this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
38 points (95.2% liked)

AskHistorians

679 readers
78 users here now

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] apfelwoiSchoppen 51 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Both are/were leading popular fascist movements in liberal democracies with the expressed intent of undoing any semblance of democratic will for the voting populace. Their playbook is to vilify non white people and immigrants and focus on giving preferential rights to white people who play the game. Those who did not either fled, got locked up, or were executed. The focus on a specific subset of people is further reinforced by their strict obsession with a historic reductive or fictionalized nationalism and/or manifest destiny.

Both have had failed insurrections with soft consequences for the leaders who incited and participated in the events. (see Beer Hall Putsch)

Fascist movements can have unique aspects that make them different from each other. Nazi Germany was different than Mussolini's Italy, or Franco's Spain, etc etc. Just because they have these aspects does not exclude them from being fascist and doing a lot of harm to people. See the image from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Listen and learn from history.

The last edit, promise.

[–] PugJesus 25 points 1 month ago

Mass deportations were considered multiple times by the Nazi Party before they settled on extermination. The issue the Nazis had is that they had nowhere to deport them to - it's one thing to tell a country "These are your citizens, you have to take them back"; it's another to say "These are our citizens, you have to take them". Not as a matter of moral right and wrong, but of legal obligation. The former is much more compelling to countries than the latter.

There was considerable talk of expelling German Jews, and many German Jews were turned away from other countries because other countries had no desire to take in large amounts of refugees - and antisemitism exacerbated that issue. The US took in a pitifully small amount, being in the midst of one of our intermittent outbreaks of anti-immigration hysteria + the Great Depression, and other countries often did even less than we did. The Sovs under Stalin refused all Jewish-German refugees. The ambiguous British position and lack of enforcement led to large amounts of Jews fleeing to Palestine - illegally, but the British made only token attempts to stop them.

Hitler spent a large amount of the 30s locking up his domestic enemies, long before death camps were conceived. Some in ordinary prisons, others in work camps.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Deporting/locking up/tattooing in his view "undesirables" via concentration camps.