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Cyrano4747 posted:Honestly in a "Death of Hitler" scenario I have a suspicion that Bormann gets the Beria treatment. Maybe he's more clever than Beria and manages to out maneuver the others, but he's one of the few that everyone is going to agree needs to die pretty much as soon as Hitler's body is cold. Isn't Himmler much more like Beria? He's hated by everyone else in the leadership, he has control over the secret police so everyone is scared of him, and he through the secret police he probably has dirt on everyone so everyone has an incentive to kill him. Even Stalin himself commented on this, he introduced Beria to FDR and Churchill as "My Himmler" Bormann seem like the equivalent of Malenkov
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Jul 14, 2023 17:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:Th But that's also getting to the interface of where philosophy meets legislation, and a lot of what became law was actually a more conservative version of what the hardliners really wanted. Something to keep in mind - and this is part of why I keep drawing the parallel to analyzing this like a religion rather than anything else - is that there is often a gap between what the most devout and fanatical adherents of a thing profess and debate among themselves vs. the lived experience of the average person and how these beliefs get translated into concrete laws and how those laws get enforced. Another good example might be ISIS or the Taliban. There's a ton of poo poo going on in there that doesn't quite match up with the theorizing of their biggest thinkers, but to understand the thrust of the organizations as a whole you still need to wrap your head around the religious foundations and, with that in mind, a lot of the things that seem perplexing to us start to come in focus as making a degree of sense.
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Jul 14, 2023 17:14
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Typo posted:Isn't Himmler much more like Beria? He's hated by everyone else in the leadership, he has control over the secret police so everyone is scared of him, and he through the secret police he probably has dirt on everyone so everyone has an incentive to kill him. *shrug* the analogy was just to illustrate that he's someone everyone is going to want dead. He's too close to power, he has too much of an ability to hurt the other players, and he doesn't have an independent basis of power of his own (e.g. the SS, the Air Force, etc) to insulate and protect himself. You're right, Beria's closer to Himmler in terms of having the dirt and having an actual basis for power, but the underlying point was that Bormann is the guy everyone's going to agree needs a bullet in the head before they even begin to sort out which of them takes the old boss's job.
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Jul 14, 2023 17:16
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Bormann also seemed to have a distinct lack of troops who would do what he said, while Goering and Himmler did not have that problem.
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Jul 14, 2023 17:21
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Is there any insight into the private state of mind of the leading men around say Stalin or Hitler (or other similar leaders?) In that company it’s difficult (for me at least) to imagine not existing in a constant state of intense stress and guardedness if not outright concern about catching a bullet, but for all I know enough personal power and self assuredness is a kind of armor against it.
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Jul 14, 2023 17:23
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Nessus posted:Bormann also seemed to have a distinct lack of troops who would do what he said, while Goering and Himmler did not have that problem. that really depends on his relationship with the generals at the exact moment when a power struggle break out to use the Stalinist analogue: Khrushchev had no formal military command either. But he had formed good relationship with the red army generals during his stint as commissar so Zhukov backed him with the troops during the post-Stalin succession struggles.
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Jul 14, 2023 17:40
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When it came to American POWs, did they get treated differently depending on their race or ancestry? Did ones with "Aryan" characteristics get preferential treatment?
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Jul 14, 2023 17:55
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Nessus posted:Bormann also seemed to have a distinct lack of troops who would do what he said, while Goering and Himmler did not have that problem. I only really see him as viable during that period because all the troops are tied up fighting the USSR. He most definitely would have been couped soon after if the impossible happened and the Third Reich somehow survived. Having troops during that period didn't really save Goering or Himmler from their fates. If anything, the lack of troops around to imprison them in any meaningful way allowed them both to mill around until they got caught. For all the power and money they had, they all ended their careers pretty pathetically and by being the shallow, idiotic cowards they all ultimately were. You almost got the Death of Stalin scenario playing out at the end of Hitler's life/reign but the idiots moved too fast, ie not waiting until he was actually dead. Then Donitz ends up getting the succession as part of Hitler's last orders because they both got along well and he wasn't actively trying to take control. You can't really get a 1 for 1 because the Third Reich wasn't really a functional state like the USSR, which had codified rules and laws as to how succession went. Hitler was pushed into power, changed the rules, and didn't really think about making a functioning system for succession in case he wasn't there. Hitler most definitely never thought about his own mortality outside the supplements and drugs he was popping into his system. While I don't think he actually believed he would live forever, he probably thought he would be around for a tenth of that 1,000 year reich. EDIT: two fish posted:When it came to American POWs, did they get treated differently depending on their race or ancestry? Did ones with "Aryan" characteristics get preferential treatment? That's complicated because POW camps in Germany were set up by service branch and usually servicemen were handled due to their nation's status with the Geneva Convention. Luftwaffe camps were generally the "nicest" since Goering believed that pilots were the "knights of the sky" or whatever, they were given better accommodations and respect than others. There are several accounts of African American POW's in Luftwaffe camps being treated the same as white servicemen and often better than they were treated by their own countrymen in the military. If you were Jewish though, you most definitely hid that for obvious reasons but they weren't doing 23 and me with POW's to determine who was entitled to better treatment. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 17:57
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:You almost got the Death of Stalin scenario playing out at the end of Hitler's life/reign but the idiots moved too fast, ie not waiting until he was actually dead. Then Donitz ends up getting the succession as part of Hitler's last orders because they both got along well and he wasn't actively trying to take control. You can't really get a 1 for 1 because the Third Reich wasn't really a functional state like the USSR, which had codified rules and laws as to how succession went. Hitler was pushed into power, changed the rules, and didn't really think about making a functioning system for succession in case he wasn't there. Hitler most definitely never thought about his own mortality outside the supplements and drugs he was popping into his system. While I don't think he actually believed he would live forever, he probably thought he would be around for a tenth of that 1,000 year reich. tbf the post-Stalin succession struggle didn't follow the rules of the CPSU either the winner did largely come down to whom the military backed in both 1953 and 1957
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Jul 14, 2023 19:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:Something to keep in mind - and this is part of why I keep drawing the parallel to analyzing this like a religion rather than anything else - is that there is often a gap between what the most devout and fanatical adherents of a thing profess and debate among themselves vs. the lived experience of the average person and how these beliefs get translated into concrete laws and how those laws get enforced. I don't doubt that the mechanics of belief and the movement were much like a religion, I don't think that's particularly uncommon among heavily motivated movements. But I was under the impression that they presented all of their stuff as some kind of science, not as revelations from god or interpretations of scripture, but as things that they had deduced from empirical evidence. They had archaeologists giving their own interpretations of ancient ruins and historians piecing together their image of history. There were anatomical charts about supposedly observable physical characteristics of their individually defined races. In practice they may have been following the lead of the head prophet and the consensus of the top acolytes, but it seems like it was important to them to put together an academic and scientific face on all of it, so it is worth looking at it from that angle.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:11
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They absolutely tried to make racial features quantifiable. Somewhere in my stacks is a translated collection of Nazi paperwork which includes the table. Phone posting 800 miles away, but it involved things like nose angle, nose length, eye separation, etc, not just the blue eyes and blonde hair of common parlance. Of course, by any post 1945 standard, this is all blistering nonsense of the worst sort. Oddly, the horrors of Nazism may have been what discredited eugenics and “race science” for keeps.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:38
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't doubt that the mechanics of belief and the movement were much like a religion, I don't think that's particularly uncommon among heavily motivated movements. But I was under the impression that they presented all of their stuff as some kind of science, not as revelations from god or interpretations of scripture, but as things that they had deduced from empirical evidence. Eh, not really, at least not in the way that you're thinking of "science" in the context of being a computer literate anglophone (I presume) American in 2023. Just as an example, the Institut für Biologie und Rassenlehre was founded with the aim of being a junction between the political (and thereby philosophical) arms of National Socialism and scientific understanding, but even there they made it clear that biology was of fundamental importance for the National Socialist world-view and - this is critical - its delineation and demarkation from "spiritual enemies." Every time push comes to shove in the Nazi state, the scientific takes a back seat to the spiritual. You've got people running around taking measurements of skulls, but that's because they're attempting to work towards a foregone conclusion. There's certainly an element of trying to put a coat of "objective correctness" on it but it's about as deep and sincere as young world creationists conducting geological surveys to prove the earth is 10,000 years old. As for presenting it as revelation, they certainly did, and Hitler was their high prophet. There's a whole cult of the Fuehrer that really focuses on him as the highest authority on pretty much anything, but doubly so anything having to do with the German People, its place in history, and its struggle against enemies both without and within. For a simple analog, think of the Kims in Korea, and that pudgy weirdo standing around pointing dramatically like he's giving orders during a missile test or something else he knows equally gently caress-all about. Or his dad's weird Juche writings.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:39
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Oberndorf posted:They absolutely tried to make racial features quantifiable. Somewhere in my stacks is a translated collection of Nazi paperwork which includes the table. Phone posting 800 miles away, but it involved things like nose angle, nose length, eye separation, etc, not just the blue eyes and blonde hair of common parlance. This is people working towards an ideological goal and slapping a coat of paint on it. The underpinnings of the system aren't scientific, this was a pretty thin veneer. The science (even bogus science) isn't what's driving the ideology, it's the other way around.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:41
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Oh absolutely, but that’s all the “science” they had was. Ideologically motivated pseudoscience.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:46
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Just to add, no one was groomed to be his successor for a number of reasons. One big reason I think is that Hitler bought into the messianic propaganda around him, such as him not marrying Eva Braun because he believed he had to appear celibate as the Fuhrer. Another was that the upper echelon of the Nazi government was a web of intrigue and infighting that would have turned very ugly if someone was designated as a favorite. Goering as mentioned was supposed to be the successor but at the end of the war Hitler had him arrested when Bormann made it look like he was seizing power. Hitler as well relied on Himmler, considering him one of his best assets and like a guard dog, but had no issues having him removed from office the second he doubted his loyalty. Himmler was one of the few higherups who unofficially had a set successor, Reinhard Heydrich, who was building up his resume by getting actual combat and flight decorations, unlike Himmler who got ceremonial flight awards for instance. Since Heydrich got blown up, Himmler didn't have a successor due to the war and trying to stay in control of his section of the Nazi empire in the chaos of the war and the state itself. according to wikipedia he bit a cyanide ampoule, the article didn't mention any bullet hits in the skeleton
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Jul 15, 2023 11:50
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Some minor point I'm actually curious about now, with regards to leadership and the post-war succession: you know how in American history textbooks in school, they'll have a two-page spread with all of the presidents and their times in office? What do they show in German history textbooks when the kids take their history classes? The post-unification chancellors and the West German ones? Maybe the East German ones too? Does it go back to Hitler and Weimar?
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Jul 15, 2023 18:37
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two fish posted:Some minor point I'm actually curious about now, with regards to leadership and the post-war succession: you know how in American history textbooks in school, they'll have a two-page spread with all of the presidents and their times in office? What do they show in German history textbooks when the kids take their history classes? The post-unification chancellors and the West German ones? Maybe the East German ones too? Does it go back to Hitler and Weimar? Ancetodal from a friend, but you get the merovingian and carling kings, the holy roman emperors, Bismarck and the German empire, and then you move into WW1, interwar years and WW2, along with the rise of the nazi party, inflation and then a long course on the nazi regime and the atrocities committed. E: he adds: In general, history classes focused on German history and only added historic events from outside Germany if they had a significant effect on Germany. In addition, the Nazi dictatorship was a reoccuring topic in German, English, Geography and Ethics/Philosophy and Sociology classes. (this was in Hamburg)
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Jul 15, 2023 20:09
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There's no world history courses for kids? In the US by the time you graduate high school you've pretty much learned the broad strokes history of the entire planet
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Jul 15, 2023 20:16
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That's interesting, thank you! But what I meant was a chart like this, something similar to which you would often see in American history textbooks growing up, except with maybe a little more formal formatting:  Do they have these for the Chancellors of Germany in history textbooks for kids, and if so, who's on it?
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Jul 15, 2023 20:29
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VostokProgram posted:There's no world history courses for kids? In the US by the time you graduate high school you've pretty much learned the broad strokes history of the entire planet When I went through American public education in the 90's, this was only true if you considered "the entire planet" to be Europe and the USA. Maybe it's better now? But I'm not gonna hold my breath.
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Jul 15, 2023 20:59
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:When I went through American public education in the 90's, this was only true if you considered "the entire planet" to be Europe and the USA. Well maybe it's a state thing but at least for me in the 2000s in CA it was pretty good. Obviously the US gets more attention: there's two years that are entirely US history. But we still learned about the fertile crescent and ancient china and the Incas and all sorts of random poo poo from all over the globe. E: Just so this isn't purely anecdotal, I looked up the content standards (from 1998 but apparently still in use) and it's got 3 years of world history: quote:Kindergarten Through Grade Five The first few grades are just the basic teaching kids that we live in a society stuff but after that its whole lotta history that I'm sure only nerds like me actually remember. Yaoi Gagarin fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 21:12
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VostokProgram posted:There's no world history courses for kids? In the US by the time you graduate high school you've pretty much learned the broad strokes history of the entire planet Can't say for German curriculum, but in Finland it was like that, but it's not really in conflict with what you were replying to. In grades 1-9 we learned about ancient history, medieval history and so on but mainly as far as was necessary for giving some cultural fundamentals like who the gently caress was Caesar. In our equivalent to high school there was more emphasis on international history, but it's always going to be just a scratch and a broad generalisation of events, so the contents have to be picked based on what is deemed most important for winning in Trivial Pursuit. As an aside I remember browsing my father's old school books as a kid and in the geography book where they described various countries there were also depictions of what a typical Balkanese or Frenchman looked like - a drawing of a man's head from a side angle so you could see the skull shape. This was in the 60's I think. That really stuck to my mind because even as a kid I thought it was weird.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:17
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two fish posted:That's interesting, thank you! I don't think a spread like that would work in most countries, because the US is unique in having a clear starting point followed by an uninterrupted continuity of institutions. For most European countries there wouldn't even be a clear starting point, and then there would be a whole bunch of different offices representing various aspects of head of state / government evolving over time, under different states, constitutions and regimes, with possible periods of no statehood at all.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:29
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steinrokkan posted:I don't think a spread like that would work in most countries, because the US is unique in having a clear starting point followed by an uninterrupted continuity of institutions. For most European countries there wouldn't even be a clear starting point, and then there would be a whole bunch of different offices representing various aspects of head of state / government evolving over time, under different states, constitutions and regimes, with possible periods of no statehood at all. I think you can easily make a table of eg. the kings and queens of Denmark. What is it good for is a separate question. My understanding is that in United States there is some weird worship of Founding Fathers and dead presidents, which in my interpretation was formed as an alternative to the monarchistic rituals of old colonial days. There's no actual use in knowing who the chancellors of Weimar republic were because there were LOTS and their cabinets were often short lived. Nor does it help anyone to know who James Garfield was except for excelling in Trivial Pursuit.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:40
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Nenonen posted:I think you can easily make a table of eg. the kings and queens of Denmark. You'd be right that James Garfield isn't one of the most important US presidents, but the really important Presidents are probably Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and from there you'd have a hand full of second tier guys you can argue over.
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Jul 15, 2023 21:52
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With regards to world history, growing up in the 90s in the northeast, what they taught us was the broad strokes of ancient empires, then you had Rome, and then nothing at all happened until the Renaissance, and Columbus discovering America, and maybe some vague blur of assorted wars for several centuries leading up to blitzkrieg and Hitler and World War II. American history, though? Some token mentions of Native Americans, usually around Thanksgiving, and then it just went straight into pilgrims, colonists, the lead-up to independence, independence, still going on about independence, no mention of anything until a brief touch of slavery to explain the Civil War, and nothing happened again, just a vague blur until the Great Depression, and then it's Pearl Harbor and Hitler and World War II. Both world and American history ended at World War II: world history ended with the Holocaust, American history ended with the atomic bombings. Final exams, then summer vacation.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:04
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America just has significantly less history than Europe does.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:20
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VostokProgram posted:Well maybe it's a state thing but at least for me in the 2000s in CA it was pretty good. Obviously the US gets more attention: there's two years that are entirely US history. But we still learned about the fertile crescent and ancient china and the Incas and all sorts of random poo poo from all over the globe. I was under the impression that while they definitely try to expose you to a lot, they don't particularly expect students to retain much of it. Especially from how many times they repeat the same things. If you don't know what cuneform is by 10th grade, making it into a vocabulary word another year in a row isn't going to make much of a difference. I think the narrative of history as it was taught in my school moved geographically, starting from the fertile crescent, moving west to Greece, Rome, and then England and the New World, and then it stays there until gradually rediscovering the world as America rises to become a superpower and eventually returns to Europe triumphantly as well as a little of Asia with WW2 and Vietnam. I feel like there should've been more details on Native Americans (especially in the year focused on state and local history) and the Philippines. steinrokkan posted:I don't think a spread like that would work in most countries, because the US is unique in having a clear starting point followed by an uninterrupted continuity of institutions. For most European countries there wouldn't even be a clear starting point, and then there would be a whole bunch of different offices representing various aspects of head of state / government evolving over time, under different states, constitutions and regimes, with possible periods of no statehood at all. Every other country has the same kind of beginning point where the current state and its government was formed, unless you want to go the whole 5,000 years of unbroken history schtick. How much you want to place your cultural value on previous states is entirely a matter of choice.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:40
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SlothfulCobra posted:Every other country has the same kind of beginning point where the current state and its government was formed, unless you want to go the whole 5,000 years of unbroken history schtick. How much you want to place your cultural value on previous states is entirely a matter of choice. For Germany, that beginning point is October 1990. They've had four chancellors since then. I think most states don't put the same emphasis on "This is our unbroken line of leaders since our founding" that the U.S. and Canada do.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:13
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In an effort to streamline history curriculum in Europe, European countries should just wipe the slate clean and start history from 1993 when Maastricht Treaty came into effect creating European Union and being the starting point of current governmental apparatus of European nations. Instead of solidification of neoliberalism in Europe being the 'End of History' let it be the 'Beginning of History!' Just think of the savings EU countries would achieve in history books after this. The closest global competitors have to print massive amounts of education material, like US with their tomes with history from 1492 or China with their massive bricks with 5000 years of history. But the austere EU books would be 20 page leaflets of compositions of European Parliament and different Commissions and ten pages about euro crisis and that's it!
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Jul 16, 2023 00:54
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bob dobbs is dead posted:being officer to a forlorn hope (a unit which was to be in the vanguard to extreme danger, usually a breach in walls or an escalade) was highly coveted because it could launch great careers Careers? As what, a corpse?
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Jul 16, 2023 02:15
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Quackles posted:Careers? As what, a corpse? "Losing? That's a bad strategy, son, plus it's gruesome. "Winning is what I do, stick to that!"
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Jul 16, 2023 03:19
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Quackles posted:Careers? As what, a corpse? It wasn’t uncommon to reward leading the Forlorn Hoop in battle with some sort of command, of a company or troop or whatever, which would greatly set apart a young officer who’d command a unit when most commanders were far older. Similarly the men often got NCO equivalencies.
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Jul 16, 2023 03:31
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Quackles posted:Careers? As what, a corpse? get rich or die tryin
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Jul 16, 2023 03:51
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Oh, so it was the military equivalent of "get a job by walking into the store and handing your resume to the cashier while maintaining eye contact". 
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Jul 16, 2023 04:18
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its a pretty walled fortress siege specific thing, in practice. so they went away when those went away
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Jul 16, 2023 04:37
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A commander asking for volunteer officers to lead a unit on a challenging adventure with the implication that success means promotion or favors has most certainly not gone away.
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Jul 16, 2023 04:43
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Vahakyla posted:It wasn’t uncommon to reward leading the Forlorn Hoop in battle with some sort of command in fact I’m given to understand that this is how lebron james got his first big break
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Jul 16, 2023 05:04
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hoop is actually the valid dutch spelling one of the most weird etymologies in all military english, false friended from verloren hoop which is better calqued as forlorn heap or forlorn bunch, but hoop still means hope sometimes in dutch, just not this time bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 05:06
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bob dobbs is dead posted:...forlorn bunch Early modern reboot of the Dirty Dozen looking good.
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Jul 16, 2023 06:10
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