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Empathy is under attack lately.
The all-important ability to see the world through another person’s eyes is now being recast as something corrosive.
The argument goes like this: if you’re empathetic, you’re being manipulated into accepting all manner of ideas, behaviors or policies that you would otherwise reject. Empathy, in this view, is a Trojan horse for weakness.
But that’s a dangerous distortion.
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True empathy is not agreement. And it’s definitely not surrender.
It’s the refusal to reduce another person to a caricature. It recognizes that the people we disagree with have reasons for their choices. And people are intrinsically valuable, even if we’re on opposite sides.
Far from weakening conviction, empathy actually strengthens it by grounding our beliefs in humanity, not hatred.
A story from World War II illustrates this. It reminds us that even in our darkest moments, empathy must triumph.
On Dec. 20, 1943, in the frenzied skies above war-torn Europe, two bitter enemies met in what remains one of World War II’s most remarkable encounters.
An American B-17 bomber, piloted by 21-year-old West Virginian Charles Brown, was shredded by enemy fire. Bullets had torn through the fuselage. Several crew members were bleeding out. The plane was barely holding together, yet still in the air.
Flying nearby was the enemy: Franz Stigler, 28, a veteran German fighter ace. His job was simple: blow the Americans out of the sky.
Stigler had every incentive to pull the trigger.
Pilot Charles Brown reunited with German pilot Franz Stigler on September 20, 1997. (Courtesy of Adam Makos)
In the kill-or-be-killed quest to reach air superiority, the odds against the German’s survival were much worse than the Americans’. Of the 40,000 German fighter pilots in WWII, only 2,000 lived to see the war’s end.
For Stigler, every kill mattered.
But when Stigler flew up alongside Brown’s limping bomber, something extraordinary happened, according to historian Adam Makos, who chronicled the incredible encounter in his book "A Higher Call."
Stigler didn’t turn his machine guns on the Americans.
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Instead, Stigler risked his own reputation, career and even life, to fly for miles in close proximity to the bomber’s wingtip, providing a shield for the damaged enemy plane from other fighters.
Instead of killing his enemy, the German fighter pilot escorted the sputtering American bomber to safety.
Even more remarkable, Stigler was one bomber kill away from the Knight's Cross, Germany's highest award for valor. He gave that up by sparing Brown.
For decades, the American 8th Air Force classified the incident as top secret. The German military sealed the record as well. Stigler was ordered never to speak of the act again, at risk of facing a firing squad.
German fighter ace Franz Stigler, 28, showed his humanity by sparing an American bomber. (Courtesy of Adam Makos)
Some explain the incident as chivalry, a relic of an older code of honor. Others dismiss it as an anomaly, a glitch in the machinery of war.
But to me, it was something deeper.
True empathy.
Stigler remembered his humanity. He chose to see his enemies not as targets, but as people.
And that choice reverberates today.
We live in a culture that rewards outrage. We’re told that empathy is naïve and that to understand another person’s pain is to surrender our convictions.
But Stigler’s decision shows otherwise. Empathy is the courage to rise above a tribal reflex and act by a higher call.
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Empathy is strength.
Stigler risked his own reputation, career and even life, to fly for miles in close proximity to the bomber’s wingtip, providing a shield for the damaged enemy plane from other fighters.
When we’re in the presence of people we dislike or disagree with, even those we consider enemies, we face the same choice Stigler faced.
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Do we reduce them to caricatures, or do we remember their humanity?
In an era when division is the currency, empathy is essential.
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