In East Germany, they went further with deNazification. Not far enough, but significantly further than the West. Of course, that approach had flaws too - they downplayed Nazi antisemitism quite a bit.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
I don’t think USSR occupation worked AT ALL combating Nazi / fascist ideologies. It seems the complete opposite. The most fascist parts of Europe now are the former USSR
That’s not true. Oligarks gutted Russia but Poland, Baltic states, Slovakia etc. are significantly better off than they were in USSR. For example Estonia GDP was the same in 1920 -> 1990. It wasn’t until independence they started to get significant boosts in material conditions.
It just didn’t work. Maybe the decades long occupation of Eastern Europe by USSR lead to hatred that manifested into opposite of communism, either way the USSR efforts just lead to more fascism.
The Soviets raped every single women in East Germany. 200k babies were born from these rapes. Women were severely traumatized and society still suffers from the inter generational trauma.
Immediately after the war yes. But later in schools, they were taught, that they were the victims of the nazis and ignored the facts that they too were the perpetrators.
A lot of people seem to be objecting to this tweet in particular. I'm not saying the Soviets completely deNazified East Germany. I'm not saying the Nazis were good guys. I'm just saying that they did more deNazification than the Western Allies.
Anyway, it may be useful to look up Adolf Heusinger and Hans Globke..hell, and even the Dassler brothers. They, and many others, from politicians to businessmen and even soldiers, were never really made to confront their crimes because they were useful and not quite prominent enough to punish.
I know you're more interested in how the general public handled their collective guilt, but it's indicative of attitudes. Everyone was fine with Hitler's Chief of the General Staff of the Army becoming West Germany's first Inspector General of the Army and Chair of NATO's Military Committee.
Engineer that dreamed of space travel and was “liberated” by US Army in 1945 happen to developed V-1 and V-2 missiles and oversaw its production by forced labor. Not sure how much Werner von Braun handled his guild.
Obviously, you're coming at this from the "how are we going to handle MAGA people in coming decades" angle, and my answer is that there's no reforming these people - certainly not the leaders. Ordinary MAGA types can be reformed, but it's not something that can be done reliably at scale.
Been thinking about this. With any cult (said loosely as any time someone gives over control to an ideology) the only way to bring them back is cutting them off from the cult. You'd have to address it from the information source that's isolating them from other ideas.
It's death count. After an unignorable threshold, the general populace gains the insight that mass death is unsustainable. Both the actions of the french revolution and the holocaust did not last more than 5 years.
There’s a little similarity between MAGAts & the Confederacy, after the war and all the hardships that followed, there were some people who realized that in some ways they were wrong, in some ways they were victims themselves, and another way they are held onto that defeat and to anger💔
The only answer I see is completely excluding them from power. You gotta box them out entirely. And not just at high levels - everything from the White House down to town councils. Basically, do right what Reconstruction did wrong.
How do you do it? If you're gonna work within the existing legal framework, you need a political party that can take power and use it ruthlessly - gerrymandering, tricky procedures, all sorts of dirty play.
The other option is extra-legal means, like occupation by a foreign power that will re-educate the populace, put politically reliable people in positions of power, & completely remove MAGAs from any power while giving them an acceptable standard of living to prevent too much resentment or rebellion.
We need a Democrat version of maga. We are never gonna get a third party going. We need to be the voice within the democrat party that takes it over. Now, I don't mean becoming fascist, obviously, but the way they took control of that party is what we need to now do in the democrat party
In this country, you have a right to be a fascist. It's not up to them to change, it's up to us to keep them out of power. I hope they will change. I really, really do, but this is why freedom is hard.
The is Machiavelli and the acceptance of realism. It can be said this is why liberals and Democrats are getting their ass kicked, they cannot accept the new realism and fail.
This has happened many times, not just to American Democrats.
Damn, this is as plausible as it is bleak. Sounds like a hard lean into consequentualism that demagnetizes the intact moral compasses to salvage democracy.
We had a true DOJ, congressional, and public opportunity after J6 to eradicate and fumigate the offenders. Our government badly booted it. SCOTUS’s hands are dirty too. Never forget.
I have dear friends that I love that I have not spoken to since November. Because I don't know how they stood with fascist.They agreed with it.I don't know, I don't think I can.
I wholeheartedly agree; there is no reforming these people. They’ve done this knowing better the whole time. I have watched people I went to school with who took the same classes I did under the same teachers…teachers who must now be rolling over in their graves. They knew better. Yet they cheer.
The difference between Republican coverage and Democrat coverage of the firing of inspectors generals is found here. The Republican coverage would be about an existing or perceived cover up while the Democrats continue to just wring their hands and poop themselves
It may have been denazified in theory but in practice the brown shirts were replaced with blue shirts, the Hitler youth with the FDJ. Only the flavor of the propaganda and symbolism changes.
Comments
https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100~amp.html
This has happened many times, not just to American Democrats.