During the first three weekends of May, Michael Frayn’s compelling play, “Copenhagen,” will be presented at the Performing Arts Center in Los Alamos. The Little Theatre has put on some engaging and entertaining shows in its history, but this work is particularly poignant in light of current events. The play touches on (or plunges headlong into) issues of morality, humanity, loss, friendship, citizenship, and our obligations to our fellow human beings. It’s a big show, despite there being only three actors. And it’s good drama: “ars gratia artis.”
I portray one of the characters. Learning and acting in the role, I have had some profound feelings of discomfort and anxiety about the parallels to our time. The ideas expressed here are my own and not affiliated with the very fine people at Los Alamos Little Theatre. Any resemblance to actual or real despots, living or dead, is not coincidental.
The core story of the play concerns a 1941 visit by Werner Heisenberg, then in charge of atomic research for Hitler’s Third Reich, to his old mentor and friend Niels Bohr and his wife, who are living in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Bohr, half-Jewish, was considered one of the greatest physicists in the world at the time, the father of atomic research. Heisenberg was a wunderkind in his own right, the inventor of Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle. Denmark and Norway had been under German occupation for over a year by this time, and Nazi atrocities were soon to be unleashed on the Danes, as they had been so many other places in Europe. Bohr was forced to flee Copenhagen under cover of darkness in 1943, and he ended up in Los Alamos at the Manhattan Project.
Along with the discussions of the science involved, the characters opine about the plight of Jews and other dissidents. They are aware that a dark shadow has swept across Europe. They explore the way the Nazis approached science and its relation to military success, and the deep fears that can come from working under such a regime. The story is not afraid to look in to the dark recesses of the water.
To me, the parallels to the United States now are obvious and chilling. I do not write these words with any relish. In fact, I’m afraid. For me. For others.
A bit of history:
January 1933 — Adolph Hitler comes to power “by democratic means” and is sworn in as chancellor after being appointed by the popular president, Hindenburg. Since July of the previous year the Nazis has been the most powerful party in the Reichstag, the German parliament, though without an outright majority. Suffering has been rife in the years following World War I, greatly exacerbated by the Depression, and here Hitler sees the possibility of taking power after years of being a minor political figure. In speeches and party news outlets, Hitler and his cronies embrace and spread the idea that the Jews are responsible for Germany’s decline, along with Slavs, Roma and other marginalized groups. His pitch is mainly economic: because of these groups, “good Germans” are suffering. As he assumes power, Hitler also relies on support from the “conservative elites”—business leaders and traditional political power brokers—to gain enough support in the Reichstag to get laws passed. They are united by their hatred of the “radical left.” The alignment lasts only so long as it remains useful to Hitler.
February 1933 — The Reichstag fire and the resulting emergency decree by Hindenburg gives Hitler a chance to consolidate unitary power and empowers the Nazis to crack down on Communists — who had been blamed for the fire — and other anti-German elements. Within days, thousands are arrested. Habeas Corpus is suspended. The free press is throttled. Civil rights and civil liberties are abolished, as is the right to due process. This doesn’t go far enough for Hitler. Disappointed at the verdict of those put on trial for the fire (only one person is found guilty) he removes authority for treason trials from the Reich Supreme Court and creates special tribunals. He pushes for and gets passed The Enabling Law, which allows him to pass and enact (or cancel) laws without the consent of the parliament.
Within weeks, the process of “Gleichshaltung” (sometimes translated as “bringing into line”) begins. All German social, political and cultural organizations are to be controlled by and run according to Nazi ideology and policy. Anyone deemed lacking ideological purity is pushed out of government ministries, universities and schools. Theaters are limited in what they can perform. Symphonies stick to works by German composers. The Nazis begin identifying and destroying “degenerate” works of art and literature. Books are burned — the equivalent of taking websites offline in our time. Thousands of Jews and others are removed from their positions. The lucky ones leave Germany and Europe. A few end up here in our town. Many of the unlucky ones face deportation and death. By 1935, the army changes its oath of allegiance from the nation to one man—Hitler.
1933 — Dachau, the first concentration camp, begins operation on March 22, barely two months after Hitler takes power. By 1945 dozens of camps have been built in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Finland, France, Holland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Yugoslavia. Estimates place the number of “sub-camps” in the thousands. Some are intended to be temporary. Some are just for children. As the Nazis retreat from Allied advances, many of these abattoirs are emptied and razed to hide evidence of crimes against humanity. The surviving camps are scenes of unimaginable horror to the troops who liberate them. Millions of people died.
I have studied much history, politics, some science, and a fair amount of law. I was a newspaper journalist for more than 20 years. As a kid, I lived in Vienna, not a quarter-century after the Third Reich fell. Almost any older resident there could point to where the SS houses of interrogation had been, many still standing in quiet residential neighborhoods. More than once I visited Mauthausen, a concentration camp not far from the city. I had friends whose relatives perished there. I walked through the gas chambers, saw the crematoria, the barbed wire, and the mass graves. It was easy to imagine how bad it was, and yet it was also impossible.
Now I fear that this, all of it, is playing out in the United States. Six months ago I worried the Democratic Party was being hyperbolic in saying the election was about the future of democracy. Turns out they weren't kidding. Now, thousands of government workers have been forced out because their work “did not align with the priorities of the current administration.” Programs that help minorities and the disabled and the sick and those who are struggling have been eliminated. Government agencies and the military are being purged of black people, hispanics, women, transgender Americans and many others. Several of those agencies have been summarily shuttered.
Law firms and universities, schools and hospitals and libraries are being pressured to conform to the ideology of the current regime. The free press is vilified daily, and is being rapidly replaced with a friendly press. American citizens have been called “treasonous” by the president for criticizing policies or contradicting the White House. Most disturbingly, protesters and people living legally in this country are being snatched off the streets by masked agents and sent to mega-prisons in other countries based on tattoos, clothing and social media posts. Court orders and rulings are being ignored. “They’re eating the checks! They’re eating the balances!” Researchers, doctors and scientists are being muzzled and marginalized. Even now, U.S. citizens are being detained. This should scare us all here on the Hill, and everywhere.
Pundits keep saying the we are in for a constitutional crisis any day now. Our constitutional crisis was made manifest Jan. 20. Hours after taking the oath to “protect, preserve and defend the Constitution,” the new president declared that the 14th Amendment (guaranteeing birthright citizenship) doesn’t apply to everybody in this county. Aside from the 14th, the 4th and 5th and 8th Amendments are under attack. The First Amendment is hanging by a thread. Unless we recognize the crisis and react, however decently and morally we can, conditions will only get worse. The president, standing in the Oval Office only days ago, mused openly about detaining and deporting U.S. citizens at his discretion, to the applause and approving laughter of those assembled. This at a meeting with a person who describes themself as the “world’s coolest dictator.” We’re paying that dictator to imprison our neighbors. (See official U.S. Government photo, above.)
This town has a special place in the history of World War II, in American history. The scientific community has been actively debating whether we are in a new age, the Anthropocene, some placing the birth of the age to Trinity in 1945. Growing up here, I largely believed that Los Alamos had saved the world from tyranny, and that it was a key player in bringing on a new age of human greatness and goodness. We may be somewhat insulated in our remote mountain town from the gross abuses that are occurring elsewhere, but we should not fool or lull ourselves into thinking we are safe and secure. Nor should we sacrifice liberty for security, for if we do we will forever be denied liberty, and will scarcely ever be secure.
What is to be done? We can protest. Speak out. We can vote. We can write letters. Scream in to the void. We can even disagree: that’s actually a good thing. But we can’t wait. Violence has historically not been the answer to oppression. Perhaps start with getting to know your neighbors. Start with getting involved in your community. Start with volunteering, or a dozen other small steps that can lead to big results. As a friend said, “If you can even just keep the trash picked up out in front of your house, you’re doing pretty good.” Read a book. Any book. Maybe read a history book, if they’re still allowed. Be nice. Care. Listen. Pay attention. Donate. Help out. Save America.
Change a few names in the play at the Little Theatre and it could easily be a modern drama about 2025. “Artes vitam imitantur.” Art imitates life. History repeats itself, this time with more sophisticated and lethal means. We are being told to despise a common enemy, lumped together as invaders, murderers, human traffickers, gang members. “Really bad people.” It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book of political power.
It won’t be long before that list of “enemies of the state” includes many groups. Any group, in fact. The press. The elementary school. Your neighbors. The Lab. We cannot afford, as a city or as a nation, to allow ourselves to tumble headlong in to a new era of authoritarianism and ignorance. The world has been here before, in living memory. We must form a critical mass of resistance. There’s no cavalry coming. We ARE the cavalry.
April 19 was the 250th anniversary of the battle of Lexington and Concord: the start of the Revolutionary War. Paul Revere made his famous ride to warn of the British coming the day before. Next July 4th will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, celebrated as the “birth of our nation.” I hope we make it to that birthday.