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"The Germans" is an absolutely jaw dropping read, a series of interviews with average German citizens and low-level nazi party members, conducted a decade or so

"The Germans" is an absolutely jaw dropping read, a series of interviews with average German citizens and low-level nazi party members, conducted a decade or so after the war, by an American Jewish journalist. It shows, in first hand accounts, the banality of evil and how easily it can prevail if people do nothing. It is an account of modern tyranny and everyday collaboration. The parallels in the feeling of what's happened in American society, particularly the silence, confusion and cowering now of anyone who should oppose a hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy and our laws, are striking. It should have been required reading in American schools, when there was still time to educate people against these dangers.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
subsistence234 2y ago
sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything.
- palmotea 2y ago
  > sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything. Come on. A "hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy" is completely orthogonal to the size of government, before or after the takeover.
  - subsistence234 2y ago
    How do you clean up a corrupt organization?
    - maeln 2y ago
      Surely not by appointing other oligarch and cronies at high position of said organization.
    - a_victorp 2y ago
      By making it more transparent
    - vkou 2y ago
      It's probably best to start by not appointing a serial liar, convicted felon and conman to head it. But if for some insane reason you do, you probably want to keep him and his cronies accountable to the law of the land. The conduct expected from someone with that history should be unimpeachable. Instead, what we got is the conduct of someone who is unimpeachable. None of the rules apply to him or his friends, and neither do any of the checks and balances.
      - twixfel 2y ago
        He's a rapist too, isn't he?
        georgemcbay 2y ago
        He literally bragged about it before he was elected the first time. I know we live in chaotic times and all but "grab them by the pussy" without clear consent is, in fact, sexual assault, no matter how much of a celebrity you are. And there's a long trail of credible accusations against him ranging from various forms of sexual assault to unequivocal rape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct...
        Terr_ 2y ago
        IANAL, but if you're asking for a technically-correct answer, it depends on which place's laws you're using for the statement. If the crime can be done with hands and objects, yes. If the crime requires an actual phallus, no. (It'd still be something else, like sexual assault.)
    - dgb23 2y ago
      Bernie Sanders has been trying to tell you this since I can count. Corruption is fought by cutting off external, financial influence and lobbying and by putting the voters front and center. It is however _not_ fought by firing and going after dissents, pardoning violent extremists, stepping over the separation of power.
    - palmotea 2y ago
      > How do you clean up a corrupt organization? 1) The US government isn't "corrupt." It might be inefficient, it might be bloated, but it isn't generally corrupt. 2) You definitely don't try "clean up corruption" by out-doing it in corruption and lawlessness.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- dgb23 2y ago
  Is this admin making the government smaller? So far they are expanding power, firing dissents and trying to reduce spending to humanitarian causes and education, to expand its hegemony, to agitate allies. They even attempt to increase means of incarceration. But there’s no attempt to decentralize power.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > government smaller I'd also emphasize that a dictator is smaller than a Congress, but not better, and "fewer written rules" can easily conflict with "more freedom for individuals." Just imagine if the many state laws concerning crimes and misdemeanors were torn up in favor of "don't piss off the police." Sure, it's way shorter, but you've simply replaced the hard-fought written rules (which you have a chance to see, understand, contest, etc.) with hidden unwritten ones that change semi-randomly.
BiteCode_dev 2y ago
I remember I once stumbled upon pictures of the daily life of ordinary nazis. They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments. There is even a video where hitler is shying away from his love companion. This was a shock to me as a kid: evil doesn't look like the caricature of "the very bad guy", it emerges in every day people. I think we failed to communicate that. It was too tempting to have a universal vilain you could use in Hollywood movies and instantly recognize. That you can't identify to. Black and white is so easy to sell. But what it means is a huge part of our society cannot make the link between what is happening in their own life and the past. Because they have a vision of the past that looks like a kid show, not what really happened. Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide. Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves. In the last too decades, we surely spent a lot of time playing with words until they could not be useful anymore. But it made us feel good for a moment.
- illwrks 2y ago
  I’ve not watched it yet, but a recent film called the Zone Of Interest sounds like it aligns to this. It’s about the Hoss family that lived next to one of the Nazi concentration camps, the father/husband ran the camp. Also, I recently watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and it again aligns to that point of view a bit.
  - cocoggu 2y ago
    Point to be noted is that Rudolf Hoss wasn't the leader of a random Nazi camp. He was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, making him one of the biggest mass-murderer of the last century.
    - illwrks 2y ago
      Apologies, I’m not tuned into the details of the film as it’s on still my witch list. I didn’t want to overstate it just in case I was incorrect.
ookblah 2y ago
i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. they will always be taken advantage of, scammed, etc. social media and tech just made this 10x more effective. it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose. maybe i'm just cynical have given up. it's a really jarring thing to encounter people who refuse to even spend the min effort to attempt to question their own beliefs.
- elif 2y ago
  Once you see how stupid and useful this group is, it's hard to unsee the deliberate attempts to make this group larger and dumber.
  - elif 2y ago
    Thought I should expand to explain the group gets larger as the economy suffers and people are too poor busy and hopeless for anything other than a hopeful narrative. And the group gets dumber when skipping school is glorified, education gets funding cuts, and people mass consume media.
- labster 2y ago
  Nah, cynicism is the only rational reaction now. Lots of people died from covid and our poor government response, but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive.
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    > Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive. I think this trivializes the outcome in a dangerous way. From my view as an outside observer, these were all big factors: - Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late) - Having an impossible platform for a lot of single issue voters (mainly: people that want immigration reduced, but also firearm availability) - Thoroughly uninspiring middle-east policy (not a personal opinion, but I think that cost a bunch of votes that would have been democrat) Personally, I also think that some sexism was also a significant factor and that Harris would've had an easier time had she been male. I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated). If the democrats main takeaway is that they just need to campaign for lower egg prices next election they might well lose again IMO.
yodsanklai 2y ago
In France, I remember we read several classic allegories on that theme at schools. Rhinoceros by Ionesco (even watched it in the theater as a school trip), also The Plague (Albert Camus). I didn't think much of it when I was a teenager, but I'm looking at them on the light of these recent events. Especially Rhinoceros on ideological contagion.
- wiether 2y ago
  Yes we did, but I think that the people who needed it the most, were the ones who either didn't had to read it (the ones not in a "lycée général") or whent through because it was required but didn't tried to understand the meaning. More broadly, as teenagers, most of us didn't had the maturity to truely grasp the meaning ; and the ones who did probably already where sensitive enough to don't fall in the same traps. In the hundreds of people I crossed path with during my school time, I don't remember a single one who was actually enlightened by things in the program. The only ones who had kind of a shift from their original mindset did that outside of school or because of a teacher who went out of their way (and of the official program) to explain things.
  - yodsanklai 2y ago
    I don't think I was enlightened at that time, but at least, we discussed these topics and they are part of the collective knowledge in Europe. It's probably why Musk nazi salutes resonate differently in Europe vs the US. That being said, populism is raising in Europe too.
  - noduerme 2y ago
    Odd things can enlighten someone. I was outside a gay bar in Avignon when a guy I knew who was hardcore FN hesitated and then sat down next to me, a Jew, and had an honest conversation. I think it doesn't take too much to enlighten French people, because much of the template for plurality and tolerance is already there and built into the culture. Then again, there are always some true assholes.
- fransje26 2y ago
  Is "The Plague" considered an allegory of the struggle against upcoming extremism? While reading it I saw some parallels with occupation: people trying to escape, some suffering from being separated from their loved ones, those abusing the system and enriching themselves with contraband, help being flown in irregularly, etc. But I didn't get as far as Nazism. Do you happen to remember which elements supported that supposed theme?
aa-jv 2y ago
>cowering now of anyone who should oppose a hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy and our laws, are striking. That's the least of your concerns. What you should be opposing is the US' government participation in genocide. The American publics' scale of tolerance of evil needs serious and earnest re-callibrating. This can only happen with war crimes prosecutions.
i_love_limes 2y ago
I'm having a hard time googling the book you mentioned. Is it by any chance called 'They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45'? That's the closest thing I could find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free
- gspr 2y ago
  Yes. "They thought they were free" is the main title. "The Germans 1933-1945" is the subtitle.
taurknaut 2y ago
Watching Gaza get razed has pretty much ended any sense I had that liberal society is capable of learning lessons or improving itself. I grew up a good liberal, but as an adult I realize that so much of peoples' attraction to liberalism is simply inability to resolve conflict, center values in society, or establish a shared culture. There are better ideals to structure society around, like material rights. Fwiw i also believe we should dismantle our government as it is not, actually, very democratic and doesn't actually function well and mostly exists to serve itself and its corporate clients. The current parties are simply the last people on earth I'd trust to do it.
- pjc50 2y ago
  If you hate liberalism, wait until you find out about illiberalism.
  - taurknaut 2y ago
    What makes you think I hate liberalism? I was just pointing out it's not sufficient for a functional society, contrary to the tenets of our civic religion. If it was, our country wouldn't be such a dysfunctional shithole our citizens log on to China's instagram to talk about how much of a dysfunctional shithole this country is. Hilarious and hugely embarrassing. Granted, I do abhor the part of liberalism that makes people think their voice has any inherent value and that political action begins and ends with voting. I'd like to remind readers that Hitler was voted into office, but the civil rights act was legislated out of fear of cities burning down, and it took a literal civil war to end slavery in this country (outside of prisons anyway). Most of the few labor rights we have in part because the labor movement was bombing buildings and shutting down entire cities. We live in an arguably progressive society in spite of liberalism, not because of it. Am I naive for thinking americans are capable of making a government we can ACTUALLY not be embarrassed by? That can actually prioritize its own citizens over its GDP and bombing places that never did us wrong? Whose flag isn't seen by many groups of people as a hate symbol? With a culture not based on being proudly ignorant? Probably. But we all need hope. Liberalism certainly ain't gonna get us there by itself—at some point we need actual values to orient around aside from greed and the right to be an asshole in public.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I think the thing that has been most surprising to me is how utterly transparent our current situation has been. I like to say "When it comes to the end of the Republic, I thought it would have all been quite a bit sneakier." Like the way that all of the Republicans in congress folded like a cheap suit and are now completely subservient to Trump - "Profiles in Cowardice" from top-to-bottom, with the exception of a few outliers who have now been ejected from the Republican party. My favorite current example is Bill Cassidy - what a total coward! I knew all of his "concerns" about RFK Jr. were a charade, and then even given his oath and knowledge as a doctor that he would eventually fold, and come out with some BS statement about how "After a really long conversation with RFK Jr. he assured me on some of my concerns blah blah blah..." And it happened like that to a T. Almost exactly like the Susan Collins/Brett Kavanaugh situation "I was shocked pikachu! I mean he assured me he wouldn't overturn Roe v. Wade!" I'm just surprised at how it's all playing out exactly to script, and the "scripts" from previous history aren't even that old or forgotten...
- noduerme 2y ago
  Yes, pinning our hopes on Bill Cassidy to head off catastrophe was a bit like hoping your oncologist would show up bright and early with good news...
arp242 2y ago
From a German who lived through the 30s (from memory): "at the time, I couldn't determine if Hitler was a good phenomenon with some bad side-effects, or a bad phenomenon with some good side-effects". In hindsight the answer is pretty obvious. But in 1934 Germany? A lot less so.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

subsistence234 2y ago

sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything.

palmotea 2y ago
> sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything. Come on. A "hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy" is completely orthogonal to the size of government, before or after the takeover.
- subsistence234 2y ago
  How do you clean up a corrupt organization?
  - maeln 2y ago
    Surely not by appointing other oligarch and cronies at high position of said organization.
  - a_victorp 2y ago
    By making it more transparent
  - vkou 2y ago
    It's probably best to start by not appointing a serial liar, convicted felon and conman to head it. But if for some insane reason you do, you probably want to keep him and his cronies accountable to the law of the land. The conduct expected from someone with that history should be unimpeachable. Instead, what we got is the conduct of someone who is unimpeachable. None of the rules apply to him or his friends, and neither do any of the checks and balances.
    - twixfel 2y ago
      He's a rapist too, isn't he?
      - georgemcbay 2y ago
        He literally bragged about it before he was elected the first time. I know we live in chaotic times and all but "grab them by the pussy" without clear consent is, in fact, sexual assault, no matter how much of a celebrity you are. And there's a long trail of credible accusations against him ranging from various forms of sexual assault to unequivocal rape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct...
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        IANAL, but if you're asking for a technically-correct answer, it depends on which place's laws you're using for the statement. If the crime can be done with hands and objects, yes. If the crime requires an actual phallus, no. (It'd still be something else, like sexual assault.)
  - dgb23 2y ago
    Bernie Sanders has been trying to tell you this since I can count. Corruption is fought by cutting off external, financial influence and lobbying and by putting the voters front and center. It is however _not_ fought by firing and going after dissents, pardoning violent extremists, stepping over the separation of power.
  - palmotea 2y ago
    > How do you clean up a corrupt organization? 1) The US government isn't "corrupt." It might be inefficient, it might be bloated, but it isn't generally corrupt. 2) You definitely don't try "clean up corruption" by out-doing it in corruption and lawlessness.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
dgb23 2y ago
Is this admin making the government smaller? So far they are expanding power, firing dissents and trying to reduce spending to humanitarian causes and education, to expand its hegemony, to agitate allies. They even attempt to increase means of incarceration. But there’s no attempt to decentralize power.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > government smaller I'd also emphasize that a dictator is smaller than a Congress, but not better, and "fewer written rules" can easily conflict with "more freedom for individuals." Just imagine if the many state laws concerning crimes and misdemeanors were torn up in favor of "don't piss off the police." Sure, it's way shorter, but you've simply replaced the hard-fought written rules (which you have a chance to see, understand, contest, etc.) with hidden unwritten ones that change semi-randomly.

BiteCode_dev 2y ago

I remember I once stumbled upon pictures of the daily life of ordinary nazis. They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments. There is even a video where hitler is shying away from his love companion. This was a shock to me as a kid: evil doesn't look like the caricature of "the very bad guy", it emerges in every day people. I think we failed to communicate that. It was too tempting to have a universal vilain you could use in Hollywood movies and instantly recognize. That you can't identify to. Black and white is so easy to sell. But what it means is a huge part of our society cannot make the link between what is happening in their own life and the past. Because they have a vision of the past that looks like a kid show, not what really happened. Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide. Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves. In the last too decades, we surely spent a lot of time playing with words until they could not be useful anymore. But it made us feel good for a moment.

illwrks 2y ago
I’ve not watched it yet, but a recent film called the Zone Of Interest sounds like it aligns to this. It’s about the Hoss family that lived next to one of the Nazi concentration camps, the father/husband ran the camp. Also, I recently watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and it again aligns to that point of view a bit.
- cocoggu 2y ago
  Point to be noted is that Rudolf Hoss wasn't the leader of a random Nazi camp. He was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, making him one of the biggest mass-murderer of the last century.
  - illwrks 2y ago
    Apologies, I’m not tuned into the details of the film as it’s on still my witch list. I didn’t want to overstate it just in case I was incorrect.

ookblah 2y ago

i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. they will always be taken advantage of, scammed, etc. social media and tech just made this 10x more effective. it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose. maybe i'm just cynical have given up. it's a really jarring thing to encounter people who refuse to even spend the min effort to attempt to question their own beliefs.

elif 2y ago
Once you see how stupid and useful this group is, it's hard to unsee the deliberate attempts to make this group larger and dumber.
- elif 2y ago
  Thought I should expand to explain the group gets larger as the economy suffers and people are too poor busy and hopeless for anything other than a hopeful narrative. And the group gets dumber when skipping school is glorified, education gets funding cuts, and people mass consume media.
labster 2y ago
Nah, cynicism is the only rational reaction now. Lots of people died from covid and our poor government response, but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  > Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive. I think this trivializes the outcome in a dangerous way. From my view as an outside observer, these were all big factors: - Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late) - Having an impossible platform for a lot of single issue voters (mainly: people that want immigration reduced, but also firearm availability) - Thoroughly uninspiring middle-east policy (not a personal opinion, but I think that cost a bunch of votes that would have been democrat) Personally, I also think that some sexism was also a significant factor and that Harris would've had an easier time had she been male. I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated). If the democrats main takeaway is that they just need to campaign for lower egg prices next election they might well lose again IMO.

yodsanklai 2y ago

In France, I remember we read several classic allegories on that theme at schools. Rhinoceros by Ionesco (even watched it in the theater as a school trip), also The Plague (Albert Camus). I didn't think much of it when I was a teenager, but I'm looking at them on the light of these recent events. Especially Rhinoceros on ideological contagion.

wiether 2y ago
Yes we did, but I think that the people who needed it the most, were the ones who either didn't had to read it (the ones not in a "lycée général") or whent through because it was required but didn't tried to understand the meaning. More broadly, as teenagers, most of us didn't had the maturity to truely grasp the meaning ; and the ones who did probably already where sensitive enough to don't fall in the same traps. In the hundreds of people I crossed path with during my school time, I don't remember a single one who was actually enlightened by things in the program. The only ones who had kind of a shift from their original mindset did that outside of school or because of a teacher who went out of their way (and of the official program) to explain things.
- yodsanklai 2y ago
  I don't think I was enlightened at that time, but at least, we discussed these topics and they are part of the collective knowledge in Europe. It's probably why Musk nazi salutes resonate differently in Europe vs the US. That being said, populism is raising in Europe too.
- noduerme 2y ago
  Odd things can enlighten someone. I was outside a gay bar in Avignon when a guy I knew who was hardcore FN hesitated and then sat down next to me, a Jew, and had an honest conversation. I think it doesn't take too much to enlighten French people, because much of the template for plurality and tolerance is already there and built into the culture. Then again, there are always some true assholes.
fransje26 2y ago
Is "The Plague" considered an allegory of the struggle against upcoming extremism? While reading it I saw some parallels with occupation: people trying to escape, some suffering from being separated from their loved ones, those abusing the system and enriching themselves with contraband, help being flown in irregularly, etc. But I didn't get as far as Nazism. Do you happen to remember which elements supported that supposed theme?

aa-jv 2y ago

>cowering now of anyone who should oppose a hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy and our laws, are striking. That's the least of your concerns. What you should be opposing is the US' government participation in genocide. The American publics' scale of tolerance of evil needs serious and earnest re-callibrating. This can only happen with war crimes prosecutions.

i_love_limes 2y ago

I'm having a hard time googling the book you mentioned. Is it by any chance called 'They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45'? That's the closest thing I could find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free

gspr 2y ago
Yes. "They thought they were free" is the main title. "The Germans 1933-1945" is the subtitle.

taurknaut 2y ago

Watching Gaza get razed has pretty much ended any sense I had that liberal society is capable of learning lessons or improving itself. I grew up a good liberal, but as an adult I realize that so much of peoples' attraction to liberalism is simply inability to resolve conflict, center values in society, or establish a shared culture. There are better ideals to structure society around, like material rights. Fwiw i also believe we should dismantle our government as it is not, actually, very democratic and doesn't actually function well and mostly exists to serve itself and its corporate clients. The current parties are simply the last people on earth I'd trust to do it.

pjc50 2y ago
If you hate liberalism, wait until you find out about illiberalism.
- taurknaut 2y ago
  What makes you think I hate liberalism? I was just pointing out it's not sufficient for a functional society, contrary to the tenets of our civic religion. If it was, our country wouldn't be such a dysfunctional shithole our citizens log on to China's instagram to talk about how much of a dysfunctional shithole this country is. Hilarious and hugely embarrassing. Granted, I do abhor the part of liberalism that makes people think their voice has any inherent value and that political action begins and ends with voting. I'd like to remind readers that Hitler was voted into office, but the civil rights act was legislated out of fear of cities burning down, and it took a literal civil war to end slavery in this country (outside of prisons anyway). Most of the few labor rights we have in part because the labor movement was bombing buildings and shutting down entire cities. We live in an arguably progressive society in spite of liberalism, not because of it. Am I naive for thinking americans are capable of making a government we can ACTUALLY not be embarrassed by? That can actually prioritize its own citizens over its GDP and bombing places that never did us wrong? Whose flag isn't seen by many groups of people as a hate symbol? With a culture not based on being proudly ignorant? Probably. But we all need hope. Liberalism certainly ain't gonna get us there by itself—at some point we need actual values to orient around aside from greed and the right to be an asshole in public.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I think the thing that has been most surprising to me is how utterly transparent our current situation has been. I like to say "When it comes to the end of the Republic, I thought it would have all been quite a bit sneakier." Like the way that all of the Republicans in congress folded like a cheap suit and are now completely subservient to Trump - "Profiles in Cowardice" from top-to-bottom, with the exception of a few outliers who have now been ejected from the Republican party. My favorite current example is Bill Cassidy - what a total coward! I knew all of his "concerns" about RFK Jr. were a charade, and then even given his oath and knowledge as a doctor that he would eventually fold, and come out with some BS statement about how "After a really long conversation with RFK Jr. he assured me on some of my concerns blah blah blah..." And it happened like that to a T. Almost exactly like the Susan Collins/Brett Kavanaugh situation "I was shocked pikachu! I mean he assured me he wouldn't overturn Roe v. Wade!" I'm just surprised at how it's all playing out exactly to script, and the "scripts" from previous history aren't even that old or forgotten...

noduerme 2y ago
Yes, pinning our hopes on Bill Cassidy to head off catastrophe was a bit like hoping your oncologist would show up bright and early with good news...

arp242 2y ago

From a German who lived through the 30s (from memory): "at the time, I couldn't determine if Hitler was a good phenomenon with some bad side-effects, or a bad phenomenon with some good side-effects". In hindsight the answer is pretty obvious. But in 1934 Germany? A lot less so.