Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

Discussions on the propaganda, architecture and culture in the Third Reich.
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George L Gregory
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#31

Post by George L Gregory » 28 Feb 2021, 02:16

Sid Guttridge wrote:
27 Feb 2021, 13:13
Hi GLG,

You ask, “Kristallnacht was over in two days (one night), what could ordinary Germans have done in that short of time to discourage or oppose it?” Virtually nothing. However, it probably should have informed their future attitudes and actions.
Bearing in mind that Nazi propaganda had been in full force for five years, the Nazi regime was a complete dictatorship and any open opposition towards the regime was a criminal offence and would have been punished by harsh methods. One night is not enough for any opposition to gather together and form a respective opposition.

You post, “The fact it was carried out by such a small minority of people speaks volumes”. How many were needed?
You post, “Removal of Jews =/= Extermination of Jews”. In this case it did. The “removal of Jews” was an observable fact. The murder of them was also a fact but one that only reached the German public in the form of rumour - rumour which seems to have gained wider public currency as the war progressed.
It's latter part we are discussing here. No one is denying that Germans had heard of rumours, but so what? Rumours were spread about all sorts. I think it's fair to assume that many Germans would have dismissed any rumours outright.
You post, “Most Germans remained indifferent to what was happening to the Jews for various reasons. But, there is no evidence that most Germans between 1933-45 supported the actual extermination of Jews.” I agree. However, indifference to racial persecution and possible mass murder is not a good look of itself.
I agree. However, it was mainly the youth who were indifferent to it because they had been raised by Nazi propaganda which justified racial segregation and racial persecution.
You post, “Because no evidence has ever been shown to prove that the majority of Germans knew about the extermination of the Jews.” True, but there is evidence that a lot, perhaps the great majority, had heard rumours of it. The mere fact it was even a point of debate or discussion tells us something in itself.
It tells us that there were rumours, nothing else.
You post, “Do you think every person who voted for the Nazis had bothered to read Mein Kampf? The popularity of the book soared once the Nazis had come to power, not the other way around.” Ignorance is no excuse. Mein Kampf is the most complete and available version of Hitler’s manifesto and it is explicitly anti-semitic from Chapter 1. By the time Hitler came to power there were arounf a quarter of a million copies in fcirculation. By the end of 1933 it was well over a million! (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4465572?se ... b_contents). Nazism's anti-semitism was not its best kept secret!
Have you even read the book? The book is not "explicitly anti-semitic from Chapter 1". In fact, the word "Jews" is not even mentioned once in Chapter 1! And in Chapter 2 he initially rejected anti-semitism:
I cannot maintain that the way in which I became acquainted with them struck me as particularly pleasant. For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation.
The popularity of the book only grew after 1933 so most Germans who voted for the Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s had not even read the book.
You post, “Although anti-semitism was indeed a core idea of Nazi ideology, it was absent during the time when the Nazis were trying to gain power because they knew it wouldn't have been approved of by most Germans.” The evidence for this absence is what? They certainly never took Mein Kampf off the bookshelves.
Anti-semitism wasn't what attracted people to the Nazis.
You post, “Someone who behaves like a thug and holds racist views is not necessarily a Nazi.” Nevertheless, both were hall marks of the Nazis’ route to power. Anyone supporting the Nazis was giving a nod of approval to both, if only by their indifference.
The street fighting against political opponents was or the most part a thing of the past by the time the Nazis had come to power. The Nazis post-1933 didn't like to give off the impression of being thugs. On the contrary, they always presented themselves as the people who were resorting order.
You post, “Not all members of the Nazi Party were thugs. Not all members supported the killing of people. Not all members were anti-semitic. Etc.” Again true, but they nevertheless all chose to support a party that was, did or advocated all those things publicly. If any of those were deal breakers for them, they could have resigned.
Don't tell me you think it was as black and white as that. Most people are driven by self-interest and for many Germans the Nazis offered prosperity.
I can’t find any reference to, “several Gauleiter and deputy Gauleiters had refused orders to enact the Kristallnacht, and many leaders of the SA and of the Hitler Youth also openly refused party orders, while expressing disgust. Some Nazis helped Jews during the Kristallnacht.” Do you have any names or primary sources?

Cheers,

Sid.
The source is Sarah Ann Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the Jewish Question., page 266.

Some Nazis even helped Jews during the Kristallnacht!

Ibid.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#32

Post by George L Gregory » 28 Feb 2021, 03:12

Aida1 wrote:
26 Feb 2021, 22:00
Neonate is certainly a word used to insult or criminalise people these days. Few people would call themselces that and if they did it would be political suicide.
Exactly. It’s a pejorative word. I think it’s also very much a misused word like the word ‘fascist’.

I wonder, how many people would know what you meant if you described yourself as a ‘National Socialist’? :D


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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#33

Post by wm » 28 Feb 2021, 10:02

Supposedly Himmler was against Kristallnacht and said:
I suppose that it is Goebbels's megalomania...and stupidity which is responsible for starting this operation now, in a particularly difficult diplomatic situation
this is what Polish diplomats reported:
All the information I have obtained from Germany indicates that German society as a whole, except for the most obstinate party formations, took a rather negative view of the retaliatory action applied to the Jewish population.

Even though the majority of German society approved of the Nuremberg Laws as measures aimed at the separation of the Jewish element from the Germans, even at the cost of heavy material losses for the Jews, the systematic destruction of Jewish property, be it in the form of breaking windows and equipment in shops and dwellings and the plunder of objects, or in the form of setting synagogues on fire or blowing them up with dynamite, organized by the party in broad daylight and before the eyes of the public, has exceeded the measure of what a normal German citizen considers acceptable.
Thus, criticism is unexpectedly widespread and includes all social strata.
This is compounded by the fact that German society in its attitude is not anti-Jewish.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#34

Post by wm » 28 Feb 2021, 10:24

The distance covered by death trains from the largest ghettos in occupied Poland (in miles):
Warsaw - 60
Kraków - 40
Litzmannstadt - 50
Białystok - 50
Lublin - 75

In the case of the surviving smaller ones (many of them were liquidated and Jews sent to the largest), it wasn't really any different.
Masses of death trains traveling all across Europe are a myth.

Many of the routes were longitudinal (for example Hungary to Auschwitz) so nobody traveling from Germany to the Eastern Front had a chance to see a death train.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#35

Post by Sid Guttridge » 28 Feb 2021, 10:33

Hi GLG,

You post, "Bearing in mind that Nazi propaganda had been in full force for five years, the Nazi regime was a complete dictatorship and any open opposition towards the regime was a criminal offence and would have been punished by harsh methods. One night is not enough for any opposition to gather together and form a respective opposition." And I did not suggest that it was. However, as you point out, Kristallnacht happened five years into the regime. It is not as if anti-Semitism and physical brutality towards Jews hadn't been flagged up long before.

You post, "No one is denying that Germans had heard of rumours, but so what? Rumours were spread about all sorts. I think it's fair to assume that many Germans would have dismissed any rumours outright." The "So what" is in the fact that the rumours were true and were plausible in the light of the the general escalatory trajectory of Nazi actions against the Jews for nearly a decade. If many Germans chose to dismiss the rumours, they were clearly wrong to do so.

It may be true that, "......it was mainly the youth who were indifferent to it because they had been raised by Nazi propaganda which justified racial segregation and racial persecution." but they were not the movers and shakers in society. It was their elders running the show.

You post, "It tells us that there were rumours, nothing else." It is the subject of the rumours that is important. Difficult to believe though they doubtless were in an otherwise highly civilized and cultured country, the rumours nevertheless conformed to the general trajectory of Nazi policy towards the Jews since coming to power, which gave them some purchase they would otherwise not have had. In my society today there is no sudden disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Jews or rumours of their mass murder for a reason. It is not part of normal discourse because no mass disappearance is observable and no mass murder is plausible. Neither was true in Nazi Germany.

You are right. Mein Kampf is not "explicitly anti-semitic from Chapter 1". I should have written "from its Preface". I put up three complete texts of Mein Kampf and searched for the word "Jew" in each. It came up 542, 513 and 705 times, depending, I guess, on the edition. There were so many references that the side bar was mostly yellow, not white!

I am not sure why you only quote the one bit of Mein Kampf that briefly questions existing anti-Semitism by others. I think you will agree that it is hardly typical.

You post, "The popularity of the book only grew after 1933 so most Germans who voted for the Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s had not even read the book." Nevertheless, ignorance is no excuse. Anti Semitism was a central tenet of Nazism and there were around a quarter of a million copies of Mein Kampf in circulation even before Hitler came to power.

You post, "Anti-semitism wasn't what attracted people to the Nazis." Maybe not, but it is integral to what the Nazi Party stood for, so if you choose to vote for Nazism you were also necessarily choosing to vote for anti-Semitism.

You post, "Most people are driven by self-interest and for many Germans the Nazis offered prosperity." So the integral anti-Semitism was OK then?

In looking stuff up on the subject, I came across the following: "In western democracies today we do not have state-instigated violence of the sort or on the scale unleashed by Hitler. But stereotyped prejudices are nevertheless often legitimated from the top, accompanied by whipped-up fears of supposed dangers to the in-group community, in a context where active minorities are not only prepared to engage in violence but also have the physical means to do so. The lessons of Kristallnacht — about the need for informed vigilance, non-compliance with prejudice and sustained empathy with fellow human beings — remain all too relevant." This seems particularly relevant just now.

I have ordered a cheap copy of Hitler, Germans, and the Jewish Question, to see if it gives any evidence, examples or primary sources that "Some Nazis even helped Jews during the Kristallnacht." At marginally less than the price of my usual coffee, including postage, I couldn't resist! I'll just skip one coffee rush!

Cheers,

Sid

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#36

Post by Sheldrake » 28 Feb 2021, 11:46

wm wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 10:24
The distance covered by death trains from the largest ghettos in occupied Poland (in miles):
Warsaw - 60
Kraków - 40
Litzmannstadt - 50
Białystok - 50
Lublin - 75

In the case of the surviving smaller ones (many of them were liquidated and Jews sent to the largest), it wasn't really any different.
Masses of death trains traveling all across Europe are a myth.

Many of the routes were longitudinal (for example Hungary to Auschwitz) so nobody traveling from Germany to the Eastern Front had a chance to see a death train.
It all depends on what you mean by masses. There were also trains taking around 200k Germans, 250k Czechs, 100k French 120k Dutch and others from Belgium, Italy and Greece. You only needed see one one to create an awareness of what was happening.

Nit sure what point you are arguing? Are you claiming that the majorty of Germans were unaware of the holocaust?

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#37

Post by wm » 28 Feb 2021, 11:52

A single train with people inside proved nothing. And even a hundred of them.
Especially that millions of Soviet POWs and Eastern European slave laborers were transported in such trains too.

Again most of the German Jews were sent to ghettos in occupied Poland, not to death camps.
Maybe 20,000+ of them were sent directly. 20,000 were just several trains.

On average it was 130 miles from Slovakia to Auschwitz, 180 miles from Czechia.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#38

Post by Sheldrake » 28 Feb 2021, 13:36

wm wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 11:52
A single train with people inside proved nothing. And even a hundred of them.
Especially that millions of Soviet POWs and Eastern European slave laborers were transported in such trains too.

Again most of the German Jews were sent to ghettos in occupied Poland, not to death camps.
Maybe 20,000+ of them were sent directly. 20,000 were just several trains.

On average it was 130 miles from Slovakia to Auschwitz, 180 miles from Czechia.
Could you please answer the question. Are you trying to prove that most Germans had no idea about the Holocaust?

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#39

Post by George L Gregory » 28 Feb 2021, 13:51

Sid Guttridge wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 10:33
Hi GLG,

You post, "Bearing in mind that Nazi propaganda had been in full force for five years, the Nazi regime was a complete dictatorship and any open opposition towards the regime was a criminal offence and would have been punished by harsh methods. One night is not enough for any opposition to gather together and form a respective opposition." And I did not suggest that it was. However, as you point out, Kristallnacht happened five years into the regime. It is not as if anti-Semitism and physical brutality towards Jews hadn't been flagged up long before.
So, if you were a German citizen, what would you have done?
You post, "No one is denying that Germans had heard of rumours, but so what? Rumours were spread about all sorts. I think it's fair to assume that many Germans would have dismissed any rumours outright." The "So what" is in the fact that the rumours were true and were plausible in the light of the the general escalatory trajectory of Nazi actions against the Jews for nearly a decade. If many Germans chose to dismiss the rumours, they were clearly wrong to do so.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
You post, "It tells us that there were rumours, nothing else." It is the subject of the rumours that is important. Difficult to believe though they doubtless were in an otherwise highly civilized and cultured country, the rumours nevertheless conformed to the general trajectory of Nazi policy towards the Jews since coming to power, which gave them some purchase they would otherwise not have had. In my society today there is no sudden disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Jews or rumours of their mass murder for a reason. It is not part of normal discourse because no mass disappearance is observable and no mass murder is plausible. Neither was true in Nazi Germany.
I'm going to pay you the compliment that you have watched plenty of documentaries about the Third Reich.

Many Germans remained indifferent to what was happening to the Jews for several reasons. One reason (or excuse, depending on how you view it) was that there was a war going on so they weren't bothered what was happening to a minority.

Most of the Jews who were killed were from outside of the German Reich. The Nazis also had the help of plenty of collaborators in Nazi-occupied Europe.
You are right. Mein Kampf is not "explicitly anti-semitic from Chapter 1". I should have written "from its Preface". I put up three complete texts of Mein Kampf and searched for the word "Jew" in each. It came up 542, 513 and 705 times, depending, I guess, on the edition. There were so many references that the side bar was mostly yellow, not white!

I am not sure why you only quote the one bit of Mein Kampf that briefly questions existing anti-Semitism by others. I think you will agree that it is hardly typical.
No, you should not have posted that because it's even more incorrect. What you have posted is that "Mein Kampf is an explicitly anti-semitic book".

I'm going to make the assumption that you haven't even read the book. Have you read the book?

I posted the quote to show that Hitler actually was at first indifferent to anti-semitism and only regarded the Jews as a religion and eventually began to separate Jews from Germans and began to "hate" Jews.
You post, "The popularity of the book only grew after 1933 so most Germans who voted for the Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s had not even read the book." Nevertheless, ignorance is no excuse. Anti Semitism was a central tenet of Nazism and there were around a quarter of a million copies of Mein Kampf in circulation even before Hitler came to power.
250,000 copies of the book were in circulation. In the 1932 November election 11,737,395 Germans voted for the Nazi Party.

Are you arguing that as a prerequisite a voter should read the book or books by the person for whom they are going to vote?

Nowhere in the book is there a plan for the extermination of the Jews. Nowhere in the book is there any mention of killing millions of Jews and other people. So I'm not really sure what ignorance you are referring to really.
You post, "Anti-semitism wasn't what attracted people to the Nazis." Maybe not, but it is integral to what the Nazi Party stood for, so if you choose to vote for Nazism you were also necessarily choosing to vote for anti-Semitism.
Why do you think the Nazi Party did not use anti-semitism in their election campaigns when trying to gain power?
You post, "Most people are driven by self-interest and for many Germans the Nazis offered prosperity." So the integral anti-Semitism was OK then?
No, but it explains why so many people remained indifferent to it.

I highly doubt that someone votes for a party and agrees with every single policy.

In the case of the Nazi Party, the Nazis never actually gained enough votes to come to power by Hitler being elected. One may argue that Hitler was in the right place at the right time. There's a good case to argue that if Hindenburg hadn't of appointed Hitler as Chancellor then Hitler would have gone down in history as a complete failure and the Nazi Party would have been an absolute mess.
In looking stuff up on the subject, I came across the following: "In western democracies today we do not have state-instigated violence of the sort or on the scale unleashed by Hitler. But stereotyped prejudices are nevertheless often legitimated from the top, accompanied by whipped-up fears of supposed dangers to the in-group community, in a context where active minorities are not only prepared to engage in violence but also have the physical means to do so. The lessons of Kristallnacht — about the need for informed vigilance, non-compliance with prejudice and sustained empathy with fellow human beings — remain all too relevant." This seems particularly relevant just now.
Cheers,

Sid

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#40

Post by George L Gregory » 28 Feb 2021, 13:52

Sheldrake wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 13:36
wm wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 11:52
A single train with people inside proved nothing. And even a hundred of them.
Especially that millions of Soviet POWs and Eastern European slave laborers were transported in such trains too.

Again most of the German Jews were sent to ghettos in occupied Poland, not to death camps.
Maybe 20,000+ of them were sent directly. 20,000 were just several trains.

On average it was 130 miles from Slovakia to Auschwitz, 180 miles from Czechia.
Could you please answer the question. Are you trying to prove that most Germans had no idea about the Holocaust?
Are you referring to actually knowing about the extermination camps e.g. Treblinka? If so, the answer is 'No'. If you're referring to brutal persecution, oppression, etc, then the answer is 'Yes'.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#41

Post by wm » 28 Feb 2021, 14:04

Yes, the Germans didn't know about the Holocaust.
Although many heard about this or that atrocity.
At least nine-tenths of the population do not know that we have killed hundreds of thousands of Jews.
We have been informed that in Upper-Silesia a big KZ [concentration camp] is being built, which is expected to be able to accommodate 40 to 50,000 men, of whom 3 to 4000 are to be killed each month.
But all this information comes to me, even to me, who is seeking facts of this nature, in a rather vague and indistinct and inexact form.
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Moltke was a leader of the anti-Nazi Underground and a high-ranking member of the Abwehr. His task was to find the truth about the Holocaust and as late as March of 1943 that was all he knew. At that time most Polish Jews were dead already.

That's directly comparable with the USSR where four years earlier the communists murdered more or less the same number of people (up to 200,000) similarly fast. And nobody noticed anything.

Well, the Nazis killed up to 3 million Soviet POWs in a few months and nobody, including the Germans, didn't notice it.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#42

Post by Sid Guttridge » 28 Feb 2021, 15:39

Hi GLG,

You ask, "So, if you were a German citizen, what would you have done?" Not voting for Hitler in the first place seems like a good place to start, especially if anti-Semitism was not my thing.

You post, "Hindsight is a wonderful thing." Indeed it is, but less useful than judicious foresight, which might include actually reading the policies of the party you decide to vote for.

You post, "I'm going to pay you the compliment that you have watched plenty of documentaries about the Third Reich." Not that many. I prefer books. It is a rare documentary that isn't based on pre-existing books or breaks new ground in the archives without going into print first.

You post, ".....there was a war going on so they weren't bothered what was happening to a minority." The assault on the Jews began long before the war. It just came to a head during it.

You post, "Most of the Jews who were killed were from outside of the German Reich. The Nazis also had the help of plenty of collaborators in Nazi-occupied Europe." True, but we are discussing the Germans here, and they were the movers and shakers in the so-called "Holocaust".

You post, "No, you should not have posted that because it's even more incorrect." Well, after you pointed out that Hitler does not mention the Jews in Chapter 1 of Mein Kampf, I checked. The first mention of them is even earlier, in the preface, where he complains about Jewish publishers.

You post, "What you have posted is that "Mein Kampf is an explicitly anti-semitic book". Yup, it is. Are you really contending otherwise?

You post, "I'm going to make the assumption that you haven't even read the book. Have you read the book?".You need make no assumption. I read the first few chapters some forty years ago and found it eminently un-unputdownable, so gave up there. I have dipped into in places for specific topics since then, like now. How about you?

You post, "I posted the quote to show that Hitler actually was at first indifferent to anti-semitism and only regarded the Jews as a religion and eventually began to separate Jews from Germans and began to "hate" Jews." Yeah, but so what? It is not reflective of the book itself. How many positive references are there to Jews in the 500-700 mentions of them in Mein Kampf?

You post,"250,000 copies of the book were in circulation. In the 1932 November election 11,737,395 Germans voted for the Nazi Party." So, Nazi Party ant-Semitism was in plain sight. How many of them do you think were unaware that the Nazi Party was anti-Semitic, and how much would it have mattered if they were aware?

You post, "Are you arguing that as a prerequisite a voter should read the book or books by the person for whom they are going to vote?" No. I am arguing that if you are going to vote it would be as well if you were well informed as to what you are actually voting for. In the Nazis' case, Mein Kampf seems like the obvious starting point.

But if that was too much like hard work, (as it was for me), there was always the Nazis' 25 point programme, which would fit on one side of A4 (or foolscap then, I guess?). Its Point 4 says, "None but members of the nation may be citizens of the state. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed may be. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation." Jews, and only Jews, are singled out - three times.

You post, "Nowhere in the book is there a plan for the extermination of the Jews. Nowhere in the book is there any mention of killing millions of Jews and other people." True, but nobody has ever claimed that it did. It simply set the mood music of anti-Semitism in which the mass murder of Jews later took place. The seeds of the mass murder of Jews was in anti-Semitism and Mein Kampf is both anti-Semitic and the foundational text of the Nazis who later carried out the so-called "Holocaust".

You post, "Why do you think the Nazi Party did not use anti-semitism in their election campaigns when trying to gain power?" Do we know that?

You post, "I highly doubt that someone votes for a party and agrees with every single policy." I agree. But if you fundamentally disagree with one of its basic tenets, one would hope it would give one pause for thought.

You post, "In the case of the Nazi Party, the Nazis never actually gained enough votes to come to power by Hitler being elected. One may argue that Hitler was in the right place at the right time. There's a good case to argue that if Hindenburg hadn't of appointed Hitler as Chancellor then Hitler would have gone down in history as a complete failure and the Nazi Party would have been an absolute mess." Quite possibly. (As a matter of interest, did Hindenburg have any constitutional choice but to first ask the leader of the biggest party in parliament to try to form a government?)

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#43

Post by Sheldrake » 28 Feb 2021, 17:05

wm wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 14:04
Yes, the Germans didn't know about the Holocaust.
Although many heard about this or that atrocity.
You ought to read Nicholas Stargardt's The German War (2015) This draws on contemporary diary entries and letters. There is a chapter called "The Shared Secret" which explores the way that the fate of the Jews was broadly understood, but not a topic of public discussion.

There were many eye witnesses to the executions in Riussia in 1941 and photographic evidence flooded back. Many of the participants had written back with a fairly accurate summary. During the autumn Jews were deported from Germany. BY late November fairly precise if not accurate rumours - so in Minden the local SD office reported that Jews were to be deported to Russia where the fit would work in Russian factories while the sick and old would be killed. The deportations were public and attracted crowds.

The BBC reported on the deportations and mass executions from June to November 1942. ON 12 December 1942 British foreign minister Eden denounced the deportations and mass murdered - widely reported in the International press.

The trains to Belzec were routed through Rava Ruska where most trains stopped. Locals could point out where the jews were killed and burned from the train.

There was a widespread rumour that soap was being made from the bodies of Jews, resulting in a series of jokes.

Many Germans assumed that the destruction visited on their cities was in retaliation for what Germany had done to the Jews.

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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#44

Post by George L Gregory » 28 Feb 2021, 17:50

Sid Guttridge wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 15:39
Hi GLG,

You ask, "So, if you were a German citizen, what would you have done?" Not voting for Hitler in the first place seems like a good place to start, especially if anti-Semitism was not my thing.
That's all nice and well, but you didn't answer my question. Many Germans in 1938 were neither members nor supporters of the Nazi Party.

I'll make it more clear for you - as a German citizen who neither supported nor was a member of the Nazi Party, what would you have done?
You post, "Hindsight is a wonderful thing." Indeed it is, but less useful than judicious foresight, which might include actually reading the policies of the party you decide to vote for.
Are you implying that Germans in the early 1930s knew that the Holocaust would eventually happen?
You post, "I'm going to pay you the compliment that you have watched plenty of documentaries about the Third Reich." Not that many. I prefer books. It is a rare documentary that isn't based on pre-existing books or breaks new ground in the archives without going into print first.
Have you read the majority of the main biographies of Hitler? I.e. The biographies by Alan Bullock, Ian Kershaw, Joachim Fest, etc.
You post, ".....there was a war going on so they weren't bothered what was happening to a minority." The assault on the Jews began long before the war. It just came to a head during it.
Discrimination and persecution certainly happened before the war, but the Nazis weren't killed Jews en masse prior to WW2.
You post, "Most of the Jews who were killed were from outside of the German Reich. The Nazis also had the help of plenty of collaborators in Nazi-occupied Europe." True, but we are discussing the Germans here, and they were the movers and shakers in the so-called "Holocaust".
You post, "No, you should not have posted that because it's even more incorrect." Well, after you pointed out that Hitler does not mention the Jews in Chapter 1 of Mein Kampf, I checked. The first mention of them is even earlier, in the preface, where he complains about Jewish publishers.

You post, "What you have posted is that "Mein Kampf is an explicitly anti-semitic book". Yup, it is. Are you really contending otherwise?
No, I was correcting your mistake.

He doesn't complain about "Jewish publishers", he complains about the way the Jewish press were describing him:
At the same time I have had occasion to give an account of my own development, in so far as this is necessary for the understanding of the first as well as the second volume, and in so far as it may serve to destroy the foul legends about my person dished up in the Jewish press.
You clearly haven't even read the book.
You post, "I'm going to make the assumption that you haven't even read the book. Have you read the book?".You need make no assumption. I read the first few chapters some forty years ago and found it eminently un-unputdownable, so gave up there. I have dipped into in places for specific topics since then, like now. How about you?
I read the book years and years ago. I've read a chapter here and there again over the years. The book actually has some pretty interesting points of view e.g. how to read, physical fitness, etc. Of course none of those things outweigh the vile anti-semitism throughout the book, but the book is definitely worth a read if one wants to try to get into the mind of the author.

]quote]You post, "I posted the quote to show that Hitler actually was at first indifferent to anti-semitism and only regarded the Jews as a religion and eventually began to separate Jews from Germans and began to "hate" Jews." Yeah, but so what? It is not reflective of the book itself. How many positive references are there to Jews in the 500-700 mentions of them in Mein Kampf?[/quote]

You've now moved the goalpost. I quoted that specific to show that the book doesn't start off as anti-semitic.
You post,"250,000 copies of the book were in circulation. In the 1932 November election 11,737,395 Germans voted for the Nazi Party." So, Nazi Party ant-Semitism was in plain sight. How many of them do you think were unaware that the Nazi Party was anti-Semitic, and how much would it have mattered if they were aware?

You post, "Are you arguing that as a prerequisite a voter should read the book or books by the person for whom they are going to vote?" No. I am arguing that if you are going to vote it would be as well if you were well informed as to what you are actually voting for. In the Nazis' case, Mein Kampf seems like the obvious starting point.

But if that was too much like hard work, (as it was for me), there was always the Nazis' 25 point programme, which would fit on one side of A4 (or foolscap then, I guess?). Its Point 4 says, "None but members of the nation may be citizens of the state. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed may be. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation." Jews, and only Jews, are singled out - three times.

You post, "Nowhere in the book is there a plan for the extermination of the Jews. Nowhere in the book is there any mention of killing millions of Jews and other people." True, but nobody has ever claimed that it did. It simply set the mood music of anti-Semitism in which the mass murder of Jews later took place. The seeds of the mass murder of Jews was in anti-Semitism and Mein Kampf is both anti-Semitic and the foundational text of the Nazis who later carried out the so-called "Holocaust".
People weren't drawn to the Nazi Party because of its anti-semitism. Hitler's book meant nothing to the average German voter in the late 1920s and early 1930s... they wanted a change and the Nazi Party was the only party which seemed to promise the change and to reverse the ills of the Treaty of Versailles.

In the 1920s Hitler only spoke of the "removal" of Jews. He neither mentioned nor advocated any sort of plan for the genocide of Jews.

The racist policies advocated by the Nazis were not new in Germany and other countries during the early 20th century. Some Jews even wanted to separate themselves from other ethnic groups and argued for Zionism which is why the Haavara Agreement was signed, etc.
You post, "Why do you think the Nazi Party did not use anti-semitism in their election campaigns when trying to gain power?" Do we know that?
Yes.

This is like history 101.
You post, "I highly doubt that someone votes for a party and agrees with every single policy." I agree. But if you fundamentally disagree with one of its basic tenets, one would hope it would give one pause for thought.
Not if it's not going to effect you at all. Hence why many Germans who voted for the Nazi Party didn't really care about the anti-semitism aspect of the party. Most Germans didn't even know any Jews since Jews were largely living in Berlin and were a tiny percentage of the German population.
You post, "In the case of the Nazi Party, the Nazis never actually gained enough votes to come to power by Hitler being elected. One may argue that Hitler was in the right place at the right time. There's a good case to argue that if Hindenburg hadn't of appointed Hitler as Chancellor then Hitler would have gone down in history as a complete failure and the Nazi Party would have been an absolute mess." Quite possibly. (As a matter of interest, did Hindenburg have any constitutional choice but to first ask the leader of the biggest party in parliament to try to form a government?)

Cheers,

Sid.
If you had read the major biographies of Hitler then you would know fine well that was going to more than likely be the scenario if Hitler hadn't of been appointed as Chancellor. The Nazi Party lost a lot of votes and the communists had gained a lot of votes in the last free election.

All I know is that Hindenburg gave in to the pressure by his advisers to appoint Hitler as Chancellor.

George L Gregory
Member
Posts: 1083
Joined: 13 Nov 2020, 16:08
Location: Britain

Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#45

Post by George L Gregory » 28 Feb 2021, 17:50

Sheldrake wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 17:05
wm wrote:
28 Feb 2021, 14:04
Yes, the Germans didn't know about the Holocaust.
Although many heard about this or that atrocity.
You ought to read Nicholas Stargardt's The German War (2015) This draws on contemporary diary entries and letters. There is a chapter called "The Shared Secret" which explores the way that the fate of the Jews was broadly understood, but not a topic of public discussion.

There were many eye witnesses to the executions in Riussia in 1941 and photographic evidence flooded back. Many of the participants had written back with a fairly accurate summary. During the autumn Jews were deported from Germany. BY late November fairly precise if not accurate rumours - so in Minden the local SD office reported that Jews were to be deported to Russia where the fit would work in Russian factories while the sick and old would be killed. The deportations were public and attracted crowds.

The BBC reported on the deportations and mass executions from June to November 1942. ON 12 December 1942 British foreign minister Eden denounced the deportations and mass murdered - widely reported in the International press.

The trains to Belzec were routed through Rava Ruska where most trains stopped. Locals could point out where the jews were killed and burned from the train.

There was a widespread rumour that soap was being made from the bodies of Jews, resulting in a series of jokes.

Many Germans assumed that the destruction visited on their cities was in retaliation for what Germany had done to the Jews.
Does the book mention how many Germans knew about the extermination camps?

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