> Instead of choosing moderation, Hitler as we all know went full steam ahead on every front. And still, even as he guaranteed that Germany would only receive absolute cold hostility from the democratic powers
Hitler correctly recognized that the 20th century would be one where large interconnected world powers with access to resources would dominate everyone else. He was trying to create a European Continental state that could compete on the world stage with America and the Soviet Union, and especially with a potential East Asian superpower.
> Germany had no real need to invade Poland, much less to do so immediately. There was nothing of urgent strategic necessity for Germany in Poland.
Germany and the Soviet Union both had legitimate concerns of the other side invading Poland first. For Germany, this would mean the Soviets would be only around 100 kilometers away from Berlin.
> Fascist-leaning Poland was, in many senses, a potentially powerful and useful German ally, one that could be easily bought off with German investment and aid, to be used if needed against Russia, Hitler’s ultimate enemy as he kept saying over and over again (and, again, such has been the strategy deployed by German governments since the 1990s). Ask any Pole about their military cooperation with Germany against Russia as we speak.
This would be a very fair argument, if not for the fact that Germany repeatedly offered military alliance with Poland during the pre-war Nazi regime. The Poles may have been Fascist-adjacent, but that’s precisely why they weren’t willing to be Germany’s protectorate or give up ethnically German territories like Danzig in return for military alliance against the Soviets. Hitler trusted Pilsudski but lacked faith in his successors.
> And this Poland invasion would result on CERTAIN war against Britain and France, which had ABSOLUTELY NO APPETITE for war against Germany.
Ah yes, the countries with absolutely no appetite for war with Germany just so happened to form a binding military alliance with a country Germany had long-running tensions with in Eastern Europe which had little relevance to themselves and did not exist 20 years prior… They were just being decent upstanding world police, weren’t they?
> Now Britain could only wage a war of revenge, leaving Europe in ruins and her own position in the Far East progressively weakened.
Are you under the impression that the Brits were terrified to break their magical oath to Poland, lest some god strike them all down?
> By the time both leaders met in Hendaye, Oct 23, 1940, at the peak of Nazi success, Franco flatly refused to join the Axis, which eventually had very damaging consequences for the Fascist war effort, as Hitler feared.
Don’t be ridiculous, man. The Spanish were in absolutely no condition to join the Axis powers, and even if they were they’d demand Algeria in return. It was honestly better for Germany that Spain remained neutral, as it made it impossible for the allies to use the war-torn dictatorship as an easy foothold into continental Europe.
> Hitler’s invasion of Poland was truly a disaster for the Fascist International, as Franco feared
Francisco Franco was not a Fascist.
> This Hitler four-dimension chess-playing, to me, doesn’t sound like evil genius. More like evil stupidity. And I haven’t said anything about the criminal, moronic policies that forced thousands of Germany’s most brilliant minds out of the country, and left them scheming to destroy his regime; the silly racism that still led Germany to treat even key allies, actual and potential, with disdain because they were insufficiently Aryan in the minds of semi-literate buffoons
Considering that around half of the significant socialists in the November Revolution were Jewish, it is quite reasonable not to want your cognitive elite to be part of a fifth column. It was made worse by the fact that the Nazis were very open antisemites while the Kaiserreich was not particularly so, making Jews in positions of power even less trustworthy. There’s no denying that it was a devastating loss to German innovation, but I think even the Nazi top brass knew that.
> the unfulfilled plans to invade even Catholic, Fascist-leaning Ireland (it sure looks like Hitler was really into invading fellow Fascist countries); and the contradictions in a mind that only wanted peace with Britain but first gave Britain no choice other than declaring war on him. And don’t get me started on Benito Mussolini.
The unfulfilled plans… Key word unfulfilled? You’re judging Hitler for something he didn’t even do. Also, fascists don’t owe something to other fascists. It isn’t like communism where they’re trying to create a new world order.
> Go tell that to Mussolini, who destroyed one of the world’s oldest Christian countries — Ethiopia — while claiming to act in the interests of the Church, who joined World War II only so he could get a small slice of southern France
Mussolini was an atheist. Also, Ethiopian Orthodoxy is heretical under the Catholic view, so I don’t think Catholics should be that concerned about that place. Italians were more concerned about wanting to rectify the humiliation of the first Italo-Ethiopian war.
> From the outside, by late 1941 anyone could have said that Mussolini and Hitler had gone from victory to victory. The Allies’ situation was indeed dramatic.
Sort of, but the German situation was also dire. Germany was literally running out of oil reserves and that’s why they launched Barbarossa so early. They predicted that they would run out of enough fuel to launch an attack on Russia entirely if they didn’t act soon. As well as enough oil to continue launching any offensives. I won’t say that Hitler made every right decision but he gets a lot of flack he doesn’t deserve, militarily speaking. Hitler, in some sense, *should* have won the war with the west. It was a Pyrrhic victory for the British.
You are on the right track. Hitler wanted to turn Germany into a country like today's Russia, a country that is largely self-sufficient and has all the natural and mineral resources for an independent life. Here lies the answer to the question of why the world's globalist elites want to destroy Russia.
Do they want to destroy Russia? They have a golden opportunity to do serious harm to them in Ukraine yet have failed to provide the resources necessary.
NATO expansion to seeding political instability to sanctions, name one thing the Globalists haven’t done that they could do, outside of thermonuclear war.
Catholics do not regard Ethiopian Orthodoxy as heretical. They consider the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, like all Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, to be schismatic - which is a much different thing.
You didn't mention HItler's declaration of war on America, which came in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Had he not done that, Roosevelt would have had difficulty convincing America that we were necessarily at war with anyone other than Japan.
I read that declaration as a matter of principal to Hitler. This then would mean that Hitler did adhere to his own principals.
It's very hard to get Hitler right after 80 years of unopposed vilification on an absolute scale. I feel that to actually understand historical events, it's very important to correctly understand the motivations--and hence personalities--of the main decision-makers. You won't find them to be either pure heroes or pure villains. What I often find is that we either agree, personally, with the consequences of their policies, and find them "good", or we don't agree and find them "bad". But if we postpone our assessment of moral worth, the next level of understanding, we can then look at their motivations for these policies, and form our opinions then.
E.g., I find it very hard to dislike Churchill, but by many measures he was "a bad dude".
If an ideology constantly promotes idiotic and overly aggressive leaders, then it’s a feature, not an accident. And if the same ideology also grants them full power, it becomes a recipe for disaster.
History is not deterministic, but there is a form of natural selection at play, where effective ideologies tend to outcompete the ineffective ones. Fascist powers have been so consistently moronic around the globe that I can’t imagine them succeeding.
And yet, in the context of the article--which I'll take at face value for sake of this discussion, it seemed to be very appealing to the masses at a nationalistic level.
Could we then entertain the notion that fascism is *emotionally* very appealing on an instinctual level? For quite a while now I've felt that Hitler, in particular, represented the actual final embodiment of the Byronic Romantic hero, and the Romantic Movement certainly celebrated the ascendance of the emotions as perhaps the ultimate human cultural motivation.
So fascism is Romanticism at a national/ethnic level, as policy?
Franco pragmatically rode the wave of popular fascism, from what I can tell. Like a studied politician today ride woke-ism, or isolationism, or whatever the flavor of the day is.
Too, you'll note that I'm talking about Hitler "in particular", and "fascism" in general, so why do we bring in Franco? Do you feel that he was an ideologically committed fascist--like Hitler--or that his actual stance was alloyed with personal opportunism? Used fascism to achieve a personal end? I realize it could well be a mix of idealism and personal ambition, but how do you see him?
Franco was a Fascist alright. At least for as long as he could plausibly claim to be one, given the Cold War and all. That's my point: for each wacky loner with grandiose, murderous ideas like Hitler & Mussolini, there was a number of calculating paunchy men in uniform like Franco, Horthy and Metaxas.
I agree with the proportions you mention, but I see Hitler, and Mussolini a bit less so, as ideologically committed fascists--more like religious belief--than people like Franco, whom I see more as a totalitarian opportunistically using fascism as a vehicle to personal power.
I see very many of the early Russian communists as being decreasingly ideological and more personally totalitarian, using communism as a state religion to justify their power. So I see the underlying unifying popular idea of fascism--a belief in national/ethnic superiority--as the core belief that allows access to power for leaders associated with this popular belief.
Because this belief suggests to the believers that the *nation* is all important, over individual concerns, it's pretty easy to slide private ownership to state control if the leaders effectively show that it enhances the overall goal of national supremacy.
In short, I think that Hitler felt a near-religious "calling" to power for the purpose of raising German ethnicity to global superiority--which he believed was its natural and rightful place--while people like Franco or Castro used an existing belief system as a means to personal power. That they may have favored the system somewhat does not mean that they did not use it *primarily* to access power, and not primarily to institute the ideology for its own supposed public benefits.
I think that most leaders, once they've wielded power, come to *like* it, whether or not they felt that way at the beginning--and so retain power long after they've more-or-less accomplished their stated goals. They often do this by manufacturing new threats, or portraying that they have not yet finished their task.
The example of a Cincinnatus, factual or otherwise, is by far the exception.
I’m not equipped to explain it, but I’ve heard fair arguments that fascism, or at least national socialism, and communism both grew out of Romanticism.
The ancient aristocracies gave a check and balance to the old kings. With fascism those don't have any sway, giving way too much unchecked power to a small cabal of fanatics.
That was a real problem. Hitler and Mussolini, in particular, often acted more like oriental despots than European kings with councils and interest groups they should listen to.
Agreed that Hitler was less than impressive, to say the least. But regarding Poland, let's not forget that they were extremely hostile to Germany (partly because of historical reasons, partly because their own delusional ambitions), so they weren't really a potential partner. In fact, they had been manipulated by Britain who wanted the war at all cost (at least the Churchill faction). Hitler made a reasonable peace offer, which Poland rejected, fooled by the Western guarantees. Your point still stands though: Hitler should have seen through this and never should have invaded, even if it would have meant leaving ethnic Germans within Poland in the cold. As a German, it's tempting to blame the Allies for the destruction of Germany and all the suffering and ongoing occupation, but in the end, the wrong guy emerged in the 1920s.
I think that Hitler, as a leader, had clear goals and committed to these goals with little reservation. He then apparently valued perseverance in pursuit of these goals as the *highest* value--and this is shared by many successful individuals throughout history.
But again, the goals themselves were impracticable and unrealistic, which is as you say, a deep personality flaw.
This is a laughably incorrect post, “yeah these two were dumbasses” as you list off literal propaganda points I was tossed in middle school. You can start your OWN research, not Jewish Kissinger’s on the point of Poland backed by a U.K. And France who were not only preparing for but hoping for war with Germany.
How much Great Britain wanted war with Germany is debatable. Some argue that the Munich Agreement was just a vile British bait. But as far as France is concerned, it can be said with almost complete certainty that she did not want war. The remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 can serve as proof. That move violated the Treaty of Versailles, and France had every right to react militarily but didn't. The German army was weak at that moment, the French forces could comfortably walk to Berlin. However, in the 1930s, France was a torn country, politically and ideologically divided, and neglected military needs.
They also had Soviet field marshals present in Paris helping prepare plans for an invasion through the Rheinland, France was just as antagonistic as the U.K. was with Churchill.
Oh really ? Is that why they shattered the Locarno pact with their announcement of the Franco-Soviet Pact in 36 ? 46 divisions on the German border, this is why the Rhein had to be remilitarized, France was hyper aggressive over literal peace proposals in regard to the illegally annexed Saar region, in response to which they put their army in the read and also moved divisions from southern France and North Africa.
Posturing and saber rattling are nothing; talk is cheap. If they wanted the war, those divisions would have been in Germany, but they remained in France.
Except those divisions ‘were’ in Germany just six years prior, you call amassing your entire army on a border “saber rattling” ? Why was it ok for France to violate it’s sworn obligations to peace but not Germany of the unfair Versailles, why wasn’t Germany allowed to remilitarize the Rheinland despite a literal military superpower amassing on it’s border, talking publicly of plans to invade through the Rheinland ? And finally Mr.Twigg, if France wasn’t hungry for war, WHY did they declare war first in conjunction with the U.K. And Poland ?
Then why did they sign not one, but two military pacts related to the invasion of Germany ? They declared war just three days into Germany’s “invasion” of its own majority German former territories and the LON frei-stadt of Danzig. I think you would benefit from more reading, I have a good book list on this subject that may change your mind.
You completely ignore the incredible trauma the Great War inflicted on GB and France, this trauma had a direct impact on responses and the strategy towards Germany in the lead up to 1939. GB and France were desperately trying to avoid another European war.
Ah yes trying to hard to avoid another war that they used their intelligence services to meddle on Poland to ensure the new admin would be as anti-German as possible. So anti-war that Churchill would regularly talk of war with Germany years before it ever came, the allies were the real war mongers through and through as a result of their Jewish influence in government, don’t be fooled it’s the exact same situation today.
You mention the millions of Chinese who died being widely known. Unfortunately I think the vast vast majority of people outside of China and Korea and Japan and maybe the wider East Asia region have much knowledge of this at all because there aren’t popular movies and shows about it (which is where most people get their knowledge of history from).
So I just finished war and peace where the underlying narrative is sort of railing against great man of history (or great idiot of history in this case) ideas, I was wondering what you thought of Tolstoy's views in general here and if you think Hitler and Mussolini could've done differently in this case? How much were they riding a ride of public sentiment and how much could he himself change the course of Germany's actions?
You’re completely overlooking the genocide of ethnic Germans happening in Poland at the time, which was a major driving factor for the invasion and reclamation of land. Along with some of your other comments about the era, it makes me question whether you know the full story or are just repeating a propaganda narrative.
From the Ukrainian point of view, there was little to choose between the NAZIs and the Soviets. The Holodomor killed around 8 million Ukrainian. It’s no wonder they greeted the Germans as liberators.
The Finns have similar mixed feelings, as German troops fought for them in the Winter War against the Soviet w.
This is an oversimplified view of Hitler and the situation at the time. One of the reasons why Hitler had an expansionist policy is Germany's economic situation. Does anyone wonder how it was possible that an "economic miracle" was happening in Germany while America and much of the world was suffering from the Great Depression. Well, it was not about an economic miracle, but about the over-indebtedness of the Nazi regime, which would inevitably lead to the bankruptcy of the state, and the bankruptcy of the state would lead to the collapse of the regime. Here is one of the historical inevitabilities.
The Irish government was so opposed to Britain, and so certain of its defeat, that Churchill offered them Northern Ireland in exchange for supporting the Allies, and they refused.
Interesting piece. Ukranians however had every reason to welcome a counter extermination of Russians... also.. they are labelled "swastika loving" as opposed to everyone else being merely " fascist leaning"...
“Idiot” is an interesting word with roots in running through classical Greece. Even in modern Greek it has connotations of “specialness” and “selfishness” . My IDIOsyncratic view of “idiocy” is that it is a refined form of “stupidity” which I (IDIOsyncratically again) define as the self centered emotionally driven misuse of intelligence. (In this “definition” stupidity is far from the opposite of intelligence. While not quite a function of intelligence, stupidity is still somewhat dependent on it. Thus the more intelligence a person possesses, the greater capacity they have to be stupendously “stupid.” Because stupidity is the motivated misuse of intelligence. )
Without getting too much into geopolitics or geostrategy (where imperially driven Churchill is an example of another kind of stupidity) Hitler was clever in many ways that made him almost a ‘SUPER fascist” in that his version of fascism nearly breaks the fascist mold to become its own “special” category of nihilistic, self destructive, violence. His cleverness (or “talent’ might be a better word) was how he could plug into, invoke, stoke, and manipulate the selfish, ignorant, trauma driven, stupidity of a great mass of insecure people to ever more frantically seek scapegoats, self aggrandizement, and impunity/safety.
His concept of “living room” carried many meanings. It meant the space to colonize and expand. It meant productive land. And it meant a comfortable domestic standard of living that he and fellow Germans saw in the United States (which had conquered and attained its own “living room” by driving genocidally westward). For Hitler, “living room” required driving east to the fertile Black Earth of Ukraine. Poland was mostly in the way, and Hitler tried to enlist it as a disposable ally whose rebuttal caused him to employ the USSR to dispose of it.)
Fascism because it appeals to, stokes, and manipulates the irrational while simultaneously denying and perverting “the world of values*” is bound to be stupid in the most self destructive and apocalyptic of ways — as we hope we don’t learn the hard way if trimp is re-electorated.
***********
*see how Timothy Snyder tries to work with this concept of Edith Stein and other Eastern European thinkers (including Havel) in his new book “On Freedom)
Fascism is a relationship between the traumatized, the fearful, the humiliated, the frustrated, and the irrational in all of us (the “masses”) with leaders who (cynically, cannily, opportunistically, or unconsciously) exploit our traumas, fears, humiliations, and irrationality to identify with some “traditional” version of “their people” (“the folk”) who are supposedly being victimized/exploited/threatened by “outsiders” (those not viewed as authentic or sincere members of the folk) and who are therefore potentially or actively dangerous.
Fascism is a dangerous distortion of the type of populism which has become cynical about traditional leadership, elites, the economy, and the legal system. ’m not sure that “genuine” or “sincere” or “cynical” are the best words to describe a fascist leader though there are certainly elements of something *like* “cynicism” and “sincerity”. Take George Wallace who was a populist demagogue but wasn’t exactly a fascist. He played on racism and populism that he later claimed he didn’t deeply believe in (at least not in the racism) . But enough voters responded so energetically to his racist and populist rants that he could probably rationalize his playing with their hatreds, fears, and insecurities as an “authentic” response to an “authentic” popular demand. And, of course, popular adulation at rallies can be very intoxicating to the leader receiving the adulation as well as to the members of the “crowd” who are intoxicating each other. Mass movements like Nazism, Fascism, and certain other forms of populism are about a “group mind” or a ‘collective unconsciousness” and a certain flavor of mass hypnosis which might be a better term than “intoxication”. But it’s a MUTUAL hypnosis with the collective mutually hypnotizing each other as they also hypnotize the leader who is also more like lighting rod for the hypnosis/intoxication than the source of it. The source of it lies in the people. (You and me not excluded.)
What’s really going on, (I think) is scapegoating ( a displacement of blame and responsibility) but it’s not simply the victims (minorities, immigrants, Jews, “deviants” women) who are being scapegoated. The leader can put the responsibility for the violence on “the people” who he may genuinely feel like he is serving even if at the same time he is enriching himself and/or “monopolizing” power. His supporters are also shifting responsibility for their violence onto the leader. Ordinary, non elite, Germans who voted for Nazis or even joined the party could later claim they didn’t really believe Hitler was as bad as he presented himself to be. Economic elites who supported Hitler probably sincerely believed that they could control the goofy comical little corporal (until they found out they couldn’t ). Today with Trump, most of his supporters claim to believe that trimp is mostly about bluster and doesn’t mean to earnestly drive an effort to deport millions or prosecute liberals etc.
"His cleverness (or “talent’ might be a better word) was how he could plug into, invoke, stoke, and manipulate the selfish, ignorant, trauma driven, stupidity of a great mass of insecure people to ever more frantically seek scapegoats, self aggrandizement, and impunity/safety."
From my readings I have come to the conclusion that he did all this *without* a trace of cynicism. He truly believed in German racial destiny. And I think that this lack of cynicism was apparent to the populace, who interpreted it, correctly, as being genuine.
> Instead of choosing moderation, Hitler as we all know went full steam ahead on every front. And still, even as he guaranteed that Germany would only receive absolute cold hostility from the democratic powers
Hitler correctly recognized that the 20th century would be one where large interconnected world powers with access to resources would dominate everyone else. He was trying to create a European Continental state that could compete on the world stage with America and the Soviet Union, and especially with a potential East Asian superpower.
> Germany had no real need to invade Poland, much less to do so immediately. There was nothing of urgent strategic necessity for Germany in Poland.
Germany and the Soviet Union both had legitimate concerns of the other side invading Poland first. For Germany, this would mean the Soviets would be only around 100 kilometers away from Berlin.
> Fascist-leaning Poland was, in many senses, a potentially powerful and useful German ally, one that could be easily bought off with German investment and aid, to be used if needed against Russia, Hitler’s ultimate enemy as he kept saying over and over again (and, again, such has been the strategy deployed by German governments since the 1990s). Ask any Pole about their military cooperation with Germany against Russia as we speak.
This would be a very fair argument, if not for the fact that Germany repeatedly offered military alliance with Poland during the pre-war Nazi regime. The Poles may have been Fascist-adjacent, but that’s precisely why they weren’t willing to be Germany’s protectorate or give up ethnically German territories like Danzig in return for military alliance against the Soviets. Hitler trusted Pilsudski but lacked faith in his successors.
> And this Poland invasion would result on CERTAIN war against Britain and France, which had ABSOLUTELY NO APPETITE for war against Germany.
Ah yes, the countries with absolutely no appetite for war with Germany just so happened to form a binding military alliance with a country Germany had long-running tensions with in Eastern Europe which had little relevance to themselves and did not exist 20 years prior… They were just being decent upstanding world police, weren’t they?
> Now Britain could only wage a war of revenge, leaving Europe in ruins and her own position in the Far East progressively weakened.
Are you under the impression that the Brits were terrified to break their magical oath to Poland, lest some god strike them all down?
> By the time both leaders met in Hendaye, Oct 23, 1940, at the peak of Nazi success, Franco flatly refused to join the Axis, which eventually had very damaging consequences for the Fascist war effort, as Hitler feared.
Don’t be ridiculous, man. The Spanish were in absolutely no condition to join the Axis powers, and even if they were they’d demand Algeria in return. It was honestly better for Germany that Spain remained neutral, as it made it impossible for the allies to use the war-torn dictatorship as an easy foothold into continental Europe.
> Hitler’s invasion of Poland was truly a disaster for the Fascist International, as Franco feared
Francisco Franco was not a Fascist.
> This Hitler four-dimension chess-playing, to me, doesn’t sound like evil genius. More like evil stupidity. And I haven’t said anything about the criminal, moronic policies that forced thousands of Germany’s most brilliant minds out of the country, and left them scheming to destroy his regime; the silly racism that still led Germany to treat even key allies, actual and potential, with disdain because they were insufficiently Aryan in the minds of semi-literate buffoons
Considering that around half of the significant socialists in the November Revolution were Jewish, it is quite reasonable not to want your cognitive elite to be part of a fifth column. It was made worse by the fact that the Nazis were very open antisemites while the Kaiserreich was not particularly so, making Jews in positions of power even less trustworthy. There’s no denying that it was a devastating loss to German innovation, but I think even the Nazi top brass knew that.
> the unfulfilled plans to invade even Catholic, Fascist-leaning Ireland (it sure looks like Hitler was really into invading fellow Fascist countries); and the contradictions in a mind that only wanted peace with Britain but first gave Britain no choice other than declaring war on him. And don’t get me started on Benito Mussolini.
The unfulfilled plans… Key word unfulfilled? You’re judging Hitler for something he didn’t even do. Also, fascists don’t owe something to other fascists. It isn’t like communism where they’re trying to create a new world order.
> Go tell that to Mussolini, who destroyed one of the world’s oldest Christian countries — Ethiopia — while claiming to act in the interests of the Church, who joined World War II only so he could get a small slice of southern France
Mussolini was an atheist. Also, Ethiopian Orthodoxy is heretical under the Catholic view, so I don’t think Catholics should be that concerned about that place. Italians were more concerned about wanting to rectify the humiliation of the first Italo-Ethiopian war.
> From the outside, by late 1941 anyone could have said that Mussolini and Hitler had gone from victory to victory. The Allies’ situation was indeed dramatic.
Sort of, but the German situation was also dire. Germany was literally running out of oil reserves and that’s why they launched Barbarossa so early. They predicted that they would run out of enough fuel to launch an attack on Russia entirely if they didn’t act soon. As well as enough oil to continue launching any offensives. I won’t say that Hitler made every right decision but he gets a lot of flack he doesn’t deserve, militarily speaking. Hitler, in some sense, *should* have won the war with the west. It was a Pyrrhic victory for the British.
You are on the right track. Hitler wanted to turn Germany into a country like today's Russia, a country that is largely self-sufficient and has all the natural and mineral resources for an independent life. Here lies the answer to the question of why the world's globalist elites want to destroy Russia.
Do they want to destroy Russia? They have a golden opportunity to do serious harm to them in Ukraine yet have failed to provide the resources necessary.
Wanting something and having the means to do it are two totally different things.
They must not be very powerful then.
That’s the crux of western dominance. It’s not as powerful as the elites imagined it.
Of course they want to destroy Russia. From
NATO expansion to seeding political instability to sanctions, name one thing the Globalists haven’t done that they could do, outside of thermonuclear war.
Catholics do not regard Ethiopian Orthodoxy as heretical. They consider the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, like all Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, to be schismatic - which is a much different thing.
You didn't mention HItler's declaration of war on America, which came in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Had he not done that, Roosevelt would have had difficulty convincing America that we were necessarily at war with anyone other than Japan.
I read that declaration as a matter of principal to Hitler. This then would mean that Hitler did adhere to his own principals.
It's very hard to get Hitler right after 80 years of unopposed vilification on an absolute scale. I feel that to actually understand historical events, it's very important to correctly understand the motivations--and hence personalities--of the main decision-makers. You won't find them to be either pure heroes or pure villains. What I often find is that we either agree, personally, with the consequences of their policies, and find them "good", or we don't agree and find them "bad". But if we postpone our assessment of moral worth, the next level of understanding, we can then look at their motivations for these policies, and form our opinions then.
E.g., I find it very hard to dislike Churchill, but by many measures he was "a bad dude".
If an ideology constantly promotes idiotic and overly aggressive leaders, then it’s a feature, not an accident. And if the same ideology also grants them full power, it becomes a recipe for disaster.
History is not deterministic, but there is a form of natural selection at play, where effective ideologies tend to outcompete the ineffective ones. Fascist powers have been so consistently moronic around the globe that I can’t imagine them succeeding.
And yet, in the context of the article--which I'll take at face value for sake of this discussion, it seemed to be very appealing to the masses at a nationalistic level.
Could we then entertain the notion that fascism is *emotionally* very appealing on an instinctual level? For quite a while now I've felt that Hitler, in particular, represented the actual final embodiment of the Byronic Romantic hero, and the Romantic Movement certainly celebrated the ascendance of the emotions as perhaps the ultimate human cultural motivation.
So fascism is Romanticism at a national/ethnic level, as policy?
I don't know, does Franco look like a dashing Romantic hero to you?
Franco pragmatically rode the wave of popular fascism, from what I can tell. Like a studied politician today ride woke-ism, or isolationism, or whatever the flavor of the day is.
Too, you'll note that I'm talking about Hitler "in particular", and "fascism" in general, so why do we bring in Franco? Do you feel that he was an ideologically committed fascist--like Hitler--or that his actual stance was alloyed with personal opportunism? Used fascism to achieve a personal end? I realize it could well be a mix of idealism and personal ambition, but how do you see him?
How might he compare to Castro, e.g., vs Hitler?
Franco was a Fascist alright. At least for as long as he could plausibly claim to be one, given the Cold War and all. That's my point: for each wacky loner with grandiose, murderous ideas like Hitler & Mussolini, there was a number of calculating paunchy men in uniform like Franco, Horthy and Metaxas.
I agree with the proportions you mention, but I see Hitler, and Mussolini a bit less so, as ideologically committed fascists--more like religious belief--than people like Franco, whom I see more as a totalitarian opportunistically using fascism as a vehicle to personal power.
I see very many of the early Russian communists as being decreasingly ideological and more personally totalitarian, using communism as a state religion to justify their power. So I see the underlying unifying popular idea of fascism--a belief in national/ethnic superiority--as the core belief that allows access to power for leaders associated with this popular belief.
Because this belief suggests to the believers that the *nation* is all important, over individual concerns, it's pretty easy to slide private ownership to state control if the leaders effectively show that it enhances the overall goal of national supremacy.
In short, I think that Hitler felt a near-religious "calling" to power for the purpose of raising German ethnicity to global superiority--which he believed was its natural and rightful place--while people like Franco or Castro used an existing belief system as a means to personal power. That they may have favored the system somewhat does not mean that they did not use it *primarily* to access power, and not primarily to institute the ideology for its own supposed public benefits.
I think that most leaders, once they've wielded power, come to *like* it, whether or not they felt that way at the beginning--and so retain power long after they've more-or-less accomplished their stated goals. They often do this by manufacturing new threats, or portraying that they have not yet finished their task.
The example of a Cincinnatus, factual or otherwise, is by far the exception.
I’m not equipped to explain it, but I’ve heard fair arguments that fascism, or at least national socialism, and communism both grew out of Romanticism.
The ancient aristocracies gave a check and balance to the old kings. With fascism those don't have any sway, giving way too much unchecked power to a small cabal of fanatics.
That was a real problem. Hitler and Mussolini, in particular, often acted more like oriental despots than European kings with councils and interest groups they should listen to.
Agreed that Hitler was less than impressive, to say the least. But regarding Poland, let's not forget that they were extremely hostile to Germany (partly because of historical reasons, partly because their own delusional ambitions), so they weren't really a potential partner. In fact, they had been manipulated by Britain who wanted the war at all cost (at least the Churchill faction). Hitler made a reasonable peace offer, which Poland rejected, fooled by the Western guarantees. Your point still stands though: Hitler should have seen through this and never should have invaded, even if it would have meant leaving ethnic Germans within Poland in the cold. As a German, it's tempting to blame the Allies for the destruction of Germany and all the suffering and ongoing occupation, but in the end, the wrong guy emerged in the 1920s.
I think that Hitler, as a leader, had clear goals and committed to these goals with little reservation. He then apparently valued perseverance in pursuit of these goals as the *highest* value--and this is shared by many successful individuals throughout history.
But again, the goals themselves were impracticable and unrealistic, which is as you say, a deep personality flaw.
Hitler was anything but Machievellian.
This is a laughably incorrect post, “yeah these two were dumbasses” as you list off literal propaganda points I was tossed in middle school. You can start your OWN research, not Jewish Kissinger’s on the point of Poland backed by a U.K. And France who were not only preparing for but hoping for war with Germany.
If you want a reading list lmk know.
How much Great Britain wanted war with Germany is debatable. Some argue that the Munich Agreement was just a vile British bait. But as far as France is concerned, it can be said with almost complete certainty that she did not want war. The remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 can serve as proof. That move violated the Treaty of Versailles, and France had every right to react militarily but didn't. The German army was weak at that moment, the French forces could comfortably walk to Berlin. However, in the 1930s, France was a torn country, politically and ideologically divided, and neglected military needs.
They also had Soviet field marshals present in Paris helping prepare plans for an invasion through the Rheinland, France was just as antagonistic as the U.K. was with Churchill.
Oh really ? Is that why they shattered the Locarno pact with their announcement of the Franco-Soviet Pact in 36 ? 46 divisions on the German border, this is why the Rhein had to be remilitarized, France was hyper aggressive over literal peace proposals in regard to the illegally annexed Saar region, in response to which they put their army in the read and also moved divisions from southern France and North Africa.
source Schultze-Rhonhof, Gerd, Der Krieg p99
source Sean McMeekin Stalin's War 2021
Go read the Locarno pact too from 25.
Posturing and saber rattling are nothing; talk is cheap. If they wanted the war, those divisions would have been in Germany, but they remained in France.
Except those divisions ‘were’ in Germany just six years prior, you call amassing your entire army on a border “saber rattling” ? Why was it ok for France to violate it’s sworn obligations to peace but not Germany of the unfair Versailles, why wasn’t Germany allowed to remilitarize the Rheinland despite a literal military superpower amassing on it’s border, talking publicly of plans to invade through the Rheinland ? And finally Mr.Twigg, if France wasn’t hungry for war, WHY did they declare war first in conjunction with the U.K. And Poland ?
The French dragged their feet and were somewhat pressured by the British to declare war.
Then why did they sign not one, but two military pacts related to the invasion of Germany ? They declared war just three days into Germany’s “invasion” of its own majority German former territories and the LON frei-stadt of Danzig. I think you would benefit from more reading, I have a good book list on this subject that may change your mind.
You completely ignore the incredible trauma the Great War inflicted on GB and France, this trauma had a direct impact on responses and the strategy towards Germany in the lead up to 1939. GB and France were desperately trying to avoid another European war.
Ah yes trying to hard to avoid another war that they used their intelligence services to meddle on Poland to ensure the new admin would be as anti-German as possible. So anti-war that Churchill would regularly talk of war with Germany years before it ever came, the allies were the real war mongers through and through as a result of their Jewish influence in government, don’t be fooled it’s the exact same situation today.
You mention the millions of Chinese who died being widely known. Unfortunately I think the vast vast majority of people outside of China and Korea and Japan and maybe the wider East Asia region have much knowledge of this at all because there aren’t popular movies and shows about it (which is where most people get their knowledge of history from).
So I just finished war and peace where the underlying narrative is sort of railing against great man of history (or great idiot of history in this case) ideas, I was wondering what you thought of Tolstoy's views in general here and if you think Hitler and Mussolini could've done differently in this case? How much were they riding a ride of public sentiment and how much could he himself change the course of Germany's actions?
I love War and Peace. I think Tolstoy has a very appropriate take on just how important decisive figures are in history
Interesting post, David!
You’re completely overlooking the genocide of ethnic Germans happening in Poland at the time, which was a major driving factor for the invasion and reclamation of land. Along with some of your other comments about the era, it makes me question whether you know the full story or are just repeating a propaganda narrative.
From the Ukrainian point of view, there was little to choose between the NAZIs and the Soviets. The Holodomor killed around 8 million Ukrainian. It’s no wonder they greeted the Germans as liberators.
The Finns have similar mixed feelings, as German troops fought for them in the Winter War against the Soviet w.
This is an oversimplified view of Hitler and the situation at the time. One of the reasons why Hitler had an expansionist policy is Germany's economic situation. Does anyone wonder how it was possible that an "economic miracle" was happening in Germany while America and much of the world was suffering from the Great Depression. Well, it was not about an economic miracle, but about the over-indebtedness of the Nazi regime, which would inevitably lead to the bankruptcy of the state, and the bankruptcy of the state would lead to the collapse of the regime. Here is one of the historical inevitabilities.
> even Catholic, Fascist-leaning Ireland
I’m a bit dubious about that. Catholic authoritarian isn’t really fascist. Fascists tried and failed to get elected.
The Irish government was so opposed to Britain, and so certain of its defeat, that Churchill offered them Northern Ireland in exchange for supporting the Allies, and they refused.
Being pro German isn’t necessarily fascist, by most accounts the Irish in fact leaned towards the allies.
Interesting piece. Ukranians however had every reason to welcome a counter extermination of Russians... also.. they are labelled "swastika loving" as opposed to everyone else being merely " fascist leaning"...
WTF does this mean:
“the aim of Hitler’s Generalplan Ost for the Eastern Slavs, even though Swastika-loving Ukrainians still don’t quite get it.”
You truly are a moron.
Goodbye
Every betting man knows there is no such thing as "a sure thing."
“Idiot” is an interesting word with roots in running through classical Greece. Even in modern Greek it has connotations of “specialness” and “selfishness” . My IDIOsyncratic view of “idiocy” is that it is a refined form of “stupidity” which I (IDIOsyncratically again) define as the self centered emotionally driven misuse of intelligence. (In this “definition” stupidity is far from the opposite of intelligence. While not quite a function of intelligence, stupidity is still somewhat dependent on it. Thus the more intelligence a person possesses, the greater capacity they have to be stupendously “stupid.” Because stupidity is the motivated misuse of intelligence. )
Without getting too much into geopolitics or geostrategy (where imperially driven Churchill is an example of another kind of stupidity) Hitler was clever in many ways that made him almost a ‘SUPER fascist” in that his version of fascism nearly breaks the fascist mold to become its own “special” category of nihilistic, self destructive, violence. His cleverness (or “talent’ might be a better word) was how he could plug into, invoke, stoke, and manipulate the selfish, ignorant, trauma driven, stupidity of a great mass of insecure people to ever more frantically seek scapegoats, self aggrandizement, and impunity/safety.
His concept of “living room” carried many meanings. It meant the space to colonize and expand. It meant productive land. And it meant a comfortable domestic standard of living that he and fellow Germans saw in the United States (which had conquered and attained its own “living room” by driving genocidally westward). For Hitler, “living room” required driving east to the fertile Black Earth of Ukraine. Poland was mostly in the way, and Hitler tried to enlist it as a disposable ally whose rebuttal caused him to employ the USSR to dispose of it.)
Fascism because it appeals to, stokes, and manipulates the irrational while simultaneously denying and perverting “the world of values*” is bound to be stupid in the most self destructive and apocalyptic of ways — as we hope we don’t learn the hard way if trimp is re-electorated.
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*see how Timothy Snyder tries to work with this concept of Edith Stein and other Eastern European thinkers (including Havel) in his new book “On Freedom)
This is such a terrible take on the history. Wtf is wrong with you people lol
Fascism is a relationship between the traumatized, the fearful, the humiliated, the frustrated, and the irrational in all of us (the “masses”) with leaders who (cynically, cannily, opportunistically, or unconsciously) exploit our traumas, fears, humiliations, and irrationality to identify with some “traditional” version of “their people” (“the folk”) who are supposedly being victimized/exploited/threatened by “outsiders” (those not viewed as authentic or sincere members of the folk) and who are therefore potentially or actively dangerous.
Fascism is a dangerous distortion of the type of populism which has become cynical about traditional leadership, elites, the economy, and the legal system. ’m not sure that “genuine” or “sincere” or “cynical” are the best words to describe a fascist leader though there are certainly elements of something *like* “cynicism” and “sincerity”. Take George Wallace who was a populist demagogue but wasn’t exactly a fascist. He played on racism and populism that he later claimed he didn’t deeply believe in (at least not in the racism) . But enough voters responded so energetically to his racist and populist rants that he could probably rationalize his playing with their hatreds, fears, and insecurities as an “authentic” response to an “authentic” popular demand. And, of course, popular adulation at rallies can be very intoxicating to the leader receiving the adulation as well as to the members of the “crowd” who are intoxicating each other. Mass movements like Nazism, Fascism, and certain other forms of populism are about a “group mind” or a ‘collective unconsciousness” and a certain flavor of mass hypnosis which might be a better term than “intoxication”. But it’s a MUTUAL hypnosis with the collective mutually hypnotizing each other as they also hypnotize the leader who is also more like lighting rod for the hypnosis/intoxication than the source of it. The source of it lies in the people. (You and me not excluded.)
What’s really going on, (I think) is scapegoating ( a displacement of blame and responsibility) but it’s not simply the victims (minorities, immigrants, Jews, “deviants” women) who are being scapegoated. The leader can put the responsibility for the violence on “the people” who he may genuinely feel like he is serving even if at the same time he is enriching himself and/or “monopolizing” power. His supporters are also shifting responsibility for their violence onto the leader. Ordinary, non elite, Germans who voted for Nazis or even joined the party could later claim they didn’t really believe Hitler was as bad as he presented himself to be. Economic elites who supported Hitler probably sincerely believed that they could control the goofy comical little corporal (until they found out they couldn’t ). Today with Trump, most of his supporters claim to believe that trimp is mostly about bluster and doesn’t mean to earnestly drive an effort to deport millions or prosecute liberals etc.
"His cleverness (or “talent’ might be a better word) was how he could plug into, invoke, stoke, and manipulate the selfish, ignorant, trauma driven, stupidity of a great mass of insecure people to ever more frantically seek scapegoats, self aggrandizement, and impunity/safety."
From my readings I have come to the conclusion that he did all this *without* a trace of cynicism. He truly believed in German racial destiny. And I think that this lack of cynicism was apparent to the populace, who interpreted it, correctly, as being genuine.
What do you think?
Incompetence is baked in... cemented actually.