Hitler's Eternal Returns

At the risk of again taking Tony Blankley seriously, he's got another new column making the rounds (as part of the fanfare for his frightful new book), and it begins like this:

The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.

Is this true? Let's make a chart.

NAZIS IN '40s	EURABIASTS IN '00s
Had already conquered Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands	Were the majority population of three secular countries: Turkey, Bosnia, and Albania
Were in the process of attacking or conquering Greece, Hungary, Romania, England, the Soviet Union, and others	Were in the process of being rebuffed, again and again, in efforts to join the EU
Were exterminating millions of Jews and Gypsies as official policy	Contained a radical terrorist fringe that has killed thousands
Had huge standing armies, modern warfare capabilities, and international allies	Were pariahs in their own countries, using weapons like nail bombs

Corrections to the above welcome. Europe's problem with Islamic extremists is real, but the increasingly hysterical assessment of its scope, and the never-ending campaign by WoT enthusiasts to Hitlerize their hobby horse, smack of desperation.

Comments

[Ross Perot]

H&R needs more charts.

[Matt Welch]

Yeah, I just wish I'd gotten the font smaller....

[Patrick D]

"H&R needs more charts."

Charts that made sense might be more helpful.

[jc]

But if Blankley said "1930's", would the chart back him up?

[joe]

Man, that's the most terrible exaggeration in the history of mankind.

Seriously, I'm not sure the death toll from radical EUROPEAN Islamists even reaches into the thousands.

[John]

I lived in Germany from most of 04 and all of my German friends claimed that the danger of a resurgence of Nazism was not against the Jews, but against the Turks, which is a shame because most of the Turks in Germany are hard working decent people and not Islamist scum so beloved by the European elites. I don't think the populace of Europe is going to go nearly as quietly as the Bin Ladens of the world think they will and I don't think the Muslims moving there are as bad as the Blankleys of the world make them out to be. Clearly, there are some serious jihadist animals in Europe that need to be eliminated, but the vast majority of Muslims there just want to be Westerners.

[VoiceOver]

Well, to be fair, those on the left others have used Hitler as well: Bushitler.

And the accompanying chart:

Hitler -------------------------- GWB
1933 Appointed Chancellor --- 2000 "Elected"
1933 Reachstag Fire ---------- 2001 9/11
1938 Anschluss --------------- 2001 Invaded Afghanistan
1939 Czech Invasion ---------- 2003 Invaded Iraq
1939 Polish Invasion
1940 Norway Invasion
1940 France Invasion
1941 Balkans Invasion
1941 Russian Invasion

So you can clearly see, Dubya's got his work cut out.

[Kwix]

But VoiceOver,
Bush had done in 3 years what it took Hitler 6. He has 4 years left, I'm sure he can make a dent in that list. Give the fella a chance won't you?

[joe]

Voiceover, I'm sure you'll be providing a link to the term Bushitler, or some other Nazi comparison, appearing on the editorial page of a major newspaper, above the byline of that paper's editor.

[Shawn Smith]

jc,

But the fact is Blankley didn't say the 1930's. That means, at least, he's an idiot, or lazy, or both. In any case, it seems like there are good reasons to not take what he says seriously.

[sage]

Matt,

You know your history better than I, so I have to take your word for the left side of the chart. But the last statement in your post is tits-on.

[MikeP]

Corrections to the above welcome.

It's pedantic, but most of the Moslems in Europe are not Arab. So, rather than "EURABIASTS", perhaps "EURISLAMISTS" or the like would be better.

[Patrick D]

Matt,

Apologies. Thought the chart was Blankley's. You are right on in terms of the proposition that Islamists pose a threat comparable to European fascism or Communism.

Just more conservative porno implying Islamists are somehow a cross between Nazis and Bodysnatchers.

[Matt Welch]

MikeP -- "Eurabiasts" was Blankley's term.

[mk]

I recommend that we start calling the writers at The Washington TImes "AmeriMooniasts"

[Larry Horse]

The Becker Posner Blog a few weeks ago made the astute observation that a large reason for the alienation of a lot of Muslims in Europe is the jagoff labor laws there that protect those who already have a job or who are connected enough to get a job at the expense of those who would get a job because they are the best worker, which we more or less have here in America. If Muslim immigrants to Germany or France were able to compete for their share of the capitalist spoils on an equal playing field with every other worker, then they might feel more allegiance to their new European culture and the few who are bad apples might actually appreciate their new country.

[John]

I point to voiceover's post as a response to all of the posters on here who constantly claim that "no one on left ever objected to the invasion of Aghanistan, its just Iraq they have a problem with." Yeah right.

[xray]

John: Yup, voiceover's post proves it. The entire left opposed the invasion of Afganistan. It's now irrefutable. (And Gore would definitely have tried to hold hands with the Islamists instead of kicking ass.)

[John]

Larry Horse

You are right. The Europeans screw immigrants and new entrants into the labor force at every opportunity. Most of them do not want to be jihadist, they just want a job. The Europeans have really created a recipe for disaster. They deny jobs and opportunities to Muslims in the name of keeping their goldplated welfare state for the natives while at the same time they create a politically correct culture that excuses and embraces any excess on the part of an allegedly "victimized group" (unless of course they are Jews) and encourages the worst sort of self pity and hatred that spawns extremism.

[John]

Xray,

I think Al Gore would have risen to the challenge and done the right thing and then been crucified by the likes of George Soros and the daily Kos brigade for doing so. Its not that I think all leftists are fifth collumnists, just a small and significant number of them.

[jc]

Shawn,

Just because Blankley draws the line at "1940's" doesn't mean that analysis of thesis must only consider the 1940's. Certainly Nazis had nothing in the left column in the early 1930s, yet they had already begun their poliitical advance within Germany by then. I'd be willing to bet that some pundits in Europe in the early 30's were already sounding the alarm about the threat of the Nazis by then. Why ignore that just because Blankley chose the wrong decade?

A better refutation of Blankley's argument would be to show a chart of where the Nazis were in the 30's and where they were in the 40's, followed by a chart of where the Eurabiasts were in the 90's and where they are now. Or would such a chart actually back up Blankely's claims? I think Matt's commentary is flawed because of a convenient mistake (using the 40's) by Blankley (or whomever wrote the sub-headline for his column where 1940's was used).

The "being rebuffed again and again" part isn't all that different from the position Germany was in post WWI, Germany constantly claimed their failing economy was due to the post WWI restrictions placed on them. It doesn't matter that it's baloney, it worked in getting more power to the Nazis. And there was enough hatred of the merchant class in Europe to at least sympathize with some of the Nazi doctrine. There's still enough right-wing elements in Europe today that might sympathize with some of the Islamo-Fascist doctrine. Heck, we've got enough evangelists blathering from the pulpits in the US - all you have to do is substitute "Christ" in their speeches with "Allah" and you can't tell the friggin' difference.

[Matt Welch]

jc -- It'd break down in the '30s, too. Fascism as a concept was actually transnationally *popular*, enough to compete for and eventually help win (or wrest control of) governments in European states. Islamism, comparatively, is *un*popular, and has a hard enough time asserting itself in a Muslim-dominated country like Turkey, let alone effect minority putsches over nation-states that are typically far more homogenous and integration-unfriendly than the United States. I'm not splitting hairs here.

[joe]

jc, your analysis doesn't work, because Work, Family, Country, Fuhrer appealed to a very broad segment of Germany, whereas only a marginalized minority in Europe is even a potential audience for Islamists.

You write, "Heck, we've got enough evangelists blathering from the pulpits in the US - all you have to do is substitute "Christ" in their speeches with "Allah" and you can't tell the friggin' difference."

You or I may not able to tell the difference, but I assure you, the fundies on both sides sure as hell can.

[John]

JC,

The Nazis in Germany were known and supported by the mainstream of German society. The Nazi's were anything but a despised minority like the Muslims are right now. Further, the Nazis more or less bought off the German people with loot from first the Jews and then the occupied territories. I point you to this book which shows how Hitler improved the lives of ordinary Germans not by an economic miracle but by looting undesirable groups. Not something the current crop of European Muslims are likely to be able to pull off. The analogy just doesn't work.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131898779/reasonmagazinea-20/

[Shawn Smith]

jc,

I'm not so sure I was arguing with your point, I just thought that it was pretty sad that someone who makes a living trying to convince people that he's right (Blankley) can't be troubled with small details like reviewing his written statements for accuracy. It's the same kind of crap W. J. Clinton liked to pull--appeal to the emotions of people, because most of the time that's all you need to bring them over to your way of thinking.

[jc]

Matt, joe,

I don't disagree with you, I think Blankley's mostly wrong. I figure we're more likely to see Muslims encamped in Europe than Muslims taking over. But I'm not so sure about places like Albania, Islamism may still be unpopular there but is it as unpopular as it was 10 years ago?

[Hakluyt]

Matt Welch,

Yes, people tend to forget that fascist states came into being in say Hungary and Spain prior to 1939. Indeed, the Hungarians went along with the Nazis willingly so that they could avenge their post-Trianon losses (that the subject people that they took back into their newly bloated borders of the 1940s actually wrested from Hungary those lands via military force in an effort to throw off their oppressive yoke didn't seem to strike them as important I guess).

[Abdul]

You forgot:

Nazis- small mustache

Eurabists--full beard

[The Lonewacko Blog]

What we really need in a case like this is some kind of a futures market, or more properly, a bet-your-futures market.

So, those who are enabling what Blankely says is coming could bet not just their current wealth, but all the future wealth of their entire clan. If, a decade or three hence, they turn out to be wrong, they and/or their successors would lose everything and perhaps even be tried.

[Johnny Clarke]

Until radical Islamists have U-boats with those cool net cutters and saddle tanks, I'm not the slightest bit concerned. To paraphrase another great man who probably needed to lose a lot of weight to meet the currently fashionable American ideal, "The only thing that ever concerned me about the War on Terror was that the terrorists might get U-boats."

[Johnny Clarke]

Besides, I mean, c'mon. The Germans had cool uniforms, "Death's Head" insignias, the Gestapo, Tiger tanks, Blitzkreig tactics, monocles, those fantastic evil accents, the already-mentioned U-boats (Das Boot is one the classic war movies of all time) and the radical islamists have...what? Sweaty, scrawny bearded guys in bathrobes. Suicide bombers killing helpless civilians. They're just crap and it isn't going to catch on. They have no style.

[Sitting Bull]

So Mr. Blankley is concerned that a foreign culture with a strange religion is gonna march over here (a la Camp Of The Saints) and destroy our way of life.

Boy have I got a story for him...

[Horst Graben]

You left off the most important difference:

The Germans had a history of organization, science and engineering. The islamo-pedophiles have invented nothing since zero and the clitorecomy.

The Nazi's were very scary because they could accomplish major projects using their own home-grown technology. The araboterra-ist is a parasite that relies on host systems and assets coupled with frat-boy strategery.

That said, a parasite can do lottsa damage if not fumigated. That's your real point, right. No need to bother with the un-chosen semites, they pose no "real" danger. In fact, lets tie the hands of our military and police to make it a "fair" fight.

How sporting.

[joe]

Does Godwin grant dispensations? Cuz I could really use one right about now.

[John]

Go Horst Go!!

You are right, the Islamists are a pretty pathetic lot when compared to the Nazis. The only thing that might be more pathetic are fifth collumn leftist quizlings like Red Ken Livingston bootlicking the savages.

[thoreau]

Once upon a time our country was threatened by an alliance of 3 industrialized countries. But we survived.

Then we were told that we must go to a permanent wartime footing and give vast sums to the Pentagon and its contractors to defend ourselves against a country that was busy destroying its economy and could barely grow enough wheat to sustain itself. We did that for more than 40 years, fighting the occasional skirmish against various countries that were so under-developed that they had to be bankrolled by the economically pathetic USSR.

And, lo and behold, we won. I mean, what were the odds that the premier champion of capitalism and technological progress would outlast the people who brought us Lysenkoism?

Now we're told that we must not only remain on a permanent wartime footing, we must also destroy whatever remains of the Bill of Rights. Why? Well, there's a loose organization of a few thousand militant religious fanatics out there. They have at best indirect support from a handful of small countries. But this is the greatest threat facing us since, well, the industrial might of Germany.

My hunch is that we'll defeat these primitive fanatics. And then we'll be told that there's this one guy who's really angry at the US. He has no friends or sophisticated weaponry, but he's really angry. So we must devote 50% of GDP to national defense, just to make sure he never does anything to us.

And the American people will fall into line.

[John]

Thoreau,

That theory would work except that we spent the 1990s doing nothing despite constantly being attacked by these assholes. When they managed to kill a few thousand Americans we bothered to take notice. If what you are saying were true, we would have done all of this in the 1990s because the defense department needed a bogeyman after the end of the cold war. Instead we cut defense spending drastically and ignored increasingly sophisticated and effective attacks by Al Quada.

[Cridland]

One blogpiece/column like this from Welch is worth 18 of the "did so/did" not rhetorical challenges. We distinguish them by their clarity.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Make the chart correspond to 1935 and tell us then if things look any better.

[ChrisO]

Blankley's column is idiotic and poorly written. But large, unassimilated muslim populations *are* a problem for Europe.

--From what I have read (and no, I can't cite chapter/verse), the overwhelming majority of muslims in Europe refuse to adopt the legal and cultural norms of their host countries, and increasingly display contempt for their hosts and a desire to live as a separate 'society within a society.' And that's the mainstream muslim population. The Islamists quite openly seek to make Europe part of the 'ummah', by whatever means.

--If population numbers were static, we might not be talking about this at all, but the reality is that in most European countries, the native birth rate is at or below replacement rate, while muslim populations are exploding through immigration and higher birthrates. When muslim populations reach 20-30% (as they have in some countries), their unassimilated nature and hostility to the values of their hosts becomes a real problem.

Analogy to '30s fascism is silly, because the issue is not really about politics, but the long-term survival of something recognizably "Europe" as a culture. It's not going to disappear tomorrow, obviously, but Europeans have let in a huge group of people, ostensibly to do their dirty work, and found that the new folks bring huge problems and dangers.

[joe]

In 1935, Douglas, the Nazis had already won significant numbers of seats in the Reichstag.

Party members who had actually committed treason against the government, trying to overthrow it seize power in a coup, were fawned over by the press and police, and given a slap on the wrist by the courts.

In 1935, the Freikorps were already decades old - an organization that shared the basic philosophy of Naziism, and at one point commanded the allegiance of millions of respected, mainstream Germans.

I don't want to go all Gunnels here, but people should really read, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer before pronouncing on the pre-WW2 history of the Nazis.

[John]

Joe,

You might want to also read Paul Johnson's Modern Times describing how facisism and communism were pretty much two sides of the same coin.

[joe]

I'm quite familiar with his argument, John, thanks. It's not exactly an obscure line of argument.

Yes, there are a lot of similarities. There are also a lot of similarities between whales and fish. No, fish are not whales. They did not descend from whales, and any grouping that puts them together as a kind is doomed by its superficiality as a descriptive or predictive tool.

[Hakluyt]

joe,

Its unfortunate that Shirer is so often wrong (in so many areas) and that he's so widely read. I suggest The Nazi Conscience and the work of Ian Kershaw (as a starter) instead.

There are also a lot of similarities between whales and fish.

Well, this ignores the issue of whether the similarities make them alike or not. Similar things can be so similar as to be alike or related after all.

[Hakluyt]

joe,

Reading Shirer and making claims about Nazism is bit like those who claim to know something about medeival France based on a reading of A Distant Mirror. 🙂

[Eric the .5b]

Then we were told that we must go to a permanent wartime footing and give vast sums to the Pentagon and its contractors to defend ourselves against a country that was busy destroying its economy and could barely grow enough wheat to sustain itself.

Lemme know if this thread goes into a debate on the Cold War. I tend to find those too similar to creationism/evolution debates to bother joining in.

[joe]

Don't you be disrespecting Shirer, Hakluyt! Shirer's da MAN!

[Stevo Darkly]

Then we were told that we must go to a permanent wartime footing and give vast sums to the Pentagon and its contractors to defend ourselves against a country that was busy destroying its economy and could barely grow enough wheat to sustain itself.

Lemme know if this thread goes into a debate on the Cold War.

OK, here we go.

I do feel like this needs to be said. Sure, everybody knew the USSR would collapse economically, later if not sooner. What we didn't know was whether it would collapse peacefully. We had recent experience to the contrary. As described in the book Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, the economic policies of Nazi Germany were also unsustainable and destined to collapse. But instead of collapsing peacefully, Nazi Germany's economic problems helped spur Hitler to wars of conquest. From a review in Reason:

Hitler himself apparently never had a clue that the economic policies he had followed for the first three years of his regime were responsible for his production problems. By 1936, Kershaw makes clear, Hitler believed his own press clippings regarding his economic acumen. Thus, for Hitler, the food crisis only confirmed his preconceptions. In the secret memorandum on which Goring's Four Year Plan was based, Hitler wrote, "We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources. The solution ultimately lies in extending the living space of our people, that is, in extending the sources of its raw materials and foodstuffs." That is, the problem is not my fault and the answer is war, not economic reform.

Hitler's fears of losing power were not without foundation. His great nemesis, the Soviet Union, found that out 50 years later. In the 1980s, it could not keep up with increased U.S. defense spending and sustain what William E. Odom in The Collapse of the Soviet Military (1998) terms "a permanent war economy" in which 20 to 40 percent of the gross domestic product went to the military. The Soviets faced the same choice as Hitler: economic reform or war? Thankfully, the Soviet leaders chose economic reform, even though it didn't save them or their regime...

The Soviets might have gone the other way, you know. There was a reason they poured their resources into producing tanks and missiles instead of toilet paper. In the end, the difference was that Hitler was convinced he could win a war. Ultimately, the Soviets became convinced they could not.

And, lo and behold, we won. I mean, what were the odds that the premier champion of capitalism and technological progress would outlast the people who brought us Lysenkoism?

The USA did have the money and the brains to build up a military capable of deterring the Soviets, but actually doing it (by shoveling that money to the Pentagon and its contractors) was not irrelevant to the outcome. If two guys step into Thunderdome, and one guy is smart, wealthy, productive, generous and well-educated but unarmed and a bit scrawny, while his opponent is a stupid, crude, lazy, hulking lout with twice the muscle mass, brass knuckles, and a knife, unfortunately the odds really do tend to favor the second guy.

Given the circumstances, and even acknowledging the bureaucratic waste inherent in any government-run operation, the US military buildup was not a dumb idea -- it was decisive. But the Left resisted it all the way. They had other plans for that money.