Furzy mouse highly recommended this National Geographic documentary. I’ve only looked at the beginning, but the comments about it at YouTube (as opposed to the ones arguing related historical issues) are very positive. And sadly, as the world moves in a more authoritarian direction, it becomes more and more necessary to study history if we are to have any hope of preventing extremists from putting a new social order in place.
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How did Hitler come to power? Because people supported corporate shills like Obama and McCain and Clinton and Romney. Because the educated people supported the ‘mainstream’ choices, and refused to ‘waste’ their votes on decent people like Nader and Perot, and the common people were crushed.
FDR knew better. He know that people needed more than political theater. They needed jobs and money and medical care and social security. Things that anyone voting for Obama has discarded.
So go the easy way. Vote the way that the corporate shills in the New York Times tell you to vote. Don’t break a sweat. Sure, this ended the Roman empire, and the Romanovs were executed in a basement, but this time it will all be good. Just be good little sheep and all will be well.
The underlying question that has to be answered is how after Weimar did Germany get the finance to develop a Europe-beating military, considering that finance was controlled then as now in London and New York. On the traduction of Germany and the duping of Hitler, “Conjuring Hitler” by Guido Giacomo Preparata marshalls a lot of financial and political facts into a very compelling hypothesis.
It also suggests a reason for the mysterious fact that Oswald Mosley is regarded by the establishment in England as a national hero.
Thanks so much for the book tip. Have been doing research on this – our own version of fascism, the plot against FDR, Kim Phillip-Fein’s “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal,” etc. Seems like they/we are once again on the verge of something – Bertram Gross’s “Friendly Fascism,” or what Chris Hedges refers to as “inverted totalitariansim” or what Tom Ferguson refers to as “the swamp creature”…
The re-arming of Hitler’s Germany was MMT(modern monetary theory) in action. Hitler wanted to re-arm. He inspired the nation to rebuild Germany’s military power. The common people and the oligarchs agreed. Hitler’s government printed the d-marks, but probably used some obscure finance to ‘be discreet’. The government spent ( government demand) that money on German industry which happily accepted it without protest or demanding an ‘inflation premium’. Private industry responded by investing to increase supply (investment spending) and increasing employment. The inspiration of Hitler and the increasing employment convinced ordinary citizens that Hitler really was leading germany to prosperity, people felt more confident and started spending money to enjoy themselves, so consummer spending then rose, providing further stimulus for private industry .paid wages and salaries. Hence MMT government spending and German re-armament brought short term prosperity to Germany.
When money is our Debt and bankers’ credit/profits, it does not matter who is in office, it will end badly.
When money is NOT Debt to government, business and people it benefits government, business, people, and ultimately turns banks into banks again. The US has taken this “privilege” away from bankers six times in our history led by our best Presidents among them Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy who were then warred against, assassinated, or the attempt was made in order for the bankers to retake their profit machine–debt money.
……
http://www.monetary.org/how-the-economists-facilitated-the-crisis-and-how-hr-6550-solves-it/2011/06
“The mistake … lies in fearing money and trusting debt.”
Henry Simons, (Economic Policy for a Free Society, 1930s, P.199)
This fundamental error has allowed the most egregious banking and money system to dominate our society for a century. It has caused immense damage:
For example: The privatization of our monetary system, with control over public policy being in unelected hands, for whoever controls the money system, over time will control the nation.
And look what they have done with that power:
* They’ve given special privilege to create money to some, and disadvantage to others; which has led to an obscene concentration of wealth and a corresponding poverty! This has encouraged lawlessness and corruption among the privileged; pushing them to diseased excess for acquisition, and ignoring those among us in great need.
* They’ve turned economics into a primitive religion, and worshipped the “market” as a god, despite all evidence to the contrary. A primary tool they use is to denigrate and ignore evidence. “Anecdotal” was the description Greenspan used for real evidence that challenges their theories. A fundamental sin of poor methodology.
* They have placed an unnecessary ball and chain on the leg of every producer by having the money supply itself bear an unnecessary interest cost to society.
* They’ve foisted a “fractional reserve” system on us prone to periodic collapse. Credit will collapse during a crisis. Money does not collapse. Credit will collapse during a crisis. Money does not collapse. Money does not collapse.
In our present system most of what we use for money – more accurately purchasing media – comes into existence as an interest bearing debt, when banks make loans. In that sense, most money in our fractional reserve system – is debt. But economists can’t seem to grasp that those rules can and must be changed. Afraid to confront their paymasters, who are benefitting from the injustice, they can’t conceive of practical ways we can use real government issued money for money instead of substituting private debt for it. They ignore previous attempts such as the Chicago Plan of the 1930s; and smear prior periods when such real money was used successfully.
Errors of methodology regarding money include refusal to examine the facts and a tendency to ignore history where the monetary facts are found. This leads to the silliest errors of fact regarding monetary history including:
* Being unaware of the colonial periods’ excellent experience with government money.
* The Continental Currency – they are generally unaware they were destroyed by Brit counterfeiting.
* The Greenbacks – which is mistakenly characterized as worthless paper money, ignoring that they ultimately exchanged one for one with gold.
* The French Assignats – where they have again ignored Brit counterfeiting and enshrined the propaganda book written by a banking heir as unbiased fact (White’s Fiat Money in France)!
* The German Hyperinflation is not recognized as occurring under a privately owned and privately controlled Reichsbank!
* Regarding the FED as part of the government!
* The Free banking Schools misidentify the Free banking period because New York’s “Free Banking Law” gave better results. But despite its title it imposed much stronger requirements and regulations and was the opposite of free banking!
Jamie Galbraith ended his testimony to the Senate’s Crime Subcommittee with this warning: “But you have to act. The true alternative is a failure extending over time from the economic to the political system. Just as too few predicted the financial crisis, it may be that too few are today speaking frankly about where a failure to deal with the aftermath may lead.
In this situation, let me suggest, the country faces an existential threat. Either the legal system must do its work, or the market system cannot be restored. There must be a thorough, transparent, effective, radical cleaning of the financial sector and also of those public officials who failed the public trust. The financiers must be made to feel, in their bones, the power of the law. And the public, which lives by the law, must see very clearly and unambiguously that this is the case. Thank you.”
James K. Galbraith to the Subcommittee on Crime, Senate Judiciary Committee, May 4,
……….
http://www.monetary.org/2012-conference
Announcing the 8th Annual AMI Monetary Reform Conference
at University Center in downtown Chicago, Sept. 20-23, 2012
The American Monetary Institute proudly announces its 8th annual Monetary Reform Conference in Chicago. Our conferences launched the modern grass roots movement for U.S. monetary reform and thereby World reform. You are invited to attend this important meeting in beautiful downtown Chicago. Our money system clearly needs a serious overhaul to secure economic justice, peace and prosperity as we enter the 3rd Millennium. True reform, not mere regulation, is necessary to move humanity away from a World dominated by fraud, warfare and ugliness and toward a World of justice and beauty. You can avoid discouragement and join with us in this adventure to achieve positive money results for America and the world.
Don’t be discouraged because the villians who created the present crisis, have manipulated governments to bail them out. The media, which has made such “errors” possible, and the economic theories behind banker activities already stand accused in the public mind.
Main Themes of the Conference: Implementing Monetary Reform now!
…………
Bev, University of Chicago to call the shots again? Insane.
Otherwise, thanks for your succinct contribution to humanity.
Can see the rsuls of his rearmament started war on diferent nations and wanted to conquir the wolrld. the germans sufered a lot under his regim.
Excellent question. The answer is found by looking at the support for Hitler by the “blueblood” families in London and here such as the Bushes and Harrimans. Read Trading with the Enemy, for instance.
http://thingumbobesquire.blogspot.com/2010/09/necessary-needling-of-insolence-of-some.html
T, thanks for the link. Well said.
Thanks for the tip, Steven. Reminds me of Anthony Sutton’s “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler”, also packed full of revelations that demolish the official mythology. Recommended!
I will check this book out. I suspect it’s similar to what I found in “American Reparations to Germany” by SA Schuker (1988)… that pre-war Germany offered Wall Street higher interest rates than Wall St could get elsewhere during the great depression… and Wall St jumped all over it.
Henry C.K.Liu at the Asia Times has a great analysis of
the financial basis for the rearmament of Germany.
It has been quoted by eveyone from Communists to Neo Nazis: Here’s an example paraphrased without the financial gobbledygook.
“Hitler began a national credit program by devising a plan of public works that included flood control, repair of public buildings and private residences, and construction of new roads, bridges, canals, and port facilities. All these were paid for with money that no longer came from the private international bankers.
The projected cost of these various programs was fixed at one billion units of the national currency. To pay for this, the German government (not the international bankers) issued bills of exchange, called Labor Treasury Certificates. In this way the National Socialists put millions of people to work, and paid them with Treasury Certificates. Under the National Socialists, Germany’s money wasn’t backed by gold (which was owned by the international bankers). It was essentially a receipt for labor and materials delivered to the government. Hitler said, “For every mark issued, we required the equivalent of a mark’s worth of work done, or goods produced.” The government paid workers in Certificates. Workers spent those Certificates on other goods and services, thus creating more jobs for more people. In this way the German people climbed out of the crushing debt imposed on them by the international bankers.
Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved, and Germany was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, with no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western countries (controlled by international bankers) were still out of work. Within five years, Germany went from the poorest nation in Europe to the richest. Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, despite the international bankers’ denial of foreign credit to Germany, and despite the global boycott by Jewish-owned industries. Germany succeeded in this by exchanging equipment and commodities directly with other countries, using a barter system that cut the bankers out of the picture. Germany flourished, since barter eliminates national debt and trade deficits. (Venezuela does the same thing today when it trades oil for commodities, plus medical help, and so on. Hence the bankers are trying to squeeze Venezuela.)”
Timmy,
a 45% unemployment rate had something to do with it…”reparations”..ever view John Cusak=”MAX”?
I recommend book The Forced War, by Hoggan. Also check http://www.ihr.org and http://www.askwhy.co.uk . There is also r1a on wikipedia or r1a.org. This nazi killed my r1a brothers in theirs slave labor camps. The also killed my brothers in Jasenovac concentration camp. In reality it was just crusade and religious massacre of Catholic church/Roman empire. Structure of Catholic church is copy of Roman empire with pope as Pontius maximus. Why pope wear vedic god Mithra hat?
There is NO race – of – humans, we are a species.
Skippy… Race is built upon the idea of ethnicity, ethnicity is built upon the nationalization – oocupation of a patch of ground, with the ensuing mystic ideology that gives it validity. In this fog of thought… the music always ends in the same crescendo… and yes it does skip from time to time, but then marches on.
The ultra chauvanist, future, would – be hitlers are not going to rise to power on any ethnic “race” program. At least not here in the US, or in Britain. Depite what one commenter had to say about having the courage to vote for Ralph Nader, a “hitler” wont rise or fall here on the strength or weakness of the popular vote either.
When people defend their “race”, what they’re really concerned about is their culture, their ways, their standards, their shared, understood language. Those things do vary. Their concerns are real. I don’t know if they’re righteous, but they’re real. Cultures overwhelm each other all the time.
Thank for pointing this out to everyone. There is no biological basis for race. It is a construct of the mind. Just like the State of Mississippi or Walmart or “my culture”.
It’s more garbage used to divide.
It was used to great effect to quell Bacon’s Rebellion.
If you mean, there is no genetic basis, you are correct, I’m sure. But, as I was saying, defending or denigrating a “race”, people are really referring to a particular culture, and there is quite a variety of those, and they have often overrun each other. So “racial” paranoia is not completely unfounded.
Race is a poor term. It’s extremely loaded and ill-defined, to boot. When one group defends themselves, and we approve of them, they’re defending their “culture”, a noble thing. When another group defends themselves, and we disapprove of them, or decide they’ve gone too far, they’re “racists”, very bad people.
Evolutionary theory has held up well as an explanation for the diversity of life forms. Humans, too, are subject to evolutionary pressures and these pressures differ from niche to niche. Hence it is unrealistic to expect that humans cannot/does not have subspecies like other primates. Clearly there are, we call then ‘races’. They have real biological (drug sensitivities, disease prevalence, hormone levels, etc.)) and mental (temperament, intelligence, etc.) consequences due to the pressures and constraints imposed by the niches wherein these subspecies adapted.
It is silly to deny these real differences with their individual and bulk properties. Denial virtually insures unjust outcomes. It makes more sense to understand them and figure out how to accommodate them in a fair manner.
@above2,
And some wonder why, so many were compliant to man the camps… shezzz.
All it takes is the slightest validation, the smallest reasoning, all justified by some pseudoscience and its game on. Its the mental positioning used to give the questioning, not fully compliant, accompanied by some swift trials and executions, the excuse for atrocity’s.
This has and is still happening in – America – for FFS. The legacy of colonialism is rooted in this pseudoscience.
Scientific Racism: The Eugenics of Social Darwinism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eX5T68TQIo&feature=related
Here some year 11 home work from SA… snort.
Science and religion
In the 19th century, Darwin’s discoveries made an enormous impact in England, Western Europe, their colonies, and the USA, where Christianity was the dominant religion. Darwin’s theory was seen to be in conflict with the literal interpretation of special creation to be found in the Bible in the Book of Genesis, and even today Darwin’s work raises emotional responses among fundamentalists.
It can be argued that religion does not explain how the world works. Religion is about faith and hope and answers questions about ‘why’. Science on the other hand, is rational and evidence-based and answers questions about ‘how’. Religion and science should not be seen as two different worldviews as they do not provide solutions to the same questions.
Many learners and educators struggle with aligning their religious beliefs with scientific evidence and may find it helpful to read:
philosophytalk.org
One of the world’s greatest cosmologists, a South African based at the University of Cape Town, Prof. George Ellis, won the prestigious Templeton Prize in 2005 for advancing the understanding between science and religion. He is a key figure in the discussion of the boundaries between science and theology.
What is Social Darwinism?
Darwinism and Social Darwinism have very little in common, apart from the name and a few basic concepts, which Social Darwinists misapplied. The theory that there is a hierarchy of human species into ‘races’ has affected international politics, economics and social development across the globe.
Social Darwinism is a false application of Darwin’s ideas such as adaptation and natural selection, and does not really follow from Darwinian thinking in any way. Social Darwinism is a belief, which became popular in England, Europe and America, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher in the 19th century was one of the most important Social Darwinists.
Social Darwinism does not believe in the principle of equality of all human beings. It states that:
Some human beings are biologically superior to others
The strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society
The weak and unfit should be allowed to die
There was a constant struggle between humans and the strongest always would win. The strongest nation was the fittest, therefore the best, and consequently had an inherent right to rule.
Social Darwinism applied the ‘survival of the fittest’ to human ‘races’ and said that ‘might makes right’. Not only was survival of the fittest seen as something natural, but it was also morally correct. It was therefore natural, normal, and proper for the strong to thrive at the expense of the weak. White Protestant Europeans had evolved much further and faster than other “races.”
So-called ‘white civilised’ industrial nations that had technologically advanced weapons had the moral right to conquer and ‘civilize’ the ‘savage blacks’ of the world. Social Darwinism was used to rationalise imperialism, colonialism, racism and poverty.
The beliefs associated with Social Darwinism were discredited during the 20th century, as the increasing knowledge of biological, social, and cultural phenomena does not support its basic tenets.
The concept of ‘human races’ is scientifically invalid. Physical characteristics do not relate in any way to mental or behavioural attributes. Many people argue that the word ‘race’ should no longer be used for the following reasons:
Most scientists today would say that there is no such thing as race.
The misinterpretation of the term ‘race’ to classify people has gone hand in hand with contempt for human rights.
Social Darwinism is by no means dead, as traces of it can be found in the present.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pseudo-scientific-racism-and-social-darwinism-grade-11
Happy to provide higher level discourse and cross referenced papers, etc, upon request.
Skippy… it should be noted that Germany was a late player in the colonialist game, mostly north west Africa, look into it… all. Colonialism, racism, genetics, et al.
PS… “Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher in the 19th century was one of the most important Social Darwinists” – link above.
Skippy… Methinks… it is absolutely fooking fantastic[!!!] that more and more people are becoming aware of this crack pot, Hubert Spencer and the horrific damage his armchair thunkit has wroth upon the world.
Hitler consumed his thunkit, where Herbert was thee creator of it. Hubert created the most powerful weapon Hitler had[!] I don’t even know if Dante’s Hell – has – a place for such a person.
According to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer due to historic and cultural tendencies the Germans were largely uncomfortable with the whole Democracy thing. They really wanted was a kind of monarchist socialism although what they wanted above all was a steady job and regular meals. German industrialists wanted facism and if they hadn’t funded Hitler the Nazis would likely have never been more than a bunch of Munich brawlers. Hitler never captured more than 44% of the national vote.
Exactly…We dont need to be vigilant for the next charismatic glorious leader (which seems to be what most Americans who worry about such tings waste thier time on)..we need to knock the “industrialist” classes down 10 or 12 notches, and begin remaking our culture democratically. Right now we are ruled by poorly educated, intellectually apathetic, money grubbing, technicians in finance capital. As a class Those people are not fit to be solely in charge of anything, not even thier own greed.
SPS, It’s much deeper and more complex: Mindset: “German Romanticism” —
“META-POLITICS: The Roots of the Nazi Mind” by Peter Viereck (rev.1961, 1941);
“Old NAZIS, the NEW RIGHT, and the REPUBLICAN PARTY: Domestic fascist networks and their effect on U.S. cold war politics” by Russ Bellant (1991, 1989, 1988).
It may well be “bred in the bone.” (W.H. Auden: “September 1, 1939”)
Michael Haneke’s White Ribbon eerily dramatizes the psychological ground the nazis emerged from.
Nazi Fascism was an economic failure BTW. Unemployment was resolved thanks to war production and the draft. Government deficits were financed though confiscation, seizure of Jewish and other undesirables property and the gold reserves of conquered countries.
It didn’t fail. It succeeded on different standards.
That’s a myth. The Nazi economy was largely a success — and not just due to armaments spending, they also built the autobahns and many other things. Nor was it funded by confiscation. It was funded by issuing Mefo bills, which was basically printing money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefo_bills
“The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the NAZI Economy” by Adam Tooze (New York, VIKING, 2006).
I haven’t read that. Michael Pettis recommends it:
http://www.mpettis.com/2012/07/04/what-is-financial-reform-in-china/
“The war and the draft”? That’s historically inaccurate revisionism written by the victors about the vanquished.
Henry C.K.Liu at the Asia Times has a great analysis of
the financial basis for the rearmament of Germany.
It has been quoted by eveyone from Communists to Neo Nazis: Here’s an example paraphrased without the financial gobbledygook.
“Hitler began a national credit program by devising a plan of public works that included flood control, repair of public buildings and private residences, and construction of new roads, bridges, canals, and port facilities. All these were paid for with money that no longer came from the private international bankers.
The projected cost of these various programs was fixed at one billion units of the national currency. To pay for this, the German government (not the international bankers) issued bills of exchange, called Labor Treasury Certificates. In this way the National Socialists put millions of people to work, and paid them with Treasury Certificates. Under the National Socialists, Germany’s money wasn’t backed by gold (which was owned by the international bankers). It was essentially a receipt for labor and materials delivered to the government. Hitler said, “For every mark issued, we required the equivalent of a mark’s worth of work done, or goods produced.” The government paid workers in Certificates. Workers spent those Certificates on other goods and services, thus creating more jobs for more people. In this way the German people climbed out of the crushing debt imposed on them by the international bankers.
Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved, and Germany was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, with no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western countries (controlled by international bankers) were still out of work. Within five years, Germany went from the poorest nation in Europe to the richest. Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, despite the international bankers’ denial of foreign credit to Germany, and despite the global boycott by Jewish-owned industries. Germany succeeded in this by exchanging equipment and commodities directly with other countries, using a barter system that cut the bankers out of the picture. Germany flourished, since barter eliminates national debt and trade deficits. (Venezuela does the same thing today when it trades oil for commodities, plus medical help, and so on. Hence the bankers are trying to squeeze Venezuela.)”
H, so why did Hitler make Hjalmar Schacht (BIS) head of the Reichsbank?
My brother in god! You are my reader! This Henry Liu I reposted criss/cross many times. Good bless you!
http://biomystic.org/endabe.htm
http://www.askwhy.co.uk
Read also about Christ and Kundalini.
http://www.adishakti.org/_/christ_and_the_kundalini.htm
John F. Kennedy and All Those “isms”
http://www.sott.net/
Masters of byp#ssin’ history
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” Henry Kissinger
http://www.hermes-press.com/dollar_imperialism.htm
“Secret knowledge is the basis of all power. Your source of information depends upon who you are and what position you hold in society. Your source of information determines the reliability of what you know.” Steven Jacobson, Mind Control in the United States
“In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply.” Rockefeller Foundation Director of Charity, Frederick Gates, 1913
http://www.hermes-press.com/education_index.htm
It is ridiculous to sea how elites achieved their goals. Unbelievable. You guys are not able to move out of elementary school history boox. Unbelievable
In many respects, the obscenity which was Hitler and Nazi fascism were historically unique; surely so in scale. Comparables for ‘demogogue’s in crisis’ which might scale better to other circumstances might be Benito Mussolini himself or Talat Pasha in Turkey, nationalist corporatists both, the former building a security state while the later being instrumental in a genocide (amongst others).
But really, fascists come to power _without_ crises per se. It has happened repeatedly in modern times. How? they get elected, typically in formerly affluent but declining states with bloated but minimally functional militaries and huge, entrenched disparities of wealth. Consider the career of Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna, who perfected anti-Semitism as an electoral winner. Or best of all, look over Juan Peron. He came to power as a ‘populist’ in an economically plunging country with a useless but far too large military and an insulated wealth class akin to the Kochs and their ilk here willing to work their goals through him as the interface. His character was far more complex than a simple psychotic racist; likely he was neither. But he left a ruined political landscape, brought further economic decline to the many while guaranteeing the wealth of the few, and prepped the conditions for insurrection against political stasis and a liquidating counter-insurgency in response.
Our bete noir in the US will look much like Juan Peron. Someone is sure to try this over the next 20-30 years. Whether they fail outright, or work their poison for a few yers before the body politic rejects them I wouldn’t care to handicap. But conditions are in place for someone to try that role, outside the periphery of American socio-politics, but not so far outside it can’t be seen as a real possibility.
And there was no Socialism. The substantial faction of the Nazis who tried to steer Hitler to that route were eventually liquidated. It was a racist project from beginning to end.
Really?
1. Socialism. I have been trying to find evidence about this but am having a hard time so please show me what NAZI policies demonstrate they weren’t national socialists. It’s really hard to find facts.
Cause I heard the Nazi economy was booming with almost no unemployment via work projects like the Audobahn and the development of the Volkswagon. Sure, I know about the ties to Western capitalists, as Paul alludes to below, but weren’t there some sops to socialism? Hitler ruled simply by fire and brimstone?
The NAZIs ended the trade unions but created an alternative structure that still protected rights, right?
It’s really hard to get facts but I’ve seen some claim Germans had far better rights than Americans at this time and their economy sure recovered better (like 40 hour day, social security/pension system, etc.). I welcome anyone to point me to the correct facts.
Plus, Hitler kicked the private bankers out and printed his own Marks! This was the ultimate democratic act. I would love to see an analysis of what this did for the German economy but I can’t find any facts on it.
This is precisely what I wish the U.S. would do; spend dollars (e.g. greenbacks) it creates without borrowing or taxing. It’s what Lincoln did. I would hope any socialist would demand his government take the same action Hitler did. But we are never told anything about this history.
2. Racism. Didn’t the NAZI party come about by joining the Zionists with the National Socialists? Didn’t the NAZI party encourage immigration to Palestine with the support of Zionist Jews? Wasn’t this a policy Zionists employed with Western powers? Didn’t the U.S. refuse to allow a number of Jews entry to the U.S. during WWII and could this have been to encourage them to emigrate to Palestine?
Hilter and the NAZIs waited until 1941 to start the death camps which is kind of late if that was their original goal. America also put people in camps too.
Not saying they weren’t racist. And the laws were racist and oppressive. But there was more going on there . . .
Like WWI and then messing with the German economy. Then WWII. There is a big story about WWII that we haven’t been told that the above documentary doesn’t get reveal.
Really?
1. Socialism. I have been trying to find evidence about this but am having a hard time so please show me what NAZI policies demonstrate they weren’t national socialists. It’s really hard to find facts.
Cause I heard the Nazi economy was booming with almost no unemployment via work projects like the Audobahn and the development of the Volkswagon. Sure, I know about the ties to Western capitalists, as Paul alludes to below, but weren’t there some sops to socialism? Hitler ruled simply by fire and brimstone?
The NAZIs ended the trade unions but created an alternative structure that still protected rights, right?
It’s really hard to get facts but I’ve seen some claim Germans had far better rights than Americans at this time and their economy sure recovered better (like 40 hour day, social security/pension system, etc.). I welcome anyone to point me to the correct facts.
Plus, Hitler kicked the private bankers out and printed his own Marks! This was the ultimate democratic act. I would love to see an analysis of what this did for the German economy but I can’t find any facts on it.
This is precisely what I wish the U.S. would do; spend dollars (e.g. greenbacks) it creates without borrowing or taxing. It’s what Lincoln did. I would hope any socialist would demand his government take the same action Hitler did. But we are never told anything about this history.
The ‘socialism’ of the Nazi party was rooted in the absolutist concept that every German, from cradle to grave, was beholden to serve the State. That is the core concept of fascism — that the State is everything.
Nazi ‘socialism’ was rooted in the concept of “Blood and Soil,” the idea that the Volk were one great being, a force of nature greater and more pure than any other ‘race’ on earth, and had only to stand up together to claim their glorious destiny. Weed out the Jews, gypsies, cripples, half-Aryan mutts and other racial trash and the majesty of the German Volk would burst forth, unstoppable.
The re-creation of a national labor force was not done for the sake of the laborers. No, no — that would be genuine socialism. It was done to rebuild heavy industry in order to build a military machine, a nation armed like none other. It was done to turn every hand, every effort to building a thousand-year Reich that would dominate or rule the world.
Hitler gave the hungry Germans bread, restored their dignity and stoked their pride. He took in return only everything they had and everything they were as a civilized people. In truth he did nothing FOR them, only TO them.
You might find Part II of the above video informative? It indicates that Hitler merely appropriated the trappings of socialism (backed by industrialists and banksters) as a means of hi-jacking popular support, but got rid of socialist-leaning Rohm soon after consolidating power and it should be noted that the first occupants of the camps (’34-’35?) were opposition communists and social democrats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6nt2VgCx2Y
BTW, I am always a bit puzzled by the tendency to call a political system socialist because it employs central planning, as most socialists think of socialism as a system which first and foremost provides social goods…
But how did he adopt the trappings of socialism?
That’s what I’m trying to figure out and the facts have all been whitewashed.
Surely Hitler and the NAZIs employed some policies people liked, no? Or was it all fire and brimstone and Jew hate? I find that really hard to believe.
I know that he employed Keynsian economics to employ people and get them out of the depression. How did he do that? Were the workers treated well? Wouldn’t a fascist employ only slave labor and only enrich a small class of people? Didn’t large numbers of Germans do well under NAZI policies?
I once accepted that the NAZIs only used the word socialist but now I think the real fascists used propaganda to call their opponents fascist. We need some basic facts. And I would like to start with the German economy and a comparative analysis of the treatment of workers during this period.
Well, you’re just bringing more heat and not much light.
I no longer want to hear conclusory statements about German intent. I no longer buy into the propaganda and want specific facts.
What daily bread? Did Germans have to stand in line for bread? Did they have food programs? How did it compare to the U.S. food lines, etc? What was German unemployment? What were German working rights? Did they have the 40 hour week? Social Security? Could they strike? They didn’t have the right to strike but didn’t they have an alternative system?
And response that fails to talk about the German alternative system is dishonest. It’s intentionally leaving out critical facts so I’m deeply suspicious of the intentions of people who have left out a major part of the story.
Also, kicking out the private central bankers. Do you have any information on that? That seems the opposite action of a fascist so how do you explain that?
A comment is hardly the place to comment on the rise of Nazism. There were probably thousands about that and related periods. As bad as Obama has been he is a democrat in soul and body. The tendency of many to blame the last capable president we had with every crime possible is disgusting and harmful.
Some of us grow up under the long shadows of the Nazi regime. We don’t appreciate taking it lightly.
Obama is committing very similar crimes as Hitler.
The only difference is magnitude. Obama summarily executes Americans on his say alone and with no due process. Obama has declared war on the world and sent forces to over 100 countries. He claims way more power than Hitler could ever dream of.
And the U.S. has exceeded Hitler in its crimes and deaths since WWII.
So you don’t get to crow that war criminal Obama is better than Hitler. He’s not.
Plus, the victors wrote the history. I don’t think we have the whole history about how the war started, etc.
“The tendency of many to blame the last capable president we had with every crime possible”
Who is doing that? Seriously, who? Give me just one name, just one.
President Obama has ordered drone strikes upon funerals in hopes that a terrorist has shown up to mourn. That is a war crime.
If you grew up under the shadow of the Third Reich and are not troubled by lawless assassinations, you are a fool.
Yves, in keeping with your post: “Plus ca change, …” and why.
http://whowhatwhy.com/the-game-that-goes-on-and-on-3.html
A three-page article by By RUSS BAKER, Published: April 21, 2010. Please support WhoWhatWhy, for all their goodness. Key excerpts follow.
p. 1:
…
“When most people criticize those aspects of government that seem most impervious to the democratic process, they cite the permanency and perceived self-interest of the mandarins of the Washington bureaucracy. But when it comes to real power, an ability to come out ahead no matter which party is in power, it’s hard to top certain financial institutions.
“UBS is very much a part of that permanent government.” …
from p. 2:
“Harken, Nemazee, Quasha (and UBS) first came to my attention while I was researching my 2009 book, Family of Secrets, which is an investigative history of the rise of the Bush family and the special interests behind them. I was examining George W. Bush’s run of good fortune in the 1980s when his failed oil ventures repeatedly became golden as larger ventures scooped them up and increased his remuneration. Texas-based Harken Energy, the biggest of these, paid Bush more than he had ever earned, gave him a nice board position, and basically freed him up to move to Washington and work on his father’s 1988 White House race.” …
“In any case, it has become increasingly clear that tax evasion is but a piece of a troubling larger picture. The states of New York, Texas and Massachusetts sued the bank in 2008, accusing it of misleading investors about risks in its auction-rate securities market. UBS executives dumped their own holdings when the supposedly safe investments took a nosedive, yet continued to recommend them to customers. In Puerto Rico, a Bloomberg News reporter found, UBS had created its own closed-loop system for generating profits —it advised the Commonwealth to issue bonds, marketed the bonds to investors through UBS mutual funds, and then loaned the mutual funds money so they could buy the bonds. As James Cox, a Duke law professor and expert on finance and law said at the time, “I’ve never seen such a blatant series of conflicts of interest.” …
“Further south, Brazilian police arrested officials of both UBS and the insurance giant AIG as part of a half-billion-dollar tax avoidance scheme, alleging that the companies used suspected black market money-changers to spirit the funds out of Brazil to Switzerland.” …
from p. 3:
Marcos also was moving billions pillaged from the Philippine and American people (via aid to that country) into Swiss accounts. In fact, Phil Kendrick, who sold Harken Energy to Alan Quasha, recalls having heard rumors back then that the money to buy him out came from Marcos himself. The Bushes and Marcos were famously friendly. As vice president, George HW Bush visited Marcos’s Philippines during its protracted martial law and declared that country, to considerable subsequent ridicule, a great and vibrant example.
“We love you, sir, we love your adherence to democratic principles,” vice president Bush said on that 1981 trip. And Marcos’s widow Imelda would speak, elliptically, of how the elder Bush had given her husband advice on how to invest “his” fortune. Bush and Marcos even took lessons from the same golf instructor.
It’s all about access—and golf has long played a crucial role. Back in the 1950s, Senator Prescott Bush, father of HW and a powerful former banker himself, used to have unique access to President Eisenhower as his regular golf partner. By the time of Barack Obama’s little-studied invitation to Robert Wolf to round out his foursome, Wolf (and UBS), too, were already on the inside. Early in the Obama administration, Wolf had quietly been appointed to Obama’s Economic Advisory Board. The fact that UBS is now playing a role in the administration of a liberal democratic “reformer” illustrates just how trans-partisan money interests can be.” …
“The staff director for Obama’s Economic Advisory Board, who also serves as a member of the president’s powerful Council of Economic Advisers, is Austan Goolsbee, who along with Donaldson and Bush shared membership in the exclusive Yale secret society, Skull and Bones.” …
“… American presidents, no matter how good their intentions, are inevitably enmeshed in a self-reinforcing web of interests and influences that permits the wealthy to shape our national destiny no matter who controls the government in Washington.”
Connect:
UBS golfing with Presidents: from Eisenhower through Obama
UBS doing business with Bush, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama
Nemazee, Iran, Simi Valley and Reagan
Nemazee, Iran, Harken Energy, Bush Dynasty, Enron
Nemazee to Marcos, to BIS, and the “Commonwealth”
UBS and Duke
UBS and Bonesmen for “God and Yale”/CIA/Anglo-American Establishment
UBS and “permanent government” for Global .01% Nobility Reich profit
Key: GOLFING is such a Gentile “White” sporting tradition, is it not? Iranians considered “Aryans” (Persian). So what’s MISSING in the piece is how UBS connects with Paine Webber and the Boston Brahmins. Likely connects with BCCI Smart Set. Dig deep for WASPS Uber Alles.
CONNECT above key players with BIS in Hitler’s Time in: “TRADING WITH ENEMY:The NAZI-American Money Plot 1933-1949” by Charles Higham.
How well Veblen comprehended then. How well Michael Hudson and Yves Smith comprehend today. “Plus ca change, …”
Nice article – I will add it my collection that is about to collapse my 2 terrabyte back up hard drive of articles about how the banks ARE the government. The article insinuates that Wolf was asking something of Obama, instead of the greater probability that Wolf was telling the president what to do…
“The president was joined by an old friend from Chicago; a young aide; and Robert Wolf, Chairman and CEO, UBS Group Americas. In a decidedly incurious piece, a New York Times reporter made light of Wolf’s presence:”
Yes, our “news media” – they must have been chatting about golf swings… What else could they possibly been chatting about???
So, if not in the mold of Hitler’s fascism, which kind of fascism?
Methinks corporate fascism, with no evident explicit leader. Rather, a relatively decentralized control of materials and distribution. With infighting amongst the economically empowered, as may be the case, for which the peasantry pay in blood, trauma, and want, but which said peasants have no real understanding of the actual workings.
It’s called Inverted Totalitarianism.
see Wikipedia.
see: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9175.html
Hitler is the poster child for the bad man theory of Nazi Germany. And that is part of the explanation. But, the rise of Nazi Germany is also caused by a failure of capitalism. World War II is the great capitalist war. Daniel Guerin’s 1038 book Facism and the Corporations (or Big Business)explores the corporate underpinnigs is Nazism’s rise. It’s a good read today.
The man who advised FDR and earlier ran the economy during WWI as the head of the War Industries Board, Bernard Baruch, made millions during the first war.
“Before World War I, it was said that “Barney” Baruch was worth a million dollars or more. After World War I was over, it was alleged that he was worth about two hundred million dollars…” (Dall, p.72)
“”War orders”, make small companies big and make big companies larger! There is no doubt that from his unusual vantage point, Mr. Baruch could readily behold a very broad, fertile, economic “valley”, readily exploitable. It was duly exploited.” (Dall,p.73)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baruch#Favorite_book
I’m sure the profit motive then carried over through the second world war.
WWM — FRAME the Carolinas, Bernard Baruch, Ben Bernanke since his birth.
Within that frame — FRAME: the Carolinas, the Walker-Bush Dynasty until now.
This documentary is overly sensational. It indeed plays up the “bad man” theory of history, as Paul refers to above. As if all evil is personified in one man and one political party. This is the one group that is most vilified and that usually doesn’t translate into honest history.
WWM, it’s dishonest: not mentioned are BIS bankers and the Occult.
Above is mentioned: “CONJURING HITLER: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich” by Guido Giacomo Preparata;
Compare documentary,”THE OCCULT HISTORY OF THE THIRD REICH” in 3 DVD SET (1998, Madacy Entertainment Group, Ltd., St. Laurent, Quebec, Canada);
Other revealing books:
“THE OCCULT ROOTS OF NAZISM: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology” – and “BLACK SUN: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity” by Nicholas Goodrick-Clark;
“THE IDEOLOGY OF TYRANNY: Bataille, Foucault, and the Postmodern Corruption of Political Dissent” by Guido Giacomo Preparata, featuring the amalgamation of “cult” thinking and practice that became “Neoconservative” Economics promulgated from Rockefeller’s “Commonwealth” arm, the University of Chicago. — N.B.:
Chapter 2 (“Gnostic Fragments”)
Chapter t: Bataille: Mystique – The Monstrous Archons – Eroticism – Expenditure – Power;
Chapter 6: Foucault and the Social Science-Fiction of Neo-Gnosticism
Chapter 8: The Tomb Raiders of the Postmodern Right: Junger’s Anarch, the Neocon, and the Bogus Hermeneutics of LEO STRAUSS: Junger’s Anarch – Martin the Obscure -Kojeve: the Pierre Menard of Postmodernism – Leo the Squalid – Neocon [CAPS mine];
Chapter 9: True Power: The End of Dissent, Iran/Iraq, and the War on Terror: Veblen’s Testament and the End of Dissent – Mr. Foucault Goes to Tehran – Gulf One: The Grand Illusion – The War on Terror
“Summary and Conclusions” tie up this strange history of means to an end.
Consider Madonna’s public conversion to Deep Cult. Revisit the Denver Airport: “The Denver Airport Deep Underground Military Base (DUMB) Explained NOV 2011” (by LORDLANGERZ on Nov 22, 2011) on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROTdpI1wW4
Consider the role of Madeleine Albright, even now. Denver is Deep Cult, with Mme Blavatsky–Third-Fourth Reich “teacher” at its core. Cue NASA. Study:
“BABYLON’S BANKSTERS: The Alchemy of Deep Physics, High Finance and Ancient Religion” by Joseph P. Farrell, within the FRAME of:
“TOP SECRET AMERICA: The Rise of the New American Security State” by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin.
DRINK Willard Mitt Romney’s Mormon-CIA Occult Vision of Our Salvation, with Bishop Mitt as our Glorious Monarch, with Paul Ryan’s Supreme Pontiff back.
“Behold! I tell you a mystery.” We are enthralled to Black Magicians: their looting finessed through Quantic robots and Hight Priests with Delusions of Grandeur. The pathological thousand year Reich is upon us.
“Come, Sweet Death” (J.S. Bach) is its eternal anthem.
I do want to check out the ‘Conjuring Hitler’ book.
If we are interested in how modern liberal societies can become totalitarian regimes – ones capable of genocide, its usually misguided to look at the ascent of Hitler in the German context, rather, the period in question – 1918-1933 – is best studied from the angle of the failure of the Weimar Republic – remember, Hitler after all was an opportunist supported by shed loads of money from a monied elite not prepared to accept sharing power with their fellow countrymen – any thing sound familiar.
However, for those with an interest in the subject matter, one of the best studies ever written is based on a comparative analysis of Hitler and Stalin – both odious individuals who caused misery beyond imagination.
As such, and for those with the necessary time, may I suggest reading Alan Bullock’s “Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives” or Bullock’s other seminal study, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.
I’m reading this book right now, actually for the second time in a row, and he compares Hitler and Stalin,(and Mussolini, a little bit on Mao, and a tiny amount on Saddam Hussein) a lot in the context of the art produced by totalitarian governments http://www.amazon.com/Totalitarian-Soviet-Fascist-Peoples-Republic/dp/0064332667
angelina: re “art produced by totalitarian governments” — compare:
“The Denver Airport Deep Underground Military Base (DUMB) Explained NOV 2011″ (by LORDLANGERZ on Nov 22, 2011) on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROTdpI1wW4
Compelling narrative — interestingly enough it mentions Hitler’s ‘pseudo social discourse’ (i.e. his sympathy for the unemployed, etc.) Unfortunately it fails to discuss the context that led to so many unemployed, namely the policy of austerity promoted by German Chancelor Brüning.
Bad times bring out the worst in people. The Nazi rise to power was relatively quick going from irrelevance in 1928 to largest party four years later. It’s helpful in avoiding mistakes of the past to clearly identify root causes.
Pardon, but the Nazi party never legitimately won more than a third of the Weimar Parliament. Hitler was appointed Chancellor and asked to form a coalition government WITH the DNVP party in January of 1933. This was only done because there had already been two Parliamentary elections in 1932 which could not form a coalition government. So President Hindenburg stepped in and appointed one.
Hitler waited about three months before having the Parliament building set on fire one dark night, and used that excuse the next morning to declare a “state of emergency” suspending the Constitution in order to preserve it. He pushed the Enabling Law through Parliament (without anyone fully reading it), outlawing all other political parties and giving Hitler dictatorial powers during the temporary crisis. A temporary crisis that continued until May 8, 1945. The German Constitution was never abolished, only held in temporary abeyance.
Hitler’s favorite political philosopher, Carl Schmitt, had taught him in the 1920’s that ‘whomsoever can declare an emergency (of the State) is the true sovereign.’ Meaning, if you can successfully set aside the Constitution for any period of time, you rule the State outright from that moment. Suspend the usual rules, and you can do anything you want from there. You have taken power.
Note that America, following 9/11, was declared by George W. to be in a state of emergency, and the enormous, fully detailed Patriot Act was rushed through the Congress (without ever being read). America remains in a state of emergency, all based on our war on a noun — terror.
Our Constitution is in abeyance, and will remain suspended until our own Gotterdammerung.
Such things are never undone peacefully.
Did anyone ever read the Patriot Act before voting on it?
“The bill was brought to the floor of the House of Representatives on October 23, the same day it was introduced. Many Democrats expressed extreme displeasure over the hurried nature of the process. Rep. Bobby Scott said, “I think it is appropriate to comment on the process by which the bill is coming to us. This is not the bill that was reported and deliberated on in the Committee on the Judiciary. It came to us late on the floor. No one has really had an opportunity to look at the bill to see what is in it since we have been out of our offices.” Rep. John Conyers, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, declared, “we are now debating at this hour of night, with only two copies of the bill that we are being asked to vote on available to Members on this side of the aisle.”
Source: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2009/03/02/congress-had-no-time-to-read-the-usa-patriot-act/
~
“I once took a speed-reading course. Got pretty good at it, too. For instance, I was able to finish War and Peace in a half hour. It’s about Russia.”
Heinrich Brüning is the man that finally catapulted Hitler to power.
Brüning was called on to form a new, more conservative ministry on March 28, 1930, without a Reichstag majority. His policies, formed in response to the onset of the Great Depression, involved increased taxation, reduced government expenditure, a firm beliver in balanced budgets (the EU cabal believe in surplus) and so on. Today we have many devoted Brüning protégés, Merkel and the troika, Cameron & Osborne, Romney & Ryan, Obama also believes in the ideology and of course all of the EU cabal of so called social-democratic and labour parties. We are doomed.
after the Reichstag rejected a major part of his plans, Brüning began governing by presidential emergency decree, sort of like EU de facto done in Greece and Italy today and what they want the powers to do in all of EU.
Brüning’s austerity measures paralyzed the German economy and resulted in skyrocketing unemployment. Brüning was the master of austerity, the troika would have been tears of joy if they have had Brüning today.
De facto up to 40% unemployment, public economy in shambles when tax revenue disappear. Heavy industry and construction was put to an standstill, small and medium sized companies did go bankrupt in droves. Commnity was bankrupts, even one federal state of Germany.
July 18 he dissolved the Reichstag, which returned after new elections in September 1930 with Communist and, more important, Nazi representation greatly increased.
Brüning was sacked by Hindenburg when he attacked big landowners east of Elbe, but he was in the firm believe he was close to the goal of a prosperous economy.
Germans did see Hitler as “unsere letzte Hoffnung”, our last hope.
Brüning left Germany in 1934 and ultimately ended up in the United States, where he taught political science at Harvard University from 1937 to 1952.
For a second there, I thought you were going to say “ended up in Chicago” LOL…
/l, The late “Bruning’s Restaurant” on Lake Ponchartrain was typical of RESTAURANTS owned by NAZIs laundered in New Orleans, a Roman Catholic “Ratline” stronghold. See history of International House in New Orleans. etc.
/l, see: “THE THIRD REICH IN THE IVORY TOWER: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses” by Stephen H. Norwood (2009).
Of all the people who like to yammer on the Internet about what caused the rise of the Nazis, I wonder how many are aware of even the existence of the German Revolution, the Spartakists, the role of Friedrich Ebert, the original Stormtroopers, the street fighting of the ’20s and ’30s… Everyone seems to want to think the Germans had a spontaneous mass moral failure.
Well,
In my country, that’s the UK, these issues are taught extensively at ‘A’ Level and beyond – indeed, both my first degree and postgrad degree were heavily focused on Germany from 1848 to post war Unification in the early 90’s.
As an aside, its interesting to note that one of the major contributory causes of the failure of Weimar and descent into Hitlerism was the schism in the German left caused by the SPD’s endorsement of the War in August 1914, thereby resulting in the creation of a Communist Party that was as vehemently anti-Weimar as the NAZIS.
CR, your British Imperial indoctrination is complete.
LBR,
Unlike the USA, at UK educational institutions, if one is reading humanities, we usually don’t get mind washed, indeed, on my courses i was taught by Socialists, Communists, Liberals and Conservatives – none of whom 20 years later would approve of this ghastly neoliberal/neoliberal construct thats been established since the implosion of the USSR in 1991.
Further, and as any reading of Hansard will clearly demonstrate, the UK left represented by the Parliamentary Labour Party in August 1914 was fragmented with regards its support for going to war with Germany/Austro Hungary.
From my own leftwing vantage point, and never wishing to kill my fellow leftwing travellers regardless of nationality, war is an anathema better fought by those who create the conditions for it than those who’s only duty is to act as cannon fodder.
With regards WWII, its the only War that was ever justified as it was a crusade against NAZISM/Fascism – yes, many benefitted, but the facts remain that our German brethren were freed from Hitler’s tyranny and many who actually fought them did not see the German as the enemy, rather Hitlerism was the enemy.
So, the facts are simple, by supporting Germany’s war effort in August 2014, as with its UK peer, the SPD caused a large schism in the left – obviously Communism existed at this time, but as in the UK, many of the proletariat were wedded to Parliamentary leftwing parties and not actually interested in overthrowing the state – please remember, there is a huge difference between democratic socialism, Marxism and Communism, be it influenced by Marx, Mao, Lenin or Stalin.
As for being a British Imperialist, well, I may be British, but my home nation of Wales remember is as much a victim of Anglo Saxon/Norman aggression as Ireland – remember, our Union with England certainly was not done via any democratic means, it was imposed, much as the Irish Union was imposed.
RD, Cue: Anglo-American War Profiteers: “TRADING WITH THE ENEMY: The NAZI-American Money Plot 1933-1949” by Charles Higham. All about profit > .01%.
Cue: Walker-Bush Dynasty from Holy Roman Reich III-IV. “All in the family.”
Such dreck is a distraction, serving only the purpose of letting the systemic causes off the hook. Talking about families and cliques implies, without actually saying, that if we just got rid of them then everything would work fine. Bullshit.
RD, your summary conclusions are fallacious, perhaps meant to deceive.
Germany between 1914 and 1933 was extremely chaotic. They lost a major war, underwent revolution and counter-revolution, than occupation and hyper-inflation, a few years of relative stability in the late 20’s and than depression.
The best book about this period is Sebastian Haffner, “Defying Hitler”. He shows how his generation and class, he was born in 1907 and came from minor Prussian nobility, were seduced by the Nazism. For his generation violence was a constant part of life. Most Germans believed than could have won WWI. What about Americans? Sure we lost a couple of colonial Wars. But only a small fraction of the population is in the military. If you live in suburban America you also have little experience with violence and choas.
I second the recommendation of “Defying Hitler”. It is an amazing portrayal of what it was like for someone willing to see what was happening to actually live through the rise of the Nazis. It was written in those days, not afterwards*, so it is free from the distortions that come from viewing the 20s and early 30s through the prism of what we now know would come later.
*There was much controversy when the book was released about whether it could have actually been written in the 20s and 30s. Scientific tests of the paper it was written on showed that it was.
I’m sure glad I don’t live in a country mired in depression where violence is a constant part of life, which recently lost a humiliating war it believes it could have won, whose minor nobility is easily seduced.
We get an propaganda image of Hitlers rise to power crafted by he winners. We get a image of an drooling lunatic that anyone would spot as a madman on a miles distance. Conclusion the germans is utterly stupid …?
So when we today have to spot the coming madman we only have to look for the drooling lunatic, and we of course are not so stupid that we does not easily spot such a fellow?
In the winners history Hitler wasn’t really talented or good at anything, only a stupid lunatic. But idiots don’t put the world on fire, intelligent men do. Hitler was a very skilled organizer, had the ability to surround him self with skilled people with competence that built up the nazi organization and then Germany. A modern leadership where Hitler let the nazi management solve the tasks on their own without Hitler interfering in details. Like, here is an task, solve it, how you do it is up to you, solve it.
If one want to understand how it was possible it’s better to read Irving than Bullock. Yes Irving is a pro nazi but according to many he is the one that knows most about the nazis.
I have to disagree with you on this issue – most post-revisionist research on Nazis Germany is undertaken by the German’s themselves and indicates clearly that organisationally, Germany under Hitler was a mess epitomised by competing interest groups trying to win favour with the Furher.
Indeed, the march towards institutionalised genocide epitomises this issue.
Another classic example of this was the fact that German industry was not put on a full war footing until after the Invasion of Russia, by contrast, the UK began turning over its economy to a full war footing by late 1938 – the UK learning valuable lessons from its experience with total war in 1914-1918.
Further evidence of the fact that Herr Hitler was no military genius can be found in the fact that up to 1941 efforts were underway to try and assassinate Hitler by the UK and its Allies – these efforts were abandoned was it became obvious that Hitler was actually a bonus to the Allies in its War aims – the fact is simple, had Hitler listened to his very talented General’s there is a huge possibility Russia would have been knocked out of the War and the UK forced to the negotiating table.
Again, and for those with an interest in these issues, the BBC has actually just shown a very good comparative historical study focusing on ‘The Churchill’s’ its a three parter and can easily be downloaded via bittorrent – I highly recommend it.
Chris Rogers, Luchino Visconti’s film, “THE DAMNED” will interest you.
As we know the result of Hitler and Nazi politics was a disaster, and of course Hitler was not a super genius but he was probably fairly intelligent and had he’s qualities above average. He operated in a turbulent time and not least in Germany. And there would certainly be better ways to lift Germany to a better position, but that would probably also required some common sense in France and Belgium. Challenged the then present world order, fascism was on the rise all-around, Spain, Italy, Hungary and so on. Most of the east Europe countries was more of right wing dictatorships than democracies. Not really anything the west did see as a big problem.
One have to consider that the victorious allies did put in place laws in Germany that did forbid anything that could connect to the Nazis. Accompanied with serious denazifiction of the German’s. Those laws are still operating. It’s really not a good idea to put the nazi regime in any positive light.
If the German generals have had their way there hadn’t been a remilitarization, and not so in the Rhineland and no Anschluss of Austria or Sudetenland. This was Hitler gambling and as it looks then from his and many German’s view quite successful.
But in larger perspective it was a hopeless undertaking, with Britain, US and Soviet as enemies the industrial balance was not even close to level with the Axis powers. FDR and US did see this and started already around 1941 to draw the plans for the post war where US was the dominant global power. The allies have no problems to out produce Germany and had “free” access to oil. A factoid, Soviet that had adopted Fordism industrialization produced more canons and tanks per unit energy and ore than Germany. A German quartermaster at the east front had something like 1.4 million spare parts in total, Soviet had standardized and had significantly less. But German engineering was of course better. Despite the German motorized Blitzkreig they employed more than 600 thousand horses at the east front, not least due to fuel shortage.
When the war started 1939 Germanys sort of Keynesian economic had achieved full employment and fairly good supply of consumer goods. US and Britain had enormous unemployment, a significant share of working age people that could be put in to war production immediately.
Hitler as a human creature was a godawful mess of neuroses, unable to live in any world but his grandiose dreams, a perpetual slave to his mile high Messiah complex. Like all sociopaths, he had charisma and passion and sincerity on vivid display for individual people but felt no genuine empathy for any of them. His empathy was entirely for ‘the people,’ the mythical, mystical Aryan Volk. Which was a fairy tale widely admired at the time.
His empathy was for Germany, the most exceptional nation in the world.
Beyond his mental and emotional dysfunction, he was physically diseased as well, and an amphetamine addict during the war years.
He detested office hours and paperwork, preferring instead to suggest or demand that certain things happen and then leave the details and legwork to his devoted underlings. He loved for them to surprise him with superb advancements of the cause, and they lived to present him with such triumphs, whatever the cost.
Such a person cannot himself make the trains run on time, or arrange the Final Solution, or direct the Russian campaign, or win a global war. Such a person can only screw up such matters, which Hitler did quite royally during his 12 years in charge. He was a meddler at all things, at all times.
With no sense of strategic warfare, he personally lost WWII at the very outset when he declined to build enough subs to starve Britain into surrender. He lost the war again when he grandly declared war on America without any real need, without consulting anyone. He lost it again when he moved the bulk of his Panzer divisions south just before the decisive battle for Moscow. He lost it yet again at Stalingrad, a completely pointless battle for a trophy town.
These were all his personal decisions, based on nothing more substantial than his need and desire to look powerful, to be seen in charge, to command affairs he knew nothing about. And he made them all against the most expert strategic advice available.
If I remember correctly, the Kriegsmarine didn’t plan on having enough subs to succesfully wage war until 1944. It’s no minor feat that they accomplished what they could; The US submarine force essentially did to Japan what the Germans had hoped to do to the UK.
For those with an interest in the Russian Civil War and the creation of the USSR, here’s an interesting documentary created by American Lefties:
“Tsar to Lenin”
The Definitive Film Record Of The 1917 Russian Revolution
Produced by Herman Axelbank, Narrated by Max Eastman
http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/14801/Tsar-to-Lenin
Hannah Arendt:
“Each time society, through unemployment, frustrates the small man in his normal functioning and normal self-respect, it trains him for that last stage in which he will willingly undertake any function, even that of hangman.”
Arendt relates a story of a Jew who is released from Buchenwald. The freed Jew encountered, among the SS men who gave him certificates of release, a former schoolmate, whom he did not address but stared at. The SS guard spontaneously explained to his former friend: “You must understand, I have five years of unemployment behind me. They can do anything they want with me.”
Today it is called necessary neo-liberal economic reforms, alas the ones that is made longterm unemployed is the “property” of the state and can be ordered to any workfare job. Its true evil, first you implement a economic system that create a shortage of jobs then you make the victims responsible and serfs to be pushed around.
The second part of the documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqPc93Pvs0U&feature=youtube_gdata_player
The NG documentary as usual omit essential economics facts. Any facts that resembles present neo-liberal economic dogma isn’t there.
Of course the Czechoslovakia and Sudetenland would not be covered truly, how. France and British outright threatened with reprisals if Czechoslovakia dident let Germany take over, how the British actally did steal Czech gold reserve deposit in Brittain. The western powers wa complicit in butchering Democratic Czechoslovacia but up in arms when Hitler marsched in to the Polish military dictatorship.
And where was the USA when all of this ‘appeasement’ was going on?
I may not be too patriotic and have never turned a blind eye to some of the worst excesses of UK foreign policy – however, in the atmosphere of 1937/38 the elites in Britain and France did not want another war with Germany – indeed, had the UK and France threatened war with Germany once the Rhineland was remilitarised in 1936, there would not have been a War.
As for speaking for my fellow countrymen, particularly those of a leftwing disposition, whilst our masters were discussing the problem of Hitler and fascism, many from my own community took to arms in 1936 and headed to Spain to support the Republic against Franco and his cronies – if you are of a working class background and well versed in history, we usually refer to the onset of the war against fascism as 1936, others see its origins/begins with Japan’s invasion of Manchuria.
I cannot speak on behalf of TPTB in the 1930’s, I can speak on behalf of my own community, and that was vehemently anti-fascist. Remember, in the UK and France many of the ruling elite was actually pro-fascist and pro-Hitler, it was only after Munich that this changed – do also remember Stalin’s Russia were also willing accomplices to Hitler, particularly when it came to carving up Poland.
It is difficult (ok impossible) to fully understand the appeasement era without understanding the degree to which each of the 3 sides was trying to get the other two to fight the war. Each side hoped to let the other two fight it out, then step in a pick up the pieces.
Germany had no real hope to sit out a West vs. Soviet Union war, but up to a certain point did hope for Western neutrality. After all, within Germany the domestic analogs of the West had given the Nazis considerable support as a means for eliminating the strong German Communist Party.
Appeasement was the attempt by the West to make WW2 a Germany versus the Soviet Union war. (In the end, that is exactly what it turned into to a considerable degree.)
The Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union was Soviet’s countermove. (It was also so unprincipled and so contrary to everything that the left had stood for until that moment that it caused deep, permanent damage to the Marxist left.)
CR, the Capital ISSUE always has been how to keep Russia at bay, especially any alliance between Germany and Russia or the U.S. and Russia. At stake ALWAYS is the British Empire v. Russia. In this manic drive to maintain eternal dominion, the Empire co-opted the Anglo-American Establishment in the U.S. and around the globe. It’s STILL the Capital Issue. (Cue: “City” stronghold in Tel Aviv, and the “Christian Zionist” Evangelical Movement in Money and Politics in America.)
We are but pawns on the Anglo-American Empire’s chessboard in the Great Game: The British Empire v. Russia for global dominion: The Capital Issue.
On the Czech issue I believe US did had the position that it was an internal european business that they had to deal with them self.
As Jessica say an game of Schwarzer Peter (Old Maid ). The west hoping that Hitler turned on Soviet. Molotov/Ribbentorp was more to stall things, Soviet had no illusions about Hitlers aims for lebensrum in the east. Soviets wanted to deal with the finish about territory getting them access to the Gulf of Finland because they was sure of German attack. They then took it by force. Stalins forced industrialization was also with the prediction another war was coming.
The Munich deal was probably not as the history tell us appeasement but tactics on an upcoming war everybody was expecting. Czechs was a pawn to sacrifice on the Grand Chess Board.
Soviet offered to support Czechoslovakia to stop Hitlers expansion, Poland refused to let them bypass their territory.
After Germany marched in to Poland and France and Britain declared war it took almost half a year before there was any fighting. And despite repeated provocations by Germany on USA, e.g. sinking US ship not so long from north america, US refused to go to war with Germany. This while the battle of Britain was roaring, not until it was over did USA enter the European war.
It’s difficult to learn from history, then this science is as political as economy, bloated with propaganda and nationalism
/l, how clever that DNA is at setting us up in the same manner.
Your back! Yippee!!!
sure, there isn’t likely to be a replay of the rise to another just like hitler…. but…
when you look at the demographic that were the nazi supporters.middle income,moderately educated,religious…these were the cristian middle class. the same ones in this country who vote republican.As a sociologist would say, @1/3 of the population has inborn/bred authoratarian tendencies;either as leaders(2%)or followers(31%)…look at the rabid patriotism of the tea party. Look at the moral certainty of the bible thumpers.This minority is loud,and seeks appeasement.AS long as they are convinced they are on the right track, they do whatever it takes. They have no problem supporting locking up latino’s for profit to prop up the corrections industrial complex. Or trashing constitutional rights of others ,be it drug laws or tsa or homeland defense in order for a percieved sense of justice… they are already halfway down the road to totalitarianism.They would have fit in just fine in nazi germany…. without a lot of hoopla. after all we all know these people… and they are pretty “normal”.
I must also add that the percentage of people already in the fascist camp are the military. They in general vote republican, are religious and are generally not very well informed.. and trained/brainwashed to follow orders
rob, is it “Authoritarian” DNA? George Lakoff: “MORAL POLITICS.”
while I can’t say definitively.If it is, there was a study that correlated a physiological structure of the brain in the frontal cortex to people who were predisposed to “not buck authority”…. just heresay,since I can’t even remember who did the study or what it was really all about… but it seems that way.
Professor Altemeyer’s book is a primary source on this topic:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
as far as the rise of nazi germany ,I think we all agree the a scenerio that resulted from the economic upheaval caused by the aftermath of WWI, with the ensuing joblessness,poverty,oppression,feelings of being persecuted;made a population ripe for anybody to gain control who could help them up….And hitler was a monsterish person,no doubt…but..
I think that the common narrative these days is to make hitler a boogeyman, who was special,thus implying,”no hitler anymore,no problem”.This in effect takes away the complicity of all those entities and people ,whose help made it possible for hitler to emerge on the world scene as he did.
When the book”merchants of Death” came out in 1934,hitler wasn’t even on the scene yet,in any position of power,but it predicted a world war within the decade. It detailed the rearming of germany by british arms co”Vickers” and french arms co”schneider” through subsidieries in checkoslovakia.
In USMC gen. Smedley Butler’s book”war is a racket” he was describing the attempted coup of roosevelt by the morgan syndicate and the dupont people ,who were fascists and their millions of supporters in the american legion and other strike breaking groups, who were styling themselves on mussolini’s brown shirts(or black shirts?)After all JP Morgan co’s,dupont,rockefeller,jim mooney at GM and aAnd Alfred Sloan at GM and henry ford (don’t forget his “dearborn independant newspaper and his anti-semitism and his yearly birthday gifts to hitler).Captains of US industry were pro german. After all they had operations in germany and elsewhere that would go to support the german war cause during the war..ford supplied over half the heavy trucks for the germans, he even built factories in vichy france and in africa for the german war machine,during the war..then there was ITT supplying the communications systems and GM stashing patented airplane fuel chemicals in europe so as to be able to supply the nazi’s during the war,IBM went thru a lot of trouble making the codes that were eventually stamped on the arms of the concentration camp residents,and so on and so on…
and britian didn’t just appease hitler… early on the concept was to divide the world into three blocks. The anglo-american block. the european block was to be controlled out of germany and the russians/soviets were to control the eastern block.chamberlin gets a bad rap, he was just the bidding boy for the real power players, the cecil family and all their noble connections.
This strata of what was happening was all interlocked thru supra-nation corporations.. these are what “owned” things, like I.G Farben who owned auschwitz and the patents and the infrastructure tat was divided up after the war..After the war, @ 750 corporations were resposible for carrying on what the nazi’s/corporatists were working on… all from the seed of british federalism.. thru to american hegemony… and today, these corporate mindset types march us on…
The shakles of control are already all in place. WE have systems of surveilence, a militarized police force ,everywhere. a prision industrial complex, a radically divorced from the good of the american people legislature, a federalist society controlled court system and a corporate controlled executive branch…
While people can’t fathom a decent into nazism, we already live in a fascist empire… the veil just hasn’t been lifted yet.. but it is alll there….
In North carolina, the military basesf(fort bragg and others) have this “exercise” every year they call”rob and sage”.. soldiers not wearing military uniforms go out into neighboring communities and not so neighboring… fully armed and pratice taking over the local towns.. several years ago there was a mistake when a local sherrif saw these guys carrying assault rifles and shot two of them.. We are a mouse fart away from a police state.Corporate control. legal precedents… and laws against popular uprising/demonstration…We need to think seriously how to proceed from here.
rob, NOW AS THEN, it’s ALL about war profits and Lebensraum to the .01%DNA “Holy” Reich (see “Glucksburg Dynasty” at Wikipedia) and their .99% Agency.
I should amend that the book “merchants of death came out in 1934, but the time before hitler , and the period germany was being rearmed was in the mid twenties, by the french and british arms co,schneider and vickers thru subsidieries in checkoslovakia and hungary “skoda”
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Those who study it but come to too dogmatic conclusions are doomed to be caught off guard when history does not repeat itself exactly.
A classic example of this was the first generation of Bolshevik leaders who were all on-guard against the rise of a charismatic Napoleon figure and ignored the threat that the seemingly less-talented Stalin posed.
Fascism per se or strongman rule in America would have much better PR than its predecessors.
It will come wrapped in the Stars and Stripes and carrying a Bible, but its bones will be banks too big to fail, its muscles will be monopoly corporations, and its soul will be lust for global conquest.
Antifa, “Superman!”
Fascism arose in mass societies where everyone listened to the same radio (which was a new phenomenon) and marched into work by the thousands in the same factories. Nowadays, the Internet is more fragmenting and diversifying than mass-ifying and that will affect the form of tyranny.
For one thing, tyranny in the US now would more likely rule through befuddlement than through collective hysteria.
>> Nowadays, the Internet is more fragmenting and diversifying than mass-ifying
Do you occasionally watch Fox News, listen to talk radio (or “Christian” radio), and skim right-wing blogs? Yes, there are many channels and URL’s. But, the Republican platform and its followers are not so fragmented.
mad tf, true, yet more: It is an inconceivably huge MONOLITH, beyond imagining.
So either “they” continue to clamp down on the internet, or they use it to further fragment us from our common interests, or most likely use a combination of both strategies in order to rule their empire.
You are not connecting all the dots into one document. History does repeat itself. And the same bad guys keep coming up. It didn’t start with the fords, or the gm’s but earlier. Why not follow the monies further back, how did those people get their money? thru the same investment firms, Those firms go way back in our time, who sponsored the power plays prior to that. You can trace the civil war to several players, those players were in power during the war of 1812, and prior to that the same players sponsored more expiditions and death to the “under-races”. Before the war of the roses the records become unclear, for europeans, but there seems to be a common thread, the masses are to be kept masses, to do the bidding of a few, give them some freedom of thought and expression, as long as they don’t find out they are the masses.
Not sure why the word fascism makes many feel comfortable here.
Nazi = national SOCIALIST party
Hitler was voted in by the German people.
Let’s be blunt, socialists are more likely to have a Hitler repeat. Hitler won by “giving” people what they wanted.
We know all else that happened by Hitler trying to make his people happy.
Sometimes we fail to understand that there are different seasons, and some will be better than others. When we fail to see this minor detail, we are complacent in taking from others to keep the party going.
Ruff,
Hitler was never ever voted in to power by the people of Germany and, if you look at the figures for elections in the period 1930-1933 you will see that by the time Hitler was invited to be Chancellor, the popular vote for the NAZIS Party was in decline, i.e., they were has beens.
So, please do not spread such a myth further, Hitler never won an election, the NAZIS may have constituted the largest bloc in Parliament, but it still did not have a majority, to say otherwise is an insult to all those in Germany who between the Wars supported a democratic Germany, regrettably, with its leftwing forces at each others throats, a large agrarian voting base and industrialist class against both the left and democracy, the surprising thing from an historical perspective is how long the Weimar Republic actually lasted.
We give the governments power to enforce the law. Society’s contract is with governments, not the rich, or thieves, or criminals.
Is this hard to understand?
Jesters are always welcome here, but let’s not get carried away with hopes and dreams.
‘Society’ is a mythic word, a word that means whatever each of us thinks it means at any given moment. Similarly, anyone can get up on a soap box and describe their version of the ‘contract’ between ‘all of us’ and the government, and it also means nothing binding. There’s a whole other contract at the next soapbox, and the next and the next.
Jesters recite poesy about how we have a set of governing rules, a Constitution, laws, regulations and even good manners fer Chrissake — but look again.
Our Constitution is in suspension ever since 9/11, our laws are written by corporate lobbyists to be voted on by politicians well paid for their votes, and even then those laws are broken with absolute impunity by bankers or anyone else with millions of dollars on hand. Regulations about business or the environment or private property are similarly corporate-created and never seriously enforced. Good manners are the exception not the rule so just exactly what or who do you think is in charge of all this?
It’s a free for all from shore to shore, not a government. Not a nation of citizens in charge of their collective fate. Not a republic. Not a democracy. It’s an existential contest of greed and money and you and I are along for the ride.
‘Tis the jesters in this enormous circus who will bleat all the way to the poorhouse and then to the grave about a contract between society and government.
Never remembering that such songs are the children of trust.
And trust is dead and gone.
Antifa,
You are making my point. There are always criminals. Myself and you can’t do jack about that. Some are born to be criminals.
What makes a difference is the government. If they decide that the law is a law for some, and doesn’t apply to their friends, than we are in no better place than Hitler Germany.
Again, there will always be rich thieves. But our government decides when to enforce the law, not the rich.
“But our government decides when to enforce the law, not the rich.”
I’ll believe that when I see some bankers in jail. Don’t hold your breath.
@Ruff,
“But *our* ‘government’ – decides – when to enforce the law, not the rich.” – Ruff
Skippy… I think you need to identify whom *our* denotes, as in ownership rights and privileges. Because it ain’t the voter[s.
BTW libertarians are just small *d* social Darwinist, know wonder their such good cannon fodder for the big *D* social Darwinist. Young little d’s would like to grow up to be big D’s some day… eh.
I don’t think the word “fascism” makes anyone “feel” comfortable. It is just that it is the closest approximation of what is happening these days.It was mussolini who said that fascism ought to be called “corporateism”. Which IS, what is happening.
yes, the NAZI’s were socialists… but so were all the fascists.. socialism came first. people like mussolini were journalists for socialist papers.the socialism thing(whatever that meant to so many)was around first…the pretense of a populist movement,always a dodge for a few to rule the many… these early populists were going to use the masses to take power from those “ordained by god”,we call them socialists… then came the people who found help from corporate structures and aligned with major industrialists and bankers… which is where the national socialists fit into….Hitler was the choice of major economic players…until him and goering took their stuff,and the rest played his game.. until he left? and they kept on keeping on…The important thing is to not get too caught up in specific points, since history and time are cyclical,not circular…the shape of a spiral,not a circle.
And today, the world full of gov’ts with “friendly” fascist tendencies. Sure some are also socialistic, but democracy is socialistic too. after all, here in america,we are a republic,NOT a democracy. The founders debated this point. they chose a republic(the masses ruled by an intellectual,economic elite.MEN with the education and the bankbook to sit back and discuss and act as benevolent despots…)democracies were seen as a form of mob rule,subject to sway of public opinion,which is usually bad and dangerous,in their eyes.
I see that all these public/private arrangements are fascist..
look at america, the top 1% own most shares in the corporations,who in turn own the politicians,pay the lobbyists,who in turm make the laws,or don’t make the laws,.. we are a fascist state..just because we are no longer like a nazi germany(meaning hitler got his idea for concentration camps from our successful implementaion of sticking all the indians in reservations to “get rid” of them… hitler just used increasing efficiency of technology to achieve that end.and our use of slave labor to support economic structures,be they southern plantations who in turn fed the materials for the northern industrialists fortunes..
or britian who without a written constitution is run by “agreement” and traditions and all is fine unless anyone messes with a big business… then the full weight of the gov’t comes down to protect the big corporations…
look at china.. they are called socialist… but really, it is not a gov’t of the people. there are elites in control of the “gov’t” at every level. Every one of the elites supports,get kickbacks, and is somehow connected to the success of all those business’s. even at the state level, minig,media,banking,etc, is really a state owned and run operation… the gov’t and “private” entities tied together… just what mussolini was talking about. China is fascist.
russia, is a gov’t /mob/ oligarch arrangement.. again, privateers and the gov’t helping them, and keeping the competition down… that is fascist… or corporatist.. regardless that all these players would never call themselves so.. I think it is the most coherent structure that they all fit in… the game is rigged….which doesn’t negate the possibility to live amongst the occupation of the world by fascists./corporatists who still have to pretend they are not what they are.
Mussolini never actually said ‘corporatism is fascism,’ though he certainly agreed with the notion. Corporatism in Italy at the time referred more to the worker’s guilds that dominated the economy than to giant industry.
The word fascism was a good word, a favored word on many continents, said to refer to the ‘all of us standing’ together idea of the Roman Empire (the bundle of sticks image and all that). With a worldwide Depression in full swing, the notion of all of us pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps was sold to citizens just about everywhere.
But the Nazis were never genuine socialists. They pretended to be on their way to seizing power, and many newly-employed Germans liked to think Hitler intended only to provide them with bread and jobs and call it a day, but no such thing was going on. The goal was always war. The goal was always to create an authoritarian, racially pure Reich in which every citizen was but a cog in the machine, to be tossed out upon foreign battlegrounds, worked to the bone in factories and mines, or made to make blonde babies for the State.
Every citizen belonged to the State, lived for the benefit of the State, and was sacrificed to the State. No exceptions.
That is not socialism.
Ruff, The NAZI Party was a SPOILS Party: Take from the Jews et al., Give to the Germans: transfer of wealth by “legal” theft and force. Like Neocon “Disaster Capitalism” today: Take from the 99%, Give to the 1%: transfer of wealth by “legal” theft and force.
>> Let’s be blunt, socialists are more likely to have a Hitler repeat.
Q: Who’s more likely to “repeat Hitler” — or at least repeat the policies that made him so universally reviled?
A: Self-appointed “culture warriors”, racists, “Christian” fundamentalists, and xenophobic promoters of military empire and implicit world subjugation.
You know who these people are. And they don’t call themselves “socialists”. They give themselves such labels as “Republican”, “Tea Party”, “conservative”, and “right”-wing.
Right…
Keep dreaming that the democrats are any different. I have thrown every single vote to democratic candidates. Obama will be the last.
Republicans are as worst.
Democrats for social programs and republicans for war and the rich. Not democrat not republican ever stop to ask whether we can afford it.
You need to wake up.
>> Keep dreaming that the democrats are any different.
In terms of racism and cultural issues? You betcha, they’re different.
What are the first thoughts that comes to mind when you say the word “Hitler”? For me, it’s “the Holocaust”. It’s the systematic mass murder of millions of average citizens.
That has nothing to do with political/economic systems. If you think it does, it’s because the Koch “libertarian” archipelago has successfully brainwashed you with the “welfare/warfare” meme — an attempt to make readers conflate and associate very distinct policy decisions. It’s you who needs to wake up.
And you had started the conversation by referring to “socialists”. Didn’t know you were referring to the Democratic party, who haven’t done anything “socialist” in quite some time. (Central planning — yes. Socialist — no.)
Lol..
Look at your post 3:36 on.
They are the same garbage. Which party lead the freedom of slavery?
That should answer your racism question. It’s not even about race at this point. It’s about a government class and rich class against the rest of us.
Btw
Socialism = central planning = social programs = medicare, welfare, social security, unemployment, etc
Obviously there much more benefits for the rich.
So the lower classes and the rich all on the back of the middle class. Heck, the poor are driving around in SUVs while the middle class is struggling to put food on the table. Not sure what more social programs you want in a country that’s supposed to be capitalist.
>> Which party lead the freedom of slavery?
You say this as though political parties never change their platforms. That’s so ignorant an assumption that I won’t bother carefully reading or responding to your other statements.
The third part of Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism is a good comparison of Nazism and Stalinism.
One of the points she makes is that totalitarianism is not about being efficient or smart, precisely because these were foundations of the normal world and any sense of normalcy no matter how bizarre or malign would give ordinary people the means to challenge the totalitarian insiders and ultimately the totalitarian leader.
I prefer to call what we have now kleptocracy. It certainly has totalitarian traits. Much like totalitarianism, kleptocracy often looks inherently self-destructive and stupid. But that is the normal world view looking at it. From the inside looking out, it is and always is about control, control, control.
Hugh, Totalitarian Disaster Capitalism to profit the .01% is “kleptocracy.”
Agreed. It’s always about the power (control).
Another book I’d recommend is The Coming of The Third Reich by Richard J. Evans.
The allies really overplayed their hand at the end of WW I, resulting in disastrous conditions in Germany that led to hyper inflation. Given these conditions, it would be rather surprising if someone like Hitler didn’t come to power.
It’s also no wonder that he was extremely popular in the very beginning. He literally turned Germany around economically and gave people something to be proud of once again.
Second the recommendation of Richard Evans, all three volumes.
Tremendous narrative, super suppporting evidence from diaries and documents of the time, beautifully crafted prose.
Both the differences and the similarities to our own times will spring to the eye as you read it. For example, Goebbels was a pike, a potzer, an amateur, compared to the media apparatus of today.
i am plowing through the third of evans’ wonderful trilogy. i cannot recommend it too highly; a marvelous history, and the first volume answers many of the points raised in this discussion thread about the rise of the nazis. puts to rest many of the myths as well.
lambert, i think dr. goebbels did quite well with the comparatively primitive tools of radio, film and controlled press. he was a master rhetorician, and he thoroughly understood how to use the mass media of his time. you give him a satellite cable network, he’d out do roger ailes and fox with ease.
Before we go to far afield with the Nazi=socialism meme:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler had objected to the party’s previous leader’s decision to use the word “Socialist” in its name as Hitler at the time instead preferred to use “Social Revolutionary”.[13] Upon taking over the leadership, Hitler kept the term but defined “socialism” as meaning a commitment of an individual to a community.[13] Hitler also claimed that unconditional equality of opportunity for all “racially sound” Aryan males was the essence of the “Socialism” of “National Socialism”.[14] Initially, Nazi political strategy used anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric.[15] This was downplayed in the 1930s to gain the support of industrial owners, and it shifted more to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.[15] Nazism favoured private property, freedom of contract, and promoted the creation of national solidarity that would transcend class differences.[16][17] The Nazis outlawed strikes by employees and lockouts by employers, because these were regarded a threat to national unity.[18] Instead, the state controlled and approved wage and salary levels.[19]
Adding:
Although that’s a thumbnail sketch it basically jives with all that I’ve read on the matter in that the Nazi movement was initially whatever they needed it to be, much like today’s neoliberalism – although one must see that neoliberalism is a more refined and “perfected” form of totalitarianism (ie., inverted).
In the West you have “Progressive”, “Socialist”, “Stalinist”, “Conservative”, “Libertarian” etc etc flavors of neoliberalism.
Every political philosophy has been co-opted by the neoliberalism.
Whatever the philosophical bent, neoliberalism has morphed to espouse whatever political philosophy it has needed to in order that the neoliberal economic system is maintained and promoted.
If one is so inclined, I recommend taking some time and reading the World Socialist Web Site for really good analysis as to how the today’s “socialists”, “communists”, “Stalinists” etc have been dancing to the neoliberal tune for decades in their respective countries.
What is “neoliberalism”?It implies new liberalism.Do you mean this is a wave to strengthen worker rights. rights to collective bargaining. an 8 hour work day. rights to a minimum wage. Health insurance for being hurt on the job.right to not be subject to worksite conditions that are inherently unhealthy…ending of slavery…ending of jim crow laws and unequal protection of law based on race and sex….etc.
Where do these”neoliberals come into this stuff?
rob, in American propanda Newspeak, “neoliberalism” is declared “socialism;” but history shows that it is cut from the bolt of “Neoconservatism,” and may even be the same “ism” tweaked for Blue Dog use.
Quite the contrary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is an ideology based on the advocacy of economic liberalizations, free trade, and open markets.[1] Neoliberalism supports privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation of markets, and promotion of the private sector’s role in society.[1] In the 1980s, much of neoliberal theory was incorporated into mainstream economics.[2][3][4][5]
It means it’s a rehash of classical liberalism not modern liberalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_States#Classical_liberalism
Classical liberalism in the United States (also called laissez-faire liberalism[15]) is the belief that a free market economy is the most productive. It may be represented by Henry David Thoreau’s statement “that government is best which governs least.” Classical liberalism is a philosophy of individualism and self-responsibility. Classical liberals in the United States believe that if the economy is left to the natural forces of supply and demand, free of government intervention, the result is the most abundant satisfaction of human wants. Modern classical liberals oppose the concepts of social democracy and the welfare state.
I think lenova is more correct, than those other definitions. After all,classical liberalism is an idea that promotes something positive for the human condition and people… those people who sought to ‘help” in history were catagorized by the term “liberal”.after all they generally were fighting the injustices of the day… be it jesus,or harriet beecher stowe or ida tarbell… That is what is classically liberal.there is a “right” side to history.then there is a “wrong’ side.. like the industrialists who said laisses faire was a good idea, or their hack economists who taught it to generations, all to keep as much money in their own pockets as possible. all these things,free trade,globalism,supply side economics,etc.. are all just bastardized ideas co-opted by the ruling elite to oppress the people… that is a “conservative” idea…And even conservative has been stolen. After all a true conservative would do well to save the planet,and resources,and the creatures who live there… for that is sustainable and would harken long term growth… that is “conservative”..
.Personally, I haven’t been “taught” what words mean. And I don’t care to support the status quo terminology that binds us.The enunciation of truth is what words are for… not the garbage that is designed to mislead the masses, such as causistry and equiviocation as was concieved by the jesuits to combat the reformation…
jsmith, no, its “free trade” by British Imperial Chicago definition = Neoconlib
rob, right: Strategic re-definition of words for Big Lie promulgation: Newspeak.
Classical liberalism is the idea that people have rights. Neoliberalism is the idea that everything can be defined in terms of money (i.e. if I violate your rights I can pay you a certain amount of money in compensation) and therefore capial, and only capital, has rights.
Jsmith, unfortunately your target audience cannot digest this much “content.”
That sounds compelling and I once assumed this to be true but I’m not so sure now.
It’s too convenient of an explanation and doesn’t sound realistic to me.
Hitler and the NAZIs didn’t give workers ANY real rights? C’mon.
I’m trying to find facts and they have been erased from the historical record.
What about the 40 hour work week? Pensions/social security?
Remember U.S. workers had limitations on how much they could strike as well. How did the German laws compare? I no longer trust conclusary claims by people in the U.S. Seems like this was the propaganda fight at the time–how the respective countries treated their workers.
Also, Germany kicked out the private central bankers and printed their own marks! This is huge.
I want to see a more scholarly comparison of the different policies and less of a psychological exposition of what America claims the Germans were doing.
Lords of Finance (2009) by Liaquat Ahamed put it in financial/economic context. The book have shocking similarities to what is going on in Europe now.
And without economical/fiancial context this documentary is worthless, in my opinion
mario, true, maybe even “worse than worthless.” For cause? Who backed it?
>> maybe even “worse than worthless.” For cause? Who backed it?
Murdoch owns the “National Geographic” channel.
You should flip through the channel schedule sometime, to see for yourself how bad it is. The animal shows are there to hook in the kids. The police and military programming are the real “content”.
How does a Hitler rise? Partly because idiots like Ta-Nehisi Coates learn to swallow extrajudicial assassination:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/coates-obamas-perceived-transformation.html?_r=1&ref=opinion#comments
meanwhile the placement of leadership by simply purchase of office
http://www.nationalmemo.com/gop-consultant-koch-brothers-bought-ryans-nomination-with-100-million-promise/2/
briansays, Ryan would make quite a good “Hitler redux” – he has the same “Authoritarian” “Ultraconservative” tight Roman Catholic background to prove it.
I have a hard time seeing Ryan as some kind of charismatic leader, your perspective on his religious background and his bare chest aside, because there already exists a highly ideological but by now thoroughly bureaucratized blueprint and game plan.
Ryan may bring some color from Sarah Palin’s America but he’s mostly doing the job he auditioned for. Like Obama. Or like Adolph Eichmann. Or Scott Walker. Or Ezra Klein.
We can go on.
Read Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther books. History via fiction is more fun.
Regarding the likelihood of Hitleresque leaders popping up, its difficult to overestimate the importance of the technological context. The context in many societies nowadays has changed such that the bad old modern movements cannot be sustained as they once were. Of course, not every place is like this. There are many poorer places where it is possible to close a society off, utterly dominate discourse, and thus terrorize citizens or neighbours. Hell, just look at North Korea.
Ottawan, Hell, just look at Hungary. again. An EU State, at that.
>> its difficult to overestimate the importance of the technological context. The context in many societies nowadays has changed such that the bad old modern movements cannot be sustained as they once were.
You ARE overestimating it.
Watch a few minutes of Fox, listen to a few minutes of talk radio, and listen to a few Republican friends. (Or consider the same on the Left.) Many channels but not *that* many variations in belief.
NC readers/commentators, how do you interpret the presence of “Liberty University” ads as the frame for our discussion today? Yves has no control over what her “ad service” provides. So what gives?
Liberty university is a joke.A propaganda orifice.In the bush II era, there were more interns in congress from liberty university,than any other. which means they are still around somewhere, like larva waiting….the
Google’s Ad Sensing service is keyword-based and incredibly stupid. I can well believe that Yves’s takedowns of the libertarians attracted ads with the keyword “liberty.”
this is worth watching
“BBC documentary film series that examines Adolf Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power, their zenith, their decline and fall, and the consequences of their reign. It featured archive footage and interviews with eye witnesses and was shown in six episodes.
http://tinyurl.com/cfnmee5
The Nazis: A Warning from History http://tinyurl.com/cwtelaj
1) “Helped into Power”
2) “Chaos and Consent”
3) “The Wrong War”
4) “The Wild East”
5) “The Road to Treblinka”
6) “Fighting to the End”
g, No really, BBC? Cue NYT. Cue Rhodes-Milner Roundtable: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Another thing about hitler was in Mein kampf, he spoke of the “big Lie”…he talked about how most people knew of themselves to be only guilty of “little lies”.. and expected those everywhere… but were themselves incapable of the big lie. A lie so glaring and in your face that it would make them cringe.. and unable to carry it off… and how this was something unfathomable to them. they didn’t think that way and couldn’t believe someone could do it to them… which is what made them so vulnerable to these big lies.
AND THAT is the rule of today. Our politicians lie so flippantly and regularly, people can’t believe that these people could be so decietful. Look at the past 12 years… talk about a “big lie”, and a population who seem hamstrung as to not see them….
He also spoke of people who believed what they were told by authoratative sources… these were the easiest people to fool. then there were people who didn’t believe anything… they were the second easiest to fool.but then there were people who would listen and critically evaluate what they were being told.These people were “politically unreliable” and should be sent to the camps.
On the other hand, it would be interesting historical speculation to wonder how the world would be if the Axis had won?
There would have been no more Soviet Union, no Stalin, no gulags that killed tens of millions post WWII, no Cold War, no nuclear arms race, no Hiroshima, no Nagasaki, no Korea, No Vietnam, No Middle Eastern meatgrinder and Asia would probably speak Japanese as its lingua franca.
As to Britain and the U.S., Hitler wanted them as allies–he did after all allow the “heroes” of Dunkirk to withdraw without harming a hair on their head, sent peace envoys to Britain and they were summerly locked up for life to continue the “Hitler will invade us” myth. The American people had more in common with the Germans than they did with any other people.
Europe with a Nazi victory would be a German speaking Vichy. Hitler would be long dead of old age by now and who knows what form of government it would have.
There would’ve been any number of additional conflicts and massacres.
There is very little chance that Hitler could have kept any ground he took from Russia in the long term. Stalin had entire factories dismantled and moved a couple thousand miles into Siberia, where they churned out tanks and planes and ammo and bombs in peace, right around the clock. Russia had its own oil, iron and endless millions of troops. It was only a matter of time.
Hitler had no strategic bombing capacity, so this gigantic industrial production way back by the Ural Mountains was just going to build and build and build and then come smashing down on his armies and his cities like a steel tsunami. Which is what happened, in fact.
His only possible means of stopping this eventual onslaught was if he had by then gained the alliance of Britain and the USA. Maybe all of them together could stem the tide.
Something very like this situation was present in May of 1945, as the Allied and Soviet armies met. General Patton was certainly ready for total war against communism then and there, as was General MacArthur just a few years later in North Korea.
Perhaps Truman declined Patton’s advice because The Bomb hadn’t been successfully tested yet. More likely, his other military commanders looked at the Soviet war machine and said “no way, certainly not now and hopefully not ever — do you have any idea how many tanks those people have!?!”
That was the answer, after all, for the duration of the Cold War. NATO’s only way of stopping a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was tactical nukes. There were just too many Soviet tanks and troops to survive any other way.
An argument could be made that the sacrifice of the German people did indeed save western Europe from Soviet Communism. German soldiers and officers fought for lots of reasons (but not to take over the world), one of which was to save Europe from communism. Just like our guys fight against terrorism (but not too enlarge our neoEmpire).
What if Germany hadn’t been there? Would Stalin have conquered all of Europe by ’42 or ’43? If so, as dark as the world appears now, it would likely look a lot darker. Anyway, it’s just a thought experiment … please no one accuse me of being a nazi sympathizer!
Perhaps the American people, the only ones that I care about, would have been better off if we had not entered
WWII. Gee, I wonder why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor after we cut off all their oil supply?????
Lindburgh was right, we should have stayed out of WWII.
Because expansionist and racist German and Japanese superpowers bent on conquering Britain/Russia/China/ME/Africa would’ve then just minded their own business and the world would’ve been an okay or better place — is that what you believe?
Lindbergh? you have to be kidding.
The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever
“He was one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best–selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step – the Lindy Hop – he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Charles Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. Together this oddest of couples – one a brilliant surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies – embarked on a secret quest to achieve immortality.’ snip
“World-famous after his pioneering 1927 nonstop transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh, says Friedman, thought he was a god, and after a 1928 otherworldly experience in the Utah desert, he committed himself to exploring the science of eternal life. His sister-in-law’s damaged heart valve led Lindbergh to seek out Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel, whose vascular-suturing technique made open-heart surgery and other advances possible. The pair embarked on an immortality project at New York’s Rockefeller Institute. Utilizing Carrel’s expertise with tissue culture and Lindbergh’s mechanical engineering genius, they kept extracted organs alive and functioning for weeks at a time. As Friedman (A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis) demonstrates, these biological experiments were integral to the pair’s obsession with eugenics, their belief that the white race was endangered by lesser organisms and to Lindbergh’s later enthusiasm for the Nazis. Friedman, who has written for GQ and Esquire, makes complex science accessible and serves as an absorbing cautionary tale on how two heroic reputations were marred by fascism and anti-Semitism.”
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Skippy… his father was a nut job too!
Upon careful reading I find it is “Fuzzy Mouse” and not Yves Smith, that “highly recommends this”. I too have looked at only the beginning, but what I saw appalled me.
IMO, what I saw was not a historical explanation, but a propaganda piece that seems to want to perpetuate the K and USA view that WWII was about Hiitler, a minor charachter in the larger picture.
Kudos to the readers, who seemed to have a more continental perspective, and realize “there is more to the story”.
To really emphasis just how appropriate mentioning Hitler, etc on a financial blog really is:
How much more of what’s going on do people reckon the democratic public will put up with before they start voting for ultra-extremist parties?
another interesting thing about hitler/nazi/WWII was the burning of the reichstag…. we know the fasists did it, and blamed the communists, which in turn caused the population to allow/support the removal of the communists and allowed for the hard core takeover of the reichstag by the fascists,now having enough votes to pass the new laws hitler rode to power on….
this is like today
we have 9/11… a thing that may have had muslim extremists involved, but at the very least they(whether they knew it or not)were protected by the US gov’t.the ensuing damage caused that cultural jolt that allowed the patriot act and the unfettered march to war, then to occupation… all the while these financial crimes/takeovers were ongoing… and no one seemed to notice…except for a scant few of us…
germans got their homeland defense and we got ours…. bush and the democrats waged a war on freedom.. and we americans are losing..and all these financial crimes and global takeovers are marching forward… there is never just a one prong attack.
Of course, history may be rhyming quite accidentally. Nevertheless, an astute and interesting observation!
The key point being that declaring a “State emergency” let Hitler suspend the German Constitution and push through the Enabling Law.
9/11 allowed George Dubya to declare a “State emergency” and push through the Patriot Act, which has effectively suspended and set aside the American Constitution.
Antifa, yes, an exact parrallel. But Bushie couldn’t make the cut for Absolute Dictator. i guess he just looked too ridiculous in that “macho” Mission Accomplished get-up. And he lacked Hitler’s Rhetorical Genius. Then they tried the “Orator” Obama, but he couldn’t make the cut, for several reasons. No, not Mitt. That’s why they’re pushing Paul Ryan, shirtless, aggressive in his Ultraconservative Rhetoric. Still, no genius there. It’s just re-runs and Reality TV from here on out. Maybe its because they use canned “applause and shout” tracks at those canned “speech” events. Really bad theatre.
Edit: parallel
No, they’re not pushing Ryan because they think he’d make a good dictator, they’re pushing Ryan because they know he’s a good house n*****.
Given the way power works these days, of the people you mention it is Romney who is the most likely candidate to step off the plantation.
I’m not saying that’s likely, mind you. Or that if he stepped off he’d necessarily step off in a liberal-left direction, just that he has the most capacity to do it.
WW2 never ended. And I am sick of blatant documentaries and other “histories” that not only disinform (1871 was when the Germans became a nation, not an empire, and tons of other implied nonsense) but omit key pieces of information shamelessly. This was a tired old piece of propaganda which failed to equally blame the Brits and us and laid the whole thing in the lap of Germany. If the Germans had secured access to oil we’d all be Germans today, including the Jews. Instead they ran their factories 24/7 to produce enough war materiel, etc. Arbeit Macht Frei. We blocked Germany from oil and almost lost, the Brits did too, and the Russians fought to the bitter end to defend stalingrad and the oil in the south. There was no ambiguity about what everyone wanted. Interesting we are again so compelled to secure oil today in an age that would prefer solar and wind. IT is because you can’t run a military on solar and wind. So at least the battle with China is preempted even though we sacrificed our economies. I think someone should do a parody of this kind of propaganda – have a narrator take the stage and prompt us through a blatant, merciless satire of this kind of reportage. The narrator could still be jeremy Irons, but he should be doing his knock-out imitation of Boris Karloff.
And shall it not be a wonder beyond all comprehension to the humans of the 22nd and 28th and 39th Centuries, whenever they ponder the short span of years from 1900 to 2050 or so, that their own ancestors foolishly drained this gigantic pool of concentrated hydrocarbon energy from out of the Earth and generally used it all up by fighting global and endless wars with it, over it, and for it?
As if oil were more precious than blood?
What the hell were they thinking?
Antifa, right, but to Them, oil IS more precious than blood. War = loot/spoils. They love money more than blood, no doubt. They worship money: Their God. In their universe, “money” conquers death. “Money” means “eternal life.”
Murdoch owns the “National Geographic” channel. For many of you questioning this documentary, there’s your answer.
Much of the argument here is mired in a fixation with the symptoms of the disease of fascism, guaranteed to mistake the forest for the trees.
As we all should know, the ideology of fascism began with what Mussolini called corporatism; the fusion of corporate/finance power with the state. Whenever the normative ‘democratic’ or ‘republican’ institutions of a nation are mortally weakened, conditions arise that favor the consolidation of the existing power structure into a corporatist governing structure – ‘fascism’ in a capitalist society, ‘communism’ in a socialist society.
The progress of the disease and the appearance of its symptoms vary greatly from one society to another, but it always entails the exchange of former masks of the entrenched power structure – in our case, ‘liberty, equality, and democracy for all’ – for whatever ideology is most amenable to the unfettered exercise of brute power.
Whether that is a racialist evocation of the volk or an eternal threat of ‘terrorism’ is irrelevant to the general shape of the consequences; a radical reduction of personal and communal freedom, destruction of the pre-existing legal system, and eventual impoverishment of the population.
Fascism thrives on inculcating cults of personality. As long as we’re arguing about whether Obama is like Hitler, we’re playing their game. And we’re missing the essential truth that both were products of essentially the same forces; an unholy transnational alliance of western financial/corporate power that will always take and wield all the power it can, in whatever nation is handy for its purposes, given half a chance.
When the Supreme Court selected George Bush as President in 2000, a reporter asked Bill Clinton if he was surprised.
“Not really,” he replied. “They had the power and they used it.”
So it is with the Transnational moneyed elites, whether in the guise of corporations, private militias, politicians or whole governments. They have the power. They use it.
Unfortunately for the greater number of us, money and power can never be sufficient, in any amount or degree. They will continue to take from us until there is no more to be had, and then they will come for the turnips, and the stones, and blood. These power struggles are never settled peacefully.
It used to be said in the Forties that Germany and Japan had to be stopped. So it is with America now. It needs to be stopped. It won’t get better under the current management.
Haven’t read all the commentary yet, but have been studying Hitler recently. There appears to be much propaganda surrounding Hitler’s true intentions and what happened in the 1930’s-1940’s
The Jews apparently waged war on Hitler in 1933.
See Daily Express Newspaper headline, “Judea declares war on Germany”. March 24 1933.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/07/10/images/D-Express-Judea-24-03-33.gif
It’s a a terribly distorted story that is full of propaganda that takes forever to sort it all out.
I would recommend browsing some of Mark Weber’s, or David Irving’s work on the “Institute for Historical Review” Website to get some solid research on the subject.
http://www.ihr.org/
You need to check your meds pronto. What’s next Holocaust denial? Oh why, yes….
You can check in to what Michael Eisner has done to world’s children now that he has taken over Walt Disney’s creation.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n5p10_Weber.html
David Irving??? Seriously, DAVID IRVING???? You’re clearly off your anti-psychotics, sir.
Why is he off his meds? Does one have to be unbalanced to look into those facts?
This is the one thing Americans have been trained to not think about.
What facts presented here are wrong?
One may also be suprised to learn that JFK Admired Hitler.
“Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived… he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.”
– John F. Kennedy,
President of the
United States of America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ei9ycAOdQ&feature=related
One Should Also Take a look at “David Cole Auschwitz” youtube videos, HE is a young Jewish man who INvestigates the gas chambers in Auschwitz.
Goldman Sachs bankers are the new Nazis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbbD84sZNM8
I wasn’t aware of Rupert Murdoch’s involvement with National Geographic. Here are the titles on the front page of NG’s Video/Nat Geo TV web page:
The Heroin Sting
Forbidden Love
Teenage Drug Smuggler
Death Penalty Drug Trafficking
Nervous Breakdown
Bagel Heads
Alien Deep: Wrecks of the Abyss
Abandoned Preview
Rocket City Rednecks Season 2 Sneak Peak
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/national-geographic-channel/
Kunst, Guido Giacomo Preparata would understand Murdoch’s agenda perfectly.
Yep. Just as worthless as the Discovery Channel or the History Channel.
Basic corporate television is almost completely worthless to me now. I can’t find anything worth watching.
Re neoconservative and neoliberal, my understanding is they are ways of rationalizing breaks with traditional conservatism and liberalism. Standard conservatism was fairly isolationist. Conservatism’s embrace of the Cold War put it at odds with this tendency. This was partially resolved by accepting the Cold War as a military necessity despite its international commitments but limiting civilian programs like foreign aid outside this context and rejecting the concept of nation building altogether.
With the end of the Cold War conservative internationalism needed a new rationale, and this was supplied by the neoconservatives. They advocated the adoption of conservatism’s Cold War military centered internationalism as the model for America’s post-Cold War international relations. After all, why drop a winning strategy? America had won the Cold War against a much more formidable opponent than any left on the planet. What could go wrong?
America’s ability not simply to project but its willingness to use military power was equated with its power more generally. If America did not do this, it was weak and in decline. However, the frequent use of military power showed that America was great and remained the world’s hegemon. In particular, the neocons focused on the Middle East. This sales pitch gained them the backing of both supporters of Israel (because neoconservatism was unabashedly pro-Israel) and the oil companies. The military industrial complex was also on board because the neocon agenda effectively countered calls to reduce military spending. But neoconservatism was not just confined to these groups. It appealed to both believers in American exceptionalism and backers of humanitarian interventions (of which I once was one).
As neoconservatism developed, that is with Iraq and Afghanistan, the neocons even came to embrace nation building which had always been anathema to traditional conservatism. Neocons sold this primarily by casting nation building in military terms, the creation and training of police and security forces in the target country.
9/11 too was critical. It vastly increased the scope of the neocon project in spawning the Global War on Terror. It increased the stage of neocon operations to the entire planet. It effectively erased the distinction between the use of military force against countries and individuals. Individuals more than countries became targets for military, not police, action. And unlike traditional wars or the Cold War itself, this one would never be over. Neoconservatism now had a permanent raison d’être.
Politically, neoconservatism has become the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. Democrats are every bit as neocon in their views as Republicans. Only a few libertarians on the right and progressives on the left reject it.
Neoliberalism, for its part, came about to address the concern of liberals, especially Democrats, that they were too anti-business and too pro-union, and that this was hurting them at the polls. It was sold to the rubiat has pragmatism.
The roots of neoliberalism are the roots of kleptocracy. Both begin under Carter. Neoliberalism also known at various times and places as the Washington Consensus (under Clinton) and the Chicago School is the political expression for public consumption of the kleptocratic economic philosophy, just as libertarian and neoclassical economics (both fresh and salt water varieties) are its academic and governmental face. The central tenets of neoliberalism are deregulation, free markets, and free trade. If neoliberalism had a prophet or a patron saint, it was Milton Friedman.
Again just as neoconservatism and kleptocracy or bipartisan so too is neoliberalism. There really is no daylight between Reaganism/supply side economics/trickledown on the Republican side and Clinton’s Washington Consensus or Team Obama on the other.
And just as we saw with neoconservatism, neoliberalism expanded from its core premises and effortlessly transitioned into globalization, which can also be understood as global kleptocracy.
The distinctions between neoconservatism and neoliberalism are being increasingly lost, perhaps because most of our political classes are practitioners of both. But initially at least neoconservatism was focused on foreign policy and neoliberalism on domestic economic policy. As the War on Terror expanded, however, neoconservatism came back home with the creation and expansion of the surveillance state. At the same time, neoliberalism went from domestic to global, and here I am not just thinking about neoliberal experiments, like Pinochet’s Chile or post-Soviet Russia, but the financialization of the world economy and the adoption of kleptocracy as the world economic model.
Hugh, the “Cold War” rhetoric was cover for “The War Against the Third World,” continued by the name: The War Against Terror/Terrorism. War for .01% profits.
“John Stockwell: The Third World War” (knimmo on Nov 27, 2006) on YouTube: a precis just 7 minutes long. See how “ECUADOR” fits into this frame, vis-a-vis London/U.S./Sweden v. First World Whistle-blower Julian Assange, who has been upsetting the apple cart of illusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VxnCBD9W4
MMT has been used in China for the last thirty odd years and continues to be used and will be the reason China is most likely to take over from the United States as the world super-power. MMT is coming under threat from members of the Communist Party willing to be corrupted by the emerging successful capitalist robber barons with ambitions to make even further wealth out of a Western style financial sector. It remains to be seen whether MMTers come out on top of the robber barons. Pretty much the same struggle will occur in the West but with MMT difficult to understand, a nominal democracy and a lazy electorate that struggle could take many years.
“And sadly, as the world moves in a more authoritarian direction, it becomes more and more necessary to study history if we are to have any hope of preventing extremists from putting a new social order in place.”
multiple wars, some covert others not; secret drone assassinations; extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention; torture; war on whistleblowers; legalized fraud; rampant corruption; attacks on free speech; etc, etc, etc
by any reasonable measure, extremists have already succesfully put a new social order in place. we just keep moving the bar of extremism further and further out into the fringes and have passively allowed all of this.
this topic is timeless and extremely sensitive…bottom line when there is economic hardship (as present), one can expect human nature to burp to the limelight a radical like adolph hitler.