"J b" <johnbrene@hotmail.com> schrieb:
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Any way you look at it, the Bolsheviks were looking to expand the Communistic "World Revolution" and even briefly pulled it off in Germany. There was only one political group prepared and willing to deal with this threat before it engulfed the country, the NSDAP.
"HPA" <320097756779-0001@t-online.de> schrieb:
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Sorry JB, but that sounds a bit like the old recipe of getting rid of the cholera by spreading the pestilence. Historians, as far the scientifique ones are concerned, found that exactly this wrong hope put on the Nazis by the still established parts of Germany society in that times made them gain in 1933.
Well some hope is better than none, and the Weimar Republic was basically offering none. The Communists (KPD) and Socialists (SDP) both had their chance and did little with it. If they had wanted to win the elections or parliament and get the country turned around long term, they would have had to (at a minimum) unite. But they couldn't, because like so many other foggy headed parliamentarians in the WR, they amounted to a befuddled, bickering, self-interested pack of snobs and dreamers. As a consequence, the vanguard of communist red front was making greater and greater inroads with the poor, the unemployed and the lower (working) classes across the land, agitating for a fight (revolution) and social upheaval as they moved along.
Most Germans did not want this. Others had grown sick of all the sell-outs and shysters (carpetbaggers) they found in their midst, both internal and external, sucking whatever life Germany still possessed out of it. It is the reason why Hitler's party steadily rose to power as time went on, and came to dominate the Reichtstag by 1932. By that point, the National Socialists were picking up seats in the parliament faster than the KPD and SDP could lose them. By 1933, they had twice the seats of the Socialist Party and three times those of the KPD.
President Hindenburg had little choice but to turn the executive reins of power over to Hitler because of this, and in hopes the NS would act as a buffer against the growing communist violence and the threat of civil war (culminating in the burning down of the Reichstag itself by a dimwitted Red). In the 1934 plebiscite, Hitler won an astounding 90% of the vote over the issue of combining the highest offices of the state, military and party into one.
It does not surprise me the SPD hung back to protect themselves. Either
one of those parties would have steamrolled right over them, and trust me for what it's worth, the KPD, the Spartakusbund and Red Front Fighters' League were not going to go away without a fight.
Only a prospering economy would have managed that. Intelligence to manage
economy, cannot be found or build in street- or other fights. Seems to be an permanent error of politics, that getting the might is already enough and sufficient qualification to solve problems. So you might take it also as some
sort of wisdom, not to be envolved in street fights and try instead to keep
and influence parlamentarian democracy.
That presupposes that a prospering economy was there to begin with, or work with. That was hardly the case! Germany was mired in a particularly pernicious (dire) form of poverty, and little was improving as the years passed. It made our American depression look fairly lightweight by comparison. The victorious allied war powers were sucking what little sustenance Germany had out of it. It was criminal but lauded by the big shots of the day. The French were frothing at the mouth, the British Imperialists were laughing up their sleeves, and the American government couldn't care less.
Other groups were stealing and manipulating from within, from communists to carpetbagging capitalists, with far too many Jews being amongst those in the forefront. The Reds were itching for a fight, and soon enough they got one. Only they foolishly incited men who were seasoned in combat and in no mood for forgiveness. They made their beds, and soon they were going to be lying in them. Rose rimmed historians can put any personal twists on it they like, but they can't change the way it was.
As it were, the SA (Sturmabteilung) and Freikorps simply hit harder, and eventually ground the Reds into camp dust. In time they turned their guns towards the source of the Revolution -- Soviet Russia.
Sorry, but this also is a myth to me. If America would have lay in the East and had began at the Polish border, National Socialists would have started the same war in 1939, as they didn`t make any differences between the countries they captured in point of ruling ideology or ecomomy form. They had only one principle : might. In the end to silly to find an answer on: might, what for ?
Did the NS start the war, or were they reacting to conditions they viewed as being shoved down their throats, that is until they rose up and fought back? Could it be they were now set on settling the score, only this time on their terms? Once you disturb or provoke a bee hive, are there any guarantees the agitated within won't come at you viciously, with no saying when or where they will stop?
It was more complicated than just that precursor, to include the age-old concept of 'lebensraum' and the viewing of the Russians as little more than peasants ("submenschen" = lesser humans) accustomed to listless toil. The conditions in the vast expanses of Soviet Russia, deplorable and contentious as they were, fed into these estimations. Would the Russians have done better over time under German overlords, as opposed to the Marxist-Bolshevik masters they then had (and Czarist ones before that)? Who knows! But that of course is a subject all its own, and what existed then differs immensely from the political and economic conditions we find at present, and our more contemporary views.
It is always easier - when all is rosy and well - to sit in judgment of past events from loftier perches, and delude ourselves we are really seeing those times for what they were worth, more so the dire periods. And that is beyond the assault of propaganda that constantly pre-conditions our thinking. The masses, then and now, excel at blind thinking, and almost always believe what the folks in charge tell them. It is easier for the anointed ones to tell them how to think, since study and thinking beyond the norm takes extra effort. Crowds suffer delusions, as much now as back then. It fuels smugness, materialism and complacency.
At present our American government is obsessed by an Iraqi <and Israeli> situation that is way beyond our control, now to include the direct use of our armies and ever more resources, all the while bequeathing our Israeli friends astronomical monetary subsidies to include an arsenal of nuclear weapons (while expecting their neighbors to sit still and behave). What for! This is while to our south an ongoing - and virtually ignored - invasion on our own turf hurls forward, and the nation slowly but invariably transforms. It's laughable! It is also criminal, and yet most folks hardly seem to care anymore (or at least know their elected officials don't). Tolerance seems to know no bounds these days.
So I present to you a few rough sticklers from our own past. When we had enough of our British overlords, we sent them packing by the point of the gun. Lots of British merchants were short-changed (cheated) because of it, but to the victors go the rewards. Whenever the Indians "pushed" us, we made it a point to push back harder. We were able to build an American empire because of it, and we did not let the tears of so and so many native tribes stop the progress. Not the tidiest or prettiest picture, but it worked. Now America is admired (and hated) the world over, and everyone wants to come here. As for the value and purpose of "might", you might have a different take on it if someone were at your throat, or violating you at length while enjoying the feeling of impunity. It always goes back to the source of the trouble, which is where everyone insists on choosing their own view.
As it is, there are no easy or clear cut answers here. What astounds me is that so many people think there are.
Jb
PS. HPA here's the crux of our differing political views as I see it: you see the world for what it should be, and I see it for what it is and always has been: [revised] 1/4 fascinating, 1/4 amusing, 1/4 hopeless and 1/4 bunk. It hardly pleases me, but que sera sera.