Quarter of Germans say Nazism had good points

www.pap.pl ^ | 17.10.2007 | http://www.breakingnews.ie/

[Gumdrop]

This sounds like a push poll to me. It strives to find some examples of nice-sounding policies of the 3rd Reich and then invites Germans to opine about whether the regime had some good points.

Everyone knows that the Germans had high unemployment in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Hitler put them to work on the autobahn and established the Volkswagen automobile manufacturing plant. So, while the entire 3rd Reich was evil to the core, there is always something that can or could be construed as positive when polling a population.

Results of such polls do not indicate anything regarding whether the Germans actually think Hitler’s government had redeeming qualities. Infact, the Germans are still reeling from the after effects of Nazism, and I am afraid it will still be so in 50 years.

This poll is meaningless.

[Verdelet]

“So, while the entire 3rd Reich was evil to the core, there is always something that can or could be construed as positive when polling a population.”

For a short term almost everything can be considered positive.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1912602/posts?page=109#109

[saradippity]

By creating huge national debt---

I do understand that the Treaty of Versaille created an impossible situation for the German people. It did seem that they would never be able to pay off the monies required to pay off the debt it created.

Can you give me any references to support the rest of your comment. I don't believe some of it,I don't understand one point and another point seem to be directly opposite of what I have heard and read. Thanks.

[antinomian]

Well really, 60 million people died because the powers on all sides wanted them too as they saw it furthering their strategic goals. It wasn't as though Britain and France accidentally declared war on Germany for invading Poland (but not Russia for doing the same plus invading Finland and the Baltic states) due to subterfuge or confusion.

And if Tansill is to be believed in Back Door To War, the Polish government had decided to acquiesce to the Germans as Czech government had done and Britain talked them out of it with promises of support.

[Andrew Byler]

And if Tansill is to be believed in Back Door To War, the Polish government had decided to acquiesce to the Germans as Czech government had done and Britain talked them out of it with promises of support.

David Hogan says the same thing in "The Forced War", and he's one of the few historians who actually bothered to learn Polish and read the Polish diplomatic communiques of the time.

Germany wanted a war with Russia, and Poland just happened to be a stepping stone that could either cooperate like Slovakia and Hungary, or resist like the Czechs and be swallowed. Both the German and Polish military establishments had delusions of grandeur stemming from the 1920's, and involving the revision of the border either towards the Elbe for the Poles or towards the Bug for the Germans (the "Hitler rearmament" was simply a dusting off of a Wehrmacht plan from the 1920's). Britain and France wanted a war with Germany to keep her down after she started to get up. Stalin of course wanted to conquer Europe. Everyone had different aims, but to get them all warring with each other and to make the war last 6 years took an incredible lack of foresight and naive belief in the superiority of their own forces and a supposed lack of consequences from the fighting on all sides. In the end, it can be said decisively, Europe lost from this stupidity, and permanently. The 60 million dead would have been 100,000,000 or more people today.