punkerbruhaha
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Anyone Have Information ? - 2007/03/21 21:38
Sounds good. I'm not saying it didn't happen -- both the Communists and the Nazis had an interest in bringing down the Weimar government, and it's certainly possible they might have supported common means in a temporary way, but that would not mean they were working toward a common ultimate goal. Both the Communists and the Nazis, for example, had an interest in weakening the Weimar government's ability to put down street riots, which worked to the disadvantage of both parties.
As you can probably tell, one of the major areas of my research into the period has been the career of Ernst Roehm. He fascinates me, and for years I've been waiting for a good biography on him to be published.
If you have heard anything about one being, or having been, written, I'd appreciate knowing about it.
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re:Anyone Have Information ? - 2007/03/22 02:33
I'm going to snip some of your material. I don't disagree with it, but I don't think it's central to the discussion we are having.
(And thank you for your civil tone and rational presentation of historical support for your views. It's a pleasure to have a real discussion for a change.)
<snip>
I think this disproves your statement that such totalitarian means of government are characteristic of all leftist systems; perhaps you meant all leftist totalitarian systems? If so, I'd agree with you. But I think the important point here is that it is not the leftist aspect of such systems which make them totalitarian, since there are leftist systems which are NOT totalitarian, as I noted above, and as you agreed. If we can agree that there are rightist systems which are also totalitarian, then it becomes clear that the two things -- a right or left ideological foundation, and totalitarian means for enforcing that ideology -- are separate, and not necessarily found together.
To take the obvious examples that are on everyone's mind today, wouldn't you agree that the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq had the characteristics you named above -- leaving out the question of how effective the control of the economy could be in such countries? Certainly, Hussein seems to have had a major cult of personality going on in Iraq as well.
<snip>
I would say he did not succeed nearly as well as the popular image suggests. And, again, I don't think regimenting the population is unique to a leftist form of rule. Take a look, for example, at all the ancient governments that had life-and-death control over their populations and conscripted workers. Take a look at Czarist Russia with its system of serfdom and the cult of the Czar as the earthly representative of God in the Slavophile ideology. They had less technological power to control their populations, but they also saw the ruler as the state incarnate with near-absolute rights over the population.
The Party was the instrument, but I'd look at the Fuehrerprinzip a bit more carefully. Again, I don't see the Fuehrerprinzip as essentially leftist, but as something with far more mystical and even feudal roots, something even beyond the Stalinist cult of personality. I was very much impressed by Joseph Nyomarkey's outstanding study, _Charisma and
Factionalism in the Nazi Party_, which I think is spot-on. He says:
"In contrast with Marxist parties, where ideology provides the highest source of authority, the Nazi party was based on charismatic legitimacy. The importance of this fundamental difference in the natures of the Nazi and the Marxist movements has been obscured by the 'uni-totalitarian' approach, which, by concentrating on the common characteristics of totalitarian movements, has tended to neglect some significant peculiarities of these two movements." (p. 4)
In fact, I would say it was that very charismatic position of Hitler which made the Nazi movement so different from Marxist or socialist systems _per se_. The squabbling in the Marxist parties was always over who understood and interpreted Marxism best; the squabbles in the
Nazi party were over who had Hitler's ear. That is why people all across the left - right spectrum in the Party claimed to be "real Nazis" as long as Hitler delegated authority to them.
I still have to disagree with this.
<snip>
But I would say you have no offered any evidence that those _methods_ of rule have anything to do with a specifically Left ideology.
His whole background and career were military, with no hint of a leftist ideology. He even said, at times, that he was still basically a supporter of the old Bavarian monarchy. He certainly exemplified the charismatic legitimacy of the Nazi worldview.
He was indeed violent, he was revolutionary in some ways, although traditional in others, but he was NOT a leftist. He was, as I said, a populist. I can look up quotes if you want, but I'm not sure exactly what kind of quotes you're looking for here. You might want to look at Roehm's speech to the Diplomatic Corps on December 7,
1933 ( gad -- today's the anniversary of that speech. How weird --)
published as "Why SA?" There he says, "Bolshevism (has) nothing whatever to do with the soldierly spirit which is the source of
National Socialism. It is, on the contrary, the very negation of all that the soldiers of all nations and all times have stood for."
That's about as strong a condemnation as Roehm could make.
No, I've said they _weren't_ "rightists." They were neither left nor right in popular terminology.
<snip> Rat
(who has to go to bed now.... More later)
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re:Anyone Have Information ? - 2007/03/22 07:13
No, he was dismissable because he was femme and a supporter of the
"Third Sex" concept of homosexuality. He wasn't a "real man".
Roehm, OTOH, was most definitely a "real man" and didn't fit the stereotypes of people like, for instance, Himmler. It was quite embarrassing, too, because Himmler was originally Roehm's protege.
If you look at that famous picture of the group at the War Ministry with the barbed wire barricade -- the one Himmler used to prove his part in the Putsch, and the one Roehm was removed from in the publications after 1934 -- there's Himmler, looking dorky as ever, right next to Roehm, looking competent and determined and macho (cigar and all) as usual. Roehm was not quite in the Friedlaender camp either, but more so than the Hirschfeld camp. I note what stress has been put on the Hirschfeld Institute, and the adopting of the pink triangle in the gay movement, but Friedlaender and the masculinist (and often racist, authoritarian, and nationalistic)
side of the German gay-rights movement has been much less discussed.
Then you get idiots like Lively and Abrahms who blow it all out of proportion in ridiculous pieces of drivel like _The Pink Swastica_.
He evidently had a lot of ambivalence about homosexuality. Otto
Wagener reported that Hitler believed in "Od rays" and felt that it was "precisely the especially outstanding personalities who are subject to such tendencies" (homosexuality), and several authors report Hitler felt that homosexuality was unfortunate because it removed "the best and most manly of characters" from the breeding pool. His friendship with Roehm had to have an effect on his views. OTOH, the official Party program was ferociously anti-gay, calling for the castration and/or death penalty. I think it had a lot to do with which particular Nazi was involved, and the situation.
I'm not convinced at all that Hitler had any Jewish background. It was true that Goering's godfather and the supposed lover of his mother was of Jewish ancestry, and supposedly the doctor who treated Hitler's mother for her cancer was Jewish.
Or bisexual. Most of the members of Roehm's staff who are identified as homosexual were also married (which, of course, doesn't prove anything). Roehm was the most definite about being absolutely uninterested in woman, but even he had been involved with women early in his life, before he came out in the early 'twenties. There was evidently some amount of "barracks homosexuality" or situational homosexuality in the SA and SS, and Himmler also took that into account in his later policies toward SS who had been caught with other men.
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re:Anyone Have Information ? - 2007/03/22 11:08
<snip>
Rat;
If by that, you mean he was gay, yes. If you mean he was effeminate...no.
Thanks, I'll go through it tomorrow and see if there's anything new I haven't read yet.
Yes. There's such a variety of opinion on him by contemporaries and historians alike, and such a collection of conflicting identities in his personality. I think the thing that really creeped out a lot of Party people was that he _was_ so visibly macho and so overwhelmingly "one of us", and yet about as out as it was possible to be in Germany without getting arrested and stuck in the slammer forever. It was easy for the Nazi homophobes to dismiss people like Hirschfeld, who was Jewish and femme, but it wasn't so easy to dismiss Roehm. He raised the paranoia level in the Party.
OTOH, Roehm is a thorn in the side of some of the more PC gay activists, who don't want to claim him as "one of ours" either.
The only redeeming feature for them is that he did get killed off by Ade eventually.
It takes real talent to creep out both sides. 
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kindkid420
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re:Anyone Have Information ? - 2007/03/22 16:46
I wonder why? he was a thorough queen and a priceless asset to the rise of nazism, a very strange mix that got the job done. Without him history may well have turned out very differently.
http://tinyurl.com/y1nr
http://tinyurl.com/y1o0
Interesting subject.
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punkerbruhaha
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re:Anyone Have Information ? - 2007/03/22 18:29
<snip>
Where I differ from you is that I wouldn't say those are characteristics of leftist systems (only), but of totalitarian systems. Certainly, I don't see how you can deny that any number of seriously non-Left regimes, especially in South America, the Middle East, and Africa, share those characteristics without any socialist or Marxist or even liberal ideology. OTOH, if you look at some of the democratic socialist governments, like those in the Scandinavian area, there are none of the characteristics you're claiming all leftist systems share. Look at
Sweden or the Netherlands, for example.
<snip>
Germany was possibly the only country where an officially
Leftist party like the Social Democrats shifted to the center in practical terms.
Why do you say that? Remember the scandal about money going to prop up the Junker estates of Hindenberg's friends?
Yes, I'll agree, but I still don't think they had any real similarity in ideology. They did in methods, both before and after they took power in Russia and Germany, but that's not the same thing at all.
Again, if you look at those religious wars, I think we're talking about similarity of methods -- the _cujus regio, ejus religio_ political structure of Europe then, for one thing. To those outside, it may seem the two sides were similar, but to those inside the conflict, the various factions had bedrock differences -- some of which remain today.
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