An incredibly salient quote from the very end of the final volume of a 3 book series on Nazi Germany

[Rainbow Droid]

From Richard J Evans, "The Third Reich at War", Page 762 of 764:

... when elderly Germans came towards the end of the century to look back on the Third Reich and ask themselves why they had supported it, they could no longer remember that one of the main reasons had been because they had thought that it made Germany great again.

Published in 2008.

I highly recommend all three volumes. I've spent my life studying Weimar Germany and the Third Reich and this set has got to be the best, overall, that I've ever read, and at this point I've read all three volumes many times over the years. That quote just keeps coming back to me. Over, and over, and over.

[secondwind]

1. 😳

[KewlKat]

2. Edited quote for clarity...

when elderly Americans came towards the end of the century to look back on the Trump Era and ask themselves why they had supported it, they could no longer remember that one of the main reasons had been because they had thought that it made America great again.

Enough said

[Pachamama]

5. [phone]

[Disaffected]

34. I would suggest another edit:

"when (some) Americans came towards the end of the decade..."

[KewlKat]

38. Fair enough...thanks for the suggestion

[earthside]

3. Just finished reading this a couple months ago.

Actually, these are available as audio books ... so I listened.

Very, very good.

So many things that echo and have parallels with Trumpism.

My backdrop for all my reading and study of this era is Hannah Arendt, 'The Origins of Totalitarianism' -- it can happen again and it can happen here.

[lark]

4. It's happening as we write.

This government is totally fascist in nature and they are making it more plain on a daily basis. It will piss me off so much when those rw fuckers who voted for drumpf have their Medicare and Social Security cut to the bone - and they wail, "How could I have known"? If they opened their eyes and watched any news outside the fascist zone of Fox, they would have known. They didn't care because they thought it was only "the others" who would be hurt, never them. They didn't listen or watch what was really happening and so let this develop and overwhelm our government, our laws and only when it's their "stuff" that gets removed do they wake up and it's too damn late - they have enabled the second coming of state fascism.

[Cosmocat]

8. They won't wail

they will take it and demand that everyone else takes it, too, while desperately screeching about LIBERALS!!!!!

They will throw their own children in volcanoes if 45 or the right wing media tells them.

DECADES of right wing propaganda ...

[lark]

11. I don't know about that.

When Medicare only covers 50% of billed (not allowable which is just a fraction of the billed rate) charges and their family members die because they can't afford their lifesaving medications or they themselves are near death - they will absolutely wail and gnash their teeth because this will have been done by Repugs (fascists) alone without any Dem help. People get real focused when their lives or those of folks they love, are on the lines. That's why we won so big in 2018, people knew healthcare is highly at risk under repugs/drumpf.

Yes, there's a ton of folks in really red states that don't realize this - now. When they get the letters cuttitng their benefits, when they can't get into dr. or get the inhumanly high medical bills and dr. won't see them anymore until they pay - things will get real. They know drumpf/repugs will be in charge and so they are the only ones who could have let (made) this happen. RW propoganda will not stand up to death or disability. It's just that by the time this is done, will there even be any recourse whatsoever?

[Girard442]

32. I've been aboard the "when Trump does X they'll see how bad he is" train for a long time.

I'm afraid it ain't ever coming into the station.

[Captain Zero]

12. This. Fox News will go on and on about how the Dems screwed it up

They will never even know, much less believe that the Republican Party stole it from all of us.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

9. Trump keeps

Hitler's book mien kamph (forgot how to spell it) on his nightstand.

[uponit7771]

6. "I've spent my life studying Weimar Germany and the Third Reich" Me too! I used to live in Kitzingen

... and was told about Hitler when I was nine and wondered how in the world such a buetiful people and place could be talked into supporting Trump !!

[triron]

17. Yes how in the world?

[Hekate]

29. My late MIL was Viennese. She said Germans were known for their science, culture, and literature...

People just could not believe the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Her parents stayed in Vienna because they were sure this would all blow over, and perished -- she persuaded two of her sisters and their families to come with her to Belgium, and most of them survived.

[uponit7771]

36. I believe similar is happening at the border in regards to trust; people just trust the US and don't

... believe someone would just take children from the parents out of sake of cruelty.

I would be shocked but not surprised if there were mass graves at the border after Red Don is taken out of office.

History is repeating itself in the fact that people think the MAGA Cult is going to pass too ... it wont, the republican party was enacting overt and open voter suppression based on a lie ... that's not going to pass.

[Azathoth]

7. Evans' Third Reich trilogy and Kershaw's Hitler biography are probably the definitive works

Definite must-reads for anyone serious about understanding Nazi Germany.

[Disaffected]

35. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

was also good.

[Azathoth]

39. Rise and Fall is a classic

Unfortunately, it was written before a lot of the newer archival stuff had been opened and thoroughly researched.

But there's something gripping about reading a complete history of the period written by a guy who actually saw it happening.

[Disaffected]

40. Yes, one of the best I've read (on any topic),

and I still have my old, old paperback with now yellow & tattered pages.

Dated 1963 and cost $1.65 Can

[BSdetect]

10. Nationalism is tribal.

[bucolic_frolic]

13. The truth revealed

Make Allemagne Great Again

[gembaby1]

14. I have these books

They are a great trilogy and a spot on historical account of the madness of the Third Reich. More people should be reading them.

[olegramps]

15. Nationalism is just tribalism on a grander scale. What Albert Einstein said was a the major threat.

It leads to the justification of virtually any atrocity. It justifies abuse by authorities in every capacity from law enforcement to the halls of the legislature. The news media has always been its greatest threat and the determination to silence it is of paramount importance. For the glory of the Father Land can justify the brain washing of children to the imprisonment of dissenters. Their are no limits once the breach is made and propaganda becomes the truth.

[Joinfortmill]

16. Holy shit

[Johnny2X2X]

18. We've twisted things to the point you can no longer point out a truth

The truth of the matter is that Trump and his regime have borrowed heavily from Hitler and Goebels. And I do not mean just in the concept of propaganda, I mean the literal content of Nazi Propaganda. Their slogans, their creeds, many times word for word from Nazi books and literature.

In our society, you lose an argument by comparing someone to Nazis, Trump has used that, his entire campaign is from the playbooks of Nazis and no one is allowed to even talk about that.

[ancianita]

22. IF45 pumps up the 2nd tier of the economy to get votes from the poor tier.

Link to tweet

[kairos12]

19. During the Senate "trial"

I smelled the Reichstag burning.

[coti]

20. I've said before that "MAGA" is the new "Seig Heil" nt

[ancianita]

21. Also, they were in the mode of "keep calm and carry on."

[BadGimp]

23. This deserved a graphic

so I made one

[KewlKat]

24. Dejavu

when elderly Americans came towards the end of the century to look back on the Trump Era and ask themselves why they had supported it, they could no longer remember that one of the main reasons had been because they had thought that it made America great again.

[raccoon]

25. I read the first two. Haven't read the third one yet because

I didn’t feel like reading about the Einzatsgruppen.

Thanks for sharing that quote. V

[mr_lebowski]

26. Just out of curiosity ... if they themselves couldn't remember that's what they thought ...

Then how does the author know ... that's what they thought?

Not saying it's incorrect nor that it's not powerful stuff, but ...

The pedant in me wants an explanation for what appears, at least in a vacuum, to be an inherently illogical assertion.

Did he have contemporaneous writings from these same people he could compare their interviews against later, is that how he knows this is true, or?

[Hekate]

30. Probably contemporaneous accounts from newspapers, journals, and interviews of the 1930s-'40s...

That would be consistent with being a good historian.

[mr_lebowski]

31. That method would not prove the assertion being made unless they were interviews with the

very same individuals (or thru some other means like the letters or diaries of these same folks).

That's why I was curious the method used to make this determination.

Mainly because I want to share it on Social Media but I want to have the facts down.

If I noticed it, most people I argue with online will as well.

[Rainbow Droid]

33. The quote is marked with notation 277, and when referenced will be found to read:

Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany: An Oral History (New York, 2005), 337-44.

[gibraltar72]

27. That generation of Germans

felt so humiliated after WW1 by the restraints put on them under armistice they were ripe for a dictator. We haven't experienced that in actuality. Yet the Republicans made people think they had when a great black President was elected.

[Cartoonist]

28. Excellent books

It exposes the Catholic Church for their complicity. They didn't just go along, the RCC was a major player in the Third Reich, just like the evangelists today.

[DFW]

37. Big difference, though

Germany HAD been a great culture and civilization prior to the First World War, and the terms of surrender were humiliating. The USA in 2016 was coming off 8 years of a president beloved by many, ridiculed by an angry minority, and one who had both economic success and foreign policy success behind him. America, after the Cheneybush embarrassment, WAS great again, or on its way there. For Trump and the Republicans to claim otherwise was a lie. We hadn't been humbled and defeated. We were proud and holding our heads high. It took Trump to destroy that. It took Fox Noise to actually convince enough people that things were horrible. We had no 10000% inflation, long bread lines in every city or 30% unemployment in 2016. It's hard to imagine anyone but a delusional person thinks we are now a greater nation than we were in 2016, although like Göring said at Nürnberg in 1946, you can convince the people of anything.