Uncle Obsessed with World War II Somehow Blind to Encroaching International Fascism
Uncle Obsessed with World War II Somehow Blind to Encroaching International Fascism
Local amateur historian and occasional beloved family member Paul Poppavich vehemently dismisses news of fascism’s rising international tide, despite an encyclopedic knowledge of World War II history.
This hurts cause this is my dad. I figured they like the military and battle shit, not the political environment that lead to it.
They do like the military and battle shit. That’s the problem, they’re completely blind to any of the more complicated, interpersonal stuff.
Pew pew boom boom yaaaay, yap yap nooo
Tons of US fascists fought in Europe. From their perspective, they weren’t fighting against fascism, they were fighting against Germany.
Also, when it comes to US reactions to fascism from the 1920s on, WW2 was very much the EXCEPTION, not the rule.
People like to point to the Silver Legion and Jim Crow and such but the native fascist parties didn't even have as much support as they do today.
If you want to argue that segregation was enough to make America a fascist state I wouldn't disagree but Americans at the time simply didn't see it that way, even if some of them liked what that Hitler guy was saying about autarky and making more white babies.
Anti-semitism of the kind that Hitler was spouting was very much a mainstream idea, not just in Germany and Austria but all across Europe and the US. Hitler was merely the most radical one that came to power.
It's easy to frame WWII as the battle between democracy and fascism, but reality is a lot messier and more complicated than that.More like the American fascists hid in the closet after Pearl Harbor. The surprise attack silenced anymore isolationists, some of whom are fascists sympathetic to Nazi Germany and were even funded by Berlin.
Learning about WWII doesn't teach you how the most progressive, industrialized society in the world at the time, and possibly ever, became fascist. For that you need to learn about WWI, the failed Spartacist uprising from 1917-1923, and the following period where the Nazis rose to power and the last remnants of the USPD and KPD were destroyed.
So unless your uncle is a fan of Rosa Luxemburg, he's probably clueless
Learning about WWII doesn’t teach you how the most progressive, industrialized society in the world at the time, and possibly ever, became fascist.
But enough about Spain.
As an uncle who knows something about WWII and also notices the current rise in fascism, I must point out there is an error in the article:
At press time, Poppavich signed up for a local history group’s WWII reenactment, requesting a position within the Axis powers, specifically the USSR since he “likes Putin’s style.”
Actually, the USSR was not an axis power during the war. They were one of the Allies on the side of Great Britain and the US. The Axis was Germany, Italy, and Japan
The Soviets initially signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in '39, after Stalin concluded that the old Allied alliance of WW1 was functionally dead and the US/UK's government wasn't going to put up a fight against German encroachment.
A lot of American liberals took that to mean Stalin was a German ally, intent on carving up Europe between them. And there's ample period propaganda with Hitler and Stalin in cahoots. One famous bit even has them getting married.
The "Trump/Putin Kissing" meme is an echo of these critiques.
Molotov-Ribbentrop was a non-aggression territorial and economic agreement, not an alliance. One that every knowledgeable historian agrees was seen by the signees as temporary (except possibly by Stalin's drunk ass)
It was not an alliance, they were not in the Axis, and any suggestion otherwise is suspect especially in this context.
Shit, the first thing that happened between them after the invasion of Poland was the Winter War where Finland was supplied by Germany and was a hair's breadth and some racism away from joining the Axis itself.
They were one of the Allies on the side of Great Britain and the US.
eventually. after Hitler attacked them. Stalin believed German wouldn't attack SO FUCKING MUCH, he ignored warnings from Poland, The US, the UK and more. I read somewhere he even had people executed for it but also this is during the time of great purges, so honestly they were probably going to be executed regardless, just Stalin things I guess.
He knows everything about world war 2 and even collects ww2 memorabilia. So, I can't see how he missed it.
And I mean, he has loads of it. He has that luger, the mp 40, that SS uniform, those nazi flag and even an iron cross.
Reminds me of my ‘historically interested’ family members.
“Hitler was actually a great person”, they say.
Don't think for a second that neolibs will save you from it. They just want a different flavor.
Nah, it's not that liberals WANT any kind of fascism. It's just that they don't really MIND much since they and their owner donors tend to be wealthy and/or powerful enough to weather most of the effects.
Also, if you look at liberals throughout history, particularly Italy a century ago, you'll see that they tend to not resist fascist uprisings that hard and then join them once they come to power.
With the exception of Franco's Spain, every fascist government in the 1920s and -30s and then throughout the cold war had either no resistance or outright support from the Western liberals.
WW2 wasn't the rule for how the West tends to deal with fascists, it was the exception.
Well, the US stayed out of the conflict until after the Battle of Stalingrad. The US was hoping the Nazis would destroy the USSR, which it looked like they might, but once the Russians started pushing back west the US realized they couldn't allow Russia to win the war. So they teamed up with the UK, invaded France and cleaned up the western front and told their people that it was actually the US/UK that won the war when the most sacrifices were made, and the actual turning point was achieved by the USSR.
Consequently fascism wasn't completely eradicated, it was absorbed into the western consensus as the virulent anticommunism of the Nazis was quite valuable. Several high ranking Nazi generals were recruited to form NATO, and rocket scientists were also brought into the fold. The vast majority of companies, and their executives who cooperated with and were fervent enablers of the Nazis, received no punishment at all; as punishing business dealings with the Nazis would implicate american businesses such as IBM whose second largest customer was Nazi Germany (the first being the USA). The few executives tried at Nuremburg received diminished sentences.
They hated him, because
theyhe told them the truth.That's being generous.
They told themselves the truth?
international
WW2 people missed WW2 coming and they'd just gotten out of WW1 twenty years prior.
You can cut 70 year old History Channel nerds a bit of slack.
I don't have any sources at hand, but I'm pretty sure Europeans saw a second war with Germany coming years before it started.
Nah. I hear the french actually just whipped up the maginot line the day before the war kicked off.
”fractured arm from a golf course fall”
Pretty much sums it up.
Encyclopedic knowledge of history doesn't mean historians know how to use logic and crytical thinking.