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MrBling posted:Was there any ever chance of Spain entering WW2 after Germany helped Franco win his civil war? Surely the Allies must have been a bit wary of it happening, even if Germany seemingly mostly helped out Franco to take focus away from themselves and what they were doing. Not really, Spain was just in no shape to fight a war after the Spanish Civil War. Consider that the war was only considered to have been brought to a close six months before World War II kicked off, and even after what was considered to be the end of major fighting in the SCW there was still some amount of guerilla warfare being conducted by Republican holdouts. Franco needed time to rebuild the country and consolidate his power. If they did enter on the Axis side, they'd likely be a net drain of resources, since all that Spain could really provide was warm bodies. That would put a burden on the other Axis powers to feed and equip them considering Spain's lacking industrial base, post-war economic disruption, and general poverty. It would also be a significant amount of territory needing defending, since it would be susceptible to Allied air attacks and amphibious invasion, and unlike Italy you'd have to cover a much wider front if the Allies did invade and secure a significant foothold.
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May 10, 2014 19:35
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Well Franco didn't need a night of long knives because he had the hilarious good fortune of having both Mola and Sanjurjo die in plane crashes. E: and since sanjurjo's death was pretty hilarious I'll share the Wikipedia description of it. quote:Sanjurjo died in Estoril in a plane crash on July 20, 1936, when he tried to fly back to Spain. He chose to fly in a small airplane piloted by Juan Antonio Ansaldo. One of the main reasons for the crash was the heavy luggage that Sanjurjo insisted on bringing. Ansaldo warned him that the load was too heavy, but Sanjurjo answered him: Raskolnikov38 fucked around with this message at 19:41 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 19:38
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:"We"? This is your first post in this thread that I can find. First of all, I was a lurker in this thread as I don't have much to add to the specific subject but now you are making more general claims about history so I felt the need to give a response. But this time, I actually agree with a lot of what you wrote, especially the bits about what needs to be discussed and answered. The problem is, that's what people were doing here before you came in here asserting obviously false things, like the idea that Nazi's goal was only creating the Greater Germany and Hitler simply being a nationalist. The rest of your posts were rants against modern culture and liberalism. It just doesn't instill confidence in your arguments.
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May 10, 2014 19:45
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MrBling posted:Was there any ever chance of Spain entering WW2 after Germany helped Franco win his civil war? Surely the Allies must have been a bit wary of it happening, even if Germany seemingly mostly helped out Franco to take focus away from themselves and what they were doing. Hitler and Franco had a lot of personal animosity between them, and neither shared much of the same ambitions on the geopolitical scale. Franco was politically isolated before the Spanish civil war, and basically stumbled onto a leadership role after two of his Nationalist leaders died in accidents. He was very much placated with his hold on Spain, and the Blue Division was really just a way of acknowledging the German support he received during the Civil War, and a continuation of his "duty" to fight socialists. The Civil War was still in recent memory, and the Spanish economy was barely afloat through trade with both Allied and Axis. The forces behind the War lacked any sort of expansionist or revanchist element and the Nationalists were mainly traditionalists who were galvanised by "household" issues rather than outside politics. There wasn't much reason for Franco to accede to Hitler's demands. Had Franco joined the war, Gibraltar would probably have been captured quickly enough, but Spain's 5000km coastline now needs to be defended. The Spanish army and air force is not up to snuff, and the Germans need to invest themselves in at least the entire Northern coastline. The Navy is nonexistent, and Germany can't even help there. The Catalan/Basque/Galician Republican elements are still simmering. It's too complicated and alt-histy to really discuss, but it's an iffy scenario, and sees no gain for the Spanish. Franco sensibly refused Hitler, was called a Jew, never touched the War, and lived on for 3 decades. And nobody did a thing.
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May 10, 2014 20:06
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Jews were specifically targeted by the Nazi regime from its very inception. No other group of Nazi victims, apart from maybe communists, was so openly and constantly vilified. Jews were murdered by the Nazis trough ad-hoc executions in the east, through sickness, starvation, exhaustion and random violence in the labour camps, and through gassing in the extermination camps. You did a good job writing that up. It is no coincidence that jews and communists got targetet together, because in the planning of Barbarossa and into the operation 5 seperate orders were given to the Wehrmacht by it's leadership (in german literature called "Verbrecherische Befehle", and to clarify, each of them expands the scale who is considered a target) that explicitly linked jews and communism and at first called for the liquidation of jewish men of education, communist functionaires and state officials like clerks. For the Wehrmacht it was presented as a logical step (but also resonating with conservative beliefs about communism), because the operation ran on a tight schedule and had extremely long supply lines and bottlenecks that were correctly identified to be vulnerable to partisan activity. Reading about the role and planning of Generalquartiermeister Wagner, I'm surprised that the state didn't dig up his remains and launch them with great ceremony into the next sewer. Probably because of his later role in the 20th July resistance to Hitler. It was formulated as "der Jude als Hauptträger des Bolschewismus", meaning jews being the core cell and source of bolshevism, and the logical step, if you buy into this worldview is, that if you want to wipe out resistance aka bolshevism, you have to wipe out the jews. That wasn't a new development, but a core belief of the system (Marx being jewish, communism being *the* nemesis etc.). There is another formula that was used back then: "Judentum ist Partisanentum" and "Judentum ist Bolschewismus", you could use these terms interchangeably and everyone in Germany would know what was meant. Maybe this is a good time to point out the different goals (and with that a certain disposition politically, e.g. the Abwehr as a conservative force that at heart despised the nazis, or the RSHA pushing very hard to get done with the jews, etc.) that each department pursued, or really the parallel structures within the state that Kershaw mentions, each with their own goals vying for Hitler's ok. Extermination of the jews is a sideproduct in the plans for the war in the east and it expanded/changed in close dialogue with the developments/requirements on the front and at home, it wasn't the actual goal, more like an "inherrent necessity" if you follow the arguments of this worldview and the utter radicality of war planning and execution. There were other solutions to where to transport the jews (see Madagaskarplan and everything else that was discussed at the Wannseekonferenz), but the development of the war in 1940 barred these. The colonial plans for the east were even more grotesque, but I already posted extensively on that. I was always fascinated by the paradoxon that fascism called for the return to an imaginated past (really, in the best sense of "making shiiiiiiit up" [google Guido von List for great profit], like the atlantis of the north or what have you), but at the same time was a futuristic movement (see the connections of italian futurism, actionism and fascist movement) that was obsessed with technology. It's only partially true that the nazis had no philosophical or theoretical background or foundation. It goes back to the 19th century discourse what makes a nation, for Germany this was to be decided by "blood" (see Renan vs. Fichte, surviving today as jus sanguinis, etc) instead of voluntaristic principle, e.g. attachment to certain core values of what makes your nation (e.g. liberté, egalité, fraternité). It is no coincidence that this issue was especially virulent in Austro Hungaria, as this was a state that defied all the nationalistic developments in favour of the dynastic principle, while it's extremely heterogenic citizenry very well received the discourses of the time. Vienna is really the focal point to understanding where the train would go. You can read up on the roots of these ideas of fringe movements in Austro Hungaria that Hitler shamelessly copied 1:1 in Hamann, Brigitte (1999): Hitler's Vienna : A Dictator's Apprenticeship. It's definitely a book worth reading that also does an excellent job on presenting Hitler's time in Vienna and the environment that he was in. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 20:34 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 20:07
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fspades posted:First of all, I was a lurker in this thread as I don't have much to add to the specific subject but now you are making more general claims about history so I felt the need to give a response. Alright, I think you're referring to page 17, now that I look back through the thread again. It's the only time attempts at explaining roots for anti-jewish sentiment in Germany happened in this thread. Nobody in this thread has had the point of view that I have had on the events of WW2, for better or for worse. I think it all needed to be said, and do what you want with it. Ignore it all even. And I do think all of his endeavors were for the Reich first, and in this way he was primarily a nationalist. He had many goals but they all fell under the umbrella of creating a new German empire in Europe. I don't think that was an unreasonable characterization to make. I wouldn't say it was the Nazi's only goal, there was a lot going on and it was all a chaotic situation, what with Himmler and Heydrich largely being left alone to pursue their aims. But I do believe that Hitler had a cohesive vision and it was not racism first, it was German nationalism, with racist ideology being a factor in his goals. I do think this undercuts the Jewish victim mentality because it shows not everything was about them, and that's why I bring it up. I wish there were more posts in this thread with an attempt understand every side and tie it all together, an attempt to demonize no one for the sake of it, while at the same time keeping the values that are important to all people in mind. And if you condemn, be very specific about what it is you are condemning, and be aware of potential hypocrisies and contradictions. Because that's the problem with condemnations. It is usually throwing stones from a glass house. Edit - the above post for example, and another by JaucheCharly on page 17. That's what I am referring to. Good posts. ThePriceJustWentUp fucked around with this message at 20:25 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 20:17
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I'm just summing up Hannah Arendt and adding the little that I read. If you want to give props, it's hers.
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May 10, 2014 20:27
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JaucheCharly posted:I'm just summing up Hannah Arendt and adding the little that I read. If you want to give props, it's hers. From Origins of The Totalitarian State? I guess I need to read that again, and more carefully.
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May 10, 2014 20:31
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I'm not sure how you can call Hitler's German nationalism not racism, because if thinking your race is better than other races, and that to promote your race's prosperity, you need to rob, murder, and expel any other race that stands in your way, what IS racist?
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May 10, 2014 20:43
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Pornographic Memory posted:I'm not sure how you can call Hitler's German nationalism not racism, because if thinking your race is better than other races, and that to promote your race's prosperity, you need to rob, murder, and expel any other race that stands in your way, what IS racist? I've tried to answer this 4 different ways and it all comes out to be an unimportant semantic distinction so I will just say point taken. However, what brand of nationalism wouldn't be racist? As in, what is a country based on if not its people. If somehow America managed to stoke a stronger form of nationalism, how would it take shape, and who would its enemies be? What would our identity be and what would theirs be? Would it be racist? White people vs brown people? This has already happened in a way, but it never really took hold (because we're so diverse, really). Almost every country in the world has a distinct ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity, and so if a popular movement rises up in that country due to some perceived inner or outer slight, doesn't that form end up taking a racist form in some way, in that a culture is standing up for itself? I don't know, I think I am just saying that calling Hitler's Germany racist is not as stark a distinction as we want to think it is. They took existing tensions to their logical conclusion, I would say. And whether tensions should never go there or not is besides the point, because they did. Edit - I don't want to take this apologist tone anymore. Obviously the Nazi regime went far beyond resolving existing tensions, and through the use of overwhelming force and technology did things that were completely over the top in a civilized state and were essentially crazed death cult ideology. I recognize this and do not dispute this. But the basic form is not different I am saying. Were they racist? Yes, but are the Dutch or the British not, for example? ThePriceJustWentUp fucked around with this message at 21:09 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 21:02
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:But I do believe that Hitler had a cohesive vision and it was not racism first, it was German nationalism, with racist ideology being a factor in his goals. It was German nationalism, but a distinct racist form of it that was unlike, say, Bismarck.
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May 10, 2014 21:05
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Nazism was also a totalitarian system. I think you'd be right that 19th century forms of nationalism carried racism with it. But Nazism sought the total transformation of the lives of everyone in the society, with everything under the control of the Nazi party, and everything now part of a "mass," whether mass surveillance, mass conscription, mass games or mass murder. It sought to "coordinate" the lives of everyone in the society, which had similarities to forms of communism, in that it would lead to a better world and happier, healthier human beings. But unlike communism, which sought to eliminate classes, Nazism aimed to do this by systematically eliminating all racially unhealthy elements within the society. The result was a racially pure, racially homogeneous and utopian society. Roger Griffin wrote: "Even the euthanasia campaign and the multiple genocides carried out by the Third Reich need to be understood not merely as orgies of wanton sadism and hate-inspired nihilism, not as a simple and totally alien inhumanity, but – a surely more chilling proposition – as the collateral damage of the struggle to bring about an anthropological revolution for the ultimate good of all humanity." http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/1415/springtime-for-hitler BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 21:15 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 21:13
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Omi-Polari posted:Nazism was a racist form of nationalism. It sought to revitalize society by reconnecting citizens with their history, culture, ethnic roots and soil. It also sought to mobilize the masses with mythic narratives about the cultural and racial superiority of the Aryans. Even the state-approved artistic style celebrated both hygienic and racial beauty. I thought Bismarck united the disparate German "tribes" under the banner of a modern nation state. It was a precursor to the modern conception of a race, where there wasn't one before in the same way (I am sure a case can be made for this, maybe with Foucault). I wouldn't call his brand of nationalism "not racist". He didn't try to unite the British and the Germanic tribes under one roof, for example. Omi-Polari posted:Nazism was also a totalitarian system. I think you'd be right that 19th century forms of nationalism carried racism with it. But Nazism sought the total transformation of the lives of everyone in the society, with everything under the control of the Nazi party, and everything now part of a "mass," whether mass surveillance, mass conscription, mass games or mass murder. It sought to "coordinate" the lives of everyone in the society, which had similarities to forms of communism, in that it would lead to a better world and happier, healthier human beings. I'm reading the Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler right now, slowly. Apparently it influenced Hitler and a few others in the party as I remember, but I am actually reading it because Ludwig Wittgenstein said it influenced him greatly. I bring this up because he talks about how some cultures have a conception of world-history/self-history, while others have no conception of some arc of history leading to some point. Nazi Germany was surely in the first category, in that they believed their nation was destined for something, a place in the heavens in some way. People want to dismiss this as occultish thinking, but it's common and is a more Western outlook on life (and history) than anything else. The belief in an arc of history towards an ever brighter and greater future. And though the entire Western world was fighting Nazi Germany, it is all susceptible to the same fantastical thinking at its base, same with Soviet Russia, in that Communism is seen as the perfecting of certain forms of social organization, leading to even greater perfection. This all clashed together at once during World War 2, where it was not just a war of ideology, but the war for that future perfect state of order against all enemies, for each side. To just call it ideology removes the fantastical element that each side held about its role in the world. Britain, too, which still harbored sentiments of having a worldwide empire. America as the "shining city on a hill" (Reagan articulated what America thinks about itself best). These are all very similar to Nazi ideology, our causes and conditions were different though. The same foundation of fantastical thinking endemic to the West. ThePriceJustWentUp fucked around with this message at 21:29 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 21:13
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:I thought Bismarck united the disparate German "tribes" under the banner of a modern nation state. It was a precursor to the modern conception of a race, where there wasn't one before in the same way (I am sure a case can be made for this, maybe with Foucault). I wouldn't call his brand of nationalism "not racist". He didn't try to unite the British and the Germanic tribes under one roof, for example.
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May 10, 2014 21:14
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:I'm reading the Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler right now, slowly. Apparently it influenced Hitler and a few others in the party as I remember, but I am actually reading it because Ludwig Wittgenstein said it influenced him greatly. Nazism was distinct because it emphasized racial purity and mythic, ancient pre-modern narratives as a new "canopy." We create a new world by reconstructing the ancient one, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. (Which implies burning down the rest of the decaying modern world.) The phoenix goes through cycles of birth and death, and is reborn anew each cycle. (It's actually a different phoenix each cycle which contains the essence of the previous ones.) The Nazis wanted to build a new society that contained the essence of the ancient, pre-modern Aryan society. I think communism attempted something similar, but much different in other ways by emphasizing cutting all ties with the past to build a new future. The Soviets went really sci-fi with it. Also: Nice observation about America. That's definitely a mythic narrative. But I think the distinction is that Nazism and Communism were movements that developed as a means to impose a new order on top of the decaying, collapsing old one. So I think the closest American equivalent would not be Ronald Reagan, who was saying that to justify supporting the conservative, contemporary order -- but a new demagogue who says that American society today is decaying, decadent, has lost all meaning, people are adrift and purposeless. And as a solution we will revive the "shining city on a hill" and rebuild a pre-modern American state on top of the ruins of the current one. It turns out, there are far right groups in the United States who are saying this. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 22:01 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 21:48
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I have nothing left to add but thanks for the post, Omi-Polari. I will continue to read Spengler for now.
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May 11, 2014 01:05
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Hitler's particular strain of anti-Semitism was a unique combination of traditional European/German religious anti-Semitism and scientific racism, and was part of the transformation of the idea of "Jewishness" as a religion to an immutable racial character. One thing to remember about Hitler, though, is that he originated nothing. He borrowed all of his beliefs (including his anti-Semitism) from others.
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May 11, 2014 03:29
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meat sweats posted:The invasion of other countries for the purpose of establishing Hitler's racial empire was a war crime, irrespective of whether they personally executed Jews or not. This has been the consistent moral and legal fact since Nuremberg. All members of the German state and military were guilty. Refusing to admit it = Nazi apologism. You are one obtuse poster.
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May 11, 2014 04:50
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You should keep reading to the end of the thread for a surprise!
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May 11, 2014 05:59
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:Hitler's particular strain of anti-Semitism was a unique combination of traditional European/German religious anti-Semitism and scientific racism, and was part of the transformation of the idea of "Jewishness" as a religion to an immutable racial character. Scientific racism was still a big thing in the 1930's. It was becoming more and more discredited but it was still on the edges of mainstream societal thought. It was a big driving force in Japanese colonial policy for instance, even before bureaucrats and intellectuals started championing "blood and soil" rhetoric.
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May 11, 2014 06:55
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Antisemitism was pretty controversial among various fascist movements. It wasn't very widespread in Italy and there were even a number if Jewish fascists. Mussolini doesn't seem to have cared much as there weren't any German style antisemitic laws until he was pressured by Hitler. In Scandinavia there was a number of different views on the matter, those groups that were influenced by Nazism were of course the most fervently antisemitic while some saw this as a negative foreign influence and a barrier to the creation of a pure Nordic ideology and the groups that were more Italian influenced seem to have been slightly less prone to antisemitism. In Britain the British Union of Fascist were criticized by their opponents in the Imperial League of Fascist for not being antisemitic enough and called "kosher fascists" and "The British Jewnion of Fascists". Most in the BUF took the view that Jews were not inherently wicked and that those who were assimilated into British society were British while those who had emigrated more recently and/or held onto their old "non-European" culture were inferior not because of race but because of that culture. So the disagreement between the BUF and the IFL, who believed Jewish inferiority and vice to be racial, is basically clash between modern scientific racism and an older form of cultural racism. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 07:23 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 07:19
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FreudianSlippers posted:Antisemitism was pretty controversial among various fascist movements. It wasn't very widespread in Italy and there were even a number if Jewish fascists. Mussolini doesn't seem to have cared much as there weren't any German style antisemitic laws until he was pressured by Hitler. The thing with anti-Semitism, though... There's a term I learned from the writings of Moishe Postone called "structural anti-Semitism." Like how an argument is not explicitly racist but has implicitly racist undertones? A lot of not-explicitly-anti-Semitic stuff from the far right still seems anti-Semitic. Like a lot of the modern conspiracist movement doesn't mention Jews by name, but that's the implication of believing in an international conspiracy of rootless moneychangers who spread chaos and want people to feel detached from their culture, traditions, etc. I wonder if that was present in Italian fascism so when Hitler pressured Mussolini, it easily slotted into place, so to speak.
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May 11, 2014 07:56
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I dunno if it's super relevant but there's been some work done on the Italian colonies in Libya w/r/t this. Basically they've found that the North African Jews were persecuted and/or handed off to the Germans at a much higher rate than European Jews. This has been attributed to: 1. These Jews were brown and didn't speak Italian and so were easier to otherize. (Seriously, that's one of the better reasons) 2. Italian colonists in Libya were a self-selected group more likely to be hard core believers in the whole New Rome thing. 3. The military stationed there was already comfortable with assorted nastiness after putting down the Cyrenaica tribes and other resistance. 4. They got lumped in with aforementioned tribes and other resistance when the Brits came back and many groups decided to help them out. There's some debate about which factors were more important, but one and two seem pretty relevant given that, as far as three and four go, there was already a system there that didn't really demand special treatment for Jews per say. I dunno, maybe just a complicating factor in the Italian Fascists are like this but German Fascist go like that talk, but different subgroups in one bigger group can go different ways.
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May 11, 2014 09:55
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meat sweats posted:You should keep reading to the end of the thread for a surprise!
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May 11, 2014 10:54
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the JJ posted:I dunno if it's super relevant but there's been some work done on the Italian colonies in Libya w/r/t this. Basically they've found that the North African Jews were persecuted and/or handed off to the Germans at a much higher rate than European Jews. The reasons you gave would line up rather well with what I remember from the courses in holocaust studies I took about 8 years ago. Essentially, Italy passed a bunch of antisemitic laws in 1938 as a handout to Hitler, but the laws were written in a way to exclude the majority of Italy's Jewish population from any effects they had. So it makes sense that North African Jews would get the short end of the stick on account of not being a part of the mainstream Italian society.
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May 11, 2014 12:27
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:I thought Bismarck united the disparate German "tribes" under the banner of a modern nation state. It was a precursor to the modern conception of a race, where there wasn't one before in the same way (I am sure a case can be made for this, maybe with Foucault). I wouldn't call his brand of nationalism "not racist". He didn't try to unite the British and the Germanic tribes under one roof, for example. Talking about the states of 19th century Germany as 'tribes', quotes or not, is really rather weird, and the 19th century is exactly when the modern conception of race as used by the Nazis developed. Nonetheless, Bismarck didn't go in for, say, laws outlawing marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans or stripping Germans of their citizenship based on their racial purity. That's because Bismarck was a fairly normal 19th century nationalist. Saying Bismarckian nationalism was pretty much the same as Nazism is fundamentally incorrect.
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May 11, 2014 15:12
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You also have to remember how effective the Nazi policy of Aryanization was, which amounted to handing over Jewish property and businesses to non-Jews. It was a big carrot to lead elements of the German population (and the population of Germany's allies) to support anti-Semitic policies even if they themselves didn't fully believe the hardline Nazi rhetoric. Who doesn't want a free business?
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May 11, 2014 15:16
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That's also why Kristallnacht was not looked on favorably by much of the Nazi leadership and was not an event that was repeated. All the destruction of property was also destroying capital that could have been seized intact and distributed to proper Aryans. Well, that, and the fact that people engaging in riots is not something any state concerned with maintaining law and order would want to endorse.
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May 11, 2014 15:34
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Wasn't the Irgun of pre-Israel more or less fascist? I don't know if they ever had any allegiance or coordination with any other national fascist movements, but in practice they were going with the general tide of worldwide fascism.
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May 11, 2014 16:50
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FreudianSlippers posted:In Britain the British Union of Fascist were criticized by their opponents in the Imperial League of Fascist for not being antisemitic enough and called "kosher fascists" and "The British Jewnion of Fascists". Most in the BUF took the view that Jews were not inherently wicked and that those who were assimilated into British society were British while those who had emigrated more recently and/or held onto their old "non-European" culture were inferior not because of race but because of that culture. This is overstating the case dramatically -- all conspiracy theory-based movements are anti-Semitic as anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century is where the conspiratorial mindset originated. The BUF certainly was open about their dislike of Jews and certainly engaged in any number of street brawls with Jewish groups. That other factions in fascism tried to gain followers by claiming to be more anti-Jew isn't surprising. Communist groups splinter over who hates capitalism and the U.S. more all the time, it doesn't mean any of them aren't actually Communists to begin with. Mosley loved to say things like "of course I don't think all Jews are born bad, it just coincidentally happens that right now every Jew in the world is a Bolshevik." In the context of British politics, this was a necessary phrasing -- Jewish political equality had been a reality in the UK since 1858 and England had a much weaker tradition of religious anti-Semitism than Germany, due to the fact that it had zero Jews in the country at the time when the Reformation happened. But, everyone knew what he meant and certainly no Jews or liberals were fooled about what their fate would be under a BUF government. feedmegin posted:Talking about the states of 19th century Germany as 'tribes', quotes or not, is really rather weird, and the 19th century is exactly when the modern conception of race as used by the Nazis developed. Nonetheless, Bismarck didn't go in for, say, laws outlawing marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans or stripping Germans of their citizenship based on their racial purity. That's because Bismarck was a fairly normal 19th century nationalist. Saying Bismarckian nationalism was pretty much the same as Nazism is fundamentally incorrect. Bismarck served a king, and Hitler hated monarchies precisely because they were too bound to tradition and legalities. Pornographic Memory posted:That's also why Kristallnacht was not looked on favorably by much of the Nazi leadership and was not an event that was repeated. All the destruction of property was also destroying capital that could have been seized intact and distributed to proper Aryans. Well, that, and the fact that people engaging in riots is not something any state concerned with maintaining law and order would want to endorse. The conception that Nazis are obsessed with "law and order" is completely incorrect. As I said, if it applies to anyone it would be to the Spanish Fascists. We have this idiom in American English of the obsessive "rules Nazi" but it misses the reality which is that totalitarianism is about eliminating the rule of law and replacing it with a planned destabilization. In Nazi Germany, everything in political life was chaotic, informal, and subject to multiple overlapping jurisdictions. By design, the only constants were Jews bad, Hitler good. Nothing else could be known day to day. The main issue with Kristallnacht from the Nazi PR perspective was they were not yet at war with the West and were trying to position a long-term co-existence as possible. Anything that *looked* extreme or lawless to people *outside* the country was a liability. They already had total control over Germany; neither the internal political reaction, nor anything that happened after the invasion of France, mattered. Mr. Sunshine posted:ThePriceJustWentUp is either dangerously naive, or making an outright attempt at rehabilitating Hitler. This does not somehow validate your claims that all Germans are guilty of everything forever. It's a good thing I never made such a claim and instead focused on members of the state and military apparatus, who all mainstream thinkers have always held to be guilty, as they were found at Nuremberg. It's also amazing that even though the people who tried to derail the thread to complain about this not at all controversial reminder have been exposed as actual, literal Neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers, some people still think that it's inappropriate to question their motives.
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May 11, 2014 17:43
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Karl is fourteen years old, and a member of the Hitler Jugend. He is wearing a swastika armband and a hand-me-down helmet several sizes to big, covering behind a sandbag barricade some few hundred meters from the ruins of the Reichstag building in Berlin. In his hands is a panzerfaust, a stick with an anti-tank grenade at the end, constructed in a factory rapidly running out of everything including gunpowder. A soviet IS tank comes rumbling down the street, straight for his position. With tears running down his face, he raises his weapon, and pulls the trigger. It clicks. As Karl is crushed underneath the tank that never even noticed him, meat sweats watches with arms crossed over his Che Guevara t-shirt. "Guess you shouldn't have started World War Two, kid", he smirks. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 11, 2014 21:14
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Karl is fourteen years old, and a member of the Hitler Jugend. He is wearing a swastika armband and a hand-me-down helmet several sizes to big, covering behind a sandbag barricade some few hundred meters from the ruins of the Reichstag building in Berlin. In his hands is a panzerfaust, a stick with an anti-tank grenade at the end, constructed in a factory rapidly running out of everything including gunpowder. A soviet IS tank comes rumbling down the street, straight for his position. With tears running down his face, he raises his weapon, and pulls the trigger. It clicks.  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 11, 2014 21:38
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Karl is fourteen years old, and a member of the Hitler Jugend. He is wearing a swastika armband and a hand-me-down helmet several sizes to big, covering behind a sandbag barricade some few hundred meters from the ruins of the Reichstag building in Berlin. In his hands is a panzerfaust, a stick with an anti-tank grenade at the end, constructed in a factory rapidly running out of everything including gunpowder. A soviet IS tank comes rumbling down the street, straight for his position. With tears running down his face, he raises his weapon, and pulls the trigger. It clicks. Wow, you're really obsessed with defending Nazis as morally virtuous no matter how many times other people try to get the thread back on track. That must be a fun life. The SPLC has extensive resources on leaving white supremacy, if you would like me to share some.
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May 11, 2014 21:59
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Frau Müller has worked at the post office for almost 40 years now. The trams have stopped running, so the last few weeks she has been walking to work. Life is difficult. There's a shortage of of even basic foodstuffs, and there's air raids almost every day. But frau Müller goes to work, like she did during the last war, like she did under the Kaiser and under the Weimar republic. As she nears the post office, the wail of the air raid sirens fill the air. 15000 feet above her, a stressed and tired crewman on a Lancaster bomber misidentifies his target, and releases his payload early. Frau Müller never even makes it across the street. In his mother's basement, meat sweats makes another mark on the wall. One more cog in the Nazi machine dead. He sighs with satisfaction.
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May 11, 2014 22:15
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meat sweats posted:Anything that *looked* extreme or lawless to people *outside* the country was a liability. They already had total control over Germany; neither the internal political reaction, nor anything that happened after the invasion of France, mattered. This doesn't line up well with the fact that the Nazis were extremely concerned about public perception, which led to things like Germany not being put on a wartime economical basis and Catholic opposition to the Nazis didn't get a draconic reaction.
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May 11, 2014 22:18
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meat sweats posted:This is overstating the case dramatically -- all conspiracy theory-based movements are anti-Semitic as anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century is where the conspiratorial mindset originated. The BUF certainly was open about their dislike of Jews and certainly engaged in any number of street brawls with Jewish groups. That other factions in fascism tried to gain followers by claiming to be more anti-Jew isn't surprising. Communist groups splinter over who hates capitalism and the U.S. more all the time, it doesn't mean any of them aren't actually Communists to begin with. Mosley loved to say things like "of course I don't think all Jews are born bad, it just coincidentally happens that right now every Jew in the world is a Bolshevik." In the context of British politics, this was a necessary phrasing -- Jewish political equality had been a reality in the UK since 1858 and England had a much weaker tradition of religious anti-Semitism than Germany, due to the fact that it had zero Jews in the country at the time when the Reformation happened. But, everyone knew what he meant and certainly no Jews or liberals were fooled about what their fate would be under a BUF government. Yeah but in my defense I was posting from a phone and very tired. The only book I've actually read on the BUF is by Richard Thurlow and his view is that even though the BUF became increasingly anti-Semitic as time went on this wasn't as central to their overall ideology as it was in other British fascist movements. Any recommendations for further reading?
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May 11, 2014 22:31
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Kemper Boyd posted:This doesn't line up well with the fact that the Nazis were extremely concerned about public perception, which led to things like Germany not being put on a wartime economical basis and Catholic opposition to the Nazis didn't get a draconic reaction. Public perception about mob rule or how they were treating Jews, though? Hitler took down the anti-Jewish signs before the Munich Olympics so that American reporters wouldn't have any dramatic photos to take. This is the sort of thing that became irrelevant once Germany was at war with the West. It's true that mass movements need a support base and many historians think the reason the German war economy was never put on the footing of the American was because Hitler needed to keep some segment of the population happy. But Kristallnacht in 1941 would have gone very differently, is the point. FreudianSlippers posted:Yeah but in my defense I was posting from a phone and very tired. The only book I've actually read on the BUF is by Richard Thurlow and his view is that even though the BUF became increasingly anti-Semitic as time went on this wasn't as central to their overall ideology as it was in other British fascist movements. Any recommendations for further reading? I've never read a book on BUF specifically, but if you follow Moseley through his life and the history of far-right speeches, plus the history of Jews in England generally, it's pretty apparent what he was doing. After the war, he dropped the overt trappings of fascism and the Jew parts and just redirected himself to railing against black immigrants to England, basically find-and-replace in the same speeches. It's anyone's guess how racist particular fascists "actually" were versus what was being used to try to find a support base, but the idea that it would have turned out any different for Jews in Britain if Sea Lion succeeded and the Nazis put Mosley in charge than it did anywhere else seems fanciful.
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May 11, 2014 22:42
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Frau Müller has worked at the post office for almost 40 years now. The trams have stopped running, so the last few weeks she has been walking to work. Life is difficult. There's a shortage of of even basic foodstuffs, and there's air raids almost every day. But frau Müller goes to work, like she did during the last war, like she did under the Kaiser and under the Weimar republic. As she nears the post office, the wail of the air raid sirens fill the air. 15000 feet above her, a stressed and tired crewman on a Lancaster bomber misidentifies his target, and releases his payload early. Frau Müller never even makes it across the street. Other than trolling meat sweats, what is the point of these?
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May 11, 2014 22:58
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Mr. Sunshine posted:Karl is fourteen years old, and a member of the Hitler Jugend. He is wearing a swastika armband and a hand-me-down helmet several sizes to big, covering behind a sandbag barricade some few hundred meters from the ruins of the Reichstag building in Berlin. In his hands is a panzerfaust, a stick with an anti-tank grenade at the end, constructed in a factory rapidly running out of everything including gunpowder. A soviet IS tank comes rumbling down the street, straight for his position. With tears running down his face, he raises his weapon, and pulls the trigger. It clicks. Haha even I'm not this much of an apologist.
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May 12, 2014 00:50
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ThePriceJustWentUp posted:Yes but it's always been very dry and clinical and largely ignores Hitler's personal magnetism except to demonize it. I haven't read everything but I did read that Kershaw biography for example. Germany was swept up by the power of Hitler's conviction, and that's also why they fought until the bitter end. Laurence Rees wrote Hitler's Charisma and although I haven't read it Kershaw gave it a very positive blurb.
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May 12, 2014 00:59
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