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OctaviusBeaver posted:It's kind of funny Stalin was totally fine with killing millions of people out of hand, but when it comes to the Nazis who were actually in charge of everything he wanted them to get a trial. Did'nt the Russian judges at Nuremberg vote death penalty for everyone anyway on principle ? It was more about putting a good show than anything else.
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May 5, 2014 07:51
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Noctis Horrendae posted:I would like to think that they were marginally more civilized, but oh so marginally. Also, that point goes for every war and country ever, not just Germany in World War II. Don't say such things. It's actually pretty clueless to do so. The war in the east wasn't a "normal" war. Look to the numbers of POWs that died in the Westfeldzüge compared to that.
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May 5, 2014 09:03
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Noctis Horrendae posted:While I'm not going to contribute to the perpetuation of the "clean Wehrmacht" myth, I think a clear distinction needs to be made between the Waffen SS (who committed most of the "war" war crimes), the Allgemeine SS (those who orchestrated and organised the killings), the Totenkopfverbande SS (those who actually guarded and/or killed Jews en masse in the camps), and the Wehrmacht (the actual armed forces). Do you think tagging 'I'm not going to contribute to the perpetuation of the "clean Wehrmacht" myth' on the front of regurgitating the very definition of the clean Wehrmacht myth makes it OK? I wish these threads were better policed to keep the military fetishists out. It's not that you guys are Nazi apologists per se, it's just that you've bought into this general notion of ideologically and morally neutral armed forces that you think you can admire "just" for their honorable fighting of a war, as if wars just happen divorced from context. The war was fought for the Nazi domination of Eurasia. Whether any individual soldier personally killed a Jew (or any of the other victimized groups) doesn't matter -- the entirety of his life from 1939 to 1945 was devoted to one and only one goal, which was establishing the conditions by which the Jews, Slavs, etc. could be killed. There is a problem when people who have the superior knowledge of tank repair manuals and no moral sense get to take over the discussion of the Nazi period, and the problem is it leads to attitudes like "the 'actual armed forces' are morally blameless because soldiers just follow orders."
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May 5, 2014 11:28
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The whole idea of a soldier(and by extension an army) as nothing more than a tool with no responsibility to their own conscience should be a wholly repugnant concept especially when literally discussing nazi germany.
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May 5, 2014 14:16
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Besides, what reason, if any, is there to assume to Wehrmacht were "honorable?" Compared to what? Was their some land army that they fought that had less scruples or lower standards for behavior on the field of battle? I don't know the specific historiography of this idea, but it seems, from what I've read, that come from a lot of German people after the want needn't something to cling to after the crimes of the Third Reich became public. "Yeah, I was in Poland. But I was doing the honorable stuff."
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May 5, 2014 14:23
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meat sweats posted:Do you think tagging 'I'm not going to contribute to the perpetuation of the "clean Wehrmacht" myth' on the front of regurgitating the very definition of the clean Wehrmacht myth makes it OK? In my experience, the "clean Wehrmacht" people haven't read a primary source in their entire life and pollute the "tank repair manual" community as much as they do any other.
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May 5, 2014 14:37
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Last Buffalo posted:I don't know the specific historiography of this idea, but it seems, from what I've read, that come from a lot of German people after the want needn't something to cling to after the crimes of the Third Reich became public. "Yeah, I was in Poland. But I was doing the honorable stuff." In addition to that, a good proportion of senior Wehrmacht officers who survived the war not only escaped real punishment but continued their careers as officers in the Bundeswehr or as military analysts. For obvious reasons the Western powers became very interested in Soviet military practice, and with no access to the Soviet military archives they had to rely on the German officers for that information. The result was that to the west of the iron curtain the historiography of the Eastern Front was badly tainted by their myth-building apologia. Erich von Manstein is the most outstanding example of this. After the collapse of the USSR western historians had much better access to Soviet archives, while at the same time from the 1980s onward there was a tremendous surge in studies of the Holocaust, so the picture is now very different although some people still cling to the old story.
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May 5, 2014 14:53
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Last Buffalo posted:I don't know the specific historiography of this idea, but it seems, from what I've read, that come from a lot of German people after the want needn't something to cling to after the crimes of the Third Reich became public. "Yeah, I was in Poland. But I was doing the honorable stuff." It should be remembered that prior to, really, 1979, the conception of the Holocaust (either of Jews or in general) as the ultimate crime of the Nazis was not widespread. What the leaders were put on trial for and what made the Nazis the byword for evil until VERY recent memory was their violation of international law on conquering & occupying territory. They started a war of aggression, and that is what was considered their crime until pretty much just before the current generation of freshly minted history professors was born. Being in Poland or France at all WAS the crime, regardless of how "honorably" anyone allegedly conducted themselves there. The distinction of the "regular army" from the SS is not only garbage in terms of what it's trying to imply about Holocaust guilt, it's also, ultimately, an attempt to distract attention from the fact that the entire German military apparatus was guilty of war crimes, first and most notably starting the deadliest war in human history in the first place, whether they were involved in the genocide or not.
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May 5, 2014 15:34
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What's your take on Austrian draftees? I heard they were mostly sent to the Eastern front as regulars. When I studied in Austria 3 years ago, one of my friends told me how he never met his grandpa because he died in Russia during the war. Up until that point I hadn't really agreed with the "first victim>first collaborator" notion. But then this story followed by other experiences including that hour-long monologue "Der Herr Karl" ("Naja, Österreich war immer unpolitisch. Aber a bissel a Geld is z'sammkummen, net?") led me to believe they were indeed just finding a way to tread water after Versailles and the Depression.
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May 5, 2014 17:11
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:What's your take on Austrian draftees? I heard they were mostly sent to the Eastern front as regulars. When I studied in Austria 3 years ago, one of my friends told me how he never met his grandpa because he died in Russia during the war. Up until that point I hadn't really agreed with the "first victim>first collaborator" notion. But then this story followed by other experiences including that hour-long monologue "Der Herr Karl" ("Naja, Österreich war immer unpolitisch. Aber a bissel a Geld is z'sammkummen, net?") led me to believe they were indeed just finding a way to tread water after Versailles and the Depression. I posted on this in the german thread about a year ago or so. A large part of the Austrians that were drafted went to the Balkans (e.g. Infanteriedivision 717), especially Serbia (Greece too, google Waldheim), where regular Wehrmacht units killed a shitload of civilians, labeled as "Partisanenbekämpfung". My Professor did some mayor research on that. Eastern front too obviously. I had/have family members that were in Stalingrad and France. German Austria wanted to join Germany after WW1, but was barred from that. So people were stuck in a state that nobody wanted, where everything was conceptualized as the nerve centre for Austro-Hungaria, too big for such a small country. Everybody was expecting economic disaster, but things turned out ok, until the great depression. Add in political chaos between red and black with the nazis as the wildcard. I kind of struggle what to make of it. First victim is obviously bullshit, but that clause in the Moscow declaration offered an easy way out after the war, when again, they had to make a state that nobody wanted. We had the highest (? or at least very, very high) per capita NSDAP membership in the whole Reich, with around 587k members if I recall that right. Resistance movements? Hardly anything more than grafiti and papers. There's really no way that you can dodge the draft with the Nazis. That war was like a force of nature, that swallowed everyone in it's path. For a normal person, there was hardly a way out of the country, even before the war. You get drafted, end up somewhere. Maybe you'll start to like it, maybe not. Either way, you go to war. People accomodated to the new situation. New opportunities, you see. I want to emphasise what Meat Sweats said...the whole apparatus worked towards the Nazi's goals, and willingly too. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 19:46 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 19:33
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So much to comment on so little time. I'll just say that the Wehrmacht was balls deep in every atrocity type you care to name. Also post war justice and trials politics was a lot more complex than so far portrayed. Also the notion that Russian archives became accessible after 90 is a joke. There was a maybe five yer window where we got some things then it slammed shut. Circa Putin tha window got bricked over.
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May 6, 2014 02:50
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Speaking of Wehrmacht apologists, does anyone have any information on the number of training deaths in the Wehrmacht? I was reading a book that goes one step further and advances the myth of the "clean Waffen SS". The book in question being "Watch on the Rhine", a pulp sci-fi by John Ringo and Tom Kratman. The book makes a lot of dumb claims that are hilariously easy to refute with five minutes of googling. (The Waffen SS were no worse than people such as... convicted war criminal Erich Von Manstein) But one I had more trouble with: that the German military lost 1 percent of new recruits in training accidents and that modern armies only have lower loss rates because they've been crippled by political correctness and liberals. I've researched enough to know it's stupid, but I'd really like to see some hard data on the subject, if it's available.
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May 6, 2014 07:44
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meat sweats posted:It should be remembered that prior to, really, 1979, the conception of the Holocaust (either of Jews or in general) as the ultimate crime of the Nazis was not widespread. What the leaders were put on trial for and what made the Nazis the byword for evil until VERY recent memory was their violation of international law on conquering & occupying territory. They started a war of aggression, and that is what was considered their crime until pretty much just before the current generation of freshly minted history professors was born. Being in Poland or France at all WAS the crime, regardless of how "honorably" anyone allegedly conducted themselves there.
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May 6, 2014 10:30
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Mr. Sunshine posted:What are you basing this on? Crimes Against Humanity were one of the indictment points of the Nuremberg Trials (as well as subsequent trials) and this included all of the really nasty stuff like slave labour and the death camps. There were separate trials for people like Eichmann, Höss and Stangl, almost solely for their participation in the Holocaust, and Simon Wiesenthal and his likes conducted a very public hunt for perpetrators of the Holocaust. There were even trials conducted for the participants in the T4 program, the euthanasia program that can be viewed as a precursor to the actual Action Reinhard extermination program. The Nazi concentration and extermination camps were a big loving deal when they were disclosed to the public eye towards the end of the war, and the one things that helped elevate the Nazis from Bad Guys to Lovecraftian Otherwordly Evil. I don't know where you get this idea that they were only seen as bad because they occupied other nations. He's overplaying it a bit but in the broadest sense he's correct. "Crimes against humanity" was a catch all for all of the hosed non military poo poo the nazies did mostly because no one had a real conceptual or legal framework for genocide and how it was special. Early on the Jews were lumped in with everyone else who suffered without donning a uniform: french civilians tortured or killed during anti partisan sweeps, civilian deaths from the bombings of Rotterdam, Coventry, et al, POWs who were massacred after surrender, civilian deaths in the U Boat campaigns, etc. Rather than recognize the Jews as a unique and super hosed type of persecution post war groups latched onto their experiences to claim a greater share of the anti fascist martyrdom narrative that was becoming increasingly politically useful. The French made the camps all about the members of the resistance who perished there, while the communists lumped everyone who died in Europe between 33 and 45 in as "victims of fascism". In the west this only really started to change with the Eichmann trial in the 60s and some heavy pushing on both historiographical and political fronts by the Israelis. The reporting surrounding Nuremberg concentrated on the war crimes. It wasn't that individuals didn't know about the anti semetic nature of hitlers Germany; were talking about what the public discourse was In the US major cultural awareness of the Holocaust in a way that we would recognize it today really comes about with the 1978 broadcast of the TV miniseries Holocaust. That and the eichmann trials are the two huge moments that, in the eyes of the Western public at least, transforms the suffering of the Jews into a distinct and separate thing from all the other nasty poo poo the NSDAP did. Interestingly enough Eastern Europe never made this turn under the Soviets and you can still find monuments in e Berlin etc that date from the late 80s and are dedicated to "the victims of fascism" as a generic group. In the E German historiography the camps were much more concentrated on as where political prisoners, especially KPD and SPD, were detained and killed. The latest controversies in holocaust memorialization have to do with how we recognize non Jewish sufferers. The Jews were singled out and killed for reasons radically different than your average political prisoner, but many argue that the persecution of other groups falls under the same conceptual space of "racial hygiene" as a motivation Also whoever is reading Ringo holy poo poo save your sanity now. I did a lets read of some of his poo poo for TFR a few years back and boy does it get bad. Edit might come by later to expand and clarify on this subject when not on a phone so if you have questions shoot.
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May 6, 2014 16:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:So much to comment on so little time. I'll just say that the Wehrmacht was balls deep in every atrocity type you care to name. Also post war justice and trials politics was a lot more complex than so far portrayed. Really? Which archives? TsAMO is open, RGASPI, RGVIA, at the very least. Some of them are slowly but surely starting online repositories, even.
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May 6, 2014 19:38
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Monocled Falcon posted:But one I had more trouble with: that the German military lost 1 percent of new recruits in training accidents and that modern armies only have lower loss rates because they've been crippled by political correctness and liberals. Lost how? Dead? Maided? Injured?
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May 6, 2014 20:18
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I did a fair amount of research into the American post-war programs (including prosecuting trials and denazification boards), and the consensus is that it was entirely a sham. Originally, the OSS brought over a slew of ex-German scholars and intellectuals who fled Germany in the early '30s and immigrated to the US to serve as liaisons and help administer post-war Germany. By late '45 and '46 most of them had been replaced for being too vigilant in prosecuting Germans and too insistent that Germans be held accountable. Denazification in general was basically a joke. Originally, the Wehrmacht soldiers held in America and Allied prisoner of war camps were sent through a 'committee' process where they were interviewed by a group of Allied representatives - this process was too slow, and angered too many sympathizers, and was replaced by a process where a group of local Germans would conduct the interviews.
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May 6, 2014 20:30
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Ensign Expendable posted:Really? Which archives? TsAMO is open, RGASPI, RGVIA, at the very least. Some of them are slowly but surely starting online repositories, even. I'm mostly going off what colleagues who have researched in them have said. Lots of reports of huge sealed off sections and complaints about how what's available is the same stuff that was accessible to foreign researchers by the 80s. From what they've told me there was a period early on under Yeltsin when you could rest relatively unfettered access to most things short of the craziest secret, executive, personal, NKVD/KGB etc archives but that it quickly constricted. I probably should have made it clearer that this was second hand info, but phone posting. That said it's coming from colleagues who are/were actively researching in Russian archives so I at least believe them. A lot of them are going to Ukrainian and Belorussian archives when looking into questions that challenge the current consensus in the Russian literature. Again, not my field so I'm not intensely familiar with it, but I socialize frequently with people who deal with it daily so i hear a lot about the difficulties and how that situation has changed in the last few decades.
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May 6, 2014 20:31
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A bunch of the really juicy secret archives are classified as Special Folder, and it takes a shitload of paperwork to declassify a Special Folder. In the late 80s and early 90s people cared less about some old stacks of paper and more about not starving, so a fistful of dollars would buy your way into the deepest and darkest corners.
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May 6, 2014 20:42
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Cyrano4747 posted:In the west this only really started to change with the Eichmann trial in the 60s and some heavy pushing on both historiographical and political fronts by the Israelis. The reporting surrounding Nuremberg concentrated on the war crimes. It wasn't that individuals didn't know about the anti semetic nature of hitlers Germany; were talking about what the public discourse was This is all good info -- I would encourage people to actually look at transcripts of the Nuremberg trials and the contemporary newspaper reporting on them, or find a European history textbook written for an English-speaking audience prior to the mid-80s, to get a sense of the historiography on this subject. I just picked up one such book off the shelf -- the term "Holocaust" isn't used at all, and the entire discussion of camps and Jews in WW2 is a half a page about the destruction of the ghettoes and Anne Frank. This in a 500 page college survey-level textbook on Europe from 1890 to 1981, where there's about 100 pages on the war as a whole. Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is also available to me here -- 1200 pages on Germany from 1933 to 1945, one chapter about the "New Order," about sixty pages, which covers the entirety of Jewish policy as well as all other aspects of the war's impact on civilians. This was a hugely popular book when it came out and shaped middlebrow America's conception of the period for decades, back when big historical tomes were bestsellers. The point is that Nazis were already convenient comic book and film villains and considered grotesque embodiments of evil, BEFORE the shift in attention to the Holocaust happened. There were any number of lurid pop-history and fiction books about the villanous Nazis from the middle of the war itself (Captain America punching Hitler was controversial because the U.S. wasn't even at war with Germany yet!) well into the 70s when Holocaust awareness started to become a phenomenon. America was morbidly fascinated with how people like George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazis could exist--but Alex Haley's famous Playboy interview devotes one sentence to asking if he denies that there were gas chambers, then resumes talking about other topics. The Holocaust was one small part of the crime of starting the war, and that is what the Nazis were always thought to be guilty of, and why already-tenuous arguments for clean hands in the genocide don't vindicate the military.
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May 6, 2014 21:39
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You also need to recognize the division between academic understanding of Nazi Germany and popular understanding of Nazi Germany. There are large segments of the world - and even of the United States - which have no real understanding of the Holocaust. As people have talked about, the academic world began to focus on the Holocaust beginning in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. As early as the 1960s (and the publication of A.P. Taylor's "The Origins of the Second World War") historians started to delve into the question of why Nazi Germany went to war -- and to start to move away from assigning particular blame to parties, or imagining that Hitler was executing a diabolical plan. Pointing fingers at Nazi Germany for starting WWII - no matter how accurate - is too easy, and represents a sort of lazy historical thinking. Modern Holocaust education, while better, is still pretty lackluster. The opposite is true from a historical standpoint - books on the Holocaust are an industry. I had a professor who used to joke that when studying Jewish history, you could only find a publisher for two types of books: books about the Holocaust, and books about Jewish mysticism.
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May 6, 2014 21:54
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Fun side fact: studying Nazi Germany is studying life in small. I was able to use Ian Kershaw's concept of "working towards the Fuhrer" to help describe how budgets get approved at a University!
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May 6, 2014 21:56
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Monocled Falcon posted:I was reading a book that goes one step further and advances the myth of the "clean Waffen SS". The book in question being "Watch on the Rhine", a pulp sci-fi by John Ringo and Tom Kratman. The book makes a lot of dumb claims that are hilariously easy to refute with five minutes of googling. (The Waffen SS were no worse than people such as... convicted war criminal Erich Von Manstein) But one I had more trouble with: that the German military lost 1 percent of new recruits in training accidents and that modern armies only have lower loss rates because they've been crippled by political correctness and liberals. Watch on the Rhine is an abysmally bad book. I bought it because hey, nazis in 1000-ton tanks fighting aliens! But it was so loving bad I threw it away after reading a few chapters. I mean, it opens with some EU politician watching footage of alien-wrought devastation in Washington DC, inner-monologuing to herself about how good it is to see America in ruins. Then Germany uses alien technology to rejuvinate the last surviving SS members, because of course the weak, liberal European people of today cannot fight the alien menace. Then the author spends far too many paragraphs describing the moral failings and devious character of the weak, liberal, homosexual pacifists who have the gall to be upset that Germany has brought back the SS. Oh, and most SS soldiers were honorable warriors fighting for their country, except one or two bad apples who were just in it for the rape.
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May 6, 2014 22:06
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Gotta buy this and ironically refer to it as my favourite book.
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May 6, 2014 22:14
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Yes, it actually sounds pretty cool if tasteless. Springtime for Hitler in book form?
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May 6, 2014 22:47
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Cyrano4747 posted:The latest controversies in holocaust memorialization have to do with how we recognize non Jewish sufferers. The Jews were singled out and killed for reasons radically different than your average political prisoner, but many argue that the persecution of other groups falls under the same conceptual space of "racial hygiene" as a motivation As a member of the gay community, I'm conflicted on this. While it is true that the Jews were the main victims of the Nazi regime, they weren't the only ones who suffered. If people want to use the term "Holocaust" to refer exclusively to the genocide of the Jewish people than that is fine, but any historian of the period should mention the other groups that were targeted, tortured, and murdered en masse by the Nazis.
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May 6, 2014 23:45
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Kuiperdolin posted:Yes, it actually sounds pretty cool if tasteless. Springtime for Hitler in book form? I like the one where the Israelis invade texas. I think Indians got involved.
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May 6, 2014 23:53
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Kuiperdolin posted:Yes, it actually sounds pretty cool if tasteless. Springtime for Hitler in book form? John Ringo is a crazed rape-hungry old man who hates environmentalists and queers as much as he loves good old fashioned fascism. He's the anti-Arthur C. Clarke. He is the unwinding of the great spring of human progress, where all good things about modern humanity are inverted in favor of a kind of brutalist contrarianism and military fetishism that borders on the maniacal. Black is white, up is down, only pussies give a poo poo about trees, and "I'm just asking questions!" I loving beseech you, do not read his books. Not even in the name of irony. Not even for the black, bilious chuckle you might have after his thousandth lovingly detailed dismemberment, or the five hundredth time a woman is singled out for butchery. For the love that you have for what is good in mankind, spare yourself this pitiless eye-rolling idiocy. The cosmoline-dripping letters pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine show a more nuanced appreciation of literature and politics than John Ringo. The John Birch Society looks sober and restrained by comparison. An infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare, we are told. What we are not told is that even monkeys refuse to produce the works of John Ringo. My question: does anyone have a source for the famous quote where Adolf Hitler basically states "even if I was able to make peace with the soviet union tomorrow, I'd just invade again in a week?" I feel like I saw it in this thread (or the military history thread?) but I can't find it.
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May 7, 2014 00:25
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spider bethlehem posted:John Ringo is a crazed rape-hungry old man who hates environmentalists and queers as much as he loves good old fashioned fascism. He's the anti-Arthur C. Clarke. He is the unwinding of the great spring of human progress, where all good things about modern humanity are inverted in favor of a kind of brutalist contrarianism and military fetishism that borders on the maniacal. Black is white, up is down, only pussies give a poo poo about trees, and "I'm just asking questions!" It should be noted that Tom Kratmann somehow manages to outdo Ringo in this regard. Watch on the Rhine is what Plato thought of when he said that written language was a bad idea.
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May 7, 2014 02:57
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Isn't he the one who wrote something with SS soldiers swimming the English Channel or something and being a useful combat force afterward?
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May 7, 2014 03:39
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spider bethlehem posted:An infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare, we are told. What we are not told is that even monkeys refuse to produce the works of John Ringo. Holy poo poo I'm stealing this, it is pure distilled genius.
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May 7, 2014 03:46
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Frostwerks posted:I like the one where the Israelis invade texas. I think Indians got involved. I have it. It's pure genius. (At one point the Texans lack firepower so they dig a canal to bring a battleship to Dallas)
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May 7, 2014 06:02
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Kuiperdolin posted:I have it. It's pure genius. That... is truly special. What were the Indians' role?
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May 7, 2014 06:11
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Oh, yeah, Watch on the Rhine is a terrible, terrible book. I'm reading it because it's so terrible, it's almost this perfect satire of this whole sort of stupid John Ringo style sci-fi novels. Like, ever heard of The Iron Dream, or It Can't Happen Here? It is exactly like those books, done unironically. I was even thinking of doing a let's read on it. The book seemed like a good subject for that because it's both horrifying and funny to watch the authors label their enemies fascists but then adopt or hold every position of actual fascism, then have people who should be actual fascists agree them about everything else. A combination of college and not being able to track down things like training losses in the Wehrmacht stopped me. If anyone's interested, I could try, but either way, I'm still interested in the question of what percentage of recruits died in basic training in the German Wehrmacht. See, Tom Kratman, the co-author is someone who defines the term "pseudo-intellectual", and that the death rate in training should be about one percent is one of his big ideas that prove how weak modern people are. That idea having any basis in fact is something that I'd like to have confirmed or denied.
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May 7, 2014 06:42
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Monocled Falcon posted:Oh, yeah, Watch on the Rhine is a terrible, terrible book. I'm reading it because it's so terrible, it's almost this perfect satire of this whole sort of stupid John Ringo style sci-fi novels. Like, ever heard of The Iron Dream, or It Can't Happen Here? It is exactly like those books, done unironically. I'd be interested in a Let's Read of something like that. I've toyed with the idea of doing a "fascism in modern escapist fiction" thread, ranging from things like Ringo and Clancy to the more innocuous obsession with royalty and security theater in modern dramas, but it seems like kind of a high concept thread to hope for. Incidentally, do you ever get the feeling that all the malarkey about modern humanity being weak is just the most obvious and pathetic sort of projection that could be imagined? To paraphrase Chris Onstadt, "any more of that and you're just on your knees in a field, under a heavy rain, screaming for your dad to notice you." For on-tracknes, I'd like to reiterate my question about sourcing that quote about Hitler's pitiful addiction to invading the Soviet Union and add on to this question about Wehrmacht/SS training cadre casualties, with the caveat that I have no idea what a reasonable comparison figure would be, so anyone who can speak to this on a statistical level would be very welcome.
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May 7, 2014 06:50
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spider bethlehem posted:For on-tracknes, I'd like to reiterate my question about sourcing that quote about Hitler's pitiful addiction to invading the Soviet Union and add on to this question about Wehrmacht/SS training cadre casualties, with the caveat that I have no idea what a reasonable comparison figure would be, so anyone who can speak to this on a statistical level would be very welcome. I can't help you with the quote, but it is pretty much in line with Hitler's stated opinions, as well as his actual actions. The nazis started the war for two nebulous reasons - Revenge on France for Versailles, and carving out a colonial empire out of Poland, the Soviet Union and other bits and pieces of Eastern Europe. On top of that you have the whole "communism is a Jewish plot (PS: so is capitalism)", viewing the slavs as subhuman, etc etc. Pair this with Hitler's tendency to break treaties at the drop of a hat if he felt like it, and well...
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May 7, 2014 07:20
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spider bethlehem posted:I'd be interested in a Let's Read of something like that. I've toyed with the idea of doing a "fascism in modern escapist fiction" thread, ranging from things like Ringo and Clancy to the more innocuous obsession with royalty and security theater in modern dramas, but it seems like kind of a high concept thread to hope for. If you want a lets read if awful patriot fiction there is a great one going on in TFR right now. It's the thread with "bracken" in the title. Pretty sure there are links in that thread to the other two huge TFR patriot fiction lets reads from past years, including one covering Ringo's Ghost Johnny Ringo is not a nice man and his word-pictures hurt my think-meat 
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May 7, 2014 14:19
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Mr. Sunshine posted:I can't help you with the quote, but it is pretty much in line with Hitler's stated opinions, as well as his actual actions. The nazis started the war for two nebulous reasons - Revenge on France for Versailles, and carving out a colonial empire out of Poland, the Soviet Union and other bits and pieces of Eastern Europe. On top of that you have the whole "communism is a Jewish plot (PS: so is capitalism)", viewing the slavs as subhuman, etc etc. You know, I was very much raised on the myth of the invincible Nazis, Germany as the Mordor of the modern world, etc. A lot of my friends and a surprising number of history teachers repeated the idea that somehow the fascist side in World War 2 had come just -this close- to conquering the world, and only the desperate efforts of a handful of plucky scientists in Los Alamos and ARE TROOPS had stopped the blood-dimm'd tide from washing all decency into the sea. The more studying I do, and the more time I spend in this thread, the more I become convinced that the war was the consequence of a nationwide delusion. Only a nation utterly drunk on delusions of grandeur could imagine victory under the conditions that prevailed at the start of the war. Fascism makes you drunk, I think - a sort of permanent wet-brain psychosis that goes on as long as the ride does, carrying normal people off their feet and leaving them stranded or dead. Led by madmen, industrialized by slavetakers and guided by principles of irrational emotion masquerading as historical inevitability, it's no loving wonder they were beaten. It's like if Alex Jones was given a country to run. Cyrano4747 posted:If you want a lets read if awful patriot fiction there is a great one going on in TFR right now. It's the thread with "bracken" in the title. Pretty sure there are links in that thread to the other two huge TFR patriot fiction lets reads from past years, including one covering Ringo's Ghost This is the kind of advice I'm not sure I will end up happy for having followed, but thank you Cyrano.  indeed.
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May 7, 2014 16:31
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spider bethlehem posted:You know, I was very much raised on the myth of the invincible Nazis, Germany as the Mordor of the modern world, etc. A lot of my friends and a surprising number of history teachers repeated the idea that somehow the fascist side in World War 2 had come just -this close- to conquering the world, and only the desperate efforts of a handful of plucky scientists in Los Alamos and ARE TROOPS had stopped the blood-dimm'd tide from washing all decency into the sea. The problem with your description of Germany is that you assume Nazi Germany operated under conditions that were in some way unique. Fascism was incredibly popular all across Europe, and if history had taken a slightly different course, a fascist leader could have easily emerged in France or Finland. Many of Hitler's actions were rational and correct if you buy into his particular worldview - too many people make the mistake of viewing Hitler as some frothing moronic madman, but there's many 'good' reasons why people believed in what he said and what he thought. If your worldview is informed by Hitler's unique blend of scientific racism, and you wholeheartedly believe that different races are engaging in combat on a global stage, where losing means the destruction of the very foundation of culture, then why wouldn't you support invading Russia or wiping out the Jews? Clearly the majority of Germans did not buy into this system completely - although most did to varying degrees - but enough people in positions of power did to create a system in which success was predicated on furthering these viewpoints, independent of personal belief.
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May 7, 2014 22:23
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:a fascist leader could have easily emerged in France One almost did.
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May 7, 2014 22:38
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