Effectively, Germany’s choices in the early 30’s were either Communism or National Socialism. I wonder how Communism would have worked out.
Blame Woodrow Wilson.
***I wonder how Communism would have worked out.***
The same.
“Controversial problems [between Germany and Russia] did not, in my opinion, exist anywhere along the line from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and to the Far East. In addition, despite all the divergencies in their views of life, there was one thing common to the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies in the West.”—Julius Schnurre, Nazi trade rep to Russia.
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer. Page 501 in my copy,
“I wonder how Communism would have worked out.”
Just as many German citizens would have been killed, but this would have been forgiven and overlooked by historians.
Well, the eastern 1/3rd of Germany got to find out. The Russians kept Buchenwald and some other concentration camps up and running ... only the name and the inmate population changed.
“Effectively, Germany’s choices in the early 30’s were either Communism or National Socialism. I wonder how Communism would have worked out.”
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Probably not much differently - both are Collectivist ideologies, in which the individual has no rights whatsoever. Hitler and his henchmen and collaborators murdered about 75 members of my extended family, whereas Stalin and his henchmen murdered one of my great grandfathers (then 74 and suffering from esophageal cancer), and he and his successors effectively kept 3/4 of that great grandfather’s descendants as indentured servants for 3 generations.
Screw all of the “isms,” they are just another word for dictatorship and lack of rights for all but the inner circle around the top man (and even they walk on quicksand daily).