• PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    34·
    6 days ago

    Interesting that none of them picked the sitting president. Not sure if that was due to their dislike of the New Deal, or if that’s a reflection of a pre-WWII American view that their leaders play second fiddle to Europe.

    • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      40·
      6 days ago

      As much as I believe universities are great and important things, pretty much before the 1950s the majority of colleges were just for lack of better term, “practice country clubs” that doubled as training for the idle rich to learn to be porks.

      So FDR, who still had problems, was utterly profane to porky and the piglets in university at the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Adolf Hitler was the most beloved person among (white) Amerikkkans until the US entered WW2.

        • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          19·
          6 days ago

          …It also includes a piece of a speech by Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German-American Bund (the American wing of the Nazi party), in which he rails against the “Jewish-controlled media” and says it’s time to return United States to the white Christians who he says founded the nation. At one point during the speech a 26-year-old plumber’s helper from Brooklyn named Isadore Greenbaum charges the stage and yells, “Down with Hitler.”

          He is beaten up by Bund guards and his clothing is ripped off in the attack before New York police officers arrest him for disorderly conduct. (In court that night, the judge said, “Don’t you realize that innocent people might have been killed?” Greenbaum responded, “Don’t you realize that plenty of Jewish people might be killed with their persecution up there?”)

          I feel like it would be too easy to draw a parallel here to a CURRENT, ongoing genocide and the way protestors trying to stop the current murder machine are treated…

          • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            10·
            6 days ago

            Anti-fascists were straight-up shooting and stabbing nazis in the Germany at that time because they knew what was going to happen. Of course, liberals denounced them for being “violent commie extremists.”

            I’m preaching to the choir. You’d think libs would have learned after WWII to trust the left when it comes to fighting fascists. They either don’t think fascists are fascists or they’re fascists themselves.

      • MeowZedongEnglish
        9·
        6 days ago

        I’m pretty sure that much of the most progressive stuff in The New Deal were concessions made to labor unions. FDR didn’t do it from the kindness of his heart.

        • cricbuzz [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          7·
          6 days ago

          You’re exactly right. This is outlined in “The S Word” by John Nichols. He was pressured by ardent socialists/communists and actually LISTENED to that pressure. Leading to setting up some of the most important safety nets in US history.

          Imagine if socialists/communists ACTUALLY had a chance to take the reins and go further

        • spectre [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          Sure but just like when a liberal makes a mild concession to progressives nowadays the hogs bray “communist communist!” all about it and that’s what’s being polled here

  • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.mlEnglish
    271·
    6 days ago

    How bad this was depends on how “great” was framed. Hitler was a failed art student and low ranking infantryman who was let into the military (possibly by mistake) after failing his physical examination.

    By 1939 (age 50), he had taken control of the German state and was soon after made a dictator by the Enabling Act, killed many of his political rivals openly in the Night of Long Knives, re-armed the German military after the treaty of Versailles totally gutted it, been given Austria, invaded the Sudetenland, kicked off the holocaust with Kristalnacht, signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and occupied Poland - taking it in 3 weeks, and was at war with Britain/Australia/New Zealand (soon to be at war with everyone else).

    “Great” doesn’t necessarily mean “good” or “morally correct.” Great can mean “person who has changed a lot of things” without making any moral judgment about that - think “great man of history” (not very materialist, I know). By that metric, obviously Hitler was “great” - even pre-WW2 and pre-Holocaust he had already radically changed global politics, had terrified much of Europe, radicalized a huge portion of the German people, and was set to potentially make a huge comeback from Germany’s defeat in WW1.

    Or they could just be a bunch of nazis over there at Princeton. That is also very possible.