I don’t have any references on hand, but many Nazis and Fascisti openly admitted that their program of the ‘total state’ was based on Woodrow Wilson’s (by far the most totalitarian state in the first world war).
Also…left-wing nationalist, the institutionalized eugenics laws, marriage controls, ‘public health’ obsessions, the disarming of the populace, the use of the State to organize cartels of business to serve the ‘public’. These are all American innovations.
y, ok. I see where you’re coming from. I just take offence at the suggestion Hitlerism is akin to social democracy. Along with the things you give as similarities there’s also major differences which WW2 ultimately attests to. There’s also the fact of Nazi hostility to socialism, the attack on German unions, reductions in wages, conquest, slave labour, dictatorship, militarism…
Your position seems to mirror that of Stalin and the Comintern that social democracy was social fascism. It proved to be a big mistake, right?
I could be wrong but I thought that the German model originated largely with Bismark, not Wilson, and that Hitlers plans for Germany were therefor the direct result of plans initiated by Bismark, and not Wilson.
Perhaps Wilson copied Bismark’s model or one of his pre-Hitler successors?[Don’t know, have not checked]
Also, I am pretty certain that the US interstate road system was originally copied directly from the German model, although I am not sure who in Germany originated that plan, Bismark, Hitler, or someone between the two, time wise.
Regards, onebornfree
Social Security and certain welfarist measures have their Germanic origin in Bismarck; but the plan of the total state and specifically centralized ‘planned’ corporatism was a Wilsonian thing. Of course it wasn’t all American, but the ideological superstructure of Progressive Nationalism was much more pronounced in the American system than in the more conservative (in the European sense) brand of nationalism found in Bismarck and Hindenburg.
- The Democratic countries made the war a world war, and are more responsible for the overall carnage than Hitler.
I don’t know how to calculate the marginal evilosity of a Hitler or Churchill…
I wasn’t commenting on them morally, just that there is no way the conflict could have been expanded to the same scope if it wasn’t for the foreign adventurism of England and the US.
5. The Democratic countries made the war a world war, and are more responsible for the overall carnage than Hitler.
I don’t know how to calculate the marginal evilosity of a Hitler or Churchill…
This is an “if X than Y statement” that works within a specific and measurable context, it is not a moral statement.
my bad, I meant carnagosity