The analogy of 1930s France has long occurred to me as a far better comparison for the post-Cold War US than Weimar Germany. Everything from gerontocratic leadership (and Trump will soon have to be included in that category) to the rise of an anti-patriotic right at the far end of the political spectrum, then onward to corrupt institutions populated by time-servers, careerists and ideologues simultaneously.
I suppose I had that impression put on me by my late father's personal library, which included the two great contemporary histories by William Shirer, the well-known Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the lesser-known Collapse of the Third Republic -- Shirer being an eyewitness to both. Shirer was, among other things, an heir to the historiography ("Strange Defeat") started by Marc Bloch at the time that asked "why the French collapse in 1940?" (Bloch, who was Jewish and a member of the French Resistance, was executed by the Germans in 1944.)
Some corrections to the excellent narratives, just a few nits to pick. The idea of a restored Jewish homeland was not new in modern times. It can be traced to various figures of the era of revolutions as disparate as John Adams and Napoleon. The earliest Jewish thinkers to grasp both the positives of a restored nation and the urgent negatives that were starting to appear in latter 19th-century Europe were around 1860 or so -- the German socialist Moses Hess (formerly pals with Marx and Engels), the Anglo-Italian philanthropist Moses Montefiore, the Russian journalist Leon Pinsker, and the Russian ethnolinguist Eliezer ben Yehudah (Perlman). By the time Herzl had appeared on the scene in the 1890s, decisive practical steps were already being taken. What Herzl added was the search for Great Power acquiescence, if not approval or support, as no such project could get far without it. This search in turn inspired other, later figures like Weizmann and Ben Gurion, to thread the needle among the powers of the two world wars to achieving a state. That state was not the original goal, BTW, but only the late result of practical necessity.
The Catholic church in France was less political than you might think from accounts of the Dreyfus Affair. It was the Catholic *laity* who were (or at least many of them) aggressively anti-Dreyfusard. The Dreyfusards did include a wide range of middle class and moderate left defenders of the Republic, and even some conservative figures here and there, because they intuitively sensed the Dreyfus Affair was really a proxy for the contested legitimacy of the Republic. Foreshadowing the destructive role the far left would later play in European politics, however, it was not out in front defending the republic. On the contrary, it was consciously and publicly alienated enough from the Republic to simply sit on the sidelines. The analogy with the Communists of the Weimar Republic and the role they played in bringing it down is manifest.
The far right was evolving at this time, not just in France. It was leaving behind the older focus on monarchism, aristocracy, and established Church. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was moving into a modern kind of far right: chauvinist, populist, borderline-racist, a configuration that put it at odds with more traditionalist notions. Again, the foreshadowing of the 1930s is manifest: the German Nazis and the Italian fascists leaving behind premodern political forms in favor of forms radically modern and "mass" yet radically anti-democratic.
Excellent. It seems that after every major war America has to decide what it wants to be. Civil war, WWI, WWII. After the cold war it hasent yet decided. It can be the defender and purveyor of woke totalitarianism globally- in imperialist so to speak. It can continue its cold war role of defender of freedom and prosperity or it can withdraw from the world. The first and last will lead to the end of freedom and prosperity- even in America.
It’s a good point: America has the luxury of deciding what it wants to be—unlike, say, Israel, which can only be what it is, the Jewish state. America may make the wrong decision, it may be diminished as I noted, but short of global nuclear war or a comet strike it will always survive in some form.
I think a key point missing in analyses of this genre is a country’s history of democracy, and the value the culture places on democratic rule. Germany had basically zero historical or cultural appreciation for democracy. France was not a longstanding democracy either, though not as distant from democracy as Germany was.
The United States is probably second to England globally in historical and cultural resistance to the idea of autocracy.
I don’t think democracy will be defeated easily in America. I think it would be more likely overrun by a foreign army than an insurrection to institute a dictatorship.
Weimar Germany was a country that had been recently run under Kaiser Wilhelm, a true autocrat. In contrast, Queen Victoria, his grandmother in England, had a far more narrow role as the monarch in England.
German culture valued blind obedience and the collective over the individual.
The cultural framework necessary for democracy to thrive was absent.
Germany had a longstanding militarism as a prominent part of its culture. Its role as a belligerent in WWI illustrates the extent of that.
American individualism preceded the Revolutionary War. It is a key component of American culture.
Perhaps the only valid comparison between the United States in the 21st century and Germany in the 1930’s is the true and inarguable existence of evil, and the fact that G-d has been removed from public discourse, in Germany from the church itself, in both places.
Could Americans become evil like the Nazis? Yes. Because evil exists.
Would it take the shape or trajectory of a culture like Germany of the 1930’s? No. It would go a different way but be just as evil.
Are the takers down of hostage pictures likely to mount an armed rebellion against the US government? I think it more likely that they weaken the US from the inside and render America completely unable psychologically and militarily to defend itself.
I think the left’s victim culture is a powerfully corrosive force that has infiltrated the right also. It’s hard to reverse and it undoes a civilization.
Army recruitment rates are down. Birth rates are down. Neither required an insurrection. Just a corrosive and pervasive sense of helplessness and a blind tendency to blame America.
By sleepwalking into the Great War, European leaders created the predicate for World War II. By the end of the Second World War, Europe was in extremis; it’s power evaporated and it’s peonage to the United States was the only thing that sustained a few European nations as modestly relevant world powers.
Since the end of the Cold War, it’s the United States that’s been sleepwalking. First into Afghanistan and then into Iraq twice. Now, Ukraine seems almost certain to be the next shoe to drop.
Foolish European leaders were responsible for the collapse of what had once been a centuries-long run as the world’s hegemonic power. Contemporary American leaders (globalists all) have squandered the good will, economic prowess and military power that sustained American hegemony.
Just as the consensus of European leaders resulted in a calamity for Europe, the consensus of American elites is slowly but surely dooming the United States.
My nanny way back when owned a cafe during the Occupation that was notorious for resistance fighters and collaborator reprisals. She always said that their argument had nothing to do with average people, until the Germans stood them up against a wall and shot them. After the massive sacrifices of the Great War and the invisibility of any benefits therefrom, her average people saw no reason to defend one side against the other. Not exactly defeatism (which implies some sort of national cowardice), more just opting out of a struggle that had nothing to do with them. I wonder how many Americans today have gone full Mercutio on both sides. Activists hate to hear it, but maybe their fringes are the only ones who are so polarized.
I think the comparison to Weimar is still apt. What's mind boggling is that our progressives want to take the side of Weimar, like it was something good that should have been preserved, rather than a nightmare collapsing under its own contradictions. Very good essay though.
Surely very flawed yet far better than what replaced it. Churchill was right: it should have been a constitutional monarchy with one of the Kaiser's nephews as king. The failure of the three main democratic parties (Catholic Centre, Social Democrats, and German People's Party) -- all together consistently making up about 50% of the vote and often well over that -- was an astonishment.
The analogy of 1930s France has long occurred to me as a far better comparison for the post-Cold War US than Weimar Germany. Everything from gerontocratic leadership (and Trump will soon have to be included in that category) to the rise of an anti-patriotic right at the far end of the political spectrum, then onward to corrupt institutions populated by time-servers, careerists and ideologues simultaneously.
https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/25de33b7/alexei-navalny-died-for-the-truth-tucker-carlson-fell-for-the-lie
I suppose I had that impression put on me by my late father's personal library, which included the two great contemporary histories by William Shirer, the well-known Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the lesser-known Collapse of the Third Republic -- Shirer being an eyewitness to both. Shirer was, among other things, an heir to the historiography ("Strange Defeat") started by Marc Bloch at the time that asked "why the French collapse in 1940?" (Bloch, who was Jewish and a member of the French Resistance, was executed by the Germans in 1944.)
Some corrections to the excellent narratives, just a few nits to pick. The idea of a restored Jewish homeland was not new in modern times. It can be traced to various figures of the era of revolutions as disparate as John Adams and Napoleon. The earliest Jewish thinkers to grasp both the positives of a restored nation and the urgent negatives that were starting to appear in latter 19th-century Europe were around 1860 or so -- the German socialist Moses Hess (formerly pals with Marx and Engels), the Anglo-Italian philanthropist Moses Montefiore, the Russian journalist Leon Pinsker, and the Russian ethnolinguist Eliezer ben Yehudah (Perlman). By the time Herzl had appeared on the scene in the 1890s, decisive practical steps were already being taken. What Herzl added was the search for Great Power acquiescence, if not approval or support, as no such project could get far without it. This search in turn inspired other, later figures like Weizmann and Ben Gurion, to thread the needle among the powers of the two world wars to achieving a state. That state was not the original goal, BTW, but only the late result of practical necessity.
The Catholic church in France was less political than you might think from accounts of the Dreyfus Affair. It was the Catholic *laity* who were (or at least many of them) aggressively anti-Dreyfusard. The Dreyfusards did include a wide range of middle class and moderate left defenders of the Republic, and even some conservative figures here and there, because they intuitively sensed the Dreyfus Affair was really a proxy for the contested legitimacy of the Republic. Foreshadowing the destructive role the far left would later play in European politics, however, it was not out in front defending the republic. On the contrary, it was consciously and publicly alienated enough from the Republic to simply sit on the sidelines. The analogy with the Communists of the Weimar Republic and the role they played in bringing it down is manifest.
https://kavanna.blogspot.com/2008/04/century-later-dreyfus-case.html
The far right was evolving at this time, not just in France. It was leaving behind the older focus on monarchism, aristocracy, and established Church. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was moving into a modern kind of far right: chauvinist, populist, borderline-racist, a configuration that put it at odds with more traditionalist notions. Again, the foreshadowing of the 1930s is manifest: the German Nazis and the Italian fascists leaving behind premodern political forms in favor of forms radically modern and "mass" yet radically anti-democratic.
Excellent. It seems that after every major war America has to decide what it wants to be. Civil war, WWI, WWII. After the cold war it hasent yet decided. It can be the defender and purveyor of woke totalitarianism globally- in imperialist so to speak. It can continue its cold war role of defender of freedom and prosperity or it can withdraw from the world. The first and last will lead to the end of freedom and prosperity- even in America.
It’s a good point: America has the luxury of deciding what it wants to be—unlike, say, Israel, which can only be what it is, the Jewish state. America may make the wrong decision, it may be diminished as I noted, but short of global nuclear war or a comet strike it will always survive in some form.
I think a key point missing in analyses of this genre is a country’s history of democracy, and the value the culture places on democratic rule. Germany had basically zero historical or cultural appreciation for democracy. France was not a longstanding democracy either, though not as distant from democracy as Germany was.
The United States is probably second to England globally in historical and cultural resistance to the idea of autocracy.
I don’t think democracy will be defeated easily in America. I think it would be more likely overrun by a foreign army than an insurrection to institute a dictatorship.
Weimar Germany was a country that had been recently run under Kaiser Wilhelm, a true autocrat. In contrast, Queen Victoria, his grandmother in England, had a far more narrow role as the monarch in England.
German culture valued blind obedience and the collective over the individual.
The cultural framework necessary for democracy to thrive was absent.
Germany had a longstanding militarism as a prominent part of its culture. Its role as a belligerent in WWI illustrates the extent of that.
American individualism preceded the Revolutionary War. It is a key component of American culture.
Perhaps the only valid comparison between the United States in the 21st century and Germany in the 1930’s is the true and inarguable existence of evil, and the fact that G-d has been removed from public discourse, in Germany from the church itself, in both places.
Could Americans become evil like the Nazis? Yes. Because evil exists.
Would it take the shape or trajectory of a culture like Germany of the 1930’s? No. It would go a different way but be just as evil.
Are the takers down of hostage pictures likely to mount an armed rebellion against the US government? I think it more likely that they weaken the US from the inside and render America completely unable psychologically and militarily to defend itself.
I think the left’s victim culture is a powerfully corrosive force that has infiltrated the right also. It’s hard to reverse and it undoes a civilization.
Army recruitment rates are down. Birth rates are down. Neither required an insurrection. Just a corrosive and pervasive sense of helplessness and a blind tendency to blame America.
This is a fascinating observation, Thomas. Bravo.
By sleepwalking into the Great War, European leaders created the predicate for World War II. By the end of the Second World War, Europe was in extremis; it’s power evaporated and it’s peonage to the United States was the only thing that sustained a few European nations as modestly relevant world powers.
Since the end of the Cold War, it’s the United States that’s been sleepwalking. First into Afghanistan and then into Iraq twice. Now, Ukraine seems almost certain to be the next shoe to drop.
Foolish European leaders were responsible for the collapse of what had once been a centuries-long run as the world’s hegemonic power. Contemporary American leaders (globalists all) have squandered the good will, economic prowess and military power that sustained American hegemony.
Just as the consensus of European leaders resulted in a calamity for Europe, the consensus of American elites is slowly but surely dooming the United States.
"...much the same people served as government ministers in successive cabinets."
I can argue that the mandarins in the State Department and and other agencies frustrate effective leadership.
But our leadership (Executive, Legislative and to some extent Judiciary) are also failing us.
The military had been the one branch of the government that stood for something and united Americans in respect.
But our generals no longer speak of victory. Their objectives are now "nation building" or "administration" or "peace keeping".
Our generals are careerists whose focus is getting that lucrative retirement position with defense contractors.
Our military no longer produces a Billy Mitchell or a Smedley Butler - gadflies who challenge the status quo and force public discussion.
Reform will come from the bottom - Americans in sufficient numbers and with loud enough voices that Washington will have to listen.
People like you and Claire Berlinski (and many others) are the voices that will educate Americans about the path that we are on.
My nanny way back when owned a cafe during the Occupation that was notorious for resistance fighters and collaborator reprisals. She always said that their argument had nothing to do with average people, until the Germans stood them up against a wall and shot them. After the massive sacrifices of the Great War and the invisibility of any benefits therefrom, her average people saw no reason to defend one side against the other. Not exactly defeatism (which implies some sort of national cowardice), more just opting out of a struggle that had nothing to do with them. I wonder how many Americans today have gone full Mercutio on both sides. Activists hate to hear it, but maybe their fringes are the only ones who are so polarized.
This is superb.
I think the comparison to Weimar is still apt. What's mind boggling is that our progressives want to take the side of Weimar, like it was something good that should have been preserved, rather than a nightmare collapsing under its own contradictions. Very good essay though.
Weimar *was* something good that should have been preserved.
Surely very flawed yet far better than what replaced it. Churchill was right: it should have been a constitutional monarchy with one of the Kaiser's nephews as king. The failure of the three main democratic parties (Catholic Centre, Social Democrats, and German People's Party) -- all together consistently making up about 50% of the vote and often well over that -- was an astonishment.