I have published about 500 blogs here, and on the republished Democratic Peace Blog. All blogs are listed here , with a week or two delay.
Of them all, the one most ignored and that strikes at a persistent myth, even among the most knowledgeable of the commentators, is the one on Hitler’s nonelection. You have heard it. “Hitler was elected,” presumably in a national election. But he was not. He lost both national elections in which he participated (see What? Hitler was Not Elected?
)He was appointed chancellor in a backroom deal by the political elite. What gives this myth its strength is that it is that it seems to show that even democratic elections can produce the worst tyranny. Realist like this idea as do leftists.
The most controversial of my blogs is also on Hitler. For the left it is a matter of their political religion that Hitler was right wing. So, when I say he was socialist here, those with the prevailing left wing ideology cannot allow it, and have attacked my blog in various ways, including trying to destroy it with 200 page nonsense comments (all cleaned up). On this it is even worse for the left. Jonah Goldberg in his Liberal Fascism his made a strong and well supported argument that today’s left liberalism and progressivism shares many ideas and beliefs with the fascism of Mussolini and Nazism of Hitler (please, not the Holocaust). I agree. One reason I am a freedomist.
As to my blogs describing and advocating the democratic peace, there have been many comments and questions, often repetitive, on them. So, I compiled them all and my answers into a Q and A.
Of course, and comments or questions on any of this are welcome.
One problem with the view of Hitler as a leftist is that he saw the conventional left-wingers as his main enemies. For example, members of the Communist and Social Democrat parties were put into concentration camps whereas members of the Catholic Centre and Republican parties were not.
ReplyDeleteDo you have any figures on the democide in Malta committed by the Nazis? The island of Malta was given a Victoria Cross for their resistance to Nazi rule, yet it is rare that the suffering of the Maltese people during this period is mentioned. I understand that Hitler's air force bombed Malta continuously.
Hitler hated the communists and saw them as a subversive group ini Germany and in the Nazi Party, and began to murder them after 1933. That does not make Hitler any less a socialist. In the West now, many socialists are non-communists, some anti-communists. While all communists are socialist, not all socialists are communists.
ReplyDeleteAs to Malta, I found nothing on the toll from Malta's resistance to Nazi rule. This is another omission from the Nazi's total democide, of which I am sure there are many. So, even an estimate of 21-million murdered overall may well be too low. But I think it does give a good order of magnitude.
King George VI of Britain said that the Maltese Cross was "to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history". It's a shame that historians have largely ignored the siege of Malta. There must've been thousands of deaths to add to the Nazi democide. However, with figures as high as 21 million, a few extra thousand doesn't seem to alter the number much by proportion. It's sad to think these huge numbers were all individual lives once.
ReplyDelete