Why did Nazism thrive in Germany?

SW VandeCarr

The Nazi regime was surprisingly open to the world. Moreover, they documented everything. Everything points to Hitler's absolute power. If he wasn't in charge, who do you think was?

brainstorm

I think there was probably no real central command. I think people gave each other the impression that Hilter and the other officers were controlling everything, but I think that's part of the cult of authority that occurs with fascism. I think people give each other ideas and reasons, and they take others ideas and reasons and utilize them as grounds for their own actions. I think people get so consumed with what they think they're supposed to be achieving for the collective good they imagine, that they don't bother to pay attention to the fact that they are the authors of their own actions.

Like I said, if I was a middle-manager and you were working for me, I could give you orders and make reference to Hitler or other officers to motivate you. The only reason I have to suspect this is that I've seen it happen in work situations where the manager has gone home and then colleagues give each other commands with reference to things the manager said or "would say." It's difficult for people who do this to realize that it is their interpretation of their boss's policies that they're going on, which is actually their own perspective and not the boss's. Likewise, the boss himself may taylor his policies to suit what the workers want and expect from him. So management is more about giving people what they want and taking responsibility/blame than it is about actually authoring what goes on.

SW VandeCarr

Hitler ruled by decree. If he said it, it happened. That's what I mean by absolute power. Of course there were many nodes of subordinate power and bureaucratic "fiefdoms" as in any government. In fact Hitler often left areas of responsibility ill defined and encouraged "turf wars" so he could step in and settle things. Sometimes he micromanaged, sometimes he let things drift. He was not a good administrator, but he was the perfect despot because he had the SS in his pocket.

zoobyshoe

You're right. The criteria for "legally insane" are vastly more stringent that those for getting a psychiatric diagnosis.

My assessment of how he got into power despite being bipolar: basically, the common manifestations of bipolar mania are what allowed him to get into power, at those times, under those circumstances. When a person is manic they can attack a task with a drive and confidence that is astonishing. Up to a point there is a certain clear headedness that keeps their work on target. They can be surprisingly competent and effective and productive. Brain scans of people having manic episodes show their brains to be hyper-energized: burning up glucose like crazy, pun intended. What usually happens next, though, is they cross a threshold into delusions of grandeur, crash, and sink into black, suicidal depressions. As I mentioned earlier he complained of depressed symptoms to Morel, but there is also at least one episode where he was waving a pistol around threatening to kill himself. Unfortunately, someone wrestled the pistol away from him.

The average bipolar person spends their manias feeling invulnerable and omnipotent, more or less. They indulge in every kind of risky behavior: speeding, gamboling, spending till their credit cards are cut up, and promiscuous sex with strangers. Hitler's famous "fearlessness" in battle situations was probably not real courage, but a manic delusion of invulnerability, an example of gross risk-taking. They are manipulative and lie like sociopaths, and they demand special treatment. When foiled they will become angry manics, and can spew complaints, vituperation, threats, insults, etc., non-stop for extended periods. The average Hitler speech was a typical angry mania. As expository writing, his speeches were terrible. He's rarely quoted because he rarely said anything in a memorable literary way.

In his case the angry mania was delivered on his listener's behalf, not his own: he persuasively projected his personal sense of outrage about the state of Germany onto his listeners with such passion, such expressive intonation, that people were caught up in it, and felt he was giving voice to their own fears and outrage. While the content was pretty poorly organized, his delivery was mesmerizing, animalistically dynamic, elemental. The medium was the massage in this case. Reasonably sensitive, educated people pegged him as a nut job, but his hardcore followers were not particularly bright. We're talking street gang types, the uneducated, a lot of ex-military, political crackpots and cranks, but if you get ten thousand of such people as fanatic supporters suddenly you're a political force to be reckoned with. Nothing succeeds like success. The fact he had such a following made him interesting to everyone who heard of him. Many working class people went to early Nazi rallies out of idle curiosity and left as believers: here was a guy who was unquestionable dedicated, who had a plan, who would get something done. People were psychologically naive: the intensity of his anger could be mistaken for sincerity, seriousness of purpose.

After the failed Beer-Hall Putch, he toned his overt power hunger down and decided to try legal routes to power: entering elections legitimately and making backroom deals. A lot of power brokers correctly assessed him as a crazy, but quite incorrectly thought they could use him like a puppet. He was keenly sensitive to this and always surprised the hell out of them by coming out with all the winnings. How was he so canny? Even a person with delusions of grandeur can tell if what you're offering is in accordance with those delusions or not. He knew instantly when people were trying to use him and he invariably turned the tables on them. By virtue of the same instinct he kept the high level members of his government in competition with each other such that they had no mutual trust out of which allegiances against him might be forged.

So, his mania gave him the extreme ambition, extreme energy, organizational skills (up to a point) his infectious emotional surges, "fearlessness", and sociopath-like willingness to enter into agreements he never intended to keep, all of which got him into power.

zoobyshoe

This doubt about conventional, accepted historical sources is starting to smell fishy. I hope you're not going to turn out to be one of these people who claim the Holocaust never happened.

brainstorm

Do you ever wonder why people who work in retail stores do pretty much anything you ask? It's because they're trained to observe that the customer is always right, customer is king. If Hitler ruled by decree, it was because of a culture of submission to authority among those who obeyed his degrees without evaluating their merit. What did they have to lose? Mostly everyone was just desperate to keep their job anyway. They didn't think about the quality of the orders, only whether they would get lost in the large unemployment pool if they got fired for some reason.

Still, I think Hitler just sold national-socialism as a political ideology despite the fact that it was already a popular social ideology that had yet to be explicated in public politics. I think that Hitler did not design the machinery of bureaucracy, authority, militarism, etc. that were used to carry out the nazi programs. I think he mainly just inspired them to go at it with more intensity. I seriously question the implicit or explicit assumption that people have that things would have gone radically different if Hitler hadn't been the one elected chancellor. I think the culture of national-socialism evolved on multiple levels simultaneously and Hitler and the officers were just playing their role alongside others.

I think the reason Hitler and the officers are mythologized as tyrants is to uphold the belief that everyone else was "just following orders." It was uncomfortable for people to admit being complicit in the regime, and for others to allow some people to go unprosecuted. It's disturbing to think that when a lot of people commit the same crime at the same time, they can all get away with it because any one can claim it is unfair to punish him/her instead of someone else.

brainstorm

Whenever I read about someone getting fined or jailed for denying the holocaust, I think the reason is that they're doing it out of some kind of covert anti-Semitic hate gesture that I don't fully understand. I have no reason to believe the holocaust didn't take place. I question the framing of it some, in that I think calling it a single event reifies collectivism and downplays the fact that every individual who loses their life had an entire life taken away from them, not to mention those who loved them.

I question the aura of Hitler because it seems like an extension of the cult of the Fuhrer to me. It just seems too convenient to believe that on the one hand fascist-authoritarians love to submit to "higher" authority, and on the other hand, this one individual is portrayed as being the ultimate commander of authoritarian power. To me, the draw of fascist authoritarianism for people is that they can take little or no individual responsibility and still contribute to and validate themselves according to a service ethic. So I dislike the idea of becoming complicit in that kind of fascist authoritarian attitude by validating the mythology of the evil leader who sells out all the poor unsuspecting followers by leading "the innocent sheep" into something they're not aware of and don't understand. How does the saying go, "wir haben es nicht gewusst."

Back to the topic of the thread, this is not a German-specific ideology. Ethnic identity doesn't make a difference in whether people subscribe to authoritarianism as a means of claiming innocence and irresponsibility for their actions. I also don't think that authoritarianism/fascism is ever harmless, even though it doesn't always culminate in death(s). At the least it is something that happens daily, which results in discrimination and other mistreatment against people for no other reason than their daring to think for themselves instead of conforming to a known lie.

Char. Limit

The reason that Hitler was able to succeed in Germany (Nazism never really thrived without Hitler der Sprecher (the orator) to move it along) was because of a national feeling, that had been nurtured for the last four hundred years, of insecurity.

It goes all the way back to the Thirty Years' War, where fully one third of the German people died. How, you ask (probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyway)? By the German lords fighting each other, killing the middle and lower classes in the process. Afterward, Germans didn't care about freedom or democracy, they wanted to live. They wanted security.

This effect also sprang into being after World War I, where a defeated and humiliated Germany was forced to essentially bow before the nations of Western Europe (France and England) and commit seppuku. The crippling debts ruined Germany's economy, and the Great Depression only made it worse. Notice that Hitler came into power at the same time FDR did. They both first entered power for the same reason... the country was falling, and the people turned to someone who promised what they wanted. However, FDR promised prosperity, while Hitler promised the humiliated, broke, insecure German people security.

Also, look up a certain term in German. Vergangenheitsbewältigung. It should give you the attitude that Germans think of Nazism today.

zoobyshoe

Facing the fact Hitler was in total command doesn't make you complicit in anything. It's not a myth or "aura", it's the position he maneuvered himself into. All the best advisers Germany had to offer could not prevent him from leading Germany into ruin. Everyone here who has read about it will tell you that Hitler, not his generals, lost the war. He over-extended himself against all their advice. This would not have been possible had he been the figurehead you claim. If he had been a figurehead they could have bumped him aside and taken over when he started screwing up.

SW VandeCarr

Not just German lords, but foreign and mercenary armies (Tilly, Wallenstein) rampaging through the territories of allies and enemies alike. I think the rise of the expansive militarism of Brandenburg-Prussia began in the immediate aftermath of this war. However, the military class had little respect for Hitler. Why did they let this bipolar misfit take control? Surely, they could have found a better leader if a dictatorship was inevitable given the circumstances. How about General von Schleicher, who was chancellor before Hitler? He could have moved to prevent Hitler from taking power. I understand he was considered fairly competent.

Coming to terms with the past.

SW VandeCarr

Wir wollten es nicht wissen.

brainstorm

The funny thing is how nazism always seems to preach against weaklings, but basically what you're saying is that people were beaten into submission, to the point of wanting life and security, never mind loss of freedom and no say (democracy) in their lives. What a subtle way to talk about creating a slave mentality!

I think I mentioned in previous posts that collective punishment for WWI helped strengthen German nationalism by creating a feeling of collective blame for the war and collective punishment. If you treat people as a collective, the temptation for them to subscribe to collectivism becomes greater. It's a vicious cycle that needs interruption, imo.

I used to fall for it every time someone would drop a term and claim that it explains a whole mentality, culture, etc. I don't fall for it anymore. I looked up the word, meaning "coming to terms with the past" but you have to discuss it for it to become relevant. Playing the game of imperative-implicit may work to drive people into fascist submission, but when you wake up from the trance of fascism, you realize that that's a negative and not a positive thing - so please try to avoid it by explaining your points explicitly and making them open for reasonable discussion.

Char. Limit

Well, I wouldn't quite call it that, but in the 1650's and 60's, it really was pretty close.

Absolutely. I completely agree with this.

Did you just call me a fascist?

But no, and please, don't answer that.

This wasn't my main point, but the wikipedia article on the word describes German attitudes on Nazism after the war, I think. I didn't mean to offend.

brainstorm

I guess in a way I did accuse you of fascism, but that's different to me than calling someone "a fascist." Fascism is a framework of social-orientation and action, imo. I wouldn't divide people into fascists and non-fascists, especially not in some essential way. Fascism is really as aspect of everyone's nature and cultural vocabulary. It's just that each individual is unique in the consciousness and will to resist the specific patterns of thought and culture that have developed through their personal genealogy of experiences and personality.

I didn't mean to offend or avoid offending. I was just pointing out that it is one of the myriad cognitive techniques of fascism to interact in terms of implicit-imperatives. There are lots of code words in German, like "liebenraum" and "undermenschen" that are associated with fascist ideas. By using these terms and then avoiding discussion, a very anti-democratic approach to communication and social-beliefs is attempted. Oftentimes when people are treated this way, they develop a fear and even hate for discussion of authority. They desire for people to fall in line with authority and accept meanings without question. I hope you can see how that can lead to the kind of slave-mentality and other consequences of fascism we've been talking about.

No offense, but do you see how talking in terms of "German attitudes" reproduces the same collective imagery and collective responsibility assumed in the collective punishment after WWI? I note this because I think these subtle aspects of thinking and talking about people in terms of collectives are what perpetuates the ideologies of fascism, consciously or sub-consciously.

Char. Limit

Please, get the words right... Liebenraum means "love space", the correct term is Lebensraum, or "space for living".

Also, there's a T in Untermenschen.

Proper spelling is very important.

OmCheeto

None according to wikipaedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history

National Socialism looks very logical on the surface: economic security, social welfare programs for workers, a just wage, honour for workers' importance to the nation, and protection from capitalist exploitation(wiki on the Nazi's)

Wouldn't the proletariat of all nations want that?

But once these things can't be provided, scapegoats must be found. There's always someone responsible for our woes, and it surely couldn't be us.

brainstorm

Sorry, I've only communicated about these words orally. I don't really like it when people utilize words in one language to communicate concepts instead of just talking about them in the language being used, which is why I gave these examples of that mode of communication. My point was that the suggestion is implied that culture is imperative in the meanings of certain words, and I think that is conducive to fascist ideology, in whatever language(s).


This is a proletarian ideology that certainly is not limited to any single ethnicity or culture. The problem is that it's not really legitimate or healthy. It creates an ideology of proletarian entitlement in terms of collective rights, which obscures the fact that economics is the product of individual economic activities. Also, why should economic security be limited on the basis of national/ethnic identity? Socialism already has the bad habit of promoting collectivism/groupism, and when the "group" is construed as a national or ethnic group, economic exclusion on the basis of ethic/national identity is naturalized. As a result, you get the mentality that it's perfectly legitimate to have equality among some people and inequality among others on the basis of national/ethnic or other group membership. Why should membership in any group be a legitimate means of claiming economic rights? Shouldn't people be responsible for their own economic activities and benefits individually?

Scapegoating is just the result of ethnic differentiation and discrimination, I think. If someone views themselves as having entitlements as being part of a group-classification, it is logical that other group-classifications should have separate entitlements or are responsible for undermining the preferred group. It's groupist/collectivist logic that develops into a whole discourse that makes it very difficult to think in terms of individuals interacting in a free market economy. Sadly, even the very ideology of individualism and free market economics is disdained as a reaction of collectivist socialism. People are brainwashed to believe the only way for them to live well is by ganging up against individuals identified and grouped as being ethnically different. Is it any wonder that racism/ethnicism and collectivist war-feelings keep resurfacing in global discourse?