mandarine

Checking all explanations beyond the obvious is one of the core abilities of a scientific mind. I have always liked to use this ability to advocate strange or adverse viewpoints, even when I personally disagreed with them. Someone spits on your shoe: maybe he was aiming at the gutter and missed. Someone says the Earth is flat: I agree that a local linear approximation of the Earth surface is enough for 99% of human activities. Someone thinks speeding is not dangerous: indeed, speed is not dangerous per se, only deceleration is.

Here is a short writing exercise where I show how I can be the devil’s advocate, how I try to understand people and actions that are so the opposite of me that it feels awkward sometimes.

The criminal nazi torturer

In a brightly lit cellar below a pile of rubble that used to be the dance school, a tall young SS corporal is waiting for the moans to subside. Then he stoops and whispers in the ear of 15-year-old Sergei Viktorenko: ‘You tell me where I can find the bastard, I’ll be so kind as to leave you the molars and half your tongue.’

Preliminary judgement

Starting from the above truth, try to imagine yourself in the torturer’s shoes and explain why he behaves as he does. Then read my version.

The criminal nazi torturer ?

Three days before that, Ernst Schüchtler had just arrived in this living hell, on his first mission after completing SS training near Königsberg. Contrary to all other men in his eastbound train, he was eager to reach the destination: he had been elected to serve in the very same unit as Detleff, his buddy back when they were singing their lungs out in the woods, shoveling dirt to setup camp, stacking sandbags on a damaged dike, or helping out with the harvest. Of all the other HitlerJugend boys, Detleff and he were inseparable, always on the same team and under the same tent. He remembered his short blond hair and his broad smile; the sunny sound of his voice and the firm grip of his handshake; the scar below his chin and the freckles on his forehead. He remembered Detleff’s weight on his back and Detleff’s arms around his chest in that piggyback race. He was wondering how they’d both have changed, after these three years. He was aware that war and adulthood had come, that nothing would be the same anymore. Indeed. In the past three days, Detleff had barely attempted a single smile. Their unit had expected more relief and the captain openly sighed before his men, making a bitter remark about how he was supposed to hold the position with two boys to replace the five trained commandos he had lost to sniper bullets. Yesterday he and Detleff were sent together on a liaison patrol to the General’s headquarters. On the way back, they had stopped for five seconds under a deserted porch to catch their breath when Detleff made a funny gurgling sound. Ernst turned around and saw that his friend had the lower half of his face missing, and blood beginning to soak his stiff collar. His mind went blank with terror and grief at the same time. The only thing he could think of was to lull his buddy to rest with that stupid song he could still hear echoing through the woods: “If we are too weak / To bear heavy loads, / As brothers we seek / To plough new furrows. / We push hatred aside / We all join our hearts / We do what we can / For this land of plenty. / An eager momentum / Will show us the way to Life.” This morning, the team stormed the building facing the porch. They found no trace of a sniper, but took 15-year-old Sergei and his babooshka as prisoners, believing they knew something. Young Sergei died without a tooth left in his mouth. There was no other ambush in that area afterwards.

Both sides of the story

If you want more of this, you probably want to see Clint Eastwood’s two latest movies on the battle of Iwo-Jima: Flags of Our Fathers is from the american viewpoint. Letters From Iwo Jima is seen from the japanese viewpoint. I must see them.

Read on

An apologia of the scientific mind

Read away

Official movie site
Letters From Iwo Jima at Wikipedia

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