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Posted by: hyperbola 8 months, 3 weeks ago
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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This article is based on a common failure to know history. In fact, Hitler came to power as a result of the Great Depression, i.e. the same kind of financial corruption by the rich and powerful that the world is experiencing now. Given the level of "stereotypes" prevalent in the american media, one has to ask whether the US might be the next place where "right-wingers" get totally out of control.
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Hitler Didn't Ride To Power on Inflation
"The Urgency of Aiding Russia" (editorial, Jan. 27) warns that Russia could experience the kind of hyperinflation that helped bring forth Hitler. While you may be correct on the need to aid Russia, you are wrong that inflation brought Hitler to power.
Germany did experience hyperinflation in the early 1920's. By October 1922, the mark stood at 130 billion to the dollar. Marks had to be carried in wheelbarrows, and life savings were wiped out. Yet the inflationary spiral was brought under control in November 1923 largely through the efforts of Hjalmar Schacht, currency commissioner and president of the Reichsbank. Dr. Schacht issued a new mark guaranteed by the land values and the business obligations of German industry. Citizens turned in their old marks, receiving one new mark for each trillion old marks.
With inflation checked by 1924, Germany entered a time of relative prosperity. Hitler, while active in German politics, was consigned to the political fringe. Beginning in late 1929, the German economy fell victim to worldwide Depression. Through the early 1930's industrial production, employment and sales fell, while Hitler's support increased. Inflation was nonexistent. Rather, by 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, the problem was deflation, as tight credit and unemployment left millions of people with very few marks to spend on anything.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/20/opinion/l-hitler...-
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david_nwpa8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Your economic analysis of Hitler's rise to power is spot on. However, he was nudged along with the support of his goons who took out his competition (the Communists and the Organized Labor movement). The underpinnings of his ideas stem from the Treaty of Versailles which relegated Germany to paying millions of marks in reparations. The economic turmoil combined with the political ploys Hitler had, and the unwitting and elderly Hindenburg brought Hitler to power legally in 1932 as Chancellor of Germany.
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Yes, in theory, similar circumstances in the US could bring a right-wing nutjob with the same ambitions to power legally. However, without shredding the Constitution, it would take a lot of signing statements to reach that point.-
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Yep. However, it was more than just goons that aided Hitler in his rise. In fact there was a concentrated, well financed right-wing campaign to discredit "liberals" that is not so different from what we see in the US today.
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Historical Comparisons: Fritz Stern Publishes "Five Germanys I Have Known"
"Can It Happen Here?" is the headline of the NY Times review of the Fritz Stern's memoir:
In November 2005, Fritz Stern received an award for his life's work on Germans, Jews and the roots of National Socialism, presented to him by Joschka Fischer, then the German foreign minister. With a frankness that startled some in the audience, Stern, an emeritus professor of European history at Columbia University, peppered his acceptance speech with the similarities he saw between the path taken by Germany in the years leading up to Hitler and the path being taken by the United States today. He talked about a group of 1920's intellectuals known as the "conservative revolutionaries," who "denounced liberalism as the greatest, most invidious threat, and attacked it for its tolerance, rationality and cosmopolitan culture," and about how Hitler had used religion to appeal to the German public. In Hitler's first radio address after becoming chancellor, Stern noted, he declared that the Nazis regarded "Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life."....
http://atlanticreview.org/archives/467-Historical-...
Isn't it curious that the "meme" of the "inflation of the Weimar Republic" giving rise to Hitler still has credibility in the US. Who infected us with that?
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