(Part 2) Best german history books according to redditors
We found 2,040 Reddit comments discussing the best german history books. We ranked the 658 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
I don't believe I'm able to answer your question about any sort of feeling of guilt or how the adults have responded in today's culture without sourcing from personal anecdotes, however I can broadly answer what the allies (especially the Americans) did to try to break down German Nationalism after the war, and I shall try my best to apply it to the Hitler Youth. Also it's worth mentioning that very little of what I'm writing applies to the Soviet side of Germany, enough so that I'd say any similarities are pretty much coincidence.
To start with some background, Germany's Nazi Party actually only contained about 10% of the population, roughly 50% of the population was involved in Nazi related organizations and activities (Such as the Hitler Youth, but also organizations such as the League of German Women, Doctor's League, and numerous others) So while I'm unable to find any actual numbers for how much of the population actively supported the Nazis, those numbers seem to suggest that not everyone was estatic about Hitler's programs. However there's also numerous other factors in those numbers, such as who was a citizen according to the Nuremburg laws, so I simply offer that as an aside for painting the picture of Nazi Germany's variety of fanaticism towards Hitler. What we know as The Hitler Youth however was mandatory for all children of Aryan blood, and actually was subdivided into 2 other organizations as well. These organizations were "The League of German Girls", "Deutches Jungvolk" or roughly translated German youth, and then the Hitlerjugend or Hitler Youth. For the purposes of clarity, I'll address each branch by it's official name for this post, with the Hitler Youth being a reference to the organization as a whole, and Hitlerjugend meaning that individual organization within the Nazi Youth Organizations. Anyways, that provides about enough background for me to explain.
The process was aptly called "Denazification", and largely was centered around propaganda. The process began with the numerous war crime trials, which were publicized widely. Some of the members of the Hitler Youth were also accused of war crimes, but these accusations were really never pursued, as no one in the Hitler Youth was above the age of 18 at the time of their alleged crimes. Really in post war Germany, it seems that most of the Hitler Youth was not held responsible for crimes at all, and in the evaluation of Nazi members that followed the war, were essentially all exonerated. (I hesitate to say that none of them were held responsible for their actions, as I'm sure there were a couple select exceptions that I was simply unable to find) The Allies also implemented a strict censor on all German newspapers and radios, in a way that quite frankly was almost the same process that the Nazi's used throughout their reign. All forms of written, visual, and audio news were all controlled by the occupying government. 30,000 Nazi books were banned, including Mein Kampf (Which only just came back on to the German market this year) and possession of any banned books was a punishable offense. Mein Kampf being banned actually didn't do much to reduce Nazi sentiments, as the book was written for people who already agree with the ideas, however it did create an idea of taboo about the topic. At the same time, the Americans also worked to reconstruct Germany with the Marshall Plan, attempting to create an idea that they weren't conquerors, but rather liberators. This was somewhat furthered by the massive amounts of publications about the Holocaust, giving the Allies essentially the ultimate trump card in claiming they were in the right, and the Nazi's in the wrong. Incredible amounts of books, newspaper articles, and films such as "Die Todesmuhlen" (Meaning "The Death-Mills", it was a film on the holocaust that was released in Western Germany) were published and distributed throughout Germany about the events, and essentially placed the guilt of it on the German people. It seems this was placed just as much on the youth as it was the rest of the population, despite their amnesty when it came to the war crime trials. It's worth mentioning a lot of the propaganda strategies used were almost identical to Nazi propaganda, as it's effectiveness was incredible within the German people from 1933 to 1945. (For a great example of Nazi propaganda's influence, the chapter "I Believe in Him" in the book Language of the Third Reich by Victor Klemperer gives a better perspective on the German people's completely illogical faith in Hitler towards the end of the war) However as for the effectiveness of the Allies application of the propaganda, I've found conflicting evidence, so I can't speak to it. In the end however, the most effective Nazi nullifying aspect was the crippling depression and destruction of Germany itself after the war. The Nazi leaders were all dead, and unlike WWI where it could be argued Germany still had some fight left, the Germans had unquestionably been beaten. The things that had brought people to the Nazis, such as jobs and community provided, were gone and the ideas banned. The Hitler youth had been led largely by older members of the party, so it immediately ceased to be an influence at the war's end.
To attempt to answer what happened to the members of specifically the Hitler Youth after the war however, I did a little bit of research on West Germany's economic activities after the war. West Germany actually ended up overtaking Britain in productivity levels by 1950. This is very much because of the Marshall plan pouring money into West Germany in an attempt to stave off communism. However what followed afterwards was an economic boom. (Also called the "Wirtschaftswunder" if you want to look it up) This boom also happens to coincide right when almost all of the Hitlerjugend had reached working age, and due to the large amount of industrialization, the military repetitiveness and tenancies that they had learned in the Hitler Youth likely served to only exaggerate this industrial boom. This idea is furthered by Germany's economic growth slowing in 1960, which also happens to coincide shortly after when the last of the Deutches Jungvolk had entered the workforce. Germany also really didn't start to receive many immigrants until about 1960, so it's workers were very primarily Germans who had lived through WWII. So it appears that the Hitler Youth's structure may have been beneficial for Germany's, and it's member's, economic well being after the war, however it could also be simply a case of correlation and not causation.
In regards to the psychological impact of the war on the youth, I could not find a conclusive survey or study on specifically the youth. This probably is because of the earlier mentioned American censorship. I did find that the United States conducted a study of occupied Germany with questions like "Were the Nuremburg Trials unfair?" and "Was Germany better off without the jews?", which might help clear up how the German people as a whole felt immediately after the war, but I was unable to find the study itself. If anyone is able to locate this study, it might be a way to delve deeper into this question.
Lastly, during the last months of the war, Germany utilized a tactic of using units called "Volkssturm", or People's Storm. These units suffered somewhere upwards of 600,000+ deaths in the last months of the war. While these units were not expressly filled with Hitlerjugend, and also included the elderly and infirm who weren't normally fit for military service, they did make up a very large percentage of these units. So unfortunately, an decent amount of the most fanatical Hitlerjugend who volunteered to be in the Volkssturm (especially in Berlin) didn't survive WWII.
Conclusion: The Hitler Youth that survived had the best opportunity to live a "normal" life of any Germans, and their childhood in the Hitler youth may have actually prepared them better for the industrial working world.
 
Note: This is my first post in r/askhistorians. Moderators, if you feel the need to delete my post, I would appreciate it if you could message me telling me how to improve my future posts.
edit: formatting and added a sentence on immigration in the economic paragraph. Also thanks to u/rocketman0739 for fixing my German spelling & providing the translation of "Die Todesmuhlen".
edit 2: Since it was requested, I'm providing my sources for Denazification as well below.
 
Sources:
JCS 1067 was the guidebook for the plan on restoration of normal German life after the war, and was signed by Truman. It includes the American Censorship guidelines in part I, section 10.
For comparison to Nazi censorship and propaganda practices, I got most of my content from The Ministry of Illusion by Eric Rentschler.
I believe in Him chapter by Victor Kemperer (amazon link)
General knowledge on The Hitler Youth and it's structure sourced primarily from A Hitler Youth in Poland by Jost Hermand
Germany's economic improvement data largely sourced from this paper by Wendy Carlin
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/
Tagging on to this, if you're interested in Stasi material, go read this book: Stasiland.
If I remember correctly, she mentions in the book that there is an organization that has tasked themselves with reconstructing a lot of the shredded files. Literally bags and bags and bags of shredded material that will take them more than their lifetimes to piece back together.
> We once made a low-level attack near Eastbourne,' recalled a pilot called von Greim. 'When we got there, we saw a large mansion where they seemed to be having a ball or something; in any case we saw a lot of women in fancy-dress, and an orchestra. We turned round and flew towards it. The first time, we flew past, and then we approached again and machine-gunned them. It was great fun!'
This is one of thousands of German transcripts recorded during "Operation Eavesdrop" by the British.
A German man spend a decade compiling them and wrote a book:
Soldaten by Sönke Neitzel
He is legitimately the original guy to claim "the majority of the Wehrmacht was not honorable" and he made that judgement based off of the hundred thousand transcripts from German POWs he read through.
Later in WW2, German U-boats were being decimated because they had limited range on battery power while submerged. They invented a snorkel device for the intake and exhaust to allow submerged running on diesel power.
The crews hated them because they couldn't track waves well enough. When a wave interrupted the airflow, every crew member paid the price with their eardrums.
PS. Iron Coffins is a good personal account of what it was like as a German.
The idea that the Wehrmacht engaged in an honourable war and the SS committed the atrocities is known as the "clean wehrmacht myth". There's lots of books and sources available, some good starting points would be https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319 and https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930
There's also a wikipedia page that might be more accessible on the "clean wehrmacht myth". The gist is that we needed allies for the war against communism, so we rehabilitated the German Army and let them have a scapegoat. We literally let them write the history of the war in the East.
Best book for these people to read is Soldaten. Because it shows the frank conversations the German POWs had when they thought no one was listening.
Hermann Goering made these comments during the proceedings to Gustave Mark Gilbert who was a psychologist and was allowed access to all prisoners. This specific quote is published in the Nuremberg Diary written by Gustave.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp
http://www.amazon.com/Nuremberg-Diary-G-M-Gilbert/dp/0306806614
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to
watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials
Great book "The Nuremberg Diary".
OK, that's it. A few weeks ago I bought a few books about how it was that German seems so cool these days but gave rise to power the de-facto Hitler of all Hitlers.
They're next in my reading queue. This is insane.
Indeed there were! The books Hitler's Jewish Soldiers and it's "Sequel" The Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers are great places to start looking if you interested.
>As an abstract principle, civil discourse is regarded as a virtue. However, one should neither mistake a façade of respectability for civility nor be prepared to sacrifice core democratic principles to achieve civility.
>
>That point was driven home by Richard Evans in The Coming of the Third Reich when he explained how the Nazi Party, which lost the 1932 election, was able to seize and consolidate unchallenged power in 1933.
>
>"It is in the nature of democratic institutions," Evans noted, "that they presuppose at least a minimal willingness to abide by the rules of democratic principles." But it is extremely dangerous, either in the name of "civility" or "bipartisanship," to yield to those who seek nothing less than the destruction of democracy—a point Evans drove home by quoting Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels's harsh reference to the "stupidity" of democracy. Goebbels proclaimed: "It will always remain one of democracy’s best jokes that it provided its mortal enemies with the means by which it was destroyed."
​
Civility that goes perpetually unreciprocated starts to look like complacency and fear.
This book is great and explains the soldiers' mindset really well
Did you know that Stalin insisted on writing that definition that way to avoid culpability for the crimes that he had already committed?
I disagree with your take on this, at least from my readings in Bloodlands it was pretty clear that Stalin wanted to colonize the Ukrainian breadbasket and killing off large amounts of the population via starvation were a great way to help destroy the strong nationalist groups that existed in the Ukraine at the time. The wheat that you mention was largely in the Ukraine, and peasants were shot for even going near it, resulting in rampant cannibalism. If it was an accident, it was a happy accident for Stalin that his policy destabilized and destroyed a country that was mostly composed of farmers who would have resisted collectivization efforts of their farms. I'm sorry, it's just too advantageous and neatly convenient for Stalin for my liking. Ask the Poles if the Russians engaged in genocide.
Every time questions similar to this pop up, people recommend Neil Gaimen. Well, his book is not bad (I own it), but recommending it to a person asking for a detailed recount of the original myths is downright silly. It's a pretty short collection of myths retold into short-stories by Gaimen. They're well written and absolutely closely based on the original myths, but he still invents new stuff, and again, it's a novel-like retelling, not a detailed account of the actual myths. Here are some further suggestions:
Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by H.R. Ellis Davidson is a great and thorough description of Nose myth and religion by an acclaimed specialist in the field. It's also laymen-friendly.
The Poetic Edda is arguably the single most important source of Norse myths. It's a collection of poems, written down in Christian times but many dating to well into the Pagan era. I've linked the new translation by Jackson Crawford (whose channel is great for learning about Norse myth, btw), but there are others.
Then there's the Prose Edda, which is likewise a very important original source. Whereas the Poetic Edda is a collection of poetry, the Prose Edda sees many of them retold into more consistent prose narrative (hence the title). As a source, however, the Prose Edda is less reliable than the Poetic, since the latter is a collection of actual Pagan myths, while the former is a compilation and retelling by an (early medieval Icelandic) Christian.
The Sagas of Icelanders important sources to Norse myth and particularly religious practice. The Sagas are actual prose stories (and good ones, too), written in the first few centuries after conversion. Figures from Norse mythology, particularly Odin, are often prominent, but the narratives tend not to primarily concern the mythology.
A notable exception is the Saga of the Volsungs, which is one of the most important narratives in Norse myth. Wagner's Ring Cycle and Tolkien's works were both heavily influenced by it. The Volsunga Saga features Norse gods, viking raids, dragon-slaying and much more.
There are more good books, but those ought to be a decent start.
This book is pretty riveting stuff. Kind of a side by side comparison of Nazis and Communists during those years and makes it clear how much more efficient the Soviets were in contrast to the stereotype of German efficiency.
Like in Poland, where Nazis had a hard time actually killing the people they needed to kill and pretty much just grabbed anybody they could, especially the jews. Soviets collected information first and quietly executed soldiers, officers, intellectuals, and local leaders instead. They learned how to do it from years of experience doing the same domestically. They killed quite a few jews and non-Russians because, despite their ideology of bringing the world together, they were very nationalistic/paranoid when it came to key jobs and power.
A lot of Jewish soldiers in the Wehrmacht joined because they wanted to show the Nazi's that a Jew could do anything a German could do (since at the time the party was playing up that they were inferior). Others joined simply because they believed being a Jew on the front was safer than being a Jew back home. The Nazi's eventually closed the loophole that allowed Jews to join though but I think estimates say there were 50,000 Jewish soldiers in the army?
One of the highest decorated Wehrmacht soldiers was actually Jewish, he was given his medal by Hitler himself who from what I read resented it at first but in the end caved. There was a book written on Jewish soldiers in the Wehrmacht (and even a documentary that complemented it) which featured his story but the name escapes me at the moment.
Edit: Spelling.
Edit 2: I believe this is the book,
http://www.amazon.ca/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700611789
The estimate given is infact 150,000 soldiers of Jewish decent, not the 50,000 I stated above.
This is a tough, but important question. Not to critique other comments on this thread, but the Nazis actually did develop a methodology of public polling to measure public opinion, a matter which was very important to the regime, strange as that might seem. The founding myth of the Nazi Party was that internal dissent and betrayal on the German homefront caused Germany's loss in World War I, "stabbing in the back" the nation's long-suffering soldiers on the front. We often think this ["stab in the back" myth] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_legend) as a cynical means to shift blame and responsibility, but the Nazis really believed it. To ensure this event wouldn't occur a second time, Nazi authorities throughout the history of the regime gauged public opinion to ensure the homefront wouldn't collapse a second time. These surveys aren't the best historical sources for methodological reasons outlined [here] (http://books.google.com/books?id=kjo__n_uEcAC&pg=PA326&dq=nazi+public+survey&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L1CNT62jBMbZ0QHw-_TFDw&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=nazi%20public%20survey&f=false), but they do exist.
What do these surveys tell us? Robert Gellately's [Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0192802917/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link) provides some [very good empirical use of these surveys] (http://books.google.com/books?id=WFYwVsYc9GEC&q=opinion+poll#v=onepage&q=opinion%20survey&f=false) to assess German support of the Nazi regime. His assessment, and increasingly the assessment of others historians, is to classify Nazi Germany's history as a "consensus dictatorship." For most of the war the German people supported the regime, for a variety of reasons - German victories early in the war, support for the "socialist" part of National Socialism, anti-semitism, fear of Communism, and many other rationales. Public support for the war began faltering after Stalingrad, but nonetheless remained remarkably robust until literally Allied armies where reducing German cities into rubble. Totalitarian suppression of dissent accounts for part of the answer why the regime hung on as long as it did, but it seems increasingly clear that a significant cross-section of the German people tacitly or explicitly supported National Socialism.
Oh boy - here we go - another apologist.
Challenge accepted - lets see what the historians say.
> The Nazis were left-wingers, you ignorant prat.
Strasserism was left-wing. The SA were originally raised from the workers class. Both were purged from the Nazi parties by the time it rose from obscurity to power.
According the Holocaust Encyclopedia
>In the months after Hitler took power, SA and Gestapo agents went from door to door looking for Hitler’s enemies. They arrested Socialists, Communists, trade union leaders, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi party; some were murdered. By the summer of 1933, the Nazi party was the only legal political party in Germany. Nearly all organized opposition to the regime had been eliminated. Democracy was dead in Germany.
German Socialists and communists were purged in the Nazi concentration camps. Fascists were not - that fact alone should demonstrate to you that the Nazis weren't left-wingers
.
> As an ultra-nationalist, socially conservative, anti-egalitarian and fascist ideology, Nazism naturally falls on the extreme far-right end of the political spectrum;
Hitler: A Biography - Ian Kershaw
>[Hitler] was wholly ignorant of any formal understanding of the principles of economics. For him, as he stated to the industrialists, economics was of secondary importance, entirely subordinated to politics. His crude social-Darwinism dictated his approach to the economy, as it did his entire political “world-view.” Since struggle among nations would be decisive for future survival, Germany’s economy had to be subordinated to the preparation, then carrying out, of this struggle. This meant that liberal ideas of economic competition had to be replaced by the subjection of the economy to the dictates of the national interest. Similarly, any “socialist” ideas in the Nazi programme had to follow the same dictates. Hitler was never a socialist. But although he upheld private property, individual entrepreneurship, and economic competition, and disapproved of trade unions and workers’ interference in the freedom of owners and managers to run their concerns, the state, not the market, would determine the shape of economic development. Capitalism was, therefore, left in place. But in operation it was turned into an adjunct of the state.
One of the cofounders, Otter Strasser, was socialist-minded - but he was booted out before the Nazis came to power. His Brother was later liquidated after Hitler became the Fuhrer.
>Unfortunately for him, he had taken seriously not only the word “socialist” but the word “workers” in the party’s official name of National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He had supported certain strikes of the socialist trade unions and demanded that the party come out for nationalization of industry. This of course was heresy to Hitler, who accused Otto Strasser of professing the cardinal sins of “democracy and liberalism.” On May 21 and 22, 1930, the Fuehrer had a showdown with his rebellious subordinate and demanded complete submission. When Otto refused, he was booted out of the party.
The Coming of the Third Reich - Richard J. Evans
>In the climate of postwar counter-revolution, national brooding on the “stab-in-the-back,” and obsession with war profiteers and merchants of the rapidly mushrooming hyperinflation, Hitler concentrated especially on rabble-rousing attacks on “Jewish” merchants who were supposedly pushing up the price of goods: they should all, he said, to shouts of approval from his audiences, be strung up. Perhaps to emphasize this anti-capitalist focus, and to align itself with similar groups in Austria and Czechoslovakia, the party changed its name in February 1920 to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party…. 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.
and
>The “National Socialists” wanted to unite the two political camps of left and right into which, they argued, the Jews had manipulated the German nation. The basis for this was to be the idea of race. This was light years removed from the class-based ideology of socialism. Nazism was in some ways an extreme counter-ideology to socialism, borrowing much of its rhetoric in the process, from its self-image as a movement rather than a party, to its much-vaunted contempt for bourgeois convention and conservative timidity.
Now - lets check with an actual historical expert in National Socialism - Joachim Fest
>This ideology took a leftist label chiefly for tactical reasons. It demanded, within the party and within the state, a powerful system of rule that would exercise unchallenged leadership over the “great mass of the anonymous.” And whatever premises the party may have started with, by 1930 Hitler’s party was “socialist” only to take advantage of the emotional value of the word, and a “workers’ party” in order to lure the most energetic social force. As with Hitler’s protestations of belief in tradition, in conservative values, or in Christianity, the socialist slogans were merely movable ideological props to serve as camouflage and confuse the enemy.
>In terms of labor, worker strikes were outlawed. Trade unions were replaced by the party-controlled German Labor Front, primarily tasked with increasing productivity, not protecting workers. In lieu of the socialist ideal of an egalitarian, worker-run state, the National Socialists erected a party-run police state whose governing structure was anti-democratic, rigidly hierarchical, and militaristic in nature. As to the redistribution of wealth, the socialist ideal “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was rejected in favor of a credo more on the order of “Take everything that belongs to non-Aryans and keep it for the master race.”
>Above all, the Nazis were German white nationalists. What they stood for was the ascendancy of the “Aryan” race and the German nation, by any means necessary. Despite co-opting the name, some of the rhetoric, and even some of the precepts of socialism, Hitler and party did so with utter cynicism, and with vastly different goals. The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality.
> 'Soldaten'
is this it?
https://www.amazon.com/Soldaten-Fighting-Killing-Secret-Transcripts/dp/0307958124
February 1945. Over two days, almost 1300 bombers attacked the German city of Dresden, creating a firestorm and killing over 20,000 civilians.
July 1943, Operation Gomorrah. Again, over the course of several days, over a thousand bombers hit Hamburg. They create another firestorm, killing over 40,000 civilians. This one was so severe that the very roads were bursting into flames. Countless people suffocated in their shelters. That's 40,000 people in just a few days.
By 1945 Allied bombers were roaming Germany at will, blasting cities to the ground. This was entirely in accord with the the plans of "Bomber" Harris, who seemed to have almost a personal zeal for destroying Germany--not just the military, not just military targets, but Germany itself.
In Japan, the Americans did the same thing: they leveled cities all over the country. See http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Arnold-map-Japan-firebombing.jpg for a comparison to similarily-sized US cities, if it will help you get some sense of the scale of the devastation.
Would you not consider the area-bombing of civilians using highly sophisticated four-engine bombers to be 'industrial' slaughter? I certainly do.
With no civilians running around in COH2 you can feel very good about yourself as you battle the evil German foes, but in reality if a town presented opposition to the advancing American forces they would easily destroy it with artillery--German civilians didn't matter. American fighters were roaming the skies and strafing arbitrary targets. Not just military targets. They hit anything that moved. Many German civilians, women and children included, were destroyed by these pilots.
While it is true that the Western allies didn't have "death camps", the Soviets had plenty of creative ways to make use of undesirables. Millions died in prison camps, work camps, dangerous mining and factory work, penal battalions, or were simply executed.
If you think I'm trying to forgive Nazi war crimes, think again. But you seriously need to understand that war leaves everybody dirty. Check out Max Hasting's Armageddon if you want to have a very thorough and depressing read about what went down. He covers Western Allied combat operations including the area bombing of civilians and executions of POWs, the Soviet invasion of Eastern Germany and the mass-rapes and killing and complete subjugation of Eastern Europe. And of course, he also covers the genocide and mass killings by the Germans, with plenty of stories from soldiers and civilians alike to bring to life the horror of their experiences.
edit: Of course you yourself can ignore the moral problems that came with this morass that engulfed hundreds of millions of people around the world. Enjoy your video game.
I'm personally very fond of Hilda Ellis Davidson's Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. It's scholarly, it covers all the Germanic evidence not just the Scandinavian, and doesn't add anything that is not really there. And of course there's always the incomparable Snorri Sturluson. I recommend Jean Young's translation.
If you ever get a hold of this book by Herbert Werner, a former U Boat commander do pick it up. Astounding accounts of U-Boat warfare and the dangers of being in an U Boat.
/u/JGwynne, I think it hearkens back to just having felt an affinity for the lore from an early age. I recollect when I was about 15 I bought a used copy of H.R. Ellison Davidson's GODS AND MYTHS OF NORTHERN EUROPE (I still have it) and referred to it often in my first Tolkien- and D&D-inspired fantasy scrawlings.
I've always been fascinated by the cosmology, too, of the Nine Worlds and Yggdrasil, so when I started my publishing services company in 2013 I called it Nine Worlds Media with little hesitation, and this later carried over when /r/TimMarquitz asked me what we should call our fledgling pub house. Ragnarok was right there on the tip of my brain, especially because I was working on a short story at the time set in the deep cold of Fimbulvinter.
Plus, I like that Ragnarok may be the "doom of the gods," but it is also the beginning of a new age. The word itself means to "conjure" a new origin or fate, so it speaks to me on many levels.
Your argument is irrelevant. There were Jews in Nazi army.
http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700611789
If you haven’t read it, this was by far the most powerful book I read regarding the holocaust in regards to relaying it’s true horror. It’s terrible reading but powerful nonetheless:
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332
The Good Old Days
The Transfer Agreement--25th Anniversary Edition: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine
You should read Max Hasting's Armageddon: Battle for Germany 1944-45. His assertion, which he backs up and which goes contrary to the prejudices of the west, is that western (US, British, French) troops were very poor soldiers compared to German and Japanese ones. The Germans and Japanese had been raised in an atmosphere of militarism and desire for revenge, while western soldiers were raised in an atmosphere of pacifism. This showed on the battlefield time and time again - western troops would not assault a position under fire without artillery support, would not coordinate with armor support, and simply were not very active or assertive on the western front. Against the Japanese this was not as true, simply because of the intense hatred that Americans felt for Japanese (as was true in reverse). Basically the western democracies lacked fighting spirit generally and substituted massive materiel superiority to compensate. US films about WWII tend to focus on elite formations like the 82nd Airborne, which were exceptions to the rule and were used time and time again because they were the only units that would press an attack or hold without breaking. On the other side, German infantry performance across the board tended to be on the level of the best units of the west.
I agree with your concerns for the future of the moderate left, especially when I see the likes of Sanders and Corbyn. But, honestly, the party’s are responding to the incentives given to them. The last generation of liberal politicians was the most moderate produced by either political system in a generation. And what did they have to show for it? Torn apart by both sides as out-of-touch elite technocrats, with the attack from the right feeling even more vicious for the party’s moderation.
A couple of decades of that also makes it pretty hard to muster the energy to say, “no, no, we should take the other side’s concerns seriously.”
Take Kevin Williamson. I honestly just don’t have much concern left for defending the author of this. Jonah Goldberg is another good example. I follow him on Twitter and like his dogs, but every time he says something about civility in discourse, this cover flashes through my head.
My grandparents emigrated from the bloodlands of Europe of world war 2. I was raised to be well aware of the horrors of totalitarianism from either side of the spectrum. Telling me that because I think government has a role in the solution to societal problems puts me on the slippery spectrum to Stalin and Hitler is both intellectually lazy and deeply personally infuriating. It’s better articulated and researched, but it strikes the same chord with me as old school John Birch Society crap. It’s exactly why the one point I reacted against in the first place was claiming that no one links liberalism and communism.
So what motivation do I have to come to the defense of thinkers who apparently are willing to lump my political preferences in the same camp as the 20th century’s worst monsters? Again, I understand that nothing I’m saying is particularly fair or constructive, and you could point to plenty of authors on the left guilty of similar rhetoric. But I also don’t see a groundswell of discussion insisting that those authors get a voice on Fox News or the National Review. I’m tired of being in the only camp (moderate liberals) apparently expected to take everyone’s views and preferences into account.
Check this book for example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Soldaten-Fighting-Killing-Secret-Second/dp/1849839492
And if you think that Jews were only one victims of war so you're wrong.
If anyone is interested, this is a great book about the actual religions surrounding the Norse deities.
This too: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523721960&sr=1-1&keywords=the+good+old+days
Turns out the whole "I was just following orders or I would have been punished!" thing is complete bullshit. They knew what they were doing, and they did it with gusto. Not all of them wanted to take part (obviously), but those that did absolutely had a choice.
Couldn't agree more. But the women weren't 'broken on the wheel', they were peasants who were nailed to a cart wheel on an actual cart while it drove through Germany. See [Armaggedon] (https://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-Germany-1944-1945-Max-Hastings/dp/0375714227) by Hastings.
The Nazi Seizure of Power is a great look at how average Germans (in the town studied) came to embrace the Nazis and reject other options.
It's a bit dense (I read it in a graduate course last semester) if you're just looking for an overview, but it really explained a lot to me, as someone with no real background in modern German history.
I link to wikipedia because it's on the web and thus easily available. There are hundreds of books documenting the atrocities committed by communists. I would suggest you read some of them, as I have.
In Max Hastings' (a very well respected WWII historian) book "Armageddon", he describes the average infantryman's reaction to enemy snipers in this way (on page 88) - "Almost every soldier on both sides shared a hatred of snipers, which frequently caused them to be shot out of hand if captured. There was no logic or provision of the Geneva Convention to justify such action. Sniping merely represented the highest refinement of the infantry soldier's art. Its exercise required courage and skill. Yet, sniping made the random business of killing, in which they were all engaged. become somehow personal and thus unacceptable to ordinary footsoldiers."
While Hastings is talking about WWII events here, the same feelings amongst the average foot soldier in regards to snipers absolutely held true during the earlier Great War as well. The average infantryman has always hated snipers, for the reasons I (and Hastings) outlined.
Indeed, sniping has long been considered one of the military's most "controversial jobs". Thanks to Hollywood, that view has changed a bit recently, but during WWI, there is little question that snipers were reviled by enemy forces due to their tactics and the indiscriminate lethality they introduced to the battlefield.
There are plenty of diary entries from WWI soldiers describing how soldiers would briefly forget themselves and stick their head above the lip of the trench, only to be sniped in the head or body and killed - "Apl 16 - One of our chaps killed by sniper. Forgot himself and put head above parapet. Got bullet clean through his head." or as another of countless examples "Nov 2 Heavy bombarding from Fritz this morning. Artillery men call it "morning hate". One man sitting eating his lunch on a pile of wood killed by a sniper. Bullet went straight through him."
Here is another article about sniping during the Great War that covers some of what I was talking about..
Even the historic "Christmas Day" truce of 1914, where British and German soldiers engaged in a sudden cease-fire, emerged from their respective trenches, and even played a game of football in "no mans land" in celebration of the holiday, was eventually broken up by deadly sniper fire, causing the soldiers to rush back to their trenches and resume fighting each other in earnest.
As for camouflage and concealment, WWI snipers and spotters sometimes went to great lengths to conceal themselves in "no man's land", even to the point of constructing hollowed-out fake tree stumps or using hollowed out dead animals as concealment to snipe from.
Snipers could expect no quarter from the enemy if captured - "Working day and night, trained marksmen would function essentially as assassins, often targeting any moving object behind enemy lines, even if they were engaged in peaceable tasks (which meant that if a sniper was taken prisoner he could expect no mercy, on either side)," and they were appreciating as having a severe effect on enemy morale "Although the overall number of casualties claimed by snipers were small (although many snipers kept count of their number of 'kills', often reaching triple figures), they played an important role in sapping enemy morale. Soldiers knew that they could not walk about freely along exposed trenches; anyone unwise enough to peep above the front line parapet could expect a well-aimed bullet in the head - as often happened."
Of course it is insane, everything you have been led to believe is false... including Hitler, i sincerely and wholeheartedly ask you to investigate, and question the reality you live in.
Want me to blow your mind? Investigate who is Fred Leuchter, investigate the Leuchter report, read The Seventh Million, read The biggest lie of the 20th century, read The transfer agreement, read The great holocaust Trial.
On countless occasions during my spell as an assistant in Naples I heard people say about some newspaper or other: è pagato, it’s paid for, it lies for its client, and then on the following day these very same people who had cried pagato were absolutely convinced by some obviously bogus piece of news in the same paper. Because it was printed in such bold type, and because the other people believed it…
I also know that a part of every intellectual’s soul belongs to the people, that all my awareness of being lied to, and my critical attentiveness, are of no avail when it comes to it: at some point the printed lie will get the better of me when it attacks from all sides and is queried by fewer and fewer around me and finally by no one at all.
The Language of the Third Reich
And if you want something to read Anna Funder's book Stasiland is one of the best books I've ever read.
I think I was clear, America is a fucked up place. But for you equate living under a Nazi regime as similar is purely the arrogance of youth. Go read Stasiland, for a glimpse of what state oppression is really like.
Yes, most people are happy just getting by. They have a mortgage and/or kids to put through school. You and I have time to wax lyrical on reddit about things that are important to us. I agree with you that the state of things is unjust. But running away won't change anything.
"The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing". Social change can be generated by a very small % of the actual population, thanks largely to the aforementioned apathy of the rest. get involved
To be clear, I'm not American, don't live there, and wouldn't choose to myself (well, maybe New York, Boston or Portland). I agree with you that there are major problems. But I disagree with your nihilistic outlook.
Robert Proctor has written a book on just this subject, The Nazi War on Caner, which shows the Nazis were decades ahead of other countries on linking the health effects of cigarette smoking and cancer. They also were ahead of the curve on asbestos, radiation, and food and occupational safety hazards. The same thinking that went into believing the Jews and other peoples were unclean also supported Nazi restrictions on other environmental toxins.
Here you are. This was recommended to me by a professor of Germanic myth a few years ago, and I've read it a couple times now. It's heavily research-based.
How many people actually voted for the Nazis initially doesn't change how many of them knew about the murder of Jews, the disabled, and others. What you're typing up is the narrative that was propagated right after the war. As wikipedia nicely summarizes Wachsmann's work from KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, "the German people often claimed that the crimes occurred behind their backs and were perpetrated by Nazi fanatics, or that they frequently dodged responsibility by equating their suffering with that of the prisoners, avowing they too had been victimized by the National Socialist regime." But that doesn't change the fact that the knowledge was readily available at the time. And evidence that is still available suggests that 1/3 of the population knew what was going on, and that's based mostly on reviews of the press and interviews with survivors in the 80's and 90's, long after the war had ended. Lots of historians argue that, in fact, many more knew, but we'll never have an exact number. That doesn't change the fact that they knew, and asking a few questions was likely all that was needed to find out. And asking a few questions wouldn't land you any sort of prison. I recommend Gellately's work as a starting point.
And excuse me, but calling Austria "oppressed" is laughable. That's a result of the 1943 the Allied Moscow Declaration, which described Austria as "the first free nation to fall victim to Hitlerite aggression." That was a deliberate attempt by the Allies to lay the groundwork for a separate Austrian identity that could be sheared off from the German one. Anti-semitism was rampant there, and it has been estimated that 500,000 Austrians directly participated in Nazi activities (in a country of 6 million, and that doesn't even cover how many of the population actually supported Hitler and his policies).
Archives for links in comments:
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I am Mnemosyne 2.0, Mass hysteria is only availible in the new DLC, $12.99 for the update^^^^/r/botsrights ^^^^Contribute ^^^^Website
Having just read Stasiland the film in that youtube-link gets a lot more interesting.
No reason to go through life this ignorant, bro. You're only hurting yourself in the end.
Start here
The Coming of the Third Reich (The History of the Third Reich) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0023SDQGW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_YkiJBb4QNF142
To those who croon about how the German POW's had it made and how life was a paradise for them.
Well, there is history and then there is what really happened.
http://www.amazon.com/Crimes-Mercies-Civilians-Occupation-1944%C2%961950/dp/0889225672/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419322289&sr=1-1&keywords=james+bacque
http://www.amazon.com/OTHER-LOSSES-Shocking-Civilians-Eisenhowers/dp/1559580992/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419322289&sr=1-3&keywords=james+bacque
http://www.amazon.com/After-Reich-Brutal-History-Occupation/dp/0465003389/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419322289&sr=1-5&keywords=james+bacque
http://www.amazon.com/Morgenthau-Plan-Influence-American-Postwar/dp/1892941902/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419322574&sr=1-1&keywords=morgenthau+plan
http://whale.to/b/walsh11.html
It's OK to have not known this before - the victors get to write history, after all.
This is not to excuse the German and other Axis nations atrocities (especially the Ukrainians). On the East Front, wholesale murder of whole towns, never mind villagers, was normal (for example the much celebrated and admired, because it was a great military achievemtn by Manstein, the retaking of Kharkov in 1943, ended in the wholesale execution of the WHOLE TOWN in revenge for resisting).
The savagery of Russians has been told many times (in my family, my grandma flatly stated that "When the Russians came, they first stole everything and then raped everything that moved"... And no, we were Russian allies at that point).
But the Western Allies not only shot POWs in Germany as a matter of course, but starved the whole German population as an act of revenge. The Morgenthau Plan was in full force right after WW2, and only after Mr. Hoover and some Mormons and Red Cross (and others) actually visited Germany and saw what the Allies were doing there was it cut back a bit.
Due to the Cold War, both the Russians and the West tried to woo the Germans - in fact, the first mass feeding of the Berliners was done by the Soviets, to demonstrate how much better they were than the Western Allies who starved the whole population and took hundreds of thousands for slave labor!
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested:
https://www.amazon.com/Stasiland-Stories-Behind-Berlin-Wall/dp/0062077325
It's absolutely terrifying and more about the regime and its crimes as a whole. And should probably dissuade most people from thinking "it wasn't that bad".
I enjoyed your conversation, but just wanted to address this:
> Some source for nazi industrialists? Some, like Henry Ford, were utter bastards, but I don't think any were outspoken nazis, and definitely not fascists. I don't think nazi Germany would have welcomed them either.
Outspoken nazis? Well, I guess it depends how outspoken one does have to be - Henry Ford definitely passes the test in my mind with flying colors. Besides Ford, easy arguments could be made/googled for William Randolph Hearst (although he changed his mind before the war) and Graeme K. Howard, the head of GM, who wrote a book urging the US to co-operate with the Nazis at the time. Charles Lindbergh wasn't really a businessman, but a very vocal supporter of the Nazis. Thomas Watson, of IBM, left behind plenty of very sympathetic material although one could easily make the argument that he was just doing business.
Of course, you might disagree with me on all of these but I think the point guyanonymous was trying to make was that at the very least, a lot of very important and powerful people in the US profited from Nazi Germany and thus wanted to stay out of the war - eg. stay friendly with the nazis - which wasn't very moral. It makes business sense, though, as trading with the people doing the actual warring is always good for business. Just ask Sweden..
If you haven't read it, Antony Sutton's Wall Street and the rise of Hitler is a classic on the subject.
On another theme that you mentioned, Backing Hitler by Robert Gellately is also really good and dives into what the Germans themselves knew about the extent of the death camps which is probably at least what the Allied intelligence services knew.
Also try to get a copy of this:
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Third-Reich-Lingua-Imperii/dp/0826491308
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_–_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii
>Já faz alguns anos, no primeiro dia de aula, tenho dado aos meus alunos uma cédula eleitoral dizendo que “chegou a hora de elegermos o líder de uma grande nação”, e ofereço a eles dois candidatos, o A e o B.
>
>O candidato A é descrito como “um conhecido crítico do governo, este homem está envolvido em movimentos contra impostos, e defendeu abertamente a secessão, rebelião armada contra o atual governo federal e até mesmo a derrubada deste governo. Ele é um membro conhecido de uma milícia que está envolvida em trocas de tiro com autoridades policiais. Ele é contra as tentativas de desarmamento civil do atual governo federal, e contra as restrições a imigração para este país. Ele é um empresário que ganhou sua fortuna comercializando bebidas alcoólicas, cigarro e contrabando.”
>
>O candidato B é descrito assim: “Um condecorado veterano de guerra, este homem é um antitabagista declarado e dedicado defensor da saúde pública. Seus interesses na saúde pública incluem o incentivo a pesquisa científica na medicina e sua dedicação a eliminação do câncer. Ele se opõe ao uso de animais na condução destas pesquisas. Ele tem apoiado restrições no uso de amianto, pesticidas e radiação, e apoia padrões trabalhistas de segurança e saúde determinados pelo governo, bem como a promoção de alimentos como pão integral e soja. Ele é um defensor de medidas de controle de armas pelo governo. Um ardente opositor do fumo, ele tem apoiado o aumento de restrições tanto do uso quanto das propagandas de cigarros. Estas restrições a propaganda incluem: [1] não permitir que o uso de cigarro seja retratado como inofensivo ou um sinal de masculinidade; [2] não permitir que estas propagandas sejam direcionadas as mulheres; [3] não chamar a atenção aos baixos teores de nicotina nos cigarros; e, [4] limitações dos locais permitidos para estas propagandas. Este homem é um defensor do meio-ambiente e de programas de sustentabilidade, e acredita na importância de enviar o exército para outros países para manter a ordem lá.”
>
>Peço que os alunos votem, anonimamente, em um dos dois candidatos. Eu não aplico esse exercício todos os anos, assim ele permanece uma surpresa para os estudantes. Ao longo dos anos, os resultados das votações foram geralmente de 75% dos votos para o candidato B e 25% para o A. Após completar o exercício e contar os votos, informo aos estudantes que o candidato A é uma mistura dos pais fundadores americanos (e.g., Sam Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington etc.). O candidato B, por sua vez, é Adolf Hitler, cuja defesa dos programas citados pode ser encontrada em obras como The Nazi War on Cancer, de Robert Proctor.
>
>Em uma de minhas classes alguns anos atrás, estávamos discutindo o caso de Schechter, onde o Supremo Tribunal americano derrubou a legislação fundamental do New Deal, o Ato de Recuperação da Indústria Nacional. Eu estava explicando aos alunos como esta legislação havia transformado o comércio e a indústria do país em um sistema de cartéis de negócios criados e implementados pelo governo. Também falei para eles o quanto os programas fascistas/socialistas eram populares em todo o mundo naquela época. Havia Stalin na União Soviética, Mussolini na Itália, Hitler na Alemanha, Franco na Espanha e Roosevelt nos Estados Unidos.
>
>Então digo a minha classe como Winston Churchill, em 1938, elogiou Hitler, assim como luminares como Gandhi, Gertrude Stein (que o indicou para o prêmio Nobel da paz), e Henry Ford (que estava encantado em trabalhar com o líder alemão). Um dos meus alunos não aguentou. “Como você pode dizer que tanta gente apoiou uma pessoa tão má como Hitler?”, ela arguiu. “Vocês me dizem”, eu respondi, “apenas duas semanas atrás 78% de vocês nesta classe votaram nele” Uns 20 segundos de puro silêncio ecoaram pela sala de aula antes de seguirmos em frente para o próximo assunto.
>
>Dois dias atrás decidi aplicar o teste a um novo grupo de alunos. Depois que eles votaram – de novo anonimamente – contei os votos e descobri que, mais uma vez, Hitler havia vencido, mas por uma margem mais apertada que nos anos anteriores. Nas minhas duas classes, Hitler venceu por 45 contra 41 de votos (e ele não precisou do Tribunal Superior para validar sua vitória). Em outras palavras, seu apoio caiu das médias anteriores de 75% para aproximadamente 52,3%.
>
>Um dos meus alunos escreveu na sua cédula “vou votar em branco, votaria em um candidato socialista se tivesse um”. Na aula seguinte eu li esta mensagem para a classe e falei para eles que havia sim um “candidato socialista”: o candidato B, na pessoa de Adolf Hitler. A palavra “nazi” era derivada do nome formal do partido de Hitler: o Partido Nacional Socialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães. O fato de muitas das políticas de Hitler terem se tornado a essência do “politicamente correto” moderno, bem como das plataformas “do partidos mainstream”, é um triste reflexo do quanto se deteriorou a cultura do país nas últimas décadas.
>
>Ainda assim, pode haver razões para um otimismo com este último resultado destes alunos, que nunca tinham tido aula comigo antes. Quando quase metade desses jovens preferem ficar ao lado do tipo de gente com pensamento alinhado a Declaração da Independência, pode ser um bom sinal de que o apoio a políticos tradicionais do nosso atual estado fascista esteja esmorecendo.
>
>Tendo experimentado a cultura hitlerista de nosso governo atual, talvez uma boa parte das pessoas esteja redescobrindo o significado de sua própria história. Enquanto os cães da mídia continuam recitando seus scripts predeterminados, pode ser que o “espírito de 1776”, com seu amor pela liberdade e desconfiança no governo, ainda esteja suficientemente enraizado no tecido de nossa sociedade.
this book on the recordings is also relevant:
http://www.amazon.com/Soldaten-On-Fighting-Killing-Dying/dp/0307958124
My point is, if he saw that, no doubt others did too. Of course, it's not like the Wehrmacht was remotely clean anyway. Consider Hannes Heer's "War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II", or Wolfram Wette's "The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality" for further reading.
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings (Edit: Non Fiction, sorry)
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (might seem a somewhat crude choice, but it is a great novel about war, moral and suffrage)
Jarhead by Anthony Swofford (More about coping with war than war itself, somewhat non-fiction)
Edit: Some are between fiction and non-fiction, some are an odd choice, but worth reading nonetheless.
Figes' The Whisperers is very good. Funder's Stasiland is a good read, but a little too journalistic to be good history.
Slightly more off-beat, but fascinating and well worth reading is Speaking with Vampires by Louise White.
Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner is a great book about life on a U-boat.
> We’re a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
We're a Democratic Constitutional Republic which makes us a representative democracy. Stop splitting hairs to sound smart.
>There are quite a lot of people muslims in the US who would happily start a genocide against Muslims American born citizens right now
Do you even know any Muslims personally? I've never met one that thinks this way, and I've met plenty.
>The German citizens were terrified to learn the scale of atrocities committed of the holocaust, that’s not the Hitler they voted for.
Incorrect. According to the only systematic study on WWII German news available in English, German newspapers wrote about and celebrated concentration camps and the extermination of "subhumans."
After years of propaganda, they enthusiastically supported it.
> Biggest load of shit I've ever heard.
[Well if you want to read it by all means] (https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930), War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II by Hannes Heer is a fantastic book on the subject I find. Gathering valued insight from a collection of historians of the subject of the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth you're trying to perpetuate.
> You do realized the Wehrmacht FEARED the Nazi party and therefore felt like they had to do everything the Nazis requested?
Once again, this is the [Clean Wehrmacht Myth] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Wehrmacht) I just mentioned. The belief that the Wehrmacht were an apolitical organisation that were "pushed around" by the Nazi Party, and considered themselves independent from the Nazi Party's political ideology. This narrative is generally pushed around by far-right authors and a select few activist groups, despite being proven false by the Wehrmacht's own documents. The above mentioned book and provide further insight if you're willing to pick it up.
Really? Check out the history of Zionism and the Nazis...
http://www.amazon.com/51-Documents-Zionist-Collaboration-Nazis/dp/1569804338
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0914153137/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51pBrljOWRL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&refRID=0GN1CVGSZNESC2C73HZZ
Hell, Google the history of the Lehi. Or, check out this link and the sources provided... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence
Or downvote facts? Rebel against knowledge. "Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Freedom is slavery."
>I've stopped watching the mainstream news because they have only become more implicit in it over time, to the point that the Republican view of any issue must be considered no matter how offensive or racist.
You mean "complicit" here, right?
Thanks for all the answers. As a treat, I recommend you check out this book which explains the rhetorics of the Third Reich, which will, sadly, continue to be incredibly relevant.
You may be interested in the Prose Edda, which is a more systematic account. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe is also a standard text, assuming that you want something academic.
I specialize in the Eastern Front of WWII, but there are quite a few 'genres' of books that I can recommend.
General accounts:
When Titans Clashed
Russia at War
Thunder in the East
Absolute War
Hitler's War in the East
The Road to Stalingrad
The Road to Berlin
A Writer at War
THE ROLE OF THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR: A Re-examination
Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought: The Red Army's Military Effectiveness in World War II
If you're interested in memoirs I'd suggest:
Blood on the Shores
Over the Abyss
Sniper on the Eastern Front
GUNS AGAINST THE REICH: Memoirs of an Artillery Officer on the Eastern Front
PANZER DESTROYER: Memoirs of a Red Army Tank Commander
Through the Maelstrom: A Red Army Soldier's War on the Eastern Front, 1942-1945
Red Road From Stalingrad: Recollections Of A Soviet Infantryman
Red Star Against the Swastika: The Story of a Soviet Pilot over the Eastern Front
Penalty Strike: The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander, 1943-45
BUT NOT FOR THE FUEHRER
Through Hell for Hitler
A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War : Russia, 1941-1944
Barbarossa:
War Without Garlands: Barbarossa 1941/42
BARBAROSSA DERAILED: THE BATTLE FOR SMOLENSK 10 JULY-10 SEPTEMBER 1941 VOLUME 1: The German Advance, The Encirclement Battle, and the First and Second Soviet Counteroffensives, 10 July-24 August 1941
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
Kiev 1941
Operation Typhoon: Hitler's March on Moscow, October 1941
THE VIAZ'MA CATASTROPHE, 1941: The Red Army's Disastrous Stand against Operation Typhoon
What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa
War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941
Germany and the Second World War: Volume IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union
For Stalingrad/Leningrad:
STALINGRAD: How the Red Army Survived the German Onslaught
Leningrad: State of Siege
Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad
To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942
Armageddon in Stalingrad: September-November 1942
Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943
The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad
Kursk:
The Battle of Kursk
Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: An Operational Narrative
Air War:
Barbarossa: The Air Battle July-December 1941
Stalingrad: The Air Battle: 1942-January 1943
Kursk: The Air Battle, July 1943
Bagration to Berlin: The Final Air Battles in the East 1944-1945
Black Cross/Red Star : Vol. 1, Operation Barbarossa 1941
Black Cross / Red Star: The Air War Over The Eastern Front, Vol. 2 - Resurgence: January - June 1942
Black Cross Red Star: The Air War Over the Eastern Front Volume 3
German Army:
War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II
Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich
The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture
The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality
The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers
Partisans:
Defiance
Stalin's Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II
Holocaust/Genocide:
Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule
Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine
Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine
The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization
The Holocaust in the Soviet Union
Hopefully the above will do for a start.
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Off the top of my mind, specific books they've mentioned that I've enjoyed:
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-Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens
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-Open Letters by Vaclav Havel
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-The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1926-1939 by Antony Beevor
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-So You've Been Publically Shamed by Jon Ronson
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-Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
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I'll try to remember more and add to it as I can recall them.
EDIT
-Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
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-Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
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-Both Ian Kershaw and Richard Evans' accounts of HItler, Germany, and the Third Reich in WWII
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-Moynihan did a long interview in Vice about Karl Ove Knausgaard, so I would imagine maybe he's a fan
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-Bad Blood by John Carryrou
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-The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
I just want to point out a few things :
I can expand on any of this if anyone wants.
Sources:
1.)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Germany_%281919%E2%80%931945%29#List_of_officeholders
2.)http://www.amazon.com/Defying-Hitler-Memoir-Sebastian-Haffner/dp/0374161577
3.)http://www.amazon.com/The-Nazi-Seizure-Power-experience/dp/0531056333
Awesome link - I'm looking for the same thing.
I wish they had a kindle edition, but it appears the whole interview could be found in the book: "Nuremberg Diary" by G. M. Gilbert
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0306806614/qid=1059272755/
I bet you've seen this, but I found this thread for the info relating to the quote:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/235519.html
And Lastly, something that might be worth checking out for ya- the original spot I found this quote was 15 minutes into Dan Carlin's podcast: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-317-shades-of-grey/
I've always prefered first person narratives in WWII books. Here are two of my favorites
To Fly and Fight - Clarence "Bud" Anderson's flying experiences in WWII. He's still an active P-51 pilot to this day.
Iron Coffins - Herbert Werner's accounts of WWII submarine warfare from the German side. One of many books on the subject I have read, but this one was the first.
Anyone who wants to read an account of what it was like living in the DDR read Stasiland. Excellent book.
I've been meaning to read this book about the land between Germany and Russia during that time. You are absolutely right about the tameness of the Western Front.
I have a minor correction to make about Auschwitz: it was actually a very large complex that included multiple camps, and Auschwitz I was the work camp. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the largest of the camps, was a true extermination camp, like Sobibor, Treblinka, and others. Auschwitz III (Monowitz) was also a work camp, and it is where Elie Wiesel was imprisoned.
Ok, thanks for pointing that out!
For the quotes and more on Hitler's personal views on religion (among many other things) there is:
More information about the Foundation of Positive Christianity in Nazi Ideology and its implementation in the Third Reich can be found in:
From Axis perspective:
Guy Sajer - The Forgotten Soldier
Herbert Werner - Iron Coffins
Sven Hassel books (treat it like the fiction)
Saburo Sakai - Samurai
From an American perspective, Goodbye Darkness by William Manchester
From a German perspective, Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner
I recommend the Nuremberg Diary by Gilbert. LINK
It is. From what I recall, U-boats suffered the greatest losses in lives percentage-wise. They were called the Iron Coffins, which is also the title of a book.
There are many other good and interesting books on the topic, including the memoirs of Karl Dönitz, admiral who led the U-boat arm.
There's a book called After The Reich that talks about what happened to Germans after the war
http://www.amazon.com/After-Reich-Brutal-History-Occupation/dp/0465003389
>When Hitler’s government collapsed in 1945, Germany was immediately divided up under the control of the Allied Powers and the Soviets. A nation in tatters, in many places literally flattened by bombs, was suddenly subjected to brutal occupation by vengeful victors. According to recent estimates, as many as two million German women were raped by Soviet occupiers. General Eisenhower denied the Germans access to any foreign aid, meaning that German civilians were forced to subsist on about 1,200 calories a day. (American officials privately acknowledged at the time that the death rate amongst adults had risen to four times the pre-war levels; child mortality had increased tenfold). With the authorization of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, over four million Germans were impressed into forced labor. General George S. Patton was so disgusted by American policy in post-war Germany that he commented in his diary, “It is amusing to recall that we fought the revolution in defense of the rights of man and the civil war to abolish slavery and have now gone back on both principles"
>
>Although an astonishing 2.5 million ordinary Germans were killed in the post-Reich era, few know of this traumatic history. There has been an unspoken understanding amongst historians that the Germans effectively got what they deserved as perpetrators of the Holocaust. First ashamed of their national humiliation at the hands of the Allies and Soviets, and later ashamed of the horrors of the Holocaust, Germans too have remained largely silent – a silence W.G. Sebald movingly described in his controversial book On the Natural History of Destruction.
>
>In After the Reich, Giles MacDonogh has written a comprehensive history of Germany and Austria in the postwar period, drawing on a vast array of contemporary first-person accounts of the period. In doing so, he has finally given a voice the millions of who, lucky to survive the war, found themselves struggling to survive a hellish “peace.”*
Try this
It’s not about just the Bolsheviks, but this was a fascinating book on the vast murder that took place in Eastern Europe in the 30s and 40s. Wash it down with something happy, I made the mistake of reading it back-to-back with this and became pretty depressed for a few weeks.
I also read Rise and Fall and came here to recommend it.
People were spending more due to heavy state encouragement to buy-buy-buy and a job placement program working with major industries that ensured that every worker could find a job. IG Farben, Krupp, Siemens, and other major German companies gladly went along.
Thanks for the link. Do you know who produced this? When?
The Eastern Front has gotten so little study in the West, although I'm looking forward to reading the new book Bloodlands.
>Not a single German who refused to kill a Jew was demoted, sent to concentration camp, assigned to a suicide mission or sentenced to death.
>On the contrary: such orders commonly included an offer that "anyone who did not feel up to the upcoming task could come forward." Nevertheless, this occurred only in exceptional cases. Those who did opt out were neither taunted nor pressured, but treated with consideration. They were given different duties, often back home. There were always others willing to take over the murders--the "proven pragmatist" Himmler could be sure of that. Men were generally eager for the job ,as, for example, on a November evening in 1942 in Lukow, Poland, when musicians and performers from the Berlin police department came to entertain Police Battalion 101: "They also learned of the forthcoming shooting," according to witnesses, "and offered, even pleaded emphatically for permission to participate in the execution of these Jews. This strange request was granted by the battalion."(page 395). This means that voluntary mass murder was seen as a social pastime and a thrill - without the necessity of orders.
>The book shows concretely how good the perpetrators felt before, during and after their "operations"; how they humiliated, beat, and tortured defenseless people and then shot them in the back of the neck without the slightest hesitation; how the men posed before their living or dead victims, laughing into the camera - bloodthirsty, sadistic, lascivious. After they had done their day's work, they celebrated with a "death banquet" for the Jews, went to bed with their lovers, or wrote home faithfully that these snapshots and extermination anecdotes would someday be "extremely interesting to our children."
--götz aly, the famous german historian
http://www.yadvashem.org/download/about_holocaust/studies/aly_full.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tz_Aly
Some reccomeneded reading:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators/dp/1568521332
http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/0805087265/ref=pd_sim_14_7?ie=UTF8&dpID=514AHPryUJL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=05Y7VNBGT0ENBSGJ0Y3B
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Jews-Imagination-Persecution/dp/0300212518/ref=pd_sim_14_8?ie=UTF8&dpID=51Ecr%2BivaDL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&refRID=08WPD7EPW7WHM64VTB04
You seem enamored of a great myth, that germans were ignorant victims, forced into murdering millions of women and children by a small cabal of evil nazis. All the evidence suggests that's a lie, they gladly supported hitler and wanted "the germ of humanity" (jews in hitler's words) dead.
I bought it at a local bookstore, but it's on [Amazon UK] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007IL51RG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) and Amazon US in book and kindle format. I've seen it recommended on /r/askhistorians a couple of times too. Well worth a read if you like your history
There is also:
http://www.amazon.ca/Nazi-Seizure-Power-Experience-1922-1945/dp/0531056333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375909280&sr=8-1&keywords=the+nazi+seizure+of+power
My understanding is that this book is a classic in the literature about the Nazis. It is harder going than "Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth", but has lots of interesting information about the rise of the Nazi party and its internal workings at the grass roots level.
I also recommend Proctor's [The Nazi War on Cancer] http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-War-Cancer-Robert-Proctor/dp/0691070512/
for additional context on the German social program.
My sources are books, I have a decent Hitler library. I recommend Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, and of course Mein Kampf (Among many others.) I distinctly remember one of the reasons for never taking his coat off in public was because he would pour sweat before his speeches. Once he got going he was great, but before he was a nervous wreck. I attempted to look on the internets, but couldn't find a reliable source. Edit: If you really want a great comprehensive read about Germany in World War 2, I HIGHLY recommend Rise and Fall of the Third Reich....its a must read. http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/0671728687
There is a book by Robert Gellately called "Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany" that studies the subject in some depth.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Backing-Hitler-Consent-Coercion-Germany/dp/0192802917/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368139469&sr=8-1&keywords=backing+hitler
Gellately's claim is a pretty uncomfortable one... It is that Germany, in which knowledge of Nazi crimes was widespread, gave its support to Hitler.
You should check out the book Soldaten about German POWs living in the UK during WW2. It's a fantastic read. One of the best impulse buys I've ever made.
Highly educated opinions in that post. real edifying stuff.
Clearly the steady diet of racism and tabloid newspapers is rotting your "communist" brain. The post WW2 era refers to the first decade after the war. Take a step back from FOX news and look at one of these papery things commonly known as a book.
https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent-Europe-Aftermath-World/dp/125003356X
https://www.amazon.com/After-Reich-Brutal-History-Occupation/dp/0465003389
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall tells the really interesting stories of people who lived in Communist East Berlin.
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain is the greatest book about Mental Health ever. It tells how exercise is one of the key factors in effecting mental health.
>My point is the Holocaust wasn't the Holocaust then. Kristallnacht was a pogrom. Terrible, but dismissable by the uncaring people who don't want to give others a handout.
I was about to say that you are seemingly ignorant of history (especially given the comparisons you make) but truth is, you're just straight up talking out of your rectum. Pick up a copy of The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. Read it, and I mean actually READ IT. And if you manage through that, pick up the next installment, The Third Reich in Power. Then we might be able to have an exchange that wouldn't be an utter waste of my time. In the meantime, save the bowel movements for the toilet and don't talk about the Holocaust.
His brother's work "In the time of of Winston Churchill", Haffner's the "meaning" and Klemperer's LTI are worth a read, as welll. Führer means leader.
And never forget Bracher: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism
https://www.amazon.de/Meaning-Hitler-Sebastian-Haffner/dp/0297792555
https://www.amazon.de/Language-Third-Reich-Imperii-Continuum/dp/0826491308
https://www.amazon.com/German-Dictatorship-Structure-National-Socialism/dp/1125634790
Nice calculation you did there, but I don't get why being a follower, an opportunist or a beneficiary of National Socialism requires membership in the NSDAP? Even less so since the NSDAP didn't play an important role from 1933 onwards. It was an agitation machinery that was rendered more or less useless when there were no elections any more. So you dug out a pretty meaningless stat there.
The widespread approval of National Socialism or specific policy fields is not only documented by contemporaries emigrants like Thomas Mann or Ralph Giordano, it is also dealt with in numerous historical studies, like
I suggest to have a thorough read before defending "honest German people" and "honest German soldiers".
Some other good works to read about "the banality of evil" are Eichmann in My Hands, People of the Lie and Nuremberg Diary.
Instead of touching this, perhaps you should try some reading. I promise it's worth the $5 with shipping.
Russia wasn't alone in raping German women.
There are some serious accusations against US soldiers in liberated Frane as well.
And then there's the denial of aid, starvation and forced labor of Germans.
Whoever said there are no good guys in war were more right than they knew.
If you're into WWII, I cannot stress enough what a great book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is.
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
> i ask you to explain to me, how the average person has the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions about who should run state?
It’s not necessary to explain this to you because the question is entirely irrelevant. It is a very narrow and parochial understanding of knowledge which becomes apparent if you reverse the question: How can any one individual, or small group of select individuals, have the required knowledge of the populace to make informed decisions about how the state should be run on their behalf?
The issue is not whether "the vast majority of people” have or don’t have "the required level of knowledge on politics” because they don’t need whatever this specialist knowledge is to have specialist knowledge of their own lives and families.
In fact, for that matter, specialist knowledge of the kind you are talking about is highly disputed, is not a well-defined object that can be learned or not and is the subject of endless debate - in a democracy at least that’s true. Under a dictatorship you can simply have dissenting voices silenced.
> … dictatorships are less pleasant but democracies are just as corrupt as any dictatorship its just far less obvious ...
That is absolute rubbish. I mean it’s not even a different point of view, just actual palpable nonsense.
The only way in which that statement could be true is if we were to extend the meaning of ‘Democracy’ to include countries like North Korea as they are named the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea or Zimbabwe or any other places which ostensibly have some form of democracy, let’s say Nigeria, but where corruption is absolutely rife and not even “far less obvious” but plain to see to anyone from the minute they wake up in the morning to the moment they go to bed at night.
The important point there from your argument is that the issues of corruption in the latter ‘democracies’ have absolutely nothing to do with the form of government they have, or who is in power at any one time, or whether or not the populace at large have what you call "the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions”.
Corruption exists in democracies such as the US or the UK and so on. But so do burglary, murder, extortion, rape, riots, inequality and any number of other crimes and injustices. A democratic system is not a promise of utopia and was never meant to be.
You’re a student so you’re young and it’s fine to hold pompous and silly ideas for the sake of shocking older people such as myself, but if it really is the case that you have actually "done considerable research” into dictatorships and democracies, then perhaps you could tell me what your thoughts on. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1: The Spell of Plato as I have to say your comments are rather suggestive of the idea that you think a dictatorship ruled by an elite class of selfless and benign philosophers would be just as good, perhaps better, than a democracy.
You could also, for instance, look at books such as these and explain where you can find anything comparable happening under a functioning democracy (and not e.g. those I mentioned before):
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder
The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World by Theodore Dalrymple
Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot
Relevant.
Julius Streicher (that we hung at Nuremberg for his faith-hatred) seems to have been less guilty than many Zionists.
And, while he was certainly a disgusting racist, his defence is pretty strong:
>In 1935, at the Nuremberg Party Congress, the "racial laws" were promulgated. During the preparation of the law-project, were you called upon for consultation and did you participate in any way in the elaboration of these laws ?
>>"The accused Streicher:- Yes, I believe I participated in it insofar as, for years, I had been writing that all mixing of German and Jewish blood had to be prevented in the future. I wrote articles to that effect, and I have always repeated that we had to take the Jewish race, or the Jewish people, as a model. I have always repeated in my articles that the Jews were to be regarded as a model by other races, for they have given themselves a racial law, the law of Moses, which says:
>>>"If you go unto foreign lands, you must not take foreign wives. And this, Gentlemen, is of great importance in judging the Nuremberg laws. It was these Jewish laws that were taken as a model. When, centuries later, the Jewish legislator Ezra saw that, despite this, many Jews had married non-Jewish wives, these bonds were broken. This was the origin of Jewry which, thanks to its racial laws, survived for centuries, whereas all the other races and civilizations were destroyed."
>>Source : Trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Court (Nuremberg : November 14th 1945 October 1st 1946). Official French text. 26th April 1946 Debates, Tome XII. D 321).
Note - German Jews were not actually preaching division and very few of them were Zionist (< 1/2%?). German Jews were overwhelmingly practicing integration - up to 150,000 of them may have served in the German Army - see http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700611789/
The first Germans (and only Jews) arguing in favour of apartheid were the Zionists! Should we hang them too?
(Note - despite Julius Streicher being labelled as the race "theoretician" of the Nazis, he didn't claim any personal contribution to the Nazi racial laws of 1935, only that his logic was applied. Der Sturmer was popular pre-war because it was pornographic - its circulation slashed to some 15,000 during the war to save paper).
> Why does my roll as a player matter at all? Its a video game and a multiplayer one at that.
I think your inability to see the difference between watching a story in a movie vs participate in it as a player invalidates everything you say automatically. But I digress.
>Nice strawman. Nobody is saying we want to kill jews in game.
??? I wasn't saying that, I'm saying it's the same logic of "if something is in a movie, we should be able to play as characters in that event"
>This is LAUGHABLY wrong. Many german soldiers in the german military did not enjoy what was demanded of them. They weren't all nazi's like you think they were. A lot of them hoped to just defend germany against the allies and never be asked to shoot or gas jews. Very few were willing to risk saying no to the gestapo when they commanded such actions to be done. FEAR is a powerful tool.
That is literally nazi propaganda. Do Some Research. These are the only good german soldiers.
>A lot of them hoped to just defend germany against the allies
You're so historically illiterate, Germany attacked Poland and France first. This isn't even to mention the dehumanization and hate crimes against people before the war began. The average person in Germany in the 1930's was totally racist and okay with terrible things happening to "undesirables" my great grandfather's friend was murdered in frankfurt for being jewish and none of the police would investigate and people said he deserved it. You're so ignorant.
>Alone it wouldn't matter but when stacked upon the unholy mess that of which BFV is its just yet another thing that they fucked up. And for a lot of people here thats enough reasoning.
That doesn't even make sense "If there was nothing wrong with the game no one would care but since the game is in a bad state we need more things to complain about"
>Your argument reminds me of that retarded EXTRA SENSITIVE "Extra Credit" channel on youtube with their most downvoted video yet. "Stop normalizing nazis"
I don't know who that is, but I can take a wild guess who would disagree that normalizing nazis is a good thing.
>HeRe YoU aRe PLaYinG tHe PVp In yOUr FaVoItE Ww2 ViDeO gAmE WiTh ThE NaZi FlAG As yOuR fAcTiOnS SyMbOle. AnD aLL oF a SuDDeN, YoU'Re A nAzI!.
Damn you got me, now spell ICUP
https://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319
https://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930
Already posted my source.
Also there are countless other exceptions of the rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Bloch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Maurice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Milch
Erhard Milch is a great example of a WWI veteran getting the status of a honorary Aryan.
There are also some books on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700611789
Some of this is true except for the whole shield of victimhood bs you posted about the Jews. One of these days they'll acknowledge their responsibility in being kicked out of many nations. If they'd stop their divide and conquer bs they always do and attempts at utter domination of everyone then that might not happen.
People should also consider that Israel just keeps on taking territory.
http://ifamericansknew.org/history/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L42TxsKKPi8
Also, for the real history of Israel look to this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0914153137
Folks there's a good reason our politicians treasonously campaign in Israel and every single one of them MUST make a speech at AIPAC. The fact that this is treason should give everyone pause but no...it's Israel, their shield of victimhood is too strong and stranglehold on media too great.
thezog.info
There are many including Savage Continent Europe and After the Reich. There are many many books written on the subject. Google book post ww2.
> The Right can't mean almost anything. It means one of primarily two things.
Which would be...?
Seriously, what are the characteristics of the Right in America, and how do Neo-Nazis share those characteristics?
Like I've said repeatedly, you seem to be engaged in an amazing act of mental gymnastics in order to avoid the reality that Neo-Nazis aren't particularly indicative of the American Right.
Seriously now, you've flat out admitted that historical Nazism does not fall on the American Right. In order to maintain this, now nearly totemic, belief that Neo-Nazis are on the Right, you're claiming... historical Nazis "never addressed American issues".
What? Are you really of the opinion that the National-Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) didn't have a tax policy? Didn't have an opinion on Gun Control, on social welfare spending, on speech limitations...
Jonah Goldberg used to tease leftists by asking "other then the War, bigotry and genocide, what don't you like about Fascism?" This was a tease because the actual policies that Nazis and Italian Fascists had were... a great deal like Bernie Sander's platform.
Let me put it another way: the blurb for The Nazi War on Cancer, they describe;
>Robert Proctor recently made the explosive discovery, however, that Nazi Germany was also decades ahead of other countries in promoting health reforms that we today regard as progressive and socially responsible.
Or as the author said in an interview with the New Scientist;
>“The Nazi campaign against tobacco and the whole-grain bread operation were as fascist as the yellow stars and the death camps,” says Proctor. “We need to make sense of that, however painful it might be.”
Putting aside the European definition of 'the Right', you haven't given a single, substantive reason to place Neo-Nazis on the political Right except for your dogmatic assertion that they must be on the Right.
I've just finished reading Stasiland. I highly recommend it if you are interested in the Berlin wall and what life was like in the GDR.
No, actually the book "Soldaten" by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer. It's based on secret British recordings of German POWs, who talked freely about the crimes they committed, including shockingly casual descriptions of sexual violence followed by murder.
The book has been translated into English:
https://www.amazon.com/Soldaten-Fighting-Killing-Sonke-Neitzel/dp/1849839492
The order to execute all captured female combatants was issued by General Günther von Kluge in June 1941, right at the start of Barbarossa. The reason for this was that the mere idea of armed women fighting alongside men was an affront to the Nazis' rigid concept of gender roles. They saw it as a direct attack on the "natural order" (a term used to give their absurd ideology a veneer of legitimacy).
I just read through those FAQ points. I dont mean to sound weird but there isn't but the smallest reference to the fact that the Jews had become "over-proportionately represented" (I think "powerful" might even be an appropriate, if loaded, word) in Germany.
It just seems that if you are creating a one-stop solution for these "So what was the deal with Jews and the Nazis?" questions that should receive a bit of a treatment.
It seems that almost all of that information just points back to "historic antisemitism".
But ..
>By 1908, 12 of the 20 richest Berliners were of Jewish ancestry, as were 11 of the 25 richest people in Prussia. In 1923, 150 of the 161 privately-owned banks in Berlin were Jewish;
source
>"In Berlin alone, about 75% of the attorneys, and nearly as many doctors, were Jewish."
source
>By 1823, the Bavarian government owed 23% of its public debt to Jews; as early as 1818, there was growing complaint about excessive Jewish influence in Germany.
source
>Jews were responsible for a great part of German culture. The owners of three of Germany's greatest newspaper houses; the editors of the Vossiche Zeitung and Berliner Tagleblatt; most book publishers; the owners and editors of the Neue Rundschau and other distinguished literary magazines; the owners of Germany's greatest art galleries were all Jews. Jews played a major part in theatre and in the film industry as producers, directors, and actors. Many of Germany's best composers, musicians, artists, sculptors, and architects were Jews. Their participation in literary criticism and in literature were enormous: practically all the great critics and many novelists, poets, dramatists, and essayists of the Weimar Republic were Jews ... If cultural contributions by Jews were far out of proportion to their numerical strength, their participation in left-wing intellectual activities were even more disproportionate.
source
This is a HUGE part of the formula of "So what was all that about the Nazis and the Jews". This not-entirely-unwarranted feeling of "Jewish saturation in German culture". But I dont really see it gone into anywhere there.
The end game in Germany in WW2 was brutal. Here is a great book that covers it.
https://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-Germany-1944-1945-Max-Hastings/dp/0375714227?SubscriptionId=AKIAJA54JMESX73IGPXQ&amp=&ascsubtag=569363862-16-954414228.1537588116&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0375714227&linkCode=xm2&tag=d_2b_a_p-20
Probably the best of the outline curriculums out there is on the Troth website. I have a curriculum I developed a while back as well. Message me your email and I can send it when I get home from work.
If you are opposed to that, I would suggest starting with Gods and Myths of Northern Europe as a basic introduction.
These are a few you want if you're focused on the European Theater:
Endgame, 1945 by David Stafford
http://www.amazon.com/Endgame-1945-Missing-Final-Chapter/dp/0316035998
After the Reich by Giles MacDonogh
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465003389/ref=pd_aw_sims_1?pi=SL500_SY115&amp;simLd=1
Germany 1945: From War to Peace by Richard Bessel
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060540370/ref=pd_aw_sims_3?pi=SL500_SY115&amp;simLd=1
There are of course a few more but this should get you started. One thing I like to do is if you find a good, comprehensive book on a topic you like, be sure to check out the reference/source pages in the back. Most good history books that's aren't direct novelizations will have references to direct sources that are usually pretty good themselves. Good luck and happy reading!
[This is more accurate than you think] (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1419186631&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+good+old+days+the+holocaust+as+seen+by+its+perpetrators+and+bystanders)
If you're interested in a U-boat captain's perspective, I highly recommend Iron Coffins. It's a great read. I cannot recommend it enough.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
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.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0914153137
The Good Old Days?
I saw a lot of documentaries about WWII and specially about Germany (only half of them made in USA btw). but they all together gave less knowledge than single book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
This book changed my view about a lot of things regarding WWII and Nazi Germany. And I stopped thinking about Hitler as crazy maniac who didn't understand what he was doing but rather as representative of time and conditions Germany was in
EDIT: there is one and another film made on this book, first one is crap, don't try to see it, about second one I know nothing
My parents encouraged me to read as a kid. They enrolled me in the Pizza Hut Book It program that incentivised reading by giving you a personal pan pizza after you read so many books. I read mostly Hardy Boys, and Goose Bumps.
I really started reading my freshamn year in college. I got all depressed and a buddy of mine gave me The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to pass the time. I am not sure how, but that book changed my life. Ever since I have been a voraciouse reader. Its like something just clicked.
El muro se construyo cuando la gente aun no tenia idea de lo que se venia, y la gente del bloque socialista no tenia real idea de como eran las cosas en occidente.
Te recomiendo leerte este libro. Para que hagas post mas informados.
http://www.amazon.com/Stasiland-Stories-Behind-Berlin-Wall/dp/0062077325
Fair enough. I personally would find it interesting which is why I enjoy the works of Max Hastings (Especially Armageddon: The Battle for Germany and Retribution: The Battle for Japan.) He talks about all fronts even little discussed ones like Burma and the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria in 1945.
I know I'm the exception because I find that interesting, but I agree that local bias plays a huge role and not just in the US or Britain.
History is always a muddy process, and the Holocaust has its own special difficulties - for example, German witnesses aren't exactly jumping at the chance to explain how they knew all about what was happening, and it's hard to prove knowledge or understanding even if you do get an oral admission from some people.
A historian named Robert Gellately did an analysis using newspaper records to determine what information was being disseminated to who, and his research indicates that newspapers were indeed a sufficient source to piece together atrocities as early as 1933, and he found that newspapers were openly publishing articles about the camps. However, his research (which I personally find pretty damning) is relatively new (2001), and runs against the widely accepted consensus prior to that point, which was that most Germans did not know what was happening, or that they had been fed a modified version of the truth. Many historians still dispute his conclusions.
His book, Backing Hitler, is very good, but it will make you sad for humanity, so read at your own risk.
Read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer (http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/0671728687) if you want to have adult conversations. But, since you most likely won't do that this is enough to shut you up:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Hitler_hate_Roman_Catholics
And if you want to know any more history, hire a tutor because you clearly need one.
Read more here: https://www.amazon.com/Stasiland-Stories-Behind-Berlin-Wall/dp/0062077325/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1501588135&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=stasiland
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.
http://www.amazon.com/Nuremberg-Diary-G-M-Gilbert/dp/0306806614
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators-Bystanders/dp/1568521332
This book describes a system where the political system hid what it was doing from the people and even most soldiers. This is the real lesson of the Nazi tragedy. A lesson that the rest of the nations are trying to forget.
German peoples were enslaved post war, and hundreds of thousands were killed in Soviet prison camps, while tens of thousands more were starved in Germany. It was a pretty horrific time. Black people were treated awful, bit that comparison is inept.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/125003356X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465062768&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40&amp;keywords=savage+continent&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=51k2a1PIkBL&amp;ref=plSrch
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465003389/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=14HX9JJS52CG9W2MZ6ME
If you have the chance to read Stasiland by Anna Funder there are a few documented cases I believe. Fascinating book.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Stasiland-Stories-Behind-Berlin-Wall-Anna-Funder/1847083358
People should read Soldaten. It's an amazing look into the minds of captured Germans. Basically it's the transcripts of private conversations between POW Germans. Apparently some germans had no idea they were being recorded and you get a glimpse into their souls. It's not a pleasant experience.
http://www.amazon.com/Soldaten-On-Fighting-Killing-Dying/dp/0307958124/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=19GV58WF6HFTNJ6ZMXHG
Many Jews want to hide the story, but the Zionists needed a middle class to populate Palestine. The Nazi's needed to end the boycotts that were crippling their country. So the Zionists and Nazi's worked together make this happen. Jewish peasants did not have any value to the new country and were left to die.
Read all about it:
http://www.amazon.com/Transfer-Agreement-25th-Anniversary-Dramatic-Palestine/dp/0914153137
I did watch it. It did underplay how vilified Jews were in Germany at the time. Do you think it was even remotely realistic that soldiers like Friedhelm and Wilhelm would be hanging out with their Jewish buddy in 1941 Berlin. Give me a break. If anything the series showed the Polish resistance to be more anti-semitic than the Wermacht which is patently absurd.
> Ah yeah that's right, every German was a jew killing nazi. That's right
No, they obviously weren't, but the series perpetuated the idea, popular among many Germans, that Nazi ideology wasn't massively popular across all of German society at the time. It was. It wasn't just specialist SS death squads doing the killing, plenty of ordinary Wermacht units were busily killing Jews on the Eastern front with glee. Take a read of Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs if you want to get a good insight into the typical mind of a German soldier at the time. I'll give you a hint they weren't like Wilhelm.
http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700611789
150,000 Jews, not 10,000. Also the book has a good rating so its a good source. It is a well researched book and not bullshit and it cites sources.
>So quote me where I said that. Did I say you're triggered? Did I call you hypersensitive?
I never said that you said these things. Note that in my original comment it specifically states:
>(of course it's just implied)
Read.
>Let me get this straight. Gencyn can call GC bitches, cunts, bigots, terfs, delusional, disgusting, subhuman, they can celebrate when we get beaten and tell us we deserved it, advocate for violence against us, they can make fun of us for being autistic, incest survivors, CSA survivors, prostitution survivors, they can smear us as being "on drugs" or "crazy" when we are not, they can report us to the local authorities for completely made up child neglect, and all of that is just fine and dandy, or at worst, isolated events or the odd bad apple - despite to this day people celebrating and continuing to do that on gencyn
>but if I call an obviously fragile and ass-mad group of people who have made upwards of 4 different subreddits to try and screech about us doing exactly what they're currently doing, and who are mass brigading, and mass reporting, all of our posts entirely disingenuously, "fragile" - I'm a akin to alt-right neo-nazi racist white supremacist communities.
Akin is the wrong word, please don't misrepresent what I am saying
>If I had a dollar for every time we banned one of your lot from GC subs for coming in to call us all cunts and bitches, I'd be able to quit my job and fucking retire lol. But sure. We're the problem.
And if I had a dollar for every time a GC user dehumanized, denigrated or insulted a trans people, I'd be able to live until 2300 unemployed. This isn't a one-sided thing.
>Or I'm just saying gencyn participants are such fucking babies that you cannot take what you dish out. Your entire subreddit is dedicated to stalking GC, but the moment we do it to you, you start mass reporting our comments as being sexually explicit, pornographic, abusive, CP, etc, and you make 4 different subreddits dedicated to trying to pick apart our posts of your posts of our posts.
More examples of infantilization and condescension right here. If you continue with this type of language, I will be forced to ban you from this subreddit and I rather enjoy being able to have discourse with you.
>I mean for heaven's sake, you made an entire post shitting on Missi for "infantalizing and condescending" language because she said "Off to a great start buddy" to someone who couldn't even spell her name right. Like really????
Calling out bad behavior =/= "shitting on". Buddy is extremely condescending, along with "hon", "honey" and similar terms.
>We don't though. You're just massively reaching on that front. I could find as many, if not easily more, parallels between the language of your community and the alt right, but the thing is, if we're all speaking english, we're all going to be using some of the same fucking words.
I don't think you understood what I meant by parallels in language. There have been a lot of analyses of Nazi-specific phrasing, terminology and language. The way that certain ideological subcommunities utilize language is often unique or characteristic, which means that "not all of us use the same words"
"TERF is a slur" <-> "Anti-racist is code for anti-white" <-> "Nazi is a slur", which all comes with the "well they called me a _, so I'll just own it" mentality (see flairs on GC that say things like "I was born a TERF")
Making lists of crimes that a population does (which is exactly the Klan fallacy)
Vague appeals to free speech
Accusations of being funded by George Soros
Fearmongering over a website changing terminology to be more inclusive ("vagina" being used alongside "front hole") <-> the dozens of instances of the alt-right talking about how language changes erase white people
"IQ science is racist" <-> "Science is a TERF"
I could go on but I have work in a few minutes
>This is such a disingenuous post, and given how much you're back peddling, I think you damn well know it.
I'm not backpedaling. You misunderstanding what I meant is not backpedaling.
>Sweet ass back peddling. "Thanks for showing your true colors" implies nothing of the sort.
True colors:
>the kind of person someone really is rather than what the person seems to be
Showing your true colors:
>reveal one's real character or intentions, especially when these are disreputable or dishonorable.
Using similar language and rhetoric to alt-right groups is a character trait.
>I'm a akin to alt-right neo-nazi racist white supremacist communities.
I did not say this.
Broadly speaking, before the war the plans were something like this:
Conquer lands in the east (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Western USSR), de-populate them and colonise them with Germans. This eventually coalesced into the Hunger Plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan), which was a set of more specific proposals on how to do this, including forced removal of food to Germany, leading to death by starvation of somewhere in the region of fifty million people.
http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465002390/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1342617922&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=bloodlands+europe+between+hitler+and+stalin+by+timothy+snyder
The war took unexpected turns for the Germans, so only small portions of the plan were ever implemented.
http://www.amazon.com/After-Reich-Brutal-History-Occupation/dp/0465003389/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1334889666&amp;sr=8-4
After the Reich
> > You say you've read several books on theme, can you provide a few?
[Theme: "collusion between Zionist parties and Facist regimes in Europe prior to WWII"]
> Books specifically on this subject, no I'm afraid not. To be frank it's such an 'out there' position that it doesn't garner an enormous amount of attention unless you want to look at Protocols of the Elders of Zion level antisemitic propaganda.
Here's one for your reading list:
The Transfer Agreement--25th Anniversary Edition: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine
From Amazon:
> 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. 25th Anniversary Edition.
About the author (Wiki):
> Edwin Black is an American syndicated columnist and investigative journalist. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East [...] Black is the son of Polish Jews who were survivors of the Holocaust. His mother, Ethel "Edjya" Katz, from Białystok, told of narrowly escaping death the Holocaust by escaping a boxcar en route to the Treblinka extermination camp as a 13-year old in August 1943.
More on the topic @ Wikipedia:
Haavara Agreement
> The Haavara (Transfer) Agreement was agreed to by the German government in 1933 to allow the Zionist movement, in the form of the Haavara company to transfer property from Germany to Palestine, for the sole purpose of encouraging Jewish emigration from Germany. The Haavara company operated under a similar plan as the earlier Hanotea company. The Haavara Company required immigrants to pay at least 1000 pounds sterling into the banking company. This money would then be used to buy German exports for import to Palestine.
Zionists and Nazis - "strange bedfellows"?
Perhaps, but Germany had something that the Zionist leaders DESPERATELY NEEDED: Jews - wealthy, educated, cultured and politically savvy Jews to populate the little Zionist Homeland that they had been contriving in Palestine for some 40 years.
Meanwhile, the Nazis were suffering substantially thanks to an international boycott against German made goods - AND had come to view their Jewish population as "personae non gratae".
The Nazis benefited by a achieving measure of relief from the boycott (and, from their perspective, ridding themselves of unwanted Jews), whereas the Zionists benefited because they were blessed with wealthy, talented Jews who, were it not for Nazi persecutions, would likely never have considered moving to Palestine.
You're confusing war crimes in combat (of which all parties involved in the war were guilty) with Nazi leadership's masked plan of extermination.
On Soldaten: http://www.amazon.com/Soldaten-Fighting-Killing-Secret-Transcripts/product-reviews/0307958124/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&amp;filterBy=addOneStar&amp;showViewpoints=0
This is going to be simplistic: The Nazis believed in socialism FOR ITS OWN PEOPLE (citizens of the German Nation, this includes Germans in other countries, hence the justification for invading). Socialists believed in socialism for everybody! It was an international movement, and was devoid of the chauvinism that's inherent in Nazi ideology. It's not really the socialist part that made the Nazis abhorrent, it was the extreme nationalism. Also the only opposition to the Nazi take over of Germany came from the SPD (the socialist party), basically. Reichsbanner (the militarized section of the SPD) men and the SA would actually battle each other in the streets.
And Hitler mostly focused on the nationalism parts of the ideology while his socialist political rivals within the party faded out (eta: the Strasser bros! Thanks higher up comment!)
I recommend reading The Nazi Seizure of Power by William S Allen.
Adolf Hitler, read the rise and fall of the 3rd reich
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/0671728687
http://www.amazon.ca/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700611789
Why am I a kook for stating facts?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Fall-Third-Reich/dp/0671728687/ref=cm_lmf_tit_2
Stop with this Wehraboo revisionist bullshit. It doesn't matter if they were a good person or a bad person, they were all standing over the same mass graves. The average German civilian knew what was happening, let alone the soldiers carrying out the work. If they didn't defect or resist, they were as guilty as the rest.
&nbsp;
EDIT: Since I'm already catching downvotes, if you're not a Nazi apologist and maybe just misinformed, here are some great resources that go into explicit detail how the average German soldier was far from clean:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3xc03h/just_how_much_of_the_wehrmacht_was_dirty/?st=jse6fwxk&amp;sh=c852a62b
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/480hnc/were_the_nazis_encouraged_to_use_terror_as_a_form/?st=jse6fxso&amp;sh=835b61d6
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vc22s/how_much_did_the_wehrmacht_on_the_eastern_front/?st=jse6g0af&amp;sh=7fb522db
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5voi0y/is_it_true_that_the_wehrmacht_generally_treated/?st=jse6g1dz&amp;sh=d2a96c8a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wehrmacht-History-Myth-Reality/dp/0674025776
http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Eastern-Front-Nazi-Soviet/dp/0521712319
http://www.amazon.com/War-Extermination-Military-Studies-Genocide/dp/1571814930
You know who you fucking sound like? The people in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Old-Days-Perpetrators/dp/1568521332