Considered Opinions

Krauts

It was early May, but every day is a pool day when you are five degrees north of the equator. The Golden Sands is a wonderful place to watch people from all over the world, and it is also a good place to lie among the Poincianas and towering Coconut Palms to read from The Outline of History.

Wells was describing the “cast¬like” social systems that evolved in the Aryan-speaking peoples during the tens of centuries prior to the time of Christ. These Aryans, as they were known, developed a common language somewhat later than the Semitic, Indian, and Chinese-speaking people. They also created a rigid social structure and a state of peaceful coexistence to manage what Wells referred to as a “natural and necessary conflict within” to maintain a separation between the Princes, the Knights, the Bergerstand, and the Bauenstand. Apparently, these values were far less congenial to both the English-speaking peoples and the French and Italians at the time, who favored a free movement from class to class. When the Aryans periodically conquered empires in the Eastern Mediterranean, they always took these values with them and reduced the conquered to the lower cast.

Pondering^[i]Before going on, I hasten to add this footnote. what he had written, it occurred to me that without even looking up from the page, the harsh voices periodically distracting me from my reading were German words. My very brief familiarity with that language suggested that they were otherwise friendly words but spoken in sharp, loud tones. It occurred to me at once that what I had been observing over the past three days was a carryover from ancient times still dominating the way people from around the world relate to each other. Looking about more carefully, there were clearly three separations of people around the pool.

The first were those enjoying the shallow end of the pool with their small children, splashing and laughing with total disregard for color, size, sex, or anything else. The parents were loosely grouped under several thatched umbrellas, sipping their gin and tonics while the men kept a close eye on the children, and the women discussed modern birth methods, stretch marks, and how well Johnny was doing in school.

The second group formed around the periphery of the area and was, I thought, perhaps the way we all wished the world operated. There were Chinese, Japanese, Australians, Americans, and probably miscellaneous Western Europeans all mixed together. I say probably because it was difficult to detect the various languages
being spoken with soft, gentle tones in perfect harmony with these magnificent surroundings.

The third group was made up entirely of German-speaking people. They drifted around the area in groups of a half-dozen or more like nomads. One lady saw something interesting in a magazine, which she read out loud for everyone to hear, and they all laughed. No one in the group was listening because all were talking – loudly, rudely, and simultaneously. A man yelled for the waiter to bring another beer, but not before yelling to the rest of the group, asking if any others wanted one. The others answered, like a pack of dogs barking at the mailman, that they were also thirsty.

It was apparent to me then why the non-German-speaking people had stationed themselves around the outside of the pool area, isolating themselves from this prehistoric behavior. These modern-day descendants of the Aryan Princes and Knights have been thrusting their pseudo-superiority on the peace-loving peoples of the world for thousands of years, and nothing much has changed after two World Wars.^[ii]I happened to be in Penang visiting a Siemens manufacturing plant there and meeting a coworker from Munich who had been a fighter pilot in WWII. Another, Klaus Zeigler by name, interrupted our staff meeting in California one day for a moment of silence to remember Hitler’s birthday.

By: Jim
Written: May 1986
Published: March 31, 2025
Revised: