How did the Germans let Hitler rise to power?

Thatcher is not anymore your PM and Blair will maybe lost its post before the 60th anniversaries of the end of WWII. The spanish people have push out Aznar and its successor have remove their troop from Irak.
As long as democracy thrives, you can do something.

Hitler got its job through the democracy then it destroyed the system. I don't how he did it, probably slowly in steps. But that's where Germany have failed.

When the democracy is threatened, that's the point where you have to react.

Good point FB. I remember the emotion of 1997 when we finally got rid of the Tories and the Portillo moment!

Dont u think had it been Brits, the Aussies, americans or anyone else, they would have done exactly the same. The point is not specific about Germans, I think its more general. Humans are like that. Show them some gold and they l dump humanity. What does an average human want? security, prosperity ( Financial), Fun, Frolic, sex, etc etc. Who and how much does anyone care about any thing else.

Not many have the ability to create such a certain enviornment of consumption. Hilter promised one and they gave in. What bothers me is that while people castigate Germans for plundering wealth from the east block and other countries, were not the colonial countries like England, France , Portugal, spain doing exactly the same. No one wants to talk about it bcos that was smooth, that was hip. funny!

I think the answer lies in just evaluating urself, we are no different than an ordinary German, no different...

Good point. I think if we had been in the same position in Britain it could have happened to us.

I'm not forgetting about them. Go and look at that display in Obersalzberg. The resistance, although the individual acts were commendable, was in total pitiful.

Falklands, Korea, Yom Kippur, 6 Days War : Land is a resources,
Vietnam : Strategic position. regional dominance can be defined as a resources.

The Crusades maybe the peoples did not plan to stay they wanted to kill the infidel which were living in Jerusalem.

The Colonial war were a fight for liberty (when done by natives). The US one was against taxes which is The governments resources'.

well, indeed. Thus you can define any war as resources if you want to twist the reasoning. The actual reason for Yom Kippur or 6 Days wasn't actually to get the land in order to use it as a resource though - it was to destroy the Israeli state.

OK, I'll tell you what I think then.

1 - I wasn't alive when it all happened, so I couldn't discuss Hitler's rise to power as it happened.
2 - If I was alive when it all happened, I would probably have been living in London, so I wouldn't have the full benefit of information from the German's point of view.
3 - I don't know what was going on in the mind's of individuals. I don't know if, or how they suffered in the period leading up to Hitler's rise to power.

Having said that, I am now married to a Bavarian. Both her grandfathers were killed on the eastern front. She never knew them. Her parents hardly knew them (her father last saw his father when he was two and her mother last saw her father when she was three years old). My grandfather, on the other hand, lived until 1989 and was a decorated civilian hero of the Dunkirk Little Ships (even got the Legion d'honneur pinned on his lapel by Charles de Gaulle personally). My son has some family history now, huh?

My wife's grandfather was against the Nazis, whilst his elder brother was one of the first to join The Party (both were killed in the war).

Most Germans were led to believe that National Socialism was the 'new order' of hope and prosperity. If you lived in the small towns and villages you didn't really come into contact with 'undesirables'.

The Nazis preyed on the natural human weakness of fear... and it worked.

By the time the Nazis had amassed enough power here it was too late. Laws had been changed (remember, everything that Hitler did was legal ~ he changed German law to make it so). The best you could do was privately disapprove. Public disagreement would soon have you carted off... or even executed, and there are hundreds of examples to prove this.

Looking at this issue as "The Germans" as a whole and singular-minded group is totally flawed. It is just generalising. In fact many Germans (of the non-'undesirable' type) emigrated as Hitler rose. Many didn't have the capital to get out. Many couldn't see the wood for the trees, whilst most believed the fiction' doled out by the press.

We should draw comparisons and parallels to today and learn something.

But I doubt many people agree with me there.

i.e. to get control of the land - lets call it 'land resources' for the sake of argument.

Since Bismarck there has been a culture of superiority in germany that stills exists in part today. That is at least a part of why the holocaust happened in Germany and why it would not happen anywhere else.

The so called 'Path of Legality'. Interesting interview from this weeks Spectator, that outlines how little The Allies knew of the concentration camps :

Lieutenant John Randall discovered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by accident. Sixty years ago, on 15 April 1945, Randall, then a 24-year-old SAS officer, was on a reconnaissance mission in northern Germany. He and his driver were heading down the road to Lüneberg when he noticed a large, imposing iron gate in front of a track leading off into the woods to their left. Curious, Randall decided to investigate and so discovered one of the most horrifying aspects of Hitler’s Germany.

‘We were totally unprepared for what we had stumbled across,’ says Randall, now 85, sitting opposite me in the Special Forces Club in London. ‘I just drove through these gates because they were open. There were one or two totally dejected-looking German guards, but they made no effort to shoot. They didn’t even stop us.’

So when did it dawn on you that this was a concentration camp? I ask. ‘About 30 yards into the camp my jeep was suddenly surrounded by a group of around 100 emaciated prisoners,’ says Randall. ‘Most of them were in black-and-white-striped prison uniform and the rest wore a terrible assortment of ragged clothes. It was the state of these inmates that made me realise that this was no ordinary POW camp. As to the identity or name of the place, I had no idea. We were two miles from Lüneberg Heath where, incidentally, Montgomery signed the German surrender.’

And later on, it gets contentious:

As Randall continues his story, I realise that despite his self-control and professionalism, this interview is a terribly emotional experience for him. Describing the sights, noises and especially the smells brings Belsen back to him. But he keeps going. ‘I believe people of my age should express their own sentiments,’ he says, ‘and I can never forgive the Germans for what they did. I have met the most charming and intelligent Germans since the war, but I will not accept that they knew nothing about the concentration camp atrocities. Worse still, there were those who did know and chose not to do anything about it. I was only 24 years old when I went into Belsen. It was a tremendous shock to a young man brought up in a protected environment. I was very impressionable and, as a result, have had a lifelong hatred of brutality and injustice — all the things that the Nazi regime personified.’

rubbish.
falklands is british full stop. fuck the argentianian claim on it. the falklands was a soveriegn british territory when argentina was a spanish colony and not even an independent nation so there claim is quite frankly a joke.
discovered first by the english. the only claim the spanish have is that the pope drew a line in the sea and said everything to one side was portugese and everything else spanish. errr, excuse me.
no argentinian has lived on the islands either.
falklanders are as british as anyone born in the UK.
as for the war it was a last ditch attempt by the junta to divert the mess argentina was in at the time and to whip up nationalism and hold onto their arses. they got the seeing to they deserved.

It's nice to think we all would have been freedom fighters if we'd been around then but thats pretty unlikely really - I probably wouldn't have been. Hindsight is a wonderful thing

and since WWII Brits and Americans have a huge culture of moral superiority over Germans. Which to a great extent should be totally obsolete in today's world

A resistance 'movement' is always a small fraction of the population. So no I don't think everybody would have been a freedom fighter. But resistance was effectively 0 in Germany and that tells us something.

@sin wrote

It is only a part of conservatism. Conservatism per se does not exclude being open towards change or modernization..

And yes, I also have to agree with Rahul that it could in theory have taken place in England, France or any other country strong enough or with enough citizens. Don't forget that Germany had their colonies in Africa as well. That makes it "doppel-plus-ungut."

i think had not the germans started masacaring millions, then WWII would be viewed with the same business as usual glasses as any other war. i agree with you whole heartedly that human beings are prepared to put their sence of social justice and morality away as soon as they're shown the shiny coin. but i believe colonialsim was carried out in a different manner with much more respect for religion, humanity and the goodwill of all concerned. although to be honest that only after the banning of slavery! no colonial power bleed any country dry, because the deal was always two sided. but its a good discusion point to bring up.

Not quiet true. I remember a monument on Luneberg Heath to a group of German resistance. The story goes that one night a Lancaster bomber was struggling to get back from a bombing raid over Berlin, shot to pieces and loosing hydraulic fluid.

The 3 surviving crew decided to bail out and landed in the heath. They were immediately surrounded by a group of Germans and thought "Oh! shit". These Germans got them into Denmark and across to Sweden.

I'll try to ask an old mate who was with me working in the area if he remembers the name of the place where the monument is.

Wot I read here? Can zis be? Please explain what you mean with "not bleed dry" or "a two sided deal". If we were to take the native Northern Americans.. what deal was in it for them?

Aren't we forgetting who invented the Concentration Camp?

Cecil Rhodes

agree totally. Its 'unlucky' for present day Germans that the whole holocaust business was carried out in their name. Had it just been a 'normal' war the guilt factor would have been a lot lower. Plus we might not have had such problems in the Middle east today.

Pity that the poor bloody soldiers paid the price for a row between a harridan made of iron and a general made out of tin pots.

I know loads of people from countries like India, Singapore, Indonesia Pakistan, who are more than definite that colonial rule ( which we are taught in our history books as an 'oppresive massacre' ) would never have ended had the allies not been weakened due to the war ( courtesy hitler)... just made me think that how sometimes the so called bad events could have positive conontations... { an eathquake's sound to a girls guitar is just another good vibration }

poor bugger gets blamed for everything.

fact's a fact me old cocker.

Too true. Let's also not forget who used poison gas first as a weapon.
Against civilains in Kurdistan. And let's guess which one of the "Great Men" of history who was behind it...

Did the change the chain of thoughts

if it was oppresive . gahndi would have been executed for treason. i think the problem with trying to understand colonialism, ie the fact that it lasted so long an went from extreme brutality, to compasionate understanding, and often did both at the same time in different places. india was on the road to being free before hitler even had one vote, by the way, so please dont infere that the guy was a saint.

oh and could we please make sure we use the words concentration camp, and vernicktungslager here before we go down the road that grthro is already merrily chunddering down...
there is a massive moral and ethical difference! and noone here is a bild reporter are they.

yeah and seeing what a bitter bunch of bastards those voortrekkers turned out to be they didn't learn from it did they when the set up apartheid eh?

1) This culture of superiority exists everywhere and still does today in many countries (just read Acquascutum's posts if you want an example! ). The problem is that when you lose world wars when people have the technology to film them, people rub your nose in it a little longer...
2) Anti-Semitism was rife in most of Europe (Italy may have been an exception actually), as it always has been, the Nazis just decided to do something about it.

yes. he invented CONCENTRATION camps. The Germans invented DEATH camps. There is a distinct difference.

The purpose of the British concentration camps in Southern Africa was to concentate the lcoal populations into camps, gaurded by British soldiers thus depriving the Boer soldiers of potential re-supplying, thus making it harder for them to use their effeective guerilla tactics of attack and flee against the British. Yes, people did die in the British camps but not out of design, but due to unforeseen (although admittedly preventable) diseases like Cholera.

The Germany designed their camps to work people to death and later in the war designed new camps to directly exterminate people.

No comparison Sin, sorry.

@OG
I vehemently disagree with you. The British, frustrated by Boer guerilla fighting tactics, specifically used concentration camps against them as psychological warfare to lower their morale by letting women and children basically rot away in them.

OK, they weren't death camps per se, but they weren't anything to be proud of.

Fuck me sideways!!!

Is that Jules Winnfield agreeing with something I said???

agree nothing to be proud of, but also not to be compared with the systamatic killing carried out in the KZ. such comparisons confuse the issues.

not true Jules. Read the documents written that presented the idea to the war office in London. The purpose was specifically to deny the Boer fighters resources.

And besides, even if the purpose was "psychological" warfare, they never built the camps with the specific intention of eliminating an entire race. I think you may have been reading too many revisionist texts.

Let's get this straight.

I said Cecil Rhodes invented the concept of the Concentration Camp... nothing more.

Open question (I don't know the answer): Didn't the Nazi's start off with Concentration Camps which turned into 'Death Camps'?

It is quite a shock. Grtho is even re-evaluating my IQ.

Sin, yes. lathough later camps were either build or extended specifically as extermination or death camps.

no sin, within the context of the thread your statement was comparing those camps used to concentrate people and those used to make people into concentrated ash. the nazis first camp was in dachau, where it was basicly a brutal prison where people were tortured to death but some were released, depended on your crime.

Please see Sin's reply (??!). That maybe what they started out as, but it isn't the way they were ultimately used. Anyway these types of documents are always full of chickensh*t euphemisms - just read transcripts from the Wansee Conference...


We're comparing apples and oranges, I agree, however British concentration camps were no holiday camps (another euphemism for you! ), let's put it that way...

what did the boers learn from their time in these concentration camps? how to set up the apartheid system?

which, continuing rahul's thought, although terrible were it not to have existed gahndi may never have learnt to fight against social injustice?

Sorry to do an IPJ on ya Gideon, but I said Where did you read the bit about comparing differing types of concentration camps?

and...

@Jules Winnfield


You got an IQ??? Man, you must be rich!!!

chicken and the egg. without apartheid would there have been no social injsutice to fight against?

Ummm...

did I just invent new TT slang there?

"Doing an IPJ"

Sorry, gotta go off and chuckle for a while

sorry to do a gideon on you mate but... thats exactly my point. you did not differentiate between the two forms of camps, therefore within the context of the discussion you left yourself open to the following posts, which presume you were taking the view that british camps were and are comparable to those whose existance was created purley for mass extermination. (funny even that wors seems to small when thinkning about what happened) shall we go on...

At the time of the Boer war anyone with half a brain knew that gathering large people into makeshift camps was inviting killer diseases so the question of whether killing the Boers off was an intentional or not is not an idle one.

Incidently to back the point up the Boer war was the last conflict in which the British Army lost more troops to disease than enemy action. Prior to WW1 more soldiers died of disease than combat.

Sorry it is an old post but I am back from my lunchtime run and I just wouldn't let it lie (Vic Reeves).

Much as I hate Thatcher (said that before) the bloody Argies did invade the Falkland Islands first. What were we to do then, just sail up to the islands and ask them with a loudhailer to Clear Orff our land?

(was that an IPJ?)

no an IPJ involes 14 pages of serious semantic and contextual argument , and piecemeal taking apart of a sentence to such detail that even a well paid lawyer would wish he'd have become a plumber.

And the guys who carried it out were from where exactly?