We agree that the Nazi plan was intended only to benefit (a subset of) themselves.
We also agree that Nazis intended to treat slavs as prior empires had treated their Worthy Oriental Gentlemen (wogs, in the vernacular).
I'd like to make the distinction on the first point that they marketed[1] their intentions differently. I should have said "sold" instead of "viewed", sorry. And my "benevolently" had not been meant to be taken in a positive light. (If someone tells you they are benevolent, keep a hand on your wallet.)
To me it is clear that Goebbels said that the Nazis must protect 2'000 years of Western Civilisation from the Communists (who, you correctly note, were severely conflated with jews in that speech), and that not only was everyone who was not For Them implicitly Against Them, but that it didn't matter anyway, because they were totes going to protect even countries whose governments/intellectuals didn't wish such protection[2].
Would it help if I translate the parts I left in german into english? (I hadn't because I think the original translation pretty much got it right, but will try if you'd like fresh phrasing.)
As to sheep, dogs, and pigs, they're from Animal Farm[3], repurposed to fit one of PG's recent essays[4]:
Concrete groups:
pigs - animals who seizing power for animals from humans.
(aggressive unconventionals / Nazi leadership)
Somehow the benefits from this change of power don't extend much beyond pigs. At the end of the book, the pigs and the neighbouring human farmers get along just fine.
dogs - herd sheep on behalf of pigs.
(aggressive conventionals / blackshirts, SS)
Compare recent US police use of the "sheepdog metaphor", which I believe dates back at least to the conflict in Korea. Dogs get the pigs' table scraps, so they think themselves better than the sheep, who don't.
sheep - those who happily repeat all the domestic propaganda produced by the pigs
(passive conventionals / NSDAP rank and file, general populace)
The existence of many potential leaders with authoritarian tendencies is not necessarily a social problem. The existence of many followers with authoritarian tendencies, is.
Does the distinction between how the plan was intended by the leaders and how it was sold to the followers make more sense now?
[1] I doubt the Sportpalastrede was intended to be external propaganda: it was domestic propaganda to motivate "Total War". So maybe ordinary NSDAP members (the sheep) really bought into a "They are sick, and We are the cure" line even though the Nazi leadership (the pigs) and the SS (the dogs) knew it was, finally, all about whose knee was to be on whose neck.
[3] a book taught in the anglophone world as having been about Stalin, but it also maps to other targets. Considering that was written by an anglophone author for an anglophone audience, we should not be too surprised when we can find many parallels in the anglophone experience. (Goldstein's book in 1984 goes so far as to claim that Animal Farm is how things always work. For as much as I've read of Durant's Story of Civilization, Goldstein seems to be correct.)
> Goebbels said that the Nazis must protect 2'000 years of Western Civilisation from the Communists
See, from all I read about Nazism, whatever short quote in one propaganda speech was, Nazism was not concerned with Western Civilisation at all. As far as Nazism was concerned, there was German civilization. Not western, German. French are something different. British are something different. Americans are something different.
The western civilization concern is contemporary white supremacist concern.
> they were totes going to protect even countries whose governments/intellectuals didn't wish such protection
They were to conquer rest of west. That was appeal of Nazism.
> The existence of many potential leaders with authoritarian tendencies is not necessarily a social problem. The existence of many followers with authoritarian tendencies, is.
Meh. That argument takes responsibility away from those in power, away from those who seek power and places it on ambiguous faceless mass. It also ignores social systems those people operated in. It also ignores actual motivations for why people supported or did not supported movements.
Paul Graham is not exactly historian nor sociologist. Forcing his theories on history wont make you understand what happened - it will make you reject actual history and replace it by own imagination. You will come in with preconceived idea about who is who psychologically based on which group is sympathetic in hindsight, from the point of view of our values.
Paul Graham also makes up child psychology, but that does not matter much.
I'll happily stipulate we can leave PG to the side :-)
(just hope you don't mind if I make small attempts at making HN a little more of a garden and a little less of a stream:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337759 )
If you could point me to other speeches laying out the Nazi domestic story differently, I'd appreciate it. I picked the Sportpalastrede because (a) it was what we'd read in school, (b) it comes at a critical point, after Rokossovsky had cut off the Nazis from middle eastern oil, and just before the Nazis go explicitly totalitarian, and (c) even though they'd basically lost momentum, the Nazis would go on to be even more cruel to even more people for a few years more. I don't believe that Max Mustermann would have given the consent of the governed[1] in 1933 for "we're going to conquer everyone and kill millions of undesirables", but "we're going to support our traditions, defend the church, and create a brilliant future for our children", despite being a different end approached by the same means, was probably a much easier sale.
"...going to protect even countries whose governments/intellectuals didn't wish such protection." was intended to be read exactly as "conquer rest of west". Sorry, often I fail to realise most people are not as cynical as I.
So, moving on to where I believe we differ:
> "takes responsibility away from those in power, away from those who seek power and places it on ambiguous faceless mass"
is exactly the point I'm arguing. I would say the implosion of the USSR is encouraging, because it shows us that people not in power can change the behaviour of those in power, when they are willing to say together, "you know, this system, it doesn't actually promote the ideals we were all taught to believe in."
(Yes, it likely helped immensely that Gorbi himself also seems to have believed in his childhood picture of what socialism was supposed to have been. Also, in the case of both of us[2], we belong to this mass despite being neither ambiguous nor faceless.)
I think asking people in power (especially people who sought power for its own sake) to be responsible is to ignore those thousands of years of history Goebbels claimed to be preserving. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23846415
Can you suggest a better method for avoiding self-interested leaders than the hypnopaedic suggestions of Brave New World or the arbitrariness of sortition?
(Go back a few hundred years, and one can find plenty of people willing to argue that monarchy is superior to democracy, as the identification of the monarch with the state means that the monarch is more likely to act with long term interests in mind. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23184621 )
Anyway, where we seem to differ is where best to address the problem of potential totalitarianism: with the many, or with the few? I believe it very difficult with the former, and impossible[3] with the latter.
How do you see it?
[1] compare Linebarger's Psychological Warfare, in the context of hot war, not peaceful political process:
"the defeated people may lose their sense of organization, fail to decide on leaders and methods, and give up because they can no longer fight as a group. This happened to the American Southerners in April, 1865. The President and Cabinet of the Confederate States of America got on the train at Richmond; the men who got off farther down the line were "refugees." Something happened to them and to the people about them, so that Mr. Davis no longer thought of himself as President Davis, and other people no longer accepted his commands. This almost happened in Germany in 1945 except for Admiral Doenitz."
I would argue by overall books like Third Reich Trillogy from Richard J. Evans. Or by Hitlers biography by Ian Kershaw. Or the book on Wehrmacht. Arguing by speeches is futile, because that way you can prove Nazi both Communists and anti-communists. As people gladly do, to get back at contemporary enemies. Cherry picking from sentences from hours long speeches is easy especially since they tended to be more of emotional experiences then rational ones.
As for "west" framing, consider that French were traditional enemies of Germany. They even occupied portion of Germany (Ruhr in 1923) between wars, which added quite a lot of strength to Nazi. Germany fought in WWI against other western countries, lost, it was formative experience for majority of Nazi leadership. Germans were very resentful about loosing that war.
> just before the Nazis go explicitly totalitarian
I would argue that this was part of ideology from the very early stages. Not from very early begining, but quite soon.
> I don't believe that Max Mustermann would have given the consent of the governed[1] in 1933
Max Mustermann is fictional person. 1933 is when Nazi took full power, physically destroyed possible opposition and question of consent became moot.
> for "we're going to conquer everyone and kill millions of undesirables",
In 1933, nazi did not knew they will accomplish genocide yet. They knew Jews are the enemy, but they did not knew what they will do with them yet. All of that came later.
> Anyway, where we seem to differ is where best to address the problem of potential totalitarianism: with the many, or with the few? I believe it very difficult with the former, and impossible[3] with the latter.
I did not talked about this at all. I argued about what did actually happened in the past, not about what should have. I think that this question is not much meaningful, precisely because it is motivated by overly simplified reading of history and because such dilemma does not exist in practice.
In retrospect, having whole generation of young man turn grow as soldiers in a wold war, celebrating militarism, interpreting their violence as patriotism all breads next round of violence.
Thanks for the book references. It will take me a while to track them down (may even need to "поиск"). Kershaw looks especially interesting. I have been reading Zweig, Weil, and a book by someone whose name I no longer recall (that I had thought had been a source for Der Untergang but is not listed in the latter's WP page) which I suspect may have been slightly self-serving. (also: Arendt and Lewis as references in the wider context)
However, as I said before, I am less interested in what the actual intentions were and more interested in how they were sold (cf. Linebarger). So emotional experiences are just fine — I don't believe rational arguments have ever had much to do with human politics[1]. And I prefer speeches because they are primary sources of propaganda[2]. It seems we'll have to agree to disagree, here.
We do agree on the german resent of france[3]. (Ironically, the author of the Hassgesang gegen England would first get scapegoated (by the equally patriotic but less extreme) in 1918, and then fail to be rehabilitated in the early thirties: because he was jewish.) However, in the context of 1943, it was fine to defend the Abendland, because most of it which was not neutral was, like france, under military occupation, client government, or both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany#/media/File:World...
We also agree that the nazi ideology was implicitly totalitarian from the beginning. Consider Triumph des Willens[4]. However, 13 January 1943 was when the implicit and foreign became explicit and domestic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war#Germany
Yes, Max Mustermann is the teutonic "citoyen lambda" or "John Doe". Maybe I am too optimistic[5], but the question of consent[6] is never moot. No matter that anglophones love to paint their enemy du jour as iconified by a single person[7], Hitler wasn't about to personally beat up everyone who badmouthed the Reich, it took large numbers of people who believed in him to make his system work. See my previous Linebarger quote, about the point when no one would take orders from Mr. Davis, or consider the point in 1991 when no one would take orders from Comrade Yanayev.
We also agree that the Nazis got worse and worse as time went on. I'm interested in the shape of that slope. Some slopes are slippery ("We are the greatest people in the greatest country and it doesn't matter what we do to accomplish the greater good"), others not so slippery ("If you start disrespecting property rights by abolishing slavery, you'll end up with communism"). My guess is that, like coke dealers who partake of their own goods, the judgement of people who wind up believing their own propaganda is less than optimal.
Again, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the purpose of transferring bones from one graveyard to another. I am interested in history more for the purpose of making predictions about the present (which does not mean I don't appreciate getting corrected on my understanding of it! Having poor probabilities leads to poor betting...) and less for its own sake. Figuring out how to avoid repeating history would be most excellent, but at the moment I am cynical enough to believe that "those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it." In any case, having gotten that off my chest, I'm happy to limit myself to the historical detail of 1919-1945.
> interpreting their violence as patriotism
Very well put. Even fools learn from experience[9]. The wise attempt to learn from someone else's experience.
[1] note that even the ancient greeks distinguished rhetoric from logic. I would also be willing to bet that NSDAP speeches were pro-communist exactly between 1939 and 1941, and anti-communist outside those dates. The convenient thing about Two Minutes Hates is that the $OTHER is always variable.
[2] not having an internet and explicit social graph, the Nazis had to make do with radio and loudspeaker truck.
in which Hitler plays the victim card hard. (but neglects to mention that the program for lifting the german Volk up involves putting others two meters under. Generalplan Ost would appear seven years later.)
[4] US fervour for the first Iraq war reminded me of nothing so much as Triumph des Willens. They treated going to war as if they were rooting for a basketball championship. (Der weiße Rausch, on the other hand, is not half bad.)
[6] Whose consent is another interesting question. In 1984, proles, like animals, are free. The Inner Party only needs to fear, and hence control, the Outer Party, roughly 13% of the population. (Luckily for them, Airstrip One has a long tradition of middle class norm self-enforcement. Even we today ask why we would need watch cameras in villages, because spiessig grandmothers keep themselves busy minding everyone elses' business.)
[7] Hitler, of course, would have agreed with the single-leader-principle. But he also, earlier, had agreed with the communists that no matter which one of them controlled the future, centrists such as the social democrats would have no place in it. In any case, here I'm thinking of "The Pope" or "Bonaparte", etc. (Come to think of it, this fear of a united continent may even be logical: if the continent is not full of balanced powers playing, from the english viewpoint, "let's you and him fight", they might turn their military spend from armies to a navy, which would be a direct threat to Oceania's ability to waive rules by ruling waves.)
[9] Körner notes in one of his books that the UK and US, having fought a war to destroy german and japanese militarism forever, then complained bitterly when the germans and japanese refused to join the Iraq adventure.
Edit: I think a point where we've been talking past each other is on the question of the many vs. the few. I agree that the few were responsible[a], not the many. I just happen to believe that if one wants to avoid a repetition, it is much easier (though still more difficult than many countries care to do, as it involves education) to keep the many from following genocidal totalitarians than it is to expect the few (of whom some would be genocidal totalitarians given the opportunity) to avoid climbing the greasy pole.
[a] Responsibility is a key reason that to be recognised as a Party to a Conflict, a group exercising the ultima ratio regum has to have a command structure. Lack of command would make it very difficult to know who ought to be sent to the ICC.
We also agree that Nazis intended to treat slavs as prior empires had treated their Worthy Oriental Gentlemen (wogs, in the vernacular).
I'd like to make the distinction on the first point that they marketed[1] their intentions differently. I should have said "sold" instead of "viewed", sorry. And my "benevolently" had not been meant to be taken in a positive light. (If someone tells you they are benevolent, keep a hand on your wallet.)
To me it is clear that Goebbels said that the Nazis must protect 2'000 years of Western Civilisation from the Communists (who, you correctly note, were severely conflated with jews in that speech), and that not only was everyone who was not For Them implicitly Against Them, but that it didn't matter anyway, because they were totes going to protect even countries whose governments/intellectuals didn't wish such protection[2].
Would it help if I translate the parts I left in german into english? (I hadn't because I think the original translation pretty much got it right, but will try if you'd like fresh phrasing.)
As to sheep, dogs, and pigs, they're from Animal Farm[3], repurposed to fit one of PG's recent essays[4]:
Concrete groups:
Somehow the benefits from this change of power don't extend much beyond pigs. At the end of the book, the pigs and the neighbouring human farmers get along just fine. Compare recent US police use of the "sheepdog metaphor", which I believe dates back at least to the conflict in Korea. Dogs get the pigs' table scraps, so they think themselves better than the sheep, who don't. The existence of many potential leaders with authoritarian tendencies is not necessarily a social problem. The existence of many followers with authoritarian tendencies, is.Does the distinction between how the plan was intended by the leaders and how it was sold to the followers make more sense now?
[1] I doubt the Sportpalastrede was intended to be external propaganda: it was domestic propaganda to motivate "Total War". So maybe ordinary NSDAP members (the sheep) really bought into a "They are sick, and We are the cure" line even though the Nazi leadership (the pigs) and the SS (the dogs) knew it was, finally, all about whose knee was to be on whose neck.
Compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4
Or the Sith Rule of Two.
[2] "Gee, nice country you've got here. Wouldn't want anything to happen to it." is the stereotypical anglophone expression of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket
[3] a book taught in the anglophone world as having been about Stalin, but it also maps to other targets. Considering that was written by an anglophone author for an anglophone audience, we should not be too surprised when we can find many parallels in the anglophone experience. (Goldstein's book in 1984 goes so far as to claim that Animal Farm is how things always work. For as much as I've read of Durant's Story of Civilization, Goldstein seems to be correct.)
[4] http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html
mapped to Animal Farm in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975900