lpetrich
Contributor
I'm calling him that because he had betrayed so many of his supporters over the decades of his career.
Anti-Capitalist Early Nazis. In the early years of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, there were some genuine anti-capitalist Nazis like Gottfried Feder, who opposed "interest slavery". It even got into the Nazis' official platform as "11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery." But as the Nazi Party grew, Adolf Hitler kissed up to the banks and explained away this provision as referring to Jews.
The Early Nazi Militia. The SA (Sturmabteilung "Storm Brigade") was a paramilitary German-nationalist organization that became the military wing of the Nazi Party in its early years. This militia protected Nazi rallies, interfered with rivals' rallies, and fought rivals' militias, like in street brawls. Its top leader, Ernst Röhm, was a good friend of Adolf Hitler himself. But after Hitler consolidated his rule of Germany, he decided to show who is boss and to please those who distrusted the SA. So he ordered a purge of the SA, the Night of the Long Knives in the summer of 1934. Ernst Röhm and several other SA leaders were executed in it, and the SA was not much after that.
Homosexual Early Nazis. Many early Nazis were gay, including SA leaders like Ernst Röhm himself. But Hitler justified his purge of the SA by pointing out their gayness, and the Nazi regime continued with homophobia, suppressing gay-rights efforts and gay bars, and jailing some 50,000 gay people, mostly men, sending several thousand of them to concentration camps, and subjecting some of them to sadistic tortures. The concentration camps' jailers made their inmates wear badges to show what they were in for, and gay men got pink triangles, originally downward-pointing.
The more mainstream conservatives. The Nazis came to power as part of a coalition with the conservative Nationalist Party, but after the Reichstag fire of early 1933, Hitler demanded emergency powers and got them. By the middle of the year, all political parties were banned except the Nazi Party, and his coalition partners meekly shut down their party.
The Western Powers. In the mid-1930's, the Nazis started their expansionism, sending their troops into the Rhineland in 1936 and annexing Austria early in 1938. They then started to howl about how Czechs were being very nasty to ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland areas of Czechoslovakia. They demanded the annexation of the Sudetenland, and in September 1938, the leaders of Britain, France, and Italy went to Munich, Germany, and agreed to that annexation. The prime minister of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, called it "peace for our time". Early next year, however, the Nazis took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, turning the Czech part into a protectorate and making the Slovak part nominally independent. Later that year, the Nazis howled about mistreatment of ethnic Germans in Poland and claimed that Poland was getting ready to start a war with Germany. This time, however, Britain and France were less willing to appease the Nazis.
The Soviet Union. A part of the Munich appeasement deal was omitting the Soviet Union, almost as if Britain's and France's leaders hoped that Nazi Germany would direct its expansionism against that nation. But in the middle of 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had started secret negotiations, and in August of that year, they decided a nonaggression pact. The next month, Germany invaded Poland, and that was soon followed by Germany and the Soviet Union dividing Poland and the Baltic states between them. For the next two years, Germany fought the Western powers, conquering France and bombarding Britain. As this was going on, the Nazi leaders left their eastern borders poorly defended and vulnerable. Yet Stalin trusted Hitler, the same Stalin who ordered massive purges of the Soviet Communist Party and military forces, who found many of his fellow Old Bolsheviks guilty of bogus charges in the Moscow Trials, and who ordered a hit on his old colleague Leon Trotsky. He trusted Hitler enough not to pay much attention to Germany's military buildup near the Soviet Union's borders in mid-1941, and when the Nazis attacked on June 22 of that year, Stalin allegedly had a nervous breakdown. It took a massive military effort to drive Germany out of the Soviet Union, an effort that cost the lives of some 20 million Soviet citizens.
Nevertheless, Hitler did stand by a few people the whole time, like his good friend Benito Mussolini.
Anti-Capitalist Early Nazis. In the early years of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, there were some genuine anti-capitalist Nazis like Gottfried Feder, who opposed "interest slavery". It even got into the Nazis' official platform as "11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery." But as the Nazi Party grew, Adolf Hitler kissed up to the banks and explained away this provision as referring to Jews.
The Early Nazi Militia. The SA (Sturmabteilung "Storm Brigade") was a paramilitary German-nationalist organization that became the military wing of the Nazi Party in its early years. This militia protected Nazi rallies, interfered with rivals' rallies, and fought rivals' militias, like in street brawls. Its top leader, Ernst Röhm, was a good friend of Adolf Hitler himself. But after Hitler consolidated his rule of Germany, he decided to show who is boss and to please those who distrusted the SA. So he ordered a purge of the SA, the Night of the Long Knives in the summer of 1934. Ernst Röhm and several other SA leaders were executed in it, and the SA was not much after that.
Homosexual Early Nazis. Many early Nazis were gay, including SA leaders like Ernst Röhm himself. But Hitler justified his purge of the SA by pointing out their gayness, and the Nazi regime continued with homophobia, suppressing gay-rights efforts and gay bars, and jailing some 50,000 gay people, mostly men, sending several thousand of them to concentration camps, and subjecting some of them to sadistic tortures. The concentration camps' jailers made their inmates wear badges to show what they were in for, and gay men got pink triangles, originally downward-pointing.
The more mainstream conservatives. The Nazis came to power as part of a coalition with the conservative Nationalist Party, but after the Reichstag fire of early 1933, Hitler demanded emergency powers and got them. By the middle of the year, all political parties were banned except the Nazi Party, and his coalition partners meekly shut down their party.
The Western Powers. In the mid-1930's, the Nazis started their expansionism, sending their troops into the Rhineland in 1936 and annexing Austria early in 1938. They then started to howl about how Czechs were being very nasty to ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland areas of Czechoslovakia. They demanded the annexation of the Sudetenland, and in September 1938, the leaders of Britain, France, and Italy went to Munich, Germany, and agreed to that annexation. The prime minister of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, called it "peace for our time". Early next year, however, the Nazis took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, turning the Czech part into a protectorate and making the Slovak part nominally independent. Later that year, the Nazis howled about mistreatment of ethnic Germans in Poland and claimed that Poland was getting ready to start a war with Germany. This time, however, Britain and France were less willing to appease the Nazis.
The Soviet Union. A part of the Munich appeasement deal was omitting the Soviet Union, almost as if Britain's and France's leaders hoped that Nazi Germany would direct its expansionism against that nation. But in the middle of 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had started secret negotiations, and in August of that year, they decided a nonaggression pact. The next month, Germany invaded Poland, and that was soon followed by Germany and the Soviet Union dividing Poland and the Baltic states between them. For the next two years, Germany fought the Western powers, conquering France and bombarding Britain. As this was going on, the Nazi leaders left their eastern borders poorly defended and vulnerable. Yet Stalin trusted Hitler, the same Stalin who ordered massive purges of the Soviet Communist Party and military forces, who found many of his fellow Old Bolsheviks guilty of bogus charges in the Moscow Trials, and who ordered a hit on his old colleague Leon Trotsky. He trusted Hitler enough not to pay much attention to Germany's military buildup near the Soviet Union's borders in mid-1941, and when the Nazis attacked on June 22 of that year, Stalin allegedly had a nervous breakdown. It took a massive military effort to drive Germany out of the Soviet Union, an effort that cost the lives of some 20 million Soviet citizens.
Nevertheless, Hitler did stand by a few people the whole time, like his good friend Benito Mussolini.
