Oaks and acorns

In the Guardian's G2 supplement today there's an extract from Jonathan Freedland's new book. The piece is about his great-uncle Mick Mindel, who was a communist between the two world wars, it's written with understanding and affection, and it is well worth a read. It tells of what a shock it was to Mindel and his lover Sara Wesker, among other communists, to learn of the Nazi-Soviet pact:

A year later, in the summer of 1939, Mick, who still worked as a cutter, was returning to the home he now shared with Sara and her family after a 12-hour shift. As he turned his front door key, he heard the wireless, louder than usual. He called to Sara, but heard no reply. The moment he was out of the tiny hallway, he could see why. Sara was huddling by the wireless, her ear next to it even though the voice was loud and clear. She did not look up; her eyes were frozen. Her face, always sallow, was now a deathly white.

The room was filled by the voice of the BBC: " ... standing under a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, Foreign Minister Molotov signed the pact in Moscow on behalf of the Soviet Union, while Germany was represented by Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop. General Secretary Stalin looked on ... "

Sara had her head in her hands, moving it from side to side. She began letting out a low noise, a sound Mick had never heard from her before. It was part wail, part growl - an animal wounded and angry.
.....
[At a party meeting later...] Mick looked around and, almost for the first time in the Communist party, he felt lonely. Why were all these people apparently able to make a pact with the gangsters of Nazism when he could not?

You should read it all - for the snatch of micro-history it recounts. But I couldn't help thinking oaks and acorns. It's the other way round usually. From small beginnings something great - or as is more relevant here - something terrible can grow. But this order can also be reversed. When the larger thing has already happened it becomes harder to be shocked. One of the lessons from the European catstrophe of the mid-twentieth century was supposed to be never again. In fact the calamities recur, again and again. The world is accustomed.

In the Nazi-Soviet pact the country to which millions looked with a hope that had already been betrayed, soiled and bloodied many times over by those ruling it, concluded an alliance with Nazi Germany. Today - small beer by comparison - some socialists are ready to march alongside, and organize with, reactionary Islamist theocrats and anti-Semites, and to speak in apologia for the murderous activities of cognate forces. So it goes.

(Thanks to David T for advice.)