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Eschers Basement posted:eugenics Holy poo poo, are you me? I'm literally writing a paper on eugenics in North Carolina right now. I just finished Blacks book, and I had to quit reading a couple times because I got so angry.
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Apr 17, 2013 03:31
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It's also worth noting that the T4 program to kill the mentally ill and handicapped was rooted in this notion of racial hygiene, and that Aktion Reinhardt gassing camps were run by T4 staff directly on loan to Globocnik at SSPF Lublin.
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Apr 17, 2013 10:31
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Mycroft Holmes posted:Holy poo poo, are you me? I'm literally writing a paper on eugenics in North Carolina right now. I just finished Blacks book, and I had to quit reading a couple times because I got so angry. Whoa. That's a neat coincidence. Glad to see the book's getting read - I actually put the foot/end notes together for it, so you can trust me when I say it's a well-sourced book.  And, yeah, I don't know how anyone can read it without getting furious or needing to lie down and cry for a while. One of the research tasks Black gave me was to read Nyiszli's memoirs of Mengele. Don't read this book. You should read this book. But don't read this book if you want to be functional at all for a few weeks after.MothraAttack posted:It's also worth noting that the T4 program to kill the mentally ill and handicapped was rooted in this notion of racial hygiene, and that Aktion Reinhardt gassing camps were run by T4 staff directly on loan to Globocnik at SSPF Lublin. Very worth noting. To expound on this: the Nazi program to kill the mentally ill and handicapped proved to be an effective test run for the later Holocaust. T4 taught the Nazis that lethal injections were too slow for murder on the scale they needed, and so they moved to gasses such as Zyklon B. In addition, the public outcry over T4 taught the Nazi leadership to be much more private and circumspect when it came to setting up and authoritizing the death camps. Without the T4 program to build on, the Holocaust may have been much smaller and less effective, and certainly the ideals for both came from the same belief in racial stock and genetic superiority.
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Apr 17, 2013 14:14
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Really informative topic, thank you for posting this! My question pertains to the viability of the Nazi Economy: 1). How did Hitler rehabilitate the post-war economy of Germany? 2). Was it true that Hitler's economic reforms depended on war? Is it also true that without war, the German economy would have likely collapsed in the long term? Radio Talmudist fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Apr 18, 2013 |
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Apr 18, 2013 20:46
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I have two questions that I feel mainstream history books and academia tend to sweep under the rug, or ignore. (1) Can you talk a bit about the "Joy Division"? I thought sexual intercourse with Jews was considered a crime, something like race-betraying or something, with actual legislative teeth behind it. How would the Germans justify raping Jewish women if this were the case? (2) Every country post-WW2 has this sort of mythos of the brave Resistance taking up clandestine arms against the Nazis, but the numbers seem to indicate that collaboration was fairly widespread. How did the Nazis go about trying absorb the French, Dutch, Belgians, Danish, etc.? How close were they to extinguishing national identities?
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Apr 18, 2013 21:09
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Radio Talmudist posted:Really informative topic, thank you for posting this! There's some stuff on the Nazi economy upthread. In short, he didn't. The preceding posts are worth a look. And yes, what little he did do for the economy depended on him starting a war. JaggyJagJag posted:I have two questions that I feel mainstream history books and academia tend to sweep under the rug, or ignore. I don't know much about organized Jewish sexual slavery in the camps, but Nazi leadership was schizoid to the extreme, and concentration camps were their own lawless fiefdoms, especially the Zwangsarbeitslager (forced labor camps). People bartered with what they had to trade, and women from all over had sex to offer for food, decent shoes, better work assignments, and other things necessary for survival. Barely any laws from Germany were enforced. I'm not sure that they ever did. Nazi ideology held that the war with fellow Germanic and other Western European peoples was mostly a misunderstanding that would blow over once Germany was triumphant. There weren't any laws to replace baguettes with Brötchen or anything.
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Apr 19, 2013 00:47
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Just saw some libertarian fuckwad (friend of a friend) post on facebook "never forget, Hitler was elected- by the people" (I'll give you 3 guesses what the topic of conversation was about) It took me a while to figure out how to respond to this, before settling on a pithy equivalent to "you should really do some research before you make yourself look so ignorant", but I feel this wasn't adequate, either at expressing my anger at reading something so insanely ignorant, or just pointing out the extent of the ignorance. Is this a common misconception? Where did this idea even come from?
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Apr 19, 2013 01:26
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Ableist Kinkshamer posted:Just saw some libertarian fuckwad (friend of a friend) post on facebook "never forget, Hitler was elected- by the people" (I'll give you 3 guesses what the topic of conversation was about) From the 1932/33 German elections. I mean if you look at the results and know nothing beyond those numbers, it makes sense.
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Apr 19, 2013 01:47
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Richard J. Evans summarizes the relevant Weimar elections pretty well. Basically the Nazis gamed the proportional representation system, beat the poo poo out of everyone who called foul or wouldn't vote for them, then retroactively declared their actions legal after seizing power. Then they beat the poo poo out of everyone who called foul over their play for ex post facto legality. Claiming the Nazis were ever legally elected in any meaningful sense is historically absurd but because people never bother to read about how things actually went down in Germany it's a frustratingly convenient talking point that will never ever go away.
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Apr 19, 2013 02:49
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Richard J. Evans summarizes the relevant Weimar elections pretty well. Basically the Nazis gamed the proportional representation system, beat the poo poo out of everyone who called foul or wouldn't vote for them, then retroactively declared their actions legal after seizing power. Then they beat the poo poo out of everyone who called foul over their play for ex post facto legality. This approach is somewhat problematic because as I see it, the NSDAP didn't really game the proportional representation system. Instead, the other right-wing parties of Germany were more than willing to embrace the Nazis to counter the left wing. (Somewhat related to current affairs, this is exactly what's going on right now in Hungary)
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Apr 19, 2013 07:22
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Yeah, that's kinda true. I should've been a bit more specific/less glib about it. I meant they used the fact that throughout the late 20s they intimidated people into voting for them which, thanks to the proportional representation system, increased the number of seats they held in the Reichstag. The collusion with the conservative parties didn't become an issue until the very end.
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Apr 19, 2013 10:44
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Thanks for the replies. I admit that I'm not exactly a historical scholar when it comes to this stuff, but I know the notion that Hitler's rise to power was democratic in any way is just insane.
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Apr 19, 2013 16:51
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Ableist Kinkshamer posted:Thanks for the replies. I admit that I'm not exactly a historical scholar when it comes to this stuff, but I know the notion that Hitler's rise to power was democratic in any way is just insane. It should be noted that it was perfectly legal (minus the streetfighting), though. It wasn't a coup and it wasn't a revolution. He was appointed in accordance with the constitution.
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Apr 20, 2013 07:02
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Gumby posted:
What Gumby said. To elaborate, several of the camps had bordellos for staff and privileged inmates. At least 200 sex workers have been identified among ten bordellos, and although participation was initially voluntary there were certainly cases of forced recruitment. Most were German women already imprisoned as "asocials," but a number of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarussians and even a few Roma filled out the ranks. As it stands none are believed to have been Jewish. That said, the coercive, twisted nature of the camp almost certainly led to gross sexual mistreatment and favoritism. The Joy Divison concept seems to stem from a 1955 novella allegedly based on an unknown diary, so who knows. A top Yad Vashem researcher maintains the work is just fiction, and there's a debate on how rooted in reality it is versus its role in conveying the general memory of sexual abuse in the camps versus its status as possible Holocaust smut. I wouldn't say mainstream sources ignore the Joy Division concept per se, but that the evidence for something akin to what's specifically described is at this time incomplete. Across the occupied territories the Germans sent up brothels for soldiers, and more than 34,000 women were forced into them. It's possible some were Jewish, but most accounts are from Poles and others. In other cases no formal arrangements were needed. Staff at the Polish extermination camps had fixed schedules and were allowed leave to neighboring villages where they could fraternize as they pleased. A Ukrainian guard at Belzec married a local Polish girl, for example, and some guards were so loose in their talk that Christian Wirth had two sent to the gas chambers. MothraAttack fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Apr 20, 2013 |
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Apr 20, 2013 15:28
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Devour posted:Did Nazi Germany have universal healthcare? The short answer is no. The longer answer: The German Empire ("Kaiserreich") was the first country in the world to sign into law a health care system. In 1883, Chancellor Otto von Bismark signed the Health Insurance Bill. This provided health care for a large segment of German workers. It was tied to workplaces in that the costs were split between employer and worker. Later there would be expansions to health care with the main ones coming after WWII. According to this pdf Germany achieved universal health care in 1988.
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Apr 20, 2013 16:03
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They did offer tax deductions for some health insurance policies, though. Not applicable to Jews.
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Apr 20, 2013 16:19
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Kemper Boyd posted:This approach is somewhat problematic because as I see it, the NSDAP didn't really game the proportional representation system. Instead, the other right-wing parties of Germany were more than willing to embrace the Nazis to counter the left wing. Well, there was a lot of criticism of the Weimar-era system of proportional representation - even conservatives like Carl Schmitt thought that it was ripe for exploitation by a radical group premised on destroying democracy from within.
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Apr 20, 2013 22:29
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ArchangeI posted:It should be noted that it was perfectly legal (minus the streetfighting), though. It wasn't a coup and it wasn't a revolution. He was appointed in accordance with the constitution. Right. For those reading the thread who are a little confused, it goes like this. Weimar Germany had had crippling inflation soon after WWI for various reasons, including the financial/foreign policy of the dominant party at the time, the left-moderate Social Democrats. In the midst of the Depression, many Germans were leery of trusting the SPD again. The (also moderate) Catholic Center Party was fading in importance, and radical conservative parties (such as the NSDAP/Nazis) were growing in size along with support for the Communist Party (KPD). The rich and the middle class were generally scared of the KPD and voted moderate or conservative in one way or another; the working poor generally supported the KPD or the SPD. The Nazis for their part declare that they're not really a political party since parties split the German nation into social classes when everybody should be working together to further the German people as a whole. Plus, democracy is for the weak anyway. Due to having a bunch of political parties who won't work together, the German Reichstag (Congress) is deadlocked and laws don't get passed, which is around the time that the President of Germany and his advisers decide to just start ruling by decree since they never liked this whole democracy idea anyway. Okay, it's July 1932. The NSDAP get 37% of the vote, the SPD 22%, the KPD 14%, and the Center Party get 12%. This means that between NSDAP and KPD supporters, over 50% of Germany was now voting for a party that had declared in their platform that democracy was useless and had to be replaced. This is important to remember: at this point a (slight) majority of Germans had given up on democracy. The Nazis have a plurality, so Hitler gets to be chancellor, right? Nope. He needs a majority. Hitler calls bullshit (and he sort of has a point) because it's a strong plurality. The Reichstag is still useless and Hindenburg and his buddies continue ruling by decree. Flash-forward to November 1932. New elections. The Nazis are flat broke, the Depression has bottomed out, and cracking heads in the street only takes you so far, so their vote drops to 33%. SPD drops down to 20%. The KPD rises in popularity to 17%, further freaking out German moderates and conservatives. One of Hindenburg's autocratic conservative buddies, worried about the Communists potentially taking over, gets Hindenburg to let Hitler be Chancellor as long as his cabinet doesn't have too many Nazis in it. After all, what's the worst that can happen? Thirteen years later, Europe is a smoking pile of rubble. So yeah, every step of Hitler's rise to power was legal (aside from the street fights). More Germans voted for the NSDAP than for any other party during both elections 1932, and we can blame Franz von Papen, Hindenburg's buddy, for striking the deal that let Hitler become Chancellor with a mere plurality. Kangaroo Jerk fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Apr 21, 2013 |
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Apr 21, 2013 02:23
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Gumby posted:
To be entirely fair, what can you do if parliament is doing everything in its power to run the country straight into the ground? Imagine a congress which filibusters literally everything (shouldn't be too hard) except when they decide to impeach the head of government. Which they do, several times. At some point, you can't really blame Hindenburg for going "gently caress this, we're now a presidential dictatorship until I decide you guys get to have a crack at it again". It should be noted that Ebert, his predecessor, ran much the same line during the crisis in the early 20s and eventually handed full control back to parliament. Parties in Weimar were kinda awkward anyway. They came from a tradition of Imperial Germany, where there was a strong executive (His Majesty's Government) that was controlled by a fairly weak legislative, which pretty much only controlled the budget. Which is no doubt critical, but it is a difference to a system where the legislative body elects the head of government. As a result, nearly all parties in Imperial Germany (and consequently Weimar) were parties that represented the interests of certain classes against the government. They didn't want to work together because they didn't see themselves as being responsible for working together. The result was a situation where pretty much no one liked democracy. When you have representatives writing things like "Well a people that elects this kind of deadlocked parliament doesn't want a democratic government anyway" the republic is pretty much hosed.
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Apr 21, 2013 18:04
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Paxicon posted:Thanks for the replies, but I was kind of looking for specific feuds between top officials and how they were resolved Long story short, they weren't. How successful you were in the Nazi circle depended on your closeness to Hitler. Pre-Barbarossa, currying favour involved having something to offer the Fuehrer (Goering's ruthless energy and appeal to the wealthy, Goebbels' propaganda), and post-Barbarossa, it seemed to depend largely on how much of a spineless yes-man you were (Bormann, Doenitz, and his very favourite, Treue Heinrich) In the end, Doenitz was the successor because he didn't try to declare himself leader, surrender to the West or shoot himself. He was literally the last man standing. MothraAttack posted:There's plenty, but two are worth noting offhand. Wilhelm Canaris was head of the Abwehr intelligence agency, and Reinhard Heydrich, as Himmler's young deputy, was ambitious as hell and in a position to be so. Some historians credit him with fomenting the idea of mass gassing centers for the Jewish question, and some speculate he was priming to be Hitler's eventual successor. Heydrich sought to consolidate all German intelligence under his umbrella and readily turned against Canaris, an old family friend. Canaris caught wind, and each man had their staff memers spying on one another. Canaris sought to prove Heydrich's rumored Jewish ancestry, at one point trying to gather old photographic evidence and send it abroad. Heydrich's approach was more cautious, and he advised his spies to be wary of his foe's abilities. Nothing really decisive happened as Heydrich died shorly after the spy war started -- but a spy war that brazen was pretty remarkable. It's also worth noting that Heydrich's goal wasn't entirely unreasonable. The Abwehr produced questionable intelligence, partly because Canaris and much of his staff were secretly opposed to Hitler -- a fact kept hidden from Heydrich's prying eyes. It's also worth noting that Heydrich, owing to a longstanding feud, hated the Kriegsmarine, Grand Admiral Raeder in particular. Raeder was almost a caricature of a battleship admiral and old-school Prussian officer. He was a staunch conservative and ardent nationalist who worshiped Tirpitz and wanted nothing more than to rebuild the High Seas Fleet, centered on battleships. He never liked submarines, and didn't fully understand the importance of aircraft carriers until the late 1930s, by which time it was too late. Raeder, upon taking command of the Reichsmarine in the late 1920s also had a vision for his sailors. He was a staunch social conservative as well as a devout Protestant, and he viewed himself as sort of a private school headmaster, tough but fair, bringing up the elite of a new generation. Along with this came sets of arcane rules that sailors and officers alike found onerous. In attition to complaining that Germany's ships were too small and too few in number, the Grand Admiral also complained that their officers' caps were too small and their gold buttons too few in number. Sailors were forced to wear the dress uniform at nearly all times and were subject to strict disciplinary measure for even the smallest infractions. Officers were prohibited from wearing monocles and smoking pipes and cigars in public. They were likewise forbidden from carrying briefcases as it made them look like businessmen rather than sailors, and were also asked not to wear raincoats unless it was raining; the wool overcoats looked much more befitting of a naval officer. There were strict moral standards too. All seamen and officers were expected to attend chapel, and even their sex lives were subject to scrutiny. Heydrich, as a naval cadet in 1930 was engaged to a woman, but met another in a hotel room, which was judged by an honour court to be promising oneself to two women. The officers that made up the tribunal agreed that he was guilty, and referred the matter to Raeder, who had him expelled from the Academy. Heydrich harassed Raeder for the rest of his life, tapping his phone and slandering him at every turn. It's also worth noting that many of the July 20th plotters wanted to negotiate with the western allies to let them keep half of Poland, Gdansk/Danzig and all of Austria and Czechoslovakia when they surrendered.
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Apr 23, 2013 05:49
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Sunshine89 posted:Reinhard Heydrich chat. Sometimes I shudder at the thought of what role he would have played in the later Reich had he not been offed so spectacularly and relatively soon. He was so cunning, ambitious, sadistic and rightly placed to engage those traits. It is perhaps too bad he never stood in the Nuremberg docket, though. And it's also worth mentioning that many of the July 20th plotters were motivated at least in part by humanitarian purposes. Henning von Tresckow felt his loyalties turn when he witnessed the execution of Soviet POWs, and he told SS officer and cousin Alexander Stahlberg that there was systematic extermination in the East. Stahlberg reported the murder of more than 100,000 Jews to Manstein but was rebuffed by a commander who refused to believe it was possible. Swedish consul Karl Vendel visited the General Government and met with officers who were likely members of Tresckow's inner circle, and when he returned to his office in Berlin he filed a report to the Swedish government alleging mass extermination of Jews. Unfortunately the Swedish government did little with the report, and although it made it to the prime minister's office the report itself sat dormant until the 1970's. MothraAttack fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Apr 23, 2013 |
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Apr 23, 2013 09:48
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Sunshine89 posted:It's also worth noting that many of the July 20th plotters wanted to negotiate with the western allies to let them keep half of Poland, Gdansk/Danzig and all of Austria and Czechoslovakia when they surrendered. Say hypothetically that they did and for some reason the plotters were recognized by everyone afterwards as the lawful rulers of Germany. Is it likely the Allied would have agreed? I mean this was 1944 already. Also why do we always call them the Allied and never 'the Alliance'?
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Apr 23, 2013 15:42
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Namarrgon posted:Say hypothetically that they did and for some reason the plotters were recognized by everyone afterwards as the lawful rulers of Germany. Is it likely the Allied would have agreed? I mean this was 1944 already. The Allies were well aware of the Dolchstosslegende and how Nazi propaganda emphasized that the German army was unbeaten in the field and how none of Germany's opponents in WWI had actually invaded Germany itself. Ignoring that all this would have happened in very short order since Germany was out of reserves and America was shipping a heck of a lot of fresh soldiers to Europe, the strategic balance that led to the relative stalemate was falling apart, but the German public either did not know or did not believe that. The Allies were keen to ensure that however the war ended, that Germany would not be able to wait 20 years, forget why they made peace, and start up WWIII. Also, by the time German officers were beginning to contemplate negotiating peace, the situation for the Allies had moved to a point where peace wasn't in any of their best interests. The Soviets could never accept anything less than the destruction of Germany after the horrific and brutal war they had been fighting for years by that point. Any cessation of fighting would have only been breathing room for both sides to make war later, but with more soldiers, better weapons, etc. They each represented an existential threat to each other that could not be resolved given the events that occurred prior to that point. The Western Allies had a vested interest in having a military presence in Western Europe, particularly as they understood that even after Germany was defeated, there was an impending showdown with the Soviets coming after the war. Making peace with Germany would have just ensured that more of Europe ended up under Soviet influence post-war. They understood that the Soviets were extremely unlikely to withdraw from any territory they captured, so the only way that making peace with Germany would have made any sense is if they planned to attack the Soviets in the immediate aftermath of them finishing with Germany. This would have been especially stupid since, by many measures, the Soviets had the most powerful military on Earth at that time.
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Apr 23, 2013 17:10
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Namarrgon posted:Say hypothetically that they did and for some reason the plotters were recognized by everyone afterwards as the lawful rulers of Germany. Is it likely the Allied would have agreed? I mean this was 1944 already. For your second question, during the WWI, Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were referred to as the Central Powers or, the Alliance (Britain, France and Russia were the Entente). It also wasn't as formal as the WW1 alliances, as Churchill especially distrusted Stalin. As for your first question, absolutely not. In addition to Stalin not agreeing to a separate peace, the western Allies wanted to ensure that Germany could never start another world war. After the conditional surrender in 1918, they started another one after just 21 years, and flouted their agreements long before that. Clearly, they needed a stronger rear end-kicking to knock some sense into them- the war isn't over until Berlin is captured and Hitler captured or dead. The prevailing plan by the Allies, until the adoption of the Marshall Plan in Western Europe was the Morgenthau Plan. Under this plan, Germany was to be reduced to the pre-industrial age. Germany was to be allowed no armed forces whatsoever. The industrial areas of the Saar would be ceded to France, and Silesia and East Prussia to Poland. The country would be trisected, with a North and South Germany, and an International Zone between Germany and France. It was dropped in 1946, as many Allied commanders realized that it would be a death sentence for millions. Also, by the time the July 20th plot occurred, total victory for the Allies was a question of when rather than if. Germany was surrounded, with Allied armies in France, Italy and all of the conquered East. The Allies had total air and naval supremacy, and could bomb with impunity and resupply their troops with ease. Germany was no longer a true threat; Germany had no ability to project power, and was such, there was no reason to accept a conditional surrender. Germany never stood a chance to win the war anyway. Chief in importance after Hitler and his madness, Germany had few natural resources and little oil, and was surrounded by its enemies. Russia and the US were rich in resources and had mountain ranges and oceans protecting them, while Britain had the Commonwealth and France their colonies. Blitzkrieg only works against small countries or medium sized but unprepared countries, and all need developed road networks. The eternal corporal, Hitler, was only concerned with land. The Air Force never had anything but tactical dive bombers and short-range interceptors. Even when they did try to come up with better fighters, strategic bombers or jets, Hitler and Goering would come up with some ridiculous requirements, like insisting a heavy bomber be able to dive bomb, that a jet be a fighter-bomber, and that new fighters should be scrapped and some of the technology applied to existing ones. There also weren't enough pilots, and they were flown until they were exhausted. The Navy was in an as bad a state or worse. In addition to some cruisers and destroyers, they had only two battleships and two battlecruisers, and these did little. The battlecruisers had guns that were too small for anything but commerce raiding and attacking weaker ships when they were part of a task force, and one was lost to a suicide mission, one to bombs. The battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz were poor sea boats, and built with a short range and poor AA defenses, and, as such, were obsolete when they were launched. Bismarck sank the HMS Hood, the flagship of the British fleet, but even that wasn't much of a victory, as the Hood was a WW1-era battlecruiser (and was made the flagship because she was longer than any of the battleships), had a design that was known to be flawed, put into the wrong role, and never got refitted when many of her contemporaries had two full reconstructions; Bismarck was sunk by aircraft and 3 battleships from the Royal Navy 2 days afterward. Tirpitz spent her whole life hiding in Norwegian fjords until the Royal Air Force destroyed him with bombs. They had no aircraft carriers, or long range patrol aircraft, so their fleets were blind and submarines undefended. The U-Boats were effective commerce raiders, but, without proper support were practically useless. The only types built in quantity were too slow to sink moving combat ships, and needed to spend most of their time on the surface. Once the Allies learned effective anti-submarine tactics, losses mounted and 2/3 of U-Boat crews died. While this may sound like History Channel sperging, it did have meaning. Germany couldn't threaten to flatten London from the air; that didn't work. They couldn't threaten to take their mighty battle fleet to their overseas bases, rebuild and harass the Allies from there. All they had was their small, surrounded country with the Allied forces forming a giant 3-way pincer movement. MothraAttack posted:Sometimes I shudder at the thought of what role he would have played in the later Reich had he not been offed so spectacularly and relatively soon. He was so cunning, ambitious, sadistic and rightly placed to engage those traits. It is perhaps too bad he never stood in the Nuremberg docket, though. I do admire many of the plotters, in fact, this is why it shocked me to find out so many wanted to hold onto the conquests; that it seemed like it wasn't so much National Socialism, but Hitler specifically that they opposed. On that thought, I believe that if a plot was to have any success, it would have had to be in the short window between the Battle of Britain and Barbarossa. Morale had taken a hit, Goering had been disgraced, and Himmler, without the captured East, was far less powerful than later. Stalin would also still have a non-aggression pact with Hitler. EDIT: Beaten
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Apr 23, 2013 18:24
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Gumby posted:Right. For those reading the thread who are a little confused, it goes like this. Weimar Germany had had crippling inflation soon after WWI for various reasons... I just wanted to chime in here and point out that that these events aren't that close in time. While hyper-inflation certainly contributed to a loss in faith in the SPD, the hyper-inflationary period was 1921-1924. Hitler had tried to launch the Beer Hall Putsch in '23, and was tossed in jail for it until '24. But I think it needs saying that the economy had begun to improve in the later half of the 20's, the diplomatic situation was settling down a little bit, and the NSDAP were still trying to rebuild. Things were getting a little bit better, although there was plenty of this stuff Gumby posted:Due to having a bunch of political parties who won't work together, the German Reichstag (Congress) is deadlocked and laws don't get passed, which is around the time that the President of Germany and his advisers decide to just start ruling by decree since they never liked this whole democracy idea anyway. going on, and the political situation still wasn't great, particularly with regards to the Presidency. But the Nazi party wasn't really a thing yet on the political stage; they got less than 5% of the vote in both the 1924 and 1928 election. What really screwed over the system was the beginning of the Great Depression in '29, and the inability of the SPD and KPD to work together to do anything about it. That's the environment the NSDAP finally start to succeed in, getting 18% of the vote in the 1930 elections. That takes you back to Gumby's post in '32. Long story short, I just wanted to say hyper-inflation didn't cause Nazis. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Apr 23, 2013 |
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Apr 23, 2013 21:28
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I just wanted to chime in here and point out that that these events aren't that close in time. While hyper-inflation certainly contributed to a loss in faith in the SPD, the hyper-inflationary period was 1921-1924. Hitler had tried to launch the Beer Hall Putsch in '23, and was tossed in jail for it until '24. But I think it needs saying that the economy had begun to improve in the later half of the 20's, the diplomatic situation was settling down a little bit, and the NSDAP were still trying to rebuild. Things were getting a little bit better, although there was plenty of this stuff I agree, actually. I intentionally skipped over the seizure of the Ruhr and the resulting hyperinflationary strategy to make a long story short. But! The earlier disappointing economic tactics of the SPD did not help their electoral chances during the second economic crisis, the Great Depression. Once bitten, twice shy.
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Apr 24, 2013 00:15
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If you were in the unfortunate position of being a Jew in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, was it possible for you to renounce your religion and swear fealty to Hitler and the Nazi Party in order to at least receive preferential treatment when compared to the rest of the Jewish population, or were you hosed from the word go?
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Apr 24, 2013 02:50
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Fojar38 posted:If you were in the unfortunate position of being a Jew in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, was it possible for you to renounce your religion and swear fealty to Hitler and the Nazi Party in order to at least receive preferential treatment when compared to the rest of the Jewish population, or were you hosed from the word go? It depends. The Wehrmacht had quite a few officers in high places that were technically Jewish, but managed to get around it. Estimates go as high as 150000 "half-Jew" and "quarter-Jew" soldiers. And then there's this guy. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Milch DasReich fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 24, 2013 03:04
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I'm pretty sure it was based on Jewish ethnicity, not Jewish religion. Which makes me sort of confused as to why Nazi ideology had shoutouts to Martin Luther's treatise on the Jews. It's true that he did go way over the top on how they should be treated, saying things like dung should be thrown at them till they're run out of town, etc. But he was just a very passionate man for Christ who couldn't comprehend why God's chosen people so tacitly rejected Jesus Christ and his teachings. Luther's writings were directed at Jewish religious beliefs--beliefs which were naturally followed by ethnic Jews. I haven't done much research on the Nazi side of things, but I don't think the Jews' rejection of Jesus or anything related to Christian or Jewish theology was related to the founding of the NSDAP or even among their core beliefs. I guess what I'm saying is how could they shoehorn Martin Luther's one-off treatise into their ideology and then imprison and murder people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller, who were both Lutheran pastors?
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Apr 24, 2013 03:05
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:I'm pretty sure it was based on Jewish ethnicity, not Jewish religion. Luther wrote three seperate treatises on the Jews, not one. You are vastly minimizing what he said in them. For example, in "On the Jews and Their Lies", he calls for rabbis to be executed if they 'preach', for synagogues to be razed to the ground, and for Jews to have no safe conduct on the roads. In "Vom Schem Hamphoras" he allies the Jews with the devil. In Warning against the Jews, he calls on all Jews to be expelled from Christian countries and claims that Jews would kill all Christians if they could. How can you be confused as to how this contributed to the antisemitism that the Nazis were founded on? I don't get it.
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Apr 24, 2013 03:22
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Obviously these writings are not integral to the Book of Concord or Large and Small Catechisms or really any Lutheran ideologies. The two Lutheran pastors I named are examples of what Lutheranism was at the time of the Nazis, and they were both sent to concentration camps. So how did the Nazis justify it? It just seems contradictory to me.
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Apr 24, 2013 04:03
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Obviously these writings are not integral to the Book of Concord or Large and Small Catechisms or really any Lutheran ideologies. The two Lutheran pastors I named are examples of what Lutheranism was at the time of the Nazis, and they were both sent to concentration camps. So how did the Nazis justify it? It just seems contradictory to me. The Nazis weren't consistent. Luther's writings against the Jews were almost genocidal, and so were obviously both part of the background of antisemitism which the Nazis capitalized on and specific works that the Nazis could point to for legitimacy in their treatment of the Jews. They also made a lot of use of him just for pure nationalism. But in everything, the Nazis didn't actually care or revere Luther, they were self-obsessed. Lutherans who supported them-- and there were plenty-- got nice treatment. Those who opposed and were powerful or influential in any way, got sent to the concentration camp. The Nazi relationship with religion is an inherently twisted one and it doesn't make any real sense, but the way that Luther was both inspiration and support for the Nazis is very historically clear.
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Apr 24, 2013 04:29
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Nazis took whatever religion and pseudo-science they could to justify their hatred. Consistency in anything was never a hallmark of the party. And nearly nobody who follows a religion or denomination thereof knows anything about that religion's theology. They know what they're told. And to answer the question from earlier, Jewishness was decided by blood, as being Jewish was considered a race by the Nazis, not a religion. That's why some people who were only part-Jewish survived.
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Apr 24, 2013 10:51
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Don't forget Gorings famous quote of "I will decide who is a Jew". Anti-Jewish laws were strict but they could be bent if you had the right ear, one example is the actor Hans Albers who was so popular in Germany that they tolerated him living with his Jewish girlfriend. You also had some people who had one Jewish parent and tried to hide it, some successfully, most not. Best example of this is Werner Goldberg who in a famous twist managed to wind up as the poster boy for "The Ideal German Soldier". It was a bit like selling Indulgences. If the right person declared you Aryan, suddenly you had no Jewish ancestry.
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Apr 24, 2013 14:02
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I know these "what-if" questions can be tedious but I do have a question. If Von Hindenburg had 'put his foot down' and stood firm agaisnt appointing Hitler as Chancellor could the whole mess of Nazi Germany been avoided?
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Apr 24, 2013 19:46
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Did the German media say much about the resistance movements in occupied countries? Any idea how they were portrayed?
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Apr 24, 2013 21:52
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Nckdictator posted:I know these "what-if" questions can be tedious but I do have a question. If Von Hindenburg had 'put his foot down' and stood firm agaisnt appointing Hitler as Chancellor could the whole mess of Nazi Germany been avoided? Doubtful. Hindenburg was already pretty old and died in 1934. The communists were seen as the growing threat, and I would argue that Hitler might have been able to snatch an election afterwards. of course, the German people could just as well have risen up in a grand communist revolution. As for Luther, I have always been taught that he was antijudaistic rather than antisemitic (opposed to the religion rather than the race). Has there been anything to prove that he considered Jews a separate race that would remain a problem even if they converted to Christianity?
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Apr 24, 2013 22:24
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ArchangeI posted:Doubtful. Hindenburg was already pretty old and died in 1934. The communists were seen as the growing threat, and I would argue that Hitler might have been able to snatch an election afterwards. of course, the German people could just as well have risen up in a grand communist revolution. What I don't get is why this is seen as important. In Luther's time, 'race' wasn't nearly as big a concept, and religion was. Jews who converted, however, were still obviously under a ton of suspicion for false conversion, given that the conversions were often of the 'or-else' variety. The Nazis, and really the 20th century, moved from a more religious to a more racial mindset. Nobody is alleging that Luther supported the Nazis, or that he wouldn't have opposed them, or that he would have persecuted Jewish converts. It is not the case, however, that Nazi antisemitism came out of nowhere and was an entire invention of racial theory-- it is very, very clearly inherited from the legacy of Christian antisemitism already present, including that of Martin Luther. In the Nazis case, as well as Luther's 'antijudaic' (if you want to split that fine hair) cultural influence, they used him as a nationalist symbol. Does it it help not to view it as an accusation that "Martin Luther was a Nazi" but, "The antisemitic works of Martin Luther contributed to the antisemitic environment in which Nazi-ism rose, and the Nazis also made use of Luther as a nationalistic figure"?
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Apr 24, 2013 22:39
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ArchangeI posted:Doubtful. Hindenburg was already pretty old and died in 1934. The communists were seen as the growing threat, and I would argue that Hitler might have been able to snatch an election afterwards. of course, the German people could just as well have risen up in a grand communist revolution. I think Hindenburg being super old was part of the problem. As I recall he was only convinced to re-run in the 1932 election because he was seen as the guy that could prevent Hitler from winning. Had he been a younger man, the November 1932 Reichstag elections wouldn't have happened, and Hitler would never have had his plurality. Of course, Hindenburg was never the most savoury of characters anyway, and was quite willing to work with notable scumbag Kurt von Schleicher to establish the foundation of a Presidential Dictatorship that, lo and behold, wound up turning it's powers over to Hitler.
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Apr 24, 2013 23:43
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How did the Nazi stormtrooper army manage to grow so fast during such early stages? They were independent from the normal army, yeah? I heard that they had something like millions of members before they were eventually consolidated into the main army. Seems kind of crazy that they could essentially build up their own forces and that they could recruit so many people even before having total control of the nation, you'd think that building up a separate army loyal to a certain political party would be grounds for treason?
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Apr 25, 2013 07:19
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