[Foreignborn]

I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color.

For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written.

Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war.

Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise.

—

not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book.

i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.

[lukan]

Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly.

There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open.

His views towards jews likewise.

So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening and it was more and more clear that the war will be lost.

[FrustratedMonky]

Yes.

Also, Project 2025 was openly published. Anybody could read it. They aren't hiding the goals.

People just don't want to bother with it.

[lif]

PNAC (Project for the New American Century) published an interesting 'report' in 2000

[chillingeffect]

In their defense, there is an inexhaustable supply of "take over w my ideology material."

This is a confluence of many conditions. Some long-focused efforts, some architecting and annealing of interests, some individual greed, some long-lasting effects of trauma, and some massive ignorance.

One of the only good points is that the American people are stubbornly allergic to authoritarianism. Yes there are exceptions, but mainly carved out by people trading it for self-interest. Many good surprises like Tucker Carlson's opposition to squashing free speech and the Republican's long-lasting distaste for pedophilia are still out there.

The post above pointing out how we're diff to Nazism is on point. There have been many more authoritarian plays since then. Americans remain conveniently ignorant of them.

Also we're being economically crushed and everyone feels it. Although racism is a powerful tool by this movement, it's actually centered around impoverishing everyone and the dizzying egos of its leaders.

[FrustratedMonky]

I like a lot of what you are saying. But sadly I think it is an older view. Maybe this was true in 80's before social media.

"American people are stubbornly allergic to authoritarianism"

Literally 40%+ of Americans have voted for Authoritarianism. It's viewed as being 'tough'.

[exoverito]

There is no anti-authoritarian party. Are lockdowns not authoritarian? Do mandates to take an experimental vaccine not violate bodily autonomy? How quickly everyone forgets the widescale censorship and lawfare. Snowden had to flee the country and Chelsea Manning was imprisoned during the Obama presidency.

On a more pragmatic level, take the one-party state of California, and the absurd burden of its regulations. These largely prevent the construction of anything new, as seen in the infamous high speed rail project, and the restricted supply of new housing, pricing many young people out of ever owning a home. Perhaps you don't think regulations are authoritarian, yet they're enforced with the power of the state, which wields the monopoly on violence.

[Hikikomori]

One side wants to impose restrictions to avoid loss of life and breakdown of the hospitals. The other wants some people to not exist anymore and are building camps to accomplish that.

Shut the fuck up about both sides being the same.

[FrustratedMonky]

"one-party state of California"

Or Texas. Lets not forget if we are calling both sides the same. There are states with one party. Alabama? Mississippi?

[watwut]

No, they dont mind it or agree with it. They prioritise harm to who they perceive ennemies and projwct 2025 delivers that.

[tobias3]

You had to take him seriously but not literally.

[lukan]

Nah, better not literally:

" Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc."

(from Mein Kampf, Chapter 11)

But if no one would have taken him serious, there would not have been a problem. But people did take him serious, they seriously believed he was some kind of messias send from god to save his troubled great country.

[BDPW]

What I took away from the book was that all these people were very eager to say variants of 'das haben wir nicht gewusst' when at the same time they also describe how the jews were systematically removed from their society and every part of civil society was taken over by the nazi's.

I would add to your statement that almost everyone should read it. It's unnerving to read how 'normal' all these people were in some way and how 'easily' it all happened because the population generally disliked jews.

[watwut]

Based on history books I read (mostly from Richard Evans), they knew. Nazi violence and concentration camps were public knowledge, because the regime needed to generate the fear. Germans prior war were in fact scared a lot.

This particular book is a out what nazi sympatizants and nazi themselves were saying after the war. It is what it is, but there was real motivation to not have own culpability in destruction of Germany in the open. (Which is what they have seen as tradegy, not the holocaust itself all that much)

[arp242]

It's a contentious issue and many historians disagree. However, even many Jews at the time didn't really know what was going on, as evidenced from letters and diaries of the time. Many Jews genuinely thoughts they were Ghettos or concentration camps, which were surely horrible and surely people needless died there, but are far removed from outright extermination camps. So based on that I'm somewhat inclined to believe many didn't really "know" about the extent of the Holocaust.

Of course it's easy to say in hindsight they "knew" or "could have known", but in hindsight everything is easy, right? There were rumours about Jimmy Saville going back to the 70s, but did the British public really "know" what he was up to? Evne Mark Lawson, one of the few people who actually did stop and report a sexual assault (in 2006, see [1]) didn't really know the full extent of things, not really. He may have suspected, but that's not the same.

Another thing is that during the first world war there was a lot of (mostly British) propaganda about atrocities Germans were supposed to have committed, from raped and crucified nuns to Germans killing children for sport to the infamous "German Corpse Factory". This was widely reported and believed during the war, but after the war this all turned out to be a huge load of bollocks. It severely undermined the trust in the media.

There was 21 years between the wars – that's less time than the start of the Iraq war and today. Imagine what your response would be if the US government would say "we found weapons of mass destruction in $country, here as some vague satellite photos as evidence, we have no choice but to invade".

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/01/the-day...

[victorbjorklund]

No shit they claim to not have known. No one would say "oh yea I knew they were killing children but i didnt care"?