The impact of Nazism with a focused hatred of communists and not Untermensch

The Trump refence. if you move around internet you see any argument about white working class get shut by "Economic anxiety argument".

and those ... Make it seems like that is intention of his post.
I may be mistaken, but so far it seems to me as propable possibility this is what he meant

You're inferring a reference to Trump purely based on the use of the term 'economic anxiety'?
 

Loghain

Banned
You're inferring a reference to Trump purely based on the use of the term 'economic anxiety'?

Due to the use of term being used very often in this context. and due to the ... yes indeed.
I apologize if im wrong. Regardless we got offtopic and we should propably cease with this.
 
Due to the use of term being used very often in this context. and due to the ... yes indeed.
I apologize if im wrong. Regardless we got offtopic and we should propably cease with this.

As you said yourself, this isn't chat. Unless someone's explicitly talking about Trump it's best not to criticise them for bringing up current politics when they made a perfectly valid point about the motivations of those who voted for the Nazis.
 

Loghain

Banned
As you said yourself, this isn't chat. Unless someone's explicitly talking about Trump it's best not to criticise them for bringing up current politics when they made a perfectly valid point about the motivations of those who voted for the Nazis.

The problem is that said argument is often used to collerate Trump supporters with Hitler supporters.
And i dont think the "basket of deplorables" tactic is very productive one.
But we are seriously offtopic we should really stop.
 
It wouldn't be the Nazism that we knew but if instead of the racial hatred of the non-aryan peoples the basis was more against the political ideology of communism of communists without the blatant racial ideology.

The largest impact I can think on the war front would be less Jewish scientists fleeing or being killed.

No. The largest impact is that the Germans try to treat the occupied peoples in the East somewhat humanely, since they are humans and not sub-humans after all, even if they are not "aryans". Thus they don't enslave and starve them. Thus they have to send food to the troops in the East all the way from Germany. And the logistics of their Ostheer collapses in the spring of 1942.
 

Loghain

Banned
No. The largest impact is that the Germans try to treat the occupied peoples in the East somewhat humanely, since they are humans and not sub-humans after all, even if they are not "aryans". Thus they don't enslave and starve them. Thus they have to send food to the troops in the East all the way from Germany. And the logistics of their Ostheer collapses in the spring of 1942.

You are saying that Nazis had to do this to be succesfull ?. thats pretty disgusting attitude imho
 
Thus they have to send food to the troops in the East all the way from Germany. And the logistics of their Ostheer collapses in the spring of 1942.

Earlier then that, really.

You are saying that Nazis had to do this to be succesfull ?. thats pretty disgusting attitude imho

That's because we would like to have what is evil also be what is ineffective, but reality is not always so kind as that. The reality is that the Germans didn't have the transport space for Barbarossa to succeed even before you factor in the need to ship the food to adequately feed 3.2 million men and all those supply animals. The Germans had to descend upon the land like a horde of locusts in order to make even the OTL advances, and hence OTL damage to the Soviet military and economy, logistically feasible. The atrocities perpetrated on the Soviet citizenry were not some regrettable unpleasantness the invasion could have done without. Rather, they were a key factor in making the whole venture worthwhile to Nazi Germany.

In any case, racism was such a immense part of the Nazis, and Hitler in particular, madness that pushed them into starting the war to begin with. Without that, odds are good they pull back from the brink. If they do end up in a war they fight it with much less energy, all while looking for an early negotiated exit, allowing them only very modest territorial gains. Non-racist Nazis would never dream of turning the vast lands of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union into it's own Congo colonial theme park, which was a pretty core element behind why WWII developed as it did historically.

There's also the motivation angle to consider. Merely being anti-communist wouldn't be a patch on the historical Nazi indoctrination, that was again race-centric, which turned their soldiers into fanatics and inured their officers to the terrible atrocities of the war.
 
Last edited:
You are saying that Nazis had to do this to be succesfull ?. thats pretty disgusting attitude imho

Well, the Nazi attitudes were quite disgusting, but that's no news, I think.

That said, I'm not saying the Germans had to hate the Slavs in order to enslave and starve them. We have lots of previous examples of armies "living off the land" at the expense of the local population, up to Napoleon's armies, for instance, and while there were chauvinistic streaks back then already, nothing could hold a candle to the Germans vs. Slavs, or Japanese vs. Chinese, in WWII.
But all that hate must surely have helped.

Finally, as to success, yes, the OTL German successes in the Soviet Union depended also from a deliberate decision from the get-go to feed the army (men and horses) as much possible from local resources. Given the diseconomies of the war (initial loss of harvest due to combat and scorched-earth policies, shortage of manpower, horsepower and general transportation, shortage of fertilizers, machinery and resources etc.), that automatically implied keeping the rural population on hunger rations and starving the city dwellers.
 
Popular sovereignty refers to the idea that the authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people. It doesn't necessarily reflect an exact political reality.

While in France Napoleon compromised on many reforms, he legitimized them and preserved many of the gains for decades. And back during the Consulate he had introduced some lasting institutions and reforms of his own. During the era of the First Empire, Napoleon's rule in other countries brought vital civil rights such as the abolition of serfdom and feudalism, reform of the court system, reforming local government, abolishing the Spanish Inquisition, and emancipating Jews. Napoleon was an autocrat by our standards but in comparison to every other country he was fighting, or at least all countries other than Britain, Napoleon was less absolutist. It's telling that even Napoleon's enemies, such as Prussia, were forced to reform their government and society while fighting him, to avoid popular uprising. And that the Napoleonic Code was so effective that it survived and even spread to dozens of countries after Napoleon was defeated.

I'm not just talking about an "exact political reality". The conquest of Spain was the direct opposite of popular sovereignty. The people were directly opposed to Napoleonic rule.

His conquests were directly responsible for the extreme reactionary attitude of the returned Spanish King. Napoleons actions stigmatized progressive policies and legitimized reactionaries all over Europe. He basically showed Europe that the worst fears of conservatives were true. Reform was so suppressed and stalled that progressivism exploded in 1848. Not to mention that Napoleon screwed the hell out of the Ottoman reformists. Besides all that, I simply do not believe that other countries needed to be conquered in order to reform. Metternich for example was basically forced to embrace reactionary policies when he wanted conservative reform. You mention abolishing the Inquisition but it was already a dying institution.

Also, the Civil Code of the French did not actually need Napoleon in order to exist.
 
Last edited:
Merely being anti-communist wouldn't be a patch on the historical Nazi indoctrination, that was again race-centric, which turned their soldiers into fanatics and inured their officers to the terrible atrocities of the war.
Are you saying racism was a larger motivator for the Wehrmacht than anti Communism?
 
Are you saying racism was a larger motivator for the Wehrmacht than anti Communism?

By the time WW2 broke out, yes. The anti-communism of the Wehrmacht was tied up within it's racism and not the other way around. Prior to the effects of Nazi indoctrination taking, anti-communism may have still been widespread, but offensively-oriented anti-communism was not. In the 20s and 30s, you'd have found plenty of people in the United States, UK, and France, and, yes, Germany who would be ardently against communism, would argue quite passionately for fighting a war in opposition to it's spread, yet would have blanched at the suggestion of attacking the Soviet Union first in the name of defeating it.
 
Last edited:
Top