FCC 'Diversity' Chief Calls for ‘Confrontational Movement’
N∅ ∅baMa∅
FCC 'Diversity' Chief Calls for ‘Confrontational Movement’ to Give
Public Broadcasting Dominant Role in Communications
Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), called for a “confrontational movement” to combat
what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations
and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust
public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53055
HEIL 0baMa0 HITLER!
~ RHF
> Inspired by Saul Alinsky,http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2314
Glenn Beck had a lot to say about Prez Obama's
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53055
Mark Lloyd and the FCC on his FOX News TV
Show last night.
http://www.fcc.gov/ogc/lloyd.html
http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=4608
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/52435
.
Glenn Beck -wrt- Mark Lloyd and the FCC
http://raymondpronk.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/mark-lloyd-fcc-diversity-czar-and-cass-sustein-regulatory-czar-progressive-radical-socialist-silencing-of-free-speech-on-internet-blogs-and-talk-radio/
.
Mark Lloyd Prez Obama's Czar at the FCC
Leading the Attack on Freedom of Speech
http://www.khakielephant.com/2009/08/mark-lloyd-fccs-new-attack-free-speech.html
-and-
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/14/fairness-doctrine-raises-its-ugly-head-under-new-fcc-diversity-czar/
-and-
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/mark-lloyd-redistribution-of-wealth-czar-at-the-fcc/
.
Watch Glen Beck FOX TV this Week for the
http://www.foxnews.com/glennbeck/index.html
Truth About the Obama-Regime© and the
Obama-Czars© & The Obama-S-Corps©
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/tv/
Begin to Understand the Realities of 21st Century
Liberal-Fascism being employed by the Obama-
Regime© like Mark Lloyd at the FCC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck
.
O.B.A.M.A. = One Big Absolute Mistake America !
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/244b71e8dcd31438
The ObamaNation© Creating a Culture of Joblessness and Dependency
.
.
dave
> Inspired by Saul Alinsky, http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2314
> Public Broadcasting Dominant Role in Communications
>
> Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications
> what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations
> and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust
> public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC.
>
> http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53055
>
> HEIL 0baMa0 HITLER!
Democracy dies without information.
dave
\> .
> O.B.A.M.A. = One Big Absolute Mistake America !
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/244b71e8dcd31438
> The ObamaNation© Creating a Culture of Joblessness and Dependency
> .
When you throw everything you got at something you run the risk of
response in kind and then some. Be careful what you wish for.
cuh...@webtv.net
cuhulin
~ RHF
> N? ?baMa? wrote:
> > FCC 'Diversity' Chief Calls for ‘Confrontational Movement’ to Give
> > Public Broadcasting Dominant Role in Communications
>
> > Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications
> > what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations
> > and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust
> > public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC.
>
> >http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53055
>
> > HEIL 0baMa0 HITLER!
- Democracy dies without information.
Dave - Mark Lloyd does not believe in American
Democracy and Freedom of the Press {Media}
including Freedom of Speech : Mark Lloyd's Hero
is Hugo Chavez and Total Government Controlled
Media.
Dave Mark Lloyd believes in Government Controlled
Media providing you your 'information' Obama-Ganda©.
[ We Love You Big Government - Praise Be The Obama ]
-read- The Truth About the Obama-Regime's©
Liberal-Fascist Attack on Freedom-of-Speech
by Obama-Czar© Mark Lloyd at the FCC
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/1da81756d8749b17
.
dave
>
> - Democracy dies without information.
>
> Dave - Mark Lloyd does not believe in American
> Democracy and Freedom of the Press {Media}
> including Freedom of Speech : Mark Lloyd's Hero
> is Hugo Chavez and Total Government Controlled
> Media.
>
I'd love to see a cite for this one...
Opposing viewpoints on every channel!
~ RHF
> ~ RHF wrote:
>
> > - Democracy dies without information.
>
- - Democracy and Freedom of the Press {Media}
- - including Freedom of Speech : Mark Lloyd's Hero
- - is Hugo Chavez and Total Government Controlled
- - Media.
-
- I'd love to see a cite for this one...
-cite- cite- cite- Prez Obama's FCC CZAR
Mark Lloyd Loves Hugo Chavez's Revolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF2C235fD7o
-oops- in his own Liberal-Fascist Words to boot
- Opposing viewpoints on every channel!
Sort of what you get {not} on PBS & NPR a Raging
Liberal Advocate with a weak voice 'moderate' . . .
-oops- What's missing a real Conservative Voice
giving the opposite point of view.
The narrow Obama-Ganda© US Federal Government's
version of the Truth for all the good little Obama-Bots©
.
dave
> On Aug 28, 5:33 am, dave <d...@dave.dave> wrote:
>> ~ RHF wrote:
>>
>>> - Democracy dies without information.
> - - Dave - Mark Lloyd does not believe in American
> - - Democracy and Freedom of the Press {Media}
> - - including Freedom of Speech : Mark Lloyd's Hero
> - - is Hugo Chavez and Total Government Controlled
> - - Media.
> -
> - I'd love to see a cite for this one...
>
> -cite- cite- cite- Prez Obama's FCC CZAR
> Mark Lloyd Loves Hugo Chavez's Revolution
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF2C235fD7o
> -oops- in his own Liberal-Fascist Words to boot
>
which it was. I like the guy. The righties get their panties in a knot
whenever the lefties "steal" their tactics. Tough titties.
Nickname unavailable
its impossible for a liberal to be a fascist. fascism is a form of
conservatism. hitler and mussolini were conservatives.
hitler was a conservative:As Hitler himself wrote:
"The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the
liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of
humanity
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm
Myth: Hitler was a leftist.
Fact: Nearly all of Hitler's beliefs
placed him on the far right.
Summary
Many conservatives accuse
Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named
"National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and
control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private
capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn
were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism
does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be
democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always
on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics
over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over
cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship
over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism,
nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness,
common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and
even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an
atheist.
Argument
To most people, Hitler's beliefs belong to the
extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in
patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and
you arrive at Hitler's warring nationalism. This association has long
been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To deflect such
criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack,
claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the
political left, not the right.
The primary basis for this claim is
that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word "National" evokes the
state, and the word "Socialist" openly identifies itself as such.
However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this
term: it was a misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of
political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic
(which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Liberal Democrat"
party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether
Hitler called his party "socialist," but whether or not it actually
was.
In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level
anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people -- after all,
wasn't the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and
political parties have called themselves "socialist," but none have
actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few
basic political terms.
Perhaps the primary concern of any political
ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This
includes factories, farmlands, machinery, etc. Generally there have
been three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in
which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and
peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their
livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling
elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own
the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those
who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are
excluded. The third (and untried) approach is socialism, where
everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the
vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few
people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at
the other.
Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common
is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well
as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses.
Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own
companies that would operate on a free market, without any central
government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is
hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker
ownership of production.
The Soviet Union failed to qualify as
socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a
type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the
shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian
government. In variants of socialism that call for a central
government, that government is always a strong or even direct
democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator
claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a
"socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in
control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-
socialist.
And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers
controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke.
It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism.
Technically, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of
production. The Nazi "Charter of Labor" gave employers complete power
over their workers. It established the employer as the "leader of the
enterprise," and read: "The leader of the enterprise makes the
decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the
enterprise." (1)
The employer, however, was subject to the frequent
orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933,
they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the
direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed,
making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great
Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following
Keynesian-like policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of
the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful
without resorting to dictatorship or war.)
Prior to the Nazi seizure
of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in
response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler
exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their
labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were
empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German
businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power.
Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:
• "The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow
[Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the
masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly
'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to
keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample
supply of it." (2)
Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all
his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective
bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the "Labor
Front" replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the
Nazi party and did not represent workers. According to the law that
created it, "Its task is to see that every individual should be able…
to perform the maximum of work." Workers would indeed greatly boost
their productivity under Nazi rule. But they also became exploited.
Between 1932 and 1936, workers wages fell, from 20.4 to 19.5 cents an
hour for skilled labor, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for
unskilled labor. (3) Yet workers did not protest. This was partly
because the Nazis had restored order to the economy, but an even
bigger reason was that the Nazis would have cracked down on any
protest.
There was no part of Nazism, therefore, that even remotely resembled
socialism. But what about the political nature of Nazism in general?
Did it belong to the left, or to the right? Let's take a closer look:
The politics of Nazism
The political right is popularly associated with the following
principles. Of course, it goes without saying that these are
generalizations, and not every person on the far right believes in
every principle, or disbelieves its opposite. Most people's political
beliefs are complex, and cannot be neatly pigeonholed. This is as true
of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a
leftist, it's worth reviewing the tenets popularly associated with the
right. These include:
• Individualism over collectivism.
• Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.
• Eugenics over freedom of reproduction.
• Merit over equality.
• Competition over cooperation.
• Power politics and militarism over pacifism.
• One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.
• Capitalism over Marxism.
• Realism over idealism.
• Nationalism over internationalism.
• Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.
• Meat-eating over vegetarianism.
• Gun ownership over gun control
• Common sense over theory or science.
• Pragmatism over principle.
• Religion over secularism.
Let's review these spectrums one by one, and see where Hitler stood in
his own words. Ultimately, Hitler's views are not monolithically
conservative -- on a few issues, his views are complex and difficult
to label. But as you will see, the vast majority of them belong on the
far right:
Individualism over collectivism.
Many conservatives argue that Hitler was a leftist because he
subjugated the individual to the state. However, this characterization
is wrong, for several reasons.
The first error is in assuming that this is exclusively a liberal
trait. Actually, U.S. conservatives take considerable pride in being
patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed
their lives for their country. The Marine Corps is a classic example:
as every Marine knows, all sense of individuality is obliterated in
the Marines Corps, and one is subject first, foremost and always to
the group.
The second error is forgetting that all human beings subscribe to
individualism and collectivism. If you believe that you are personally
responsible for taking care of yourself, you are an individualist. If
you freely belong and contribute to any group -- say, an employing
business, church, club, family, nation, or cause -- then you are a
collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a person
inherently "liberal" or "conservative," and to claim that you are an
"evil socialist" because you champion a particular group is not a
serious argument.
Political scientists therefore do not label people "liberal" or
"conservative" on the basis of their individualism or collectivism.
Much more important is how they approach their individualism and
collectivism. What groups does a person belong to? How is power
distributed in the group? Does it practice one-person rule, minority
rule, majority rule, or self-rule? Liberals believe in majority rule.
Hitler practiced one-person rule. Thus, there is no comparison.
And on that score, conservatives might feel that they are off the
hook, too, because they claim to prefer self-rule to one-person rule.
But their actions say otherwise. Many of the institutions that
conservatives favor are really quite dictatorial: the military, the
church, the patriarchal family, the business firm.
Hitler himself downplayed all groups except for the state, which he
raised to supreme significance in his writings. However, he did not
identify the state as most people do, as a random collection of people
in artificially drawn borders. Instead, he identified the German state
as its racially pure stock of German or Aryan blood. In Mein Kampf,
Hitler freely and interchangeably used the terms "Aryan race," "German
culture" and "folkish state." To him they were synonyms, as the quotes
below show. There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were
not part of Hitler's state, while there were Germans outside Germany
(for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that
Hitler's political philosophy was not really based on "statism" as we
know it today. It was actually based on racism -- again, a subject
that hits uncomfortably closer to home for conservatives, not
liberals.
As Hitler himself wrote:
"The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the
liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of
humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the
soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." (4)
"The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and
advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogenous
creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence
as a race… Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for
the preservation of those original racial elements which bestow
culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as
Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a
nationality which… assures the preservation of this nationality…" (5)
"The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the
task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks
of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of
raising them to a dominant position." (6)
And it was in the service of this racial state that Hitler encourage
individuals to sacrifice themselves:
"In [the Aryan], the instinct for self-preservation has reached its
noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life
of the community and, if the hour demands it, even sacrifices it." (7)
"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to
the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for
every truly human culture." (8)
Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.
"All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and
technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the
creative product of the Aryan." (9)
"Aryan races -- often absurdly small numerically -- subject foreign
peoples, and then… develop the intellectual and organizational
capacities dormant within them." (10)
"If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop…
Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a
short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up… the present
culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it
awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture." (11)
"Every racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline
of the hybrid product…" (12)
"It is the function above all of the Germanic states first and
foremost to call a fundamental halt to any further
bastardization." (13)
"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction
of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the
purity of our blood…" (14)
Eugenics over freedom of reproduction
"The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that
nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs,
horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself…" (15)
"The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has
neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of all life.
It must take care to keep it pure… It must see to it that only the
healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's
own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and
one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be
considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the
nation. Here the state… must put the most modern medical means in the
service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all
who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and
therefore pass it on…" (16)
Merit over equality.
"The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the
most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national
community to leading position and leading influence. But as in
economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from above, but must
struggle through for themselves…" (17)
"It must not be lamented if so many men set out on the road to arrive
at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will in this way be
recognized, and will be the victor." (p. 512.)
Competition over cooperation.
"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to
fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." (18)
"It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this
world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always
been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the
very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of
the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking
revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and
realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations,
never as enterprises of coalitions." (19)
"The idea of struggle is old as life itself, for life is only
preserved because other living things perish through struggle… In this
struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the
weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by the
principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself
in the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle…
If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won." (20)
Power politics and militarism over pacifism.
Allan Bullock, probably the world's greatest Hitler historian, sums up
Hitler's political method in one sentence:
"Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitler's ideas can be
reduced to a simple claim for power which recognizes only one
relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that of
force." (21)
The following quotes by Hitler portray his rather stunning contempt
for pacifism:
"If the German people in its historic development had possessed that
herd unity [defined here by Hitler as racial solidarity] which other
peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of
the globe. World history would have taken a different course, and no
one can distinguish whether in this way we would not have obtained
what so many blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining
and whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of
tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious sword
of a master people, putting the world into the service of a higher
culture." (22)
"We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost
territories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through
pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms." (23)
"In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right
perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and
subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this
earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism." (24)
One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.
"The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization
anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects… a principle of majority
rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of
other people's wills and opinion." (25)
"The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but
must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but
their master!" (26)
"By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the
numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority
rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature…" (27)
"For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never
replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise
man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards." (28)
"There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons,
and the word 'council' must be restored to its original meaning.
Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will
be made by one man." (29)
"When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the
scales dropped from my eyes." (30)
"The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism…" (31)
"Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to
comprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social
Democracy." (32)
Capitalism over Marxism.
Bullock writes of Hitler's views on Marxism:
"While Hitler's attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt,
towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility… Ignoring the
profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in
practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class
parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he
detested -- mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to
the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and
friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the
domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity;
internationalism versus nationalism." (33)
As Hitler himself would write:
"The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism." (34)
"In the years 1913 and 1914, I… expressed the conviction that the
question of the future of the German nation was the question of
destroying Marxism." (35)
"In the economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the
political sphere." (36)
"The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in
indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the
national intellectual world, destined by them for extinction." (37)
"Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the
Jews." (38)
"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of
Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the
mass of numbers and their dead weight." (39)
Realism over idealism.
Hitler was hardly an "idealist" in the sense that political scientists
use the term. The standard definition of an idealist is someone who
believes that cooperation and peaceful coexistence can occur among
peoples. A realist, however, is someone who sees the world as an
unstable and dangerous place, and prepares for war, if not to deter
it, then to survive it. It goes without saying that Hitler was one of
the greatest realists of all time. Nonetheless, Hitler had his own
twisted utopia, which he described:
"We are not simple enough, either, to believe that it could ever be
possible to bring about a perfect era. But this relieves no one of the
obligation to combat recognized errors, to overcome weaknesses, and
strive for the ideal. Harsh reality of its own accord will create only
too many limitations. For that very reason, however, man must try to
serve the ultimate goal, and failures must not deter him, any more
than he can abandon a system of justice merely because mistakes creep
into it…" (40)
"The same boy who feels like throwing up when he hears the tirades of
a pacifist 'idealist' is ready to give up his life for the ideal of
his nationality." (41)
Nationalism over internationalism.
"The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when… their
international poisoners are exterminated." (42)
"The severest obstacle to the present-day worker's approach to the
national community lies not in the defense of his class interests, but
in his international leadership and attitude which are hostile to the
people and the fatherland." (43)
"Thus, the reservoir from which the young [Nazi] movement must gather
its supporters will primarily be the masses of our workers. Its work
will be to tear these away from the international delusion… and lead
them to the national community…" (44)
Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.
"Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they
imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few
exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of
Nature: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on
earth." (45)
"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this
world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which,
fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its
will against all others." (46)
Meat-eating over vegetarianism.
It may seem ridiculous to include this issue in a review of Hitler's
politics, but, believe it or not, conservatives on the Internet
frequently equate Hitler's vegetarianism with the vegetarianism
practised by liberals concerned about the environment and the ethical
treatment of animals.
Hitler's vegetarianism had nothing to do with his political beliefs.
He became a vegetarian shortly after the death of his girlfriend and
half-niece, Geli Raubal. Their relationship was a stormy one, and it
ended in her apparent suicide. There were rumors that Hitler had
arranged her murder, but Hitler would remain deeply distraught over
her loss for the rest of his life. As one historian writes:
"Curiously, shortly after her death, Hitler looked with disdain on a
piece of ham being served during breakfast and refused to eat it,
saying it was like eating a corpse. From that moment on, he refused to
eat meat." (47)
Hitler's vegetarianism, then, was no more than a phobia, triggered by
an association with his niece's death.
Gun ownership over gun control
Perhaps one of the pro-gun lobby's favorite arguments is that if
German citizens had had the right to keep and bear arms, Hitler would
have never been able to tyrannize the country. And to this effect, pro-
gun advocates often quote the following:
"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation
has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more
efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." -
Adolf Hitler
However, this quote is almost certainly a fraud. There is no reputable
record of him ever making it: neither at the Nuremberg rallies, nor in
any of his weekly radio addresses. Furthermore, there was no reason
for him to even make such a statement; for Germany already had strict
gun control as a term of surrender in the Treaty of Versailles. The
Allies had wanted to make Germany as impotent as possible, and one of
the ways they did that was to disarm its citizenry. Only a handful of
local authorities were allowed arms at all, and the few German
citizens who did possess weapons were already subject to full gun
registration. Seen in this light, the above quote makes no sense
whatsoever.
The Firearms Policy Journal (January 1997) writes:
"The Nazi Party did not ride to power confiscating guns. They rode to
power on the inability of the Weimar Republic to confiscate their
guns. They did not consolidate their power confiscating guns either.
There is no historical evidence that Nazis ever went door to door in
Germany confiscating guns. The Germans had a fetish about paperwork
and documented everything. These searches and confiscations would have
been carefully recorded. If the documents are there, let them be
presented as evidence."
On April 12, 1928, five years before Hitler seized power, Germany
passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition. This law substantially
tightened restrictions on gun ownership in an effort to curb street
violence between Nazis and Communists. The law was ineffectual and
poorly enforced. It was not until March 18, 1938 -- five years after
Hitler came to power -- that the Nazis passed the German Weapons Law,
their first known change in the firearm code. And this law actually
relaxed restrictions on citizen firearms.
Common sense over theory or science.
Hitler was notorious for his anti-intellectualism:
"The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things
ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again… In
many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so
swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the
individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find
application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man
working and earning his living in a definite field." (48)
"Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but
it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The
result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls
down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in
life." (49)
"The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work
primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of
absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only
secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the
development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and
determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility,
and only in last place comes scientific schooling." (50)
"A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed
and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will
not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth." (51)
Pragmatism over principle.
"The question of the movement's inner organization is one of
expediency and not of principle." (52)
Religion over secularism.
Hitler's views on religion were complex. Although ostensibly an
atheist, he considered himself a cultural Catholic, and frequently
evoked God, the Creator and Providence in his writings. Throughout his
life he would remain an envious admirer of the Christian Church and
its power over the masses. Here is but one example:
"We can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its
doctrinal edifice… comes into collision with exact science and
research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one
little syllable of its dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that
its power of resistance does not lie in its lesser or greater
adaptation to the scientific findings of the moment, which in reality
are always fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once
established, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body
the character of faith. And so it stands today more firmly than
ever." (53)
Hitler also saw a useful purpose for the Church:
"The great masses of people do not consist of philosophers; precisely
for the masses, [religious] faith is often the sole foundation of a
moral attitude… For the political man, the value of a religion must be
estimated less by its deficiencies than by the virtue of a visibly
better substitute. As long as this appears to be lacking, what is
present can be demolished only by fools or criminals." (54)
Hitler thus advocated freedom of religious belief. Although he would
later press churches into the service of Nazism, often at the point of
a gun, Hitler did not attempt to impose a state religion or mandate
the basic philosophical content of German religions. As long as they
did not interfere with his program, he allowed them to continue
fuctioning. And this policy was foreshadowed in his writings:
"For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of
his people must always remain inviolable; or else he has no right to
be in politics…" (55)
"Political parties have nothing to do with religious problems, as long
as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and
ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the
scheming of political parties." (56)
"Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of
religious conviction for political ends." (57)
"Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if
you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred
duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps
outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into
the other." (58)
Hitler was raised a Catholic, even going to school for two years at
the monastery at Lambauch, Austria. As late as 24 he still called
himself a Catholic, but somewhere along the way he became an atheist.
It is highly doubtful that this was an intellectual decision, as a
reading of his disordered thoughts in Mein Kampf will attest. The
decision was most likely a pragmatic one, based on power and personal
ambition. Bullock reveals an interesting anecdote showing how these
considerations worked on the young Hitler. After five years of eking
out a miserable existence in Vienna and four years of war, Hitler
walked into his first German Worker's Party meeting:
"'Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas-lamp I could see four people
sitting around a table…' As Hitler frankly acknowledges, this very
obscurity was an attraction. It was only in a party which, like
himself, was beginning at the bottom that he had any prospect of
playing a leading part and imposing his ideas. In the established
parties there was no room for him, he would be a nobody." (59)
Hitler probably realized that a frustrated artist and pipe-dreamer
like himself would have no chance of achieving power in the world-
wide, 2000-year old Christian Church. It was most likely for this
reason that he rejected Christianity and pursued a political life
instead. Yet, curiously enough, he never renounced his membership in
the Catholic Church, and the Church never excommunicated him. Nor did
the Church place his Mein Kampf on the Index of Prohibited Books, in
spite of its knowledge of his atrocities. Later the Church would come
under intense criticism for its friendly and cooperative relationship
with Hitler. A brief review of this history is instructive.
In 1933, the Catholic Center Party cast its large and decisive vote in
favor of Hitler's Enabling Bill. This bill essentially gave Chancellor
Hitler the sweeping dictatorial powers he was seeking. Historian
Guenter Lewy describes a meeting between Hitler and the German
Catholic authorities shortly afterwards:
"On 26 April 1933 Hitler had a conversation with Bishop Berning and
Monsignor Steinmann [the Catholic leadership in Germany]. The subject
was the common fight against liberalism, Socialism and Bolshevism,
discussed in the friendliest terms. In the course of the conversation
Hitler said that he was only doing to the Jews what the church had
done to them over the past fifteen hundred years. The prelates did not
contradict him." (60)
As anyone familiar with Christian history knows, the Church has always
been a primary source of anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism
therefore found a receptive audience among Catholic authorities. The
Church also had an intense fear and hatred of Russian communism, and
Hitler's attack on Russia was the best that could have happened. The
Jesuit Michael Serafin wrote: "It cannot be denied that [Pope] Pius
XII's closest advisors for some time regarded Hitler's armoured
divisions as the right hand of God." (61) As Pope Pius himself would
say after Germany conquered Poland: "Let us end this war between
brothers and unite our forces against the common enemy of atheism" --
Russia. (62)
Once Hitler assumed power, he signed a Concordat, or agreement, with
the Catholic Church. Eugenio Pacelli (the man who would eventually
become Pope Pius XII) was the Vatican diplomat who drew up the
Concordat, and he considered it a triumph. In return for promises
which Hitler increasingly broke, the Church dissolved all Catholic
organizations in Germany, including the Catholic Center Party. Bishops
were to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime. Clergy were to see
to the pastoral care of Germany's armed forces (regardless of what
those armed forces did). (63)
The Concordat eliminated all Catholic resistance to Hitler; after
this, the German bishops gave Hitler their full and unqualified
support. A bishops' conference at Fulda, 1933, resulted in agreement
with Hitler's case for extending Lebensraum, or German territory. (64)
Bishop Bornewasser told a congregation of Catholic young people at
Trier: "With our heads high and with firm steps we have entered the
new Reich and are ready to serve it body and soul." (65) Vicar-General
Steinman greeted each Berlin mass with the shout, "Heil Hitler!" (66)
Hitler, on the other hand, kept up his attack on the Church. Nazi
bands stormed into the few remaining Catholic institutions, beat up
Catholic youths and arrested Catholic officials. The Vatican was
dismayed, but it did not protest. (67) In some instances, it was hard
to tell if the Church supported its own persecution. Hitler muzzled
the independent Catholic press (about 400 daily papers in 1933) and
subordinated it to Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment.
Yet soon the Catholic Press was doing more than what the Nazis
required of it -- for example, coordinating their Nazi propaganda to
prepare the people for the 1940 offensive against the West. (68)
Throughout the war, the Catholic press would remain one of the Third
Reich's best disseminators of propaganda.
Pacelli became the new Pope Pius XII in 1939, and he immediately
improved relations with Hitler. He broke protocol by personally
signing a letter in German to Hitler expressing warm hopes of friendly
relations. Shortly afterwards, the Church celebrated Hitler's birthday
by ringing bells, flying swastika flags from church towers and holding
thanksgiving services for the Fuhrer. (69) Ringing church bells to
celebrate and affirm the bishops' allegiance to the Reich would become
quite common throughout the war; after the German army conquered
France, the church bells rang for an entire week, and swastikas flew
over the churches for ten days.
But perhaps the greatest failure of Pope Pius XII was his silence over
the Holocaust, even though he knew it was in progress. Although there
are many heroic stories of Catholics helping Jews survive the
Holocaust, they do not include Pope Pius, the Holy See, or the German
Catholic authorities. When a reporter asked Pius why he did not
protest the liquidation of the Jews, the Pope answered, "Dear friend,
do not forget that millions of Catholics are serving in the German
armies. Am I to involve them in a conflict of conscience?" (70) As
perhaps the world's greatest moral leader, he was charged with
precisely that responsibility.
The history of Hitler and the Church reveals a relationship built on
mutual distrust and philosophical rejection, but also shared goals,
benefits, admiration, envy, friendliness, and ultimate alliance.
Return to Overview
Endnotes:
1. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1960), p. 263.
2. Ibid., p. 143.
3. Ibid., p. 264.
4. Hitler, quoted in Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny,
abridged edition, (New York: HarperCollins, 1971), p. 228.
5. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1962), pp. 393-4.
6. Ibid., p. 398.
7. Ibid., p. 297.
8. Ibid., p. 298.
9. Ibid., p. 290.
10. Ibid., pp. 291-2.
11. Ibid., p. 291.
12. Ibid., p. 401.
13. Ibid., p. 402.
14. Ibid., p. 214.
15. Ibid., p. 405.
16. Ibid., p. 404.
17. Ibid., p. 449.
18. Ibid., p. 289.
19. Ibid., p. 516-17.
20. Quoted in Bullock, pp. 11-12.
21. Ibid., p. 230.
22. Hitler, p. 396.
23. Ibid., p. 627.
24. Ibid., p. 288.
25. Ibid., p. 344.
26. Ibid., p. 465.
27. Ibid., p. 81.
28. Ibid., p. 82.
29. Ibid., p. 449.
30. Ibid., p. 60.
31. Ibid., p. 78
32. Ibid., p. 51.
33. Bullock, p. 228-9.
34. Hitler, p. 535.
35. Ibid., p. 155.
36. Quoted in Bullock, p. 102.
37. Hitler, p. 376.
38. Ibid., p. 382.
39. Ibid., p. 65.
40. Ibid., p. 437.
41. Ibid., p. 299.
42. Ibid., p. 338.
43. Ibid., p. 340.
44. Ibid., p. 340.
45. Ibid., p. 284.
46. Ibid., p. 351.
47. The History Place, "The Rise of Adolf Hitler: Success and a
Suicide," http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/success.htm
48. Hitler, p. 418.
49. Ibid., p. 429.
50. Ibid., p. 408.
51. Ibid., p. 408.
52. Ibid., p. 346.
53. Ibid., p. 459.
54. Ibid., p. 267.
55. Ibid., p. 116.
56. Ibid., p. 116.
57. Ibid., p. 268.
58. Ibid., p. 563.
59. Bullock, p. 35.
60. Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (London and New
York) 1964, p. 50ff.
61. Friedrich Heer, God's First Love (New York: Weybright and Talley,
1967), p. 320, citing Lewy, pp. 249-250; see also Falconi, Carlo, Il
silenzio di Pio XII (Milan) 1965.
62. Heer, p. 319.
63. Lewy, p. 57 ff.
64. Ibid., p. 94 ff.
65. Ibid., p. 100f.
66. Ibid., p. 105.
67. Heer, p. 310.
68. Heer, p. 110.
69. Giovannetti, A., Der Vatikan und der Krieg (Cologne) 1961.
70. Lewy, p. 304.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/adolf_hitler_2.html
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will
be
believed.
Adolf Hitler
here is one for conservatives,
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they
will believe it.
Adolf Hitler
here is another one for the brainless drooling conservatives,
The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big
lie than to a small one.
Adolf Hitler
most droolers will never figure this one out,
The leader of genius must have the ability to make different
opponents
appear as if they belonged to one category.
Adolf Hitler
(hint, liberals are fascists, hint hint)
Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be
made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to
consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
Adolf Hitler
Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison
that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.
Adolf
Hitler
What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.
Adolf
Hitler
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The aristocrats and gentlemen of the Right who made up the majority of
Hitler's cabinet hated the concept of democracy even more than the
Nazis did, All over Germany, thugs in brown shirts took possession of
the streets and roughed up Communists, socialists, and Jews; they
chased socialist mayors and officials out of government buildings
http://www.buy.com/prod/hitler-and-his-secret-partners/q/loc/106/30426378.html
Chapter 1: Financing the 1933 Elections
On the cold winter weekend of January 28, 1933, Germany was officially
without a government. Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his cabinet
had resigned on Saturday afternoon, and eighty-six-year-old President
von Hindenburg had not yet appointed a new chancellor. A nervous
tension spread over Berlin. Everyone waited for news; most felt
Germany was at an historic turning point.
Who would be the next chancellor? Hitler - the leader of the largest
party, the Nazis, who pledged to destroy democracy? Papen - the
aristocratic horseman who had been chancellor before Schleicher, but
who had no popular following? Perhaps Schleicher again, if he could
persuade the Social Democrats, the second largest political party in
the country, to join him in a coalition? Governing Germany in the
middle of an economic depression with nine million unemployed was not
an enviable task. The country had just had three different chancellors
in rapid succession. By tradition, the leader of the largest party was
usually appointed chancellor. But the Nazis had been the largest party
for over a year, and so far intrigues and political maneuvering had
succeeded in keeping Hitler out of power. Everyone guessed what a
Hitler government would mean. He had not kept his militarism, anti-
Semitism, and dictatorial ambitions a secret.
Political intrigues were so numerous that weekend that no one really
knew what was going on. Sensational rumors were being spread
throughout the city. Some said an army coup was imminent, that
Schleicher and the generals were about to abduct President von
Hindenburg and declare martial law. There were also rumors of an armed
Nazi uprising and a general strike by the socialist workers.
Hitler and Hermann Goering, the second most powerful man in the Nazi
party, stayed up all night on Sunday, January 29, trying to figure out
what Hindenburg might do. It was not until after 10 A.M. on Monday
that Hitler received a summons to the president's office. Even at that
point, the Nazis were not certain whether Hitler would be appointed
chancellor or Hindenburg would ask him to serve as vice-chancellor.
Across the street from the Chancellery, in the Kaiserhof Hotel,
Hitler's lieutenants were waiting, unsure of what was going on.
Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, said:
In the street the crowd stands waiting between the Kaiserhof and the
Chancellery. We are torn between doubt, hope, joy and despair. We have
been deceived too often to be able, wholeheartedly, to believe in the
great miracle. [S.A.] Chief of Staff Roehm stands at the window (with
binoculars) watching the door of the Chancellery from which the
Fuehrer [the leader, Hitler] must emerge. We shall be able to judge by
his face if the interview was a success. Torturing hours of waiting.
At last, a car draws up in front of the entrance. The crowd cheers.
They seem to feel that a great change is taking place....
A few moments later, he is with us. He says nothing. His eyes are full
of tears. It has come! The Fuehrer is appointed Chancellor. He has
already been sworn in by the President of the Reich. All of us are
dumb with emotion. Everyone clasps the Fuehrer's hand....Outside the
Kaiserhof, the masses are in a wild uproar....The thousands soon
become tens of thousands. Endless streams of people flood the
Wilhelmstrasse. We set to work...at once.
Hitler's victory was not a complete one by any means. He had been
appointed chancellor in a coalition government. Papen was to be his
vice-chancellor, and all the powerful cabinet posts were held by
Papen's conservative allies, rather than the Nazis. But at the moment,
Hitler's followers weren't worried about the details; for them the
only thing that mattered was that Hitler was chancellor. They had come
to power! All day, crowds gathered in the square outside the Kaiserhof
Hotel and the Chancellery.
At dusk Nazi storm troopers in their brown uniforms gathered in the
Tiergarten park, along with men of the Stahlhelm, an
ultranationalistic veterans' organization, for a torchlight victory
parade through the center of Berlin. As soon as it was dark, they came
marching by the thousands through the Brandenburg Gate, carrying
swastika flags and the black, white, and red flags of the German
empire. Bands marched between the units, beating their big drums as
the men sang old German military songs. But as each band came to the
Pariser Platz, where the French embassy was located, they stopped
whatever they were playing and, with an introductory roll of drums,
broke into the tune of the challenging war song "Victorious We Will
Crush the French."
The torches carried by the marchers glowed hypnotically in the
darkness. To foreign witnesses, it was a frightening sight. "The river
of fire flowed past the French Embassy," Ambassador François-Poncet
wrote, "whence, with heavy heart and filled with foreboding, I watched
this luminous wake." Liberal Germans found it an "ominous sight." It
was, wrote one German reporter, "a night of deadly menace, a nightmare
in...blazing torches."
As the marchers came by the Chancellery, there were tumultuous cheers
for Hitler, who stood in an open window saluting them. He was so
excited that night, he could hardly stand still. He was raising his
arm up and down heiling, smiling, and laughing so much, his eyes
filled with tears. "It was an extraordinary experience," recalled
Papen, who was standing behind Hitler. "The endless repetition of the
triumphal cry: 'Heil, Heil, Sieg Heil!' rang in my ears like a
tocsin." When Hitler turned to speak with Papen, his voice choked with
emotion. "What an immense task we have set for ourselves, Herr von
Papen - we must never part until our work is accomplished." Hitler and
Papen were much closer allies than anyone at the time imagined.
It was after midnight when the parade ended. Being too excited to
sleep, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, and a few other Nazis sat up talking
for hours. They could hardly believe it had actually happened: they
were in the Chancellery at last. That evening, Hitler said to
Goebbels, "No one gets me out of here alive." It was one of the few
promises he kept.
On the morning of January 31, Hitler's storm troopers gave the German
people a glimpse of what Nazi rule would be like. All over Germany,
thugs in brown shirts took possession of the streets and roughed up
Communists, socialists, and Jews; they chased socialist mayors and
officials out of government buildings and even broke into the private
homes of their political enemies. When people complained to Papen, he
laughed. "Let the storm troopers have their fling." Among his friends
at the Herrenklub, an exclusive gentlemens club, he boasted: "We've
hired Hitler." To a skeptic he replied: "What do you want? I have
Hindenburg's confidence. Within two months we will have pushed Hitler
so far in the corner that he'll squeak."
The facts seemed to support Papen's optimism. Not only did Papen have
Hindenburg"s confidence, but in fact the old president had promised
never to receive Hitler unless he was accompanied by his vice-
chancellor. Papen also held the important post of minister-president
of Prussia, Germany's largest and most powerful state. From the
composition of the cabinet, it seemed all the real power was in the
hands of the conservatives: the aristocratic General von Blomberg was
minister of defense, Baron von Neurath, a career diplomat, was foreign
minister, and the old archreactionary Hugenberg was both minister of
economics and minister of agriculture. The Nazis were outnumbered six
to two.
The two Nazis in the cabinet, Wilhelm Frick and Goering, held posts
that were thought to be insignificant. Frick was minister of the
interior, but he did not control the police, which in Germany was
under the jurisdiction of the individual state governments. Goering
was made minister without portfolio, but with the promise that he
would be minister of aviation as soon as Germany had an air force. He
was also named minister of the interior of Prussia, an office that did
not receive much notice by the public but did control the Prussian
police.
The aristocrats and gentlemen of the Right who made up the majority of
Hitler's cabinet hated the concept of democracy even more than the
Nazis did. These men belonged to the old ruling class of the kaiser's
Germany. They wanted to regain their old position of supremacy, lost
in 1918. They wanted to restore the monarchy, suppress the socialist
unions, avenge the loss of World War I, and make Germany the dominant
power in Europe. It was obvious why such reactionary nationalists
helped put Hitler in power: their goals and his were very similar.
Few people knew the full extent of Papen's collaboration with Hitler.
Historians have said he "did more than anyone else outside the Nazi
party to help Hitler to power." Papen helped Hitler because he was
trying to control him and use the Nazis for his own aims.
Papen was a handsome aristocratic-looking man with distinguished gray
hair and an officer's mustache. From an impoverished family of the
Westphalian nobility, he became a General Staff officer, a skillful
horseman, and a man of great charm. After a successful marriage to the
daughter of a wealthy Saar industrialist, he bought a large block of
shares in the Center party's newspaper, Germania. For a short time in
1932, Papen was chancellor, but his government had no popular support.
Papen believed it would be rather easy for an aristocratic officer
like himself to manipulate a former corporal, like Hitler, and thus be
able to use the Nazi's mass following to accomplish the aims of the
upper-class conservative nationalists.
Hitler immediately began to outmaneuver his conservative colleagues.
He reported to the cabinet that the Center party was making impossible
demands and could not be counted on to form a coalition with the Nazis
and the Nationalists that would have a majority in the Reichstag.
Because of this situation, Hitler argued he would have to call for new
elections. The only "demand" the Center party made was that Hitler
promise to govern constitutionally, but none of the other members of
the cabinet bothered to check Hitler's statement. They agreed to new
elections on the condition that Hitler promise that the composition of
the cabinet would not change regardless of the outcome of the voting.
New elections would provide Hitler with a chance to improve on the
poor results the Nazis had received at the polls the past November. If
the Nazis won a clear majority in the elections, they might be able to
get rid of their coalition partners. Hitler had every reason to
believe the election campaign would be a big success. The entire
machinery of government, including the radio, was now under Nazi
control and could be used for campaigning. The party had been flooded
with new applicants for membership since he had become chancellor. In
the cabinet meeting on February 2, Hitler discussed his preparations
for the elections. Wilhelm Frick, the Nazi minister of the interior,
proposed that the government set aside a million marks for the
election campaign. Count von Schwerin von Krosigk, the minister of
finance, rejected this suggestion. Hitler did not force the issue. He
would have to get the money elsewhere.
The theme of the Nazi election campaign was to be the fight against
communism. Hitler opened the attack in a late-night radio broadcast to
the nation on February 1. He blamed the hard times Germany had gone
through since 1918 on the Social Democrats, which had been the largest
party in the Reichstag during most of those years. The Social
Democrats, he reminded his listeners, were actually a Marxist party.
"Fourteen years of Marxism," he said, "have ruined Germany; one year
of bolshevism [communism] would destroy her. The richest and fairest
territories of the world would be turned into a smoking heap of ruins.
Even the sufferings of the last decade and a half could not be
compared to the misery of a Europe in the heart of which the red flag
of destruction has been hoisted." He went on to promise to put the
unemployed back to work and save the peasants from bankruptcy.
On his fourth day in office, just after opening the election
campaign, Hitler took time off to attend a very important dinner. He
had been invited to the home of General von Hammerstein, chief of
staff of the army, to meet the leading officers of the army and navy.
In a speech that lasted almost two hours, Hitler explained his plans
for rebuilding German military power.
The generals were the real power in Germany during the Weimar period.
After World War II, many Germans tried to cover up the role certain
members of the Officer Corps had played in helping to put Hitler in
power. Many historians naively accepted this view, but the real story
is quite different. Traditionally, the German Army ruled from behind
the scenes and had the final "power to veto" any important issue.
After the loss of World War I, the Versailles Treaty severely
restricted the size of the German Army. The only way the generals
could maintain mass training and develop new weapons was to finance
private paramilitary units, like the Free Corps, with secret army
funds.
Hitler not only began his career as an army agent, but even in the
1930s he was supported by a powerful faction in the army. Over several
years, General von Schleicher, who was in charge of a secret informal
political department of the army, funneled over ten million marks to
Hitler. Why? Many military officers wanted an authoritarian government
that could unify the nation. The people needed to be infused with a
new spirit of patriotism because powerful interests were planning a
war of revenge against the Allies. Naturally there was a division of
opinion among the generals as to how much power to give Hitler.
Hindenburg originally had strong reservations about appointing a man
from a lower-class background, like Hitler, chancellor. However, the
aggressive action the Nazis took against Communists was admired by
Hindenburg, and his relationship with Hitler rapidly improved.
One day, Hindenburg summoned Hitler when Papen was away from Berlin.
Hitler informed the president that Papen was out of town and reminded
him of the rule he (Hindenburg) had made, that the chancellor could
visit him only when accompanied by the vice-chancellor. "The old
gentleman [Hindenburg]," said Hitler, "replied that he wished to see
me alone, and that in the future the presence of Papen could be
regarded as unnecessary. Within three weeks, he had progressed so far
that his attitude towards me became affectionate and paternal. Talking
of the elections fixed for the 3rd of March, he said, 'What are we
going to do if you fail to get a majority? We shall have the same
difficulties all over again.'"
At the beginning of the election campaign, Hitler and Papen persuaded
old President von Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree to protect
law and order. The decree gave Nazi officials the right to prohibit
public meetings. Newspapers could be suppressed if they "incited"
civil disobedience or published "false" reports.
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hitler the conservative:As a master of the "big lie", he was able to
build substantial grass-roots support, based on a platform of anti-
Semitism and anti-communism, conservative values
http://www.harley.com/people/adolph-hitler.html
Interesting People
ADOLPH HITLER
If there is one person in history whose activities changed the world
the most, that person is Adolf Hitler. Hitler (1889-1945) was the
German dictator who founded the National Socialism (Nazi) movement in
1920. Within twonty years, Hitler had led Germany and its allies into
World War II (1939-1945), by any measure, the most devastating war in
history, with over 60 million people killed.
As a young man, Hitler served in the Bavarian army during World War I.
(Bavaria is a part of Germany.) Although he was recognized for
bravery, the experience embittered him, and he blamed Germany's defeat
on Jews and Marxists.
In 1921, Hitler became the leader of the German National Socialist
(Nazi) Party. In 1923, he unsuccessfully attempted to overthrow the
Bavarian government — the so-called Beer Hall Putsch — and was
imprisoned for nine months. During that time, Hitler wrote the book
Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), in which he laid bare his theories of hate
and anti-Semitism, and his plans for world domination, a vision in
which the German master race would create the so-called Third Reich.
("Germany will either become a World Power or will not continue to
exist at all." — Vol. 2, Ch. XIV)
In time, Mein Kampf would become the bible of the Nazi party. The grew
slowly, however, until the Great Depression, during which Hitler's
skills as a speaker and organizer allowed him to capitalize on the
growing social and economic unrest. As a master of the "big lie", he
was able to build substantial grass-roots support, based on a platform
of anti-Semitism and anti-communism.
Although he had some false starts, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany
in 1933 and, within a year, was given full dictatorial powers by the
government. In concert with other Nazi leaders — principally Goering,
Himmler and Goebbels — Hitler crushed all opposition and took control
of most facets of German life. In 1934, laws were passed to establish
official anti-Semitism and to create the first concentration camps.
On August 2, 1934, the elderly president of Germany died. Within
hours, Hitler declared himself Fuhrer (supreme ruler) of Germany.
Technically, the declaration was illegal. However, less than three
weeks later, a special election was held in which 90 percent of the
German people voted to confirm Hitler as Fuhrer. Hitler was now the
absolute ruler of Germany, a law unto himself.
Over the next few years, Hitler prepared Germany for war, carrying out
many political maneuvers that allowed him to extend his power into
smaller, less powerful countries. On September 1, 1939, Germany
invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain, France, Australia and New
Zealand (the Allies) declared war on Germany, formally starting World
War II.
At first, Germany had a great deal of military success, invading and
conquering much of Europe, North Africa and Russia. On December 11,
1941, Germany declared war on the United States, upon which the U.S.
entered the war on the side of the Allies. Still, it was some time
before the Germans would be stopped. Indeed, on April 26, 1942, Hitler
declared, "This war no longer bears the characteristics of former
inter-European conflicts. It is one of those elemental conflicts which
usher in a new millennium and which shake the world once in a thousand
years."
In the fullness of time, Hitler was proved to be wrong. On February 2,
1943, he received his first major setback when the Germans were
defeated at Stalingrad in southwest Russia. Over the next two years,
the Allies began to defeat Germany, one battle at a time and, by the
spring of 1945, virtually all of Europe and North Africa had been
liberated.
With the Third Reich collapsing around him and the Russians
approaching, Hitler hid in an underground bunker in Berlin. On April
29, 1945, as the Russians approached the city, Hitler married his
longtime mistress Eva Braun. The next day, both Hitler and Braun
committed suicide.
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alt.religion.christian, alt.politics.economics
Mussolini the father of fascism hated liberalism; his movement was the
first fascist movement – a halfway house between
conservative authoritarianism and modern totalitarianism
Mussolini and fascism in Italy
A. Mussolini hated liberalism; his movement was the first fascist
movement – a halfway house between
conservative authoritarianism and modern totalitarianism.
B. The fascist seizure of power
1. Prior to 1914, Italy was moving toward democracy but with problems:
Catholics, conservatives, and
landowners hated liberalism and the country was divided.
a. Only in Italy did the Socialist party gain leadership prior to
1914.
2. The First World War and postwar problems ended the move toward
democracy in Italy.
a. Workers and peasants felt cheated because wartime promises of
reform were not carried out.
b. Nationalists felt cheated by the war settlement.
Page 4
c. The Russian Revolution energized Italy’s socialists into occupying
factories and farms.
3. By 1922, most Italians were opposed to liberal, parliamentary
government.
4. Mussolini’s Fascists opposed the “Socialist threat” with physical
force (the Black Shirts).
5. Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922 and forced the king to name him
head of the government.
C. The regime in action
1. Mussolini’s Fascists manipulated elections and killed the Socialist
leader Matteotti.
2. Between 1924 and 1926, Mussolini built a one-party Fascist
dictatorship but did not establish a fully
totalitarian state.
a. Much of the old power structure remained, particularly the
conservatives, who controlled the
army, economy, and state.
b. The Catholic church supported Mussolini because he recognized the
Vatican as an independent
state and gave the church heavy financial support.
c. Women were repressed, but Jews were not persecuted until late in
the Second World War.
d. Overall, Mussolini’s fascist Italy was never really totalitarian.
IV.Hitler and Nazism in Germany
A. The roots of Nazism
1. German Nazism was a product of Hitler, of Germany’s social and
political crisis, and the general
attack on liberalism and rationality.
2. Hitler was born in Austria, was a school dropout, and was rejected
by the Imperial art school.
3. Hitler became a fanatical nationalist while in Vienna, vhere he
absorbed anti-Semitic and racist
ideas.
4. He adopted the ideas of some fanatical Christians (e.g., Lueger)
that capitalism and liberalism
resulted in excessive individualism.
5. He became obsessed with anti-Semitism and racism, and believed that
Jews and Marxists lost the
First World War for Germany.
a. He believed in a Jewish-Marxist plot to destroy German culture.
6. By 1921, he had reshaped the tiny extremist German Workers’ group
into the Nazi party, using the
mass rally as a particularly effective tool of propaganda.
a. The party grew rapidly.
b. Hitler and the party attempted to overthrow the Weimar government,
but he was defeated and
sent to jail (1923).
B. Hitler’s road to power
1. The trial after Hitler’s attempted coup brought him much publicity,
but the Nazi party remained
small until 1929.
2. Written in jail, his autobiography, Mein Kampf, was an outline of
his desire to achieve German
racial supremacy and domination of Europe, under the leadership of a
dictator (Führer).
3. The depression made the Nazi party attractive to the lower middle
class, who were seized by panic
as unemployment soared and Communists made election gains.
a. By late 1932, some 43 percent of the labor force was unemployed.
b. Hitler favored government programs to bring about economic
recovery.
4. By 1932, the Nazi party was the largest in the Reichstag-having 38
percent of the total.
5. Hitler wisely stressed the economic issue rather than the anti-
Jewish and racist nationalism issues.
6. He stressed simple slogans tied to national rebirth to arouse
hysterical fanaticism in the masses.
Page 5
7. He appealed to the youth. Almost 40 percent of the Nazi party were
under 30 years of age.
8. One reason for his rise to power is that Bruning and Hindenburg had
already turned to rule by way
of emergency decree.
9. Another reason Hitler won is that the communists welcomed Hitler as
the last breath of monopoly
capitalism.
10. Key people in the army and big business along with conservative
and nationalistic politicians
believed that they could control Hitler; Hitler was legally appointed
chancellor in 1933.
C. The Nazi state and society
I. The Enabling Act of March 1933 gave Hitler absolute dictatorial
power.
2. Germany became a one-party state-only the Nazi party was legal.
a. The Nazi government was hill of rivalries and inefficiencies,
leaving Hitler to act as he wished.
b. Strikes were forbidden and labor unions were replaced by the Nazi
Labor Front.
c. The Nazis took over the government bureaucracy.
d. The Nazis took control of universities, writers, publishing houses;
democratic, socialist, and
Jewish literature was blacklisted.
3. Hitler gained control of the military by crushing his own storm
troopers, the SA, thus ending the
“second revolution.”
4. The Gestapo, or secret police, used tenor and purges to strengthen
Hitler’s hold on power.
5. Hitler set out to eliminate the Jews.
a. The Nuremberg Laws (1935) deprived Jews of their citizenship.
b. By 1938, 150,000 of Germany’s 500,000 Jews had left Germany.
c. Kristallnacht was a wave of violence directed at Jews and their
synagogues and businesses.
D. Hitler’s popularity
1. Hitler promised and delivered economic recovery through public
works projects and military
spending.
a. Unemployment dropped. The standard of living rose moderately – but
business profits rose
sharply.
b. Those who were not Jews, Slays, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
communists, or homosexuals
experienced greater opportunities and equality.
2. Hitler reduced Germany’s traditional class distinctions; the old
ruling elites had to give way to
lower-middle-class people in Hitler’s train.
a. Yet few historians believe that Hitler brought on a real social
revolution: the well-educated classes
held on to their advantaged position, and women remained largely
housewives and mothers.
3. He appealed to Germans for nationalistic reasons.
4. Communists, trade unionists, and some Christians opposed Hitler;
many who opposed him were
executed.
V. Nazi expansion and the Second World War
A. The chief concepts of Nazism were space and race-which demanded
territorial expansion.
B. Aggression and appeasement (1933-1939)
1. When he was in a weak position, Hitler voiced his intention to
overturn an unjust system; when
strong, he kept increasing his demands.
2. He lied about his intentions; he withdrew from the League of
Nations in order to rearm Germany.
Page 6
3. Germany worked to add Austria to a greater Germany, established a
military draft, and declared the
Treaty of Versailles null and void.
a. An Anglo-German naval agreement in 1935 broke Germany’s isolation.
b. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler occupied the
demilitarized Rhineland in 1936.
4. The British policy of appeasement, motivated by guilt, fear of
communism, and pacifism, lasted far
into 1939.
5. Mussolini attacked Ethiopia in 1935 and joined Germany in
supporting the fascists in Spain (the
Rome-Berlin Axis alliance).
6. Germany, Italy, and Japan formed an alliance.
7. Hitler annexed Austria and demanded part of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
8. Chamberlain flew to Munich to appease Hitler and agree to his
territorial demands.
9. Hitler accelerated his aggression and occupied all of
Czechoslovakia in 1939.
10. In 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a public nonaggression pact and
a secret pact that divided eastern
Europe into German and Russian zones.
11. Germany attacked Poland, and Britain and France declared war on
Germany (1939).
C. Hitler’s empire (1939-1942)
1. The key to Hitler’s military success was speed and force (the
blitzkrieg).
2. He crushed Poland quickly and then France; by July 1940, the Nazis
ruled nearly all of Europe
except Britain.
3. He bombed British cities in an attempt to break British morale but
did not succeed.
4. In 1941, Hitler’s forces invaded Russia and conquered the Ukraine
and got as far as Leningrad and
Moscow until stopped by the severe winter weather.
5. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (1941), Hitler also declared war
on the United States.
6. Hitler began building a New Order based on racial imperialism.
a. Nordic peoples were treated with preference; the French were
heavily taxed; the Slays were
treated as “subhumans.”
b. The 55 evacuated Polish peasants to create a German “settlement
space.”
c. Polish workers and Russian prisoners of war were sent to Germany to
work as slave laborers.
Most did not survive.
d. Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and communists were condemned
to death.
7. Six million Jews from all over Europe were murdered by killing
squads, in ghettos, or in
concentration camps.
a. At the extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau the victims
were forced into gas
chambers.
b. Recent research suggests that many Germans knew of and participated
in these killings.
c. Some scholars believe that the key reason so many Germans (and non-
Germans) did not protest
the murders is that they felt no personal responsibility for Jews.
E. The Grand Alliance
1. The Allies had three policies that led them to victory.
a. The United States concentrated on European victory first, then
Japan.
b. The Americans and British put military needs before political
questions, thus avoiding conflict
over postwar settlements.
Page 7
c. The Allies adopted the principle of “unconditional surrender” of
Germany and Japan, denying
Hitler the possibility of dividing his foes.
2. American aid to Britain and the Soviets, along with the heroic
support of the British and Soviet
peoples and the assistance of resistance groups throughout Europe,
contributed to the eventual
victory.
F. The tide of battle
1. The Germans were defeated at Stalingrad at the end of 1942, and
from there on the Soviets took the
offensive.
2. At the same time, American, British, and Australian victories in
the Pacific put Japan on the
defensive.
a. The Battle of the Coral Sea (1942) stopped the Japanese advance.
b. The Battle of Midway Island (1942) established American naval
superiority in the Pacific.
3. The British defeat of Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein (1942)
helped drive the Axis powers from
North Africa in 1943.
4. Italy surrendered in 1943, but fighting continued as the Germans
seized Rome and northern Italy.
5. Bombing of Germany and Hitler’s brutal elimination of opposition
caused the Germans to fight on.
6. The British and Americans invaded German-held France in June 1944
but did not cross into
Germany until March 1945.
a. The Soviets pushed from the east, crossing the Elbe and meeting the
Americans on the other
side on April 26, 1945; Hitler committed suicide, and Germany
surrendered on May 7, 1945.
b. The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945,
and it too surrendered.
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alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, rec.radio.shortwave, alt.news-media,
alt.religion.christian, alt.politics.economics
franco the fascist was anti-communist, for conservative family values,
and was supported by hitler and mussolini:During Franco's rule, trade
unions and all political opponents across the political spectrum, from
communist and anarchist organizations to liberal democrats were
either suppressed or tightly controlled by all means, up to and
including violent police repression
Francisco Franco
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses see, Franco (disambiguation).
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (4 December 1892 in Ferrol – 20 November
1975 in Madrid), commonly known as Francisco Franco (Spanish
pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko ˈfɾaŋko]) was a military general and
dictator of Spain from October 1936, and de facto regent of the
nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in 1975.
During his almost forty year reign, Franco's governance of Spain went
through various different phases. Although the most common ideological
features which were present throughout included a strong sense of
Spanish nationalism and protection of its territorial integrity,
Catholicism, anti-communism and traditional values.[1]
From a military family, Franco originally set out for a career in the
Spanish Navy—however this had reduced since Spain has lost much of its
empire so he became a solider instead. During the early period of his
career he fought in Morocco during the Rif War, rising to the position
of general. Afterwards he was stationed on the Spanish mainland and
saw service suppressing an anarchist led strike in 1934; defending the
stability of Alcalá-Zamora's conservative republican government.
Everything changed in 1936 with the election of the Popular Front, a
far left coalition of socialists, communists, anarchists and liberal
republicans. A period of severe instability ensued, with escalating
violence and distrust between supporters of each side. Anti-clerical
violence against the Church by leftist militants raised tensions.
After the assassination of José Calvo Sotelo, by a commando unit of
the Assault Guards—the military felt a communist dictatorship was
nearing. Franco and the military participated in a coup d'etat against
the Popular Front government.
The coup failed and devolved into the Spanish Civil War during which
he emerged as the leader of the Nationalists against the Popular Front
government. After winning the civil war with support from Benito
Mussolini's Italy and Adolf Hitler's Germany—while the Soviet Union
provided help to the Popular Party—he dissolved the Spanish
Parliament. He then established a right-wing authoritarian regime that
lasted until 1978, when a new constitution was drafted. During the
Second World War, Franco officially maintained a policy of non-
belligerency and later of neutrality. However, he agreed to allow the
many Spanish volunteers, known as the Blue Division to join the
Germany Army in the fight against Communism on the Eastern Front.
After the end of World War II, Franco maintained his control in Spain
through the implementation of repressive and authoritarian measures:
the systematic suppression of dissident views through censorship and
coercion,[2][3] the institutionalization of torture,[4] the
imprisonment of ideological enemies in concentration camps throughout
the country (such as Los Merinales in Seville, San Marcos in León,
Castuera in Extremadura, and Miranda de Ebro)[5], the implementation
of forced labor in prisons[6] and the use of the death penalty and
heavy prison sentences as deterrents for his ideological enemies[7].
During the Cold War, the United States established a diplomatic
alliance with Spain, due to Franco's strong anti-Communist policy.
American President Richard Nixon toasted Franco, [8] and, after
Franco's death, stated: "General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of
the United States[9]." After his death Spain gradually began its
transition to democracy. Today, pre-constitutional symbols from the
Franco regime (such as the national flag with the Imperial Eagle) are
banned by law in Spain.
Contents [hide]
[edit]
Early life
Francisco Franco was born on 4 December 1892, in El Ferrol, Galicia,
which is Spain's chief naval base in the north. The Franco family was
originally from Andalucia and are thought to have a degree of
aristocratic ancestry.[note 1] Since relocating to Galicia they were
strongly involved in the Spanish Navy and over two centuries produced
naval officers for six generations uninterupted, right down to
Franco's father Nicolás Franco y Salgado.
Franco's mother was María del Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade and
his parents maried in 1890. The Bahamonde family was of local Galician
aristocratic stock, she was descended from VII Conde de Lemos and his
wife the third Condessa de Villalva, who were descended from
Portuguese royalty and thus from many other European kings.[10][11] He
had two brothers, Nicolás (Ferrol, 1891 - 1977), Spanish Navy Officer
and Diplomat married to María Isabel Pascual del Pobil y Ravello, and
Ramón, a pioneering Aviator, and two sisters María del Pilar (Ferrol,
1894 - Madrid, 1989) and María de la Paz (Ferrol, 1899 - Ferrol,
1900), with whom he spent much of his childhood.
[edit]
Military career
[edit]
Rif War, rise through the ranks
Francisco was to follow his father into the Navy but as a result of
the Spanish-American War the country had lost much of its navy as well
as most of its colonies. Not needing more officers, entry into the
Naval Academy was closed from 1906 to 1913. To his father's chagrin,
he decided to join the Spanish Army. In 1907, he entered the Infantry
Academy in Toledo, from which he graduated in 1910. He was
commissioned as a lieutenant. Two years later, he obtained a
commission to Morocco. Spanish efforts to physically occupy their new
African protectorate provoked the protracted Rif War (from 1909 to
1927) with native Moroccans. Tactics at the time resulted in heavy
losses among Spanish military officers, but also gave the chance of
earning promotion through merit. It was said that officers would get
either la caja o la faja (a coffin or a general's sash). Franco soon
gained a reputation as a good officer. He joined the newly formed
regulares, colonial native troops with Spanish officers, who acted as
shock troops.
In 1916, at the age of 23 and already a captain, he was badly wounded
in a skirmish at El Biutz and possibly lost a testicle.[12] His
survival marked him permanently in the eyes of the native troops as a
man of baraka (good luck). He was also recommended unsuccessfully for
Spain's highest honor for gallantry, the coveted Cruz Laureada de San
Fernando. Instead, he was promoted to major (comandante), becoming the
youngest field grade officer in the Spanish Army. From 1917 to 1920,
he was posted on the Spanish mainland. That last year, Lieutenant
Colonel José Millán Astray, a histrionic but charismatic officer,
founded the Spanish Foreign Legion, along similar lines to the French
Foreign Legion. Franco became the Legion's second-in-command and
returned to Africa. On 24 July 1921, the poorly commanded and
overextended Spanish Army suffered a crushing defeat at Annual at the
hands of the Rif tribes led by the Abd el-Krim brothers. The Legion
symbolically, if not materially, saved the Spanish enclave of Melilla
after a gruelling three-day forced march led by Franco. In 1923,
already a lieutenant colonel, he was made commander of the Legion.
The same year, he married María del Carmen Polo y Martínez-Valdès;
they had one child, a daughter, María del Carmen, born in 1926.[13] As
a special mark of honor, his best man (padrino) at the wedding was
King Alfonso XIII, a fact that would mark him during the Republic as a
monarchical officer. Promoted to colonel, Franco led the first wave of
troops ashore at Al Hoceima in 1925. This landing in the heartland of
Abd el-Krim's tribe, combined with the French invasion from the south,
spelled the beginning of the end for the short-lived Republic of the
Rif. Becoming the youngest general in Spain in 1926, Franco was
appointed in 1928 director of the newly created the General Military
Academy of Zaragoza, a new college for all Army cadets, replacing the
former separate institutions for young men seeking to become officers
in infantry, cavalry, artillery, and other branches of the army.
[edit]
During the Second Spanish Republic
With the fall of the monarchy in 1931, in keeping with his long-
standing apolitical record, Franco did not take any notable stand. But
the closing of the Academy, in June, by War Minister Manuel Azaña,
provoked his first clash with the Republic. Azaña found Franco's
farewell speech to the cadets[14] insulting. For six months, Franco
was without a post and under surveillance.
On 5 February 1932, he was given a command in La Coruña. Franco
avoided involvement in José Sanjurjo's attempted coup that year, and
even wrote a hostile letter to Sanjurjo expressing his anger over the
attempt. As a side result of Azaña's military reform, in January 1933,
Franco was relegated from the first to the 24th in the list of
Brigadiers; conversely, the same year (17 February), he was given the
military command of the Balearic Islands: a post above his rank.
New elections held in October 1933 resulted in a center-right
majority. In opposition to this government, a revolutionary movement
broke out 5 October 1934. This uprising was rapidly quelled in most of
the country, but gained a stronghold in Asturias, with the support of
the miners' unions. Franco, already general of a Division and aide to
the war minister, Diego Hidalgo, was put in command of the operations
directed to suppress the insurgency. The forces of the Army in Africa
were to carry the brunt of this, with General Eduardo López Ochoa as
commander in the field. After two weeks of heavy fighting (and a death
toll estimated between 1,200 and 2,000), the rebellion was suppressed.
The insurgency in Asturias sharpened the antagonism between Left and
Right. Franco and López Ochoa—who, prior to the campaign in Asturias,
was seen as a left-leaning officer—were marked by the left as enemies.
At the start of the Civil War, López Ochoa was assassinated. Some time
after these events, Franco was briefly commander-in-chief of the Army
of Africa (from 15 February onwards), and from 19 May 1935 on, Chief
of the General Staff.
[edit]
1936 general election
After the ruling centre-right coalition collapsed amid the Straperlo
corruption scandal, new elections were scheduled. Two wide coalitions
formed: the Popular Front on the left, ranging from Republican Union
Party to Communists, and the Frente Nacional on the right, ranging
from the center radicals to the conservative Carlists. On February 16,
1936, the left won by a narrow margin.[15] Growing political
bitterness surfaced again. The government and its supporters, the
Popular Front, had launched a campaign against the Opposition whom
they accused of plotting against the Republic. The Opposition parties,
on the other hand, had reacted with increasing vigour. The latter
claimed that the Popular Front had illegally obtained two hundred
seats in a Parliament of 473 members. After the loss of 200 seats, the
Opposition Parties claimed the government represented only a small
minority, adding claims that the Popular Front's parliamentary
majority was the result of large-scale electoral fraud, of Government-
sponsored mob terror and intimidation, of the arbitrary annulment of
all election certificates in many Right-wing constituencies, and of
the expulsion, the arrest, or even the assassination, of many legally
elected deputies of the Right. According to the Opposition, the real
enemies of the Republic were not on the Right but on the Left; Spain
was in imminent danger of falling under a Communist dictatorship, and
therefore by fighting the Popular Front they, the Opposition, were
merely doing their duty in defence of law and order and of the freedom
and the fundamental rights of the Spanish people.[16]
The days after the election were marked by near-chaotic circumstances.
Franco lobbied unsuccessfully to have a state of emergency declared,
with the stated purpose of quelling the disturbances and allowing an
orderly vote recount.[citation needed]
Instead, on 23 February, Franco was sent to the distant Canary Islands
to serve as the islands' military commander, a position in which he
had few troops under his command.
Meanwhile, a conspiracy led by Emilio Mola was taking shape. In June,
Franco was contacted and a secret meeting was held in Tenerife's La
Esperanza Forest to discuss a military coup. (A commemorative obelisk
commemorating this historic meeting can be found in a clearing at Las
Raíces.)
Outwardly, Franco maintained an ambiguous attitude almost up until
July. On June 23, 1936, he wrote to the head of the government,
Casares Quiroga, offering to quell the discontent in the army, but was
not answered. The other rebels were determined to go ahead, con
Paquito o sin Paquito (with Franco or without him), as it was put by
José Sanjurjo, the honorary leader of the military uprising. After
various postponements, July 18 was fixed as the date of the uprising.
The situation reached a point of no return and, as presented to Franco
by Mola, the coup was unavoidable and he had to choose a side. He
decided to join the rebels and was given the task of commanding the
Army of Africa. A privately owned DH 89 De Havilland Dragon Rapide,
was chartered in England July 11 to take Franco to Africa.
The assassination of the right-wing opposition leader José Calvo
Sotelo by government police troops, possibly acting on their own in
retaliation for the murder of José Castillo, precipitated the
uprising. On July 17, one day earlier than planned, the African Army
rebelled, detaining their commanders. On July 18, Franco published a
manifesto[17] and left for Africa, where he arrived the next day to
take command.
A week later, the rebels, who soon called themselves the Nationalists,
controlled only a third of Spain, and most navy units remained under
control of the Republican loyalist forces, which left Franco isolated.
The coup had failed, but the Spanish Civil War had begun.
[edit]
From the Spanish Civil War to World War II
Main articles: Spanish Civil War and Spain in World War II
The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 and officially ended with
Franco's victory in April 1939, leaving 190,000[18] to 500,000[19]
dead. Despite the Non-Intervention Agreement of August 1936, the war
was marked by foreign intervention on behalf of both sides, leading to
international repercussions. The nationalist side was supported by
Fascist Italy, which sent the Corpo Truppe Volontarie and later Nazi
Germany, which assisted with the Condor Legion infamous for their
bombing of Guernica in April 1937. Britain and France strictly adhered
to the arms embargo, provoking dissensions within the French Popular
Front coalition led by Léon Blum, but the Republican side was
nonetheless supported by volunteers fighting in the International
Brigades and the Soviet Union. (See for example Ken Loach's Land and
Freedom.)
Because Hitler and Stalin used the war as a testing ground for modern
warfare, some historians, such as Ernst Nolte, have considered the
Spanish Civil War, along with the Second World War, part of a
"European Civil War" lasting from 1936 to 1945 and characterized
mainly as a Left/Right ideological conflict. However, this
interpretation has not found acceptance among most historians, who
consider the Second World War and the Spanish Civil War two distinct
conflicts. Among other things, they point to the political
heterogeneity on both sides (See Spanish Civil War: Other Factions in
the War) and criticize a monolithic interpretation which overlooks the
local nuances of Spanish history.
[edit]
The first months
Despite Franco having no money, while the state treasury was in Madrid
with the government, there was an organized economic lobby in London
looking after his financial needs with Lisbon as their operational
base. Eventually, he was to receive important help from his economic
and diplomatic boosters abroad.
Following the 18 July 1936, pronunciamento, Franco assumed the
leadership of the 30,000 soldiers of the Spanish Army of Africa. The
first days of the insurgency were marked with a serious need to secure
control over the Spanish Moroccan Protectorate. On one side, Franco
managed to win the support of the natives and their (nominal)
authorities, and, on the other, to ensure his control over the army.
This led to the summary execution of some 200 senior officers loyal to
the Republic (one of them his own first cousin). Also his loyal
bodyguard was shot by a man known as Manuel Blanco. [20] Franco's
first problem was how to move his troops to the Iberian Peninsula,
since most units of the Navy had remained in control of the Republic
and were blocking the Strait of Gibraltar. He requested help from
Mussolini, who responded with an unconditional offer of arms and
planes; Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr military intelligence,
persuaded Hitler, as well, to support the Nationalists. From July 20
onward he was able, with a small group of 22 mainly German Junkers Ju
52 airplanes, to initiate an air bridge to Seville, where his troops
helped to ensure the rebel control of the city. Through
representatives, Franco started to negotiate with the United Kingdom,
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for more military support, and above
all for more airplanes. Negotiations were successful with the last two
on July 25, and airplanes began to arrive in Tetouan on August 2. On
August 5, Franco was able to break the blockade with the newly arrived
air support, successfully deploying a ship convoy with some 2,000
soldiers.
In early August, the situation in western Andalusia was stable enough
to allow him to organize a column (some 15,000 men at its height),
under the command of then Lieutenant-Colonel Juan Yagüe, which would
march through Extremadura towards Madrid. On August 11, Mérida was
taken, and on August 15 Badajoz, thus joining both nationalist-
controlled areas. Additionally, Mussolini ordered a voluntary army,
the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) of some 12,000 Italians of fully
motorized units to Seville and Hitler added to them a professional
squadron from the Luftwaffe (2JG/88) with about 24 planes. All these
planes had the Nationalist Spanish insignia painted on them, but were
flown by Italian and German troops. The backbone of Franco's aviation
in those days were the Italian SM.79 and SM.81 bombers, the biplane
Fiat CR.32 fighter and the German Junkers Ju 52 cargo-bomber and the
Heinkel He 51 biplane fighter.
On 21 September, with the head of the column at the town of Maqueda
(some 80 km away from Madrid), Franco ordered a detour to free the
besieged garrison at the Alcázar of Toledo, which was achieved
September 27. This controversial decision gave the Popular Front time
to strengthen its defenses in Madrid and hold the city that year but
was an important morale and propaganda success.
[edit]
Rise to power
The designated leader of the uprising, Gen. José Sanjurjo died on July
20 1936 in an air crash. Therefore, in the nationalist zone,
"Political life ceased."[21] Initially, only military command
mattered; this was divided into regional commands (Emilio Mola in the
North, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano in Seville commanding Andalusia, Franco
with an independent command and Miguel Cabanellas in Zaragoza
commanding Aragon). The Spanish Army of Morocco itself was split into
two columns, one commanded by General Juan Yagüe and the other
commanded by Colonel José Varela.
From 24 July, a coordinating junta was established, based at Burgos.
Nominally led by Cabanellas, as the most senior general,[22] it
initially included Mola, three other generals, and two colonels;
Franco was added in early August.[23] On September 21, it was decided
that Franco was to be commander-in-chief (this unified command was
opposed only by Cabanellas),[24] and, after some discussion, with no
more than a lukewarm agreement from Queipo de Llano and from Mola,
also head of government.[25] He was doubtless helped to this primacy
by the fact that, in late July, Hitler had decided that all of
Germany's aid to the nationalists would go to Franco.[26]
Mola considered Franco as unfit and not part of the initial rebel
group.[citation needed] But Mola himself had been somewhat discredited
as the main planner of the attempted coup that had now degenerated
into a civil war, and was strongly identified with the Carlists
monarchists and not at all with the Falange, a party with Fascist
leanings and connections, nor did he have good relations with Germans;
Queipo de Llano and Cabanellas had both previously rebelled against
the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera and were therefore
discredited in some nationalist circles; and Falangist leader José
Antonio Primo de Rivera was in prison in Madrid (he would be executed
a few months later) and the desire to keep a place open for him
prevented any other falangist leader from emerging as a possible head
of state. Franco's previous aloofness from politics meant that he had
few active enemies in any of the factions that needed to be placated,
and had cooperated in recent months with both Germany and Italy.[27]
On 1 October 1936, in Burgos, Franco was publicly proclaimed as
Generalísimo of the National army and Jefe del Estado (Head of State).
[28] Mola was furious and Cabanellas intervened to calm the spirits
down.[citation needed] When Mola was killed in another air accident a
year later (which some believe was an assassination) (June 2, 1937),
no military leader was left from those who organized the conspiracy
against the Republic between 1933 and 1935.[29]
[edit]
Military command
From that time until the end of the war, Franco personally guided
military operations. After the failed assault on Madrid in November
1936, Franco settled to a piecemeal approach to winning the war,
rather than bold maneuvering. As with his decision to relieve the
garrison at Toledo, this approach has been subject of some debate;
some of his decisions, such as, in June 1938, when he preferred to
head for Valencia instead of Catalonia, remain particularly
controversial from a military viewpoint. It was however, in Valencia,
Castellon and Alicante where the last troops were defeated by Franco
Franco's army was supported by Nazi Germany in the form of the Condor
Legion, infamous for the bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937. These
German forces also provided maintenance personnel and trainers, and
some Germans and Italians served over the entire war period in Spain.
Principal assistance was received from Fascist Italy (Corpo Truppe
Volontarie), but the degree of influence of both powers on Franco's
direction of the war seems to have been very limited. Nevertheless,
the Italian troops, despite not being always effective, were present
in most of the large operations in big numbers, while the CTV helped
the Nationalist airforce dominate the skies for most of the war.
António de Oliveira Salazar's Portugal also openly assisted the
Nationalists from the start, contributing some 20,000 troops.
It is said that Franco's direction of the Nazi and Fascist forces was
limited, particularly in the direction of the Condor Legion, however,
he was officially, by default, their supreme commander and they rarely
made decisions on their own. For reasons of prestige, it was decided
to continue assisting Franco until the end of the war, and Italian and
German troops paraded on the day of the final victory in Madrid.[30]
[edit]
Political command
In April 1937, Franco managed to fuse the ideologically incompatible
national-syndicalist Falange ("phalanx", a far-right Spanish political
party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera) and the Carlist
monarchist parties under a single-party under his rule, dubbed Falange
Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-
Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS), which became the only legal party in
1939. The Falangists' hymn, Cara al Sol, became the semi-national
anthem of Franco's not yet established regime.
This new political formation appeased the pro-Nazi Falangists while
tempering them with the anti-German Carlists. Franco's brother-in-law
Ramón Serrano Súñer, who was his main political advisor, was able to
turn the various parties under Franco against each other to absorb a
series of political confrontations against Franco himself. At a
certain moment he even expelled the original leading members of both
the Carlists (Manuel Fal Conde) and the Falangists (Manuel Hedilla) to
secure Franco's political future. Franco also appeased the Carlists by
exploiting the Republicans' anti-clericalism in his propaganda, in
particular concerning the "Martyrs of the war". While the loyalist
forces presented the war as a struggle to defend the Republic against
Fascism, Franco depicted himself as the defender of "Christian Europe"
against "atheist Communism."
From early 1937, every death sentence had to be signed (or
acknowledged) by Franco. From the beginning of the revolt, all the
Junta generals ordered massive public and summary executions to spread
fear and reduce resistance among the civilians.
[edit]
The end of the Civil War
Before the fall of Catalonia in February 1939, the Prime Minister of
Spain Juan Negrín unsuccessfully proposed, in the meeting of the
Cortes in Figueres, capitulation with the sole condition of respecting
the lives of the vanquished. Negrín was ultimately deposed by Colonel
Segismundo Casado, later joined by José Miaja.
Thereafter, only Madrid (see History of Madrid) and a few other areas
remained under control of the government forces. On February 27,
Chamberlain and Daladier's governments recognized the Franco regime,
before the official end of the war. The PCE attempted a mutiny in
Madrid with the aim of re-establishing Negrín's leadership, but José
Miaja retained control. Finally, on March 28, 1939, with the help of
pro-Franco forces inside the city (the "fifth column" General Mola had
mentioned in propaganda broadcasts in 1936), Madrid fell to the
Nationalists. The next day, Valencia, which had held out under the
guns of the Nationalists for close to two years, also surrendered.
Victory was proclaimed on April 1, 1939, when the last of the
Republican forces surrendered. On this very date, Franco placed his
sword upon the altar in a church and in a vow, promised that he would
never again take up his sword unless Spain itself was threatened with
invasion.
At least 50,000 people were executed during the civil war.[19][31][32]
Franco's victory was followed by thousands of summary executions (from
15,000 to 25,000 people [33]) and imprisonments, while many were put
to forced labour, building railways, drying out swamps, digging canals
(La Corchuela, the Canal of the Bajo Guadalquivir), construction of
the Valle de los Caídos monument, etc. The 1940 shooting of the
president of the Catalan government, Lluís Companys, was one of the
most notable cases of this early suppression of opponents and
dissenters.
Although leftists suffered from an important death-toll, the Spanish
intelligentsia, atheists and military and government figures who had
remained loyal to the Madrid government during the war were also
targeted for oppression.
In his recent, updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor
"reckons Franco's ensuing 'white terror' claimed 200,000 lives. The
'red terror' had already killed 38,000."[34] Julius Ruiz concludes
that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843
executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of
150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist
Spain."[35] In Checas de Madrid, César Vidal comes to a nationwide
total of 110,965 victims of Republican violence; 11,705 people being
killed in Madrid alone.[36]
Despite the official end of the war, guerrilla resistance to Franco
(known as "the maquis") was widespread in many mountainous regions,
and continued well into the 1950s. In 1944, a group of republican
veterans, which also fought in the French resistance against the
Nazis, invaded the Val d'Aran in northwest Catalonia, but they were
quickly defeated.
The end of the war led to hundreds of thousands of exilees, mostly to
France (but also Mexico, Chile, Cuba, the USA and so on.).[37] On the
other side of the Pyrenees, refugees were confined in internment camps
of the French Third Republic, such as Camp Gurs or Camp Vernet, where
12,000 Republicans were housed in squalid conditions (mostly soldiers
from the Durruti Division [38]). The 17,000 refugees housed in Gurs
were divided into four categories (Brigadists, pilots, Gudaris and
ordinary 'Spaniards'). The Gudaris (Basques) and the pilots easily
found local backers and jobs, and were allowed to quit the camp, but
the farmers and ordinary people, who could not find relations in
France, were encouraged by the Third Republic, in agreement with the
Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so
and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there
they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for "purification"
according to the Law of Political Responsibilities.
After the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain of the Vichy France
regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police
attempted to round-up those who had been liberated from the camp.
Along with other "undesirables", they were sent to the Drancy
internment camp before being deported to Nazi Germany. 5,000 Spaniards
thus died in Mauthausen concentration camp [39]. The Chilean poet
Pablo Neruda, who had been named by the Chilean President Pedro
Aguirre Cerda special consul for immigration in Paris, was given
responsibility for what he called "the noblest mission I have ever
undertaken": shipping more than 2,000 Spanish refugees, who had been
housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old cargo ship,
the Winnipeg.
[edit]
World War II
In September 1939, World War II broke out in Europe, and although
Hitler met Franco once in Hendaye, France (October 23, 1940), to
discuss Spanish entry on the side of the Axis, Franco's demands (food,
military equipment, Gibraltar, French North Africa, Portugal, etc.)
proved too much and no agreement was reached. (An oft-cited remark
attributed to Hitler is that the German leader would rather have some
teeth extracted than to have to deal further with Franco.) Franco's
tactics received important support from Adolf Hitler and Benito
Mussolini during the civil war. He remained emphatically neutral in
the Second World War, but nonetheless offered various kinds of support
to Italy and Germany. He allowed Spanish soldiers to volunteer to
fight in the German Army against the USSR (the Blue Division), but
forbade Spaniards to fight in the West against the democracies.
Franco's common ground with Hitler was particularly weakened by
Hitler's propagation of a pseudo-pagan mysticism and his attempts to
manipulate Christianity, which went against Franco's deep commitment
to defending Christianity and Catholicism.[citation needed]
Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German
mining rights in Spain. Some historians argue that Franco made demands
that he knew Hitler would not accede to in order to stay out of the
war. Other historians argue that he, as leader of a destroyed country
in chaos, simply had nothing to offer the Germans and their military.
Yet, after the collapse of France in June 1940, Spain did adopt a pro-
Axis non-belligerency stance (for example, he offered Spanish naval
facilities to German ships) until returning to complete neutrality in
1943 when the tide of the war had turned decisively against Germany
and its allies. Some volunteer Spanish troops (the División Azul, or
"Blue Division")—not given official state sanction by Franco—went to
fight on the Eastern Front under German command from 1941–1943. Some
historians have argued that not all of the Blue Division were true
volunteers and that Franco expended relatively small but significant
resources to aid the Axis powers' battle against the Soviet Union.
During the entire war, especially after 1942, the Spanish borders were
more or less kept open for Jewish refugees from Vichy France and Nazi-
occupied territories in Europe. Franco's diplomats extended their
diplomatic protection over Sephardic Jews in Hungary, Slovakia and the
Balkans. Spain was a safe haven for all Jewish refugees and
antisemitism was not official policy under the Franco regime.
On June 14, 1940, the Spanish forces in Morocco occupied Tangier (a
city under the rule of the League of Nations) and did not leave it
until 1945.
[edit]
Spain under Franco
Main article: Spain under Franco
Franco was recognized as the Spanish head of state by Britain and
France in February 1939, two months before the war officially ended.
Already proclaimed Generalísimo of the Nationalists and Jefe del
Estado (Head of State) in October 1936 [28], he thereafter assumed the
official title of "Su Excelencia el Jefe de Estado" ("His Excellency
the Head of State"). However, he was also referred to in state and
official documents as "Caudillo de España" ("the Leader of Spain"),
and sometimes called "el Caudillo de la Última Cruzada y de la
Hispanidad" ("the Leader of the Last Crusade and of the Hispanic
World") and "el Caudillo de la Guerra de Liberación contra el
Comunismo y sus Cómplices" ("the Leader of the War of Liberation
Against Communism and Its Accomplices").
In 1947, Franco proclaimed Spain a monarchy, but did not designate a
monarch. This gesture was largely done to appease the Movimiento
Nacional (Carlists and Alfonsists). Although a self-proclaimed
monarchist himself, Franco had no particular desire for a King yet,
and as such, he left the throne vacant, with himself as de facto
Regent. He wore the uniform of a Captain General (a rank traditionally
reserved for the King) and resided in the El Pardo Palace. In
addition, he appropriated the royal privilege of walking beneath a
canopy, and his portrait appeared on most Spanish coins and postage
stamps. He also added "by the grace of God," a phrase usually part of
the styles of monarchs, to his style.
Franco initially sought support from various groups. He initially
garnered support from the fascist elements of the Falange, but
distanced himself from fascist ideology after the defeat of the Axis
in World War II. Franco's administration marginalized fascist
ideologues in favor of technocrats, many of whom were linked with Opus
Dei, who promoted the economic modernization under Franco[40].
Although Franco and Spain under his rule adopted some trappings of
fascism, he, and Spain under his rule, are not generally considered to
be fascist; among the distinctions, fascism entails a revolutionary
aim to transform society, where Franco and Franco's Spain did not seek
to do so, and, to the contrary, although authoritarian, were
conservative and traditional.[41][42][43][44][45] Stanley Payne, the
preeminent conservative scholar on fascism and Spain notes: "scarcely
any of the serious historians and analysts of Franco consider the
generalissimo to be a core fascist". [44][46] The consistent points in
Franco's long rule included above all authoritarianism, nationalism,
the defense of Catholicism and the family, anti-Freemasonry, and anti-
Communism.
The aftermath of the Civil War was socially bleak: many of those who
had supported the Republic fled into exile. Spain lost thousands of
doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, judges, professors, businessmen,
artists,etc. Many of those who had to stay lost their jobs or lost
their rank. Sometimes those jobs were given to unskilled and even
untrained personnel. This deprived the country of many of its
brightest minds, and also of a very capable workforce.[citation
needed]. However, this was done to keep Spain's citizens consistent
with the ideals sought by the Nationalists and Franco.
With the end of World War II, Spain suffered from the economic
consequences of its isolation from the international community. This
situation ended in part when, due to Spain's strategic location in
light of Cold War tensions, the United States entered into a trade and
military alliance with Spain. This historic alliance commenced with
United States President Eisenhower's visit in 1953 which resulted in
the Pact of Madrid. Spain was then admitted to the United Nations in
1955.
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alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, rec.radio.shortwave, alt.news-media,
alt.religion.christian, alt.politics.economics
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Opposition to Marxism
Fascists made no secret of their hatred of Marxists of all stripes,
from totalitarian communists to democratic socialists, Mussolini first
made his reputation as a fascist by unleashing armed squads of
Blackshirts on striking workers
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/202210/fascism/219363/Common-characteristics-of-fascist-movements
Common characteristics of fascist movements
There has been considerable disagreement among historians and
political scientists about the nature of fascism. Some scholars, for
example, regard it as a socially radical movement with ideological
ties to the Jacobins of the French Revolution, whereas others see it
as an extreme form of conservatism inspired by a 19th-century backlash
against the ideals of the Enlightenment. Some find fascism deeply
irrational, whereas others are impressed with the rationality with
which it served the material interests of its supporters. Similarly,
some attempt to explain fascist demonologies as the expression of
irrationally misdirected anger and frustration, whereas others
emphasize the rational ways in which these demonologies were used to
perpetuate professional or class advantages. Finally, whereas some
consider fascism to be motivated primarily by its aspirations—by a
desire for cultural “regeneration” and the creation of a “new man”—
others place greater weight on fascism’s “anxieties”—on its fear of
communist revolution and even of left-centrist electoral victories.
One reason for these disagreements is that the two historical regimes
that are today regarded as paradigmatically fascist—Mussolini’s Italy
and Nazi Germany—were different in important respects. In Italy, for
example, anti-Semitism was officially rejected before 1934, and it was
not until 1938 that Mussolini enacted a series of anti-Semitic
measures in order to solidify his new military alliance with Hitler.
Another reason is the fascists’ well-known opportunism—i.e., their
willingness to make changes in official party positions in order to
win elections or consolidate power. Finally, scholars of fascism
themselves bring to their studies different political and cultural
attitudes, which often have a bearing on the importance they assign to
one or another aspect of fascist ideology or practice. Secular
liberals, for example, have stressed fascism’s religious roots; Roman
Catholic and Protestant scholars have emphasized its secular origins;
social conservatives have pointed to its “socialist” and “populist”
aspects; and social radicals have noted its defense of “capitalism”
and “elitism.”
For these and other reasons, there is no universally accepted
definition of fascism. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a
number of general characteristics that fascist movements between 1922
and 1945 tended to have in common.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Opposition to Marxism
Fascists made no secret of their hatred of Marxists of all stripes,
from totalitarian communists to democratic socialists. Fascists
promised to deal more “firmly” with Marxists than had earlier, more
democratic rightist parties. Mussolini first made his reputation as a
fascist by unleashing armed squads of Blackshirts on striking workers
and peasants in 1920–21. Many early Nazis had served in the Freikorps,
the paramilitary groups formed by ex-soldiers to suppress leftist
activism in Germany at the end of World War I. The Nazi SA
(Sturmabteilung [“Assault Division”], or Brownshirts) clashed
regularly with German leftists in the streets before 1933, and when
Hitler came to power he sent hundreds of Marxists to concentration
camps and intimidated “red” neighbourhoods with police raids and
beatings.
For French fascists, Marxism was the main enemy. In 1925, Valois,
leader of the Faisceau, declared that the guiding principle of his
organization was “the elimination of socialism and everything
resembling it.” In 1926 Taittinger declared that the primary goal of
his Patriotic Youth was to “defeat the progress of communism by any
means necessary,” adding that “We defend the hierarchy of classes.…
Everyone knows that there will always be different social levels, the
strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the governing and the
governed.” In 1936 French Popular Party leader Doriot announced that
“Our politics are simple. We want a union of the French people against
Marxism.” Similarly, La Rocque, head of the Cross of Fire/French
Social Party, warned that communism was “the danger par excellence”
and that the machinations of Moscow were threatening France with
“insurrection, subversion, catastrophe.”
In 1919–20 the Heimwehr in Austria performed the same function that
the Freikorps did in Germany, its volunteer militia units
(Heimatschutz) doing battle with perceived foreign enemies and the
Marxist foe within. Many of these units were organized by members of
the landed gentry and the middle class to counter strikes by workers
in the industrial districts of Linz and Steyer. In 1927 violent
clashes between the Heimwehr and the Schutzbund, a socialist defense
organization, resulted in many deaths and injuries among the leftists.
In 1934 the Heimwehr joined Dollfuss’s Fatherland Front and was
instrumental in pushing Dollfuss toward fascism.
Many Finnish fascists began their political careers after World War I
as members of the anticommunist paramilitary group the White Guards.
In Spain much of the Falange’s early violence was directed against
socialist students at the University of Madrid. Portuguese Blue
Shirts, who called themselves “national syndicalists,” regarded
systematic violence against leftists to be “revolutionary.” During the
Spanish Civil War, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German fascists
joined forces to defeat the Popular Front, a coalition of liberals,
socialists, communists, and anarchists who had been democratically
elected in 1936.
In 1919 a number of fascist groups emerged in Japan to resist new
demands for democracy and to counter the influence of the Russian
Revolution of 1917. Although there were important differences between
these groups, they all opposed “bolshevization,” which some Japanese
fascists associated with increasing agitation by tenant farmers and
industrial workers. Fascists acted as strikebreakers; launched violent
assaults on left-wing labour unions, peasant unions, and the socialist
Levelling Society; and disrupted May Day celebrations. In 1938
Japanese fascists, having become powerful in the national government,
supported the mass arrest of leaders of the General Council of Trade
Unions (Nihon Rodo Kumiai So Hyogikai) and the Japan Proletarian Party
(Dai Nippon Seisan-To) and of professors close to the Labour-Peasant
Faction. Celebrations of May Day in Japan were prohibited in 1938, and
in 1939 Japan withdrew from all international labour organizations.
Despite the fascists’ violent opposition to Marxism, some observers
have noted significant similarities between fascism and Soviet
communism. Both were mass movements, both emerged in the years
following World War I in circumstances of political turmoil and
economic collapse, both sought to create totalitarian systems after
they came to power (and often concealed their totalitarian ambitions
beforehand), and both employed terror and violence without scruple
when it was expedient to do so. Other scholars have cautioned against
reading too much into these similarities, however, noting that fascist
regimes (in particular Nazi Germany) used terror for different
purposes and against different groups than did the Soviets and that
fascists, unlike communists, generally supported capitalism and
defended the interests of economic elites.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Opposition to
parliamentary democracy
Fascist movements criticized parliamentary democracy for allowing the
Marxist threat to exist in the first place. According to Hitler,
democracy undermined the natural selection of ruling elites and was
“nothing other than the systematic cultivation of human failure.”
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, maintained that the
people never rule themselves and claimed that every history-making
epoch had been created by aristocrats. Primo de Rivera wrote that “our
Spain will not emerge from elections” but would be saved by poets with
“weapons in their hands.” In Japan the Tojo dictatorship dissolved all
political parties, even right-wing groups, and reduced other political
freedoms.
Before they came to power, Hitler and Mussolini, despite their dislike
of democracy, were willing to engage in electoral politics and give
the appearance of submitting to democratic procedures. When Hitler was
appointed chancellor in 1933, he abandoned his military uniform for a
civilian suit and bowed profusely to President Paul von Hindenburg in
public ceremonies. In 1923 Mussolini proposed an electoral reform,
known as the Acerbo Law, that gave two-thirds of the seats in
Parliament to the party that received the largest number of votes.
Although Mussolini insisted that he wanted to save Parliament rather
than undermine it, the Acerbo Law enabled the Fascists to take control
of Parliament the following year and impose a dictatorship.
In France, La Rocque declared in 1933 that no election should take
place without a preliminary “cleansing of [government] committees and
the press,” and he threatened to use his paramilitary squads to
silence “agitators of disorder.” In 1935 he called elections exercises
in “collective decadence,” and early in 1936 he told his followers
that “even the idea of soliciting a vote nauseates me.” A few months
later, faced with the prospect that the Cross of Fire would be banned
by the government as a paramilitary organization, he founded a new and
ostensibly more democratic party, the French Social Party, which he
publicly claimed was “firmly attached to republican liberties.” He
privately made it clear to his followers, however, that his conversion
was more tactical than principled: “To scorn universal suffrage,” he
said, “does not withstand examination. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler…
committed that mistake. Hitlerism, in particular, raised itself to
total power through elections.” With the collapse of the Third
Republic in 1940 and the creation of the Vichy regime, La Rocque
returned to condemning democracy as he had before 1936: “The world
situation has put a halt to democracy,” he wrote. “We have condemned
the thing as well as the word.” In 1941 La Rocque insisted that the
French people obey Vichy’s new leaders the way soldiers obeyed their
officers.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Opposition to political
and cultural liberalism
Although circumstances sometimes made accommodation to political
liberalism necessary, fascists condemned this doctrine for placing the
rights of the individual above the needs of the Volk, encouraging
“divisiveness” (i.e., political pluralism), tolerating “decadent”
values, and limiting the power of the state. Fascists accused liberal
“fellow travelers” of wittingly or unwittingly abetting communism. In
1935 the Cross of Fire berated “moderates”—i.e., democratic
conservatives—for indirectly aiding the communists through their taste
for “compromise and hesitation.” La Rocque urged the French people to
stand up against revolution and its “sordid ally” moderation, warning
that, on the final day of reckoning, complicit moderates—“guardians
unfaithful to their charge”—would be “at the head of the list of the
guilty.”
Fascist propagandists also attacked cultural liberalism, claiming that
it encouraged moral relativism, godless materialism, and selfish
individualism and thereby undermined traditional morality. Anti-
Semitic fascists associated liberalism with Jews in particular—indeed,
one precursor of Nazism, the political theorist Theodor Fritsch,
claimed that to succumb to a liberal idea was to succumb to the Jew
within oneself.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Totalitarian ambitions
Although Hitler had not revealed the full extent of his totalitarian
aims before he came to power, as Führer (“Leader”) of the Third Reich,
he attempted not only to control all political power but also to
dominate many institutions and organizations that were previously
independent of the state, such as courts, churches, universities,
social clubs, veterans groups, sports associations, and youth groups.
Even the German family came under assault, as members of the Hitler
Youth were told that it was their patriotic duty to inform on anti-
Nazi parents. In Italy, Mussolini adopted the title of duce
(“leader”), and his regime created billboards displaying slogans such
as “The Duce is always right” (Il Duce ha sempre ragione) and
“Believe, obey, fight” (Credere, obbedire, combattere). It should be
noted that, despite their considerable efforts in this direction,
neither Hitler nor Mussolini succeeded in creating a completely
totalitarian regime. Indeed, both regimes were riven by competing and
heterogeneous power groups (which Hitler and Mussolini played off
against each other), and the Fascists in Italy were significantly
limited by the wishes of traditional elites, including the Catholic
church.
Before fascists came to power, however, they often disavowed
totalitarian aims. This was especially true in countries such as
France, where conservatives were alarmed by reports of the repression
of dissident conservatives in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. After
Hitler’s crackdown on Roman Catholic dissidents in Germany in 1934 and
1935, French fascists took pains to deny that they were totalitarians,
lest they alienate potential Catholic supporters in France. Indeed,
they attacked “statism” and advocated a more decentralized government
that would favour local economic elites. However, La Rocque’s claim in
1936 that he supported republican liberties did not prevent him in
1941 from demanding “unanimity” under Pétain and a purge of
practitioners of Freemasonry from all government departments.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Conservative economic
programs
There were a few, usually small, fascist movements whose social and
economic goals were left or left-centrist. Hendrik de Man in Belgium
and Marcel Déat in France, both former socialists, were among those
who hoped eventually to achieve a fairer distribution of wealth by
appealing to fascist nationalism and class conciliation. In Poland the
Camp of National Radicalism (Oboz Narodowo-Raykalny) supported land
reform and the nationalization of industry, and fascists in Libya and
Syria advocated Arab socialism. In Japan, Kita Ikki, an early theorist
of Japanese fascism, called for the nationalization of large
industries, a limited degree of worker control, and a modern welfare
program for the poor.
However, the economic programs of the great majority of fascist
movements were extremely conservative, favouring the wealthy far more
than the middle class and the working class. Their talk of national
“socialism” was quite fraudulent in this respect. Although some
workers were duped by it before the fascists came to power, most
remained loyal to the traditional antifascist parties of the left. As
historian John Weiss noted, “Property and income distribution and the
traditional class structure remained roughly the same under fascist
rule. What changes there were favored the old elites or certain
segments of the party leadership.” Historian Roger Eatwell concurred:
“If a revolution is understood to mean a significant shift in class
relations, including a redistribution of income and wealth, there was
no Nazi revolution.”
Mussolini, a leading member of the Italian Socialist Party (Partito
Socialista Italiano) before World War I, became a fierce antisocialist
after the war. After coming to power, he banned all Marxist
organizations and replaced their trade unions with government-
controlled corporatist unions. Until he instituted a war economy in
the mid-1930s, Mussolini allowed industrialists to run their companies
with a minimum of government interference. Despite his former
anticapitalist rhetoric, he cut taxes on business, permitted cartel
growth, decreed wage reduction, and rescinded the eight-hour-workday
law. Between 1928 and 1932 real wages in Italy dropped by almost half.
Mussolini admitted that the standard of living had fallen but stated
that “fortunately the Italian people were not accustomed to eating
much and therefore feel the privation less acutely than others.”
Although Hitler claimed that the Nazi Party was more “socialist” than
its conservative rivals, he opposed any Marxist-inspired
nationalization of major industries. On May 2, 1933, he abolished all
free trade unions in Germany, and his minister of labour, Robert Ley,
later declared that it was necessary “to restore absolute leadership
to the natural leader of the factory, that is, the employer.” Nazi
“anticapitalism,” such as it was, was aimed primarily at Jewish
capitalism; non-Jewish capitalists were allowed to keep their
companies and their wealth, a distinction that was made in the Nazi
Party’s original program and never changed. Although Hitler reduced
unemployment in Germany, most German workers were forced to toil for
lower wages and longer hours and under worse conditions than had been
the case during the Weimar Republic. His solution to the unemployment
problem also depended on the recruitment of thousands of men into the
military.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Corporatism
The fascist economic theory corporatism called for organizing each of
the major sectors of industry, agriculture, the professions, and the
arts into state- or management-controlled trade unions and employer
associations, or “corporations,” each of which would negotiate labour
contracts and working conditions and represent the general interests
of their professions in a larger assembly of corporations, or
“corporatist parliament.” Corporatist institutions would replace all
independent organizations of workers and employers, and the
corporatist parliament would replace, or at least exist alongside,
traditional representative and legislative bodies. In theory, the
corporatist model represented a “third way” between capitalism and
communism, allowing for the harmonious cooperation of workers and
employers for the good of the nation as a whole. In practice, fascist
corporatism was used to destroy labour movements and suppress
political dissent. In 1936, for example, the economic program of the
French Social Party included shorter working hours and vacations with
pay for “loyal” workers but not for “disloyal” ones, and benefits were
to be assigned by employers, not the government. The Nazi “Strength
Through Joy” program, which provided subsidies for vacations and other
leisure activities for workers, operated on similar principles.
Extensive corporatist legislation was passed in Italy beginning in the
late 1920s, creating several government-controlled unions and
outlawing strikes. The Salazar regime in Portugal, using the Italian
legislation as its model, outlawed the Trade Union Federation and all
leftist unions, made corporatist unions compulsory for workers, and
declared strikes illegal—all of which contributed to a decline in real
wages. Croatian, Russian, Argentine, Brazilian, and Chilean fascism
also proposed corporatist solutions to labour-management strife.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Alleged equality of
social status
In the political discourse of the fascist right, economic problems
related to large disparities of wealth between rich and poor were
treated as problems of social status and class prejudice. Rather than
attacking upper-class wealth, fascists attacked upper-class snobbism.
Rather than narrowing class differences, they taught that these
differences were subjective and unimportant. National “socialism” was
said to occur when a Hitler Youth from a rich family and a Hitler
Youth from a poor family became comrades; no wealth had to be shared.
This conception of socialism was in part an outgrowth of the Nazis’
attempt to transfer military values to civilian life: In war it did
not matter if the soldier next to you came from a poor or a wealthy
background as long as he fought loyally for the combat unit.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Imperialism
Many fascist movements had imperialistic aims. Hitler hoped that his
Drang nach Osten (“drive toward the east”), by conquering eastern
Europe and Russia, would not only prove the racial superiority of
Aryans over Slavs but also provide enough plunder and Lebensraum
(“living space”) to overcome continuing economic difficulties at home.
Mussolini’s imperial ambitions were directed at North Africa, and his
armies invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Polish fascists advocated retaking
all the lands that had ever been ruled by Polish kings, including East
Prussia. Finnish fascists wanted to create a “Greater Finland” at the
expense of Russia, and Croatian fascists advocated a “Greater Croatia”
at the expense of Serbia. Japanese fascists preached military conquest
on behalf of their plan for a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere.” French fascists were strong defenders of the French empire in
Indochina and North Africa, and during the interwar period they
attracted considerable support among the ruling European minority
(colons) in Algeria. Portuguese fascists waged colonial wars in
Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique. Syrian, Iraqi, and Egyptian fascist
movements also supported territorial expansionism. However, there were
some “peace fascisms” that were not imperialistic, such as the
Integralist Action movement in Brazil.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Military values
Fascists favoured military values such as courage, unquestioning
obedience to authority, discipline, and physical strength. They also
adapted the outward trappings of military organizations, such as
paramilitary uniforms and Roman salutes. Hitler imagined a God who
presided over military conflicts and ensured the survival of the
fittest. Mussolini was famous for slogans such as “A minute on the
battlefield is worth a lifetime of peace,” “Better to live an hour
like a lion than a hundred years like a sheep,” and “Nothing has ever
been won in history without bloodshed.” Similarly, a pamphlet
published by the Japanese War Ministry in 1934 declared: “War is the
father of creation and the mother of culture.” The songs of Spanish
Falangists extolled the nobility of death in war. Like many fascists,
the French writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, author of the fascist
novel Gilles, prided himself on his “tough-minded” realism, which
accepted killing as a principle of nature. La Rocque’s organization,
originally a war veterans’ movement, prided itself on the martial
“spirit of the Cross of Fire,” and its spokesmen made nefarious
comparisons between “virile” combat soldiers and “decadent” civilian
politicians.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Volksgemeinschaft
Hitler envisioned the ideal German society as a Volksgemeinschaft, a
racially unified and hierarchically organized body in which the
interests of individuals would be strictly subordinate to those of the
nation, or Volk. Like a military battalion, the people’s community
would be permanently prepared for war and would accept the discipline
that this required. The Italian, French, and Spanish versions of this
doctrine, known as “integral nationalism,” were similarly illiberal,
though not racist. The Japanese version, known as the “family-system
principle,” maintained that the nation is like a family: it is strong
only when the people obey their leaders in the same way children obey
their parents.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Mass mobilization
Fascists characteristically attempted to win popular support and
consolidate their power by mobilizing the population in mass meetings,
parades, and other gatherings. Exploiting principles borrowed from
modern American advertising, which stressed the importance of
appealing to the audience’s emotions rather than to its reason,
fascists used such gatherings to create patriotic fervour and to
encourage fanatic enthusiasm for the fascist cause. The Nazi rallies
at Nürnberg, for example, were organized with theatrical precision and
featured large banners, paramilitary uniforms, martial music,
torchlight parades, bonfires, and forests of fascist salutes
accompanied by prompted shouts of “Sieg Heil!” Hitler believed it best
to hold such gatherings at night, when audiences would be more
susceptible than in the daytime to irrational appeals. Fascists also
sought to regiment the population, especially young people, by
infiltrating local social networks—tavern groups and veteran, sports,
church, student, and other organizations—and providing soup kitchens,
vacation outings, and nationalistic ceremonies for townspeople. In
France, La Rocque’s French Social Party dispensed meals to the
unemployed and offered workers access to swimming pools, social clubs,
and vacation grounds in order to entice them into the movement.
Mussolini’s regime in Italy and Salazar’s government in Portugal also
held government-organized mass rallies. After 1936 Japanese fascists
paid less attention to mass mobilization than to working directly with
the nation’s elites. The dictatorship that followed was based on a
coalition of military leaders, industrialists, state bureaucrats, and
conservative party politicians.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » The leadership principle
Fascists defended the Führerprinzip (“leadership principle”), the
belief that the party and the state should have a single leader with
absolute power. Hitler was the Führer and Mussolini the Duce, both
words for the “leader” who gave the orders that everyone else had to
obey. The authority of the leader was often enhanced by his personal
charisma.
The leadership principle was also conceived to apply at lower levels
of the political and social hierarchy. Fascist organizations sometimes
exhibited the so-called “corporal syndrome,” in which persons
willingly submit to the authority of those above them in exchange for
the gratification they derive from dominating those below. Japanese
fascists believed that owners of stores and workshops should exercise
“paternal” authority over their assistants, clerks, workers, servants,
and tenants. Subordinates were not permitted to organize themselves
into unions, and the small bosses assumed the leadership of town and
village councils. As historian Masao Maruyama notes, this mind-set
affected the way many Japanese shop masters viewed their nation’s
foreign policy in the 1930s: “The resistance of the East Asian peoples
to Japanese imperialism aroused the same psychological reactions among
them as the resistance of their subordinates in the shops, workplaces,
and other groups under their control. Thus they became the most ardent
supporters of the China Incident [the Mukden Incident (1931), in which
Japanese troops seized the Manchurian city of Mukden] and the Pacific
War.”
Common characteristics of fascist movements » The “new man”
Fascists aimed to transform the ordinary man into the “new man,” a
“virile” being who would put decadent bourgeoisie, cerebral Marxists,
and “feminine” liberals to shame. The new man would be physically
strong and morally “hard,” admiring what was forceful and vigorous and
despising everything “weak” and “soft.” As Hitler described him, the
new man was “slim and slender, quick like a greyhound, tough like
leather, and hard like Krupp steel.” The new man was a man of the past
as well as the future. Italian fascists held up the soldiers of
ancient Rome as models, and Bertrand de Jouvenel praised the “brutal
barons” of the Middle Ages and the original conquerors of Europe, the
Franks. “Fascist man,” he wrote, was “a throwback to the warrior and
property holder of yesteryear, to the type of man who was the head of
a family and a clan: When this type of man ceases to win esteem and
disappears, then the process of decadence begins.”
Drieu La Rochelle believed Hitlerian man to be superior to Democratic
man, Marxist man, and Liberal man. “The Hitlerian,” he wrote, “is a
type who rejects culture, who stands firm in the middle of sexual and
alcoholic depravity and who dreams of bringing to the world a physical
discipline with radical effects.” The new man was also a Darwinian
“realist” who was contemptuous of “delicate” souls who refused to
employ harsh military or political measures when they were required.
During World War II, in a speech to an SS unit that had executed many
Jews, SS chief Heinrich Himmler reminded his “new men” that they
needed to be emotionally as well as physically hard: “Most of you know
what it means when 100 corpses are piled up, when 500 or 1,000 are
piled there. To have gone through this and—with exceptions due to
weakness—to have remained decent, that is what has made us hard. I
have to expect of you superhuman acts of inhumanity.…We have no right
to be weak.…[Our men] must never be soft. They must grit their teeth
and do their duty.”
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Glorification of youth
Fascists praised the young for their physical strength and honoured
them for their idealism and spirit of self-sacrifice—qualities, they
said, that were often lacking in their elders. Fascists often
presented their cause in generational terms. As the young Goebbels
declared, “The old ones don’t even want to understand that we young
people even exist. They defend their power to the last. But one day
they will be defeated after all. Youth finally must be victorious.” De
Jouvenel described fascism as a “revolution of the body” that
reflected youth’s hunger for discipline, effort, combat, and courage.
The young, who loved “strong and slender bodies, vigorous and sure
movements, [and] short sentences,” consequently detested middle-aged,
pot-bellied liberals and café verbosity.
Partly because they made concerted appeals to young people, fascist
parties tended to have younger members than most other rightist
parties. The leadership of the Nazi Party, for example, was relatively
young, and junior officers in the German army often went over to
fascism sooner than senior officers. Corneliu Codreanu, leader of the
Iron Guard in Romania, was only 31 when he founded the movement in
1930, and his major lieutenants were in their 20s. Similarly, Primo de
Rivera was only 30 when he founded the Falange, and in 1936, 60 to 70
percent of his followers were under 21.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Education as character
building
Fascist educators emphasized character building over intellectual
growth, devalued the transmission of information, inculcated blind
obedience to authority, and discouraged critical and independent
thinking that challenged fascist ideology. According to Nazi writer
Herman Klaus, the teacher “is not just an instructor and transmitter
of knowledge.…He is a soldier, serving on the cultural and political
front of National Socialism. For intellectuals belong to the people or
they are nothing.” The ultimate aim of Nazi education was not to make
students think more richly but to make them war more vigorously. As
the Nazi minister of culture in Prussia wrote, “The National Socialist
revolution has replaced the image of the cultivated personality with
the reality of the true German man. It has substituted for the
humanistic conception of culture a system of education which develops
out of the fellowship of actual battle.” Teachers who did not practice
these principles or who appeared skeptical of Nazi “idealism” were
subject to dismissal, often as a result of reports by student
informers.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Decadence and
spirituality
Some of the ugliest aspects of fascism—intolerance, repression, and
violence—were fueled by what fascists saw as a morally justified
struggle against “decadence.” For fascists, decadence meant a number
of things: materialism, self-indulgence, hedonism, cowardice, and
physical and moral softness. It was also associated with rationalism,
skepticism, atheism, humanitarianism, and political, economic, and
gender democracy, as well as rule by the Darwinian unfit, by the weak
and the “female.” For anti-Semitic fascists, Jews were the most
decadent of all.
The opposite of decadence was “spirituality,” which transcended
materialism and generated self-discipline and virility. The spiritual
attitude involved a certain emotional asceticism that enabled one to
avoid feelings of pity for one’s victims. It also involved Darwinian
notions of survival of the fittest, a belief in the right of natural
elites to upward social and political mobility, and accommodation with
members of the upper classes. It prized hierarchy, respect for
superiors, and military obedience. It was forceful toward the weak,
and it was “male.” The spiritual attitude was also hateful. In 1934
Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, worried that Germans had “forgotten how
to hate.” “Virile hate,” he wrote, “has been replaced by feminine
lamentation. But he who is unable to hate cannot love either.
Fanatical love and hate—their fires kindle flames of freedom.” De
Jouvenel agreed: “Any sentiment less vigorous than hatred indicates a
lack of virility.”
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Violence
Fascists reacted to their opponents with physical force. Primo de
Rivera maintained that “no other argument is admissible than that of
fists and pistols when justice or the Fatherland is attacked.” Before
he came to power, Mussolini sent his Blackshirts to assault socialist
organizers throughout Italy, and later he sent many leftists to
prison. Hitler’s storm troopers served a similar function, and Nazi
concentration camps at first interned more Marxists than Jews. Nor
were dissident conservatives spared Nazi violence. Hitler’s infamous
“Blood Purge” of June 1934, in which Röhm and other SA leaders were
summarily executed, also claimed the lives of Kurt von Schleicher, the
last chancellor of the Weimar Republic, and his wife, who were
murdered in their home. To his critics Hitler replied, “People accuse
us of being barbarians; we are barbarians, and we are proud of it!” In
Romania, Codreanu’s “death teams” engaged in brutal strikebreaking,
and, in France, Drieu La Rochelle glorified military and political
violence as healthy antidotes to decadence. Beginning in 1931 Japanese
fascists assassinated a number of important political figures, but in
1936, after a government crackdown, they renounced such tactics. In
the United States in the 1920s and ’30s, the Ku Klux Klan and other
groups sought to intimidate African Americans with cross burnings,
beatings, and lynchings.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Extreme nationalism
Whereas cosmopolitan conservatives often supported international
cooperation and admired elite culture in other countries, fascists
espoused extreme nationalism and cultural parochialism. Fascist
ideologues taught that national identity was the foundation of
individual identity and should not be corrupted by foreign influences,
especially if they were left-wing. Nazism condemned Marxist and
liberal internationalisms as threats to German national unity.
Fascists in general wanted to replace internationalist class
solidarity with nationalist class collaboration. The Italian, French,
and Spanish notion of integral nationalism was hostile to
individualism and political pluralism. Unlike democratic
conservatives, fascists accused their political opponents of being
less “patriotic” than they, sometimes even labeling them “traitors.”
Portuguese fascists spoke of “internal foreigners” who were
“antination.” In the 1930s some French fascist organizations even
rejected the label “fascist,” lest they be perceived as beholden to
Germany.
In France, immigrants—particularly left-wing immigrants—were special
targets of fascist nationalism. Jean Renaud of French Solidarity
demanded that all foreigners seeking residence in France be rigorously
screened and that the unfit be denied entry “without pity”—especially
social revolutionaries, who made France “not a refuge for the
oppressed but a depository for trash.” In 1935 La Rocque blamed Hitler
for driving German refugees into France and condemned the “foolish
sentimentality” that prompted the government to accept them. He also
criticized France’s naturalization policies for allowing cities like
Marseille and Paris to be inundated by a rising tide of
“undesirables.” France, he declared, had become the shepherd of “a
swarming, virulent mob of outlaws,” some of whom, under the pretext of
fleeing Nazi persecution, were really infiltrating France as spies.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Scapegoating
Fascists often blamed their countries’ problems on scapegoats. Jews,
Freemasons, Marxists, and immigrants were prominent among the groups
that were demonized. According to fascist propaganda, the long
depression of the 1930s resulted less from insufficient government
regulation of the economy or inadequate lower-class purchasing power
than from “Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik” conspiracies, left-wing agitation,
and the presence of immigrants. The implication was that depriving
these demons of their power and influence would cause the nation’s
major problems to go away.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Populism
Fascists praised the Volk and pandered to populist anti-
intellectualism. Nazi art criticism, for example, upheld the populist
view that the common man was the best judge of art and that art that
did not appeal to popular taste was decadent. Also populist was the
Nazi propaganda theme that Hitler was a “new man” who had “emerged
from the depth of the people.” Unlike left-wing populism, fascist
populism did not attribute workers’ hardships to big business and big
landowners and did not advocate measures such as progressive taxation,
higher pay for industrial and farm workers, protection of unions, and
the right to strike. In general it spared the wealth of the upper
classes—except that belonging to Jews.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Revolutionary image
Fascists sometimes portrayed their movements as “new” and
“revolutionary,” an image that appealed not just to the young but to
older literary modernists such as Filippo Marinetti, T.S. Eliot, Ezra
Pound, Wyndham Lewis, William Butler Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, and Paul de
Man. However, dozens of fascist writers also praised cultural
traditionalism, or “rootedness.” Under the Third Reich, Goebbels
subsidized an exhibition of modern art not to celebrate its glory but
to expose its decadence; he called it simply the “Exhibition of
Degenerate Art.” Fascism’s claims to newness did not prevent its
propagandists from pandering to fearful traditionalists who associated
cultural modernism with secular humanism, feminism, sexual license,
and the destruction of the Christian family.
Common characteristics of fascist movements » Antiurbanism
Fascists also pandered to antiurban feelings. The Nazis won most of
their electoral support from rural areas and small towns. In Nazi
propaganda the ideal German was not an urban intellectual but a simple
peasant, and uprooted intellectualism was considered a threat to the
deep, irrational sources of the Volk soul. Jews were often portrayed—
and therefore condemned—as quintessential city dwellers. In 1941 La
Rocque commented: “The theory of ‘families of good stock who have
their roots in the earth’ leads us to conclusions not far from [those
of] Walter Darre, Minister of Agriculture for the Reich.” Romanian
fascism relied heavily on the support of landed peasants who
distrusted the “wicked” city. The agrarian wing of Japanese fascism
praised the peasant soldier and denigrated the industrial worker.
Under fascist regimes women were urged to perform their traditional
gender role as wives and mothers and to bear many children for the
nation. Mussolini instituted policies severely restricting women’s
access to jobs outside the home (policies that later had to be revised
to meet wartime exigencies), and he distributed gold medals to mothers
who produced the most children. In Germany the Nazis forbade female
party members from giving orders to male members. In a speech in 1937,
Charles Vallin, vice president of the French Social Party, equated
feminists with insubordinate proletarians: “It is not with class
struggle that the social question will be resolved. Yet, it is toward
a sort of class struggle, opposing the feminine ‘proletariat’ to the
masculine ‘capitalist,’ that feminism is leading us.”
De Jouvenel equated women with hedonism and hedonism with decadence.
Europe, he wrote in 1938, had grown soft and feminine from pleasure
seeking, becoming “like a woman who had just escaped a frightening
accident. [She] needed light, warmth, music.” According to de
Jouvenel, an atmosphere of “facility” corrupted everything, and people
had become increasingly unwilling to take on painful tasks. In short,
he believed the feminization of Europe had been its downfall. In a
similar vein, Drieu La Rochelle claimed that educated women undermined
his manhood. He characterized political movements he disliked as
feminine and those he admired as masculine—fascism, for him, being the
most masculine of all.
.
~ RHF
> ~ RHF wrote:
> > On Aug 28, 5:33 am, dave <d...@dave.dave> wrote:
> >> ~ RHF wrote:
>
> >>> - Democracy dies without information.
> > - - Dave - Mark Lloyd does not believe in American
> > - - Democracy and Freedom of the Press {Media}
> > - - including Freedom of Speech : Mark Lloyd's Hero
> > - - is Hugo Chavez and Total Government Controlled
> > - - Media.
> > -
> > - I'd love to see a cite for this one...
>
> > -cite- cite- cite- Prez Obama's FCC CZAR
> > Mark Lloyd Loves Hugo Chavez's Revolution
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF2C235fD7o
> > -oops- in his own Liberal-Fascist Words to boot
>
> He didn't say he loved it, he said it was "incredible" and "dramatic",
> which it was. I like the guy.
- The righties get their panties in a knot
- whenever the lefties "steal" their tactics.
> Tough titties.
Dave that would be the 1930s Righties and the
Today's Lefties {Liberal} who stole the Methods
and Tactics of Fascists which brings us to the
reality of 21st Century Liberal-Fascism as it now
manifests itself in America.
dave - thanks for admitting it ~ RHF
.
The Truth About the Liberal-Fascism being
Employed by the Obama-Regime©
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/06d289f288657545
.
About - Liberal-Fascism -by- Jonah Goldberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Fascism
.
Watch Glen Beck FOX TV for Your Daily Dose
http://www.foxnews.com/glennbeck/index.html
of Truth About the Obama-Regime© and the
Obama-Czars© & The Obama-Security-Corps©
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/tv/
Begin to Understand the Realities of 21st Century
Liberal-Fascism being employed by the Obama-
Regime© to Control Every Aspect of Your Daily Life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck
.
O.B.A.M.A. = One Big Absolute Mistake America !
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/244b71e8dcd31438
The ObamaNation© Creating a Culture of Joblessness,
Dependency and Controlling Your Every Day Life plus
Taxing Every Day You Live : That's Obama-Tax-Slavery© !
.
.
"Since When Has It Been Part of American Patriotism
to Keep Our Mouths Shut?" -a-la- Hillary Clinton 2006
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/0e99a85fda97af18
.
just say 'no' to obamaism© {liberal-fascism} ~ RHF
http://theyoungconservative.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/yaf-resist-ob...
.
.
dave
> .
> Watch Glen Beck FOX TV for Your Daily Dose
> http://www.foxnews.com/glennbeck/index.html
> of Truth About the Obama-Regime�
You'd appear slightly less deranged if you learned to spell your
spiritual advisor's name correctly. There are 2 [ea] "n"s in Glenn
Beck's first name.
Here's a nemonic to help you remember: "Nattering Nabobs".
dxAce
dave wrote:
Here's one to remember you, Dave: "Nucking Futs".
dxAce
Michigan
USA
dave
dxAce
dave wrote:
Yep, that's you Dave, Nucking Futs!
~ RHF
OK it's Glenn Beck Glenn Beck Glenn Beck !
Dave Better You Prepare Yourself For Obama-Tax-Slavery© !
Dave All You Earn Will Go To Obama-Tax-Slavery© !
Dave All You Do Will Be Controlled By Obama-Tax-Slavery© !
.
About - Liberal-Fascism -by- Jonah Goldberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Fascism
.
Watch Glenn Beck FOX TV for Your Daily Dose
http://www.foxnews.com/glennbeck/index.html
of Truth About the Obama-Regime© and the
Obama-Czars© & The Obama-Security-Corps©
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/tv/
Begin to Understand the Realities of 21st Century
Liberal-Fascism being employed by the Obama-
Regime© to Control Every Aspect of Your Daily Life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck
.
O.B.A.M.A. = One Big Absolute Mistake America !
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/244b71e8dcd31438
The ObamaNation© Creating a Culture of Joblessness,
Dependency and Controlling Your Every Day Life plus
Taxing Every Day You Live : That's Obama-Tax-Slavery© !
.
"Since When Has It Been Part of American Patriotism
to Keep Our Mouths Shut?" -a-la- Hillary Clinton 2006
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.radio.shortwave/msg/0e99a85fda97af18
.
That's Obamaism {Liberal-Fascism} in a Nutshell ~ RHF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3yMPWmeaBs
.
cuh...@webtv.net
the street from doggy's couch.He can see me workin on my old trailer in
my back yard.I put a piece of 2'' by 4'' on top of my head and I wind it
around like a Helicopter.Another time, I swing my long extension cord
around and around like a Lasso and I throw it like I am riding a horse
and lassoin a cow.Another time I bunny hop across my back yard just like
a bunny rabbit.
I think I heard that dude say, Man, you ought to stop that sh.t! That
encourages me to do some more Crazy antics back there.
cuhulin