12 ms·

Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

120 points by d_e_solomon 11y ago

BogusIKnow 11y ago
"Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893 – 30 January 1961) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt. She is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934 and as one of the few women news commentators on radio during the 1930s. She is regarded by some as the "First Lady of American Journalism." - Wikipedia
- tamana 11y ago
  First Lady of American Journalism is a horribly sexist and paternalistic title to give. It discredits her work. Reflective of the sexism of the time, though, that even a great leader of a field is imagined only as the Wife of something.
- dang 11y ago
  Dorothy Thompson is a fascinating and important historical figure, hugely famous in her prime, but much diminished when she died and largely forgotten now. She is due to be rehabilitated. I'd be surprised if it didn't happen in the next few years. I've been told that http://www.amazon.com/American-Cassandra-Life-Dorothy-Thompson/dp/0316507245 http://www.amazon.com/American-Cassandra-Life-Dorothy-Thomps... is a good bio.
  - emgoldstein 11y ago
    Thompson, like many (if not most) American journalists of her time, was a Stalin apologist in the Duranty circle: http://spartacus-educational.com/USAthompsonD.htm http://spartacus-educational.com/USAthompsonD.htm I'm not sure any intellectual who collaborated with Hitler should get points for warning the world about Stalin. Or vice versa. If Harper's had written an article called "Who Goes Bolshevik" in 1941, it could have been much shorter: "pretty much everyone." Or at least, everyone who mattered. If you wanted the truth about Stalin in 1941, you'd do much better with the Voelkischer Beobachter than the New York Times.
    - dang 11y ago
      I don't know the details but that link doesn't come close to establishing that she was a Stalin apologist.
      - pvg 11y ago
        It doesn't seem like it at all. Things she apparently wrote in 1946: The West experienced moments of doubt, Thompson wrote, in which the outcome of communist belief and behavior was questioned: "Can communist cultism, organized like a medieval secret order, with a priesthood, a police and an inquisition, reform itself into a modem, liberal, democratic movement?" Why, during the war, did communist propagandists throughout the world demand an immediate "second front", an attack on heavily fortified Western Europe by the United States and Great Britain? "Did these obedient claques care nothing for the lives of American boys? Were they listening to any voices but the voice of Stalin?" "Yet, we said: No", Thompson continued. "We shall prove our confidence, trust and trustworthiness. We shall hold faith that it will not be betrayed. Loyalty, we said, begets loyalty." But as Germany collapsed, the Soviet Union began "reversing every wartime pledge and policy. And not only was the quarter of a century of communist despotism to be fastened again upon the necks of the long suffering, heroically,enduring, eternally,hoping, eternally,serving Russian people -but naked and unashamed it was seeking new people to subject. "
        emgoldstein 11y ago
        Ah, but that was 1946. The (American) party line had changed -- most American liberals were anti-Stalinist in 1946. A quick google search turns up this from 1943: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11332745 http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11332745 "Dorothy Thompson, the well-known columnist, writes: 'Russia does not want to make an isolationist policy. Russia wants a friendly Europe in a friendly world, with a system of collective security. There are signs of such hostility in both Europe and America to Russia that it gives Russian leadership some reason for suspicion. As things look at present, it is by no means certain that defeat of Germany will assure a non-Fascist Europe or one prepared to adopt a good-neighbor policy toward Russia." Her views in 1946 are standard 1946 post-FDR New Dealism (after the Anglo-Soviet split); her views in 1943 are standard 1943 New Dealism. You're just hearing the party line; God only knows what she actually thought, and when. It would be much easier to fight the memory hole if we didn't have these ridiculous copyright laws, but a lot of original WWII propaganda (not cherry-picked by modern hagiographers) remains on line. It's often pretty appalling reading.
d_e_solomon 11y ago
I always thought that the answer to this question is less important than that it prompts to reader to question themselves on why or why not they would join the Nazis. It's easy to look back through the lens of time and assume that we, good wholesome people, would not become Nazis, but if you're in the moment, what happens?
lordleft 11y ago
What an incredibly well written article, and quite thought provoking.
kenjackson 11y ago
I love the idea of reading articles from this time period on this topic. This article though, with Mr A/B/C/... was bit much to handle though. Just felt much too speculative.
- eudox 11y ago
  I thought the fictional/thought-experiment setting was a very good device for this kind of article.
- HillRat 11y ago
  I would bet a barrel of reichmarks that these were real people. In fact, I'm absolutely certain that "Mr. C" is the "saturnine" Lawrence Dennis, a former State Department diplomat and Wall Street advisor considered the guiding intellect of 1930s American fascism. Fascinatingly, Dennis didn't grow up "Southern white trash." No, he actually was a famous African-American child preacher, a background that he did hide successfully (though, reading between the lines of the article, not perhaps to everyone) as he disavowed his family, appeared at Exeter on scholarship, and traveled in the upper reaches of American society and eventually to the far fringes of American, Italian and German fascism. It is a surpassing irony that his hatred of Jim Crow segregation and contempt for the democracy that allowed it led him to be welcomed inside the sanctum of those men who would have imprisoned, shot or gassed him had they known the truth of his background.
  - emgoldstein 11y ago
    Not entirely welcomed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Dennis#Sedition_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Dennis#Sedition_trial
    - HillRat 11y ago
      Yep; the other irony was that his prosecutor was O. John Rogge, one of the great liberal crusading attorneys of the day, who insisted on bringin charges in order to drag militant racism into the light of day. So Dennis, spurred by his hatred for American racism, made common cause with thuggish men who would have happily hanged him from a tree, and as a result was prosecuted by a man who otherwise would have been his natural political and moral ally. A complex man, Lawrence Dennis. (There is one biography available, The Color of Fascism, which is a little too clunky to be authoritative, but which is well worth reading. An equally unusual journey is that of Bayard Rustin, an openly gay African American civil rights activist who studied under Gandhi, introduced MLK to the theory of nonviolent activism, and ended up part of the neoconservative movement in the Reagan administration.)
batz 11y ago
The essence of any totalitarian strategy is to seize some resources, invent a necessarily preposterous myth, then in exchange for demonstrating belief in the myth, re-distribute the resources arbitrarily among a minority of people who are easily replaceable and know it. The secret is to then reward people from the majority for denouncing and replacing members of the minority for not being zealous enough, so that they can elevate themselves through commitment to the myth. This has the self-policing effect of keeping everyone in line. So long as you can keep those resources coming to your ruling coalition of highly replaceable idiots, you are golden. Read Smith and DeMesquita's "Dictator's Handbook" for details of how this works. It doesn't matter whether that myth is of a 3000 year reign, the supreme right of a proletariat, the divinity of leader, that my golf handicap includes 11 holes in one, the revolution, or even that my particular tribe or ethnic group is morally superior to your tribe or ethnic group. It's all the same shit. What people don't talk about is how these assholes seize power. It's through charismatic promises of future rewards to people who think they have nothing. They appeal to the greed and impulsiveness of the poor, it's a straight short con. The nuanced part is how you get current status quo supporters to switch sides and provide their support to the challenger. They do this with a second message that triggers the middling man's sense of loss aversion. This is just posing a credible prisoners dilemma in which if moderates and supporters defect now, they get to keep their social position, but if they hold out, they will lose everything. Arguably, this model of political polarization shows how ISIS works, how feminism annexed academia, why Trump is popular, why Occupy failed but why BLM could grow exponentially. Nazi's were repugnant, but history would show that being repugnant is likely more indicative of political success than failure.
- tdeck 11y ago
  What would the resource be in the case of BLM?
  - wildmusings 11y ago
    The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be. When you see it as just part of the broader identity politics movement, it's easier to identify the resources: moral vindication and reassigned blame for their troubles, handouts from other people's pockets, and discrimination against the perceived oppressor group ("affirmative action").
pessimizer 11y ago
IIRC, the upper-middle class and the people who admire them. That seemed to be what the article is saying, until I got to the conclusion. https://www.worldcat.org/title/logic-of-evil-the-social-origins-of-the-nazi-party-1925-to-1933/oclc/123279201 https://www.worldcat.org/title/logic-of-evil-the-social-orig...
tcbawo 11y ago
This article is especially interesting, given it was written before the the US entered the war and before the full extent of Nazi atrocities was known. I'm reminded of C.S Lewis's speech about the Inner Ring (1944): http://www.mit.edu/~hooman/ideas/the_inner_ring.htm http://www.mit.edu/~hooman/ideas/the_inner_ring.htm
- arethuza 11y ago
  I wonder what would have happened if Hitler (who apparently didn't give the matter much thought) hadn't declared war on the US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States_%281941%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...
  - neffy 11y ago
    The US would have been spared the embarrassment of not having declared war on the Nazi's, when they did eventually enter the war a few months later. The US was ramping up to enter WW2 long before the end of 1941.
  - Animats 11y ago
    Didn't matter. Pearl Harbor brought the US into the war. If Hitler hadn't attacked Russia, things could have been very different. Hitler thought Russia would be a fast, easy conquest. It wasn't, and Germany found itself in a two-front war. It cost the USSR 20 million dead to beat Germany, and cost Germany 5 million dead, 80% of German casualties. Germany was an ally of Russia until 45 minutes before the attack. Much of Russian paranoia comes from this. If Germany had consolidated its gains on the continent of Europe without trying to expand beyond that, we might today have a Greater Germany covering much of what's now the European Union. Britain would be on the outside, in the position Taiwan is now with respect to China. Russia would be the big power next door, just as it is to China now. Germany could have cut a peace deal with the US and Britain in that situation.
    - ptaipale 11y ago
      > Germany was an ally of Russia until 45 minutes before the attack. Much of Russian paranoia comes from this. Germany was an ally of RUssia, and learned from Soviets much of how to run an extermination camp, and Russian provided Germany with space to practice armor warfare. However, there is considerable debate speculating that Germany's initial success in Barbarossa was simply because the Soviet army was planning to attack Germany on July 6, and therefore its formation was totally arranged for offense, and failed miserably when attacked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv... Anyway, the Russian paranoia didn't really need a German betrayal to develop. The Russian military had been internally wiped out in the paranoid purges of 1930's.
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
I was surprised by the relatively clear description of a psychopath as being ideal Nazi material. I'm not sure if it was a widely known concept at the time or if they were just going by instinct.
- pinewurst 11y ago
  Mr C? "He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism." I didn't read him as psychopath so much as someone nursing serious grudges about his perceived exclusion from the top rank of society. Enough that he'd delight in "setting things right" even Nazi style. That was, for me, the most interesting character insight.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    I meant Mr D: "He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others."
    - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
      Sounds like he may have affluenza.
    - pinewurst 11y ago
      I think of D as a sociopath who could be Nazi or "patriot" depending on which one would give him current advantage.
      - iofj 11y ago
        I wonder if there is any real limit to what positions such a person would take. In every company I've ever worked for there's several examples of this sort of person and ... I don't think I've ever even seen one with their own political opinion. Personal advancement, or the potential for it, determines their position in any argument, including political ones. These days that usually makes them argue for "diversity" (taken to corporate insanity extremes, like every other position). I would agree with the article that given the environment in the 1930's that would probably have made them nazis. But this has nothing to do with the content of these ideologies, only with their relative success. But what I find myself at very strong odds with is the smart person who clawed his way up and finds himself beneath a glass ceiling, Mr. C. They usually have a relatively insane political opinion that indeed originates from some past humiliation. But that nearly always makes them some sort of extremist socialist or outright marxist if they were poor in their childhood, or extreme laissez-faire when not. And frankly, what is wrong with holding such an opinion due to having had to endure serious hardship or humiliation as a result (having been the rich kid in a poor school or a poor kid in a rich school would pretty much guarantee such a position, no ?). I would imagine that if indeed such a person became a nazi, one confrontation with a nazi "type D" would cure him of such an affliction, as he'd immediately recognize the ideology for what it is. Either such guys are nihilists or they have some insane party affiliation. Given the thousands of political parties in the Weimar republic, I'd be much less surprised to find this Mr. C an avid supporter of one of the many "20 party members and only their mothers vote for them" ideologies that the Weimar republic boasted.
lumberjack 11y ago
I think to better understand why people are attracted to Fascism it is better to read about the rise of Mussolini than about the rise of Nazism. Mussolini essentially was going to make Italy "great again". He was a former socialist but not an internationalist. While communists promised economic justice, fascists promised a better prouder more powerful nation. Today you expect wealthy people to be economically liberal but in those days many were attracted by the premises of fascism. There also this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICng-KRxXJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICng-KRxXJ8 A teacher creates a fascist movement to show his students how they can be duped into one.
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  > Today you expect wealthy people to be economically liberal but in those days many were attracted by the premises of fascism. Oh, fascism can be great for the wealthy. Your company becomes an instrument of the state, turning your economic power into political power, and you don't need to worry about nonsense like Competition anymore.
  - zipwitch 11y ago
    I've seen the term 'inverted totalitarianism' to describe how the US is in a similar, but different place to pre-WWII fascism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
woodruffw 11y ago
Very thought provoking. In spirit, it reminds me of The True Believer [1], published about a decade later. Take Nazism and replace it with any other movement of discontent (just or unjust), and you have a general critique of mass movements a la Hoffer. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
- ericd 11y ago
  Interesting, thanks for the link. This part strikes me as particularly relevant to the current state of things in the US, especially for blue collar/middle class: The "New Poor" are the most likely source of converts for mass movements/for they recall their former wealth with resentment and blame others for their current misfortune. Examples include the mass evictions of relatively prosperous tenants during the English Civil War of the 1600s or the middle- and working-classes in Germany who passionately supported Hitler in the 1930s after suffering years of economic hardship. In contrast, the "abjectly poor" on the verge of starvation make unlikely true believers as their daily struggle for existence takes pre-eminence over any other concern.[5]
  - tamana 11y ago
    History is always the upper and (part of) the middle classes trading placdes.
  - iofj 11y ago
    It's weird how this mirrors what you see with terrorists. Terrorists are middle-class or upper-middle-class with very, very few poor among them. I don't think that the "daily struggle for survival" is it. Rather I think that the fact that poor are constantly forced to confront themselves with reality and living with others that makes them less likely to join movements like this. Also, as a worker you'd have direct contact with members of this party (because you don't get to choose the people you hang out with). It is much, much harder to tell yourself a fictional story about what drives them. About what they'd do if given power. By contrast you regularly find insane positions among the upper classes. How hard is it to find an upper-middle-class or higher Marxist on a university campus ? Not very hard, despite the fact that he wouldn't be there in the system they advocate. Hell, there's Malthusians among them too, whereas I've yet to meet the first poor worker defending the virtues of killing of "enough" of the human race for a "sustainable population of Earth" to me. Having illusions about "grandeur" of race, of inherent virtues of one group versus another, about the "good of the human race", ... is far easier when you're not confronted with the underbelly of any city on a daily basis ... when you're only confronted with who you choose to be confronted with.
keithpeter 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Peierls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Peierls When I was a postgrad at Birmingham University, around 1982/3 ish we had a talk by Peierls. He discussed his feelings about Heisenberg joining the Nazi party (you had to join the Party to continue to be a University lecturer in the late 1930s - that was when Einsten resolved to leave Berlin). My recollection (reaching back 30+ years here folks) is that Peierls did not blame Heisenberg- it was how it was. Peierls recollected Heisenberg talking about 'white waistcoats' and people leaving who didn't have to leave, thus reducing the number of overseas jobs available to people who did have to leave (i.e. German Jewish academics). What I'm thinking here is; How do you see the end of the wedge when it is very thin?
Animats 11y ago
It's been a while since the last big, successful, popular, dictatorial, charismatic movement like Nazism. Putin comes closest, but he came to power as an insider, with Yeltsin supporting him. ISIS is religion-based, (even though it was designed by a former Iraqi colonel who wasn't very religious [1]) and those work differently. There are warlords in sub-Saharan Africa, but they're usually not popular leaders. Remember, Hitler was elected Chancellor; he didn't lead a revolution. Yes, Trump makes somewhat Nazi-like noises. Not sure what to think about that. [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-saddams-former-soldiers-are-fueling-the-rise-of-isis/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-saddams-former...
- VLM 11y ago
  The problem with "big, successful, popular, dictatorial, charismatic" is there's also an implied addition of being against us, which naturally (LOL) implies they're evil. Otherwise your big five is just Obama, as a recent example. By the full seven criteria obviously Obama doesn't qualify of course.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Just to nitpick John, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg. The nazi party never won an election in their entire history.
  - olavk 11y ago
    The Nazi party was certainly the winner or the election in July 1932, where it became the largest party in the parliament. In March 1933 elections it became even larger, with 44% more than twice the size of the second largest party, the SPD. It just never had an absolute majority - the parliamentary act which effectively gave the party dictatorial powers was supported by the conservative and center parties.
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      I guess we can argue over what it means for a political party to win, but the Nazi party were never able to gain the support of the majority of the German people.
firasd 11y ago
I found this interesting and prescient: "Hitler's Program", by Leon Trotsky (1934). “Hitler has been widely regarded as a demagogue, a hysterical person, and a comedian… It takes more than hysteria to seize power, and method there must be in the Nazi madness.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/xx/hitler.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/xx/hitler.htm
hodwik 11y ago
Written by Dorothy Thompson, first journalist kicked out of Nazi Germany. She also said: "No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Führer' or 'Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'"
- sandworm101 11y ago
  >> No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. She obviously never imagined the state of American politics today. A good chunk of them now openly want a "strongman" in the high office. The degree to which they want to be bullied by those they elect boarders on socio-political masochism. So I disagree with Thompson. To say that people don't see the dictator coming is too easy. The people must be held to account for the leaders they create, else the cycle repeat.
  - danjayh 11y ago
    Totally agree. The current congress welcomes Obama's use of (likely illegal) executive orders to accomplish things, because it means they can avoid responsibility and accountability. They don't fight to retain their constitutionally granted powers, because all they really want it somebody else to do the dirty work -- end result is they allow unprecedented levels of executive control to go basically unchecked ... and whether or not you agree with what's being done with it now, it's a slippery slope, because each president is different, but they'll all have this precedent to point back to as justification.
    - deciplex 11y ago
      And, there is a cap on the maximum number of voters who could possibly give a damn at any given moment. Most of the people who would raise concerns about these executive orders will not be too concerned about overreach by the executive once the next Republican President is in office, nor is it likely they spoke up when the last one was in. And so it goes. That's the true danger in divisive politics - when seeing that 'your team' scores points while they can becomes more important than good policy and governance.
Animats 11y ago
Who goes Nazi? These guys.[1] The Republican establishment donors who used to think Trump was a nut, but now that he's leading, are coming around to supporting him. They're terrified that he might win and they'd be out of power, on the outside looking in. Hitler had a lot of supporters like that.[2] Krupp (arms manufacturing), Thyssen (arms), Kridoff (coal), and others all contributed funds before Hitler took over. National Socialism wasn't anti-industry, it was "industry and the state working together". [1] http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/266389-donors-changing-their-tune-on-donald-trump http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/266389-donors-changing-... [2] http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/27/tom-perkins-wrong-germanys-1-percent-hitlers-allies-victims.html http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/27/tom-perkins-wrong-ger...
- conistonwater 11y ago
  I think that's not the kind of thing she was aiming for in the article. She's talking more about personal decisions about whether you as a person would join them, not these kinds of generic political deals. In other words, her point is that if you know someone on a personal level, that alone is enough to tell if they would make the personal decision to go Nazi. It's not even anything specifically to do with wealth or power, per se.
BogusIKnow 11y ago
"Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t-whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi." Could be a quote from the last psychiatrist.
grimmdude 11y ago
This article seems relevant to Man in The High Castle.
tamana 11y ago
Colorful and imaginative writing. 75 years on, did it ever show to have a kernel of truth? It reads like a Just So Story that lets anyone call anyone else a Nazi in spirit. I'e bet there are plenty of As to Es on both side of the Nazi divide.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

120 points by d_e_solomon 11y ago

"Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893 – 30 January 1961) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt. She is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934 and as one of the few women news commentators on radio during the 1930s. She is regarded by some as the "First Lady of American Journalism." - Wikipedia

tamana 11y ago
First Lady of American Journalism is a horribly sexist and paternalistic title to give. It discredits her work. Reflective of the sexism of the time, though, that even a great leader of a field is imagined only as the Wife of something.
dang 11y ago
Dorothy Thompson is a fascinating and important historical figure, hugely famous in her prime, but much diminished when she died and largely forgotten now. She is due to be rehabilitated. I'd be surprised if it didn't happen in the next few years. I've been told that http://www.amazon.com/American-Cassandra-Life-Dorothy-Thompson/dp/0316507245 http://www.amazon.com/American-Cassandra-Life-Dorothy-Thomps... is a good bio.
- emgoldstein 11y ago
  Thompson, like many (if not most) American journalists of her time, was a Stalin apologist in the Duranty circle: http://spartacus-educational.com/USAthompsonD.htm http://spartacus-educational.com/USAthompsonD.htm I'm not sure any intellectual who collaborated with Hitler should get points for warning the world about Stalin. Or vice versa. If Harper's had written an article called "Who Goes Bolshevik" in 1941, it could have been much shorter: "pretty much everyone." Or at least, everyone who mattered. If you wanted the truth about Stalin in 1941, you'd do much better with the Voelkischer Beobachter than the New York Times.
  - dang 11y ago
    I don't know the details but that link doesn't come close to establishing that she was a Stalin apologist.
    - pvg 11y ago
      It doesn't seem like it at all. Things she apparently wrote in 1946: The West experienced moments of doubt, Thompson wrote, in which the outcome of communist belief and behavior was questioned: "Can communist cultism, organized like a medieval secret order, with a priesthood, a police and an inquisition, reform itself into a modem, liberal, democratic movement?" Why, during the war, did communist propagandists throughout the world demand an immediate "second front", an attack on heavily fortified Western Europe by the United States and Great Britain? "Did these obedient claques care nothing for the lives of American boys? Were they listening to any voices but the voice of Stalin?" "Yet, we said: No", Thompson continued. "We shall prove our confidence, trust and trustworthiness. We shall hold faith that it will not be betrayed. Loyalty, we said, begets loyalty." But as Germany collapsed, the Soviet Union began "reversing every wartime pledge and policy. And not only was the quarter of a century of communist despotism to be fastened again upon the necks of the long suffering, heroically,enduring, eternally,hoping, eternally,serving Russian people -but naked and unashamed it was seeking new people to subject. "
      - emgoldstein 11y ago
        Ah, but that was 1946. The (American) party line had changed -- most American liberals were anti-Stalinist in 1946. A quick google search turns up this from 1943: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11332745 http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11332745 "Dorothy Thompson, the well-known columnist, writes: 'Russia does not want to make an isolationist policy. Russia wants a friendly Europe in a friendly world, with a system of collective security. There are signs of such hostility in both Europe and America to Russia that it gives Russian leadership some reason for suspicion. As things look at present, it is by no means certain that defeat of Germany will assure a non-Fascist Europe or one prepared to adopt a good-neighbor policy toward Russia." Her views in 1946 are standard 1946 post-FDR New Dealism (after the Anglo-Soviet split); her views in 1943 are standard 1943 New Dealism. You're just hearing the party line; God only knows what she actually thought, and when. It would be much easier to fight the memory hole if we didn't have these ridiculous copyright laws, but a lot of original WWII propaganda (not cherry-picked by modern hagiographers) remains on line. It's often pretty appalling reading.

d_e_solomon 11y ago

I always thought that the answer to this question is less important than that it prompts to reader to question themselves on why or why not they would join the Nazis. It's easy to look back through the lens of time and assume that we, good wholesome people, would not become Nazis, but if you're in the moment, what happens?

lordleft 11y ago

What an incredibly well written article, and quite thought provoking.

kenjackson 11y ago

I love the idea of reading articles from this time period on this topic. This article though, with Mr A/B/C/... was bit much to handle though. Just felt much too speculative.

eudox 11y ago
I thought the fictional/thought-experiment setting was a very good device for this kind of article.
HillRat 11y ago
I would bet a barrel of reichmarks that these were real people. In fact, I'm absolutely certain that "Mr. C" is the "saturnine" Lawrence Dennis, a former State Department diplomat and Wall Street advisor considered the guiding intellect of 1930s American fascism. Fascinatingly, Dennis didn't grow up "Southern white trash." No, he actually was a famous African-American child preacher, a background that he did hide successfully (though, reading between the lines of the article, not perhaps to everyone) as he disavowed his family, appeared at Exeter on scholarship, and traveled in the upper reaches of American society and eventually to the far fringes of American, Italian and German fascism. It is a surpassing irony that his hatred of Jim Crow segregation and contempt for the democracy that allowed it led him to be welcomed inside the sanctum of those men who would have imprisoned, shot or gassed him had they known the truth of his background.
- emgoldstein 11y ago
  Not entirely welcomed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Dennis#Sedition_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Dennis#Sedition_trial
  - HillRat 11y ago
    Yep; the other irony was that his prosecutor was O. John Rogge, one of the great liberal crusading attorneys of the day, who insisted on bringin charges in order to drag militant racism into the light of day. So Dennis, spurred by his hatred for American racism, made common cause with thuggish men who would have happily hanged him from a tree, and as a result was prosecuted by a man who otherwise would have been his natural political and moral ally. A complex man, Lawrence Dennis. (There is one biography available, The Color of Fascism, which is a little too clunky to be authoritative, but which is well worth reading. An equally unusual journey is that of Bayard Rustin, an openly gay African American civil rights activist who studied under Gandhi, introduced MLK to the theory of nonviolent activism, and ended up part of the neoconservative movement in the Reagan administration.)

batz 11y ago

The essence of any totalitarian strategy is to seize some resources, invent a necessarily preposterous myth, then in exchange for demonstrating belief in the myth, re-distribute the resources arbitrarily among a minority of people who are easily replaceable and know it. The secret is to then reward people from the majority for denouncing and replacing members of the minority for not being zealous enough, so that they can elevate themselves through commitment to the myth. This has the self-policing effect of keeping everyone in line. So long as you can keep those resources coming to your ruling coalition of highly replaceable idiots, you are golden. Read Smith and DeMesquita's "Dictator's Handbook" for details of how this works. It doesn't matter whether that myth is of a 3000 year reign, the supreme right of a proletariat, the divinity of leader, that my golf handicap includes 11 holes in one, the revolution, or even that my particular tribe or ethnic group is morally superior to your tribe or ethnic group. It's all the same shit. What people don't talk about is how these assholes seize power. It's through charismatic promises of future rewards to people who think they have nothing. They appeal to the greed and impulsiveness of the poor, it's a straight short con. The nuanced part is how you get current status quo supporters to switch sides and provide their support to the challenger. They do this with a second message that triggers the middling man's sense of loss aversion. This is just posing a credible prisoners dilemma in which if moderates and supporters defect now, they get to keep their social position, but if they hold out, they will lose everything. Arguably, this model of political polarization shows how ISIS works, how feminism annexed academia, why Trump is popular, why Occupy failed but why BLM could grow exponentially. Nazi's were repugnant, but history would show that being repugnant is likely more indicative of political success than failure.

tdeck 11y ago
What would the resource be in the case of BLM?
- wildmusings 11y ago
  The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be. When you see it as just part of the broader identity politics movement, it's easier to identify the resources: moral vindication and reassigned blame for their troubles, handouts from other people's pockets, and discrimination against the perceived oppressor group ("affirmative action").

pessimizer 11y ago

IIRC, the upper-middle class and the people who admire them. That seemed to be what the article is saying, until I got to the conclusion. https://www.worldcat.org/title/logic-of-evil-the-social-origins-of-the-nazi-party-1925-to-1933/oclc/123279201 https://www.worldcat.org/title/logic-of-evil-the-social-orig...

tcbawo 11y ago

This article is especially interesting, given it was written before the the US entered the war and before the full extent of Nazi atrocities was known. I'm reminded of C.S Lewis's speech about the Inner Ring (1944): http://www.mit.edu/~hooman/ideas/the_inner_ring.htm http://www.mit.edu/~hooman/ideas/the_inner_ring.htm

arethuza 11y ago
I wonder what would have happened if Hitler (who apparently didn't give the matter much thought) hadn't declared war on the US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States_%281941%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...
- neffy 11y ago
  The US would have been spared the embarrassment of not having declared war on the Nazi's, when they did eventually enter the war a few months later. The US was ramping up to enter WW2 long before the end of 1941.
- Animats 11y ago
  Didn't matter. Pearl Harbor brought the US into the war. If Hitler hadn't attacked Russia, things could have been very different. Hitler thought Russia would be a fast, easy conquest. It wasn't, and Germany found itself in a two-front war. It cost the USSR 20 million dead to beat Germany, and cost Germany 5 million dead, 80% of German casualties. Germany was an ally of Russia until 45 minutes before the attack. Much of Russian paranoia comes from this. If Germany had consolidated its gains on the continent of Europe without trying to expand beyond that, we might today have a Greater Germany covering much of what's now the European Union. Britain would be on the outside, in the position Taiwan is now with respect to China. Russia would be the big power next door, just as it is to China now. Germany could have cut a peace deal with the US and Britain in that situation.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    > Germany was an ally of Russia until 45 minutes before the attack. Much of Russian paranoia comes from this. Germany was an ally of RUssia, and learned from Soviets much of how to run an extermination camp, and Russian provided Germany with space to practice armor warfare. However, there is considerable debate speculating that Germany's initial success in Barbarossa was simply because the Soviet army was planning to attack Germany on July 6, and therefore its formation was totally arranged for offense, and failed miserably when attacked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv... Anyway, the Russian paranoia didn't really need a German betrayal to develop. The Russian military had been internally wiped out in the paranoid purges of 1930's.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

I was surprised by the relatively clear description of a psychopath as being ideal Nazi material. I'm not sure if it was a widely known concept at the time or if they were just going by instinct.

pinewurst 11y ago
Mr C? "He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism." I didn't read him as psychopath so much as someone nursing serious grudges about his perceived exclusion from the top rank of society. Enough that he'd delight in "setting things right" even Nazi style. That was, for me, the most interesting character insight.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  I meant Mr D: "He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others."
  - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
    Sounds like he may have affluenza.
  - pinewurst 11y ago
    I think of D as a sociopath who could be Nazi or "patriot" depending on which one would give him current advantage.
    - iofj 11y ago
      I wonder if there is any real limit to what positions such a person would take. In every company I've ever worked for there's several examples of this sort of person and ... I don't think I've ever even seen one with their own political opinion. Personal advancement, or the potential for it, determines their position in any argument, including political ones. These days that usually makes them argue for "diversity" (taken to corporate insanity extremes, like every other position). I would agree with the article that given the environment in the 1930's that would probably have made them nazis. But this has nothing to do with the content of these ideologies, only with their relative success. But what I find myself at very strong odds with is the smart person who clawed his way up and finds himself beneath a glass ceiling, Mr. C. They usually have a relatively insane political opinion that indeed originates from some past humiliation. But that nearly always makes them some sort of extremist socialist or outright marxist if they were poor in their childhood, or extreme laissez-faire when not. And frankly, what is wrong with holding such an opinion due to having had to endure serious hardship or humiliation as a result (having been the rich kid in a poor school or a poor kid in a rich school would pretty much guarantee such a position, no ?). I would imagine that if indeed such a person became a nazi, one confrontation with a nazi "type D" would cure him of such an affliction, as he'd immediately recognize the ideology for what it is. Either such guys are nihilists or they have some insane party affiliation. Given the thousands of political parties in the Weimar republic, I'd be much less surprised to find this Mr. C an avid supporter of one of the many "20 party members and only their mothers vote for them" ideologies that the Weimar republic boasted.

lumberjack 11y ago

I think to better understand why people are attracted to Fascism it is better to read about the rise of Mussolini than about the rise of Nazism. Mussolini essentially was going to make Italy "great again". He was a former socialist but not an internationalist. While communists promised economic justice, fascists promised a better prouder more powerful nation. Today you expect wealthy people to be economically liberal but in those days many were attracted by the premises of fascism. There also this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICng-KRxXJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICng-KRxXJ8 A teacher creates a fascist movement to show his students how they can be duped into one.

fennecfoxen 11y ago
> Today you expect wealthy people to be economically liberal but in those days many were attracted by the premises of fascism. Oh, fascism can be great for the wealthy. Your company becomes an instrument of the state, turning your economic power into political power, and you don't need to worry about nonsense like Competition anymore.
- zipwitch 11y ago
  I've seen the term 'inverted totalitarianism' to describe how the US is in a similar, but different place to pre-WWII fascism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

woodruffw 11y ago

Very thought provoking. In spirit, it reminds me of The True Believer [1], published about a decade later. Take Nazism and replace it with any other movement of discontent (just or unjust), and you have a general critique of mass movements a la Hoffer. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

ericd 11y ago
Interesting, thanks for the link. This part strikes me as particularly relevant to the current state of things in the US, especially for blue collar/middle class: The "New Poor" are the most likely source of converts for mass movements/for they recall their former wealth with resentment and blame others for their current misfortune. Examples include the mass evictions of relatively prosperous tenants during the English Civil War of the 1600s or the middle- and working-classes in Germany who passionately supported Hitler in the 1930s after suffering years of economic hardship. In contrast, the "abjectly poor" on the verge of starvation make unlikely true believers as their daily struggle for existence takes pre-eminence over any other concern.[5]
- tamana 11y ago
  History is always the upper and (part of) the middle classes trading placdes.
- iofj 11y ago
  It's weird how this mirrors what you see with terrorists. Terrorists are middle-class or upper-middle-class with very, very few poor among them. I don't think that the "daily struggle for survival" is it. Rather I think that the fact that poor are constantly forced to confront themselves with reality and living with others that makes them less likely to join movements like this. Also, as a worker you'd have direct contact with members of this party (because you don't get to choose the people you hang out with). It is much, much harder to tell yourself a fictional story about what drives them. About what they'd do if given power. By contrast you regularly find insane positions among the upper classes. How hard is it to find an upper-middle-class or higher Marxist on a university campus ? Not very hard, despite the fact that he wouldn't be there in the system they advocate. Hell, there's Malthusians among them too, whereas I've yet to meet the first poor worker defending the virtues of killing of "enough" of the human race for a "sustainable population of Earth" to me. Having illusions about "grandeur" of race, of inherent virtues of one group versus another, about the "good of the human race", ... is far easier when you're not confronted with the underbelly of any city on a daily basis ... when you're only confronted with who you choose to be confronted with.

keithpeter 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Peierls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Peierls When I was a postgrad at Birmingham University, around 1982/3 ish we had a talk by Peierls. He discussed his feelings about Heisenberg joining the Nazi party (you had to join the Party to continue to be a University lecturer in the late 1930s - that was when Einsten resolved to leave Berlin). My recollection (reaching back 30+ years here folks) is that Peierls did not blame Heisenberg- it was how it was. Peierls recollected Heisenberg talking about 'white waistcoats' and people leaving who didn't have to leave, thus reducing the number of overseas jobs available to people who did have to leave (i.e. German Jewish academics). What I'm thinking here is; How do you see the end of the wedge when it is very thin?

Animats 11y ago

It's been a while since the last big, successful, popular, dictatorial, charismatic movement like Nazism. Putin comes closest, but he came to power as an insider, with Yeltsin supporting him. ISIS is religion-based, (even though it was designed by a former Iraqi colonel who wasn't very religious [1]) and those work differently. There are warlords in sub-Saharan Africa, but they're usually not popular leaders. Remember, Hitler was elected Chancellor; he didn't lead a revolution. Yes, Trump makes somewhat Nazi-like noises. Not sure what to think about that. [1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-saddams-former-soldiers-are-fueling-the-rise-of-isis/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-saddams-former...

VLM 11y ago
The problem with "big, successful, popular, dictatorial, charismatic" is there's also an implied addition of being against us, which naturally (LOL) implies they're evil. Otherwise your big five is just Obama, as a recent example. By the full seven criteria obviously Obama doesn't qualify of course.
danieltillett 11y ago
Just to nitpick John, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg. The nazi party never won an election in their entire history.
- olavk 11y ago
  The Nazi party was certainly the winner or the election in July 1932, where it became the largest party in the parliament. In March 1933 elections it became even larger, with 44% more than twice the size of the second largest party, the SPD. It just never had an absolute majority - the parliamentary act which effectively gave the party dictatorial powers was supported by the conservative and center parties.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    I guess we can argue over what it means for a political party to win, but the Nazi party were never able to gain the support of the majority of the German people.

firasd 11y ago

I found this interesting and prescient: "Hitler's Program", by Leon Trotsky (1934). “Hitler has been widely regarded as a demagogue, a hysterical person, and a comedian… It takes more than hysteria to seize power, and method there must be in the Nazi madness.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/xx/hitler.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/xx/hitler.htm

hodwik 11y ago

Written by Dorothy Thompson, first journalist kicked out of Nazi Germany. She also said: "No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Führer' or 'Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'"

sandworm101 11y ago
>> No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. She obviously never imagined the state of American politics today. A good chunk of them now openly want a "strongman" in the high office. The degree to which they want to be bullied by those they elect boarders on socio-political masochism. So I disagree with Thompson. To say that people don't see the dictator coming is too easy. The people must be held to account for the leaders they create, else the cycle repeat.
- danjayh 11y ago
  Totally agree. The current congress welcomes Obama's use of (likely illegal) executive orders to accomplish things, because it means they can avoid responsibility and accountability. They don't fight to retain their constitutionally granted powers, because all they really want it somebody else to do the dirty work -- end result is they allow unprecedented levels of executive control to go basically unchecked ... and whether or not you agree with what's being done with it now, it's a slippery slope, because each president is different, but they'll all have this precedent to point back to as justification.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    And, there is a cap on the maximum number of voters who could possibly give a damn at any given moment. Most of the people who would raise concerns about these executive orders will not be too concerned about overreach by the executive once the next Republican President is in office, nor is it likely they spoke up when the last one was in. And so it goes. That's the true danger in divisive politics - when seeing that 'your team' scores points while they can becomes more important than good policy and governance.

Animats 11y ago

Who goes Nazi? These guys.[1] The Republican establishment donors who used to think Trump was a nut, but now that he's leading, are coming around to supporting him. They're terrified that he might win and they'd be out of power, on the outside looking in. Hitler had a lot of supporters like that.[2] Krupp (arms manufacturing), Thyssen (arms), Kridoff (coal), and others all contributed funds before Hitler took over. National Socialism wasn't anti-industry, it was "industry and the state working together". [1] http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/266389-donors-changing-their-tune-on-donald-trump http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/266389-donors-changing-... [2] http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/27/tom-perkins-wrong-germanys-1-percent-hitlers-allies-victims.html http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/27/tom-perkins-wrong-ger...

conistonwater 11y ago
I think that's not the kind of thing she was aiming for in the article. She's talking more about personal decisions about whether you as a person would join them, not these kinds of generic political deals. In other words, her point is that if you know someone on a personal level, that alone is enough to tell if they would make the personal decision to go Nazi. It's not even anything specifically to do with wealth or power, per se.

BogusIKnow 11y ago

"Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t-whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi." Could be a quote from the last psychiatrist.

grimmdude 11y ago

This article seems relevant to Man in The High Castle.

tamana 11y ago

Colorful and imaginative writing. 75 years on, did it ever show to have a kernel of truth? It reads like a Just So Story that lets anyone call anyone else a Nazi in spirit. I'e bet there are plenty of As to Es on both side of the Nazi divide.

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