One of the major gripes this site has with liberals at the moment is the "Putin is a crazy man" mindset in which they give themselves to all sorts of "does Putin have autism?? Photographic caliper evidence says yes" and similarly inane takes. In the site's view this sort of conception of individuals as acting on history/anthropomorphizing a state is unhelpful and equivalent to Great Man Theory, which is an antiquated concept.

My question here is to what degree is this the case with the man to whom Putin is so commonly compared, Adolf Hitler? The Western liberal understanding seems to be at odds with itself, both accepting the "banality of evil" (through Arendt's analysis of Eichmann) and branding the Nazi regime as "crazy." To what degree did the Reich's actions flow from banal measured-and-genocidal political calculus, retroactively Putinified, and to what degree was the state and its actions (not asking about its propagandized citizens) actually given to wild irrational paranoia?

  • The_Walkening [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The largest German corporations and nearly all of their capitalists were deeply tied in with the Nazi party.

    The pretty common media trope of Nazi officers with facial scars is due to the fact that many of their officers went to elite colleges with elite fraternaties where they practiced mensur - a type of fighting where getting scars on the face were a mark of pride.

    Like seriously everyone likes to mention the fencing part of it but the elite fraternities part is always glossed over, never mind whose kids are in them.

    • AcidSmiley [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It's not so much elite colleges as elitist student fraternities. Mensur is practiced among the Burschenschaften, nationalist frats that worked (and still work, to this day) as good old boy networks for rich ghouls both in the public and private sector. You can find these at any German university to this day, even though their reputation has taken a steady nosedive since the end of the war. The culture at these frats is just as toxic, mysogynist and prone to severe alcoholism as among US fratboys, but a lot more bizarre and archaic even among those that aren't outright nazis.