if only humour and charm stopped nazis from funding genocide, slavery, and war. hitler wasn't stopped because the third reich realized in their heart of hearts and mind of minds that fascism is wrong, it was the bullets and the bombs
I always assumed that WWII was facilitated by heavy sanctions imposed on Germany. See [1] for a romanticized description of economic disarray that thrusted Hitler into power.
Germans learn about the history of the Third Reich in detail and I always asked myself: how could this happen? Smart, hard-working, intelligent, compassionate, literate people start to plan industrial murder of millions of people on the basis of what exactly?
Now, here's the thing. Progress is not that shiny guiding light. It is an extreme force, especially a force to control things, especially nature. The Third Reich planned mass murder, as it were a railroad track or lunar landing - the form was exactly the same and they did not understood: that this similarity in form revealed and forever merged the idea of progress to the most inhumane behavior and destruction.
If that does not make sense, I encourage you to just read a bit about the concentration camps or the Third Reich in general. Good timing, too - we have 75th anniversary of V-E Day coming up.
This seems to be a personal opinion article. Much has been written about the Nazi rise to power. The first four years of Hitler's rule, starting in 1933, were good for Germany. He got Germany out of the postwar depression. If he'd left office after four years, he'd be remembered as the Savior of Germany. After four years, things started to go bad; two more years and WWII was under way.
The Nazi party was closely allied with big companies. That was by design, and there was no secret about it. That's what "national socialism" was all about - industry and government working together. It worked more like crony capitalism in practice, and less well over time.
One of the big problems in a dictatorship is how the second tier of control works. The leader can't decide everything. There has to be delegation. But how? Regional delegation results in regional leaders powerful enough to challenge the national leader. Delegation by subject area (ministries) sometimes works, but the military and security apparatus usually becomes the center of power. Delegating power to businesses is a bit safer, especially if you don't let them become monopolies in their sector. The Nazi Party used all three forms of delegation, which the author describes as a mess. It's not an unreasonable way to run things, though.
The third Reich was a very progressive society by many of today's metrics until the holocaust happened in the name of "progress." It's a very vague term with any number of interpretations.
It's also funny to see the same Americans rake down on the RSHA of the Third Reich.
America is ten times worse than Germany ever was. Actually, in comparison, the German Reich under Hitler appears to be more like a paradise. It's time for Americans to admit that they're doing precisely everything they ever accused the Germans of doing. But the Germans are always wrong and you are always right. Its nice, its a system.
It's decades since I read him, but per William Shirer, by 1939 the Third Reich was facing looming bankruptcy (by turning a firehose of cash on its problems—creating make-work jobs, running a massive rearmamanent program, building up huge armed forces, and bread and circuses). Indeed from one perspective the post-1938 expansion of Hitler's reich was driven by the urgent need to steal money and resources from the neighbours to stave off a total economic collapse.
Like turning to bank robbery to pay off the maxed-out credit cards. (Which works for a short while, right up until you hit a bank with a SWAT team waiting for you.)
This, imho is eerily similar to the mistake of punishing Germany ruthlessly at the end of WWI, which basically created the perfect underlying conditions for Nazis and WWII.
> the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country which they transformed into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government
In this context, the "government" means the military. Hitler used military force to enforce their rein. There's no way Nazi Germany could have done what they did without absolute control exerted by the military.
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