“What a memorable day!” wrote a middle-class Hamburg housewife in her diary on Jan. 30, 1933.

[kpete]

Last edited Fri Jul 22, 2016, 09:48 AM - Edit history (1)

Weimar Germany and Donald Trump
How traditional and radical conservatives come to speak a common political language—that ultimately benefits the extremists
By Eric D. Weitz


“What a memorable day!” wrote a middle-class Hamburg housewife in her diary on Jan. 30, 1933. She had just watched the parade of torch-bearing storm troopers celebrate Adolf Hitler’s assumption of power in Germany.

Frau Solmitz did not, however, extol only Hitler. She waxed melodic about Hitler’s cabinet, in which there were just three Nazis. All the others were upstanding conservatives, men like Franz von Papen, the aristocratic former chancellor and leader of the Catholic Center Party, and the career bureaucrat Constantin von Neurath, who was named to head up the foreign ministry. These were experienced men, reasonable men. They would contain Hitler’s excesses. After four years of economic depression and political paralysis, 14 years since the humiliation of the Versailles Peace Treaty, decades of an overweening Jewish presence in German public life, it was time for a new beginning. It was time to make Germany great again.

In the end, a small clique of businessmen, estate owners, bankers, high-ranking civil servants, and army officers prevailed upon the president, Paul von Hindenburg, to name Hitler chancellor of Germany. For these traditional conservatives, the Nazis were uncouth, low class, and undisciplined. Yet these same conservatives made a political bargain with the Nazi party. Developed over the 14 years of the Weimar Republic, the bargain was created and then sealed through a common political language of utter disdain for the Republic, contempt for Jews, opposition to the Versailles Treaty, and hostility to democracy and socialism.


................


Today’s Republicans and similarly-minded figures in Europe are like the conservatives who put Adolf Hitler in power: delusional about their influence, playing dangerously with the structures of our democracy. Few Republicans in the United States are willing to follow Sen. Graham on the “exit ramp,” as he termed it, from the Trump highway. And much of the reason lies in the fact that Trump’s political language is only more blatant than what many Republicans have been saying for decades.

That is the lesson from the right-wing populist upsurge in Weimar Germany, which culminated in the Nazi assumption of power. The political language of fear and hostility directed at “foreign” elements (never mind the fact that many and even most of those so-called foreigners had been residents and citizens for generations) enables moderate and radical conservatives to come together. The moderates make the radicals salonfähig, acceptable in polite society. That is the real and pressing danger of the current moment.

............

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/207665/weimar-germany-and-donald-trump

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Worse yet, Britain, via PM Chamberlain, met with Hitler to appease him.

Thus proving once again that negotiation with a bully does not work.

[whatthehey]

17. And a good job too

Because at the time of the Munich agreement, the British army could have fielded maybe two iffy divisions and the RAF had nowhere near the number of planes they started the war with (the same month as that "appeasement", Chamberlain's government gave the air force carte blanche to buy as many planes as could be produced). Neither was the RDF radar system functional as it was by the time the Battle of Britain started.

Beginning total war with Germany in 1938 would have resulted in Britain holding out not much longer than France. Whether post-war armchair generals agree or not, that "appeasement" saved Britain and enabled an allied victory.

[TimeToGo]

19. Yes

It's a little hard to know how strategic Chamberlain was being -- but nevertheless, Britain was in no position to fight.

[VMA131Marine]

29. My recollection from reading the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" ...

is that Hitler would have backed down if France and Britain had threatened war then over his attempt to annex the Sudetenland. Hitler was in a fairly tenuous position at that point and a military or political defeat would have seriously undermined his image. At that time, France had a much larger army than Germany and far more tanks and other armoured vehicles. Unfortunately, there wasn't the will in either France or Britain to keep their mutual aid commitment to Czechoslovakia. That said, without France's aid, Britain was in no position to oppose Hitler's move alone and the Munich agreement did buy time to prepare for the eventual war. On the other hand, Churchill was furious about the agreement. He was one of the few that saw Hitler's true intentions.

[Wednesdays]

31. Another likely factor was the Soviet Union

Germany secured a non-agression pact with Stalin on the eve of the Poland invasion. They had no such treaty in 1938.

[Joe Chi Minh]

38. Yes, Hitler's rapid conquests were largely opportunistic. He was

apparently continually taken by surprise by the rapidity of the successes of the blitzkriegs.

Most of the monied classes in the Western and anglophone world were ardent admirers of the continental fascists, before the war, and of course have never lost their terror of Communism. Well, they've never lost that admiration, have they ? They've just kept 'stum' about it, while their backwoodsmen beavered away at making good their losses and ultimately prevailing. Brexit, I think, was the better option to, at least, delay it.

[Fla Dem]

2. The parallels are frightening. Good read, frightening but good

How true.

Republicans in the United States continue to dance around Trump, many unable to decide whether their party should back such an obviously incapable, self-aggrandizing, and racist candidate for the presidency. A few individuals, like Sen. Lindsey Graham and New York Times columnist David Brooks, have been highly critical of Trump and have refused to throw their weight behind him. But by and large, Republicans have moved into Trump’s camp, Paul Ryan perhaps the most prominent among them. They bemoan the fact that they can’t control him, but they don’t have the courage to separate themselves from a candidate with substantial popular support.

The Republicans who have sidled up to Trump are correct in this regard: They can’t control him. And they shouldn’t expect power to moderate him. University of Chicago legal scholar Eric Posner recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in which he described what Trump could do with the executive power he will possess if he is elected. In a phrase: He can do a whole lot in regard to foreign and immigration policy and the naming of people to the federal judiciary. Ours is a presidential system, and despite the difficulties Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had with Congress and the Supreme Court, presidents wield enormous power. In possession of that power, Trump will be fully capable of shredding the constitution from within, as the Nazis did.

Scary in deed.

[WhiteTara]

3. GOP has already rewritten the constitution

and would put the new one in place if they had congress, WH and SCOTUS. Get your passport ready now!

[auntpurl]

11. Where in the world do you think would be safe with Trump in power along with Repub congress?

I'll tell you what, I live in the UK and I don't feel safe.

[WhiteTara]

12. Well, I agree you should feel

very nervous with your current "leadership" Sounds like you got your frick to our frack.

[GusBob]

4. And in 1943 Hamburg was reduced to rubble

Operation Gomorrah

how memorable was that Frauline?

[ancianita]

5. Yes. Every true word must be grounded in a reality that will uplift ALL, not just some.

"...Political language ... from Conservatives to Anarchists ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.,,

...A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

The point is that the process is reversible..."

George Orwell
"Politics and the English Language"
1946

[calimary]

10. Scary as hell.

That reminder in the OP here, "it was time to make Germany great again" - scary as hell!

This George Orwell observation, applies, too. Scary as hell!

Saw something else here that reinforces it. The "is designed to make lies sound truthful" - dovetails into the whole idea of gaslighting. Where you manipulate words to turn meanings upside-down.

https://www.texasobserver.org/how-the-gop-is-gaslighting-america/

[ancianita]

16. Yes. Those who need to be told what's right depend on public figures to think for them.

That is why college should be free.

Too many Americans who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing will not invest in the development of their understandings of the manipulability of their language.

But "free" would get a more well read citizenry to think on reality and truth in political language.

That they don't is what's scary. Because the words are hardening their foolish world views.

[calimary]

21. Ironic quote there - a lie in and of itself!

After all, Donald Trump really DIDN'T write "The Art of the Deal." His ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, did.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all

His entire schtick is a lie.

[ancianita]

27. Fair point, except that since Schwartz spent eighteen months with him, it's likely a Trump quote.

He certainly endorsed everything in the book by claiming to write it, at the very least.

[IronLionZion]

6. Germany wasn't a nuclear superpower

and America is significantly more diverse.

The parallels are important to understand and of course we have to work for the votes to win the election and not be complacent. But we also don't need to freak ourselves out with fear either. Our country has checks and balances and our military leaders have already stated they won't follow unlawful orders.

Trump's thugs are not nearly as influential as Hitler's

[muntrv]

7. Also, our economy is not nearly as bad as it was in Germany 1933.

The parallels are scary, nevertheless.

[groundloop]

8. GOPers won't admit it, but our economy is pretty damned good

If our economy were actually bad, as tRump would have us believe, his vitriol and lies would have a much better chance. HOWEVER, we underestimate him at our peril.

[tblue37]

14. We also overestimate the American voter at our peril--not just the yahoos that would

actually vote for Trump, but the apathetic fools who just don't think it is that big a deal to get out and vote. The reason the worst people get elected is that the right wing base is motivated and disciplined. The GOP uses language and media effectively to propagandize their followers, while the Democrats ignore the advice of experts like George Lakoff. The Republican Party gets their voters to the polls, while the Democrats not only do not use language effectively to motivate their supporters, but also don't do enough to prevent voter suppression, to ensure that Democratic votes are actually counted, to register new voters, to GOTV, and to make sure that the liberal story gets past the barrier the corporatist media have created.

THE SECOND COMING
William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? <emphasis added>

Just as an example of how bad Democratic messaging is--the fact that what is called "neoliberalism" is actually right wing economic policy, not progressive at all, confuses most American voters. They hear the word "neoliberalism" and end up believing that the exploitative economic policies that have ruined their lives are a form of liberalism. No wonder they don't want to elect liberals!

[calimary]

22. OH MY GOD that poem has scared me since I first read it in English class

in high school.

Yeah. No freakin' KIDDING "things fall apart."

[sunnystarr]

33. too weird ...

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

Tiffiny Trump's recording ... Like a bird

[trixie]

15. There is a great book you should read

In the Garden of Beasts

Here is an excerpt from the review:

One of the malicious nicknames given to William E. Dodd by his fellow American diplomats in the 1930s was “Telephone Book Dodd.” The joke was that Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed Dodd ambassador to Germany in 1933, had supposedly meant to offer the post to a Yale law professor named Walter F. Dodd but made a mistake in looking up the name.

“In the Garden of Beasts,” which takes its name from Tiergarten, the park across the street from this residence (though “Animal Garden” is a less lurid translation), would be smugly heavy-handed if it did nothing but emphasize the Dodds’ prejudices and naïveté. But it appreciates the ambassador’s inherent backbone, the mounting provocations that he faced, and the great dread he felt about having to deal directly with Hitler, once such meetings became inevitable. When they did meet, Dodd in top hat and tails, Hitler made a fool of him time and again.

Yes, this was a family that joked excitedly after Hitler had kissed Martha’s hand, advising that she not wash the part that his lips had touched. (Hitler felt withering contempt for the ambassador’s party-girl daughter, despite his show of courtliness.) But Dodd, who did not rise to become a great statesman but did not bend to German pressure either, would eventually be transformed by what he saw coming in Germany. And it was his sense of history, not his morality, that made him savage the German vice chancellor who dared to profess ignorance at a party about why the United States had entered the First World War. “I can tell you that,” responded Dodd, in one of his uncharacteristically dynamic moments. “It was through the sheer, consummate stupidity of German diplomats.”

The parallels are alarming!

[colsohlibgal]

9. Hartmann Brought This Up

Bad times were there in both the US and Germany in 1932.

We went left they went hard Nazi right.

It is so alarming that there are enough dumb folks here now to nominate a fraud, a con man, like Drumpf. It is scary.

I am happy I am a short 3 or so hour drive to Canada. I still have a hard time believing he can win but then I never thought they would nominate him.

[tblue37]

13. Exactly!--

These were experienced men, reasonable men. They would contain Hitler’s excesses. After four years of economic depression and political paralysis, 14 years since the humiliation of the Versailles Peace Treaty, decades of an overweening Jewish presence in German public life, it was time for a new beginning. It was time to make Germany great again.

[Hekate]

18. Excellent read. Accurate and scary as shit.

[PatSeg]

20. I recently read a book that I highly recommend

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson.

It was a fascinating and revealing look at 1930s Germany and the rise of the Nazi party. We often ask, how on earth could that nightmare happen? Reading the book, I got a very clear picture and I know it can happen again.

I've read that a movie is in the works, starring Tom Hanks.

[FighttheFuture]

23. These Trade Agreements are our "Treaty of Versailles"!!! Democrats need to repudiate them!

Trump is already owning this issue. Hillary needs to really take a lesson from Bernie on these.

[Urchin]

25. Wow! Good point.

[Urchin]

24. Trumps speaking style last night

Trump's speaking style last night even reminded me of Hitler's speeches--lots of anger and shouting.

[deathrind]

26. Another...

One...ok.

[L. Coyote]

28. Hitler kept all his promises to the Jewish people.

“My faceless neighbor spoke up:

“Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.”

I exploded:

“What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?
His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily:

“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/hitler

[ffr]

30. Make Germany Great Again was an idea, not a slogan

Hardly unique to the Nazi's or otherwise, since it's an idea. Reagan too said that same thing as Drumpf, and correct me if I'm wrong, but let's not get carried away with that whole theme and look like idiots who didn't do our homework.



Snopes.com

[Will Morningstar]

32. Live from the "exit ramp" on the "Trump highway",

in Senator Lindsey Graham's well-chosen phrase. Thinking back a generation, I remember two honorable gentlemen on the floor of the United States Senate, united in a common purpose: the impeachment of President William J. Clinton. Both were equally eloquent, courtly, respectful, and persuasive in their arguments. Whereas the one, Senator Arlen Spector, approached his task with wet-lipped delight, the other, Senator Graham, did his duty as he saw it, but appeared to take no joy in it.

Despite our divergent views on many, if not most, issues, I have held a grudging respect for Senator Graham and his bipartisan integrity ever since.

True conservatives are important and necessary. They keep us balanced, they keep us honest, and when we actually listen to them, and allow ourselves to be challenged by their points of view, they bring out the best in us.

Graham, Kasich, even Cruz (and many others who dare not show their faces in the present poisonous climate) could never reach out to us and beg for a stop to this madness. It's up to us to make the first move.

[uponit7771]

34. Omg

[Albertoo]

35. Comparison is not reason

Hitler was a -pathologically- focused individual who wanted to kill Jews.

Trump is a -comically- unfocused narcissist who doesn't want to kill anybody (yet?).

[luckylefty77]

36. True but Germany at the time didn't have the long history of democracy that America has. Trump

maybe a bad person but he's no Hitler besides Hillary will win the election easily.

[maddiemom]

37. The real major conundrum here concerns

the devoted Trump followers who parrot his promises as "givens', with no thought as to truth or specifics or plans for achievement. Trump says it, and it must be true. These people are the true nightmares, contributing to "Idiocracy." Several on-air pundits ( cred. Ana from TYT for one) have stated the obvious: the Trump followers, rather than Trump himself, are truly scary. People who have not learned any critical thinking and are open to any bullshit spewed. Many Democratic pundits are masters of critical thinking, so often sabotage their own candidates. In short: Republicans are always behind their candidates,even if they're near fascists: Democrats will argue for every drop of sanctimony for individual candidates, shooting themselves in the foot.

[uponit7771]

39. "Yet these same conservatives made a political bargain with the Nazi party. ..."

[Will Morningstar]

40. The Fork in the Road on the Trump Highway

So, we are presented with a choice: shall we support our ticket, or shall we, along with the sad remnants of the G.O.P., be correct from the Opposition benches?