Schönerer - Hitler's Forerunner

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Firstly I agree that Racial Card was a new addition to German War aims but were not the other ones remarkably similar to German objectives of 1914 but stated in a new context.

ie German economic domination of Europe and in particular France and secondly, additional terrritories (empire) for prestige and living space.

In the case of the second aim, this was restated as an empire in the East since creating an overseas empire, the Kaiser's great dream, would mean a naval victory over Great Britain. This was simply not feasible and hence the reason Hitler sought throughout to placate Britain and separate it from France.

Surely the same industrialists and army Vons (minus Jews) were in charge with a thin veneer of ex NCOs Nazis, like Hitler, adding a bit of inefficient chaos at the top level.

 

There is a big problem here: IF the Nazis were retaliatig for injustices of the Versailles treaty WHY they have channeled thir anger on nations NOT responsible for injustices. Poles and Russians who suffered the most under Nazies weren't even present at Versailles.

 

Poland and Russia was simply the new German "African" Empire. The treatment of Poles, Russians (and Jews) was striking similar to the brutality and genocide of the Herero peoples by the Kaiser's army. The Herrero were unfortunate enough to be in the way of an earlier German expansion.

Namibia - Genocide and the second Reich
This is a very powerful and moving documentary by the BBC where a surprising number of future Nazis are linked to an earlier Liebensraum\extermination and death camp operation in the the German Colony of Namibia (South West Africa).

Please view it - I can't think of anything which better shows that the Third Reich was not an aberation but a a more ruthless application of thoughts and lessons from the Kaiser's time.

 

Thanks scipio for this valuable information. It appears that 12 years of Nazi regime wasn't an aberration in the German History - it is indeed a continuation. German state and German nation were much longer actively involved in genocidal activities.

 

Genocide of Herero people in Namibia is indeed a sad story!

Now, everything indicates that extreme nationalism has existed in Germany long before Hitler. There was an idea of the Lebensraum, there was a plan to settle Germans at lands populated with other peoples, there were »scientific« proofs the German racial supremacy, there was German militarism. There was a genocide before the 3rd Reich. Everything existed before Hitler. He has just stepped in to »lead the nation towards the final victory.« There are direct links between the genocide in Namibia and genocide in Europe!

It is shame that German settlers who actually have made the genocide in Namibia still own millions of acres seized by their predecessors over 100 years ago by a mass murder organized by the German state and German Army. This is unthinkable: something like the Nazi grandchildren today owning the most of Poland and Ukraine. Namibian people should rise to take their lands back.

 

Is there such a difference to this? Source is Wikipedia:

Boer War



During the later stages of the Second Boer War, the British Empire was forced under extreme circumstances the policy of rounding up and isolating the Boer civilian population into concentration camps,[SUP][2][/SUP] one of the earliest uses of this method by modern powers.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]
The wives and children of Boer guerrillas were rounded up after their farms were burnt down ("scorched earth policy") and sent to these camps with poor hygiene and little food. Most of the children in these camps died, as did a significant portion of the adults.[SUP][3][/SUP]

Any nation has their dark stains on their vests. That is not a German privilege. No offense, but something to remember.

 

It is to the credit of the German Government that they sent a Minister to Namibia to apologise to the Heroro for genocide (as you will see in the documentary) and equally commendable is the fact that the von Trotha family travelled to this country to apologise in person (not mentioned).


The Maltreatment of the Boers is a shameful act (and there are plenty more in Imperial, European and American history) but what is the relevance of this to the discussion we are holding.

Since you ask if there is a difference - yes, I think there is a big difference.

The British never set out to exterminate the Boers. Maybe one of our South African members can contribute since I am no expert in this area. However my understanding is that the British having completed what they thought was a quick, successful military operation, the Boers simply refused to accept defeat and resorted to a very successful guerilla campaign. Instituting the camps was done to separate the population from the fighters. A death is no less a death for whatever reason, but from what I can understand the deaths in the Camps were the result of bureaucratic incompetence rather than deliberate acts of punishment.

I am sure that there is lingering bitterness within the Boer population but after conclusion of the ugly operation, the British tried to redress the situation and gave full rights to the Boers and I don't think that there was any confiscation of land or further bloodshed.

As a measure of the reprochement, General Schmutts, the WW2 Prime Minister of South Africa and former Boer commando leader, was a close confidant of Winston Churchill who fought on the other side.

South Africa contributed to the Allied war effort in both wars.

 

Scipio,

The difference is smaller than you will think. You´re right about the fact that the Brits won´t have sent them into the Concentration Camps for killing them! But through poor hygiene, poor nutrition and medical care which caused lots of victims, and I do not think that any of the Camp leaders can say that he had no guess of the situation, is there not a big differnce in the result of the action. It is no matter if i will die for the reason that someone will killing me or that someone let starve me to death, the result for me is the same.

Maybe that you won´t understand it, and i don´t think that you aren´t willing to do so, but if you was raised in Germany with all kind of peoples pointing with the finger in Germany´s direction and always are telling you : "You have murdered millions of innocent people and all Germans are evil!" than there will be a point where you will get rid of such a testify. Yes, some of the Germans acted like mercyless murderers and yes they have killed innocent people! But not all German, Wehrmacht, Colonial Forces or else did that, only a few did it. The problem with such discussions is that some will easily forget to divide the bad ones from the good ones. And that was the only meaning of my writing! Maybe that i´m sometimes a bit sensitive to such statements, but i only want to remember that others did a similar thing. Please let the discussion go on.

 

I certainly don't think that and it seems to me that anyone who does is being as racist as the Nazis.

I don't see how the current German State could do much more to attone for past sins except more direct compensation to the victims which I think
was very miserly. I also think it might have pursued some war criminals eg Mohnke with more vigour.

I can understand your sensitivity - once I was in a bar in Sweden with a German colleague and the man next to us asked if my colleague was German? He then got up, turned his back to us and walked to the other end of the room - not pleasant.

However, I do think that the racial ideas underpinning National Socialism were aready there in embryo form in the Kaiser's time.

Did you watch the video through?

 

Thanks for the additional info Ulrich. I should have been more interested in history of other continents too. It is terrible how Africans have suffered under colonial region.

What I really want is to find out the roots of Evil that has overwhelmed Europe over the past century. Obviously, we have to dig elsewhere and deeper into the past.

 

Tamino, to find the roots of the evil, you have to go way back to the 18th century and have to study the live and connections of the monarch families and all their actions from there on. This evil is born at there and raised slowly like creepers on a tree. The hate against Jews and other races is to find in books of the 12th century and much earlier. And atop of all was the exaggerated self-esteem of many european cultures. So if you really want to find the roots, you´ll have a lot of work to spend. Good luck for that!

 

Thanks for your understanding! This example is one of many and we always thought if they don´t like us, why they like our money? They weren´t consequent.

As i wrote above, to my understanding of history the German Emperor wasn´t the founder of such racial ideas, he lived them but they were founded much earlier. The video is a real good made one. I´ve seen it on TV. And there is another good one to this topic but i can´t find it, i´ve lost the title. Maybe i´ll find it and if i´ll post it.

 

Dr. Eugen Fischer was Mengele's predecessor: in 1905 he conducted »Anatomical studies of the soft tissues of the head of two Papuans« His »Guinea pigs« were Herero and Nama prisoners of war.

In 1908 he conducted research on racial mixing among Germans and African women. According to Fischer's recommendations by 1912 interracial marriage was prohibited throughout the German colonies!

His area of investigation was typical Nazi: Bastards, Eugenics, Twins, Sterilization, Gypsies, Jews and Euthanasia. He was appointed rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin by Adolf Hitler in 1933, and later joined the Nazi Party.

Hitler did not have to re-invent: everything existed before him. He just had to put »the right people to right places«.

 

I have to concur with Ulrich, Nazi 'like' thoughts have existed thoughout the world for a very long time. Basicly it comes down to Us against Them. It does not matter the country, it is the same, but when the society is under extreme stress such as extreme economic dis-location often act as a catalyst for the blossoming of extreamist idology and intolerance. Couple that with our ever greater facination with science and an ability to seperate humanity from the pursuit of knowledge at any cost and without moral constraints and you have a superhighway to tragedy and disconnect from basic human values.

 

The Boers are the African version of Americans. They came, they saw, conquered the natives and stole their land. The Boer War was a war between two groups of thieves over a land that was not theirs. That does not justify how the Boers were treated, but it ought to remind us that the Boers were not exactly saints themselves.

 

In discussing Hitler and evil we ought to remember that land expropriation, mass killing, and war have been part of every culture in every land in organized human history. Obviously it occurs on varying levels in terms of people involved, but let no one be mistaken in believing that the dark side of man is restricted to Europeans*. It is not.

*I include Americans with Europeans.

 

Belasar, Ulrich, GrandsonOfAMarine,

I wouldn't generalize or relativise when we have enough specific data to investigate the subject of our conversation. Here we talk about the specific evil people, not about the Evil in general.

It is true that there were victims at all sides but it is also a blasphemy to compare Göring to Sir Arthur Harris or Manstein to Zhukov. Even though these people have been at comparable positions a massive difference among them is in their goals and intentions.

Also, we cannot simplify this subject by reducing it entirely to the frustrated corporal who wrote the Mein Kampf. There was a plan, there was an objective, and there were incentives.

Why shouldn't we investigate specific people and specific ideologies that created conditions in the pre-war Germany that brought her citizens to the state of extremely violent mass hysteria? Nobody here is accusing the entire nation; we rather talk here about the people who caused the war and the conditions that have resulted in millions of victims.

 

Tamino,

It is not my intent, nor I believe those of Ulrich or GoM, to stifle this debate or minimize the responcability of many Germans and thier allies for the war and thier actions. Rather it is to point out that such seeds that Hitler and his ilk exploited exist inall countries, nations and peoples. (Canada might be an exception, but then they are not quite normal anyway ). During this same period other nations had figures very similar to Hitler and his Nazi Party, Mosley In Britain, Kuhn and Huey Long in the US, Mussolini in Italy, Stalin in Russia and many more. Some were 'successfull', others not, and each patterned his message to his audience and thier particular phobias and irrational fears.

Nor is any of this particularly new. Rome gave us the word Barbarian, it is said for the sound of the 'less civilized' language of her neigbors. Rome gave us another legacy, the concept of a single European empire, run to the taste and whims of a all powerfull leader/tyrant. Through out the last 2,000 odd years many Kings and Sultans, Prince's and Pope's, Emperor's and Revoluntionaries have tried to recreate in thier own image a new "Roman Empire". Rome's legions, the Sultans Jannisaries, Charlemagnes Knights, the Popes Inquisitors and Lenin's/Stalin's Cheka/NKVD was every bit as world shattering to its victims as Hitler's Panzers and Special Kommandos were to thiers.

People like Hitler have come to power though out the ages in the same way. Being at the right place, at the right time. Common people have been all too ready to surrender thier free will to be a part of something they sense is greater then themselves. Appealing to thier vanity and greed, offering everthing from a full belly to everlasting salvation, such men have focused the efforts of the many to achieve thier own personal dreams of power. There also have always been willing hands, ever willing to share the prophet/leader/tyrant's dream for a measure of power themselves. Often they have been even more extreme than the figurehead, almost to prove that they are the truest of true believers to thier god like messiah.

Again I post this not to inhibit this debate, but hopefully place it in its context. We are her to discuss the time, people and actions of this period, by we must try to avoid over mystafing the matter. It is all too easy for us humans to try and say This, this above all else has some profound meaning, when all too often history has been little more than a tragic comedy of errors by people who held over developed sense of personal destiny.

( I'm not trying to make a point with my font, just trying different ones for the sake of my tired old eyes )

 

Not Roman, Greek - barbaroi as in baa-baa (sheep noise).

Evil comes in many forms but the specific form copied by Hitler was so uncannily similar to that of the Kaiser's in his Empire that it should be seen as a continuation in my opinion.

 

Belasar you’re a nice guy but, please, read my posts carefully. I am not talking about anyone's responsibility or the responsibility in general but about specific causes and particular people who have contributed to the development of the Nazi movement.

I would like to assure you that I am aware that bad things happen and have happened everywhere, since the beginning of time, but in this specific thread I wanted to find out how and why the Nazi ideology has prevailed in Germany for more than a decade. I wanted to know which people in particular have initiated the Nazism.

I understand your point of view but I am afraid we are talking now about two entirely different things.