Posted on 11/16/2012 7:03:49 AM PST by fivecatsandadog
Historic attachments to heroic leadership combined with a mastery of propaganda techniques to mesmerise Germany into acceptance of the charismatic authority offered by the Nazi 'Fuhrer'.
For almost a decade after 1933, Hitler enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity among the great majority of the German people. However dramatic and spectacular his political career, concentration on Hitler's character and personality – in some respects bizarre, in others downright mediocre and wholly unpleasant – can nevertheless do little to explain the magnetism of his popular appeal. Nor can his extraordinary impact on the German people in these years be accounted for satisfactorily by seeing in Hitler's personal Weltanschauung (notably in his obsessions with the 'Jewish Question' and with Lebensraum) a mirror image of the motivation of Nazism's mass following. Recent research has done much to qualify such assumptions, suggesting too that even deep into the period of the dictatorship itself Hitler's own ideological fixations had more of a symbolic than concrete meaning for most Nazi supporters.
What seems necessary, therefore, is an examination not of Hitler's personality, but of his popular image – how the German people saw their leader: the 'Hitler Myth'. The 'Hitler Myth' was a double-sided phenomenon. On the one hand, it was a masterly achievement in image-building by the exponents of the new techniques of propaganda, building upon notions of 'heroic' leadership widespread in right-wing circles long before Hitler's rise to prominence. On the other hand, it has to be seen as a reflection of 'mentalities', value-systems, and socio-political structures which conditioned the acceptance of a 'Superman' image of political leadership. Both the active manufacture of Hitler's public image and the receptivity to it by the German people need, therefore, to be explored.
(Excerpt) Read more at historytoday.com ...
The German people will desperate, they had a chip on their should from the loss in WWI, and it wasn’t only hardcore Nazis that believed the “stabbed in the back” theory, it was pretty much universally accepted in Weimar Germany.
Then comes the Great Depression, which decimated Germany, it’s not hard to see how these things provided fertile ground for a movement like the Nazis to come to power.
And the thing is, if the Nazis didn’t come to power, most likely it would have been Thaelmann’s Communists that did. And what’s interesting is that it would have set up ultimately a rivalry between Germany and the Soviet Union as to who would control the worldwide Communist movement, and likely there still would have been war between the two.
On the History Channel this past weekend, I watched a documentary about the Third Reich where survivors (and letters/photos from the day) told how many Germans looked up to Hitler, idolized him; and then within only a few weeks, they started rounding up the Jews and “less favorable” non-Arian types, loading them into boxcars.
“During the 2008 election I noticed the similarity...”
Fast & Furious was a “false flag” operation, like the Reichstag fire and Gleiwitz incident.
The current scandals with these US generals is the modern equivalent of the Blomberg-Fritsh affairs.
See my tagline.
I wonder how many Jews in those early days weren’t worried about Hitler, because they thought he would only go after the “bad Jews.”
Kind of like the liberal Jews here, that think their enemies only want to destroy the “Zionist” Jews, and not ultimately them as well.
The Nazis had better beer at their rallies.
And the Nazis also had snappier uniforms.
‘A economic crash will turn his acolytes off real fast.’
Not if the crash is pushed as the means to an end. The Left finds those who are willing to sacrifice if it means ‘revenge’ or ‘punishing your enemy’. Such is an unintended consequence of Envy and Jealousy (main motivational factors for the “Progressives”). I will suffer if it means my enemies will suffer too. (See Cuba and Venezuela)
If you’ve been paying attention to what Progressive folks are saying like Trumpka, Laurence O’Donnell, Howard Dean and Patti Murray (who wants to be head of the Senate Budget Committee but will not commit to making a budget). This is their method to destroy the Republican Party. I think it will work.
It almost happened in this country in the 1930s, with the Fascist Huey Long.....he used a lot of Hitler’s techniques, and I’m convinced had he not been assassinated, he could have wound up as a virtual dictator, as he was in Louisiana.
Exactly- anything bad that happens is the fault of Republicans/greedy business. They will have utopia after they succeed in getting rid of us. That doesn't mean getting us out of political power, it means removing us from society. And the crowds will cheer.
Not so ironic, he’s a card carrying member of the Socialist Worker’s Party.
When he was ‘elected’ over Al D’amato, he ran with the endorsement of same in this state.
He’s still a member thereof, but has dropped public showing of it.
Like a hot potato when it became a spoken item a couple years back.
The Left has succeeded into turning the Republican Party into what the Washington Generals are to the Harlem Globetrotters.
I talked to a neighbor about that. His parents had been through the camps. He said that the memory of pogroms hadn't completely faded away. He said the attitude was that they had seen bad times before, and survived. "What's he going to do--kill us all?"
Unfortunately, and perhaps unknowably, the answer was "yes."
If this thing refers to Hitler as “right-wing”, I really don’t think I’d want to read it.
He did get 90% in a plebicite (like a poll), of course those who voted no, were likely in danger for their lives
What’s happening in our country is a lot closer to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia than to the ascendancy of Hitler and the rise of National Socialism. Lenin and Trotsky used dialectical principles to focus attention on the plight of the proletariat class and devise a collectivist solution to the economic inequities inherent in the feudal Russian state.
Obama (and the Left) are using the same principles to exaggerate the differences between the WASP middle class and the other segments of society. He has to first create a proletariat class, then empower it at the cost of the petit bourgeoisie, then aggravate the tensions between those classes until they erupt in class-on-class violence.
With all the talk of secession, it’s pretty obvious we’re just about there.
“building upon notions of ‘heroic’ leadership widespread in right-wing circles long before Hitler’s rise to prominence”
I see - Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Mhinh, Castro, Che, Chavez of Venezuala, and others on the Left employed no such notions. Right?
Anymore myths from the Left?
What’s happening in our country is a lot closer to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia than to the ascendancy of Hitler and the rise of National Socialism. Lenin and Trotsky used dialectical principles to focus attention on the plight of the proletariat class and devise a collectivist solution to the economic inequities inherent in the feudal Russian state.
Obama (and the Left) are using the same principles to exaggerate the differences between the WASP middle class and the other segments of society. He has to first create a proletariat class, then empower it at the cost of the petit bourgeoisie, then aggravate the tensions between those classes until they erupt in class-on-class violence.
With all the talk of secession, it’s pretty obvious we’re just about there.
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