Obviously I am aware of the horrors of both regimes.
Next thing you will be making me an apologist for totalitarianism.
And you can believe it or not, but living standards and GDP per capita, along with other measures of well-being increased in Germany significantly in the late 30s from the early years -- Hitler's military Keynesianism really worked. It goes without saying that even in the 1930s Nazi Germany was a nightmare if you were a Jew, a Communist, a labor leader, an intellectual, etc. Most people weren't. As for increased labor discipline, people were mainly happy to get back to work at all. The regime _stayed_ popular through 1944. Basically it was only when the Allies started knocking the door that the popularity went down among ordinary Germans.
Stalinist Russia too, increased living standards and material well being for most of population, certainly over the catastrophe of the Civil War years. The increase was considerable on the average from 1927 to 53, even taking into account the devastation wrought by WWI, which was on a scale that is hard to imagine. 25-50 million dead, the industrial base in absolute ruins, etc. Needless to say Stalinist Russia was a bad place to be if you were a "kulak," a Ukrainian peasant, an intellectual, an old Bolshevik, a relative of an Enemy of the People, in late 30s a party member or an army officer. Most people weren't. Accordingly, both systems were very popular among the masses of ordinary people who not in the groups singled out for persecution or liquidation.
I am here taking the perspective I advocate for honest and objective understanding and evaluation of bad regimes. An awful system need not be uniformly dreadful in every respect. A system that has something good about it need not be in the least acceptable. Popularity tells you something but not much. If Yoshie could look at Iran this way or Chris at Russia, the quality of discussion would be considerable improved.
--- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Andie:
>
> "The average life of the ordinary citizen ... in
> Hitler's
> Germany, was an improvement over the past."
>
> I don't believe that is true for the wage earners.
> There were longer hours,
> less wages, resoures were redirected from the
> production of consumer goods
> to armaments. Tens of thousands were prosecuted for
> breaching labour
> discipline, and thousands executed - all of which
> added to a climate of
> terror in the workplace. Also, notwithstanding the
> ideological commitment to
> the peasants, they were pretty much abolished as a
> class. There was
> obviously some glamour to the military victories of
> 1939-40, but in material
> terms they presaged a return of the austerity
> policies of 1933-35. An
> improvement over the past? Not over the boom years
> of '23-'25, and
> frustrating as the inflation was, it was those with
> a lot of savings that
> really suffered more than wage earners.
>
> As to the material advantages of Stalin's Russia, I
> think they would be
> pretty hard to justify, as opposed maybe to the
> post-Stalin era. Stalin's
> rule involved some brutal industrialisation, wartime
> austerity, a famine and
> the liquidation of the kulaks, which were all pretty
> grim.
>
>
>
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