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There are two sort of contradictory views of nazism that I was exposed to as a child. The first one is the “banality of evil” view. The nazis were nothing spec

There are two sort of contradictory views of nazism that I was exposed to as a child. The first one is the “banality of evil” view. The nazis were nothing special. One of many populist and racist parties. One of many hateful ideologies. The only thing that stands them out is the results. They actually won power through weirdness of politics in that time and place. They actually started a massive war (lucky timing). They actually went on the massive genocidal campaign implied by their rhetoric. Normal people. Normal (if somewhat distasteful) party. Abnormal actions. It’s kind of related to the “one damn thing after another” theory of history. The other (more intuitive, and unavoidable) view is the pure evil view. Hitler & Eichman were uniquely evil people. The SS were evil people. They had an evil doctrine, evil symbols, evil political methods. Evil resulted. Watch out for this sort of thing. Know the devil when you see her. Never Again! Anyway, in 1939 I’m not sure nazism stood out as a unique evil different in some way from domestic far right movements like the kkk. It’s historical perspective that gives it the symbolic meaning that shocks us today.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago
Pure evil can in fact pass for normal, banal politics in certain times and places. That's the problem. Normal, banal people learned not to think thoughts like, "Are we the baddies? We've got skulls on!" and, "But what would I think if they were doing this to me?" Remember, the late 1930s also had Stalinism, Japanese Imperialism, the British Empire sponsoring things like the Bengali Famine, and various American imperial/colonial efforts as well. There was a lot of evil to go around. The proper advice is: know the Evil Impulse when it appears in yourself, and then you can have a good idea of how to spot it in others.
- sremani 9y ago
  “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    >And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Well, anyone with a measure of decency, of course.
moomin 9y ago
The Jews fleeing the country, the ghettos, the concentration camps had all started. The night of the Long Knives had already happened. Don't know if they were unique, or worse than the KKK (when the KKK had any power they killed a lot of people). But they were definitely, obviously, way evil.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Kristelnacht happened around that time, concentration camps (the final solution) came later. I imagine that from a foreign/non-jewish perspective nazi militarism and expansionism (Czechoslovakia, Poland & Austria) were way bigger deals than racism. Anti-jewish state action and/or thuggery was relatively commonplace. Kristelnacht is just another pogrom without the historical context making it the symbolic first blood of the holocaust.
  - greedo 9y ago
    Just a quibble, the concentration camps didn't start out as part of the Final Solution. They started out as a place to confine dissidents, etc.
    - moomin 9y ago
      There's a terminology problem here. Scholars call the "final solution" camps extermination camps. They started after the invasion of Poland. Concentration camps in general began the moment the Nazis took power.
      - greedo 9y ago
        Exactly. The Germans referred to the initial camps as "Konzentrationslager" or "Arbeitslager" designed primarily around slave labor. They weren't overly concerned about prisoner death, but that was a byproduct in their minds. They wanted to work the Jews and other groups they considered Untermenschen until they dropped dead. Some camps were two-part; comprising a slave camp and an extermination camp. Auschwitz is a good example of this, though Treblinka also had a small work camp connected to its extermination camp. The work camp was primarily to support the vernichtungslager. In contrast, the sole goal of the extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) was the expeditious murder of "undesirables."
dudul 9y ago
Not only did it not stand out as especially evil before the beginning of the war, but a lot of politicians/personalities were speaking very highly of Hitler at the time. Also, he was often seen as the real hope to defeat communism, which on the contrary was immediately called "evil". To add to your first paragraph, I think that another thing that stands out is that it happened in what was one of the most civilized and culturally evolved countries in the world at the time.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  Good point. I actually tried to work it into the banality paragraph. My Grandad’s view (he was interned in Czechoslovakia within months of this rally) was exactly this. Even in the most civilised country on earth… rather than because “germans.” He saw nazism as something that afflicted germany, almost arbitrarily. Somehow, he didn’t even have a particular dislike of germans, at least when I knew him. He visited in the 70s and enjoyed speaking german when he had the chance. Incidentally, he also thought communists were evil even though he fought for a communist militia eventually (he escaped in 41/42). He equated Communism to fanaticism, a unique level of fanaticism.
GuiA 9y ago
Related is the debate of functionalism vs intentionalism: The debate on the origins of the Holocaust centers on essentially two questions: Was there a master plan on the part of Adolf Hitler to launch the Holocaust? Intentionalists argue there was such a plan, while functionalists argue there was not. Did the initiative for the Holocaust come from above with orders from Adolf Hitler or from below within the ranks of the German bureaucracy? Although neither side disputes the reality of the Holocaust, nor is there serious dispute over the premise that Hitler (as Führer) was personally responsible for encouraging the anti-Semitism that allowed the Holocaust to take place, intentionalists argue the initiative came from above, while functionalists contend it came from lower ranks within the bureaucracy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intenti...

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

Pure evil can in fact pass for normal, banal politics in certain times and places. That's the problem. Normal, banal people learned not to think thoughts like, "Are we the baddies? We've got skulls on!" and, "But what would I think if they were doing this to me?" Remember, the late 1930s also had Stalinism, Japanese Imperialism, the British Empire sponsoring things like the Bengali Famine, and various American imperial/colonial efforts as well. There was a lot of evil to go around. The proper advice is: know the Evil Impulse when it appears in yourself, and then you can have a good idea of how to spot it in others.

sremani 9y ago
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Well, anyone with a measure of decency, of course.

moomin 9y ago

The Jews fleeing the country, the ghettos, the concentration camps had all started. The night of the Long Knives had already happened. Don't know if they were unique, or worse than the KKK (when the KKK had any power they killed a lot of people). But they were definitely, obviously, way evil.

dalbasal 9y ago
Kristelnacht happened around that time, concentration camps (the final solution) came later. I imagine that from a foreign/non-jewish perspective nazi militarism and expansionism (Czechoslovakia, Poland & Austria) were way bigger deals than racism. Anti-jewish state action and/or thuggery was relatively commonplace. Kristelnacht is just another pogrom without the historical context making it the symbolic first blood of the holocaust.
- greedo 9y ago
  Just a quibble, the concentration camps didn't start out as part of the Final Solution. They started out as a place to confine dissidents, etc.
  - moomin 9y ago
    There's a terminology problem here. Scholars call the "final solution" camps extermination camps. They started after the invasion of Poland. Concentration camps in general began the moment the Nazis took power.
    - greedo 9y ago
      Exactly. The Germans referred to the initial camps as "Konzentrationslager" or "Arbeitslager" designed primarily around slave labor. They weren't overly concerned about prisoner death, but that was a byproduct in their minds. They wanted to work the Jews and other groups they considered Untermenschen until they dropped dead. Some camps were two-part; comprising a slave camp and an extermination camp. Auschwitz is a good example of this, though Treblinka also had a small work camp connected to its extermination camp. The work camp was primarily to support the vernichtungslager. In contrast, the sole goal of the extermination camps (Vernichtungslager) was the expeditious murder of "undesirables."

dudul 9y ago

Not only did it not stand out as especially evil before the beginning of the war, but a lot of politicians/personalities were speaking very highly of Hitler at the time. Also, he was often seen as the real hope to defeat communism, which on the contrary was immediately called "evil". To add to your first paragraph, I think that another thing that stands out is that it happened in what was one of the most civilized and culturally evolved countries in the world at the time.

dalbasal 9y ago
Good point. I actually tried to work it into the banality paragraph. My Grandad’s view (he was interned in Czechoslovakia within months of this rally) was exactly this. Even in the most civilised country on earth… rather than because “germans.” He saw nazism as something that afflicted germany, almost arbitrarily. Somehow, he didn’t even have a particular dislike of germans, at least when I knew him. He visited in the 70s and enjoyed speaking german when he had the chance. Incidentally, he also thought communists were evil even though he fought for a communist militia eventually (he escaped in 41/42). He equated Communism to fanaticism, a unique level of fanaticism.

GuiA 9y ago

Related is the debate of functionalism vs intentionalism: The debate on the origins of the Holocaust centers on essentially two questions: Was there a master plan on the part of Adolf Hitler to launch the Holocaust? Intentionalists argue there was such a plan, while functionalists argue there was not. Did the initiative for the Holocaust come from above with orders from Adolf Hitler or from below within the ranks of the German bureaucracy? Although neither side disputes the reality of the Holocaust, nor is there serious dispute over the premise that Hitler (as Führer) was personally responsible for encouraging the anti-Semitism that allowed the Holocaust to take place, intentionalists argue the initiative came from above, while functionalists contend it came from lower ranks within the bureaucracy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intenti...