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PART 2: The 1930s |
Here War Is Simple W H Auden Here war is simple like a monument: For living men in terror of their lives, But ideas can be true although men die, And maps can really point to places
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INDEX the first world war
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INFORMATION
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HISTORY The concentration camp at Dachau in Germany was opened on March 9 1933, less than a week after Hitler became supreme ruler. Almost at once several thousand people were imprisoned there (without trial) because they opposed Hitler's Nazi government. They included Communists, Socialists and Liberals, many of them academics and other distinguished people. Later, thousands of German and Austrian gypsies and Jews were held there before being deported to death camps set up in Poland. The Dachau camp was run by the SS (vast paramilitary organisation) and with great brutality; many prisoners died there from ill-treatment, or were killed. In 1944 and 1945, when the Germans were hastily emptying concentration camps set up outside Germany, many surviving Jews were sent to Dachau on 'death marches'; those who collapsed were left to die. When American troops liberated Dachau in 1945 they found many dead, but also 33,000 starving survivors - only 2,531 of whom were Jewish.
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IDEAS This poem is deceptively simple. It travels along several paths at once. It draws attention to the tranquillity and order of the headquarters where military decisions are made, and where those who will die are not seen as individuals, more as counters on a game-board. (Notice the impersonal objects: telephone, flags, maps, bowls.) The poem shows that a few people can make a 'plan' for the deaths of many, and carry it out. The poem shows that an idea - Nazism, Communism, Fascism, any political idea associated with power or fear - can be used to whip up mass enthusiasm. Carried on this emotional wave , crowds of people will eagerly sanction and support the killing of others who have opposing ideals and ideas. Maps are diagrams showing locations and the routes between them. Maps indicate regions in an abstract, diagrammatic way; they don't show people, or what is happening to them. Maps don't show how easy it is to be cruel from a distance, and how soon it becomes easy to be cruel close to. (But both maps and people can be biased.) As this poem was published (in 1939) war was about to begin in Europe, where the brutalities of Nanking and Dachau would be repeated over and over again. How can writers get people to listen to their warnings of war? |
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