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appalachiablue

(41,048 posts)
Mon Jul 20, 2020, 05:27 AM Jul 2020

The Path to Nazi Genocide

Last edited Mon Jul 20, 2020, 06:11 AM - Edit history (1)



- Produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2014. 'Conservatives didn't like democracy'

This 38-minute film introduces the history of the Holocaust. It begins by looking back at the major changes from 1918 to 1933 that created the political climate for the birth and rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. It explores the basis for the party’s support among ordinary Germans and the military, government, and business establishment before and after Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933.

> After 1933, Nazi leaders used violence and intimidation, propaganda, laws and decrees, and parliamentary maneuvers to quickly destroy the remains of democratic rule. Having established a dictatorship, leaders began pursuing ideological goals. These included the purification and strengthening of the “superior” German “race” and the return of Germany to great power status through economic revival and the build-up of the military.

Jews, who were viewed in Nazi ideology as a separate and dangerous “race,” went from being German citizens with full equal rights to outcasts. They were pressured to immigrate and excluded from the racially based “people’s community” that gave many Germans, especially youth, a sense of belonging. Other excluded groups included Roma, persons with disabilities, gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political opponents.

During World War II, which began in 1939, German military conquests and alliances endangered Jews living in countries across German-dominated Europe. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in summer 1941, envisioned by Nazi leaders and the German military as a “war of annihilation,” was a key turning point on the path to the genocide of Europe’s Jews. The murder of 6 million Jewish men, women, and children required the active participation or acquiescence of countless Germans and Europeans from all walks of life.
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- Genocide, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

Genocide is the intentional action to destroy a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. A term coined by Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, the hybrid word "genocide" is a combination of the Greek word ?έ??? (genos, 'race, people') and the Latin suffix -caedo ('act of killing').

The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.

Examples include the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the Serbian genocide, the Guatemalan genocide, the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, the Cambodian genocide, and after 1980 the Bosnian genocide, the Anfal genocide, the Darfur genocide, the Rwandan genocide and the Yazidi genocide.
The Political Instability Task Force estimated that, between 1956 and 2016, a total of 43 genocides took place, causing the death of about 50 million people. The UNHCR estimated that a further 50 million had been displaced by such episodes of violence up to 2008...
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The Path to Nazi Genocide (Original Post) appalachiablue Jul 2020 OP
I'll have to watch this later. Behind the Aegis Jul 2020 #1
It's good, esp. the lead up to Hitler from WWI and appalachiablue Jul 2020 #2
Bookmarking to remind myself to watch later. BlancheSplanchnik Jul 2020 #3
Maybe the coronavirus is Trump's genocide? gab13by13 Jul 2020 #4
Elderly too. And eugenics, 'sacrifice the weak' Ayn Rand appalachiablue Jul 2020 #6
Excellent restored video, threadbare commentary. denem Jul 2020 #5
K&R. Thanks for posting. Great film. Nt raccoon Jul 2020 #7

Behind the Aegis

(53,823 posts)
1. I'll have to watch this later.
Mon Jul 20, 2020, 05:49 AM
Jul 2020

Even the Holocaust didn't purge anti-Semitism; it is still quite popular. It just goes to show the tipping point is never far off.

appalachiablue

(41,048 posts)
2. It's good, esp. the lead up to Hitler from WWI and
Mon Jul 20, 2020, 07:12 AM
Jul 2020

the Great Depression which really set the stage to demolish democracy and establish brutal dictatorial fascism.

Hitler's Nazi Party hardly received a significant number of votes until dire economic conditions of the Depression provided a magnet for anti- establishment, anti democratic demagogues, authoritarianism and nationalism, as is often the case.

The middle class turned out to vote for Hitler later in 1933 or 1934 and he received the highest number of election votes then. The battered middle class was concerned with losing even more, and welcomed a 'promiser' who said he could make things right again. How familiar.

Add in the desire to decimate Communism and its elements which were greatly feared by elites and others in Germany and elsewhere and the assistance in this effort from western bankers and industrialists.

The Nazis carried out the pro Aryan, Germanic master race ideology with its links to the earlier romanticized, ethno- nationalistic 19th c. Volkisch movement.

Early on the Nazis implemented eugenics policy to the extreme and curtailed rights for Jews in every way. Their actions ultimately led to another world war, the elimination of people considered 'inferior humans'- the disabled, weak, dissidents, homosexuals and gypsies and foremost the systematic murder of Jews. What we're seeing today, and the parallels I can hardly believe.

Hitler's support from the establishment, including industrialists needs to be more widely known.

Maybe one day there will be a 'vaccine' to counter racism, anti Semitism, sexism, bigotry and 'othering.' One can hope.

- Volkisch Movement, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkisch_movement

gab13by13

(20,864 posts)
4. Maybe the coronavirus is Trump's genocide?
Mon Jul 20, 2020, 07:56 AM
Jul 2020

I mean it is killing black people, brown people, and poor people at a much higher rate than others. Maybe this is Trump's genocide?

appalachiablue

(41,048 posts)
6. Elderly too. And eugenics, 'sacrifice the weak' Ayn Rand
Mon Jul 20, 2020, 11:07 AM
Jul 2020

libertarian style. She didn't believe in any public aid for persons with mental or physical disabilities.

Cull the herd, get rid of useless eaters, drains on society, 'others,' 'inferiors,' the physically and mentally unfit, 'deviants,' political dissenters.

Nazi Eugenics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics

Those 'unfit to live.' The disabled were the first victims of Nazi eugenics murders.

Survival of the richest and/or fittest. Keep around some healthy workers, until replaced by automation.

Pardon my cynicism..

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