The New York Times' first article about Hitler's rise is stunning

https://www.vox.com/2015/2/11/8016017/ny-times-hitler

101 122 6 years ago

roenxi• 6 years ago

Now, Brown's sources in all likelihood did tell him that Hitler's anti-Semitism was for show.

That is scarier than the alternative of Hitler being a true believer. What Jew would feel comfortable would want to live in a country where a cynic would choose to attack Jews because it played well to the mob?

muzani• 6 years ago

In modern politics, it would be dismissed as a vocal, extreme minority. And if such a person won elections, they'd be accused of gerrymandering and such.

throwaway20482• 6 years ago

A few bad apples

brobdingnagians• 6 years ago

There is audio recording of Governor Cuomo telling Orthodox Jewish leaders in New York that his restrictions on their religious activities are driven by fear (i.e. political) not science. Would that qualify?

ashtonkem• 6 years ago

By and far the scariest thing about Hitler’s rise to power is not the small minority of true believers, but rather the large masses of the population that weren’t true believers but went along with it for one reason or another. Perhaps they wanted career advancement, perhaps they feared communists and trade unionists more, or maybe they thought they could do more good on the inside. Whatever the personal reason, tons and tons of perfectly reasonable, nice Germans voted for, joined, or stood by as the Nazis took power and plunged the world into war and committed mass murder.

thu21114• 6 years ago

Eh, look at the modern attacks on white males. Mainstream politicians give speeches where they denounce white men and say things like, "women are better than men" (Obama), "women are the primary victims of war" (Clinton), "It's an English jurisprudential culture, a white man's culture. It's got to change" (Biden). They do it because it their base loves it, it plays well to "the mob" (though of course calling it that won't win me any favours here on HN), discrimination and effective banning of white men from being appointed to top positions is widespread behaviour throughout the west at this point, and so on.

There seem like two big differences. One is that - so far at least - the politicians doing this don't call for actual violence against white men. However, it's starting to get close. In places where BLM is active people scrawl on their storefronts that they're black, in an attempt to avoid the violence and damage dished out against any business not perceived as 'allied'. Prominent politicians conspicuously avoid condemning the violently racist behaviour of these rioters.

The other is that Hitler genuinely hated Jews as a race. He didn't have any concept of 'allied' Jews. Modern racial hatred often comes across as not especially genuine because it's full of white men condemning "white men", and people demanding women /blacks/black women be put into powerful positions ... unless they're the wrong kind of minority, i.e. conservative, in which case they are treated in exactly the same way as the "white men". Scott Alexander has written eloquently about the way these labels, which on the surface appear to have clear racial or gender-based definitions, have been effectively adopted and rewritten within certain subcultures to be code words for conservatives. This doesn't seem to precisely parallel what happened in Nazi Germany where, for all you can say about him, Hitler said exactly what he was going to do and then did it. Although Goebbels was well known for his ideas on propaganda, the regimes most famous for screwing with their citizens minds were all communist. Orwell's 1984 was inspired by socialism and not the more obvious and immediate example of Nazi-ism for that reason.

jgwil23• 6 years ago

cf. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

White men in 21st century America are still at the top of the totem pole; their situation is nothing like that of Jews in early 20th-century Europe. Perhaps you should spend a little more time worrying about the most vulnerable members of our society, who are also targeted by political speech, ostensibly just to rile up the "masses." Let's not forget that there are now 500 children separated, perhaps permanently, from their parents, as a result of the policies of the man who spoke the words above.

scatters• 6 years ago

You just described more or less every country in Europe (if not the entire world) at the time. Zionism came out of a desire for Jews to have a country where they could feel comfortable that demagogues wouldn't fire up the mob against them.

cies• 6 years ago

I learnt that the US (population and media) was mostly pro-Hitler at first. They idea of someone uniting Europe was appealing, the US had not too long ago fought for independence against the Britain monarchy, and Hitler was a strongly anti-commie/anti-union/pro-capital.

It was only later that the picture changed, largely by the US media portraying Hitler as evil, opening the way for a joint intervention.

Also note that some US businesses where still trading with nazi Germany throughout the war.

ido• 6 years ago

1776 was a long time before the 1930s.

bryanrasmussen2• 6 years ago

The revolutionary war ended in 1783, the war of 1812 actually ended in 1815 (Washington DC was burned in 1814).

And of course there were many conflicts between Britain and America in the intervening years, at the time there was no special relationship (more like a special enmity), whereas Germany was a fairly new country and thus did not have this history of enmity in the U.S where people hearing about something Germany did could call on old prejudices.

on edit: should also note that for many countries a long time ago is not 147 years (1783 to 1930)

yodelshady• 6 years ago

About the same timeframe as the US civil war -> now. You really think those wounds are gone?

Pardon the cultural stereotypes but only in the US is 100 years considered a long time. Half the planet has tribal divisions dating back millennia. See, er, this article.

Bit more on topic: certainly, most of the West was more concerned about Communism than they were a Hitler. Not exactly a methodology we've abandoned since... waves generally at Middle East. And who in 1900, 1910, even 1930, would have put money on Germany being the European country to engage in a genocide notorious even by 20th century standards? Not me. Which I guess is the point of the article.

krapp6• 6 years ago

Also note that some US businesses where still trading with nazi Germany throughout the war.

IBM selling tabulators to the Nazis, which arguably kicked off both the information technology revolution and the Holocaust, is one infamous example.

the-dude7• 6 years ago

I think Ford is an even more convincing example.

Fnoord• 6 years ago

See the book "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

gwd3• 6 years ago

I learnt that the US (population and media) was mostly pro-Hitler at first.

Ref? I just listened to "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", and that's not the impression I got. Hitler certainly had some support from people like Lindberg; but they seem to have been duped by his "We don't want war" rhetoric.

sagonar• 6 years ago

Support for Hitler was not uncommon, he seemed to get the economy re-started, build roads etc. If you ask for REF here.. then I think you ought to ask for REF when people say there were anti as well..

thrpewr5432434• 6 years ago

Well, duh. Most of the Eugenics movt., and its proponents, were based in Cal and NY.

The US (like UK, West) has always been a country of hypocrisy.

They put Shumei Okawa to trial in Tokyo, for having the audacity to put forward pan-Asianism to liberate it from European clutches. Japan was put on trial for waging 'aggressive war' for monopolizing Asia, even while the Dutch, British, etc. had completely destroyed Asian economies only in the past century.

The Japanese Imperial Army was no benign enterprise, but I'm sure the Europeans didn't win over Asia with flowers and chocolates.

Little wonder, the Indian Justice dissented in the show trials of Tokyo. Now, if only the Indian state had the spine to withdraw these charges, at least for symbolic purposes. The fact that it won't says a lot.

sn41• 6 years ago

Justice Radhabinod Pal [1] has a monument in the Yasukuni shrine. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhabinod_Pal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine

jariel3• 6 years ago

"Japan was put on trial for waging 'aggressive war' for monopolizing Asia, even while the Dutch, British, etc. had completely destroyed Asian economies only in the past century."

This is ridiculous - there is no comparison between 'The Dutch' and 'The Japanese' incursions into Asia.

The Dutch were traders, with some geopolitical leverage, money and a few ships.

The Japanese literally invaded and marauded most of E. Asia causing millions of casualties, literally destroying cities, taking sex-slaves on mass, i.e. 'Horrors of Mechanized 20th century' - on par with Nazis. Not some localized trade dispute with a pack of merchant marines firing on innocents, 'monopolizing trade of a few sectors'.

gnusty_gnurc• 6 years ago

Most of the Eugenics movt., and its proponents

People gung-ho about "progressivism" usually don't really pay the due attention to how that mindset was intertwined and motivated by the same forces behind eugenics, evangelicalism, race science, corporatism, industrialization, mass centralization, authoritarianism, etc.

simonh3• 6 years ago

The German subsidiaries of those companies, in Germany run by German citizens, still traded in Germany yes.

leipert2• 6 years ago

Potato - Kartoffel. In the end the subsidiaries still meant a profit for the main company/conglomerate.

pjc502• 6 years ago

Many of Hitler's ideas were lifted from the US, such as the system of racial discrimination embedded in law. https://www.timesofisrael.com/american-laws-against-coloreds...

However, it wasn't really reciprocated; the "German-American Bund" managed a few rallies but did not acquire the support of the KKK.

occamschainsaw• 6 years ago

I went into a rabbit hole exploring race relations in US and Europe after watching this opening scene from Watchmen the TV show[1]. Powerful stuff. History being written by the victors and all that.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xijkosNCzTg

cafard2• 6 years ago

"the US had not too long ago fought for independence against the Britain monarchy"

Yet somehow we fought on the British side in 1917.

spats1990• 6 years ago

edit: disregard, article pdf available upthread

- vox's link to the archived NYT article is broken because most archived NYT stuff is behind the paywall now. if anyone else wants to read the full article, someone has reproduced the entire thing here with helpful wikilinks added: https://medium.com/@marcslove/new-popular-idol-rises-in-bava...

kuu• 6 years ago

   Another condition favorable to the outburst of the movement is the widespread discontent with the existing state of affairs among all classes in the towns and cities under the increasing economic pressure.

Sounds familiar...

CamperBob2• 6 years ago

As usual in modern-day journalism, the truth is paywalled while the lies are free.

I suspect that's going to become a bit of a problem at some point.

shureluck3• 6 years ago

This is another one of those articles where the author is condescendingly trying to fearmonger to a segment of the US population. It is so obvious.

Lets be fair. If NYT supported Hitler, should we cancel the NYT for supporting systemic racism in the past?

Im so exhausted of these condescending and self-righteous articles.

krapp6• 6 years ago

That's not at all related to any point the article is trying to make.

shureluck3• 6 years ago

Im not the only one who noticed.

jariel3• 6 years ago

It's stunning in retrospect, but 1922 was really early, and Mr. Bad still a relative nobody. A lot of people around the world were saying crazy things at the time.

The Weimar Republic was dominated by feuding between the relatively normal Social Democrats who held power, and the more radical German Communist Party who were directed and funded by Stalin, who had a considerable share of the popular vote, and who regarded 'all parties to the right of them to be fascists' - and of course the Social Dems (nominally left of centre) to be the 'worst fascists'.

The 'far right' were a weird fringe group that were even used as stooges by the Communists when their objectives aligned i.e. to overthrow the incumbent Social Dems.

There were street/youth/thug parties of all stripes.

Remember this is the time of Universal Suffrage, the rise of Unions, literally just a few years post Russian Revolution.

And of course, there were all sorts of other Germany-specific issues such as hyperinflation etc. - which by some measures is happening right now (real estate, stocks, other assets) and our governments faced with COVID are going to be spending 20 years of deficits in 1 year etc..

The Weimar Republic [1] is a fascinating episode in contemporary history we should really spend more time looking at.

By the time Hitler came to power, the cards were in play, so in a way, the 1930's are not nearly as interesting.

Hitler did not just magically come out of a bottle in 1932 and take over - really it was the result of complicated set of factors in the 1920's. We should pay more attention there, but it's complicated, and doesn't make for great, populist filmmaking.

Edit: 1924 Election results [2] 1932 Election results [3]. You can see this early, the Nazis & Co. were not important until later.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1924_German_federal_electi... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_elect...

poisonborz2• 6 years ago

We should pay more attention there, but it's complicated, and doesn't make for great, populist filmmaking.

I would say otherwise. Watch the first season of Babylon Berlin.

jariel3• 6 years ago

Oh yeah, that's amazing. But by 'populist' I don't mean 'Foreign films with subtitles' I mean 'American Tanker Crew Defeats Entire German Panzer Division starring Brad Pitt and Jason Stratham, Directed by Guy Ritchie, Produced by Michael Bay' - which is how I think most people around the world learn History and Geography, and which are the only kinds of major films Hollywood makes. Regular people do not read or watch documentaries. HN readers and their peers are not 'regular' people.

[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2020/01/22/what-americans-know-abou...

yamrzou• 6 years ago

Here is a PDF of the original article: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/11/21/987....

Also available on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20181104231809/https://timesmach...

danoloan• 6 years ago

"Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded." This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler's anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes

...

Watch: Donald Trump's rise is a scary moment in America

every single time. if you can't see what's going on here, you wouldn't even if i explained.

lultimouomo• 6 years ago

The article is from November 2015.

It might have been written as propaganda against the future POTUS, but it would have been quite the foresight, as Trump wasn't even a credible candidate until the Iowa primary in February 2016.

abc-xyz• 6 years ago

The time the article was written, and the purpose for which it was written, is irrelevant. What’s relevant is the fact that it’s now being used to not-so-subtly attack Trump.

Maybe it’s a coincidence, or based on keywords in the article, or perhaps an editor carefully picked this specific video to prominently display below the article. Guess we’ll never know.

But it is quite telling that an article about Hitler/concentration camps focus on Trump rather than Xi Jinping/Xinjiang.

shureluck3• 6 years ago

100% They try to act like it isnt a propaganda piece but it is so obvious.

kortilla3• 6 years ago

The article ends with the expected (it’s vox) comparison to Trump. One thing I don’t understand in these comparisons is that Hitler was openly antisemitic very early on (as this article points out). Who is Trump openly against? All of his “obvious racism” is poorly thought out off-the-cuff remarks that he then backtracks later. If Trump is Hitler 2.0, who are the Jews?

gwd3• 6 years ago

Huh? Trump isn't mentioned in the article at all.

pmachinery4• 6 years ago

It's a video underneath the article, about Trump's rise to power. To be honest I didn't notice it either (I'm quite pleased I now have such a blind spot for videos) until Trump supporters started complaining about it here.

To be fair, I think they have a point. Comparison of [current politician] to Hitler is just shit for the birds.

Edit: Obviously quite a few birds here.

PunchTornado• 6 years ago

the immigrants

krapp6• 6 years ago

. One thing I don’t understand in these comparisons is that Hitler was openly antisemitic very early on (as this article points out). Who is Trump openly against?

Immigrants and "leftists", socially acceptable targets. As far as anti-semitism goes, politicians have learned not to be so open about it, although Trump has had his fair share of slip-ups in that regard[0], he's never so overt that people can't talk themselves out of believing he's saying what they think he's saying.

If Trump is Hitler 2.0, who are the Jews?

Again, immigrants and "leftists," which thanks to the demonization of BLM as a violent "neo-marxist" organization, now includes any African Americans who openly object to systemic racism, although that's just part of a long American tradition of delegitimizing black activism.

Also still the Jews. It's always going to still be the Jews, but you'll have to read between the lines when modern politicians complain about "globalist bankers" and "New York liberals" and "cultural Marxists" to get it.

[0]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/12/donald-trump-anti-se...

Udik2• 6 years ago

After all the gifts that Trump gave to Israel- probably in part pushed by his son in law Jared Kushner- the suggestion that Trump might be antisemitic is hilarious, just hilarious.

kortilla3• 6 years ago

But have you read Hitler’s speeches? There is no subtly that people can “talk themselves out of believing”. Phrased differently, people have to convince themselves there is some hidden undertone from Trump (“dog whistles”). The opposite was true for Hitler, people were convincing themselves he couldn’t possibly mean what he was saying.

petilon• 6 years ago

Non whites

kortilla3• 6 years ago

But where are his speeches then talking about how non-whites are the issue? If he was in any way similar to hitler these would be overt, explicit messages.

ArnoVW• 6 years ago

The article dates from march 2016. The other articles are simply the more recent articles that the algorithm says are "similar" or "popular".

If you scroll higher up you'll see a similar heading saying "RELATED: this video shows what ancient Rome really looked like"

Udik2• 6 years ago

I don't see anything stunning in the NYT article- it is a very early view on an emerging political phenomenon on the other side of the ocean- certainly in a world pretty different from our own, one where open display of racism and political violence were just a cause for concern rather than absolutely unacceptable. On the other hand the world was just emerging from a war that had killed about 20 million people, while Russia had just gone through a bloody revolution that produced the first communist state- with all the hope and terror that that entailed- all followed by the Spanish flu just to to top it off (another 50 million deaths).

In the context, the NYT article sounds actually pretty insightful; I find the expectation that a 1922 article would describe Hitler in the exact same terms of a 2016 one to be just deeply ignorant.

the-dude7• 6 years ago

Hitler was not opposed and defeated because of the Holocaust.

If Hitler had somehow conquered Europe and installed a stable power, the Holocaust probably would be a footnote.

pmachinery4• 6 years ago

In that circumstance it wouldn't even be a footnote; nobody would even hear of it, except perhaps as a "conspiracy theory".

andromeduck7• 6 years ago

Eh, probably more like how the Holodomor is treated in Russia or Nanking massacre in Japan and the west for that matter: disputed by apologists in public, lauded by nationalists in private, denied by the people in power and mostly forgotten by the rest.

jondubois• 6 years ago

Exactly. People can't wrap their minds around the fact that their own country is constantly peddling propaganda. I noticed this after I started travelling around the world working in different countries. Every single country is constantly pushing its own propaganda and they all have some element of truth mixed together with lies. Conspiracy theory is how governments hides aspects of the truth that they don't like.

the-dude7• 6 years ago

jon(dubois), you are dead & shadow banned.

emilsedgh• 6 years ago

United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and most it's citizens don't/didn't feel bad about it. Why do you think a victorious German society would've cared that deeply about Jews who have been historically loathed?

It would've been publicized as a success, not something to hide away.

ReptileMan2• 6 years ago

I don't think that Holocaust did even had such a mindshare for a some time afterwards. People were quite desensitized back then - you had horrors aplenty to choose from.

But then you had the rise in all aspects of art, politics and culture of the Jewish Americans and for them obviously it was the event in WWII and great part of their identity and life. So it percolated to the other parts of the society. If Chinese Americans have risen to prominence in the 80s we would have gotten Unit 731 instead of Schindler's list. After all a creator creates on topics that are close to them.

In my part of Eastern Europe when learning about WWII the emphasis was about the monumental struggle and bodycount of the USSR and the Holocaust was sidelined.

the-dude7• 6 years ago

Interesting, thanks. Maybe because The Netherlands actually did ( or suffered ) so little, it has been Holocaust front and center.

paulie_a• 6 years ago

You are incorrect, it was so horrific that the US president had as many troops as possible "tour" the sites as possible to be witnesses of what happened.

It was kind of a big deal immediately

cm2187• 6 years ago

Not the least because the holocaust happened late in the war. I underdstand Hitler's original plan was to exile those populations [1], and the turn of ww2 forced him to come up with another plan. That is still ethnic cleansing but not of the same degree of horror.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

brnt• 6 years ago

This is what boggles my mind: if Hitler and his cronies had been competent military leaders and limited the scope of their war and stopped at the English channel and kept the peace with Russia, or at least one of those, it seems to me chances were pretty good the Nazi grasp of Europe could have solidified and perhaps grown permanent. What a nightmarish scenario that is...

I am therefore happy the Nazis bit off more than they could chew by starting a war with the Brits, which eventually brought the Americans on board, and the Russians, where they suffered most of their losses. On the one hand it seems that it's just a matter of chance their leadership was so grossly incompetent, but on the other hand maybe we can always bank on such types to get caught up in their own rhetoric and they by definition are too ambitious for their own 'good'.

pjc502• 6 years ago

Surrender of France: June 1940

Barbarossa (invasion of USSR): June 1941

Pearl Harbor: December 1941.

If the Nazis had somehow negotiated a successful end to hostilities with the UK between 1940 and 1941, they could have become a stable power holding much of central Europe. The problem they faced was lack of oil - there isn't much central Europe. That forced the push east into the oil fields of the caucasus. The Japanese invasions were similarly triggered by the need for oil that could not be embargoed from them.

andromeduck7• 6 years ago

The history of the original Antifa and its founder Ernst Thälmann is also well worth a read.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2018/10/how-left-e...

the-dude7• 6 years ago

The article touches on the 'moderate left', which was seen as a bigger threat than the right ( were the Nazi's rightwing? I dare to question ).

However, since the fall of the USSR, the 'moderate left' in Western Europe seemingly have lost interest in the classic ideals, bowed to neo-liberalism and found alternative ideals.

So maybe he was not wrong after all.

edit: posted under wrong parent before. I deleted and reposted.

4ggr02• 6 years ago

Why would the Nazis not be rightwing?

gerland3• 6 years ago

The problem with far left (or far right) formations, is that their biggest oponent is not the far right. It's the moderate left. Almost no one from far left starts outright supporting far right, but a lot of people "seep in" to more certer oriented views as they age. Also the only way to get into places of power in a "attention economy" is to be more radical than all the rest. Most people do not have any political views at all. The "silent majority" is a myth. Those are people that will just bend to anything that is mainstream, while complaining about this at home. The reason for that is that they do not have an integrated political view that is sufficienty important. It's just a third rate thing, while for the radicals it's the most important thing in the world. Political environment is developing based on movement. If there is no shift, there is no place for people to make careers, that's why no one who is seriuous about being a politician will stick to defending the center. An attack position will always yield better result than a defensive one. You do not have to have answers to all the possible problems, in reality you do not have any answers at all, just prove that your oponent does not have answers to SOME problems. It's a game that we cannot avoid playing and a game that makes everyone lose in the end.

harryf• 6 years ago

Not directly related but here's a crazy thing I ran into recently - Hitler and the Nazi's basically popularised Anti-Smoking - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_...

The German movement was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s
Adolf Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco and the Nazi reproductive policies were among the motivating factors behind the Nazi campaigns against smoking.
Even by the end of the 20th century, the anti-smoking movement in Germany had not attained the influence of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign.

Ironically it may have had the opposite effect long term, at least in Germany...

It has been argued that the Nazi anti-tobacco campaigns delayed effective nicotine addiction reduction measures by decades. At the end of the 20th century, the anti-tobacco campaign in Germany was unable to approach the level of the Nazi-era climax in the years 1939–41, and German tobacco health research was described by Robert N. Proctor as "muted". Modern Germany has some of Europe's least restrictive tobacco control policies, and more Germans both smoke and die of it in consequence, which also leads to higher public health costs.

andromeduck7• 6 years ago

His campaign was also one of the first to use airplanes to campaign, flying city to city to hold rallies often in the same day which made people feel closer to him.

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler...

mbroncano• 6 years ago

They also popularized decaf https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/decaf-coffee-nazi-part...

FeeJai2• 6 years ago

Ban smoking and caffeine and put populations on Methamphetamine. Interesting twist

LargoLasskhyfv• 6 years ago

Pervitin für Sie und Ihn!

thu21114• 6 years ago

Also, Hitler was big into animal rights. Germany's modern day animal protection laws are largely still derived from Nazi era laws.

haunter• 6 years ago

They also created GEMA which is the main collective rights management association in Germany

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEMA_(German_organization)

JacKTrocinskI• 6 years ago

"Hitler is credited with having a rapidly increasing following among the workers disgruntled by the high cost of living". The situation of German workers doesn't seem too dissimilar to the economic unrest slowly mounting in the western world today.

rendall3• 6 years ago

This fellow makes an interesting case that Nazis (i.e. National Socialists) were what it says right on the tin: socialists who swapped out class struggle in favor of an ethno-nationalist struggle but were otherwise identical. I don't agree with everything he rants about, but I do find interesting his discussion of the shrinking market theory

https://youtu.be/go2OFpO8fyo

Edit - those who downvote: I'm totally fine with a judicious downvote, but if you wouldn't mind leaving a comment about what it is that you disagree with or dislike? I'd especially love to hear from those who disagree that Nazis were socialists: Do you disagree with the video per se or something else? I'm eager to learn more!

sofixa2• 6 years ago

I didn't watch the video because i don't want this type of nonsense in my viewing history and because the premise is inherently flawed.

Socialism means something, and Nazi Germany and the NSDAP don't fit any of the criteria. Did the workers own the means of production ? Did the NSDAP even remotely move in that direction? No and hell no. The NSDAP worked closely with industrialists ( which helped finance their rise to power), destroyed unions, etc. Having a few national programs ( Volkswahen, the Autobahn, etc.) doesn't mean socialism.

They were as socialistic as horses are fish. Yeah, they have two eyes, but that's about it.

rendall3• 6 years ago

"Did the workers own the means of production ? Did the NSDAP even remotely move in that direction?"

The arguments in the video address everything you bring up, here. It would be lovely to have you refute those very specific arguments. My precis won't argue nearly as well:

"Did the workers own the means of production ?"

Nazis seized businesses, positions and property from Jews and absolutely handed them over to Germans, which is the Nazi analog of seizing the means of production

"destroyed unions..."

Destroyed communist labor unions in favor of Nazi labor unions, youth groups, etc

"The NSDAP worked closely with industrialists..."

I would imagine if you were one of those industrialists, and you didn't work closely with the Nazis, you would swiftly find your industry "nationalized"

"I didn't watch the video because i don't want this type of nonsense in my viewing history"

... the fellow is decidedly anti-socialist, and if you're pro-socialist I can imagine you would find it upsetting. But, given that you know socialism intimately, you are the only one who can refute those ideas! It would be nice to know where he goes off the rails

BlueTemplar2• 6 years ago

They're "socialist" like current "democratic socialist" European governments?

baybal2• 6 years ago

several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers

I wrote on this point:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881824

Yes, Hitler Adolf was not a compulsive paranoiac, and been noted by contemporaries as a shrewd political strategist. He committed his crimes in cold blood, and sane mind.

But.... his anti-Semitism not being a product of a mental illness, or irrational hate doesn't make it less terrible. Were they rational from any viewpoint, serious, or not, it were these anti-Semitic policies which opened the road to the crime of genocide later in his reign.

This also doesn't absolve the habitual anti-Semitism practiced by virtually every other political establishment in Europe prior to WWII from sins, or make it less bad as genocidal anti-Semitism of the late third reich.

The persecution, whether is based on political rationale, or a maniacal tendency, is still persecution. I would say a crime like this becomes even more grave if it is done with some behind the curtain political rationale.

FeeJai2• 6 years ago

I would like to add that Hitler was a severe Methamphetamine addict (yes, seriously). During that time, Chocolate was laced with Meth and packaged under the name Pervitin. That drug was the secret behind the success of the German Blitzkrieg against Poland, the soldiers just did not become tired. Of course it had the same side effects, that people became irrational and aggressive. What the NYT wrote might very well have been true in 1922, a severe meth addiction changes people and makes them more aggressive.

andromeduck7• 6 years ago

Also fun, modern militaries kept using amphetamines in combat until a sleep deprived american in a F16 shot up a bunch of Canadians in Afghanistan. Now it's just Modafinil for NATO countries at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-go_pill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident

Other drugs historically used as a stimulant in warfare include Khat in the horn of africa/persian peninsula and Betel nuts in asia, and various forms of I think fungi in the Americas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areca_nut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat

FreshFries• 6 years ago

Do not for get Dutch courage!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_courage

amai• 6 years ago

A year after that article Hitler went to jail for a failed coup d'état : https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beer_Hall_Putsch

The New York Times' first article about Hitler's rise is stunning

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