All Humans Have Souls
In our books and movies about history there is a common tendency to portray the two sides of a conflict as either good or evil. An example of this is any WWII film. In such films the Allies are depicted as good, the Nazis as evil. For movies this makes a sort of sense. A movie can only be so long, and have so many perspectives, directors have to leave some things out... right?
At least that is what I thought; until I watched the movie Greyhound. The movie follows a WWII destroyer captain, as he escorts a convoy of Ally ships across the Atlantic. The part of the movie that is important for my point is when Tom Hank’s character sinks his first German U-boat. His crew is cheering, proud to have killed 50 Nazis. But Tom Hank’s character had a different opinion of the event. His character said something that stuck with me. Instead of referring to the crew of the U-boat as 50 Nazis he called them “50 souls”. It may only be a movie, but I first watched this film almost 6 years ago now, and I have never forgotten that line. When referring to a people that were as evil as the Nazis, the idea that someone could feel remorse for their deaths and refer to them as souls... that stuck with me.
It is easy to see people, especially those in history books as “black and white”. When you have the ability to read about someones life beginning to end, you can begin to see them as one dimensional. It is easy to feel like you know the entirety of them. But people are complex. No book or movie could ever reveal the full complexity of a person. Yes, there were Nazis that did horrible things. But how could we know for example that all 50 sailors that died on the U-boat were evil? They all lived complex lives. Some were almost certainly evil, the captain and the officers, they were complacent in the Nazis crimes. But what about the cook? Or the radio tech? There were almost certainly men on board who were forced into service and were not evil to their core. The biggest difference between the sailors on a Nazi U-boat and the sailors on an American warship, was their place of birth. Not how evil of a person they were.
By referring to the people who lost their lives in war (or anytime really) as souls, you are acknowledging that people are complex, and deserving of being understood rather than just being labeled as good or evil. The word evil to describe a group of people seems to be just thrown around nowadays. In the age of social media, it is easy to view people with different political beliefs as one dimensional and evil. It could do us some good to step back and understand that very few people believe that they are evil. Most people are just trying to do what they believe is right. It does not make someone evil to want what is best for their friends and family. We may disagree on what that best thing is, but we can find common ground in our intentions.
The term soul or human soul is one that I love. It can serve to humanize people and events that we would rather dehumanize. It is easier for us if we refer to Nazis as inhuman, because then it implies that we rational humans could never commit the same atrocities. By referring to them as souls, it can serve as a reminder that there was nothings special about the Nazis. There are many groups of people today who have doctrines of hate against people of a different race or creed. By humanizing such acts of evil like the holocaust, we can better acknowledge that what happened in the past can happen again if we are not careful. The word soul serves as a tool to better understand our fellow humans, especially when we disagree with them. Our words shape our world, so we should choose them carefully.