Mindset
The Silence at the Centre Is Deafening
“The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.“
– R. G. Collingwood
I went to see the film Nuremberg yesterday. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever watched, but it did what good history should do—it made me think again about what human beings are capable of, and why remembering the atrocities of the Nazi regime during the Second World War matters.
Not just those atrocities, but the countless others repeated throughout history when power distorts, seduces, and ultimately corrupts—even those who begin with good intentions.
History, unfortunately, is almost always written by the victors. In doing so, it often portrays the defeated as pure evil, a convenient simplification that makes the story easier to tell and easier to digest. But it is rarely the full picture.
In the case of Germany, that simplified recollection robs us of something critical: the ability to understand how ordinary people—people who wanted safety, peace, meaningful work, and to love their families—were drawn into something they never believed themselves capable of. Yet once the train was moving at full speed, stopping it was no longer an option.
That cultural train gathered momentum quickly. Survival increasingly depended on getting on board—or fleeing entirely. From where we stand now, this feels impossible to imagine. But it isn’t. It has happened repeatedly throughout history.
Fear—of death, pain, exclusion, or being ostracized—drives human neurology in powerful ways. Under enough threat, people will do things they never believed they would.
Most people, however, do not live at the loud, extreme ends of belief systems. Most live in the middle.
Maybe you believe wealth should be taxed more fairly so responsibility cannot be evaded through influence.
Maybe you believe both a woman’s autonomy and the value of unborn life matter, and you struggle with the tension rather than shouting slogans.
Maybe your faith guides your character and moral compass, but it does not grant you authority over others.
Maybe you believe in social support for those who are struggling, while also believing in accountability and self-sufficiency.
Maybe you believe strong nations are built by welcoming immigrants and understanding that diversity, over time and tension, strengthens society—but you also believe in constraints and limitations that keep society civil while remaining culturally vibrant.
Most people live here.
They want to contribute, raise good children, belong to a community, and leave some form of meaningful legacy—large or small.
But those who live in this space are rarely heard.
They don’t shout. They don’t dominate conversations. They don’t impose their beliefs on others because they aren’t convinced they possess absolute truth. They follow the laws, go to work, care for their families, and do their best.
And yet, that silence becomes dangerous when the microphone is seized by those who manipulate, polarize, and consolidate power—when decisions are made in service of self-interest rather than the collective good.
This is what happened in Germany.
The seeds were planted in the poverty and humiliation following the First World War and deepened during the Great Depression. People who cared for one another were slowly convinced that another group was the problem. That the world was against them. That only one man could restore greatness. Only one leader. The savior. The Führer.
Once aboard, life improved—work, money, safety, security. Life off the train became increasingly intolerable. Leaving became harder. Then nearly impossible.
As the train accelerated, people watched as rights, property, dignity, and ultimately lives were taken from others. Whether you agreed or not no longer mattered. You were now complicit. Survival—and eventually prosperity—depended on staying on board.
Truth became something to ignore, because acknowledging it would make survival unbearable. Slowly, imperceptibly, people became someone they never imagined being. And by then, there was no going back. The train would only stop when it crashed.
The cruel irony of this metaphor is that the powerless were placed on real trains, carried toward a horrific and inevitable fate.
History does not require monsters to function. It only requires momentum, fear, and enough silence.
This is not a claim of equivalence between eras, but a recognition that human systems repeat long before they recognize themselves.
During his testimony at Nuremberg, Hermann Göring—effectively second-in-command to Adolf Hitler—repeatedly attempted to do three things:
He deflected responsibility, portraying himself as a loyal servant of the state rather than an architect of genocide, emphasizing bureaucratic distance and claiming ignorance of the full scope of extermination.
He reframed loyalty as patriotism, arguing that Germans followed Hitler out of fear, national loyalty, and belief in leadership—not immorality—and insisted that any nation under similar conditions would behave the same.
And he justified continued allegiance, suggesting that even after defeat and exposure to atrocities, obedience had become so normalized, and dissent so dangerous, that continued loyalty was inevitable rather than a moral failure.
Understanding how people become complicit is not the same as excusing them—it is the only way to prevent repetition.
The lesson is not about where you sit on the political or ideological spectrum. It is about understanding how momentum, propaganda, and fear can pull even well-intentioned people along—and how power reliably corrupts those who seek to control it.
The men who were executed for their crimes largely believed they were innocent. They believed they were following orders. They believed they were correcting injustices done to their nation. They believed so deeply that they could no longer see the worst parts of themselves.
The danger is not that history repeats itself exactly, but that it advances quietly while ordinary people assume it cannot.
For those of us who live in the silent centre, quietly going about our lives, we must understand this truth:
The centre is not a place of safety.
It is a place of comfort.
And comfort breeds blindness.
Our silence is not neutral.
Our silence is deafening.
