# Were The Nazis a Puritanical Lot? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 12, 2010, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201 "2010-05-12T18:51:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/21 "2010-05-13T00:22:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkajXeVLpk4) is the Nazi equivalent of sex. Wasn’t it DH Lawrence who said that dancing is making love to music? These guys rock. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/22 "2010-05-13T02:33:37Z")
[Salon Kitty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_Kitty) was a real brothel in Berlin. The SD really did use it for espionage. Minister Goebbels was especially fond of the girls’ lesbian sex shows which in other contexts could get women sent to a concentration camp. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/23 "2010-05-13T02:46:12Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Minister Goebbels was especially fond of the girls’ lesbian sex shows which in other contexts could get women sent to a concentration camp. Lesbianism wasn’t particularly punished in Nazi Germany. It was discouraged, and you certainly could be arrested for it, but it wasn’t considered anywhere near as bad as male homosexuality. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/24 "2010-05-14T03:29:31Z")
> [@adhay](#): > > Wasn’t it DH Lawrence who said that dancing is making love to music? These guys rock. If that’s the criterion, _The Producers_ did it better. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/25 "2010-05-14T17:02:04Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The Nazis were very much down on homosexuality – and SA leader Ernst Rohm was definitely homosexual, which provided a convenient additional pretext to get rid of him in the [Night of Long Knives.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_long_knives) Later on, known homosexuals in Reich territory were rounded up and interned in concentration camps, with [pink-triangle badges](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges) on their uniforms. Of course, one might be tempted to interpret all those uniforms and shiny boots and Sam Browne belts and goose-stepping formations as a fetishistic sublimation of homoerotic impulses. But that’s just armchair psychology. I have no idea what a psychiatrist would say about it. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/26 "2010-05-14T21:35:09Z")
Homoerotic fetishism is in the eye, or possibly some other organ, of the beholder. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/27 "2010-05-14T21:48:37Z")
I suspect that the Nazi regime (like most authoritarian regimes) liked to project a “pure” facade-beneath which was rampant corruption. Take Air Marshall Goering-he was a pervert and lecher. I don’t know about Hitler-he seemed asexual. But most pof the high-ranking nazis has a lot of skeletons in their closets. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/28 "2010-05-14T22:18:52Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I suspect that the Nazi regime (like most authoritarian regimes) liked to project a “pure” facade-beneath which was rampant corruption. Take Air Marshall Goering-he was a pervert and lecher. I dunno about that, but he was definitely a drug addict, a thief, and an all-around voluptuary. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/29 "2010-05-16T05:27:40Z")
Why were the Nazis so opposed to the Bauhaus? I mean, a group of artists and archietcts-how does that threaten anybody? I recall that the Nazis forced the school to shut doe\wn, and most of the faculty left the country. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/30 "2010-05-16T05:48:20Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I mean, a group of artists and archietcts-how does that threaten anybody? You mean like Hitler and Speer? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/31 "2010-05-16T06:34:31Z")
I still haven’t figured out why they hated the Jews. Were there a lot of Jewish Bauhaus artists? IIRC, there were other genres of art they weren’t find of either. Socialist Realism – you know, the proud fatory worker stuff – and I think officially they frowned on impressionism, but I think Goering stole a bunch of it anyway. They were against ‘decadent’ artm whatever that means. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/32 "2010-05-16T13:49:13Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Why were the Nazis so opposed to the Bauhaus? I mean, a group of artists and archietcts-how does that threaten anybody? I recall that the Nazis forced the school to shut doe\wn, and most of the faculty left the country. Because Modernist architecture is Jewish cosmopolitan Bolshevik decadence and a threat to authentic German art. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/33 "2010-05-16T14:03:59Z")
Interestingly, a lot of those architects ended up here, which is why Tel Aviv features one of the finest collections of Bauhaus buildings in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/34 "2010-05-16T14:23:23Z")
Pruitanical? Goebbels used his position as propaganda minister to boink every UFA starlet he could, even though he had a wife and six kids. IRT Hitler’s dislike of Modernism; I can’t be too jugdemental. As a middle-age white guy, Hip-Hop came around in my life at about the same time that Modernism did in Hitler’s, and like a lot of middle-age white guys it strikes me as a bunch of self-important, ignorant louts taking a shit on the lid of the treasure chest of 4,000 years of human culture instead of opening it and using it as a resouce. But that doesn’t mean I’d deny them a livelyhood if I had the power to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/35 "2010-05-16T17:08:12Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Interestingly, a lot of those architects ended up here, which is why Tel Aviv features one of the finest collections of Bauhaus buildings in the world. Well, Tel Aviv IS a Jewish cosmopolitan city. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/36 "2010-05-16T19:13:37Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Why were the Nazis so opposed to the Bauhaus? I mean, a group of artists and archietcts-how does that threaten anybody? I recall that the Nazis forced the school to shut doe\wn, and most of the faculty left the country. Because Hitler was an artist. (That’s the difference between Hitler and, say, Franco, who has been described as “a cop, not an artist.”) You must understand, like all forms of totalitarianism, Nazism claimed authority over not only government and economy, but society and culture, bringing all together in lines with a unifying vision. And Hitler favored a heroic, uplifting, style of art, and was down on abstract art, expressionism, everything he regarded as [“Degenerate Art.”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art) “Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized,” said Hitler. As for [Nazi architecture,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_architecture) James Howard Kunstler in [_The City in Mind,_](http://www.amazon.com/City-Mind-Notes-Urban-Condition/dp/0743227239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274036426&sr=1-1) chapter on Berlin, states: > [@](#): > > . . . Hitler’s postwar career as a frustrated young artist has become a cliche of history. To describe him as a “failure,” however, misses the point. His political career was performance art, with many explicitly theatrical touches, and it was such a smashing success until the last few disastrous years that he was rewarded with a kind of absolute temporal power not seen since the Roman emperors. Among other things, it enabled him to practice architecture on the grandest conceivable scale, through his surrogate, Albert Speer. > > . . . As a matter of style, Speer’s version of classicism was not so far from the spirit of Art Deco, which could be described as classicism mechanized and streamlined for speed; Nazi architecture was classicism further simplified to express power minus distracting eroticism. It differed from Art Deco chiefly in eschewing any hint of feminine curves. [Bauhaus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahaus) architecture, on the other hand, was purely mechanistic and functionalistic, sending a message that architecture should send no message; that would not do. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/37 "2010-05-16T20:00:53Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I still haven’t figured out why they hated the Jews. Were there a lot of Jewish Bauhaus artists? The linkage between radical German nationalism and radical antisemitism went back to the early 19th Century. (See Wagner’s [“Judaism in Music,”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_in_Music) 1850). 19th-Century nationalism in general was bound up with the idea of every “race” or “nation” being a hereditary group with its own _Volksgeist_ or “race spirit.” It was a mystical idea, and Nazi ideology was expressly based on it. See the documentary [ **German** nationalism in the 19th Century took a particularly xenophobic form, thanks in part to Bismarck. Also from _The City in Mind:_ > [@](#): > > Germany’s swift rise as an international power was necessarily accompanied by rapid industrial development. Bismarck managed this momentous transformation with two central tactics. The first was an innovative social welfare system of old-age pensions and subsidized medical care, which purchased the loyalty of the expanding working class. The second, and more sinister tactic, when he had concluded his expansionary wars, was Bismarck’s cultivation of a national siege mentality, portraying the Germans as a people encircled by scheming, jealous enemies from an alien culture, a world-view that would have terrible repercussions a few decades hence. It fostered a radical sense of apartness from the rest of European culture, one outgrowth of which was a virulent strain of anti-Semitism that became institutionalized in science, literature, and higher education. The historian Paul Johnson writes: > > > [@](#): > > > > [The] ruling case hated the West with a passionate loathing, both for its liberal ideas and for the gross materialism and lack of spirituality which (in their view) those ideas embodied. They wanted to keep Germany “pure” of the West, and this was one motive for their plans to resume the medieval conquest and settlement of the East, carving out a continental empire for Germany which would make her independent of the Anglo-Saxon world system. These Easterners drew a fundamental distinction between “civilization,” which they defined as rootless, cosmopolitan, immoral, un-German, Western, materialistic and racially defiled; and “culture,” which was pure, national, German, spiritual and authentic. Civilization pulled Germany to the West, culture to the East. The real Germany was not part of an international civilization but a national race-culture of its own. When Germany responded to the pull of the West, it met disaster; when it pursued its destiny in the East, it fulfilled itself. The Jews, of course, were alien, rootless, cosmopolitan, etc. – the “mushroom of humanity,” as Hitler called them, springing up everywhere overnight with no deep roots in the soil. They were not German, not even European, in origin, and no matter how long they lived in one place in Europe they could never truly belong there, never be part of the race-community. There were older reasons. In medieval Europe, in most times and most places, Jews could not own land, could not even work land as peasants or serfs. There was no clear distinction, then and there, between owning land and ruling it – to own land was to have political authority over those who lived on it – so Jewish landowners, even serfs with subtenants, might conceivable rule over Christians, which was unacceptable. Nor could Jews serve in most military forces. Nor, of course, in the Church. In short, all respectable, honorable places in European society were denied to them. But Jews were allowed to be merchants, artisans, and professionals. Also collection agents, factors, and tax-collectors for Gentile landlords and royalty. Also moneylenders, because the medieval Church, following St. Thomas Aquinas’ Christianization of the philosophy of Aristotle, held with Aristotle that interest on money is somehow unnatural, gold being an inanimate substance that does not grow; so Christians were forbidden to engage in “usury,” defined as charging **any interest at all** on a loan; but Jews could. Naturally, they developed into a mercantile culture, becoming sharp traders, and valuing money because it was the only thing of any value they **could** have. “The American nation makes the Negro clean its boots, and then proves the inferiority of the Negro from the fact that he is a bootblack,” said George Bernard Shaw. In the same way, Europeans, having forced Jews into such roles and livelihoods, came to view Jews as bloodsucking merchants, moneylenders and thieves **by their hereditary nature.** See the Nazi propaganda film, [url=[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcyCHV4bALg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcyCHV4bALg)]_Der Ewige Jude](]Occult History of the Third Reich.[/url) (The Eternal Jew.)_ From the common working person’s point of view, Jews were exploiters because they represented the exploitation **they could see.** A Russian peasant might say, “Every kopeck I earn goes into the pocket of some damned Jew!” Ignoring that the Jewish factor to whom he paid his rents had to remit nearly all of it to a Gentile landlord, the Jewish shopkeeper had to buy from Gentile-owned factories, etc. As George Orwell wrote in his 1945 essay [“Antisemitism in Britain:”](http://www.george-orwell.org/AntiSemitism_In_Britian/0.html) > [@](#): > > . . . I have already > indicated that I believe antisemitism to be essentially a neurosis, > but of course it has its rationalisations, which are sincerely > believed in and are partly true. The rationalisation put forward by the > common man is that the Jew is an exploiter. The partial justification > for this is that the Jew, in England, is generally a small > businessman–that is to say a person whose depredations are more obvious > and intelligible than those of, say, a bank or an insurance company. > Higher up the intellectual scale, antisemitism is rationalised by saying > that the Jew is a person who spreads disaffection and weakens national > morale. Again there is some superficial justification for this. During > the past twenty-five years the activities of what are called > “intellectuals” have been largely mischievous. I do not think it an > exaggeration to say that if the “intellectuals” had done their work a > little more thoroughly, Britain would have surrendered in 1940. But the > disaffected intelligentsia inevitably included a large number of Jews. > With some plausibility it can be said that the Jews are the enemies of > our native culture and our national morale. Carefully examined, the > claim is seen to be nonsense, but there are always a few prominent > individuals who can be cited in support of it. . . . Before the Enlightenment, anti-Jewish prejudice – _Judenhaas,_ “Jew Hate,” in German – was mostly religious. That went back at least to Martin Luther – “Trust no fox upon his green heath, nor a Jew upon his plighted word.” From that point of view, a converted Jew stopped being a Jew. There were myths and conspiracy theories about Jews, but they took the form of the [blood libel,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel_against_Jews) or Jews poisoning wells to cause plagues – preposterous, but at any rate things not completely impossible when attributed to a poor and powerless minority. In the late 18th Century came a gradual [Jewish emancipation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_emancipation) throughout Europe, the abolition of the outmoded medieval restrictions on them. One side effect of this was that, to some minds, it now made it possible to conceive of the Jews as **powerful.** A lot of conspiracy theorizing emerged in the wake of the French Revolution – see [Abbe Barruel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbe_Barruel) – and this synergized with anti-Jewish feeling to form a new racial and conspiratorial “anti-semitism” (a phrase [coined by Wilhelm Marr](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-semitism#Evolution_of_usage_as_a_term) at the foundation of the Anti-Semitic League in 1879). [continued in next post] ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/38 "2010-05-16T20:05:32Z")
Combined with all of the above was the rise of Communist and Socialist movements. A purportedly rationalistic creed proclaiming the international identity of the working class was, of course, directly at odds with mystic German nationalism. And Marx was a (non-practicing) Jew, and many prominent socialists in Europe, such as Trotsky, were Jews, and many rank-and-file socialist revolutionaries were Jews – it’s not hard to see how a despised minority would be attracted to a doctrine that promised equality for all. The best lie is one with a kernel of truth in it, and the best of all is one the liar sincerely believes. The idea of an “International Jewish-Communist Conspiracy” was utter nonsense, but Hitler and many leading Nazis earnestly believed in it. In fact, they believed Jews were to blame for Communism **and** for Capitalism. National Socialism was supposed to be an alternative to both. Long before Hitler came to power, his principal war aim was to destroy the nations of Poland and Russia – not simply to destroy Soviet Communism; not simply to conquer Poland and Russia and exploit them like a colony in Africa; but to destroy them utterly as nations, and build a greater Germany on their bones, thus transforming Germany into a continental power to rival the United States. All this is well-documented from Hitler’s own words. From [_Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties,_](http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Times-Revised-Twenties-Perennial/dp/0060935502/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196390812&sr=8-3) by Paul Johnson, Chapter 10, “The End of Old Europe”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s aims can be reconstructed not merely from Mein Kampf itself, with its stress on the ‘East Policy,’ but from his early speeches and so-called ‘Second’ or Secret Book of 1928. This material makes it clear that the ‘cleansing’ process – the elimination of the Jews – was essential to the whole long-term strategy. Being a race-socialist as opposed to a class-socialist, Hitler believed the dynamic of history was race. The dynamic was interrupted when race-poisoning took place. The poison came, above all, from the Jews. He admired the Jews as ‘negative supermen’. In his Table-Talk he said that if 5,000 Jews emigrated to Sweden, in no time at all they would occupy all the key positions: this was because ‘blood purity’, as he put it in Mein Kampf, ‘is a thing the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth’. The Germans, on the other hand, were poisoned. That was why they lost the First World War. Even he was poisoned: that was why he sometimes made mistakes – ‘all of us suffer from the sickness of mixed, corrupt blood’. Race-poisoning was a comparatively common obsession in the time of Hitler’s youth, rather as ecological poisoning became an obsession of many in the 1970s and 1980s. The notion of ubiquitous poisoning appealed strongly to the same type of person who accepted conspiracy theories as the machinery of public events. As with the later ecologists, they thought the race-poison was spreading fast, that total disaster was iminent, and that it would take a long time to reverse even if the right policies were adopted promptly. Hitler calculated it would take a hundred years for his regime to eliminate racial poisoning in Germany: on the other hand, if Germany became the first nation-race to do so successfully, it would inevitably become ‘lord of the Earth’. (Mein Kampf.) > > What distinguished Hitlerian race-theory was, first, this rooted belief that ‘cleansing’ could make Germany the first true superpower, and ultimately the first paramount power in the world; and, secondly, his absolute conviction that the ‘Jewish race-poison’ and Bolshevism were one and the same phenomenon. In 1928, when he wrote his Second Book, he did not appreciate that old-style ‘Jewish’ Bolshevism had ceased to exist and that Stalin’s Russia was in essentials as anti-Semitic as Tsardom had been. On the contrary, he believed the Soviet Union was a Jewish cultural phenomenon. Hence the object of his policy was to combat ‘an inundation of diseased bacilli which at the moment have their breeding-ground in Russia’. Thus the ‘cleansing’ fit in perfectly with the resumption of traditional German East policy, but on a far more ambitious scale. > > Hitler’s full programme, therefore, was as follows. First, gain control of Germany itself, and begin the cleansing process at home. Second, destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe. All this could be accomplished without war. Third, on this power basis, destroy the Soviet Union (by war) to rid the ‘breeding-ground’ of the ‘bacillus’ and, by colonization, created a solid economic and strategic power base from which to establish a continental empire, in which France and Italy would be mere satellites. In the fourth stage Germany would acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, plus a big ocean navy, to make her one of the four superpowers, in addition to Britain, Japan and the United States. Finally, in the generation after his death, Hitler envisaged a decisive struggle between Germany and the United States for world domination. > > No one since Napoleon had thought in such audacious terms. In its gigantic scope the concept was Alexandrine. Yet until he was engulfed by the war he made, Hitler was always pragmatic. Like Lenin he was a superb opportunist, always ready to seize openings and modify his theory accordingly. This has led some historians to conclude he had no master-programme. In fact, while always adjusting the tactics to suit the moment, he pursued his long-term strategy with a brutal determination that has seldom been equalled in the history of human ambition. Unlike most tyrants, he was never tempted to relax by a surfeit of autocratic power. Quite the contrary. He was always raising the stakes on the table and seeking to hasten the pace of history. He feared his revolution would lose its dynamism. He thought himself indispensable, and at least four of his phases must be accomplished while he was not only still alive but at the height of his powers. It was this impatience which made him so dangerous in the short term and so ineffectual in the long term (the very reverse of the Soviet strategists). In a secret speech to German newspaper editors in November 1938, after his great Munich triumph, he deplored the fact that his need to talk about peace had led the German nation to relax too much. He argued that for Germany to accept peace, and thus stability, as a permanent fact of international life was to accept the very spirit of defeatism. Violence was a necessity, and the public must be prepared for it. Same book, Chapter 11, “The Watershed Year”: > [@](#): > > Hitler’s ultimate aim was to create a German Volk of 250 million. He said that he proposed settling 100 million Germans on the great plains to the west of the Urals. In 1941 he envisaged that over the next decade the first 20 million would move east. Though he saw the colonization process clearly, he was vague on where the settlers were to come from. Those eligible and willing to settle, the Volksdeutsche from south-east Europe, numbered only 5 million, perhaps 8 milllion at most. His colleage Alfred Rosenberg considered the idea of ‘drafting’ Scandinavian, Dutch, and English settlers, being racially approximate to Germans, when the war was won. Some aspects of this great population transfer, to be the most formidable and decisive in history, were determined in meticulous detail. There was to be polygamy and a free choice of women for servicemen with decorations. The Crimea, after being ‘cleansed’ of Slavs and Jews, was to be turned into a gigantic German spa under its old Greek name of Tauria, populated by a mass transfer of peasants from the South Tyrol. Over vast areas of the Ukraine and south European Russia, a new Volk civilization was planned. As Hitler described it: > > > [@](#): > > > > The area must lose the character of the Asiatic steppe. It must be Europeanized! . . . The ‘Reich peasant’ is to live in outstandingly beautiful settlements. The German agencies and authorities are to have wonderful buildings, the governors palaces. Around each city, a ring of lovely villages will be placed to within 30 or 40 kilometers . . . . That is why we are now building the large traffic arteries on the southern tip of the Crimea, out to the Caucasus mountains. Around these traffic strands, the German cities will be placed, like pearls on a string, and around the cities the German settlements will lie. For we will not open up Lebensraum for ourselves by entering the old, godforsaken Russian holes! The German settlements must be on an altogether higher level! > > As Hitler’s vision expanded, in the heady days of 1941, it came to embrace all Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the whole of France north of the Somme were to be incorporated in a Greater Germany, the names of the cities being changed – Nancy would become Nanzig, Besancon Bisanz. Trondheim would become a major German city and naval base of 250,000 inhabitants. The Alps would be the boundary between ‘the German Empire of the North,’ with a new ‘Germania’ as its capital, and ‘the Roman Empire of the South’. The Pope would be hanged in full pontificals in St. Peter’s Square. Strasbourg Cathedral would be turned into a giant ‘Monument to the Unknown Soldier’. New crops, such a perennial rye, would be invented. He would forbid smoking, make vegetarianism compulsory, ‘revive the Cimbrian art of knitting’, appoint a ‘Special Commissioner for the Care of Dogs’ and an ‘Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects’.’ Pride goeth. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/39 "2010-05-16T20:13:01Z")
Of course, whether the Nazis were “Puritans” depends on how you define the term. When Cromwell’s Puritans took over England, they chopped down village maypoles, forbade the celebration of Christmas, came down on everything they regarded as heathen or pre-Christian. The Nazis, OTOH, were openly leery of Christianity, and reached back to pre-Christian Teutonic mythology and religion – as they imagined it. Certainly the idea of worshipping a German or Aryan “race spirit” would have utterly perplexed Hermann the Cheruscan. Nevertheless, the Nazis, especially the SS and the Hitler Youth, played up runic symbols, Norse/Germanic gods, etc. Himmler’s SS headquarters at [Wewelsburg Castle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wewelsburg) was essentially a neopagan cult center. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201/40 "2010-05-16T20:17:11Z")
Jeez, did I push the wrong button. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-nazis-a-puritanical-lot/539201.md?page=3)