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I'm sure Nazi Germany was great for some Germans too, if they willfully ignored all the bad stuff going on.

by Crusoe123 4y ago

FiberBundle 4y ago
Unfortunately the Nazi regime was popular with the majority of Germans.
- hnbad 4y ago
  Do you base this on the last "free election" that literally just had a large circle for "I want Adolf Hitler to be the Führer and sole leader of Germany" and a smaller one for "no"? Because in the last election before that[1], the Nazis didn't even get 50% of the vote and that was after heavy suppression of dissent and left-wing parties. I don't think there were any objective opinion polls you could base this on after the point at which disagreeing with the Nazi regime resulted in a visit from the police or worse. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_elec... This was the last federal election in Germany and followed the Nazis openly attacking left-wing parties, fully controlling state propaganda, practically prohibiting all opposition parties from campaigning and literally shutting down opposition newspapers, plus staging the Reichstag fire -- and they still only got 43.9% of the vote at a 88.7% turnout. The previous federal election only got them 37.3% of the vote at a 80.6% turnout but this was enough to get Papen and Hindenburg to form a coalition government with Hitler at the helm.
  - wwtrv 4y ago
    Nazis weren't really that popular until the beginning of WW2, just that the opposition parties hated each other even more and were unable to unite in opposition (a bit like the Russian revolution). The conquest of France was an unifying (and legitimizing) moment when even the people who were passively skeptical of the regime mostly got behind it (actual opponents were almost all in exile or imprisoned by that point)
    - watwut 4y ago
      By the time WWII started, opposition was closed in literal concentration camps. There was heavy suppression of oth democratic and communist parties from the moment Hitler took power on 1933. Also, the calls for opposition to unifie miss who the opposition was. As in, it was composed of both pro democratic and actual communist party that took directions from Stalin. Who were pro dictatorship too at that point. I mean, it is popular talking point from from tankies. But, social democrats not unifying with actual communists despite Hitler propaganda claiming they are the same makes sense.
  - FiberBundle 4y ago
    That's just my take from reading history. I think it's the general consensus in scholars who study Nazi Germany that the Nazis had the support of the population after having gained power. Evans [1] e.g. goes into depth on this, though I, unfortunately, don't have the time now to look up any references. [1] Richard J. Evans - The Third Reich in Power
    - hnbad 4y ago
      I think you're conflating different factors to create a false, but common, narrative that obfuscates the banality of the Nazis' rise to power. The Weimar Republic was in essence Germany's first real experiment with democracy so many people in positions of power were still heavily invested in the old ways (whether directly as in the monarchists who wanted to reinstate the emperor, or less directly as in those who wanted to scale back democracy to establish a form of new aristocracy). At the same time you had communist movements trying to take democracy to its logical conclusion (but they were also split into competing factions because things like the Bolshevik revolution were happening around the same time) and a general populace exhausted from a long and failed war of attrition that had seen more death and suffering than any previous war on German territory. The Nazis didn't get into power by winning the hearts and minds of the people, they got into power by allying with wealthy conservatives who were afraid of leftists and saw the Nazis as a natural antidote against communism. This allowed them free rein to suppress the opposition while also playing out the conservatives as too timid and ineffective because they had been unable to form a stable coalition government. The death bed wish of Hindenburg was for Hitler to step down and restore the Hohenzollern monarchy. This was after Hitler had already become chancellor and was on his way to becoming the unchecked autocrat via the Enabling Act, which the conservatives co-signed. Hitler of course ignored this but it should tell you all you need to know about the delusions of the conservatives who enabled him. Once the Nazis were in power, of course their support in the population grew because they claimed responsibility for everything good while creating a smokescreen of grandiose nonsense achievements, breaking ties and treaties with other countries as a show of force (which after the defeat of WW1 rekindled the national pride) and eventually "fighting back against Polish aggression" to start WW2. But at that point all political opposition had been silenced or murdered so of course people were more likely to support them. Questioning the government was not just frowned upon but became actively dangerous. And of course as the war progressed for many it became a sunk cost fallacy. Reducing this to "actually the Nazis were popular" creates a false sense that there must have been something unique about 1930s Germans to have elected such an obvious evil as the NSDAP when in reality 1) the 1933 NSDAP still allowed for plausible deniability much like certain far-right parties do today, 2) the right (i.e. conservatives) saw the NSDAP as a stabilizing force because they saw the left as a threat to order and 3) even at their peak they couldn't get the majority of votes in a fair election. People support institutions that do bad things if those bad things are sufficiently normalized. And a good dose of nationalist fervor or revanchism helps the medizine go down.

I'm sure Nazi Germany was great for some Germans too, if they willfully ignored all the bad stuff going on.

FiberBundle 4y ago

Unfortunately the Nazi regime was popular with the majority of Germans.

hnbad 4y ago
Do you base this on the last "free election" that literally just had a large circle for "I want Adolf Hitler to be the Führer and sole leader of Germany" and a smaller one for "no"? Because in the last election before that[1], the Nazis didn't even get 50% of the vote and that was after heavy suppression of dissent and left-wing parties. I don't think there were any objective opinion polls you could base this on after the point at which disagreeing with the Nazi regime resulted in a visit from the police or worse. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_elec... This was the last federal election in Germany and followed the Nazis openly attacking left-wing parties, fully controlling state propaganda, practically prohibiting all opposition parties from campaigning and literally shutting down opposition newspapers, plus staging the Reichstag fire -- and they still only got 43.9% of the vote at a 88.7% turnout. The previous federal election only got them 37.3% of the vote at a 80.6% turnout but this was enough to get Papen and Hindenburg to form a coalition government with Hitler at the helm.
- wwtrv 4y ago
  Nazis weren't really that popular until the beginning of WW2, just that the opposition parties hated each other even more and were unable to unite in opposition (a bit like the Russian revolution). The conquest of France was an unifying (and legitimizing) moment when even the people who were passively skeptical of the regime mostly got behind it (actual opponents were almost all in exile or imprisoned by that point)
  - watwut 4y ago
    By the time WWII started, opposition was closed in literal concentration camps. There was heavy suppression of oth democratic and communist parties from the moment Hitler took power on 1933. Also, the calls for opposition to unifie miss who the opposition was. As in, it was composed of both pro democratic and actual communist party that took directions from Stalin. Who were pro dictatorship too at that point. I mean, it is popular talking point from from tankies. But, social democrats not unifying with actual communists despite Hitler propaganda claiming they are the same makes sense.
- FiberBundle 4y ago
  That's just my take from reading history. I think it's the general consensus in scholars who study Nazi Germany that the Nazis had the support of the population after having gained power. Evans [1] e.g. goes into depth on this, though I, unfortunately, don't have the time now to look up any references. [1] Richard J. Evans - The Third Reich in Power
  - hnbad 4y ago
    I think you're conflating different factors to create a false, but common, narrative that obfuscates the banality of the Nazis' rise to power. The Weimar Republic was in essence Germany's first real experiment with democracy so many people in positions of power were still heavily invested in the old ways (whether directly as in the monarchists who wanted to reinstate the emperor, or less directly as in those who wanted to scale back democracy to establish a form of new aristocracy). At the same time you had communist movements trying to take democracy to its logical conclusion (but they were also split into competing factions because things like the Bolshevik revolution were happening around the same time) and a general populace exhausted from a long and failed war of attrition that had seen more death and suffering than any previous war on German territory. The Nazis didn't get into power by winning the hearts and minds of the people, they got into power by allying with wealthy conservatives who were afraid of leftists and saw the Nazis as a natural antidote against communism. This allowed them free rein to suppress the opposition while also playing out the conservatives as too timid and ineffective because they had been unable to form a stable coalition government. The death bed wish of Hindenburg was for Hitler to step down and restore the Hohenzollern monarchy. This was after Hitler had already become chancellor and was on his way to becoming the unchecked autocrat via the Enabling Act, which the conservatives co-signed. Hitler of course ignored this but it should tell you all you need to know about the delusions of the conservatives who enabled him. Once the Nazis were in power, of course their support in the population grew because they claimed responsibility for everything good while creating a smokescreen of grandiose nonsense achievements, breaking ties and treaties with other countries as a show of force (which after the defeat of WW1 rekindled the national pride) and eventually "fighting back against Polish aggression" to start WW2. But at that point all political opposition had been silenced or murdered so of course people were more likely to support them. Questioning the government was not just frowned upon but became actively dangerous. And of course as the war progressed for many it became a sunk cost fallacy. Reducing this to "actually the Nazis were popular" creates a false sense that there must have been something unique about 1930s Germans to have elected such an obvious evil as the NSDAP when in reality 1) the 1933 NSDAP still allowed for plausible deniability much like certain far-right parties do today, 2) the right (i.e. conservatives) saw the NSDAP as a stabilizing force because they saw the left as a threat to order and 3) even at their peak they couldn't get the majority of votes in a fair election. People support institutions that do bad things if those bad things are sufficiently normalized. And a good dose of nationalist fervor or revanchism helps the medizine go down.