Freedomain Radio

http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traffic_Jams/FDR_1126_Childhood_Origins_WWII.mp3

Amazing article. Thanks for posting this.

There's a lot to think about in this one.

I read a book once called "Hitler: The Pathology of Evil", by George Victor, that makes many similar claims about Hitler, but blames his psychology almost exclusively on his father rather than his mother... It's eerie to see some of the similarities and parallels between this book and that article. For instance:

...Klara's fourth child, Adolf, was her first to survive, and he too seemed sickly. Alois vented his frustration on Klara, "So you have failed me once more! Is it impossible for you to bear me a healthy child?"...

...The circumstances of his birth set off a chain of events, bringing suffering to Klara and [Alois'] sons and leading to the tragedy of the Third Reich. [Alois'] cruelty caused Adolf's self-loathing and craving for revenge. In turn, they led to failures in school and work and to the desperation in the call Adolf felt to become a hero. The story of Alois' mystery father was the source of Adolf's ideas that he himself was the victim of Jews and that his blood was Jewish. The phantom Jew may never have existed, but in Adolf's mind he was a powerful figure, standing behind the morbid obsession that drove him to bleed himself with leeches and, after he identified with Germany, to bleed the nation..

Something else occurred to me, while comparing these two views. Demause's article touches quite directly on the desire to defend the mother posthumously, and I think this book does that unwittingly (in the author's conclusions about the source of Hitler's evil). It's also interesting to see that desire manifested obliquely in the way Hitler himself was defended early on, by many germans - especially given Demauses' article's descriptions of Hitler as a sort of "motherly" figure:

...When the extent of his regime's destructiveness was revealed, Nazis defended him, saying Hitler did not initiate or even know about the worst. They argued that Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, or Bormann were mainly responsible and had manipulated Hitler. The evidence against that conclusion is overwhelming. The outline of the destructiveness to come was already in Hitler's mind when he wrote Mein Kampf in 1924, before Goebbels and others played their parts. The motives -- the cravings for revenge, for war, and for extermination of Jews -- were Hitler's...

One simultaneous thread I noticed also, comparing the two, is how this author attempts to exhonorate the German people as a whole, correctly arguing that Hitler was not manipulated (as above), but then claiming that he had somehow manipulated everyone else. While Demause rightly points out that the pathology was not simply Hitler's, but infected the whole nation. How else could such a man "manipulate" anyone?

Interesting podcast. I have never heard or read something about this bonding of infants like mummies. He builds up a part of his thesis on this though. I wonder what his sources has been.

Another column of his article is the motherland focus. This was not a common term when I lived in Germany what is a totally subjective impression of course and took part in another time.

I ask google and it says: 1,840,000 for "Vaterland" and 371,000 for "Mutterland". Maybe the motherland term got wiped out due to the occupation of different allies? This article didn't really convince me. There are parts that resonate. For example the abandonment of children and shipping them to relatives or leaving them in orphanges and "Knecht Ruprecht" or "Krampus" for the Austrians.

Lily Lucerne:

Interesting podcast. I have never heard or read something about this bonding of infants like mummies. He builds up a part of his thesis on this though. I wonder what his sources has been.

Swaddling children has been done for thousands of years. Here's a 16th century view on it:

. . roul it up in soft cloths and lay it in the cradle but in the swaddling of it be sure that all parts be bound up in due place and order gently without any crookedness or rugged foldings; for infants are tender twigs and as you use them, so will they grow straight or crooked. . lay the arms right down by the sides that they may grow right. . After four months let them loose the arms, but still roul the breast and feet to keep out cold air for a year till the child have gained strength. Shift the child’s clouts often for the Piss and Dung.

Now, I DO disagree with this author that for the first year of life a child could not move at all. But swaddling was indeed still in favor in Germany during the time he mentions.

Elizabethan era:

18th century (re-creation - see the whole process here.)

And even modern times.

 Add to that the native peoples of  the north americas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradleboard

"A cradle board is a typical North American Baby Carrier used to keep babies secure and comfortable and at the same time allowing the mothers freedom to work and travel. The cradleboards were attached to the mother’s back straps from the shoulder or the head. For travel, cradleboards could be hung on a saddle or travois. Ethnographic tradition indicates that it was common practice to cradleboard newborn children until they were able to walk, although many mothers continued to swaddle their children well past the first birthday.

Bound and wrapped on a cradleboard, a baby can feel safe and secure. Soft materials such as lichens, moss and shredded bark were used for cushioning and diapers. Cradleboards were either cut from flat pieces of wood or woven from flexible twigs like willow and hazel, and cushioned with soft, absorbent materials.

The design of most cradleboards is a flat surface with the child wrapped tightly to it. It is usually only able to move its head."

Here it was used to easily carry the baby and keep it nearby when working.

Why was this practiced world wide by so many unconnected cultures?

blondie:

 

Why was this practiced world wide by so many unconnected cultures?

 

Because it suited the conditions of life in those unconnected cultures. It kept babies close, kept them out of trouble, and kept them restrained so that the mothers could work, travel, or tend other (older) children without worrying that the infant was getting into things.

Of course, a mythology built up around it. For the Elizabethans, the mythology was that the child's limbs would grow crooked if they weren't swaddled, and that it was bad for babies to use their limbs for the first months of life. That's what an Elizabethan mother would have told you, probably, not that she was tying up her baby because she had 5 other kids and no birth control and needed to be able to leave the infant alone in its crib for hours at a time.

Maltreatment of infants caused a lot more wars than WWII. See the Hundred Years' War, for example.

Charlotte:

Maltreatment of infants caused a lot more wars than WWII. See the Hundred Years' War, for example.

Do you have a theory about the hundred years' war? I wonder what effects this had to the generations who were a child at this time. This constant state of war. Also taking into account that the soldiers were more often feared as rapist than as protector.

this is all so incredibly sad. I stopped at 15 mins in, didnt think i could continue hearing more.

Lily Lucerne:

Charlotte:

Maltreatment of infants caused a lot more wars than WWII. See the Hundred Years' War, for example.

Do you have a theory about the hundred years' war? I wonder what effects this had to the generations who were a child at this time. This constant state of war. Also taking into account that the soldiers were more often feared as rapist than as protector.

Sure do. Were I to write it out, it would be about a 50-page essay.

Suffice to say, male infants were tied up and left in cribs till they were a year old, rarely allowed access to their mothers and even more rarely to their fathers, taken away at age 7 to start fighting, generally first went to war at about age 14, fought in close combat whereby they were able to witness exactly what wounds they were inflicting, and even when they weren't at war were in constant peril of their lives because of plague, disease, invasion, and general disorder. People who did not go to war were not considered as men.

Reading the chronicles, there's a juvenility about the medieval mind - even about the minds of the supposedly learned counsellors of the kings, who were usually 40 and over. This comes, I think from becoming men too early, and becoming thrust into the public sphere too early. Just look at the horrendous lives and sad deaths of anyone who has been crowned king or queen as a child. (E.g. Mary Queen of Scots, Charles VI of France, etc.)

Don't even get me started on medieval attitudes towards sex. Whew!

Charlotte:

Don't even get me started on medieval attitudes towards sex. Whew!

I would like to hear an example

How was it to be a child, female and a queen?

It must be odd and I have trouble imagining it. The power or the illusion of it since you had adults giving you "advices" an illusion of choice (man, this is so twisted) that is handed towards you and the guilt that arises out of your decisions must be horrible. You must have been the ultimate scapegoat, not?

Well, for starters, one of the reasons Christianity thought sex was corrupt and evil was because child rape was almost universal in the early middle ages...

Stefan Molyneux:

Well, for starters, one of the reasons Christianity thought sex was corrupt and evil was because child rape was almost universal in the early middle ages...

I assume you mean early marriages. No matter how old the girls are when they were married, consummation usually didn't happen - in the case of most women - until age 16. Yes, for princesses royal, the age was sometimes 12. But popular literature of the 20th century has overblown it - 12th century handbooks on marriage state that the girl should be at the very least 16 and her husband over 20 before consummation takes place. This wasn't an aesthetic opinion - but a medical one.

But, like everything else in the middle ages, people's views of sex were entirely conflicted. Sex was a right thing - in order to produce heirs, and Jesus of course did say to be fruitful and multiply. Sex was a wicked and evil thing - according also to the Church, who thought carnality a mortal sin. It was the highest ideal - in the traditions of courtly love, which did almost more to shape the noble's mindset in the high middle ages than did Christianity. (Accounts of nobles who never even bothered to go to mass are pretty common - but everyone at least paid lip-service to the ideals of courtly love.) Eventually it was decided by church doctors that the enjoyment of sex was the bad thing - as long as it was done to get heirs, there was no problem. Huge tomes were written on whether it was ok to have sex with your wife if she was pregnant - trying to decide if that was the sin of carnality or not.

What was it like to be female? Depends entirely on time, place, and class. In the 12th century among the high-born of France, it wan't horrible. In the 14th century among the peasant class... god, I can't think of a worse time to have lived. Women in most times and places were confined to places near home, though of course there are great accounts of women who travelled over half the world with no male guardian. There were great female writers, ecclesiastics, even rulers in their own right. But we know of these, in large part, because they were exceptions.

As for childhood... The problem was... that there was no real concept in the medieval mind of childhood. There is very little mention of childhood or children in any of the practical manuals that were written. We have manuals written for women on the management of estates, on fashion, on manners, on how to employ the best servants, on how to make oneself beautiful, and 10,000 other things... but no manuals on how to care for children. Children were not seen as things to be protected or nurtured. There is one certainty in medieval literature: any child mentioned will always die. In every romance, in every novel... they all die. One took up adult pursuits as early as it was feasible - sometimes even earlier than 7. That's why I think medieval people were mostly so juvenile. They were trapped. And not allowed to be children when they WERE children. So they acted like children as adults.

I'm not sure how to convey any of this, LL, and I'm rambling methinks. Am going to cut it off here. But... the middle ages was specifically designed, I think, to breed broken people. Much like now.

Charlotte:

but a medical one.

I didn't know that. So Shakespeare's Juliet was the exception with 12, not?

Charlotte:

In the 14th century among the peasant class... god, I can't think of a worse time to have lived.

What was going on back then? I didn't know that there was a lot of information about that time. I don't know if I mix something up here but wasn't there a theory that the church added 300 years somewhere between year 500 ad and 1500 ad to give Christianity a bit of maturity? Do you know something about this?

Charlotte:

any child mentioned will always die. In every romance, in every novel

That gives indeed a good impression how people thought about childhood. It was probably more a fluke if one made it into adulthood. ( out of context:This reminds me of a person I once knew who noticed that in all the movies the gay person always died till the 90ies.)

Charlotte:

the middle ages was specifically designed, I think, to breed broken people. Much like now.

What do you mean? What specifical design today breeds broken people? I would assume there has been some progress. We are better in terms of child caring then ever before, not? Or has there been a time we know of when people realized the importance of childhood before?

Charlotte:

I assume you mean early marriages. No matter how old the girls are when they were married, consummation usually didn't happen - in the case of most women - until age 16. Yes, for princesses royal, the age was sometimes 12. But popular literature of the 20th century has overblown it - 12th century handbooks on marriage state that the girl should be at the very least 16 and her husband over 20 before consummation takes place. This wasn't an aesthetic opinion - but a medical one.

Oh no, I meant it quite literally - if the documented sources in this article to to be believed...

Stefan Molyneux:

Charlotte:

I assume you mean early marriages. No matter how old the girls are when they were married, consummation usually didn't happen - in the case of most women - until age 16. Yes, for princesses royal, the age was sometimes 12. But popular literature of the 20th century has overblown it - 12th century handbooks on marriage state that the girl should be at the very least 16 and her husband over 20 before consummation takes place. This wasn't an aesthetic opinion - but a medical one.

Oh no, I meant it quite literally - if the documented sources in this article to to be believed...

That's interesting! Some of the historians there have been superseded, but I see nothing wrong with most of his citations at first glance. I'll have to read in rather more detail.