The Problem with Stopped Clocks

by Cliopatria

Surprise, surprise: 25% of Germans think that there were"good sides" to the Third Reich (37% among the generation that grew up under the Third Reich, 15% for the next generation, and 20% among the young generation). It neatly parallels the rise of pro-fascists parties in recent elections

It would be easy to make too much of this."The Nazis did such and such" is a weak, but oft used, rhetorical device. American conservatives often discredit social policies in Europe by noting similar programs established by the Nazis. These programs had roots in previous eras--the conservative-nationalists of the Kaiserreich and the socialists of the Weimar Republic. (I think I have been overheard comparing the current consumer economy to the Nazi war economy. Shame on me!) Surely, the formula can be reversed in order to lend credibility to the Third Reich.

The larger problem is how a positive interpretation of Nazism makes Germans comfortable with political extremism. Eva Herman, whose comments about Germans driving on Nazi-built roads caused a furor, soft-pedals the foundations of Nazism. The institutions of contemporary Germany may have some roots in the Nazi era--thus being Nazi accomplishments--but they are not remarkably Nazi. As Voelker Beck said, the Autobahn had been in the planning for decades before it had been built in the 1930s.

Even to argue for the efficiency of the regime would be a fallacy: was not fascism one force among many that prevented the flowering of democratic culture in Weimar Germany? Did those forces not seek to inhibit the function of the Weimar government? Nazism was partially responsible for the failures of the republic, an author of its faults. The NSDAP solved the turmoil it caused.

The Third Reich did not make order with efficiency. Through violence, it gained the monopoly on violence, thus could turn it on and off at will.

[Cross-posted at Europe Endless] [Edited 10/20]

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Jeff Vanke - 10/20/2007

Reflexive denunciation of the 25% of Germans who see "good sides" to the Third Reich is not only facile and incorrect. It's dangerous.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that Hitler's first three years saw unemployment drop from 25% or higher, to close to nil. That some people were forced into jobs they didn't want was beside the point for the many more who were happy to have work.

I have heard German conservatives praise Nazi family policies, or at least the portions of those policies that they remember, encouraging demographic growth with subsidies, etc. It doesn't matter if such policies did not originate with the Nazis; that's not what the poll and its results are about.

The fact is, life in the prewar Third Reich was pretty good for a whole lot of people, and *that's what made it work*. If we want to understand how hideous regimes attain and consolidate power, we have to examine how those regimes coopt some preexisting values and desires. There's no sense condemning people for holding non-noxious values and recognizing that an evil regime did more than pay lip service to those values. The German series "Heimat," much praised, about daily life in Nazi Germany, is not just one misery after another. All-or-nothing condemnation explains little, helps little. It is even, I maintain, counterproductive.

Take, for example, Iraqi Sunnis under Saddam Hussein. Substantial portions of the Iraqi population did not want Saddam to go. Does that mean they endorsed, or even understood at the time, all that was wretched about his regime? No. But understanding the Venn diagram of overlap between their desires and Saddam's cooptation of the same, that could have helped external powers (viz., the U.S.) approach Saddam's Iraq with more nuance and more ameliorative effect. The same will hold true for future historians of Saddam's Iraq, as for historians of Nazi Germany.