This is a good article; almost like a condensed alternative to Kakel’s The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide. That said, I have to quibble with the original title: Imperial America was an important source of inspiration, but it was not the only international influence, as the focus on it here implies.
The Kingdom of Italy, for example, also served as an important source of inspiration and many German Fascists scoured it for models. Then there is the British Empire, and the Ottoman Empire’s violence against Armenians almost certainly influenced and encouraged the Third Reich’s own violence, but the author did not touch on any of these herein.
Do not think that I am trying to savage the article. Although it only scratches the surface, it is still very much worth reading:
The linguistic influence of the American model also applies to other central themes in [Fascist] ideological discourse. It may suffice to say that even the term “Endlösung” [final solution] first made an appearance in books in the USA at the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century. The reference was less explicit, perhaps, and was without Hitler’s murderous implications, however it did suggest a “final and complete solution” [endgültige und vollständige Lösung] or the “ultimate solution” [die ultimative Lösung] to the problem of the “inferior people,” in particular [black humans].
Click here for events that happened today (January 30).
1901: Otto Wilhelm Rudolf Caracciola, member of the ‘National Socialist Motor Corps’, came into existence.
1902: Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, a rare example of a Jew who sympathized with the Third Reich, was born.
1915: Joachim Peiper, SS officer and war criminal, sadly burdened humanity with his existence.
1933: The Weimar Republic ended and the Third Reich commenced as the German bourgeoisie appointed its new Chancellor; it gave three of the eleven cabinet posts were given to NSDAP members. President Paul von Hindenburg required Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen to accompany this Fascist for all meetings between the President and the Chancellor, thinking that that would suffice to prevent him from committing any drastic changes. As soon as 1700 hours on the very same day, this Fascist made his first bid for greater power by demanding a re‐election of the Reichstag, a motion which was defeated at this time. Coincidentally but less importantly, the establishment promoted Werner von Blomberg to the rank of General der Infanterie as Prince Wilhelm married Princess Marianne of Prussia in Tabarz, Thüringen.
1934: The Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich abolished the Reichsrat (the second chamber of the German government) at the same time all provincial parliaments lost their right to draft local legislation.
1935: Somebody published a decree for the Structure of the German Commune, giving the NSDAF the authority to approve all office holders at communal level. Most local town mayors were already NSDAP members and this decree strengthened the Party’s control over every subsequent public appointment.
1936: Berlin promoted Horst Böhme and Josias to the ranks of SS‐Hauptsturmführer and SS‐Obergruppenführer, respectively.
1937: Berlin proclaimed that the Reich would continue to guarantee Dutch and Belgian neutrality. The German Reichstag renewed the Enabling Act of Mar 1933 even though Frick’s Interior Ministry had wanted the government to have a larger say, and the Reichstag to give formal assent to new laws. The formal legal principle was retained that laws were (in theory) approved by ‘the Reich government as a collegium’, and not by the Chancellor alone (this despite the fact that he had long abandoned any pretense what the State was governed by a collective leadership, and instead issued decrees and directives on his own behalf). Likewise, this Chancellor formally declared the Reich’s withdrawal from the Treaty of Versailles in a speech to the Reichstag upon the renewal, and Odero‐Terni‐Orlando laid down the keel of Fascist submarine Scirè in Muggiano, Lerici, La Spezia.
1938: Several hundred women sought shelter in the Nanjing Theological Seminary from the Imperialists.
1939: In a Reichstag speech, the Third Reich’s head of state spoke of German–Polish peace and warned that if the “international Jewish financiers” threatened the world with another war, he would embark on eliminating the Jews to rid the world of this. Less importantly, Berlin awarded Josias the Golden Party Badge.
1940: As Fascist aircraft bombed shipping in the English Channel and the North Sea, sinking British cargo steamers, Fascist submarine U‐55 sank two ships, but the Allies destroyed her by an aircraft(!) later that day and nearly all of the crew, except for the suicidal captain, surrendered. Meanwhile fifty miles north of Wilhelmshaven, Fascist torpedo boat Iltis misidentified Fascist submarine U‐15 as a hostile vessel and rammed her, sinking her and slaughtering the entire crew of twenty‐five… no comment.
1941: As Comandante Cappellini arrived at Pauillac, Berlin announced that any ship bringing goods into Britain, regardless of nationality, would suffer. Berlin also promoted Rudolf Höss and Otto Skorzeny to the ranks of SS‐Sturmbannführer and Untersturmführer, respectively. Axis submarine U‐94 assaulted Allied convoy SC‐19 northwest of Ireland, sinking British ship Rushpool but failing to kill any of the crew. Axis ships Motia and Delfin thirty miles north of Zavia, Libya had to deal with an Allied assault, but Axis torpedo boat Aldebaran chased off the offender before she was able to damage any Axis ships. Meanwhile, Axis submarines Maggiore Baracca and Francesco Morosini sighted each other in the Atlantic Ocean at 1112 hours and exchanged recognition signals.
1942: The Third Reich’s head of state spoke at the Berlin Sports Palace, threatening world Jewry with annihilation. Meanwhile, eight hundred men of the Imperial Japanese Special Naval Landing Force and four thousand Axis troops landed on the island of Ambon in the Dutch East Indies, covered from above by carrier aircraft of Hiryu and Soryu, whereas four hundred Axis troops landed at Adang Bay and began a 155‐mile trek across jungles to assault Bandjermasin, the capital of Dutch Borneo. Axis bombers heavily damaged a British minesweeping trawler forty‐five miles east of Grimsby while Axis submarine U‐106 sank Allied tanker Rochester eighty kilometers off Norfolk, Virginia, massacring three of thirty‐five aboard. In the Kingdom of Romania, Luftwaffe group I./KG 100, flying He 111 bombers, received orders to move to Saky, Ukraine in order to fly raids against Soviet shipping in the Black Sea and supply columns along the Black Sea coast.
1943: Hermann Göring publicly noted that the Axis’s defense and sacrifice at Stalingrad would go down in history as a heroic tale. Berlin awarded Ferdinand Schörner the NSDAP’s Golden Party Badge but officially relieved Erich Raeder of his duty as the head of the Reich’s Navy. The Axis won the Battle of Rennell Island in the Solomon Islands as Axis troops defeated French troops and captured Faïd Pass, Tunisia and Axis submarine Platino sunk an Allied vessel off Bougie, Algeria.
1944: Axis forces in central Italy took out an entire U.S. Army Ranger battalion and Axis submarine U‐278 fatally damaged an Allied arctic convoy escort, but Berlin suffered an Allied aerial assault and lost a Me 410 heavy fighter and a Bf 109 fighter over Lingen.
1945: The Axis lost its passenger line Wilhelm Gustloff to Soviet fire, but the Soviets were unaware of the many refugees aboard and at least five thousand of them needlessly perished as a consequence. Meanwhile, Berlin ordered Otto Skorzeny to join the Army Group Vistula on the Eastern Front and Albert Speer noted to his Chancellor that, having lost the Silesia region to Soviet forces, the Reich had now lost an important source of coal and steel, and the war was now good as lost. At Cabanatuan, Luzon, the Axis lost five hundred Allied POWs.
1946: The Soviets found Johann Georg Richert guilty and executed him in Minsk, Byelorussia.
1951: Ferdinand Porsche, SS officer and engineer, died.
1958: Dr. Ernst Heinkel, bourgeois Fascist, mercifully dropped dead.
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