The Sinking of the RMS Titanic and other ships.

[Mayerling]

Well the comedic comparisons between Hitler's Germany and The Titanic are endless, but I'll spare everyone and just go with

Sure.

Yes, there is a comic element (dark comic element) to both, but I'll spare everyone too.

I'll join on the new thread, and leave this to the issue of shipwrecks, rather than ship-of-state or continents wrecks.

Jeff

[Phil H]

I have taken the liberty of starting a new thread here:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=194660#post194660

Phil

[Robert]

Yes, a new thread is called for.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Good idea.

Particularly as I couldn't disagree more with Adam's post.

They were idiots; the whole thing was a shambles.

I'lll leave that for the other thread: suffice to say a measure of their competence was starting wars and being destroyed. Yes, that's how competent they were. Even Stalin managed to avoid being destroyed, which, really, is the bare condition for government. Even a burrow owl can feed itself and stay alive until nature takes its toll, and while being able to experience pain; a burrow owl does not hold the ability to reason.

[Phil H]

I too support a new thread - this one on The Titanic has gone well off course!!

But I think this is an important and interesting discussion and clearly there are fantastically well-informed posters here on Casebook.

Thanks

Phil

[Adam Went]

The discussion has very much moved on from my last post but suffice it to say that Phil H, I agree with pretty much everything you've said there - the truth is that if you take their persecution out of the equation, the Nazis actually did a pretty good job of restoring the economy and national pride in the first few years of their reign. Unemployment rates plummeted, you no longer needed a wheelbarrow load of money to buy a loaf of bread, ordinary citizens took pride in who they were instead of being trodden down and living miserable lives under the conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles and the general economic climate of the 1920's. Hitler was massively popular in the 30's.

I can't remember who it was now but somebody once said that if Hitler had died in 1938, he would still to this day be hailed as one of the greatest leaders of the modern era.

But it certainly still is a touchy subject with some people, to give anything resembling praise to anything the Nazis did or anyone involved with the Nazi party. That's certainly very understandable, but in the interests of historical accuracy, they were not ALL that way.

If any of you get the chance, have a read of Alfons Heck's "A Child Of Hitler", it's a fascinating study of how a youth growing up in Nazi Germany was brought up eventually to be a leader of men near the end of the war, and the circumstances surrounding all of it.

Having gone on longer than I would have liked once again, yes Jeff, excellent idea - we should move this interesting discussion to its own thread.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Errata]

Fleetwood, Adam, Errata, Robert, and all others,

Any reactions to my idea?

Jeff

Well the comedic comparisons between Hitler's Germany and The Titanic are endless, but I'll spare everyone and just go with

Sure.

[Mayerling]

Let's start a new thread?

Fleetwood, Adam, Errata, Robert, and all others,

I have been guilty as all of you in what seems to be a serious thread here regarding German history to 1945, the Second World War and it's origins, German (and Hitlerian) blunders, the quality of leadership in the Third Reich, and the Holocaust. It's been really fascinating, particularly since we all seem so well versed on the subjects. Just one problem. Except for a 1943 UFA film that was anti British called TITANIC, and was a pretty well made film (whatever one thinks of its propaganda value to the Nazis), what has all of the last week's fascinating discussions got to do with the Sinking of the RMS Titanic and other naval disasters and mysteries (i.e. the Mary Celeste, what was on Sir George Tryon's mind when his orders led to the sinking of the HMS Victoria, what happened to the USS Cyclops). I think we shoud have a seperate World War II thread down here. It would be as active as the one on the ships.

Any reactions to my idea?

Jeff

[jason_c]

Phil, perhaps it was because for several years, Hitler did succeed, despite the worries and reservations of his followers. One of the Bolsheviks five occasions, he concluded that Lenin must have the faculty of seeing ten feet into the ground. Maybe the leading Nazis felt this way about Hitler, The bad news for Hitler was, he himself fell victim to this delusion.

I think this is certainly true. Hitler had brought a small factional Nazi party to power unlimited power in Germany. It was believed he had turned around the German economy too. And by 1940/41 they had all but defeated the allies in war. If Hitler said the Russians could be easily defeated then that must also be true. And to the easily influenced the final solution probably sounded as if it had merit..........

[jason_c]

Pick up any book on the holocaust, e.g. Sobibor, and you have a regime devoid of compassion and empathy, which ensures they lie firmly in the 'worst excesses of human existence' camp.

I wouldn;t disagree with that.

But the Final Solution was not decided upon until well after the war began (The Wansee Conference) and the concentration camp - per se - was not a Nazi invention. As Goebbels was always pleased to point out, that was a British invention during the Boer War.


Phil

Phil, or a Spanish invention in Cuba.


Which is not to hide our own role in building concentration camps. And it was death camps which the Nazi's "perfected".

[Robert]

Phil, perhaps it was because for several years, Hitler did succeed, despite the worries and reservations of his followers. One of the Bolsheviks said that after seeing himself proved wrong and Lenin proved right on about five occasions, he concluded that Lenin must have the faculty of seeing ten feet into the ground. Maybe the leading Nazis felt this way about Hitler, The bad news for Hitler was, he himself fell victim to this delusion.

[Phil H]

A lot of the "philosophy" the Nazi's used to back up their ideas was actually a screen. Sophistry rather than philosophy, I think (i.e. you choose your conclusion and then justify it).

Rosenberg (a Balt, I seem to recall, rather than a German) was the Party's chief "theoriser". He relied more of Houston Stewart Chamberlain than anyone else. H S Chamberlain (no relation to the PM as far as I know) was, I think, a theosopist (follower of Madame Blavatsky and her odd ideas).

Himmler's staring point was Volkisch ideas, but he then got into a lot of odd ideas related to the former germanenorden and the Thule Society (a progenitor of the Nazi Party in the 1918-22 period). They traded on the strange ideas of Sebbotendorf, Guido von List and other Arian followers such as Karl Maria Wiligut who was a member (Brigadier, or some such) in the SS.

In order to arrive at an acceptable standard of behaviour then a judgement call has to be made.

What is an acceptable standdard of behaviour in historical terms - where were the limits Churchill must have obeyed had the Germans invaded the Uk in 1940? When is the Taliban wrong or the French Reistance right? Surely it is all perceptual, rather than absolute, it depends on whether you regard yourself as subject or master, equals or enslaved (mentally or physically)?

Finally, "working up to the Fuhrer as it was called" - trying to ascertain his views then out do them, without orders - was certainly used by many Nazis to get their ideas across and gain favour. Yet, for all that they were never inclined to overthrow Hitler, despite his many weaknesses and their talents? Why?

Phil

[Fleetwood Mac]

I think the Nazis tried to rope in Hegel too.

Nietzsche would have been appalled to be associated with the Nazis. Unfortunately he had a rotten sister.

All true, Robert.

Similarly Darwin: they misunderstood what he was saying and were more in tune with Herbert Spencer.

They did manage to rope in the living Martin Heidegger, who though not particularly anti-semitic, was attracted to their anti-liberal sentiment.

Really interesting how such a radical, brilliant philosopher such as Heidegger could end up in cahoots with that lot.

[Robert]

I think the Nazis tried to rope in Hegel too.

Nietzsche would have been appalled to be associated with the Nazis. Unfortunately he had a rotten sister.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Phil,

As a measure of their stupidity:

Nietzsche believed, among others things, that a healthy man makes his own way; his values are his own and a statement of his own vitality; not values generated by a reaction to those whom you don't like or are in a position of power etc.

So what did the Nazis go and do? They made Nietzsche one of the fathers of their philosophy while blaming everything on 'the Jews'.

They really couldn't be more stupid and ignorant of what Nietzsche was actually saying. In the event Nietzsche had been alive, God alone knows what he would have made of it. He'd already renounced his German citizenship; I imagine he would have left the country and set up shop elsewhere.