I don't need to see it. I was born Kharkov, Ukraine.

In 1940, the NKVD killed about 22,000 Polish officers in cold blood in the Katyn Forest. These were unarmed prisoners.

In 1941, about 15000 Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and brought to Dobrytsky Yar, where they were killed. The parents were shot, the kids were thrown in to the pits to freeze to death among the corpses of their parents to save bullets.

I played in both forests when I was a kid, completely ignorant of the history. What people need to internalize is that neither the Nazis or the Soviet or ISIS now are monsters. They are ordinary men, and ordinary men are capable of doing these things under the right conditions. To dehumanize them is to forget this and forget that any of us could be on either the receiving end or the giving end.

Edit - http://smile.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

For all the people condemning this bookkeeper, I recommend reading a book call Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland

It'll put into perspective that if you were in 1930's Germany, there's a good chance you'd be a Nazi, and if the opportunity to become a bookkeeper came up, you'd jump at the opportunity.

The Clean Wehrmacht myth is a blatant lie. The Wehrmacht were repeatedly involved in war crimes, including the extermination of undesirables, and at the very least most, if not all, members were aware that their government was pursuing a campaign of violence against civilians and had purged undesirables (such as cripples and mentally ill) from society back home. The Wehrmacht may have been normal men, but that does not mean they are free of the blame for what occurred during World War 2.

Here are some resources regarding the Clean Wehrmacht Myth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776

https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319

https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930

I'd also add Ordinary Men to that list, as it's a very interesting study/discussion of how plain people like you and me can become bloodthirsty exterminators of other people in the right circumstances. https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492122897&sr=1-1&keywords=ordinary+men

Edit: Done replying to comments in this thread, it's exhausting. None of the argumentation is new. To quote the Duke of Wellington, "they came on in the same old way...". The materials are there for you to explore and read. You can form your own judgments based on facts and rigorous research, that's the beauty of a free and open society, the kind of society Nazi Germany was actively trying to prevent. The reason the Clean Wehrmacht myth needs to be refuted is because, as I've said in another comment, it presents an ignorant view of history that allows us to avoid the hard truth, learned largely from World War Two, that ordinary men who would otherwise be considered honorable, decent people can take part in atrocious crimes or, at the very least, hear about them and be permissive or even supportive of them. If we deny that, we can't learn to prevent such things happening again.

Edit 2: Honestly last thing, I just want to add a comment by one of the mods of r/askhistorians specifically relating to this subject. It's honestly the best comment on Reddit I've ever seen regarding this subject and it has a list of plenty of resources for those who want to investigate this issue further: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/cy3cxs0/

This is stated over and over recently, and it's largely false. Yes, there was some drug use in the Nazi military, but mostly among fighter pilots and tank crews. The book Blitzed by Norman Ohler is a classic example of the overstatement of drug use in Nazi Germany, and this review just tears it to shreds. I'd really recommend reading the whole thing, but a few choice excerpts are:

> The use of methamphetamine was common, he argues, particularly in the form of “Pervitin”. The drug, [Ohler] says, was manufactured in huge quantities: 35m tablets were, for example, ordered for the western campaign in 1940. This seems an impressive figure, until you recall that more than two and a quarter million troops were involved, making an average of around 15 tablets per soldier for the entire operation. Given the concentration on supplying tank crews with the drug, this means that the vast majority of troops didn’t take any at all.

And continued:

> Ohler goes much further than claiming that methamphetamine was central to the German military effort, however. He claims that its use was universal among the civilian population of Germany, too... This sweeping generalisation about a nation of 66 to 70 million people has no basis in fact. No doubt a number of Germans took, or were even prescribed, opium derivatives for medical conditions, or took them to alleviate the growing stress of living in a country that by mid-1944 was being invaded from all sides and buckling under the strain of intense aerial bombardment. But to claim that all Germans, or even a majority of them, could only function on drugs in the Third Reich is wildly implausible.

The author makes his central point, and perfectly illustrates why I hate the overstatement of drug use in Nazi Germany:

> What’s more, it is morally and politically dangerous. Germans, the author hints, were not really responsible for the support they gave to the Nazi regime, still less for their failure to rise up against it. This can only be explained by the fact that they were drugged up to the eyeballs. No wonder this book has been a bestseller in Germany.

To imply that using meth 'stripped the Nazis of empathy' is to imply that not only everyone who was involved in Nazi atrocities was somehow not responsible for their actions and on meth constantly, but to also imply that similar atrocities are impossible unless the perpetrators are on drugs or in an altered mental state. The lesson of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust is that normal people committed those acts, just like you and me. A good book which delves deeper into this topic is Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. I wish people would stop propagating this nonsense and do proper research.

Trump's fabrications regarding crime should be getting more attention. Crime is a much less significant problem today than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Trump lies constantly and without shame or remorse about this.

I would not call Trump himself an outright fascist--but Trumpism is a proto-fascist movement. I don't want to find out whether it blossoms into the real thing.

Robert Paxton's definition from The Anatomy of Fascism:

>"A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Trump's nativist anti-intellectual demagoguery, and willingness to fan and manipulate ethno-nationalist resentment is deeply concerning, especially now that we know he's going to have people like Steven Bannon as his top political advisor.

He still doesn't have the power of the military and national security apparatus at his disposal. There's still time to stop him and not have to find out if he will abide traditional constitutional and normative restraints.

You have to remember that Hitler was appointed chancellor by a democratically elected president. Genocide doesn't just happen in a week, nor does change.

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Happen-Here-Signet-Classics/dp/0451465644

Relevant reads

That's a really interesting question. You might want to take this to /r/linguistics. The change seems to have occurred when Old English (spoken c. 500AD-1100AD) formed out of Proto-Germanic (spoken c. 500BC-500AD).

In Proto-Germanic, the sentences would've been something like this (obviously, I'm not translating everything, just giving you a rough idea):

• This is *es car, ask *immai. (Two different words)
  
  
• This is *ezōz car, ask *ezōi. (Two different words)
  
  In Old English, they would've looked like this:
  
  
• This is his car, ask him. (Two different words)
  
  
• This is hire car, ask hire. (Same word)
  
  Why, I'm not sure. We may not even know - change just happens in languages, sometimes for no reason at all. However, we do know that, the farther back you go in English's history, back through Old English and Proto-Germanic, all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, you can see that noun cases have been dropping like flies. We used to have a very complex system of cases, and now we only have remnants of that (his/him, I/me, etc). You might be interested in reading Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter, which goes into some hypotheses as to why English has simplified so much.

Or get transferred to the front, which was a death sentence. Also it isn't like the SS or Army advertised that there would be no punishment, plus they would force the person declining to publicly step out with the rest of his unit and shame him for it, which in the military culture of honor/masculinity was a huge deterrent. It's not as if they made it psychologically easy, but then capitalized on that acquisence to make people commit crimes and not complain about it or protest because they had bought in by not stepping out. Rather diabolical how they used psychology against their own people to get them to do horrible crimes.

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

I agree with both of the other commenters, but thought some perspective might perhaps be helpful.

In his highly acclaimed work Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder estimates that 3.1 million Soviet POWs were murdered by the Nazis through forced starvation as a part of Generalplan Ost. The USHMM estimates that about 1.7 million people were murdered in the Operation Reinhard camps, while another 1.1 million were murdered at the Auschwitz camps.

While many, many more people were murdered as part of the Holocaust via open air shootings, starvation, etc., it is not inaccurate to recognize that the Nazis killed more Soviet POWs through forced starvation than they did through the killing centers most people generally associate with the Holocaust.

I've been posting the amazon link to that book at least once a day for the last month or two :).

Thank you for picking a superb section to post the actual text so people can see exactly why I'm so much in favor of ALL Americans reading this particular book right now. This isn't something that has never been seen before. Sure, it has never been seen like this in the United States, but we have seen it all before. Less than a century ago in fact, back in the 1930's, over in Germany, there was this guy you may have heard of, his name was Adolph Hitler....

ETA: https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

> This article has drawings of some of the torture methods that are used in NK prisons.

Wow, I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago currently and these methods are exactly in-line with what the Soviets did to their prisoners, even down to the detail of foreign prisoners usually getting preferential treatment as to avoid unnecessary international attention.

I recommend everyone read Richard Evans' 3-part series on the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, especially the first book about the rise of the movement. There's so many parallels between then and what we're seeing now in the US it chills me to the bone.

I posted this in another thread, but going to post it again here since it's relevant.

------

I feel like we should be mailing textbooks/memoirs on fascism/authoritarianism to our representatives...

I thought about organizing a gofundme to send the same book to all Republican representatives (senate and congress) from Amazon, but I think it would be more effective if it was sent from individual constituents in the rep's districts. I personally feel powerless since all my representatives are democrat, but I think it would send a really powerful message if people in red districts sent copies of books directly from Amazon. It would only cost around $10 to do that, and you can include a gift message with your address and why you're sending it.

People smarter than me probably have better suggestions, and could even point out passages that should be highlighted and bookmarked, but here are a few suggestions off the top of my head:

• The Anatomy of Fascism
  
• It Can't Happen Here
  
• Or just go all out and send Inside the Third Reich (though this may come across a tad hyperbolic, even though there are some fair comparisons)
  
  EDIT: Adding 1984 by Orwell to the list for obvious reasons.

This is my favorite WW2 book:

In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield.

https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583/

The transformation of the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich was gradual.

> "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

> "This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

> "You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

> "Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"

> "To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

> "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

> "Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."

> "Yes," I said.

> "You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

> "Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

> "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

> "But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

> "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

> "You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

> "Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

Herman Mayer - They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45

Forget Stephen King, the most horrifying book I ever read was They Thought They Were Free by Milton Meyer. Not because of the outrageousness of what the Germans ultimately did, but because of how mundane and normal it appeared to them before it all spiraled out of control.

"What would I have done?" is a question which really begins to haunt you while you're reading the book - and it doesn't leave you. We would all love to think of ourselves as nobly rejecting the police state, even allowing ourselves to be martyred. But would we, really? In tough economic times, would we turn down that job just because it demands a loyalty oath (but no other objectionable acts)? Especially if your kids were hungry? Would we go against what most of our family and friends (apparently) support, and be happy about being cast out? Would we risk jail and possibly, torture? Certainly some of us would, but how many of us? Enough?

Mayer catalogues a lot of rationalizations and self-justifications, but he doesn't go out of his way to portray the Germans he talked to as particularly evil, because they weren't. They were all too much like you and I. It really brings home the point that It Can Happen Here.

The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy

It's extremely thorough, which is both good and bad, because that war contained so many competing interests and an infinite number of notable generals and politicians that it can be overwhelming to remember who is doing what to whom and who wants what. But that said, I think that's really just the nature of the war itself. I definitely recommend it, if you have the patience to finish it. I bought the book knowing relatively little about the 30 years war and now know a lot more about it, and it's pretty well-written as well. Definitely recommend it.

The thirty years war was a crazy, huge, complicated thing and that book gives an overview of all of it. All that information can be daunting, but it's a great book. It's also a great time capsule of how government worked in that time frame, as well as society in general. And it helps explain why the Netherlands exists, too.

Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

Edit = I've listed some of the best books I've read on the subject below. Just ask if you want to know anything about them:

[The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans] (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904650&sr=8-3&keywords=third+reich+at+war)

[The Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans] (http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Power-Richard-Evans/dp/0143037900/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904650&sr=8-2&keywords=third+reich+at+war)

[The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans] (http://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-at-War/dp/0143116711/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904650&sr=8-1&keywords=third+reich+at+war)

[Maus by Art Speigelman] (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Maus-25th-Anniversary/dp/0679406417/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904780&sr=8-2&keywords=maus)

[Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics by Frederich Spotts] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Power-Aesthetics-Frederic-Spotts/dp/1585673455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904821&sr=8-1&keywords=hitler+power+of+aesthetics)

[Art of the Third Reich by Peter Adam] (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Third-Reich-Peter-Adam/dp/0810919125/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=21WGRYFWN5L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR115%2C160_&refRID=1VRZ6QYR6PG5XXXMYTPN)

[Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Empire-Nazis-Ruled-Europe/dp/014311610X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904865&sr=8-1&keywords=hitler%27s+empire)

[State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda by Susan Bachrach and Steven Luckert] (http://www.amazon.com/State-Deception-Power-Nazi-Propaganda/dp/0896047148/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904916&sr=8-1&keywords=state+of+deception+nazi)

[Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris by Ian Kershaw] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-1889-1936-Hubris-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393320359/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457904967&sr=8-2&keywords=hitler+kershaw)

[Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-1936-1945-Nemesis-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393322521/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=01WJ9WDS06KZ1AX79B3M)

[The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton] (http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Doctors-Medical-Psychology-Genocide/dp/0465049052/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905061&sr=1-1&keywords=the+nazi+doctors)

[The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg] (http://www.amazon.com/Raul-Hilberg-Destruction-European-third/dp/B008UYLG6K/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905115&sr=1-4&keywords=destruction+of+the+european+jews)

[Heinrich Himmler by Peter Longerich] (http://www.amazon.com/Heinrich-Himmler-Peter-Longerich/dp/0199651744/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905176&sr=1-1&keywords=heinrich+himmler)

[Hitler's Hangman - The Life of Heydrich by Robert Gerwartch] (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Hangman-The-Life-Heydrich/dp/0300187726/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51FT1ecdFQL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=084WSKT05G4GB1FGE1SY)

[Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 by Saul Friedlander] (http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Germany-Jews-Persecution-1933-1939/dp/0060928786/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457905269&sr=1-3&keywords=nazi+germany+and+the+jews+saul)

[Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander] (http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Germany-Jews-1939-1945-Extermination/dp/0060930489/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0DQYMK2GMYNVJK794F03)

[Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning] (http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068)

[KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann] (http://www.amazon.com/KL-History-Nazi-Concentration-Camps/dp/0374118256/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=41yRIhssGkL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&refRID=0BSM1HJ13NDQ46VKENQK)

Generally the "merchant" classes were found in what can be called "free cities" and there was quite a bit of red tape, mostly involving what would amount to grants of business rights from whoever the overlord was (in many cases the Churches, in others Nobles.) There were some pretty interesting showdowns as these urban areas developed between the Nobles that wanted to control them (and tax the wealth that was developing in them) and the residents, who were essentially fighting for freedom of trade. They were further regulated by what would have been the equivalent of guilds, etc.

Depending on the relations between these free(er) cities and surrounding areas, trade was either good, or could be terrible.

The beginning chapters of The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, by Peter H. Wilson does a really good job of going through the various social constructs for the geographic regions involved in the war. I found fascinating the legal constructs of the HRE.

I'm still trying to map out exactly what was going on in the HRE, though. I got busy with work and haven't been able to put the time in on reading this in about 6 months.

Link for the book, well worth buying, since you will likely read it about 10 thousand times trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Thirty-Years-War-Europes/dp/0674062310

It's hard to pin down exactly and by what standard you want to judge "Nazi Ideology".

Were most German soldiers patriotic and nationalistic. Most certainly yes. In Hitler's Army, the author makes strong arguments, using everything from rank and file soldiers diaries to communications between high levels of the Wehrmacht, that the average German believed in the rightness of their cause. That being the restoration of German pride, revenge for Versailles, defense against perceived threats to their way of life (Bolshevism), and defense of their homeland. As the war dragged on, defeatism, anti-Nazi sentiment, and war exhaustion did increase exponentially to where it was openly spoken of, at least by German civilians, their disdain for the Nazi's and Adolph Hitler.

In Ordinary Men, the author zeroes in on a particular police unit in Poland that actively participated in the Ethnic Cleansing of Poland of not only Jews, but Slavs, Poles, and other undesirables. While the book paints a largely dismal picture, showing that many went with the "following orders" principle, it was mixed, but definitely was a majority who participated in the Holocaust and Racist actions.

However, there are constant stories being cited, of German regular army, the Wehrmacht not dealing well with being tasked with taking on Holocaust related actions. There were reports of absenteeism, alcoholism, suicides, and even an occasional refusal of a direct order when these actions had to take place. While clearly these units did participate, it was not a mass action, but the large majority did participate. With what thoughts on their mind we can't say for sure across the board, but we do know that Nazi German soldiers overwhelmingly participated in these acts.

So on the whole, if you want to tie Nazism to the larger ideology of German Nationalism, then yes, the average soldier gladly followed the Nazi lead in this. While ascribing to their racist ideology and activities that related to the Holocaust, the numbers were smaller, but still a significant majority.

I remember this from reading Ordinary Men in college. It’s worth checking out.

Probably Germanic actually.

English: What, where, when. That, there, then.

German: Was, wo, wann. Das, da, dann.

Spanish: Que, donde, cuando. Eso, ahi, entonces.

EDIT: Germanic, not German. I've also corrected the words based on people who speak better German and Spanish than myself. Anyone who is interest in the orgin of English as a language should check out this book It shows how English, more so than other languages, is a real bastard tongue which combines Germanic, Latin, and Celtic languages.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

Not available yet on Barnes & Noble, but Bezo's little site had it available one day after Charlottesville. How interesting!

>They promote peace and love while fighting fascism.

I wouldn't go that far. If you want a good book about antifa there's this.

Pay no attention to the reviews, it's mostly alt-right goons who probably haven't even read the thing and are just pissy somebody could make an actual effort to understand this shit.

A lot of these groups are violent, but one also has to understand the context they are coming out of, which is basically a sort of low level conflict that's been simmering between the radical left and right for almost a century. People who think neo-fascist/racist political organizations and groups aren't dangerous aren't paying attention. They are. Hence a complete lack of tolerance towards them on the part of the far-left
'

Strictly speaking, there is no Antifa organization anymore, originally "Antifaschistische Aktion", a pre-WW2 German antifascist movement, and it's basically an ideology and ways of organizing agaist fascism and racism.

Many left-wing socialist and anarchist groups have adopted their methods.

What the rightwing media is trying to push is that basically the Black Bloc is "Antifa", they're the ones with masks that people normally first think of whenever Antifa is mentioned and on the occasion doing the vandalism bits.

There are many other groups that do not do that and are aligned with Antifa views and methods, like Maledicte said.

Recommended reading: Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray. He was on a podcast a while back explaining the basics, but I've forgotten what it was. I'll update when I remember/find it.

edit: Ah, here it is, it's on The Gist podcast from Slate, here it is.

The interview with Bray starts at around 4min 40secs.

edit2: I just realized that my comment makes it sound that I'm down on the Black Bloc, but it's not as clear-cut as that. Yeah, I disagree with some of their methods, but they are Activists with a capital 'A' and they don't shy away from direct action which I can respect.

That sounds awesome! I'm currently building a world for a book. And something like this seems super helpful. Do you think it's the same as this one, even though the cover isn't quite the same? https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

A boy who gets a C minus in Appreciation of History can't be all bad.

Snapshots:

1. This Post - archive.org, megalodon.jp, ceddit.com, [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fbadhistory%2Fcomments%2F5jqa97%2Fthe_lies_of_a_meme_the_truth_of_crusades_the%2F&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
2. /r/lewronggeneration - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/?url=/r/lewronggeneration "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=%2Fr%2Flewronggeneration&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
3. http://i.imgur.com/IMzmqer.jpg - archive.org, megalodon.jp, [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FIMzmqer.jpg&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
4. Here's the original comment thread - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/?url=http://www.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/comments/5jlsai/life_sure_was_better_during_the_crusades/dbhfbma/?context=10000 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), ceddit.com, [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Flewronggeneration%2Fcomments%2F5jlsai%2Flife_sure_was_better_during_the_crusades%2Fdbhfbma%2F%3Fcontext%3D10000&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
5. Rodger Crowley - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/?url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1RW8ieYILjMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Roger+Crowley%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU5o2m4ofRAhUqqVQKHbnPCJQQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q&f=false "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%3Fid%3D1RW8ieYILjMC%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26dq%3Dinauthor%3A%2522Roger%2BCrowley%2522%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ved%3D0ahUKEwiU5o2m4ofRAhUqqVQKHbnPCJQQ6AEIJjAC%23v%3Donepage%26q%26f%3Dfalse&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
6. Charles Martel - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBattle_of_Tours&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
7. Peter Wilson - archive.org, megalodon.jp, [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FThirty-Years-War-Europes-Tragedy%2Fdp%2F0674062310&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
8. /r/atheism - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/?url=/r/atheism "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=%2Fr%2Fatheism&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
   
9. Turns out that the Pyrenees are a b... - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Roncevaux_Pass "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), [archive.is*](https://archive.is/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBattle_of_Roncevaux_Pass&run=1 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!")
   
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Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men sheds light on the Milgram experiments and the psychological factors that contributed to the murderous acts carried out by ordinary men in the Ordnungspolizei.

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

I was required to read this for a Germany 1919-1945 course I took in college. It left me with conflicting feelings towards the men who carried out these appalling murders. Barbers, shopkeepers, everyday guys. Uncomfortably questioning myself if I would have succumbed to authority and peer pressure and carried out the orders if in that situation (absent of hindsight).

While I agree that stopping the "Muslim invasion" is ridiculous (unless your name is Charles Martel), almost all of the points this meme made are either untrue or deliberately obfuscating what really happened. Personally, I hate /pol/ and want desperately for Muslim refugees to find a safe home in Europe or America, but bad history is bad history, so here goes:

1. Do the raiding, enslaving, etc. yourself
   
   Yeah, this one is accurate.
   
   
2. Wreak havoc on your homelands by constantly attacking true Europeans
   
   There was no concept of "Europe" at this time. Furthermore, there were no concepts of national identity. People may have been united in a common language but traveling a mere 100 miles might take you to a place where you struggle to understand the same language that you speak!
   
   
3. Byzantium is begging for help... so instead of helping out, sack the capital of Christian Byzantine leaving her vulnerable to Turkish hordes.
   
   I assume this is referring to the Fourth Crusade? Byzantium was not "begging" for help. The reasons why Enrico Dandolo and the others were led to Constantinople was partly due to bad intel (a pretender to the throne convinced them that he was the rightful ruler, and if they overthrew the Emperor, he would submit to the Pope as the premier religious authority) The crusaders, while waiting in mainland Venetian territory, suffered a horrible plague. Drained of money and time, the crusaders needed to first go to the ERE in order to make connections, loot, or otherwise stock up for their planned conquest of Alexandria (Jerusalem was a wholly unrealistic goal). Oh, and the Pope excommunicated all of the crusaders for attacking Constantinople and tried desperately to have them stopped.
   To be honest, it's been a while, but I'm citing Rodger Crowley here. I'd love for someone more knowledgeable to chime in.
   
   
4. Take credit for stopping the Muslim advance when it was really the Mongol Hordes that destroyed the Islamic empire from the East.
   
   This one absolutely cracks me up by how wrong it is. The real people who stopped the "Muslim" (in reality, a very specific Muslim dynasty, the Umayyads) advance were the Franks, more specifically, Charles Martel, who stopped the Umayyad incursion into (what is now) France in 732. His grandson is more famous though, being Charlemagne. More on that later. Anyways, the sacking of Baghdad happened in 1258. That's right, over 500 years after the Battle of Tours. Not sure how the sacking of Baghdad in 1258 had any impact on the Umayyad problems in Southern France. As for Baghdad itself, the era of Muslim expansionism had long come to an end at that point.
   
   
5. Call upon fellow Christian peasants to put an end to oppression, yet casually massacre them in my backyard.
   
   I'm not going to dispute this. However, you have to recognize that at the time, "oppression" meant many different things. It definitely did not mean what it does now. Not exactly uniquely Christian to do such a thing.
   
   
6. Lose hundreds of thousands of men from the Mu..., I mean from myself (Thirty Years War).
   
   Wikipedia's articles on the TYW are awful. They're written from an English perspective that glorifies the idea of a Protestant alliance vs. the Catholic Habsburg powers. This is simply not true. For one thing, the primary "Protestant" power was France, aka the biggest Catholic nation in Western Europe. Secondly, faith merely acted as a component to the more serious dynastic and territorial ambitions of various groups, most notably the Swedish, the Hessians, and the Palatinate. The war was triggered by the Bohemian Revolt, not overall religious tension in the Empire. Indeed, the war is best seen as a failure of the existing Imperial framework to resolve new disputes. Before the war, the Empire was easily the most peaceful part of Europe. Most disputes were resolved via arbitration, not violence. It was only after Ferdinand II issued the Edict of Restitution that the war took on a more religious flavor, and even then Sweden just abused the "freedom of Germany" to achieve its aim of controlling the Baltic grain trade. What's more, the war claimed around 20% of the population of Germany, not 25-40%, and an overwhelming majority of the victims were from the plague/other diseases. Lastly, the assertion that the TYW somehow left the Balkans vulnerable to the Ottomans is ridiculous. The Ottomans already controlled most of the Balkans, and furthermore, the end of the War marked the beginning of the reconquest of Hungary and the Balkans by Austria. For more, I recommend Peter Wilson.
   
   
7. Rather than take back what the Moorish aggressors had taken in Iberia, decide it's more important to convert the Saxons and spend about 300 years massacring them.
   
   This one is so misleading that I have to conclude OP is from /r/atheism. I have to assume that OP is talking about Charlemagne, who is largely responsible for the Christian crusades into Germany. Firstly, he did try to reconquer the Iberian Peninsula, but failed. Turns out that the Pyrenees are a bitch to cross. What's more, the successive Iberian rump states were often supplied with crusading knights and funds from various Catholic donors, although I don't know enough to really comment definitively on the subject. Anyways, the Saxon lands, ruled by various leaders, were much easier to conquer than the massive Umayyad Empire. It was also a Karling family tradition to convert Saxons from paganism to Christianity. Charlemagne had his power base in Aachen. A trip to Iberia would take much longer than a trip to Saxony, and any trouble at home could be remedied much quicker. Lastly, the Carolingian Empire was highly tolerant at the time. He even employed Isaac, a Jew, as his ambassador to Baghdad. Charlemagne was devoutly religious, but also a pragmatist. War with the Umayyads would be overly costly and probably not worth it in the long end, and that's if he could win. Saxony was land ripe for the taking for a man of Charlemagne's talents. Oh, and the Pope was into it as well, and considering that Charlemagne's cooperation with the Bishop of Rome led him to being crowned the first Emperor of the West in hundreds of years, I think it was the right decision. The Imperial title lasted until 1806.
   
   

   In conclusion, this meme sucks.
   

Love this guy! Anyone who's unfamiliar he wrote a book last year called The Strange Death of Europe.

Here's a speech he gave that got a lot of traction as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjthnMOFSZM

The trouble with Germany circa that time is that the Nazis weren't tremendously Out There.

There's a book about this with a very relevant title that I think you should read, or borrow from a library, or something - "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland". The youth of Germany are slightly less responsible for their actions due to years of intense Nazi brainwashing; the elders, not so much. The elders were the 'ordinary men', and even they were happy to line up a few thousand jews and throw the corpses in a ditch.

Wehrmacht soldiers were indisputably Nazis. "Nazi", you see, does not merely cover direct, sworn, card-holding members of The Party: it also describes those fellow-travelers who share the Party's views or further its interests.

Being a member of the German military circa that time involved swearing an oath of personal fealty to Adolph "I don't know which of these untermenschen I hate the most, so just go kill people and I'll tell you when to stop" Hitler, participating in blatant wars of aggression, and witnessing, if not cheerfully indulging in, all sorts of atrocities, with official opinions ranging from tacit approval to outright carte-blanche "slavs aren't people so it's legal to do whatever you want to them".

^^^^^^^^^^.

The Good Book says, in a different context, "ye shall know them by their fruits" - the Nazis had no fruits. Apart from a certain kind, as some of their officials were... peculiar.

Just about everything the Nazis made was garbage. Their vaunted ethics-less science was shit; they falsified reports to fit their politics, did idiot archaeological digs looking for evidence for their falsified aryan history, their concentration camp experiments were nothing but creative torture, and they ignored the whole concept of nuclear physics as "Jewish Physics" and for obvious reasons didn't contribute jack or shit to that field of endeavour.

And as for "but Hitler fixed the economy", wew fucking lad; their economy was a paper tiger based on lies, debt, scams, war booty, and slave labour, 'fixed' by printing money and propping it up with stolen goods, and if he hadn't gone on a war spree and looted Germany's neighbors of gold and goods, he would have been remembered as the architect of the worst catastrophe to hit the German economy since the 30 Years' War.

After The War, no-one who had any real choice in the matter used Nazi equipment; no-one could use all those horses Nazi logistics (which sneers at notions of efficiency) relied upon, because the starving soldiers had eaten them all; the Czechs threw away the Me262 once the Soviets got around to giving them MiGs; the Israelis only used the Bf109 until they could get something better and dumped it at the first opportunity; the Syrians only used the Panzer IV because no-one would give them real tanks; and the French only used the Panther because their own arms industry was munted, on paper it has good stats, and the Nazis left lots of them broken down by the roadside. For a reason, as it turned out. A heavy tank with a medium tank's drivetrain isn't exactly a recipe for success. But hey, it had a badass name and it was pretty good as long as you parked it on a flat surface and didn't try to drive anywhere, so it's been talked up as the best thing since the FT17.

The only thing the Nazis accomplished was to make a huge mess and get a lot of people killed for nothing. Killing people was their plan all along, and the "ordinary men" of Germany were more than happy to go out and shoot some untermenschen. While units like the einsatzgruppen and Dirlewanger Brigade catch a lot of flak for obvious reasons, the Nazi military in general had an atrocious reputation for all sorts of shittery ranging from looting and rape to indiscriminate massacres in 'reprisal' against imagined or real partisan activity- justified partisan activity, given that they were resisting unlawful occupation, when they existed at all, because "oops we just "accidentally" burned down another village, let's say these dead people were partisans" -bombing civilians just about everywhere they went, murdering prisoners, and all manner of things that would be classed in court as "aiding and abetting", including loaning troops and providing logistical support to the SS and einsatzgruppen.

The Wehrmacht only got out of being declared a criminal organisation, after the war, because they were too disorganised to qualify. And when you're talking about Nazi Germany, 'disorganised' is the normal state of affairs: too disorganised to be an organisation was one Hell of an accomplishment.

^^^^^^^^^^.

People like to talk about Mein Opa who bravely defended the Fatherland ^in ^^the ^^^motherland, and who Never Did Anything Wrong; really, it's amazing how many people had nothing to do with the Nazis and were just quietly doing their jobs and never 'employed' a slave labourer or noticed a camp that received a constant stream of jews, gypsies and Soviet POWs, yet somehow never had to build more barracks to hold them.

There is a marked tendency among Nazis, Neo- and otherwise, and sympathisers for such, to try and argue that occasional war-criming on the part of the Allies was as equally immoral as chronic war-criming on the part of the Axis, and that wars are inherently bloody things in which, occasionally, Mistakes Are Made; that it isn't right to pay too much attention to a few thousand dead Frenchmen here or a few thousand dead Poles over there, much less millions of 'missing' Jews and Russians, or to imply that a man in a Stahlhelm might not have been doing the Right Thing by Fighting For His Country.

Both sides did war-crimes. The Nazis treated them as a good day's work.

The usual excuse, once "the Wehrmacht didn't do war crimes" has been blown out of the water like the Bismarck, is that they did war-crime, but only because they'd be shot or sent to the Eastern Front or a concentration camp if they refused.

That wasn't usually a problem; if you didn't have the stomach for it, they'd just move you somewhere else. There was no shortage of young Hitlerites eager to murder some untermenschen, so if you were the one guy in a hundred who thought "Hang on, maybe this is a bit much," they'd get you to help dig the graves, or post you up the road to keep witnesses from getting underfoot, blacklist you from being promoted, or move you to an actual combat unit. After laughing at you and calling you a pussy, of course, because what kind of lily-livered moron gets weepy over a bunch of dead Jews/Gypsies/Russians?

Comparing any army to the Wehrmacht basically means implying that the soldiers in it are a pack of bloodthirsty bandits only held back from a rape-murder-and-pillage spree by fear of being caught.

^^^^^^^^^^.

This shit goes right back to the very end of WW2; The Cold War kicked off right after WW2 finished, and the Allies were willing to overlook quite a bit to try and get the remnants of the Wehrmacht to help out against the Soviets, so a lot of things, especially regarding the Eastern Front, got quietly brushed under the carpet if it'd get some shitbag with an Iron Cross to play ball.

^^^^^^^^^^.

And for a final bonus, "the propaganda" to "demonise the opposing soldiers"? Otto Carius complained about that in his memoir. He wrote of the angry glares of Allied prison camp guards who he felt were disapproving of him purely because of 'atrocity propaganda' and had no justification at all for looking down upon a heroic tank ace who just happened to habitually enjoy the cordial company of SS officers.

He was, after all, just fighting against Judeo-Bolshevism, and never did anything wrong.

The 'atrocity propaganda'. Riight. There's three kinds of propaganda - absolute bullshit, stuff that's mostly true, and truths that the enemy don't want people to hear about. When it came to the behaviour of the Nazi military, there was no need to make things up because everywhere they went, they behaved like the literal nazis they were. Rotterdam, Warsaw, Guernica, Warsaw (again), half-a-hundred other places...

Always applicable quote from 'The Anti-Fascist Handbook':

"It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of people who oppose limiting free speech on political grounds are not free speech absolutists. They all have their exceptions to the rule, whether obscenity, incitement to violence, copyright infringement, press censorship during wartime, or restrictions for the incarcerated.

If we rephrase the terms of the debate by taking these exceptions into account, we can see that many liberals support limiting the free speech of working-class teens busted for drugs, but not limiting the free speech of Nazis. Many are fine when the police quash the free speech of the undocumented by hunting them down, while they amplify the speech of the Klan by protecting them. They advocate curtailing ads for cigarettes but not ads for white supremacy.

All of these examples limit speech. The only difference is that liberals pretend that their limitations are apolitical, while anti-fascists embrace an avowedly political rejection of fascism."

The thing I can't get over is the fact that there is an actual Antifa Handbook out there which actually details the ideology of prominent antifa groups as well as their histories and how they operate. But if the guy who made this actually read this book his head might explode once he realizes how reasonable it is

Pretty sure the slaves didn't get a vote in that democracy and if you think the NSDAP rise to power in the Weimar republic had anything to do with democratic process I have to assume you have not take the time to look at how that shit went down.

In 32 they received 10% fewer votes than just six months earlier, that's when the conservative parties there made a literal deal with the fucking devil and threw all their weight behind him and had him declared chancellor in order to maintain some semblance of power. While it was "legal" Hitler was not elected president by the German people. Even then Hitler only had 2 cabinet appointees from his own party.

Course, then they lit the Reichstag in a false flag and seized power under the guise of a communist revolt, and the rest is nothing but a stain on human history.

But Nazi's being democratically elected? Rofl, good one Fritz.

If you have an interest in the truth of this check out "The Death of Democracy" and/or "The Anatomy of Fascism". While more general, the Anatomy of Fascism is the better read IMO.

Buy Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men" and loan it to him . It's not a difficult read, well the topic is, but the language is not.
You see that paperbacks are pretty cheap.

I you're interested in this subject, I highly recommend Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. Very interesting read that tries to find out why and how did ordinary middle aged German men commit those attrocities.

Ordinary Men taking part in the extermination of the Slavic people. And ordinary men who participated in rape to such a scale that it caused a demographic shift.

I agree. Despise the perpetrators all you want, I certainly do, but don't fall into the trap of believing they're somehow different. Christopher Browning wrote an excellent book on the Ordinary Men who helped in the attempted genocide of WWII:

>Browning reconstructs how a German reserve police battalion composed of "ordinary men," middle-aged, working class people, killed tens of thousands of Jews during WW II.

The study of "The banality of evil" warns us that blaming extremist actions on some type of "evil other" blinds us to the role we play in supporting those individuals:

>Normalizing the Unthinkable

>Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on "normalization." This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as "the way things are done." There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals; others keeping the machinery of death (sanitation, food supply) in order; still others producing the implements of killing, or working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of defense intellectuals and other experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public.

It depends a lot on when exactly we're talking. For a famous and spectacular example you have Albert Battel, who had the "deal with him after the war" added to his file by Heinrich Himmler personally. You have other examples like Erwin Rommel who was insubordinate on a general basis (wouldn't hunt jews, wouldn't tell anyone else to do it, refused to kill captured commandos) and got mightily unpopular for it. At that point they certainly had a hope of winning and losing people wasn't worth and there was still a general idea of "we want to keep this quiet".
At that point they also tried to keep the actual atrocities to volunteers (to prevent people from getting the option of insubordination in the first place).

If I remember correctly it was sometime late '44 that the feltgendarmerie (Military Police) was given the authority to shoot German soldiers on the spot (for desertion, cowardice, or refusing orders). Along with a rise in drummed up military courts wherever they happened to be handily available.
A lot of people were sent to penal battalions much easier then, as it didn't take actually sending someone to a proper judgement and sentencing.

Reading on the subject is difficult (the subject is surprisingly little covered directly, mostly referred to in passing by people covering other subjects. Far as I know there's no book on that one subject).
However, if you have a JSTOR account there is this. (this is the basis of the "nobody ever got punished claim btw).
http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068 talks about how atrocities were committed and how people who might refuse to participate directly rather helped indirectly.
Sadly I don't know any easy way to gain a lot of insight into military insubordination in the German armed forces, not because it was rare (it happened more than you'd think), but because it's been covered surprisingly little and going over the old execution cases is something of a sore subject that's been met with a lot of resistance.

For civilian insubordination it's a bit easier as you can read up on people like Sophie Scholl who was beheaded for resistance, nonviolent resistance in her case as she was participating in the white rose.
People were regularly imprisoned for saying things critical to the regime (or Hitler, which is why Sophie Scholls father was in prison), so it's not a stretch to say that at the very least people believed insubordination would carry severe consequences.

Youknow, I'm more interested in history, and especially WW2 history, than the average person. I've seen videos of executions, pictures and videos from the most horrid camps and battles, I've read testimonies...
I have a strong constitution, I can "disengage" emotionally from most of these things. You have to in order to see it in the first place. As a result my response to things like Holocaust deniers saying it was impossible to burn that many bodies is to literally just do the math.

That picture of Sophie Scholl is one of only two things that I can honestly say makes me physically unwell.

>But the dominance of marxism-leninism in the revolutionary socialist movement is very materialistic in the sense that it derives it's popularity from the fact that it worked. Communists did manage to overthrow the bourgeoisie, they did manage to build out socialism and they did manage to supress the counter-revolution. Whatever anarchists have to say about marxism, you can't deny that it reached skies, while anarchism never decently got of the ground.

We challenge the notion that Marxism-Leninism "worked".

Did they overthrow the bourgeoisie in order for the proletariat to change social relations, or to establish a bureaucracy as a new ruling class? Did they build "socialism", or build a state-capitalist system where labor was still sold as a commodity and products were still made for exchange-value, but the State was the sole employer, the bureaucracy took control of the social surplus extracted and exchange was carried under a 'plan'? The Bolsheviks won the civil war alright, but did they also not suppress working class activity that called for the removal of hierarchical control and an end to privileges to the bureaucracy, did they not suppress the Petrograd strikes, the sailors in Kronstadt and other parties that workers also supported?

Marxism-Leninism didn't "reach the skies". It was the establishment of state-capitalism under a Red Flag. If "reaching the skies" implies avoidable famines that result in horrible human losses, establishing despotic rules for laborers to follow and internal passport system, a brutal secret police that murders with out a trial, a real archipelago of slave labor camps dedicated to torturing any dissidents, "lazy" workers and people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, massacres of Polish people in Katyn; all of this culminating in an age of Purges and political violence that ironically kills all the best Generals right before a major war broke out, then excuse me but i'd rather not "reach the skies" with you.

And indeed, the "material reality" is that the Berlin wall fell, the entire Soviet Union reverted back into run-off-the-mill capitalism ruled by former ""socialist"" bureaucrats as oligarchs, China is now a capitalist super-power ruled by a dictatorship that terribly suppressed working class movement; and the vast majority of workers in the world want nothing to do with "Communism" because of that. It is now a synonym for failure. And this isn't just the result of "propaganda", the Berlin wall did in actuality fall and all the things i mentioned are well documented by serious historians even if they are exaggerated and spammed everywhere by right-wingers who conveniently ignore the horrors committed by the West for propaganda purposes. Marxist-Leninist parties are becoming less and less relevant by the day ever since 1991.

>Do you think anarchism could ever change their analysis on hierarchy so that they could adopt more functional and successful organisational structures?

I also strongly doubt the notion Marxist-Leninists have "functional and successful organisational structures". During the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik Party despite claiming to be a "vanguard" was behind the masses at every turn. Every single actual revolutionary success has been characterized by extensive direct action by the masses (as pretentious would-be leaders and bureaucratic bodies are left behind by the tides) and the building of worker's councils. M-L party structures today serve as little more than grounds for lifestyle activism of militants. But to answers your question, by definition, anarchists can't abandon their opposition to hierarchical control with out abandoning anarchism.

>Although I find anarchism charming I as a communist cannot see it's revolutionary value because it has never succeeded.

Our problem at large is that socialism itself has never succeeded.

A large part of the holocaust were liquidations in Poland and Eastern Europe. Towns as large as 30,000 people were "liquidated" in a day. Police units would march the populace into the woods and take a portion, line them up, shoot them at a proscribed place in the spine. Repeat. There is a horrific book called "Ordinary Men" about the 101 Police Reserve Battalion. Those ~500 men alone were responsible for >80,000 deaths.

>In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal’s claws.

>Barbara Tuchman, "A Distant Mirror: life in the calamitous 14th century"

The reason I hate the Nazi analogy, besides the fact that it’s overused, is that it just is not apt. 1920’s Germany was pro-Jewish, only compared to other countries. Being anti-Semitic was not a career ending move and plenty of people in power vocally hated them, even if something like Holocaust was not on their mind. People should actually learn something about early Nazi history before making this comparison. Even if they weren’t popular before right before their rise to power, they were considered more like rabble rousers, not pariahs. I recommend The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans to get an understanding of what led to their assuming and consolidating power.

You should give this a good once over.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

People have got to stop with this massively hyperbolic trash repost. Calling the far right 'nazis' is unworthy of discussion. Calling the far right 'fascist' is only slightly less ignorant, but is still extremely hyperbolic. 99.95% of people using the term are completely ignorant of the history.

Why?:

There is no 'definition' of fascist/fascism. This shitty '14 points list' has been floating around the internet for a while and Trump checks all 14 points (as does Obama, as does HRC, as does Bush2). 1) This list is completely fabricated (fake news?). 2) The actual definition of fascism is extremely debatable by very educated people (see below). 3) you can take these lists and look at the Obama administration and check 12-13 of the 14 points. 4) and I should have to tell you this, but if you see something thats being passed around the internet between like-minded people, its probably bullshit.

If you want to read/learn about real fascism, read these two books:

Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) 2nd Edition

The Anatomy of Fascism Reprint Edition

They are both excellent, and pre-Trump. They provide and excellent overview of the fascist movement(s) throughout history. The quick takeaways are: 1) there is no 'definition' of fascist (eg that 14 point list is facebook bullshit), 2) both right-wing and left-wing political movements have shown many elements of fascism (eg extreme right wingers are just as intolerant as extreme left wingers), 3) the current right movement in America bears little in common with actual fascist movements.

So why are people calling the right 'fascists'? In my personal opinion, the left is using the term to justify vilification and aggression towards the right (I say this as a political moderate). This is not to say 'the right' are the good guys - there are plenty of situations in life where there are no 'good guys' - the current left/right debate is one of those situations.

I'm sure you saw that white nationalist, Richard Spencer got sucker punched a few weeks ago. The entire left was hand-wringing about wether or not this was justified - even the NYT published a half-assed assessment. You saw it here on reddit - 'the alt-right' is so toxic they deserve violence. You know who also thinks that speech should be silenced with violence - fascists.

As a moderate I find this rationalization for 'violence to silence' horrifying. Violence is never an answer. You'll note that actual fascists use violence and threats of violence to suppress speech - so what is the difference between the left and right these days?. I stand in the middle and have a hard time telling.

TL;DR they very people that claim to be 'anti-fascist' are abusing the term to create an enemy that's (apparently) worthy of a priori violence - if you think about that for a second it should be horrifying.

And just watch - by virtue of 1) trying to inject a little reason here 2) showing a refusal to call the more extreme right 'nazi-fascists' and 3) criticizing the left for being shitty too, I am going to get called an alt-right wing Trumpeter.

I remember reading this in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. Fantastic book with so much info about Hitler and the Third Reich. Definitely recommend it for history junkies.

It's 1280 pages.


Edit: if anyone is interested here is a link to buy The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

You might be interested in Robert Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism."

Speaking of that FBI chick, there's a whole subculture of white European girls that want Muslim guys because they're perceived as vicious and strong relative to their cucky European counterparts. Just search tumblr. It's morbid.

Also this is a good book The Strange Death of Europe

The Germans went from a self described "master race" to cucks in under a century.

Bloodlands is a great read about Eastern Europe mostly under Stalin. It also talks about the famines in Ukraine. It was difficult to read at night for me because what I read would be so depressing, disgusting, horrifying that I would have constant nightmares.

Here you go. My reference. http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/1451651686/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408410932&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+the+third+reich

Read the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. There's a great audiobook version on Audible. I'm American too, except my four years of history classes were in Texas not NYC, and after reading that book I truly realized how little they actually taught us in high school.

If you wanted to take your interest further

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

The the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. It will give you an incredibly detailed account about how normal men became systematic killers.

A quick google found this post in AskHistorians, which cites a passage from this book.

>On 20 August, chaplains from the 295th Infantry Division informed Lieutenant-Colonel Helmuth Groscurth, the chief of staff, that ninety Jewish orphans in the town of Belaya Tserkov were being held in disgusting conditions. They ranged from infants up to seven-year-old children. They were to be shot, like their parents. Groscurth, the son of a pastor and a convinced anti-Nazi, had been the Abwehr officer who, that spring, had secretly passed details of the illegal orders for Barbarossa to Ulrich von Hassell. Groscurth immediately sought out the district commander and insisted that the execution must be stopped. He then contacted Sixth Army headquarters, even though Standartenführer Paul Blobel, the head of the Sonderkommando, warned Groscurth that he would report his interference to Reichsführer SS Himmler. Field Marshal von Reichenau supported Blobel. The ninety Jewish children were shot the next evening by Ukrainian militiamen, to save the feelings of the Sonderkommando. Groscurth wrote a full report which he sent direct to headquarters Army Group South. Appalled and furious, he wrote to his wife: ‘We cannot and should not be allowed to win this war.’

Unfortunately I don't own a copy of the book itself, so I can't look into what sources the author used.

You can, however, read the original report that Groscurth filed with Army Group South (and an English translation, although I'm not sure of how accurate it is) here.

"And she, my family, and our friends are not fascists but they often support fascist ideals without know it." - there, that's it. EVERY leftist goes through this at some point.

One of the first things you could do is educate them on the origins of fascism. I mean this in a non confrontational sense. The unlearning process can be a painful one though so many people will disengage. It's tricky, all you can do is supply the information. Through learning the origins of what fascism is, they may grasp how it never went away and how it still effects us, daily. You could start with the following quote:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Giovanni Gentile

Few more useful links below:

How fascism works

The new faces of fascism

Antifa Handbook

Alt America

​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8AcmzqFdPM&t=11s - on Nazism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUFvG4RpwJI&t=1108s - again on Nazism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ClScOsE-4&t=78s - on fascism & socialism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1O3DWDzyv8&t=7s - capitalism & fascism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_rto6JPYQ8 - neoliberalism & fascism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6Nb3wbpljo - fascism & the political compass

​

​

The Soviets in the 30s and 40s were, as a whole, far more competent in controlling large areas and people than the Germans. Case in point, the German "Hunger Plan" intended to starve millions of Slavs hardly got off the ground in conquered territories, whereas the NKVD was able to systematically control every field, granary, and loaf of bread in the entirety of modern Ukraine. The Germans resorted to shooting mass numbers of Poles and Belorussians instead.

The Soviets were equally as successful with their Gulag deportations. Party officials were embedded enough to identify problem families in even the smallest hamlets of the USSR and ship them thousands of miles to Kazakhstan or Siberia. This is millions of people we're talking about, all specially selected, charged, and recorded in Soviet archives. While the Germans were very good at rounding up and killing people, they weren't nearly as discriminatory or efficient as the Russians.

Bottom line is that if Trump wants to round up and deport millions of people in a systematic, targeted effort, he should look to the USSR rather than the comparatively sloppy Nazis. I would recommend he read Bloodlands for further research into turning America into an ethno-centrist, totalitarian dictatorship.

University mobilization was extremely important to the Nazis. Student groups grew to the point where the entirety of student unions were controlled by extremist Nazi youth groups. They then moved on the faculty, getting leftists and jews and other undesirables sacked in favor of ideologically similar folks.

This of course doesn't even begin to mention the effort that was put into indoctrinating even younger grade-school students.

Everyone should read Richard Evans' fantastic 3-part series on the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Now more than ever do people owe it to themselves to see how this kind of thing starts as a fringe movement and gradually proceeds to....well, everything.

No the famine was not planned by Mao, but it was a direct result of his regime. You realise there was food available, but people were only able to purchase it through the black market.

Fascism is no better than communism, however I do need to correct you. Nazism revolves around racism. Not all fascism is Nazism, but all Nazism is fascism.

Capitalism is an economic system not a government system. You would have to pair Capitalism against Maxism not Communism. The argument is that Democracy is better than Communism.

Yeah, the US government sucks a lot, but the conditions of US prisons are much better than the conditions of Gulags. Yes, most of the people sent to the Gulags were guilty, but the question is should the law have been in place to begin with? Should someone be thrown in a concentration camp for speaking out against the government. If you think the Gulags were any better than concentration camps You should read the gulag archipelago. It is written by a survivor of the gulags.

This bill board doesn't even argue against marxism in the form of 1st world left wing politics. It is argueing against traditional communism.

What is your opinion on North Korea, which is the only communist regime left?

As for your last point that capitalism kills far more than communism. I think there is a difference between not saving someone and killing them. The Communism death toll is calculated by totalling the number of people that were killed via direct government action. The capitalism one just counts all the deaths. Again, that isn't even the right argument because capitalism is not a form of government, but an economic theory. (Which no nation in the world embrasses to it's full extent. Most economies are somewhere in between marxism and capitalism.) The real argument is Democracy vs Communism, that's what the cold war was about. Democracy works much better than Communism and does not kill anywhere near as many people. The reason people put capitalism up against Communism is because it's much easier to make an argument that way. Even though it's not logically consistent.

Now I know this is heading in the direction of an internet argument where people just say shit and no one really wins. I'll leave a couple book recommendations below, and I would really appreciate it if you left me some book recommendations that you think would help me learn. I believe that we should always be challenging our personal beliefs, and I have an audible credit so I'm more than willing to listen to one of your suggestions. Let's make something positive come out of this. I don't want it to just be a digital shouting match.

Battlefield America

Gulag Archipelago

For a New Liberty

I hope sharing this doesn't piss you off too much. I know political discord can easily make people, myself included, mad. I hope you have a good day, and I'm serious about leaving me some links. I'll check them out. Thanks for your imput and feel free to challenge me back. If my view is right then it should be able to take criticism, right?

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Required lest history is repeated...

I was just reading about the link between labor aristocracy and the rise of fascism a few days ago. The ruling class becomes decadent and complacent, the opposition is unable or unwilling to act, and this spurs radical change.

However, if you reject leftwing action based on internationalism and feminism (anti racism and anti sexism), and especially the destruction of class society (communism), then you're only alternative is to double down on narrow, chauvinistic nationalism, patriarchy, and patriotism. You can find anti capitalist and socialist sentiment in fascist movements, but usually it's against an imagined corrupted form of capitalism, "crony capitalism," and not the existence of class society generally. In other words, the fascists want to be the boss, not get rid of them. They think they can manifest a truly just and natural order once deviants and subversives are liquidated and everyone becomes unified by a grand national impulse. In short the fascist solution is to unleash war within and without--the standard capitalist response. But the fascist impulse carries a vital, energetic tone that fetishizes action and violence for their own sake, against both decrepit old guard bourgeoisie, low class deviants and radicals, and the foreigner.

The historian Robert Paxton described fascism as "pallangenic," or Phoenix-like, a desire to rebirth society into an imagined former greatness, but America was never great. It hasn't fundamentally changed it's character since 1776, which is why we've been fighting the same battle against the same ruling class for over 200 years. The first rebellion in the US was against onerous taxes imposed by an unelected regime built on slavery and native land theft, and since sustained by more land theft, a racial-economic hierarchy, and aggressive resource wars. All our problems stem from this, problems that cannot be addressed using tools this same system provides, for obvious reasons.

So fascists seek revolution without revolution. Not a change in fundamental order, but to supplement the current order. German Nazi party loyalists were installed into factory management positions alongside the old managers, for example.

There's a complicated mix of factors. White supremacist hegemony is threatened by an increasingly (but necessarily) globalized labor market (outsourcing and immigration--capitalism direly needs cheap labor to avoid recession) and destruction of the family as it was shaped by capitalism--its nuclear form, as women become more economically independent and no longer need to be with a man they don't want to, but this also grows the labor pool. Now that more and more whites are subjected to the economic conditions familiar to the underclasses (which are mostly nonwhite and women), they are panicking. There's nothing in the bourgeois political toolkit to handle severe existential crisis except racism, sexism, and other scapegoats.

But the Democrats and their unions are in no shape to fight this, just as the social democrats in Europe were in no way ready to combat the fundamental nature of capitalism. The problems now are so great and the interests in the status quo so entrenched it would take an aggressive movement with revolutionary orientation to reconstitute society on a less inherently antagonistic basis. Fascists believe they can do this, but have never been able to

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

They knew. It is one of the biggest misconceptions about the Holocaust, that the German people had little to no idea what was going on, and that it was just the government. It depresses me to see it plastered all over this thread. I think it just makes people feel better to think that it was only a few evil people who perpetrated this horrendous crime, instead of many "normal" people. I highly recommend that everyone read the books and articles I linked to. They explain it much better than I can. I do doubt, however, that I will be able to change many peoples minds. Most of the time I don't even bother.

I'm not saying the Germans of today are bad, they have done many things trying to set right the crimes of their past generations. But the Germans of the time knew what was going on and many participated in it.

They knew.

The guy you answered to seems to disregard the newest events in historical research.

For an insightful read about the causes of WWI, I can only recommend Clark's book The Sleepwalkers.

I bet my post will classify me as a "wehraboo", as some others seem to call everyone who does not put the sole blame on Germany for WWI breaking out.

Classic Stockholm Syndrome. You should read this book.

Anyway, here is my rebuttal in bullet point form:

Wall St bailouts = fascism

World's largest prison population = fascism

Due process totally destroyed = fascism

Indefinite detention without trial (just claiming the power is bad enough) = fascism

Extrajudicial assassination of American Citizens (Anwar, etc) = fascism

Censoring of free speech (SOPA) = fascism

Constantly using terrorism as an excuse to expand the security state = fascism

Something that certainly shows the rhymes between today and 20th century history worth checking out might be "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45" by Milton Mayer

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

This is a long excerpt (and I'm sure some of you already know it) but I think it's really, really important to read this and think about it:

>"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

>"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

>"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

>"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

>"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

>"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

Far far far more nuanced than that.

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693/

Fantastic book. The rise of the Nazi party within Germany, and then Hitler's subsequent takeover of that party, was far more complicated than: Nobody protested... or the SA Brownshirts had more guns.

Germany is/was a complicated place.

>You could say it wouldn't take a lot to turn America into an evil country like Germany became. But in a way, it already is. It's just not as poor and desperate as Germany was.

Whenever I see Trump and his supporters, I'm instantly reminded of this book. It's a really good read and shows that the people of Germany were just as culpable in their actions as Hitler was. It's astonishing to see how similar the social climate towards the Jews back then was to today's attitude towards Muslims.

In Germany they were being sterilized.

>non-slavic

A plenty of German Nazis were of Slavic descent and with Slavic names.

There were also a large number of part-Jewish soldiers, especially before 1941. Up to 150,000 or so in total. https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Military-Paperback/dp/0700613587

> They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

on amazon.com

and on amazon.ca

love to note the 40% price difference..btw

Relevant; They know what they're doing. And how we will react.

>"Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?-Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'
>
>And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....
>
>But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked-if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
>
>And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."

• Milton Mayer
  
  They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488120868&sr=8-1&keywords=ordinary+men

This is a great book on a related subject. It's about the polish police force during that era. When they were ordered to round up jews and execute them some did it willingly, some did it reluctantly because it was an order, and some just outright refused.

Good job missing the point. Literally there is no rules outside of fuck nazi. Tactics are decided on the individual and group level. Also trust me NO ONE bitches about AntiFa like other AntiFa members.

Yes there are dumb AntiFa with bad optics and tactics but we aren’t a card caring organization with membership logs, aside from telling a guy to fuck off there is no real way to kick people out.

That’s the benefit and negative of AntiFa. Anyone can be AntiFa, but ANYONE can be AntiFa.

Local group decide their targets some are more legitimate targets than others, would I have gone after Milo whatever his last name is. Meh, probably not but the Berkeley crowd has different motivations then the groups I rolled with.

Also I’m getting a 404 on the article listed so I can’t respond to it directly, but I will also posit that not every punk in Black is AntiFa so lots of stuff gets blamed on the group.

If you are interested in the topic I would recomend this book it does a pretty good job at explaining the motivations and history of AntiFa.

You might be interested in checking out How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Very good writer there if you like reading history.

"...America’s 45th president is open about the fact that he doesn’t read much history..." that's a real shame because we could all avoid a lot of pain and suffering if the dumb ass just read a little ...

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

You don't have to be young. This book is a historical account of a police unit made of middle-aged men from pre-War Germany through their radicalization from normal men to the kind of people that bayonet pregnant women.

The power of groupthink and ideology is terrifying. The fact of the matter is that it can be confidently said that for any given person, if they were present in Germany during its Nazi transformation, they would almost certainly have become Nazis.

No, it isn't. If you would like to know more I suggest you read "Hitler's Willing Executioners" by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and "Ordinary Men" by Christopher Browning

​

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Willing-Executioners-Ordinary-Holocaust/dp/0679772685/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3R1FH4PO6HEYJ&keywords=hitlers+willing+executioners+by+daniel+goldhagen&qid=1568991878&s=books&sprefix=hitlers+%2Cstripbooks%2C154&sr=1-1

​

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023/ref=asc_df_0062303023/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312028586631&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17934141838329272719&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002445&hvtargid=aud-801381245258:pla-417307105818&psc=1

German here. It seems to me like too many people are pinning their hopes on this one investigation.

Too many people are still sure that the system works at some level, even though Trump and his cronies have been busy dismantling it from the inside right since he got into office. They're sure that the institutions will still protect them. They're sure that the population is generally aware of what's going. They're sure that if Trump ever took that final step into authoritarianism, millions would be in the streets.

So I'm just here to say that this process has happened before, and it has happened in many countries, and all of the arguments you're making have been made before - and yet many of these countries fell to totalitarianism.

I'm just gonna leave this quote from a German university professor who was interviewed about what life in Germany was like in 1933-45:

>"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

>"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all."

(source: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45)

Sometimes, an in-depth case study of a specific person/event can reveal larger truths about the period being studied.

Probably my favorite history book ever, A Distant Mirror, is framed as a biography of a relatively unimportant French noble from the period for precisely this reason.

In other cases, historians are forced to take this approach because the surviving writing from a period is mostly about the smaller subject. The reason so many studies of Norman England are about land ownership isn't because it's necessarily the best way to understand the time period, it's because we happen to know way more about land ownership from the time period than we do about anything else. I'm not sure this is true of, say, Dutch local political parties from the interwar period, but it wouldn't surprise me if whoever wrote that paper had an exceptionally good group of documents on them. The fact that a paper might attract a small or specialized readership shouldn't diminish its scholarly importance.

EDIT: bad grammar corrected

This book, it seems:

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035/

Meh, over in the Americas, that was the term that we gave to Scottish immigrants at the time, and it stuck. You should note in that contemporary language in the UK at the time, Scotch was a perfectly acceptable adjective to apply to either the drink or the person. Also, at that time Scotch itself was not a popular drink amongst non-scottish folks.

If you're interested in Scottish history, I would recommend Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World:
http://www.amazon.ca/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

The user turned this narrative into a five part series of the first killings, how the ordinary men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 dealt with the aftermath of that killing, how the killings became a routine, and eventually details their largest mass killing - the killing of the 42,000 Jews in the Lublin Ghetto

HighCrimesandHistory's post is based on the fantastic work Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. The book details the 500 middle aged family men of Reserve Police Battalion 101, mostly shopkeepers and tradesmen from Hamburg, as they directly killed at least 38,000 Jews in under a year, and sent tens of thousands more to the death camps.

The book itself is incredible and a must read for anybody interested, but /u/highcrimesandhistory turned parts of the book into an incredibly visceral and readable narrative

You are going to get a new asshole torn open for openly disregarding the abundant accounts from outside and within the German armed forces themselves that state German Wehrmacht personnel willingly aided the SS. More importantly they also aided the Ordnungspolizei, the more important of the two, imo, as most people are not even aware of their existence. Most will probably read that name and go "Or dung poli- who?" especially people who think the Wehrmacht were shining beacons of virtue. By the end of the war the OrPo were assimilated into the SS. Who were the Ordnungspolizei and why were they incorporated into the SS? They were, prior to 1936, Germany's police forces. With their collectivization under Nazi control they became Germany's federal police. Many of the people simply retained their jobs during all of this, as it's easier for everyone if the police who worked under an organization of this or that name continue their jobs under a different organization with the same scope, broadly speaking. Give it a few years and the OrPo would be accompanying the German advance into the Eastern Front, where they participated in war crimes as a paramilitary force that herded Jews into ghettos and took part in mass murder. Let that sink in for a second, the once FEDERAL POLICE of Germany was gradually warped to the point where it was carrying out mass murder and finally amalgamated into the SS as there ceased to be a need to distinguish the two.

People all too often cite the SS as being packed to the brim with young and ideologically volatile German men who grew up affected by the rhetoric they were exposed to and bought into it. This is simply not reflective of reality when police officers who were predominantly middle-age and lived their early lives before post-WW1 sentiments began to brew were, in their 30s and 40s, complicit in war crimes and mass murder. As police officers. You really believe the Wehrmacht was guilt-free when what used to be civilian law enforcement took up arms and rampaged across Europe, safely behind the frontlines for the most part, murdering ethnic minorities and other "undesirables"? This is without even mentioning those same policemen become taskmasters in all corners of Europe, overseeing ten times or more their number in local collaborators, often regional police forces the Germans simply left intact and incorporated for their own uses. There's a good book on this called Ordinary Men. If ordinary cops can do that, you can bet your ass a soldier who has no reservations about killing people can do the same if not worse.

I'm sure there were German officers who vehemently opposed the shit they were being fed, but it wasn't significant nor does it stand as evidence disproving the occurrence of other incidents. You don't disprove something which is factually recorded as having happened by putting forward a case where the opposite occurred. Just like how you don't retroactively prove you didn't commit a crime by not committing a crime in a difference situation. That's not how it works.

Manstein was supposedly one of those German officers, rather far up the chain of command, who was not always in agreement with Hitler. Right up until the point he received a large estate in Poland and tax benefits, much like many other officers in the Wehrmacht complaints from him promptly ceased to manifest themselves and he was more than happy to serve. Manstein. The Manstein.

You're arguing with at best isolated anecdotes and excerpts from history which can be cherry picked to present a misleading narrative that is still mostly acceptable- if only to those who don't dig deeper and have little general knowledge of the Second World War and its darker details. At worst you're putting forward overwhelmingly misleading generalizations and just blatantly incorrect information you cannot find anywhere except from those who advocate historical revision. Against the bigger backdrop of documented history- minus cherry-picking, that's just not a fight you're going to win.

Wow! That was a fascinating read. Thanks for sharing. It really speaks to the same tribal behaviors we are seeing in current society.

I would also recommend the book “Ordinary Men” for a similar look at how an entire society became mass murderers.

——

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_sEqHDbZNFPNYX

I know this isn't the time or place but if you guys are interested there's a great book about this Litteral exact thing.

It's called ordinary men and I suggest anyone interested in history have a read. It's super interesting

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_FhFUAb7SYTDE8

Yes, but it only goes so far. Browning's Ordinary Men were middle-aged, married men from the most communist, least nazified region of Germany and yet they killed along with the rest.

There IS work that shows, for example, that Austrians were overrepresented in the SS and in killing units as were individuals from border regions. Also, that the generation born before WWI but not old enough to participate were particularly active.

Stalingrad. Yes, I know there have been some movies about it, but none that even came anywhere close to being accurate. What happened at Stalingrad during WW2 is completely unknown to most people of the world. It was probably the most horrifying battle in all of human history.

Suggested reading

> These ten men were not men of distinction. They were not men of influence. They were not opinion-makers. Nobody ever gave them a free sample of anything on the ground that what they thought of it would increase the sales of the product. Their importance lay in the fact that God—as Lincoln said of the common people—had made so many of them. In a nation of seventy million, they were the sixty-nine million plus. They were the Nazis, the little men to whom, if ever they voiced their own views outside their own circles, bigger men politely pretended to listen without ever asking them to elaborate.

~ Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

There are no knights in shining armor in the books any more than on the show. Knights in ASoIaF are of the Gregor Clegane variety: they use their title and power to rape and pillage.

There's a fantastic book on the Middle Ages called A Distant Mirror, and it explains how even in Medieval times, the idea of the "knight in shining armor" was an outdated myth that didn't reflect reality. One of the reasons I took to A Game of Thrones when I read it is that it was the first "accurate" portrayal of historical knights that I could think of.

A Song of Ice and Fire is by no means faeries and fair maidens... The show extrapolates the tone of the books.

To add to this, two good books to read are:

Gulag Archipeligo - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder

Medieval Cities had specialized shops for almost everything. A city with actual walls would have freemen who were chandlers, butchers, leatherworkers, smiths, etc. with their own shops, typically with their family living in the second story of the building.

Market towns (pop a few hundred) are much more likely to have the everything is sold at the market vibe. But usually only twice a week or something. You probably would be entirely unable to find serious armor there.

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368722301&sr=8-1&keywords=time+travelers+guide+to+medieval+england

this book gives you a great background to extrapolate from real history to get a realistic fantasy setting

Robert Paxton, made famous for his book Vichy France, has a book titled The Anatomy of Fascism. He focuses more on how the actions of particular fascists defined the political ideology. Maybe not the best source, but definitely worth a quick read if only to make a comparison to other books.

Read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

It was written in the 60s I think, not long after the events of WWII; but is very complete in discussing how Hitler was able to assume power, his failed attempts, and why the German people "let this happen".

It is very good, and draws a lot of parallels in our recent politics.

> Where she claims white europeans are being forced out of europe by dirty brown people.

I'm sorry, did she say that in the video? If so, what timestamp? If not, you're engaging in some very divisive rhetoric.

How about addressing the topic discussed in the video rather than straw manning statements that weren't made? You seem to think Southern is the only one talking about the death of Europe. I would strongly encourage you to read: https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472942248/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&dpID=61bPgEl9KIL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail

The unfettered import of millions of people who have no ties to Western society, nor the inclination to assimilate, is how you destroy a culture. This isn't rocket science. Pretending that this isn't the case doesn't make you more progressive.

I'd strongly recommend people read Ordinary Men.

"Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, a study of German Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) Reserve Unit 101, used to massacre and round up Jews for deportation to the Nazi death camps in German occupied Poland in 1942. The conclusion of the book, which was much influenced by the experiments of Stanley Milgram, was that the men of Unit 101 were not demons or Nazi fanatics but ordinary middle-aged men of working-class background from Hamburg, who had been drafted but found unfit for military duty. In some cases, these men were ordered to round up Jews and if there was not enough room for them on the trains, to shoot them. In other, more chilling cases, they were ordered to merely kill a specified number of Jews in a given town or area. The commander of the unit gave his men the choice of opting out of this duty if they found it too unpleasant; the majority chose not to exercise that option, resulting in fewer than 15 men out of a battalion of 500 opting out of their grisly duties."

During my graduate history studies we read this: https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

Using journals taken from these reservist policemen, the aurthor displays just how much the common man knew about the final solution and just how traumatizing it was to shoot them face to face.

Found the book via google machine Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

“Christopher Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.”

I’m actually glad you brought the topic back up as I just ordered the book myself! My wife and I have actually talked about this subject a lot lately, and just how powerful conditioning actual is in our lives. Whether it be for things like those German officers, self help affirmations or training for a marathon (which is what I am trying to do right now), it’s all different aspects of being conditioned into becoming something else, step by step. Gaining that sort of understanding has greatly improved my ability to empathize with others and has made me a much more centered and content person. Honestly.

Those interested in this topic might like the book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" ( https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023 ) about a group German police who started out as low level officers and slowly got corrupted into committing terrible acts on behalf of the Nazis.

From the amazon.com description:

>Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.
>
>While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.
>
>Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.
>
>“A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."—Newsweek

If you don't think it's happening.. go read this:

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

Perhaps a place where the government spies on its citizens? taps their phones? Rejects Habeus Corpus? Declares and exercises the right to assassinate anyone, including American citizens?

Turn off CNN and read some history. I suggest you start with, "They Thought They Were Free".

http://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

this is a good recent book about it http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371077339&sr=8-1&keywords=bloodlands

another thing they apparently did was have the prisoner stand against the wall ostensibly to measure his height, then shoot him in the head via a hole in the wall. this way the prisoner didn't struggle.

> Right-wing nutjobs (fascists)

Not even remotely the same, fascism originated from the Italian left and got great under Mussolini, whose party was hugely supported by Italian Jews.

Well, until he thought of Hitler as a serious threat and tried to get cozy with him.

Experts like Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton and many more generally agree that fascism is neither "Left" nor "Right" exclusive.

Edit: I just realized the glorious irony in your comment.

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

The difficulty of discussing Christianity and the Holocaust, directly, is that relatively few people, even within Germany, were truly aware of the extent of the Holocaust until near the end of the war. As a result, you will find it a little more difficult to find information directly related to that topic. Christianity's relationship to Naziism, on the other hand, does have some more readily available information.

While a good portion of Germany's Christian population either supported, or at least failed to oppose, Naziism, that is not universally the case. You might be interested in a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and theologian who strongly opposed Hitler and Naziism, and was eventually executed by them. He was moderately known at the time, but became extremely influential in the past few decades or so.

While it's an extremely large volume, and not directly related, you might find some useful information in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". It's very comprehensive, and does talk a bit about the Christian Democrat party's opposition to Nazism early on, only to eventually fail to mount any meaningful opposition as Hitler began rising to power.

Finally, while I don't know of any specific books on the topic, you probably will want to look into the influence of Martin Luther (specifically his antisemitism) on Germany, Naziism, and Hitler. This is topic that has been widely written about, to my knowledge, so there should be an abundance of information out there on it.

The New Yorker has a more sympathetic view:

An Intimate History of Antifa. It is a book review of the brand-new Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray. It's 288 pp, 14 dollars, and you can buy it on Amazon. 33 reviews with a 2* average for now.

(I am not going to make any comparisons to my Rage Against the Machine CD's manufactured by the Sony Music Corporation. That is the New Yorker's job. They don't.)

> They are first and foremost people and individuals with lives and families,

So is everyone; I don't think anyone seriously doubts it. ISIS members have families and people that love them. So do Klansmen. This is the most facile, boring anti-violence argument one can possibly imagine.

> they dont conciously go out to enforce unjustified hierarchy,

I mean, yes, they do. It's literally their job. Maybe they know it's unjustified, maybe they don't; I find it hard to care. Cops will do anything from mass executions (https://www.amazon.ca/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-solution/dp/0060995068) to bathhouse raids if they're ordered and paid to. If they think hierarchy is unjustified, they either need to quit, or become selective when following orders. Put on the uniform, take the wage, pay the price.

> I cant believe the degeneracy and the actual hypocracy of some people, who would defend muslims as individuals against the type right wing facism and racism which paints all muslims as terrorists ,but find it perfectly acceptable to kill nameless Cops who had nothing to with the actions of their colleagues.

I mean, not all Muslims are involved in oppression. Cops are, definitionally; even if they're nice folks, orders are orders, standard policy is standard policy. This is just hilarious equivocation. And I mean, I don't think many people are outright saying yeah, go abduct and kill some cops - the overwhelming response I've seen has been about how inevitable this response was. And "has nothing to do with their colleagues" is pretty rich - even cops who act with outright violence often aren't hood-wearing neon-lights RACISTS, they're expressing subtle biases that other cops tend to respect and respond to. Cops in a department will draw into the blue wall and actively defend each other - when individual "good cops" start actually doing something about these supposedly unrepresentative "bad apples," I'll start to care about their differentiation.

> Do cops have role in maintaoning hierarchy? Yes. Do cops on a regular basis use violence and bullying to maintain this hierarchy? Yes. Should cops be killed irregardless of their actions or livelihoods? FUCKING NO.

I'd love to see some proof of people actually suggesting a kind of cop genocide unironically, because it's pretty obviously not what most people were saying.

> Why the fuck would you say shit like this, knowing it does not represent the ideolodgy of libertarian socialism, workplace democracy and the absance of hierachy?

You know violence and indeed outright assassination are the products of certain anarchist doctrines, right? Propaganda by the deed wasn't universal, but it's an important part of anarchist history. Admiration/ respect for such actions is not utterly incompatible with anarchism.

tl;dr: Psychopaths and Sociopaths are normal people.

Sociopathy is not a good/ bad thing that turn people into monster.It's just a copying mechanism for survivors of abuse in their childhood.

My advice for every sociopath with antisocial tendencies is: Focus your attention on the kind of person you want to be, rather than what kind of events you want to happen. Imagine how you would act now if you suddenly had impeccable character. Then, make your goal be to act that way, just for the moment.

I think the reason why people are concerned or even frightened by people that show no empathy is because it seems they cannot be reasoned with.
You cannot appeal to them with emotions, or other ways of relating that may have had an effect on a neurotypical.

What do people who lack empathy act like?

They behave all the time like you do most of the time.

Someone who lacks empathy does not vicariously feel the experiences of another. It does not mean they are predatory. It does not mean they are irresponsible. It does not mean they are sadistic. Do not be persuaded into demonizing such people.


Sociopaths and Psychopaths lack an empathy and/or guilt barrier that would prevent them from doing something that is generally perceived to be "wrong" "bad" or "immoral".

They are indifferent beyond measure,without mercy and justice.Try to imagine the indifference itself as a power.The truth is, indifference really is a power, selectively applied, and living in such a way is not only eminently possible, with a conscious adoption of certain attitudes, but facilitates a freer, more expansive, more adventurous mode of living. Joy and grief are still there, along with all the other emotions, but they are tempered – and, in their temperance, they are less tyrannical.Sociopaths are people who grit their teeth and tolerate pain and suffering.They’re serene and confident in the face of anything you can throw at them.

Think of the spartan warriors (IMO the most stoic society that there was). They were trained since kids to get rid of fear, they were encouraged to get in fight and make fun of each other in order to not take emotions seriously. The spartans had several types of drills that they did in order to abandon primal instincts and reflexes. For example, they would hit aspiring warriors in their eyes with vines until the warriors could stop reflex from closing both eyes when they got hit.

The spartans abandoned all primal instincts, including fear, so that they could be their 100% rational and tactical self during battle, and that's part of the reason they were such good warriors.

Some psychopaths may murder, but it’s not because of their psychopathy that they murder. Indeed, psychopathy or any other condition may have played an important role in someone’s decision making—obviously, no one makes decisions in isolation from their neurological condition—but it’s not the psychopathic mind that turns people to kill—and kill in numbers.

Contrary to being immoral, their social blindspot empowers them to avoid many moral pitfalls. Empathy frequently leads to morally bankrupt behavior:

When a control group in an experiment were asked whether a ten year old girl with a serious illness should be allowed to skip a queue to get medical treatment ahead of children who needed it more, they appropriately refused. When the subjects were encouraged to empathize with her by being given her name, face and personal story, subjects overwhelmingly opted to move her to the front of the queue, consigning faceless children to death.

This is a phenomenon that salespeople, politicians, lawyers and every one with an agenda knows to exploit. I'm exploiting it in this very post, and you didn't even realize it! Those who lack empathy have no such lever by which their thinking may be hijacked. They are more apt to make fair and rational judgments.

As with most things, empathy is not simple. It is not binary; it is not something you either have or don't. You will feel empathy for some people sometimes and other times you won't. Even if you are an empathic person, you frequently act with indifference or disproportionately small concern. Thousands recently died in the Philippines in a disaster that exceeded the 9/11 terror attacks; how many Americans fell to their knees and wept? Did you? The difference between you and someone who doesn't feel empathy is that they behave all the time like you do most of the time.

Champions for empathy will protest, "what's to stop someone from being a violent vandal if they don't have empathy?" Lets be clear about something; empathy won't prevent someone from doing horrendous things . Read the account of a Nazi reservist in Police Battalion 101 who, in spite of being viscerally empathic, participated in the point-blank execution of Jews:

> The shooting of the men was so repugnant to me that I
missed the fourth man. It was simply no longer possible
for me to aim accurately. I suddenly felt nauseous and
ran away from the shooting site.

Empathy is not a safeguard against cruelty. Empathy can even be manipulated into "counter-empathy" or sadism .Empathy was never a deterrent, and those who lack empathy have no more incentive than you to engage in foul behavior.

Read up about Germany's Reserve Police Battalion 101 during WW2 - Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is a great read into how normal everyday people can become monsters near-overnight. Not to say mainland isn't sending in the military too - just wanted to shed some light on human weaknesses in general.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062303023/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_x7RBDbRYQ7AGM

Hey OP, the book you want to read about this is Ordinary Men

The book covers the activities of an honest-to-god Einzatsgruppen unit, recruited from policemen around Hamburg. It's one of the most chilling books I've ever read about Nazi atrocities. The perpetrators of these massacres really were just ordinary people, yet as the author discovers, fell quite naturally into their role as executioners.

Browning provides a summary like so. ~10% of the unit committing atrocities became enthusiastic killers. ~80% performed their roles joylessly, but killed reliably and made no refusals. ~10% refused or hesitated at some point, without any real consequences.
A minority (13 of 500), abstained from killing outright.

In reality, if a German officer or soldier wished to abstain from committing atrocities, there was no real consequences for them. This held true even for the Einzatsgruppen, and certainly held true for regular army units.

TLDNR: the average German person never had strong positive or negative feelings about Jews, they just said that they hated Jews when the Nazis were in power and then said that they were okay with Jews when they were removed.

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If you're not familiar with group psychology and conformity then the idea that you don't need to hate a people to commit genocide upon them might seem like a bold assertion to you, so I'd urge you to pick up one of the best (and cheapest) texts on this exact topic: https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473217160&sr=1-9&keywords=order+police+german

In that particular case it proved possible to get almost every member of a unit full of people who'd never killed anyone before, recruited from an anti-Nazi city (Hamburg), to kill a whole village's worth of innocent people by explaining how it was necessary to safeguard their country's National Security and indirectly making them feel embarassed about backing out in front of their friends and coworkers. They didn't have to threaten them, order them, or indoctrinate them. They just had to tell them that it would protect their loved ones and let them feel pressured not to slack off when they were with their peers.

You were absolutely right about the hardcore believers. They formed groups like the Wehrmacht Veterans Association and the SS Veterans' Association (which campaigned for the Waffen-SS to be decriminalised and its members to receive state pensions). People like Field Marshall Erich von Manstein went to the grave either refusing to say a single negative thing about Hitler or the regime or its policies, or outright saying (usually just to trusted friends) that they had been right.

Of course, even during the war the strong supporters of the regime and direct participants in War Crimes would have found it extremely emotionally damaging to change their views. To believe that what they had done was evil would have destroyed them. So they doubled down and believed as hard as they could that they had done the right thing and therefore were good people. Post-war 'De-Nazification' just strengthened their convictions.

Between the lacklustre response from average Germans, and the counterproductive effect among most hardcore ex-Nazis, even observers of the time called "De-Nazification" an abject failure. Later scholarship has made the depths of this failure even clearer.

--------------

Compare and contrast the relatively mainstream fear of Asian Communists, which endured in the public sphere/polite conversation even after the war - but with progressively softer rhetoric and more emphasis on the "Communist" than the "Asian" part.

----

EDIT: I can see why you'd want to believe that De-Nazification worked, but that doesn't make it true... I've yet to see the words "De-Nazification was a success" in any book or journal covering the process.

Your last point is pretty reminiscent of ordinary men though this is definately easier to pull off when your exporting the jackbooted into communities they dont have ties with

Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad was a pretty gripping read about the battle and the fate of the 6th army. I'm sure some of the more hardcore history buffs out there have more detailed suggestions, but if you're looking for a good layman's history of Stalingrad you can't go wrong with it.

Prosim te, ne ti ne jaz nisva citirala enega samega kosa literature, ker je to reddit debata. Tako da ne ti meni, da si ti nadobjektiven, jaz pa dajem samo mnenja.

Kar se tiče pokolov, pobojev, te izvajajo skozi čas bolj ali manj vsi politični sistemi. Samo poglej si pokole ameriških Indijancev v 19. stoletju in prej. To je bil tudi en vzor nacistom glede njihove politike v Vzhodni Evropi. Da so ZDA to počele, to ne pomeni, da je njihov sistem enak fašističnemu. Politične podobnosti se določajo na globlji ravni, kot samo o tem, koliko se pobija, strada itd.
ZDA so po mojem mnenju kljub tem dejanjem svetlobna leta pred nacistično Nemčijo glede svoje dobrote. Enako tudi glede Sovjetske zveze, sicer malo manj.

Prosim te še enkrat, ne govori iz riti. Predpostavljam, da si libertarec (popravi me če to ni res). Za osnovo ti priporočam delo Roberta Paxtona: Anatomy of Fascism.
Evo link od Amazona: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918. Ni le o fašizmu, temveč tudi o pojavu množične politike nasploh.

Če ti to ni všeč, predlagam tudi klasiko: Hannah Arendt: Izvor totalitarizma. Zelo dobro opisano, kaj je bilo pred 130 leti skupno imperializmu, fašizmu in leninističnemu komunizmu.
https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Totalitarianism-Harvest-Book-Hb244-ebook/dp/B004Q9TLJW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Da ne bo spet, da podajam samo svoje mnenje.

I loved Witcher 3. You might be interested in this: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

> Take your own suggestion and read some old history books.

Anyone even remotely familiar with history would know that Hitler removed all aspects of socialism from the Nazi party (often violently).

I understand that I'm wasting my time arguing with someone who has no interest in reality, but please take your own advice and pick up a history book. I'd recommend the "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". It's an absolutely exhaustive coverage of not only Hitler, but the factors and moods that led to him, written by a journalist who was stationed in Berlin during Hitler's rise, and often provides first-hand account of many of the events he covers.

https://www.amazon.ca/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

Please, educate yourself. Don't just parrot goofy memes.

Before this thread is locked, last time the topic came up someone asked if there’s an Antifa manifesto or anything. I recommend this book:

https://smile.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

Ignore the title, it isn’t a “handbook” to being Antifa. It’s a history of anti fascism and the reasoning behind the movement. It’s by an academic so it isn’t the best written thing in the world but is still interesting regardless of what you may think of Antifa.

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

Enguerrand I, Lord of Coucy

I have been reading "A Distant Mirror" an amazing book about medieval history, and decided to play as , the first royal ancestor of the main character in the book.

To play him the start date has to be January 1, 1077, and choose the County of Amiens in the Kingdom of France.

Me and my friend have had a back and forth succession game as his line and it has been a blast. You are constantly caught in the middle of France exploding into revolutions, the English, Flemish, and HRE, among others, all trying to encroach on your position. It is a constant defensive battle, but very rewarding when you manage to snag an extra county or two.

My book recommendation for all of this shit.

>answering violence with violence will not get anyone anywhere.

you know literally nothing about the history of anti-fascism. what you are proposing has literally never once worked. antifa has worked.

> please feel free to change my opinion on the subject.

If you were skeptical you'd already have read on the subject of fascism and anti-fascism, but you haven't. At all. All you're doing is regurgitating "le common sense" redditisms about how fascists deserve to be allowed to terrorize us.

This is a concise history of anti-fascism. As someone who has been in anti-fascist circles for many years, I can say that it is quite good. Read that if you're actually skeptical. If not, then don't ask for people to change your opinion. What you need to know is all in that book.

> if you think your side is in the right by punching them then you're in the wrong.

My family was in the camps. Modern nazis want to recreate those camps. Violence isn't the only means of resisting nazis, but it is entirely acceptable. A variety of tactics is required to stop nazism.

It's honestly upsetting how many nazis and nazi sympathizers are flooding this sub lately.

Uhh... this is what various immigrants that want to integrate and blend into an other society has done for centuries. Long list here for those that moved to the USA or Great Britain for example some relatives of mine changed their name from a Polish Jewish name to a Swedish-sounding name, and nobody thought they were Jewish after that, despite one of them was leading a watchmaker organization. A bulk of German and Polish jews also considered themselves German or Polish first and foremost, but thousands of German "half-Aryans" were spared of life to serve in WW2 and sometimes even granted "full-Aryan" status such as field Marshal of the Luftwaffe, Erhard Milch while half-Poles and even quarter-Poles were sent to extermination camps as if they were fully Jewish. An acclaimed book was published on the subject by Bryan Mark Rigg

A bit of pedantry here: you wouldn't have necessarily been a Nazi, since many citizens of Nazi Germany, including members of the army serving in the eastern front, weren't actual members of the Nazi party. However, you probably would have "Sieg Heil'd like a motherfucker" and gone along with the orders to "liquidate" this or that batch of Jews.

> There's a story in Peterson's book about a troop of German Military police who go to Warsaw. Normal guys with families. Their officer tells them that its going to be rough, that nobody has to come who doesn't want to, but he'll be there and their comrades will be there. Almost nobody steps back from it, and they all go to Poland. Six Months later they're Bayoneting women in the street and kicking in doors to shoot people.

I recommend Ordinary Men, as linked above, for further reading. It goes into great depth on the story of how Reserve Police Battalion 101 went from average Joes to war criminals.

Not to tread on the verge of falling prey to slippery slope argumentation, but I do think it is a rather short distance from, "we need to carry guns during worship to protect ourselves from... [insert vague and unlikely threat of your choice]," to, "kill them in the name of God."

One thing a reading of events surrounding the Nazi genocides has shown me is that the greatest amount of evil was perpetrated by normal people who believed they were helping the common good.

That's not so say Christians are Nazis or any such thing like that, only to point that the distance from "us vs them" mindsets to outright violence is not that far, even for otherwise peaceful and non-violent people.

An example of what I am referring to: http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

That really was a pretty rough read. Not a bedtime story. Link

While I do think it's podcast fodder. He brings this up. You must push back before it goes to far, incremental steps soon lead us far from where it was reasonable. An example of this gone wrong, was an ordinary german police force that ended up shooting women after nazi indoctination https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

Have you tried reading this book? It explains the mindset of being a younger male back then. If you know that 3.5 million other Germans have already been sent to death camps for resisting, you'd probably get in line right next to everyone else, because, lets face it, that's what you'd be trained to do.

You clearly didn't read the second link, (also wtf is executing leaders of an opposing ideology, they were murdering prisoners of war) here's a few crimes by the 'ordinary men' of the Wehrmacht

> The 707th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht put this principle into practice during an "anti-partisan" sweep that saw the division shoot 10,431 people out of the 19,940 it had detained during the sweep while suffering only two dead and five wounded in the process.[64]

and


> At Mirgorod, the 62nd Infantry Division executed "the entire Jewish population (168 people) for associating with partisans".[65] At Novomoskovsk, the 444th Security Division reported that they had killed "305 bandits, 6 women with rifles (Flintenweiber), 39 prisoners-of-war and 136 Jews".[65] In revenge for a partisan attack that had killed one German soldier, the Ersatz-Brigade 202 "as an act of retaliation shot 20 Jews from the villages of Bobosjanka and Gornostajewka and burnt down 5 Jew-houses".[66] Even more extreme was the case in Serbia, where the majority of the Jews there were murdered by the Wehrmacht, not the SS.[67] At Šabac, "Central European Jewish refugees, mostly Austrians, were shot by troops of predominantly Austrian origin in retaliation for casualties inflicted by Serbian partisans on the German Army".[65] The orders issued by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in September 1941 called for the German Army to shoot 100 Serbs for every German soldier killed by the Serb guerrillas and did not call for Jews to be singled out.[68] But because of rampant anti-Semitism in the German officer corps, it was more or less automatically assumed that the Serbian Jewish community were behind all of the partisan attacks, hence the targeting of Jews in the mass shootings carried out in retaliation for guerilla attacks.[68] The German historian Jürgen Förster, a leading expert on the subject of Wehrmacht war crimes, argued that the Wehrmacht played a key role in the Holocaust and it is wrong to ascribe the Shoah as solely the work of the SS while the Wehrmacht were a more or less passive and disapproving bystander.[67]


Edit: Just to add, when you say that part about "normal people not liking that" that just isn't true, the Nazis made regular people key parts of the holocaust all the time. You should read about the 101st reserve police battalion, very regular normal people. They were middle aged, didn't grow up under Nazi propaganda, working class people from Hamburg, drafted but found ineligible for regular military duty. They ended up being a major part of the holocaust in Poland. (The citation for most of this is 'Ordinary Men' by Christopher Browning)

How is this brigading? I can provide more academic sources if needed.

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/reviews/980628.28fran.html?mcubz=3

The Clean Wehrmacht myth is a well documented fact in history academica. I just generally start off with a wiki article as they are easy to read and the sources for it are found at the bottom of the page if you want to verify it. No one is saying all or even half of the Wehrmacht were members of the Nazi Party. Quite the opposite, the entire point is that just because you weren't a card carrying member, doesn't mean they didn't do just as bad and sometimes worse things in the name of Nazism.

> It's not going to happen

Famous last words

> He's not going to nuke anyone over anything or any reason

https://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668

you need to read this book too

I can give you a short list of personal favorites, books that I consider both informative and extremely interesting / entertaining to read. As you'll see I prefer memoirs and eyewitness accounts to sweeping historical overviews of the war.

With the Old Breed, E.B. Sledge. Personal memoir of the author's experience as a marine machine gunner in the Pacific war, specifically the campaigns on Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge is a marvelous writer with prose I'd describe as "Hemingwayesque", a real compliment. Grueling, appalling, human, his account does a great job of sketching in the personalities of his fellow marines.

"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II, Studs Terkel. This is the book that World War Z is aping, but the actual book is a far more gripping read. Terkel sat down for personal interviews with 121 survivors of the war, Germans, Japanese, British, Canadian as well as American.

Band Of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose. Now made famous by the TV series, the story of E Company's recruitment, training and ultimate combat experience during and after the Normandy invasion is as intense and eye-opening as it sounds.

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, Leo Marks. Marks was a cryptographer working in London for the SOE (special operations executive, the group responsible for running much of "The Resistance" throughout occupied Europe, North Africa and Asia). He's a very funny guy, a self-professed coward, but the book portrays his deeply heartfelt concern for the well-being of the agents he was sending behind enemy lines. His codes, and methods of transmitting them, could be the only thing saving them from capture by the Gestapo. All too often, they weren't enough. "If you brief an agent on the Tuesday and three days later his eyes are taken out with a fork, it hastens the aging process," he writes.

Stalingrad, Anthony Beevor. When you start to read about the Eastern Front, you realize that much of the conventional western perspective of WWII in Europe is based on the comparatively minor engagements in Italy and France. France lost 350,000 civilians to the war, The Soviet Union lost 15-20 million. Considered purely from the POV of total casualties and total armed forces committed, WWII was primarily an engagement between Germany and the Soviet Union throughout Eastern Europe, with a number of smaller actions in the western countries. Anyhow, the story of the brutal, grinding siege of Stalingrad, the point where the German tide definitively turned, is a must-read.

Homage To Catalonia, George Orwell. This is Orwell's personal account of his service fighting on the Republican side against fascists during the Spanish Civil War from 1936-37. Basically, this was the war before the war, as described by one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Incidentally Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls is a fairly accurate, very powerful portrayal of a different view of the same war.

Here's the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-The-Fateful-Siege-1942-1943/dp/0140284583

I'd highly recommend it. Definitely accessible for a non-historian (such as me). It was just amazing how the Soviets recovered from almost losing Moscow. The Germans continually thought the Soviets were on their last legs, just one more push before they'd collapse - but it never happened, and the Soviets kept forming up division after division, manufacturing tank after tank, way beyond what Germany thought they were capable of doing.

Now I'd like to find a good book about the aftermath - the gradual multi-year fighting retreat Westwards of the German army until the end.

> I always wondered how did German people allow things to get how they did.

I highly encourage you to read They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45.

It's terrifying.

It's an extract from the book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans by Milton Mayer. The full book gives a more detailed view with examples.

So what earns them the title? Do you realize the Nazi's spent a decade and a half doing exactly what was done in Charlottesville? Like exactly? Why are you talking out of your ass on such an easily researchable topic?

Start here...

The Coming of the Third Reich https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143034693/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_34hLzbJYY3W61

And do yourself a favor and don't speak again on this topic until you are done with it. At least that.

Yes, this. The Protestant Work Ethic: idle hands, etc.

Of course the puritans weren't the inventors of such notions. In the Middle Ages, usury (making money out of money, or charging "excessive" interest for loans) was a sin, technology which allowed one person to do more work than another were forbidden. The word curfew ("cover fires") comes from the extinguishing of all lights so that no-one could work after dark to increase productivity. (For most of this I use Barbara W. Tuchman's A Distant Mirror as reference)

Human beings do seem to have an innate distaste for unfairness. We're social creatures, after all. Perhaps the drive that motivates the above, as well as the denigration of work that seems "too easy" is simple jealousy, maybe combined with the fear of being used.

ETA Link to A Distant Mirror on Amazon. It's a great book; y'all history buffs should read it, or some of her other works. A history prof I know regards Tuchman very highly.

I'm a big fan of Barbara Tuchman. Her book A Distant Mirror is about the Fourteenth Century. It is specifically focused on Europe (mostly France and England). It has an excellent chapter on the black death.

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

> I don't deny facts or anything, thats not who I am.

If you're a communist, you are either denying facts or advocating genocide. Your pick which you are.

>For the events you linked, the evidence backing death counts is widely sporadic. 2 to 12 million people? That's a ridiculous range that would be thrown away in any other circumstance.

there are very precise estimates of the deaths. but "we killed so many people we lost track of how many died" is NOT a good argument for your ideology of choice.

> My point in mentioning how capitalism is responsible for millions of deaths every day

you can mention things that aren't true all you want, that doesn't make them good arguments. There are 8 billion people alive on the planet today, almost all of them because of capitalism.

> Due to man-made limitations on health care access

This phrase makes zero sense. man made limits on healthcare? Where do you think healthcare comes from? It doesn't grow on trees. People have to make it, they have to learn to become doctors, have to produce medicine, etc. Under capitalism, people are rewarded for doing that, so lots of healthcare is produced. Communism did not pave the way in medical science and practice, capitalist countries did.

> Its not even remotely the same as denying the holocaust.

It's exactly the same. You're denying the crimes of people you are ideologically sympathetic towards. If anything, that's worse that holocaust denialism. Most holocaust deniers, while awful people, don't say hitler had a bunch of ideas that were really good, just poorly implemented.

>I can tell you have a hatred of communism and for that reason you aren't providing anything constructive for someone like me. Thanks for the attempt though.

if 100 million corpses wasn't enough to change your mind, I certainly don't expect to.

Right, but he didn't experience the German's persecution directly, only their willing executioners.

The Eastern rite Churches were persecuted quite badly in the USSR. The Latin rite Church was annihilated. Erased. The monasteries were converted into prisons and the Churches were used for torture and interrogation. When the Soviet Union fell and those Churches were being rehabilitated, they carried bones out of the basements by the truckload.

Would you like to know more?

For the medieval period, I found The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England very interesting. Definitely more of a popular book than hard-core history, though.

Because this is a serious question, I will give you an answer: no, this is absolutely nothing like that. This is a great resource on how the Nazis actually did what they did: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

King Leopold II to be specific.

And he devastated the Congo. This is a book everyone should read.


Also, this book is an essential read on "ordinary men" in a Nazi reserve batallion and how they coped with (or outright enjoyed) the tasks entrusted to them. Some ran away, some drank themselves to oblivion, severe depression, etc.

> But almost all of the Nazi command were fairly ordinary.

Interesting choice of words. A well known book was written about the folks far lower down the chain, the regular troops. Ordinary Men. It goes into where these guys came from, how they got through the gig, etc. Indeed, they were ordinary men, and they did extraordinarily evil things. Very much worth a read, it very methodically goes through the process of how regular folks got broken down to the point of committing terrible crimes.

I'd suggest reading this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

Your pop understanding of the Holocaust lacks nuance. Soldiers who refused to participate in war crimes were hardly 'Gestapo'd'. They were allowed to stay in the barracks - though they'd usually 'come around' due to peer pressure. People who criticized the Nazis were quietly deplatformed, but only radicals like antifascists and communists were black-bagged. Ghettos and cattle car shipments were public. Slave camps in Germany were adjacent to civilian centers to facilitate transportation.

The extinction of the untermensch was a popular directive in Germany. People knew and believed and acquiesced not under the jackboot'd pressure of tyranny but out of the logical conclusion of fascism.

Many of those responsible for the worst of the Nazi's atrocities, such as mass killings of Jews in Poland and Russia (e.g. rounding up all of the Jews men, women, and children in a particular Polish town ~3000 in all and shooting them), were members of reserve German police and could be considered "normal" citizens not really politically affiliated with the Nazi party. Many (not all) were from humble backgrounds, young, not very educated, not very wealthy and did regular police work until the Nazi party/Himmler reconfigured such reserves into death squad-like battalions carrying out extermination efforts.

The author of this one book I recently read went through hundreds of firsthand accounts from such complicit men to see how everyday Germans could possibly be swept into committing such horrible war crimes. As an Amazon review says, some factors included "cowardice, ideological indoctrination, loyalty to the battalion, and reluctance to force the others to bear more than their share of what each viewed as an excruciating duty." In one particular passage I remember, members of one of these death squad battalions were told that participation in another one of these mass murders was not mandatory, was not forced, and the Germans were allowed to take some rest if they were not up to it this time around. Though like the quote above says, many of those who decided reluctantly to continue did so not because they were particularly geared up to do so out of faithfulness to the Nazi racial ideology or what have you, but because it was their duty within their battalion. Often on nights after having carried out such missions, commanders would allow/encourage draftees into drinking a lot to "forget."

Still, for me too, it's difficult to see from a modern point of view, just how almost an entire society could have sunken into savagery under Hitler. In the end, the implementation of the Final Solution rested on the complicity of the individual in playing their part and its difficult to say exactly why each person went along with it.

> Flirting with fascism

I think you meant flirting with totalitarianism. America is very far away from Fascism, but it flirts with totalitarianism with those acts you mentioned.

But your point was not wrong. Have you ever read "Ordinary Men"? Basically, the guys who shot jews in cold blood were often just normal guys, no weird background, or even crazy views...things just got out of control.

It's not a mental condition, it's normal human psychology that technology has pathologized into a profit motive.

That should really be the most terrifying aspect of this. These are absolutely normal people who can be ushered forward by ideology to commit unspeakable horror.

Barbara Tuchman's prose is superb in The Guns of August, but her scholarship has been eclipsed in the past sixty years.

As to the outbreak and background to the war, you should consider reading Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. It is the best one volume account out there on the market. Brilliant, profound book.

http://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668

I would recommend the work of Peter Hart and William Philpott on the fighting of the war itself. Both British writers, yes, and so their accounts are Anglo-centric, but they do a really good job of both close in study of the man in the trench and of the higher strategic picture.

In particular I recommend these works by Hart:
Fire and Movement: The British Expeditionary Force and the Campaign of 1914
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Movement-British-Expeditionary-Campaign/dp/0199989273/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462799265&sr=1-7&keywords=Peter+Hart

The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War

And this by Philpott:
War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War

http://www.amazon.com/War-Attrition-Fighting-First-World/dp/1468310992

These authors are what could be called revisionist historians, as they don't by into the old "Lions led by donkeys" myth that was so promulgated in the first seventy or so years of Great War historiography, nor do they think that a handful of British poets accurately describe the experience of a hundred million men.

If you're interested in more specific campaigns, like the Eastern Front, the Italian Front, Gallipoli and the Ottoman War, etc etc, I can give you some books to check out as well if you're interested.

Naked Economics - conforme /u/jpjandrade recomendou (a Economia Nua e Crua em PT-BR) é sensacional, o tipo de livro que dá vontade de comprar 10 para dar de presente.

Outro um pouco mais avançado é Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, o qual creio não ter edição em PTBR ainda.

De história vai depender muito do seu gosto... os de economia são simples de escolher pois o básico da economia é o seu próprio núcleo... história é muito ampla...

Eu adoro história e devo ter uns 50 livros, sendo uns 20 sobre episódios específicos da Segunda Guerra. Recomendo os seguintes livros como sendo bons mesmo pra quem nunca leu nada a respeito (creio que todos os abaixos existam em PTBR, caso não leia em Inglês):

The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land;

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War - Se gostou do filme, o livro é sensacional - totalmente baseado nos relatos das unidades presentes em combate;

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 - este livro é sensacional, se já ouviu alguma vez sobre a batalha de Stalingrado a leitura é obrigatória;

Por fim, caso goste de ciência (física e química especificamente) e de história militar, este foi o livro que mostrou pra mim que a ciência caminha de forma fantástica, e que muitas (se não todas) as explicações de descobertas são superhypermega simplificadas: The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Maybe to you, but plenty of the guys working in the death camps weren't people who signed up for that, many or most were just regular civil servants who didn't have a choice. It's easy to sit back on reddit and judge them, but the people working those death camps may be more like yourself than you're comfortable admitting. Ordinary Men by Browning is a good monograph on this topic. So you can say that I have the distinction of not willingly participating, but plenty of these participants we now look at as monsters weren't willing either, but they didn't have a choice. I'm not saying they're saints, but the situation isn't as easy as we would like to imagine.

I cannot recommend reading this book enough

​

You should not be shocked that humans are capable of this. Chances are if it were you or me in that position, we would have done the same thing.

What you wrote is only partially accurate. Check out Ordinary Men I recommend this book to everyone interested in the topic of how and why regular Germans participated in the Holocaust.

The reason I mention it here is that the batallion was asked to murder thousands of Jews, many agreed, yet multiple individuals refused and do you know what happened to them? Nothing, nothing at all, the Germans not only didn't punish those who refused, they weren't even looked down on. So it begs the question, how forced were German police units/soldiers? How much of the violence was driven by individuals? What if entire units refused? Some of those questions are unanswerable but the one answer provided in this work is compelling. That German soldiers could say "no" and they would not be punished.

He’s actually referencing the book Ordinary Men. It’s an account of some of the horrors that went down in Poland during the final solution. It tells the story of a battalion of German police officers who basically would have to go in after the army had “captured a region” and do the dirty work of not only loading people on to trains to be sent to the death camps, but were also later slowly coerced into killing thousands of people by executing them in the forests and farm land surrounding the towns that had been captured. This is the book in case you’re interested.

Yes, Hitler made tons of tactical blunders with Russia. Timing was his biggest blunder (he should have waited to invade). But even then he had assembled a 6million man army that proceeded to crush Russian forces for the first couple months. The defeats only came with trying to take Moscow and Stalingrad. Many historians conjecture that if Hitler had diverted forces to the oil fields in the Caucasus instead of Stalingrad, the Eastern Front would have looked much differently for the Germans.

If you haven't This is a great book on the subject

The Battle for Spain by Anthony Beevor is considered the definitive, modern single volume history of this conflict.

Beevor is renowned for his justifiably famous books Stalingrad, D-Day and The Fall of Berlin.

The German Wehrmacht did use flame throwers. And they were very effective during WWII. However flame thrower operators were always high priority targets and therefore were offered bonuses. For reference please read Anthony Beevor's book Stalingrad.

https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583

Also the US Marine Corps while fighting the Japanese loved using flame throwers against bunkers.

>If you think Hitler/Stalin would have handled that the same way, you're ignorant of history.

Considering I have said nothing of the sort, I’m not sure why you’d think that’s a position anyone is taking. Seems like you’re just creating a strawman argument because the argument I made, that the right-wing loves to censor topics, is one you can’t argue against.

>People who think that Trump is a fascist don't have a gnats worth of knowledge what fascism is. Please open up a damn history book and read a thing.

Fascism isn’t only achieved through a Nazi state though, and rhetoric can certainly be fascistic without requiring a nation to reach the depths of becoming a full blown authoritarian hellscape.

Have you read Eco’s dissection of Italian fascism? Have you read about the Weimar Republic and the rise of Fascism in Germany?Perhaps you should, because you might understand the context of fascism in a non-fascistic state, and recognize the many valid comparisons it has to modern far-right ideology. Don’t take my word for it, I can point to any number of Holocaust survivors organizations which have stated the same thing about Trumps policies and rhetoric, and I’m sure they’d love to hear you tell them that they “don’t know a gnats worth of knowledge” about fascism.

You need to read "They Thought They Were Free"

It's just you. Hobb's Elderlings series was first published in 1995. GRRM's ASOIAF was started in 1991, and there are many accounts/interviews that document GRRM's inspirations and overall vision he planned from the beginning.

GRRM's website FAQ also lists a number of book titles he used for research. I've read some of them, and the specific influences are not hard to pick up on. For example, A Distant Mirror describes a family that grew to importance because they built up their main keep at a major river crossing and controlled all traffic through it, just like House Frey.

Additionally, themes of mental connections with fantasy animals, people riding dragons they are connected to, etc. are all old tropes. An easy example is McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series that was first published in 1967.

EDIT: Also you may want to fix the references to "worgs" in your article; you have them down as "wogs."

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394553680&sr=8-1&keywords=bloodlands+europe+between+hitler+and+stalin

I've specifically read documented cases of it happening during the Holodomor, as well as among [Soviet prisoners of war](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_prisoners_of_war_(Nazi_Germany) (a group of Holocaust victims that are often overlooked, ignored, or simply not included).

Off the top of my head I can't recall ever reading about cannibalism happening inside the concentration camps. This does not mean that it didn't happen, and logic would tell us it almost certainly did. However getting caught engaging in cannibalism would almost certainly be a capital offense. Furthermore there is the cultural stigma that it carries. These factors would contribute to participants remaining silent on the matter.

Other factors would include a lack of the necessary free time required to engage in it (daily schedules for prisoners were meticulous, and purposefully designed to ensure very little free time and privacy), a lack of method for preparing a body for consumption (some barracks had stoves but they were usually in the middle of the room and therefore constantly under scrutiny, and then you have to think about the tools that would be required to butcher a corpse. It would be very difficult to butcher meat without a knife, and where do you get that in a concentration camp?), and finally the fact that any bodies that would be available for consumption would almost certainly be severely malnourished and therefore not a great source of nutrition (and it's not like humans are an ideal source of food to begin with).

However, knowing what we know about starvation, it almost certainly did happen. At some point when human beings' needs are not met, we WILL revert to our baser instincts. I have read accounts that inmates would beat or kill over matters of food. Fistfights would often break out in the meal lines (your place in line could easily determine whether you would get food that day). Inmates would eat food regardless of its condition. Even if food was moldy, dirty, soggy, or stale, it would still be eaten. I've read that when soup was spilled, inmates would drop to their hands and knees and suck at the mud in order to get a few drops. In addition to the simple needs of humans, food could also be used for bribes and favors.

If you have any clarifying questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

EDIT: As far as bugs and rodents, I again can't recall any specific instances, but when you're starving to death, you'll eat anything. Conditions in the camp certainly attracted all sorts of vermin, so they were definitely available to those that could devise a way of catching and eating them.

Sources

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Hitler's Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

You may want to read up on how the USSR treated ethnic minorities. A lot of it is covered in Bloodlands by Yale historian Timothy Snyder.

In short - a lot of murdering and ethnic cleansing.

Plus some other stuff.

How the Scots invented the modern world and everything in it

Invented the whole modern world, according to this book. As a Canadian of Scottish descent, I like to think so.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

Which is to miss the point, entirely...

Seriously, read that Mark Bray article. If it seems disingenuous, that's because it is. Mark Bray is the author of the Antifa Handbook. Why is he the one The Washington Post permits to give a presumably objective look at the organization?

Imagine if months ago, when the term "alt-right" was first being discussed nationally, WaPo posted an article titled, "Who are the Alt-Right?" written by, perhaps, Richard Spencer?

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035?SubscriptionId=0EP44N4Z8Y93MBZ1ZC82&tag=wamu-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1612197035

Sadly it seems to only be on Amazon

Not that you're asking the question in good faith, but the answer depends on who you ask.

The problem is that people's beliefs aren't interested in facts. For example, I can show you research that shows that there are around 11 million white nationalists in the US, and you won't be able to find any reputable research that disagrees or challenges thst estimate, but you won't actually believe it because you have FEELINGS.

ThE AnTI-fASciTs ArE tHe ReAl FasCiStS!

Your comment is the height of ignorance. Honestly, I'm not even sure how someone on this sub could hold that opinion unless you stumbled upon it by mistake. Antifa groups do not target anyone except fascists. When fascist activity dies down, the anti fascist activity dies down with it. They don't turn on the next group of people as fascists would. There is no ANTIFA group. There are antifa groups like the Rose City Antifa, Anti-Racist Action, Redneck Revolt... and many, many others, but ANTIFA is a just shorthand for anti-fascism.

"The queer quest is to survive, the fascist quest is to be the only survivor." - Natalie herself said that. Replace queer with any oppressed group and the fascists are coming for them. And when the fascists do come you can't change who you are. You're fucked. You can't stop being a Jew or black or etc... but, if you are fascist and the anti-fascists come for you, then you can just say you're going to change and they will let you change. A large amount of anti-fascists are converted fascists. That makes antifa groups very not fascist. Trying to draw an equivalence is either buying into right wing propaganda or just plain dumb.

Olly really goes in depth about this and Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook lays out a pretty good picture of what antifa is and what antifa groups do. I suggest you educate yourself about the people who are sacrificing so much to fight real fascism.

Good question, I haven't read the book:

>Contrary to conventional views, Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought-perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals.

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587

read. https://www.amazon.ca/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893

Need a tldr because you're an american idiot? 5 days without sleep and a bit of stress and just about anyone will confess to anything.

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton. Amazon link

I think going into this it would be wise to get a good picture of what was happening in Europe leading up the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. I recently read The Guns of August, which is a great book about the lead up and early days of WW1. You can see that the major European were focused on expansion into Africa. The tactics they employed to control the population, particularly by the English, (notably concentration camps) were then adopted by the Nazis.

So many roots of fascist ideology are grounded in settler colonialism. With that in mind a good read for more background would be Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

Did you just try to cite Jonah Goldberg on fascism/nazism, someone that has been ripped to shreds by actual experts, a man with no clue what he's talking about?

Paxton shreds him here:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122231

> The best description of how Nazism fits on the Left-Right spectrum is probably that given by Jonah Goldberg: Nazism, like Italian Fascism, Spanish Francoism and Soviet Communism, is a heresy of Socialism.

Nazism was an extreme form of ANTI-socialism. Why exactly is it you think the only 2 fascist movements that came into power were put there by conservatives.

From the third Reich trilogy:

> To many readers of the newspapers that reported Hitler’s appointment, the jubilation of the brownshirts must have appeared exaggerated. The key feature of the new government, symbolized by the participation of the Steel Helmets in the march-past, was surely the heavy numerical domination of the conservatives. ‘No nationalistic, no revolutionary government, although it carries Hitler’s name’, confided a Czech diplomat based in Berlin to his diary: ‘No Third Reich, hardly even a 2½.’25 A more alarmist note was sounded by the French ambassador, André François-Poncet. The perceptive diplomat noted that the conservatives were right to expect Hitler to agree to their programme of ‘the crushing of the left, the purging of the bureaucracy, the assimilation of Prussia and the Reich, the reorganization of the army, the re-establishment of military service’. They had put Hitler into the Chancellery in order to discredit him, he observed; ‘they have believed themselves to be very ingenious, ridding themselves of the wolf by introducing him into the sheepfold.’

Or:

> Many other middle-class occupations felt their economic and social position was under threat during the Weimar Republic. White-collar workers lost their jobs, or feared that they might, as banks and finance houses got into difficulties. Tourist agents, restaurants, retailing, mail-order firms, a huge variety of employers in the service sector ran into trouble as people’s purchasing power declined. The Nazi Party, now equipped with its elaborate structure of specialist subdivisions, saw this, and began to direct its appeal to the professional and propertied middle classes. All of this was anathema to those Nazis who, like Otto Strasser, brother of the Party organizer Gregor, continued to emphasize the ‘socialist’ aspect of National Socialism and felt that Hitler was betraying their ideals. Angered by the support given by Otto Strasser and his publishing house to left-wing causes such as strikes, Hitler summoned the leading men in the Party to a meeting in April 1930 and ranted against Strasser’s views. As a way of trying to neutralize Otto Strasser’s influence, he now appointed Goebbels Reich Propaganda Leader of the Party. But, to Goebbels’s annoyance, Hitler repeatedly postponed decisive action, hoping that Otto Strasser’s propaganda apparatus would still be of some use in the regional elections that took place in June 1930. Only after this, and Strasser’s publication of an unflattering account of his row with Hitler earlier in the year, did he decide to purge the party of Otto Strasser and his supporters, who pre-empted this move by resigning on 4 July 1930. The split was a serious one. Observers held their breath to see if the Party would survive this exodus of its left wing. But things had changed markedly from the days when Goebbels and his friends had revived the Party in the Ruhr with socialist slogans. The dissidents’ departure revealed that Strasser and his ideas had little support within the Party; even his brother Gregor disowned him. Otto Strasser vanished from serious politics, to spend the rest of his life in Germany, and, later, in exile, dreaming up small, sectarian organizations to propagate his views to tiny audiences of the like-minded.

> Having shed the last vestiges of ‘socialism’, Hitler now moved to build more bridges to the conservative right. In the autumn of 1931 he joined with the Nationalists in the so-called ‘Harzburg Front’, producing a joint declaration with Hugenberg at Bad Harzburg on 11 October stating their readiness to join together in ruling Prussia and the Reich.

I'd highly suggest you avoid reading anything written by Goldberg, the man is historically illiterate and is laughed at by actual experts.

I'd suggest the third reich trilogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

Anatomy of fascism by paxton:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Or Gregors nazism:

https://www.amazon.com/Nazism-Oxford-Readers-Neil-Gregor/dp/0192892819

And a bit more, from the end of the third reich trilogy:

> The Nazi propaganda effort, therefore, mainly won over people who were already inclined to identify with the values the Party claimed to represent, and who simply saw the Nazis as a more effective and more energetic vehicle than the bourgeois parties for putting them into effect. Many historians have argued that these values were essentially pre-industrial, or pre-modern. Yet this argument rests on a simplistic equation of democracy with modernity. The voters who flocked to the polls in support of Hitler, the stormtroopers who gave up their evenings to beat up Communists, Social Democrats, and Jews, the Party activists who spent their free time at rallies and demonstrations - none of these were sacrificing themselves to restore a lost past. On the contrary, they were inspired by a vague yet powerful vision of the future, a future in which class antagonisms and party-political squabbles would be overcome, aristocratic privilege of the kind represented by the hated figure of Papen removed, technology, communications media and every modern invention harnessed in the cause of the ‘people’, and a resurgent national will expressed through the sovereignty not of a traditional hereditary monarch or an entrenched social elite but of a charismatic leader who had come from nowhere, served as a lowly corporal in the First World War and constantly harped upon his populist credentials as a man of the people. The Nazis declared that they would scrape away foreign and alien encrustations on the German body politic, ridding the country of Communism, Marxism, ‘Jewish’ liberalism, cultural Bolshevism, feminism, sexual libertinism, cosmopolitanism, the economic and power-political burdens imposed by Britain and France in 1919, ‘Western’ democracy and much else. They would lay bare the true Germany. This was not a specific historical Germany of any particular date or constitution, but a mythical Germany that would recover its timeless racial soul from the alienation it had suffered under the Weimar Republic. Such a vision did not involve just looking back, or forward, but both.

> The conservatives who levered Hitler into power shared a good deal of this vision. They really did look back with nostalgia to the past, and yearn for the restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy and the Bismarckian Reich. But these were to be restored in a form purged of what they saw as the unwise concessions that had been made to democracy. In their vision of the future, everyone was to know their place, and the working classes especially were to be kept where they belonged, out of the political decision-making process altogether. But this vision cannot really be seen as pre-industrial or pre-modern, either. It was shared in large measure, for one thing, by many of the big industrialists who did so much to undermine Weimar democracy, and by many modern, technocratic military officers whose ambition was to launch a modern war with the kind of advanced military equipment that the Treaty of Versailles forbade them to deploy. Like other people at other times and in other places, the conservatives, as much as Hitler, manipulated and rearranged the past to suit their own present purposes. They cannot be reduced to expressions of ‘pre-industrial’ social groups. Many of them, from capitalist Junker landlords looking for new markets, to small retailers and white-collar workers whose means of support had not even existed before industrialization, were as much modern as they were traditional.123 It was these congruities in vision that persuaded men like Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg that it would be worth legitimizing their rule by co-opting the mass movement of the Nazi Party into a coalition government whose aim was to erect an authoritarian state on the ruins of the Weimar Republic.

I'm currently reading this and it's obvious that GRRM has done a great deal of research of this era before putting pen to paper. From the social structures to living conditions, hygiene, rural vs urban living, wars, laws and plagues.

Obviously these girls are assholes who should be kicked in the teeth, but this is a pet peeve of mine. Not every person who kills an animal and doesn't care is a potential serial killer.

Some people are just assholes who don't think that animals have any value.

I mean, Hitler was a vegetarian (according to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), an antivivisectionist and (according to the same book linked above) around the time that Hitler joined the German Worker's Party he was so concerned about the hunger of mice he used to leave bread on the floor of his room for them at night.

One man's concern for the welfare of animals didn't translate into a concern for human beings. Another person's cruelty to animals doesn't mean they'll be cruel to people.

That book is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It's a very good book if you want to learn about how Hitler rose to power and how the Nazi's were destroyed.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is huge, but very detailed on a lot of the higher-ranking German Soldiers during the war.

Of course, I read it in Germany on the Bahn -- a book with a swastika on the cover earns you strange looks.

Read this book by John McWhorter.

No, my point was that he was a largely "irrelevant player". This movement preceded him. It was funded by very powerful people [like Rockefeller and Carnegie] back when Hitler was a starving hobo.

Hitler is now the poster child for the movement, but the reality is that he had very little to do with it.

We're all programed today to lay everything on Hitler's doorstep, and to do otherwise is treated as a thought-crime. It's not even permissible to show a wider context.

(Why can't we show this wider context? Because our side gets implicated in the larger dragnet. So we're encouraged to isolate Hitler. To pretend as if he acted alone. As if all these ideas of 'scientific racism' were original to him.)

I myself was shocked when I watched a BBC documentary on the Holocaust, and to see Germany's enemy [England] make a very textured case. According to the documentary, Hitler was a drug-addled basket-case with Parkinsons when the Holocaust took place. He would sleep in till 2pm in the afternoon. Most of the administrative decisions related to the Holocaust were actually carried out by Himmler. We have a direct papertrail to Himmler. Where not a single memo or document bears Hitler's signature, we find direct and unambiguous documentation leading to Himmler.

According to Albert Speer (and almost every other person who was there at the time) Himmler was the "true believer" in racial theory, whereas Hitler was a hypocrite. A demagogue, who (in his private life) acted quite differently than what his "official positions" were. Evidence of Hitler's hypocrisy even makes it into the mainstream media, at times. Like the fact that Hitler [unlike Himmler] took steps to protect certain Jews that he liked. For instance, his bodyguard [Emil Maurice] was part-Jewish. As was his cook. In addition, consider this Reuters article: "Hitler Protected Jewish World War One Vet": http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-hitler-idUSBRE8650G620120706

Hitler also infuriated Himmler by having Jews in his top cabinet. Men like Erhard Milch, Wilhelm Keitel, Walther von Brauchitsch, Erich Raeder, and Maximilian von Weichs.

You'd never know this from Hollywood movies, but Hitler also had 150,000 Jews in the Germany army. See Mark Bryan Rigg's documented work on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Military-Paperback/dp/0700613587/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467915611&sr=8-1&keywords=hitler%27s+jewish+army+rigg

The reality is: What we're operating on in a Hollywood caricature of what actually took place.

We're told "Hitler was this racial hardliner, who never deviated one iota from his stated ideology."

The truth?

The truth is that that narrative gives him too much character. It attributes to him a twisted morality, but an iron spine that refused to deviate from that moral code. The reality, however, is that he was a hypocrite and a demagogue, who didn't really believe his own rhetoric. And he definitely didn't act on it.

In the BBC documentary I watched, they related an anecdote where Hitler gave an order to "Germanize" the new Polish territory they'd taken over. Every new governor of the region interpreted "Germanize" as rounding up racial minorities and sticking them in camps. One governor interpreted the order to merely mean 'Hand out German passports to all the populace.' When Himmler heard of this "outrage," he demanded that Hitler remove him immediately. Hitler refused.

It was Himmler (not Hitler) who was the racial hardliner, the true believer. And that's why it's significant that when Hitler was incapacitated with Parkinsons [and on 37 different drugs, including meth and cocaine], all the orders related to the Holocaust emanated from Himmler's desk.

And this is the problem with the whole Hollywood time-travel fantasy of a sniper going back into the past to assassinate Hitler to stop the Holocaust. The reality is: Unless that man was shooting Himmler, the Holocaust would still have happened.

Hitler could never have been born and Germany would still have had eugenics programs from the Rockefeller Foundation.

He didn't invent any of this shit. (Though it's popular nowadays to pretend he did--to exonerate our side.)

• Footnote: The reflexive impulse here will not be to refute any of what I've said (or any of the links I gave as my sources and citations). But to bypass logic and reason by invoking emotional arguments: "Why, you . . . you . . . you just like Hitler! That's what this is all about!" "You're just a Nazi apologist!" On the contrary. I despise Hitler. I just don't grant him the dignity of turning him into Darth Vader, with all the dark brilliance of Satan. I see him as more akin to George W. Bush, when the torture scandal broke in Iraq. Read "Mein Kampf". It's not this brilliant work of evil genius, stuffed with diabolical insights like Blake's "Proverbs From the Bible of Hell". It reads more like the incoherent ramblings of a Sarah Palin. We have this image built up of Hitler which gives him far more dignity than he deserves. Camus wrote, "The West's ideal of masculine beauty of Milton's Satan". So by turning Hitler into this "evil genius," we're imbuing him with a certain measure of "masculine beauty" and "badboy glamor". He doesn't deserve that lionization. He was a severely limited man, and a hypocrite. And toward the end [when the Holocaust happened] he was a Parkinson's-addled basketcase, cut off from almost all administrative decisions. A figurehead.

"“He is seriously a globalist Jew, there is no question,” Trump continued. “But you know what, in his own way he’s a nationalist supporter of our fascist ideals because he loves our country.” In other words, yeah, he's Jew, but he's one of the good ones because he plays on our team.

This kind of talk reminds me of Hitler's honorary aryans. There's a book called "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" that goes into detail with plenty of historical examples about the Third Reich's policies to make exemptions for certain "Untermensch". Trump's talk is straight out of Hitler's playbook.

For those interested: [Hitler's Jewish Soldiers] (https://smile.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587?sa-no-redirect=1)

I don't think you do. You believe in the mere fantasy of what socialism should be.

eta: Here's your 'internationalism', and here, and here.

Then read The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

Prove it, Benito.

Here's an actual writer and author, not a propagandist.

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Dr Suess also instructed me otherwise.

IMHO, here's a very good place to start learning about the European history of WW2. Get yourself to a Library, or better yet, just buy the book. It's a good, in depth look at what happened and how it happened.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/1451651686

This book has it all: Hitler's youth, the roots of his hatred for jews, the brown shirts, how he was elected into office...on and on. 1500 pages or so.

Agreed.

This is the book that her guest wrote:

https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Liberal-Europe/dp/1472942248

His comments were 100% accurate on European immigration.

When people learn a second language, the structural differences between the first and second languages tend to be the hardest to pick up. For example, if your first language doesn't have honorific speech levels like Japanese or Korean, then you may never pick them up if you can communicate (albeit roughly) without them. Another example might be a complex case system like Russian. If you can make yourself understood in the second language without all the subtlety of total mastery then you may never take the time (or even be able) to master it.

The history of England (and the British Isles in general) is one of repeated invasion. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes displaced the Britons. The Vikings invaded and displaced the locals. Then the Normans invaded a thousand years ago and replaced the elite. Each invasion and displacement rubbed away some of the complexities as locals and invaders alike learned to communicate, and each introduced a layer of vocabulary. As a consequence, English now has very few of the grammatical features that make Germanic languages Germanic. John McWhorter put it like this:

> English's Germanic relatives are like assorted varieties of deer - antelopes, springboks, kudu, and so on - antlered, fleet-footed, big-brown-eyed variations on a theme. English is some dolphin swooping around underwater, all but hairless, echolocating and holding its breath. Dolphins are mammals like deer: they give birth to live young and are warm-blooded. But clearly the dolphin has strayed from the basic mammalian game plan to an extent that no deer has.

For a very easy introduction to English (and the source of that wonderful analogy) see Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

Yeah... for that perspective I'd highly recommend They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer.

He interviews and forms relationships with around a dozen citizens of a small town in Hesse over the course of a decade or so about their experiences and thoughts during the rise of Nazism and the following years.

"They weren't Nazis. They just adhered to the Nazi ideological/racial worldview and were complicit in mass murder."

Inform yourself OP.

>The center's findings come after Communist Party members earlier this month called for streets to be renamed and monuments to be erected to Stalin throughout Russia ahead of celebrations in May marking 70 years since the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, the Kommersant newspaper reported.
Asked by the Levada Center how they felt about the initiative, 39 percent of Russians said they would back plans for erecting a monument to Stalin, who was supreme commander in chief of the Soviet army during World War II.

That's fucked up. Everyone needs to read 'The Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin' by Timothy Snyder. I'd venture to say Stalin was worse than Hitler after reading that.

http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471

I was a bit of a history nerd in school and university, still am a bit, I'm not a historian by any stretch of the imagination. The North Africa theatre is fascinating, and can be somewhat disassociated from the war crimes narrative that accompanies most of the Wehrmacht's campaigns, as it was fought in a somewhat 'gentlemanly' fashion. If you have any interest in the real WW2 I cannot recommend Timothy Snyder's 'Bloodlands' as a primer, great book about the Eastern Front:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465031471?pc_redir=1411768435&robot_redir=1

Fantastic recommendation, I got to read Junger's memoir last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Absolutely horrifying and enlightening.

One of my favorite WWI books is A World Undone, by G. J. Meyer. Which is ironic since I don't think I've ever posted a single anecdote from it (an error I need to severely correct).

It's super dense, but probably one of the best overviews of the war, encapsulating a deep amount of academic research, primary sources from soldiers, civilians, leaders- all the while providing important historical context and background for the many many actors/nations involved, their motives, and goals.

I recommend this book to ANYONE interested in WWI besides a passing understanding. At 816 pages it can be daunting to most readers, but if you have the interest, absolutely check out this book.

Another great book is Max Hastings's Inferno, which is one of the best "social histories" of the war IMO. The wide-range of intimate, tragic, surprising, and sometimes funny testimonies collected in the book, along with Hastings's excellent prose, is one of the most "human" retellings of WWII, I've ever read and is a must for anyone who is interested in the war beyond just the military and political aspects.

Edit: I also want to include Hastings's Retribution which covers the Pacific campaign (1944-45) in equally masterful prose and heartwrenching testimony. Learned not only a lot about the Japanese perspective but also of people's lives under Japanese occupation.

Also Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, which is a fantastic (American POV) of the war and incredibly well written.

Pretty much, yeah. His intent was basically to have minesweepers clear the straight, battleships bombard the coastal guns and enter into the harbor of Istanbul with enough firepower to force a surrender (it almost certainly would have).

The problem was that - after clearing the forts and the Ottoman guns almost entirely running out of ammo, supplies, and communications - a single Ottoman mine layer got through some pretty lax night time patrols. It layed some mines and scampered off; those mines sunk a couple of battleships and damaged others.

These ships were specifically chosen because they were old and expendable. Iirc Churchill thought along the lines that if every single ship under the admiral's command had been lost but Constantinople were captured it would have been a great victory.

Unfortunately, due to having been at peace for so long, the naval commanders were terrified of losing ships. In peacetime it meant demotion and disgrace, but in war it was neccessary, and that's something that didn't translate well after literally lifetimes of no naval warfare. As soon as the battleships retreated due to relatively light losses at a point in the battle in which the Turks later admitted they literally could not have stopped another push, the naval campaign ended. To add to this debacle out of Churchill's hands, the naval commander had a nervous breakdown when Churchill pressed him to continue attacking.

Once the sea battle ended another began: there was an internal fight over where a prepared expeditionary force in the Mediterranean (which included the only pre-war combat troops not decimated by the Western Front) would be used to try and force Gallipoli by land or attack another, French-supported location.

Gallipoli won out, there were weeks and weeks of delays, a German military attaché completely reworked the Dardanelles' defenses, Churchill got less troops than he asked for, the commander was a bit of a dolt, the landings were completely botched in both location and execution, and so Gallipoli became as much a trench-filled disaster as everywhere else. Some months later, the Allies pulled out.

If you like the era, check out G. J. Meyer's A World Undone. It's a fantastic and total account of World War I and Gallipoli gets at least a chapter devoted to it. It reads like an actual book rather than a dusty old historian's textbook and is truly fantastic, and I cannot recommend it enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Goldberg - a half Jewish soldier of Nazi regime that became so popular and famous he even became a poster boy.


The Jews who fought for Hitler: 'We did not help the Germans. We had a common enemy'


When Hitler Honored Jewish Soldiers, as many as 100,000


Hell, there are even books written on this with all the proof you could ever want.


foto of African Nazi soldier


The idea behind the holocaust was not to exterminate the Jews but take the wealth away from wealthy Jews. War/genocide is the best disguise and the elite never cared how many peasants will die.
These aren't even my juicy sources, i was too lazy to dig them up.

Oh, you once read? Well then it must be true.

Yes, actually. First of all the SS was a volunteer force (before 1943, when conscripts started to be transferred into the Waffen SS). The Einsatzgruppen were also volunteers-only. Furthermore, because of psychological casualties among units tasked with carrying out mask executions, it was common to transfer out of these units on request. Participating in mass executions was typically voluntary. Ordinary Men is an excellent history about a police battalion that was used as an execution unit which goes into a lot of the details about this.

Finally, there is not a single recorded instance of a German serviceman being executed for refusing to kill a civilian. (need jstor to read it)

This notion that individual Germans were somehow not at fault for joining the SS, joining mobile death squads, and then executing Jews/Poles/POWs/"partisans" whatever is mind-boggling

The way you've phrased this question caught my attention, and I'd like to point you in the direction of what I think is one of the most important books ever written about the Second World War:

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning tries to explain how a group of apolitical middle-aged men who weren't even professional soldiers, guys who had reached adulthood long before Hitler took power, men who weren't particularly anti-Semitic and didn't vote for the Nazis, became enthusiastic executioners of thousands upon thousands of Jews.

The process that turned law-abiding, conscientious citizens into murderers was an intricate and subtle process and cannot and never will be explained by simplifications like 'brainwashing' or 'the Nazis were all psychopaths', and that's the point Browning tries to get at in his book.

There are other books like Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners which argue that Germans have always been hell-bent on the elimination of the Jewish race since the beginning of time which will answer your question in a way that will make you feel much more comfortable, if that's what you want. If not, Browning's your man.

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men. How did the Nazi regime get ordinary men to commit genocide? A fascinating, compelling, sometimes horrifying read. The words and experiences of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 (which was assigned to Nazi-occupied Poland), gleaned from 1960s interrogations, are very present and alive in the text.

Well how about we just assume Hitler killed a 'shit-ton' of people in gas chambers and furnaces? Is that a number we can agree on?

And while there is some lack of concrete evidence, we can assume that the number 6 million was not pulled out of a historian's ass.

For instance, reports written by camp guards or death squads that survived the massive paper-shredding that the Nazis performed at the end of the war? See the book Ordinary Men for just one regiment's recounting of the 'Final Solution'.

Ordinary Men

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1523719680&sr=8-2&keywords=ordinary+men&dpID=51LEkLnM3RL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

Required reading

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693

This is the first in a Trilogy by Evans. Excellent research, and when ready today, while still very different from the United States, will seem closer than you would like. When he starts explaining about how journalism fractured into political journalism along ideological lines, you can see the same problems we suffer today.

Also, a highlight for the section explaining what happened to Adolf Hitler after the Beerhall Putsch. He talks about the country put him in a deluxe cell, and his probation was no public speaking for five years. They came and went.

Timeless question indeed. Dehumanization is a necessary condition but it's deeper than that alone. Inside each of us lurks this beast.

I recommend Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. There's also a recent lecture on the topic.

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning does a really great job of explaining much of what was done to the Jews over time.

I'd like to see your source on that story. I was taught by this man, and I distinctly remember numerous discussions on the topic, and that Nazi soldiers weren't punished for not killing Jews or any of the other persecuted individuals. The Nazi command who set the policy on these matters, viewed the extermination of Jews/Gypsies/Gays etc. as a difficult but necessary task; they simultaneously felt pity for, and glorified their soldiers, who were heroes doing what was best for the Aryan nation by squashing out the succubus races/nations of individuals.

So, while there was definitely strong social pressure to kill in order to fit in, move up the ranks, etc., there wasn't any formal military policy on punishing those who did not feel up to the task, which is one of the more frightening aspects of the whole situation.

Read more:

http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

here

Easy one is Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

Another good one is Becoming Evil by James Waller

https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Evil-Ordinary-Genocide-Killing/dp/0195148681

BOTH of these directly address "normal" soldiers killing massive numbers of civilians. They will destroy any Wehraboo.

Also the Third Reich Trilogy by Richard Evans... Anything by Ian Kershaw.

I'm in the middle of Homo Deus currently. Its great so far, Yuval is a great writer and his books are a lot more accessible than traditional history books. I'm sure there are a lot of liberties taken with some of the history but I think Sapiens is a must-read. Homo Deus is more assumption based on current reality but its very interesting so far.

Gulag Archipelago is one I read based on the recommendation of Jordan Peterson. Awesome book if you are into WW1-WW2 era eastern europe. being an eastern european myself, i devour everything related to it so this book tickled my fancy quite a bit. good look into the pitfalls of what peterson warns against.

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning is another history book discussing that time period and how it all transpired and the lesser known reasons why WW2 went down the way it did. some surprising stuff in that book related to hitler modeling europe around how the united states was designed at the time.

apologies for inundating with the same topic for all my books so far but Ordinary Men is an amazing book chronicling the people that carried out most of the killings during WW2 in Poland, Germany and surrounding areas. The crux of the argument which I have read in many other books is that Auschwitz is a neat little box everyone can picture in their head and assign blame to when in reality most people killed during that time were taken to the outskirts of their town and shot in plain sight by fellow townspeople, mostly retired police officers and soldiers no longer able for active duty.

for some lighter reading i really enjoy jon ronson's books and i've read all of them. standouts are So You've Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test. Highly recommend Them as well which has an early Alex Jones cameo in it.

Not being able to stomach it is something that changes over time. This should be part of history curriculum perhaps as soon as high school. Read Ordinary Men

The book is Ordinary Men.

The Book you are talking about is Ordinary Men by Chris Browning

> …whoever wrote Guns of the South.

Harry Turtledove.

Mostly I read war stuff. Storm of Steel, The Guns of August, shit like that. I really, really want to read this. Think it'll probably be my next Amazon purchase since I've given up finding it at the used store.

This is a pretty good book on that subject.

One of my favorite holocaust books is Ordinary Men link and is about a battalion of the Order Police and their experience in Poland. Some enjoyed killing, some were indifferent, some hated it and did it anyway, a few refused to do it, and then there were the Lithuanians.

>Do you have any non-Jewish sources?


I linked to the The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) website above. that isn't good enough for you?

United States Library of Congress: Nuremberg Trials



https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/jackson-rpt-military-trials.pdf

https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Nuremberg_trials.html


 


http://www.holocaustresearch.pl/?l=a&lang=en


Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York, by Christopher Browning

>The Great War (week-by-week history of WWI)

This is an awesome project that I have also been following. I love Indy Neidell.

It inspired me to go out and read this book which turned out to be one of the best books I have read this year.

Highly recommended if you are interested in the intricacies and the historical context of the July 1914 crisis. It really goes through the detailed histories and motivations of the full cast of characters from Serbian politicians, the Black hand to French diplomats, etc.

For example, Maurice Paléologue, French ambassador to Russia:

>Paléologue had a horror of the kind of detailed dispatches that were the bread and butter of workaday diplomacy, preferring to shape his impressions into lively scenes invigorated by dialogues in which catchy phrases replaced the long and often ambiguous verbal circumlocutions that were the day-to-day traffic of diplomats working in Russia...In order to achieve this he composed the account of his meeting before he had even left the embassy to see the Russian sovereign.

>De Robien and his colleagues got busy encoding the detailed narrative of a conversation that had never taken place. Amid all the faux-reportage, the count remembered one highly characteristic Paléologian phrase: ‘At this point, the interview reached a crucial turning point and the Emperor offered me a cigarette.’

It really is a fantastic book full of the type of details of diplomatic/political machinations that I was simply unaware of except in broad strokes (like how diplomats often planted stories in the press and how that turned into a complex game of signalling, etc.) Some of the character profiles, like that of the German Kaiser, are also hilarious. I had no idea how insufferable he was and how embarrassing his government found him.

Edit: Since fans of the Great War will have something of a fetish for Conrad von Hötzendorf, I must say that the book covers him and the politics around him in great detail.

Good to see someone following the Great War on YouTube. All of you should go watch it.

As other users have said it wasn't just gas chambers, the nazi's used guns, herding people into building and starting them on fire, gas trucks and of course gas chambers. I would suggest yourself reading Ordinary Men it is a short book that explains the people behind the mass shooting deaths of millions in the East and the reason the nazi's changed to other forms. It is dark, it is depressing but it isn't technical, if you think your friend can handle it pass it on to him.

There is a great book about German Police Battalion 101 called Ordinary Men... it demonstrates how pre-war these citizen police officers were simple, ordinary people (just like you and me); but during the war, 85% of these citizens became monsters. After the war, most had no problem resuming civilian lifestyles.

There are many detailed comparisons / conclusions made with the Milgram Prison Experiments, as well as an updated chapter at the end in response to some of the criticisms towards his original text.

Probably Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943.

Try this: http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583 ... looks like a good book. Appears to discuss disease.

Most of my knowledge regarding the matter is European, so I'm going to give a list of my favorites regarding the European / African front.

To get the German perspective of the war, I'd recommend:

• Panzer Commander - Hans von Luck - One of my favorites
  
  
• Panzer Leader - Heinz Guderian - He developed Blitzkrieg tactics
  
  
• The Rommel Papers - Erwin Rommel - Written by my favorite German Field Marshal up until his forced suicide by Hitler. Good read of the Western and African theaters of war. Also a good book to read if you're interested in what German command was doing on the lead up to D-Day.
  
  I have a few battle-specific books I enjoy too:
  
  
• Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943 - You really don't know the brutality of Stalingrad till you've read this book. You'll see it in a whole new light I think.
  
  
• Berlin: Downfall 1945 - Battle of Berlin at the end of the war, another good book.
  
  Now if you want to play games, Hearts of Iron series is great (someone recommended the Darkest Hour release of the game. Allows you to play historical missions based on historical troop layouts, or play the entire war as a nation. Historical events are incorporated into the game. While you'll rarely get a 100% accurate game as it is abstracted, it is an excellent way to see what challenges faced the nations of the time. You could play as Russia from 1936 and prepare yourself for the eventual German invasion. Or maybe you decide to play as Germany, and not invade Russia. But will Russia invade you when they are stronger? Will warn you: It does not have a learning curve. As with almost all Paradox Interactive games, it is a learning cliff.

>The Nazis were pretty explicit about their intent.

Not actually true, really. Yes, Hitler and the NSDAP were explicit about their intent in the early 1920s, when they were getting 2% of the vote at most (I think in the 1928 elections they got something like 0.7% of the vote, if memory serves).

Then, once the Depression started and things were going from bad to worse, Hitler saw his political moment and he actually toned down his anti-Semitism and political extremism, toned down his attacks on capitalism and became more friendly to big business in much the same way the British Labour Party would in the later 1940s.

When one-third of the German people voted for Hitler in 1933, they were voting for a party which played to long-held German beliefs and prejudices (including anti-Semitism) about the need for a strongman like Otto von Bismarck rather than feeble parliamentary democracy, a party which appealed to Social Democratic notions of strong trade unions and welfare for the old and the poor and war veterans and a basic standard of living for all, a party which talked about reining in the excesses of exploitative (read: Jewish) capitalism, a party which appealed to the nostalgia of "the good old days" before 1914, a party which would stave off a Bolshevik Revolution (the threat of which was very real and which was, after widely disseminated reports of Trotsky's Red Terror in the early 1920s, widely reviled), a party which would throw off the shackles of Versailles and put Germany back in the top tier of nations which Germany's economy and kultur deserved, and, most of all, a party which promised an end to the political deadlock of the Weimar Republic--which was thoroughly discredited in the eyes of practically all Germans.

But what's astonishing is just how vague Hitler and the NSDAP were about all this. Like any politician, they spoke in platitudes and phrases which were open ended in their interpretation. When Hitler spoke of smashing Jewish finance, moderates heard him saying that international bankers were strangling Germany economically after WWI and needed to be reined in with reasonable regulation; the hardcore anti-Semites heard Hitler talking about expropriating Jewish banks outright.

Far from voting for an party which explicitly promised another world war and death camps filled with Jews, Germans thought they were voting to "Make Germany Great Again" by returning to a kind of Kaiserreich where a strong leader, aided by a loyal, dispassionate, efficient civil service carrying out the Leader's every order without being tangled up in messy parliamentary politics, would make ordinary Germans richer and esteemed in the eyes of the world. And more than some voted for the NSDAP to "keep those Jews in their place."

That's not my opinion, but rather the opinion of eminent historian Richard J. Evans.

Wages of destruction by Adam Tooze

History of the Third Reich Series which include:

The Coming of the Third Reich

The Third Reich in Power

The Third Reich at War


Rise and fall of the Third Reich

Thats very good reading material right there.

You need to get your head out of your ass mate. They don't want to "meet the left halfway", they aren't interested in dialogue, or compromise, or getting along.

They would glady curb stomp you and piss on your corpse except it's just slightly against their favor right now. But every cringing waffling "surely we can talk through our differences!" type empowers them.

Since you enjoy edification, pick up a book next time.

They Thought They Were Free is another must-read. There's one quote from it which terrifies me because it's exactly what we're going through with trying to figure out the flashpoint that brings people into the streets.

I don't think there will ever be a perfect repetition of history or any historical figure, but we can at least look at the years that mirror ours and the traits he shares with other demagogues. 2018 is as much 1789 or 1848 as it is 1928 or 1932. He has the personality of a Mussolini with the ambitions of Lewis Levin with the ego of Hitler with the same audience that Huey Long had. All of these are a really bad combination if we face any sort of national crisis or economic downturn. Normalcy bias has killed so many people in the past that it can't dictate how we respond to today and tomorrow.

If you have time, I highly recommend reading that entire book. The whole thing is fascinating because it dives down to the personal level with interviews with Germans who lived through the whole process.

The book's a little awkward to read in public though, what with the big swastika on the cover. I got more than a few strange looks on the train.

There's an awesome book out I learned about today called "They Thought They Were Free" (http://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928) about the perception everyday Germans had during World War II. Most were aware SOMEthing was wrong, but they were all mutually benefitting from whatever it was, so chose, some unconsciously to not say or do anything. Fascinating book. I'm about 3/4 through.

Yea, it seems like nobody takes protests seriously unless you're willing to become violent. Ghandi actually felt it the Jews in WW2 should have protested by walking into the ovens. Fascists are willing to kill, giving them an instant advantage over their nonviolent adversaries. The whole "their evil but they wouldn't actually black bag me and send me to a camp" mentality. Several excellent books have covered this trend in fascist uprisings.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226511928/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=NMB493XQXAH9GFM2Z16F

https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Happen-Here-Signet-Classics/dp/0451465644

It seems to me that the two strengths of the series are world-building and character depth. If this is your favorite series, you probably like it for one or both of those things.

If you like it for the world building, I recommend history books such as the History of the Peloponnesian War or A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.

If you like complex characters, then the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Another strength of asoiaf is that it isn't too heavy handed regarding magic in the story, and this is a strength of the Mistborn series too.

Possibly this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404330328&sr=1-2

Without having read it, it doesn't look like what I would call "summer reading" but YMMV

I'm assuming by medieval/renaissance you mean the traditional European inspired fantasy. Here's a brain dump:

Feudalism:
I feel like I see a lot of fantasy where heroes turn up at some village and get asked to fight someone or other because the villagers have nowhere else to turn to. What I don't often see is the local knight living in the manor across the field whose responsibility it is to be a warrior and protect his fief and who probably doesn't appreciate strangers turning up and undermining his authority by doing his job for him.

There would probably also be a lot of small wars going on at any given time between knights and barons and earls that provide lots of work for dangerous people but have nothing to do with the greater battle battle between good and evil.

Knighthood:
Speaking of knights a knight isn't "someone who fights with plate armour and a sword," that's what they were IRL because that was the most effective way to fight and you needed a certain amount of wealth and status to afford the huge investment in training and equipment. If you have a fantasy world where with enough training and expensive equipment people can learn to shoot fire and call down lightning that will break a cavalry charge then that world's knights will almost certainly all be wizards. And very few other people will be allowed to be.

Era-appropriate firearms:

• https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/538672805409922868
  
• https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/511721576383944160
  
  That aesthetic of people in plate armour with cannons is something you almost never see depicted.
  
  Renaissance fashion:
  
• https://i-h1.pinimg.com/564x/67/7c/4d/677c4de51094fe521abab26318dc5f19.jpg
  
• http://blog.sunandswords.com/post/143679221560/some-awesome-photos-taken-last-week-of-my-kit
  
• https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ae/56/85/ae5685d3f34f0a1a777ca2a587d8cf54.jpg
  
  Speaks for itself.
  
  Medieval medicine and science:
  A physician diagnosing you by cross referencing your symptoms with the alignment of the stars to decide how to properly balance your humors isn't something I've seen a lot of in fantasy. That element of earnestly applying the scientific method to things you don't understand based on what seem to us like completely ridiculous variables and assumptions. Also more folk medicine like plants that only had medicinal properties if you found them by accident or sympathetic magic like curing a rabid dog bite using the literal hair of the dog that bit you.
  
  On a similar note you don't see a lot of importance put on folk superstition like hanging horseshoes above doors to keep out evil spirits/the devil/elves trying to steal your children. I feel like basing a fantasy world's idea of magic around the small everyday things might make a change from the usual Big Magic stuff.
  
  
  The equator:
  Not really something that will affect the day-to-day feel of a world but I read once that some people believed that the equator was hotter because it was closer to the sun and that right on the equator it would be too hot for anything to survive or cross. So they thought the entire southern hemisphere was inaccessible due to this deadly heat barrier. Not sure what you could do with it but I thought it was a neat idea. Maybe the discovery or creation of a tunnel under the equator would be an interesting way to introducing a "new world" to explore that developed totally independently.
  
  The devil:
  You know where medieval people got magic powers? By serving the devil. You know how they became werewolves? Made a deal with the devil. You know how women learned arithmetic? You better believe that's the devil. A lot of fantasy treats the monsters and magic and whatnot as just the natural flora and fauna of the world but these days I don't feel like I've seen much that filters the world through that lens of everything comes from one or two sources that have strong moral stances associated with them and, therefore, everything that comes from them does too.
  
  Pilgrimages:
  I don't know, you just never see them in fantasy but in the middle ages they were quite the thing from the noble woman who spends ten years of her life travelling constantly between holy sites to the common folk for whom the trip to visit the bones of St Whoever is basically the closest they ever have to a holiday.
  
  Ships:
  Don't have your medieval knights cross the sea on what amounts to a 17th century galleon like I feel like I keep seeing. Not when there are cool medieval and renaissance ships you could use:
  
• Byzantine Dromon: https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/tag/dromon/
  
• Venetian Galleass: https://www.deviantart.com/radojavor/art/Battle-Of-Lepanto-41693977
  
• Look, we built towers on it and now it's a war ship: http://users.trytel.com/tristan/towns/florilegium/images2/def14b.jpg
  
  Level of material wealth/standard of living:
  When you turn up in a sleepy little farming village there probably won't be a big inn with a roaring fire, a dinner menu and a dozen rentable rooms. There will be a family that'll let you sleep on the floor of their one-room cottage for a few coins and might even share some of their latest batch of beer with you. Even the lord of the castle may very well sleep in the same room as their whole family and several servants. When you try to sell your stack of looted swords to the local blacksmith they aren't going to have cash sitting around to pay you. But they could offer you a box of nails and some of the loaves of bread the baker owes them.
  
  Little things:
  I feel like a lot of the reason "medieval" fantasy tends to feel stale is that it's mostly made up of just all the bits and pieces of history that people are familiar with smooshed together. Good for acccessibility, bad for originality. Often just adding little details or taking away familiar things can make a difference. Look up the things they had in place of anything resembling modern law enforcement like Tithings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing) and the Hue and Cry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_and_cry) or people bringing their own mugs to taverns because the taverns couldn't just buy bulk mugs off the shelf or the fact that it could take members of ten different guilds to make a suit of armour and anyone trying to do the bits that are covered by another guild will find themselves out of work pretty quick. Maybe read something like https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571. Look up medieval bestiaries to learn how lions are born dead and brought to life by their mothers or how vultures can see the future.

A fantastic book, A Distant Mirror is a detailed glimpse of medieval 1300's French and English life, from royalty to peasantry.

There are some sections in the book that describe mercenary groups, including some interesting bits about groups that don't get paid, and essentially leaderless bands that pillaged 'friendly' countrysides just to survive. Some were as big as standing armies, but without a war to fight, bank to fund them, or often even a purpose just hardend soldiers - and how they roamed pilliaging summer seasons and forcefully occupied random towns for winters .

For anyone interested in this area in the previous century, this book is just great.

Well, this book covers much of the 14th century, but it’s not as recent as the Thirty Years War. Nevertheless, it’s regularly mentioned in this sub as one of the best historical books altogether.

Poland has been through some shit.

Storia antica:

• Robin Lane Fox - Alessandro Magno
  
• Tom Holland - Rubicone
  
• Peter Heather - La caduta dell'impero romano
  
• Peter Heather - L'impero e i barbari
  
  Scienza: Qualunque libro di Paul Davies, Simon Singh, John Gribbin, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker.
  
  -----
  
  Ti consiglierei anche questo e questo ma non credo ne esista una versione in italiano.
  
  
  
  

Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

I was thinking more of ideas rather than implementation. These ideas of Capitalism, Liberalism and Imperialism that define the modern world are found really strongly in the UK, then in the Netherlands, Northern France, and they become diluted and changed as they go further from there.

It's How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Similar titles include How the Irish Saved Civilization, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, and Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. None of them are by the same author, but they're all interesting historical books with similar titles (How some great culture did great things that built what we have now), none the less.

I would love to find similar titles about other countries, cultures, and civilizations. They're always so interesting!

https://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

Hello! I've recently finished The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson. I was curious if anyone knew any books of similar depth on the Italian Wars of the late 15th and early 16th century?

It doesn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

Child porn is the moral panic of our age. Like Reagan's Welfare Queen, or the "satanic ritual" panics of the 80s and 90s, the stuff does not exist, but instead causes fear and terror in the population: Something Must Be Done!™.

I do not believe that child porn exists in real life: I have never seen it, nor has any person I have ever met in real life seen it. It only exists as some boogeyman to terrorize unsuspecting dupes into submission. Some "enemy" must exist for the fascists, whether that "enemy" exists in real life or not is irrelevant. The media shrills stuff up until everyone is willing to hand over all authority (and everything else) to those in power. One book to read on how this shit happens is Hitler's Willing Executioners

The logged data exists to find you guilty of something. Downloading, or wikilinks or filesharing - those are other moral panics. It will be used to testify against you when The Man wants to put you away for something. Anything.

A lot of people consciously/subconsciously want an excuse to exploit other people, and the easiest way is often to think of them as objects not people.

For sex:

For power:

For conquest:

For meaning:

For varying personal reasons:

Agreed. The book Hitler’s Willing Executioners explains this really well.

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679772685/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_.LEvCb7SXRHT8

I couldn't name a specific source off the top of my head, but I just remembered seeing a statistic of like 3500 being thrown around. So I decided to go looking. In my search, I found an article Rense.com that says there were 150,000. But Rense isn't exactly what I'd call reliable.

However, there's also this book that puts it at 150,000 Jews. As it says in the description, "mischlings" are included in the total number. But I haven't personally read it, so it could be shoddy and terrible for all I know.

However, like the "muh diverse waffen-ss" people, to imply this is in any way indicative of the Nazis being tolerant, cool guys is completely erroneous. I mean, it says right there further into the description that they ended up fucking over even the Jews that fought for them as well.

Instead of spending your time on people like him, read some interesting books. https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587

As many as 150,000 actually did:
http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587
Many were allowed to simply just go back to Palestine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement

The rest were considered traitors for starting the civil war of the 1918 and agitating the allies and turning them against Germany. Why would you allow your enemy within your armed forces?

They should have been already pretty familiar with it. Since those camp were nothing new in Stalins Soviet Union.

He was rounding up people for the Gulag since 1919.

If someone is interested in suggest reading the Gulag Archipelago.
Written by Alexander Solzjenitsyn.
If you think the Germans were bad you better strap yourself in. Communism killed an approximated 100 million people in the 20th century. About 66 in the Soviet Union alone.
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893

He was right, it did.

NSDAP was a rightist/reactionary/veterans movement partially funded by businessmen and was way more popular among the middle class than the working classes (just look at voting statistics). the nsdap didn't kill businessmen, it killed workers who tried to unionize against the corporatist state the nazis created. the national union was not a union concerned with workers rights, it was concerned with maintaining industry to feed the war machine. the Nazi state never owned all the businesses and was only able to control a select few industries.

I'd suggest you read the Nazi sections in this book, in order to better understand the relationships better business, workers, and the NSDAP

The following book is also worth looking at:

Paxton, Robert: The Anatomy of Fascism (2005)

>Antifa is an organized group of people with a singular common purpose. Sure, they may claim that "they aren't an organization," but they literally are. They are a loosely governed organization, but still an organization, regardless.

Local antifa groups might be organized, but antifa as a whole is not. There is no consistent "antifa policy" on how to approach things like violence, protests, etc because antifa is not an organization. You could have a group of people calling themselves antifa in City A who do nothing but tear down fascist posters, and a group of people calling themselves antifa in City B who do nothing but milkshake fascists, and that isn't a contradiction because the groups are not part of any organized movement in any more specific sense than ideologically (people who dislike fascism and want to do something about it) and probably don't even talk to each other other than in the very vague sense that they may both use social media.

-------------

What are all of these "authoritarian" and "dictatorial" things that antifa does which are so horrible?

-------------

The rest of your post argues that since antifa is authoritarian and dictatorial (????????) it's somehow fascist by stubbornly refusing to use anything but a woefully inadequate dictionary definition that nobody actually takes seriously, as evidenced by the fact that nobody unironically calls most authoritarian countries in the world fascist. You should consider looking into some actual attempts to define fascism by credible people if you want to throw the term around.

> When I say that Antifa is fascist, I don't mean that they are literal fascists like Mussolini.

"When I say that antifa is fascist, I don't mean like, you know, fascist fascists. I mean the other kind of fascists: people I don't like."

He gave you the textbook definition of fascism. That is what “fascism” is. It was YOU who argued that Nationalism is non-violent. I did not back up your argument: Trump has been “violently taking out” people he perceives as enemies (undocumented immigrants) by using a paramilitary force (ICE) to arrest them in and lock them in cages. Does that sound familiar?

Here’s something you can do that might be a better use of your time: read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

> You are posting bullshit written by people with an agenda.

Yes, of course, the hand-waving of all experts on any given subject by simply declaring they have an agenda. Serious question, in your head, do you think this is a valid refutation of academic works in relation to fascism?

Do you think this works anywhere outside of the Donald?


> You have never read a history book that was written after 1960 is my guess. You are an amazingly stupid person.

Let's take a look.

I quoted the 3rd reich trilogy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

> The Third Reich Trilogy is a series of three narrative history books by the British historian Richard J. Evans covering the rise and collapse of Nazi Germany in detail, with a focus on the internal politics and the decision-making process.[1] According to Ian Kershaw, it is "the most comprehensive history in any language of the disastrous epoch of the Third Reich",[2] which has been hailed as a "masterpiece of historical scholarship."[3] The three volumes of the trilogy were published between 2003 and 2008.

So that's after 1960.


I quoted the anatomy of fascism:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Which was written in 2005.

Which is again, after 1960 last time I checked. Next time you start throwing wild punches in an effort to save face after getting dismantled, make sure you can't be made to look like an idiot in 30 seconds.

This book and it's series of books will tell you most you want to know, from what colors you couldn't wear or what kind of birds you were not allowed to eat. Great detail and fun read.

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

Ian Mortimer has a series of Time Traveler’s Guides to X

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908/

Possibly one of those?

https://smile.amazon.com/Wars-Roses-Alison-Weir/dp/0345404335

https://smile.amazon.com/Princes-Tower-Alison-Weir/dp/0345391780

https://smile.amazon.com/Reluctant-Queen-Story-Queens-England-ebook/dp/B000VSW7TI

https://smile.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich back when I was in high school. I've since started listening to it again on audio book.


I highly highly recommend it, it is the best book on Nazi Germany that I have ever read. It is written by journalist William L. Shirer, who was a correspondent for US media in the years leading up to the war and he continued to live in Berlin until the US and Germany went to war and he was asked to leave the country.

Hell of a book and apparently non fiction counts as literature so +1.

This has such a long and many faceted answer. Be aware this is just my opinion, if you want an in depth look at how it happened The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is well written and does not read like a textbook, I recommend it.

The heart of it lies in the years following The Great War, WWI, or what your local history chooses to calls the European war from 1914-1918. At the end of that war The Treaty of Versailles drove the German economy into the dumpster. The resulting Germanic generation that grew up in the 20's and 30's were barely getting by. They had little to look forward to or be proud of. Their country was broken up, they were basically allowed no heavy industry, and they were paying billions of Reichsmark in reparations that left them with no working capital and very broken economy. This goes right along with the world experiencing the [Great Depression] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression). No money, no jobs, no hope. This makes for a very unhappy people willing to do almost anything to be proud again.

Along comes a man wanting to "Make Germany Great Again". This man is a great orator, he speaks to the pride of the German peoples. He terrorizes the established political setup and through force of will and quite a bit of jack-boot thuggery finds himself in charge. He tells the rest of the world that he is going to industrialize his nation and in the process make a small army just for their own protection. "Sorry about your treaty but, we're going to ignore it." He then found a scapegoat that they can demonize and blame for their problems.

We now have political machine that knows how to use violence to get into power and keep it. We have a government that has successfully told the rest of the world to go away and let Germany ignore the treaties. You have a scapegoat to blame any remaining problems on. You have a large enough portion of your populace either complacent enough or afraid enough to allow it all to happen. Now they ramp up the industrialization and build a real army.

A large percentage of the German population have spent their lives beat-down, poor, and barely getting by with no hope for the future. But now there is hope! The economy is working again, the German people are strong and proud. They are taking back lands that are traditionally belonging to Germanic peoples with their new army. They are removing their scapegoats from their towns and villages. Pretty quickly this leads to war.

By 1944 Germans know there are massive problems. They can't write it in the papers but, they do whisper it. They are losing the war and they remember what comes of losing wars.

I really feel the slaughter at Oradour-sur-Glane is frustration and fear of what will happen when Germany looses again. The soldiers fear a return to the Germany of the 20's and 30's. They don't want another gutted economy, no luxury items, barely enough to eat, no work, no hope, and no pride. That type of fear is primal. There's a deep seated need for violence and domination of your adversaries in the human brain that goes back to our earliest survival. To survive you must crush your competition and drive them out if not for yourself, for the next generation. I'm not saying that is the only reason but I do believe this animal drive is a significant contributing factor that was satiated through this violence. But, like a lot of violence it only made things worse.

tl;dr Fear is a powerful thing.

Pathetic human being? Sure. Nazi? Sounds like you need to brush up on your history a bit. Rather than bash you and downvote you, I invite you take the opportunity to actually learn what a nazi is:
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

I'd recommend The Second World War and World War Two Day by Day.

My first WW2 book was Rise and Fall of the Third Reich but it just covers Germany. Good book though add it to your list.

Was going to recommend Keegan as well, so at least that's two random internet strangers who agree this would be a good starting point!

There is also Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It may be a bit massive, but it's a damn good read.
https://www.amazon.ca/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

Will probably be hard to find a book on that topic that is not biased in some way, unless you just want to analyze data. And even that presents it’s own problems. It would probably be better to chose a book from each “side” of the bias and read them both.

I would recommend The Strange Death of Europe for the “hey, this level of immigration may be a problem” side.

Wow, what a post. I've tried to track down the quote, which led me to what looks like the source -
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/the-corruption-of-the-white-westerner-foundation-myth/
and that post refers to a article by John Derbyshire
http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/no-decent-answers-on-douglas-murrays-the-strange-death-of-europe/
which in turn refers to a book by Douglas Murray, 'The Strange Death of Europe'
https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472942248/

As the poster below said, that's a borrowed word from Old Norse (The Vikings raided England and actually ruled the island for a few years almost a millennium ago. The show Vikings depicts this event.) .

There's actually a good book about the history of English, with a great name. "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue". The tl;dr is in the title: English has a lot of words borrowed from other languages.

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944

As for stuff like "Knight" of "Thought", the "gh" used to be pronounced like the "ch" back of the throat sound in "blech" but it eventually got dropped.

Then there's the famous "Vowel Shift" which changed how basically every vowel was pronounced, which was most likely influenced by the large number of borrowed words in the middle ages.

http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/history_early_modern.html

its arguable. The basic rule I would advise people is that if you can spell it logically it is latin based. If you can't spell it logically its german. If the verb changes tense in the middle of the word, then its of semetic origin, as all germanic strong verbs are.

If you are curious please see:

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412209131&sr=8-1&keywords=our+glorious+bastard+tongue

The book will actually make you laugh. Well written.

John McWhorter's book has a chapter on it. It's written for a popular audience, and it gives the standard arguments. Personally, I'm not convinced by it, but it's easy to read, that's for sure. A lot of scholarship on this can get quite technical, and it's quite easy to fool those who don't actually know a Brittonic language.

> The evidence for Celtic is sketchy, though not entirely without merit.

I'd recommend this book.

He talks a lot about the relationship between English and Celtic languages, and is quite convincing.

A friend of mine who reads a lot about politics tells me that Antifa is poorly represented and she recommended that I read the book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook to get a better idea of what Antifa is about.

Apparently they have been around for the better part of a century, having started up with the start of the first fascist regimes.

I'm still undecided on what I think of them.

It doesn't matter as I don't go on marchers with neo-nazis or white supremacists.

It's been around since before WW2 in a great many forms. Sometimes it's more formally organized than others, sometimes less so.

The current American iteration of antifa can be traced to Anti Racist Action, which came out of Minneapolis in the 80s, itself inspired by French, German, and Italian Anti Fascist Action. They formalized the long-standing tradition of forcibly deterring neo-Nazis from infiltrating music scenes, bars, and working class/PoC neighborhoods. They went through various iterations themselves, falling apart when there wasn't much fascist activity to oppose, coming back when there was, spreading the movement around the continent, etc.

Antifa actions and groups take a lot of forms. Not every antifascist partakes in the black bloc or other immediate and dangerous activity either. Some provide medical services, some provide childcare, some provide food or a place to stay. But pretty universally and almost by definition, they're not especially organized.

Antifascist actions are for one thing: opposing fascists. Historically, most antifascists have been anarchists and autonomists, though you'll find plenty of communists and even some left-liberals in there too. By nature of these differences, they really only come together for these kind of bigger things upon which they all agree, and which they all also agree form a more immediate threat to their community than their (sometimes significant) disagreements.

Some of the misconceptions ITT are these:

-"Antifa is an attitude." I'll commend your principled opposition to fascism as a sign of your basic human decency, but if that attitude doesn't translate to action, it isn't antifa in the historical sense of that term.

-"Black bloc and antifa are separate things." No, black bloc is a protest tactic widely associated with antifa. The idea is, if you get enough folks together dressed identically, the folks who are there to wreck shit can do so without being easily identified by law enforcement or fascists.

-"Anarchists aren't real antifa, they're hijacking it." This is the worst of these misconceptions. The history of antifa as we think of it is associated with nothing more so than anarchism. Like I said, you'll find a lot of political stripes will participate, but it's the anarchists that have carried the load historically. The red and black double flag logo does, in fact, represent communism and anarchism. It's probably a reference to Otto von Bismarck, who once said of anarchists and communists: “Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!"

If you're interested in a quick and dirty (and pretty damn good) history of antifascism, allow me to recommend Mark Bray's [Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook] (https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035). It's a quick read, and it's got a lot more information than you'll ever get from most news sources trying to stumble through speculation.

I can’t find the Biden video on anything but Neo Nazi websites and having been stalked by a Neo Nazi group is rather not risk my safety. I couldn’t find anything reputable at all.

So, we’re down to one attorney general with one tweet. With an attention grabbing book cover that you can buy on Amazon about the history of fascism.

“Many Democrats support the Antifa movement” is s stretch. I haven’t even found an instance where someone was actually harmed by the Antifa movement.

But bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe, am I right?

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Antifascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

not available yet, but i found it at my local book store last night which you should buy it at if you do

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

​

Is a sort of history of Antifa, as least as the author sees it.

​

I bought a copy so.... as if I'm not already on a list! I haven't studied it yet, though. And I'm not sure how the author's version of antifa squares with antifa groups going around, which seem to have extended things from not just being anti-fascist to wanting to eliminate borders completely. Like, huh?

> (and I suspect that West probably doesn't personally know that everyone in that group was identified with Antifa but still spread this talking point anyway).

And yet here you are, who have never spoken with anyone engaged in anti-fascist organizing, who have probably never marched in a street, spreading all kinds of Fox News talking points about "the ANTIFA."

You haven't the faintest idea what antifa is about. But you should. I strongly recommend talking to someone engaged in that work (which is 99% non-violent). Or read this book by scholar Mark Bray: https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

Archives for the links in comments:

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> Maybe, but beating them in the streets only creates more Nazi's,

citation needed

For plenty of examples that explicitly contradict your claim, collected by a historian of political radicalism & human rights, read this.

Here's a start:

Antifa Handbook

Militant Anti-Fascism

Combined with actually doing the things the far left calls for. Fascism doesn't come up in times of equal prosperity. It gains momentum when people are hopeless, when the system has failed them, when they feel threatened and fearful. If you want to defeat fascism you have to address the root causes - the racial ones and the economic/political ones.

I highly recommend The Coming of the Third Reich, which covers the background in which the Nazi party came to exist and then took power. It covers 1871-1933. Incredible book.

And yeah, the parallels to current world leaders are obvious and upsetting.

The Coming of the Third Reich https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143034693

This, which some say is too sympathetic to Weimar excesses.
and


This which tells you that Nazis are bad, and it's all the Kaiser's fault.

Det må være bogen "They Thought They Were Free" om tyskerne i årene 1933 til 1945. Spændende læsning. Men omslaget er et kæmpe kagekors, hvilket gør at jeg er nødt til at gemme bogen af vejen, da den ellers giver for mange kommentarer fra folk, der konkluderer før de undersøger. Bogen kan ses her: https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

Edit: Hagekors ikke kagekors...

Which is fine and dandy up until you find out that a lot of people who were actually killed were innocent of those crimes, and that it's also used to wipe out political opposition. Seriously, that's a stupid argument.

"The Soviets were cool, because they only killed people who were threatening social order." Which is fine and dandy, except it ignores the huge swaths of people who were killed for "threatening the social order" who were either completely innocent or just killed for political convenience.

There have been books written all about how people who live under totalitarian regimes who thought things were great when they actually weren't, and only noticed how shit things were right before the shit hit the fan so hard everyone in a square mile got covered in it. Hell, one book, as well as one of the most famous and best books on this very matter, is literally called They Thought They Were Free, which describes life in a wide variety of totalitarian nations from Nazi Germany, to Fascist Italy, to the Soviet Union, to North Korea.

>The Philippines is a sovereign country, this is the man they chose, he has popular support as do his policies, and that's where it end.

Sure, but that doesn't mean the man isn't doing things that are terrible and should be heavily criticized. The "they're a sovereign nation" argument only gives you that they have a right to elect a totalitarian nutbag as president, it does nothing to justify the choice thereof or excuse him from criticism.

Being popularly supported doesn't make your actions humane, them being humane makes them humane. And inhumane actions, regardless of how popularly supported, are still inhumane.

>There isn't some one-size-fits-all law, rule or political system which is applicable to or appropriate for all countries at all times. Thinking there is is a type of deranged fanaticism.

But what there are are broadly agreed upon standards of human rights and necessary laws. One of the most important among them, especially with regards to the justice system, being the right to due process and trial instead of the unilateral ability for someone to arbitrarily decide you are guilty and thus worthy of execution.

There's a really excellent (and sort of scary) book about this called "They Thought They Were Free". The author went back to Germany, and interviewed "regular joe" type people that were alive during Hitler's rise to power. When asked how they let it happen, they all said that they thought Hitler had their best interests in mind and was protecting them from all kinds of threats.

A quote from Sinclair Lewis comes to mind: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

> I understand the worries, but starting to compare permanent marks on your body such as implants ..... is not that fair.

Except of course it is already happening. More companies are chipping their workers like pets

>Also comparing a company wanting to identify you through your fingerprint to Nazi concentration camp is maybe taking it a bit too far don't you think?

I did not compare the two. I explained why people may violently oppose this policy change. To you it's a trivial matter, but to others it is a cause for great concern, worthy of losing their job over and fighting for in a tribunal/court room .

Is this concern reasonable? Maybe not. But your original post asked the question "Why are people obsessing over this?". And I have answered why some may be horrified by it.

Some people see this as the thin edge of the wedge. A wedge that in the past ended in concentration camps. If you still don't get it perhaps you should read "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Sanford Mayer" First published in 1955

It explains how a representative democracy turned into a dictatorship. Not overnight, but piece by piece. Little by little and a warning from history to never let it happen again.

Some people take that warning seriously.

> they do it in small enough increments that nobody notices while it's happening..

In "They Thought They Were Free", Milton Mayer returned to Germany and interviewed Germans to try to determine how they had let Hitler come to power. One of them remarks:

> "What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.

> "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

> "This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."

Barbra Tuchman's The Guns of August is a personal favorite of mine. Her A Distant Mirror is also supposed to be very good, though I haven't managed to get to it yet.

Carl Sagan is also a great choice if you are interested in space.

I that case you might be interested in the following books:

• Barbard Tuchman's A distant mirror. The best book on medieval history I think I've ever read.
  
• A time traveller's guide to medieval England by Ian Mortimer
  
• Agincourt by Juliet Barker
  
  

I'd suggest the 14th Century. Black plague, 100-years war, massive social unrest. See A Distant Mirror and more info here.

This is a classic that I remember enjoying greatly. https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman

absolutely enthralling. i've never read something so informative and entertaining...she teleports you to a different world: ours, 700 years ago.

next on the list is Immanuel Wallerstein's 4 volume World Systems Series. it's been on my bucket list since i took a course in undergrad on the subject.


then, marx's capital.

History of the Medieval World by Susan Wise Bauer. I'm reading this now and I've really enjoyed it, very clear writing and introductory overviews to cultures all over the world - Europe, North Africa, China, Korea, India, you name it.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. This one was highly recommended on /r/medievalhistory

I'll give you two that I've enjoyed lately:

Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations talks about some states that you see in Eu4 like Aragon, Burgundy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century takes you into the life of a French nobleman during the Hundred Years War. I'd check out pretty much anything else by Tuchman while you're at it.

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

> Hitler took about a decade from locking people up to systematically killing them. Concentration camps were never intended to kill people. I mean, of course plenty of people died, but mostly due to neglect. They didn't really care if people died, but it wasn't the goal. Death camps were part of their Final Solution which only really happened when their war in the East started and they were suddenly in a hurry.

There's a great book, Bloodlands (https://www.amazon.ca/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471/) I recently read that focuses on the years of 1933-1945 on Hitler and Stalin in central and eastern Europe.

Hitler initially hoped to 'rid' to Jews to Russia, after it was taken over by Nazi Germany. It was supposed to be dumping ground. When he failed in doing that, that's when the plans changed, and the concentration camps shifted to extermination camps.

I notice that nobody has mentoned Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder.

This is the story, not only of the Holocaust, but also of the millions of people either executed or starved by either Stalin or Hitler for other reasons such as Stalin's enthusiasm for dreaming up ways of consolidating his personal power. These people were either civilians or non-combatants such as prisoners of war. The final tally including the Holocaust and Stalin's purges and the Katyn massacre and much more is about 14 million people. This took place between 1932 and 1945 in an area that included most of Poland, a lot of Belarus and the Ukraine and a big chunk of western Russia.

It is an interesting read but also a difficult one. It has taken me a long time to get through the first three hundred or so pages not because the book is badly reading but simply because the subject matter is so depressing. Still, I recommend reading it if you have an interest in the time surrounding World War II.

Collectivization and forced industrialisation were part of Stalinist Communism because he viewed the Soviet Union as lacking an industrial base to support a true marxist communist state. They were stepping stones to that end. Nazism gave a head nod to socialism but Hitler in actuality just played lip service to the German people in that respect.

I'm done arguing but I'll leave you a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nazism_and_Stalinism.

You can also take a gander at this book http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471 if you're interested in a more in depth look at the state practices of both countries in Ukraine, the Balkans, and Poland.

In practice sure both countries were similarly brutal but there's a difference in why they were brutal.

Edit: Also why did you sarcastically write 'attempted' changes? Millions of people starved or were killed during those programs. The border between Ukraine and Poland was literally shut down to prevent people from fleeing. Stalin and the Comintern was wholeheartedly devoted to collectivization and making it succeed to support the next stage of industrialization. This was while they were planning to support a communist revolution in Poland. Also look at after the war how the Soviet Union exported communism to the countries it occupied. You can't ignore that and say they half-assed their attempt to make communism work.

Ignore the idiot and better yourself.

Start with this: https://www.amazon.com/Archipelago-Peterson-introduction-Aleksandr-Solzhenitsyn/dp/1784871516/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=gulag&qid=1567319207&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Continue with this: https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bloodlands&qid=1567319292&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Then come back here and ask for some more.

Read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. It's an exhaustive chronicle of the extermination programs of each respective regime, and argues quite persuasively that the development of extermination camps was a direct result of the combination of the two factors you mentioned in your post.

Read https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471/

The crop-demands of the soviets were absurd. They literally exceeded the most optimistic yields in any nation by several magnitudes.

The USSR famines go beyond simple droughts/natural-disasters/etc. It was deliberate and the consequence of millions starving was simply an acceptable price to pay to urbanize the nation.


There are many incidents in history of short-sighted policies having unintended consequences (e.g. The Four Pests Campaign). But this isn't the case for millions of the victims under the USSR rule.

Check out Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. It covers the history of Poland and Ukraine in excruciating detail about this topic.

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918 by G.J. Meyer is a really thorough and enjoyable read that definitely covers 'the big picture' in an accessible way.

A World Undone ( http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325016559&sr=8-1 ) is a phenomenal one-volume account of WWI. Just enough details to be really interesting, but not so high-level as to be dry. It's well written and very readable. Plus, it includes small, side chapters that help explain the history and historical context of events of the main chapters. It's really a phenomenal read.

America's war for the greater middle east and A world Undone: The Story of the Great war, 1914 to 1918 will improve your general knowledge of the world.

I finally have time to upload a bunch of pictures from Paris's Musee d'armee.

For some reason, the camera took terrible pictures indoors. Suffice to say, I got a new camera after this trip.

I studied history in college and found this book to be the best resource on WW1.. A World Undone by GJ Meyer. Easy to read and isn't dull like some history books can be.

Got hooked into A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 and about a hundred pages in it. Has anyone else read it? what do you think?

What is a good book to "understand" World War II? It could be from a political, technological, military or social perspective. As an example, I found G J Meyer's "A World Undone" to be a fascinating read on the political and military aspects of WWI.

Dan Carlin is so fun to listen to. If you enjoyed Blueprint for Armageddon make sure to pick up "Wrath of the Khans," about the rise and zenith of the Mongol Empire. You can listen to it 4 times through and still hear new things on every listen... trust me haha.

Also, if you're interested in WW1 literature, this is required reading: https://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403

BOOKS:

• If nothing else, I encourage everyone with even a modicum of interest in WWI to read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Marie Remarque, a German veteran of the Great War. It's a harrowing, brutal, and eye-opening look at the conditions that soldiers on all sides had to endure, and the terrible toll that the war extracted from the troops that served.
  
  
• For nonfiction, I highly recommend A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918. by G.J. Meyer. It's a comprehensive, accessible, informative single-volume history that helps tie together all of the many theaters, nations, and other factors that made up the world-changing conflict that we now know as WWI.

Hey folks. I used to be a big war history book buff back when I was a kid, but got out of it in later years. However playing some BF1 and realizing that my WWI knowledge was pretty spotty got me looking for a book to brush up. I recently finished this guy and wanted to say that I really recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1503508652&sr=8-5&keywords=WWI+history

Trying to do a comprehensive war overview book is always fraught with peril. There is so much to cover and you need to do justice to all the major events while not turning into just a continual series of dates and casualty numbers. This book does a great job of balancing covering the action on the battlefields along with the homefronts and other political topics. I also liked how it helped to connect you to some of the major characters and empires by giving small side-chapters to fill in the background on them (The Romanovs, Ludendorff, The Ottoman Empire). Way less dry than John Keegan's "The First World War." Probably the best full war history book that I've read, it's pretty amazing how much it crams in without being too much of a doorstop.

Barbara Tuchman was brilliant writer of history.

Albert Camus was a brilliant absurdist philosopher and novelist.

Jared Diamond has written some brilliant books at the intersection of anthropology and ecology. Another good book in this genre is Clive Ponting's A New Green History of the World.

Gwynne Dyer is an acclaimed military historian turned journalist on international affairs who has written a number of very engaging books on warfare and politics. His most recent book Climate Wars is the ONE book I would recommend to someone, if so limited, on the subject as it embodies both a wonderful synopsis of the science juxtaposed against the harsh realpolitiks and potential fates of humankind that may unfold unless we can manage to tackle the matter seriously, soon. Another great book on climate change is Bill McKibben's Deep Economy.

For social activists interested in ending world hunger and abject poverty, I can recommend: Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom; Nobel Prize winning micro-financier Muhammad Yunus' Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism; UN MDG famed economist Jeffrey Sach's End Of Poverty; and Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea

For anyone of Scottish heritage, I heartily recommend Arthur Hermann's How The Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It

For naval history buffs: Robert K. Massie's Dreadnought.

Last, but not least: Robert Pirsig's classic Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Enjoy!

THAT IS WHY WE HAD TO INVENT MODERN CIVILISATION

How the Scots invented the modern world by Arthur Herman

10/10

https://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

MFE,

We’ve had such a delightful string of evenings “together” that I’m only now finally finishing responding to your foreign film message. : )

I’ve seen Seven Samurai, but I think that’s the only one of Kurosawa’s that I’ve seen and I’m afraid I don’t remember it too well. What do you like about his works?

Watching the trailers, I see a lot of parallels to American westerns. How much influence did Kurosawa have on them or they on him?

Ran looks so elegant to me, but I can’t tell if that’s just the score and the way the trailer is cut. Dreams looks amazing. Also, as I watched the trailer, the voiceover wording going from “as a child” to “as a man” struck me. Are there things in Kurosawa’s films that speak to the man you have been, the man you are, and/or the man you are becoming (not that you need to become any different than you are, but we are all constantly changing and growing).

I haven’t seen Tampopo or the trilogy. You calling them tops means I definitely need to see them at some point. : )

Have I told you how much I love Fifth Element? Yet, I haven’t seen any of his others. I love, love, love that the right song was needed before the chase could commence. Oh, and how funny about the guy throwing up. You’d think that’d be par for the course with the driving that goes into a car chase, yet I’ve never seen that shown!

The line from Clockwise about him showing off his muscles and her egging him on reminded me of us: you showing your mental muscle in so many ways and me very much appreciating and enjoying your displays of intellectual prowess.

Nightwatch and Daywatch look mesmerizing. I don’t watch a lot of horror, but those look very good and well worth the chills.

Oh, how have I let myself slip into so much work and so few movies? La Vie En Rose looks amazing! : )

I’ll return the favor, but I notice as I think back on the foreign language films I enjoy that I’ve rarely seen any of them more than once or twice. I think that gets down to the whole multi-tasking thing and in-home media entertainment tending to be a backdrop for manual activities.

And now I’m laughing at how that came out, but I’m going to leave it in just in case you get a laugh out of it too. : )

So, the foreign film that really sticks out for me is Life is Beautiful. The idea that a man could have such a soul as to create that world of charming adventure for his child in a concentration camp blows me away.

(These are more in order of how much I can remember about them rather than in order of favorites.)

The next one I’ve seen enough to remember is Das Boot. War isn’t my first choice of relaxing subject matters, but I think it’s a beautiful film. It has that Ran elegance about it. While the war part isn’t a draw, I love technology and you know how I feel about water, so submarines are pretty amazing. I’ve enjoyed tremendously the ones (all docked) that I’ve toured.

The film 3 Iron (which seems available in its entirety is a quietly surreal piece that leaves you wondering at the end what really happened.

Pan’s Labrynth was visually complex with many scary and rough moments that were are richly detailed as they were discomforting.

O’Horton was just cute. It wasn’t a top favorite, but it’s a warm, sweet film.

The rest I have just the barest memories of, but they all were compelling enough that I’d watch them again if time allowed for it. They include [Like Water for Chocolate] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqm8_GjKDBc), Fanny and Alexander, and [Babette’s Feast] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvNifgj_dv4).

I feel like I have seen this one, but I’m not positive. : )

>And I love to make you smile

: ) You telling me that widens the one you’d already put there. : )

>How is it the Poms seem to have a corner on the Science-Fiction-Comedy?

Just from comparing the wiki pages on British humor and sci fi, I wonder if some of the fit is because the invented portions of people, worlds, and mechanisms are easy targets for sarcasm and the awkwardness of some to function in those unique and demanding settings for self-deprecation. Additionally, humor based on insensitivity to cultural differences can be more acceptable when the culture being joked about is fictional.

I think the inventiveness of Brits (in which the Scots seemed to play no mean role) plays well into a genre called a “literature of ideas” and that depends on the reader/viewer’s ability to be comfortable with new and unusual scientific explanations and solutions .

>Just plain not freezing properly and ruining it for one of the audience...letting someone down.

Oh, that plays into so many things we’ve talked about, doesn’t it? I’ve mentioned the utter enjoyment a woman can have being active around a man even when he prefers to be more staid, and the thought that you might worry even about your ability to be appropriately staid makes my heart go out to you. Yes, I do know the part, though, to do with worrying about letting someone down. Given our conversations about what I do not feel comfortable with in terms of adventure, mine seems to run the opposite course in worrying about my ability to be appropriately active without causing anyone emotional or physical harm.

>Had the old magazine kept moving along, I would probably still be doing it.

I will direct my wishes toward whatever you want to have happen whether it’s to be done with magazine editing or to have some opportunity that you would like materialize. I don’t think it’s a secret that I admire your mind, spirit, and writing. You have a gift, but how you will most enjoy that gift is completely up to you. : )

The Dakar video was amazing. That would be so awesome to do. I read a little bit about Dakar rally and learned what erg is. What would be your vehicle of choice for the rally?

Sama Amie seems to capture well the intensity, risk, and vibrance of the rally as well as the simple of joy of pursuing something complex and thrilling. : )

The headings are great on the picture of the issue cover you linked, and what a great image! : )

>My reporting writing isn't all that great.

I’m sure you know my default is both to beg to differ because of the high qualities I see in your writing while simultaneously deferring to your self-knowledge. Why do you think it isn’t great?

>At the eleventh hour the entire rally was cancelled due to terrorism/security concerns.

I’m so sorry that happened. The world will never know all the little dealings for good that get lost in the vast mis-shufflings of greed.

>Which one would you like me to post?

Please choose what you would like to give me. Your writing of any sort is a gift to me. I’d love for you to pick something out. : )

>sock...black the next day. And the next...

So if I see you in jet, onyx, ebony, obsidian, slate, or raven, I know something has gone terribly wrong, right? : )

>I have to try and figure out who's chopping onions in my front room, can't seem to find 'em.

Good to know I’m not the only one who has welled up on more than one occasion. You fill me with joy to the point of it overflowing onto my cheeks and past my through-my-tears smiles.

better lAte than never

Edit: corralling links

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0609809997?pc_redir=1410434164&robot_redir=1

I just picked up (but haven't started) Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter H. Wilson. From the reviews on Amazon, people generally seem to like it, but I haven't had a chance to start it myself. It does seem to be pretty comprehensive, but also dense. I have read another book by the the same author The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy which I did enjoy, so I can certainly recommend the author.

I'm conjecturing, because the book I read the fact in wasn't super clear (The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, by Peter H. Wilson - but my guess is, since it was common practice to drill pikemen constantly to march in lockstep; if you saw the tips of the pike dipping and swaying in relative unison, you know the pikemen had been drilled half to death and wouldn't break under shock.

If it was a mass of pike with no visible swaying, you could be the pikemen were inexperienced, and probably would break cohesion with a solid cavalry charge/close volley/push-of-pike.

I'm reading The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy at the moment and the first few chapters give a good overview of how the HRE operated at the time and during the war. It's pretty good, highly recommend it.

I think Gitmo is at once a good and a poor good analogy. Poor in that it has housed perhaps 10-50,000 fewer people, and that it lies outside of the United States. Good in that we know of it's existence and, myself as an American, are culpable for its crimes.

Many believe the German concentration/work/death camps were outside of Germany. To some extent that is true--the major killing camps were in Poland. But many of the labor camps were in Germany and their death rates were non trivial.
A link to the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nazi_concentration_camps

As I'm sure you know Hitler was not secretive about his attitude towards the Jews; it was one of the reasons he was elected. You cannot fully absolve a democracy of the crimes that its leadership commits. Krystalnacht was a nationwide phenomenon of "common Germans." Some believe it was a test to see how willing Germans would be to embrace violence towards Jews.

A book you may find of interest:
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Willing-Executioners-Ordinary-Holocaust/dp/0679772685

And if you are of the documentary generation (or even if you aren't), this one is excellent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)

You said there is a lot of evidence that the death camps were widely unknown outside of their operation. Can you point me in the direction of that data?

Thanks.

Psychology or abuse, you say? Why not try Hitler's Willing Executioners? It's a disturbing non-fiction book about the Holocaust and the role of ordinary Germans in it.

To put themselves into power Hitler and the Nazis built on long-standing cultural Antisemitism and blamed the Jews for the humiliating outcome of the First World War and the economic crisis that came after it. Check out this book: Hitler's Willing Executioners for a better understanding of how average Germans were capable of atrocities.

Daniel Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, was in part a response to Browning's book. It has been a while since I read it, but he basically argued that the ideas of antisemitism were so deeply rooted in the German psyche that the NSDAP just had to exploit that in order to get followers. So, the question arises whether or not centuries-old antisemitism is a part of mid-twentieth century German national identity/nationalism or if it is something else as a legitimate reason for action.

Edited for grammar.

Calling Japanese internment camps the "EXACT SAME THING" is ridiculous. Anyway, of course Germans knew about the death camps.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard

>Robert Gellately, a historian at Oxford University, conducted a widely respected survey of the German media before and during the war, concluding that there was "substantial consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans" in aspects of the Holocaust, and documenting that the sight of columns of slave laborers were common, and that the basics of the concentration camps, if not the extermination camps, were widely known.[20] The German scholar, Peter Longerich, in a study looking at what Germans knew about the mass murders concluded that: "General information concerning the mass murder of Jews was widespread in the German population."

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_Holocaust#The_Holocaust:_What_the_average_Germans_knew, further sources are cited in the article
  
  Anne Frank was hiding in an attic, and still heard about it:
  >"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed."
  
  >- October 9, 1942
  
  
• http://annefrank.com/about-anne-frank/diary-excerpts/
  
  A book if you would like to know more: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679772685/qid=1075330351/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7592414-1779069?v=glance&s=books
  
  I understand how pervasive propaganda was in Germany, but if you stepped outside into the rest of Europe, it was all over the papers, all over the radio, everyone knew. If you have evidence that they were somehow still ignorant, please share it.

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military

Israel's Nightmare: Homegrown neo-Nazis in the Holy Land

Patrol 36: An Israelis neo-Nazi Organization Living in Israel

P.S. Of the 12 million people killed by the Nazis, they killed six million other individuals who weren't Jewish.

Very true. I can't imagine trying to have children read Ordinary Men. Anne Frank is a much better introduction.

The only thing I can recommend is Ordinary Men by Dan Browning.

Non-Canadian link

Its vast majority situational. I worked in the meat industry for a while and a lot of the guys have to develop a sense of humor about it cause it fucks with you a little. Gleefully can also be a coping mechanism, very few people are truly screwed up. This is a good book about it.

I've just ordered Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men: Amazon

The Rape of Nanking: Amazon

FYI, I just provided links so you could look them up quickly - I don't have any Amazon affiliation or anything.

I should have waited to finalize my order, because now I want to buy the book you mentioned as well.

I would recommend reading [Ordinary Men] (http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068) a book that uses the narrative about a group of ordinary Germans from all walks of life committed some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust: many Jews were not killed in chambers (the final solution) where their screams could be ignored. These "ordinary men" were forced to take jews out of villages and shoot them in cold blood, even infants.

The author uses it as a cautionary tale of the horrors of brainwashing propaganda and war; how average joes can be convinced that what they're doing is ok because it is sanctioned by a higher authority and therefor rationalize it to themselves. For more on that you can read about Milgram's psychological experiments, described in [Obedience to Authority] (http://www.amazon.com/Obedience-Authority-Experimental-Perennial-Classics/dp/006176521X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342748841&sr=1-1&keywords=obedience+to+authority). In the 1950s people were insisting that the Holocaust was a strictly German thing, that it happened once and never again. Milgram proved that most Americans would be willing to inflict pain on others to the point of death (they truly thought the actor was being killed by shocks) as long as some authority sanctioned it. He showed that even in our "good country" if an authority figure tells you to do something, you place all responsibility on him and become willing to kill. Afterwards participants would say things like "I felt bad for hurting the guy so bad, but I wanted to do my job well" and things like that.


People have always been quick to deny involvement, or claim to be just doing their small part. It's complacency towards hate that leads to these atrocities, not millions of hateful people.

I've not read this, but a good friend did and loved it. Ordinary Men.

Read this:
Ordinary Men

Another parallel work is "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher R. Browning.

http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068

I think everybody should read one of these books, so they understand the consequence of "going along."

There’s a book called Ordinary Men that delves deep into this. But yes, yes there were.

While that might be true...

Other people have historically believed to the same thing only to realize with great horror that they are being shot at by their own armed forces.

I would like to hear your explanation on military ethics and the Laws of War, and why that would effectively prevent what he described from happening.

While high-brow theory is certainly interesting, what he described is essentially human nature/psychology supported by history.
Ordinary Men

If you are interested in a guide to the outbreak of WW1, check out Christopher Clark's 'The Sleepwalkers'.

Rather than 'blaming' a side it analyses the series of events and argues that Europe 'Sleepwalked' into WW1 rather than a good guy, bad guy narrative (not suggesting that anyone here has presented such a narrative).

https://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485700853&sr=8-1&keywords=sleepwalkers

I loved this one

https://www.amazon.de/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668

but I have a favour for Clark.

That does! Thank you:) I think it is too! I know most people realy only focus on the Nazi part of it all, but there’s so much to German history! (Like the Barbaric Tribes).


World Wars are super interesting! Have tou ever read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque? There’s “sequel” to that book called The Road Back. It looks at what happens to a (German) soldier after World War I ended. That’s supposed to be an accurate representation of soldier’s sentiments at the time. Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger is a (German) soldier’s experience during WWI. Holocaust by Bullets, Ordinary Men, Sleepwalkers, Europe’s Last Summer, and A Woman In Berlin are some pretty incredible books about these wars. Don’t know of you’ve heard of them or have read them, but thought I’d made the suggestion! Movie wise I’d say Generation War if you haven’t see it yet:) The Darkest Hour movie was great if you haven’t seen that! I’m planning to watch Babylon Berlin soon. Don’t know if you were looking for suggestions but I thought I’d make some!

If you haven’t, I HIGHLY recommend reading a book called Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. It is the true story written from documents, interviews, and eye witness statements about how a simple Polish reserve police force became a death squad, murdering their own people. At the end it goes into social experiments on people conforming to authority figures such as The Milgram Experiment and The Stanford Prison Experiment.

It is extremely powerful and I actually had to put the book down and stop reading a few times because the descriptions of events were so heartbreaking. I cannot recommend this book enough.

> How do you think the citizens are convinced to stand by and let evil happen?

I don't think they need convincing in the first place, honestly. I think so long as it doesn't effect them directly they'll just watch it happen, perfectly content. The only time they'll react is if they are worried they will be next. If they can benefit, or be convinced they'll benefit, they'll willingly take part.

> Because they agree to follow the "social contract"

I don't think there is such as thing. If its a contract, then it can be violated by either party. Since there are no consequences if the gov't breaks it, its really just imposed rules from the elites. Whatever the origins of the idea of the social contract, I think ultimately its meaningless. Those in power have power, those that aren't, don't, and that's all there ever was and will be.

> It was true in Nazi Germany and it's true in many countries today.

Right, we seem to agree here, basically, if someone says "Sure, its fine to kill Jews." then pretty much everyone goes, "Oh, well I guess there isn't a moral problem here at all, lets take their stuff."

> That's why it's so important not to be a sheeple, and to stand up against corruption, evil, wars, and the demonization of "the others" as scapegoats for the powerful in corrupt/evil countries, among other things.

I don't disagree, exactly, but I don't think humans are capable of this. There is an incredible amount of research that shows that people are pretty crappy. The Milgram Experiment is a good example of what we have to work with here. Even if people resist initially (The book "Ordinary Men" goes into detail about this, I admit I have not read it, for it would be a very depressing read I'm not convinced I want to know the details of.) they eventually conform to whatever they are told too, no matter how terrible it is.

From the link, "Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever." Emphasis mine. Everyone wants to think that they'd be in that small (and ultimately pointless, sadly) minority, but the truth is we'd never know unless actually faced with the situation. (Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is another good book with a rather depressing message, although a fictional story I think its unfortunately bang-on).

Given all this (some of which is well researched, some of it is just my opinion), I find talk of standing up to corruption and evil, etc, to be well intentioned, but ultimately hopeless. I think humans are essentially self-serving and evil, and that fear of consequences is usually the only thing preventing them from running wild.

> Sorry to slap your lightheartedness with some realism, lol. :D

Nah, we are just flappin the gums after all :) But seriously, I find humanity to be terrifying and extremely depressing.

>To be fair, a lot of Nazi soldiers were just following orders out of fear.

Okay, I need to see anything you have to support that. I have never read anything about Nazi Germany that suggests that. Not in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" or anywhere else.

I did read a comprehensive analysis of non-Nazis in Poland in "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland". The conclusion the authors made were that nearly all of these people were not doing out of fear, but because it was their task/job/duty/pick your definition. Like a Bell Curve, there were fervent believers, and those who resisted but fear was a small portion of the motivation of them.

This analysis has its critics, but they don't state anything like what you've stated. So if you have anything that has looked at primary documents (And cites them) and comes to the conclusion you've stated I'd love to read it. Because it does not mesh with anything I've seen or read before, either as an analysis/historical accounting or the criticisms of those works.

I would suggest Ordinary Men for much more information about this very subject.

Has he read Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor? It's an amazing book, also very detailed (560 pages).

Some of my reccommendations

​

Anthony Beevor's books on Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin

​

Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place about the Siege of Dien Bien Phu

​

Osprey's book on Infantry Anti Tank Tactics. I thoroughly enjoyed this and gave me some insight into tactis that I can try out in the Combat Mission games.

​

Some great history books:

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
   
   
2. Stalingrad
   
   
3. The Interrogators
   
   
4. On Roads
   
   The first and last are not military history but are quite a good and different reads for someone interested in history and facts.

Well, Sir Richard Evans IS an esteemed historian specializing in Nazi Germany.

Enjoy:

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Third-Reich-Richard-Evans/dp/0143034693/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321313575&sr=8-1

> Can you show me where it says socialists can't be authoritarian, violent, racist, etc?

I never made that argument. So that's a strawman and I don't see how it adds to the discussion.

>It seems the argument is, "None of these people were real socialists because they were racists and/or nationalists."

Again, I don't know who is making that argument. Because that's not what has ever been said.

>And yet for some reason, when it comes to the Germans, it's always, "Well, they weren't really socialists because they were racists and white supremacists..." or whatever.

No, it's that they weren't really socialists because they weren't really socialists.

>But it seems those who disagree simply find it sufficient enough to cut and paste links to Huffington Post, Reader Digest-level academics

Now you stoop to throwing attacks at experts because their credentials don't suit you?

Ian Kershaw is a Huffington Post level academic?

William Shirer, who actually saw the Nazi party's rise?

How about Richard Evans, who was knighted for his scholarship?

>Despite the change of name, however, it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth from, socialism. True, as some have pointed out, its rhetoric was frequently egalitarian, it stressed the need to put common needs above the needs of the individual, and it often declared itself opposed to big business and international finance capital. Famously, too, anti-Semitism was once declared to be “the socialism of fools.” But from the very beginning, Hitler declared himself implacably opposed to Social Democracy and, initially to a much smaller extent, Communism: after all, the “November traitors” who had signed the Armistice and later the Treaty of Versailles were not Communists at all, but the Social Democrats.

I'll take the work of actual experts who have studied this far more than me or you.

>I think you totally lack sense of proportions when you lament this as a "serious crime".

It is, by my standards. But it pales in comparison to the crimes of the Allies and Soviets.

>Rather, the Jews were victims of circumstances of war - circumstances they were not exactly innocent of bringing about.

Remember that some Jews were just regular people doing honest work. (A minority, I think 5-10% were manual laborers by NSDAP estimates.) Some probably remained NS supporters, even after the 1935 race laws.

The German Jews tried to get the international Jewish groups not to wage economic war on Germany. Emigration was obviously encouraged by NS policy, but it wasn't possible for everyone.

Some Jews had deep roots in Germany, and had fought in the first war... many mischlings fought for Germany against the Soviets and Allies.

(Although obviously we're not just talking about German Jews in the camps, but hopefully you get my point that we can still consider them as individuals.)

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers by Bryan Mark Riggs

http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587

Shows how Hitler personally reviewed up to 150K records of men who were part jewish and signed the papers (that we still have) clearing the way for them to serve in the German military. So this does not prove anything about Hitler's family but add in the DNA evidence we now have and the fact that Hitler destroyed his father's home town by turning it into a artillery target range it seems clear to me that Hitler thought he was part jewish and hated the idea quite a bit.

To me the fact that he signed all the waivers indicates he wanted to give other young men that were part jewish a path similar to his own after he fought in WWI for Germany.

> Yes I do.

I wasn't aware of this. I'll look into it.

> Don't you think this is a bit dishonest?
>
> It seems to me that you're trying to pass off sources like this in order to fool people who aren't read up on the subject.

I wasn't attempting to do this, but in retrospect I concede that my use of this source was a poor decision.

> In what way are these people libertarian.

Isn't Anarcho-Syndicalism and Communalism (or democratic confederalism) libertarian?

> Oh, was this some sort of half baked smear?

This is the second time I got this response and it really annoys me. I was arguing that political violence is inherent to any political power and how treating political violence perpetrated by the USSR as a criticism of it is unfair, because if you look into any society, no matter how nice their beliefs are, they will have committed political violence. The libertarian regimes I brought up were just examples to prove this point.

I wasn't trying to make a "half baked smear". I can't imagine how someone could read my response and take away this conclusion.

> Do you know what libertarianism is, because I don't think you do.

What does libertarianism mean to you?

I will check it out.

Currently finishing Anotomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

And the similarities make me wake up screaming daily. Seriously we are goose-stepping to plan.

Hate on news
Demonization on religion
Blame immigration
Sprinkle apathy and complacency of public and leaders

What gives me hope is the judges who put a stay. That didn't happen in either Italy or Germany.

> So we should wage war against everyone who has bad ideas?

If that bad idea involves the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, then yes, I'd say we should try and stop them, forcefully if necessary

> And how would one tell the difference between nazis and non-nazis?

You just need to know the signs to look for. If you want to learn more about them, I'd suggest reading Anatomy of Fascism or The Origins of Totalitarianism, both of which give you a good understanding of how to identify actual fascism. Also, while I'm linking to Amazon, I'd also like to recommend It Can't Happen Here, which is a novel written in the 1930s about how the rise in Fascism would look in America

http://theleder.com/docs/Misc/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

According to Robert Paxton (author of Anatomy of Fascism), fascism in United States would likely be religious

>For example, while a new fascism would necessarily diabolize some enemy, both internal and external, the enemy would not necessarily be Jews. An authentically popular American fascism would be pious, antiblack, and, since September 11, 2001, anti-Islamic as well;

I think Christian Theocratic Republic would manifest itself trough the five stages of fascism as described in the book and article above:

1. Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
   
2. Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
   
3. Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
   
4. Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business magnates.
   
5. Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy
   
   >The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.
   
   ps. I like Paxton's take on fascism. He sees fascism as strategy to achieve power. Fascist movements can
   have very opportunistic turns in their ideology and policies.

>essentially fascist

Stop using that word like it has no historical definition. There are a lot of things you could critique about the current Turkish state but the idea that it's equivalent to some kind of mid-20th century form of militaristic nationalism is absurd.

Hitler also stated quite clearly:
>Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not.' - Adolf Hitler, Sunday Express, 28 September 1930

That's basically the underlying point of marxism/socialism/communism. That private property (not to be confused with personal property in the minds of most leftists) has to be eliminated. If fascists are against it, then they cannot be real socialists by definition.

Fascism is not anti-capitalist. It borrowed imagery and language from socialism because that is the idea that dominated mass politics at the time. Without doing that it would have failed as a popular movement. That would be like saying you are against affordable healthcare (I don't mean the controversial ACA here) in American politics today. Everyone wants healthcare to be cheaper and it would be political suicide to say you didn't want that. Likewise, Europe just before and after WW1 only wanted social programs. Some more socialist than others.

Additionally, when Fascism was being created, there was no revolutionary popular movement on the right. The revolutionary right-wing had to borrow key ideas from socialists in order to define their own movement. They had no intention of keeping bona fide socialist ideas, but rather corrupting these ideas for their own purposes.

I'll quote from The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what fascism is and the danger it poses.

>Whenever fascist parties acquired power, however, they did nothing to carry out these anticapitalist threats. By contrast, they enforced with the utmost violence and thoroughness their threats against socialism. Street over turf with young communists were among their most powerful propaganda images.

Libertarians of all people should be especially sensitive to politicians who say one thing but do another. If a politician says they are libertarian, but does not act like it, then they are actually a sympathizer with the political actions they take, not the words.

Wait what? Since when are we doing the "guilty until proven innocent" shit? I thought first you'd need evidence for her being a fascist,... oh right she's a right winger, normal rules don't apply to her.

Idk man, I just go with the stuff 5 experts on fascism said because, you know they studied that crap their whole life.

here a paragraph from an article about fascism and which current politicians fit the description:

>Robert Paxton (author of: The Anatomy of Fascism) agrees: "I don't think it helps very much to use this inflammatory term [fascism] about Trump. 'Populist demagogue' works fine." So does Payne: "The Sweden Democrats and Le Pen movement in France really are just right-wing movements, in the sense of being conservative movements. There's nothing categorically fascist about them. They are outside the general consensus of center-left politics in these countries, and people want to find special pejoratives to apply to them."

> Think of a medieval market where people met at a specific place at a specific time to directly exchange goods

they didn't. They used coins. Minted in silver, roughly 230 pennies to the pound.

>Is this a market?

Yes because they had buyers, sellers, and price tags.

>Is a system of semi-formal gift exchange a market in some sense?

no, it's a gift exchange. Push, not pull. In general:

give someone a gift, you're typically not obligated to reciprocate.

In a white elephant multi-person rotation exchange, everyone must throw one gift into the pot in order to participate. No this isn't a market.

>I think your definition is perfectly reasonable btw, it just seems more like a personal rubric.

It is; that's why I'm trying to see who can poke holes on it. I got it from a Science Paper involving non-humans (mice). So it's an objective standpoint for something not familiar with those price tags (mice).

Hi!

My name is Ed McDonald and I'm a fantasy author. My debut is going to be released across 6 languages in 2017/18, so I have some insights on this. I am looking forward to Blackwing being published so that I don't have to write this as a disclaimer all the time :D. I'm also speaking on a panel about getting published in fantasy at the London Book Fair in March.

Firstly, read fantasy. All the fantasy. But it's more important to read the things that are currently being published than it is the classics. You won't learn much from Tolkien these days, times have changed since LOTR. Instead, if it's epic fantasy you want to write, then you need to read Rothfuss, Sanderson, Abercrombie, Lawrence and Lynch. They are the big sellers for epic. If you want to write YA stuff then read YA stuff. This is not just because those writers are great, but because it will teach you the market trends.

Next though, reading outside the genre is great, but only to find books that you enjoy so that you can cut them apart. My guilty pleasure? Lee Child's Jack Reacher books. They frequently have glaring plot holes or don't make sense, and are full of deus ex machina resolutions or just "and then Jack blew his head off" finales, but the pace and the simplicity keeps me turning the page. And from that, I learned that I much prefer a Reacher novel to trudging through 5 pages of world building at a time, so when I write fantasy, I write fast paced thrillers which is what then sold Blackwing around the world. I wouldn't have gained that style without reading outside the genre.

Finally, I guess I'm cheating because I have some degrees in history, but if you're writing historically inspired settings, you ought to be reading some history. Don't try to plough through dry academic texts if you aren't a historian though - I'm an academic and even I find those dry as sand. Get the popular stuff, even kid's history, just to try to soak up the feel of the period. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England is essential for those that want to gain a quick overview.

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486802982&sr=1-1&keywords=the+time+traveller%27s+guide+to+medieval+england

I write a blog that mainly focuses on assisting aspiring authors such as yourself and you may find some of it helpful.

https://edmcdonaldwriting.com/2017/01/25/you-are-not-george-rr-martin-how-to-get-published-in-the-grimdark-era-of-fantasy/

There's this, albeit a different time period: http://smile.amazon.com/dp/1439112908/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=BKTCY0V8K7XD&coliid=I1B9AZ44XS0SEO

and also this fun desktop background: http://i.imgur.com/zXFY5.jpg

edit: of course a dozen people have already posted this - what was I thinking?

It can be dangerous to go alone. Take this!

PART II

BUT there are problems with your prose too

There are times where you really do TELL us stuff that you should not.

>We had no idea of the horrors that lay ahead, only that the world we left was not alone. Someone had made a life here, someone not of our land, so it stood to reason that there were more of them out there and a new land that perhaps we could call home.


This is a bad TELL. Don’t let us know there is more horrors. Let us discover them as the narrator does.

Don’t tell us that people made a life here. SHOW us that they did.

> the scene was a thousand times more unsettling than before

This almost made me puke. This is terrible. DO NOT SAY SOMETHING WAS 1000X MORE UNSETTLING. Show us this. It is that simple. SHOW us why it was unsettling. Describe the scene, and let us revel in the quiet horror that you paint.

> I understood then that he was never a coward, but that he simply could not bear the sight of more death. Ironically, his exile brought him in contact with more death than we ever saw at home.


A thousand times NO. You CANNOT tell someone the point of the story. You MUST trust your reader to figure it out. If you do, then your ending will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

At other times, you use ineffective language:

> and cities buzzed like beehives,

This really tells us nothing. It really doesn’t. HOW do they buzz? What are the people doing (or what does the narrator imagine they are doing) that they are buzzing?

OK, on the whole there is middling-to-bad prose, with moments of just absolute mind-boggling brilliance. If you can practice your prose and get it all up the point of the first 4 paragraphs, you will dazzle all those who read your stuff.

You are a LONG-ASS way from this. But the fact is that you can do it. You have done it. You just need to train your writing so that you do it all the time.

So, get to it.

WORLD BUILDING/CONSISTENCY

There are a LOT of problems here. You don’t really lay out a accurate view of the black death. You have the characters describe artifacts that they have never encountered – using words that are commonly used by people familiar with these artifacts. You have them know things about the world they cannot (e.g. like which houses are better built, when they have never seen houses like it).

This is a major problem – but it is an EASY problem to solve

First, decide when you think this occurred. THEN, read a 2-6 books each on the periods of time – both in the Americas and Europe. This will give you a sense of what is reasonable to expect in the Europe setting and what the native Americans would be used to seeing (and not seeing).

If you want to go for the middle ages, I suggest the following (for Europe): The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England. I have no good suggestions for the Americas.

Again, as written the world you have is not good enough to be credible, but this is readily solved via some research.

So, get to it.

CONCLUSIONS

I don’t say this often (ever?). You have the beginnings of an amazing story. Your strongest asset is your moments of amazing prose, and the fact that you have already established compelling characters with so little. If you expand this, while maintaining what is good and correcting what is bad, you will have quite a story. But there is much work to be done. You need a more fleshed out plot. You need more -- and more active -- characters, and you need a more believable story. NONE of these are problems that cannot be solved.

So…Get to it. :)

The book I read.

I don't know about pictures, but the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson is fantastic and covers US involvement thoroughly.

Also the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Ron Rosenbaum is downright chilling. He actually lived in Nazi Germany.

While I want to agree chapters 5-9 say otherwise

Actually, I'm not. Let me be very clear that I am not saying that National Socialism and Communism (especially Stalinism) are the same, they aren't. I'm saying that the methods used to implement the two and the rhetoric used was very similar. So similar that Communist academics had to make up these stupid terms like "reactionary" in order to created a division where there wasn't one.

Both the Bulshivek movement in Russia and the Nazi movement in Germany leveraged the "workers" against the aristocracy. Stalin and Hitler (while hating each other bitterly) complimented each other on occasions for doing what they though was correct. Stalin congratulated Hitler on the Night of Long Knives, Hitler praised Stalin's purification of the Communist party from Jewish influence.

Read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich if you really want to understand the methods employed to bring the Nazi's into power. If it doesn't remind you of the way the Bolsheviks came into power then you aren't paying attention.

The impetus for trying to separate the two only stems from people trying to maintain that Communism is a force for good. An argument that I disagree with, but think is not injured by acknowledging that the same rhetoric and revolutionary devices were used in both the Bolshevik and Nazi rises to power.

Edit: A book I'm reading right now does a great job of demonstrating this in a scholarly way. The most jarring thing about the book is how resistant some academics are to allow this comparison. Very much in the vein of your comment. They see the comparison as a threat (something I don't really understand), instead of looking at it as an academic work.

If you're interested, read Rise & Fall of the Third Reich.

Hitler was an evil political genius. He played political parties off each other to rise to power, then did the same thing on a global scale until 1942 or so. He'd wipe out members of his own side to further his rise to political power or secure it.

I'd say he's on the Mount Rushmore of diplomacy with Talleyrand. (Again - perhaps the most evil dude that ever lived, but breathtakingly good at diplomacy.)

Check out this book. https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686 Written by a corespondent who lived in Germany at the time and who had access to all the Nuremberg evidence and many personal journals of prominent Nazis. The first third of the book takes place before Hitler assumes the Chancellorship of Germany.

TLDR; He played up to peoples hatred of the Versailles treaty, belief that they didn't lose WWI, they were betrayed, mostly by the Jews and the democratic government, and he got support from the military by promising to break the treaty and rebuild the armed forces. Then he won some key elections.

Desculpe, só deu para ver o vídeo hoje.

Mas ele começa mal, batendo nessa história do nazismo ser um movimento de esquerda. Difícil, né? Felizmente, eu acabei de ler um livro fascinante sobre o nazismo, entitulado “the rise and fall of the third Reich” (fui atrás do link da Amazon para você: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686), um livro contando quase que semana a semana como os nazistas tomaram o poder. O livro é de 1960. Vou resumir para você: os nazistas eram de extrema direita, como os facistas.

Aí vem falar da Economist, e começa perguntando: “mas quem é essa Economist?”. Para saber essa vale a pena ler outro livro: “the pursuit of reason”, da Ruth Dudley Edwards, que é um livro contando a história da revista, publicado no seu aniversário de 150 anos. (Infelizmente, esse livro está esgotado. A minha cópia eu comprei em um sebo). A Economist é a publicação com mais credibilidade no mundo, há 175 anos defendendo os mesmos princípios. Os Agnelli de fato compraram uma participação minoritária na revista — mas a independência do conselho editorial se mantém.

Mas o melhor jeito de defender a credibilidade da revista é ler os seus artigos e avaliá-los pelo que eles são. Nesse caso volta a pergunta principal: com o quê do artigo deles sobre o Bolsonaro você discorda?

Leave this on your toilet tank: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686/

All the podcasts already mentioned are amazing, I highly recommed Hardcore History and History of Rome to start. [Western] history begins with the Greeks and the Romans, I personally find the Romans far more fascinating (and History of Rome covers it all, sorta, hooray!). A great read for the Greeks is Persian Fire by Holland (already mentioned and my favorite history author). You can continue learning about Rome by listening to 12 Byzantine Rulers by Lars Brownworth. If you learn Roman history you follow a timeline from 750 BC to 1450 AD. In Our Time is produced by the BBC and covers a ton of subjects.

Almost every old text is already posted on Librivox, and lots of lesser know works. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and The History of the Peloponnesian War are two very famous ones. I personally enjoy Jacob Abbott with Richard I-III being pretty good. It's all read by volunteers so some tolerance is expected.

You have months if not years of free podcasts to listen to, however I also love Audible for history. One of my favorites is The History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill, all four volumes are on there; it covers mostly British history, but much of Europe and all of American history (his telling of the Revolutionary and Civil wars are amazing) from before Romans to 1900 AD. You can also listen to the whole book if you liked Brownworths podcast on Eastern Rome/Byzantium.

Since you don't know where to start I'll just list some of my favorites. The Vikings influence on history is quite enthralling. The story of the fall of the Roman Republic is the best there is. Hannibal of Carthage is easily one of the most famous generals of all time, so you might as well enjoy the Battle of Cannae.

One of my favorite reads is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, it's like the tv show Band of Brothers...but you're Hitlers brother, and you learn how frighteningly easy it all was (and you get a great understanding of Russia). Honestly though, just listen to all of Dan Carlin's podcasts, my favorites being Bubonic Nukes and Prophets of Doom (this one takes a while to get going, but the decent into madness is fascinating). Understand that not everything is going to be accurate, so enjoy the stories but dont focus on memorizing the details, and if something interests you enough seek out some deeper material on it.

edited some more links.

I'm not a scholar so I can only give a short answer: Because Germans were desperate and Hitler turned the country around rapidly.

William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a pretty good source of information on this. He even devotes some time in the book to his incredulity that the Germans easily believed bold faced lies told by the state press.

No. They didn't. The Jews were not secretly behind the Nazis.

The very first thing to do is to stop watching conspiracy videos. It's nonsensical half truths and outright lies. And there are a metric fuck ton of videos out there trying to make Hitler look good. If you don't have time to read something actually comprehensive like https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

You could watch non-conspiracy bullshit videos. This one, while not perfect, is fairly comprehensive and based upon the above book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEw0RIaYrtE

Try asking in /r/AskHistorians for specific questions or recommendations.

Yeah... scares the shit out of me.

Read like something from this book.

SHHHHH dude. NOOOO. KEEP IT ON THE DOWNLOW!

I don't want the Islamic Truck of Tolerance to pay me a visit.

Your savior

Douglas Murray - Strange Death of Europe

Douglas Murraylla on todella hyvää näkemystä Euroopan tilanteesta ja tuo kirja on varmasti asiaa vielä enemmän avaava.

O último foi este: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472942248

Recomendo.

Are you sure about that? I'm not very learned yet, but I read one of John McWhorter's books and pretty much the whole thing is him talking about how there are certain grammatical concepts like 'do' that had to come from Celtic languages. After all it's a pretty unique thing and the Celtic languages are the only ones that have something just like it. And in any case, Early Modern English sounds like way too late for it to appear. I think I remember reading that those grammatical trends were incorporated into spoken English pretty much immediately, although they didn't show up in writing until a couple centuries after the Norman Invasion, when people started to actually write in English again.

You may like this book in that case! It's a good read

Though If you listen to McWhorter there's a whole lot of other Celtic words that we don't usually regard as such. Which has always made sense to me. I never understood how Celtic languages were supposed to have had 0 influence on English given the history of pre-existing populations before the Anglo-Saxons came in.

Thanks for the info! Linguistics is fascinating to me. Especially since you used the word bastard to describe English, I'm reminded of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter. It's one of my favorite books and it does try to explain why the impact of other languages was seemingly higher on English. It's very entertaining too and not just "...for a linguistics book".

This is a pretty good book ... Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Goldberg


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587


This one is only in German:
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jüdisch_versippt

Kapos still supported the system. Whether they got a nice chocolate bar out of it or not.

--------------

They knew this and they still supported the party. That's not getting into the Jewish German military members whom also supported the Nazi party.

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700613587/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502748528&sr=8-1&keywords=Hitler%27s+Jewish+Soldiers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Gancwajch

Just because a group can find an Uncle Tom [a self-hating gay person like Milo] doesn't mean that they suddenly can't be bigoted.

Group 13

Żagiew

Judenrat

Jewish Ghetto Police


Abraham Gancwajch



Stephanie von Hohenlohe

Stella Kübler

Alfred Nossig

Chaim Rumkowski

Henric Streitman


Józef Szeryński

Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln


Hitler's Jewish Soldiers


Uncovered: new evidence of Jewish movie moguls’ extensive collaboration with Nazis in the 1930s


The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler

>"To continue doing business in Germany after Hitler's ascent to power, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films that attacked the Nazis or condemned Germany's persecution of Jews."


The Transfer Agreement

>The Transfer Agreement is Edwin Black's compelling, award-winning story of a negotiated arrangement in 1933 between Zionist organizations and the Nazis to transfer some 50,000 Jews, and $100 million of their assets, to Jewish Palestine in exchange for stopping the worldwide Jewish-led boycott threatening to topple the Hitler regime in its first year.

Please read

Read this and get back to me.

https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893

You do realize it's an article ABOUT a book right? What do you want an Amazon link so you can purchase it for yourself?

https://www.amazon.com/001-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893

Give this a read:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

You can buy it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893

My bad, not the "poorest" ones, but the "richest" of the poor. This includes farmhands, bydlos, and farmers. Some of which that were starving and didn't turn in expected crop yields and got turned into gulags. As for some of the other cases, The Gulag Archipelago does a good job with first hand accounts of the prisoners of the gulags. Including the talk of "cripples"(ill/disfigured) such as:
>90 I THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
Generalissimo into issuing the order to arrest all those cripples
over again, without any new charges! It was even disadvantageous,
both economically and politically, to clog the meat grinder with
its own refuse. But Stalin issued the order anyway. Here was a
case in which a historical personality simply behaved capriciously
toward historical necessity.

The orphans:

>The mid-1930s witnessed the peak of persecution of perceived political enemies, with millions of Soviet citizens imprisoned and hundreds of thousands executed.[30] Up until 1937, there were no specific guidelines on how to treat the children of these “enemies of the people”. Yet after the Great Purge there were "...at least several hundred thousand children [that] lost their parents". Now the government was forced to confront the problem of managing this new category of orphans.[31]

>In 1937, the Politburo decided to accommodate children of the enemies of the people in normal orphanages administered by the Narkompros. Educational staff underwent training by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), and the orphans’ names were kept on record.[32] This reflects the Communist Party’s theory of socially inherited criminality, often informally described by the traditional Russian proverb, “an apple never falls far from the tree”. Orphanages existed not only to provide welfare, but also to prevent counter-revolutionary ideas from contaminating society.[33]

>There were no official orders to discriminate against children of enemies of the people.[34] Yet orphanage staff often beat, underfed, and abused such pupils.[35] Any misbehavior was understood as the product of a counter-revolutionary upbringing, and punished harshly.[36] Treating children like budding criminals had diverse effects. In some cases, the induced "class guilt" inspired orphans to prove their loyalty to the ideals of Communism. In other cases abusive treatment was to incite resentment toward the state.[37]


>If judged to be “socially dangerous,” the NKVD sent orphans to either a colony for young delinquents or a Gulag labor camp.[38] The tendency was to place all difficult orphans in colonies, which sought to re-educate children using a labor regime.[39] Children over fifteen were liable for at least five years in camp for being a “family member of a traitor to the motherland”.[40]




>[On the same topic]Polish Orphans of Tengeru focuses on the story of 123 children who were brought to Canada in 1949 at the end of an epic journey that began with the mass deportations of Poles in 1940 to the slave labour camps of the Soviet Gulag in the Arctic, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Then, in June 1941, the Nazi dictator turned against the Soviet one. Stalin was suddenly in need of help.

>As a condition of a new alliance with the West, Stalin agreed to release his Polish prisoners, and to allow the formation of a Polish army under the command of General Władysław Anders, who had been held in the infamous Lubyanka Prison. By that time, many prisoners had died and the survivors had little chance of getting out of the country, but Anders succeeded in getting his army evacuated to the Middle East, and to take some 50 thousand civilians out with him, including thousands of orphaned children, with him.

>[Further accounts on the topic] his book is a unique description of the Stalin's Children’s Gulag. It is Russian original of the book with the same title in English. It contains several narratives. The first one, “Orphans of Communism”, is a historical overview of the orphan’s GULAG. Described are the barbaric laws, the scales of the catastrophe, the Russian criminal environment as a bearer of a special folklore—the song and musical culture of the prisons and concentration camps. English translations some of these songs are provided. The second narrative is a translation of the twenty most popular Russian street's and thief's songs in English. Then goes a thief's cant dictionary (Gulag's folklore). The next one is a main narrative of this book: an adventure story “I Am Your Prisoner for Life”. It is based on recollections from author’s experience surviving at the Center for the Intake and Evaluation of Displaced Juveniles (DPR), situated in city Luga during 1946–1948, after his parents were thrown into prison. The pictures of everyday reality go on: the stealing of food and clothes from starving children, humiliations, scuffles, bullying, assaults and batteries, sex and rape, which could be shocking even for those accustomed to Hollywood productions. The boy overcomes his terror, betrays, and denounces the ringleaders. According to the thief’s canons, a traitor must die, and the boy is punished by stabbing. He survives, escapes from the DPR, and finds his way to his mother's prison camp. This book, with a fascinating plot and amazing, unconventional musical arts, was narrated in a way that nobody before had. The indissoluble alloy of orphan’s GULAG structure, its folklore, melodies, and songs appears as a genuine richness and thrilling material for film creators. This narrative is not only an almost forgotten page of the waifs’ and strays’ lives in Stalin’s time, but also a document of accusation. The next narrative is memoirs, presented in the form of miniature stories, of a very old woman, a refugee from Russia, who survived the Blockade of Leningrad, Stalin’s prisons, exile to Siberia, and the ordeals of her children and close relatives. Some photos and documents are included in this history. The last narrative is a miniature story about an old Jewish woman interview in American Embassy in Moscow.
http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/crimes.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_in_the_Soviet_Union
http://cosmopolitanreview.com/polish-orphans-of-tengeru/
https://www.amazon.com/Orphans-Communism-Your-Prisoner-Russian/dp/1475003811

As for how peasants got treated, I suggest reading Brusski: A story of peasant life in Soviet Russia by Fedor Panferov.

Here you go, keep your stick on the ice. Learn something new every day, eh?

Lord Elend Venture • 7h

Really insightful book into the life of a

Red Army soldier his love for his country

and dear V.l Lenin. Really does a great

job of explaining how the evil and

ultimately unsuccessful people in his

country tried to fight against progress

and actually made things worse. 10 out of

10 would recommend.

https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-

Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-

Investigation/dp/0813332893



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If you think there is any indoctrination going on than you dont really understand history my friend. I suggest you look into the soviet union and how they indoctrinated their people. Here is a fantastic place to start

Did you know that 1 in 3 people in Soviet eastern germany was a government informer? that is what true indoctrination is. Not the imperfect western democracy that we live in.

I also think to believe that brexit only happened because of media indoctrination is disingenuous and completely disregards peoples free will and inclination to vote for it. If you do this than you are not truly interested in a free society because you believe that other peoples different opinions are not genuine.


Id actually argue that technology will make it more likely for a 1984 society to happen, We are already heading towards a system of media content that tailors itself to each an every individual, so at some point we wont be choosing what we see etc but an algorithim will.

No sane person could compare the US prison system with the gulags. Only a socialist apologist could. They aren't even in the same ball park.

https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893

I suggest you read the Gulag Archipelago.

https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332893

Read this book and after if you can honestly say you still have the same opinion, I will concede. You can also give me a similar task. I have read a lot of Marx's work already though.

edit: also try this https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Question-Karl-Marx/dp/1507828152 and see how this fucker was a huge anti-semite and racist.

>Και από τον Στάλιν Χίτλερ δεν θυμάστε παρά μόνο τα εγκλήματά του... Το μόνο που δεν άκουσα γι' αυτόν είναι ότι με το πρωινό του έτρωγε τηγανητό ανθρώπινο κρέας. Για κείνον τον Στάλιν Χίτλερ, τον Αρχιστράτηγο του Κόκκινου Στρατού της Βέρμαχτ με τις νίκες στο Στάλινγκραντ στην Πολωνία, στη Μόσχα στη Γαλλία, στο Λένινγκραντ στην Γιουγκοσλαβία και στο Βερολίνο στην Ελλάδα, δεν έχετε τίποτα να πείτε; Αν έλειπε ο Κόκκινος Στρατός η Βέρμαχτ και ο Στάλιν Χίτλερ, τι θα είχαμε σήμερα; Αραγε το σκεφτήκατε; Ποιος θα εμπόδιζε τον Χίτλερ Στάλιν να γεμίσει την υφήλιο με χιλιάδες Αουσβιτς Γκουλάγκ; Φαντάζεστε την Ελλάδα γεμάτη με στρατόπεδα εξόντωσης;

Stalin did nothing wrong

Το πρόβλημα δεν είναι η αντικομμουνιστική (ή αντιναζιστική ή αντιολοκληρωτικη γενικότερα) υστερία, το πρόβλημα είναι οτι ξεχνάμε τα εγκλήματα τους και πολύ φοβάμαι οτι γι'αυτό οδεύουμε να τα επαναλάβουμε.

Ξέρουμε φίλε Μίκη, αντικομμουνιστές σε στείλαν εξορία για τις ιδέες σου και την δράση σου. Αυτό που ξέχασαν τα συντρόφια να σου πούνε όμως είναι πως περισσότερα κοινά έχεις με τα θύματα του κομμουνισμού παρά με τα κομμούνια που υπερασπίζεσαι.

The best book, on the topic, hands down: Origins of Totalitarianism. Not for the weak in mind, though. There is also this: The Anatomy of Fascism. Books are cool.

If you want to know what drives the fascist worldview, and exactly why people are like this, I'd suggest: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

The third reich trilogy is also fantastic and lays out the entire context and explains exactly why Nazis had so much appeal.

Sure do. There's even a book you can read on the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-O-Paxton/dp/1400033918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495981371&sr=8-1&keywords=the+anatomy+of+fascism

Have you read Paxton? I'm asking because I'm convicend by the others comments that it would be the best option for me (since I don't have too much time for it).

Thank you very much for your attention!

I would recommend this. In particular, chapters two and three go into detail about the onset of Fascism and Nazism in Europe. It's a very in-depth read.

The Cleanest Race is very much a fringe view, and itself has been highly criticized for (among other things) not recognizing the range of variation and character in totalitarian ideologies. It glosses over the rather fine-grained spectrum from communism through nationalist fascism, concluding that just because North Korea is definitely not communist in the traditional sense (which few would challenge), it much be some type of fascist state. But that dichotomy is a false one.

North Korean juche ideology does certainly share some similarities with fascism, particularly in its ultra-nationalism. But that is not enough to qualify it as fascist (at least in any way which preserves the meaning of the term, importantly distinct from other flavours of authoritarianism and totalitarianism), and there are some important areas in which it seriously diverges from fascism. As just a snippet, there is the "collaboration with traditional elites" that Paxton emphasizes; the maintenance of market-based economic structures (albeit with serious state intervention in labour and production markets in the form of fascist corporatism); and the important rhetoric in popular opposition to socialism that Griffin emphasizes (sorry; don't have a digital source for that).

But again, all of this is largely beside the point: the focus on the "fascism vs. communism" spectrum kind of bypasses the most important ideological components of North Korea. Rather, its most significant ideological characteristic is that of totalitarianism; you can take a look at Hannah Arendt's key work on totalitarianism to see how this perspective is the overriding one when it comes to understanding the nature of serious state oppression.

They didn't underestimate his support, they tried to co-opt the nazi movement.

There's a fantastic book called the anatomy of fascism that goes into detail on this and talks about exactly what is required for actual fascists to come into power:

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918

Just a nitpick - "Dr" Lawrence Britt doesn't really exist. This is a chain email that was popularized during the Bush administration. Robert Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism is a much better definition.

Anyway, yes, he's a fascist, fascism is inherently populist.

Like others have mentioned, the Hindu Caste system is closer to a traditional land-based feudalism seen in Medieval Europe and pre-Imperial Japan.

It's important to emphasize that fascism is very different from feudalism/the Hindu Caste system, because it involves the mass participation in politics. While defining fascism has been very difficult, Columbia Univ. WWII historian Robert Paxton has defined it as:

>a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline ... and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence ... [the] goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

You can read more about fascism in Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism.

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton

Give it a read. It's a pretty interesting book about what fascism is,what is isn't, and how fascist governments come to power.

Probably a lot more detail than you're asking for, but this is a great, easy to read book on what medieval europe was actually like to live in.

I don't know the answers to your specific questions, but I found Ian Mortimer's "The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England" to be an enjoyable read which addresses the lives of ordinary people. Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

Come now, that's too sweet of you. And yeah, I myself am imprisoned by my books too. I dread the ideas of moving due to the sheer amount of books I have. I thought I was done with it since I bought a kindle 5 years ago but I threw it away after half a year 'cause I could not be without my hardcover books. And sometimes I feel like putting a good book under my pillow or on my night stand makes me feel closer to the book itself. Now if only I can read everything that I own is another problem...

Those are some solid suggestions. I definitely would love to devour...I mean read and appreciate them someday. I have to finish House of Leaves first. Goddamn it's exhausting to read that book but also quite rewarding. I also just ordered The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England. Was thinking about either medieval time or the growth of the Silk Road and ended up with medieval time.

We are such book worms, aren't we? I'd feel so bad if I end up with someone who doesn't like books 'cause I would be so boring and reading all the time.

Didn't have a reason to. I'm on summer break between second and third year of a phd program, but I am fairly sure that I want to leave the program, so I'm now devoting my time toward job hunting online.

Also, none of my friends called me about hanging out last night, and I go to the gym six days a week but yesterday was my day off. Had enough groceries to get by. Net result is me shuffling between my room, kitchen, bathroom, and living room exclusively.

I spent my time yesterday looking for jobs, but mainly getting distracted by stupid shit on the internet. I read some of a book I've started recently, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England. Also smoked a little weed, but as of today I am quitting until I find a job or a dissertation topic. I am also a month into the /r/nofap challenge, so porn and jerking it was not an option.

I'm not an expert, but I believe books were relatively rare things during this time period. Also, an extensive library during that time might seem quite small by today's standards. Only the well to do, universities, and monasteries would have significant libraries. The vast majority of people didn't own a book, not even a Bible or religious text. I'm basing this half-baked answer off of what I recall from Ian Mortimers's book http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

Surprisingly, not true. Recommended reading: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1439112908

Linen undergarments were surprisingly good at absorbing sweat and oil, so as long as *those* were clean (changed and washed frequently) people didn't stink like you would expect. Further since the common knowledge at the time was that disease could be caused by 'miasma' or bad air it was important not to stink.

Medieval cleanliness standards were different from today, not nonexistant.

Well it was over so many years and there is so much to it I'd rather you tell me what you are most interested in and I can go into detail there.

However the main highlights I can think of are:

1. Read a lot of fantasy novels, this way you get many ideas for settings, villains, political issues, plots adventures, etc.
   
2. Read some history. Knowing what religion, politics, food, roads, culture and language was back then can make you change some details that give any setting a whole new dimension. The fact some kings might have a ban on books, a city is closed out due to plague, a muddy road causing a delay and trade collapse, a tradesman leaving his 7-year-old kid in the stables permanently to learn a new trade, a guild of thieves can dominate a town, a country where the farmers speak one language and the city folk another and most don't understand each other...all that can immerse the players into another era, it's not just them cosplaying in their minds and playing swords. Any book by Sansom is enough or for more detail get The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: for $10 on kindle to become an expert in 3 weeks.
   
3. Have a list of names per culture per gender: eastern, dwarven, northern, barbarian, european, african, etc. Looking them up on internet and having them on your phone/tablet/laptop can make you create rich NPC's on the spot. You can do the same with food, dress and household items. Having "someone" bring two beers is not the same as old Rosangela bringing stew and mulled wine in a wooden eating bowl and clay cup and putting it on a ffreutur (long table in welsh).
   
4. Learn the different types of government found in a medieval setting: absolute monarchy, feudal monarchy, empire, principality, theocracy, clan, republic, etc. Also learn the names of military ranks because it's common for players to get into trouble which will require escalating up the chain and it's shallow to call it "the guy in charge of the boss of the guard".
   
5. Finally create some disputes based on historical wars. Turkey vs greece, France vs. England, Dutch colonizers versus scattered tribes, crusaders versus sarracens, vikings versus world, spaniards versus aztecs. Now change the names of the actors (Vikings to Derrenfolk, English to Topinians, Spaniards to Salcedos) and then change races (you can swap whites and blacks for a twist on english or dutch versus african tribes), replace human gods with fantasy gods, give the clerics some power and add some holy relics.
   
6. Remember that the medieval world was forged by religion, war and trade. The rest is working to serve these three pillars.
   
   Internet makes it so much easier, when I started I'd spend months researching into Aztecs, now it would take me less than a week to find out all the basics to get the game going.

Here are two books that I would really recommend to know a bit more about what actually happened. I am done debating this issue because as I said above I am tired of being called nasty things.

In the Garden of Beasts

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

This one has some very outdated social views in there about gays but it is still a very good book to understand Hitler and Germany.

> On what crazy analysis of history are you rationalizing your beliefs?

On many different sources, for instance this book

Hitler was an opportunist, the fact that he didn't attack Sweden or Switzerland are clear examples of this.

Pfffft, me, a Marxist?

Start here: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

I know it's not a poorly made Youtube video, and not even a badly written blog post, but hey, it might have some information worth considering, eh?

I'd look into the books by Anthony Beevor...Stalingrad, The Fall of Berlin, The Second World War.

• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer
  
  
• Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
  
  
• Those Angry Days and Citizens of London by Lynne Olson
  
  
• The Mantle of Command: FDR at War by Nigel Hamilton
  
  
  
• The Last Lion
  
  
  Edit: Words and links and stuff
  

Hey, remember the time when brownshirts justified their violent actions in the streets as merely a retaliation against the violent actions of communists?

Almost as if violence doesn't do anything other than provide justification for retaliatory violence. Here's a great book on the subject. I highly recommend it.

When did I do that? Please quote my comment here about socialist and national socialism with Marxism?

They did so seize it. You should read rise and fall of the 3rd Reich.

And also do research on Albert Speer.

You will learn that Fascism is very much a centralized planned economy and stole the means of production.

Motivation is only the why, not the what... and not even the true why most of the time. The actions of each are completely the same and a lot of the rhetoric is as well.

Finally, the fact that you think Pence is anything like 'Muslims' (I'm guess you mean Islamists) on any scale shows me just how distorted your word view is.

... what??? Do you understand the significance of the Reichstag fire in relation to the third Reich or are you just repeating a talking point spewed from some alt-right asshole? Your invocation seems to suggest you think this is coordinated for the benefit of... Ron Paul?

You should read this instead of watching YouTube:
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

Growing up my Dad was a big fan of the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He lost his copy and ordered a new one online, but the seller was in the middle east, and shipping got complicated as he made the order days before 9/11 lol.

I recently read about this in Wiliam Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"

There's a few factors that Shirer notes, but is clear that there is obviously still much dispute as to what happened. It is theorized that Hitler was worried about his generals gaining too much power, thus left it for Göring's Luftwaffe to deliver the deciding blow. However, there were many other factors that weighed into the consideration. Sending in the army would have severely limited the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe. There were concerns about the effectiveness of the Panzer divisions in the marshy soil around Dunkirk, and around the supply lines needed for the advance.

Part of me wants to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt (that feels horrible just to type) that we have the ability to use hindsight to see how horrible of a blunder this was, but the other part reads the (albeit biased) testimonies of several of the generals that knew immediately that this was a ridiculous decision. I do not think for one second that he did it as a sign of sportsmanship. I personally think he was talked into the sharing of the glory by Goring,

Ok so I just went and looked for specific pages to take pics of and realized it took about 42 pages to come to the conclusion. This is the book if you wanna check it out sometimes though.

you should read the rise and fall of the third reich to understand what you're talking about, it didn't work for the red shirts in the past and it only pushed people towards putting the nazi party in power. Anftia is doing the same shit now, and it has the same effect.

I don't know if it is exactly "light reading" but The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich By William Shirer is a really fascinating look at the Nazis and World War II. It's not at all complex like some of the classics you've listed here, but it's still a really enjoyable read.

You really are ignorant. It's more about the mindset of people that would allow concentration camps to happen. The devotion to the dear leader over the country. Sure you can easily dismiss it now but once you are over the cliff it is a lot harder to climb out. The average German citizen wasn't aware of the concentration camps or many of the atrocities committed.

That's why the quote by Edmund Burke is so poignant.
> The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

We the people must stay ever vigilant, if we see something we must speak up it is our duty.
What we have seen so far is not a good indication of things to come but by all means, bury yourself in the sands.

I urge you to watch or read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.


https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEw0RIaYrtE

> Border policies, whether made by the EU or by individual states, are usually justified on the grounds of safety and security. They protect the public from terrorism, or from threats to identity and culture.

In a 5000 word piece the largest defining issue as I see it is mentioned once in passing.

Recommended reading on this: The Strange Death of Europe.

133244285| > United States Anonymous (ID: IXxUbnwL)

New Book

I recommend this one to be more informed about why the mass immigration problem exists and recommendations on what to do. Great book to share with friends to rage them up and redpill them a bit if they have any modicum of care about their own people.
https://mobile.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/The-Strange-Death-of-Europe-Audiobook/B06X9CR7GH

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1472942248/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Rpdyzb8J5M78T

https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472942248/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499025025&sr=1-1&keywords=the+strange+death+of+europe+by+douglas+murray

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/is-this-the-end-of-europe

Check this out: The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam Bloomsbur... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1472942248/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_VZuBzbW5SR4KJ

LOL they were not rescuing drowning migrants, they were aiding ILLEGAL economic migrants with NGO's in the mediterranean.

Why should she walk it back? It's Human Trafficking, and very immorral for many reasons. I guess i'll have you tagged as Defender of Human Trafficking from here on out.


People crossing the mediterranean to show up and go on Welfare should be sent back.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/13/mediterranean-people-smuggling-sea-lords-inquiry-uk-eu-ngo

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/migrants-and-madness-in-the-med/

http://www.dw.com/en/italy-prosecutor-claims-ngos-working-with-human-smugglers/a-38554753



The bottom line is, those people don't belong in Europe, they're throwing their life savings away to go claim welfare in a country that is not a war torn impoverished shit hole.

They are cowards and scum, as are the people aiding them.

Proper immigration with paperwork and criteria is fine. Boats of god knows who is insanity and the death of Europe as the pinnacle of human civilization and culture..

Please educate yourself, your local library should have a copy of this https://www.amazon.ca/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472942248

Read a book

You seem to be wilfully ignoring the fact that Islam isn't a race. Stop being a coward and THINK. Break the BBC's conditioning lol

>That's the position the race realists in this thread are taking.

I'm not responsible for what other people say, I can only point again to the sources I've linked.

>Yes, those group identities are nonsense as well.

You missed the point in this instance, tho you implicitly concede it little later on; it doesn't matter if it's nonsense or not (I still dispute that it is); the point is it works, and further whether or not a reactionary invigoration of group identity will have a better chance than atomized libertarians at beating the left back.

>The race realists are the exact mirrors of the SJWs.

Group differences in IQ distributions among races is scientifically verifiable and largely a product of heredity, SJWs are blank-slate absolutists, so no they are not exact mirrors in very important ways.

> Humans are tribal monsters. We have an innate bias toward treating people as members of imaginary groups. That's why people are able to believe in society, the state, etc.
> The imagined groups were the glue that held tribal hunter-gatherers together. The SJWs, race realists, statists, etc. want to treat these imagined groupings as though they are part of the real world.

You can't say that for nearly all of human history people have been tribal and in the next instance hand-wave it away as "imaginary"; the reason for tribalism is almost undoubtedly an evolved trait, meaning it's biologically hardwired into us, that seems pretty objective to me. If everyone but you is tribal then you're going to have a bad time, as we've seen with Europe letting the migrants in.

>Everyone can see what's wrong with those

Actually no I don't

>This is exactly how statists operate, too. The question for them is: What should the state do? Rather than: Is the state's authority real?

I think you mean "valid" not "real", because the state's authority is very real. Ideally I'm still an Ancap or at least a libertarian as I've been one for almost 10 years now but the hard reality is if you don't ask "what should the state do" then someone else far worse than us will ask the question and their answer won't be a libertarian social order.

Reality is that my ancestors were converted to islam by force (i.e., convert or be killed), OK, Sherlock? Now read this instead of making more dumb comments:

https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472942248

John McWhorter wrote a really solid book about how all the invasions of England warped and shaped the language called Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. Definitely check it out if you get a chance.

Like I said, I find his theory dubious at best. He also suggested that the Grimm's Law shift which changed p to f was also due to Semitic influence, despite the fact that it is in fact a very common sound shift in all sorts of languages, and in fact occurred again in High German languages in the Middle Ages.

In case you were wondering, this is the book I'm referring to http://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404495707&sr=1-2&keywords=john+mcwhorter

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue is one of my favorite books. It's such a short and easy read, too! I see it for low, low prices at Barnes and Nobles all the time.

Check out Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter if you haven't already. It's a fascinating read and it illuminates many of the idiosyncrasies of English and how they came to be here.

It sounds like you had formal education with multiple years studying the language. Everything worth achieving takes time and effort. You have put in a ton of 'mental reps.'

Good for you. Don't discount your achievements. I tell my daughters the same thing, just because you can do something or know something doesn't mean it easy and it doesn't mean that someone who cannot do it or doesn't know it is lesser or put in less effort. It is easy for you (now), because you have mastered or are on your way to mastering it.

There are native speakers who don't understand or properly use the subjunctive. That doesn't even get into the whole argument that helping verbs aren't necessary and appear to be slowly falling out of use.

If you are interested, and it sounds as though you might be the type of person who would be, a great read is https://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944

absolutely. language is constantly evolving and rules are determined purely by consensus.

I'm particularly interested in a quirk of english where you end a sentence in "that" or "they".

e.g. "trolls... solitary creatures, they"
or
"fucking interesting, that."

no clue what you'd call it but I bet that syntax has an interesting history.

also check out this book. we get a lot of fun quirks of english compared to other germanic language because of the Celts
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

---

^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot

1. I'm American and have no issue with your spelling (for the record). We have some dialectic differences and I think it's what makes each population just that much more unique.
   
   
2. This is a great book related to this subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Antifa-Anti-Fascist-Handbook-Mark-Bray/dp/1612197035

> the very nature of addressing the privileged upper class is addressing the power and privilege that their money and status grants them. It's inherently critical of neoliberal capitalism because of this.

Bullshit; money and power never enter into any approved privilege dynamic. If the did, Warren wouldn’t constantly be on the defensive from neolibs like Harris accusing her of pandering to racism by not mentioning race enough.

> You specifically left out the "class war" shit that gets the right so assblasted.

If you’re talking about conservatives, they’re the other side of the neolib coin. And again, neoliberalism loves to get proles fighting and then have the left hail it as the coming of the class war, this is what happens all the time, and it’s why Antifa believes they’re fighting the power by breaking a Starbucks window.

> another leftist movement in America sabotaged. Better uncritically blame people being mean

Yeah, the people being mean were the neolibs. They destroyed it with woke social progressivism. You subscribe to a morality that was invented to undermine genuine anger at elites and turn it into a squabble over race. That’s your side that did that.

> Trump voters are older fat fucks who make money as landlords or pool cleaning businesses.

Absolute bullshit; he won on the backs of angry disenfranchised laborers who were being displaced by literal slave labor from the south. The fat fucks vote GOP no matter what, not the people who came out to vote for him in ‘16.

> The real hard workers? The ones who know that shit is stupid and just want what's best for their family? We can work with that.

“We can work with the proles as long as they just shut up and admit that we’re morally better than them because we went to college and learned how privilege actually works, the dumb fucks.”

> how people being mean made everyone a Nazi

“Less and less attention was paid to defending the real needs of the working class, and finally political expediency made it seem undesirable to relieve the social or cultural miseries of the broad masses at all, for otherwise there was a risk that these masses, satisfied in their desires could no longer be used forever as docile shock troops.” -Hitler on nominally pro-labor progressives

He says, multiple times, in his book, that he would not have been able to get people to vote for him if the socdems hadn’t embraced this sort of unhelpful proletarian infighting. He literally brags about how lefty parties scorning the working class left a giant door for him to walk through. He says that if the bourgeoise wanted to defang the socdems, they’d treat the workers better, and laughs at them for being unable to realize that.

> Why weren't the small government conservatives put into camps?

They were. The Center party, a spineless nominally center-right party, was outlawed and its members forced to join the NSDAP on pain of prison, just like the socialists who were told it was the SA or jail.

Oh, and attempting to co-opt actual pro-worker movements as “SJW’s”, who are authoritarian neolibs, is sickening.

> a failure of the left is not justification to become a Nazi

I didn’t say it justified anything, I said it was a cause. No, it isn’t justified, but when people are treated badly, they lash out and run to the other end of the spectrum. This is just human nature; you have to deal with it.

> what the fuck is up with you guys acting like antifa is an organization or something?

Their official, designated handbook is literally given away by Amazon, they have cell leaders like Felarca, they have fucking sponsors. Just because a group is organized by cells to be harder to track doesn’t mean it isn’t unified or doesn’t follow an organizational philosophy.

> Where is their mission statement? How do they coordinate?

Read their book for details. I found it very interesting.

> Who is the Al-Baghdadi of antifa?

Movements don’t need singular leaders. Baghdadi dies tomorrow, ISIS will still exist. Their aims are set by the people who pay them, so that’s NGO’s, universities, other lefty groups, corporate sponsors like BK, etc.

> who's side were the "Jews will not replace us!" protesters on?

The Nazi side, I’d guess.

> 'm becoming a little concerned with the fact that you guys seem to think that white people like me becoming Nazi's is a natural reaction to anti-racism and progressive politics?

When people are treated badly, they respond by lashing out. Neoliberalism has fucked them. The left has hung them out to dry. They’re naturally gonna embrace nasty shit on the other side of the spectrum; I’m not saying this is good, but I’m saying it is happening.

Are you seriously using a dictionary to define "uniform"? You are aware that your definition is the adjective form of Uniform and not the Noun, right? Here, let me help you

> dress of a distinctive design or fashion worn by members of a particular group and serving as a means of identification

That's the one. But as it's been said over and over, this is not a uniform to identify themselves, it's a tactic to avoid identification. For more information on similar tactics, see Black Bloc.

As for a literal history book (have you read your article?), that's not an official handbook or anything like that. Here's the Amazon link to the book, because aparently, an anarchist "terrorist group" sells their super-secret books on fucking Amazon.

Maybe because it was written by a historian that's sympathetic with the movement, and that's it. As you may or may not have read on your own article, that book is from 2017, and the Antifascist movement exists since 1920.


But i find it interesting that you feel that Fascists "should not be poked", and that you are happy to outarm and outnumber others to defend them.

Here you go.

Seriously though, if you want to understand us, our history, and our motivation, then read that. It's written by an insider -a member of an anarchist federation- who's been involved in leftist struggle for decades. It is the best single source of information you will find on anti-fascism. It might even be in your local library.

I absolutely have to recommend The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans for anyone wanting to better understand the process of Hitler's rise. There are many other books I would suggest that deal with causes earlier and external, such as The Twenty Years' Crisis, but I am specifically responding to a comment about WWI.

There is much relevant information on the causes of WWI and it is safe to say that there were a multitude of factors at play. If you were to ask me, however, I'd say one of the primary causes was the weakening of two empires - that of the Ottoman Empire (the "sick man of Europe") and the Austrian-Hungarian empire, the latter thanks to Prussia.

Vienna was long the vanguard of Europe against the Ottomans and the Balkans were always a hotbed of controversy and revolt. The most direct causes of the pre-WWI situation are seen in the wars of the 19th century, which included things like Italian and German (Prussian) unification, the Franco-Prussian War, The Crimean War, etc.

Obviously WWI was the death-knell of monarchism and the coming of age for nationalism, but I digress. Definitely a complicated subject but certainly the after-effects of it led directly to WW2. Wars have long been generational. It's safe to say that it had deeper roots than the Treaty of Versailles; I'd argue the Treaty was merely a symptom of the European multi-polar way of thinking.

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

Read that then maybe keep tut tutting to yourself

Edit:

http://www.newsweek.com/florida-school-shooting-survivors-death-threats-819484

Yeah all those fear and anxiety based people on the left. I wonder why.

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

Ever read "They Thought They Were Free"?

I urge you to be careful of giving in to despair, or accepting that nothing will or can be done. Remember where that can lead. Instead, please insist that our rickety institutions perform as designed, and protest if they do not.

Remember that the majority of us are not in favor of any of this nonsense.

"Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty."

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

That quote is from this book, hardly a conspiracy. I know nothing about the site from the link, I just googled for the quote.

Thank you for recommending Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, I will check it out.

> This idea that Hitler tricked the Germans is really dangerous because it refuses to recognize the fundamental structure of totalitarianism as a movement of society as a whole, not just a few moustached villains.

This is not the point I was trying to make at all. And I completely agree with you.

This book was written expressly for deniers like you:

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

You should read this book.

https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928

>"Oh, had we only known about the Holocaust!"

That is the worst kind of revisionism. Milton Mayer's "They Thought They Were Free" (http://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928) helped debunk this story. The German people knew well what was going on and they didn't think twice to help themselves to the spoils of the Holocaust. There were more than 20k camps throughout the Reich and conquered territories. Details were published in papers and magazines throughout Germany. Even the New York Times ran articles about the camps.

Here is a recent article talking about the myth that the German people did not know. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard

> Pillars of the Earth

that looks good. have you read a distant mirror?

True, but also bored. Knights and other nobles without much fighting to do literally became brigands and also started attacking each other. I just read "A Distant Mirror" by Tuchman and she talks all about it.

The best book I've ever read about medieval Europe is Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. It's a bit dense but you don't have to be a history scholar to enjoy it by any means. It really seemed to cover the whole breadth of medieval society and the political powers and figures at work. It was engaging enough that I wanted to start over at the beginning once I reached the end! Can't say that about any other nonfiction book I've read.

If you'd like to read a well-researched, balanced, and truly terrifying combo of journalism and epidemiology, you could do worse than The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett.

I also recommend "A Distant Mirror", by Barbara Tuchman

If this topic has resonance then you'd do well to read a book like A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. She covers the black death and several other issues of great import from that time.

First witnessed in 1374 - good article here. I remember reading about this years ago, the main suggestion being that it was in the years following the black death which led to an upsurge in religious fervour - also lots of examples of self-flagellation - basically people doing anything they thought would mean God spared them from the plague.

Read it in A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman which is a fantastic read if you're interested in this sort of thing.

A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman

Words don't do it justice. One of the reviews was "real life Game of Thrones" and while it's somewhat trite, it's also true. The subject is an example of the best of the medieval era, and his life touched on many events that shaped western history.

One warning, it's probably going to be a tough nut for a 15 year old to crack. It's accessible as a narrative, but you should expect to have to wiki things, look at maps, and use supporting material to explain the basics.

For a less intense look, one of the "Life in" books by Joseph Gies and Frances Gies (Life in a Medieval City, LIA Medieval Castle, LIA Medieval Village), is a look at the everyday in that time. Medieval Village is the best one to start with. Rather than the names and dates of "big history", they are the traditions, customs, and anecdotes of everyday life, based on specific examples in specific time periods.

I don't see a 15 year old having trouble going through them. They are written plainly and attempt to explain the backdrop of history that those places are in. Additional material will be minimal beyond wikipedia.

I'm not homeschooling, but I'm certainly going to expose my children to these books when they're old enough.

Lviv was part of Poland for 20 years until 1939.

WW2 happened

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-13/world-war-ii-isn-t-quite-over-for-poland-and-ukraine

Read about the history of Stepan Bandera and the UPA

You should visit Lviv!

https://lifeinua.info/love-lviv/

http://www.lvivtoday.com.ua/exploring-lviv/1512

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/travel/lvivs-and-a-familys-stories-in-architecture.html

https://fredandreaseasterneurope2013.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/lviv-the-ancient-polish-city-in-the-ukraine/comment-page-1/

read Bloodlands

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin is an excellent source on why and how Hitler killed non-combatants. I do not recall anything about suicide rates changing policy. When the war was going well, the plan was to ship undesirables east and starve them to create the new German frontier, sort of like the Wild West in the US. When the war stalled, they became mouths to feed, so they starved and shot them. When the war created labor shortages in German factories, they shipped laborers back to Germany to work since all the Germans were busy dying in Russia/Ukraine/Belarus. Most non-combatant victims never saw the inside of a concentration camp.
TLDR on book
lazy TLDR: it's complicated.

during the holodomor, roving bands of cannibals became a thing. Cannibalism occurs a fair bit in human history, but soviet russia is the only place I am aware of that produced what amounted to packs of zombies.

Well you see, the reason I defend Operation Condor and Cold War FP is because of this debate about the best form of government.

Let's say group A wants to form a Marxist vanguard party and wishes to suspend democracy due to democracy being a tool of the bourgeois. So they run in the next election says they want to suspend democracy to give the people the true power through a dictatorship of the proletariat. Sounds pretty cool right? Labor rights, free stuff, worker's paradise! Sounds like the kind of political system for me. Except, oh no, it doesn't work like that. Instead of a worker's paradise, it devolved into a secret police state where no property, personal, economic, political or spiritual rights exist. Well shit, what am I supposed to do now?

My point is that yeah, we should kill people that meet two criteria, those criteria being:

1. The desire to act out a totalitarian state, dismantling natural rights in favor or greater control of the state in people's lives and
   
   
2. The ability to carry out said desires.
   
   So no I don't think we should bust into every fourteen year old's room that browses /r/LateStageCapitalism and murder them, but if they grow older, begin to voice totalitarian, anti-market opinions, begin to arm up and talk of revolution, then yeah let's get some deathsquads.
   
   If nazis were a credible threat to our democracy, we certainly should eliminate them, the same for the anarchists, socialist and other totalitarian ideologies.
   
   Pinochet, Franco, Salazar and Peron were hardly totalitarian, they were people who just wanted to see their country do better. Now, thanks to their efforts, those countries all enjoy successful liberal democracies today.
   
   I have some reading lists which would be better than reading internet forums posted anonymously about political economies that have never worked.
   
   The Condor Years
   
   Diplomacy by Kissinger
   
   Bloodlands: The Land Between Hitler and Stalin
   
   The Black Book of Communism
   
   

>The atlantic slave trade moved about 10 million slaves in total, and not all of them died.

12 million in total. But I am referring to all slaves. Those born slaves as well. That numbers in the 10s of millions. And dying as a slave counts as dying due to slavery.

>no, they didn't.

Compelling argument. The Congo Free State contolled by Belgium alone killed around 10 million Africans.

And great job ignoring all the other examples of Western atrocities!

>ah, yeas, I forgot how tenured professors were considered just as reliable as reddit posts. how silly of me.

Oh you want a professor! No problem!

>except they aren't,

Yes they are. See how great of an argument that is!

>atrocities of a certain size most definitely are.

No, certainly not. As I've shown.

>this is a flat out lie. It was the bolishiveks and their allies who covered up the extent of the famine, as has been well documented.

Perhaps you should read some more of the book.

>socialists have spent a century arguing for nationalization of hte means of production. when that ends badly, as it does in almost all cases, you don't get to redefine your terms and ignore your failures.

Many, but not all, socialists saw or see nationalization as a way for worker control, but that doesn't mean nationalization is socialism. And no, it doesn't always end badly anyway. Worker control is what all socialists can agree on, and therefore is socialism.

Not OP but the 6 million victims number is correct. You can check it here or here.

Also most of the Soviet killing took place in times of peace while Hitler killed in wars. So comparing WWII stats is misleading.

Also not well known is the fact that Stalin killed another 1,5 million people in Ukraine right after WWII in 1945/46 through another forced starvation.

My favorite work on the eastern front.

It’s an easy spot to start as well.

https://mises.org/library/economics-one-lesson

https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471

Here's a book recommendation for you: Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Read it and be informed. Trigger warning: intentional famine leads to cannibalism.

Please provide a source for your revisionist 10M figure.

Second: am I not saying that both are equally as responsible for war crimes, democide and genocide?

Look, you can take a look at the numbers the way you want. Brutally killing noncombatants in the millions still makes you a regime that stands on the wrong side of history.

I dare you to read Bloodlands. You won't finish it.

Whether you establish a classification between whoever kills more is up to you; defending either of them likens you to both.

I recommend the book Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.

I suggest you read this book.

Well, right now I'm reading Bloodlands for a history course, so that should be... uh, inspiring?

Then again, just seeing the rules, I would have to be careful about selections here.

I think by far, the most comprehensive and accessible one volume history on the war is "A World Undone" by GJ Meyer.

Brigadier Sir Richard Holmes' "The Western Front" is a very quick read and very enlightening on aspects of, well, the Western Front. It's focus allows for detail on the main theatre of the conflict, but that focus does take away form the "World' aspect of World War One.

A wonderful, visual account of the war and the aspects surrounding it is found in Stephen Patricia's "And the World Went Dark" which is both informative and a fantastic illustrated history. (Full disclosure, I contributed written copy to this book.)

And I can't resist a little plug for my own work, a novel set on the Western Front in 1917, which, while a work of fiction has a painstaking approach to realism and I've used points in the narrative to take an educational tone so that readers unfamiliar with certain points of the conflict can become immersed in the story. It's only available as an ebook at the moment, "Killing is a Sin"

I really enjoyed my reading of "A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553382403/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Eh21AbS0PCY5A
Covers all aspects and "fronts" in a very interesting way. I highly recommend it. I was in the same place you were now and this was my first book in my journey (I've since read about a dozen books on the war, and I keep wanting more!) Hope you find your book of choice and enjoy the topic as much as I have!

do yourself a favor and read "A World Undone"

this book is an amazing look at ww1 and the individuals that drove the war... I studied WW1 in college (history major) and this book stands out as one of my all time favorites.

For a more comprehensive look at Europe in the 20th century, touching on WW1, WW2, and The Cold War I suggest Out of Ashes by Konrad H. Jarausch. You can find reviews online and everyone is jizzing their pants over it, but I'm halfway through and I really like it. He's a great writer. For WW1 specifically, I'd suggest [A World Undone by G.J. Meyer] (http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449775167&sr=1-10&keywords=ww1). I didn't read it personally, but my bff is a huge military historian and she liked that it gave a larger global viewpoint than other more European-centric ones. I haven't read it yet (but she keeps bugging me to lol).

Along with "The Guns of August" and Keegan's "The First World War," I'd recommend "A World Undone," by G. J. Meyer. It's quite a bit of book, but a great overview.

A World Undone by G.J. Meyer; I'm not a big history reader but I could not put this book down
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553382403/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is my favourite: http://www.amazon.ca/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

It goes way beyond the banjo. The Scots invented all kinds of things.

Damn Canadians! Oh, wait...

This was a good read, even if the author did stretch a couple of points to make his case: http://www.amazon.com/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609809997

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It <----required reading for participation

It would not be fair for me to speak on behalf of the French/West Francian experience, but as far as Germany goes, the answer is no.

For starters, there were four major kingdoms definitively established in western and central Europe from the Treaty of Verdun:
West Francia, encompassing much of modern France,
East Francia, encompassing most of modern Germany,
Italy, which took up the majority of the Italian peninsula and shared borders very close to the modern borders of Italy,
and Lotharingia, a state caught up between West Francia and East Francia, including the Lowlands, modern Switzerland, and a relatively thin strip of territory between them.

Lotharingian land became a source of much contention between several European powers from the Treaty of Verdun onwards. The Burgundian Succession, for instance, was one such example. Another example was the Treaty of Ribemont, where Lotharingia itself was divided up by the other Carolingian kingdoms. This land never gained a national identity, instead fracturing between German and French cultures over the millennia of violence fought over it.

East Francia DID NOT become Germany. When the Holy Roman Empire was recreated by Otto I, he was considered the king of Germany. However, this kingdom was heavily decentralized, and people identified themselves with their feudal overlord than their king, or their Emperor, when the HRE was formed again. When the kingdom title became elective in 911, division into separate “states” inside the Empire was guaranteed. There were intense divisions between Holy Romans in Austria and Holy Romans on the border with Denmark. Holy Romans in Bohemia, between both of these geographic groups, spoke Czech, not German. Economic bases were completely separate in these varying parts of the Empire, and where Austrians had gold, Pomeranians had Baltic fish. Simply put, the only people who ever wanted to make the HRE a proper, centralized, unicultural state in the modern sense were Emperors themselves, and even then, emperors who would have wanted that were few and far between. Asking why the HRE never became Germany is asking why Italy never became German: It was never intended on centralizing.

The Protestant Reformation threw a much stronger wrench into any idea of German unification, with religious division becoming not just more intense, but much, much bloodier. The southerners, like Bavarians and Austrians, held to their Catholic belief, sharing their closeness with the Papacy and their even more Catholic Italian neighbors in the Empire. Northern Holy Romans did not share this warmness and closeness, and did not hold the same trust in the Pope’s word that their siblings of the south did. The printing of the Bible for all to read was something the northern Germans began to cling to very strongly.

So, what changed? As with many questions of Europe between early modernity and today, the answer is Napoleon, or, more accurately, the French Revolution.

The French Revolution was truly terrifying to the European kingdoms and the Emperor of the HRE. With the defeats from the first of the coalitions, the Emperor encouraged minor states to merge with their larger neighbors. In many ways, this was an Austrian power play to consolidate power on all of their lands, allowing for them to unify all their South German land cleanly into a “full” Austria. However, this had the same effect in North Germany. North Germany had many more minor states and city-states, and they, instead, merged into Prussia. The 1806 destruction of the Holy Roman Empire was attributed to Austrian weakness, causing even further resentment in northern and western Germany. The German Confederation formed to protect the minor states that remained, with Austria conveniently being in a weaker state than when they were Emperor. Prussia could easily consolidate power, and, with the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, German nationalism, not Prussian nationalism, was finally born.

Sources:
Peter Wilson’s Heart of Europe and The Thirty Years’ War

Nope, this bad boy. Although I have read war and peace it was such a long time ago I can't remember many details of the story.

Oooooh, I'm actually not all that familiar with Early Modern Germany, but I think I've found a few books that may help you with the religious, political and military aspects. Some of these books are pretty expensive, so I'd recommend finding a good library or seeing if your local library does inter-library loans with larger libraries. Usually you have to read the books pretty quick, but it saves paying $150 for a book if you're not in a position to do that. Just be sure to take plenty of notes!

I'd also be willing to look at what you've got but, like I said, I may not be as useful as I first thought.

The Reformation: A History

The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy

The Rise of Modern Warfare: 1618-1815

The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe

The Witchcraft Sourcebook

Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume I

Society and Economy in Germany, 1300-1600

Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany

Panaceia's Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany

Ecology, Economy and State Formation in Early Modern Germany

Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany

The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms

He Is the Sun, She Is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany

The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition and Everyday Life

The Lesser Key of Solomon

The Art of Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1570

This is a huge period of time, early modern and modern.

The 16th century is defined by religious wars, as is the first half of the 17th. I'm not sure of a good source on the Peasant Wars and such but I do know the absolute megalith you should get for the 30 Years' War (1618-1648) which is honestly the most important thing you could possibly study between 1492 - 1815 (the Early Modern Era traditionally). Yes, even more than the Napoleonic Wars. The greatest volume I've found on this is The Thirty Years' War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter Wilson.

I can not emphasize this enough: I know many people who consider the Early Modern Era to start in 1648 because of how fucking important the conclusion of this war was and what this war represented. It was the last religious war in Europe, it absolutely obliterated political lines and changed everything forever. It harkened the downfall of the top dogs at the time of Sweden, Poland, the Hapsburgs, the Ottomans, and Spain. This is a fucking important war.

Another great war on probably the most tumultuous area of the Early Modern Era is The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558 - 1721 by Robert Frost. If you want a book (that is pricey as shit) on arguably the most important man of the Early Modern Era and who brought France into greatness and basically started Absolutism I'd check out The Wars of Louis XIV: 1667 - 1714.

In terms of the Napoleonic Wars...well...it's a fucking hard topic to cover. There's not a lot of good general histories out there. I'll page /u/DonaldFDraper and ask him to come in if he has anything particular he'd like to recommend but preemptively I'll recommend Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation And Tactics In The Army Of Revolutionary France, 1791-94 written by that same dude who wrote the Wars of Louix XIV. Ultimately you can't separate the military history from the Napoleonic period very easily so you're going to get a bit of both whether you like it or not (but I hope you do! It's a great period of study w.r.t. military history). While I haven't read it I have heard French Society in Revolution, 1789-1799 by David Andress is a good read. However my principal source on the Napoleonic Wars is The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler. Yeah it's expensive, go find it cheap (or free) if you can online (because it does exist, found it before I actually buckled down and bought it) but it is the source on Napoleon. This should be the last book you get though and only if this period becomes a fascination with you.

After that I'd recommend The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France 1870-1871 by Michael Howard and to help dispel some myths and give a general overview of the common perceptions of WWI The Great War: Myth and Memory by Dan Todman. If you want an overview of events leading up to the war along with the opening year or so I'd recommend the absolute megalith The First World War: Volume I: To Arms by Hew Strachan. This is the book you should get on your introduction to the First World War along with Myth and Memory. Read this one first though.

This is the one, by Peter H. Wilson. I skimmed through it one day while browsing in Barnes and ended up spending 40 minutes reading a chapter that goes into great detail about Gustavus Adolphus' military movements into northern germany. At that point, I figured I should probably pick it up!

You could check this out:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0674062310

Hitlers Willing Executioners

Really good book on this subject.

Try Hitler's Willing Executioners.

There are plenty of books about the German populace's complicity in the Holocaust and many do make some controversial and arguable claims, but I think the book that stays closest to historical fact is this one. I understand you're not going to just order this book and read it because I disagree with your claims, but if you really want to understand how the Holocaust happened and why the Germans did it, read this. The book basically documents how the Nazis persuaded the German populace to along with its genocidal ideology. Thuggery, scapegoating, and good old fear were the main tools the party used.

This is also a fascinating read: The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders