|
Gumby posted:It's important to remember that the leaders of the Nazi party were a failed landscape artist who couldn't be bothered to get out of bed before 10, an unpublished writer, an agriculture student, and a morphine addict. While I was studying the Holocaust for my MA, I was constantly bewildered that these chucklefucks could get anything done. This is true in general terms but--somewhat perversely--I feel like I should stick up for Goebbels. On the one hand he was a socially awkward weirdo whose weak personality led him to follow Hitler slavishly, but on the other he was actually rather brilliant and a very effective propaganda minister. However, Nazis from the street level on up to Hitler had a pronounced reputation for being losers and thugs. I think this was actually a very important factor in the party's rise to power, because a lot of their success was down to patronage from establishment conservatives like traditional elites and industrialists who were certain that they could safely manipulate the Nazis. As it turned out they didn't really know who they were dealing with and they should have taken Hitler much more seriously.
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2013 22:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:49 |
|
|
raven4267 posted:Thanks for the explanation. I pretty much told him the same thing, with a lot less detail than your explanation. Just as you said, my basic understanding was that the socialist elements of fascism/nazism were to make the party appealing to the average German. I also told him that you can't really be a socialist if you only provide government programs to one specific group of people while you busy are murdering every other group. If I recall correctly, some of the socialist programs such as universal healthcare were started way before Hitler even came into power. I think that he believes that because the Nazis called themselves "National Socialists", that meant that they were ultra left-wing on the political scale. Without going into a basic primer of the two ideologies, both Fascism and Communism derive from a belief that the modern world is experiencing a crisis that traditional systems cannot resolve and a radical solution is necessary. They just approach that solution from very different, practically opposite directions, and Fascism is in many respects the right-wing response to Communism. Since they're looking at some of the same problems they wind up with some of the same solutions, and on a practical level Soviet socialism and German fascism both produced authoritarian dictatorships so they had a certain family resemblance. But they're not remotely the same thing. I think the simplest demonstration that Hitler was not left-wing or a socialist per se is his popularity with wealthy industrialists. Why did Gustav Krupp fund the Nazis? Why did Ferdinand Porsche work so closely with Hitler? Why did Henry Ford send Hitler 50,000 reichsmarks for a birthday present every year?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2013 02:41
|
|
|
Unluckyimmortal posted:I've always found it pretty frightening to consider what would have happened if the Nazis managed to hang on to the really important intellectuals that fled the Axis countries. Like quite a lot of counterfactuals about the Nazis, the answer to this question is "if they could have done X they would not have been the Nazis". Another one along the same lines is the fact that many people living in the USSR had no love for the Soviet government and likely would have cooperated with the Germans, had the Germans actually sought their allegiance instead of mistreating and murdering them. But it happened the way it happened because the entire logic of the German invasion was based on Nazi racial theory and their intentions of clearing the Slavic population so it could be resettled by Germans. Intellectuals fled the Nazi regime because the Nazis were violent racist thugs who wanted to force the German arts and sciences to conform to their political views. Aside from being a completely different political movement, it's not clear what the Nazis could have done to retain those people. It is also not clear that the Nazi's would have even wanted those scientists you named, because eliminating suspect elements from academics and research was a major part of their program for those institutions--in that fact that was arguable the main point of their interaction with universities and research labs, even moreso than getting usable research out of them. Also, even assuming a completely different Nazi party more in line with, say, Italian Fascism or perhaps a military dictatorship run by the old-line officer corps, it is by no means likely that those scientists would have assisted that fantasy German government in achieving the atomic bomb. They were willing to go to the United States to avert the apparent possibility of the Nazi getting to the bomb first, but why should they put themselves in that ethical quandary on behalf of a Mussolini-style dictator or a junta of Prussian generals? quote:Speaking of counterfactuals -- I've always wondered what the plan was in the event of a successful invasion of the USSR. Did the Nazis think that there simply was no other threat? I mean, if the Nazis had eked out a win at Stalingrad in 1942, for example, they might have exhausted the USSR and forced its surrender. The thing about historical turning points is they don't always have the same significance for both sides. Taking another example, the Battle of Midway was a turning point in the Pacific Theater because it did crippling damage to Japan's offensive capabilities, but it would not have been a turning point for the Americans had they lost. The US Navy had so many ships rolling out in the coming years that Japan's cause was basically hopeless, and they would have needed to win Midway five or six times and never once lose, an impossible task. It would only have delayed the Americans' victory. The battle of Stalingrad was a complete debacle and a turning point for the Germans, but conversely it probably would not have been nearly as destructive a loss for the Soviets they been pushed out instead. Much is and was made of the fact that Stalingrad was the last defensive point and there seemingly wasn't anywhere to check the Germans behind it, but taking the city doesn't get the Germans across the Volga. Realistically the effort of capturing the city would leave the Sixth Army severely depleted and in no condition to press on, and there isn't really anybody behind them to take over. Independent of the outcome of the fighting in the city itself, the Soviets are also massing for Operation Uranus. It's conceivable that the capture of the city would complicate the Soviet attack and cause it to be less successful than historical, but even so the Soviets would still be in a far better position in the area than the Germans simply because they had more fresh reserves available and the Germans in Stalingrad were operating at the tip of a very long salient. quote:What, in other words, would the Western European (particularly German/Austrian/Czech areas) look like after some kind of limited victory that left the Nazis with much of Europe but the rest of the world hostile? Were there any plans for that eventuality at all? To answer this, simply return to the topic of atomic weapons. The US military had plans for production of additional devices to be used to shatter Japanese defenses in preparation for a land invasion. Production was scaled back when Japan surrendered instead, but there would have been a number of bombs available by late 1945. In your scenario these weapons would go to Europe instead.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2013 07:28
|
|
|
I think this is still on-topic enough to deal with here but you might also get more input from the Ask Me about Military History thread. I'm assuming by "reverse Operation Uranus" you're talking about encircling Stalingrad. The primary objective of Case Blue was to move into the Caucasus and capture Baku, the center of Soviet oil production. Hitler is sometimes criticized for splitting his forces and sending too much of his combat power with Army Group B against Stalingrad, which was technically a secondary objective, but this line of argument ignores the strategic issue facing the German army at that point. The thrust towards Baku created an extremely deep salient and left the German lines stretched perilously thin, such that a determined attack by the Soviets in the direction of Rostov could achieve a breakthrough and result in a huge encirclement. Because Stalingrad was the major city and transportation hub on the lower Volga it was the obvious jumping-off point for any such counterstroke, as Soviet forces shuttling from their center of gravity up by Moscow would move down through Stalingrad on their way to Rostov to clip the German advance off at the sea of Azov. As Stalingrad was the strongest point held by the enemy in the theater and also a critical objective in terms of achieving the goals of Case Blue, the German army had to send the strongest available forces. The position of Stalingrad as the regional transportation hub is also what forced the Sixth Army to make a frontal assault. Stalingrad could not be easily bypassed because that would necessitate crossing the Volga, and the only crossing in the area that could accommodate such logistical demands was the city itself. Stalingrad was a significant city but that region of Russia is actually somewhat remote, and there aren't a ton of rail bridges and such out there. AFAIK you would have to go all the way down to Astrakhan or all the way up to Saratov. I'm not familiar with the minutiae of German bridging equipment during WWII but the Volga is an exceptionally broad river. The narrowest point in the area is, again, at Stalingrad. Even if they had the theoretical capability to bridge the Volga elsewhere, it was at the far end of a long thrust into Soviet territory and at a great distance from their logistical base, so it would have been very hard indeed to bring forward that kind of equipment. Due to the lack of bridges (the ones in Stalingrad were obviously destroyed) the Soviets ferried their forces across for Operation Uranus. This is not possible for the Germans. The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea and the Volga-Don Canal wasn't completed until after the war, so bringing in anything from the Black Sea is impossible. Hauling boats overland in sufficient quantity to ferry an army is not doable. Essentially, any plan that involves crossing the Germans crossing the Volga is right out, and as Stalingrad is hard against the western bank, it can't be encircled without crossing the Volga. Even granting that it was feasible to make the crossing, it wouldn't necessarily be a good idea. As above, Stalingrad has to be neutralized because it is a transportation hub and assembly point for a Soviet counteroffensive. This also means that if it is encircled Soviet forces will have an easy time moving south by rail and by river to break a German encirclement operation. German forces on the east bank of the Volga meanwhile will be operating at a distance from their base of supply (back near the Don crossings, IIRC), with a severe logistical bottleneck in the final leg due to the Volga crossing. Also, and potentially more seriously, encircling the city will require lengthening the line and detailing substantial forces to contain sorties from the Soviet forces in city itself (which were fairly strong and are not being pounded to dust in this scenario). In the historical battle the German lines were very thin, to the point that they were forced into their fatal reliance on low-quality Romanian troops to guard the Sixth Army's flanks. Substantially lengthening the front by forming a kessel would exacerbate this problem, and having a large part of the encirclement force isolated across the river would put them at very serious risk of a defeat in detail. The only realistic counterfactual for the Germans would be to avoid approaching the city altogether and instead use airpower to destroy the bridges and interdict the city as much as possible, and leave the Sixth Army fronting it at a distance to screen Soviet forces so they cannot interfere with Army Group A's advance into the Caucasus. The issue with this is that it cedes the initiative in the area to the Soviets and permits them the use of the city as a bridgehead. Most likely this would have resulted in the Soviets being able to concentrate for an offensive in sufficient numbers to scotch Case Blue anyway. The merit of this approach is that the Germans would have a better opportunity to withdraw in good order, but it's debatable how much that would benefit them in the long run.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2013 09:49
|
|
|
Big Blood Bovine posted:How big of a role did Hitler and NSDAP play in getting the German economy back on track after the Great Depression? Their defense spending and public works projects reduced unemployment and had a stimulative effect on the economy in the short term. In the long term Germany wound up in WW2 and that changed the rules a bit. quote:From the OP's and Gumby's posts I gather that Nazi economics actually weren't that great. I vaguely remember Adam Tooze writing in his book that the German central bank would've ran out of money in 1939 if Poland hadn't been conquered and exploited. I think I went over this a long time ago in the Ask me about Military History thread, so I can give a quick version. Germany was and is not self-sufficient in natural resources and has to import a lot of different things for the economy to function, including everything from foodstuffs to petroleum. If you're a German fruit broker and you want to get a load of oranges from Spain, you can't pay your guy in Spain with reichsmarks. He wants pesetas instead. So to get pesetas you take your reichsmarks to the German central bank and use them to buy pesetas, so you can make the deal. Alternatively he might accept reichsmarks and take them to the Spanish central bank and exchange them for pesetas. This functions the same way with any commodity being traded internationally. The central bank of a country will maintain reserves of foreign currency so individuals and companies can exchange their money to facilitate trade. Those reserves are kept topped off by the normal function of international trade; German merchants wind up with francs, pounds, lire, whatever, and when they exchange them for reichsmarks the foreign currency goes in the reserve. Likewise for other countries. If a lot more money is leaving the country than is coming in, this upsets the system because the reserves aren't getting refilled. If the reserves run dry, the above transactions can't be completed and everything stops. This is called a balance of payments crisis. In the 1930s Germany's foreign currency reserves were already low because the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany's reparations had to be paid in the currency of the country to which the debt was owed. This prevented them from accumulating francs and pounds, and foreign currency in general, as long as they were making payments. Then, when the Nazis began a bunch of expensive projects of military expansion, public works, and so forth, they needed to import a lot of stuff from abroad, driving the balance of payments sharply negative. If the reserves bottomed out, not only would the Nazi's stimulative projects have to stop, but the normal functioning of the German economy would likely collapse disastrously, with production grinding to a halt, layoffs, shortages, and most likely widespread panic. This was averted by several events. When Germany absorbed Austria it also took control of Vienna's currency reserves; likewise when Czechoslovakia was dismembered and the German protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia was established, they raided Prague's central bank. During WW2, the foreign currency situation was no longer a problem because the Nazis simply stole whatever they needed from occupied countries.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2013 23:38
|
|
|
brozozo posted:If the July 20 plot succeeded, what did the conspirators plan to do with the country? I know they had a government ready to take over once the coup was complete, but what were their intentions beyond killing Hitler? The German military had already set up emergency plans for martial in case of a breakdown in civilian authority, for example if a large allied bombing raid on a city paralyzed the government. The assassination of Hitler would be blamed on an attempted coup d'etat by the SS, and their officers as well as the rest of the top echelons of the Nazi government would be arrested. The martial law plans would be activated due to the national emergency and the military would replace the NSDAP-controlled civilian government, purging any opposition. As Shimrra Jamaane says, the plotters believed that with the Nazis out of power Britain and the United States could be persuaded to accept a separate peace, most likely in exchange for Germany withdrawing from Western and Southern Europe. They hoped to hang on to much of what they had gained however. In any case it would allow them to concentrate on saving Germany from being destroyed by the USSR, which was regarded with almost apocalyptic dread. It is notable that Stalin was always worried that the Western Allies would be amenable to this kind of understanding, but in reality it was a very unrealistic hope on the plotter's part. Britain and the USA had made firm commitments to total victory and moreover it was pretty easy to see that agreeing was not to their advantage. Germany was very obviously losing the war by the time the plotters began dreaming all this up, so the Allies knew they were probably going to win unconditionally in fairly short order, so there was no incentive for them to come to terms--they would get everything that Germany could offer, plus more (i.e. crushing Germany once and for all to avert future wars instead of letting them hang on), and they would avoid pissing the Soviets off immensely. Also the Germans wouldn't have been able to stabilize the Eastern Front and they still would have been screwed, except that the USSR would get everything and also be very very angry with the West. Speculatively, I would think it likely that the chaos resulting from the military coup would have broken the German war effort and led them to collapse even earlier than historical.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2013 07:21
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Were there ever any cases, large or small scale, of German forces giving way to the Western Allies in the hopes of speeding up the war's conclusion before the Soviets ended it from their end? In such a case it would make more sense for such forces to surrender to the allies and be interned as POWs for the duration. I'm pretty sure deliberately ceding land against orders would be a capital offense, so it would be wiser to become a POW. Also, once you've decided to stop fighting there's no point in waiting until later to surrender, you've already taken yourself out of the war. And yeah, a lot of German units surrendered to the Western Allies rather than fight on as the war finished up. quote:I guess part of this is also me wondering what the Allies would have done if a Hitler-less gov't just up and decided to capitulate en masse, but only to the West. Do you continue shooting the soldiers because you're committed to a total victory? Do you still stop at the Elbe even if the Germans will give you a clear road to Berlin? The Allies aka the United Nations had explicitly committed to accepting only unconditional surrender from Axis powers as early as January 1943 at the Casablanca Conference, a commitment that was reiterated at the later Tehran and Yalta Conferences (interestingly, it was also decided at Tehran to make a specific exception and allow Finland to seek a conditional peace with the USSR). Yalta also involved the division of Germany and Europe generally into postwar spheres of influence. Had the Germans approached the Allies seeking terms that included a condition like "no land to the Soviets" they would have been rebuffed. If the Germans had simply started surrendering en masse on the Western Front without such terms and cleared the road to Berlin, the Western Allies most likely would have marched on through and then later on ceded to the Soviets anything they had captured that was delineated as part for the the Soviet Zone. Realistically if the German command had decided the war was lost and stopped fighting on the Western Front the news would have been impossible to conceal from the troops on the Eastern Front, and they would have collapsed into panicked disorder trying to get west in time to be interned by the Western Allies rather than the Soviets (more or less this is what happened historically once it was clear that the military situation was hopeless). This would allow the Soviets to advance rapidly anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2013 08:48
|
|
|
surf rock posted:I've heard that the Protestant churches were largely complicit with the Nazis from the start, while the Catholic Church grew increasingly hostile to it over time. Is that accurate? The way that I would put it is that the Catholic Church in Germany had a tradition of fraught relations with the German government that went back to the 1870s, so they were used to being at odds with the prevailing cultural and political climate. German Catholics also had a tradition of political activism through the Center Party and a variety of other organizations and associations; most of these were dismantled by the Nazis but people didn't just forget them. The Nazis also advanced certain policies like eugenics to which the Catholic Church was vehemently opposed, and those made the hierarchy poorly disposed towards the NSDAP from the start. Finally, the Catholic Church in Germany was ultimately responsible and loyal to the Vatican, which made it easier for them to resist compromising themselves. Religious Protestants, Pastors, and such were not necessarily any fonder of the Nazi regime than were Catholics. The famous antiwar activist Sophie Scholl was a devout Lutheran, for example. The difference was more that protestants were not as organized and lacked the institutional experience and international support network that the Catholics were able to draw on. It's also important not to exaggerate the extent to which the German Catholic Church opposed Nazism, because it didn't amount to that much.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2013 01:53
|
|
|
Devour posted:I'm not even getting into the specifics of how badly trained/equipped the Red Army was, or how stupid Stalin was with his generals. You're kind of in a Catch-22 situation as far as this goes, because if you actually knew enough about the topic to get into those specifics in a meaningful way, you would probably know enough that you wouldn't be making this argument in the first place. You might have some awareness of how many and which elements of the German armed forces were detailed to Africa, Italy, and the Atlantic Wall, as compared to the Eastern Front. Without getting too deep into this, a good example is your idea that the Afrika Korps drew off some notable part of German strength. In reality, most of the Axis forces in theater were (garbage) Italian units, and the German forces amounted to two understrength Panzer divisions and two light (aka understrength) infantry divisions, whereas at the same time German forces on the Ostfront were probably somewhere around 200 divisions--admittedly many of those were understrength as well but you get the point.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2013 01:55
|
|
|
Vivian Darkbloom posted:So what's the verdict among historians (or whomever) about what proportion of the Germans were sincere believers in the Nazi cause, even to the point of wanting all Jews dead? Did Hitler radicalize a hatred that many Germans already nurtured? The typical consensus would be that a significant minority of Germans were true believers, only a vanishingly small group were actively opposed to Nazism, and the remaining majority of Germans went along with the program to avoid any legal or social unpleasantness. There's not a precise figure, since at the time the Nazis were in power no one would admit to opposing them, and once they were out everyone in Germany denied ever having supported them. Daniel Goldhagen had a revisionist take on this in "Hitler's Willing Executioners" in which he argued that the German people were uniquely antisemitic and were self-aware and enthusiastic participants in the Holocaust, which was rather roughly dismantled by other historians of the Third Reich. One of them, Christopher Browning, is generally better-regarded by the profession. His take was that German conservatives were supportive of Nazi antisemitism up to the point of the Nuremberg Laws but left to their own devices would not have gone beyond them to the point of deporting German Jews, let alone murdering them. By co-opting the machinery of the state the minority of ardent Nazis was able to get it done, while the balance of the population willfully ignored what was happening.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2013 02:38
|
|
|
The Weimar Republic's political system was something like an attempt to create a republic without dramatically altering the structure that had existed under the German Empire. As such continuity with the civil service, judiciary, constituent states, and so on was maintained as much as possible. For example, even though the monarchy had been abolished and the various kings and dukes of the German states were deposed, nearly all the states continued as political entities under the Republic. This was because the leadership of the republic that emerged from the German Revolution was a centrist coalition consisting of the Catholic Center Party, the moderate (pro war) Social Democratic Party, and the liberal German Democratic Party. The politicians who created the Weimar Republic actively opposed attempts to effect real revolutionary change on German society and politics and in fact made common cause with the right wing paramilitary Freikorps to defeat the left-wing revolutionaries who were trying to do so. The President functioned as something like an elected Kaiser, particularly during a national emergency, in which case the constitution enabled him to essentially rule by decree (Article 48). The Weimar Republic spent a considerable portion of its brief lifetime under such emergencies. Among his ordinary powers was responsibility for asking the leader of whatever party happened to have a workable coalition in the Reichstag to form a government. The chancellor did not have much power as an office in itself, but was more like the leader of the Reichstag, exercising power through that control of the legislature. By 1930 the party system had destabilized to the point that there was no workable coalition, so Hindenburg simply appointed Brüning of the Center Party Chancellor. Brüning bypassed the legislative gridlock by simply preparing decrees that Hindenburg then issued under Article 48. In theory the excessive power of the Reich President was counterbalanced by the powers of the Reichstag, but in practice the President was clearly dominant.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2013 03:12
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:The last democratically elected government fell apart over the question whether unemployment insurance should be raised 0.5%. It's misleading to suggest that the Müller government fell entirely because of a single bill. With the advent of the Great Depression the Weimar Republic was in a situation where dire economic straits demanded government spending for relief, but Germany's financial obligations to other countries as well as a solid chunk of the Reichstag demanded deflationary austerity policies. In a parliamentary system the government will collapse any time it introduces a bill and then fails to garner a majority, because that demonstrates on its face that they no longer have a majority. The vote on unemployment insurance happened to be when that occurred, but there were any number of issues that coming up in short order on which the government would have foundered. quote:Putting the blame on Brüning and von papen is overly simple, because like it or not, the legislative system had failed completely and everyone was pretty sick of it. When you have elected Reichstag members go "Well a population who elects a gridlocked Parliament doesn't want a democratic government anyway" you're not staying a democratic republic, period. This eventually became a popular point of view, but it's not actually the case. It comes from people conflating the economic crisis and hyperinflation of early Weimar with the later, unrelated crisis of the Great Depression. In reality Germany had about 5 years of economic stability and relative prosperity in 1924-1929, and the Weimar system was more-or-less adequate during that interval. The Great Depression was what made the government non-functional and caused Germans to flock to the KPD and NSDAP, and it should be said that Germany was hardly alone among the nations in failing to handle the crisis effectively. Moreover, public confidence in the government and the mainstream political parties was severely undermined by, among other things, unelected chancellors abusing Article 48 to force deeply unpopular deflationary legislation on the nation. That is, by Brüning and von Papen. von Papen isn't a very sympathetic character from any angle, but Brüning is somewhat justified because his position was impossible. Germany's reliance on credit from American banks (now foundering) and their obligations for reparations to Britain and France meant that the government did not actually have any kind of freedom of action to deal with what was happening in their economy. Brüning could only follow the lead of other countries as they bungled their response to the global disaster. And from that perspective it actually makes sense to bypass the unresponsive Reichstag and rule by decree, because of dire necessity. I would somewhat compare it to what is currently happening to Greece. ashgromnies posted:What was the foreign sentiment regarding Nazis in the early years of their rule, e. g. 1935? What about before their rise to power? There were obviously split opinions, on what grounds were foreigners opposing the Nazis and supporting them prior to WW2? I don't know that people outside German took the Nazis overly seriously before they were in power. I think that in general they were regarded--not unfairly!--as brutes, thugs, and criminals who would never be able to assemble enough support to participate in government except as the junior member of a coalition. The Nazi appetite from streetfighting was a big part of this, as was their brand of antisemitism. Most politicians, opinion-makers, and other members of the international elite were at least somewhat antisemitic at that time, but the Nazis were very vocal in their support for unseemly, vulgar, paranoid antisemitism and that made a lot of people contemptuous of them. At that time and for most countries, foreign policy tended to be the province of independently wealthy gentlemen, and consequently the people in Britain, the United States, and so forth, who were responsible for forming opinions of the Nazis were a large social step above them. After the Nazis began to draw more and more support, people had to take them seriously and give them a second look. Around this time the conservative German elite (i.e. officer corps, aristocrats, industrialist) began to see them as a group of people with whom they could work. They did not believe that Hitler or the Nazis were sophisticated enough to run the country on their own but rather they could be used as a broad base of support through which congenial policies could be enacted. The attitude in other countries was similar. At that time in history the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement were seen as the main threat to world peace and fiercely anticommunist leaders like Hitler or Mussolini were well-regarded by the ruling class. The attitude of somebody like Winston Churchill towards Hitler around, say, 1934 would have been that he was probably the right man to sort out Germany's problems and deal with all the problems being caused by the Socialists and Communists. At the same time, a lot of the "gentlemen" who made up the ruling class were still unable to take the Nazis too seriously, because a lot of them came off as cranks and buffoons. It don't think it was realized until 1938 that Nazi Germany was the real threat to the international system. There's a book I read not long ago, which is more on the end of popular history though I still found it interesting, "In the Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larson (he also wrote "The Devil in the White City"). It's about William Dodd, FDR's ambassador to Berlin 1933-1937, and his interactions with the Nazi regime. It goes into some detail about all this and is a pretty easy read as well. Meanwhile, Communists had a rather different opinion of the Nazis, for obvious reasons. Before 1933 the line out of Moscow, represented in Germany by the KPD (German Communist Party), was that the Nazis represented something like the death throes of German capitalism. Unable to keep control by relatively genteel political means and with the Great Depression causing widespread misery, the German bourgeoisie was trying to control the working class through street violence and brute appeals to racism; collapse would soon follow. By this time the KPD and the SPD (Social Democrats) were bitterly opposed, largely due to the SPD's often aggressive use of force against Communist activists, and rather than make common cause against the Nazis the KPD was determined to stand back and let everything fall apart, after which I presume they planned to sweep into power. When the Nazis assumed power and quickly suppressed the KPD and SPD both, the USSR realized that they had made a disastrous mistake and they promptly reversed the policy of the Comintern. Communists in the rest of Europe were instructed to form popular fronts with Social Democratic and Liberal parties to help forestall any more countries resorting to Fascism, and to participate in anti-German agitation. This changed again after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with the Comintern then being instructed to advocate peace with Germany, and then yet one more time after Germany invaded the USSR, with all the Communist parties going all-in on the Popular Front and support for the war.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2013 20:24
|
|
|
Doctor Malaver posted:A lot of dissing in this thread! The Nazi state and/or its leaders have been called corrupt, chaotic, back-stabbing, psychotic, incompetent, delusional, uneducated, incapable or rational thought, barely functional, uncooperative, and plain ugly - just off the top of my head. Also, navy was useless, airforce was laughable, etc. As I discussed earlier, the German Revolution of 1919 did not really reshape the political and social landscape of the country. Left-wing socialists and communists associated with the anti-war USPD (Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany) made some attempts in that direction but they were crushed by an alliance between the mainstream political parties--the SPD, the Centre, and the DDP--and right wing paramilitaries. The result was a Republic in which the Kaiser had been removed but the political system and government remained intact in many ways. In regards to what you're talking about, the German Empire's civil service, judiciary, university system, officer corps, and so forth all remained in place. In addition there was no significant redistribution of property, so the landowning aristocracy, financiers, and industrialists maintained their positions as well. Nor did the Nazi takeover do much to change this. What they would do instead is create party-related administrative positions that were parallel to existing civil positions, sort of just sliding a new NSDAP-run layer of bureaucracy over the top of them. The bureaucrats would continue doing their jobs, but now there would be an office somewhere upstairs with a political appointee sitting in it, who would give them orders from time to time and they had better do what he said, because his authority came from Berlin. So the civil service continued to keep Germany running smoothly, just with a newly established shadow government humming alongside and acting as liaison with Hitler's clique. This is basically how the Nazis did what you're talking about. It was not necessary for them to be capable of actually running the day-to-day operations of the country, because for that they could rely on the administrative institutions that had been established way back in the days of the German Empire. Another element that came in later was the fact that once the Nazis had been in power for a few years, ambitious people recognized that it was advantageous to be a Nazi. Professional associations also came to encourage NSDAP membership. Eventually there was a steady flood of new party members, often more skilled and from better social positions than had been typical before 1933, which raised the overall quality of the membership. However, the best positions tended to be reserved for people who had joined before the party began its cycle of explosive growth in 1930, the so-called "alte Kämpfer" who'd been with Hitler when it was actually difficult to do so.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2013 20:41
|
|
|
Alekanderu posted:Göring was a fighter ace in WW1, although that's before he became a Nazi leader, of course. The doctor who did Göring's psychological profile when he was committed for his morphine addiction in the mid-1920s had a nice quote about this. Paraphrasing, he assessed that Göring was clearly a man of great physical courage but at the same time was almost completely lacking in moral courage, so that he was capable of risking death or serious injury with elan in war, while being incapable of managing his own affairs and a complete poo poo as a person. Schenck v. U.S. fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jun 29, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2013 00:20
|
|
|
Frostwerks posted:Hey man, I actually asked a question about this very quote over in the Mil History thread a good while back. Do you have the entire thing and if I may, what exactly did you google to find it? Just something like "Göring physical courage." It's been reproduced in a couple biographies of Göring, but unfortunately not in its entirety as far as I know.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2013 16:22
|
|
|
Theomanic posted:1. What facets of Communism were being pushed by the Communist party (pre-WWII) that worried Germans so much? From posts I read here, it seems like the rich and moderates were the ones most concerned...? Why is that? The international Communist movement held dear a number of objectives that tended to arouse resistance from many sectors of society. Redistribution of wealth and property, would obviously frighten the wealthy and propertied. The threat of factories, mines, and other industrial concerns becoming state enterprises didn't seem like a great deal to the people who owned them. People of elevated social class didn't like the Communists' promise to do away with social distinctions and promote egalitarianism. The aggressive atheism of the Communist movement was a problem for religious people. Communist parties were also officially internationalist and in favor of racial equality and women's rights (although in practice never lived up to the principles), which engendered further opposition from, well, nationalists, sexists, and racists--which at that time was most people. Additionally, the Russian Civil War had been the occasion of widespread atrocity and huge numbers of Russian aristocrats were killed, imprisoned, or sent into exile after their property was seized. The specter of the Red Terror was influential in driving opposition to international Communism. Generally speaking Communism was most popular among working-class people who were unemployed, occupied relatively low positions in the workshop hierarchy, or who felt very strongly some of the stances I outlined above. Better-established workers (i.e. people who thought they had something to lose), or workers who were more socially conservative by nature, wold be more likely to support mainstream Social Democratic parties like the SPD. quote:2. I'm under the impression that the US joined the war effort only once they were attacked at Pearl Harbour. Is this correct? What was America's plan in regards to the Nazi threat? I saw Devour's post but... It seemed unhelpful. Until the Japanese attack, the American plan was to supply Britain and, later, the Soviet Union with war materiel through the Lend-Lease program. The US government was also engaging in actions to secure their own strategic interests that were provocative towards Germany. A good example of this was when the British turned Iceland over to US occupation in the summer of 1941. US naval forces were already participating in the Battle of the Atlantic before Germany's declaration of war, by escorting Commonwealth convoys as far as Iceland, as well as observing U-Boats and reporting their position to the Royal Navy. This direct collusion with the enemies of Germany would almost certainly have led to open hostilities with Germany at some point. This became clearly inevitable after Japan launched their attack, because the Americans and British began cooperating directly against Japan, an arrangement that would surely extend to the European theater as well. Germany's defensive treaty with Japan did not oblige them to declare war in sympathy with their attack on the USA, but Hitler did so anyway, judging that then was as good a time as any. quote:3. As MrBling mentioned, Denmark was peaceably occupied, though they snuck all their Jewish citizens out, I believe mainly to Sweden. While I know Sweden was neutral, I have heard stories both of them assisting Jewish people, and turning over Jewish people to the Nazi's. Were both these situations prevelant, or did they tend to a bias one way or another? I think the Swedish government harboured Jewish people unofficially, but citizens could/would still sell out Jewish people and somehow get them sent back to Germany... But I am entirely confused on the matter. I honestly don't know. Maybe somebody else can help you. Folke Bernadotte and Raoul Wallenberg are well known Swedes in this area. quote:3b. I saw Raskolnikov's post on Sweden, but I was hoping for more detail. I was not under the impression the neutral countries were that concerned about invasion. I know the American concept of a neutral country is they're a bunch of pansies, but a lot of those countries train all their citizens as soldiers, which I would imagine to be quite off-putting to a potential invading force. Sweden was vulnerable to German attack because their military would not have been able to resist a German invasion via Denmark and Norway, which were already occupied, and because Swedish iron ore was critical to the German war effort. Anything that imperiled that line of supply would have elicited an aggressive response from Germany. The Swedish government was negatively disposed towards the Nazis but mindful of the fact that they could not survive direct opposition. As a result Sweden aided both sides: the Nazis openly, and the Allies clandestinely. Swedish neutrality was not particularly inspiring or heroic but was in the best interests of the state and its citizens. quote:4. Were Germans/Hitler confused by the lack of Scandinavian enthusiasm for their project? The typical Scandinavian is quite Aryan, after all. No. A good proportion of Germans were unenthusiastic about the Nazi project, which was a source of real anxiety for the Nazis. Historians have suggested that one major reason that the Nazi government failed to effectively mobilize war industries and put the economy on a war footing until midway through the fight was the fear that the population would turn on them. The NSDAP also spent a long period of time before 1930 as an underground party, intermittently banned, with a tiny base of support among the German population at large. They were probably well aware that many Aryans, such as in Scandinavia, did not support them, but believed they would eventually come around after Germany won the war and demonstrated the rightness of Nazi ideology. quote:5. Nazi architecture and civil planning seemed quite thoughtful. Do you happen to know if their plans were realistic? Eg. Building seaside resorts that people of any income level could enjoy. Some of them, sure. Not everything they thought up was ridiculously grandiose crap like Welthauptstadt Germania.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2013 19:38
|
|
|
LittleBob posted:As a hypothetical, if Hitler hadn't declared war, wouldn't the US be forced to anyway? I mean, it seems unlikely that the UK/Commonwealth/etc. could retake the entire continent, meaning it'd be left to the Soviets otherwise? And that seems undesirable to everybody. Is there any realistic way the US couldn't get involved? Once the USA and UK began working together in the Pacific Theater, US intervention in the European Theater was inevitable because Britain's difficulties in Europe would hinder her as an ally in the Pacific. Under the pretext of shoring up their key ally against Japan, American supplies to Britain and US Navy activity in the Atlantic would have had to increase (likely the USSR as well), and the German-American confrontation there was already nearing the point of overt provocation on both sides in the autumn of '41. Germany could not afford to allow a dramatic increase in American aid to Britain and the Soviet Union, and the consequent attacks on American shipping would bring them into the war against Hitler. Even if the Germans decided to just take it on the chin and gave up on the Atlantic--an impossibility, mind you--there would still be the matter of the African Theater, which was intended to take Egypt and close the Suez Canal. If that happened it would impair Britain's ability to fight in the Pacific, hurting the USA, so there's the USA declaring war on Germany again.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2013 20:45
|
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:I think that covers the basics. It is also worth mentioning that the Weimar Courts tended to pitch softballs at Nazis and other right-wing street fighters, but they threw the book at leftists. The consequences for being a fascist thug were pretty light, but if you were a commie caught tuning up some fascists on the streets, you'd be hurting.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2013 07:06
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:He never said anything about outlawing all the parties, just the left. Fun fact: the social-democratic party was the only one actually banned. They never even bothered to ban the communists. This is not correct. On 14 July 1933 the German government made illegal all political parties save the NSDAP.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2013 01:02
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Don't think of that line as an appeal to determinism, because that's not really what it is. It's more than so many of the "what-ifs" around the Nazis relate to them not being dicks to particular groups (scientists, Poles, Balts, Slavs of various flavours), which would run completely contrary to Nazi ideology, and they weren't known for being pragmatic. The questions just don't make any sense. But there's a million more "what-if" questions you can ask. "But then they wouldn't be the Nazis" isn't intended to be an argument, it's just a pat phrase to dismiss the question on grounds of plausibility. To explain it in a little more depth I guess I would say... Dealing with questions of counterfactual history, you have to draw a distinction between "for want of a nail" scenarios regarding an event seemingly contingent on random chance, and scenarios where you want to alter large decisions made by an individual or group at a specific moment in time. In the first case there are definitely cases where the course of history might have been drastically altered by a change in the outcome of an event that could easily have gone a different way, particularly in war. In the second case, though, people usually do not arrive at momentous decisions on a whim, but rather as a extended process of reasoning through the circumstances in which they find themselves. And we often have a pretty good idea of why a particular decision was made instead of a suggested alternative. Unless the circumstances leading up to it are materially different in some way (perhaps altered by that missing nail), asking "why didn't they do Y instead of X" isn't a great question. As people have been explaining, Nazi Germany wanted to expand eastward so that they could clear desirable lands of their inhabitants and resettle them with Germans. This was their primary reason for invading the USSR, among other secondary reasons such as stamping out communism--by exterminating communists and Jews, naturally. Therefore it makes no sense to ask whether they could have invaded the USSR and refrained from trying to kill or enslave everybody they saw. That is the very reason they invaded.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2013 20:17
|
|
|
Kurzon posted:How could were the Nazis at dealing with crime? Did the crime rate go down? The Third Reich was a closed society with highly restricted civil liberties, and the police were granted far-reaching authority to pursue offenders of all kinds, political, racial, or criminal. The dramatic expansion of police powers typical of authoritarian states was often effective in combating crime, at least those crimes not associated with the regime itself, as can be seen in many states. It's just hard to operate as a criminal when the police can do whatever they want. The extensive criminality of the Nazi government aside, yes, the crime rate went down. platedlizard posted:I don't know if they actually consider him a saint per se, but he was definitely an Orthodox Christian himself and that was apparently enough for him to be honored by a couple Orthodox Christians who were interested in him. Rates of religious belief generally and church attendance specifically are very very low in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, and the Orthodox Church in those areas is aware that it is a marginal and possibly dying tradition. Since veneration of saints and iconography are among their most important traditions, establishing modern saints is one of the ways they've tried to reestablish their relevance. Another example of this would be the canonization of the Romanovs and other Russian aristocrats killed by the Bolsheviks, which is pretty dubious from a theological perspective but might have some cultural utility.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2013 16:55
|
|
|
It's a broken clock situation. Historians didn't have to go back and look over his work for indications that he was a poo poo. There was never any question that David Irving had racist, anti-semitic, pro-Fascist views, and his work was criticized from the start for portraying the Nazis more sympathetically than the archive could support. At the same time, he had an exceptional grasp of the German military archives, and he produced some work that actually held up pretty well. But that's incidental, the whole reason he became an author was so he could produce revisionist histories that showed the Nazis in a better light.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2013 06:25
|
|
|
As to the accelerated timeline, in the postwar period some British historians tried to redeem their disastrous intervention in Greece by arguing that the supposed delay it caused to Operation Barbarossa was decisive. I believe that's actually where that legend comes from originally. In actuality review of weather conditions in European Russia and the state of German logistics in the late spring/early summer of 1941 shows that they really couldn't have jumped off much earlier than June 22 regardless of what they were doing in the Balkans. It's also worth pointing out that Italy sent a motorized corps to participate in Barbarossa, and then they expanded that to the full 8th Army with 235,000 men by late 1942. If Hitler told Mussolini to get stuffed in 1941, he's not going to have access to those soldiers. Admittedly many of them were of dubious quality against the Soviets, but using them as flank guards freed up higher-quality German troops for heavier lifting. And some of the Italian formations like their mountain corps were actually pretty good. Nor is it clear that declining to go into Greece would redound to Germany's advantage in any significant way. The Germans would still be in Yugoslavia, because the invasion of Yugoslavia was a German show and launched in response to the British-backed coup d'etat of 27 March 1941. There simply isn't a plausible scenario where the Germans don't respond to that with a full-scale invasion. The subsequent invasion of Greece was the next logical step, to support the Italians and also deny the British an ally in the Mediterranean. If the Germans had declined to invade Greece, they still would have had to commit some forces simply to screen occupied Yugoslavia from Greek/British forces to the South. Who knows how much more difficult their anti-partisan campaigning in Yugoslavia would have been if Britain had a direct overland line of supply via Greece. It's hard to game out what the long term effect would have been on the war but it wouldn't have been 100% to Germany's benefit. Chupe Raho Aurat posted:Which would have been shipped with the rest of the equipment that was planned in the two year assault.. First, as others have been pointing out, the Germans didn't have unlimited transport capacity. Their troops lacked cold weather equipment in the winter of '41-'42 not because the equipment had been forgotten or something, but because they couldn't spare any room on their trains and trucks to get it to the front. During and after the autumn operational pause they deliberately chose to skimp on winter gear to make room for supplies necessary to continue the offensive, in the hopes of defeating Russia before the worst of the winter weather set in. More winter gear means less fuel, ammunition, and weaponry. Second, planning for the invasion of the USSR was very much predicated on the expectation that it could be completed in a single campaigning season--that the USSR would collapse in a matter of weeks or months. The Germans understood that the industrial capacity and population of the Soviet Union put them at a disadvantage over time. There was also the matter of Great Britain, which remained defiant in the west and a potential threat to the periphery of Axis Europe, as well as the increasing American commitments on behalf of Britain that indicated war with the USA was not far off. They went ahead with the invasion because they firmly believed they would defeat the Soviets long before those factors could come into play. If they had commenced planning with more realistic expectations, it's entirely possible the Germans would have balked at invading in the first place. Finally, with regard to the idea of the Germans playing nice in the occupied territories, some Germans advocated that position. The nominal administrative chief of the occupied Soviet territories, Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg, argued in favor of finding common cause with the local population against the Soviet government, in the hopes of drawing their support or at least their acquiescence to the occupation. His directives were ignored and actively flouted by his subordinates, most importantly SS personnel and the Reichskommissar for Ukraine, Erich Koch. When Rosenberg complained to Hitler and other high-up Nazis about Koch and the SS undermining his authority, they threw their weight behind the genocide and left Rosenberg isolated and powerless in his own supposed domain.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2014 03:23
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2014 14:53
|
|
|
I think the quickest way to explain why he's wrong would be to say that whereas the goal of Nazism was to secure the future well-being of the German racial state, genocide was not an unintended consequence but the deliberately chosen means for achieving that goal. Germany would be strengthened inwardly by eliminating Jews and other parasitic elements, and outwardly by conquering the Slavic countries and eliminating the population so the land could be settled by Germans. Also, the entire post was arrant nonsense but the worst bit is "We make too much of this racist angle." There is no "racist angle," racism is all 360 degrees of the Nazi worldview. The ideology is founded on the belief that the various races are in competition and extinction is the consequence of defeat, and the German race must be victorious at the expense of the others. That's the foundation, everything else is superstructure.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2014 00:02
|
|
|
Disappointing troll effort, 1.5/4 stars. You slow-played it well at the start but if you'd been more patient you probably could have played "not actually a Nazi, just asking questions" for a couple more posts.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2014 01:23
|
|
|
Kuiperdolin posted:Turkey got all but destroyed and, surprisingly, learned its lesson and did not start WW2. This is the Nazi thread, but I really feel that somebody ought to give this the attention it deserves. Towards the end of WWI the Entente powers arrived at a plan for the partition of the Ottoman Empire, initially detailing territories to be awarded to Britain and France but later incorporating awards to Italy, Greece, and Armenia. This included not only areas like the Levant and Mesopotamia, which might be considered colonial or at least peripheral to the Ottoman state, but also the better part of the Empire's traditional core in Anatolia and Thrace. The Ottoman Empire sought an armistice in October 1918, and under its terms withdrew its remaining armies to central Anatolia. The Entente powers occupied large parts of the Ottoman Empire and began negotiating a treaty to ratify the planned partition, which was finalized as the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920. In the meantime, however, Mustafa Kemal and his allies in the Turkish National Movement had taken over the remnants of the Ottoman military and begun constructing the foundations of a new Turkish national state based in Ankara, in central Anatolia. With most of coastal Asia Minor already under occupation the Turks commenced a war of independence, primarily against France, Greece, and Armenia. The Ottoman sultanate, with which the partitioning powers were negotiating at Sevres, was basically a fiction by this point but was not formally abolished until 1922. The treaty was also purely nominal, since Ankara rejected it and resisted it by force of arms, meaning that its terms could only be enforced by military victory. Instead, the Turks won their war of independence, defeating the Greeks, Armenians, and French. Basically, the Greeks and Armenians were not actually up to fighting the reformed Turkish army, while the French were too exhausted and war-weary to really commit to the fight. The war involved ethnic cleansing and other atrocities, mostly by the Turkish side, and resulted in their regaining virtually all of Turkey "proper." This was recognized by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and by which the Republic of Turkey took its current geographical shape, more or less. So what actually occurred was the Entente powers attempted to completely partition Turkey, and the Turks went right back to war and defeated them.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2014 23:33
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:They did what they could to bring them home, but it wasn't a huge push. That scene in Band of Brothers has done a lot to make a bunch of people think it was way more of a thing than it was. The basic explanation would be that that guy's parents were giant fuckin' Nazis even in terms of the times, and he happened to get captured in a place where he would eventually wind up in an HBO miniseries.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2015 06:27
|
|
|
achillesforever6 posted:he told there was a reason for antisemitism being a thing because there was some truth the Jews running all the finances and businesses. Statistically German Jews were overrepresented in universities and professions. AFAIK it's still the case today in countries with Jewish minorities, like the USA. The Nazis complained about it a lot. Still they were a long, long way from running "all the finances and businesses", they just ran slightly more of them than you would expect from their share of the population. In any case it wasn't really a cause of antisemitism as much as it was something that got you riled up if you were already an antisemite.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2015 19:55
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:49 |
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:It's a real shame that Hitler's Willing Executions was on the loving New York Times bestseller list while Ordinary Men is obscure outside of people who study history. It's a useful reminder of what the typical reader actually wants and expects from a history book. Aside from stuff extraneous to the texts themselves, like how they were promoted by the publisher or how they fit into political affairs of the day, I think the "problem" with Browning is that his thesis is paradoxically more challenging than Goldhagen's. Willing Executioners has kind of a just-so explanation for the Holocaust. There was an evil antisemitism at large in the German national psyche and they acted on it when the Nazis called on them. Ordinary Men instead shows that the men Browning studies understood what they were doing was abhorrent, but they were easily convinced to act against their natural inclination. The consequences of refusal were very minor, it was just that very few men were willing to take responsibility for themselves, and most preferred to just go along. I was also struck by the fact that the best defense against being pressured into murder wasn't courage or emotional strength, because IIRC there's only one or two examples of men who just took a stand and refused. Rather, men who opted out of the killing usually did so because they were too weak to participate. I guess what I'm saying is that Ordinary Men is more challenging because it makes a point about people in general, that the reader has to confront in himself--under the right (wrong) conditions, you or I could also have done this thing. I think Goldhagen's argument that there was something special in the German national character--echoing the Sonderweg thesis--comes too close to letting the reader off the hook.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2015 22:13
|
|