|
Trump definitely is the face of modern day fascism.
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2016 10:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 06:55 |
|
|
Wikkheiser posted:Reactionary would be a better word than conservative, I think. But hell, Nazism was downright revolutionary too in a ... really reactionary way. Though I've found when these words start getting thrown around, arguments start breaking out between the liberal and Marxist scholars. (Roger Griffin, who I prefer, is a liberal.) I think the reason people refer to fascism as right wing (and nowadays conservative and right wing are often used interchangeably) is to differentiate it from the left wing political movements and ideologies of the time, primarily communism and socialism. Communism and socialism were at their hearts universalist rather than nationalist ideologies, in that they appealed to universal human rights and universal economic principles as their fundamental intellectual basis. Socialism or communism might get put in place in one country or another but its appeal was designed to be broad--it was "workers of the world unite" not "workers of Germany unite", it just so happened to be that the various political parties, for quite obvious reasons, organized along national lines. (This is of course ignoring for the sake of argument the Soviet shift towards socialism in one country, but I would argue that such a shift didn't entail moving away from the intellectual argument for socialism as a universal doctrine but instead entailed a pragmatic shift towards strengthening the world's only socialist state because the Soviets believed they were constantly under threat from both external and internal enemies, but that's a discussion for another day) Fascism, on the other hand, was extraordinarily nationalistic, in that it aimed to unite its perceived national and political communities. As you say, it wasn't a typical conservative movement of the time because it didn't want to conserve the existing institutions of governance, it instead wanted to put in place a mythical version of the national community that it invented from supposed historical traditions, like the Roman Empire for Italy. That national community would then a) take priority over the individual, and b) merge with the political community. There could be no such thing as universal fascism because fascism believed so firmly in the importance of the nation-state, making its particulars unique to each nation based on that nation's fascist movement's invented mythical history. This is why fascism can be differentiated both from liberalism, which placed priority on individual over collective rights, and from socialism, which emphasized universal rather than national principles. This is of course a reductive and simplistic (and overly theoretical) explanation but essentially I think there's a reason why the formal name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Every word in there is important. Nowadays dumb people love to claim the Nazis were socialists because they have that word in there, but they differed from socialism by emphasizing the imagined national community so strongly (national socialism), whereas socialism, in theory anyway, emphasized shared humanity, shared class interests, and universal rights even across national borders. When people talk about Trump as the face of modern day fascism I think this is what they're referring to. Trump has imagined a national community of white Americans, an exclusionary nationalism that all but forbids the membership of people of colour or Muslims, and his political campaign is essentially trying to merge that imagined national community with the political institutions of state in the same way the Nazis or Italian fascists claimed to do.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2016 14:26
|
|
|
I read a claim someone made somewhere that during Operation Barbarossa Hitler wanted to stop the offensive after the conquests of Smolensk, Kiev, and other cities had proven much harder than anticipated. However subordinate commanders wanted to push ahead and thus when winter struck the Wehrmacht was strung out after failing to take Leningrad, Stalingrad, and its other objectives. Given that this runs completely contrary to how Hitler has been portrayed as a commander who was concerned solely with the offensive, and that this was just a forum post without any citations I thought it was suspect but I was wondering if anyone else had heard anything about this.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 03:35
|
|
|
Trench_Rat posted:What happend with german embasies in neutral countries after the war? The German embassy in Ireland got a condolences note from de Valera after Hitler blew his brains out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 03:48
|
|
|
vyelkin posted:I think the reason people refer to fascism as right wing (and nowadays conservative and right wing are often used interchangeably) is to differentiate it from the left wing political movements and ideologies of the time, primarily communism and socialism. Communism and socialism were at their hearts universalist rather than nationalist ideologies, in that they appealed to universal human rights and universal economic principles as their fundamental intellectual basis. Socialism or communism might get put in place in one country or another but its appeal was designed to be broad--it was "workers of the world unite" not "workers of Germany unite", it just so happened to be that the various political parties, for quite obvious reasons, organized along national lines. (This is of course ignoring for the sake of argument the Soviet shift towards socialism in one country, but I would argue that such a shift didn't entail moving away from the intellectual argument for socialism as a universal doctrine but instead entailed a pragmatic shift towards strengthening the world's only socialist state because the Soviets believed they were constantly under threat from both external and internal enemies, but that's a discussion for another day) 'Right-wing' are ideologies that consider cultural identity as the basic unit of societal analysis, 'left-wing' are ones that consider economic/material relations the basic unit of societal analysis, liberal ideologies consider the rational, atomized individual the basic unit of analysis. Ignoring feminism/LGBT/green/new left stuff, I guess As for 'nationalism' I've said before on these forums but that word is basically meaningless in the common usage, it means even less than fascism. There have been right-wing, left-wing and liberal ideologies called nationalism throughout history. I would subscribe to the theory that nationalism did not exist before the modern period, and would restrict it to new national identities that are to a certain degree artificial, and which have tended to be based on print languages and the modern states that created them. In that sense I would very roughly categorize it with liberalism, it doesn't fit conservatism because it's not a traditional identity and not necessarily a cultural one either. I wouldn't call Donald Trump a nationalist, because rural/Real America white people identity was never really consciously created and has existed for a very long time, rather I'd call him a sort of white ethnic chauvinist, very similar to the kind of ideology now espoused by Putin or China. Trump's not really presenting a coherent vision of what America means or is, he's simply saying he'll gently caress over foreigners and brown people for the benefit of white racists, no more than that icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 25, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 04:17
|
|
|
A White Guy posted:It's kind of like how latter day Tankies and true Stalinists have morphed into Maoists over time - you can't point to a failed state who espoused your ideology as something to aspire to. A Stalinist becoming a Maoist seems bizarre. Stalin accomplished a lot, even as he killed tons of people. I don't think Mao accomplished a lot? Rather, I thought China became the powerhouse it is after it drifted away from his failures?
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 04:24
|
|
|
Man I had a good joke lined up before you edited that out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 04:25
|
|
|
Hillary Clintons Thong posted:Man I had a good joke lined up before you edited that out. Well I mean, I just got kinda nervous. Asking "was Hitler a good leader, even if you ignore all the murder?" sounds like a recipe for disaster. I'd like to hear your joke though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 04:30
|
|
|
just the old classic WW2 Debate Thread: Was Hitler Bad?
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 04:32
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:Well I mean, I just got kinda nervous. Asking "was Hitler a good leader, even if you ignore all the murder?" sounds like a recipe for disaster. How about was Mannerheim bad? Finns still think he was great.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 07:42
|
|
|
From what I understand, you cant ask if hitler was good for germany ignoring the holocaust because eveything he did hinged on enslaving and exterminating. Without slaves, who would build anything? Without stealing the riches of the dead, how do you pay for anything? I am probably oversimplyfying.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 16:07
|
|
A Saucy Bratwurst posted:From what I understand, you cant ask if hitler was good for germany ignoring the holocaust because eveything he did hinged on enslaving and exterminating. Without slaves, who would build anything? Without stealing the riches of the dead, how do you pay for anything? Even subtracting from the evils of the regime it was incompetent, so you don't even need to go that far.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 17:35
|
|
|
I dunno, I can't see much evil in him putting into effect strict laws against animal abuse, but someone probably has a quote of him doing it because he was convinced jews were slaughtering pets in synagoges. That is the only exception I can think of though.
Elmnt80 fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Sep 25, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 20:59
|
|
Elmnt80 posted:I dunno, I can't see much evil in him putting into effect strict laws against animal abuse, but someone probably has a quote of him doing it because he was convinced jews were slaughtering pets in synagoges. That is the only exception I can think of though. 'I can think of one good thing' =/= 'overall it was good if you subtract mass murder'
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 21:22
|
|
|
Elmnt80 posted:I dunno, I can't see much evil in him putting into effect strict laws against animal abuse, but someone probably has a quote of him doing it because he was convinced jews were slaughtering pets in synagoges. That is the only exception I can think of though. You don't need animals when you got all the subhumans you can use as test subjects.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2016 21:37
|
|
|
The World at War is complete. I think the biggest take away I got form all this was how much civilians paid the price for the war. I don't think all the WW2 media i've consumed sufficiently painted that picture. And while I still like all my WW2 era games and movies, I can't help but feel a little guilty now about liking the era due to the near apocalyptic loss of life.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 04:29
|
|
|
A Saucy Bratwurst posted:From what I understand, you cant ask if hitler was good for germany ignoring the holocaust because eveything he did hinged on enslaving and exterminating. Without slaves, who would build anything? Without stealing the riches of the dead, how do you pay for anything? Not as much as you might think. The Nazi economy is itself a fascinating study in absolute clusterfucks. So, you know all that uproar about how during the Iraq War, Halliburton, a company the Vice President was the CEO of prior to becoming the Vice President, got a whole bunch of real cushy government construction contracts and half-assed them to the point that some of the barracks they built were electrocuting soldiers? That was not considered corruption in Nazi Germany. That was considered the machine functioning as designed. The entire public works and military procurement apparatus of the Nazi Party was a bunch of CEOs pursuing market competition by other means. There was no competition for bids. If you got the right proposal in front of Hitler, you got a "make it so" and free rein to devour as much delicious public money as you could. (This, incidentally, played a lot into why the Nazis had 1. fantastic tanks 2. absolutely no way to repair them if they were ever damaged. "why yes, mein Fuhrer, every part will be custom-made by a master craftsman! a peerless exemplar of aryan machinery! they'll cost three times as much but they'll be able to defeat ten times their number in communists! this will in no way be an issue while fighting the red army") So, where did they get the money? Loans. How did they plan to pay off the loans? This is the part where a series of question marks appears and a brownshirt asks why you gotta ask so many questions, you leftist deviant. The Nazi economy was kept -almost- working through looting the ever-loving poo poo out of everywhere they conquered, but come the day they had to start paying back their war bonds even a triumphant Nazi state was staring down the barrel of Weimar 2: This Time It's Hitler.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 04:36
|
|
Ze Pollack posted:1. fantastic tanks 2. absolutely no way to repair them if they were ever damaged. "why yes, mein Fuhrer, every part will be custom-made by a master craftsman! a peerless exemplar of aryan machinery! they'll cost three times as much but they'll be able to defeat ten times their number in communists! this will in no way be an issue while fighting the red army") This is more of a reason they got mediocre tanks than fantastic ones.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 04:46
|
|
|
Elmnt80 posted:I dunno, I can't see much evil in him putting into effect strict laws against animal abuse, but someone probably has a quote of him doing it because he was convinced jews were slaughtering pets in synagoges. That is the only exception I can think of though. If anything, it was the other way around; works like The Eternal Jew (a nasty propaganda piece by Goebbels et al.) portrays Jews supposedly slaughtering animals 'according to ritual custom', making them appear as degenerate sadists. From wikipedia: quote:After showing how Jews have supposedly been responsible for the decline of Western music, science, art, and commerce, the film presents a scene of a cow being slaughtered for meat by a shochet (Jewish ritual slaughter). The scene is prefaced by a warning similar to the one in Frankenstein, warning the squeamish about what is coming next. This long sequence, lasting several minutes, shows cows and sheep in their death throes as they bleed to death. The producers apparently filmed this scene because of Hitler's opposition to cruelty to animals. He had banned kosher slaughter of animals in Germany and felt that such footage would shock the German public.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 09:01
|
|
Rappaport posted:If anything, it was the other way around; works like The Eternal Jew (a nasty propaganda piece by Goebbels et al.) portrays Jews supposedly slaughtering animals 'according to ritual custom', making them appear as degenerate sadists. From wikipedia: And indeed 'Aryan' pets were taken away from Jews, this appears in Victor Klemperer's diary. This meme is also older than Hitler in the German imagination.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 09:03
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:This is more of a reason they got mediocre tanks than fantastic ones. Yeah, suffering like 50% non-combat breakdowns and being required to be moved around by train (using parallell rail tracks, because the tanks were too wide to be transported on a normal train) to mitigate the problems caused by this compounded by fuel shortages really is a pretty crippling weakness. German tanks did have some advantages in combat though mostly that many of the later models were armed with excellent high velocity armor piercing guns (such as the 75mm used by the Panther and the 88mm used by the Tiger) which allowed them to enage and destroy their enemies at long range where their less effective guns weren't as effective against the German tanks' front armor (on the whole German tanks weren't much more heavily armored than Allied or Soviet tanks, for instance the front armor of the Sherman, due to sloping, was almost as thick as that of a Tiger). They also had well-trained and motivated crews who were especially noted for their gunnery skils, which gave the above a greater impact (their technical skills though weren't that great in comparison with US crews at least who were usually pretty adept at fixing and maintaining their vehicles, helping to bring damaged vehicles back into the line). They also had an early proliferation of radios in every vehicle making communcation and co-ordiantion much more efficient (especially compared to the French and the Soviets). And they fielded powerful tank formations with integrated artillery, AT-weapons and motorized infantry allowing the tanks to be used with maximum effect and have the combat support they needed to operate effectively. But yeah, that's really what was effective about German armor, the vehicles themselves were not really as individually impressive as the sum of their parts of formation, doctrine and training, with some models actually having severe almost crippling issues (Panther A most infamously). Overall the best weapon the Germans produced during the war definitely wasn't any of their tanks or vehicles, it was the 88mm flak gun, which was perhaps the most effective and versatile weapon of the whole war, and a highly feared one. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Sep 26, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 09:23
|
|
Randarkman posted:Yeah, suffering like 50% non-combat breakdowns and being required to be moved around by train (using parallell rail tracks, because the tanks were too wide to be transported on a normal train) to mitigate the problems caused by this compounded by fuel shortages really is a pretty crippling weakness. Well, on the other hand a lot of the tanks used in Barbarossa weren't moved by train at all, and resultantly had a ton of miles on them before 1942.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 09:46
|
|
|
White Coke posted:I read a claim someone made somewhere that during Operation Barbarossa Hitler wanted to stop the offensive after the conquests of Smolensk, Kiev, and other cities had proven much harder than anticipated. However subordinate commanders wanted to push ahead and thus when winter struck the Wehrmacht was strung out after failing to take Leningrad, Stalingrad, and its other objectives. Given that this runs completely contrary to how Hitler has been portrayed as a commander who was concerned solely with the offensive, and that this was just a forum post without any citations I thought it was suspect but I was wondering if anyone else had heard anything about this. It sounds like the exact opposite of reality. There was no way the Wehrmacht would have unilaterally gone against Hitler's orders to that extent, and if they had, Hitler would have purged the heck out of it, since a military that doesn't listen to orders is a dictator's worst nightmare and Hitler didn't especially trust Wehrmacht high command in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 12:04
|
|
|
White Coke posted:I read a claim someone made somewhere that during Operation Barbarossa Hitler wanted to stop the offensive after the conquests of Smolensk, Kiev, and other cities had proven much harder than anticipated. However subordinate commanders wanted to push ahead and thus when winter struck the Wehrmacht was strung out after failing to take Leningrad, Stalingrad, and its other objectives. Given that this runs completely contrary to how Hitler has been portrayed as a commander who was concerned solely with the offensive, and that this was just a forum post without any citations I thought it was suspect but I was wondering if anyone else had heard anything about this. There are several examples in WWII history when Hitler was timid when he should have been aggressive and vice versa. Dunkerque, North Africa, Malta for example....
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 13:27
|
|
|
Fish of hemp posted:You don't need animals when you got all the subhumans you can use as test subjects. You still need a dog to try the suicide capsules on
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 13:34
|
|
|
Hammerstein posted:There are several examples in WWII history when Hitler was timid when he should have been aggressive and vice versa. Dunkerque, North Africa, Malta for example.... Hitler was a meth'd up crazy person.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 14:26
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:This is more of a reason they got mediocre tanks than fantastic ones. They were awful strategically, and really good tactically. Nazis in a nutshell, really. Incredibly stupid orders, executed efficiently.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 16:51
|
|
|
Ze Pollack posted:They were awful strategically, and really good tactically. The German state and economy of the early 20th century was extremely productive and efficient, that's what the Nazis hijacked with their 33' power grab and what kept Germany running. They themselves didn't really provide anything of value, being mostly a bunch of losers, weirdos and deadbeats. That's why Hitler tried to distance himself from the NSDAP's roots as soon as possible and disband the SA. A bunch of drunk Trumpites are nice to have if you need to do some street brawls with communists or beat up some Jewish shopowners, but their are totally useless at getting anything useful done.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 17:07
|
|
|
waitwhatno posted:The German state and economy of the early 20th century was extremely productive and efficient, that's what the Nazis hijacked with their 33' power grab and what kept Germany running. They themselves didn't really provide anything of value, being mostly a bunch of losers, weirdos and deadbeats. Small point, he didn't actually disbanded the SA after breaking its power in the Night of the Long Knives. It was retained within the party structure for ceremonial purposes and to allow for easy sinecures for various cronies too incompetent to do anything else, even by Nazi standards.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 17:18
|
|
|
waitwhatno posted:The German state and economy of the early 20th century was extremely productive and efficient, that's what the Nazis hijacked with their 33' power grab and what kept Germany running. They themselves didn't really provide anything of value, being mostly a bunch of losers, weirdos and deadbeats. They had that special kind of lovely management that is only possible in the kind of people who looked at the futurist manifesto and said "HELL YES I WANT ME SOME OF THAT." The doctrine of action for action's sake, stopping and thinking as a sign of weakness, does produce results! In an environment where 1. everything still basically works 2. everyone is motivated to give their job their all (because if they don't give it their all here come the brownshirts) you can, very briefly, produce amazing things! And then all the breakdowns (whether machinery or the knees of the worker who refused an order he knew would gently caress up the machine) start to add up. Incredible short term productivity! Long-term, uh, well, the Nazis were not long term kinds of people.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 17:21
|
|
Ze Pollack posted:They were awful strategically, and really good tactically. This is all kinds of tangled up and wrong. Those tanks were not that tactically effective, really except inasmuch as they were just used by the most professional fighting force with the best armoured doctrine.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 23:03
|
|
|
Disinterested posted:This is all kinds of tangled up and wrong. Those tanks were not that tactically effective, really except inasmuch as they were just used by the most professional fighting force with the best armoured doctrine. Welp. What I get for my milhist background being basically nonexistent, I heard "their armored divisions were crazy effective" and I figured it must have been down to the tanks.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 23:21
|
|
Ze Pollack posted:Welp. What I get for my milhist background being basically nonexistent, I heard "their armored divisions were crazy effective" and I figured it must have been down to the tanks. It's really much more about them knowing how to use their kit than the kit being good when it comes to the tanks.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 23:26
|
|
|
To be fair, the stories of super awesome German armor have always been pretty common.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2016 23:57
|
|
Hillary Clintons Thong posted:To be fair, the stories of super awesome German armor have always been pretty common. Paging Plan Z.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 00:33
|
|
|
Hillary Clintons Thong posted:To be fair, the stories of super awesome German armor have always been pretty common. It helps that most of the surviving high ranking Wehrmacht generals who dodged war crimes trials (read: most of them) were more or less given carte blanche to write their own version of the war's history during the immediate aftermath, which was then taken as gospel by guileless idiots administering the US Occupation Zone and passed more or less unaltered into canon. "Yep, we regular army types had soooo no idea what the Nazis were really up to back home. Nope, too busy fighting with clean hands in the east to really know about any of that, no sir. Oh, and we were the best at everything as well and all our tanks were kickass and those dirty snow slavs only beat us by overwhelming numbers." Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Sep 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 02:20
|
|
|
Ze Pollack posted:Welp. What I get for my milhist background being basically nonexistent, I heard "their armored divisions were crazy effective" and I figured it must have been down to the tanks. It's more that early on in WWII, everyone else was even worse off than the Germans, with outdated tactics and doctrine, a total misread of German plans, and the Soviets in particular were just not ready for war at all. For many Western analysts at the time, though, "the Germans have incredible tanks and brilliant tank doctrine" was an easier conclusion to draw than "our pants were around our ankles and backwards, and the Germans cut through our poorly-conceived armies so fast they had a hard time keeping track of their own advances". Once everyone got their poo poo together, though, German tanks and tactics weren't really anything special.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 04:59
|
|
|
There does seem to be a thing where its easier to explain ones failures by the "other guy" having amazing tanks rather than acknowledging the truth that our doctrines suck and we suck. Speaking of which, I have read and hoping to check against the collective wisdom of this forum, that British failures in North Africa were largely because they had truly awful tank doctrines. Well, initial failures at least. And they explained their failure by exaggerating the skill of Rommel to near superhuman status, so they didn't have to acknowledge their own shortcomings. While in reality, Rommel was certainly a very competent general, much like very many, very competent German generals but was in fact not exceptional by German standards. And his skill was exaggerated by both British and German propaganda for their differing political purposes. Anyone know much about this?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 05:39
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:It helps that most of the surviving high ranking Wehrmacht generals who dodged war crimes trials (read: most of them) were more or less given carte blanche to write their own version of the war's history during the immediate aftermath, which was then taken as gospel by guileless idiots administering the US Occupation Zone and passed more or less unaltered into canon. "Yep, we regular army types had soooo no idea what the Nazis were really up to back home. Nope, too busy fighting with clean hands in the east to really know about any of that, no sir. Oh, and we were the best at everything as well and all our tanks were kickass and those dirty snow slavs only beat us by overwhelming numbers." This had more to do with everyone in NATO wanting to know how to fight Russians for the WW3 everyday be thought was scheduled for the early 60s. It wasn't that they were guileless and more that they figured dudes who advanced to the suburbs of Moscow and killed soviets non stop for four years might know that craft. It led to a lot of lamentable stuff but it wasn't caused by laziness or incompetence. Plus it's not like the soviet war archives were open for them to double check figures. Short of captured German files and what German vets wrote the eastern front was a black box clear into the nineties.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 05:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 06:55 |
|
|
Was there any field of tech that the Germans had a dominant edge in for significant amounts of the war? My understanding is that the tank design was not light years ahead of the soviets(just good doctrine and people for a while) and they only had only a few breakthroughs in air power. They also had poor signals intelligence and code breaking compared to their enemies and obviously lovely progress when it came to nuclear weapons programs. Was there any area that one of the worlds former science meccas was able to produce great results compared to its enemies?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2016 06:13
|
|
