I’m curious what fellow dopers think of the societal differences between Germany and the United States of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Specifically, the Nazi’s managed to gain and hold power in Germany. But nothing close to that happened in the United States at the time. Why?
Was it the aftermath of WWI that allowed the German people to buy what Hitler was selling? Were the Germans as a whole more sheeplike than Americans? It seems on the surface that the two societies have things in common, such as a sense of national pride, an educated population, etc. What was the difference that sent the Germans down the path to ruin?
For a start we didn’t lose WW1, and have to sign a humiliating peace treaty. Also, I believe–not sure about this–the global depression was much worse in Germany than in the U.S.
One major difference was that large segments of the German population saw the Weimar Republic as a total failure. Even if they didn’t necessarily want Hitler in particular, they didn’t shed any tears over the loss of that system. If a large subset of the population rejects democracy as a failed experiment, installing a totalitarian system is a lot easier.
It was never in the cards to be honest. There was never a large Nazi movement here…it was more a fringe group. On the other had there were pretty large labor movements and I recall from the depths of my memory that it was commonly thought (in Europe I think but I seem to recall some in the US saying it as well) that Capitalism (and even Democracy) was pretty much out of gas and socialism/communism was the comming thing. A more interesting question is…why didn’t the US go socialist/communist in the '30’s or after? Why isn’t the US a quasi-socialist nation today a la much of Europe?
The defeat in WWII of both German and Japan was total and resulted in much harsher terms than did the Versailles Treaty of WWI. This didn’t result in the rise of any totalitarian regimes. Quite the contrary.
Hitler seemed to have a message that struck enough of a resonance that he and his party got elected. After the electrion Hitler’s policies and actions seem to have been in accord with what the German people wanted. William L. Shirer in The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich ascribes a lot of Hitler’s rise to a combination og German history and folklore and his ability to capitalize on them.
We had the KKK during the 1920s, which experienced a major resurgance after WW1 and was very similiar to the nazis. After WW1 alot of radical left and right governments came into power all over the world, including the US. The KKK had senators and governors in states like Indiana, Texas, Oregan and a few other states and had over 4 million members back at a time when the US only had about 100 million people in it. They fell from power because in 1925 DC Stephenson, the most influential KKK member in from Indiana (go hoosiers) was convicted of violently raping a woman. Most people don’t know this but the KKK, like the nazis, ran on a platform of promoting public morality and that was a huge blow to their rank and file.
You have to take into account that the Nazis were a small time party until the depression of 1929. If the KKK had survived until the depression (instead of falling apart due to corruption and immorality in 1925) they could’ve been a much bigger part of american political life in the 1930s.
One wonders what would’ve happened in Germany if in 1925 it had become public that the Nazis had alot of homosexuals in their rank and file. It could’ve done to the nazi party what the Stephenson murder did to the KKK, taken away alot of the legitimacy of the party and kept them out of power. However if that had happened the communists may’ve taken over in Germany in the 30s. Who knows.
P.S. As a matter of fact, the US did accept a lot of federal government activity in the economy that would not have been accepted without the great depression of the 1930’s. Our growth in central government power took a different path than that under Hitler, but it happened.
The US had 150 years of continuous operations as a functioning republic. Germany had no such history. Until quite late, relative to our existence as a unified whole, Germany was a collection of various political units and I think that none were what could be called democracies.
True, but the Axis was completely destroyed in WW2. In WW1 IIRC the Germans just saw the writing on the wall after their last offensive failed, so they surrendered. This led–again, please correct me if I’m misremembering, it’s been a while since I read about this–to a popular mythology about being “stabbed in the back” by liberal politicians and Jews that was exploited by bitter ex-corporal Adolf Hitler.
Oh sure but that’s not the same thing as the Versailles Treaty being humiliating. It was the feeling about the populace letting down the Wehrmacht that Hitler exploited. He also stuck in some words about the treaty but I think that was secondary. The so-called “betrayal” was the thing.
Mein Kamph is interesting in one respect, although it’s one of the dullest reads possible. Not matter what gripe Hitler had about “what’s wrong with Germany,” in the end he always got around to the Jews. Syphillis? The Jews. Bad economy? The Jews. Bad weather? The Jews. Shoes too tight? The Jews. Endlessly it was The Jews.
If it helps any, I have a list of NSDAP (e.g., Nazi) showings in the German parlimentary elections of the Weimar Republic:
1928 (the first one where the NSDAP ran alone): 810,127 votes out of 31,165,789 votes cast (2.6% of the vote)- 12 seats
1930: 6,406,379 votes out of 35,224,499 votes cast (18.3% of the vote)- 107 seats
July 1932: 13,779,017 votes out of 37,162,081 votes cast (37.4% of the votes)- 230 seats
November 1932 (the last free Weimar election): 11,737,395 votes out of 35,758,259 votes cast (33.1% of the vote)- 196 seats
From this, we can note one thing in particular: The Nazis were of limited popularity in the pre-Depression era. Nine separate parties held more seats in the Reichstag than the NSDAP after the 1928 election, and even in 1930 they are still outpolled by the SPD.
Where it really gets bad is after the July 1932 election, when the NSDAP and the equally anti-democracy KPD (the German Communist Party) end up winning a majority of the Reichstag’s seats, making it impossible for the democratic parties to govern.
Here’s a theory I’ve heard : German culture was historically far more authoritarian than most other Western countries, and very prone to “man on a white horse” politics. This was fertile ground for Hilter and the Nazis; the Germans of the time were more prone to think that the solution to their problems was to hand over all power to one Leader. BTW the same theory claims that’s why “the Germanies” were disunited for so long; too many leaders who were unwilling to cooperate or compromise with anyone, and followers who thought the same way.
America had a far less authoritarian tradition, so the fascists had a longer road to travel. We were headed the same direction; for example, there were the forced and/or secret sterilization of thousands of poor people in the 20s. The example of the Nazis produced enough of a backlash to stop or slow the movement towards fascism; without their bad example, I can see America turning into Nazi America by the 50s or so.
Germany was totally defeated in WWII and occupied for many years afterwards while in WWI they were largely intact and nobody occupied them. Many Germans didn’t quite understand why they lost the first world war nor why they got such poor terms on the treaty when many believed they could have continued to fight. It was completely clear that Germany was in no position to continue fighting in 1945.
I would agree that it’s simplistic to attribute any one thing to the rise of NAZI power in Germany. I do think WWI contributed more than Hitler’s ability to appeal to their history and folklore.
I think the difference is that after World War I, Germany was treated harshly, but was not occupied and totally reconstructed by the Allies. After World War II, the Axis powers weren’t just subjected to reparations, territorial losses, and limitations on the size and scope of their militaries (although they were subject to at least some of those things as well); the Allies occupied the main Axis powers for years and imposed completely new political institutions on them. (Of course, in the eastern part of Germany the Allied occupation did result in a totalitarian regime for over 40 years.)
A Machiavellian might say that after World War I the Germans were treated harshly enough to embitter them but not harshly enough to break them completely; however, I don’t really think the Western occupation of what became the Federal Republic of Germany or the U.S. occupation of Japan were really “harsh” in bestowing free and democratic institutions on those countries.
Huey Long was more of a communist than a fascist. I’m still certain that the KKK was our post WW1 fascism, just like the Spanish had the Republicans or the Germans had the nazis or the Italians had the blackshirts. But due to our ingrained democracy I don’t think the KKK had the ability to really ‘take over’ like the Nazis did and implement their agendas, plus they fell out of favor before the great depression which probably would’ve propelled them alot farther than just a handful of senatorial and governer seats like the had in the mid 1920s. Like Quinn showed, the Nazis were a small party until the great depression. I am not sure why fascism didn’t make a major comeback in the depression, the US seemed to turn towards communism instead (social security, government works projects, higher taxes, etc).
German history unfolded in a way that made it a better fit for Nazi ideology than America or most other countries. It’s important to remember that the Nazis were not “White Supremacists”. They did not view the White race as being unified and perfect. They would be better described as “Nordic Supremacists”, believing that a race called the “Nordic race” had lived in northern Europe since the dawn of time. They viewed the Nordic race as being superior to all others, including the white “slavic races” of eastern Europe.
This is not true, of course. In prehistoric and Roman times there was a lot a movement of the various tribes in northern Europe, and certainly mingling of a lot of people from different parts of the world. However, it is true that from the early Middle Ages onward, the northern Europeans held off invasions from the east. And of course the Saxons, Jutes and Vikings conquered much of western Europe, displacing much of the native population. In that way, the idea of a Germanic people struggling against the rest of the world gripped the minds of many people.
The United States, by contrast, was always a mishmash of people from all over the world. And even those Americans classified as white were a mishmash of all the ethnic groups of Europe. Thus, there was no possibility of anyone making claims about the inhabitants of America similar to the Nazi claims about the inhabitants of Germany.
The WWII occupation of Germany wasn’t harsh in the sense of being hard on individuals. However it was much harsher than WWII on the German government, destroying it completely so that it had to be rebuilt from the ground up.
As far as totalitarianism in the US, the depression, as I wrote did enhance the power of the central national government. And I think our population was frightened in 1932-4 and things might have turned out differently had someone been elected president who had a dictatorial bent.
As an example of just how far some of us are willing to go, I would point to the panic following the 9/11 WTC and Pentagon attacks. Hastly legislation resulted in more federal snoopery, bookstores, libraries, etc. with the authorization to go to war in Iraq being the crowning spasm. We now have government officials and others splitting hairs over whether or not mistreatment during active interrogation is or is not torture. The argument is it’s OK because it’s not really torture but something falling a little short of it. And besides that they are enemies and we need intelligence information. Even though I generally subscribe to the view that people are mostly no damned good that’s shocking to me.
At the risk of kicking over a hornets nest that will pollute the thread, I think that there is still an effort toward socialism in the United States. It’s the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party.
As to why it hasn’t taken hold, I’ve always felt that there is an agressiveness inherent in American culture, that when combined with the Protestant work ethic, combines into a culture of aquistition. Such a culture can’t be sustained with the tax rates that a true socialist government would require.
The two societies at the time had many things in common, but some major differences as well. Germany’s economy was ruined even before the war was over, and the Allied demands for reparations hurt even more. The immediate postwar years in Germany were dominated by revolt, confusion, and fear; remember that a “war” was going on in Russia and Poland until 1920. Germany had a tradition of only limited representative government, with a strong hereditary ruler in command.
In contrast, America’s economy boomed during and after WW I. We didn’t experience any hardship until at least 1930. We had it good, maybe better for the average person than any time in American history. We had a very strong tradition of representative government and a suspicion of anything that threatened that tradition.
Sure, we had “Americanism” and “KKK”, etc. I think those were a reaction to change. The US went from an agricultural country to a “citified” country almost overnight. Many Americans felt a bit lost. They wanted to belong. I am quite serious about this: Men and women joined the KKK for the same reason they joined the Kiwanis! And they just as quickly left when the seedier side of the KKK was revealed. But at least the KKK wasn’t part of the government.