Part 2 Philosophical Analysis of World War 2 and World War 1,Part 1: The Problems

Let's  bring out the dead philosophers. What would the dead philosophers say about this sadistic era in German history? Well, they would be shocked, stunned, flabbergasted. But they'd also have a lot of material to work with...a lot to share, even more so than our modern philosophers, because they were the best philosophers, and were way ahead of their time. We still have yet to live up to their ideals, even today. I guess you can say we're lucky to have the likes of Deepka Chopra, the Dalai Lama, and David Malet Armstrong (he was added to the world of dead philosophers on May 13, 2004, may he rest in peace), but nothing compares to these masters of thought. 

The Nazis taking advantage of the Germans' Post-Treaty of Versailles angst.

It clearly depicts the bondage the Germans felt by the reparations.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have the most to hope for and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.-Edmund Burke

The question is not what the Nazis did 70 years ago that's important when analyzing its political significance in relation to our modern era in 2014, the question is how do we stop a repeat of World War 2. Have we learned our lessons from that war or even World War I, or have we forgotten them, and are

repeating history today? The answer to the later is a resounding, confident, absolute "yes"- we are lock step in the treads of our ancestors, as I'll explain later. The first lesson we should have learned, the important question to ask ourselves, is how they rose in the first place...how did the Nazis get a voice, and why did people listen to them? The Nazis wouldn't have had stood a chance prior to World War I, they simply wouldn't have had an audience, because Germany was at its peak in regards to its reputation and economy, and Jews were assimilated into German society at that point. Most German people prior to Hitler's rise, would have balked at the idea of having someone in power who had an antisemitic agenda...especially a genocidal one. 

The Treaty of Versailles, however, changed all that. The Germans became impoverished with scant hope for the future, and their reputation took an unjustified beating (it took two sides to tango in World War I, after all). So they had nothing to lose by revolting against the Allied Powers, and raising a genocidal figure to the position of chancellor, which eventually culminated into the tragic World War 2. And it was tragic in more than one way, because it came to define what used to be an enlightened group of people. A holocaust in the land of the Weimar Republic, Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, Goethe, Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Mozart (Austria was working in tangent with Germany, so I've included a couple of Austrian names).
  

Hitler observing the Brown Shirts march.

During World War 2, it was as if there was collective madness, though it's certain they were being led by a mad man (or mad "men," actually). Many German Jews initially shrugged Hitler off, hoping he was a fad, but he had a remarkable way of sticking around like a splinter, thanks to the Brown Shirts who helped get him into power (he executed many of them shortly thereafter). The steady support Hitler maintained even after killing various members of the Brown Shirts who threatened to replace him, can be attributed to the Nazis' effective propaganda machine, in which many were denied the truth about what was really happening in Germany, and were arrested if they spoke up against it in the slightest way. That was a period of paranoia in Germany because no one could trust anyone, and it was not too dissimilar to the atmosphere in communist Germany years later. 

The German newspapers only printed rosy pictures of what was happening, so instead of mass murder and book burning, the picture the German public had, was that Germany was a charming, cultured place filled with joy, music, and industry. Many people did not know what was happening in Auschwitz or other death camps-Germans or German Jews, because Nazi soldiers quietly picked up their victims and fiendishly lied about where they were taking them. Only foreigners who were allowed to have access to international newspapers, really knew what was going on, especially after two Jews escaped Auschwitz on April 7, 1944. The Allies quickly responded by invading Germany on June 6th.


On the other hand, some knew what was going on and didn't care...they dangerously thought that they needed someone strong to get Germany out of its deep depression, and his methods didn't matter to them, since they viewed such a person as a temporary, but necessary fix. Obviously the combination of poverty and dishonor created their deafening tone to Hitler's sadistic agendas. As Edmund Burke put it, those with nothing to lose are dangerous to the rest of mankind, because they'll revert to any level to survive. Others knew first hand what was going on, and were executed for speaking out against the Nazis.

In general, the Jews received minimal support from the public anyway, because the Nazis controlled every aspect of the media...the entertainment media as well public media.Loud speakers were placed in the streets and radios in cafes, so no one could escape Hitler's antisemitic, fascist speeches if he or she wished to. Propaganda films such as Nos Feratu and The Eternal Jew were created to depict Jews in a negative, false light; while Triump of the Will was created to shore up public support for the Nazi cause. 

Bin Laden and Hitler, brothers from another mother.

It's worth noting that prior to World War 2, Hitler ignored the Treaty of Versailles, and the Allied Powers didn't care to enforce it. That was a bright spot, showing that there was a more promising, ethical future for Germany, if it weren't for Hitler's ethnic cleansing. What a shame, really, a golden opportunity that was missed. Perhaps, after some reflection, the Allied Powers realized the damage done by the treaty. And while many people can't fully grasp that era, being close to one hundred years ago (World War 1 started in 1914 and World War 2 started in 1939), it truly is a mirror of history today. The Nazis have morphed into radical Islamic groups. These groups, the most extreme groups in modern history if not history in general, have had the opportunity to rise in the Middle East due to poverty, infrastructure destruction caused by wars, and a tattered reputation throughout the world. Sound familiar? Is it any wonder that the mass genocide has returned?

One question that I'm still trying to analyze, is why radical Muslims and the Nazis feel that it's necessary to exterminate groups people they discriminate against. Why kill them when you can simply expatriate them? No,there must be something bigger than their ideology that gives them this imperative to kill groups of people they loath, which leads us to the next quote:

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance...the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.- Charles de Montesquieu

A caricature of Hermann Goering

that depicts his madness very well.

In this instance, you have to question whether terrorist groups like the Nazis and Al Qaeda, instead of fighting a war to spread their version of reality, are, in fact, being guided by a deep-seeded intolerance instead. I mean Hitler didn't act alone, he was helped by the likes of the nutter Hermann Goering who invented the concentration camp

concept (he was a special kind of crazy), so to a certain extent there must have been an underling antisemitism to actually single out Jewish people in the first place. At least in some of the Germans, since many were forced to become Nazis. Of course, Hitler was the pied piper inspiring this hatred in his disenfranchised followers who were hungry for salvation. The gifted orator basically convinced them that they were a super race (which wasn't hard to do), and that the Jewish people were responsible for all their ills. Since he claimed to have a way out of their misery, he was given their stamp of approval. It was that simple. 

Yet, at he same time, it's the total eclipse of human reason to even entertain such evil ideas, or even worse, to accept its racially fumed, intolerant tenets. I mean, there is 0 logic behind it since Jews didn't cause their economic collapse, unemployment, home foreclosures, and starvation. That is why if you ask the Nazis to reflect on why they harbor this hatred for Jews, it would be for some fallacious, irrelevant, biased reason that has nothing to do with reality, but does stand up to fiction. Perhaps it was the general European attitude towards Jews at that time, which was antisemitic in nature, that inevitably made Jewish people natural scapegoats. Bavaria in particular was a hotbed of antisemitism, and influenced the young dictator, Adolf Hitler, who initially had a good relationship with Jews (what a shame there as well).
 

Rather than reason, both groups, the Nazis and radical Islam (not to be confused with moderate Islam), were or are guided by passion...a pure hatred for their circumstances and for the wrong people altogether. Like bullies, the Nazis and radical Muslims did not pick on the people who helped cause their plight-the people with power. Instead, they chose helpless victims who had no means to defend themselves. Perhaps the underlying cause, other than discrimination, has to do with the need to feel empowered, but they simply don't know how to do so without violence. It's brawn over brain for these people, who could definitely benefit from more education (especially a philosophical one). Of course, there was or is underlying megalomaniac aspirations as well, and inevitably both factors come into play.

American soldiers posing as the Ubermensch.

But why weren't either the Nazis or radical Muslims inclusive like the rest of the world?

Both have a superiority complex, an intolerance for people who are different than themselves. On the Nazis' side, by separating the Jewish people from the German people, or Aryan people from the rest of mankind, they were practicing their wholly fictitious tale of the "Ubermensch," or superior race. It was really Friedrich Nietzche's concept for becoming better than our full potential, better than our biologically imposed limits, but the Nazis bastardized Nietzsche's concept, and pluralized the concept of Superman into an entire race (Hitler obviously misinterpreted Nietzsche's work Zarathustra). 

Rather than promoting a genetically superior race of demigods who have dominion over mankind, Nietzsche was arguing that such a goal was unattainable. Rather, he emphasized the "will to power," which doesn't endorse the perspective of reaching for an unattainable goal, but being energized to maximize one's own full potential. On Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the self-actualized person is at the pinnacle of the pyramid...the realization of his or her highest potential creatively, self-sustainingly, self-assuredly- the happy individual who would live their life over again exactly as it transpired throughout his or her own life. 

But Hitler interpreted Nietzsche's work to mean a genetically more evolved race, the Aryan, must have dominion over, and even worse, must rid the world of less evolved beings from older civilizations, otherwise known as the "Untermensch," or "inferior men." Radical Muslims feel that radical Islam is the superior religion, so all the people who won't convert to their religion, must be exterminated. Sound familiar? The worth of the human person has been degraded to stereotypes by these groups, thus humanity and  individuality has lost its meaning, and the imperative to self-actualize has been diminished. In its place is the goal to conform to and please a group, in other words the herd mentality has usurped individuality and self-actualization. And the groups they are conforming to, rather than regarding the soul of an individual person, view the collective human race or religion as a machine, and the outdated versions must be thrown out. There is little to no free-will with these groups who subscribed to and enforce slave morality.

Nietzsche, well, without question he was turning in his grave during World War 2. Any philosopher would be if a mass murderer twisted their philosophy to suit an evil agenda which eventually killed millions (especially one who fervently opposed antisemitism like Nietzsche). As for survival of the fittest via natural selection, Nietzsche argues against the Darwinian theory that the most evolved of our human species, the "Ubermensch," will survive in the end; a concept the Nazis subscribed to whole heartedly. According to Nietzsche, the two beings duking it out in the end will, instead, be the cockaroach and gonorrhea bacillus. In other words, lesser evolved species will be the ones to survive. 

Either way, the Nazis used his work as a philosophical guideline, but interpreted in a way which suited their own agenda, much like how radical Muslims interpret their Koran in a way that promotes their agendas. The only difference between the two seems to be that the Nazis used scientific eugenics as their tool, while radical Muslims use religion. But science doesn't support the Nazis' claims, and a benevolent God wouldn't advocate the use of violence, intolerance, and hatred to spread his word. So, what is the answer? What are effective tools that oppressed groups can use to solve their problems without resorting to violence? And how do governments prevent a war, especially one on the scale of World War 2? I discuss these issues in my next blog.

Newspaper Articles

Sergeant Stubby the War Hero

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/08/unpedigreed-but-unbowed-the-unbelievable-true-story-of-the-sergeant-stubby-americas-original-dog-of-