05-06-2013, 09:43 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-06-2013, 11:42 AM by Jim Hackett II.)
Any examination of the various events of the rise of fascism in Europe and America should not start at the beer hall putsch' of Munich in 1923, though many accounts do so. The empowerment of the NSDAP would have been spectacular indeed if the facts supported a meteoric rise of AHitler from a street snitch to Chancellor from '17 to '33. As usual there is more to the history than this presentation of AHitler as instant chancellor up from the masses in times of economic chaos.
AHitler for his psychosis was not a coward as Phil notes. Nor was he stupid, uneducated yes but not stupid.
Quite brave and a stark comparison of dispatch carriers as AWDulles on a train in peace and dining well,
as opposed to living in the lice ridden "trenches" of stagnant warfare and carrying dispatches under fire.
Dispatch carriers had to be trusted and depended upon by commanders.
Not duty for shirkers in the time before effective radio use in chains of command.
Is this a hero? It is heroic duty to be sure.
My opinion is that the hate AHitler willing played host to in his mind produced a rot of heart as hate often does.
1923 is too late a date to pick as a starting point' for the tales. In fact 1917 to 1927 is important and revealing. Even the 1917 conjunction of VILenin, AHitler and AWDulles is not early enough to begin any chronology of the fascists.
Mr. Preparata wrote this in his book Conjuring Hitler:
"If we want to understand the rise of the Nazi Era and the conflict between Britain and the Reich, we must first examine the international relations of the new German nation from 1870 onwards."
[End Quote]
This view of the German developments is found in Nola Levin's Holocaust.
"The life of a nation is infinitely complex and historians can select out of vast sources only certain forces and events that suggest a pattern. Much can never be plumbed. The case of Germany is fraught with riddles but certain trends are clear. Retarded unification under Bismarck in 1871 created among Germans a feeling of being behind the rest of western Europe and apart from it. By way of compensation, an attitude of German superiority developed. Moreover, under Bismarck, Germany was still basically a loose confederation of states within a feudal social order. Bismarck had also raised up the specter of France, the "problem" of the Catholics and the Social Democrats, all issues which continued to be unassimilated after the heady imperialism of the 1890's. …
While apparently yearning for the organic national unity achieved in western Europe, German writers and historians expressed and also aroused popular contempt for Western thought and principles: Individualism, pacifism and democracy were scorned. Perhaps nothing is more revealing of this temper of mind than the ideas of Thomas Mann in the period prior to World War I. Mann was later to disavow them, after having experienced the Nazi assault on civilization, but in his early work he contrasted the bourgeois, superficial civilization of the West with the "profound and instinctive forces of life," culminating in German militarism. He welcomed the war of 1914 as the best safeguard against the democratization of Germany, "as purification, liberation, and enormous hope. … The German soul is opposed to the pacifist ideal of civilization, for is not peace an element of civil corruption?" In his Reflections of a Non-political Man, written in 1917, Mann has a long and bitter attack on the Western intellectual who concentrates his efforts primarily on social and political matters. Western optimism and belief in progress are contrasted with the conservative, nonpolitical German romantic who is in touch with a deeper reality. The prevalence of so many nonpolitical "romantics" in Germany who regarded politics as hypocrisy and deceit hastened the rise of National Socialism. Mann later deplored this unrealistic view of political life and the apparent German incapacity to politics as an art of compromise and common sense.
Many German writers, including Mann, have also commented on a deep-seated sense of inferiority that gnawed at the German spirit. …"
[End excerpt from The Holocaust by Nola Levin]
AHitler for his psychosis was not a coward as Phil notes. Nor was he stupid, uneducated yes but not stupid.
Quite brave and a stark comparison of dispatch carriers as AWDulles on a train in peace and dining well,
as opposed to living in the lice ridden "trenches" of stagnant warfare and carrying dispatches under fire.
Dispatch carriers had to be trusted and depended upon by commanders.
Not duty for shirkers in the time before effective radio use in chains of command.
Is this a hero? It is heroic duty to be sure.
My opinion is that the hate AHitler willing played host to in his mind produced a rot of heart as hate often does.
1923 is too late a date to pick as a starting point' for the tales. In fact 1917 to 1927 is important and revealing. Even the 1917 conjunction of VILenin, AHitler and AWDulles is not early enough to begin any chronology of the fascists.
Mr. Preparata wrote this in his book Conjuring Hitler:
"If we want to understand the rise of the Nazi Era and the conflict between Britain and the Reich, we must first examine the international relations of the new German nation from 1870 onwards."
[End Quote]
This view of the German developments is found in Nola Levin's Holocaust.
"The life of a nation is infinitely complex and historians can select out of vast sources only certain forces and events that suggest a pattern. Much can never be plumbed. The case of Germany is fraught with riddles but certain trends are clear. Retarded unification under Bismarck in 1871 created among Germans a feeling of being behind the rest of western Europe and apart from it. By way of compensation, an attitude of German superiority developed. Moreover, under Bismarck, Germany was still basically a loose confederation of states within a feudal social order. Bismarck had also raised up the specter of France, the "problem" of the Catholics and the Social Democrats, all issues which continued to be unassimilated after the heady imperialism of the 1890's. …
While apparently yearning for the organic national unity achieved in western Europe, German writers and historians expressed and also aroused popular contempt for Western thought and principles: Individualism, pacifism and democracy were scorned. Perhaps nothing is more revealing of this temper of mind than the ideas of Thomas Mann in the period prior to World War I. Mann was later to disavow them, after having experienced the Nazi assault on civilization, but in his early work he contrasted the bourgeois, superficial civilization of the West with the "profound and instinctive forces of life," culminating in German militarism. He welcomed the war of 1914 as the best safeguard against the democratization of Germany, "as purification, liberation, and enormous hope. … The German soul is opposed to the pacifist ideal of civilization, for is not peace an element of civil corruption?" In his Reflections of a Non-political Man, written in 1917, Mann has a long and bitter attack on the Western intellectual who concentrates his efforts primarily on social and political matters. Western optimism and belief in progress are contrasted with the conservative, nonpolitical German romantic who is in touch with a deeper reality. The prevalence of so many nonpolitical "romantics" in Germany who regarded politics as hypocrisy and deceit hastened the rise of National Socialism. Mann later deplored this unrealistic view of political life and the apparent German incapacity to politics as an art of compromise and common sense.
Many German writers, including Mann, have also commented on a deep-seated sense of inferiority that gnawed at the German spirit. …"
[End excerpt from The Holocaust by Nola Levin]
Read not to contradict and confute;
nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse;
but to weigh and consider.
FRANCIS BACON
nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse;
but to weigh and consider.
FRANCIS BACON