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Saving Private Ryan: "Look, I washed for supper"

Discussion in 'WWII Films & TV' started by Trip Jab, Jul 30, 2016.

  1. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    I suppose Allies' propaganda called him that. For them, Czechoslovakia was Prague and nothing else. The Czechs knew he operated everywhere.

    Although he could certainly kill his mother for the greater good of Nazi Germany, he wasn't such a butcher there.
    He skillfully wiped out the fledgling Czech resistance (it wasn't that hard, early efforts were naive and amateurish everywhere) but simultaneously introduced many positive initiatives: free Saturdays, unemployment insurance, KdF, Labour Front, increased rations, wages and pensions (of course all that for the greater good of Nazi Germany).
    Generally, it seems many, especially the workers liked him there. This is why he traveled in an open top cabriolet with no security when they got him.
     
  2. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    This is one of those things that come up in American political debate. The left argues that Hitler was a right wing dictator, and the right argues that he was a socialist. It's difficult to even have that discussion without it becoming heated. There are solid arguments for both sides. His reforms certainly did improve the lives of the working class, while his racism and militant expansionism are entirely consistent with any number of right-wing kleptocrats across the globe now, or in the past. We say here that people "vote their pocketbooks" meaning you support the candidate that puts (or leaves) more money in your pocket. Nazism was clever in that way. It threw a bone to every dog. The workers got more money and improved working conditions, the corporate world was able to expand production (even though profits were limited), the aristocrats were left alone. It worked just fine right up until the death telegrams starting coming back from Russia, and the British and then American heavy bombers began turning Germany into rubble.
    In the post WWI world of depression and hunger, things might have seemed pretty good to every class until 1942 or so.

    .
     
  3. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    From what I recall reading there was a significant socialist segment of the Nazi party in it's early years. After he came to power Hitler purged it. Another one of those issues that illustrates that viewing a multiple dimension problem in only two dimensions can result in a lack of clarity.
     
  4. Takao

    Takao Ace

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    Your thinking of Otto Strasser and his supporters in the Nazi Party. They took the Socialist part seriously.

    Hitler basically paid lip service to the socialism bit, to him it was simply a means to an end.

    Viewing the Nazis from the far right and far left seems to be a recent development in the US as the Dems and Repubs are finding it easier to argue with one another, rather than join forces to actually accomplish things.
     
  5. RichTO90

    RichTO90 Well-Known Member

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    Yep. Anyone believing that the National Socialist German Worker's Party was socialist or a party for worker's because those words appear in its name must also believe that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy run by the common people...oh, wait that seems to be exactly what Trump's supporters want to believe.

    Yep again. That they cannot see that fascism and soviet communism are two sides of the same totalitarian coin demonstrate just how far out of touch with reality the extremes of both parties are.
     
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  6. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    This isn't really that complicated.
    International socialism (or Marxist socialism) was shown to be wrong at the beginning of the 20th century.
    The WW1 demonstrated that the workers didn't care about the "international" part of socialism, and failed general strikes in various countries demonstrated that class solidarity didn't exist.

    As class solidarity and internationalism were at the core of socialism and essential for a successful power grab (revolution) many people tried to rescue socialism by modifying it.

    The communists said socialism was right and the people were wrong - they needed to be forced to see the light.
    The liberals said socialism was right but it needed to be implemented legally, through the ballot box.

    One of the most known socialists - Mussolini noticed that although the workers didn't care much about class solidarity, they cared a lot about national solidarity.
    And that was fascism, socialism in a single country bound by nationalism - as long as you were a good citizen you were one of them.
    Nazism was fascism for a single race - as long as you were a good German you were one of them.


    As result, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were the most socialist countries at that time, except maybe France ruled (quite destructively btw) for a few years by socialists and communists.

    The difference between the Strasserities and the Hitlerites:
    Strasserities = socialism now, the Reich later.
    Hitlerites = the Reich now, socialism later.
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2018
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  7. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    After reichstag fire I recall there was a new law for Germany which was pretty much giving Hitler all power to give new laws. This situation was never chanced somehow.
     
  8. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    The socialists imagined their Shangri-La would be governed by a group of wise men.
    But as the victory was going to be achieved through revolution, a strong and capable leader was needed - a successful revolution really needed military like leadership. As result, strong men emerged like Lenin, Mussolini.
    And the others with God-like powers: Hitler, Stalin, Mao.

    btw the Nazi and the fascists frequently called themselves revolutionaries, their movement a revolution, socialist revolution, or social revolution. The Goebbels Diaries are a good example of that.

    Actually who was who depends on the definition of what socialism was.
    The Nazi and the fascists were convinced they are the real socialists, and their socialism was a better and improved one, i.e. socialism 2.0.
     
  9. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    From: Planned Chaos by Ludwig von Mises

    There are two different patterns for the realization of socialism.

    The one pattern — we may call it the Marxian or Russian pattern — is purely bureaucratic. All economic enterprises are departments of the government just as the administration of the army and the navy or the postal system. Every single plant, shop or farm, stands in the same relation to the superior central organization as does a post office to the office of the Postmaster General. The whole nation forms one single labor army with compulsory service; the commander of this army is the chief of state.

    The second pattern — we may call it the German or Zwangswirtschaft system — differs from the first one in that it, seemingly and nominally, maintains private ownership of the means of production, entrepreneurship, and market exchange. So-called entrepreneurs do the buying and selling, pay the workers, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But they are no longer entrepreneurs. In Nazi Germany they were called shop managers or Betriebsführer. The government tells these seeming entrepreneurs what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. The government decrees at what wages laborers should work, and to whom and under what terms the capitalists should entrust their funds. Market exchange is but a sham. As all prices, wages and interest rates are fixed by the authority, they are prices, wages and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the authoritarian orders determining each citizen's income, consumption and standard of living. The authority, not the consumers, directs production. The central board of production management is supreme; all citizens are nothing else but civil servants. This is socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism. Some labels of the capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify here something entirely different from what they mean in the market economy.
     
  10. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    The New York Times reacting to the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland:

    red_fascism1.jpg red_fascism2.jpg
     
  11. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Good Ol' Boy Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Keep your language between the ditches. please
     

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