That is very interesting, and it also makes a lot of sense.
And, while I agree that some fool is going to try to make a "Nazis did 'X', just like 'Y'" statement, it is interesting to note the long-term problems with the welfare state.
But, just to be clear, not all welfare state supporters are Nazis. To be even clearer, the vast majority aren't.
Half has a point: The majority of nanny-state supporters aren't National Socialists, they're just international socialists.
Posted at 2005-03-23 19:44:52 [PermaLink]Interesting. Consistent with something I read earlier: in his book "Diary of a Man in Despair" an anti-Nazi German portrays a greedy woman (his former girlfriend, actually) gleefully selecting property which was confiscated from the French, and advising him to do likewise.
But no matter how much was stolen...and it clearly was a lot...could it have even come close to paying for the ongoing cost of the war?
Well another nail in the coffin of those Germano-philes who continue to claim that Hitler took power and was not popular at all in Germany. This book and Hitler's Willing Exocutioners should be required reading in High Schools all over the West.
Posted at 2005-03-24 12:39:54 [PermaLink]Damian,
this was a factor, of course, but not nearly the most important one. I don't want to make a judgment on such short notice, but I'm skeptical about such monocausal explanations for complex subject matters.
Andrew,
so you take Aly at his word without further refelction? Interesting.
And btw, Hitler did seize power, after the NSDAP had already been on the wane electorally.
Oh, and 'Hitler's Willling Executioners' isn't a good book:
In his most recent book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Goldhagen asserted that blame for the Holocaust should be placed on ordinary Germans and their unique brand of anti–Semitism. When contemporary historians from both sides of the Atlantic challenged him on this point, he eventually conceded that he had underestimated how factors other than anti–Semitism helped lead to the Third Reich’s crimes. “I skirted over some of this history a little too quickly,” he said.
There is no uniquely German anti-Semitism, Andrew.