Posted on 10/17/2007 12:07:00 PM PDT by Verdelet
While the rest of the world groveled around in the great depression, Germany pulled it’s economy up by the bootstraps. Of course they did it by looting the jews, but hey, everybody else liked it.
Especially Hermann Goering when he dressed in drag.
I hear the trains ran on time, er, was that Italy?
A good number of the Brownshirts were formerly Communists, the Nazis basically promised many of the same things to the German working classes that the Communists were.
I don't read of anyone in the survey claiming they do (still, the Nazis DID have a fashion flair).
“A good number of the Brownshirts were formerly Communists, the Nazis basically promised many of the same things to the German working classes that the Communists were.”
In her brilliant (but very hard to read) book, “Force of Reason”, the Italian author Oriana Fallaci wrote how before, during and after WWII, across the war torn areas of Europe, the Communists and the Nazi and their sympathizers changed from “red” to “brown”, and back again, and with ease.
But that doesn't tell you who voted for whom, does it? The heavily Nazi voting districts were generally no more than 50% Nazi in multiparty elections, if they vote 30-40% Socialist since in new multiparty elections, that really doesn't tell you anything except that the Nazi vote splintered, since they were voting 30%+ Socialist even while also voting 50% Nazi. Its not so much a rise of Socialist voting as a splintering of the opposition temporarily united by Hitler in the early 1930's.
If the Nazis were really just a bunch of ex-Social Democrat and Communist voters, then it remains to be explained why the Socialist and Communists were still enormous party's in the Reichstag after the rise of Hitler, while all the rightist and nationalist party's had shrunk.
The main parties of 1933:
Center (Catholic) - 4,424,905 - 11.2%
National Peoples (Rightist-Nazi Allied) - 3,136,760 - 8.0%
Communist - 4,848,058 - 12.3%
Nazi - 17,277,180 - 43.9%
Social Democrat - 7,516,243 - 19.1%
The main parties of 1924:
Bavairan Peoples (Rightist) - 1,134,035 - 3.7%
German Democrats (Middle) - 1,919,829 - 6.3%
National Peoples (Rightist) - 6,205,802 - 20.5%
German Peoples (Rightist) - 3,049,064 - 10.1%
Economic Party for the Middle Class - 1,005,405 - 3.3%
Center (Catholic) - 4,118,849 - 13.6%
Communist - 2,709,086 - 8.9%
Nazi - 907,242 - 3.0%
Social Democrat - 7,881,041 - 26.0%
In the 1950-60's, the general election split was 45% Christian Democrat, 10% Free Democrat, 35% Social Democrat, 10% other. Pretty similar to the 1930's split of Socialist/Communist vs. everyone else.
The rise of the Nazi's is pretty clear by those election tallies. The rightist/nationalist/centrist parties of the middle class simply vanished or shrunk into insignificance and ended up as simple Nazi allies while the Socialist/Communist grouping and Catholics mostly held their own, with a modest level of defection to the Nazi's of about 10% of their voters.
Nazi voters of the 1930-1933 period did not come from the Social Democrat/Communist side of the aisle, and they did not return there in 1949-present. The people who voted Nazi in the 1930's were the rightist/nationalist voters of the 1920's, and the Christian Democrat/Free Democrat voters of the 1949-present period who did not come to that new coalition from the Catholic Center Party.
There, fixed it
Well, they did have ideas, but it might be debatable just how good they turned out to be. Everytime I hear some Dem bleat about a new national service draft I get this vision of the Hillary Youth goose-stepping through the countryside. Probably just those burritos I had for dinner last night.
KRAFTWERK! We have another music fan.
Sauron
But that doesn't tell you who voted for whom, does it?
You are right. But aren't you making the same mistake by assuming that there was no exchange between the socialist/communists and other parties though?
My point was that the Nazis were a socialist party and enjoyed their greatest electoral success in the districts where the socialist message was and is most popular. Is that not true?
Hey! That reminds me. Tom DiLorenzo wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal back in the 90's outlining the similarities between the Hillary's health care proposal and Mussolini's health care system. The Journal had some fun with the title. They called it "Clinton Plan Salutes Italy's Past".
They did by breaking the labor unions and by discontinuing the policy of currency expansion (inflation).
VERY well said.
Polls are intrinsically evil.
Including “Americanized”, “conservative” types.
What was the birthrate under Nazi Germany? (1933-1945)
The Autobahns, Volkswagen, the Berlin U-Bahn (Subway System), the start of suburban housing construction in Germany and the spread of home ownership to the middle class, the introduction of mass market cruise ship vacations, the basic research behind modern rocketry and space exploration, invention of stealth planes and the flying wing bomber, invention of synthetic rubber and coal gasification, simultaneous invention of the modern jet engine, restoration and expansion of the German economy, ending the hyper inflation of the Mark, elimination of trashy modern art, criminalization of abortion, loosening of the very strict Weimar gun control laws, reconstruction of the German canal system, Zepplins, increase in the birthrate of 30%, etc., etc.
Its not hard to find positive things that came out of Nazi rule of Germany. Many historians note that had Hitler died suddenly in the summer of 1939, he would undoubtedly have gone down in history as one of the most popular and successful German rulers of history. He did everything he said he was going to do in 1933 - he reunified and strengthened Germany, restored most of her historic borders, and turned the economy around 180 degrees.
Now, historians of the past 30 years are so focused on the war and the Holocaust that it makes people wonder how on earth half of Germany ever voted in the Nazi Party to power, since it seems that most today hear Nazi and immediately think gas chambers and war atrocities and Gestapo thugs. The Germans voted for the Nazis and enthusiastically backed the government to the bitter end because of the many good things it did over 12 years for the vast majority of German citizens, especially in comparison to the Weimar Republic disaster. They didn't vote for war and mass death, because that wasn't what the Nazis campaigned upon. They never even noticed the Gestapo, because the Nazi police state was focused upon a very limited subsection of the population (Jews, communist activists, criminals, homosexuals), to which 98%+ of the population was not part of. Yes a few prescient souls saw where things were headed already in 1933, but most Germans saw a charismatic man promising to make things better when they were the absolute pits.
So no its not hard to find positive aspects to Nazi rule. They are the sort of things one expects to find happening in a modern advanced country like Germany when it is not constrained by economic crisis and war. Why should anyone be astonished at this? I think you only act astonished because you know next to nothing of German history from 1918 to 1939, while the history of the war and holocaust is repeated endlessly and is known to all.
Was that because they wanted to fix the economy? Or rather because they knew the unions were the home of the communists?
It wa there in the question they asked: "Did National Socialism had some good sides such as the construction of the highway system, the elimination of unemployment, the low criminality rate, and the encouragement of the family?"
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