This piece is very over-simplistic in it’s explanations.
Part of the reason for the rise of Adolph Hitler and the National Socialists was the treatment Germany received at the hands of the triumphant Europeans after the First World War, in particular the French who tried to occupy the Ruhr and Rhine valleys.
If you think that the Iraqi insurgency is bloody, do some reading about the period immediately after Versailles and the the rise of the Third Reich about what kind of time the French had during their occupation...
It’s a very complex story and does not lend itself to simple explanations.
You’re absolutely right about the over-simplicity.
I’m currently reading Patrick J. Buchanan’s book HITLER, CHURCHILL, AND THE UNNECESSARY WAR. It’s a very good read and fully documented.
For a whole year after WW1 Churchill and England kept the food embargo against Germany starving the populace. The Allied Powers via the Versailles Treaty instilled enormous enmity (justifiably) among the Germans. Of all the villians in WW1 most historians hold Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II the least culpable.
It was the folly of President Wilson’s “Self-Determination” policy that made such a mess of the Balkanized world we have today.
Si, y aqui se habla espanol.
The similarities are stunning, although anyone can find details that allow them to deny it.
Both of them manipulated the system, appealed to the public's base instincts, and demonized 'others'; and won.
Both had a plan that would transform the world, not only Germany or America, into what it 'should be'.
Both of them telegraphed what was coming. Both times the voters assumed either that it wouldn't really effect them, or that they'd be the beneficiaries.
Some here have commented that Hitler used intimidation after his party 'won' the plurality, granted. However, anyone who'd deny that the Obama campaign just as surely intimidated both an already compliant media and any mere citizens who might criticize the new order simply does not understand the differences of both time and place.
(I hope it is only coincidence that Axlerod looks so much like Hitler with a better mustache - I still imagine the happy face hitler on Golberg's book cover every time he appears.)
Had the U.S. lost the same proportion of its population as did France it would equal about 16 million deaths.
WW I took the romance out of war and gave us the monster U.N. as the League morphed into.
Complex indeed.
It doesn’t really matter why Hitler came to power. The lesson here is that he promised change, national glory and economic salvation; he was loved by the people, who in time more or less willingly gave him their freedom in exchange for various kinds of “welfare.”
People who claimed to be against what Hitler was for nevertheless supported him because he promised to make them happy and full.
The lesson here is to acknowledge that socialism/communism/fascism doesn’t need to by imposed at the pointy end of a stick. It can slip in, even be welcomed by the masses, as welcome, blessed “change.”
That is all.