Post by The Old ManI fully understand what you are saying Pat, but if you found yourself
transported to Germany in November 1939, you'd find that Joe
Knockwurst truely believed that Poland ~attacked~ Germany first
because it's what Herr Doktor Goebbels had just told him on the radio
last night.<historical sarcasm mode on> And the brave troops of the
Fatherland were only protecting its citizens from the attacks of the
perfidious Slavs and their alies the sneaky Frenchmen and the meddling
Brits.**<historical sarcasm mode off> And Slimey Joe was a Master of
the Political Lie.
I agree, the thugs who ruled Germany got exactly what they deserved.
** the above statement was handed to me almost word for word by my
late ex-mother-in-law who heard it on the radio in November 1939 while
living in a small town in southern Austria.
I remember running into a aged woman on a farm around here who used to
be a translator for the SS during the war (her husband was a GI who
brought her home with him) She was still big on Hitler and had a signed
copy of Mein Kampf. Besides propaganda, I think there was a underlying
social and philosophical outlook in the German populace that the Nazis
simply exploited to their own ends*.
Another woman, who is a German language teacher at our local college,
makes frequent summer trips over to Germany, and that lets her note how
things are developing after reunification.
One thing she consistently notes is "ranking behavior" is still a mighty
powerful force among the Germans; your status in society is established
not by who you are or what you do, but by who is beneath you for some
reason. Is your family from industrious western Germany, or lazy eastern
Germany? If from the west, the good "High German" northern part, or the
inferior "Low German" southern part? The latest thing was to rank people
by how many cubic centimeters their apartment had in it. So once again,
it all came down to lack of enough living room area. ;-)
As many have noted, the Nazis merely extrapolated that conceit into a
battle between nations and peoples, with all Germans being inherently
better than any other nation's populace - which made the lower class
Germans feel great as now they had someone to look down on also, just
like they themselves were looked down on: "Our family may not have its
roots in the Prussian aristocracy, but we're better than any damn
Frenchman, I can tell you that."
Combine that concept with someone to blame for why you were looked down
on or your life wasn't happy - the damned Jews - and you could get every
malcontent or socially marginalized person in the country on your side,
as under the new order their hidden worth would finally be recognized
and rewarded. And the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic in
Germany was just about ideal for generating malcontents and socially
marginalized people in vast numbers.
*One thing about Goebbels that becomes obvious after you read some of
his quotes is that when it came right down to it, he detested the German
people for being stupid enough to buy into all of his lies so
trustingly. He compared them to little trained dogs who he could hold a
hoop in front of, and they would jump through it every time.
Pat
