Comment by trashtester
3 years ago
> People always believed in crazy anti-Jewish propaganda since, at least, the first crusade.
Absolutely they did. However, even at that time, it seems (if wikipedia is to be trusted) that the Jew's roles as bankers was part of the reason for the massacres:
"Many crusaders had to go into debt in order to purchase weaponry and equipment for the expedition; as Western Catholicism strictly forbade usury, many crusaders inevitably found themselves indebted to Jewish moneylenders. Having armed themselves by assuming the debt, the crusaders rationalized the killing of Jews as an extension of their Catholic mission"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres
You are absolutely right that antisemmitism didn't suddenly pop up in 1922, or even with the creation of the "Protocols" conspiracy. But prior to 1922, antisemitism probably wasn't worse in Germany than most other western countries.
But as we consider the inflation we are seeing today, try to imagine how it would be if the inflation is not 5-10% but 29500%, as it was at the peak in 1923. In other words, it would take 3.7 days for your paycheck to go to half value. When you got your salary, you had to run to the bakery and buy as much bread as you could. Old poeple and people on a fixed salary would lose everything in an instant.
Even in the present age, especially after 2008, conspiracy theories involving the banking sector is everywhere, and there are still whispers implicating a Jewish conspiracy, if you listen. Now imagine standing at a corner in Munich on a day where the factory didn't need your work, too afraid to go home to your abusive wife who would beat and scorn you for not bringing food to the hungry family.
Imagine some small man with a mustache telling a very convincing story that comletely rationalizes your troubles. He reminds you about the Goldmann banker up the street, and the Ruben gem store at the corner. Their families are not hungry, yet they didnt "work" (meaning physically) a single day of their lives, they are simply collecting usury. Imagine being told this, while hungry, while worried about being beaten by your wife when you come home, in a world where anti-semmitism is still seen as acceptable, in a world where usury is still seen as a sin, in a country where the interest rates on loans have 5 digits.
What I'm saying is that those germans were just like us, just under different circumstances. To them, the jews were the socially accepted "bad guys", just as nazis and facists, and where people can label people as nazi or facist with not much more evidence than not liking that person.
The person that would say today, that "It's ok to punch a nazi." (meaning MAGA-republican), might very will be the person in 1923 thinking that "It's ok to punch a jew.". The reasoning is very similar. And it's not restricted to the left. People on the right are currently generating massive amounts of resentment against "the elites". And in some cases, the anti-semmitism is once again coming out into the open.
I am going to say that you sound a bit confused.
> But as we consider the inflation we are seeing today, try to imagine how it would be if the inflation is not 5-10% but 29500%
Hitler took power 10 years after the hyperinflation. People didn’t vote for the NSDAP because of hyperinflation, nor they started hating the Jews more than before because of it.
> You are absolutely right that antisemmitism didn't suddenly pop up in 1922, or even with the creation of the "Protocols" conspiracy. But prior to 1922, antisemitism probably wasn't worse in Germany than most other western countries.
Antisemitism was rampant everywhere in the West, the Germans only took it to its inevitable consequences and only after 1933. Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that nazis were criminals, but the Shoah has much deeper roots that the hyperinflation or some temporary unemployment.
For instance, only in 1870 Roman Jews became full citizens, before then they couldn’t own property and, among other things, once a year they were forced to run naked during the Roman carnival. This was only 60 years before Hitler seized power.
You can find similar stories about all cities that had a large Jewish community.
> The person that would say today, that "It's ok to punch a nazi." (meaning MAGA-republican), might very will be the person in 1923 thinking that "It's ok to punch a jew.".
No, it’s not the same thing because no MAGA-republican has been punched and arrested and they even elected a president.
> deeper roots that the hyperinflation or some temporary unemployment.
Oh, and about this part, I think you underestimate the hyperinflation in 22-23 in Germany. Over a period of about 2-3 years, people who had been comfortably part of the upper middle class would lose EVERYTHING, and in many cases end up starving to death. That's not "temporary unemployment".
Read this quote:
- One particularly arresting story is that of Maximilian Bern, a man of literary education exemplary of Germany’s formerly middle-class Bildungsbürgertum. In 1923, writes Taylor
- "[he] withdrew all his savings—100,000 marks, formerly sufficient to support a modestly comfortable retirement—and purchased all it would buy by that time: a subway ticket. The old gentleman took a last ride around the city, then went back to his apartment and locked himself in."
- If you are like me, you probably assumed the next sentence would conclude with suicide. No. “There he died of hunger.” I had to linger over that sentence to fully grasp the reality: starvation in a society that had recently been among the most technologically and commercially advanced of any on earth.
https://fee.org/articles/how-hyperinflation-shattered-german...
For the Germans, this left an impression that resembled the Shoah for the jews.
Imagine seeing former affluent tech workers starving to death in San Francisco in 2029, looking like the corpses of Bergen-Belson prisoners. What would that do to the survivors?
They say that, of all causes of death, hunger is the most horrible.
> people who had been comfortably part of the upper middle class would lose EVERYTHING, and in many cases end up starving to death
The upper middle class own non-monetary assets, they are probably the least affected by inflation.
> For the Germans, this left an impression that resembled the Shoah for the jews.
No, not really and not even close. At least because the Weimar hyperinflation hasn’t caused mass starvation. Second because losing your savings is not even close to being stripped naked and beaten once a week and then being put on a cattle wagon to be slaughtered 1000 kilometres from home.
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> Hitler took power 10 years after the hyperinflation.
Hitler started planning a coup in late 1922, during the hyperinflation. It was attempted in late 1923, around the time the hyperinflation was stopped. It failed, and he ended up in prison. In 1924, during his time in prison, he wrote Mein Kampf, which lays out the plan he followed (or tried to) thereafter.
Before 1922, NSDAP (aka Nazi party) was very tiny. During the hyperinflation, it grew to 20000, mostly in Munich. Still small on a national basis, but enough to give it a solid basis as an organization.
Between 1925 and 1929, it grew slowly, but exploded after 1929, as the Great Depression hit Germany hard.
As for the role of hyperinflation in this, it is relatively well documented. Here is one quote from wikipedia:
"The Nazis' strongest appeal was to the lower middle-classes—farmers, public servants, teachers and small businessmen—who had suffered most from the inflation of the 1920s, so who feared Bolshevism more than anything else."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party
> Antisemitism was rampant everywhere in the West
At least very widespread. Still, the situation of jews in the West, including in Germany was much better at the time than it was for Blacks in the USA.
In Germany, there were many highly respected German leaders and intellectuals, such as Einstein, Freud and (less known today) Rudolf Hilferding. Hilferding is, quoting wikipedia again "almost universally recognized as the SPD's foremost theoretician of this (20th) century."
> the Germans only took it to its inevitable consequences and only after 1933.
I don't agree that it was inevitable. The Nazis were a marginal force up until 1929. By 1929, most Germans may have gotten over the terrors of 1922-23, but in 1929 the wounds were torn open, and the messages of the "little man with the funny mustache" didn't seem so crazy, after all.
It didn't help that Hilferding was Minister of Finance at the time the Depression started.
"Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that nazis were criminals, but the Shoah has much deeper roots that the hyperinflation or some temporary unemployment."
I'm not claiming that the hyperinflation was the root. I'm claiming it was one of the main sources of energy, and a great inspiration for Hitler himself, direcly before writing Mein Kampf. (Even though he was already an antisemite before 1922, I'm sure the things he saw during those two years reinforced his convitions. Hitler was known to tailor his speechest according to what ressonated with the audience.).
> You can find similar stories about all cities that had a large Jewish community.
Yes, I know. Being a minority comes with a lot of risks and problems. I fully understand why some jews prefer to have at least one state where they can be the majority. (Though it might have been better for world peace had they been given Köningsberg/East Preussia in 1945 instead of being supported in becoming the majority in Israel/Palestine).