5 ms·

No, they noticed. 90 years ago, 2/3 of the world's books were in Germany. They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening.

by Hilift 1y ago

No, they noticed. 90 years ago, 2/3 of the world's books were in Germany. They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening. Germans were acutely aware of the reality of the day to day situation and their previous history in WW1.

giorgioz 1y ago
Seems unlikely Germany owned 66% of the world books in 1935. I'm not counter claiming the rest, but that fact seems off.
brabel 1y ago
You don’t know and you can’t know what it was like. The least you could do is try to listen to the people who were there and perhaps do at least a little bit of introspection and consider what you could’ve done differently, knowing what the consequences for troublemakers were. But that seems to be beyond you?
- foldr 1y ago
  I think OP is talking about the rise of the Nazis rather than the period where the Nazis were already in control and resistance was much more difficult. Although, in fairness, Hitler was already chancellor ‘90 years ago’.
osobo 1y ago
Did you even read the article? They explicitly point out that it was the learned class that was so busy with their other important things that they missed all of it. The whole thing is about how that played out.
csomar 1y ago
[flagged]
- Dumblydorr 1y ago
  Hitler didn’t do well by the people. Real wages declined throughout Nazi reign. Their lands were destroyed. They were responsible for allowing genocide. Source: Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The article shows how he lulled them step by step and diverted them from knowing this was worse than before. Sound familiar USA?
  - csomar 1y ago
    They just lost the war. Had they won the war(s), their fortunes would have been different. We can hate the guy but he was not going to conquer Europe with the Germans and then sit at it empty.
    - fzeroracer 1y ago
      One of the reasons they specifically lost the war was because Hitler was such a fuck up that he was decimating the German economy. When you look at how the war was progressing, the only outcome for the Nazis at the time was either defeat or collapse. Combined with the endemic usage of Pervitin and other drugs at this time both to fuel soldiers and keep the citizens relatively placated they were burning up everything both at the frontline and at home.
      - XorNot 1y ago
        Bingo: the story of WW2 is that the Germans started with an effective army, and the Nazis ran it into the ground. The saddest thing is subsequent decades of bizarre interpretations of this result because people got too excited about some effective German industry that they took Hitlers various wonder weapon attempts as planned engineering projects rather than engineers trying to put form to a mad man's rantings. Hitler loved the idea of super heavy tanks, so the Germans kept trying to build them even though they were unreliable, ineffective and vulnerable. Meanwhile the Sherman got a reputation for breaking down a lot...mostly because it kept surviving and being fixed in the field and continuing to provide effective armor support, whereas German tanks just died.
    - Dumblydorr 1y ago
- metalman 1y ago
  And only from reading Chinese history and how the Chinese inteligencia see's it can you get the full wieght that what to them is an inevitable and unstopable cycle. They go so far as to describe the stages and symptoms of each stage, along with specific societal conditions that we continue to replicate with a mechanical precision they gave the name "The turning of the dynastic wheel" The chinese with there long history, and pragmatic introspection have codified things like this in there pictographic written language, where the symbol for disaster is derived from combining the two symbols for danger, and oportunity.
  - HK-NC 1y ago
    I have a chinese friend who said something similar to this, she believes much of the culture in the modern west is influenced by some shady chinese government attempt at controlling the speed at which said wheel turns, through Tiktok and stuff. While Id normally dismiss her as a nut, we do have rioting in the street arguing over a miniscule group of people wearing clothes dsigned for the opposite sex.
    - pessimizer 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - unethical_ban 1y ago
        On biological males in women's sports I think more people can agree on this. But you're handwaving away the fact that conservative political parties are using trans existence as a wedge issue.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        wizzwizz4 1y ago
        They're using trans people's participation in sports (once uncontroversial) as a wedge to drive in the larger wedge of trans existence. They can do this because, intuitively, many people think there's an advantage to be had. If there were such advantages, then we'd have to consider the thorny topic of what constitutes an "unfair" advantage, and whether the social implications of excluding a marginalised population outweigh the (perhaps disproportionate) impact of yada yada. But we don't have to consider any of this, because scientific research suggests trans women do not have such advantages over cis women: medical transition does not lead to a body configuration optimised for sports. Quoth, for instance, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2025.04.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2025.04.004: > This study highlights substantial ventilatory inefficiencies in transgender women, likely associated with gender-affirming hormone therapy This whole moral panic is an artificially-constructed wedge issue: they found something persuasive, and (by presenting trans people as something dangerous and new) side-stepped the need for evidence of harm, and positioned their reactionary bans as conservative. I think, when arguing about this topic, more attention needs to be paid to the fact that feminising hormone therapy (as a treatment for trans women) is older than insulin (as a treatment for diabetics). Any harmful consequences of trans existence (resp. participation in sports, etc) already happened, and nobody alive noticed.
- thrance 1y ago
  > Hitler did well by the Germans. That's an insanely stupid claim. Jews were systematically stigmatized and eventually sent to extermination camps. What we now call LGBT people and political opponents got the same treatment. Syndicalists too: one of the first thing Hitler did was make unions illegal. And even the "aryans" that supported him, saw their work hours get longer and longer and the pay smaller and smaller. And let's not speak of the millions dying in a pointless war that ruined Europe.
- foldr 1y ago
  > Hitler did well by the Germans This could only possibly be true if, like the Nazis, you exclude Jews, Gypsies, gays, disabled people, women who value their sexual and reproductive freedom, etc. etc. from the category ‘German’. And even then it’s still not true, as others in the thread have pointed out. It’s disturbingly frequently that I see this weird nudge nudge wink wink kinda-sorta Nazi apologism from high karma accounts here. I’m willing to believe that there aren’t fundamentally bad intentions behind it and that it stems mainly from some kind of reflexive contrarianism, but boy is it weird and disturbing.
- nathan_compton 1y ago
  "Hitler did well by the Germans" is a weird way to describe taking over a state by violence and propaganda and then leading it into a humiliating military defeat and committing some of the most morally repugnant acts in recent history in its name, but ok, I guess.
- throw0101c 1y ago
  > It is western propaganda. Germans were simply supportive of Hitler and, for the most part, Hitler did well by the Germans. It's not like they had much of a choice after ~1933: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 And Adam Tooze, who wrote an entire book examining Nazi economic policy, would disagree on the 'doing well by' part: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction
Foreignborn 1y ago
I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color. For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written. Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war. Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise. — not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book. i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.
- lukan 1y ago
  Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly. There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open. His views towards jews likewise. So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening and it was more and more clear that the war will be lost.
  - FrustratedMonky 1y ago
    Yes. Also, Project 2025 was openly published. Anybody could read it. They aren't hiding the goals. People just don't want to bother with it.
    - lif 1y ago
      PNAC (Project for the New American Century) published an interesting 'report' in 2000
    - 1y ago
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
"They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening" can be hard, it's happening right now, and a lot of people are really all in, love it. or ignoring it, or sinking into streaming services to distract themselves. Take your average house frau today, and they think Trump rounding people up is just good old law and order. People aren't thinking everything through, that's how the overwhelming distractions work.

by Hilift 1y ago

giorgioz 1y ago

Seems unlikely Germany owned 66% of the world books in 1935. I'm not counter claiming the rest, but that fact seems off.

brabel 1y ago

You don’t know and you can’t know what it was like. The least you could do is try to listen to the people who were there and perhaps do at least a little bit of introspection and consider what you could’ve done differently, knowing what the consequences for troublemakers were. But that seems to be beyond you?

foldr 1y ago
I think OP is talking about the rise of the Nazis rather than the period where the Nazis were already in control and resistance was much more difficult. Although, in fairness, Hitler was already chancellor ‘90 years ago’.

osobo 1y ago

Did you even read the article? They explicitly point out that it was the learned class that was so busy with their other important things that they missed all of it. The whole thing is about how that played out.

csomar 1y ago

[flagged]

Dumblydorr 1y ago
Hitler didn’t do well by the people. Real wages declined throughout Nazi reign. Their lands were destroyed. They were responsible for allowing genocide. Source: Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The article shows how he lulled them step by step and diverted them from knowing this was worse than before. Sound familiar USA?
- csomar 1y ago
  They just lost the war. Had they won the war(s), their fortunes would have been different. We can hate the guy but he was not going to conquer Europe with the Germans and then sit at it empty.
  - fzeroracer 1y ago
    One of the reasons they specifically lost the war was because Hitler was such a fuck up that he was decimating the German economy. When you look at how the war was progressing, the only outcome for the Nazis at the time was either defeat or collapse. Combined with the endemic usage of Pervitin and other drugs at this time both to fuel soldiers and keep the citizens relatively placated they were burning up everything both at the frontline and at home.
    - XorNot 1y ago
      Bingo: the story of WW2 is that the Germans started with an effective army, and the Nazis ran it into the ground. The saddest thing is subsequent decades of bizarre interpretations of this result because people got too excited about some effective German industry that they took Hitlers various wonder weapon attempts as planned engineering projects rather than engineers trying to put form to a mad man's rantings. Hitler loved the idea of super heavy tanks, so the Germans kept trying to build them even though they were unreliable, ineffective and vulnerable. Meanwhile the Sherman got a reputation for breaking down a lot...mostly because it kept surviving and being fixed in the field and continuing to provide effective armor support, whereas German tanks just died.
  - Dumblydorr 1y ago
metalman 1y ago
And only from reading Chinese history and how the Chinese inteligencia see's it can you get the full wieght that what to them is an inevitable and unstopable cycle. They go so far as to describe the stages and symptoms of each stage, along with specific societal conditions that we continue to replicate with a mechanical precision they gave the name "The turning of the dynastic wheel" The chinese with there long history, and pragmatic introspection have codified things like this in there pictographic written language, where the symbol for disaster is derived from combining the two symbols for danger, and oportunity.
- HK-NC 1y ago
  I have a chinese friend who said something similar to this, she believes much of the culture in the modern west is influenced by some shady chinese government attempt at controlling the speed at which said wheel turns, through Tiktok and stuff. While Id normally dismiss her as a nut, we do have rioting in the street arguing over a miniscule group of people wearing clothes dsigned for the opposite sex.
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - unethical_ban 1y ago
      On biological males in women's sports I think more people can agree on this. But you're handwaving away the fact that conservative political parties are using trans existence as a wedge issue.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - wizzwizz4 1y ago
        They're using trans people's participation in sports (once uncontroversial) as a wedge to drive in the larger wedge of trans existence. They can do this because, intuitively, many people think there's an advantage to be had. If there were such advantages, then we'd have to consider the thorny topic of what constitutes an "unfair" advantage, and whether the social implications of excluding a marginalised population outweigh the (perhaps disproportionate) impact of yada yada. But we don't have to consider any of this, because scientific research suggests trans women do not have such advantages over cis women: medical transition does not lead to a body configuration optimised for sports. Quoth, for instance, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2025.04.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2025.04.004: > This study highlights substantial ventilatory inefficiencies in transgender women, likely associated with gender-affirming hormone therapy This whole moral panic is an artificially-constructed wedge issue: they found something persuasive, and (by presenting trans people as something dangerous and new) side-stepped the need for evidence of harm, and positioned their reactionary bans as conservative. I think, when arguing about this topic, more attention needs to be paid to the fact that feminising hormone therapy (as a treatment for trans women) is older than insulin (as a treatment for diabetics). Any harmful consequences of trans existence (resp. participation in sports, etc) already happened, and nobody alive noticed.
thrance 1y ago
> Hitler did well by the Germans. That's an insanely stupid claim. Jews were systematically stigmatized and eventually sent to extermination camps. What we now call LGBT people and political opponents got the same treatment. Syndicalists too: one of the first thing Hitler did was make unions illegal. And even the "aryans" that supported him, saw their work hours get longer and longer and the pay smaller and smaller. And let's not speak of the millions dying in a pointless war that ruined Europe.
foldr 1y ago
> Hitler did well by the Germans This could only possibly be true if, like the Nazis, you exclude Jews, Gypsies, gays, disabled people, women who value their sexual and reproductive freedom, etc. etc. from the category ‘German’. And even then it’s still not true, as others in the thread have pointed out. It’s disturbingly frequently that I see this weird nudge nudge wink wink kinda-sorta Nazi apologism from high karma accounts here. I’m willing to believe that there aren’t fundamentally bad intentions behind it and that it stems mainly from some kind of reflexive contrarianism, but boy is it weird and disturbing.
nathan_compton 1y ago
"Hitler did well by the Germans" is a weird way to describe taking over a state by violence and propaganda and then leading it into a humiliating military defeat and committing some of the most morally repugnant acts in recent history in its name, but ok, I guess.
throw0101c 1y ago
> It is western propaganda. Germans were simply supportive of Hitler and, for the most part, Hitler did well by the Germans. It's not like they had much of a choice after ~1933: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 And Adam Tooze, who wrote an entire book examining Nazi economic policy, would disagree on the 'doing well by' part: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction

Foreignborn 1y ago

I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color. For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written. Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war. Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise. — not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book. i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.

lukan 1y ago
Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly. There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open. His views towards jews likewise. So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening and it was more and more clear that the war will be lost.
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago
  Yes. Also, Project 2025 was openly published. Anybody could read it. They aren't hiding the goals. People just don't want to bother with it.
  - lif 1y ago
    PNAC (Project for the New American Century) published an interesting 'report' in 2000
  - 1y ago

FrustratedMonky 1y ago

"They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening" can be hard, it's happening right now, and a lot of people are really all in, love it. or ignoring it, or sinking into streaming services to distract themselves. Take your average house frau today, and they think Trump rounding people up is just good old law and order. People aren't thinking everything through, that's how the overwhelming distractions work.