majorspark;1706475 wrote:
Many industrialized nations during that time period suffered from mass unemployment in one degree or another. Including the US. Most did not get riled up to invade their neighbors and follow false prophets.
The Germans were unique because they were being crushed by the Allies and the deflationary economic policies enacted by Bruning were extreme even by the Depression's standards.
The U.S. had a depression but it wasn't being forced into an even worse one by Reparations owed to Canada. Canada did not invade the Rust Belt and take over American Industry. You did not have Canadians demanding payment from the Americans in foreign exchange, etc. etc.
And this is the sort of Us vs. Them propaganda that ISIS spews to get recruits. They write in their magazine that the Christian West oppresses them and invades their lands and occupies them and that Islam will be restored to the Caliphate as Jesus returns at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. This is just like the Nazi's calling for the restoration of the Fatherland which has been brought to its knees by non-Aryans. And so, the Germans began expunging their land of non-Aryans (Jews in particular) just as ISIS expunges Christians, inadequately extreme Muslims, and other ethnic groups.
In other words...it takes unique circumstances for extreme propaganda to take hold and it is a mistake to think that this is simply "good vs. evil" Everybody thought the Japanese were inherently evil or deranged in some way. For instance, as horrific as everything that ISIS has done so far has been, the Rape of Nanking was still worse (if we have to try and categorize human atrocity). Yet, the Japanese are a perfectly functional people today.
The war machine propaganda drumming up is truly amazing.