Today in class we looked mostly at two films and listened to two lecutres about the rise of Hitler and the rise of Japan. It is very interesting to see how many similarities occured between these two topics. First both seemed to believe that greatness for their country would only come from expanding or taking over other countries around them. Another similarity was the belief that Germans or Japanese were better than their counterparts. Examples of these views can be shown by the persecution of Jews in Europe and how Japanese believed they were better than natives that were living on some of the islands that the Japanese occupied.
Another interesting topic that we talked about in class is the young life of Hitler. I thought it was interesting to see how he moved around and that he tried to be an artist. The video was obviously very against Hitler and often focused on his failures. I think it would also be interesting to see how the "push" really ended up and if Hitler really just ran away like the video showed. One question that I did have was whether or not Hitler or his parents were Jewish? I had heard this somewhere but I do not know if it has any truth to it. If anyone could answer that it would be much appreciated.
Matt, I will step in on the topic of whether Hitler had any "Jewish blood" in him. It has never been proven. So, the rumors that he was 1/4 Jewish, are just that, rumors.
The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany really surprised me because i could not fathom more or less blaming an entire countries problems on a single group: the Jews. I felt that it made about as much sense as blaming today's Iraq conflict on Mormons. It is impressive and sad at the same time how an entire country could be so gullible, but at the same time I was not in their shoes.
Japan struck in a somewhat similar situation as to the "cleansing of Asia," it totally reminded me of the Nazis. I cannot imagine an entire country sharing an urge to cleanse their continent in today's world. No doubt their are radicals such as Jihad groups, but an entire country?
The films shown in class were a great supplement to the lecture material. Learning the background to the contibuting powers of World War II has really helped in my understanding of the factors that fueld the war in the first place.
Even though the films were somewhat bias they really portrayed how lost the German citizens were feeling. I think part of why Hitler was able to become so popular was his timing. Germany was falling apart and the people needed someone to listen to their hardships and someone to follow. Hitler found ways to appease the people after the Treaty of Versailles by creating something similar to a strong army through his many groups and he made German strength and prosperity seem possible.
I think it is kind of interesting the way the people seemed so entrance by Hitler in the years leading up to the war. It provides an interesting commentary on the power of rhetoric and people with nothing to loose. I would pose that a big reason for Hitler’s rise was simply the way that he uses words in his speeches. Really, we shouldn’t look at this as something extraordinary, it happens all the time in our country and especially right now. Take Barack Obama for example. Unless you personally search out the information yourself at this point in the election race we really don’t know that much about the candidates or their stances, but still Obama has a large following. I am not suggesting the Obama is the next ruthless dictator we should all be worried about (I don’t have an opinion about him either way, your political opinions are your business and regardless this isn’t a POLS class), I’m just saying that he is an excellent public speaker. Like in all elections, I think this quality gives him a big advantage; just like Hitler. It’s also important to remember that this didn’t happen over night. The Nazi party grew over time and it’s no surprise that in a time where the economy was horrible it would have. At the time everyone was poor, which made that the largest demographic; and an angry one at that. If you can appeal to the largest demographic with strong rhetoric promising prosperity you’re going to build a large following. I guess I just can’t say that I am that surprised by the way things happened. Hitler’s ideas slowly grew in popularity and then when he had enough power he just killed everyone around him that disagreed. It was really systematic and well thought out; if he had of come out calling for death to half the people in the government and all the Jews I don’t think things would have worked out for him.
as unfortunate as it turned out, Hitler was possibly the best public speaker of the 20th century. Some of his general public followers told interviewers after the war that when they went to rallies and saw him speak, his movements were almost mesmerizing-how often do you see American politicians wave their arms around wildly during their speeches like Hitler did?
Its hard to picture that the treaty of versailles put the sole blame of the first war on germany. No blame was put on any other country but germany. Then to allow them to still have their army on foreign soil was just stupid. Did they really think that this treaty was going to hold on? And for the U.S. being so involved in the whole process is why is amazed me that we just sat back and let the WWII start and still stay out of it basically until Pearl Harbour. If we are going to try to fix the problems of WWI then we should have been trying to stop the problems of WWII from the start. Maybe so many people wouldn't have died then.
I agree with jordan how the Japanese reminded me of the Nazis. It also amazes me how Japan thought that they could take over the world and that it was their destiny to bring the entire world "under one roof". How would a country that is so small, even though they were rather mighty, believe they could go up against such great powers of the world at the time? You would have to have some pretty strong beliefs to believe that.
I thought the video was interesting to watch since it was made shortly after the war. The video I beliefs shows that the allies really did not feel that they were responsible for the rise of Hitler. They failed to see that the Treaty of Versailles at least laid the ground- work for radical individuals like Hitler to rise to power. I felt the film seemed to place the blame of the people of Germany for letting Hitler come to power.
I wonder why the world leaders did not see Hitler’s real intentions instead of letting the wool be pulled over their eyes? Hitler laid out his plan in Mein Kampf, which was available to the whole world to read; however, leaders like Chamberlain never took a hard line against Hitler. I know that WWI was fresh in their minds but Mein Kampf should have provided the evidence they needed to win the people’s support to take a tougher position.
Like Jeff, I believe that Hitler was probably the greatest speaker/actor of the 20th century. The reason I say speaker/actor because his speeches were a major production. He was able to persuade an entire nation to follow him to war almost without question. I find it hard to believe we will ever see a speaker/actor again that speaks with such passive and is able to persuade the masses the way he did.
I feel the same way as Jordan does about Japan. I can understand racism towards a particular group during that period, because America was deeply divided on the race issue. However, I can’t see Americans hating a particular group so much that we wage a nationally organized war to cleanse the world of that group.
I think people forget that Hilter's rise to power or should I say the Nazi Party's rise to power was the first time that a modern mass political movement machine was put to use. Hitler was the first political figure in history to fly from city to city for rallies and use mass media for political purposes. Radio also helped spark the rise of Nazism in Germany. The timing and economic slump of Germany during the 1930s coupled with the illusions of past grandeur from WWI made the timing ripe for a dictatorial ruler. Whether it had been communist or fascist, Germany's democracy was going to fall. The conservatives (aka bussiness owners and the military) saw the writing on the wall and believed that Hitler was the best of the two available options. So to say that that the rise of Nazi Germany depended on its persecution of the Jews (jordan duffeild) is not really the whole truth. It was just one of the numerous ideologies the Nazi Party believed in and wasn't the whole reason for the Nazi's rise to power.
During the times after the WWI, the German people were in such a bad state that they wanted someone like to Hitler to bring their country back to its original glory. They were desperate for a strong leader.
They were living in times where their money was worth absolutely nothing, no one had jobs, and the world basically "blamed" them for everything that happened in WWI. Hitler was able to play off of these emotions and promised the German nation great things. People just didn't see how bad some of these things really were.
I found it very intersting and impressive how Hitler created his composite organization of the Nazi Party in a manor so similar to the chain of command within a military unit. I feel that this hierarchy enabled him to dissiminate his intentions on what to do with Germany in a very affective manor which ultimately led to his ability to run the show in the whole nation. Hitler did indeed have a strong sense of command prescen throughout the time between World War One and when he became the dictator of Germany.
A more specific area to this case study that interested me is that as Hitler neared his time when he would finaly gain controll as chancelor of Germany, he had to make the decision to eliminate either the SS or the SA. Eliminating the SA was quite ruthless, but it was a critical step towards his domination of Germany.
The greatest thing hear that I gathered was that Hitler purged personell within his own party to such a strong extent that I was unaware of. I was always under the impression that every single person that was apart of the Nazi Party during whom helped Hitler rise to power was in fact awarded handsomely for their assistance. Instead, some of them were eliminated because they were viewed as a threat to Hitler's stability.
the mass genocide during this time was something that is quite frankly not comprehensible in my mind as a college student. i can read, i can see pictures, and i can watch movies about such, but until i am there or until something like this were to happen in America again (native Americans, trail of tears, which some say more died here than in the holocaust)than i can not believe something like this could happen.
i have studied about rwanda and many other genocides, but to stop something like these events immediately or to have stopped hitler immediately seems impossible, but with history and looking to the past one can learn, at least i would think so. and for most countries that is true. however, south america politics are in bad shape right now
s2k, I'm sorry to hear that it would require another genocide right here to truly allow you to comprehend it, but I understand where you're coming from. And in that case, I hope you never have that chance. Both genocides and the systematic mass murder (Holocaust, Japan vs Chinese genocide, and Stalin's purges) that occurred during the first half of the twentieth tends to support the belief that humans are hardly innately good, rather in the right circumstances, they can do unimaginably terrible things to each other. And yet during this time, we see some of the best of human nature as well. Once WWII got rolling, there were literally countless acts of heroism and selflessness on all sides of the conflict (well, perhaps less from the Japanese side, since their object wasn't necessarily to survive battle). That's one of the other secondary reasons I find this era so fascinating, and a complete must, for as George Santayana said so well "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We would all do well to try and apply past lessons to today's world.
I'm sorry if I missed it in the text, but I am very interested to know why Hitler was only in prison for 9 months when his sentence was for 5 years. I'd like to know what influenced that decision.
Also, regarding the videos shown in class: What years were those made? Was it something that was made during the war or after, and I was wondering what country were they all from? I noticed that one of the clips was produced in Great Britain, but I don't know if that is where they all originated. Also, what was their target audience for the films?
15 comments:
Today in class we looked mostly at two films and listened to two lecutres about the rise of Hitler and the rise of Japan. It is very interesting to see how many similarities occured between these two topics. First both seemed to believe that greatness for their country would only come from expanding or taking over other countries around them. Another similarity was the belief that Germans or Japanese were better than their counterparts. Examples of these views can be shown by the persecution of Jews in Europe and how Japanese believed they were better than natives that were living on some of the islands that the Japanese occupied.
Another interesting topic that we talked about in class is the young life of Hitler. I thought it was interesting to see how he moved around and that he tried to be an artist. The video was obviously very against Hitler and often focused on his failures. I think it would also be interesting to see how the "push" really ended up and if Hitler really just ran away like the video showed. One question that I did have was whether or not Hitler or his parents were Jewish? I had heard this somewhere but I do not know if it has any truth to it. If anyone could answer that it would be much appreciated.
Matt, I will step in on the topic of whether Hitler had any "Jewish blood" in him. It has never been proven. So, the rumors that he was 1/4 Jewish, are just that, rumors.
The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany really surprised me because i could not fathom more or less blaming an entire countries problems on a single group: the Jews. I felt that it made about as much sense as blaming today's Iraq conflict on Mormons. It is impressive and sad at the same time how an entire country could be so gullible, but at the same time I was not in their shoes.
Japan struck in a somewhat similar situation as to the "cleansing of Asia," it totally reminded me of the Nazis. I cannot imagine an entire country sharing an urge to cleanse their continent in today's world. No doubt their are radicals such as Jihad groups, but an entire country?
The films shown in class were a great supplement to the lecture material. Learning the background to the contibuting powers of World War II has really helped in my understanding of the factors that fueld the war in the first place.
Even though the films were somewhat bias they really portrayed how lost the German citizens were feeling. I think part of why Hitler was able to become so popular was his timing. Germany was falling apart and the people needed someone to listen to their hardships and someone to follow. Hitler found ways to appease the people after the Treaty of Versailles by creating something similar to a strong army through his many groups and he made German strength and prosperity seem possible.
I think it is kind of interesting the way the people seemed so entrance by Hitler in the years leading up to the war. It provides an interesting commentary on the power of rhetoric and people with nothing to loose.
I would pose that a big reason for Hitler’s rise was simply the way that he uses words in his speeches. Really, we shouldn’t look at this as something extraordinary, it happens all the time in our country and especially right now. Take Barack Obama for example. Unless you personally search out the information yourself at this point in the election race we really don’t know that much about the candidates or their stances, but still Obama has a large following. I am not suggesting the Obama is the next ruthless dictator we should all be worried about (I don’t have an opinion about him either way, your political opinions are your business and regardless this isn’t a POLS class), I’m just saying that he is an excellent public speaker. Like in all elections, I think this quality gives him a big advantage; just like Hitler.
It’s also important to remember that this didn’t happen over night. The Nazi party grew over time and it’s no surprise that in a time where the economy was horrible it would have. At the time everyone was poor, which made that the largest demographic; and an angry one at that. If you can appeal to the largest demographic with strong rhetoric promising prosperity you’re going to build a large following.
I guess I just can’t say that I am that surprised by the way things happened. Hitler’s ideas slowly grew in popularity and then when he had enough power he just killed everyone around him that disagreed. It was really systematic and well thought out; if he had of come out calling for death to half the people in the government and all the Jews I don’t think things would have worked out for him.
as unfortunate as it turned out, Hitler was possibly the best public speaker of the 20th century. Some of his general public followers told interviewers after the war that when they went to rallies and saw him speak, his movements were almost mesmerizing-how often do you see American politicians wave their arms around wildly during their speeches like Hitler did?
Its hard to picture that the treaty of versailles put the sole blame of the first war on germany. No blame was put on any other country but germany. Then to allow them to still have their army on foreign soil was just stupid. Did they really think that this treaty was going to hold on? And for the U.S. being so involved in the whole process is why is amazed me that we just sat back and let the WWII start and still stay out of it basically until Pearl Harbour. If we are going to try to fix the problems of WWI then we should have been trying to stop the problems of WWII from the start. Maybe so many people wouldn't have died then.
I agree with jordan how the Japanese reminded me of the Nazis. It also amazes me how Japan thought that they could take over the world and that it was their destiny to bring the entire world "under one roof". How would a country that is so small, even though they were rather mighty, believe they could go up against such great powers of the world at the time? You would have to have some pretty strong beliefs to believe that.
I thought the video was interesting to watch since it was made shortly after the war. The video I beliefs shows that the allies really did not feel that they were responsible for the rise of Hitler. They failed to see that the Treaty of Versailles at least laid the ground- work for radical individuals like Hitler to rise to power. I felt the film seemed to place the blame of the people of Germany for letting Hitler come to power.
I wonder why the world leaders did not see Hitler’s real intentions instead of letting the wool be pulled over their eyes? Hitler laid out his plan in Mein Kampf, which was available to the whole world to read; however, leaders like Chamberlain never took a hard line against Hitler. I know that WWI was fresh in their minds but Mein Kampf should have provided the evidence they needed to win the people’s support to take a tougher position.
Like Jeff, I believe that Hitler was probably the greatest speaker/actor of the 20th century. The reason I say speaker/actor because his speeches were a major production. He was able to persuade an entire nation to follow him to war almost without question. I find it hard to believe we will ever see a speaker/actor again that speaks with such passive and is able to persuade the masses the way he did.
I feel the same way as Jordan does about Japan. I can understand racism towards a particular group during that period, because America was deeply divided on the race issue. However, I can’t see Americans hating a particular group so much that we wage a nationally organized war to cleanse the world of that group.
I think people forget that Hilter's rise to power or should I say the Nazi Party's rise to power was the first time that a modern mass political movement machine was put to use. Hitler was the first political figure in history to fly from city to city for rallies and use mass media for political purposes. Radio also helped spark the rise of Nazism in Germany. The timing and economic slump of Germany during the 1930s coupled with the illusions of past grandeur from WWI made the timing ripe for a dictatorial ruler. Whether it had been communist or fascist, Germany's democracy was going to fall. The conservatives (aka bussiness owners and the military) saw the writing on the wall and believed that Hitler was the best of the two available options. So to say that that the rise of Nazi Germany depended on its persecution of the Jews (jordan duffeild) is not really the whole truth. It was just one of the numerous ideologies the Nazi Party believed in and wasn't the whole reason for the Nazi's rise to power.
During the times after the WWI, the German people were in such a bad state that they wanted someone like to Hitler to bring their country back to its original glory. They were desperate for a strong leader.
They were living in times where their money was worth absolutely nothing, no one had jobs, and the world basically "blamed" them for everything that happened in WWI. Hitler was able to play off of these emotions and promised the German nation great things. People just didn't see how bad some of these things really were.
I found it very intersting and impressive how Hitler created his composite organization of the Nazi Party in a manor so similar to the chain of command within a military unit. I feel that this hierarchy enabled him to dissiminate his intentions on what to do with Germany in a very affective manor which ultimately led to his ability to run the show in the whole nation. Hitler did indeed have a strong sense of command prescen throughout the time between World War One and when he became the dictator of Germany.
A more specific area to this case study that interested me is that as Hitler neared his time when he would finaly gain controll as chancelor of Germany, he had to make the decision to eliminate either the SS or the SA. Eliminating the SA was quite ruthless, but it was a critical step towards his domination of Germany.
The greatest thing hear that I gathered was that Hitler purged personell within his own party to such a strong extent that I was unaware of. I was always under the impression that every single person that was apart of the Nazi Party during whom helped Hitler rise to power was in fact awarded handsomely for their assistance. Instead, some of them were eliminated because they were viewed as a threat to Hitler's stability.
the mass genocide during this time was something that is quite frankly not comprehensible in my mind as a college student. i can read, i can see pictures, and i can watch movies about such, but until i am there or until something like this were to happen in America again (native Americans, trail of tears, which some say more died here than in the holocaust)than i can not believe something like this could happen.
i have studied about rwanda and many other genocides, but to stop something like these events immediately or to have stopped hitler immediately seems
impossible, but with history and looking to the past one can learn, at least i would think so. and for most countries that is true. however, south america politics are in bad shape right now
s2k, I'm sorry to hear that it would require another genocide right here to truly allow you to comprehend it, but I understand where you're coming from. And in that case, I hope you never have that chance. Both genocides and the systematic mass murder (Holocaust, Japan vs Chinese genocide, and Stalin's purges) that occurred during the first half of the twentieth tends to support the belief that humans are hardly innately good, rather in the right circumstances, they can do unimaginably terrible things to each other. And yet during this time, we see some of the best of human nature as well. Once WWII got rolling, there were literally countless acts of heroism and selflessness on all sides of the conflict (well, perhaps less from the Japanese side, since their object wasn't necessarily to survive battle). That's one of the other secondary reasons I find this era so fascinating, and a complete must, for as George Santayana said so well "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We would all do well to try and apply past lessons to today's world.
I'm sorry if I missed it in the text, but I am very interested to know why Hitler was only in prison for 9 months when his sentence was for 5 years. I'd like to know what influenced that decision.
Also, regarding the videos shown in class: What years were those made? Was it something that was made during the war or after, and I was wondering what country were they all from? I noticed that one of the clips was produced in Great Britain, but I don't know if that is where they all originated. Also, what was their target audience for the films?
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