Alternate Psychology

[lordroel]

Jun 15, 2024 9:44:02 GMT Max Sinister said:

Sebastian Haffner writes in "Germany: Jekyll & Hyde" about Adolf Nazi ("Hitler" chapter, p. 29/30):

"His aims, pursued in the following sequence and only as far as each does not endanger its predecessor, are: 1) Maintenance and extension of his personal power. 2) Revenge on all groups of persons and institutions against whom he feels resentment, and they are many. 3) The staging of scenes out of Wagner's operas and the posing of pictures after Makart with Adolf Hitler as the chief protagonist. All else is pretence and tactic."

Something very useful to know, not just TTL. Feel free to disagree if you have a good reason, but I don't see where to contradict Haffner.

If you ever want to make the most possible worst, offending, not to watch Jekyll & Hyde movie, use this, a nice kind Austrian painter who due to a accident unlocks his evil, on world bend domination, alter personalty.

[Max Sinister]

You know, the more I read about Adolf Nazi (esp. from contemporary sources), the more I get the impression that we're dealing with the Joker here, except that he's not funny.

E.g. the question why he doesn't smoke. Once he claimed that he had smoked in bed as a teen, it caught fire, so he stopped it. Another time, he calculated how much money he wasted on cigarettes, so he threw them into the river.

Edit: This includes other stuff as well. Why did he let the BEF escape at Dunkirk? Once he stated: Because he feared he'd lose too many tanks and still needed them for the rest of France. (He apparently didn't consider that escaped soldiers could fight him again in France, and would.) Another time he said: If he had destroyed the BEF, the whole Empire would have fallen - and Germany wouldn't be in a position to profit from it. (Last part is true, but the first one...)

[Max Sinister]

Another psychological riddle for the historians: What did the Nazis really think about their claims about "races"? In theory, they wanted to create the perfect "Aryan" "race"; in practice, they often cheated (so to speak), allowing all kinds of not very Aryan looking people into the Waffen-SS. What kind of behavior is that? Certainly not that of someone who has obsessive-compulsive behavior re: "races", or who's got a phobia of non-"Aryans". Maybe Haffner had a point (again) when he stated that they were driven by a kind of nihilism?

[575]

Jul 4, 2024 0:29:50 GMT Max Sinister said:

Another psychological riddle for the historians: What did the Nazis really think about their claims about "races"? In theory, they wanted to create the perfect "Aryan" "race"; in practice, they often cheated (so to speak), allowing all kinds of not very Aryan looking people into the Waffen-SS. What kind of behavior is that? Certainly not that of someone who has obsessive-compulsive behavior re: "races", or who's got a phobia of non-"Aryans". Maybe Haffner had a point (again) when he stated that they were driven by a kind of nihilism?

Perhaps - though when did this recruiting to W-SS begin? If late war then it could just be a way of making ends reach.

According the Lexicon der Wehrmacht the etnic W-SS Divisions named "der SS" was raised during 1943 onwards. The "der SS" was used to distinguish those formations from Aryan ones.

You may term it nihilism or whatever - the reich was faltering and something had to be done even outrageous things.

[stevep]

Jul 4, 2024 0:29:50 GMT Max Sinister said:

Another psychological riddle for the historians: What did the Nazis really think about their claims about "races"? In theory, they wanted to create the perfect "Aryan" "race"; in practice, they often cheated (so to speak), allowing all kinds of not very Aryan looking people into the Waffen-SS. What kind of behavior is that? Certainly not that of someone who has obsessive-compulsive behavior re: "races", or who's got a phobia of non-"Aryans". Maybe Haffner had a point (again) when he stated that they were driven by a kind of nihilism?

  I would say 575's comments definitely played a part.  As I understood it it was only really right at the end of the war that the regime paid even lip service to Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army until ~1944 I have seen reports that several hundred thousand 'Russians' - which may have included non-Russian minorities but from the numbers in the wiki article most were probably 'Great Russians' were involved in the German operations in the east, albeit largely in a rear area partisan control role. 

  It could also have been a weak case - a stronger one would have been employing the RLA in full to weaken it and then backstab it when the war in the east was won - to have Slavs do the Nazis a favour by killing each other off.  Fortunately enough of the top level Nazis were deranged enough not to be willing to consider such an idea.

  Of course humanity has a long history to holding two or more contradictory ideas at the same time and in the stress of both living under such a twisted regime and also fighting such a massive war that attribute could have been concentrated.

[Max Sinister]

OK, I mentioned the Waffen-SS criteria because it was the first thing coming to my mind. But we don't even have to go as far as that. Everybody knows the jokes that the highest nazis were far from looking very Aryan ('cept Heydrich). Why do people join an ideology that essentially tells them that they aren't good?

And if you say that they simply were crazy, it begs the question of how they were functional enough to start a world war and organize the Holocaust. Usually crazy people aren't that efficient.

[stevep]

Jul 6, 2024 19:15:17 GMT Max Sinister said:

OK, I mentioned the Waffen-SS criteria because it was the first thing coming to my mind. But we don't even have to go as far as that. Everybody knows the jokes that the highest nazis were far from looking very Aryan ('cept Heydrich). Why do people join an ideology that essentially tells them that they aren't good?

And if you say that they simply were crazy, it begs the question of how they were functional enough to start a world war and organize the Holocaust. Usually crazy people aren't that efficient.

  Well Himmler was rather touchy about his appearance and went to some length to obtain a merit badge for physical ability - think it was in one of the Mark Felton films a while back or possibly caught it in a TV documentary.  Hitler seemed to never consider it at all, presumably thinking "I'm Hitler so my rules don't apply to me".  Goring was apparently rather athletic in WWI and only because obese as a result of a morphine addition after taking an injury.  However generally agree.  Vaguely recall a joke about a true Aryan being as blonde as Hitler, as athletic as Himmler, as tall as Goebbels or something along those lines.