"O.K., let's go." And again, cheers rang through Southwick House. Then the commanders rushed from their chairs and dashed outside to get to their command posts. Within thirty seconds the mess room was empty, except for Eisenhower, The outflow of the others and his sudden isolation were symbolic. A minute earlier he had been the most powerful man in the world. Upon his word the fate of thousands of men depended, and the future of great nations. The moment he uttered the word, however, he was powerless. For the next two or three days, there was almost nothing he could do that would in any way change anything. The invasion could not be stopped, not by him, not by anyone. A captain leading his company onto Omaha, or a platoon sergeant at Utah, would for the immediate future play a greater role than Eisenhower. He could now only sit and wait.

The "line of the day" among administration spokesmen, confronted by masses of destitute and terrified refugees and solid reports of the mass execution of civilians, is to say that "we expected this to happen." They did? (They never told anyone.) If they want to avoid being indicted for war crimes themselves, these "spokesmen" had better promise us that they were lying when they said that.

La gente guardaba silencio como en presencia de un milagro; el espanto y el terror habían atado todas las lenguas.

It was if we all sensed we'd be gone someday soon in a sudden instant — often it happened in the middle of the night — and didn't want to get involved. Or else it was that none of us wanted to know anybody later on who was the way we were now.

Why did people get so upset when somebody mentioned dying? Did they think that if they didn't mention it, it would skip a few people and leave them alive forever?

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you … more proud...

Across Western nations, shell-shocked citizens experienced all the well-worn tactics of rising totalitarianism — mass propaganda and censorship, the orchestrated promotion of terror, the manipulation of science, the suppression of debate, the vilification of dissent, and use of force to prevent protest. Conscientious objectors who resisted these unwanted, experimental, zero-liability medical interventions faced orchestrated gaslighting, marginalization, and scapegoating. American lives and livelihoods were shattered by a bewildering array of draconian diktats imposed without legislative approval or judicial review, risk assessment, or scientific citation. So-called Emergency Orders closed our businesses, schools and churches, made unprecedented intrusions into privacy, and disrupted our most treasured social and family relationships. Citizens the world over were ordered to stay in their homes.

The world which lay under darkness and stillness following the closing of the lid was not the world we know. The event was over. Its devastation lay around about us. The clamoring mind and heart stilled, almost indifferent, certainly disembodied, frail, and exhausted. The hills were hushed, obliterated. Up in the sky, like a crater from some distant cataclysm, was a hollow ring.

Just imagine the silence in the world, if people talked only what they knew

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their silence at times of crisis.

It was a time of transition, which few recognized, and glutting national satisfaction. Students and scholars were silent.

I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30th, 1934 to do the duty we were bidden, and stand comrades who had lapsed, up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never [p. 65] speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never to speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary. I mean the evacuation out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about - "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program - elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be [p. 66] written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if - with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war - we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.

He had decided that what was going on was that everybody was very carefully avoiding paying attention to what was going on.

His death was imminent and we were all anticipating it, including him, but we never gave any thought to the fact that this was true for all of us, too: our death was imminent, only we were not anticipating it ... yet.”