And you are quite correct there were violent demonstrations and upheavals in the last days of the Weimar Republic.
However, You then agree with me that the people looked the other way. They most certainly did.
They looked the other way as the Communists are the Social Democrats were taken off to prison camps. They looked the other way when the mentally ill were starved to death, and they looked the other way when the Jews were thrown out of the Civil Service.
And it all started with the Nazis making speechs that no one really seemed to pay attention to.
(that of course is not an exact quote)"When they came for the gypsies, I did not speak, for I am not a gypsy. When they came for the Jews, I did not speak, because I wasn’t a Jew. When they came for the Catholics, I did not speak, for I am not a Catholic. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak."
I also reject the idea that the papers were that censored that the Normal German did not know what was happening. I frankly can't remember the title of the book, but a couple years ago, there was a book that came out detailing the German press, the news articles, and how it did NOT cover up what was happening to the Jews, and that the German people, not only knew but were quite complacent with it.
The point being, and that is why I brought it up, it all starts with not protesting because you don't want to be seen as out of the loop, or not with the "in" crowd. The most cowardly kind of cowardice of all. Simply not willing to take a stand that is against the "cool" peoople.
The German people did NOT protest the racism even if they secretly felt it was wrong, because they did not want to fall out with the crowd, even before there was a gestapo or an SS.
On a much smaller scale, of course, but this is what is happening with Stern. No one wants to say, this is disgusting display of racism, because the "in" crowd thinks Stern is "cool.
To me this is the worst form of cowardice. Is this the legacy of civil rights? Is this the legacy of the struggle I grew up watching? Now, it's okay again, as long as no one wants to be out of the loop with the "cool" people.
It is frankly, disgusting.
Kai Stromler wrote:I wrote my undergrad thesis on the evolution of National Socialist thought and its relationship to German identity 1907-1933, 1945-present. My degree in Germanic studies allows me to pretend that I'm mildly qualified.valeyard wrote:And excuse me but the National Socialist party was quite active in the Weimar Republic. Besides that, you don't even know what you are talking about.
Hitler wan't made Chancellor in the 20s. He was still in prison some of that time. He was made Chancellor in 1933. What were you saying about history?
We aren't talking about the Weimar Republic when it was strong. We are talking about WHAT TOPPLED IT and allowed Hitler to become Chancellor (The Weimar Republic ended for all extensive purposes not in 1922, but 1932/33). And it was the average citizen simply looking the other way, that expedited the fall of the Weimar Republic and the Nazis coming to power.
Yes, the Nazis were extremely active in Weimar. However, when the Beer Hall Putsch failed in 1923, Hitler went to prison, and the party was banned. It was forced off the election rolls, and the SA were forbidden to wear their uniforms. And yet they continued to march, even shirtless, as a demonstration of the inefficacy of government repression.
By 1927, the Nazi party had shed its violent-revolutionary image and was re-admitted, building up electoral strength by consistently and shamelessly lying about what their platform was and what they stood for. They pushed one set of aims in urban districts to take votes from the Communists and SPD/UPD, and a different set of aims in rural areas to win votes from the clerical and center parties. And always, always, they sold themselves as a protest vote against 'the system', against the Versailles treaty that even those who composed the government that signed it called an insult to German sovereignty.
Enter the crash of 1929, and the accompanying impoverishment and radicalization of the middle classes. In other nations, they turned to the communists, but the KPD followed the line of the International more strictly than anywhere else in the world, and still called them class enemies. There was only one revolutionary party that would have them, and they were wearing swaztikas.
It should also be noted that the elections of 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1932 (that's not a dupe in the last one), once the Nazis started making massive gains in seating and voteshare in the '30 elections, were among the most hotly contested in the history of the republic. Five mass parties (Center, SPD, UPD, NSDAP, KPD), including two opposed revolutionary movements (the Nazis and the Communists), battled tooth and nail for every available vote, attempted to form coalitions once the election was over, and watched those coalitions collapse as another election was inevitably called for. With the constant changes of government, and incessant streetfighting between the SA, Red Banner, and socialist formations, it's not too much of a stretch to argue that Germany was in as much of a state of civil war 1930-1932 as it was in 1918-1919 when the Freikorps were running around fighting infantry battles with the local soviets.
Furthermore, there was a deliberate goal to the accelerated pace of election campaigns. The interests of the Center and socialist parties wished to economically break the revolutionary parties, especially the NSDAP, which did not have access to industrial-scale sources of political donations. It worked. In the second election of 1932, Nazi voteshare slipped back to 30% from 33%; given the triumphalism of Nazi propaganda to that date, the next election cycle would have most likely seen its compltete disappearance from the scene of relevant political discourse.
Unfortunately, more people voted Red than the Center interests were comfortable with. The Center could form a government that would stick if they secured the support of the Nazis; if not, an alliance between either of the socialist parties and the KPD would be able to at least call yet another election if not form a government on their own hook. Hitler's price for the Nazis' support was the Chancellorship, which he took in January 1933. Nobody outside of the Nazi inner circle expected him to be more than a figurehead. Then, of course, somebody set the Reichstag on fire, and the resulting state of emergency dropped the scales off the eyes of a lot of political observers...most of whom then headed for the border with their mouths full of crow.
It's ludicrous to think that the average German simply looked the other way and let this happen. Persistent street battles, constant electioneering, parades by Reds and brownshirts, stump speaking on a scale not imaginable today...the average German could hardly *escape* the political discourse surrounding the future of their nation, and the role of this mustachioed Bavarian and the thugs he commanded in it.
After the Nazi takeover, though, people did indeed look the other way. That's how fascism works. The populace learns not to object to violence offered by the state against others, for fear that that violence will be applied to *them*. (If you change 'violence' to 'censorship' in that last sentence......)
Me neither. Who first brought the Nazi comparisons into this thread again? I wasn't suggesting that you be banned; it's just that the mods have a habit of locking threads, like this one, that go off topic.valeyard wrote:And as to what the Nazi party being illegal in the 1920s has to do with this argument I fail to see.
--K
That somehow he is not responsible for the content of his show or his callers.
