history , the Germans are kind of the gold standard and they teach all of this in the schools . They have museums everywhere . They have this kind of memorial called Stumbling Stones .

All over Germany they built into sidewalks . They're little bronze plaques that stick a little bit out of the sidewalks so that you might clip it with your foot , not enough to trip you , hopefully , and it tells you at this address lived and they give the names like a Jewish couple and they were deported to Auschwitz and murdered on October 7th 1943 .

So that you're constantly reminded of it .

And I think that perhaps partly in consequence of that , that in Germany the democratic form of government is valued and revered in a way that I think it is almost nowhere else Except I think it still is here among the American people , although I don't think that it's revered among the people who are running our country , but I think among the American people it's

kind of in our blood in a way that it is and no one else's . But outside of this country , and in particular you consider that the Germans , germany today , in 1990 , they had to incorporate 17 million people from former East Germany who they and their ancestors had known nothing but dictatorship for four generations going back .

I think West Germany was like 65 million or 63 million , east Germany was 17 million and yes , they do have a radical white-brained party and it's stronger in the former East .

But the fact is that even with that challenge incorporating all these people who you know had so little experience with the democratic form of government they are , I think Germany may well be the strongest democracy on earth , the most stable . So if you want another example of humanity's capacity for progress and resilience . That's a good one .

I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency , compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil .

If this is something you want to learn more about , visit my website , wwwmaniacilinskicom , or email me at mania at maniacilinski , or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter . Thanks so much .