> Then how do you explain the fact that this "weak" system survived
> several coup attempts, both from the left and from the right? And what
> makes a "weak" system as opposed to a "strong" one.
Well, it was strong enough to survive them (or rather, they were too weak to overthrow it), but not strong enough to survive the blow of the depression in the early thirties, following the hyper-inflation a few years earlier.
I don't have any especially sophisticated ideas about weak/strong political systems. I just have in mind the often-remarked-on fact that, in countries like the U.S. and Britain, the Great Depression did not destroy democratic systems, whereas it did in Germany.
> An alternative explanation is that the problem was not with the "system"
> but with the class structure. Specifically, working class organizing
> made the ruling class run scared, so they bankrolled the fascists to do
> the dirty work for them. And once Hitler grabbed power, by having his
> goons beating up trade unionists, and the buddy of his ruling class
> sponsors (Hindenburg) appointing his Chancellor to break a political
> impasse, he got rid of some of the rougue elements in the fascist
> movement (Roehm & Co.) and went with the re-militarization program
> wanted by the industrial interersts.
The ruling class was probably pretty scared in the U.S. and Britain, but it (on the whole) didn't "bankroll" any entity remotely like the Nazi Party in those countries. The idea which is still very current on the left that the coming of the Nazis into power can be explained primarily by their being "bankrolled" as a tool of big business ignores the historical facts.
For one thing, the NSDAP didn't get very much big business support until they were close to winning. Big business as a whole (there were a few exceptions) wasn't very eager to bet on a rather small, struggling, organization of apparent crazies through most of the twenties, so the party was dependent largely on dues from their own members and some contributions from wealthier sympathizers inside and outside Germany, for which Hitler was constantly begging. For example, Ian Kershaw in Vol. I of his Hitler biography (p. 299 of the paperback edition), writes:
"One limitation on Hitler's availability as a speaker in these years was posed by his frequent trips to try to establish important contacts and drum up funding for a party with chronic financial problems. Not surprisingly, for a party in the political doldrums, his efforts met with little success. Though (not to the liking of the 'social-revolutionaries' in the NSDAP) he courted Ruhr industrialists and businessmen in a number of speeches in 1926 and 1927, which went down well, they showed little interest in a party that seemed to be going nowhere. The Bechsteins and Bruckmanns, long-standing patrons, continued to give generously. But the aged Emil Kirdorf, whom Frau Bruckmann had brought into personal contact with Hitler, was almost alone among leading Ruhr industrialists in sympathizing with Hitler to the extent of joining the NDSAP, and in making a sizeable donation of 100,000 Marks..."
Then and there, as here and now, the "ruling class" is by no means a homogeneous bloc -- some of its members sympathize with some political groups, some with others.
Eric Hobsbawm (The Age of Extremes, p. 129, paperback edition), summarizes this point very well, I think: "... the point about really big business is that it can come to terms with any regime that does not actually expropriate it, and any regime must come to terms with it. Fascism was no more 'the expression of the interests of monopoly capital' than the American New Deal or British Labour governments, or the Weimar Republic. Big business in the early 1930s did not particularly want Hitler, and would have preferred more orthodox conservatism. It gave him little support until the Great Slump, and even then support was late and patchy. However, when he came to power, business collaborated whole-hartedly, up to the point of using slave labour and extermination camp labour for its operations during the Second World War. Large and small business, of course, benefited from the expropriation of the Jews."
He also adds that fascism did have "some major advantages for business over other regimes," in that it did defeat what left-wing revolutionary movements there were in those countries, it eliminated labor movements and secured the rights of management to manage its work-force, allowed the upper class (top 5% of consuming units) in Germany to gain in their share of total national income by 15% from 1929 to 1941, whereas that share fell by 20% in the U.S. (and similarly, but less so, in Britain and Scandanavia). Finally, he notes, "fascism was good at dynamising and modernising industrial economies -- although actually not as good at adventurous and long-term techno-scientific planning as the Western democracies." But against those advantages, I think there were a number of distinct disadvantages, not the least of which were that a good part of the pre-1933 ruling class probably ended up being exterminated themselves, and of course the Nazis ended up wrecking the country -- surely not something their ruling class supporters had in mind.
All and all, I would say, the "big business bankrolled Hitler" thesis is probably attractive to a lot of leftists because (1) it reinforces the vulgar Marxist view that social classes are monolithic units -- all the "ruling class" is alike and acts in concert, and all the "working class" does too (or should, once it gets properly organized under the vanguard Party), and (2) it provides a convenient alibi for the German working class: funding by big business explains how the Nazis succeeded, so we don't need to look at the inconvenient fact that a lot of workers really liked them too, and in fact supported them much more fervently than their employers did during the years when the Nazi Party really needed funds.
> Actually, there is a far reaching analogy between Hitler's and Bush's
> ascent to power.
Which is?
> And as far as "landing" is concerned, Germany lost the
> war, so we have no way of knowing how the nazis would have landed had
> they won.
That's true. "What would have happened if the Axis had won WW II" is one of those idle counterfactual historical questions that have no answers but constantly fascinate legions of history buffs.
> My guess is that they would have not been that much different
> from post World War II US. Who knows, they even might have had a civil
> rights movement giving their untermenschen the right not to ride cattle
> cars, and creating a reservation for what would have had been left of
> the Jews.
For what it's worth, my guess is very different: namely, that they would have gone right on exterminating Jews, gays, Slavs, and everyone else they considered not only "Untermenschen," but not humans at all. After all, that's what the most dedicated of them kept on doing to the bitter end, even when their whole Reich was falling apart around them.
I hate to say this, but sometimes I think there seems to be something of a "Holocaust denial," or at least "Holocaust-minimizing," faction among leftists, which differs from the rightists' H-denial faction in that the rightists try to argue that there was no Holocaust at all, while the leftists maintain that the Nazis really weren't serious about all that extermination stuff, and if the they won the war and had had a free hand, they would somehow have "matured" or "mellowed" into, as you say, something like the U.S. To me, that's a preposterous idea, but who knows -- as you say, we have no way of knowing.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org ______________________________ Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing. -- Oscar Wilde