The Humanization of Nazis

Having studied Interwar Germany, I must say you are rather far off as far as your depiction goes. You've got the basics down, but many parts are grossly exaggerated. One key point is that the German People blamed the German Kaiser for defeat. The German People didn't lose the war, the Kaiser did. The Communists - amongst other political groups - did try to seize power early on, but had little/no support from the people.

 

So at the flick of a button everything started to fall into place, do you believe that? Germans back to work - no, the economy took time to take off and even then there were failings, they had to choose between "guns or butter", that's what Minister Göring said. Thugs off the streets? Quite the contrary, the SA was running unfettered! Remember the Kristallnacht, the burning of the books, the everyday menace! Off the streets my posterior, MORE thugs on the streets! Autobahns are built? How many kms in homw much time? Etc, etc, etc.

This indeed is living proof that Herr Doktor Joseph Göbbels again was the most competent fellow in the entire NSDAP, his heritage still thrives!

 

I will only attempt to address the economic part here "marc780", since you are off the "mark"! Starting with the idea that Nazi policy shrunk unemployment. Well, in the "official numbers", perhaps, so you kind of have to give ‘em that one. Looking a bit deeper, one would be well advised to look in to the "how" the numbers shrunk. Shortly after coming to power Hitler had passed the "Enabling Act" which outlawed all but the Nazi party in Germany, so if you wanted to keep your civil servant job you either became one (a Nazi), or lost your job. Then in early 1935 the Nuremberg Race Laws were passed.

So a year after taking complete control of the German government, Jews, Gypsies, and other "untermensch" were NOT citizens, couldn’t vote, were dismissed from any professional jobs they had held, and were NOT counted as either "employed or unemployed"; as they didn’t "officially" exist inside the Greater Reich. Also married women doctors and many female civil servants were dismissed the year before (in 1934), and from June 1936 on, no woman could act as a judge or a public prosecutor. The year the Nazis came to power there were 18,315 women students in Germany's universities. By 1939 this number was 5,447.

Hitler also removed 800,000 German women, married and single, from the non-professional work force within his first four years. In August 1933 a law was passed that enabled married couple to obtain interest free loans to set up homes and start families. To pay for this "state" largess; single men and childless couples were taxed heavily.

Here is another "irony", the day after the first nationally celebrated "Labor Day" (while the unions were parading and celebrating), May 1st,1933; "The German Labor Front" (DAF) was officially sanctioned as the only union organization allowed in the Third Reich. All other union office buildings were seized by the SA that afternoon, their assets confiscated, and the union membership "hijacked" into the DAF. These new "union" members became literally the property of their employers, they couldn’t quit, strike, or change addresses without their employers permission. If they tried, it was a criminal offense. Off to jail (or a KZ). And the pay scale was frozen. Sounds like a "great union", right? In reality the "living standard" of the great majority of the German people was lower than that of their pre-WW1 counter-parts.

Hitler "saved" the German economy is a double myth, see the above "cooking the books" and then look up the "Dawes Plan", the "Young Plan". The banker Haljmar Schacht, the Krupp family, Fritz Thyssen’s industrial and banking support for NSDAP, and the cancellation of the Versailles reparations all BEFORE Hitler actually came to power.

Nazi Germany was similar to a giant "Ponzi" scheme, named after the Italian immigrant Carlo "Charles" Ponzi and used originally in America directly after WW1. However in Hitler’s version the original wealth in their control was spent to build weapons of war to conquer and/or assimilate other nation's wealth (Austria, Czechoslovkia, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway). The first defeat on the field of battle was the "death knell" for the scheme. No new material "wealth" coming in, and the internal "wealth" stretched to the limit. A "Ponzi" only works as long as there is new "input". As soon as the "input" is less than the "output", it collapses. It was not that it was one (Ponzi), just that the driving force was similar to one. Incoming wealth paying for expenditures made in the immediate past, but maybe the "rob Peter to pay Paul" statement would have seemed better. It as my own analogy, not one from any book or anything, I just thought it sounded "right".

Now, when speaking of "economics" of Germany post-WW1 there is only one guy you should remember and it isn’t Hitler. It is Hjalmar (Horace Greeley) Schacht. He was in executive positions in several major German banks before becoming (1923) commissioner of currency. Inflation had reached its height and the paper mark had become virtually worthless. Schacht substituted the rentenmark, in theory secured by a mortgage on all land and industry. By various stringent deflationary measures, and aided by loans under the Dawes Plan, the rentenmark was stabilized and the budget balanced. All before Hitler was appointed Chancellor. If one wishes to do a bit of research on the economic recovery of Weimar Germany, be sure to include the Dawes Plan and the later Young Plan in your search.

The former opened up the aid of foreign loans, and changed the reparations pay back system (a sliding scale), the latter froze the reparations, and later forgave them; all before Hitler came to power. These two Americans were responsible (with Schacht’s aid) in the economic recovery of Germany, not Hitler. Schacht's conflict with Hermann Goering, who had been made virtual economic dictator, led to Schacht's resignation from the ministry in 1937. Schacht however continued as president of the Reichsbank until 1939, when he was dismissed for vocally and vehemently opposing the huge armament program, which he felt would cause inflation. Inflation was avoided by the infusion of conquered nation’s gold re-supplying the Nazi reserves, but as a financial minister, out of favor, out of the loop, Schacht was unaware of the plan for absorbing of Germany’s neighbor’s wealth, as well as that of it own internal "non-citizen’s" being forced to contribute their legally earned held wealth.

In 1924, Germany (Schacht) obtained the first foreign loan under the Dawes Plan, and in 1925 the rentenmark was replaced by the reichsmark, based on a gold standard. Nearly a full decade before Hitler was appointed to the post of Chancellor. I believe that is the time period when Herr Hitler was serving his time in Landsburg prison, NOT in power putting them back on the gold standard. Nazi Germany under Hitler was simply a giant "Ponzi" scheme, but where the original wealth was spent to build weapons of war to conquer and/or assimilate other nation's wealth (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway). The first defeat on the field of battle was the "death knell" for the scheme. No new material "wealth" was being produced, and the existing internal "wealth" was stretched to the limit. A "Ponzi" only works as long as there is new "input". As soon as the "input" is less than the "output", it collapses.

Somehow that economic myth continues. That whole "nastiest inflation" in the history of the world was under control well before Hitler even got out of Landsburg Prison after his treason conviction. Directly after WW1 the new Weimar government had major problems in meeting its reparation "tab", even though it was smaller, considering the time and destruction done than the one Germany demanded and received (paid in full, on time) from France after the Franco-Prussian War. When they failed to keep up with their payments in '23, the French and Belgians moved into and occupied the Ruhr. When this happened, it exacerbated the problem and everything else started to "hit the fan" in Germany, and massive inflation and unemployment followed.

As an example, by late 1923 a "chambermaid" (if she had a job) worked for "room and half board" (one meal a day), plus what amounted to $.50 (fifty cents "roaring twenties" US!) a month in cash. A man working in a "plant" would have his wife come to the gate at noon, every day, to give her his pay so that the price of an item hadn't escalated beyond their ability to purchase it before she could get to the shop. It was reported in the Hamburg crime records that one woman was carrying her husband's "cash" in two covered wicker baskets to buy some groceries, when she was attacked by other women, who stole the baskets, and left the paper money!

But, now here is where it gets interesting. A year after the Ruhr is occupied by France in '23, the American banker Charles Dawes had investigated the problem and (working with Hjalmar Schacht) proposed a plan (April, 1924) for instituting annual payments of reparations on a fixed scale. His plan also recommended the reorganization of the German State Bank, and an increase in foreign loans to Weimar Germany. German politicians like Hitler and Alfred Hugenberg attacked the Dawes Plan because it did not reduce the total reparations amount. They also disliked the fact that foreigners would have some control over the German economy. At any rate, Dawes report and policies were instigated and were so successful that by the end of '24, early '25 inflation had been brought under control and the economy began to improve. And Germany was able to meet her obligations for the next four years. (much to the dismay of both the right and left wing parties)

By early 1928 unemployment had fallen to 8.4% of the workforce, but just around the corner lay the "Wall Street Crash", after which most all of the American "Dawes" loans were called. In very late 1929 the Allied Reparations Committee asked the American Owen D. Young to investigate the situation, and keep Germany out of default. Young's report suggested that the total amount of reparations be reduced by three quarters, and that Germany should make payments on a "sliding scale" rather than the Dawes "fixed scale", and adjusted to its Gross National Product.

The Young Plan was accepted by all creditor governments concerned, but it was severely criticized in Germany by the right-wing. Unemployment began to grow in Germany again, and by 1931 it was decided, by the Weimar Government (unilaterally), not Hitler, to suspend all payments of reparations. In 1932 a conference of the Reparations Creditors at Lausanne, formally (temporarily) canceled all of Germany's reparation debts, putting them on moratorium until the global economy rebounded. At this time Germany had only paid one eighth of the sum originally demanded in the "Versailles Treaty". Hitler, who was considered a buffoon in 1927 when he predicted an economic disaster (which didn't happen), was now seen in a new light, when an economic disaster outside of Europe's and Germany's control, did happen.

Hitler was "lucky twice" in that the German economy was just beginning to recover a second time when he was "appointed" (not elected) to the position of Chancellor, and the reparation debt had been canceled in 1932. He could bluster about taking a firm stand and refusing to pay (the Jew Bankers), but the truth is the debt was no longer being asked for, and the "Dawes" era loans had been forgiven as well.

And try not to forget that he "shrunk" the unemployment tally in more ways than expanding the military manpower. He also got the "racial laws" passed wherein Jews and other non-Germanic peoples were removed from citizenship. Hence not tallied in the count, employed or not. Married women were forbidden to hold jobs, persons incarcerated in prison and in mental institutions were counted as "employed", and unions were abolished.

The workers now became the "property" of their companies, they couldn't quit or move to any area the company didn't approve of. Fines and imprisonment were the results of attempting to do so. The standard of living declined to pre-WW1 levels in many areas. So, lets see here; don't count the Jews, gypsies, or married women. Don't allow workers to strike, quit, or move without permission from the company. Remove health care and old age pensions from all Jews, gypsies, Slavs and any alien nationals. Right, he "shrunk" the unemployment numbers? Total crap. He also drove many of Germany's most talented people out of the country.

Hjalmar Schacht originally held, but eventually lost his favor with Hitler. He was in executive positions in several major German banks before becoming (1923) commissioner of currency. Inflation had reached its height and the paper mark had become virtually worthless. Schacht substituted the rentenmark, in theory secured by a mortgage on all land and industry. By implementing the "Dawes Plan" and using various stringent deflationary measures the rentenmark was stabilized and the budget balanced.
As for books on the economics of the time frame, I can suggest these two:

Excellent reading are Schach’s own autobiography, Confessions of the Old Wizard [1953, translated-1956]; or A. E. Simpson’s, Hjalmar Schacht in Perspective [1969].

You might also like to research the Thyssen Banking systems, with branches in Holland, Germany, the US and others. Fritz Thyssen also wrote a book; I Paid Hitler while living in self-imposed exile in Switzerland. A really funny thing (I mean a real guffaw) is that when Thyssen was being interrogated post-war to find out if he had hidden assets/profits that should go to the rebuilding of Germany. They kept asking the wrong question! They would ask; "do you have accounts in banks x,y, or z?" And he could honestly answer "NO!" The question should have been; "do you OWN banks x, y, or z?". Then he would have had to say "yes" (if he was honest).

Post 1929 the entire world was falling into an economic depression (excluding the new USSR as it head no economic ties or commitments to the rest of the world), and the new Young Plan would have pulled Germany out faster than the now superseded Dawes Plan which had done the job from early 20's until the "crash", with Weimar Germany’s unemployment in the single digits, and inflation controlled. After the "crash" of '29 the situation world-wide altered in ways NO-ONE could have predicted. The Young Plan address the "new" reality, but before anything besides the forgiving of the reparations payments could be instigated pre-Hitler, there he was!

Those two plans (Dawes Plan early, Young Plan last), were both before Hitler. He rose to power after the "crash", and before the Young plan could be put into effect in total. Even though the reparations had been "forgiven" before his rise, he took credit for "standing up to the financial interests (read Jew bankers)", even though he had nothing to do with it. The Weimar Government had unilaterally refused to pay any more of the payments, and the Lucerne group overseeing the gathering of the payments took Young's advice and approved the forgiving of the monies. The rest of the Young plan never was implemented until post-war.

 

The thing that blows my mind is, how can normal, intelligent human beings fall for the ideas of Hitler? Furthermore, how could they kill so many innocent people and not show a single ounce of remorse? The Nazis were human, there's no doubt of that. But the things that gets me is, and this is what I like to discuss with people is just because Nazis ruled Germany and most of Europe, doesn't mean that all Germans and people under their rule were Nazis. If you take the most infamous Nazis, they're the ones portrayed as inhuman monsters, and that's not far from the truth.

What people get confused with is just because an average soldier served under them, or civilians followed them, or anything to that nature, they're automatically portrayed as inhuman. But if some people would dig deeper, they'll see that some Nazis actually were decent people who didn't commit war crimes or anything of that nature. I've seen pictures and read stories how during combat, a temporary truce was called so both sides could gather the dead and wounded. At Monte Cassino, German soldiers actually gathered British wounded with their stretchers and afterwards returned them to the British, and smoked and talked for a few minutes, before resuming the fight.

My late mother described Hitler as "brilliantly mad". I still use that term today and that pretty much describes him and all of this devout stooges. I do not condone what the Nazis did in any way, but I do acknowledge them as humans. While the most infamous ones cast doubt on whether they should have the right to be called humans is one thing, the ones that didn't blindly follow Hitler and still had the intelligence to know better, they're the ones that shouldn't be taken as inhuman, and that's where people have trouble finding that thin line.

 

Why not? If everything is going to pot and someone offers you what looks like a way out and a glimmer of hope, you'd be surprised what people are willing to believe. As for killing innocent people and remorse, look through human history, even the 'civilised' west, you see a tale of being horrible to one another in a variety of new and varied ways. Just over 100 years ago Boer civilians were dieing in British camps, black people in the US couldn't vote etc and so on. 200 years ago European troops regarded rape, loot and murder as 'the thing you do after you win' and one only has to look at the effort Wellington had to make to prevent this to see how accepted and common place it is. The thing that makes WW2 different is the industrial killing, never before had such a huge system been set up for the sole purpose of efficiently wiping out a people. In some ways, that might even have made it easier for those taking part, 'I'm not killing them, just putting them on a train,' might make it easier to live with what you have done.

 

I'm familiar that throughout history, there's been rulers that have killed countless people for personal and political gain. But the Germans have always been known for their order, their culture. What they did came as a total shock to everyone. Like you said, and I agree if a nation is down and out, and someone comes along with radical ideas, chances are, you're gonna listen to them. But when when part of those ideas involve the systemic murder of a whole race, that right there should've rang a bell, but it didn't......to most.

 

I would rather say German nation have a capability to destroy and enslave others. It is being seen throughout the centuries how they “drang nach ost”. Occasionally it was possible to stop this trend but in general they were quite successful. Roots of hatreds are just coming up from German speaking people. Anti-Semitic literature, cult of superhuman – Aryan bollocks, will to exterminate anyone thinking different by use of technology and being systematic. This country should be denied any form of existence after what they have done. All of them participated in atrocities and none is excluded.

 

The thing that blows my mind is that even acknowledging that you still fall for their fascination. Or why else would you be glorifying them by wearing that avatar?

Well, we have to recognize that they changed a bit since 1946, haven't they?

 

A stereotype that isn't always the case. Prussian soldiers raped and pillaged just like everyone else in the Napoleonic wars. The Holy Roman Empire was a model of savagery and brutality (just look at the massacres of Jews as German crusaders marched through Europe. Also keep in mind that Germany had already 'started' a world war in the 20th Century, anti-German feeling was still pretty high all over the place, that isn't why the Holocaust shocked people, it was the sheer industrial scale and brutality of it.

Not if they start by saying that this race are 'subhuman' and are to blame for all the problems you have. When people are in trouble they don't look for solutions, they look for someone to blame, Hitler gave the German people someone to blame and whilst I'm sure most didn't agree with what went on, they certainly turned a blind eye.

But it is all very well for us to sit on our moral high horses, it's not like we scapegoat racial groups do we? Well, apart from Muslims, Mexicans, Poles and so on, sure we aren't killing them but the constant presentation of these peoples as attacking our values, trampling over our history, bringing poverty and so on combined with the 'socialy acceptable casual racism' endemic in our society is the foundation on which the holocaust was built. Remember, Hitler started with imprisonment without trial and talking about deportation, there are already people talking about 'deporting' Muslims over here (nutjobs but the fact remains that they have some following) and guantanamo bay suggest we aren't as perfect as we like to think.

You aren't stopping your government from keeping people locked up for years without trial because they are suspected of being 'the enemy,' you aren't stopping your government from sending people to other nations to be tortured, what makes you think you would have been any different in Nazi Germany? It's amazing what people will allow if it isn't them getting hurt.

 

Woah. Let me make this clear: I'm not a Nazi supporter in any way. Last time I checked there's a lot people on this board that have avatars and signatures with famous Nazis or German people in it, so if you're saying I'm glorifying them, tell that to every other person also.

As for falling for their fascination, I wouldn't be able to call myself a student of history and a WW2 studier if I didn't acknowledge that they existed.

 

I acknowledge the Kempeitai existed but you don't see me sporting their avatar.

As for German avatars, it depends a lot but my opinions are well known already.

 

I think his point is that you wonder about why people fell for the Nazis and yet like so many others are fascinated by them. The nature of that fascination is irrelevant, the simple fact it exists goes a long way to explaining the power they held.

 

For the most part, you're right. I'm one of the ones who think outside the box. I form my own opinions and one of them is not every person that was a Nazi was as bad as most of them were. They were still humans first and foremost. I don't think any decent person these days condones what they stood for and what they did, myself included. But the part that bugs me is some people can't see through the looking glass and acknowledge that. Until the end of time, there will always be some level of interest in Nazis, whether for education, psychological interest, or the fact that some people can't let go of their ideas and still worship Hitler as a god.

Yes I have an interest in them, but that's purely for psychological purposes only. I do not worship Hitler or go around in Nazi outfits. I like studying how a nation could fall so blindly for him and trying to see though the cracks that just because the whole nation had "Nazi" stamped on it, there were some people that didn't go along with his ideas and showed some humanity, even though they had the "Nazi" stamp.

 

I take it you mean 'don't think'

True, it's just unfortunate that there are so many idiots out there who claim to be 'interested' in the third reich and actually wind up glorifying Nazism. not sure about 'the end of time' though, that's quite a while away

Very true.

 

Too true. As the saying goes, "there's a fine line between genius and insanity." It's not just for the people who replace being "interested" in the Third Reich with glorifying Nazism, it's for a whole bunch of people that lose track of their thoughts and ideas and wind up making a monster into a king.

There, I feel better now. All this time I felt as if I was on trial and you guys were the judges. If I came across as a Nazi glorifier, that was not my intention. I'm a deep thinking person and sometimes I present my ideas in an awkward way.


P.S. thank you for pointing out my error. I re-read it and I smacked myself.

 

If you think deep enough it's impossible to sound awkward, ergo there is a contradiction here.

 

Now that isn't true at all, as anyone who has ever read Nietzsche, Plato or Bertrand Russell will tell you

 

I didn't mean that deep

 

Wow! This thread is one heavy read and I am glad that finally got around to seeing it through.
As for the original question: I would have to say that Hitler and his gang were human.
For me they represent the pit that anyone of us can fall into.
This reminds of a philosophy teacher who once posed the question to the class: Is man inherently evil or inherently good?
The majority of the class said man was inherently good. None said bad. Only three said "neither." And in the discussion that followed, Hitler was used as an example. And the discussion on humanity of Hitler and the Nazis at first took a form similar to what is contained in this thread. Unfortunately, the discussion degenerated. This thread, fortunately, did not and it gave me a chance to recall some of the points raised and educated me on what I haven't really realized because I'm from Asia and Nazism is just something I have learned from books.
This thread is a fine example of the quality of its members and moderators. I salute everybody who contributed to this thread (since the system is set up make it impossible for anyone to do so in one sitting ).

 

As a wise rogue once said, 'there is a contradiction there