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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.
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But at least those who voted for him learned their lesson, right? RIGHT?
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.
Antisemitism is much older.
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.
Fascist Populism is a bane to humanity.
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.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
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.
That’s still too few considered. Those who voted for the NSDAP knew what they were voting for.
Also ‘just doing their job’ hides the millions of more-than-compliant actors on every level - from the local Blockwart or SS or party member to CEOs of companies like Krupp or even folks like Chamberlain.
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?
This looks weirdly like one of those “inspirational” posters on office walls until you look at the pictures.
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.
That one guy really didn’t help, though.
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.
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.
Blame is on everyone, but in different amounts.
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.
They weren’t blaming the youth. Where do you get that from?
By estimating the age of the soldiers in the bottom image.
Why would you assume the text was only referring to those soldiers and not literally everyone who aided and abbetted the Holocaust?
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.
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.
Just following orders.
I was told I needed to upvote and comment to maximize engagement on the platform.
Just following orders. /s
If there job was internally saving holocaust victims, they weren’t doing their job.
If they leaked vital intelligence to the allies, they weren’t doing their job.
If they actively tried to cut the head off the snake, they weren’t doing their job.
It the choice is between risking death, and “doing your job” it’s time for evaluating if you should be doing your job.
You’re talking like Hitler took power and the Holocaust started the next day.
ACAB
You can use this image as a motivational poster at work too!
