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Could you link some sources for that massive resistance? Wikipedia says there was very little organized resistence for most of his rise to power, and the regime was SO popular amongst the populace, it prevented even anti-nazi’s in the intelligence services from acting on their underground networks.
What we’re seeing with the current fairly widescale open resistence is far beyond anything that happened in Germany.
From what I recall from Behind the Bastards, a major part of Hitler’s bloc was the upper middle-class. Shopkeepers, factory managers, so on. It basically came down to the opportunity to eliminate wealthy Jews, and taking their stuff - fancy furniture, buildings, their businesses, ect. The destruction of the Jews was a matter of greed that happened to fit hand-in-glove with racist ideology.
The scale of the opposition would be difficult to quantify - the whole reason liberals hand power to fascists in the first place is to violently suppress dissent against the status quo, after all.
Italy gives a clue, however - almost the entire north of Italy was liberated by antifascist Partisan movements (before the US and UK suppressed them, of course.) The same thing happened in Greece - and Greece had turned fascist even before Italy and Germany did.
So yeah… Hitler’s (supposed) “popularity” should be viewed with the same suspicion as Putin’s.
Fair enough, though I could also see Hitlers public approval rating being real for a few reasons.
I’m not well read enough on Greek or Italian fascism to know if Mussolini or Metaxas were worse at quelling dissent or keeping the non-targeted groups ‘happy’, but from what I recall of Mussolini, his conquests were far less successful than Hitler’s, which may have limited his economic ability to keep people pacified in the same way.
Resistence is too late. There was opposition before the nazis gained power.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsbanner_Schwarz-Rot-Gold
German site says 2.5 million members were organized mostly by SPD, with 250,000 in the elite units.
They are mentioned as opponents to the SA:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
Strangely there is no information about the conflicts. This is what I found, on the site of the communist units who also fought the nazis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roter_Frontkämpferbund
If it is not clear, it’s the other way round.
I wasn’t aware of the scale of those opposition parties, the Reichsbanner in particular. I also can’t really find much info on their conflicts pre-1932, I assume they are only written about in German? Definitely an interesting topic to delve into.
Cheers for sharing the solid research :)
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. There is a free pdf file of it with some searching I know.
Edit: https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf
Found it. You read this and it’s gonna sound a lot like modern day.
Eh, generally not a fan of Parenti, as he gives far too much of a pass to authoritarian marxist-leninists regimes for my comfort.
Thanks for the going through the legwork to share the link, though.
https://youtu.be/npkeecCErQc
This is what Parenti would say to that. 3:15 for the relevant part. But the whole story is good. I hope you open yourself up to some more historical materialism and not discount someone because they understand the history more than what you’ve been told.
Parenti definitely doesn’t give a pass like you say. But he understands the material circumstances in which revolution occurs. What you call “authoritarian” might me seizing lands from slave plantations in Cuba. I’m not sure exactly what you mean. But I really think you should more reading from him not less. Especially, if you haven’t even read his most iconic book. (The one I recommended). Have you actually read anything from him?
I’ve watched his Yellow speech, and I’ve read segments from Blackshirts and reds. I understand his point of view, but I fundamentally disagree with his conclusions.
Seizing land from capitalists is fine, it’s what bureaucratic marxist-leninist regimes do with it afterward that bothers me. It’s an age old disagreement between ML’s and Anarchists that stretches back to at least the Russian Revolution war, and is something that cannot be compromised on.
Cuba’s agrarian reforms eventually centralized the majority of farming land under state control instead of simply all of it to the people in a decentralized manner, which they were later forced to do after the USSR fell in the 90’s (but did not cede such power without that outside force).
That centralization, that state control, is what I detest and denounce, as it furthers the ability for coercive and unequal hierarchies to exist and flourish in an ideology that is supposedly intended to eliminate them. The ML argument is that it must be done to survive against the enemies of socialism, and may point to the fact that there was never a long-term anarchist society as proof that decentralized power doesn’t work, but then they conveniently pass over the fact that all promising Anarchist revolutions were actively fought and suppressed by ML’s, such as the betrayal of Nestor Mahkno’s Black Army of Ukraine, the Anarchists during the Spanish Revolution, The Kronstadt Rebellion, and many more.
You suggest I simply misunderstand history, yet it was through intense historical research that I came to what, at least to me, seemed like self evident conclusions based on historical fact. The fundamental disagreement between us is that we will likely always disagree on what is fact, misinterpretation, or fiction. You trust your sources, I have come to trust mine, and thus our conclusions, and perhaps even our mental reality, will lead us to reject each other’s solutions to the same problem we all face: Capitalism.
To return to Parenti; his view is to suggest that the downsides of Marxist-Leninist regimes do not offset the material living condition improvements for the people living under them.
I contend that minimizes just how unjust and evil those downsides truly are. I would personally find living under the USSR just as hellish as living under Capitalism. I might have better healthcare, but then I’d have to contend with living in a deeply distrustful society where having the wrong thought could land me in the gulag or executed, all while a bureaucratic elite dictate how things will be structured and run no differently from a capitalist boss.
I have read enough ML literature and watched enough documentaries to know that I want nothing to do with that ideology, and I assume you feel the same about Anarchism, otherwise you’d be one, eh? 😅
If not, then I would implore the same from you, in that you open yourself up to Anarchist critique of Marxist-Leninism.
Yeah I’m not reading all that. Sorry mate. You’re going way off topic from the initial reason I recommended the book in the first place. It covers the history of resistance to Nazis by leftist groups in Germany. But you seem to want to ignore that for some leftist (anarchist) purity. Like somehow you can’t learn history because it’s written by a ML. Weird take and weird rant.
tl;dr, you said I lacked an understanding of history, and didn’t understand what I meant by authoritarian. I elaborated. I don’t trust Marxist-Leninism due to numerous historical examples of their failings to cooperate with other anti-capitalists (I.E, killing them), and consistant human rights abuses.
Yeah. So you’re irrational. You’re not going to read a historical account by a ML because they’re an ML. That would be like me not reading Chomsky’s manufacturing concent because he’s an anarchist. It’s dumb. You’re being dumb and close minded and missing out on one of the best historical accounts of the thing you asked about.
Your loss. But don’t act like you’re being rational here. No wonder you fail so hard understanding historical materialism. You flat out refuse to read it for some liberal moral grandstanding masked as being an anarchist.
If I suggested to you that a died in the wool capitalist and white supremacist wrote the best treatise on a particular historical event, I think you would be highly rational to be extremely skeptical of that claim, and not give it much time, if any (I certainly wouldn’t), due to how likely it is that the material is extremely biased and likely to misrepresent reality, rendering its use as a lens of historical analysis useless.
I see Marxist-Leninists as similarly biased, and in some ways cult-like, as it requires an inordinate amount of cognitive dissonance to give an earnest look at it today and truly believe it to be the best path forward (In my opinion, anyway, and that ultimately matters very little). I would say the same to someone trying to convert me to become religious, and they too would likely say my dislike and lack of willingness to read their scripture is irrational.
Obviously to someone in that world, I’m speaking heresy, but it does exemplify that we’re both quite opinionated on the other’s views in the same way two offshoot religions are, and like those religions, there is little chance of converting one to the other when they are both set in what they think of each other, though I do still hope that you see ML for what it truly is someday.