Everything you learnt about the rise of Nazism is probably a lie. The truth is that Nazism was based on Mussolini’s Fascism and Reparations had little to do with it.Almost no Reparations were paid by Germany and Hitler took power after the Reparations bill had been cancelled.
There is a profound spiritual kinship between National Socialism and Communism. Both were opposed to democracy, political liberalism and the free market economic system. Both had complete contempt for the value of individual human life and were exceedingly destructive and cruel. This is why Stalin and Hitler got along so well before Hitler's betrayal, and why the Nazis and the Communists at times cooperated with each other in bringing down the Weimar democracy even while they were battling each other in the streets.
The are differences, though. The Nazis emphasized race and demonized Jews and other supposedly lesser races. The Communists emphasized economic class and demonized the capitalists and the kulaks.
Also, Naziism had deep roots in 19th century German thought. Before WWI and even before Hitler was born Germans were arguing that the Jews were the enemy of the German race . . . that racial purity was the key to cultural superiority . . . that democracy was a sham and Germans would find true freedom united under a dictator . . . that war has healthy and revitalizing while peace was enervating . . . that life was in essence a merciless struggle for survival of the fittest in which the death of even millions of people was an ordinary aspect of nature's harshness.
More than one student of Hitler has pointed out that none of the basic elements of his ideology were new. His unique contribution was to weld them all together and to organize an effective political movement to attain power.
Yes, the German National Socialists were particularly racist. However the rest of the world was also racist and anti-semitism was rife. The Russian Empire had used pogroms to expel millions of Jews into Europe, especially Germany, and after 1917 the Soviet Union continued the policy. The Spartacist uprising was believed by Germans to have been heavily supported by members of the Jewish migrant population ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacist_uprising ) and the unemployed, shabby poor were mostly Jewish. This meant that the German middle classes were primed to support genocide whereas the rest of Europe was just anti-semitic.
As you say, racism of various sorts (not all of it violent) was common, and antisemitism was rife not only in Russia but also in France. Also, Russian anti-semitism was very cruel. However, the Nazis took it to new levels such as had never been seen in the history of the world. Part of it was technology. This gave the Germans a power to destroy beyond imagination. If Genghis Khan, the Vikings, the Huns or Bogdan Chmelnitzki had had modern weapons who knows what they might have done?
But still, why the Jews? Two leaders of the Spartacists (Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg) were Jewish, and some of the leaders of the revolution in Bavaria were Jewish, but those were also authentically German movements. There were refugees from Eastern Europe, who were not welcome, and the conflation of Bolshevism with Judaism (largely because of Marx).
One thing that is interesting to note is, that after approximately 8 years of furious activity, marching, demonstrating, speechifying, the Nazis received only 2.6% of the national Reichstag vote in 1928. They were not popular and or well received. Nazi popularity skyrocketed to 37.3 in 1932, making them the largest party in Germany - so it was fear, anger, desperation for some solution to the depression that made many people turn to Hitler as there seemed to be no other alternative short of Communism - and even then many people did not care for Hitler's antisemitism.
Still, violent "exterminatory anti-Judaism" preceded all of that. Before WWI, Heinrich Class and the Pan-German League wanted Jews removed from many areas of German life. Before that, Paul Lagarde was arguing that Jews should be exterminated "like bacillae." He wrote in his 1887 essay "Jews and Indo-Germanics": “One would have to have a heart of steel to not feel sympathy for the poor Germans and, by the same token, to not hate the Jews, to not hate and despise those who – out of humanity! – advocate for the Jews or are too cowardly to crush these vermin. Trichinella and bacilli would not be negotiated with, trichinella and bacilli would also not be nurtured, they would be destroyed as quickly and as thoroughly as possible." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Lagarde (Wikipedia footnotes the original German source).
Part of this was the modern shift from ignorant and unbiblical religious antisemitism ("The Jews killed Christ") to modern secular racial antisemitism ("The Jews are corrupting German blood and German culture"). A deep subject! I even had the temerity to write a book on the subject. I was primarily arguing against the claim that Hitler and the Nazis were Christians, but as a result of that ended up exploring the origins of Hitler's ideas in 19th-century German secularism. The Darwinian element in Hitler's thought is debated, but I believe it was significant (Ernst Haeckel was a leading advocate of Darwin's new theory and Haeckel had some distinctly Nazi ideas, though of course he was not identical to Hitler). You might look at Richard Weikart's excellent book "From Darwin to Hitler." My book was "Hitler, the Holocaust and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany."
Yes, Social Darwinism was a mistaken interpretation of Evolutionary Theory. Evolution is a theory that what survives survives, what is "fit" is that which fits. The physical and biological environment selects as it changes. Social Darwinism is the theory that the "best" come out on top, that fit means "best". That if the dinosaurs had done more push ups and lessons before the asteroid struck they would have beaten the mammals :)
It is interesting that the German economy was in recession from 1930-32 (but not like the depression of 1922-23) and there was high unemployment. The communists were gaining traction from the unemployment and looked like they might gain an electoral majority. The middle classes were scared that this would lead to a repeat of 1919 and Communist revolution. Your point about fear being a driver is undoubtedly true. Corporate Germany and the USA also feared communism in Germany and pumped millions into the Nazi party - National Socialism is kind to corporations.
It is interesting in a modern context that the Germans were portrayed as the poor victims of the Jews. The victim-oppressor narrative was the driver of polarisation then as it is today.
The lack of empathy of Germans for Jewish people is shocking. As a parent even the thought of children being gassed almost brings tears to my eyes but somehow the German population were immune from empathy. All the evidence is that the German population did indeed know that the Jews were being brutally exterminated. I have spoken to Germans of that period:, with enough booze and if you sprung it on them they would confess that they knew and cry (this is particularly a reminiscence of a scientific conference I attended in Italy in the 1970s and a drunken pub crawl with four German academics but a German dentist I knew in the UK also told me about private shame, and pride, in her village back home). In truth they were nice people who were caught up in a mass psychosis - like the Red Guards etc.
The relationship between Darwinism and National Socialism has been hotly contested. Those who believe Darwin’s theory is true argue that it had nothing at all to do with National Socialism. After all, what does true science (as they see it) have to do with weird and irrational racial theories?
People who believe (as I do) that Darwinism is a false theory and hence feel no obligation to defend it, can see significant aspects of Darwinism in Hitler’s ideology: people as nothing but animals engaged in a pitiless and ruthless struggle for survival . . . the perishing of weaker and unfit elements being natural and normal, and people starving and dying in the millions is just part of nature. . . ethics being merely human inventions since there is no deeper moral law.
A lot has been written on this. One excellent book is "The Scientific Origins of National Socialism" by Daniel Gasman. He examines the writings of Ernst Haeckel, 19th-century Germany’s leading exponent of Darwin’s theory, and finds many direct parallels between his ideas and Hitler’s: human life as insignificant . . . death as a constructive means of weeding out the unfit . . . Aryan supremacy . . . war as constructive and necessary for national health. He does not say Haeckel or Darwinism CAUSED Hitler, there were many factors, but Darwinism as mediated by Haeckel was one of them.
Another good book is "From Darwin to Hitler" by Richard Weikart. He examines how Darwinism became quickly established in Germany long before WWI, and demonstrates I think a clear connection to Hitler's ideology (though I disliked his criticisms of Gasman and thought they were inaccurate).
You say “Evolution is a theory that what survives survives, what is ‘fit’ is that which fits. The physical and biological environment selects as it changes. Social Darwinism is the theory that the "best" come out on top, that fit means ‘best’.” So, what if we apply that to people? That is what Social Darwinism is, trying to derive laws for human behavior from a Darwinian scenario of origins.
If we apply that to people, who were the best, the fittest, the ones on top in the mid and late 19th century? Obviously, according to very limited material and political standards, it was the white Europeans who dominated the globe largely because of their superior science and technology. This unchristian and unbiblical notion meant, to the Social Darwinists (who of course did not believe in the Bible), that the struggle for survival had brought the white race out on top.
Many people, including myself, believe that this is integral, foundational and essential to National Socialism. Of course there were many differences between Darwin and Hitler, no one claims that they were identical, so pointing out differences is irrelevant.
About the economy, you mention the threat of Communism, and this also was very real. The German Communist Party was the largest and most well organized in Europe. Moreover, many stories were coming out about the disasters that were taking place in the Soviet Union. There were not only Russian emigres in Germany but significant trading and military ties between the Weimar Republic and the new USSR, so people had some idea of what was going on there, and were very concerned about it spreading to Germany.
Also, I agree “Corporate Germany and the USA also feared communism in Germany and pumped millions into the Nazi party” – although corporations also put a lot of money into governments of any kind as a means of gaining influence. About National Socialism being kind to corporations, it is true the labor unions were broken and the corporations made great profits from rearmament, but they became slaves to the state in a way they had not anticipated. Moreover, in the end, Hitler’s bizarre fantasies led in the end to the destruction of those corporations and of the entire country.
I don’t know of any serious historian or credible person who portrays the Germans as the victims of the Jews, though of course that was a standard feature of Nazi propaganda, so maybe that is what you meant. As to the victim-oppressor narrative as a driver of polarization, as you point out, it is also an effective political tactic. If you want to bring down a system and get power for yourself, creating strife and division and society’s weak points is an elementary but highly effective maneuver. And now that the capital-labor division as proven to be completely useless, the divisions of gender and race are getting much more attention. As Hitler said, having an enemy to demonize is of great value in stirring up support.
About the last paragraph, you mention “a mass psychosis - like the Red Guards” – but of course the Red Guards had many victims, many people who did not fit in, did not go along, and did not fall into the psychosis. Similarly with the Germans. There were many Germans who never voted for Hitler. In the last relatively free election in the spring of 1933 the Nazis received less than 50% of the vote. Not all of them shared the Nazi ideology.
Werner Klemperer’s diary "I Will Bear Witness" described his experiences as Jew during the Third Reich. He gives instances of individual Germans who had nothing against him as a Jew (such as some stranger furtively slipping him some food on the bus, or helping him secretly in some way).
There was as you say a great deal of knowledge among ordinary Germans about what was going on. However, knowledge of and approval of are two different things. Many Germans knew something about what was going on, but how many of them approved, how many just did not care, and how many of them disapproved but were afraid to say anything? Many Americans would keep their mouths shut if they knew that any opposition, even a joke or a negative comment would end in a concentration camp. So we should not underestimate the element of fear. Of course there was a lot of heartless, callous cruelty and indifference as well.
There was one very rare German pastor who denied Germany’s “racial insanity” from the pulpit – he died a short time later in a concentration camp (now we have “gender insanity”).
Some eyewitness accounts of the Kristallnacht describe Germans who did not approve of it, who were embarrassed and ashamed, but dared not say anything. Who knows what many decent and ordinary Americans would do in that kind of a situation? An excellent book on Germans who did not approve of the regime is "In Hitler’s Germany" by Bernt Engelmann (he was 12 when Hitler came to power).
I think we might be at cross purposes. My point was meant to be that what survives is not the "best", it is what survives. A strain of bacteria that can resist a more acid environment than another is not the "best" bacteria, to be admired for the serendipity of its survival. Indeed, come the rains the bacteria that don't thrive in an acid medium will survive and the acid resistors might disappear.
The translation of the word "fit" into "best" or "dominant" is the mistake made by Social Darwinists. Darwinism cannot be directly translated into a social theory. Survival does not contain a value judgement. Suppose there were another asteroid impact and a few Eskimos survived because they were adapted to the terrible dark winter after the impact - can we convert this into a value judgement about the best way of organising a society? No.
Having said this, I agree with you that the word "Darwinism" has been used to justify a lot of nastiness. Where we disagree is that I think that this has occurred where people have incorrectly extended a simple theory about factors that affect the genetic makeup of species to social events. The extension from physical biology to value judgements about cultures was mistaken and wanton.
I feel that we have a soul and external things are like the weather. However, that should not stop us using umbrellas and giving our rain soaked neighbours a lift.
The subject of "mass psychosis" is interesting. Perhaps it is too strong a term because it medicalises something that is a matter of choice. However, organisations like the Hitler Youth, SA and Red Guards do have many aspects in common with cults. Perhaps we can say that being a member of the Red Guards was a choice but the people were only acting badly whilst under the influence of the organisation and, without that, might have been decent people. This has been my experience of talking to Germans who were around in the 1930s: basically decent people who went along with the system and believed in it.
I don’t think we are necessarily at cross purposes. My description of how Darwinism could be customized or adapted to meet a National Socialist agenda was not meant to imply that you held those views. Darwinists can go in many different directions – but in 19th-century Germany the theory was adapted to meet the demands of militarism, life is struggle, and racial superiority. But many people who believe in evolution today feel that we have reached a stage of civilization in which the rules of the survival of the fittest no longer apply because we have transcended them.
I understand your point about what survives not necessarily being the best – but people who believed they were the best before Darwinism and without Darwinism, found it easy to adapt the theory to their purposes. About Germans being the best before Darwinism, and believing they had a special spiritual quality that made them the unique bearers of civilization and culture, that was beginning to appear in Fichte and Hegel, along with Gobineau’s ideas of racial purity, before the Origin of Species was published (Gobineau was French, but popular in Germany).
Quote from you: {“The translation of the word ‘fit’ into ‘best’ or ‘dominant’ is the mistake made by Social Darwinists. Darwinism cannot be directly translated into a social theory. Survival does not contain a value judgement. Suppose there were another asteroid impact and a few Eskimos survived because they were adapted to the terrible dark winter after the impact - can we convert this into a value judgement about the best way of organising a society? No.”}
I agree that Darwinism SHOULD NOT be translated into a social theory, but is it right to say it CANNOT? That was done in the 19th century, and there is a certain logic in it. After all, if Darwinism is the correct account of human origins, shouldn’t our concepts of ethics and morality reflect our origins? Not only was it argued that ethics should be based on the realities of science (meaning Darwinism), but it was also claimed that the contrary ethic of Christianity was weak and enervating, and that it was wrong to show compassion or regard for the weak. And if Darwinism is true then Christian ethics are false, and who needs an ethical system based on falsehood?
I see your point about the Eskimos and mere survival not being proof of superiority, but German nationalists and race theorists were not the most logical and consistent thinkers. They took what seemed agreeable to them from Darwinism and ignored what was not.
About your statement {“I agree with you that the word ‘Darwinism’ has been used to justify a lot of nastiness. Where we disagree is that I think that this has occurred where people have incorrectly extended a simple theory about factors that affect the genetic makeup of species to social events. The extension from physical biology to value judgements about cultures was mistaken and wanton.}
It was mistaken and wanton as you say, but it occurred nevertheless and had a huge impact. False ideas can be very compelling. Who knows, maybe 100 years from now people will look on our views on transgenderism in the same way we look at Aryan supremacy – as something totally ridiculous and completely divorced from reality. People wonder how the Germans could have gone so far astray, but we can see some similar tendencies in our own society.
{I feel that we have a soul and external things are like the weather. However, that should not stop us using umbrellas and giving our rain soaked neighbours a lift.} No disagreement there. I don’t want to be one of those people of whom it is said “He is so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good.”
{The subject of "mass psychosis" is interesting. Perhaps it is too strong a term because it medicalises something that is a matter of choice.}
I agree, and think that things like the Red Guards, the SA and the Hitler Youth, Antifa and BLM go much deeper than mere psychosis. There is a certain logic behind the philosophies that drive them – a false logic but discernible nonetheless.
About decent people getting caught up in bad things, I believe in the concept of original sin – that all people are innately and deeply flawed from the start. Augustine described an incident he saw once where two infants were nursing at the same time from the same woman and one of them was trying to push the other one away because he did not want to share. We need training, instruction, right beliefs and values – and even those are not enough if the social pressures to do evil become great enough. And yet as you said, people do have a moral choice. We are not simply the mindless products of our environment and nothing more – and there are some people who love evil and instigate it.
We all know that the Nazis did not come from another planet. They were earthlings like ourselves, and if America ever goes through some of the hardships that Germany did – defeat in war, economic collapse, national humiliation and loss of territory – we too could follow some false messiah into madness. There are people in America today who would volunteer to be guards in death camps or concentration camps.
I certainly feel that Darwinism drove Hitlers racial ideology but perhaps in a more convoluted way. Darwinism was still a powerful development in the scientific world which had been primarily established by the British Empire. The royal society of Britain and the circles they moved in throughout Europe prided themselves in their intellectualism and advancement through the scientific method. They loved Darwins theories as those theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest justified the atrocities committed as the British Empire colonized much of the world and mistreated indigenous populations everywhere they went. It gave justification to the slave trade that Britiain dealt in, it legitimized their terrorizing of the African, Indian, North American, etc. populations because they obviously were not equal to the Brits. After the American revolution The crown started to lose its power as the ruling Empire of the western world but not before it assisted Hitlers rise to power and turned a blind eye to his persecution of races he deemed inferior (with the concurrence of the Brits and their turning a blind eye to his rapid military buildup.) The same could be said for many of the biggest American corporations along with scores of politicians and media sources of the time. The Nazi regime was supported by the Rockefellers, IBM, IG Farben, General Electric, General motors, Bayer, The NY Times, Shell gas, British petroleum, The Bush family etc and no doubt many others...
This is astonishingly anti-British. All of the European powers were fighting for control of the world in the 18th century. South America was Spanish and Portuguese, South East Asia was heavily Dutch as was South Africa. Only the East Coast strip of N.America was British, the rest was French, Spanish and Indian. Do you really believe that the other European Empires of the 18th century were more enlightened than the "Brits?". Were the Conquisatadors paragons of virtue? Almost the whole world were slavers in the 18th century.
Are you sure that your antagonism to the British is not just based on the foundation myths of the USA? The US is very anti-British because of their war of independence. When the colonists were prevented from expanding westwards by the British, because the British recognised the Indian nations who had helped against the French, they rebelled. It had nothing to do with the price of tea. When the United States expanded westwards, wiping out and corralling the Indians, they were among the most genocidal of nations, as bad as the Argentines in Patagonia or the Australians in Tasmania.
It was the post independence colonists globally who were the most genocidal, whether Spanish, Dutch, French or British.
The huge growth of the British Empire occurred along with the maritime defeat of the French, Dutch and Spanish in the wars of the late 18th century. It was not part of any definite plan until the 19th century, indeed India was controlled by the East India company on its own behalf until the 1850s. You talk of "the crown" but in 1642 the English cut off their King's head and from 1688 the monarchy was constitutionally reduced to a largely figurehead role. The US fought for the rights of "freeborn" Englishmen in 1776 (although anyone born English was free by then).
In the early 19th century the British Empire used its global hegemony to end slavery across the world. This was done before Darwin.
It cost billions of dollars and thousands of British lives. No good deed should go unpunished.
Returning to Social Darwinism, this was rife across the USA and Europe in the early 20th century. It was not a preserve of the British.
We should look at history in context. It is nonsense to say that because the Roman Empire was 60% slaves the Italians are presently the nastiest people on earth. In fact that is racism. All empires had slaves in 100AD, all empires had slaves in 1800AD. Thank God for the British of the 19th century who stopped it.
Social Darwinism – the belief that our ethics should reflect our Darwinian origins - was a significant trend in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But, other factors also influenced National Socialism. For example, long before Darwin German nationalists were arguing that Germany’s borders should be based on race and language, not on arbitrary political boundaries.
Darwinism gave legitimacy to many different ideas. If the survival of the fittest was at the root of our origins, why should we stop now? The strong survive and the weak die, and death can be an agent of advancement and purification. That could be and was used to justify imperialism, robber baron capitalism, racial hygiene and euthanasia, slavery and nationalism (the Germans and the British have proven to be the fittest in the struggle for survival).
Of course, those and other evils have existed since the beginning of human history, but Darwinism gave them more legitimacy.
And the Nazi regime was as you said supported by people and corporations in England and America, especially before the true nature of the Nazis was really known.
Also important were the defeat in WW1, the inflation and the depression, and the very real threat of nearby Soviet Bolshevism, and the weakness of the democratic opposition to Hitler. Many factors were involved and came together to create a perfect storm of evil. And Hitler’s criminal genius was undoubtedly a factor as well, as was the weakness of the British and the French.
Interesting history that I was not aware about. Seems true that the government-corporate corruption rises and falls over time as greed dominates. Must be that strong men-good times, etc story.
Quite right... I listened to the Huxley lecture last night after I mentioned it, I'll have to see why it's not playing bit I found the same thing on YouTube so here's the link....
Most of the revolutionary Jews are secular or non religious. The Bolsheviks were largely funded and instigated by the Rothschild family in retaliation for the Czar deporting them. The Rothschilds also funded Adam Weishaupt who founded the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776. It was said to have played a role in the American Revolution and the FRENCH Revolution. The Bolshevik Revolution brought in communism and WWI. Britain (Rothschild bank of England) funded and helped Hitler rise to power resulting in WWII and the holocaust. During the holocaust a young Jew posing as a Christian helped the Nazis round up Jews for the camps and helped confiscate their wealth. That was none other than George Soros as admitted in his own words in a televised interview.
There is a profound spiritual kinship between National Socialism and Communism. Both were opposed to democracy, political liberalism and the free market economic system. Both had complete contempt for the value of individual human life and were exceedingly destructive and cruel. This is why Stalin and Hitler got along so well before Hitler's betrayal, and why the Nazis and the Communists at times cooperated with each other in bringing down the Weimar democracy even while they were battling each other in the streets.
The are differences, though. The Nazis emphasized race and demonized Jews and other supposedly lesser races. The Communists emphasized economic class and demonized the capitalists and the kulaks.
Also, Naziism had deep roots in 19th century German thought. Before WWI and even before Hitler was born Germans were arguing that the Jews were the enemy of the German race . . . that racial purity was the key to cultural superiority . . . that democracy was a sham and Germans would find true freedom united under a dictator . . . that war has healthy and revitalizing while peace was enervating . . . that life was in essence a merciless struggle for survival of the fittest in which the death of even millions of people was an ordinary aspect of nature's harshness.
More than one student of Hitler has pointed out that none of the basic elements of his ideology were new. His unique contribution was to weld them all together and to organize an effective political movement to attain power.
Yes, the German National Socialists were particularly racist. However the rest of the world was also racist and anti-semitism was rife. The Russian Empire had used pogroms to expel millions of Jews into Europe, especially Germany, and after 1917 the Soviet Union continued the policy. The Spartacist uprising was believed by Germans to have been heavily supported by members of the Jewish migrant population ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacist_uprising ) and the unemployed, shabby poor were mostly Jewish. This meant that the German middle classes were primed to support genocide whereas the rest of Europe was just anti-semitic.
As you say, racism of various sorts (not all of it violent) was common, and antisemitism was rife not only in Russia but also in France. Also, Russian anti-semitism was very cruel. However, the Nazis took it to new levels such as had never been seen in the history of the world. Part of it was technology. This gave the Germans a power to destroy beyond imagination. If Genghis Khan, the Vikings, the Huns or Bogdan Chmelnitzki had had modern weapons who knows what they might have done?
But still, why the Jews? Two leaders of the Spartacists (Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg) were Jewish, and some of the leaders of the revolution in Bavaria were Jewish, but those were also authentically German movements. There were refugees from Eastern Europe, who were not welcome, and the conflation of Bolshevism with Judaism (largely because of Marx).
One thing that is interesting to note is, that after approximately 8 years of furious activity, marching, demonstrating, speechifying, the Nazis received only 2.6% of the national Reichstag vote in 1928. They were not popular and or well received. Nazi popularity skyrocketed to 37.3 in 1932, making them the largest party in Germany - so it was fear, anger, desperation for some solution to the depression that made many people turn to Hitler as there seemed to be no other alternative short of Communism - and even then many people did not care for Hitler's antisemitism.
Still, violent "exterminatory anti-Judaism" preceded all of that. Before WWI, Heinrich Class and the Pan-German League wanted Jews removed from many areas of German life. Before that, Paul Lagarde was arguing that Jews should be exterminated "like bacillae." He wrote in his 1887 essay "Jews and Indo-Germanics": “One would have to have a heart of steel to not feel sympathy for the poor Germans and, by the same token, to not hate the Jews, to not hate and despise those who – out of humanity! – advocate for the Jews or are too cowardly to crush these vermin. Trichinella and bacilli would not be negotiated with, trichinella and bacilli would also not be nurtured, they would be destroyed as quickly and as thoroughly as possible." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Lagarde (Wikipedia footnotes the original German source).
Part of this was the modern shift from ignorant and unbiblical religious antisemitism ("The Jews killed Christ") to modern secular racial antisemitism ("The Jews are corrupting German blood and German culture"). A deep subject! I even had the temerity to write a book on the subject. I was primarily arguing against the claim that Hitler and the Nazis were Christians, but as a result of that ended up exploring the origins of Hitler's ideas in 19th-century German secularism. The Darwinian element in Hitler's thought is debated, but I believe it was significant (Ernst Haeckel was a leading advocate of Darwin's new theory and Haeckel had some distinctly Nazi ideas, though of course he was not identical to Hitler). You might look at Richard Weikart's excellent book "From Darwin to Hitler." My book was "Hitler, the Holocaust and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany."
Yes, Social Darwinism was a mistaken interpretation of Evolutionary Theory. Evolution is a theory that what survives survives, what is "fit" is that which fits. The physical and biological environment selects as it changes. Social Darwinism is the theory that the "best" come out on top, that fit means "best". That if the dinosaurs had done more push ups and lessons before the asteroid struck they would have beaten the mammals :)
It is interesting that the German economy was in recession from 1930-32 (but not like the depression of 1922-23) and there was high unemployment. The communists were gaining traction from the unemployment and looked like they might gain an electoral majority. The middle classes were scared that this would lead to a repeat of 1919 and Communist revolution. Your point about fear being a driver is undoubtedly true. Corporate Germany and the USA also feared communism in Germany and pumped millions into the Nazi party - National Socialism is kind to corporations.
It is interesting in a modern context that the Germans were portrayed as the poor victims of the Jews. The victim-oppressor narrative was the driver of polarisation then as it is today.
The lack of empathy of Germans for Jewish people is shocking. As a parent even the thought of children being gassed almost brings tears to my eyes but somehow the German population were immune from empathy. All the evidence is that the German population did indeed know that the Jews were being brutally exterminated. I have spoken to Germans of that period:, with enough booze and if you sprung it on them they would confess that they knew and cry (this is particularly a reminiscence of a scientific conference I attended in Italy in the 1970s and a drunken pub crawl with four German academics but a German dentist I knew in the UK also told me about private shame, and pride, in her village back home). In truth they were nice people who were caught up in a mass psychosis - like the Red Guards etc.
The relationship between Darwinism and National Socialism has been hotly contested. Those who believe Darwin’s theory is true argue that it had nothing at all to do with National Socialism. After all, what does true science (as they see it) have to do with weird and irrational racial theories?
People who believe (as I do) that Darwinism is a false theory and hence feel no obligation to defend it, can see significant aspects of Darwinism in Hitler’s ideology: people as nothing but animals engaged in a pitiless and ruthless struggle for survival . . . the perishing of weaker and unfit elements being natural and normal, and people starving and dying in the millions is just part of nature. . . ethics being merely human inventions since there is no deeper moral law.
A lot has been written on this. One excellent book is "The Scientific Origins of National Socialism" by Daniel Gasman. He examines the writings of Ernst Haeckel, 19th-century Germany’s leading exponent of Darwin’s theory, and finds many direct parallels between his ideas and Hitler’s: human life as insignificant . . . death as a constructive means of weeding out the unfit . . . Aryan supremacy . . . war as constructive and necessary for national health. He does not say Haeckel or Darwinism CAUSED Hitler, there were many factors, but Darwinism as mediated by Haeckel was one of them.
Another good book is "From Darwin to Hitler" by Richard Weikart. He examines how Darwinism became quickly established in Germany long before WWI, and demonstrates I think a clear connection to Hitler's ideology (though I disliked his criticisms of Gasman and thought they were inaccurate).
You say “Evolution is a theory that what survives survives, what is ‘fit’ is that which fits. The physical and biological environment selects as it changes. Social Darwinism is the theory that the "best" come out on top, that fit means ‘best’.” So, what if we apply that to people? That is what Social Darwinism is, trying to derive laws for human behavior from a Darwinian scenario of origins.
If we apply that to people, who were the best, the fittest, the ones on top in the mid and late 19th century? Obviously, according to very limited material and political standards, it was the white Europeans who dominated the globe largely because of their superior science and technology. This unchristian and unbiblical notion meant, to the Social Darwinists (who of course did not believe in the Bible), that the struggle for survival had brought the white race out on top.
Many people, including myself, believe that this is integral, foundational and essential to National Socialism. Of course there were many differences between Darwin and Hitler, no one claims that they were identical, so pointing out differences is irrelevant.
About the economy, you mention the threat of Communism, and this also was very real. The German Communist Party was the largest and most well organized in Europe. Moreover, many stories were coming out about the disasters that were taking place in the Soviet Union. There were not only Russian emigres in Germany but significant trading and military ties between the Weimar Republic and the new USSR, so people had some idea of what was going on there, and were very concerned about it spreading to Germany.
Also, I agree “Corporate Germany and the USA also feared communism in Germany and pumped millions into the Nazi party” – although corporations also put a lot of money into governments of any kind as a means of gaining influence. About National Socialism being kind to corporations, it is true the labor unions were broken and the corporations made great profits from rearmament, but they became slaves to the state in a way they had not anticipated. Moreover, in the end, Hitler’s bizarre fantasies led in the end to the destruction of those corporations and of the entire country.
I don’t know of any serious historian or credible person who portrays the Germans as the victims of the Jews, though of course that was a standard feature of Nazi propaganda, so maybe that is what you meant. As to the victim-oppressor narrative as a driver of polarization, as you point out, it is also an effective political tactic. If you want to bring down a system and get power for yourself, creating strife and division and society’s weak points is an elementary but highly effective maneuver. And now that the capital-labor division as proven to be completely useless, the divisions of gender and race are getting much more attention. As Hitler said, having an enemy to demonize is of great value in stirring up support.
About the last paragraph, you mention “a mass psychosis - like the Red Guards” – but of course the Red Guards had many victims, many people who did not fit in, did not go along, and did not fall into the psychosis. Similarly with the Germans. There were many Germans who never voted for Hitler. In the last relatively free election in the spring of 1933 the Nazis received less than 50% of the vote. Not all of them shared the Nazi ideology.
Werner Klemperer’s diary "I Will Bear Witness" described his experiences as Jew during the Third Reich. He gives instances of individual Germans who had nothing against him as a Jew (such as some stranger furtively slipping him some food on the bus, or helping him secretly in some way).
There was as you say a great deal of knowledge among ordinary Germans about what was going on. However, knowledge of and approval of are two different things. Many Germans knew something about what was going on, but how many of them approved, how many just did not care, and how many of them disapproved but were afraid to say anything? Many Americans would keep their mouths shut if they knew that any opposition, even a joke or a negative comment would end in a concentration camp. So we should not underestimate the element of fear. Of course there was a lot of heartless, callous cruelty and indifference as well.
There was one very rare German pastor who denied Germany’s “racial insanity” from the pulpit – he died a short time later in a concentration camp (now we have “gender insanity”).
Some eyewitness accounts of the Kristallnacht describe Germans who did not approve of it, who were embarrassed and ashamed, but dared not say anything. Who knows what many decent and ordinary Americans would do in that kind of a situation? An excellent book on Germans who did not approve of the regime is "In Hitler’s Germany" by Bernt Engelmann (he was 12 when Hitler came to power).
I think we might be at cross purposes. My point was meant to be that what survives is not the "best", it is what survives. A strain of bacteria that can resist a more acid environment than another is not the "best" bacteria, to be admired for the serendipity of its survival. Indeed, come the rains the bacteria that don't thrive in an acid medium will survive and the acid resistors might disappear.
The translation of the word "fit" into "best" or "dominant" is the mistake made by Social Darwinists. Darwinism cannot be directly translated into a social theory. Survival does not contain a value judgement. Suppose there were another asteroid impact and a few Eskimos survived because they were adapted to the terrible dark winter after the impact - can we convert this into a value judgement about the best way of organising a society? No.
Having said this, I agree with you that the word "Darwinism" has been used to justify a lot of nastiness. Where we disagree is that I think that this has occurred where people have incorrectly extended a simple theory about factors that affect the genetic makeup of species to social events. The extension from physical biology to value judgements about cultures was mistaken and wanton.
I feel that we have a soul and external things are like the weather. However, that should not stop us using umbrellas and giving our rain soaked neighbours a lift.
The subject of "mass psychosis" is interesting. Perhaps it is too strong a term because it medicalises something that is a matter of choice. However, organisations like the Hitler Youth, SA and Red Guards do have many aspects in common with cults. Perhaps we can say that being a member of the Red Guards was a choice but the people were only acting badly whilst under the influence of the organisation and, without that, might have been decent people. This has been my experience of talking to Germans who were around in the 1930s: basically decent people who went along with the system and believed in it.
I don’t think we are necessarily at cross purposes. My description of how Darwinism could be customized or adapted to meet a National Socialist agenda was not meant to imply that you held those views. Darwinists can go in many different directions – but in 19th-century Germany the theory was adapted to meet the demands of militarism, life is struggle, and racial superiority. But many people who believe in evolution today feel that we have reached a stage of civilization in which the rules of the survival of the fittest no longer apply because we have transcended them.
I understand your point about what survives not necessarily being the best – but people who believed they were the best before Darwinism and without Darwinism, found it easy to adapt the theory to their purposes. About Germans being the best before Darwinism, and believing they had a special spiritual quality that made them the unique bearers of civilization and culture, that was beginning to appear in Fichte and Hegel, along with Gobineau’s ideas of racial purity, before the Origin of Species was published (Gobineau was French, but popular in Germany).
Quote from you: {“The translation of the word ‘fit’ into ‘best’ or ‘dominant’ is the mistake made by Social Darwinists. Darwinism cannot be directly translated into a social theory. Survival does not contain a value judgement. Suppose there were another asteroid impact and a few Eskimos survived because they were adapted to the terrible dark winter after the impact - can we convert this into a value judgement about the best way of organising a society? No.”}
I agree that Darwinism SHOULD NOT be translated into a social theory, but is it right to say it CANNOT? That was done in the 19th century, and there is a certain logic in it. After all, if Darwinism is the correct account of human origins, shouldn’t our concepts of ethics and morality reflect our origins? Not only was it argued that ethics should be based on the realities of science (meaning Darwinism), but it was also claimed that the contrary ethic of Christianity was weak and enervating, and that it was wrong to show compassion or regard for the weak. And if Darwinism is true then Christian ethics are false, and who needs an ethical system based on falsehood?
I see your point about the Eskimos and mere survival not being proof of superiority, but German nationalists and race theorists were not the most logical and consistent thinkers. They took what seemed agreeable to them from Darwinism and ignored what was not.
A search of “Social Darwinism in Germany” yielded this link to an article by Richard Weikart: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2710024
About your statement {“I agree with you that the word ‘Darwinism’ has been used to justify a lot of nastiness. Where we disagree is that I think that this has occurred where people have incorrectly extended a simple theory about factors that affect the genetic makeup of species to social events. The extension from physical biology to value judgements about cultures was mistaken and wanton.}
It was mistaken and wanton as you say, but it occurred nevertheless and had a huge impact. False ideas can be very compelling. Who knows, maybe 100 years from now people will look on our views on transgenderism in the same way we look at Aryan supremacy – as something totally ridiculous and completely divorced from reality. People wonder how the Germans could have gone so far astray, but we can see some similar tendencies in our own society.
{I feel that we have a soul and external things are like the weather. However, that should not stop us using umbrellas and giving our rain soaked neighbours a lift.} No disagreement there. I don’t want to be one of those people of whom it is said “He is so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good.”
{The subject of "mass psychosis" is interesting. Perhaps it is too strong a term because it medicalises something that is a matter of choice.}
I agree, and think that things like the Red Guards, the SA and the Hitler Youth, Antifa and BLM go much deeper than mere psychosis. There is a certain logic behind the philosophies that drive them – a false logic but discernible nonetheless.
About decent people getting caught up in bad things, I believe in the concept of original sin – that all people are innately and deeply flawed from the start. Augustine described an incident he saw once where two infants were nursing at the same time from the same woman and one of them was trying to push the other one away because he did not want to share. We need training, instruction, right beliefs and values – and even those are not enough if the social pressures to do evil become great enough. And yet as you said, people do have a moral choice. We are not simply the mindless products of our environment and nothing more – and there are some people who love evil and instigate it.
We all know that the Nazis did not come from another planet. They were earthlings like ourselves, and if America ever goes through some of the hardships that Germany did – defeat in war, economic collapse, national humiliation and loss of territory – we too could follow some false messiah into madness. There are people in America today who would volunteer to be guards in death camps or concentration camps.
I certainly feel that Darwinism drove Hitlers racial ideology but perhaps in a more convoluted way. Darwinism was still a powerful development in the scientific world which had been primarily established by the British Empire. The royal society of Britain and the circles they moved in throughout Europe prided themselves in their intellectualism and advancement through the scientific method. They loved Darwins theories as those theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest justified the atrocities committed as the British Empire colonized much of the world and mistreated indigenous populations everywhere they went. It gave justification to the slave trade that Britiain dealt in, it legitimized their terrorizing of the African, Indian, North American, etc. populations because they obviously were not equal to the Brits. After the American revolution The crown started to lose its power as the ruling Empire of the western world but not before it assisted Hitlers rise to power and turned a blind eye to his persecution of races he deemed inferior (with the concurrence of the Brits and their turning a blind eye to his rapid military buildup.) The same could be said for many of the biggest American corporations along with scores of politicians and media sources of the time. The Nazi regime was supported by the Rockefellers, IBM, IG Farben, General Electric, General motors, Bayer, The NY Times, Shell gas, British petroleum, The Bush family etc and no doubt many others...
This is astonishingly anti-British. All of the European powers were fighting for control of the world in the 18th century. South America was Spanish and Portuguese, South East Asia was heavily Dutch as was South Africa. Only the East Coast strip of N.America was British, the rest was French, Spanish and Indian. Do you really believe that the other European Empires of the 18th century were more enlightened than the "Brits?". Were the Conquisatadors paragons of virtue? Almost the whole world were slavers in the 18th century.
Are you sure that your antagonism to the British is not just based on the foundation myths of the USA? The US is very anti-British because of their war of independence. When the colonists were prevented from expanding westwards by the British, because the British recognised the Indian nations who had helped against the French, they rebelled. It had nothing to do with the price of tea. When the United States expanded westwards, wiping out and corralling the Indians, they were among the most genocidal of nations, as bad as the Argentines in Patagonia or the Australians in Tasmania.
It was the post independence colonists globally who were the most genocidal, whether Spanish, Dutch, French or British.
The huge growth of the British Empire occurred along with the maritime defeat of the French, Dutch and Spanish in the wars of the late 18th century. It was not part of any definite plan until the 19th century, indeed India was controlled by the East India company on its own behalf until the 1850s. You talk of "the crown" but in 1642 the English cut off their King's head and from 1688 the monarchy was constitutionally reduced to a largely figurehead role. The US fought for the rights of "freeborn" Englishmen in 1776 (although anyone born English was free by then).
In the early 19th century the British Empire used its global hegemony to end slavery across the world. This was done before Darwin.
see https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/slavery-the-slave-trade-and-reparations
It cost billions of dollars and thousands of British lives. No good deed should go unpunished.
Returning to Social Darwinism, this was rife across the USA and Europe in the early 20th century. It was not a preserve of the British.
We should look at history in context. It is nonsense to say that because the Roman Empire was 60% slaves the Italians are presently the nastiest people on earth. In fact that is racism. All empires had slaves in 100AD, all empires had slaves in 1800AD. Thank God for the British of the 19th century who stopped it.
Social Darwinism – the belief that our ethics should reflect our Darwinian origins - was a significant trend in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But, other factors also influenced National Socialism. For example, long before Darwin German nationalists were arguing that Germany’s borders should be based on race and language, not on arbitrary political boundaries.
Darwinism gave legitimacy to many different ideas. If the survival of the fittest was at the root of our origins, why should we stop now? The strong survive and the weak die, and death can be an agent of advancement and purification. That could be and was used to justify imperialism, robber baron capitalism, racial hygiene and euthanasia, slavery and nationalism (the Germans and the British have proven to be the fittest in the struggle for survival).
Of course, those and other evils have existed since the beginning of human history, but Darwinism gave them more legitimacy.
And the Nazi regime was as you said supported by people and corporations in England and America, especially before the true nature of the Nazis was really known.
Also important were the defeat in WW1, the inflation and the depression, and the very real threat of nearby Soviet Bolshevism, and the weakness of the democratic opposition to Hitler. Many factors were involved and came together to create a perfect storm of evil. And Hitler’s criminal genius was undoubtedly a factor as well, as was the weakness of the British and the French.
Interesting history that I was not aware about. Seems true that the government-corporate corruption rises and falls over time as greed dominates. Must be that strong men-good times, etc story.
Quite right... I listened to the Huxley lecture last night after I mentioned it, I'll have to see why it's not playing bit I found the same thing on YouTube so here's the link....
https://youtu.be/2WaUkZXKA30?si=ixJorq5-amAfcmLs
I've got a few other thoughts but will probably try to develop them a little further.... thanks
Most of the revolutionary Jews are secular or non religious. The Bolsheviks were largely funded and instigated by the Rothschild family in retaliation for the Czar deporting them. The Rothschilds also funded Adam Weishaupt who founded the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776. It was said to have played a role in the American Revolution and the FRENCH Revolution. The Bolshevik Revolution brought in communism and WWI. Britain (Rothschild bank of England) funded and helped Hitler rise to power resulting in WWII and the holocaust. During the holocaust a young Jew posing as a Christian helped the Nazis round up Jews for the camps and helped confiscate their wealth. That was none other than George Soros as admitted in his own words in a televised interview.
Do you have any links to the Soros interview?
Yes .... https://rumble.com/v2e7xkg-the-1998-60-minutes-interview-that-george-soros-tried-to-ban-.html