I mean e.g. anti-Semitic ideas where super common in christian circles at the time. Martin Luther was a anti-Semitic piece of shit and he is the founder of a Christian movement. Yes, Hilter and the Germans did something completely unhinged but I really don’t think what happened to the Jews was the issue that caused people to fight Hilter and the Germans. A probably shocking amount of people outside of Hilter’s propaganda would have been in favor of the Holocaust.
Also war weren’t new in Europe nor was the desire to create a great nation that control a huge region.
Just like only blaming Hilter is a bit short sighted, only blaming the Germans is the same. Hatred is cancerous. Blame decades and centuries of anti-Semitic hatred and you blame the cause of e.g. the Holocaust. Stop the hate before it grows. Fight the hatred. Transphobia, racism, sexism,… Whatever form the hatred takes, fight it. Fascism follows. Death follows.
Not sure it is really on point to blame conscripted and indoctrinated kids for the rise of nazism. Rather more prudent to look at the capitalists and regular conservatives who thought marrying fascists would be profitable. Also prudent because it is happening again, and it is not the youth’s fault now either.
War criminals are never not guilty and many of these kids became exactly that. However, many were also forced into service under threat of violence or were the victims of indoctrination (as kids still), which we need to acknowledge was not their responsibility. Young people are always the ones fighting the wars of the older generations. In Nazi Germany they pretty much had to fight for the nazis because their parents and grandparents thought nazism was cool.
I did not assume that. However, distinguishing who is to blame is important in order to learn from the past. Blaming conscripts and politicians equally is shifting blame away from those who were responsible.
And where were all those guards and soldiers supposed to find jobs murdering people in the meantime? Do you want his family to starve? Do you even care about the economy?
No, it happened because people with guns killed or threatened anyone who didn't do their jobs.
Personal safety people! Most of us care for it more than we care for others.
I mean look at the Israel thing. Protesting is nice but is anyone actually doing anything about it? Any of you? Any of your armed forces? Any of your governments?
Oh, you're not going to vote for whichever candidate is running next. Good for you. Doesn't help the people already dead or dying, but keep doing that.
Ah Russia vs Ukraine, Russians should protest harder and overthrow the totally-not-gonna-shoot-them-in-the-face government. It's the right thing to do. Cheers to that.
But no, it's easier to just say "majority of Russians actually support the war" like it's not a complete sack of bullshit.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda is a nice sentiment, but it's also just that, a sentiment. Life's tougher than spoken or written words because nobody wants to be someone else's cannon fodder.
Unity only works in two situations:
nothing else left
bigger guns than the other side
Any uncertainty will always break up a group, always. Which is why it's so easy to disperse protesters.
A whole lotta people did stand up to the guys with guns. Sometimes they took up their own guns. Sometimes they smuggled a bit of bread away for a Jewish neighbor, or they adopted a kid as their own. Factory workers purposefully worked as lazily as plausibly deniable. People spied for the allies and hid food away from the occupiers.
Everyone of these actions carried personal risk or cost, to varying degrees. Many paid for it with their lives, but so many more lives were saved by the Resistance and the many forms it took.
Ronald L. Haeberle was “just doing his job” as a war photographer in Vietnam churning out propaganda, with a constant and real threat on his life from his hierarchy. He was by all accounts a softspoken man who didn’t seek trouble. Until in 1969 he turned over tens of harrowing pictures from the My Lai Massacre to reporters, genuinely helping change public perception and precipitate US capitulation.
Helping a humanitarian cause thousands of kilometers away is harder, but plenty of humanitarian organizations provide real help on the ground in Gaza and are seeking donations right now. So instead of falling for cynicism, consider donating to one.
No, it happened because people with guns killed or threatened anyone who didn’t do their jobs.
As far as I know, there are no documented examples of people actually being killed for refusing an assassination order. While you might end up being shunned by other members of your battalion, you could always ask for redeployment.
Very true. Although, with Hitler, it was both—plus a complacent government that thought they had all the reigns of power and so they could use Hitler and then dump him when they were done with him.
Hitler spoke, very eloquently, to a large part of the population that was really two groups. The part of a population that, when the chips are down, want an easily identifiable simple target (that’s not them) and the excuse to attack them and make them suffer with impunity, and the part of a population that would like things to be better for them personally and don’t much care how it gets done, as long as they don’t have to bloody their own knives.
They voted Hitler into power, and then the first group set about terrorizing anyone who didn’t agree with their glorious leader, while the second group looked the other way and did a bunch of ‘well, I don’t approve, not really, but it’s not him doing it, and he really has such good economic policies…’
And then out came the real knives, when Hitler had all the power, and then he had the military and then no-one could speak up anymore.
I mean it was probably both plus a thousand other reasons… Nothing in history happens for just one reason. Believing that history happens for one reason is how you get convinced that exterminating one group of people will fix your problems.
The NSDAP would’ve been successful without him, the only thing that maybe could have prevented it is a fair peace treaty after WW1. But with WW1’s peace treaty a nationalistic movement combined with extreme racism was predetermined, just like WW2. Basically they had to give the people reasons why they lost as much as they did (“the evil French and Brits, the Jews plotted this treaty to weaken us, …”) while giving people hope again.
When I’m talking to people who’ve experienced this time they usually don’t mention the holocaust or some other atrocity first. The most common first thing they mention is that everyone had a job again, everyone could finally afford food, child mortality was rapidly decreasing. Obviously that’s also partly because the kind of people who would mention the holocaust first (the ones who experienced it) are a small minority since most of them died in the concentration camps or survived but still died younger, years of inhumanely hard work and not enough food leave their mark.
They financed building highways (a good military needs good infrastructure, the Romans already knew that) and heavily invested into the army to create jobs, but obviously that’s not sustainable. An army only is sustainable when you’re using it to steal money. The first thing after the Anschluss was that they transferred the Austrian gold reserves to Germany. Same thing after they invaded Poland and for every other country. Another factor was that they could give Jewish companies to “Aryans” instead.
So one of the main reasons why they became so popular was that people had no money, no hope (and reparation payments). And they gave them money (jobs) and hope, and promised to reclaim the land that was “stolen from them” (which again was inevitable considering that the peace treaty after WW1 took some core regions from them, the wide mass wasn’t willing to simply accept that - the UK for example was willing to accept that Germany annexed parts of Poland because “it was to be expected anyway” - Germany could simply have stopped there and made peace without anyone caring too much).
And humanity learnt from it and made WW2’s peace treaty much different, for example actually giving them money to restore their economy (of course the Marshall plan was also good for the USA since 90% of the money had to be spent on American products but it still made a huge difference for restoring a stable economy after WW2). A fairer peace treaty also made the different countries much more willing to work together, leading to the European Coal and Steel Community which eventually became the EU, the most successful peace-keeping project of all time in Europe.
Please, US-Americans: Learn from our history. Hitler’s core promise also was to make Germany great again. Look where it led, and don’t knowingly vote for someone who made it clear that he is willing to overthrow democracy, to abolish basic human rights.
In Germany and Austria we have a commonly used political appeal (you’ll often see it on signs during protests):
Nie wieder ist jetzt.
(Never again is now.)
It means that it’s our responsibility to never let something like national socialism or any other form of fascism or autocratism happen again. And it’s not our responsibility to do this in 10 years, but now. Even if you’re a republican, please think about this when you’ll be voting this year. Sometimes you have to vote for someone you don’t agree with in order to prevent worse.
I was always confused how society went along until I saw what happened with a certain recent president. Then I realized the population wanted it, they gave it to him. At all levels - civil, people in government, judiciary, and other offices, etc. That’s how a whole movement took over.
That’s funny, I was fascinated with the Holocaust for years for that reason. Like how does an entire country turn a blind eye to rampant genocide in their own backyard?
Then the Orange Man ran for President and we laughed.
Then the Orange Man was actually elected and I thought “Holy fuck! I completely underestimated the level of stupid humanity is capable of.”
Some turned a blind eye. Plenty were perfectly willing to take part. Antisemitism had been built into Germany since Martin Luther. There was no shortage of Germans looking to exterminate Jews.
But yes, there were also good people in Nazi Germany.
Yep, and the vast majority of people who saw it coming got out or attempted to get out. Which leaves people unable or the brave who tried to change it from within.
Don’t forget the culpability of people who may not be fervent supporters, but who don’t want to get involved or inform themselves of what’s going on with their government:
One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way - prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs.
Hitler’s government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.
…and…
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. “We ignored Hitler,” he said. “We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all.”
They thought of the government as “They.” The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.
They Thought They Were Free is an excellent book that interviews Germans shortly after WWII. Even post-defeat, many nazi party members fervently stood by the party or at least feigned ignorance to the atrocities.
Everyone should alsp listen to the podcast Ultra from Rachel Maddow and see the parallels of nazi influence in the US at the direction of Hitler that reached as far as Congress, to what Russia has been doing today.
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