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It is an awkwardness for the US that in the first half of the 19th Century, it did feature two staples of Nazi Germany...slave labor and concentration camps. (the latter called "reservations.")
What does distinguish the US at that time from the Twelve Year Reich, is that the US was marketing itself as the land of the free while actually limiting that freedom to white males. The sin was hypocrisy and the historical remedy for that is time, shame, and increased wealth which permits greater largesse. They had the right doctrine, it was a matter of eventually living up to it.
In the case of the Nazis, they made no pretense of being free, no pretense of their total contempt for non members of the master race, and they backed it all up with public cruelty. They were not hypocrits, they said that they detested the other races and they proved it with their horrible treatment of them. There was no remedy for that. Living up to the Nazi doctrine meant the ultimate extermination or enslavement of everyone on their ugly list.
I hate to say it but I agree with you. The idea behind chattle slavery in the south was no different than the ideas that Hitler had towards the Jews in Germany. The only difference is that it happened during the modern era, and the Germans used modern 20th century tech to achieve their goals. Hitler made it clear that he wanted to make slaves of the Polish people, and the slavic "races" in Russia, and settle German ethnics in eastern europe to supplant the native population.
If you look at the historical conversations between Hitler and his henchmen he made it clear that he did not want the Poles, Slavs, and other Eastern European ethnic groups to read and write. He wanted to make them a slave cast along with the Jews and Gypies to work as labor for German projects.
Luckily Germany today has the common sense to outlaw use of the Swastika and Nazi related activites, unlike the United States with the Confederate flag. Call a spade a spade when you see it. The hypocrisy is just ridiculous.
This is very scary stuff. I had no idea that the Communists were Hitlers enemy. The parliment burned down (probably by him) and he blamed the Communists, who he had rounded up and imprisoned. His militia was the Nazi's. All this time, I thought they were one and the same, Nazi's and Communists.
In the name of national security, Hitler eliminated free speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. The Germans were promised a great future for their children, freedom and prosperity. They thought Hitler was their Savior.
Have to get back to this program. This makes me very proud our freedoms and the tea party patriots. Never to be taken for granted. We have people on this very forum arguing for socialism. The Constitution protects our rights as individuals, as opposed to the socialist concept of 'the common good'.
Pretty much anyone who did not subscribe to his ever-changing agendas and spurious thought-processes was Hitler's enemies. Jews, Gypsies, Russians, any races other than Aryan, even his own officers who held a somewhat more moderate and less Draconian view of Germany's entitled place in the World order were all subject to termination.
Terminaton with extreme prejudice.
The political world is better treated as a multidimesndional space where there are at least two dimensions one on a persons view of economics (a scale from communism to laisz-fare capitalism) and another on ones view towards the use of violence or other forms of force in achieving ones goals
(a scale from anarchy to totalitarianism). Now you can explain the difference between Hitler, Lenin,
Mahatma Gandhi or Ayn Rand. Each would be found in a different quadrant of such a 2D graph. For example Lenin and Hitler would share the same view on the use force to achieve ones goals but had better not talk about economics. Also Gandhi and Lenin would agree on the value of collective economics but would not agree on the use of violence to achieve it.
Wrong. Both systems of totalitarianism are Far Left. The Nazis identified themselves as national socialists, and, of course, socialism is far left. To use an analogy, during the Second World War the Nazis (Germany) and the Communists (Soviet Union) were like two criminal gangs fighting for domination and inflicting terrible atrocities on each other.
Islam is a political, social, and economic society in which religion plays an important, but not the sole, part. Most in the West and the USA have not grasped this concept as yet.
An old family friend of my grandfather was fighting with Swedish Waffen SS back during the war.
In the early 90s they interviewed him on a documentary called "blågul nazism" , about Swedish Nazism now and then. He said that National Socialists are not far right but left. Im not sure what else he said but I do remember that.
Just how quick do you think Americans can be swayed if we go into economic ruin as Germany did?
scary thought.
If the right man comes along and blows the right words in our ears we'll follow him to hell. Why not a lot of our ancestors came from that piece of Europe.
The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, a confederation of German states that existed from 962AD to 1806AD. The power of the central authority rose and fell over time and for much of history, particularly at the end, the "Empire" was really just a loose association of states with an elected emperor. For most of its later history the Holy Roman Emperor was also the Archduke of Austria.
The Second Reich was the German Empire (founded primarily through the state of Prussia and its King) from its founding in 1871 at the end of the Franco-Prussian War to its dissolution in 1918 at the end of WW1. It was followed by the formation of the Weimar Republic, which is is what Hitler rose to power over and formed the Nazi state, aka the Third Reich.
I appreciate the clarification. This is all very interesting, and new to me.
Not sure about the OP, but this was never taught in my school. I too always thought the Communists and Nazis were the same. Interesting stuff, is this onDemand?
I am appalled to read this. I went to school in a small town in the 50's: It was made very clear that the Communists were the Nazi's opponents and that the Nazi party moved very early to eradicate them.
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