Speaker: How to Look Good as a Nazi
457 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 14 15 16 17 18 19 Newer→ Last
-
Yes Simon we are the sum of our History, but we also need to take responsibility for our own acttions.
To say Nazism was not a Regime defies all logic.
Had more to say but not sure it would help if we can't agree on this fundamental truth.
-
So I come back to discover that my attempt to reverse-Godwin the thread has failed. Oh well, can't win them all I suppose.
I'm with Keir, I think the idea that if it weren't for Churchill the Nazis would have won the war is far too simplistic. At the most one could say that if the position of strenuous resistance that we associate with Churchill had not won the day in Britain, perhaps the war would have lasted longer, and we know what even one day longer of Nazism meant for the people it imprisoned across Europe. But I can't see Nazism winning a war and then turning into a peacetime regime - it just wasn't built for that, and I doubt it could have lasted, holding together an empire spanning from the British Isles to the Soviet Union (which, by the way, I'm far from convinced it would have defeated anyhow).
A while ago I scanned some magazine covers by the German satirist John Heartfield from the early 1930s - they give a pretty good idea of the despair in which the German society found itself at the time, a despair that Hitler was able to turn to strength by means of a global war. But it was a suicide bid, really - how could it have ended except in catastrophe?
-
To say Nazism was not a Regime defies all logic.
And yet I didn't say exactly that, if you read further, of course it was. But the idea that the "Nazi Regime" existed as just that...a boxed in parameter which existed from 1933-45 is utter nonsense. It was the culmination and bringing together of so many philosophical strands that existed and grew, almost as a political cancer, in Germany and Austria in the years after 1848. Richard Evan's three part history of the Third Reich, and especially volume 1, is good on this, and may be, at the moment, definitive.
I'm with Keir, I think the idea that if it weren't for Churchill the Nazis would have won the war is far too simplistic.
Once again, not all what I said, and I don't think that's what Keir said either. Keir's point seemed to me to be that the Allies won because of some sort of national & regime superiority over the clusterfuck that was the Nazi leadership and philosophy. That, I think, is only a part of it and misses the reality that it could have gone either way until at least the end of 1941 (after the US entered the result, with hindsight, was never in doubt, but even then, if things hadn't had an element of luck attached, such as the D-Day storms, the timelines may well have been different). He claimed Allied Industrial superiority (which, in the case of the British, is very much untrue, but in the case of the US, indisputable). There were so many variables in the mix and nothing was that clear cut. Don't forget that good regime, the British, finding themselves with a Churchill who played such a crucial role in 1940, also found themselves with a man who argued strenuously for strategic military moves a year to two later that would have caused grievous harm to the Allied cause, and who callously and knowingly allowed millions of Indians to die in the Bengal famines (the currently revised estimate is over ten million)..it goes both ways.
If Britain had folded in 1940, if those in the cabinet who were urging it, had had their way, then who knows. German control of the Suez and India. Likely no Pearl Harbor as the Japanese would have had a free hand to go in any direction they wanted apart from East.....really, who knows.
But I can't see Nazism winning a war and then turning into a peacetime regime
which I think is pretty much what I did say. What would have happened after a European Nazi victory in 1940/41 (for example if Roosevelt had not been re-elected) is another whole question.
Less theoretically, Churchill did not exist in a vacuum; there were other politicians who shared his views and there would have been support for them.
I've read at least a dozen histories of the 1939-41 period (and, yes Guilty Men, which largely underlined the divisions and anger in those divisions and was a book, which, incidentally, Churchill made some effort to have suppressed) and none seem to be able to find a viable alternative. There was, perhaps, Bevin, but he lacked the charisma and, being a working man, was unacceptable to the higher ranks of the military and much of the civil service. Eden and Attlee were very much not up to it. Beaverbrook was a loner and Canadian to boot, and many of the others in early 1940 either openly or otherwise, leaned towards capitulation. Maxton, from everything I've read, was a pacifist and gave a series of Anti war, anti-conscription and pro-appeasement speeches from the late 1930s onwards, right into the war years. I don't think so.
-
Keir's point seemed to me to be that the Allies won because of some sort of national & regime superiority over the clusterfuck that was the Nazi leadership and philosophy.
My point is that Nazi Germany was not an effective military power. The reason I think this is because it lost the only war of any note that it ever fought. I do think that yes the British Americans and Russians were militarily superior to the Third Reich, because look, Berlin was the capital razed to the ground.
I mean, suppose Britain folds in '40; so what? Britain didn't fold in '40. Britain kept fighting. That's what happened.
Or, yes, the Allies won because they were superior military powers; that's very close to being tautological.
(The emphasis on who'd be Churchill if Churchill didn't exist is daft, because we obviously have no way of knowing, given that Churchill did exist. Also, suppose Churchill dies in '39, there's lots of things still putting a anti-appeasement PM in power by '40, unless you think it was purely luck that put him there.)
-
I mean, suppose Britain folds in '40; so what? Britain didn't fold in '40. Britain kept fighting. That's what happened.
And there I was thinking that the study of our history was a little more complex, little more multi-layered, than "That's what happened" 'cos we were better. But there you go...
WWII sorted in 7 words....decades and whole forests of academic papers and books wasted.
[Sorry, to be so snarky, but I give up]
-
About that s92.. :)
-
As opposed to `Britain was lucky'? I mean, seriously, if you want simplistic analysis, `it was luck' is pretty damn simplistic.
I have suggested causal factors that resulted in Britain and the Allies winning the war: Nazi industrial misallocation, Allied industrial superiority, Allied planning superiority based on the habits and forms of democracy.
Those are reasons, and yes they all involve the Allies being militarily superior than the Axis powers; likewise were I trying to analyse why African nations tended to be beaten by Western powers in the 19th century I would look at things that involved western military superiority.
I mean, why was Churchill PM in '40? You really haven't dealt with that at all, you've only said it was `lucky' and that (paraphrased) `Britain found itself with Churchill as PM'*. That doesn't actually explain what happened, it just says, basically, stuff happens. Whereas saying, no, Churchill was PM, and there were reasons for that, and if you want to talk about history you actually have to deal with the fact that Churchill was PM, that forces us to explain events.
I dunno, I really don't think that's simplistic at all; I think that's the only honest way to do history, by a resolute confrontation with what actually happened. It mightn't be as flashy as what-ifs, but this isn't soc.history.what-if.
* Suggesting the rather laughable image of Fleet Street hacks trotting along every morning to see who answered the door bell at No. 10, just in case the PM had changed in the night and they found themselves with Hore-Belisha or somesuch.
-
Nazi industrial misallocation, Allied industrial superiority, Allied planning superiority based on the habits and forms of democracy.
And myself, and others here, have already dealt with much of that.
it was luck' is pretty damn simplistic.
and taking 3 words out of about 3000 isn't?
About that s92.. :)
word.....
-
My point is that Nazi Germany was not an effective military power.
Perhaps a distinction could be made between the state and the military.
Rommell was vastly superior in Africa than anyone on either side from a purely military angle. His loss there wasn't due to not being very effective, he was just out-resourced and his allies were awful. The Nazi state didn't greatly affect the equation.
-
I know you are arguing about whether the Nazi's were efficient and effective or not but the below has come up in the SST.
What do you think of Finlay MacDonald's opinion piece on the Museum Nazi prank?
Me, I just wonder what happens to people when they start to write columns for the SST.
-
Me, I just wonder what happens to people when they start to write columns for the SST.
He may have been a good editor, but it's not exactly as if McDonald's editorials for the Listener were any more substantial than this.
-
I've got a little sympathy for the devil on this.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2998740/Blogger-takes-on-insurance-firm
I didn't know of his depression but it all makes sense now and I for one say his cheese still ain't on that cracker just yet.
-
Bringing up Whaleoil in a thread on Nazism I believe constitutes Godwinning. I take my hat off to you, sir.
-
How ever I have to admit I was wrong about this devil.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2998598/Far-right-leader-Kyle-Chapman-returns
I really though his life was f&@ked up enough that he'ld leave this behind. I was wrong.
-
Point taken, of course my comparision was meant to be about boys behaving badly (AG/Lincoln Uni/Whaleoil) not the Nazis & Whaleoil.
-
What do you think of Finlay MacDonald's opinion piece on the Museum Nazi prank?
I kind of agree with him -- if I'd had anything to do with it, I'd have politely suggested that AGS would no longer be welcome at the Museum until they've got the whole proper supervision and discipline thing sorted out. (I'd also drop a note to the Education Review Office suggesting their next visit to AGS might like to pay special attention to the history department.)
But I really think the enlightened commentariat could try being a little less fucking condescending. Yeah, I get a bit of a "humourless pantywaist" because that exhibition was marking the experience of people like my father who spend his youth dodging Nazi bullets in North Africa and Italy, while many members of our whanau weren't so lucky. I also went to school with a dozen or so kids whose parents or grandparents came to this country as refugees from the Third Reich, or in the aftermath of the Second World War in search of a better life.
But here's the bit that really pissed me off:
In Britain a column in the Daily Mail by Jan Moir was vilified for suggesting that gay Boyzone singer Stephen Gately's death may have had more to do with a sleazy celebrity lifestyle than natural causes. Instead of being dismissed as the muckraking of a reactionary media trout in a right-wing rag, her silly column became a rallying point for outraged anti-homophobes and every other self-appointed guardian of allowable thought.
No, Finlay, Moir went a little further than that. She opined that there just had to be something "sleazy" about his death because ""Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again. Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one."
I guess it also goes without saying that faggots -- especially those who don't live lives of monastic purity like tabloid hacks -- don't die of natural causes, because they're too busy throwing drug-fueled gang bangs.
Well, yes they do you fucking stupid troll -- every damn week of the year, but I guess Moir's psychic abilities, and her hitherto unsuspected expertise in forensic pathology and cardiology means she got it right and the coroner didn't. (Also, I guess he knowingly issued a false death certificate -- which happens to be a serious offense.) And Gately's mother lied about a family history of heart disease?
I really hope Finlay and Carol never have to bury one of their children, but I hope they'd be able to do it without the attentions of a tabloid hack who couldn't even wait until after the funeral to start pissing on a stranger's grave. Let alone insinuate that he'd somehow tried to cover up the "sleazy" truth. I suspect that wouldn't only be the occasion of a complaint to the Press Council, but a defamation writ.
Here's something Finaly might care to think about, courtesy of Tom Stoppard: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, nobody is entitled to their own facts."
-
Oh, and I did love Moir (or more precisely the PR firm hired by The Daily Mail issuing press releases) bitching about the "orchestrated campaign" of "villification" by people making mean tweets and... um, laying complaints to the Press Complaints Commission -- whose membership included the editor of the Daily Mail, until last year when he left to become chairman of the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee.
Sounds rather a lot like someone Finlay shares a stable with, doesn't it?
-
Are you saying Mr McDonald lives an equine lifestyle? :)
Moir and fellow hackettes apparently believe there's this thing called 'the gay lifestyle' that involves scandalous swinging from chandeliers and fatal orgies. And any facts will be bent to fit that story.
-
Are you saying Mr McDonald lives an equine lifestyle? :)
Hey, baby, I'm not going there. :) But I really doubt MacDonald would be quite so laid back about the "muckraking of a reactionary media trout" if she was using the tragic death of one of his children to do it as a hook for another screed about the evils of interracial marriage.
One might also think nobody should "ignore" hacks and hackettes making medical judgments that have absolutely no basis in fact.
-
Here's something Finaly might care to think about, courtesy of Tom Stoppard: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, nobody is entitled to their own facts."
Ahem, it was actually the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan who first popularised that very useful aphorism. Sorry for being pedantic :)
But I agree with your point that the Jan Moir column was really beyond reprehensible, and even for a newspaper like the Mail, pretty untennable.
-
Sorry for being pedantic :)
Go right ahead, Tom Stoppard is a fraud and it must be regularly acknowledged.
Much Daily Mail goodness in this sensational blogpost concerning the BBC appearence of mr. Griffin.
(Concerning which, K-Punk in top form also).
-
The term PC is bothersome. What's the word? Pejorative? When people go on about PCness I often think back to the days of my youth when homosexuality was illegal, women were treated like shit and white supremacy was just well, normal.
There's still a reason for political correctness IMHO and it's to guard against the sort of hurt and discrimination you are outraged by, Craig.
I'm disappointed in Finlay MacDonald. I think he used to write in a more considered way but the SST columnists seem to have to stir up a reaction by overstating their opinions. I consider the Grammar boys' actions to be pretty damn awful but also a very interesting manifestation of changing times and therefore almost worth a media storm.
-
3410,
this sensational blogpost concerning the BBC appearence of mr. Griffin.
-
Thanky.
-
Should be noted part of the reason so many people are complaining about the Daily Mail is that the Mail has a history of Whitehouse-esque co-ordinated whinging, and that this really is just them getting a taste of their own medicine.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.