Nazism: Rational Evil?

[Razgovory]

Rational only in the sense they engaged in actions which they saw as benefiting them, but then, as CdM so delicately puts it, so what?  That's not very special.  Almost everyone does that.  It couldn't be described as "Rationalism" in the philolosophical context.

[Josquius]

That's a rather bold statement, given that the Nazis predate the depression.

So long as communism was allowed to exist, the Nazis were inevitable.

Not as anything more worrying than the BNP.

[CountDeMoney]

Big deal, most of us are college-educated, too.  What's your point.

You'd be a scary Nazi.

I would've been a fantastic Nazi.

[Tamas]

Actually, quite a few of the top Nazis weren't undereducated thugs. Goebbels, Frick, Ley, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Speer, Frank, Seyss-Inquart, Funk etc. were university educated. That's actually more scary than if they really had all been undereducated thugs.

Big deal, most of us are college-educated, too.  What's your point.

Game, set, match

[Neil]

That's a rather bold statement, given that the Nazis predate the depression.

So long as communism was allowed to exist, the Nazis were inevitable.

Not as anything more worrying than the BNP.

You are of course incorrect.  Still, I could see how you would like to think so.

[Josquius]

You are of course incorrect.  Still, I could see how you would like to think so.

% of vote in 1928: 2.6
% of vote in 1930: 18.3
% of vote in 1932: 37.4

Even being an important party was a reasonably far off aspiration for them pre-depression. They certainly didn't seem to have any hope of becoming rulers of a one party state.

[Malthus]

Wow that seems to be patently untrue - the "final solutions" have been widely criticised (including by German military of the time) because it consumed resources that were needed elsewhere. Certainly, it wasn't caused by food shortages and resources dedicated to Holocaust exceeded any "savings" by a magnitude.

What kind of book is that? It looks like a load of crap

Gotta agree. The Nazi death machine was a user of valuable resources, not a saver. The attempt to use prisioners for slave labour was hardly an economy, shipping prisioners all over Europe to the camps used precious rail resources when they were at a premium, etc.

The death camps were only "rational" insofar as their very existence more or less scared everone in Europe not targed for extermination shitless (with good reason).

More to the point, they created in minature the ideal Nazi society - one in which the Nazis could actually rule like amoral teutonic gods over a sort of ant-utopia. The details of what went on in those camps defy any sort of purely rational explaination, I suspect that the reason for it has more to do with deep seated need for total dominance over others - the ultimate proof of superiority being to reduce others to total inferiority, to the lowest slavery and brutishness, use them for pointless "experiments" of the Jeffery Dahlmer variety, and then even after death to a mere commodity - piles of hair, gold teeth, soap. 

[Neil]

You are of course incorrect.  Still, I could see how you would like to think so.

% of vote in 1928: 2.6
% of vote in 1930: 18.3
% of vote in 1932: 37.4

Thank you for proving my point.  So long as communism was a threat, the Nazis were bound to get stronger and stronger.

[derspiess]

You'd be a scary Nazi.

I would've been a fantastic Nazi.

Same thing.

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't think tooze's argument was that Nazism was rational, only that given its presuppositions and objectives, its foreign and economic policy was a rational (if horrificly immoral) means of achieving those ends.  I think Tooze's broader point was that the whole Hitlerian project of creating an economically indepedent German world empire to compete with the US and British empires was a fool's errand from the start, and hence was irrational.

Another major argument of Tooze's book was that most of the vaunted proto-keynsian "job creation" schemes of the Third Reich were in fact inherited from the late Weimar regime and that Hitler eventually wound these programs down to focus on military production, which had significant negative medium term implications for German economic development in the 30s.  So I don't think one can draw from his book the conclusion that Weimar economic policy was doomed to failure.  In fact, Tooze makes a point that the "green shoots" of growth began to show in late 1932 under von Krosigk (leading to ill-fated optimism of von Schleicher about the prospects of his government).

Ultimatley, of course, the policy of open trade, foreign investment, and internal economic development would bring unprecedented prosperity to Germany in the postwar period.

[Josquius]

Thank you for proving my point.  So long as communism was a threat, the Nazis were bound to get stronger and stronger.

No...that proves my point. 1929 is the key year.
Pre wall street crash and all that they're going nowhere. Checking up again 1924 had two elections, the first  with 6.5% and the second with 3. They could even be seen to be going backwards in the late 20s if you go purely off election numbers.
The Russian revolution was moving into the past and as Germany stabilised the fear of communism had even lessened to a degree. I could well see the nazis becoming a significant political party perhaps but that's the best they're going to get, they're not going to completely take over.

[garbon]

Big deal, most of us are college-educated, too.  What's your point.

Not all colleges are created equal.

[MadImmortalMan]

I'd go with Lawful Evil.