The Rise of Nazism in Germany (Part 10)

For Part 1 of this series, please click here!

To read an analogy I once wrote directed at people who get annoyed at comparisons between Trump and Hitler, please click here.  

So...want to start with some blabbing about personal stuff.

I'm having a challenging day in terms of autistic and OCD stuff.  I was thinking that at least my ADHD is not causing me extra grief today.  But then I realized I did something impulsive today that might have been a mistake. I stuck my beak into where it might not have belonged...and I might have worsened some drama.  

Basically, the OCD/autism thing is stressing about contamination which leads me to washing my hands way too often and using wipes too much. Because of my sensory issues, I find dry hands unbearable even when they are a tiny bit dry.  But now, because of all my handwashing and all the wipes, my hands are VERY dry.  

I also have all these rigid self-rules about what I need to get done in a day, and that's stressing me out.

On top of all that, I feel I might be getting Covid.  Although it could just as easily be allergies+Covid-paranoia.  

Well...I have a family member who currently has it...not that I've seen this person lately.  But there's that feeling Covid is everywhere.  And we are code red here in the Dallas area.  And despite knowing that Covid is EVERYWHERE, I made the stupid mistake of not wearing a mask when we were out.  And pretty much everyone else at the store and restaurant made the same choice.

So....

I should mention, the extra handwashing is actually not due to the Covid issue.  I know. It's weird. But I AM weird, so....

* * *

Let's get back to the subject of Germany.

I'm going to begin reading the section on The Holocaust Explained website about the conservative elite.  

This elite was made up of the "old ruling class" and "new business class".

I think we'd call those people today "old money" and "new money".

Correct me if I'm wrong.

* * *

The conservative elite were worried about communism. 

They were worried about losing their money and their power.

I don't blame people for fearing pure communism.  Especially if they're lucky enough to be wealthy.  But even if they're not at all wealthy....

I can't imagine it working out in a la la Happy-Land kind of way.  

That being said, I'm not overly knowledgable about communist ideology.

I don't know if it's a wonderful thing that turns to shit, because the wrong people are put in charge. OR is it just bad by design?

I think, though, that the worst part of communism is the corruption that seems to always take place and the authoritarian aspect of it.

So, it's kind of funny in a sad way that Germany's conservative elite wanted to fight Communism with another brand of authoritarianism.  

* * *

I went to go feed the cats and fed myself a cookie. And while doing so, I thought of various things.

The first was whether I'd be happy with an authoritarian government that pushed my own personal ideologies?  Would I be okay with a dictator who could and would easily passed laws that made me happy?

The second was whether there are any studies of Trump support by economic level.  And same with Hitler support.  

Were they even doing polls back in Hitler days?

Here we go.  

Well...not the Hitler thing.

But The Conversation has a Trump poll/study from the 2016 election.  

In terms of white people, the people in the second to lowest and third lowest income brackets were most likely to vote for Trump instead of Clinton.  For those in the lowest bracket, it's more complicated.  They were more likely to vote for Trump than Clinton.  But they were also the group that most voted for none of the above.

The two highest income brackets were more likely to support Clinton.

So...I guess in the United States, the elite are more likely to be progressive rather than conservative.

At least in that poll.....

Here's an article in a publication called The Nation.

Or an editorial?  I'm not sure.

It's titled "Who Voted For Hitler?  Just as there are myths about Trump voters, there are damaging misconceptions about who brought the Nazis to power"

This might be providing the same information that The Holocaust Explained would give me if I shut up and listened to them.

So I'm going to do that.  And then I'll read the article in The Nation.

I was wondering if The Nation was a right wing publication and if I was going to be lectured on how it was progressives who are to blame.  But then on the top of page...on their menu, they have the terms "Climate Justice" and "Abortion rights"

So...I doubt they are right-wing.

Are they very left wing or more center?  

Oh!  Wow. This is interesting.

So, The Nation is progressive.

Lord Wiki says they are the successor to an abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator, which ended it's publication after ratification of the 13th amendment.

If I had myself a time machine, I would bring back a DVD of the documentary 13th; hand it to Mr. Isaac Knapp and say, You don't need to end your newspaper!

Yes. Of course, I'd bring a DVD machine too. 

By the way, it wasn't Isaac Knapp who started the sequel newspaper.  It was the son of William Lloyd Garrison. The older-Garrison was the guy who originally published The Liberator.

I'm struggling not to fall down a Garrison-family rabbit hole.

* * *

Getting back to The Holocaust Explained.

I'm going to try to read the rest of the conservative elite page without going on some kind of tangent.

So...Article 48 plays a pretty big part in the story. This is when the Chancellor takes action without permission from the Reichstag.  Instead he has to get permission from The President.

Between 1925-1931, it was used a total of 16 times.  

In 1931, the number of times used was 42.  

In 1932, it was used 58 times.

What this means is the leader of the country had more unchecked power. Lots of unchecked power is going to equal a dictatorship.

Now in the United States, we have two avenues of keeping the leader's power in check—Congress and the judicial system.

I'm not sure if there was a way to fight against the emergency decrees in 1930's Germany

I vaguely remember reading there was one....

I'll maybe look back at that later.

* * *

The Holocaust Explained says, The conservative elite and the Nazi Party had a common enemy – the political left.

Yeah.

The conservative elite wanted the political left to be destroyed.  They thought Hitler could help with that.

The conservative elites I know seem to want the politically left destroyed as well. They might not say that directly. But they don't speak out against what Trump has done to try to throw away the votes of left-wing people.

Ah!

This is interesting to me:  The Holocaust Explained says that the conservative elite felt that they could use Hitler to destroy the left.  And then the conservative elite would replace Hitler with another leader.

That makes me think of people who don't personally like Trump.  But they support him, because he can help people like them stay powered and privileged. 

* * *

Four people played a substantial part in getting Hindenburg to make Hitler the Chancellor.

One was Oskar von Hindenburg, Hindenburg's son.  The other was that former chancellor and family friend—Von Paten.  And then there were two wealthy industrialists—Hjalmar Schacht and Gustav Krupp,

The Holocaust Explained goes into the election stuff I read from Lord Wiki.

I'm going to read it and see if there's anything I can add to my bank of knowledge.

They compare the 1928 Reichstag elections to the 1930 one.

In 1928, the Nazis won 2.6% of the vote and gained 12 seats.

In 1930, they won 18.3% of the vote and had 107 seats.

In July 1932, they won 37.3% of the vote and had 230 seats.

Despite their win in the Reichstag, Hitler wasn't immediately made Chancellor.

Maybe it's that there's an unwritten rule that the winning party gets to see their leader as Chancellor?

In my last post, I was confused about why there were negotiations with Hitler.  Maybe this is the reason.

The Holocaust Explained says: It took the economic and political instability (with two more chancellors failing to stabilise the situation) to worsen, and the support of the conservative elite, to convince Hindenburg to appoint Hitler.

Hitler became the Chancellor on January 30, 1933.  

* * *

Now I'm going to read the article/editorial in The Nation.

Dan Simon says that there was a book in the 1980's that analyzed German voting records.  It's Who Voted For Hitler by Richard F. Hamilton 

So...apparently, there's a myth that Hitler came to power thanks to frustrated middle class and people who were under-educated, unemployed, and poor.

Simon says, Not every failed coup leads to a successful one down the road. But what successful revolution or movement hasn’t been built on a cascade of earlier failures?

This is a reference to January 6 and all those who downplay it.

Here's an interesting insight: Then, in a fateful miscalculation, thinking the Nazis were now in a weakened state and thus controllable, Hindenberg proceeded to name Hitler chancellor after all.

The weakness refers to the Nazis losing votes.

I think what he's saying is that since the Nazis didn't have a lot of voting power in the Reichstag, there wouldn't be too much that Hitler could do.

Although why make him Chancellor in the first place?

It's confusing to me.

In February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire.  I read about this doing research for a previous post.  I think I put it in one of the blog posts, but I'm not sure. 

Anyway, the communists members of the Reichstag were blamed and kicked out of the Reichstag.

Simon says, Within just a few months, the Nazis had asserted complete control over industrial output, finance, labor, the military, and politics in Germany.

Isn't that what's expected from Communists?  Government controlling industrial input? 

* * *

Now...I'm finally getting to the voting stuff.

Just as Trump is less popular in cities, the same went for Hitler.

In cities with populations over 100,000, Hitler got 32.3% of the vote.  In towns with less than 25,000 people, Hitler got 41.3% of the vote.

I've looked at 2020 election maps, and from what I remember, most cities supported Biden.

In Texas, it's this big mass of red except for the cities. Our big cities provide blueness.   

Here's a map if anyone is curious to look. 

Simon points out that in some rural communities the percentage for Hitler was 80-100%.

The same goes for Texas with Trump.

I'm hovering over small communities on the map. 

An example: In King County, there were 159 votes.  95% of them went to Trump.  Heaven bless those eight who voted for Biden.

Simon says Hitler did better in Protestant counties. 

Comparing that to Trump....Gallop says that 81% of white evangelical Protestants voted for Trump.  For Catholics, it was 47%.   

Simon says:  Hamilton finds no evidence to support the truism that a disenfranchised lower-middle class embraced Hitler’s Nazi Party. What he does find is that the Nazis were a party that organized people, especially in rural communities; that it was largely a Protestant phenomenon; and that it coincided with an inability and disinterest on the part of the major parties of the left to organize.

I kind of feel like he's saying the left is to blame, because they didn't organize enough.

I guess they didn't fight hard enough.

They weren't embracing their inner Antifa.

Maybe instead of hating Antifa and blaming them for so much, my dad should be wishing they fought harder in those Hitler days.

Simon talks about the same thing I read from Lord Wiki or The Holocaust Explained....that people were drifting away from more middle-of-the-road parties and taking a hard turn left or right.

The hard left was scary to people, because of what was happening in Russia.

I think the world would be a much better place if people fought against left-authoritarianism by going middle-left or left-libertarian rather than far-right authoritarianism.  

Simon says, Touch your toes.

Joking. But I've been tempting to do that ever since I started reading and quoting the article.

What Simon really says is, the establishment parties felt they could control Hitler, make sure he worked for them, and use him as their attack dog who, despite his violent ways (or possibly because of them), was still essentially supportive of the same German Protestant conservative values that they themselves espoused.

I think Trump (so far) is less violent than Hitler.  But I believe Trump has an equal DESIRE for violence. And I don't think there's much difference in desire for violence by either of their supporters.  

Minus the violence, though, it reminds me very much of how people might not like Trump's demeanor but they align themselves with him, because they see him as supporting what they support.  Or they know he is WILLING to support what they support.

* * *

Now we're getting into the media during the rising-Hitler days.

Simon talks about how they were indulgent towards Hitler and presented him as a positive force against Communism.

Simon says, They may not have supported them, but they did not condemn them outright either, treating them more as rascals whose heart was in the right place. 

When violence happened, the media would put the blame on the other side, saying the other side had started it.

What did they say about the Jews?  I wonder.

The basic idea I'm getting from Dan Simon is that the fear of communism played a huge role in motivating Germans to support the Nazis.

In some ways, it's understandable.  Because Russia is close to Germany, and they had recently fought in a war against each other.

But the same tactics happen here with the GOP.  Their main fight on social media seems to be that Republicans need to save America from Democrats who are going to turn the country communist.

Why does any intelligent person in the United States believe we are in danger of becoming communist?

Why do people imagine if we go a bit to the left, we're going to become like Cuba instead of a place like Finland or Denmark?

From my experience of talking to an anti-communist person, any questioning of extreme-capitalism means you are probably a communist.  

* * *

Here. I'm finally getting to the part about social class...which I felt, from the title, would be the main subject.  AND I think that's what I was searching for when I found the article in the first place.

In Berlin, which is one of the big cities.....

The upper class and upper middle class were the ones most likely to vote for the Nazi party.

The lower middle class and working class voted for Nazis less (1/4 or 3/8 vs 60% in the upper classes).

So...it seems in rural areas, it was mostly for Hitler.  But in cities, it was the upper classes that were pro-Nazi and the lower that was less pro-Nazi.

Is it the same for cities here?

For example. In blue Texas cities, is it more likely the wealthy who are going to go against the mini blue waves and vote red?

* * *

Simon says that in Hamilton's book, he looked at families who, despite the economic difficulties of the time, had enough money to go on vacation.

I'm not sure how this was determined by old records.  But....

He found that 2/3 of these people voted for the Nazi party.

I wonder that about Americans today complaining about gas prices and inflation.

I'm very sure there are many, among the ones speaking out, who are in a dire situation.

But I wonder what percentage of the complainers...such as on Twitter are living quite comfortably and not needing to make any significant sacrifices?

I don't want to dismiss all those complainers, though.  Because some of them might be comfortable, BUT they are worried for others who are not.  And THAT's a good thing.  

So...I'm just speaking of those who complain about the economy when it's not hurting them AND they also truly don't give much a shit about those that it is hurting.

It's like those who claimed that unemployment during Covid was more dangerous to people than the virus itself.  But if it's suggested the government give money to people so they could stay home and be protected from the virus, they don't seem very keen on that.

 * * *

Towards the end of the editorial, Simon does more comparing between Trump supporting and Hitler supporting.

He talks about something called The Good German.  It was a German who didn't support the Nazi party or Hitler but, on the other hand, did nothing to really resist them.

Simon says: 

The idea of the Good German is dangerous to us because it suggests that the national character flaw by which Germans fell into the hell of Hitlerism could never happen here. The percentage of American voters who still support Trump is already vastly greater than the percentage of Germans that supported Hitler during his rise to power.

I don't actually fully understand what he's saying here... It goes over my head.  But I do understand the statistic.  And that's pretty scary and sad.

Sometimes I feel judgmental and/or aggravated by people who seem very disengaged with politics.  But...really. As long as they dislike Trump and MAGA enough to go out and vote against it, that's enough.

These people, to me, are preferable to those who are politically engaged but support Trump.

I know we're not supposed to say that. We're supposed to want everyone to vote.

I do want everyone to have equal opportunity to vote.  And by that, I mean I want voting to be an easy thing for everyone. I don't want anyone to go through hurdles to have to vote.

But if a MAGA person ends up lacking the motivation to vote, I'm not going to be hurt by that. I might end up singing some happy tunes in the shower. 

 * * *

I have finally finished reading Simon's editorial.

Now I'm wondering where to go next.

I guess maybe I'll continue with The Holocaust Explained website.

Not now....

This is (WAY) long enough.

But for the next post.  

Read my novel: The Dead are Online