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Post by pieter on Oct 17, 2022 7:00:43 GMT -7
Fantastic British radio play of ‘All Quiet at the Western Front’. It starts with a prelude about the book burning’s in Berlin in 1933, when Jozef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister instigated book burnings of unwelcome German, Austrian, Jewish and Foreign writers. Copies of ‘All Quiet at the Western Front’ were burnt, the German ones ‘ Im Westen nichts Neues’.
Heinrich Heine's ominous sentence, "those who burn books will in the end burn people," is one of the most quoted phrases in modern history. Heine was right, in 1933 the Nazi’s burnt books and ten years later the Nazi’s burnt people in 1943. Nazism had roots in the First World War, Adolf Hitler fought in the First World War.
Like many Austrian Germans, Hitler began to develop German nationalist ideas from a young age. He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg monarchy and its rule over an ethnically variegated empire. Hitler and his friends used the greeting "Heil", and sang the "Deutschlandlied" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.
Historian Richard J. Evans states that "historians now generally agree that Adolf Hitler’s notorious, murderous anti-Semitism emerged well after Germany's defeat [in World War I], as a product of the paranoid "stab-in-the-back" explanation for the catastrophe".
Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment), Hitler served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time at the regimental headquarters in Fournes-en-Weppes, well behind the front lines. He was present at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele, and was wounded at the Somme. He was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914. On a recommendation by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, Hitler's Jewish superior, he received the Iron Cross, First Class on 4 August 1918, a decoration rarely awarded to one of Hitler's Gefreiter rank. He received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918.
During his service at headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout. Hitler spent almost two months in hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917. On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk. While there, Hitler learned of Germany's defeat, and—by his own account—upon receiving this news, he suffered a second bout of blindness.
Hitler described the war as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery. His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918. His bitterness over the collapse of the war effort began to shape his ideology. Like other German nationalists, he believed the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders, Jews, Marxists, and those who signed the armistice that ended the fighting—later dubbed the "November criminals".
The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany had to relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans saw the treaty as an unjust humiliation.
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Post by karl on Oct 17, 2022 9:24:22 GMT -7
Pieter My self-do remember reading of the WW1 Christmas Truce, for it was a testament that people are people no matter which side. It is the respective Government leadership that create wars and The Industrialist that create their wealth in creating and selling their products of Arms and Munitions to each respective waring nation. In the matter of The Treaty of Versailles, this was so shameful as to be buried alive for what it caused. For as pushed by the French and assisted by the Brits and stood by to let it happen by the Americans was another shameful act. For in effect, it manufactured hate by most German people of a war worn country and was the fuse to light up the next war. In the matter of AH, it is a matter of the victors of the 2nd World War to write history which followed actual events. With AH, he was not crazy by any means, but a great orature and through his manner of speaking, could appeal and organize in a manner that is unapparelled to this day as a leader. He introduced through pressure to manufactures, to create and place for sale, radios that fit into most people's manner of purchase. This was done so his speeches could be heard by most all for the use of this device, in as well as Television, yes, there was Television in those days for those of incomes that would afford such a luxury. Through his efforts, he brought The German nation out of poverty into a thriving modern state with people working and industry producing. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1079415/Hitler-planned-Big-Brother-style-television-broadcast-Nazi-propaganda.htmlThe remaining faults that were his is well documented and well known, he paid for his adverse actions with his life. Karl
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Post by pieter on Oct 17, 2022 17:11:23 GMT -7
Karl,
Of course history is always written by the victors. Between 1795 and 1918 the truth was written from the Prussian, Habsburg Austrian, Czarist and British imperial perspective and the Colonial truth with the superiority of the White European race and Christianity above the Black African man, the Indian Hindu and Sikh, the Middle Eastern Oriental Muslim Arab, Palestinian Jew, Druze, Kurd, Persian or Middle Eastern Oriental Christian Coptic, Maronite and Assyrian Christians, Oriental Far East Chinese and Indonesians (in the colonial Dutch sense). The Germans with Wilhelm II (including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, as well as northeastern New Guinea, Samoa and numerous Micronesian islands and Adolf Hitlers colonial policies in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia) were latecomers after Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom (British Empire), the Dutch and the French.
Much of the achievements of Adolf Hitler in the Third Reich with his public works, building highways and creating jobs in the arms industry (Military Industry) were started in the Weimarer Republik, but forgotten by the world. Even though the Weimarer Republic was a fragile democracy it had moments of succes. The Weimarer republic in a strange way had various names 'Deutsches Reich', Deutscher Volksstaat (German People's State) and Deutsche Republik (German Republic).
For many Germans, especially on the right, supporters of the 'National Conservative' and 'Monarchist' Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP), supporters of Reichspresident Paul von Hindenburg (2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934), president from 12 May 1925 until 2 August 1934-, supporters of Adolf Hitler's NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), and the conservative and Monarchist Aristocratic Prussian officer corps of the Reichswehr (Field Marshalls, generals, colonels, Majors and other officers), the word "republik" was a painful reminder of a government structure that they believed had been imposed by foreign statesmen, along with the relocation of the seat of power to Weimar and the expulsion of Kaiser Wilhelm in the wake of massive national humiliation.
During the Weimarer Republic and the early Nazi regime (early Third Reich period -1933-1936-) there was that constant tension in the far right corner between the National Conservative and Monarchist Reichswehr, Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), and the Monarchist Deutschnationalen on one side and Hitler's Nazi's on the other side. The Prussian Junkers, Deutschnationale Monarchists and Reichswehr officers looked down on the Austrian Gefreiter (corporal) and his often proletarian para militarairy followers of his SA stormtroopers. They misunderstood the power of the New Völkisch movement (German: Völkische Bewegung), the new Nationalist Socialist ideology, and underestimated the power and charisma of that Austrian Gefreiter. They didn't understood the experiance and influence Adolf Hitler underwent in Austria, German (Bavaria), Belgium and France during the First World War. They didn't understood that Hilter was formed during the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras, and the Battle of Passchendaele. These German Deutschnationale Monarchists and Prussian Junkers didn't understood the influence of the Populist and antisemitic mayor of Vienna Karl Lueger (24 October 1844 – 10 March 1910) of the Christlichsoziale Partei in Austria and the enormous influence of Georg Ritter von Schönerer (17 July 1842 – 14 August 1921) on the early Adolf Hitler in Vienna before the First World War. A major exponent of pan-Germanism and German nationalism in Austria as well as a radical opponent of political Catholicism and a fierce antisemite, Schönerer's agitation exerted much influence on the young Adolf Hitler. Schönerer was known for a generation to be the most radical pan-German nationalist in Austria.
These Prussian Junkers, Reichswehr officers and Deutschnationale politicians underestimated Hitlers intelligence, social and political network and thus war, political activism and experience. Before the First World War Adolf Hitler also developed an admiration for Martin Luther. Hitler read local newspapers such as Deutsches Volksblatt, the most important German national and anti-Semitic daily newspaper in Austria that fanned prejudice and played on Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of Eastern European Jews. He read newspapers and pamphlets that published the thoughts of philosophers and theoreticians such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon and Arthur Schopenhauer. Hitler in Vienna already showed traits that characterized his later life: loneliness and secretiveness, a bohemian mode of everyday existence, and hatred of cosmopolitanism and of the multinational character of Vienna.
Adolf Hitler greeted the war with enthusiasm, as a great relief from the frustration and aimlessness of civilian life. He found discipline and comradeship satisfying and was confirmed in his belief in the heroic virtues of war.
Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany’s defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May–June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers’ Party in Munich (September 1919). In 1920 he was put in charge of the party’s propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi). Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of the war and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic woes and brought widespread discontent.
The conditions in the early Weimarer Republic in the early twenties were favourable for the growth of the small party, and Hitler was sufficiently astute to take full advantage of them. When he joined the party, he found it ineffective, committed to a program of nationalist and socialist ideas but uncertain of its aims and divided in its leadership. He accepted its program but regarded it as a means to an end. His propaganda and his personal ambition caused friction with the other leaders of the party. Hitler countered their attempts to curb him by threatening resignation, and because the future of the party depended on his power to organize publicity and to acquire funds, his opponents relented. In July 1921 he became their leader with almost unlimited powers. From the first he set out to create a mass movement, whose mystique and power would be sufficient to bind its members in loyalty to him. He engaged in unrelenting propaganda through the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (“Popular Observer,” acquired in 1920), and through meetings whose audiences soon grew from a handful to thousands. With his charismatic personality and dynamic leadership, he attracted a devoted cadre of Nazi leaders, men whose names today live in infamy—Johann Dietrich Eckart (who acted as a mentor for Hitler), Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Julius Streicher.
Hitler’s ideas included inequality among races, nations, and individuals as part of an unchangeable natural order that exalted the “Aryan race” as the creative element of mankind. According to Hitler, the natural unit of mankind was the Volk (“the people”), of which the German people was the greatest. Moreover, he believed that the state existed to serve the Volk—a mission that to him the Weimar German Republic betrayed. All morality and truth were judged by this criterion: whether it was in accordance with the interest and preservation of the Volk. Parliamentary democratic government stood doubly condemned. It assumed the equality of individuals that for Hitler did not exist and supposed that what was in the interests of the Volk could be decided by parliamentary procedures. Instead, Hitler argued that the unity of the Volk would find its incarnation in the Führer, endowed with perfect authority. Below the Führer the party was drawn from the Volk and was in turn its safeguard.
The greatest enemy of Nazism was not, in Hitler’s view, liberal democracy in Germany, which was already on the verge of collapse. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict. Beyond Marxism he believed the greatest enemy of all to be the Jew, who was for Hitler the incarnation of evil. There is debate among historians as to when anti-Semitism became Hitler’s deepest and strongest conviction. As early as 1919 he wrote, “Rational anti-Semitism must lead to systematic legal opposition. Its final objective must be the removal of the Jews altogether.” In Mein Kampf, he described the Jew as the “destroyer of culture,” “a parasite within the nation,” and “a menace.”
In 1930 Hitler made an alliance with the Nationalist Alfred Hugenberg in a campaign against the Young Plan, a second renegotiation of Germany’s war reparation payments. With the help of Hugenberg’s newspapers, Hitler was able for the first time to reach a nationwide audience. The alliance also enabled him to seek support from many of the magnates of business and industry who controlled political funds and were anxious to use them to establish a strong right-wing, antisocialist government. The subsidies Hitler received from the industrialists placed his party on a secure financial footing and enabled him to make effective his emotional appeal to the lower middle class and the unemployed, based on the proclamation of his faith that Germany would awaken from its sufferings to reassert its natural greatness. Hitler’s dealings with Hugenberg and the industrialists exemplify his skill in using those who sought to use him. But his most important achievement was the establishment of a truly national party (with its voters and followers drawn from different classes and religious groups), unique in Germany at the time.Harzburger FrontCamp service of the NSDAP delegation, in the first row SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, SA Chief Ernst Röhm and Hermann GöringThe Harzburg Front (German: Harzburger Front) was a short-lived radical right-wing, anti-democratic political alliance in Weimar Germany, formed in 1931 as an attempt to present a unified opposition to the government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning. It was a stronger smart attempt of Adolf Hitler to unite the German rightwing Nationalist and conservative foces behind him. Not an easy alliance, because the opposition within the 'proletarian' leftist wing of Hitler's NSDAP party, especially within his own SA brownshirt organisation.
During the early days of the Nazi regime, the SA carried out unchecked street violence against Jews and Nazi opponents. But it was eyed with suspicion by the regular army and by the wealthy industrialists, two groups whose support Hitler was trying to secure. Against Hitler’s expressed wishes, Röhm continued to press for a “second Nazi revolution” of a socialist character, and he hoped to merge the regular army with the SA under his own leadership. Rudolf Diels, the first Gestapo chief, estimated that in 1933 Berlin, 70 percent of new SA recruits were former Communists. Often these former communists where ex-members of the Rotfrontkämpferbund (RFB), the far-left paramilitary organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the Weimar Republic. The Rotfront was the arch rival of the SA and both Rotfront and SA killed or heavily wounded members of the other organization. The bloody political streetbattles during the twenties and early thirties in Berlin and many other cities were mainly battles between Ernst Röhm's SA (Sturm Abteilung) on one side and the communist Rotfrontkämpferbund (RFB) on the other side.
Although some of the conflicts between the SS and SA were based on personal rivalries of leaders, the mass of members had key socio-economic differences and related conflicts. SS members generally came from the middle class, while the SA had its base among the unemployed and working class. Politically speaking, the SA was more radical than the SS, with its leaders arguing the Nazi revolution had not ended when Hitler achieved power, but rather needed to implement socialism in Germany (see Strasserism). Hitler believed that the defiant and rebellious culture encouraged before the seizure of power had to give way to using these forces for community organization. But the SA members resented tasks such as canvassing and fundraising, considering them Kleinarbeit ("little work"), which had typically been performed by women before the Nazi seizure of power.
Industrialists, who had provided the funds for the Nazi victory, were unhappy with Röhm's socialistic views on the economy and his claims that the real revolution had still to take place. President Hindenburg informed Hitler in June 1934 that if a move to curb the SA was not forthcoming, he would dissolve the government and declare martial law. Adolf Hitler's Minister of Defence, the conservative Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg (2 September 1878 – 13 March 1946) was not a Nazi, and therefore represented a bridge between the army and the party for Hitler. Blomberg and many of his fellow officers were recruited from the Prussian nobility, and regarded the SA as a plebeian rabble that threatened the army's traditional high status in German society.Back to the Harzburg Front The Harzburg Front was a coalition of the national conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) under millionaire press-baron Alfred Hugenberg with Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), the leadership of Der Stahlhelm paramilitary veterans' association, the Agricultural League and the Pan-German League organizations. Hitlers rise to power in the period 1930-1933Unremitting propaganda, set against the failure of the government to improve conditions during the Depression, produced a steadily mounting electoral strength for the Nazis. The party became the second largest in the country, rising from 2.6 percent of the vote in the national election of 1928 to more than 18 percent in September 1930. In 1932 Hitler opposed Hindenburg in the presidential election, capturing 36.8 percent of the votes on the second ballot. Finding himself in a strong position by virtue of his unprecedented mass following, he entered into a series of intrigues with conservatives such as Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner, and President Hindenburg’s son, Oskar. The fear of communism and the rejection of the Social Democrats bound them together. In spite of a decline in the Nazi Party’s votes in November 1932, Hitler insisted that the chancellorship was the only office he would accept. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg offered him the chancellorship of Germany. His cabinet included few Nazis at that point.
What came after that we know, and many Germans and Austrians regret that this man put a 'black shadow' over their nations. Many people forget that Germans and Austrians were the first victims of Nazism. Not only German communists and Socialists (Social Democrats), but also Zentrum (Roman Catholic), conservative, Deutsch Nationale, Liberal and Democratic Germans and Austrians, and German and Austrian Jews. For instance the Dachau concentration camp built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933, was the First Nazi concentration camp. Many other concentration camps followed. Dachau was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents which consisted of: communists, social democrats, and other dissidents.
I agree with Karl that Hitler was a great orator, he hypnotized masses in Arena's, concert halls, stadiums, squares, boulevards and streets. But I doubt his mental stability and sanity, he maintained his power by playing Martin Bormann against Heinrich Himler, Hermann Göring against Joseph Goebbels, Franz Xaver Schwarz against Robert Ley and Joachim von Ribbentrop against Heinrich Himmler.
Hither although extreme was more moderate than the Leftist SA revolutionary 'Socialist' wing of Ernst Röhm, Walter Stennes ((1895–1983); of The Stennes revolt within the Nazi Party in 1930-1931), Gregor Strasser and Otto Strasser, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The master manipulators Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich managed to manipulate Adolf Hitler, but were still dependend on him, because he was the absolute leader, the Führer.
Through his efforts Adolf Hitler brought The German nation out of poverty into a thriving modern state with people working and industry producing during the thrities and early Forties. But this was only temporarily and only for those whom followed or obbeyed him slavishly. He was not a leader for all Germans, but only for those that agreed with him. Social Democratic and Communist workers and Unionists were not Hilters Germany and many of them perished in Gestapo prisons and Concentration camps like Oranienburg (1933-1934), Dachau, onzentrationslager Sachsenhausen, Neuengamme and Buchenwald.
When I look at the deviant, dark and evil side of the Nazi regime there are to much sinister, blunt, obscure and vicious characters in it to be able to speak about a a thriving modern state which functionated well. There was to much rivalry, backstabbing, crushed careers, hurt people, good Germans that were set asside, and the short economical recovery onluy lead to the later distruction from what was build in the time of the Weimarer Republik and the Third Reich. Allied bombardments and fierce fights between Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and Volkssturm and even Hitlerjugend Flak units on one side and Soviet, American, British, Canadian, Polish, French and other invaders on the other side. Der Führer was disapponted in the German people and army and said; "If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy things ourselves because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation [Russia]. Besides, those who remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been killed."Adolf HitlerOn his infamous March 1945 'scorched earth' directive that Germany be made one vast wasteland, explaining it to Albert Speer We will not capitulate - no, never! We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us - a world in flames.
Hitler was surrounded by Hyena's, Wolves, Foxes, Lions, lizards, Crocodiles, weak pumpjacks, snakes and demons in human form in my opinion. Deviant characters like Julius Streicher (ounder and publisher of the virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine), Wilhelm Frick, Martin Borman, Hans Heinrich Lammers, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Herman Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Sepp Dietrich, Kurt Daluege, Gottlob Berger, and followers and perpetrators of war crimes like Oskar Dirlewanger, Josef Mengele, Amon Göth, Adolf Eichmann, Friedrich Jeckeln, Jürgen Stroop and Heinz Reinefarth,
Pieter
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