What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In 1991, when the German media commemorated the activities of World War II, they published a group of photo albums under Nazi rule during World War II, and the photo of a man in the photo caused widespread concern in society.
The photograph was taken on June 13, 1936, at the Hemworth Shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, where a huge warship launch ceremony was taking place, and as Nazi officials gave a passionate speech, people on the shore, from officials to workers, invariably raised their right arms and performed a very standard Nazi salute.
The faces of the crowd, either with pride, or with obedience and hidden fear, monotonously carry out unified movements, except for our protagonists. Judging from the enlarged photo, he crossed his hands, showing an obvious attitude of non-cooperation and confrontation, and the corners of his mouth also revealed a dismissive sneer, who is this man? How did he end up?
After World War II, the German masses always had a sense of guilt, which also forced them to frequently look for heroes who could bravely stand up and resist in that absurd period, so after the media widely solicited clues, the identity of this citizen was finally confirmed, and an old German woman stood up and told everyone that the man in the photo was his father, named August Landmesser. The woman then told her father's story.
Surprisingly, Landmesser was not only an ordinary citizen with no special status, but he was also a Member of the Nazi Party.
As a hamburger, in 1933, like the choice of most Germans, Landmesser voted for Hitler, who vowed to lead Germany to a revival, and as Hitler came to power, he gradually fulfilled his promise to "make bread on the table of every German household". Germany's GDP increased from 73.7 billion Reichsmarks in 1933 to 126.4 million in 1938, and the German market also swept away the haze brought about by the Great Depression and began to develop rapidly.
Therefore, the status of Hitler and the Nazi Party quickly increased among the German masses, and in 1935, Landmesser also joined the Nazi Party in order to get more subsidies and conveniences in work and life.
Landmesser's attitude changed radically in August of that year, as he fell in love with a Jewish girl. In September 1935, Germany promulgated the Act on the Protection of German Descent and German Honor and the Reich Citizenship Act, which was known as the Nuremberg Act, which stipulated that Jews would be excluded from the police, parliament, and various administrative and departmental bodies, and their basic rights as citizens were also denied, while Intermarriage with other ethnic groups was prohibited.
However, at this time, Landmesser and his wife have entered the palace of marriage, and finally they have their own children, facing the family, Landmesser did not hesitate to stand up and choose to resist, and he no longer had any interest in the Nazis, so in 1936, Landmesser was photographed with the "great disrespect" photo.
But There was still so little landmesser that landmesser could do, and in 1938, after the Night of crystal palace against the Jews, Landmesser was thrown into prison for two years because he refused to be separated from his wife.
With the outbreak of World War II, after the Wansee Conference in 1942, the Nazis finally determined their antipathy to the extermination of Jews, and Landmesser's wife was thrown into a gas chamber and brutally killed.
As for Landmesser himself, he was released from prison, but he was also unable to stand alone, and as the fascist forces gradually became more and more powerful, the Nazis began to use nothing, assembling political prisoners, prisoners and anti-Nazis into a team of cannon fodder and sending them to the front line of the Soviet-German battlefield, and Landmessser was one of them. On 19 February, Landmesser was killed on the battlefield, and the cause and location of his death are unknown, and the only clues are the years of his birth and death on the right side of his name.
However, the photo of Landmesser has also become a force to inspire countless people, Landmesser is just an ordinary person, a victim of history all his life, but he did not choose to go with the flow, in the darkest moments, but retained his own courage, which is the most precious quality in the world.