Sure. And the Christian Coalition call themselves Christians. Politicians will tell whatever lies work. Hitler may have called himself a Socialist but can you name any Socialist programs he ever enacted after coming to power?
I disagree. Even had the Soviet Government completely collapsed I don’t think the Germans would have had a completely free hand in slaughtering the population wholesale. Remember, thre were something like 175 million Russian but only something like 60 million Germans. Even without any kind of support or organization that’s a hell of a big disparity. Also, unless the US and the UK completely stopped supporting them, regardless of if there was no Soviet government supplies would have continued to trickle in.
If the Germans were openly trying to put the majority of the Russian population you would have had some percentage of that population fighting back…and fighting back pretty much in a highly inhospitable place for the Germans. Even if only 1 percent of the population actively fought back you are talking about millions of partisans who are bred to the region, who know the region they were born in like the backs of their hand, fighting a German military machine that was oriented toward fighting OTHER nations military…not a constant insurgency.
If the Iraqi’s could do it to the US I don’t think the Russians would have had any trouble doing it to the Germans…even if the Germans employed much more harsh measures. In fact, in the long run I think the Germans employing those harsher measures would have made things even worse for the Germans…and I think the Russians could and would have been ever bit as vicious as the Iraqi insurgents, and with better terrain for partisans than the Iraq deserts.
I can’t think of any on the scales we are talking about. Nor do I believe that a collapse of the Soviet government would destroy the Russians ability to fight…especially if they were fighting for their very lives under the threat of extermination.
Also, I’m unsure how the Germans would have completely taken out the Soviets. I know the Soviet government planned to evacuate Moscow and retreat behind the Urals to continue to fight. Sure, that would have been a major blow…but even if the Soviet government became symbolic of the great struggle I think it would have given at least a patina of unity and coordination to the partisans. Even without that I think they would have fought on…as I said earlier, the Saddams government is long gone and he’s rotting in a grave somewhere…yet the Iraqis fight on. And they have no unity of purpose at all really…various factions united mostly in wanting to fight Americans. I think the Russians would have been similar had the Germans forced them to it as BG suggests. People will fight if you make them…and whole sale slaughter of a majority population tends to focus the mind on the priorities.
-XT
Well, sure. The Nazi party centralized management of the economy - the “Wirtshaftslenkung” program of Hjalmar Schacht, and later the harder hand of Hermann Goring - introduced employment programs, credit rationing, national organization of key sectors of the economy, control of foreign trade, social programs of a wide variety of sorts, etc. etc. I guess it depends on what a socialist wants to admit to being socialist, but the Nazis did a little bit of everything.
Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear, since you do not seem to be responding to my point. **Hitler was not a socialist. Hitler was also not a capitalist. ** Anyone who claims either is simply ignorant of the facts. He was a National Socialist, a Nazi; it’s a completely different thing. Economic theory, contrary to what modern Western politicians sometimes seem to believe, cannot be simply categorized along a one-dimensional string with “Socialist” at one end and “Capitalist” at the other, and Nazis are about as far away from categorization along that line as you can get and still be talking about an industralized economy.
Hitler himself said that Nazi ideology was neither socialist nor capitalist, and would use socialist or capitalist initiatives as needed to advance the goals of the German race, which for the most part meant fighting wars. Economc activity in a Nazi state could use private ownership as far at it was useful for avoiding bureaucracy and fostering innovation, but would change, restrict or take it away whenever it was useful to do so to ensure preparedness for war. Hitler and his minions openly spoke of it was a planned, state-serving economy; it was not a free market in the sense that a modern liberal democracy, even a relatively socialized one, is. The entire purpose of the Nazi economic system, such as it was, was military preparedness (there was eventually to be a sort of “Aryan” utopia that would spring from all this, but, of course, losing the war put the kibosh on that) and NOT adherence to either socialist or free market ideology, both of which Hitler despised.
That’s why Brainglutton’s question is, in a sense, pointless. The Nazi economy could not have survived at all as a peacetime system because it WASN’T a peacetime system; Nazism is founded, and in the practical case of Nazi Germany, was actually conducted, upon the centrality of war as the natural human condition. There wasn’t any point at which the Nazis would have said “Okay, we’re done. We’re happy with this; let’s settle in and build a country.” (Not under Hitler or his closest minions, anway. Obviously, given a few generations, any political animal can change its spots.) If Russia had been conquered they would have simply moved on to someone else, sooner or later. The Nazis would have continued fighting for as long as there was Nazism.
Considering as an example the Volkswagen, then no.
From Wiki:
Germans would buy the car by means of a savings scheme (“Fünf Mark die Woche musst Du sparen, willst Du im eigenen Wagen fahren” — “Save five Marks a week, if you want to drive your own car”) which around 336,000 people eventually paid into…
The new factory … only produced a handful of cars by the time war started in 1939. None was actually delivered to holders of the completed saving stamp books…
I see your point and I’ll agree that Hitler’s economic system could best be described as Hitlernomics - whatever Adolf Hitler wanted it to be.
My understanding is that, even pre-war, Germany had built up a huge national debt, and the Nazi government had been operating at a deficit from the beginning. Assimilation of the Austrian and Czech economies hekped prop things up long enough for the loot from the conquered countries to start pouring in after the war started.
Loved that book. The narrator mentions in passing the Beatles’ Hamburg gigs, suggesting that even in this alternative history the influence of English rock and rollers was not much diminished. To me, the fact that the Hamburg club promoters were able to hire an English band also suggests that the state’s iron grip on popular culture must have relaxed somewhat.
Still, at some point they would have had to sit down and organize the fruits of victory for a peacetime economy. A nation can really only handle one sustained total war in a generation; Hitler (according to Paul Johnson’s Modern Times) envisioned a final showdown with the United States for global domination, but was to come a generation later. In the meantime, assuming the Nazis could have kept the U.S. out of the war and won it, they would have been left with a national economy to run and no big war to fight (maybe a war of attrition on the Urals Front, but nothing to mobilize the whole economy for a war effort). And presumably they would have kept some modified form of the Reich’s established corporatist (it doesn’t mean what you think it does) economic structure. So – how would that have worked?
But there wasn’t an established corporatist economic structure. They was a sham Labor Front established, but all working class representative organizations were demolished. Workers were bought off with promises of jam tomorrow, and the necessity of sacrifice today for the war. Take the war out of the equation, and the Nazi economy would be exposed for what it always was - a kleptocracy whose only policy was the suppression of wages and labor dissent. Once it became clear that jam tomorrow was never going to arrive, the whole system would collapse in on itself. That’s if the rampant inflation from deficit financing didn’t get it first.
On eliminating the Poles and Russians: it could have been done. It would not have been easy. Had the populations been disarmed and controlled, they could have eliminated them bit by bit. Uprisings did occur, but they were desperate affairs and pretty much never worked without immediate external support. See the Warsaw Uprising, and the in Slovakian and Czech rebellions.
Such extermination would have taken decades, and would have required dividing the population so that it could not effectively support itself. It would also have been far more difficult to do than against the Jews.
Eastern European Jews formed a more distinct ethnic group than we usually imagine. The much-stereotyped “hooked nose” was apparently pretty common among them (I recently read “Did the Children Cry” which contined some comments about that from a Polish Jew) , and they did tend to have dark hair. And many did not speak a local language at all, which made blending in nigh-impossible. Poles did try, but as the Jews were quickly herded into walled Ghettos, and the Germans could come and go at will, resistance was unlikely to work. They did what they could and faced terrible consequences if caught. The best you could hope for was death.
Also remember that the Germans had greatly significant local support in the campaign of extermination against Jews. Presumably there would have been less local support for exterminating the entire Slavic population.
cough
Ahem, no. It’s true they were able to use anti-semitism in some small areas, but overall, the Poles went to extreme, lengths to save their Jewish neighbors. Once you account fot he fact that the Germans had the run of the country, guns, obliterated the Polish leadership, total administrative control, and the Jews were often nigh-impossible to save (language, circumcision, and the unpleasant fact Jewish racism against Poles meant they often resisted Polish attempts to help), the wonder is that not that they Poles saved so few but that they saved so many. And of course, every Pole who helped a Jew, and everyone related to that Pole, and everyone in the vicinity of that Pole, was in mortal danger every minute of their lives.
In fact, anti-Semitism was a bigger factor in France and even Denmark, despite the King’s support.
cough
Ahem no.
Leaving aside Poland, which I never mentioned in my post, if you deny the role of local militias and local authorities in the Holocaust in particular in the Baltic states and the Ukraine, then you are missing history.
If Claus von Stauffenberg had succeeded in blowing Hitler up in 1944, would we still have apricot-flavored homeopathic toothpaste available today?
So? What is a good example of a real corporatist society? Or has such a thing never existed?
Well there is the neo-corporatism of the 1970’s in Western Europe - beer and sandwiches at Number 10 under Harold Wilson, for example. Also the Scandinavian models.
In your haste, you have neglected to offer a cite.
choke gag
A cite. Several. Oh, yeah, definitely gonna need some backing for that one. Hooo, doggies. Gonna need a big ol’ cite. Yesireee, Bob.
Interesting . . . in the U.S. such things are generally considered examples of “socialism” rather than “corporatism.”
Sorry to continue the hijack, but given that it is your thread…
There were elements of socialism in the Scandinavian models, especially to the extent of the gradualist worker control of industry (though the extent to which this was implemented ever is disputable).
The Wilson government in the UK, however, was pretty definitively social democratic rather than socialist. Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution was effectively a dead note even then (1970’s nationalizations were to save strategic industries and jobs, not to place the commanding heights of the economy under worker control).
Well, corporatism (as discussed in Wikipedia) appears to differ from socialism (and even from social democracy) primarily in that it envisions a society of vertically integrated sectors coming together in national “corporations” or unelected governing bodies – one for the steel industry, one for the agricultural sector, etc. – rather than something that might result from a struggle between horizontal social classes or a demand for “workplace democracy”; thus it is well adapted for ideologies such as fascism that seek social cohesion on a national scale and some form of state management without any hint of “class struggle.” Did the Scandinavian systems meet those criteria?