No, German anti-semitism saw a sharp increase towards the end WW1, and the subsequent color revolution in 19-20 had a lot of Jewish/Commie overlap, furthering that weariness. Hitler and the NSDAP were products of this time. German anti-semitism had very deep roots.
While you're correct that the NSDAP didn't come into power with overwhelming support, they quickly secured it through their robust social welfare programs and pogroms.
They never secured overwhelming support, they didn't even secure majority support. The best the outlook Germans had on the Nazis was immediately after France fell: "Apparently the Nazis know how to win wars, and the economy looks okay!" Neither was true.
Their Social Welfare programs were fucking insane, and tied directly to absolute party loyalty. When you've got girls coming home from Hitler Youth camps pregnant claiming Adolf Hitler is the father of the baby because it is a baby for Germany, and that Adolf Hitler will take care of the child (meaning the German welfare state), that's going to freak people the hell out. The insane propagandizing of every aspect of society being governed by ridiculous Nazi virtue signaling every second may have improved some support, but it would also polarize the rest of the country, even if it were silent.
The pogroms were even more unpopular as it genuinely stoked blowback against the government and sympathy for Jews, despite relentless anti-jewish propaganda. The fact that German Jews of mixed ancestry were also being relentlessly targeted as part of Nazi racial laws did not help. This is why the Nazis had to repeatedly lie about the actions taken against Jews. In many typical ethnic cleansings & genocides, the population participates in the extermination due to the radicalization of the population being fully successful. The Rawandan genocide was never hidden for a moment (it was actually disseminated by mass media in the country), and and the Indonesian genocide against the Chinese was also completely transparent. In many cases, ethnic cleansings are popular (at least locally if not nationally). Even in the United States. This was not the case in Germany as the Nazis had to claim that Kristallnacht wasn't even from their direction, but was a kind of 'grass-roots uprising'.
He basically argued the same thing a leftist today would use on CNN: 'This was just a righteous expression of communal anger, I'm not endorsing the riots... I'm just saying that this is the inevitable result of oppression.'
They never secured overwhelming support, they didn't even secure majority support.
A myth to help rehabilitate and reintegrate Germany after WW2. The reality was, German lives improved immensely under Nazi rule. Most modern European welfare programs are modeled on the Nazi welfare state. Germans were also quite fond of the exotic plundered goods that were routinely distributed to them. Granted, eventually they were going to run out of nations and Jews to plunder, so it was a completely unsustainable system, but those who lived through it seem to have remembered it fondly, as long as they weren't Jews. Summer camp for kids, free healthcare, guaranteed jobs, national pride. It was paradise after the post-Weimar/Depression hell they'd just been through.
A myth to help rehabilitate and reintegrate Germany after WW2. The reality was, German lives improved immensely under Nazi rule.
It's not a myth about reintegrating Germany, it's the reality of the German war machine's logistical and economic base combined with the Nazis monetary policies which were as shit as the Wiemar Republic's. There is a myth that has persisted to this day about the mechanization of the Wermacht, despite the fact that the majority of German logistics were being transported by horse. The blockades of Germany were always going to be an absolute death blow to German economy, but the Nazi plan was always to win as fast as possible, based off of sheer momentum alone, and then try to acquire as much industrial base as they could get their hands on. Part of the military's planning for the invasion of France in 1940 was the major concern that Germany simply could not defeat France in a protracted war, even without the Russians or Americans threatening. If the Germans were bogged down at any point in the invasion of France, Germany would be facing horrific logistical problems replacing the vast losses in men and material.
The German planners were wrong about their assessment of French strength, but they are absolutely accurate about German weakness. The economy never fully recovered even from WW1, let alone The Great Depression. Germany had some resources, but winning a war against France and Russia would require an impossible feat. No one really expected French morale, discipline, and command to be as absolutely broken as it was. The German performance in 1940 was only matched by the unpreparedness of the English, and the self-defeating stupidity of the French command and control structure. Hitler badly misinterpreted the Soviets experience in the Winter War and believed that Russia had demonstrated itself to be in nearly the same level of disorganized incompetence as the French, and had objectively worse equipment and training. He did not expect Stalin to adapt as quickly as he did. The purges of Stalin's military was thought to more devastating than it was because Stalin had just narrowly not executed one of the few remaining competent commanders he had left in the Army, who immediately set about re-organizing the Red Army's recruiting and organization. The experience of covert German economic support to the Soviet Union, the visible observations of Soviet movements under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and early successes in 1941 did nothing to dissuade the Germans of their initial analysis of Russia. They over-estimated France, and underestimated Russia, but they knew that a war against both was the absolute pinnacle of ambition.
By the end of the war, the manpower and resource shortfall that was absolutely obvious to everyone in 1940 had become painfully clear to everyone as resource shortages of every possible kind were prevalent in Germany, the Riech Mark was devaluing itself as the Deuch Mark had done previously, the loss of population required the importation of soldiers from puppet regimes, and the Germans were struggling to even feed themselves. Germany never had a chance to win in WW2, and the Germans knew that their Achilles heel was an economy that had never fully recovered. And anyone with a passing knowledge in economics can tell you why socialist welfare & entitlement programs don't create economic growth. What little recovery of the German economy there had been been taking place under the Wiemar government who had one competent person who was reversing their monetary policy before the Nazis took power
Most modern European welfare programs are modeled on the Nazi welfare state...
Socialist polices that were carried forward from German State Socialism & Militarism were carried forward by National Socialists, and whose programs were replicated by Fabian and Revolutionary Socialists. No shit. It's as if Socialists are Socialists.
but those who lived through it seem to have remembered it fondly, as long as they weren't Jews.
Those who lived through it remembered how insane and invasive it is, but didn't know how much had gone horribly wrong until people started to realize how much the Nazis had been lying to their faces about literally everything. Living under Nazi rule during the war was already significantly brutal, but they thought they were winning. Pre-war, Germans were never comfortable with how the Nazis conducted themselves, and they were just always told that the situation was better than their lying eyes told them.
Where the Nazis experienced actual overwhelming support was in places like Czechoslovakia where ethnic Germans had faced genuine discrimination, and they were told by their socialist press that Germany was experiencing the greatest resurgence anyone had ever seen. National Socialism and Fascism was a progressive, intellectual, and modern philosophy that was touted the world over. To the Germanic-Czechs, this was all the benefits of a welfare state, with the wildest riches of a Capitalist state, and national pride of a Militarist state... right up until they let the wolf into the hen house.
That economic perfection never seemed to show up, and for some reason "National Pride" was just "Cult-like worship of Adolf Hitler".
Summer camp for kids, free healthcare, guaranteed jobs, national pride.
"Summer camp": Highly politically radicalized children who turning their parent into the Gestapo for getting pregnant at 15 or 16 to some guy because Adolf Hitler.
"Free Healthcare": Shit healthcare, as is to be expected.
"Guaranteed jobs": Forced low-paid labor into the defense industry
"National Pride": Because an Austrian-born lunatic wearing silly pants is the essence of the German nation because that guy literally said so.
It was paradise after the post-Weimar/Depression hell they'd just been through.
Initially this was because the communists were either dead of in hiding and could no longer try to burn down Berlin... again. After they got into power, the lack of any basic freedom, married with the utter lunacy of rabid socialism, did not make living in Nazi Germany even remotely present.
You tend to get lost in the weeds a lot, Giz. No one is defending socialist economics. Contemporary private correspondences and public interviews show a deliberate choice to support the Nazis in the pre-war years. And yeah, it wasn't pleasant to be a German in 44.
If the Germans were bogged down at any point in the invasion of France, Germany would be facing horrific logistical problems replacing the vast losses in men and material.
Sorry for necro'ing this one, Giz, but there's another point to this as well.
You can tell when you look at the actual German tech they went to war with that this was not a military structured around prolonged campaigns. A lot of German kit in WWII required lengthy, expensive maintenance to perform to spec - this is not a problem in a military optimised for brief lightning strikes where you are the aggressor and so can dictate the schedule to match your maintenance timetables and just use the brief window of combat to run out your maintenance intervals. It's also apparent in the lack of competence the German military of WWII had in providing necessary spares and equipment to return damaged vehicles to service.
Compare this to, say, US equipment which was built with maintainability very much in mind. Combine this with a US logistical train which would happily provide sufficient spares to built an entire new vehicle from parts and it's obvious which military is set up for lengthy campaigning - and had the industrial might necessary to pull this particular trick off.
You can also infer it from German practice regarding leave - for instance, during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe simply didn't grant leave - they wanted all hands to be able to prosecute their air war. The RAF, having no idea how long the engagement was going to run for and presumably reluctant to run the main line of defence into the ground, still allowed airmen leave.
No, German anti-semitism saw a sharp increase towards the end WW1, and the subsequent color revolution in 19-20 had a lot of Jewish/Commie overlap, furthering that weariness. Hitler and the NSDAP were products of this time. German anti-semitism had very deep roots.
While you're correct that the NSDAP didn't come into power with overwhelming support, they quickly secured it through their robust social welfare programs and pogroms.
They never secured overwhelming support, they didn't even secure majority support. The best the outlook Germans had on the Nazis was immediately after France fell: "Apparently the Nazis know how to win wars, and the economy looks okay!" Neither was true.
Their Social Welfare programs were fucking insane, and tied directly to absolute party loyalty. When you've got girls coming home from Hitler Youth camps pregnant claiming Adolf Hitler is the father of the baby because it is a baby for Germany, and that Adolf Hitler will take care of the child (meaning the German welfare state), that's going to freak people the hell out. The insane propagandizing of every aspect of society being governed by ridiculous Nazi virtue signaling every second may have improved some support, but it would also polarize the rest of the country, even if it were silent.
The pogroms were even more unpopular as it genuinely stoked blowback against the government and sympathy for Jews, despite relentless anti-jewish propaganda. The fact that German Jews of mixed ancestry were also being relentlessly targeted as part of Nazi racial laws did not help. This is why the Nazis had to repeatedly lie about the actions taken against Jews. In many typical ethnic cleansings & genocides, the population participates in the extermination due to the radicalization of the population being fully successful. The Rawandan genocide was never hidden for a moment (it was actually disseminated by mass media in the country), and and the Indonesian genocide against the Chinese was also completely transparent. In many cases, ethnic cleansings are popular (at least locally if not nationally). Even in the United States. This was not the case in Germany as the Nazis had to claim that Kristallnacht wasn't even from their direction, but was a kind of 'grass-roots uprising'.
He basically argued the same thing a leftist today would use on CNN: 'This was just a righteous expression of communal anger, I'm not endorsing the riots... I'm just saying that this is the inevitable result of oppression.'
A myth to help rehabilitate and reintegrate Germany after WW2. The reality was, German lives improved immensely under Nazi rule. Most modern European welfare programs are modeled on the Nazi welfare state. Germans were also quite fond of the exotic plundered goods that were routinely distributed to them. Granted, eventually they were going to run out of nations and Jews to plunder, so it was a completely unsustainable system, but those who lived through it seem to have remembered it fondly, as long as they weren't Jews. Summer camp for kids, free healthcare, guaranteed jobs, national pride. It was paradise after the post-Weimar/Depression hell they'd just been through.
It's not a myth about reintegrating Germany, it's the reality of the German war machine's logistical and economic base combined with the Nazis monetary policies which were as shit as the Wiemar Republic's. There is a myth that has persisted to this day about the mechanization of the Wermacht, despite the fact that the majority of German logistics were being transported by horse. The blockades of Germany were always going to be an absolute death blow to German economy, but the Nazi plan was always to win as fast as possible, based off of sheer momentum alone, and then try to acquire as much industrial base as they could get their hands on. Part of the military's planning for the invasion of France in 1940 was the major concern that Germany simply could not defeat France in a protracted war, even without the Russians or Americans threatening. If the Germans were bogged down at any point in the invasion of France, Germany would be facing horrific logistical problems replacing the vast losses in men and material.
The German planners were wrong about their assessment of French strength, but they are absolutely accurate about German weakness. The economy never fully recovered even from WW1, let alone The Great Depression. Germany had some resources, but winning a war against France and Russia would require an impossible feat. No one really expected French morale, discipline, and command to be as absolutely broken as it was. The German performance in 1940 was only matched by the unpreparedness of the English, and the self-defeating stupidity of the French command and control structure. Hitler badly misinterpreted the Soviets experience in the Winter War and believed that Russia had demonstrated itself to be in nearly the same level of disorganized incompetence as the French, and had objectively worse equipment and training. He did not expect Stalin to adapt as quickly as he did. The purges of Stalin's military was thought to more devastating than it was because Stalin had just narrowly not executed one of the few remaining competent commanders he had left in the Army, who immediately set about re-organizing the Red Army's recruiting and organization. The experience of covert German economic support to the Soviet Union, the visible observations of Soviet movements under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and early successes in 1941 did nothing to dissuade the Germans of their initial analysis of Russia. They over-estimated France, and underestimated Russia, but they knew that a war against both was the absolute pinnacle of ambition.
By the end of the war, the manpower and resource shortfall that was absolutely obvious to everyone in 1940 had become painfully clear to everyone as resource shortages of every possible kind were prevalent in Germany, the Riech Mark was devaluing itself as the Deuch Mark had done previously, the loss of population required the importation of soldiers from puppet regimes, and the Germans were struggling to even feed themselves. Germany never had a chance to win in WW2, and the Germans knew that their Achilles heel was an economy that had never fully recovered. And anyone with a passing knowledge in economics can tell you why socialist welfare & entitlement programs don't create economic growth. What little recovery of the German economy there had been been taking place under the Wiemar government who had one competent person who was reversing their monetary policy before the Nazis took power
Socialist polices that were carried forward from German State Socialism & Militarism were carried forward by National Socialists, and whose programs were replicated by Fabian and Revolutionary Socialists. No shit. It's as if Socialists are Socialists.
Those who lived through it remembered how insane and invasive it is, but didn't know how much had gone horribly wrong until people started to realize how much the Nazis had been lying to their faces about literally everything. Living under Nazi rule during the war was already significantly brutal, but they thought they were winning. Pre-war, Germans were never comfortable with how the Nazis conducted themselves, and they were just always told that the situation was better than their lying eyes told them.
Where the Nazis experienced actual overwhelming support was in places like Czechoslovakia where ethnic Germans had faced genuine discrimination, and they were told by their socialist press that Germany was experiencing the greatest resurgence anyone had ever seen. National Socialism and Fascism was a progressive, intellectual, and modern philosophy that was touted the world over. To the Germanic-Czechs, this was all the benefits of a welfare state, with the wildest riches of a Capitalist state, and national pride of a Militarist state... right up until they let the wolf into the hen house.
That economic perfection never seemed to show up, and for some reason "National Pride" was just "Cult-like worship of Adolf Hitler".
"Summer camp": Highly politically radicalized children who turning their parent into the Gestapo for getting pregnant at 15 or 16 to some guy because Adolf Hitler.
"Free Healthcare": Shit healthcare, as is to be expected.
"Guaranteed jobs": Forced low-paid labor into the defense industry
"National Pride": Because an Austrian-born lunatic wearing silly pants is the essence of the German nation because that guy literally said so.
Initially this was because the communists were either dead of in hiding and could no longer try to burn down Berlin... again. After they got into power, the lack of any basic freedom, married with the utter lunacy of rabid socialism, did not make living in Nazi Germany even remotely present.
You tend to get lost in the weeds a lot, Giz. No one is defending socialist economics. Contemporary private correspondences and public interviews show a deliberate choice to support the Nazis in the pre-war years. And yeah, it wasn't pleasant to be a German in 44.
Sorry for necro'ing this one, Giz, but there's another point to this as well.
You can tell when you look at the actual German tech they went to war with that this was not a military structured around prolonged campaigns. A lot of German kit in WWII required lengthy, expensive maintenance to perform to spec - this is not a problem in a military optimised for brief lightning strikes where you are the aggressor and so can dictate the schedule to match your maintenance timetables and just use the brief window of combat to run out your maintenance intervals. It's also apparent in the lack of competence the German military of WWII had in providing necessary spares and equipment to return damaged vehicles to service.
Compare this to, say, US equipment which was built with maintainability very much in mind. Combine this with a US logistical train which would happily provide sufficient spares to built an entire new vehicle from parts and it's obvious which military is set up for lengthy campaigning - and had the industrial might necessary to pull this particular trick off.
You can also infer it from German practice regarding leave - for instance, during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe simply didn't grant leave - they wanted all hands to be able to prosecute their air war. The RAF, having no idea how long the engagement was going to run for and presumably reluctant to run the main line of defence into the ground, still allowed airmen leave.