I am going to spare you the rant you so properly deserve…I guess it’s still a rant, but it’s a smaller one.
Behind The Bastards did this rant for me, and I expect you’ll prefer their version, in the two-parter on Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the genocide machine of the German Reich. (On YouTube: Part One and Part Two )
Some things you might learn:
The holocaust during the German Reich ended with immense concentration camp complex and extermination engine. It didn’t start that way. The turning point was the Wannsee Conference in 1942 in which Heydrich and Eichmann negotiated with German officials to resort to the final solution to the Jewish question, which was to shift from a policy of deportation and maintaining ghettos to a policy of extermination. (If we go by the movie Conspiracy it took them an hour just to clarify they were talking about extermination without saying words meaning extermination)
The Holocaust didn’t start that way. In 1936 the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) run by Heydrich gathered up select undesirables and packed them into an unused munitions warehouse which became the first concentration camp. As the population outnumbered the capacity of current detention centers, more were created.
Even though the Nuremberg Laws only specified the detention and containment of a narrow field of undesirables (e.g. Jews with known criminal records) the SD rounded them up liberally, taking anyone who couldn’t immediately defend why they shouldn’t be arrested. Compare ICE in 2016-present rounding up any undocumented immigrants they can track for deportation, despite that they are supposed to only arrest those who are violent felons. (Being undocumented is a misdemeanor.). Meanwhile compare the SS (which is loyal to the Führer rather than to the German state) to the Department of Homeland Security which is loyal to the Presidency, and not the Constitution of the United States and the US State.
The mass annihilation of Jews and other undesirables started long before the Auschwitz (the prototype for the death camps) and the Wannsee Conference. During Operation Barbarossa (the war in the east) and the occupation of Poland (and the other annexed Baltic / Slavic regions) the Einsatzgruppen (SS Death Squads) would massacre villages that were either disobedient, or from which traitors came. Sometimes just gunning them down in front of a mass grave, or gassing them in death wagons (trucks with a sealed chamber into which the motor exhaust was piped). These proved too slow, but also was too hard on the execution troopers. Due to the high turnover rate and the frequency of PTSD symptoms, the Auschwitz camp was engineered so that no crewperson had to witness and process what was going on. Those who loaded the trains and packed the gassing chambers were a separate shift than those who picked up the bodies and transferred them to the ovens. The one who pushed the button was two steps removed from the one who had the authority to sign off on the executions, and neither of them had to see the victims or the processing zones.
\
Fascism is the final defense of authorities who have run out of justifications for their power. And yes, many people would rather believe their woes come from the oddballs in the society they don’t like rather than the fundamental structure of the system. It’s a lie that people want to believe, rather than face the truth of the matter. And because we’re so eager, it might kill us all.
It also tells us our plutocratic masters would rather drive the human species to extinction rather than give up their power for a better society. We’ve evolved to be social, but we aren’t really all that great at the society-of-millions thing.
They started exterminating “unfavorable” people even before they started “detaining” jews and roma.
It actually started with mentally and bodily disabled.
If you think that the genocide of these people wasn’t the plan from the get-go, you are heavily mistaken. They just needed to rile up the public against these minorities before doing anything.
I know german history. I am germanswiss. And i find it frankly disrespectfuly that a Ausländer tries to explain me our history.
And the most important for the last part:
Your point nr. 3, comparing what happened in Nazi-Germany to the US today, is fucking disgusting. It is relativation of Nazism and the Holocaust. I invite you to come over here to germany and say that here, because it could land you a nice prison sentence up to 5 years.
§130 StGB Abs. 3, look it up.
Fascism and Nazism didn’t come from a few oddballs, but from a society, systematically humiliated by the victors of ww1 at the end of it and humiliated by the economic crisis, that turned to extremism.
Nobody fucking belives that it came from a few oddballs.
WW2 and its causes are some of the most well-known and well-discussed topics in the world. I honestly don’t know how you can be so disinformed and even ignorant about this topic as to make such statements.
Please go and read the report of Richard Dimbleby. Maybe then you’ll truly understand the true nature of national socialism and its crimes
Maybe you should listen to the transnational white power movement here in the states.
They want to kill us. Law enforcement are using the same methods across the US as the SD, including deporting refugees into certain death or captivity, or just murdering inmates in the immense federal and state prison systems when not using them as slave labor. So yeah, I resent you minimizing what is going on in the states.
I never said it came from a few oddballs rather the circumstances in the German Reich were fit for a fascist movement. The antisemitism was global. But the industrialists and the nationalists needed to preserve popular fear to cling to power. What is fascinating isnthat our few oddballs were entirely aware of it.
I still hold that it’s folly to imagine the German Reich was unique or special, that the developments that lead to a fascist uprising are rare or could happen nowhere else. And it is dangerous in this era to assume so.
Your assertion that your nationalist status gives you privileged knowledge is concerning. With a Degenkolb mother and a Jewish grandmother, I’m not quite German or Jew by traditional standards. I don’t know where that fits in your spooky hereditary metric.
But I cited a source from where I got my information and Robert Evans cites his, so I’m going to continue assuming his research is sound and you’re arguing from personal investment. As for my own personal interest, it has been since the aughts in understanding how the holocaust came about and preventing another one here in the states.
They want to kill us. Law enforcement are using the same methods across the US as the SD, including deporting refugees into certain death or captivity, or just murdering inmates in the immense federal and state prison systems when not using them as slave labor. So yeah, I resent you minimizing what is going on in the states.
awful situation, but still not even comparable to the Holocaust and it’s horrors. That’s so scary about this to me. You don’t know how bad the Holocaust really was. You see a really Bad Situation and you think “that’s a really Bad situation, it must be as bad as the Holocaust!” Not realizing how fucking evil and savage the SS and the Nazis were. Again, read the Report of Richard Dimbleby. Maybe then you’ll understand how awful the Nazis and their Actions were. Maybe then you’ll understand how awful life in a Concentration Camp was. Maybe then you’ll understand why what you’re saying is relativation of Nazigermany, its Actions and the Holocaust. Maybe then you’ll understand why what you’re doing here on the Internet would land you in Prison in Germany.
I never said it came from a few oddballs rather the circumstances in the German Reich were fit for a fascist movement. The antisemitism was global. But the industrialists and the nationalists needed to preserve popular fear to cling to power. What is fascinating isnthat our few oddballs were entirely aware of it.
yes, you said the Opposite. To which i replied (paraphrasing myself:) “That’s a stupid argument. Nobody believes it’s been because of a few oddballs, This was THE biggest Lesson that we learned from WW2. So why the fuck are you bringing this up?”
I still hold that it’s folly to imagine the German Reich was unique or special, that the developments that lead to a fascist uprising are rare or could happen nowhere else. And it is dangerous in this era to assume so.
agree with your second part. If people believe that we, as a modern society can’t repeat the mistakes of the past, we’re 100% going to repeat them. I mean, just look at Russia. They believed they could never be fascist because they fought the Nazis. And what happened now? They’re fascists fighting a war of aggression against a neighboring country. This is the exact reason why this topic takes such massive prevalence in German school, tv and everyday life. We learn everything we can about it, in order to never repeat it.
Your assertion that your nationalist status gives you privileged knowledge is concerning. With a Degenkolb mother and a Jewish grandmother, I’m not quite German or Jew by traditional standards. I don’t know where that fits in your spooky hereditary metric.
It’s not about descent, it’s about the prevalence of the topic in society. I learned about this Topic 3 times during my school-career. Every fourth Documentary i watch is in one way or the other about the Nazis, their wars, their crimes. I don’t know how much exposure that topic gets in the US, where it sounds you’re coming from, but i know that it’s nowhere near as much. sadly. Which is why i get itchy when i, a person that was confronted with this his whole life, knows as much as humanly possible about this, gets lectured by a person that i assume just watched a youtube documentary and called it a day. I am sorry if you actually did a deep-dive into this topic, read a lot of books about it and know a lot, but most people that talk big like that just don’t, so that’s what i assumed.
But I cited a source from where I got my information and Robert Evans cites his, so I’m going to continue assuming his research is sound and you’re arguing from personal investment. As for my own personal interest, it has been since the aughts in understanding how the holocaust came about and preventing another one here in the states.
i don’t have my old history books from school anymore, otherwise i would have given you their names. So I’m really sorry if i can’t give you any better source, but my source in this case is my Public Education.
I am not quite sure what you mean “you’re arguing from personal investement”, so this is what i assume you mean: you mean that the reason i’m arguing is because of strongly-held personal opinions about the war.
Then you would be absolutely right. I have strong convictions to this Topic and it is one that is very close to me. And i see it as my Responsibility and Duty, not a guilt, but a Responsibility and Duty, as a GermanSwiss, a linguistic german, to:
Prevent such Actions from ever happening again
make sure that the legacy of the victims of nationalsocialism aren’t ridiculed or relativated
if i see someone comparing capitalism to nationalsocialism and the holocaust, all the people will think “hey, if nazism and the holocaust are similar to the capitalism that i’m living in, then it can’t be that bad” when in reality live under nazism was living hell. When jews being starved, beaten, tortured and executed in millions is being compared to working overhours in order to pay your bill, that’s not just respectless and a sign of lack of any basic human dignity and historical understanding, that is also relativation of nazism and the holocaust. And To come to your last point “You are not helping in that regard”: No, you’re not helping in that regard. By comparing the Horrors and absolute evil of nazism to the relatively small evil of personal greed under capitalism, you are relevating said Horrors. You are making them out to be less bad than they were. You aren’t making fascism and Nazism an uncomprehensible evil that must be stopped, but something that isn’t that bad and maybe even an alternative, because if capitalism is just as bad as fascism, we can just switch to fascism without becoming any worse, no?
Fascism and Nazism are the ultimate evil, they cannot and must not be compared to anything else, because there isn’t anything it can compare to. It IS the ultimate evil.
And i will passionately and fiery speak up every time someone tries to compare it to anything, because it’s just wrong and it’s my Duty to do so.
I really support your fight against injustice in the US, and I’m really grateful there are people like you caring about this Topic and wishing to do something about it. I really am. But please, please, do it without desecrating and relativating the victims of Nazism, their Story and their Suffering. Thanks
I’m really sorry if i can’t give you any better source, but my source in this case is my Public Education.
Much of the history I’ve studied runs contrary to what I learned in the various history, government and civilization courses that were mandated in my own public education, and this was even before the gutting and revision that has been seen. So I’m going to continue to trust the sources I’ve read. And I’m going to continue to assert there are many similarities regarding the movements in the US (and UK, Canada and Australia, though I’ve watched them less closely).
No, I’m not saying it’s exactly the same thing. But the US is exhibiting the fourteen symptoms of Ur-fascism detailed by Umberto Eco (whether you agree those are fundamental or not). It’s also describable by the ten points by Emilio Gentile (same disclaimer). We do have the largest prison industrial complex in the world, and the highest rate of incarceration, which we are tapping for slave labor and allowing widespread abuse and killing by prison staff. And no small number of the incidents of in-prison death are in line with the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.
And no, it’s not going to go the same route. For one thing the US is much bigger. It suffers from a greater level of complexity and correlative chaos which resistance efforts can (and do) exploit. But right now, the US is trending towards authoritarian takeover. the US Supreme Court is stripping rights away from Americans (mostly our rights to due process, our protections from illegal search and seizure, our rights to privacy) The public only became generally aware of this trend after the Dobbs decision which removed the federal right to abortion access.
I can’t say I know that it’s going to end in the construction of a genocide machine or the massacre of Americans by the millions, or even a war of expansionism to carry the movement’s agenda abroad, but these are certainly plausible futures were before the 20th century (and the 9/11/2001 attacks) such possibilities seemed remote. More than two CIA analysts (retired) have publicly stated the US fits the conditions that lead to civil war between the Christian nationalist movement and the rest of us. We can’t say if it will break out in five years or fifty, but the US state and federal government are not taking the steps necessary to prevent such an outbreak.
The Holocaust is not sacred. The German Reich and NSDAP are not ultimate evils and the best way we can serve the memories of its victims is to strive to assure that it isn’t happening again (something our Israeli brethren are failing at along the Gaza Strip, but that’s another topic). Never Again is an oath that does not apply just to Jews but to all peoples, and that means comprehending the process by which societies turn on themselves.
I am going to spare you the rant you so properly deserve…I guess it’s still a rant, but it’s a smaller one.
Behind The Bastards did this rant for me, and I expect you’ll prefer their version, in the two-parter on Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the genocide machine of the German Reich. (On YouTube: Part One and Part Two )
Some things you might learn:
\
Fascism is the final defense of authorities who have run out of justifications for their power. And yes, many people would rather believe their woes come from the oddballs in the society they don’t like rather than the fundamental structure of the system. It’s a lie that people want to believe, rather than face the truth of the matter. And because we’re so eager, it might kill us all.
It also tells us our plutocratic masters would rather drive the human species to extinction rather than give up their power for a better society. We’ve evolved to be social, but we aren’t really all that great at the society-of-millions thing.
Please. The goal was always to kill them.
They started exterminating “unfavorable” people even before they started “detaining” jews and roma.
It actually started with mentally and bodily disabled.
If you think that the genocide of these people wasn’t the plan from the get-go, you are heavily mistaken. They just needed to rile up the public against these minorities before doing anything.
I know german history. I am germanswiss. And i find it frankly disrespectfuly that a Ausländer tries to explain me our history.
And the most important for the last part: Your point nr. 3, comparing what happened in Nazi-Germany to the US today, is fucking disgusting. It is relativation of Nazism and the Holocaust. I invite you to come over here to germany and say that here, because it could land you a nice prison sentence up to 5 years.
§130 StGB Abs. 3, look it up.
Fascism and Nazism didn’t come from a few oddballs, but from a society, systematically humiliated by the victors of ww1 at the end of it and humiliated by the economic crisis, that turned to extremism.
Nobody fucking belives that it came from a few oddballs.
WW2 and its causes are some of the most well-known and well-discussed topics in the world. I honestly don’t know how you can be so disinformed and even ignorant about this topic as to make such statements.
Please go and read the report of Richard Dimbleby. Maybe then you’ll truly understand the true nature of national socialism and its crimes
Maybe you should listen to the transnational white power movement here in the states.
They want to kill us. Law enforcement are using the same methods across the US as the SD, including deporting refugees into certain death or captivity, or just murdering inmates in the immense federal and state prison systems when not using them as slave labor. So yeah, I resent you minimizing what is going on in the states.
I never said it came from a few oddballs rather the circumstances in the German Reich were fit for a fascist movement. The antisemitism was global. But the industrialists and the nationalists needed to preserve popular fear to cling to power. What is fascinating isnthat our few oddballs were entirely aware of it.
I still hold that it’s folly to imagine the German Reich was unique or special, that the developments that lead to a fascist uprising are rare or could happen nowhere else. And it is dangerous in this era to assume so.
Your assertion that your nationalist status gives you privileged knowledge is concerning. With a Degenkolb mother and a Jewish grandmother, I’m not quite German or Jew by traditional standards. I don’t know where that fits in your spooky hereditary metric.
But I cited a source from where I got my information and Robert Evans cites his, so I’m going to continue assuming his research is sound and you’re arguing from personal investment. As for my own personal interest, it has been since the aughts in understanding how the holocaust came about and preventing another one here in the states.
You are not helping in that regard.
awful situation, but still not even comparable to the Holocaust and it’s horrors. That’s so scary about this to me. You don’t know how bad the Holocaust really was. You see a really Bad Situation and you think “that’s a really Bad situation, it must be as bad as the Holocaust!” Not realizing how fucking evil and savage the SS and the Nazis were. Again, read the Report of Richard Dimbleby. Maybe then you’ll understand how awful the Nazis and their Actions were. Maybe then you’ll understand how awful life in a Concentration Camp was. Maybe then you’ll understand why what you’re saying is relativation of Nazigermany, its Actions and the Holocaust. Maybe then you’ll understand why what you’re doing here on the Internet would land you in Prison in Germany.
yes, you said the Opposite. To which i replied (paraphrasing myself:) “That’s a stupid argument. Nobody believes it’s been because of a few oddballs, This was THE biggest Lesson that we learned from WW2. So why the fuck are you bringing this up?”
agree with your second part. If people believe that we, as a modern society can’t repeat the mistakes of the past, we’re 100% going to repeat them. I mean, just look at Russia. They believed they could never be fascist because they fought the Nazis. And what happened now? They’re fascists fighting a war of aggression against a neighboring country. This is the exact reason why this topic takes such massive prevalence in German school, tv and everyday life. We learn everything we can about it, in order to never repeat it.
It’s not about descent, it’s about the prevalence of the topic in society. I learned about this Topic 3 times during my school-career. Every fourth Documentary i watch is in one way or the other about the Nazis, their wars, their crimes. I don’t know how much exposure that topic gets in the US, where it sounds you’re coming from, but i know that it’s nowhere near as much. sadly. Which is why i get itchy when i, a person that was confronted with this his whole life, knows as much as humanly possible about this, gets lectured by a person that i assume just watched a youtube documentary and called it a day. I am sorry if you actually did a deep-dive into this topic, read a lot of books about it and know a lot, but most people that talk big like that just don’t, so that’s what i assumed.
i don’t have my old history books from school anymore, otherwise i would have given you their names. So I’m really sorry if i can’t give you any better source, but my source in this case is my Public Education. I am not quite sure what you mean “you’re arguing from personal investement”, so this is what i assume you mean: you mean that the reason i’m arguing is because of strongly-held personal opinions about the war.
Then you would be absolutely right. I have strong convictions to this Topic and it is one that is very close to me. And i see it as my Responsibility and Duty, not a guilt, but a Responsibility and Duty, as a GermanSwiss, a linguistic german, to:
if i see someone comparing capitalism to nationalsocialism and the holocaust, all the people will think “hey, if nazism and the holocaust are similar to the capitalism that i’m living in, then it can’t be that bad” when in reality live under nazism was living hell. When jews being starved, beaten, tortured and executed in millions is being compared to working overhours in order to pay your bill, that’s not just respectless and a sign of lack of any basic human dignity and historical understanding, that is also relativation of nazism and the holocaust. And To come to your last point “You are not helping in that regard”: No, you’re not helping in that regard. By comparing the Horrors and absolute evil of nazism to the relatively small evil of personal greed under capitalism, you are relevating said Horrors. You are making them out to be less bad than they were. You aren’t making fascism and Nazism an uncomprehensible evil that must be stopped, but something that isn’t that bad and maybe even an alternative, because if capitalism is just as bad as fascism, we can just switch to fascism without becoming any worse, no?
Fascism and Nazism are the ultimate evil, they cannot and must not be compared to anything else, because there isn’t anything it can compare to. It IS the ultimate evil. And i will passionately and fiery speak up every time someone tries to compare it to anything, because it’s just wrong and it’s my Duty to do so.
I really support your fight against injustice in the US, and I’m really grateful there are people like you caring about this Topic and wishing to do something about it. I really am. But please, please, do it without desecrating and relativating the victims of Nazism, their Story and their Suffering. Thanks
I’m really sorry if i can’t give you any better source, but my source in this case is my Public Education.
Much of the history I’ve studied runs contrary to what I learned in the various history, government and civilization courses that were mandated in my own public education, and this was even before the gutting and revision that has been seen. So I’m going to continue to trust the sources I’ve read. And I’m going to continue to assert there are many similarities regarding the movements in the US (and UK, Canada and Australia, though I’ve watched them less closely).
No, I’m not saying it’s exactly the same thing. But the US is exhibiting the fourteen symptoms of Ur-fascism detailed by Umberto Eco (whether you agree those are fundamental or not). It’s also describable by the ten points by Emilio Gentile (same disclaimer). We do have the largest prison industrial complex in the world, and the highest rate of incarceration, which we are tapping for slave labor and allowing widespread abuse and killing by prison staff. And no small number of the incidents of in-prison death are in line with the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.
And no, it’s not going to go the same route. For one thing the US is much bigger. It suffers from a greater level of complexity and correlative chaos which resistance efforts can (and do) exploit. But right now, the US is trending towards authoritarian takeover. the US Supreme Court is stripping rights away from Americans (mostly our rights to due process, our protections from illegal search and seizure, our rights to privacy) The public only became generally aware of this trend after the Dobbs decision which removed the federal right to abortion access.
I can’t say I know that it’s going to end in the construction of a genocide machine or the massacre of Americans by the millions, or even a war of expansionism to carry the movement’s agenda abroad, but these are certainly plausible futures were before the 20th century (and the 9/11/2001 attacks) such possibilities seemed remote. More than two CIA analysts (retired) have publicly stated the US fits the conditions that lead to civil war between the Christian nationalist movement and the rest of us. We can’t say if it will break out in five years or fifty, but the US state and federal government are not taking the steps necessary to prevent such an outbreak.
The Holocaust is not sacred. The German Reich and NSDAP are not ultimate evils and the best way we can serve the memories of its victims is to strive to assure that it isn’t happening again (something our Israeli brethren are failing at along the Gaza Strip, but that’s another topic). Never Again is an oath that does not apply just to Jews but to all peoples, and that means comprehending the process by which societies turn on themselves.