Some collaborators had the choice to either join the party later on or openly oppose them. In germany people who joined the party after the war started are often viewed different from those who followed early on.
Just today i heared a podcast about Werner Foßmann and the fact that he joined the party in the early 30s was a point against him.
Thank you for your nuanced reply and your openness for semantics discussion.
Provocative question: Do you think then that the US should've strangled half the German population instead of just a dozen at the Nuremberg Trials because a Nazi is a Nazi?
No, we strangled the ones in charge and then forced the remainder to literally pay while their country was occupied. A culture of anti-nazism was forced upon the Germans with law.
Growth is important for everyone. MAGA can still bend the knee and atone for their bigotry.
No you did not follow the Morgentau Plan. Instead you gave Germany a bunch of money to rebuild under the Marshall Plan, and treated us quite kindly to lead us on the right path. (In contrast to the USSR which took revenge by letting their soldiers rape and loot, and disassembled German industries as repayment. The Soviets also tried to forcibly "denazify" Germany which was unsucsessful.)
No, we strangled the ones in charge and then [...]
So we agree that there is a difference between Nazis of different caliber, and they're to be treated differently.
Yeah, the whole crux of my statement was we offed the ones in charge and helped the other ones realize the ghastly error of their ways. By force if necessary, but money tends to work too.
Unless you're saying we shouldn't have fought against Nazis?
Genuinely confused how people can be defending Nazis in 2024 but... here we are I guess.
I'm not defending Nazis? I just disagree with the post, which I understood calls for people to dismiss nuance and engage a black and white view. Which smells like populism to me
The quote clearly states 'joined the party', those are NOT collaborateurs, those are members of the Nazi party, or as explained - Nazis.
Nobody was threatened to join the party, historians agree on that, people who joined were either true believers or did so to gain some sort of advantage.
The NSDAP, at their peak had 8.5 million members (1945), so around 20-25% of the German population at the time. We can argue about the other 80%, there is some nuance to be found there, of course.
But those 20% Nazi Party members were Nazis, no nuance needed.
Well, damn, it looks like you're right! I went back and checked past posts about this and the tail is indeed there and couldn't belong to any other snake, although it is positioned oddly behind the brown one. I could swear back when this came out there was definitely no tail there. Real Mandela Effect moment! It appears that if they were trying to reference this event, they failed.
No one was really threatened with violence to join the Nazi party.
It never was a decision between joining and dying, or joining and going to prison.
The choice for most was joining or losing an opportunity to advance their career.
Even the guards at the concentration camps did the job voluntarily. Being offered the position was a chance to live like a medieval lord, with a mansion, servants, and actual direct power over people's lives. The alternative was to continue living a mediocre life in Germany. That was enough incentive for enough people to staff the camps.