Support NeoGAF

[Electric Eye]

I learned this in high school in the nineties.

So did I but not through our curriculum I stumbled onto it in the school library while flipping through a really great picture history book on the Nazis, there where pictures and descriptions in there of the American Nazi party and so I did more digging and was shocked like most people here. This was before the internet so I really had to put some footwork in to get my fill of this part of history. This is also when I learned the Nazis used to cut out the tattoos off of the dead and have their wives make lamp shades with them. Fuck in fact the entire book was an illustration on just how fucked of a cult Nazism was.

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

I love how almost everyone no matter which end of the spectrum tries to claim ownership of Washington if they are an American party. He really knew what he was doing carefully crafting his legacy.

Washington was a lot of things, many distasteful and embarrassing, but he cared too much about being the American Cinncinnatus to end up a fascist.

 

[The Dink]

Christ. I had learned there was some pro-nazi support in America before the war but this is just...holy crap. I need to lie down for a bit. Especially after those racist Dr. Seus cartoons. Just...holy crap.

 

[AYF 001]

That's a bad thing?

Well i suppose it's better to be the one who starts the fire.

Considering how American isolationism could be seen as a contributing factor towards WWII in the first place, yes. The U.S. adopted a similar stance during WWI, and once again waited until they were personally attacked (unrestricted U-boat warfare against ships with civilians). If they had joined with Great Britain as soon as war had broken out, instead of merely sending supplies, Germany would likely have capitulated much sooner, with far less strain put on the economies of all parties involved. There's also the fact that tens of millions of people wouldn't have died pointless deaths. The terms of the peace treaty would probably have been more amicable towards the axis powers, since the amount of damage sustained would be minimal in comparison. Those three factors could have avoided the post-war depression in Germany that led to the Nazi party gaining power.

And as for the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire might not have been arbitrarily broken up and seized by the various European powers, but rather breaking down along more organic regional ties. Without foreign influence, the intra-national turmoil we've seen in that region over the past century could potentially have been avoided.

 

[Fritz]

The Nazi Germany invested a lot of money in the support of "Germans abroad". There was a systematic work done trying to turn badically everyone with German origin abroad into a spy. And this policy was quite successful.

Putin has tried to employ some of those ideas as well, but, thankfully, Russians are not as organized and systematic as Germans.

This is interesting. Do you have any links or other resources to read up on?

 

[Kinan]

This is interesting. Do you have any links or other resources to read up on?

Well, most famous is this book, one can start from there.

All Germans living abroad were encouraged to report their observations to the authorities, particular attention was being focused on engineers, technicians, scientists and people in other professions who were particularly likely to obtain valuable information; however, other Germans abroad were also used, even cabaret singers, waiters, language teachers, as well as Germans travelling abroad as tourists. Germans living abroad were exempt from mobilization because of their value as spies. Foreigners were given opportunity to study in Germany, and connections with them were kept in the hope that they would one day provide useful information. All of this was Goebbels' 'Total Espionage'.

 

[Fuchsdh]

It's worth pointing out that the big reason that German-Americans weren't blanket interned during WWII the same as the Japanese was that there were 10x more Germans. Still, around 10,000 were interned during the war.

As is, the actual influence of the Bund and other pro-German organizations, at least among German-Americans, was pretty slight. But they were pretty effective in making it feel like it was a lot more widespread.

 

[L Thammy]

Thanks for posting this thread. I was actually wondering about this kind of stuff recently. I had been thinking about it since I've seen a few months ago; I saw someone on GAF claiming that Neo-Nazi ideology isn't about a specific ethnicity because America has Neo-Nazis and isn't German. (For the record, this was more innocent than it might sound; I think they were just naively equating "Neo-Nazi" with "racist".)

Ethnic Germans make up surprising amount of the American populace - something like 16-17%. They're larger than any other group aside from self-reported "Americans" as far as I know. There are also a bunch of states where German is the most commonly spoken language after English and Spanish.

Now, as far as I know, the bulk of German migration to the U.S. happened a long while ago and certainly would have predated Nazism. I don't mean to say that German = Nazi or anything like that. But I was curious as to how linked modern Neo-Nazis groups are to the original Nazis; are they fanboy imitators with no real connection at all? Are they imitating the nationalism and racial pride they saw from Europe without having the direct experience that too much nationalism can have horrifying results? Is there a more direct connection?

 

[Karish]

EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK