PIC: Gandhi's 1939 letter to Adolf Hitler

[yurbud]

It didn't work, but it is a reminder of who the winner was in the long game: the violent guy lost everything and the non-violent guy wearing a bedsheet won everything.

We aren't beat yet, and the more hysterical and violent the right gets, the more likely they are to be history's losers.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for Gandhi and for right action. n/t

-Laelth

[leveymg]

2. Right thought, anyway.

Futile and potentially misinterpreted? Yes. Impertinent? No.

[samsingh]

3. i wish it had worked

[raccoon]

4. Hitler couldn't read English. AFAWK, he couldn't.

Seriously, thanks for posting.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. It answers the question what would Gandhi have to say to Hitler

Unfortunately, if Hitler were confronted with nonviolent resistance, he would have blown away that resistance and, looking Gandhi in the eye before ordering him to Auschwitz, said "That you for making this so easy."

What Gandhi had here was a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. Hitler challenged the world to take him down violently, and what he asked for, he got.

[cstanleytech]

7. Yes but I wonder what he would have said to Hitler if

he had known about the ovens and the experiments on human beings.

[struggle4progress]

6. Gandhi was a few years too late there IMO. It's possible that a concerted program

of nonviolent resistance in the very early years of Nazi control might have made a difference. The Nazis had been starting street fights, in order to whinie about the lack of law and order, even before the seizure of power. But after they seized power, they outlawed all other political parties, shut down the opposition press, and opened concentration camps like Dachau. By the end of 1933, opponents could be thrown in prison without rights, and it was common for them to get the crap kicked out of them. By 1939, the Nazis had pretty thoroughly terrified the internal opposition

Maybe a concerted non-violent resistance that began organizing immediately in 1933 might have had a chance

[yurbud]

8. the Nazis faced an ineffectual opposition party who were still beholden to some of the...

same corporate constituencies the Nazis eventually won over.

[struggle4progress]

9. There were a number of different parties that opposed the Nazis: unfortunately,

they didn't play well together. The Catholic Center folk sure as hell weren't gonna work with the Communists, and the Communists sure as hell weren't gonna work with the Social Democrats