vanir
05-23-2009, 06:54 PM
I've just been rereading an excellent book on the Third Reich by Martin Kitchen (ex-Professor and Dean of History), in which he describes a State where every German citizen lived in deathly fear of a completely abused and corrupt system of law from 1934.
In a role combining the intelligence services and domestic policing the SS were elevated to powers beyond the jurisdiction of courts, which became themselves a mockery of any justice system totally engrossed in competitive behaviour to hand out ever more brutal sentences for the most concocted offences.
It is an entirely different view to the slavering masses of dedicated Nazi worshippers often popularised in contemporary publications and media. Pr Kitchen's description is one of total disarray and political cannibalisation, of individuals with public nicknames like "dummi dummi" holding the highest offices, and only the most vile and brutal of they even capable of controlling their own subordinates. He depicts a rampant and criminal grab for wealth and power, the establishment of "little führers" throughout the Reich virtually from conception.
He describes a picture where an abuse of the democratic system from within the halls of government and through neither fault nor any lax of the community a totalitarian state run by violent, criminal mass murderers was simply a consequence.
Yet the vast majority of popular media documenting the Nazi regime far more claims the complacency of the general public in establishing them to power, though certainly expresses some sympathy "for the poor fools" and tries to understand the circumstances of Versailles and the Great Depression to have led the German community to such desperation.
I was curious about other people's thoughts. Please refrain from becoming too involved in the Holocaust with this discussion, if we may keep it to the politically formative aspects so that the thread doesn't become offensive with a word put wrongly or an opinion expressed poorly, please.
In a role combining the intelligence services and domestic policing the SS were elevated to powers beyond the jurisdiction of courts, which became themselves a mockery of any justice system totally engrossed in competitive behaviour to hand out ever more brutal sentences for the most concocted offences.
It is an entirely different view to the slavering masses of dedicated Nazi worshippers often popularised in contemporary publications and media. Pr Kitchen's description is one of total disarray and political cannibalisation, of individuals with public nicknames like "dummi dummi" holding the highest offices, and only the most vile and brutal of they even capable of controlling their own subordinates. He depicts a rampant and criminal grab for wealth and power, the establishment of "little führers" throughout the Reich virtually from conception.
He describes a picture where an abuse of the democratic system from within the halls of government and through neither fault nor any lax of the community a totalitarian state run by violent, criminal mass murderers was simply a consequence.
Yet the vast majority of popular media documenting the Nazi regime far more claims the complacency of the general public in establishing them to power, though certainly expresses some sympathy "for the poor fools" and tries to understand the circumstances of Versailles and the Great Depression to have led the German community to such desperation.
I was curious about other people's thoughts. Please refrain from becoming too involved in the Holocaust with this discussion, if we may keep it to the politically formative aspects so that the thread doesn't become offensive with a word put wrongly or an opinion expressed poorly, please.