On Tyranny Lessons 5-8 Summary & Analysis

5: Remember professional ethics

Lesson 5 opens with a statement that dictators need complicit lawyers and judges to maintain appearances and “concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.” The lesson examines the individuals the Nazi party used to oversee the occupation of surrounding nations, each of them lawyers. With the belief that the laws should serve the Aryan race, and thus anything beneficial to the Aryan race should be a law, ethics quickly became a secondary concern. Snyder argues that a commitment to professional ethics should have given citizens of the professional class reason enough to question the atrocities of the time.

6: Beware of paramilitaries

Lesson 6 opens with a warning against merging a nation’s military and its police into one entity, as well as armed, anti-government citizens marching with a picture of their leader. This lesson discusses the rise of paramilitary organizations being organized by governments. These groups often defy laws and orders and create environments of fear in an effort to destabilize or change the government. This is especially dangerous when they are directed to do so by a government official. Snyder references the SS of Nazi Germany, who were initially created outside of the law, and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, when he used a personal security detail to forcibly remove people from his rallies if they disagreed. The insurrection attempt of January 6, 2021 is also mentioned.

7: Be reflective if you must be armed

Lesson 7 opens by warning readers who serve as police officers or in the military that past atrocities have been committed when individuals like them were complicit. This lesson examines the NKVD of the Soviet Union and the SS of Nazi Germany and how each used local policemen and soldiers to carry out atrocities on a large scale. Snyder states that during the Soviet Union’s Great Terror (1937–1938), “NKVD officers recorded 682,691 executions of supposed enemies of the state,” a feat that would not have been possible without the assistance of local police. Snyder also points out that in Nazi Germany, ordinary policemen killed more Jewish people than the Einsatzgruppen (the Nazi death squads specifically organized for the task). The scale of the atrocities could not have been as large without the aid of such conformists.

8: Stand out

Lesson 8 begins by encouraging the reader not to be a follower, but to resist. This lesson emphasizes that it is often the actions of a few individuals who choose to resist that are remembered as heroic. The first example given is Winston Churchill during World War II. After the Nazis invaded France (having annexed or invaded most of the countries around them), Churchill chose continued fighting over surrender. The second example is Teresa Prekerowa, a young Polish woman who helped Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II while her country was occupied. Churchill and Prekerowa did not view their own actions as heroic, merely normal. The world views them as exceptional.

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