What is conservatism?

[KingOrfeo]

Can we hold you to this position? I'm inclined to believe that Hitler had no plans beyond Europe.

No immediate plans beyond Europe. But his plans for Europe were drastic!

A good source here is Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, by Paul Johnson, Chapter 10, "The End of Old Europe":

Hitler's aims can be reconstructed not merely from Mein Kampf itself, with its stress on the 'East Policy,' but from his early speeches and so-called 'Second' or Secret Book of 1928. This material makes it clear that the 'cleansing' process -- the elimination of the Jews -- was essential to the whole long-term strategy. Being a race-socialist as opposed to a class-socialist, Hitler believed the dynamic of history was race. The dynamic was interrupted when race-poisoning took place. The poison came, above all, from the Jews. He admired the Jews as 'negative supermen'. In his Table-Talk he said that if 5,000 Jews emigrated to Sweden, in no time at all they would occupy all the key positions: this was because 'blood purity', as he put it in Mein Kampf, 'is a thing the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth'. The Germans, on the other hand, were poisoned. That was why they lost the First World War. Even he was poisoned: that was why he sometimes made mistakes -- 'all of us suffer from the sickness of mixed, corrupt blood'. Race-poisoning was a comparatively common obsession in the time of Hitler's youth, rather as ecological poisoning became an obsession of many in the 1970s and 1980s. The notion of ubiquitous poisoning appealed strongly to the same type of person who accepted conspiracy theories as the machinery of public events. As with the later ecologists, they thought the race-poison was spreading fast, that total disaster was iminent, and that it would take a long time to reverse even if the right policies were adopted promptly. Hitler calculated it would take a hundred years for his regime to eliminate racial poisoning in Germany: on the other hand, if Germany became the first nation-race to do so successfully, it would inevitably become 'lord of the Earth'. (Mein Kampf.)

What distinguished Hitlerian race-theory was, first, this rooted belief that 'cleansing' could make Germany the first true superpower, and ultimately the first paramount power in the world; and, secondly, his absolute conviction that the 'Jewish race-poison' and Bolshevism were one and the same phenomenon. In 1928, when he wrote his Second Book, he did not appreciate that old-style 'Jewish' Bolshevism had ceased to exist and that Stalin's Russia was in essentials as anti-Semitic as Tsardom had been. On the contrary, he believed the Soviet Union was a Jewish cultural phenomenon. Hence the object of his policy was to combat 'an inundation of diseased bacilli which at the moment have their breeding-ground in Russia'. Thus the 'cleansing' fit in perfectly with the resumption of traditional German East policy, but on a far more ambitious scale.

Hitler's full programme, therefore, was as follows. First, gain control of Germany itself, and begin the cleansing process at home. Second, destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe. All this could be accomplished without war. Third, on this power basis, destroy the Soviet Union (by war) to rid the 'breeding-ground' of the 'bacillus' and, by colonization, create a solid economic and strategic power base from which to establish a continental empire, in which France and Italy would be mere satellites. In the fourth stage Germany would acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, plus a big ocean navy, to make her one of the four superpowers, in addition to Britain, Japan and the United States. Finally, in the generation after his death, Hitler envisaged a decisive struggle between Germany and the United States for world domination.

No one since Napoleon had thought in such audacious terms. In its gigantic scope the concept was Alexandrine. Yet until he was engulfed by the war he made, Hitler was always pragmatic. Like Lenin he was a superb opportunist, always ready to seize openings and modify his theory accordingly. This has led some historians to conclude he had no master-programme. In fact, while always adjusting the tactics to suit the moment, he pursued his long-term strategy with a brutal determination that has seldom been equalled in the history of human ambition. Unlike most tyrants, he was never tempted to relax by a surfeit of autocratic power. Quite the contrary. He was always raising the stakes on the table and seeking to hasten the pace of history. He feared his revolution would lose its dynamism. He thought himself indispensable, and at least four of his phases must be accomplished while he was not only still alive but at the height of his powers. It was this impatience which made him so dangerous in the short term and so ineffectual in the long term (the very reverse of the Soviet strategists). In a secret speech to German newspaper editors in November 1938, after his great Munich triumph, he deplored the fact that his need to talk about peace had led the German nation to relax too much. He argued that for Germany to accept peace, and thus stability, as a permanent fact of international life was to accept the very spirit of defeatism. Violence was a necessity, and the public must be prepared for it.

Same book, Chapter 11, "The Watershed Year":

Hitler's ultimate aim was to create a German Volk of 250 million. He said that he proposed settling 100 million Germans on the great plains to the west of the Urals. In 1941 he envisaged that over the next decade the first 20 million would move east. Though he saw the colonization process clearly, he was vague on where the settlers were to come from. Those eligible and willing to settle, the Volksdeutsche from south-east Europe, numbered only 5 million, perhaps 8 milllion at most. His colleage Alfred Rosenberg considered the idea of 'drafting' Scandinavian, Dutch, and English settlers, being racially approximate to Germans, when the war was won. Some aspects of this great population transfer, to be the most formidable and decisive in history, were determined in meticulous detail. There was to be polygamy and a free choice of women for servicemen with decorations. The Crimea, after being 'cleansed' of Slavs and Jews, was to be turned into a gigantic German spa under its old Greek name of Tauria, populated by a mass transfer of peasants from the South Tyrol. Over vast areas of the Ukraine and south European Russia, a new Volk civilization was planned. As Hitler described it:

The area must lose the character of the Asiatic steppe. It must be Europeanized! . . . The 'Reich peasant' is to live in outstandingly beautiful settlements. The German agencies and authorities are to have wonderful buildings, the governors palaces. Around each city, a ring of lovely villages will be placed to within 30 or 40 kilometers . . . . That is why we are now building the large traffic arteries on the southern tip of the Crimea, out to the Caucasus mountains. Around these traffic strands, the German cities will be placed, like pearls on a string, and around the cities the German settlements will lie. For we will not open up Lebensraum for ourselves by entering the old, godforsaken Russian holes! The German settlements must be on an altogether higher level!

As Hitler's vision expanded, in the heady days of 1941, it came to embrace all Europe. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the whole of France north of the Somme were to be incorporated in a Greater Germany, the names of the cities being changed -- Nancy would become Nanzig, Besancon Bisanz. Trondheim would become a major German city and naval base of 250,000 inhabitants. The Alps would be the boundary between 'the German Empire of the North,' with a new 'Germania' as its capital, and 'the Roman Empire of the South'. The Pope would be hanged in full pontificals in St. Peter's Square. Strasbourg Cathedral would be turned into a giant 'Monument to the Unknown Soldier'. New crops, such a perennial rye, would be invented. He would forbid smoking, make vegetarianism compulsory, 'revive the Cimbrian art of knitting', appoint a 'Special Commissioner for the Care of Dogs' and an 'Assistant Secretary for Defence Against Gnats and Insects'.'

This was the "Greater Germanic Reich" the Nazis envisioned:

 

[Beco]

I read where Hitler was going to divide power after he took over control of Europe.

He did think that he who controls Europe, controls the world.

 

[KingOrfeo]

We all know what happened, but let's talk about it for a minute. We did what we did, but Pat Buchanan

. . . asked the following:

But if Hitler was out to conquer the world —

See post #176. Hitler was determined to have a war to make Germany the hegemonic power in Europe (with Italy as a junior partner); and to destroy the nations of Poland and Russia -- not merely to destroy Soviet Communism, not merely conquer and exploit those nations like a colony in Africa, but to utterly destroy them as nations, and build a greater Germany on their bones -- to colonize them with ethnic Germans, and kill all the Jews, and reduce the surviving Slavs to slavery or at best second-class noncitizenship, and make Germany a continental-scale power like the U.S. World domination was the goal, but a distant goal.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I read where Hitler was going to divide power after he took over control of Europe.

With Mussolini, perhaps.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Any plans that a leader doesn't expect to live long enough to enact don't actually qualify as plans in my book.

I read where Hitler was going to divide power after he took over control of Europe.

He did think that he who controls Europe, controls the world.

He wasn't wrong at the time. America and Russia hadn't come out on top just yet.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Any plans that a leader doesn't expect to live long enough to enact don't actually qualify as plans in my book.



He wasn't wrong at the time. America and Russia hadn't come out on top just yet.

And the British and French and Dutch colonial empires still existed, between them controlling almost all of Africa and much of Asia. World-power status of that kind is what Hitler was ultimately fighting for.

 

[Sean Renaud]

And the British and French and Dutch colonial empires still existed, between them controlling almost all of Africa and much of Asia.

We are trying to make Hitler look bad right? Not like he could have had some kind of justification for his options right? Not that I care I think he had some justification and that's why so many followed the evil fucker. And we should be on guard to keep things from getting to a point where that could happen again.

 

[KingOrfeo]

We are trying to make Hitler look bad right?

Well, he was worse than the older generations of European imperialists. The latter at least had some notion in mind at some times that they were working to better the lives or save the souls of the "natives," and hypocrisy can at least serve to moderate actual behavior. The Nazis saw most "natives" only as cattle, on principle.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Not in 1939 he didn't.

See post #176 -- it was his plan in 1928, and it was plan in 1941. Why not in 1939? See Greater Germanic Reich.

The Greater Germanic Reich (German: Großgermanisches Reich), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation (German: Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation) is the official state name of the political entity that Nazi Germany tried to establish in Europe during World War II.[2] Albert Speer stated in his memoirs that Hitler also referred to the envisioned state as the Teutonic Reich of the German Nation, although it is unclear whether Speer was using the now seldom used "Teutonic" as an English synonym for "Germanic".[3] Hitler also mentions a future Germanic State of the German Nation (German: Germanischer Staat Deutscher Nation) in Mein Kampf.[4] The territorial claims for the Greater Germanic Reich vacillated over time, for instance amidst and for a short time after German-Soviet negotiations for the partition of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union took place, Hitler did not include territorial designs on the Soviet Union within the Greater Germanic Reich from 1939 to 1941, and instead was focusing on uniting the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia and the Low Countries into the Reich.[5]

This pan-Germanic Empire was expected to assimilate practically all of Germanic Europe into an enormously expanded Reich. Territorially speaking, this encompassed the already-enlarged German Reich itself (consisting of pre-1938 Germany proper, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen-Malmedy, Memel, Lower Styria, Upper Carniola, Southern Carinthia and German-occupied Poland), the Netherlands, the Flemish part of Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.[6]

The most notable exception was the predominantly Anglo-Saxon United Kingdom, which was not projected as having to be reduced to a German province but to instead become an allied seafaring partner of the Germans.[7] Another exception was German-populated territory in South Tyrol that was part of Italy.

In addition, its western frontiers with France were to be reverted to those of the earlier Holy Roman Empire, which would have meant the complete annexation of all of Wallonia, French Switzerland, and large areas of northern and eastern France.[8] The policy of lebensraum planned mass expansion of Germany eastwards to the Ural Mountains.[9][10] Hitler planned for the "surplus" Russian population living west of the Urals to be deported to the east of the Urals.[11]

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

He didn't have the capability for one thing. Didn't have a common border with Russia either.

No, because Poland was in the way. But Hitler had plans for that! And as we saw in 1939, he did have the capability.

Show me where it was his "plan" in 1928. We're talking about reality here, not a dream.

Hitler's aims can be reconstructed not merely from Mein Kampf itself, with its stress on the 'East Policy,' but from his early speeches and so-called 'Second' or Secret Book of 1928.

Hitler's Second Book. Full English translation here.

Moreover, Hitler attacked Stresemann for his goal of restoring Germany to its pre-1914 position. In Hitler's view, merely overthrowing the Treaty of Versailles and restoring Germany to its pre-1914 borders was only a temporary solution. In Zweites Buch, Hitler stated his belief that Germany's real problem was the lack of sufficient Lebensraum ("Living space") for the German people. In Hitler's view, only states with large amounts of Lebensraum were successful. In Zweites Buch, Hitler announced that overthrowing the "shackles" of Versailles would be only the first step in a Nazi foreign policy, whose ultimate objective was to obtain the desired Lebensraum in the territory of Russia.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

I never said he didn't have the capability to invade Poland. I said he didn't have the capability to take over the world.

Well, that's no reason for Britain not to fight him in 1939, is it?!

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[Adre]

As an aside, I see that FOX is running the 1967 William F. Buckley interview of then California Ronald Reagan. Buckley, smarter than any liberal alive today, and Reagan showing the traits that caused the annihilation of his Democrat opponent in 49 of the 50 states. Showing the leadership that makes Obama look like a stumbling boy scout.

One could add he is smarter than any conservative alive today as well.

 

[KingOrfeo]

As I said earlier, Britain made a mistake in handing the Polish Colonels a war guarantee. They might have foresaw the Battle of France as what Churchill described as "a colossal military disaster" ending in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

And then what? You say the war could have been avoided -- but avoiding war (as between Germany and Britain) = letting Hitler have Europe. Aren't you glad to live in a world where the Greater Germanic Reich never existed? You can be sure the Eastern Europeans are. If they had to choose between domination by the Nazis or by the Soviets they'd pick the Soviets in a heartbeat.

 

[RobDownSouth]

As an aside, I see that FOX is running the 1967 William F. Buckley interview of then California Ronald Reagan. Buckley, smarter than any liberal alive today, and Reagan showing the traits that caused the annihilation of his Democrat opponent in 49 of the 50 states. Showing the leadership that makes Obama look like a stumbling boy scout.

Buckley was an intellectual conservative, he'd never make it in today's conservative circles because his musings can't be condensed on to a bumper sticker.

Reagan in his prime was the absolute best at articulating the views of his corporate masters. Compare that to his bumbling stumbling apology of selling arms to the Ayatollah and you see how far he fell.

 

[RobDownSouth]

As I said earlier, Britain made a mistake in handing the Polish Colonels a war guarantee. They might have foresaw the Battle of France as what Churchill described as "a colossal military disaster" ending in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Alright, let's assume your scenario has merit. What SHOULD Britain have done, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Well, he was worse than the older generations of European imperialists. The latter at least had some notion in mind at some times that they were working to better the lives or save the souls of the "natives," and hypocrisy can at least serve to moderate actual behavior. The Nazis saw most "natives" only as cattle, on principle.

From George Orwell's essay "Rudyard Kipling" (1942):

Kipling spent the later part of his life in sulking, and no doubt it was political disappointment rather than literary vanity that account for this. Somehow history had not gone according to plan. After the greatest victory she had ever known, Britain was a lesser world power than before, and Kipling was quite acute enough to see this. The virtue had gone out of the classes he idealized, the young were hedonistic or disaffected, the desire to paint the map red had evaporated. He could not understand what was happening, because he had never had any grasp of the economic forces underlying imperial expansion. It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing. You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed 'natives', and then you establish 'the Law', which includes roads, railways and a court-house. He could not foresee, therefore, that the same motives which brought the Empire into existence would end by destroying it. It was the same motive, for example, that caused the Malayan jungles to be cleared for rubber estates, and which now causes those estates to be handed over intact to the Japanese. The modern totalitarians know what they are doing, and the nineteenth-century English did not know what they were doing. Both attitudes have their advantages, but Kipling was never able to move forward from one into the other. His outlook, allowing for the fact that after all he was an artist, was that of the salaried bureaucrat who despises the 'box-wallah' and often lives a lifetime without realizing that the 'box-wallah' calls the tune.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Alright, let's assume your scenario has merit. What SHOULD Britain have done, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight?

And consider that it was consistent British foreign policy for centuries to prevent any one power from rising to dominate the Continent, for fear such a power could dominate Britain.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Yes, but I'm not glad that by 1945 the freedom of a 100,000,000 Christians and all of the great capitals of central Europe were betrayed and handed to the most brutal tyranny in history, Communism.

You can't be serious. Nobody in Europe killed more people under it's control than Joe Stalin or the tyranny of Communism.

You can't be serious. It was better than the alternative. The Soviets at least let the Warsaw Pact nations be governed by homegrown Communist parties, and did very little killing there. The Nazis would have annexed and colonized them all, and their peoples would either have been killed or enslaved or shipped east of the Urals.

When the Nazis invaded the USSR, some people welcomed them as liberators. They changed their minds in a hurry; they soon learned it was far worse (for any non-German) to live under Hitler than Stalin.

And what's this about "100,000,000 Christians"? Does their faith make them any more valuable?