← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · vytis
Thread ID: 15989 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-12-15
2004-12-15 21:43 | User Profile
I found this interesting item by Charles Lindbergh's wife, and sometimes it makes me wonder if the final chapter of the Third Reich has yet to be written.
"What's behind Nazism? Is it nothing but a return to barbarism, to be crushed at all costs by a 'Crusade?' Or is some new, and perhaps even ultimate good, conception of humanity trying to come to birth...?"
Quote: Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Regards, vytis "Wer kennt den Jude kennt den Teufel"
2004-12-17 21:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE=vytis] "What's behind Nazism? Is it nothing but a return to barbarism, to be crushed at all costs by a 'Crusade?' Or is some new, and perhaps even ultimate good, conception of humanity trying to come to birth...?" [/QUOTE]
Well, I have some time off today and since no one else took a swing at this question, I'll stir things up...
The truth is somewhere in between. First I think Nazism was a disaster for Western society and any attempt to revive it would result in the same. Nevertheless I don't accept the silly liberal notion that all Nazis were soulless killiers who had no good ideas whatsoever.
Nazism was much more sophisticated than a return to Barbarsim. One of the theorists of mass communication, Marshal McLuhan, painted Nazism as an attempt to re-instill tribal values into an industrialized individualistic framework. Nazism was an effort to resist the fragmentation of modern society by preserving elements of a more holistic society. This is its appeal and will remain so as society becomes more and more fragmented. The Nazis never embraced mass production like the allies did. At the end of the war they were still producing superior planes and guns but could not compete with the sheer volume of the allies firepower. This was the price of retaining the quality craftsmanship of tribal societies.
Where it went wrong was in trying to force society to evolve from the top-down. I don't believe you can succesfully force others to improve. The best society is one where those who wish to discipline themselves and build something better are able to live independently from those who don't. That way those who wish to pursue debauchery don't get in the way. This is where Nazis wasted energy and built up resentment. They were not able to root out people like Goering who just sucked up resources to feed a luxurious lifestyle. Nazism created too many parasites at the top who were not able to relate to what was going on at the front specifically because they had this top-down strategy of forcing everyone to improve. At the height of the war Germany was still producing luxury items.
Yet we know that our schools teach outright lies about the Nazis; the idea that human skin was turned into lampshades for example. We are even told that the Germans were so stupid they voted for Hitler even though he believed in the "Big Lie", the idea that the bigger the lie the better. Of course anyone who has read Mein Kampf knows that Hitler accused his enemies of using the big lie. The very fact this was twisted around proves Hitler was right on at least something. The lies that surround this era make it hard to come to any definite conclusions.
Hitler took a lot of steps to insulate the rural classes from financial fluctuations through his barter programs and instituted some great work programs. Hitler probably saved Europe from communism and I don't doubt the British knew he was doing their dirty work for them, which is why they tolerated him as long as possible. On the other hand he drained the gold reserves of Germany and its hard to see how he would have kept his economy going without pouncing on foreign resources. He was surrounded by a lot of scoundrels (Albert Speer's autobiography is a good source.) and was unable to admit his mistakes. A lot of good impulses went into Nazism but it was too flawed to sustain itself. Hitler's final desperate attempt to emulate the Russian's scorched earth policy in Germany was sheer lunacy and fortunately his deputies ignored his final commands.
Well that's my two pfennig.
2004-12-18 09:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=LlenLleawc]Well that's my two pfennig.[/QUOTE]Interesting interpretations, some rather off the mark, some with something to them.
As I was just telling Walter, the idea that there was a NS ideology is sort of mistake. Everyone has to take his shot though - my take is it really was more of a bunch of vague tendencies really, if you really try to get to its essense as manifested politically. Now there was a NS of sorts (Houston Stewart Chamberlain, etc.), and theoroticians lik Rosenberg, but I'm wonder how that qualifies as a really coherent political ideology, especially since even these theoroticians never really assumed a dominant role in NS, the way peole like Marx, Lenin, Trotsy and Mao do Communism.
2004-12-18 21:33 | User Profile
Okie- You're right that NS ideology was defined very loosely. Vague tendencies is a good way to put it. I would still maintain that its main appeal was to revive an ancient tribalistic order (not necesarily barbarism) and reinject that order into a modern framework. I'm still modifying my position as I learn more.
I remember seeing some memorials to Nazi soldiers and some leftover WWII military buildings down in Bavaria. One can't fail to notice the sense of unity that pervaded the Third Reich if only for a short time. This sense of unified purpose and community in defiance of modern fragmentation is what gave German Nazism (as opposed to NS in general) its appeal. As I said above, this sense of unified purpose was misguided and ill-defined in many ways so I have no personal interest in NS.
The question I do have is this: assuming I am right that the strong point of Nazism was its appeal to tribal unity, and its ideal of a cohesive warrior who's skills are all encompasing, how much of this unity was created by Nazism itself and how much of it was the old German collective conscious in its twilight? Or: Did the Nazis really create this sense of unified purpose in Germany or had they just hijacked German culture, as it was fading, for their own purposes?
This question interests me because it is easy to look back on the Third Reich and see certain qualities in a romantic haze. I think a lot of neo-nazis do this, they overlook the faults of the Third Reich and see a society that was healthier and more cohesive than our own and attribute these goods to Nazism when in reality the Nazis may have had little responsibility in creating these tendencies. It is more likely that some of the nobility of an earlier era was still alive, but fading, in German culture at that time.
2004-12-19 08:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=LlenLleawc]Okie- You're right that NS ideology was defined very loosely. Vague tendencies is a good way to put it. I would still maintain that its main appeal was to revive an ancient tribalistic order (not necesarily barbarism) and reinject that order into a modern framework. I'm still modifying my position as I learn more. For starters that's not a bad approximation I'd say.
The question I do have is this: assuming I am right that the strong point of Nazism was its appeal to tribal unity, and its ideal of a cohesive warrior who's skills are all encompasing, how much of this unity was created by Nazism itself and how much of it was the old German collective conscious in its twilight? Or: Did the Nazis really create this sense of unified purpose in Germany or had they just hijacked German culture, as it was fading, for their own purposes? Alot of this question is addressed in the chapter in SAID (Separation and It's Discontents by Kevin MacDonald) concerning Nazi Germany. I think I've seen it on the internet, maybe even in this forum.
This question interests me because it is easy to look back on the Third Reich and see certain qualities in a romantic haze. I think a lot of neo-nazis do this, they overlook the faults of the Third Reich and see a society that was healthier and more cohesive than our own and attribute these goods to Nazism when in reality the Nazis may have had little responsibility in creating these tendencies. It is more likely that some of the nobility of an earlier era was still alive, but fading, in German culture at that time.[/QUOTE]
I think here you're sort of looking for a bridge between Nazidom and the conservatism of the Second Reich. Making such a point was a key part of the work of such revolutionary conservative writers as Oswald Spengler in the [I]Prussians And Socialism[/I]. It's something historians debate, back and forth. Generally though I still see a great break from the Second Reich period to Nazism, and some of the tendencies that it did inherit from the Second Reich are not automatically or easily appreciated by the Anglo-Saxon mind - let's put it that way :lol: Thiessen for instance compared the essense of the Third Reich's attitudes to the old Prussian practice of initiating recruits by flogging them.