Nazis Explain Why They Became Nazis

[Behind the Aegis]

(This article is from 2019, but sure seems important now, especially given the rise of Q_Anon.)

In a 1934 letter to American sociologist Theodore Abel, Helen Radtke explained why she had joined the German Nazi Party. She wrote that she was a politically active person who had sat in the public gallery of her local state parliament to listen to the debates held there, and attended as many political rallies as possible in search of a party that was "nationalist, but also cared for the poor". Eventually, she wrote, she found just what she was looking for in Hitler and his movement.

Radtke's letter was just one of 683 personal accounts sent to Abel in the years after Hitler was elected in 1933. Last January, the Hoover Institution – a public policy think-tank based at Stanford University in California – published 584 of those letters online. These personal testimonies are not only useful in understanding why so many people were attracted to the Nazis in the 1930s, but also provide insight into the minds of the millions of Germans today who are still turning to far-right political parties, like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Around a year after Hitler became Chancellor, Theodore Abel wanted to know what had motivated so many people to support him. After Abel failed to get any of the estimated 850,000 Nazi party members to agree to an interview, he came up with the idea for a fake competition, where he offered 125 Reichsmarks to whomever could write the most beautiful, detailed description of why they had joined the Nazi Party.

At the time, the prize money was worth more than half the monthly average salary in Germany, and even Joseph Goebbels – the Nazi Minister of Propaganda – publicly supported the contest. The submissions ranged from handwritten love letters to Nazism, to 12-page testimonies, while participants represented a cross-section of German society, from soldiers and SS officers to office workers, housewives, children and miners.

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[mitch96]

1. Crap, change the wording a bit and it sounds like todays rhetoric... nt

[Chainfire]

3. Times change, people don't

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[marble falls]

4. It all sounds like rationalizing what they knew from the start was a bad idea.

[mitch96]

6. My friends mother was in the Hitler youth. When ever we asked her about it she would say

All the children were in the youth groups. You could not escape it and it just became normal. She never did say anything nice about non germans or other religions when it was brought up.She never did. They knew...
m

[marble falls]

7. They knew.

[world wide wally]

5. The same basic concept of "Just lie. Enough people will believe it to make an impact"

Truth doesn't matter in the least. Only the ultimate goal is important.