How Similiar is USA 2007 and Nazi Germany Mid to Late 30s?

[bryant69]

Just out of curiosity.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Try reading this for a first-person, day by day, account of Hitler's rise.

http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1933-1941-Paperbacks/dp/0375753788/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3785481-6168955?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192047452&sr=8-1

There are, indeed, similarities. More than are usually noted.

A complacent and conformist people who are content to go along with the crowd being the most obvious.

And, the desire for "leaders" to make everything better if we just "trust" them.

[bryant69]

2. Isn't the desire to go along with the crowd standard issue for humans? n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. But, of course. The point is that the idea that "it can't happen here" is fallacious.

Not only philosophically, but historically.

[bryant69]

4. There's a gap between "It Can't happen here" and "I don't think it's happening here" though. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. The author of the diary thought so too.

Victor Klemperer was an intellectual, a college professor, a WWI veteran, a German patriot. He was also a (non-practicing Jew who loathed Zionists). A "moderate" politically.

He believed, like many Germans, that Hitler was a flash-in-the-pan demagogue who would never last in civilized Germany. That the German people would never stand for naked dictatorship, that the army would throw him out, that the capitalists would use him and control him, that the Nazi Party itself would self destruct with in-fighting, or the western democracies would confront him.

He was wrong, but throughout his diaries he still clung to various hopes that it simply couldn't happen..until it did.

[bryant69]

6. Do you think there will be an election next year? n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. I don't doubt it.

The system is not in jeopardy. Both of the parties will stay well within the boundaries in place.

[Selatius]

15. And that's the rub. History is 20/20

When you view an event in any given year in the past, you view it within the context of the years both behind and, most importantly, ahead of it. Unfortunately for 2007, we do not have the luxury of viewing ahead the same way we can view 1933 and compare it to 1934 or 35 or 36 and so on and so forth.

[Kolesar]

7. We are not an impoverished nation suffering from reparations from losing the Great War

The United States did not experience a national grievance leading to the ascension of this messianic, militarist president*.

[tritsofme]

8. The fun fantasies of many people are going to be spoiled next year

When America elects a Democratic president.

[TheUniverse]

9. Not very Similiar

We have a democracy and freedom of speech. We are not sending Jews to death camps.

[conscious evolution]

11. Germany had not committed war crimes

and other crimes against humanity yet.
We have.

[Deja Q]

16. Hitler also took a bad economy and turned it around.

consensus around here, for 2007, is the opposite...

[cali]

19. really? didn't the OP specify the thirties?

The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935? Do you know what they did? Krystallnacht took place in '38. And much, much more.

[DaveJ]

12. At the risk of embarrassing the DU

I'll go on a small diatribe. I think I must be brainwashed to some extent. My mind tells me everything is fine in the U.S. But my gut tells me otherwise. Put aside the atrocities the U.S. is committing in the desert, and let's focus on domestics. The problem is that there no longer is a sense of community. Few people feel they have any control over what happens around them. I bet most people feel no more control of their community than when they were children. (and how would we know when we never had any power in the first place?) That's one thing -- we have no control. Which relates to the other problem that all the work we do ultimately is not for ourselves, but for big businesses, which an extremely select few people control. By controlling the habits of all of us, they control not only what we do at work but what we can do at home. Controlling what we can afford to buy. Where we can go, with new passport requirements, terrorist threats, and so on. But, Most of the control is done through the financial system, and who can complain when we say it's just that? Nobody thinks that money's control over us could possibly relate to state or corporate control. As the pyramid of control rises higher, a few ultra powerful individuals are struggling to stand at that apex.

[backscatter712]

13. It is happening here.

Go read Naomi Wolf's book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot.

There's very little time left to stop America's slide to tyranny. We may have to resort to asserting our Second Amendment rights to throw off these fuckers. And we're perfectly damned justified in using lethal force against them if they're going to continue to destroy our liberties.

[bryant69]

14. Lethel force? Who should we start killing? n/t

[jpgray]

17. "Largely different" is the most acceptable answer to me

Just by virture of humans continuing to behave like humans, "totally different" is out.

[BuyingThyme]

18. Back then the Bush Family was profiting off a Nazi holocaust.

Today the Bush Family is profiting off a Nazi holocaust.