Post-Nazism

innonimatu said:
All this is absolutely true. The military had the power to topple Hitler at least right until the successful invasion of Czecoslovakia. They chose instead to back the nazis. The change of the oath was made by Blomberg, who at the time (night of the long knives) was powerful enough to force Hitler to sacrifice the armed branch of the nazi party in order to appease the military, represented by Blomberg.
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According to Gisevius's book - I can't recall the title - there was a plot to overthrow him as late as late as November 1939. The generals were apparently really concerned about the planned invasion of France, but the delay until May 1940 ended up softening their stance on Hitler, much to Gisevius's annoyance. The theory amongst the anti-Nazis in the General Staff was that Germany would quickly be beaten by France, removing the need for them to get their own hands dirty in politics.

innonimatu said:
Also true. I would only change "disdain of practical politics" to "disdain of diplomacy" when caution collied with Hitler's fixed idea of a conspiracy against Germany.

That Hitler succeeded in seizing power and starting wars that even the german generals were hesitant about is because he was carrying on very popular ideas among the german people and especially its ruling elite. The disagreements were not about conquering lebensraum, they were about where, when, and who to do it.
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There was also the matter of the purge of the military following the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair in January 1938. Many of the more anti-Hitler officers were removed from the centres of power, whereas strong pro-Hitler officers such as Keitel were either promoted or moved into positions that made them more of an obstacle to potential conspirators. Hitler also took direct control of the military after that date, and even the anti-Nazis were comfortable with that, because the other two contenders were Goering and Himmler. Most of the military despised Himmler, though they might have tolerated Goering.

Too bad Goebbels' suggestion of installing Beck as Chief of the OKW didn't work out. Could have solved a lot of problems for the world.
 
Hitler rarely followed Goebbels' suggestion period - so there's no reason why in this particular case he would have. Hitler, for once, recognized what Goebbels was good at: propaganda. Nothing less, nut nothing more.
 
Pundit said:
According to Gisevius's book - I can't recall the title - there was a plot to overthrow him as late as late as November 1939. The generals were apparently really concerned about the planned invasion of France, but the delay until May 1940 ended up softening their stance on Hitler, much to Gisevius's annoyance. The theory amongst the anti-Nazis in the General Staff was that Germany would quickly be beaten by France, removing the need for them to get their own hands dirty in politics.
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IIRC the Army was planning to remove Hitler if he attacked Czechoslovakia in '38 - no one but no one anticipated the Western Allies would just let Hitler have it. Hitler himself was pissed because they cheated him out of his war.
 
Lexicus said:
IIRC the Army was planning to remove Hitler if he attacked Czechoslovakia in '38 - no one but no one anticipated the Western Allies would just let Hitler have it. Hitler himself was pissed because they cheated him out of his war.
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Yes, but that plan collapsed shortly beforehand. Beck resigned as chief of staff in late August, before the crisis got going in earnest with the Godesberg meeting. Hitler, however, convinced him to keep his resignation a secret. After that, the coup plotters were pretty much screwed, because they lost a lot of the control they'd had over the Army without providing the moral bombshell of an open resignation. Beck tried to scrape something together again in late September once it looked like war was imminent, but there was virtually no planning and much of it seemed like wishful thinking that the British and French would rescue them from war by forcing Hitler to back down. There were a lot of older soldiers and civil servants that were terrified of a war and who were willing to back a coup to avoid it, but they possessed little organization and often as not were working at cross purposes. Hitler was also extremely successful in convincing the field-grade officers and younger general officers to go along with him. Guderian especially was convinced that they could win a war against CZ-UK-FR and his opinion carried a decent amount of weight.

So: yes, there were plans for a coup against Hitler; yes, it was the best chance of success that anybody would have aside from 20 July 1944; no, it probably wouldn't have succeeded anyway; and it fell apart before the crisis even got going in earnest.
 
There was one other time- the bomb in the plane in 1943, which just didn't explode for no apparent reason.

EDIT: Thanks for the info, I didn't know that stuff.
 
Eh, the reality is that it entered into the Legions use from the number of SS-Charlamagne veterans.
 
ParkCungHee said:
Eh, the reality is that it entered into the Legions use from the number of SS-Charlamagne veterans.
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Just pointed out the SS-Charlemagne borrowed it from the Condor Legion the same way many others borrowed from the former.
 
"We got it form the SS, but they got it from the guys who bombed Guernica" is not the very strongest excuse a person might offer.

Also, from the comments under the video,

Weird Nazi Dude said:
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The comment, the username, the profile pic...

Neo-nazis are weird.
 
Traitorfish said:
"We got it form the SS, but they got it from the guys who bombed Guernica" is not the very strongest excuse a person might offer.
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I wouldn't be surprised.

Traitorfish said:
Also, from the comments under the video,


The comment, the username, the profile pic...

Neo-nazis are weird.
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I've seen weirder Neo-Nazis than him!
 
Traitorfish said:
"We got it form the SS, but they got it from the guys who bombed Guernica" is not the very strongest excuse a person might offer.
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Hear, hear!
 
Lexicus said:
There was one other time- the bomb in the plane in 1943, which just didn't explode for no apparent reason.

EDIT: Thanks for the info, I didn't know that stuff.
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Oh, sure, Hitler might've been assassinated, but that probably wouldn't have led to a successful coup on the part of the soldiers. The Party still possessed immense amount of power and prestige, and the attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944 generated a huge wave of genuine popular support for the regime against the "criminals" in the military. In 1943, the coup plotters were divided and spread out, and were a tiny minority even among the field officers and the General Staff. It's hard to imagine them successfully taking advantage of the assassination to beat both the SS and all the loyalist generals.

In 1938, the plotters probably had greater influence than they did in 1943, and the SS didn't possess the power that it had later in the war, but even then an awful lot of the army was against any coup attempt. Plus, in 1938 Beck and the other generals weren't thinking in terms of assassinating Hitler. They actually wanted to keep him in power while rolling back much of the Party's control of the state. This fundamentally deluded plan is another reason why Beck's coup probably wouldn't have worked.

I've been writing about the internal issues of the Nazi regime recently, so the issue is kinda fresh in my mind. :)
 
Agent327 said:
Hitler rarely followed Goebbels' suggestion period - so there's no reason why in this particular case he would have. Hitler, for once, recognized what Goebbels was good at: propaganda. Nothing less, nut nothing more.
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Hitler often followed Goebbels's suggestions; the kristallnacht is the most obvious example. Hitler and Goebbels were so close that Goebbels succeeded Hitler as Fuhrer, and the entire family committed suicide the day after his death.

So yeah, once again you don't seem to have a clue what you're talking about.

Dachs said:
Yes, but that plan collapsed shortly beforehand. Beck resigned as chief of staff in late August, before the crisis got going in earnest with the Godesberg meeting. Hitler, however, convinced him to keep his resignation a secret. After that, the coup plotters were pretty much screwed, because they lost a lot of the control they'd had over the Army without providing the moral bombshell of an open resignation. Beck tried to scrape something together again in late September once it looked like war was imminent, but there was virtually no planning and much of it seemed like wishful thinking that the British and French would rescue them from war by forcing Hitler to back down. There were a lot of older soldiers and civil servants that were terrified of a war and who were willing to back a coup to avoid it, but they possessed little organization and often as not were working at cross purposes. Hitler was also extremely successful in convincing the field-grade officers and younger general officers to go along with him. Guderian especially was convinced that they could win a war against CZ-UK-FR and his opinion carried a decent amount of weight.

So: yes, there were plans for a coup against Hitler; yes, it was the best chance of success that anybody would have aside from 20 July 1944; no, it probably wouldn't have succeeded anyway; and it fell apart before the crisis even got going in earnest.
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Guderian was only a colonel at the time. Did his opinion already carry that much weight? I know Mannstein was convinced that France could be beaten quite easily; as it was, with his plan.

Dachs said:
Oh, sure, Hitler might've been assassinated, but that probably wouldn't have led to a successful coup on the part of the soldiers. The Party still possessed immense amount of power and prestige, and the attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944 generated a huge wave of genuine popular support for the regime against the "criminals" in the military. In 1943, the coup plotters were divided and spread out, and were a tiny minority even among the field officers and the General Staff. It's hard to imagine them successfully taking advantage of the assassination to beat both the SS and all the loyalist generals.

In 1938, the plotters probably had greater influence than they did in 1943, and the SS didn't possess the power that it had later in the war, but even then an awful lot of the army was against any coup attempt. Plus, in 1938 Beck and the other generals weren't thinking in terms of assassinating Hitler. They actually wanted to keep him in power while rolling back much of the Party's control of the state. This fundamentally deluded plan is another reason why Beck's coup probably wouldn't have worked.

I've been writing about the internal issues of the Nazi regime recently, so the issue is kinda fresh in my mind. :)
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Some were thinking of assassinating Hitler. Of course, Gisevius isn't the most unbiased source, but he claims Oster wanted to put Hitler on trial and have him shot, IIRC. Goering was seen as a possible successor in the Mussolini vein; a nationalist dictator, but not a crazed Nazi. Which is interesting, given Goering's position in the Nazi hierarchy.
 
Pundit said:
Guderian was only a colonel at the time. Did his opinion already carry that much weight? I know Mannstein was convinced that France could be beaten quite easily; as it was, with his plan.
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Guderian was a Generalleutnant in the summer and fall of 1938.

I brought him up less because of any weight his opinion may have carried in the German military at the time (although he was widely known and acknowledged because of his role in preparing and popularizing the armored force) and more because my part in the conversation started by pointing out Guderian's complicity in many of the Nazi regime's crimes. I think it's less a matter of him attempting to persuade other officers and more that his opinion was indicative of what a lot of those younger officers - the men who had been field-grade and company-grade men in the Reichswehr, like Manstein and Balck - thought about Hitler.
Pundit said:
Some were thinking of assassinating Hitler. Of course, Gisevius isn't the most unbiased source, but he claims Oster wanted to put Hitler on trial and have him shot, IIRC. Goering was seen as a possible successor in the Mussolini vein; a nationalist dictator, but not a crazed Nazi. Which is interesting, given Goering's position in the Nazi hierarchy.
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It's really weird to look back on British diplomacy in the thirties when so much of the FO was utterly convinced that Göring was the reasonable man in Nazi Germany. It's even weirder that they weren't totally wrong - Göring and Mussolini effectively teamed up to dissuade Hitler from invading Czechoslovakia in late September 1938 - but only mostly wrong.
 
Dachs said:
Guderian was a Generalleutnant in the summer and fall of 1938.

I brought him up less because of any weight his opinion may have carried in the German military at the time (although he was widely known and acknowledged because of his role in preparing and popularizing the armored force) and more because my part in the conversation started by pointing out Guderian's complicity in many of the Nazi regime's crimes. I think it's less a matter of him attempting to persuade other officers and more that his opinion was indicative of what a lot of those younger officers - the men who had been field-grade and company-grade men in the Reichswehr, like Manstein and Balck - thought about Hitler.

It's really weird to look back on British diplomacy in the thirties when so much of the FO was utterly convinced that Göring was the reasonable man in Nazi Germany. It's even weirder that they weren't totally wrong - Göring and Mussolini effectively teamed up to dissuade Hitler from invading Czechoslovakia in late September 1938 - but only mostly wrong.
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Just checked Wiki on that. Don't know how I made the mistake of thinking he only made General in early 1939.

Goering seems to have had a bit more of a head for practical politics than most of the leading Nazis. He argued for the Anschluss but against the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
 
Pundit said:
Hitler often followed Goebbels's suggestions; the kristallnacht is the most obvious example. Hitler and Goebbels were so close that Goebbels succeeded Hitler as Fuhrer, and the entire family committed suicide the day after his death.
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A dead man will succeed a dead man? Makes perfect sense... And the Recihskristallnacht was a major propaganda event, so that basically also just confirms my point. If you've read any of Goebbels' diaries you might think they were close, yes. But Goebbels adored Hitler, and Hitler knew what Goebbels was good for. People only got close to Hitler if he wanted them to.

Maybe not somehting you can 'wiki' though. Might need to read an actual book on the subject.
 
Pundit said:
Goering seems to have had a bit more of a head for practical politics than most of the leading Nazis. He argued for the Anschluss but against the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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"Practical politics" as in keeping power. If Göring survived WWII, he would have made an excellent leader of Apartheid South Africa: Naturally he was a white racist, though his decadent mentality would go very well with the likes of Mobutu and Mugabe, I wager.
 
ParkCungHee said:
Yep, there was a thread recently on Off-Topic, and someone joked "A Persian and and Afghan, clearly Neo-Nazis." Like there's not neo-nazis from freaking Mongolia.
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Malaysian Nazis are maybe the weirdest ones, because they've actually managed to make it kinda-sorta internally consistent, as much as Nazis ever do. Somehow that's even more baffling to me than Israeli Nazis trying to convince them themselves that their Jewish granny would be cool with the Fuhrer so long as they get really good at the salute.
 
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