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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#301

Post by erikerikson »

ajross wrote: post #226
microtonal wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If you read Reddit, a whole lot of comments go from Nazi parallels (which is partly justified, but as another comment points out there are also a lot of parallels with Orban's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, Putin's Russia, etc.) to 'Luigi'. There are so many non-violent approaches that would be effective. First, there is the 3.5% rule [1]. Second, if 10%-20% of the general population would go on a general strike, p…

> First, there is the 3.5% rule [1]. Second, if 10%-20% of the general population would go on a general strike FWIW, when the best case recommendations for a restoration of civil order and the rule of law involve very large scale society-wide civil disobedience... ...then maybe the comparison to Nazi Germany and authoritative dictatorships more generally are perhaps not as far afield as you're implying. Like, once yo…

> Like, once your thinking goes beyond "just win the next election" things are kinda over as far as "democracy" goes.

Elections are not the only form democratic participation can take. We can take local action, coordinated action, talk to our representatives at various levels, and so on.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#302

Post by amai »

"when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."

Remember that, then they attack the immigrants, the woke people, the trans gender and the leftist...

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#303

Post by watwut »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #280

This book's cover/spine features swastika — definitely controversial on a bookshelf, but can lead to some aggressive questioning ["why own this?" e.g.]. Unfortunately this detracts from the truths within this book (that National Socialist Ideology is attractive to the majority in a fascist regime change-over; you cannot fault ill-informed "nazi citizens" for their patriotism). Instead of me rambling on about this for…

> I was sitting in a cinema with a Jewish friend and her daughter of thirteen, while a Nazi parade went across the screen, and the girl caught her mother's arm and whispered, `oh, Mother, Mother, if I weren't a Jew, I think I'd be a Nazi!` No one outisde seems to understand how [attractive Nazi ideology] was.' "

It pays off to point out that actual Jews and opposition left completely different writings and opinions. They did not felt free, in fact. By the 1938, they were thoroughly victimized and fully aware of it.

There was a lot of fear in Germany itself.

The above are opinions and feelings of Nazi, basically. It make sense to write and analyze those, but they dont speak for non-nazi germans, they dont know former opposition, Jews or minorities actually felt and thought.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#305

Post by brainwad »

1oooqooq wrote: post #213
brainwad wrote: post #179

Everyone in this thread is reading this in relation to the current US government. But some other interesting parallels are the current Israeli government, and more speculatively, A(G)I.

IR is more complex. They know very well what it's leading to, since it's part of their founding history. Half the population do go out on streets to rotest, while the other half go out to protest the protests. So it is the opposite of the lack of awareness/too busy with life and changes etc the article talks about. meanwhile, this is very pertinent to USA current climate. But interestingly, people will repost this, c…

The part I found relevant for Israel was the bit about how war is a catalyst that lets the leaders justify anything on the basis of necessity, including things they wanted all along for ideological reasons.

> Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#306

Post by dghlsakjg »

gjgtcbkj wrote: post #236
username332211 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen social media's reaction to that murderer Mangione?

The case against has basically fallen apart already. If he’s a murderer why does he walk free? The prosecutors will keep billing hours those. They need a scapegoat.

They dismissed the terror charge.

He is still in jail and being charged with murder.

He is not free, and the meat of the of the case - a murder charge - is still being actively prosecuted.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#307

Post by watwut »

Foreignborn wrote: post #28
Hilift wrote: post #7

No, they noticed. 90 years ago, 2/3 of the world's books were in Germany. They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening. Germans were acutely aware of the reality of the day to day situation and their previous history in WW1.

I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color. For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be hea…

Based on history books I read (mostly from Richard Evans), they knew. Nazi violence and concentration camps were public knowledge, because the regime needed to generate the fear. Germans prior war were in fact scared a lot.

This particular book is a out what nazi sympatizants and nazi themselves were saying after the war. It is what it is, but there was real motivation to not have own culpability in destruction of Germany in the open. (Which is what they have seen as tradegy, not the holocaust itself all that much)

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#308

Post by [deleted] »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #75
lukan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly. There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open. His views towards jews likewise. So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening a…

Yes. Also, Project 2025 was openly published. Anybody could read it. They aren't hiding the goals. People just don't want to bother with it.

[deleted]

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#309

Post by LevGoldstein »

nosianu wrote: post #234
jackstraw42 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attem…

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

> Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with.

We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military. Assuming like minded people wont self-organize is a bad starting point, and jets and tanks have a tough time doing things like enforcing curfews. That's also ignoring that such a scenario would involve portions of said military force joining the civilian resistance, including those in leadership positions.

Besides, I've always hated this argument, because why fight the military when they can just target the politicians directly.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#310

Post by dghlsakjg »

throaway5445454 wrote: post #171
ArnoVW wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I lament the quality of leadership at the moment (and not just in the US) I am not sure that we can equate Afghanistan with Germany. It is one thing to denazify a "modern western country" that shares most of your values, culture and religion, and that has had institutions for some time. It is another thing altogether to pull off the deal in a country that has never had a working civil society, civil instit…

The US totally blew it in Afghanistan and its well-documented how most of the initiatives there failed due to corruption and mismanagement.

The underlying theory that the GP is getting at is that Japan and Germany were easy to rebuild because they had existing institutions and a society that trusted institutions. The idea is that it is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy; germany and Japan will "remember" how to be civilized, but under different leadership, Afghanistan and Iraq cannot revert to that.

It leans heavily on assumptions about countries and institutions.

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