To start at the beginning of this series, click here.
To read the reasoning behind this series, click here.
Getting back to The Holocaust Explained website.
Now I'm on the Adolf Hitler biography part.
He was born in Austria.
I actually just wrote Australia. Oops.
He moved to Munich in his 20's and enlisted in the army.
I'm already itching to go down another rabbit hole—A Google Maps one.
I want to see where Hitler was born. It's a town called Braunau-am-Inn.
Google Maps has a little description, saying it's known as being Hitler's birthplace.
I'm wondering if it's the kind of place where people are mostly ashamed of that fact. Or is there a large number of people who are proud of it? How do they handle Nazi-fans coming to pay homage?
I see there's a Hitler birthplace Memorial Stone.
I'm having trouble finding it on Street View. But the area is quite pretty.
I think the stone in this picture might be it.
The good news is it's not big and glorious. Also, there's not a bunch of Neo-Nazis bending the knee in front of it.
Oh! So I just Googled to get an image outside of Google Maps, and Lord Wiki quickly let me know that the memorial is actually for the victims of Nazism and not Hitler.
That makes me feel better about the world.
Back to the Holocaust website....
Hitler was given the job of instruction officer in the military. He was supposed to push nationalism and anti-communism.
In September 1919, Hitler attended his first German Worker's Party.
He liked the ideas of the party but wasn't impressed with the way things were being done. So he came in and helped to....renovate it.
Hitler came up with something called the 25 Pointe Program. The Holocaust Explained kind of drops the subject. Are they going to go into more detail later? Do I need to look elsewhere?
Maybe I'll do that later.
For now, I'll stick to the website.
Hitler wanted to do away with the Democratic committee in the organization and have one leader who was the big boss. I wonder who he wanted as the boss?
I'm joking.
So...they actually said no to Hitler. He resigned.
My way or the highway.
And they chose his way because of his great speech-making abilities.
His way was being chairman with dictator powers.
I think Trump is Hitler reincarnated.
* * *
I don't know if they list the 25 point thing.
But The Holocaust Explained does talk about what the Nazis were all about.
They were racist, antisemitic, and nationalist.
Hitler was the same.
Neither of them changed each other in those regards.
It wasn't like Hitler was woke until he joined the Nazi party. Nor was the Nazi party woke before Hitler joined them.
I'm getting, though, that it was Hitler who came up with the term Aryan race. Hitler believed the German race to be the superior race, and called the German race ‘Aryan’.
Well...cats want to eat. I'll probably get back to work tomorrow.
* * *
I'm back. It's the next day.
Last night and this morning, I realized there were still things I'm wanting to know about Finland, Germany and the United States (my rabbit hole from the previous post)
I shall maybe drop down that rabbit hole again later. But for now, I'm going to continue reading about Hitler and his Nazis.
Hitler saw Jews as especially dangerous to the Aryan race. But he also saw other groups as a threat—disabled people, gay people, Roma, and Sinti.
I've not heard of the Sinti people.
Googled...they are a subgroup of the Romani people. Are the Roma also Romani people? Or is Roma another word for Romani?
Googled some more....
It looks like Roma is another word for Romani. So, I guess that means the Sinti are a subgroup of the Roma.
Maybe.
I'm confused.
* * *
Like Trump, Hitler has a failed coup on his resume.
This happened on November 8, 1923 and was called the Munich Putsch.
Unlike Trump's failed coup, Hitler had collaboration from the military.
Trump probably had help from people who are in the military...or were. But as far as I know, he didn't have help from the military in an official capacity. If I'm wrong, please correct me!
Hitler's 1923 coup hit some snags when some participants backed out when they learned the army in Berlin would defend the government.
Despite losing some of his back up, Hitler went ahead with the plan and announced to a leader named Von Kahr that he was taking over.
I Googled Von Kahr to make sure I was understanding correctly that he was the leader. To my surprise, Von Kahr was right-wing. I pictured Hitler trying to coup against a left-wing government.
Lord Wiki says Von Kahr was a right-wing nationalist. Yet, he fought against Hitler.
Well, Hitler held a gun to him and Von Kahr agreed to let Hitler do the coup. But then later, he was like ha ha...changed my mind.
Did Von Kahr feel Hitler was TOO nationalistic and right-wing? Or was it more like he didn't want to lose his own leadership role?
Reading more from Lord Wiki. Von Kahr was not the leader of all-Germany but the leader of just Bavaria
Actually, he might not have been the leader.
He was the State Commissioner.
Well, he was State Commissioner at the time that Hitler held him at gunpoint. A few years before that, he had been Minister-President of Bavaria.
In the end, Von Kahr was murdered for betraying the Nazi-cause. In 1934, he was abducted from his apartment and hacked to death in a swamp.
So...
There are people who dismiss what people like Liz Cheney and Mike Pence have done, saying they were just doing their job.
But I disagree. And reading about what happened to Von Kahr gives me validation for my opinion about that.
Anyway, back to the failed Hitler coup.
The day after, Von Kahr said no to Hitler's coup plan, Hitler tried again.
He and his entourage marched and tried to take over a ministry building. Police fought against them. So...failure for Hitler there too.
Hitler was eventually arrested for this. He was found guilty of treason and received a sentence of five years. He served only 5 months of them.
That makes me feel that convicting Trump and sending him to prison probably won't do much to save The United States. Although...hopefully there's a law that a convicted person can't run for office? Though Clarence Thomas would probably find a way to overturn such a law.
I'm not saying we shouldn't send Trump to prison. It's kind of nice imagining him there. Although, I also kind of imagine him becoming some kind of cult leader there. The alpha. Top Dog...as they say in Wentworth.
* * *
I'm going to take a break from the Nazi timeline and go into my Finland-Germany-United States rabbit hole.
What I was wondering is how are the three countries different in terms of religion. And specifically, what portion of each population is Evangelical Christian.
I suspect that one of the reasons Finland and Germany manage to score higher on economic freedom AND have better supports for the population is due to a lower level of Christian dogma.
Yes. Christian teachings promote helping the poor. BUT I think Christianity also often glorifies suffering.
Well...maybe I'm wrong. Because evangelical Christians make up 71% of the Finnish population.
In Finland, children in public schools are required to take a religion class. But they get to choose the religion.
Something like that might be helpful in the United States. Because it might help bring to light that there are other religions besides Christianity out there.
I think some Americans are so firm in belief about Jesus, because they literally don't know there are alternate creation stories, alternate religious texts, alternate Gods, etc.
The percent of Christians in Germany is 60%.
Something interesting about both countries is people have to pay an extra tax for being part of the church...or maybe any religion. But if they claim to not have a religion, they can get out of paying that extra tax. So, the inference here, I think, is that maybe some people claim to be agnostic or atheist, so they can avoid paying that tax.
It might be more likely that people are on the fence and decide to lean towards not having a religion, since it saves them money. I mean instead of people being religious and pretending not to be.
In the United States, 71% of the population identify as Christian, and 25.4% are evangelical.
I'm guessing evangelical Christians in Finland are different than those in the United States.
Lord Wiki says that 33% of Finnish believe there is a God. So that probably means a lot of people are Christian as more of a cultural, traditional thing.
Forty-two percent believe in some sort of spiritual life force. I think this is different from believing in a God, especially if your God is a very personal God, and he hates the same people you do—women, gay people, Democrats, people on the opposing sports team, Disney executives, etc.
Germany has slightly more believers in God—44% and 25% believe in the spiritual force thing.
The poll, though, was done in 2010 (for Finland and Germany) That's kind of old. I'm guessing there may have been some changes since then.
A Pew Report in 2018 found that 90% of Americans believe in a higher power. That's a lot. Fifty-six believe in the Biblical God.
Okay.
So my hypothesis now is that it's not religion itself that causes a country to be more shitty to people...but a belief in God.
I don't think, though, that there is an inherent problem in believing in God...even the God of Jewish-Christian-Islam mythology.
I think racist, selfish, narcissistic, abusive, misogynistic, homophobic people find the literature that affirms their cruelty and bigotry. And they twist the literature to even further affirm their way of thinking and behaving.
I think other religious people twist the literature to validate the good they desire to do.
Note: I use the terms mythology and literature but that does not mean I'm 100% convinced that Christianity or any other religion is fiction. I think any mythology or book has a chance of being true. Even if it's not true for our universe. It could be true in another universe, and the writers are simply channeling news stories and diaries from the metaverse.
* * *
This article gives me hope.
Gallup did an even more recent poll and belief in God has dropped even further in the United States. It's now 81% instead of 90.
But how about belief in the Biblical God? I think that's a more important question.
The poll says that 42% believe in a God that hears prayers and intervenes. I think that would sort of be like believing in the Biblical God.
Belief in God has decreased in the last few years in all of the various Gallop-subgroups of people.
* * *
I took a break for lunch; then Tim and I talked some about politics.
We discussed the meaning of various things, because I asked (wondered aloud) if fascism always referred to right-wing. Could there be a left-wing fascist?
Basically, I didn't know what fascism really referred to. But Tim said something about anyone or any group....any viewpoint could be fascist.
I forget what we concluded all together about the various things we were defining and debating—right, left, capitalism, communism, authoritarianism....
But now I'm thinking that maybe fascism would be the extreme form of authoritarianism. And I think anarchy would be the extreme form of libertarianism.
You can have right-wing authoritarianism and you can have left-wing.
I think if we're defining left vs right economic-wise—left leaning more towards socialism and right leaning more towards capitalism, I think it would be more likely that the left would be fascist. Because if the government is controlling the whole economy, they're going to be controlling the people—where we work, how long we work, what we buy, what we can't buy, etc. If the government truly keeps their hands out of the economy—lets the chips fall as they may....doesn't give any special favors to any companies or corporations; then how would they have an authoritarian hold?
I think with social issues, it's probably the right who are more likely to be fascist...controlling bodies via abortion laws, trying to control how marriage is defined,
WELL....
Never mind.
Lord Wiki says I'm super wrong.
He says fascism is not just about authoritarianism. He says it also includes nationalism, and it's far right.
So is there a left-wing equivalent then?
I just Googled.
Saw an answer on Quora—someone suggesting that Communism would be the left wing version.
But....
Lord Wiki that there's a guy named Jonah Goldberg who believes that Fascism is left-wing and not right-wing.
Maybe I'm going to go back to believing what I was originally thinking—that there can be left fascism and right fascism.
Back to what I was saying about any group or idea having a fascist form. If we take abortion, anti-abortion fascism is what we're starting to have here in the United States. It's not allowing any abortions, taking away bodily autonomy, trying to block state travel, etc.
I don't think you could literally have pro-choice fascism. Because providing choice by definition would be anti-authoritarian. But you could have pro-abortion fascism...eugenics. You could have certain populations forced to have abortions, because their offspring is seen as undesirable.
Well, going to have dinner now....
Tomorrow, I shall try to get back on track with the German history stuff.
* * *
Well, it's the next day.
I think this post is long enough.
I'm going to post it and then start working on part 4.
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