Imagine: You are twenty-two years old and the eldest daughter in your family. You were raised by a single mom of five and your harsh, emotionally distant grandfather. You couldn’t even finish high school because you needed to help out with the family. Besides, your family was too poor to afford sending you for higher education. Your younger sister becomes a professional dancer, which was your dream until you had to stop lessons to support the younger kids. Your younger sister has already moved out on her own, leaving you feeling directionless and inadequate.
You decide to get a job as a secretary so you can leave your mother and grandfather’s house to live in an apartment with your sister. Being out of the house is wonderful. Perhaps you can’t be a dancer, but you can even start to afford a lesson again here or there with your modest salary. Living with just your sister instead of the whole family is peaceful. Even though times are still tough financially, you are reasonably content, even happy.
Then one day you hear of a contest. There is a typing contest to become a secretary for the most important political figure in your country. He is a captivating speaker and admired by many because of his promises to make your country great again. You weren’t raised in a political household, but even so the opportunity is intriguing. He is so famous a politician as to be considered a celebrity. You have little to lose and everything to gain. Besides, you used to love competing in dance competitions. Typing can’t be so different. Thus, you enter the competition.
It turns out you are an excellent typist. Even though many, many girls took part in the contest you are in the top ten who get to go meet the famous politician. You are excited. It feels wonderful to be good at something. After all, you had always thought yourself a dreadful typist. You were never particularly confident in any of your abilities. Your grandfather made it painfully clear that women couldn’t think for themselves. He blamed your mother’s femaleness for her inability to support her family without his help. You knew from a young age that your thoughts and abilities were not to be trusted.
Yet here you were, on your way to the politician’s headquarters with the nine other girls. You were taken to a room to demonstrate your typing skills, and in walked a kindly older man. It was him, and he was even better in that small setting than he was in his public speeches. He smiled warmly and put each girl at ease. You were as nervous as any of them, but in the end he chose you. You, the twenty-two year old who didn’t finish high school, was to be secretary for one of the most important men in the world.
You didn’t know exactly what his political party was all about, but you finally felt you belonged. You were happy, and you even came to view him as a father figure. After all those years of not having your own father and being berated and belittled by your grandfather, it was nice to feel appreciated. Adolf Hitler did make you, Traudl Humps, feel appreciated…
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Today we watched Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary in my Postwar German Literature class. Traudl Humps was indeed just twenty-two years old, no older than many Odyssey readers, when she became Hitler’s secretary. I paraphrased her story as she recounts it in Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary, but it is true that her family did not often discuss politics, she had no formal affiliation to the Nazi party herself, and she was unaware of the atrocities Hitler orchestrated in the concentration camps. She was just a young girl looking for a job. She was intrigued by Hitler’s celebrity. She even developed a daughterly affection for him and enjoyed having him as her boss. In her old age, she was a woman who felt deep regret and shame for “liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived.” Decades after working as Hitler’s secretary, she was still blaming herself for ignoring her gut feelings and believing the best of Hitler and the Nazi party.
It is easy to read Traudl’s story and absolve her of all blame. Indeed, Traudl was living under a dictatorship. She did not directly participate in any violence. She was just a young woman trying to do a job and live her life. It was the 1940s, and the media consisted of Nazi-controlled radio and newspapers. Resistance was difficult. Yet there was resistance among some other university-aged Germans. What was the difference between Traudl, who was manipulated by Hitler’s charm, and the Scholl siblings, who died for their efforts in spreading the truth about Hitler’s atrocities? In short, they were more politically literate and more confident in their abilities to think for themselves.
It is also easy to look at Traudl’s story and think, “I would never fall for that.” Certainly, we have more access to information than ever before in history. We still have books, newspapers, and radio, but we’ve added better television service and the internet. I can log into any social networking interface and contact regular, everyday people who live across the world. I can access a wide variety of news sources online. Yet even if Traudl had accurate information about Hitler at her fingertips, her undeveloped critical thinking skills would have made it difficult to discern which sources were trustworthy.
Without critical thinking skills, we risk being unable to tell credible sources of information from biased or even propaganda-ridden sources. Traudl was raised to follow what her grandfather said, to defer to authority, and certainly not to invest in her education. On one hand, I do not blame her for having worked for Hitler. She was naïve and uninformed, but not intentionally trying to hurt anyone. On the other hand, I feel confident we can learn from her mistakes and do better. We must do better.
As university students, most of us have heard the words critical thinking on some syllabus or in some lecture. You can read a more extensive definition of critical thinking here, but the simplest way I can think to explain critical thinking is that we must understand why we believe the way we do. When we use critical thinking skills, answers like “Because I said so” or “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it” or “Well this person I admire thinks so, so it must be true” are not enough. We must analyze why we think or feel a certain way and recognize our biases. We must become comfortable with questioning authority, whether that is a famous person or a famous news source. I’m not advocating for conspiracy theories, but I am advocating for reading a wide variety of news sources and being aware of who funds each one.
Unlike the Scholl siblings, we live in a country where pursuing the truth about politicians is relatively safe. However, that doesn't mean questioning authority and our own way of thinking is easy or natural. Many of us disagree on fundamental levels with family, friends, and professors. We all come from different backgrounds that have influenced our values and beliefs. We do not all have to come to the same conclusions, but we must do our research on the candidates and vote as we see fit. As we draw closer to Election Day, let us not just vote, but vote with a sense of confidence. If we research, question, discuss, and argue, we can all develop a deeper sense of self and greater control over our choices. That is my hope for all of us this election season.
