# Didn't Nazi Germans Suspect Something Was Up When...? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 4, 2010, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520 "2010-07-04T15:28:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520/21 "2010-07-05T15:35:44Z")
Should we be surprised? There have been plenty of people on the left who for decades apologized/ignored/defended mass murderers like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Guevara, Idi Amin, , Chavez, Hussein, Khomeini, Arafat, etc calling it “social justice”, “who are we to judge”, “right wing paranoia”. “you are a racist calling illegal immigrants illegal”. Remember all these leftist were just hunky-dory with Hitler from 1939-1941 when Germany and Russia had a non-aggression treaty. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520/22 "2010-07-05T15:47:38Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > And yet, even with everything **constanze** points out, the rise of the Nazis is _still_ seen as a failure of a functional Liberal Democracy. It’s _still_ preached about as if Weimar Germany was _just like_ modern America or Great Britain, and therefore everything that happened then and there could happen here and now in _exactly the same way._ First, it wasn’t a failure of liberal democracy, because a lot of the safeguards of a modern constitution were lacking - the Weimar constitution was based on the 1848 manifest written by idealists, which was never put to test when the revolution was crushed. The US kept adding ammendments to rectify what the founders couldn’t foresee (and still has problems in some areas). Generally, among serious historians there is agreement that the Weimar Republic didn’t fall for one reason, but for half- a -dozen ones that all contributed: lack of democratic citizens, yearning for the “good old time” under the monarchy, attacks from right and left; a police and judicary un-interested in protecting the democracy; the depression and employment situation, the back-stabbing legend and post-war bitterness and revisionism… All that contributed. The lesson that does need to be learned is: it can happen anywhere, not in Germany only; a democracy needs democratic citizens; a democratic constitution needs to be aggressivly protective and active institutions that guard it (today, we have the Bundesverfassungsgericht that guards the constitutional rights of the citizens - one of the things absent in Weimar - people had no redress when their rights were taken away with the Ermächtigungsgesetz and the Reichstagsbrandgesetz.) > [@](#): > > If you doubt them, you’re forgetting history, because history comes with a moral lesson: Voting is Evil. Um, no. Nobody sane would draw that lesson. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520/23 "2010-07-05T15:57:18Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Yeah, it’s ironic that most of the people who draw parallels to Weimar to make a political point support conservatism (i.e. they think the main reason Weimar fell was hyperinflation and debt, and their parliamentary rules made forming a government too difficult). Whereas the chief reason was the reluctance of conservative judges and the police to crack down on the freicorps and their ilk as much as they did the communists. No, both things contributed. That fringe parties had an undue influence because there was no 5% hurdle made forming a new government difficult. That a government could be dissolved with a non-constructive vote was another mistake (that is, the parties could vote their lack of confidence with the current government, without providing a working alternative. That’s destructive, criticizing without an alternative.) That the Reichspräsident had more power than today was a mistake. That the rights in the constitution were not guaranteed, and thus could be thrown out with simple laws. And so on. Unemployment and hyperinflation contributed to the bad general situation, although ironically the government was doing a good job fighting it, but because of the press situation, the population didn’t realize this. (Imagine if all news were Fox news attacking the government). > [@](#): > > Now, they have somewhat of a point w/r/t parliamentary democracies, in that they give fringe groups more of a voice, but what few people realize is that it was a failure of the system and not a feature that allowed the Nazis to get power – legally, but NOT elected. What very few people realize is how many steps of that road to failure other countries have already taken. Some experts are currently positing that countries as a whole go through a big cycle from tyranny to democracy and back again, when the grand-children generation take for granted the freedoms and no longer guard them, because being active in a democracy requires participation beyond voting once every four years. It requires educated people who learned history and not myths, and critical thinking; a free press interested in the truth and not market shares; politicans and judges looking beyond their own narrow self-interests; citizens ready to participate in either parties or advocacy groups; and a belief in the population that certain things can’t be done. If the head of government violates the basic rules of law and half the country agrees with him, then you are on the road of failure. If 30% of the population prefers belief over fact and follow authoriatarian thinking, you have a big problem. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520/24 "2010-07-05T16:00:22Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Well there was television, but there was only one channel and the Nazis had total control. And only wealth Berliners actually had home TV sets; ordinary people had to make to with watching in department stores and public TV viewing parlours. Actually, the Nazis distributed the [Volksempfänger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger)(People’s receivers) at below cost: cheap radios for everybody, because they realized the value of propaganda and the impact of modern media. That’s also why they pumped a lot of money into the movie industry, and exempted famous actor from the war to make fluffy movies that allowed people to forget the problems of WWII. Listening to enemy stations on your radio was illegal, though, and could land you in a concentration camp. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520/25 "2010-07-05T16:03:15Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I recall reading an article about the development of the gas chambers. Durig the first part of the war, troops would round up Jews (and other problem populations) in various areas of the occupied territories and shoot them en masse into open pits. Apparently there were complaints up and down the ranks that morale was not good and soldiers complained they did not sign up to shoot unarmed civilians in the back. Gas chambers were developed as a means to remove the need for soldiers in the field to shoot non-combatants. The Nazis kept developing and experimenting with different methods for several years on how to kill great numbers of people quickly, esp. in the East, because they didn’t want to transport the Jews to the concentration camps (the military officers were mad that transport of the Jews to the Camps tied up railroad capacity they needed for the front and the war they were fighting.) One method was an bus where the exhaust fumes were lead inside, but that took too long and used too much gasoline. The handicapped were usually killed with injections. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520/26 "2010-07-05T16:13:13Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > Should we be surprised? There have been plenty of people on the left who for decades apologized/ignored/defended mass murderers like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Guevara, Idi Amin, , Chavez, Hussein, Khomeini, Arafat, etc calling it “social justice”, “who are we to judge”, “right wing paranoia”. “you are a racist calling illegal immigrants illegal”. Remember all these leftist were just hunky-dory with Hitler from 1939-1941 when Germany and Russia had a non-aggression treaty. That is not relevant to the discussion at all. Furthermore, it’s largely false - most communists were shocked at the signing of the non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. If anything, large numbers of American and other citizens and parts of democratic governments cheered Hitler on in the beginning for being staunchly anti-communist. Fear of communism was far bigger than fear of fascism.\* And most countries kept their quotas of how many refugees they allowed even when reports of Jews being murdered surfaced, so that Jews who had managed to flee from Germany were either denied entrance at the border and handed back to the Gestapo or went on an odyssy from one country to the other, living on short-term visas - one ship travelled along the South American coast, but all countries denied them, until the ship sank with hundreds of Jewish refugees on board. This made it easy for the Nazis to say honestly “See, nobody else likes the Jews, either, because they aren’t taking them, so we are right that Jews are dangerous pests/ parasites and we are just doing the dirty job that everybody else would like to do, too.” - During the cold war, this continued, with the “democratic” government of the US overthrowing democratic governments in other countries that were deemed too left and installing military or right-wing dictators in their place, because right dictatorships were better for US business and preferable to communist or left-democratic governments. The consequences for the citizens in those countries were not a concern to the US govt. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/didnt-nazi-germans-suspect-something-was-up-when/545520.md?page=1)