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uboat53 · 18 days ago

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Okay guys, we need to talk about Nazis. Specifically, what you think they are, because the way the average American understands Nazis is preventing us from having some very important discussions. LONG RANT (TM) time?

INTRODUCTION

For the record, I'm a German Jew, so Nazis and the Holocaust specifically loom pretty large in my personal understanding of the history of the world. As a German and a Jew, though, it's become more and more notable that most Americans have a very bizarre and wildly incorrect understanding of what fascism and the Nazis in particular were like and how they operated and, when you dig into it, it turns out that there are very specific reasons for this.

HOW WE GOT HERE

One of the biggest reasons is that during the Second World War and for a good time afterward, the American South had a racial regime very similar to the one the Nazis wanted to put in place. This isn't speculation by the way, the Nazis themselves were very clear about their admiration of Jim Crow, American racial laws, and their own efforts to mirror them in Germany. The United States, when fighting against the Nazis, didn't want to do so in a way that provoked another rebellion on its own territory (you may remember that we'd already had one by the exact same people for the exact same reasons), so American propaganda around the war overwhelmingly focused on those parts of Naziism that didn't directly parallel bigotry that was well-established in our own country.

Hollywood largely produced American propaganda during the war so it also did the same and, after the war, as Nazis became the default villains for American TV and movies (even for stories that had no connection to anything real like Star Wars), Hollywood basically kept the same formula. They were stock bad guys, not because they did bad things, but because Nazis are inherently bad. In this way, the "badness" of Nazis and fascism became disconnected from the things they actually did.

SPREADING NAZI PROPAGANDA

Even worse, one of the favorite tactics to try to delegitimize the Nazis was to portray them as having features or faults that they themselves claimed to despise. Nazis were and are often portrayed as effeminate or engaging in homosexual activity and there is a persistent myth that Hitler was, himself, Jewish under the "one Jewish grandparent" definition. We also often see them portrayed as suffering various forms of mental illness or physical impairment to imply that they were, by their own definitions, "unfit".

None of that is true. There was actually one gay Nazi, a man named Ernst Röhm, but he was killed in 1934, well before the war, once it was judged that he was no longer useful, Hitler had no Jewish grandparents or any Jewish ancestry that can be determined, all of the Nazis were of reasonable physical fitness, and none of the Nazis who were psychologically analyzed by the Allied powers after their victory in the war were shown to be anything but neurotypical; almost absurdly so.

While I'm sure this was a well-intended effort to portray the Nazis as hypocritical, it also spread the ideas of the Nazis themselves, further demonizing those that the Nazis had branded as disturbed, depraved, or undesirable by using those traits as negative aspects of the Nazis themselves. Casting Hitler as being of Jewish descent might have made him look like a hypocrite, but it also served to cement the idea that there was something wrong with being Jewish. The same is true of efforts to portray Nazis as mentally ill or homosexual. In attempting to degrade the Nazis, inaccurate American portrayals of them have only helped spread and entrench the very ideas the Nazis promoted, ideas that much of American society already shared with the Nazis.

THE USEFUL IDIOTS

I want to return briefly to the case of Ernst Röhm because I think it's particularly illustrative. There's this idea that the Nazis were permanently and implacably hostile to anyone who didn't meet their ideas of Aryan perfection, but this ignores the fact that they were actually incredibly strategic in how they operated. They were perfectly happy to have Mr. Röhm lead their paramilitary wing as it gave them the ability to claim that all of their more extreme policies would have leeway in their implementation. This allowed more moderate politicians and parties to ally and cooperate with them instead of provoking the strong backlash that immediately putting forward their most extreme ideas would have.

Needless to say, none of that was true. Once the Nazis had enough power that they no longer needed Mr. Röhm, he was quickly and ruthlessly done away with. As with every person who believed that the extreme views of Naziism had room for them, Mr. Röhm was used and even praised as "one of the good ones". Like all of them, though, he was eventually killed by the monster he helped build. At the end of the day, the extreme promises of Naziism and fascism generally are absolutely real and they will be carried out once they feel they have enough power to do so without cost.

INTERNAL PROPAGANDA

We've all seen Nazi propaganda; the nameless, faceless stormtroopers in gas masks, right? I'm sure you've seen that exact format in movies, TV, and video games. Fallout (both the video game and the TV show), Star Wars, The Man in the High Castle, and dozens, even hundreds of others prominently feature those kinds of posters which evoke, for Americans, Nazi propaganda. They seem to play into the fascist obsession with strength and conformity.

The thing is, that's not remotely what Nazi propaganda looked like. When the Nazis wanted to propagandize to their own people, they didn't use nameless, faceless soldiers, they used blonde, blue-eyed, square-jawed soldiers in open-faced helmets looking inspiringly into the distance. They used bucolic scenes of the German countryside with proud looking German families. Fascism promotes strength and conformity, yes, but it also promotes comfort and familiarity. It's obsessed with continuity and shaping the next generation of the "volk". Celebrating Germans with faces and families was what they saw as real strength.

One might also note that, though Nazis were obsessed with militarism and strength, they had a rather rough relationship with the actual German military, the Wehrmacht. Though the Nazis were able to successfully use the Wehrmacht to subdue almost all of continental Europe, they did this not because of the military leadership's strong support of fascism, but in spite of it's fairly frequent opposition and even active attempts to overthrow the Nazi regime. Because of this, the Nazis relied much more heavily on paramilitary organizations that explicitly rejected the professionalism of the Wehrmacht and could be counted on to have total loyalty to the regime, even if they lacked the same level of operational discipline that made the Wehrmacht so effective as a fighting force.

NATIONAL SOCIALISM

You knew this was coming, right? Let's look at one of the most common things you'll hear in American political discussions. Everyone's heard that right-wing guy, right? "The Nazis were 'national socialists'! Socialists! They were left-wing, not right-wing!" Yeah, that guy doesn't know his history.

The key word in that isn't "socialism", it's "national". The Nazis weren't about socialism, they didn't want to give any of the resources of society to the people they considered inferior, unfit, or parasites. What they wanted to do was promote a certain type of person, the "right" type of person.

So yes, the Nazis spent a huge amount of government money getting German families to have kids and settling them in the various areas they'd conquered, but it wasn't because of their commitment to socialism, it was because of their commitment to racial superiority. National socialism isn't socialism, socialism is a system in which the means of production are held collectively and, in the case of social democracy, that profits and goods are distributed with regards to need such that everyone in the society has their needs met.

National socialism, on the other hand, is best described as "socialism for people like us".

There wasn't much collective ownership of the means of production in the Third Reich, instead the state intervened to promote private businesses owned by those who were favored by the regime. Trade unions which promoted the rights of workers were also suppressed and the state generally promoted cartels and monopolies. The Third Reich also maintained a large supply of slave labor made up of prisoners and undesirables such that, by 1944, it made up fully a quarter of Germany's civilian work force.

This entire system was designed to support "good" ethnic Germans who worked in managerial positions in the government and the large businesses that controlled production or served as soldiers in the army. In other words, the ideal was not that Germans would work, but that they would be a ruling class lording over all others. "Socialism" may be in the original name of the political party, but fascism and Naziism bears much more relation to an ethnofeudal aristocracy than to any system that holds production socially for the common good.

THE ACTUAL VICTIMS

Quick question, who did the Nazis kill? Jews, great, you got one… now who else did they kill?

Again, Americans didn't learn this because, for the most part, the Nazis killed people that Americans and Europeans were also bigoted against. Gay, bisexual, and transgender people were murdered just like Jews if the Nazis could identify them. You know the big book burning we've all seen videos of? What books do you think they're burning? Yeah, the first book burning targeted Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Research) and the books they burned were books including research on transgenderism, cross-dressing, and other so-called "sexual perversions".

The Nazis also killed ethnic minorities they considered "subhuman". These included but were not limited to those of African descent, those of Asian descent, and even European ethnic groups like Serbs, Poles, and Roma. In addition to ethnic cleansing that went way beyond just Jews, the Nazis also murdered anyone with what they considered hereditary disabilities. In fact, they ran a fairly brutal eugenics program that also targeted Germans who were marginalized, impoverished, or who had criminal records. In addition to this, Germans could be targeted for work or death camps if they opposed the regime itself, particularly if they were Communist.

WHY DO I BRING THIS UP NOW?

Well, you may have noticed that the right, and particularly the far-right, are ascendant not just in the US but pretty much all around the world right now. One of the things they're particularly investing a lot of energy in is muddling the history of the Third Reich because if people actually knew what the Nazis were like, they might start noticing that today's far right shares almost all of the same basic ideas, tactics, and even some of the same people who have been involved in fascist and Nazi movements for decades now.

The MAGA movement that seems to have taken over the Republican Party didn't come out of nowhere, it's largely a continuation of the same Southern aristocracy and Lost Cause movement that the Nazis drew inspiration from. It's the movement that didn't look at the portrayal of Nazis as homosexuals and mentally ill people and draw the lesson that Nazis were inherently bad, these are the people that took the lesson that the Nazis in those portrayals were bad BECAUSE they were being portrayed as homosexual or mentally ill so the real ones who were physically fit and not mentally impaired were probably fine.

The MAGA movement has also showed itself eager to promote African-American or gay members as long as that doesn't mean changing any of their policies that would attack those groups. Like the Nazis did, the MAGA movement holds up these members as proof that they're not "really" bigots despite their extreme views, but those members aren't actually allowed to contribute to the ideas of the group and are discarded as soon as their usefulness runs out. Those in the MAGA movement, all the way up to President Trump, obsess over heteronormativity, neurotypicallity, and promoting only the "right type" of people. Meanwhile, more moderate conservative politicians use this smokescreen to claim that MAGA isn't "really" as extreme as they may seem and justify working with and for them, just as Hindenburg and Papen did with the Nazis in Germany.

The MAGA movement is obsessed with a return to traditional gender roles and sees it as the solution to the "problem" of declining white birth rates. Like all fascist movements, the MAGA movement has an obsession with strength and reveres this in the military, but clashes with the American military's commitment to discipline and its focus on honoring sacrifice and bravery over raw violence. Just like the Nazis, their solution to this has been the promotion of paramilitary organizations such as right-wing militias like The Proud Boys who revel in violence and reject the military's focus on discipline and sacrifice.

Just like the Nazis, MAGA promotes "socialism for people like us". Housing subsidies in urban areas (mostly for minorities) must be cut, but subsidies for (mostly white, conservative) farmers must be expanded. Subsidies for green technology must be eliminated, but we need further tax cuts and subsidies for large corporations which should not be stopped in their efforts to consolidate their business. Like the Nazis, they promote the consolidation of big businesses owned by people sympathetic to the regime while using the state to promote only the interests of people who share the right ethnicity, religion, and/or ideology.

And, just like the Nazis, the MAGA movement targets all manner of minorities as the cause of all the nation's ills. Listen to any MAGA speech long enough and you'll hear all about the inherent superiority of "white culture" and how it needs to be protected from other, inferior, influences. Just like the Nazis, they target gay and transgender people and, just like the Nazis, they demean and target people with disabilities, the impoverished, those with criminal records, and anyone who holds to disfavored political ideologies. Heck, they're even anti-Semitic.

CONCLUSION

America is full of people who think of themselves as history buffs of the Second World War and it's such a huge part of movies, television, video games, and pop culture in general that somehow we haven't realized that we've developed such a warped view of who and what fascism and the Nazis actually were, largely because huge segments of our own country held and continue to hold exactly the same views, that we can't recognize how much MAGA mirrors the Nazis in nearly every important way. For those of us who were raised immersed in the actual history of the Second World War and the events leading up to it, the parallels are blindingly obvious and impossible to miss.

Make no mistake, the MAGA movement holds the same views about purity and nationalism that the Nazis did, it uses token minorities to mask its commitment to the most extreme of its ideas just like the Nazis did, it valorizes the family and traditional gender roles for the continuation of the "volk", it promotes militarism outside the context of discipline and sacrifice that the military honors in order to use violence to control society as the Nazis did, it allies with big business in order to work toward a feudal state for the preferred "in-group" of people who will rule over the others just as the Nazis did, and, when you look at the list of people it targets, they're exactly the same type of people that the Nazis targeted.

The only reason that's not obvious to the vast majority of Americans is that we have refused to teach an accurate history of fascism, Naziism, and the Third Reich because doing so would have meant confronting the ugly truth that similar elements exist in much of our own society. I think it's now become impossible to avoid doing so and part of that is going to involve having a very uncomfortable look at the similarities between many people in our own country, including many people in positions of power, and history's greatest villains.

#politics #us politics #maga #nazi #nazis #naziism #third reich #history #racism #american racism

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ciaheyhimm · 11 months ago

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The Two Ministers: Galeazzo Ciano and Joachim von Ribbentrop

Probably the one of the two most interesting figures. Since I make researches mostly on Fascist Italy, it was intriguing to read Galeazzo Ciano's perspective and thoughts on Joachim von Ribbentrop, his German colleague Minister. One thing is certain: both men didn't like each other. It was a huge despise from both parties. Ciano thought of Ribbentrop as a "too cynical and suck up" kind of man. Meanwhile, Ribbentrop considered Ciano as a "hiding traitor, playing the double-agent role for the democratic countries". Fun fact: Galeazzo Ciano's diaries were used by the Allies as a proof against Joachim von Ribbentrop in the Nuremberg Trials.

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On May 22, 1939, the Kingdom of Italy and Nazi Germany entered into the Pact of Steel signed by their respective Foreign Ministers Galeazzo Ciano and Joachim von Ribbentrop. This agreement was greeted with great enthusiasm by the press: "unfailing friendship between our two peoples." Ciano wrote in his diary, a few days after his execution in January 1944: "The tragedy of Italy began in August 1939. On my own initiative, I went to Hitler's headquarters in Salzburg and was suddenly confronted with the cold and cynical Germanic determination to provoke the conflict. The alliance between Italy and Germany had been signed in May. I had opposed it, making every effort to delay such a step, or at least make it ineffective. There was no reason, on the other hand, in my opinion, to bind oneself for life and death to the fate of Nazi Germany. I had favored, it is true, a policy of cooperation, because of our geographic location, because we can and should detest, but not ignore that eighty million Germans brutally burden the heart of Europe. The decision to cement the alliance was made suddenly by Mussolini, while I was in Milan with Ribbentrop. Several American newspapers had published that the Lombard metropolis had welcomed the Reich Foreign Ministry with blatant hostility, and this was evidence of Mussolini's diminished personal prestige. He was in a state of rage. By telephone he ordered me to accept the German demands for an alliance, which I had held in abeyance for more than a year and hoped to send off again. Thus was born the "Pact of Steel." This decision, which was then to have such a disastrous influence on the life and future of the Italian people, was due solely to a spiteful reaction on the part of the dictator to certain rash and baseless statements in some foreign newspapers." Actually Mussolini is worried because subsequent to the Pact of Steel the Nazis assure him that they do not want to wage war for the time being, but he is beginning to be not so sure. Italy in 39' is completely depleted, exhausted by the Ethiopian War and the intervention in Spain on the side of Franco, later the winner of the civil war. Despite the positive outcome, wars cost huge sums of money and the Italian budget suffers greatly; entering a world war in this condition would be difficult to sustain. Galeazzo Ciano, Foreign Minister as well as Mussolini's son-in-law, writes in his diary in early August, "the time has come to see how things stand: the game is too big."

On August 11 Ciano flies to Germany, is sent to von Ribbentrop with instructions to explain to him that to wage war at that time would be madness. On the question of Poland, the Kingdom Minister asks his peer, "do you want Danzig?" von Ribbentrop replies, "not anymore, we want war." Later, during the reception, Ciano approaches one of his aides and says in his ear, "we are at blows." Ciano, worried, wonders if the Germans have considered the likely intervention of England and France and how they intend to deal with them. But Ribbentrop is sure, they will not dare to intervene, Germany will invade Poland and have a free field. It is a bet on the non-intervention of the Western powers, as in 1914, when Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany invaded Belgium sure of no consequences from England. This time they really make the bet: von Ribbentrop proposes to Ciano that if England and France stayed out then Italy would give Germany a Renaissance painting; if not, Germany would give Italy a collection of ancient German weapons. But Ribbentrop is sure: "We will wage war and it will not become a world war, because France and England will not dare to intervene."

Ciano returns to Rome, and it is now clear that the Nazis are about to invade Poland, as well as that Hitler expects Fascist Italy, as declared at the 1937 Berlin Assembly by Mussolini, to march with its ally all the way. But the Führer does not know that Italy is prepared to hold out to avoid imminent catastrophe given the weakness of the army. When the Duce finally comes forward and confesses his country's total unpreparedness, the Germans first turn up their noses, then they are fine with it as long as Italy's neutrality is not flaunted too much around. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland triggering the tremendous conflict that for six years displayed the greatest atrocities in human history. Italy would enter it about a year later when during the famous Piazza Venezia speech on June 10, 1940, Mussolini announced that "The declaration of war has already been delivered to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France." It was "the hour of irrevocable decisions" that led Mussolini and the Fascist regime to its fall.

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Sources: Alessandro Barbero, Galeazzo Ciano's Diaries.

QOD: What do you think about Galeazzo Ciano and Joachim von Ribbentrop?

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