Clarification

My last post was misleading: Mann himself did not live through the Nazi's reign of terror and the Second World War since he, a non-Jew, was in exile in the United States between 1939 and 1952. Hence the title of Brecht's 1943 poem "Als der Nobelpreisträger Thomas Mann den Amerikanern und Engländern das Recht zusprach, das deutsche Volk für die Verbrechen des Hitlerregimes zehn Jahre lang zu züchtigen," a title that acknowledges Mann's distance from the events in Germany that he criticized. See also Brecht's later poem Ich, der Überlebende--one of my favorites--for Brecht's own feelings of guilt at being in exile during this period.

Ich weiß natürlich: einzig durch Glück
Habe ich so viele Freunde überlebt. Aber heute nacht
im Traum
Hörte ich diese Freunde von mir sagen: »Die Stärkeren
überleben«
Und ich haßte mich.

But I think Mann's entire oeuvre speaks to my previous point clearly: the abandonment, relativization, or over-intellectualization of simple humanism and democratic freedom leads inevitably to a barbarism that forgets the value of the human and human culture. We cannot forget what freedom means: we are fighting against a foe that has no respect for Western freedom. Unfortunately, however, our own government seems to forget its value as well.