Hello gentleman, may I introduce myself. I’m a 40 year old Aussie with a keen eye on world affairs and history. Congratulations on remaining cordial over a subject which by it’s very definition, is easy to get extremely ‘heated over’.
Of all the posts thus far, all of which have been written imeccably well, I find the most recent by “David Simmons” to be the most pertinent to me - that is, how did one of the world’s most intellectually and industrially advanced nations become sufficiently manipilated that they would ‘democratically’ adopt a man/party which in any other time and circumstances have rung alarm bells from here to eternity.
An interesting answer lays in Hitler’s ‘shrewd’ behaviour in the latter half of the 1930’s and at least up until the beginning of 1942 - namely, he ensured, albeit quite articifially, that the living standards of ordinary citizens rose from year to year - and thus, ensured his enduring popularity. Obviously, to do such a thing could not be continued in the face of a war environment, and eventually the debt was paid with Germany’s ruination, but it DOES go a long way to explaining how Hitler got away with it - not everyone in Germany, but the majority certainly found themselves saying “my own personal lifestyle seems to be improving, he must be doing SOMETHING right?”
As a quick aside, may I quickly share with you a rather frightening episode we had down here in Australia over the last 7 years, which thankfully seems to have been snuffed out but nonetheless, had awfully similar overtones to Hitler’s era in the early 1930’s - to wit, we had a female politician down here named Pauline Hanson, who wasn’t overly bright, but she had the ability to push the fear button. She exploited the xenophobia of most Australian’s of “European” descent by asserting that ALL of our troubles could be blamed by the massive influx of Asians into our country, and then setting up ghettos where drugs were sold etc etc. They were to blame for EVERYTHING she argued.
For a frightening 2 or 3 years, this woman went from strength to strength - her handlers became ever more shrewd and shrewd in their ability to exploit the “hysteria” buttons and she seemingly was on a path similar to Hitler’s ascendancy in 1932.
Thank God, but eventually both sides of politics here in Australia started to rail against her, and the forces of ‘sanity’ prevailed. Sadly, however, the experience opened a dreadfully ugly side to human nature - even here in peace loving Australia where realistically, we don’t have much to complain about at all really, do we? And that ugly side? In short, any country, no matter how intelligent, can, if manipulated hard enough and long enough, be whipped up into a state of frenzy where ordinary citizens at the very least, will pardon the systematic ‘picking on’ another race or culture.
To say the least, it scared the fucking crap out of me!
Anyways, enough about that. Back to the debate gentleman.
In short, I think history will show that Hitler’s conceit did him in really - that is, time and time again in the face of advice from his military staff, he believed in his own ‘genius’ and overruled them - to his own detriment of course.
Regards, Boo Boo Foo.