#hitler

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People focus on Hitler and Nazi leaders and the atrocious lethal lies they told to justify the mass murder of Jews.

But they should focus also on the willingness of very many people to believe those lies, to cheer and assist as their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and sent to their deaths.

The problem is never just the Hitlers, the Nazis. The problem is us, many of us — our propensity to stigmatize and hate.

"Education is not memorizing that Hitler killed six million Jews.

Education is understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required.

Education is learning how to spot the signs of history repeating itself."

~Noam Chomsky

commented on Hitler by Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw: Hitler (2008)

According to Kershaw the governing parties were headed towards authoritarianism instead of democracy so the Weimar republic really was already failing when #Hitler became chancellor. Couple that with their delusion that Hitler could be controlled and conservatives and president Hindenburg then not opposing the Nazis when they were the only ones that still had the ability to stop him from grabbing power (looking away when the communists and SPD were prevented from participating in the Reichstag) and you had the recipe for the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.