I'm over-quota now, so condemn myself to a day's silence ...
>Yes, and no. People knew the Nazis were brutes, but not that they were going
>to be mass murderers. (Even they probably didn't know it.) As for brutes,
>there were a lot of them about, some closer to home. This was the time of
>Scottsboro and large-scale lynching in the US, which therefore had little
>jutification in being self-satisfied about antiracism. Charles usually
>doesn't make anything of it, but he _is_ African American, and from that
>point of view the difference between the Nazis in the 30s and America in the
>30s, especially in the South, was not so great. If you doubt me, read, e.g.,
>Leon Littwack's Been in the Storm so Long, or (gasp) Gynnar Myrdal's An
>American Dilemma. Jesse Owens beat Hitler's runners and went home to--Jim
>Crow and lynching. And for all my anti-Stalinism, I'll say this: The CP was
>the main group of mainly white Americans in the 30s who were real strong and
>clear on racial equality here at home, make no mistake. --jks
All absolutely true, Justin. But I was talking about Europe. 'Tis actually a matter of some pride amongst the British (who were generally hardly virtuous in matters of race as recently as when I last lived there in '72) that many an old American comes back to Britain, with his family, to relive the only time in the forties when he was treated like a human being. Black Americans found they could get into any pub, chat up the local lasses, and argue politics in public. All stuff these blokes reckon they wouldn't have dared do 'at home'.
And in response to Charles, no, no-one could have guessed six million would be slaughtered in the death camps. But that doesn't mean we didn't know *enough*. I have actually read quite a few things from the time, and lots of people saw big-time nastiness and big-time trouble coming.
Hitler prohibited Jewish worship and sacked all Jewish public servants in April 1933; abolished unions in May 1933; abolished all other parties by July 1933; made a play for Austria in 1934; forced Schuschnigg out of office and invaded in March 1938; and grabbed a sizeable chunk of Czechoslovakia (with the help of those who would later defend themselves with the proposition that they didn't realise Nazism was all that bad) at the end of September 1938. And throughout all this time people were murdered in numbers significant enough to be noticed by many a western rag.
Look, it suddenly occurs we've got to an argument not at all related to what we were talking about, but I know 1938 was a time to reach for shooters, and know where to point them. And not only did France and Germany not do the right thing when the SU came looking for a deal, they deliberately excluded Czech and Soviet participation in that pathetic betrayal of the Czechs in September '38. Disgraceful. And yes, I do reckon Stalin was to blame for the Spanish disaster. I'm with George Orwell on the subject of Stalinism (in Spain and in general).
Cheers, Rob.