When Germany was defeated in World War II

[arcadian]

Were there Germans that still thought the Nazi ideology was a good and correct one even after total and devastating defeat? I'm just wondering how an ideology so prevalent that took over 20 years to develop could be completely stamped out from a national culture. An ideology that permeated throughout German society. I'm trying to figure out how rightwingers in the United States could be changed to see the destructive and selfish nature in their beliefs.

[benddem]

1. Having lived in Germany

for 7 years...I can tell you there are still Nazis there. They hate America and Americans and barely disguise their disgust when dealing with them. My hausmaster was one of them.

[el_bryanto]

2. Germany had to reject Nazism - but they didn't have to reject Conservatism

I don't know if what you are talking about is even possible in a free society, except through persuasion and dicsussion. And even then, it's likely that there will be many who refuse to change for various reasons.

Bryant

[arcadian]

4. I think it could be eliminated through education.

The right has figured that out too, it's why they want to eliminate education.

[el_bryanto]

5. That's very hopeful. But of course many of the Conservtive leaders

have had very good education.

Bryant

[Cleita]

10. That's because in kingdoms, only the aristocracy should be educated.

They believe that the ordinary peasant won't want to work for starvation wages if they learn to read and might learn something.

[el_bryanto]

13. That's of course why Conservatives are fighting literacy

Bryant

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Well then ... Thank God for the Texas School Book decision

I'm sure that will clear things up for the next generation. Education is a tool to socialize

Education in Nazi Germany got a hold of a lot of kids that ended up fighting even more fantastical for the Führer than their fathers

But you are right Education, truth and independent thinking are the key.

[Toilet]

20. If you believe

That we should eliminate conservatism through education. I don't blame them for wanting to eliminate education.

How Soviet Russia of you.

[Dogtown]

33. What an appropriate moniker!

[izquierdista]

3. The ones that did

Shot themselves in the head (or chomped on a cyanide capsule). The movie "Downfall" shows the logical end of Nazi thinking.

[Swede]

6. As Bertolt Brecht put it in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

"Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again".

[AnArmyVeteran]

7. We had to defeat German with war, but we are losing the war with the right wing.

It's inexcusable how inept democrats and President Obama have been in exploiting all of the disastrous events caused by the conservatives. But when I mention this in other threads I get attacked for daring to say anything negative about the President.

I like President Obama. I know he is a good man. But he needs to somehow find some courage to rebut all of the insane rhetoric spewing from the right. And he needs to keep reminding the American people how all of the major disasters were caused by conservative deregulation and conservative assaults against the average American.

Occasionally sticking his head out of the White House isn't enough. President Obama needs to be more forceful. He needs to take command of our country and the message. To lose the national dialogue over health care reform to a group of witless, ignorant tea baggers is inexcusable. But as they spewed out one idiotic thing after another President Obama remained silent allowing their message to permeate throughout society.

Very few worked harder to get Barack Obama elected than I did. I was one of his delegates. I worked my ass off and I donated money I could have used to pay my bills. I wish candidate-Obama would reappear and replace the President-Obama we have now. That is who I supported and worked so hard for, not the guy who is caving into the right wing or corporate interests.

[Fumesucker]

9. Eh, I think Obama agrees with the conservatives on many issues..

That's just my opinion but it's one I have reached through observation and deduction.

[AnArmyVeteran]

35. Well, if he didn't agree with them he wouldn't give in to them..

He wouldn't give in to them especially since he must know they will never support anything he wants to accomplish. Every progressive knows the right wing will never support anything Obama wants, but I'm wondering if Obama knows.

[Cleita]

8. Actually, a lot of the Germans who believed in the Nazi ideology went

silent. I knew a few who had immigrated to the US about twelve or fifteen years later whom I befriended. Every now and then they would let their guard down and say that Hitler had saved them from the reparations they were being crushed under by the Versailles Treaty. These were ordinary Germans, who were not anti-semite, but who believed the propaganda because their lives had improved under Hitler until the allies ran over their country and ended the war. Many still believed that the countries Hitler had invaded had been a danger and threat to Germany because that's what he told them. I also met real Nazis in South America, who were blatant about their beliefs and who felt history had dealt them a bad blow, a matter of bad luck. The world should be German after all.

I saw the same adoration by the propagandized right wingers of Bush. He was strong and was going to save us from terrorists! This is the same reaction. Never mind that he has set the wheels of our destruction in motion during his unelected regime just like Hitler did. The way to change the right wingers is to propagandize them with the truth to change their present beliefs to new ones. This happened to many Germans who had drunk the Kool-Aid when they were finally given the truth and saw what had happened under their noses in the Third Reich.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Selatius]

14. There is still right wing extremism in Germany.

Defeating Germany's war machine, partitioning Germany, and outlawing the Nazi Party didn't do a damn thing to destroy right wing extremism. It never did and never will. The tragedy of World War 2 in Europe is that authoritarian right wingers were even allowed to capture the levers of power in various countries of Europe.

[Toilet]

17. Look

The Nazi movement was a phenomenon. Hitler was crazy, The Nazi movement was crazy.

It was an animal on to itself.

To compare them to right wingers in America is just dishonest.

Unless you think they are capable of invading Canada and Mexico. Killing millions in the process. Imprisoning a race and murdering 6 million of them. Then you are as crazy as they are.

[el_bryanto]

21. Oh come on. I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that we shouldn't compare

American Conservatives to Nazis directly, but I don't think that's what this post is about. It's not saying that Conservatives are Nazis. It's saying that Germany had to reject the self destructive tendencies of Nazism, to reject that political philosophy. Obviously many here believe that Conservatism is, like Nazism and Communism, a self destructive philosophy that is harming our nation. At some point we need to reject it to make progress as a nation.

That's not really the same as saying that Conservatives want to commit genocide and invade Canada and Mexico.

I personally doubt we will reject conservatism as a nation and, more to the point, I think conservatism has a role to play in our national discourse even if I am largely liberal.

Bryant

[Cleita]

23. We invaded Iraq in a way that mirrored Hitler's invasion of Poland.

I mean it was as if someone did the same play, just with different actors. Hitler wanted Lebensraum and to pay a favor to his friend Mussolini. Bush/Cheney wanted control of Iraqi oil and to pay a favor to their Saudi buddies. Hitler gained power by being appointed, so did Bush. We can't invade Canada without inviting Britain and all it's allies down on us so they are left alone by us. Trust me if we could have gotten away with it, we would have annexed Canada as a territory like we did Alaska and Hawaii. Germany couldn't invade Switzerland so they left it alone. Hitler's regime made laws criminalizing Jews even though they were Germans, making them second class citizens. Right wingers are in the process of criminalizing Mexicans and other Latinos even if born here making them second class citizens. Any more comparisons?

[truebrit71]

24. Apparently you never studied history...if you had you would realize what an arse you are making..

..of yourself..

[Selatius]

26. Nazism is just another camp within right wing authoritarianism.

You can outlaw a party, but you cannot eliminate hate and the desire some have to control and destroy others who oppose them. Where I live, the closest thing we see to Nazism are the fools who run the KKK, and they have a body count rivaling any terrorist organization. The only difference is they used nooses and pistols and rifles and torches as opposed to a car bomb or a gas chamber or a modern cruise missile.

You're dealing with human nature, buddy. It's way bigger than simply the Nazis. Timothy McVeigh and the modern right wing militia movement should've taught you that.

There's nothing wrong with being conservative. There is only a problem when you seek to eliminate others in order to advance your own ideas. To be sure, most folks on the right in the US aren't nearly so genocidal, but there is a segment on the right that truly is that genocidal. They wouldn't think twice about rounding up all illegal immigrants and all liberals and having them all lined up and shot. They are the ones who should be kept out of power, for all our sake.

[fascisthunter]

27. no, they just invade the middle east with fervor

and spread xenophobia at every opportunity. Take a trip down South America and ask around about the right wing.

Oh, they also love killing liberals, activists and educated folk who don't walk their narrow line.

[el_bryanto]

29. Presumably Reid, Pelosi and Obama are in their camp?

which is why they are still walking around?

Bryant

[COLGATE4]

31. That's just silly

Try reading Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil" to see how it was ordinary germans contributed willinging to create the horror of the Third Reich. They were not crazy, the movement was not crazy and Hitler, at least in the formative years of the Third Reich was also not crazy. To write them off so capriciously is to totally misunderstand history.

[nebenaube]

15. You say they were defeated...

Well, that's hard to say... Yes, the State was defeated but too many of the actors simply joined up with the fifth column that was already here; infiltrated and corrupted all aspects of our government and slowly bred their ideology to the point where the last decade has been no less than a part of the end-game to their plan.

[fascisthunter]

16. watch the movie "Hotel Berlin"

and get ready to be shocked.

[hedgehog]

18. There's a good book on this subject:

GERMANY 1945

From War to Peace

By Richard Bessel


"For the German people — many bombed or chased out of their homes, all at the mercy of the occupying armies — this was the legacy of the Third Reich: not conquest and glory, nor genocide and guilt, but betrayal and ruin, rubble and grief."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/books/review/Ladd-t.html


As I read it, the author's theory is that most Germans were doing pretty good until the very end of WWII when Germany was invaded. Ironically, the German people felt themselves to be victims of the war at that point. The suffering that took place then was so devastating that it wiped out any desire to go to war ever again.

[no_hypocrisy]

19. Personal experience.

There are pockets.

I was invited to a Jaegersfest, a private birthday party deep in the woods for a Jaeger. Beer, roast meat, good times . . . . until they started singing. Sounded like football "fight songs" until I translated them into theme-and-variation of "Let's kill some Jews!" -- literally. My drunk friend announced to the table I was a Jew and they all stopped singing and looked at me. Yes, we left soon thereafter.

In the basement (Keller) of a private home, they have artifacts of the Nazi era like museum pieces. Daggers, belt buckles, pistols, etc. They are treasured yet illegal.

My friend (the drunk one) was an American in Germany and could tell me for long stretches the virtues of Hitler and the Third Reich. He didn't get that out of nowhere.

While you couldn't point to every Senior Citizen on a German street as a "Nazi", there are those who would return to those days if given the option.

[COLGATE4]

32. I've been there too

When they start getting beery and teary and start singing the Horst Wessel leid, it's time to go.

[TZ]

22. You know the Nazi ideology still exists fairly strongly in Germany right?

Germany has some very strict laws that surpress it, but its an idea thats never completely gone. You are always going to have narrow minded, less than intelligent hateful people.

[old mark]

25. There were many Nazis who escaped capture and lived in various

places in groups especially in Argentina where Juan Peron gave them sanctuary till the mid 1970's.
They had international underground organizations to help others with passports and transportation. One of those groups was die Spinne (Spider)
Link;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Spinne

and another was Odessa (for SS members). Link;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODESSA

These groups and others, including some in the Catholic Church, aided Nazis who were wanted for war crimes.

As the original Nazis died out of old age, new neo Nazis replaced them and still exist in Europe- and nearly everywhere else including here in the US.

mark

[COLGATE4]

28. Unquestionably there are still Nazis there

My sister in law lives in Nuremberg and is married to a German who is an avowed Nazi (dad was in the S.S.) and he has a group of friends who also embrace the '[hilosophy' of the Third Reich. It will take several generations more before this evil is eradicated, if at all.

[fascisthunter]

30. My experience in Germany was a good one... in fact

I went to a Die Arzte concert in which they played one of their most popular songs regarding nazis idiots. They are pretty mainstream and have a very large following. Nazism is a blight on Germany's past and they have done everything possible to keep it from ever taking shape as a majority point of view. The pain inflicted by nazism is still felt...

so yes, there are nazis but they are a super-minority in germany now.

[Ganja Ninja]

34. It's a pretty good analogy.

Yes there were Germans that sat in the rubble of their burned out cities and blamed everyone but Hitler. This is exactly what I see in our right wing today. Whenever anything goes wrong they look for any excuse to continue believing in their bankrupt ideology. Excuses like "George Bush wasn't a real conservative" and Sarah Palin's recent brain fart blaming environmentalists for the BP oil disaster are perfect examples.

[Iterate]

36. Oh my, where to begin...

Yes there are still Nazi sympathizers here, though few under sixty that I've met. I've found that their true feelings can remain quite hidden but can sometimes erupt in a flash of hatred and resentment, even though they live quiet and unremarkable lives. They often vote, for example, with mainstream parties. It's not common, and it's very seldom open. I've heard otherwise though from people who live in Bavaria and the Fichtelgebirge.

The ideology did not take 20 years to develop. Absolutely not. It was the culmination of 600 years of nearly continuous wars of monarchs, religious wars, and finally wars of Empires. The roots of Nazi ideology can be traced back for centuries, even though particular points stem from the end of WWI. The Nazis got the 37% support they needed to gain power from the middle class, which had just begun to recover and abandon the fascists when the depression hit.

Debunking WWII myth #11: WWII was not about Nazis v. Jews. It was a war of all against all, a war of ethnic hatred, of which that part is remarkable only because of its scale, its industrialization, and the fact that it featured the strongest against the weakest. Poles killed Jews, Russians killed Poles, Russians killed Ukrainians, Frenchmen killed Jews, Bulgarians killed each other, and Americans...well, few groups escape blame.

So, essentially ethnic hatred and economic devastation made the Nazis who made the war.

It was not a German monopoly. Every nation had its own brand of fascism as well as its own Nazi copycats. And yet, after only 65 years now, Europe is united and finally at peace. Remarkable. So how did they do it?

The history is accurately(mostly) taught in schools and not a day goes by without a quality history lesson on the teevee and in the news. It helps but its not enough.

Censorship of free speech extends to hate speech and display of Nazi symbols. It helps but its not enough.

Leadership has (again mostly) been on the side of the angels. It makes a big difference.

But the biggest difference has been a healthy, stable middle class, with low income disparity and a good social safety net for all.

That's been the EU recipe and it's working, so far. Study Ireland closely.

In other words, don't target the right-wing, learn the history, target the ethnic hate, and rebuild a healthy American middle-class with stable wages, low income disparity across the board, and a safety net for all. Do that and the fascists will go quiet.

[Octafish]

38. Outstanding post.

Vielen Dank, Iterate.

[Iterate]

39. Thanks.

[PufPuf23]

37. Read They Thought They Were Free

the Germans 1933-1945 by Milton Mayer