|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: The Nazis and the religions of today
|
deano
princess
# 12063
|
Posted
The reasons the Nazi's decided to persecute the Jews are pretty spurious if you believe the tales of Hitler being offended by a Jew as a young man.
Nevertheless, most - not all - the German people at the time at best turned a blind eye and at worst were complicit in the persecution.
So, if the Nazi's were in power today and decided that the best religion to use as a scapegoat was Islam, would people (not necessarily Germans in this day and age of course) be more or less likely to turn a blind eye? To help rather than hinder the persecution?
Pretty hypothetical stuff until you realise that a few nights ago a chap I was talking to said that, in his opinion "Hitler picked on the wrong religion", whilst we were discussion Islamic terrorism, so I'm not so sure that the answer would be a clear-cut rejection amongst society in general.
[Edited title to fix punctuation because I can. -Gwai]
[ 31. July 2014, 13:47: Message edited by: Gwai ]
--------------------
"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
mrWaters
Shipmate
# 18171
|
Posted
Let's remember that antisemitism was a powerful force in last few centuries in Europe. Spain for example killed, expelled or converted all Jews in Middle Ages. Jews were always considered to be powerful as owners of banks and other enterprises. In Poland in XIXth century and early XXth century almost all Jews were living in poverty, however those few rich ones were blamed for everything wrong with the world, and all others along with them. The most popular party in 1920s in Poland was also antisemitic.
In Germany the Jews had considerable financial power and Hitler's policies, may have been caused by a personal grudge, however the targeted group was also seen as personification of the financial system. Germany during Wiemar republic was in unimaginably bad economic condition, and certainly Jews were a very good group of people to blame from the populist view. The Great Depression combined with war reparations from the Great War did its part.
Additionally I do believe, that Europe after the horrors of both wars is much wiser. The population is generally very well educated. Everyone can read and think for themselves. There are always some extremists but they constitute a fraction of voters. Moreover let's remember that democracies may not work perfectly in every situation, but I'm not aware of any military coup d'etat attempt in a established democracy.
So to sum up my point. I do not believe we can repeat our mistake from the past in any country with well established democratic system.
Although in the UK the UKIP (anti-immigrant and xenophobic radical party) just won an election, so I guess my beliefs may be challenged fairly soon.
Posts: 80 | From: Aberdeen | Registered: Jul 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
|
Posted
If there had been a significant Muslim population in Nazi Germany, they would have been persecuted. I'm also not sure Islam should be classed as 'a religion of today' when it's not like there were no Muslims at the time, and also there are still plenty of Jewish people around now! I think, though, that given the Islamophobia of many neo-Nazi groups it would be seen as politic for modern Nazism to target Muslims.
The Nazis persecuted many people of various different religions and those of no religion - Nazism wasn't a purely religiously-motivated philosophy.
--------------------
Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Silent Acolyte:
Damn Grocer's Apostrophe.
If only we had a group of people who would take a hard-line against this sort of thing...
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
If there had been a significant Muslim population in Nazi Germany, they would have been persecuted. I'm also not sure Islam should be classed as 'a religion of today' when it's not like there were no Muslims at the time, and also there are still plenty of Jewish people around now! I think, though, that given the Islamophobia of many neo-Nazi groups it would be seen as politic for modern Nazism to target Muslims.
The Nazis persecuted many people of various different religions and those of no religion - Nazism wasn't a purely religiously-motivated philosophy.
Surely there is a good counterfactual novel here! I suspect that Islam would have done just fine, as German perceptions of it tied into Nazism's herrenvolk notions well. On top of the memories of the Ottoman/German alliance of WWI and their occasional forays into organizing links with the Persians (the original Aryans!) they tried to set up various legions and auxiliary units among Muslims. The myth of the purity of the desert and the warrior seemed to have an attraction for them.
Would they have responded differently if there had been a large Muslim minority, as there is now? That's an interesting question.... certainly the xenophobic wing of the German rightwing uses tropes reminiscent of anti-Semitism when it addresses the Turkish minority, so it's not an entirely dismissable thought.
[ 30. July 2014, 23:08: Message edited by: Augustine the Aleut ]
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
|
Posted
The Nazis cultivated a range of positions towards the Muslim Arab world, according to Wiki. There were advantages in political collaboration in the face of common enemies. And even though Arabs were viewed as 'racially inferior', Hitler admired their adherence to a religion that could be spread by the sword. He could relate to that, apparently.
He probably wasn't good news for ordinary dark-skinned Muslims who happened to be living and working in Germany, though....
[ 30. July 2014, 23:17: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
If there had been a significant Muslim population in Nazi Germany, they would have been persecuted. I'm also not sure Islam should be classed as 'a religion of today' when it's not like there were no Muslims at the time, and also there are still plenty of Jewish people around now! I think, though, that given the Islamophobia of many neo-Nazi groups it would be seen as politic for modern Nazism to target Muslims.
The Nazis persecuted many people of various different religions and those of no religion - Nazism wasn't a purely religiously-motivated philosophy.
Surely there is a good counterfactual novel here! I suspect that Islam would have done just fine, as German perceptions of it tied into Nazism's herrenvolk notions well. On top of the memories of the Ottoman/German alliance of WWI and their occasional forays into organizing links with the Persians (the original Aryans!) they tried to set up various legions and auxiliary units among Muslims. The myth of the purity of the desert and the warrior seemed to have an attraction for them.
Would they have responded differently if there had been a large Muslim minority, as there is now? That's an interesting question.... certainly the xenophobic wing of the German rightwing uses tropes reminiscent of anti-Semitism when it addresses the Turkish minority, so it's not an entirely dismissable thought.
I was thinking more along the lines that most Muslims in Europe at the time would be non-white.
--------------------
Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
|
Posted
Oddly enough, the Nazis did not worry about non-whites. There are two accounts of Black Germans during the period-- they were regularly detained by the police who were certain that they violated the Nuremberg laws, but were as regularly released after consultation with the Nazi authorities. Their situation was not covered by the law, so they were free to go.
I suspect that the offspring of Senegalese fathers in the Saar did not fare well, but I have not seen anything on them.
During WWII, Black French PoWs received much mistreatment and it is well known that the Tuskegee Boys served over Italy in the belief that, if shot down, they would be treated decently by the Italians and not the Germans.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
Nevertheless, most - not all - the German people at the time at best turned a blind eye and at worst were complicit in the persecution.
They knew and they didn't. In my family it has been hard to ask because all of the serving men in the German army were killed either while fighting or as POWs. I know that one of my relatives undoubtedly was involved in atrocities in the east (killed in Michigan in Oct 1945, probably in retaliation/retribution). People denied in two ways according to my surviving relatives who now live in the Rhineland. One was due to not being confronted on any sort of daily basis with any issue or problems, people stuck to their towns and neighbourhoods and their own kind. This might be similar to people living, say in London before the independence and not being really very aware of what the Irish were doing except when they saw them doing work locally. They were simply sometimes present. Or perhaps the segregation in America which was simply accepted. My father talked of the travels his father made to the south of the USA in the mid-1920s and the response of Germans later along the lines of "Americans know how to handle [blacks]" resonated rather clearly. Exculpatory stories are also told, like my grandmother's who I recall saying in the 1960s that she warned Jews living near to them in Berlin to leave.
The ubiquity of the Nazi symbols was probably about as intense as current flag waving and appeals to patriotism in some nations, but with a more coercive side, particularly once war started. God was referenced a lot, as well as the idea of being a chosen people. We have lots of photos.
The Roman Catholics and Lutherans both supported the Nazis for a while, and Hitler was never excommunicated; both are raised as complicity. I am not sure. The Martin Luther Memorial Church is worth a look.
@OP
In answer to your question, I think that it is rather easy to provide people with spurious information about others who are not like them, to build up the ideas of exceptionalism, and I don't know that it is very difficult to get them to be willing to kill if the social and economic conditions are right. It worked in Yugoslavia and Rwanda within mere years from today. There's a large literature about this. It is certainly rather easy to get people in a country to back a war that has no foundational causes because you can just invent one. The Nazis aren't in power, history doesn't repeat itself, but aspects of it rhyme. The rhyming is often close enough to be rather frightening.
[ 31. July 2014, 02:30: Message edited by: no prophet ]
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
deano
princess
# 12063
|
Posted
My OP wasn't to debate the origins of the Nazi's persecution but rather to ask if a party came to power in a Western Country today, would the citizens of that country oppose it to the point of their own death, would they go along with it or would they actively participate in it?
--------------------
"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
My OP wasn't to debate the origins of the Nazi's persecution but rather to ask if a party came to power in a Western Country today, would the citizens of that country oppose it to the point of their own death, would they go along with it or would they actively participate in it?
It depends upon the circumstance.
Are we changed to the point it could not happen? No.
--------------------
I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
My OP wasn't to debate the origins of the Nazi's persecution but rather to ask if a party came to power in a Western Country today, would the citizens of that country oppose it to the point of their own death, would they go along with it or would they actively participate in it?
Discounting those who would be the targets of such hypothetical persecution (who can be assumed to fight against it) the country would be split, with some people doing one thing, some others doing the second, and the rest doing the third. I imagine the percentage who would fight to the death against it would be the smallest of the three, though.
--------------------
Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
|
Posted
I would suspect that the Roma are a more likely target group than Muslims (though I'm aware they were targeted by the Nazis too), not least because Muslims are more likely to fight back.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
|
Posted
And there was Yugoslavia.
--------------------
"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
Posts: 794 | From: here or there | Registered: Jun 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
One of the questions is whether the Nazis were exceptional and in a different category or not, and whether the Germans of the time were similarly special. I think they were probably not different.
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Are we changed to the point it could not happen? No.
I agree with that statement .
The best documentry I ever seen on this subject was called 'The Nazis -- A warning in history'
The German population, 1933-45, were simply a Nation of people who were manipulated into believing they were doing the right thing .
It is important to note that the actual genocide programme was kept secret from the general public, even though many had their suspicions as to what was really happening.
Religion has a tendency to be a bit of a Red Herring where these things are concerned . Yes, it's often in there , but when it comes to -'Good people doing nothing' ? Well you can usually find a combination of other factors at work.
--------------------
Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
|
Posted
He didn't pick on a religion. He picked on a self-defined race. Judaism wasn't his target. Not being a practising Jew wouldn't save you. Being a Lutheran Jew wouldn't. Serving in the Wehrmacht with courage wouldn't. And blacks from the former German East Africa fared well right to the end.
Christians fared well unless they were actually Christian, like the otherwise heterodox Jehovah's Witnesses. Like Jesus our Master they refused to engage in war.
--------------------
Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I was thinking more along the lines that most Muslims in Europe at the time would be non-white.
Actually most Muslims in Europe at the time would have been Bosniaks. If the Nazis had decided to persecute them it would have been because they were Slavs not because they were Muslims. But in the event they didn't. The Nazis main target in the area were the Serbs and, due to Serb-Bosniak antipathy, the Bosniaks were seen as potential Nazi allies. And sometimes it was more than just potential.
--------------------
"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
Posts: 2314 | From: Croydon | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
Oddly enough, the Nazis did not worry about non-whites.
This isn't strictly true. There was no comprehensive policy for 'dealing' with the small number of black and mixed-race people in Germany, but this doesn't mean they faced no discrimination or persecution. Among other things, the Nazis seem to have been worried about miscegenation, and took measures to discourage or prevent it.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
My OP wasn't to debate the origins of the Nazi's persecution but rather to ask if a party came to power in a Western Country today, would the citizens of that country oppose it to the point of their own death, would they go along with it or would they actively participate in it?
It depends upon the circumstance.
Are we changed to the point it could not happen? No.
The scary thing about Nazi Germany is they are in so many ways us - Western, culturally nominal Christian, reasonably educated.
When US attacked Iraq, I was startled at the "wipe them off the map" blood lust among otherwise peaceful friends; when I protested to a friend, an elder in his church, that Iraq had done us no harm, he said (wrinkling his nose), "so what, they are dirty people." I was genuinely afraid to hang a peace sign in my window, fearing someone would throw stones (or, this being Texas, shoot) at my house in response.
Can it happen to us? Yes. Strong economic or military fear, charismatic leader who identifies "the enemy" - animals (including humans) who feel threatened and backed into a corner fight believing that's their only hope for survival.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
Oddly enough, the Nazis did not worry about non-whites.
This isn't strictly true. There was no comprehensive policy for 'dealing' with the small number of black and mixed-race people in Germany, but this doesn't mean they faced no discrimination or persecution. Among other things, the Nazis seem to have been worried about miscegenation, and took measures to discourage or prevent it.
I perhaps understated myself-- when I said that they did not worry about non-whites, I supposed I should have said "had no consistent programme of mass murder." Hans Massaquoi's "Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany" certainly gave plenty of examples of his mistreatment by authorities (as I mentioned above)- Black Germans were (relatively) fortunate in slipping between the cracks, such were the standards of life set down under the Third Reich
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
He didn't pick on a religion. He picked on a self-defined race. Judaism wasn't his target. Not being a practising Jew wouldn't save you. Being a Lutheran Jew wouldn't. Serving in the Wehrmacht with courage wouldn't.
Does this cross over with the 'Parts of the Bible we should repudiate' thread I wonder ?
No one can deny they are some unfortunate references in NT that blatantly cast Jews in a bad light .
Whilst religious fervour itself wasn't directly responsible for the Holocaust , I think they can be little doubt that Centuries of Biblical teaching, esp. inferences concerning the Jews, did indeed help make them an easy target.
I'm not probably not alone in confessing a slight inward cringe at Easter services when listening certain parts of the Passion read from the Gospel of John .
--------------------
Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
|
Posted
Agreed rolyn. You can see the Holocaust in Luther. And plainly, explicitly prophetically in Jesus and the apostles in their confrontation with Judaism.
--------------------
Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
Whilst religious fervour itself wasn't directly responsible for the Holocaust , I think they can be little doubt that Centuries of Biblical teaching, esp. inferences concerning the Jews, did indeed help make them an easy target.
It might be useful to distinguish between anti-Semitism (the belief that Jews are a pernicious race/ethnicity) and anti-Judaism (the belief that Judaism is a pernicious religion/philosophy). The Nazis leaned heavily on the former. The intellectual history of the latter was traced out recently by David Nirenberg. A fairly thorough review and summary can be found at The New York Review of Books.
--------------------
Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
