Germany

The Strange, Seldom Told Story of Ethics Hero Emeritus, Albert Göring (1895-1966)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
Good brother, Bad brother.

Good brother, Bad brother.

The German and Israeli news media have recounted the exploits of Albert Göring recently , because he is under posthumous consideration for the highest honorary title conferred by the State of Israel, the “Righteous Among the Nations.” These are the heroes of the Holocaust, the brave individuals who risked their lives to foil Hitler’s Ultimate Solution. Since it was created in 1953, the title has been awarded to 24,356 people from 47 countries.

Göring is a strong candidate to join their ranks, for he saved many Jews from extermination during World War II. Honoring him would not be a difficult decision, except for one thing: he was the younger brother of one of Hitler’s vilest henchman, the architect of the death camps and master of the Gestapo, Hermann Göring.

Albert became disillusioned with the Nazis early in their rise to power and moved to Austria, where he frequently spoke out against Hitler and the Third Reich. He would have ended up in prison when the Germans took over Austria, but brother Hermann Goering, Hitler’s designated successor, believed that blood was thicker than genocide: he kept Albert out of the hands of the Gestapo, even though he knew his little brother was an enemy of the state.

Nobody knows exactly how many Jews and non-Jews Albert saved from his brother’s death camps, because Albert Göring himself didn’t know how many the people he helped. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
The first Nazi soldier Ethics Hero.

The SECOND Nazi soldier Ethics Hero!

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin didn’t accomplish anything heroic, but boy, did he try. The last surviving member of the most famous and closest call of the many failed plots to kill Adolf Hitler, von Kleist-Schmenzin is a ringing example of how the only difference between a a deathless hero and some guy with an unspellable name that you never hear of until he dies sometimes is just luck, and moral luck at that.

von Kleist-Schmenzin was 90 when he perished at his home in Munich this week, outliving almost all of his fellow conspirators in Operation Valkyrie by just short of seven decades. After that near-miss assassination attempt failed (because the bomb-in-a-briefcase dropped near Hitler’s feet by chief conspirator Claus von Stauffenberg was inadvertently moved just enough to save Der Fuhrer’s miserable life), von Kleist-Schmenzin managed to convince Gestapo interrogators that he wasn’t part of the plot, though in truth he was originally given the assignment of planting the bomb. He ended up in prison (the fact that his father was also involved in the plot and was one of those executed guaranteed that) and later was sent back onto the battlefield, but only random chance prevented him from being remembered as the man who ended the war…in fact, it foiled him twice. Continue reading →

Unethical Advertising Slogan of the Month: Reebok

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

You read that right: the slogan, which Rebok printed up for use by an affiliated gym in Germany and which quickly went viral on the web, is

“CHEAT ON YOUR GIRLFRIEND, NOT ON YOUR WORKOUT!”

As blatantly unethical exhortations in pursuit of commerce go, this one is pretty spectacular. Consider:

  • It is disrespectful of women.
  • It advocates betrayal, dishonesty, disloyalty, infidelity, promiscuity and cheating.
  • It designates a higher priority to narcissistic self-maintenance over love, commitment, and stable relationships.
  • It represents an athletic equipment company giving the stamp of approval to cheating.

That’s a remarkable amount of bad ethics in just eight words. A masterpiece of economical cultural poison. Bravo! Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Naming Your Kid After Hitler: 100% Legal, 100% Child Abuse”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Moon Unit Zappa: Only in America!

Site quotemaster and resident pedant Tom Fuller comes through with a rare comment of his containing no quotations whatsoever! (Tom is, among other things, a contributor and researcher for The Yale Book of Quotations.) He adds some useful perspective on the issue of naming children, in his Comment of the Day to yesterday’s post, “Naming Your Kid After Hitler: 100% Legal, 100% Child Abuse.”  I must point out that “Choo Choo” was not the 1962 Mets catcher’s real name, any more than Red Sox pitcher Dennis Boyd was really named “Oil Can.”

Here it is Tom’s comment:

“This is a good illustration of how America’s concept of free speech is such an unusual legal and cultural norm. In many countries, including Germany, a child’s name must be legally approved in advance (in Germany, by the Standesamt — office of vital statistics).

“By German law, a child’s name has to meet two conditions: (1) it must reflect the sex of the child, and (2) it must not endanger the ‘well-being of the child.’ No “Moon Unit” Zappa, no “Choo Choo” Coleman, and — especially — no “Adolf” anybody, unless the local office says “OK”.

“According to wire service reports, hundreds of Algerians wanted to name their babies “Scud” during the 1991 Iraq war, but the local officials nixed the idea.

“My point? Only that Americans are often more likely than those in other countries to regulate speech and behavior in ways other than by prior legal restraint — like ethics, which is what this odd corner of the Web is all about. Sadly, as history has shown, when ethics fails, many people turn to the law to fix things. It doesn’t always work.”

How the Lack of Ethics Cripples Democracy, Reason #2: Corporate Executive Greed

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

 

"Let's see...that's one schilling for Cratchet, 280 for me..."

The average compensation for chief executives of the 500 largest U.S. corporations is going up again.

According to Governance Metrics International, the average compensation for the CEOs, including salary, bonus and benefits plus the exercise of stock options, the vesting of stock grants and retirement benefits, was just under $12 million in 2010, up 18 percent from 2009. As Washington Post business writer Steve Pearlstein observes in his column this week, if you believe this is justified by market forces and common sense, “then you must also believe two things: First, that none of these guys would do the same job for a nickel less. Second, that the value of the chief executive went up 18 percent last year while the value of average workers in their companies changed very little.”  “And,” concludes Pearlstein, “if you believe that, you are a fool and an ideal candidate for an open seat on an S&P company board of directors.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The great Marlene Dietrich, Ethics Hero

It was on this date in 1992 that the magnificent Marlene Dietrich died, in her sleep, in her Paris apartment at age of 91. She had hidden her face from the world since she had stopped performing over a decade before, saying that the public should remember her as she had been. Sadly, Dietrich is one of those former icons of Hollywood whom the public is slowly failing to remember anything about at all; most are more familiar with Madeleine Kahn’s send-up of her in the Western spoof “Blazing Saddles” than they are with Marlene herself. That is wrong, for she deserves better. Not only was Marlene Dietrich a unique performer and important cultural figure, she was also an Ethics Hero.

She was a rising German stage and screen actress when director Josef von Sternberg cast her as Lola-Lola, the beautiful, cynical leading character in “Der blaue Engel,” (The Blue Angel), Germany’s first talking film. The movie made Dietrich a star. Von Sternberg took her with him when Hollywood beckoned and signed her with Paramount Pictures. There Dietrich built her image and legend by perfecting her femme fatale film persona in a series of classic films directed by her mentor: “Morocco” (1930), “Dishonored” (1931), “Shanghai Express” (1932), “Blonde Venus” (1932), “The Scarlet Empress” (1934), and “The Devil Is a Woman” (1935).

Meanwhile, she had already begun fighting Hitler’s regime. Continue reading →

Are Citizens of Warring Nations “Innocent”?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

No.

“Innocent” and “civilians” apparently go together like a horse and carriage, if one is to believe the cliché used with increasing regularity by journalists, bloggers and even elected officials. The instance that finally provoked me to write about the irresponsible acceptance of this falsehood was the gratuitous appropriation of it by a sportswriter, who, if I understand him correctly, feels the United States has no standing to object to baseball star Barry Bonds’ lying and cheating because it dropped atom bombs on “innocent civilians” in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The sportswriter neglects to mention that these act occurred during wartime; perhaps he doesn’t know.) The exoneration of civilian citizens for the acts of their governments is a relatively new phenomenon, one happily endorsed by the habitually politically correct. It is untrue, and it is time to blow the whistle. Ethics foul. Continue reading →