Nazis were social climbers

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception



led by the most insecure of all ...

Click topic for LINK

Nazis were not evil, they were 'social climbers.'

That extraordinary utterance of Gotz Aly an esteemed German historian and social commentator is explained as a peculiar German inferiority complex fused with a lust to just 'get on' that created a collective moral collapse.

Social climbing gone berserk and a distant knowledge of the extermination camps led to the plunder of Jews with little remorse of conscience. 

The central thesis of Why the Germans? Why the Jews? is that the Holocaust happened because 'people like you and me allowed it to happen' - and it can happen again.  Middle class fear of losing face after defeat in the first world war, hyper-inflation and jobless Weimar years blinded people and they wilfully ignored Nazi excesses as they promised the return of German greatness.  Hitler declared the culprits to pay the greatest price should be the Jews who had orchestrated the war.

Social climbimg in the jobless, moneyless Weimar Republic was quite impossible for people obsessed with uniforms and symbolism - the Nazis brought back those glory days that led to tragic plunder in the form of massive auctions for the lifespan of the Reich in cities where Jewish belongings were stolen.  Regularly large ships with furniture, silver, furs, tapestries, rugs, glassware and more, all stolen from their victims sailed into their ports from occupied countries.

The Social Democrats and Trade Unions wanted property too - the Jews were the bad ones and everyone felt absolved of guilt, blamed for taking all the jobs, the Nazis omitted that the Jews since 1900 had excelled in schools and universities graduating at a rate of eight Jews to one Christian.  Lucrative careers in law and medicine only fed German envy.

A further complication - the Germans' deep rooted fear of true freedom which had not existed under the Kaiser meant the democratic Weimar Republic weakened them completely.  The Nazis were the catchall for socially envious people suffering an inferiority complex.  National inferiority substantially self conditioned Germans for the murder of the Jews.

"The Holocaust can repeat itself.  One should not believe the anti-Semites of yesterday are completely different human beings to the ones today."

AGREED.