I assume every person wants a correct understanding of the past. There may be some who won't even try, in order to reinforce their personal bias, but that's their problem. Regarding the events usually discussed on this forum, I reached the conclusion that people who try to learn history make 3 main mistakes, regardless of their background and prior historical information. Without realising these 3 mistakes there can be no proper understanding of the ideological battle of the WW2, which also comprised the actual fighting (not the other way around). I may be mistaken but here they are, so you can try analysing and rebutting them at your leisure.
1. First mistake is not understanding that the ideological war started well before 1939 - and it also continued after 1945. 1945 saw the end of the actual fighting but the ideological war was far from over. It continued to be waged by cultural means, same as it started.
2. The second mistake is not understanding that fascism has always started with a collosal misunderstanding, which no friend and very few enemies of fascism were able to discern: fascism is a false solution, founded on the mistaken premise that internationalism sincerely wishes the social emancipation of the opressed masses. Following this premise, fascism both fights against internationalism and takes over their revolutionary mission - using different ways and means but having the same purpose.
The fears of the West were based on the correct understanding of what no fascist was ever able to do: by undertaking the mission of internationalism they were bound to reach the same goal: taking over the world. Such fear permeated not only the internationalist challengers but also the "reactionary forces" of the classical liberalism and the western democracies, based on the force of the law and the freedom of speech. This fear made everybody to hope rather to see the West wither away and decay than being taken over by the fascist ideology. Why? Because the conservatives, same as the internationalists, understood that fascism was sincere in taking over the mission ascribed to the internationalists and it could not be stopped unless you throw away both the baby and the water from the bathtub. Unless the premise is that fascism is sincere: it really wants to take over the world, conservatives' effort could be seen as useless and senseless. Since it exists, we can take that premise for granted. By fighting the most progressive ideology of that time (from a chronological standpoint which bears no indication of value), the politically conservative forces of the West embarked upon a trek to transcend into radical progressives, ready of self-annihilation if only to deny the enemy the fruits of victory.
Thus, their position was founded on a superior understanding that marxism and other international doctrines prior to fascism were not sincere in their supposed fight for social emancipation of the oppressed masses so they cannot win. Fear of Western conquest by either fascism or any other internationalism made the radical progressives no longer want a straight victory, the only solution against fascism being the destruction of the West as a whole. Such a paradox of a moral fight against positive assets are based on the scorched earth tactics, all that is destroyed being denied to the enemy.
The conservatives who never made it to this commitment could not understand the radical progressive solution and merely considered it cognitive dissonance, because they don't know the tactical field of the antifascist fight. But the radical progressives are logical through and through...
3. The third mistake comes from being unable to understand the continuous ideological radicalization of the cultural fight against fascism - as a result of replacing most if not all non-ideological persons from all the key positions in the state. The radical progressivism cannot convince in a non-radicalized world, as Roosevelt would have fared much worse without the "America First" commitee, Ford, Coughlin and Lindbergh. Every type of propaganda needs enemies and the purpose of radicalization is bringing enemies for propaganda to work. The radical progressives don't necessarily fight against the middle class for what they represent but because they oppose the radicalization - thus being worse than fascists which are already radicalized enemies.
Understanding the past
Discussions on the propaganda, architecture and culture in the Third Reich.
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