There’s an interesting book on this subject called Hitler’s First Victims by Timothy Ryback. It chronicles how Josef Hartinger risked his career, and even his life, in pursuing justice, suggesting that history might have taken a different course if more Germans had followed his example.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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OP said he was reading the same book a minute after you. In case you are interested in chatting it up with them haha
I'm currently reading Hitler's First Victims and while I knew Nazism was gaining power in the early 1930's, I didn't actually know that the systemic murder of Jews began this early, nor that anyone in the legal apparatus at the time tried to stop it, so this was heartening in a way even though they didn't ultimately succeed.
There are a lot of parallels with what's happening now under Donald Trump, particularly the intentional destruction of the rule of law, which made the establishment of Dachau and the ~~kidnapping~~ indefinite imprisonment and murder of Jewish political prisoners possible.
Another great book about the actual process of the holocaust is IBM and the Holocaust. Lots of detail about how the victims were targetted and then how IT really made a lot of the horrors possible
Recommended read for anyone curious about the logistics.
I'll add it to my list. Thank you for the recommendation.
Been thinking about that one with the AI fun they're building now. If you think IBM helped the holocaust, just wait till you see what ChatGPT can do. It's going to be like thought police.
Look up Palantir
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One of the most well know and influential anti Nazi songs of the era The Peat Bog Soldiers was composed in 1933 as well.
Even years before the outbreak of war in Europe these camps had already had a storied history.
I'm an old musician, who remembers the role that musicians played in the Vietnam War Resistance. The current population music industry would never allow their artists to be so openly resistant today.
So I've been looking for music to revive, and create a soundtrack for the growing resistance. This might be a good one.
It's also time to revive all those good old protest folk songs by Woody Guthrie and the like. Songs like This Land Is Your Land.
The current population music industry would never allow their artists to be so openly resistant today.
Bands like Rise Against and System of a Down got a lot of air time around the Iraq war, and could go back to 90s with Rage against the Machine and the late punk bands - but I've definitely precieved an industry shift towards promoting music that celebrates apathy and embracing futility in recent years.
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I also recommend In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson. It follows the US ambassador to Germany in the 30s and how he tries to warn his counterparts back home how bad things are getting. Again, many parallels.
I'm sick of parallels, when are we gonna do orthogonals
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I've been reading about the Holocaust a fair bit of late, and it's interesting to see the debate around the functionalist/intentionalist view of how it happened. OP's story seems to lend credence to the former version, in that the Nazi state was a patchwork of warring factions that were each trying to take power for themselves and in an effort to do so, tried a little too hard to do what they imagined Hitler wanted of them, namely more and more murder and ruthlessness and general mayhem, eventually culminating in plans for wholesale extermination. This is the functionalist view, where things happened almost in a bottom-up fashion, whereas the intentionalist idea is one where Hitler planned the Holocaust from day one in a top-down approach. I personally think it's more likely to be the former though, at least from what I've read about it anyway.
Growing up in the '80s and '90s, I never really learned much about the Holocaust aspect of WWII. I knew the broad strokes, of course, but the finer details of the Nazi state's operations are where the true horror lies. Even without WWII or the Holocaust, it was one of the purest examples of a nightmarish dystopia run by corrupt, amoral, incompetent, petty, narcissistic lunatics and sociopaths. The parallels with certain modern governments is terrifying...
Very few people understand what fascism is in the concrete day to day sense. Fascist politics are very normalized in the modern world. They obfuscate everything they do. The more they can confuse and entangle antifascists the better. While we try and deconstruct their empty statements and lies they spend the whole time making confusing and conflicting statements, trying to garner as much support from bigoted people as possible. Its a union of bigotry, greed, and manipulation.
Fascists are themselves parasitic to democracy. Their existence within democracy whatsoever steadily nurtures them. The more tolerable their ideas are the faster they will grow. Tolerating Nazis at all is the same thing as promoting them. Their ideology spreads like a virus, it doesnt try to convince you merely overwhelms you. It harkens out to the priviledged masses fear of the other, and then surrounds them in a fog of conflicting information and symbolism. It says "believe in me and I will keep you safe" before outputting a barrage of rage, hatred, disgust, fear and dread. It uses language like symbolism itself. It preoccupies itself with definitions, centralizing itself as authority over reality itself. Once someone has become a fascist it is statistically impossible to change their views. Once someone has become a fascist they are overwhelmingly likely to never change. There is no scientifically proven way to deradicalize them. That's how powerful a hold it creates. True believers in fascism exist in this perpetual state of anger and confusion. The rest see utility in fascism, to advance their bigotry or to profit off of corruption.
I was watching the PBS American Experience episode on Nazi City, USA.
Hearing literally the same words that came out of the American Nazi party in 1930s that have been spewed by Republicans in the last 10 years was frankly TERRIFYING.
One of the gravest mistake we can make is to believe it can't happen here / it can't happen again.
What is wild is that MOST people had no idea about the Holocaust as it was happening. That when we learn of WWII and all that was around it and you hear about the camps you think "no shit we went to help with that." But then find out that wasn't really a motivation for the masses is crazy.
Governments knew, for sure the Brits.
There was a letter explaining everything.
I suspect they allowed since it served their purpose of creating israel which they were heavily involved in.
Same as the zionists who made deals with the nazis who could be taken to the camps: those that didn't want to move to israel later.
What are you talking about? Brits may have known but they were losing until the US came to help. They had no power to stop anything at the time. And governments aren't a populace. My original statement was that the masses were not motivated by their existence. The media was newspapers and they may have small articles here and there. But it was not common knowledge that these camps even existed.
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I think it starts with the person up top seeing more and more what they are able to get sway with and how little accountability there is and things just snowball from there. At any point, the dictator up top could stop things, but instead their true evil nature gets revealed.
... isn't the functionalist (?) version more what the west/victors wrote about WWII? Not even as propaganda per se, just bcs it can be summed up in one line & afterwards easier to append propaganda for various purposes.
Clearly if Hitler planned everything that happened he would have needed to hold power for a lot longer to solidify his sole influence or have overwhelming public support (and then do all the rest).
It was a difference between Western powers versus the Soviet Union. Western powers tried to make sure that Germans understood their complicity to genocide even if they didn't operate concentration camps. In contrast, the Soviet Union generally portrayed the problem being Hitler leading the people astray.
That's USA vs USSR in both Germanies, right?
Yes
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The murder of political enemies by the Nazis is usually not considered part of the Holocaust.
The Nazis created concentration camps to detain people immediately after they assumed power. The death camps in which millions were gassed were its own thing within that system.
The detainment concentration camps were for leftists and democrats. Then also people from the margins of society. The so-called "work-shy"; meaning people who had for whatever reason troubles functioning. It would have included Hitler if he hadn't succeeded with that politics grift. Gay people, of course. Jehovah's Witnesses because they were conscientious objectors. Of course, people were tortured and maltreated in these camps, too. But how bad it was very much depended on the status of the prisoner.
The first Holocaust killings are usually said to be the hospital patients who were victims of the Aktion T4 in September 1939 when the war started. Disabled people who needed care were murdered to free up resources for the war effort. One method was locking them in an idling truck and suffocating them with exhaust fumes.
One method was locking them in an idling truck and suffocating them with exhaust.
When the killing starts here in the states, the media will just report on basketball and celebrities.
You're right.
And the big social media platforms will censor any information about it. We already saw with January 6th that Americans are perfectly happy to just ignore what they can see with their own two eyes, so I suspect, it won't be too heavy a lift for them to step over dead bodies in the streets as long as the smell isn't too much.
Nothing will fundamentally change until people are skipping meals. Not, like, a few people, more than half the people.
The revolution will not be televised
Have you heard the latest in the Diddy trial?
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and here we are with "someone died in ~~detention~~ false imprisonment" as just another tuesday
I try to make it a point not to use the word 'detention' since it's so purposefully sanitized.
good call. language matters now more than ever, and their newspeak redefinition of words needs to be recognized as the weapon they're using it for
Speaking of that, I've been saying that the Democrats should officially retire the term Republican Party. Hold press conferences, release press releases, etc. the Republican Party abandoned it's long held principals, and have evolved into the MAGA Party. From now on, all Democratic statements and material will not acknowledge the Republican Party, because they ceased to exist. It is now officially the MAGA Party. And then make all their members adhere to that rule in all statement, interviews, etc. No exceptions, except when discussing history.
It will make the Republicans crazy, and take away their ability to claim that they are the "Party of Lincoln." They are officially the MAGA Party, whether they like it or not.
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Well, at least you now know that happens next in the US.
You're not wrong.
Having read a lot of history on the subject, the hope I do have is in the thousands who resisted the Nazis and Russians in small ways. Most of their names are forgotten (or fake, as is the way with resistance), but their stories survived because many of the people they helped told those stories after the war. Not everyone can be a Schindler or a Winton, but there are going to be more than a few who find a way to help people where needed as things get worse.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m00084td/rise-of-the-nazis
that is what told me we were fucked that series is so spot on to what is happening her
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