Nove avvertimenti della storia sull’ascesa dei nazisti che già toccano le corde

There are many ironies in our dread of Nazism. We purport to be unscathed by hostile invasions and alien ideology. Yet the conquest of 1066 was followed by 300 years of French occupation, the “Norman yoke”.

And we have known other oppressions. In what sense, then, are we immune to authoritarian governance? Besides, when the walls between subjugation and freedom can be so paper-thin, is it not prudent to keep an eye on any predisposition to tyrannical government?

The making of “the Nazi mind” from 1919 to 1945 is both enthralling and chilling on its own terms. As a “warning from history” in the age of Trump 2.0, it’s compulsive reading.

Of course, The Nazi Mind must address the charismatic evils of monsters such as Hitler and Goebbels. Each occupies their own special place in any 20th-century Inferno, the Fuhrer as a petit-bourgeois carpet-chewing Beelzebub; his brilliant propagandist as a silky, satanic antisemite.

Their sinister cruelties depended on countless humdrum enablers in the SS and the Gestapo, the foot soldiers of the Third Reich.

More alarming still is the tale that Rees unfolds about the motivations and manipulations of everyday life in Germany after the collapse of the Weimar Republic that underpinned the evils of Hitler’s regime. How, asks Rees, could the Nazis have committed the crimes they did?

Why did the death camp commandants thrill to their programme of mass murder?

Most disturbing of all: why did so many ordinary Germans become complicit in the elimination of the Jews?

How was it possible that people from such a cultured nation perpetrated the worst atrocities in history?

Finally, the big one: what relevance does this history have for us today?

⏬ Bluesky article thread (10 min) with extra links 📖 🍿 🔊

[https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lgenzjm3q724](https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lgenzjm3q724)

Biden is Von Hindenburg.

And Jan 6th was the Beer Hall Putsch.